#once again thank you guys for your support for the zine!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaen-ace-of-diamonds · 4 years

Text

Impending Paternity

Word Count: 3900+ (oneshot) [AO3]

Genre: Humor/Angst/Hurt/Comfort

Pairing: Peter B. Parker/Mary Jane Watson

Characters: Peter B. Parker, Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man Noir, Peter Porker, Gwen Stacy, Peni Parker, Miles Morales

Summary: The closer the birth of his first child gets, the more Peter’s old fears of fatherhood resurface. Fortunately for him, he now has universes of parenting advice to call on and prepare him.

Written for the @dimension-zine.

~0~

Waking up in a cold sweat wasn’t something at all new to Peter B. Parker. That didn’t make it any less unpleasant.

What was new to him was registering the feeling of MJ’s arms around his waist as they slept, the flat press of her chin by his shoulders. Once again, they shared a bed: small, but more than enough room for them to lay pressed up against each other, legs entwined, skin on skin. It was almost enough for Peter to forget what had caused him to sleep more restlessly than he had in a very, very long time.

Even in the dark of the bedroom, the damn pregnancy test is staring directly at him from the mesh metal wastebasket, with its solid pink eye. He’d stared down monsters, mobsters, and maniacs of all sorts without blinking, and yet this damn near ignites his old “curl up in the shower and hide” instinct. MJ’s stomach doesn’t show any signs of change yet, doesn’t feel any different against his back...But there’s going to be a tiny person in there very soon. A person that he helped create. A person that he’ll have responsibility to.

MJ can’t stop smiling about it — this is what she’s wanted for a long time — and her joy is very nearly infectious. Peter had agreed to this, of course he had. It was time for him to quit hiding away from the fears that he couldn’t dodge or punch away so easily. But still, he isn’t sure if he can say he’s wholeheartedly looking forward to it, and still be telling the truth.

He’s never had younger siblings or cousins. He has long since lost Uncle Ben and Aunt May (knowing that other versions of them exist, even meeting them, doesn’t erase the sting). MJ hasn’t said a word to her own parents in years, and Peter has never had any problem saying flat out how unhelpful he’s sure they’d be anyway. So he has nobody to fall back on if he has questions or confusions or fears — aside from MJ, and while he loves her and trusts her judgment in all things, he can anticipate there may be times when an uninvolved third party will be invaluable.

All of a sudden, Peter freezes, eyes going wide. He has the sudden impulse to jump out of bed that always used to come with a brilliant idea, which he feels are too few and far between nowadays. Obviously he can’t do that now, at fuck o’clock in the morning with his wife’s arms securely around him. It’ll have to wait until the morning, but oh, he can’t wait to explain to her over breakfast what he’s planning to do when he grabs enough free time over the next few months. She still hasn’t heard everything he’s had to tell about his little dimension-hopping adventure...

~0~

“So!” Spider-Man Noir slams this finished egg cream down on the table just as fiercely as he has the past eight glasses. “You’re finally becoming a daddy!”

“How...are you doing that through your mask?” Peter asks hesitantly, sipping on his one half empty glass of the drink.

“I remember my childhood fondly,” Noir goes on as if Peter hadn’t spoken, gazing nostalgically out his window. He had wanted to take Peter bar-hopping, initially, but a guy walking around all in color attracted too much attention on the streets, and they had agreed that Noir’s apartment would be best for a private conversation. “Don’t remember my own mother or father, but my Aunt May says that she and my Ma used to trade parenting tips out of pamphlets when I was just a grub.”

Peter perks up slightly. “What kind of tips?”

“Well! First one’s for your future mama...Ah, how’s your place looking?”

Peter blinks. “It’s...fine. Better than living alone, no offense to you, but — ”

“No, no, you don’t get it. Is it all pretty?”

“Huh? Pretty?”

“Somethin’ Ma and Aunt May picked up from my granny,” Noir explains. “If a mama with an unborn baby sees ugly things, that ugly beams itself into her brain and straight down into her womb, and gets right into your baby. So you gotta be sure to keep her around pretty things to look at, you see? You want a nice kid, don’tcha?”

“Uh...Y-Yeah! I sure do!” he says, trying to keep disappointment off his face. Noir talks with absolute conviction in his beliefs, but what Peter had forgotten was that these were the beliefs of 1933. Even earlier, if he’s getting this stuff from older relatives. None of it’s going to do his twenty-first century self any good.

So the first chance he gets, Peter slurps down the last of his egg cream (surprisingly tasty, he’ll have to look up a modern recipe to compare sometime) and leaps up from his chair, sauntering back over towards an opening portal. “Thanks so much, Noir, but I gotta run! No telling when I can catch the next portal, y’know?”

Noir waves, unperturbed, pouring another drink. “Stock up on lard! You got to give baby’s first bath with it, get all that scum off ‘em!”

“Sure! Lard! No problem!” Peter calls over his shoulder, nearly diving into the portal.

~0~

Though Ham assures him that the natives find him much stranger and more unsettling than he finds them, Peter never quite gets used to being a real guy in a cartoon world. The lurid colors hurt his eyes, things move too fast and sound is constantly blaring, and for some reason he’s very, very suspicious about the contents of those hot dogs. But the veggie wraps are surprisingly good, and he chows down with one hand while typing at breakneck speed with the other.

“Hot dog, you’re fast enough to kick some butt at the Daily Beagle!” Ham bounces up and pats his head happily. “Granted, we’re more story-ey than sciencey over there, but you get the point! That file-hunting stuff’s really not giving you any trouble?”

“Nope,” says Peter through a mouthful of tomato and lettuce. MJ’s newly emerging cravings were much less of a pain than either of them had expected: they consisted mostly of something rich stuffed into something bread, and he wished he could bring something from here back for her. “The rules are pretty different from the re -- uh, from my dimension, but surprisingly easy to memorize. I should be able to retrieve what you’re looking for in...maybe two minutes?”

“Faaaaan-tastic!”

“Can you keep them busy that much longer?”

“Sure can!” As he speaks, Ham is already whipping a comically large wrench out of his pocket and hurling it at the helmeted boar goons trying to break through the barricaded door. “Take that, you @#$%^&*!”

Peter still isn’t sure how Ham manages to make those sounds instead of swearing, but no matter. As far as he’s concerned, no questions equals smooth sailing.

Well...of course he does have one.

“Hey, Ham, this might be a weird thing to ask, but...what would you call ‘good parenting?’”

“Huh, I’m not sure. My parents passed before I was hatched, but Mom made sure her sac was settled in a nice place! My web was in May Porker’s lab for months before I transformed! Good thing, too, I was coming up on the tail end of my lifespan!”

“Oh...Y-Yeah, real good thing,” Peter stammers, fingers momentarily freezing on the keys as he processes that whole spider-turned-pig thing one more time. He’s privately quite glad that he’s never seen what’s under Ham’s mask.

“I consider myself real lucky, actually!” Ham laughs. There’s a crash, and the metal door starts to squeal off its hinges, the enemy scrabbling to all get through the cracks at once. Ham promptly yanks out a machine gun and lets fly at them. Peter chokes down a laugh at the toy rat-a-tat-a-tat noises it makes. “Aunt May’s the best aunt a Spider-Ham could ask for! Bakes a mean apple pie, talks my ears off about her tech, supports me in all my endeavors. And you know, I can barely even see the bite scar anymore!”

Peter chokes on tomato. “The what?”

“Oh, Aunt May was the radioactive pig that turned me into Spider-Ham in the first place! My memories are slightly muddled around that time, but oh well! Doesn’t matter! Though neither of us had any idea it would do that, soooo...maybe just be extra careful about where your teeth go?”

Peter huffs, right-clicking the elusive file he’s found and downloading it to Ham’s flash drive, which is unsettlingly shaped like a bacon strip. “Yeah. Great advice. Don’t bite my kid. Next you’ll be telling me to keep my window open for the delivery stork to fly in with ‘em.”

“Well, sure, that’s just common courtesy! If ya really want to be nice, you give your stork a nice big tip!”

Peter swallows a groan from the deepest depths of his being, along with the last of the wrap.

~0~

“Six months and I still can’t believe you’re going to be a dad!” Gwen shouts, gracefully backflipping over another laser beam. “Like an actual dad!”

“Almost seven, actually! And yep! Can’t believe it either!” Peter answers somewhat breathlessly, through his own leaping and punching of the armored thugs rushing in through the legs of the gun-toting robots. “Any ideas for names? Because MJ and I are way out!”

He hears Peni’s thoughtful humming through the speakers of her newest prototype: SP//dr, Mark Three. “Hmm...I don’t know much about historical naming conventions, but I also don’t think they’ve changed very much...Chief Stacy, what do you think?”

Safeguarded inside SP//dr’s cockpit from the onslaught targeting him and remaining remarkably calm about it, George Stacy considers it. “Hm. My daughter’s name is Gwendolyn. I’ve always thought that was the nicest name.”

Peter smirks under his mask, and gently elbows Gwen as she passes him. “Whaddaya think, Spider-Woman?”

He physically feels Gwen rolling her eyes. “It’s fine. Why don’t you just name him after you?”

“There’s millions of me! Maybe more! And besides we don’t even know if it’s a him, yet!”

“What about Ben? Or Benjamin?” Peni suggests. “To honor your uncle!”

“Oh, come on! Doesn’t anybody have an original idea!”

Gwen wrenches a robot head off and lobs it straight into a goon’s chest. “You know what, those will probably be a little easier to come by after we finish getting shot at!”

“Agreed, ma’am,” Chief Stacy says. “Excellent throw, by the way. Hey, Man-Spider, machine gunner at three o’clock!”

No matter how short and no matter how many people fight beside him, Peter’s various battles always seem to last forever as they happen, but the memory of them only lasts a blink of an eye. So it’s slightly dizzying when just a couple hours after the attack has been dealt with, Chief Stacy secured, and a plan for Gwen to hunt down whoever had ordered it outlined, the three of them are sitting on the roof of a skyscraper, eating cheeseburgers while the sun rises before them.

“I can’t even imagine eating a burger with pickles on it,” Gwen says. “You’re really telling me that’s the common thing instead of chili peppers where you’re from?”

“Yep,” Peter confirms, washing a large, hot bite down with a quarter of his soda. “I mean, I’ve had jalapeño burgers before, but they’re like a specialty thing.”

“We eat pickles on our burgers, too, but they’re all deep fried,” Peni puts in. “Crunchy.”

Gwen laughs, the breeze blowing her hair back. After hearing the story of how she’d acquired her undercut, Peter always finds it funny that she’d gone ahead and kept it after all. “So weird.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says. “Entirely unrelated, if you need any more help with your dad, you just let me know.”

“And me!” Peni adds, SP//dr waving a leg in agreement.

“Thanks, guys.”

“Hey...Speaking of dads...” Peter pauses a moment to think before continuing, “What would you call your dads’ best qualities? Like, as a dad?”

“You’re looking for advice again?”

“A little template would be nice, sure!”

“All right, then...” Peni taps a French fry on the burger box. “I always loved how smart and loving my dad was, and that he had faith in me to continue his work when he was gone. Dad always believing in me helped me to believe in myself, when I might not have otherwise.”

Gwen nods. “I feel pretty similar about my dad. He doesn’t know about me being Spider-Woman, and he doesn’t really get the whole rock band thing. But he makes sure I know that he loves me no matter what, and that he’ll support me in whatever I decide to do. Provided I’m not, like, becoming a supervillain or anything, but I’m doing the opposite of that, so...”

Peter feels the urge to start taking notes. “Sounds good, sounds good, and...don’t take this the wrong way, but is there anything they do, as dads, that makes you not like them sometimes?”

Peni giggles. “Of course there was! I didn’t like when he’d work late and not get home on time, or when he’d make me stop reading comics and go to bed, or something like that. I’d get annoyed with him, but I still loved him.”

“My dad kind of runs the house like he does the police station,” Gwen adds. “He can be super strict, a bit like Miles’ dad. Ironclad rules and curfews for me and my brother, endless lectures when we break them. If I were a normal girl, it’d be pretty stifling, but since I have this life that I have to keep secret from him...it can be really hard sometimes.”

“Yeah, I...I can see that. I don’t really know if I should keep who I am secret from my kid, though. Would it keep them safe, or...just make them resent me? Or both?”

Gwen sighs. “There’s really no right answer, I don’t think.”

“You’re worried about being perfect.” Peni pats his shoulder. “But you don’t need to be. Just use your best judgment.”

Peter looks glumly at the street below. “I wish that was something I trusted.”

~0~

There’s a hollowness inside his chest.

The only light on the wide, empty street are from the street lamps, ghastly white against the pitch black. He moves as if underwater: swinging, roundhousing, throwing his barely-pulled punches. His heart is pounding, but the rest of him and the world feels numb. Cold sweat soaks the inside of his mask, and heavy dread washes over his skin.

Peter’s fighting shadows, human-shaped pillars of darkness. His strikes go right through them, when he can reach. But everything they land on him feels like being pummeled by a cannonball, and he’s not sure how long he can endure it.

The end comes out of nowhere. One spectral arm flashes up, there’s a glint of silver, and a soundless explosion that makes the whole world ripple. It hits his chest like a tidal wave, slams him into the concrete. He can’t get up again. In the world of muted, swimming colors, the gushing of blood from his shot-open heart is sickeningly vivid.

“DAD!”

Everything in him jolts. He lifts his spinning head to see a kid sprinting towards him, as fast as they can but not fast enough to reach him. He can’t tell how old the kid is, or whether they’re a boy or girl. But he recognizes MJ’s bright red hair and blue eyes, and his own expression of utter, gut-wrenching horror and heartbreak.

“DA-A-A-D!”

He tries to say he’ll be okay and coughs up blood instead. His rib-punctured lungs won’t let him speak. Panic engulfs him: his death is going to be burned into his kid’s eyes forever and there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can do, nothing, nothing, nothing —

“Peter! Peter, wake up, it’s okay!”

The darkness is blue, striped by the thin gold light through their bedroom blinds. His eyes fly open and he grabs for his bare chest: intact, bloodless. It’s soft and safe around him but he still can’t catch his breath. MJ is awkwardly rolling over in bed to stroke his hair and try to hug him.

“Peter, you’re okay. You were dreaming. Just dreaming...”

She’s no stranger to dealing with him like this, and the guilt stabs deeper. “I...s-sorry, I...”

“Deep breaths. Slow breaths. I’m here.”

“I won’t be,” he chokes out.

“Peter — ?”

“I-I dreamed that someone shot me, killed me, r-right in front of our kid. It...God, it terrified them, ruined them for life, I could feel it, and it was all my fault!”

He rolls over to look at her face, to anchor him to the real world. He half-expects to see irritation in her eyes at his weakness. Instead there’s love and sympathy.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was just a dream. That doesn’t mean it will happen.”

“It happened to every parent I ever had. It happened to me. What if I do that to my kid? I can’t — I don’t — ”

Trembling, Peter places his hands on MJ’s belly. Their kid, determined to make sure that their mom sleeps as little as possible, kicks a drumbeat against his palms. They don’t know what fear, pain, or loss is yet. How can he be the one to bring it into their life?

“I’m not running away again,” he assures MJ, as her fingers run through his hair.

“I know you won’t. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave our kid. I never did. I want to be there for you for the rest of my life,” Peter forces out through his tightening throat. “B-But that choice could end up not being mine, after all of this. The things I do, the people I fight, I could die anytime! I’d leave you again. Both of you.”

MJ cups his cheek, leans in to kiss his forehead. “I can’t tell you that nothing bad will happen, Peter. But I can tell you you’re not alone. Like, I worry about the same thing happening to me that happened to my mom. Dying before our baby can even remember me.”

Peter’s heart lurches; he’d forgotten about that. “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t —“

She cuts him off with another kiss. “We’re both afraid, Peter. Your job is probably the most dangerous one out there, but you don’t have to go through this alone. All we can do is what every parent has to do: our best.”

“What if my best isn’t good enough? What if I fail, and they hate me?”

“It’ll be more than enough for the people who love you. Always.” MJ smiles. “And they would never hate you. I never could, no matter what.”

Tears slip down his cheeks. He wants to tell her thank you, but he can’t seem to speak, only hug her as close as he can.

~0~

He has one place left to visit. Something he hasn’t been able to face until month nine.

Aside from this world’s MJ, Miles is the most common visitor to Perfect Peter’s grave. After the first time, he’s never surprised to see Peter B. here too.

“Hey,” he says as Peter walks up, morning dew soaking his sneakers. “How’s it going? Is MJ doing okay?”

Peter nods. “Her due date’s in two weeks. All smooth sailing so far as the doctors say.”

“Awesome.” Miles half-smiles. “So...you had a question for me?”

“Yeah. I just need...one more hope boost before this thing really gets started. Feel free to tell me to kick rocks back to my own dimension if you don’t want to talk about it, but...” He gestures to the gravestone. “This Peter. Your uncle. What was it like to lose them, because of their line of work? I’ve made my life so damn risky, am I doing something wrong bringing a baby into it with me?”

Miles is silent for a long time. “I don’t have a solid yes or no to that. I...I’ll always wish things were different for them both. That there was something I could have done to save them. If I let myself think about it too hard, or too long, I’ll lose myself in it.”

Peter winces. But then Miles goes on.

“I’ve just got to tell myself, what happened, happened. Can’t change the past. The best thing I can do, for them and for me, is keep moving forward. I miss them like crazy and I wish they were still around, I always will. But more than anything, I remember the lessons that they taught me. That they were good men, that they cared about me. It’s the same with you and your uncle, right?”

“I...I do remember him that way. Yeah. But I was going into college when Uncle Ben died. I wasn’t...just a kid. I chose this life, MJ chose to stay with me, our kid didn’t ask for this kind of life.”

Miles shrugs. “I worry about my dad every day. He’s worked a dangerous job in a dangerous city since before I was born. I don’t hold it against him, because I know why he does it. I’m one of the people he’s trying to protect, after all.”

“Yeah, but — ”

“Peter. Come on.” Miles turns to look at him then, with a knowing smile. “You don’t know all of what you’re doing. No one does. What matters is that you’re a good man, and that’s what’ll be most important to your kids, whatever happens: that their dad loves them and would do anything for them.”

Peter feels the same rush of pride and affection for him that he had back at the reactor, along with a sense of security around his heart. He’s surprised to find himself laughing. “You’re the best, kid, you know that?”

Miles’ grin broadens cheekily. “Oh, I know. I try.”

He wraps an arm around Miles’ shoulders and pulls him in for a hug. “Yeah, just keep trying, future godfather.”

It takes a second for the word to hit Miles, and then he spins around to stare at him with huge eyes. “I — their godfather?! Me?”

Peter laughs. “No one out there’d be better than you. Only the best for my kid.”

~0~

After the twenty-seven most stressful hours of their lives, Mira Penelope Watson-Parker emerges into the world with a long, indignant screech.

Illuminated in the noon sun, in the soft yellow hospital room, both his wife and daughter look like angels in Peter’s eyes. He doesn’t even care that he’s about to cry. “You did amazing, hon.”

MJ grins. “Helps to have a husband whose hands I could squeeze as hard as I needed. C’mere and hold her. I’m sure she wants to meet her dad.”

Peter tries so very hard not to tremble as MJ passes their blanket-wrapped daughter into his arms. He’s never felt anything so delicate in his life.

“She’s...so tiny,” is all he can manage.

Mira’s hair is her mother’s bright red, just like in his dream. But the dark hazel eyes staring curiously up at him are all his own.

Peter smiles at her, cradling her close. He really would do anything for her, he knows that already.

“Hey, sweetheart. Hey. Dad’s here.”

#into the spider verse #spiderman #peter b parker #miles morales #into the spiderverse #kaen's fics

36 notes · View notes

a3fantasyzine · 3 years

Text

🌸 Fantasy World 🌸

And at the end, it isn't about Villanger but Sakuya's personality and some thoughts about the world HAHA

I hope you guys enjoyed this! Advanced happy birthday to our dearest Sakuya Sakuma 🌸

Please reblog or leave your thoughts over at our Curious Cat!

Thank you so much for your support once again! We hope you're looking forward to the zine's pre-order (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! game #a3 #fantasy #storybook

4 notes · View notes

thehawaiianqueen-art · 4 years

Photo

Aizawa Shōta Art Log Zine UPDATES!!

So some updates on what’s going on with the zine right now. In short, the zine is very much still happening; however, this might end up taking a lot longer than I originally anticipated. As of right now, I want to push it by making it closer to 50+ pages of content. This doesn’t include the wallpapers and Icons and whatever other digital goods I can put in as well. This zine is being done solely by me, so please try to keep that in mind as stuff starts to update more as we go. I’m planning on using my Twitter (Link in bio) more for updates on zine matters and use Tumblr as the place people can toss me questions about stuff. This will be easier for those that want updates without having to hunt for them.

I have the following in Drafts/thumbnail stages:

Front and Back Covers are drafted

Around 25 pages have solid thumbnails to work with

5 thumbnails need to be either drawn again or cut for other stuff

2 Wallpapers have thumbnails

2 Icons have been sketched

This is all that I have done at the moment of me typing this, and those are posted both on Ko-Fi and my Patreon for Zine Backers. Now, this leads into the whole Zine Backers stuff that I will now explain.

If you filled out my interest check, I asked if anyone would possibly be interested in being a zine backer because I cannot just completely devote all my time to this project as I would like to. Right now, I have to take whatever commission I get to pay what bills I have and save anything leftover. I am also in the process of getting out of my current toxic and unhealthy living environment and simultaneously trying to update my almost 5-year-old laptop that’s slowly but surely giving out on me. So there is quite a bit going on here; I’m trying to manage all at once. This is just to help support me in making the zine.

Now, what are the benefits of being a Zine backer? There is quite a bit. You have 2 ways of being backer by using Patreon and or Ko-Fi. Both will have your name in the zine as a backer who helped make this zine possible. Even if it’s just for one month, your name will still be credited because every little bit does help a lot.

Ko-Fi Zine Backer is cheaper at $5 per month while Patreon is $8 per month (you get more stuff there)

Ko-Fi Zine Backer Perks:

This is $5 only under the “Monthly” slot on Ko-Fi. (It’s the easiest way to track everyone for crediting you later on.) Access to:

WIP screenshots of what’s in the works

1 Ko-Fi Backer Icon Exclusive

Patreon Zine Backer Perks:

This is $8 a month. Access to:

Early Access to Zines before anyone else!

Bonus content for what didn't make it in the zines

Polls on what zine you guys would like me to do next

1 Extra Patreon Only Wallpaper Exclusive

1 Extra Patreon Only Icon Exclusive

You will also get a 10% discount code when zines come out for any bundle you decided to perches.

This is exclusive to Patreon only and not Ko-Fi. Patreon also includes the backlog of wallpapers and line art I have on there as well; you can check out.

The Zine Backer option is again there for anyone who would like to support the zine and my content and can do so. If you can’t, that’s fine and understandable with the current time we are in right now. Don’t worry about it. Free ways to help any content creator is to like and share their work with others.

As for when this zine will be finished, I’d say around October at the earliest if I can manage it with other commissions. @zawavember 2020 will not be affected by this at all, and I will post the prompt list around the start of October. I’ll keep you all updated on the zine as it goes

If you have any questions about anything, drop me an ask or DM, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading and your support so far.

Tags: @fandomzines @zinefans @zinefeed @bnha-community-board @uahigh-newsletter @bnhabulletin @bnhafandomcalendar @zineforall

#aizawa shouta #my hero academia #boko no hero academia #mha zine #eraserhead #aizawa shouta eraserhead #ereasermic #Fan zine #anime zine #Zine updates #bnhaevents #zine for all #sfw zine

41 notes · View notes

angelofthequeers · 4 years

Text

Salt-Kissed Lips

Disclaimer: I don't own ML.

My contribution to the Leap of Faith zine by @ladrienzine now that we’re allowed to publish our works! It was so awesome to work with everyone involved and it really solidified my love for these blushing dorks!

“Isn’t it fascinating?”

“Father!” Adrien’s heart nearly leaps out of his body through his throat. But when he whirls around, Gabriel Agreste is far from angry.

“I always knew they existed,” the older man says in a hushed voice. His grey-streaked blond hair, madly gleaming cold grey eyes, and pale skin tinged a sickly blue by the light of the gigantic tank are more than enough to give him the look of a mad scientist without the need for some cliché white lab coat. “Everyone called me crazy. But I always knew my Emilie was taken by one of them!”

Adrien’s not exactly sure what to say. Oh, he’s not surprised to see a real mermaid in the flesh; his father’s been obsessed with “the blue tail in the moonlight” that he’d seen just after Emilie’s disappearance for so long that Adrien would’ve been more surprised to find that they didn’t exist. It’s just that he’s never seen Gabriel quite so…unhinged before now.

“They want to take my Emilie?” Gabriel says. “I’ll take one of them! I need to make some phone calls, Adrien. Soon, the whole world will know that these things are real and I’m not crazy! People will stop avoiding you and thinking of you as the crazy man’s son! Take a good look at that thing and know that it’s the reason your mother is gone!”

Once Gabriel’s gone, Adrien turns back to the massive tank that’s part of the marine park in which Gabriel works. The brilliant blue eyes that glare back at him are so full of venom that it’s a wonder they’re not shooting jellyfish barbs at him – wait, can mermaids even do that? Can they speak human languages? Or breathe air? What can they do?

“I’m sorry,” he says. Whether or not she can hear or understand him, he at least needs to make it clear to himself that he’s not his father. The sight of the girl with long dark hair in pigtails, a vivid scarlet tail dotted with black scales, and matching scales across her chest and face, almost like a mask, is like mild indigestion in his gut.

This is wrong. Okay, so Emilie might have been taken by a merperson, and Gabriel’s got every right to be full of grief. But keeping a mermaid prisoner and turning her into an exhibit to be gawked at for the rest of her life? There’s no way Adrien can justify this to himself. The hatred in her eyes isn’t helping, and neither is the fact that…wow, she’s stunning.

Oh no. Does this make Adrien a scaly?

Snap out of it! That’s not important right now!

The seed of a daring idea suddenly sprouts in his mind. Should he dare –?

Gabriel will be furious.

But this is the right thing to do.

But can he disappoint his father?

It’s not like Gabriel’s been much of a father since Emilie’s disappearance. He’s pretty much been raised by Nathalie, his father’s assistant.

He can’t let this happen. If he sits back and lets Gabriel turn this mermaid into an aquarium animal, he’s just as bad as the man that people associate him with. And if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s Gabriel Agreste.

“Hey.” He lightly taps the glass. The mermaid bares her jagged teeth and recoils, her black pigtails billowing around her like seaweed. “I’m gonna get you out, okay?” When she doesn’t seem to comprehend him, he points at himself, then at her, then up at the top of the tank. The hostility fades from her face, replaced with a puzzled frown. “Just hold on.”

Adrien bolts up the stairs out of the room as fast as humanly possible. He can’t be caught – he just can’t – if he’s caught, Gabriel will totally end him – whatever love the man has for his son can’t be any stronger than his rabid obsession with avenging Emilie.

Once Adrien’s outside and at the edge of the tank, he pauses. Is he really going to do this? Betray his father like this? After all these years of searching for the thing that took Emilie…

But this mermaid isn’t to blame. And she’s not a thing. Besides, will Gabriel really just up and be a better father once he’s turned this mermaid into a freak show? Or will he continue to obsess over her and soak up the glory of such a discovery?

Before he can once again doubt himself, Adrien sticks his hand into the tank and splashes, hoping to attract her attention. Once she’s up here, he can grab her and haul her out, smuggle her through the park somehow, down to the beach nearby –

Something grabs his wrist and yanks him into the tank. He yelps, although this is a bad move as his mouth is instantly full of water – he can’t breathe, the mermaid’s eyes are boring into him, he’s gonna be fish food –

He struggles even harder when the mermaid grabs his face. But rather than try and devour him with her terrifying teeth, she wrenches his mouth open and blows bubbles into it. Adrien reflexively swallows…and whoa, he’s not drowning! He can breathe underwater as effortlessly as in air!

“I’m Adrien. What’s your name?” he says to test this, and his voice rings in his head like echolocation in the marine documentaries he loves watching.

“I don’t trust you enough to give you my name. What do you think I should be called?” The mermaid’s voice is melodic, like she’s singing as she talks. It’s a sound that Adrien would gladly record and hoard for himself to listen to again and again; a sound that’s just as beautiful as the girl to whom it belongs.

“Um…” Two strips of red seaweed woven through her pigtails float above her head, almost like antennae, making her resemble a very fishy insect, especially with her wide eyes behind the red scale mask and her black-spotted red tail. “You kind of look like a – a ladybug…”

“Ladybug…” the mermaid says slowly, as though testing the word. “Ladybug. I am Ladybug.” She tilts her head, examining Adrien as though he’s a particularly interesting specimen. Which is ironic, given their positions. “You’re not like the other one. He’s full of hate.”

“I’m sorry about him,” Adrien says. He instinctively reaches out to take one of Ladybug’s pale, red-webbed hands, but stops himself just in time in case touching a mermaid is offensive or uncomfortable for her or something. “He thinks a merperson took my mother years ago. He’s been obsessed with avenging her ever since.”

“We don’t take humans,” Ladybug growls. “Humans beg to come with us. Many of my kind are humans that we saved from their own lives, whether they hated them or were in danger or simply discontent.”

“You think my mum…hated her life?” Adrien tries to wrap his head around this new information. Would Emilie really have gone freely with the merpeople? Left Gabriel? Left…him? Sure, their lives hadn’t been perfect, but no life is, right?

“I don’t know,” Ladybug says. “But if you help me escape, I will gladly share more information with you. I’ve always been fascinated by humans. My friends warned me not to come too close to shore…I should have listened to them…”

“Right! Yeah!” Adrien says. “If I lift you out, I can carry you out of here. There’s a beach just outside here. You can breathe air, right?”

Ladybug smiles and nods. The sight should be terrifying, what with how her sharp teeth are bared like he’s a tasty morsel, but it’s actually kind of cute and makes her look gorgeous, even if the blue tank light is making her appear rather ghostly. Swallowing, he kicks for the surface and emerges into the warm air with a gasp, then hauls himself out of the tank and leans at the edge to dip his hand back in. Ladybug’s head surfaces just a moment later. Now in the natural light of the late afternoon sun, her skin has a rosy glow to it that just enhances her prettiness, and Adrien’s stomach does a flip-flop as he carefully drags her out of the water.

“Thank you, Adrien,” Ladybug says. Adrien takes a moment to adjust her in his grip, shivering at the way her glittery, slippery tail hooks around his arm for extra support. It doesn’t feel earthly, but it also doesn’t feel like the fish he and Gabriel have caught many times before on the rare occasion that Gabriel would spend father-son time with him. Or maybe that was just a way to keep an eye out for mermaids.

“So…you guys “save” humans, right?” Adrien whispers as he stumbles through the building. Thank god that it’s after closing time, so he’s not bumping into people everywhere he turns.

“Yes,” Ladybug says. “We’re not kidnappers. We only take humans of their own free will.”

“Uh…how exactly do you do that? Just constantly blow bubbles in our mouths?”

Ladybug giggles. The sound nearly makes Adrien fall over and cry at the unfairness. How can one person – mermaid – have such a beautiful voice? Maybe Ariel had been truer to life than he’d thought.

“Our kisses have many effects on humans,” she says. “We can entrance them. We can cure them. We can cause disease in them. We can also turn them into one of us.”

“Whoa. Seriously?” Adrien’s brain wants to implode at this overload of information, though thankfully it doesn’t betray him as he carefully pushes the entrance doors open with his shoulder and sets off down the path to the beach. “You can actually make me one of you?”

Ladybug once again regards him with her curious head-tilt. “Would you like that?” she says. “Your father is not a very nice man, is he?”

“He’s doing the best he can,” Adrien says automatically. “He’s still not over Mum’s disappearance.” But even as he says the words, he knows they’re a lie. When’s the last time Gabriel had hugged him? Spoken to him for a purpose other than to issue an order? Spent time with him outside of obsessing over merpeople and dragging Adrien into his vengeful crusade?

And it’s not like anyone else likes Adrien either. When your father’s loony and mermaid-obsessed, people don’t generally see the point in assuming that you’re any better. Crazy by association, he’s been branded. Either that or other mermaid fanatics pester him for information and access to his father.

“The transformation is reversible,” Ladybug says as though reading his mind. Who knows, maybe she can? “If you ever decide that you’re unhappy, you can return to the land. But I wouldn’t be able to associate with you if you chose that. It would be too dangerous for –”

“Adrien! Come back this instant!”

Adrien gasps and ducks behind a thick clump of bushes, praying to every deity above that there’s no sign of them sticking out for Gabriel to see.

“Son! You know how important this is to me!” Now there’s a plea in Gabriel’s voice. “Bring the mermaid back! Do it for your mother!”

But if Ladybug’s right, Emilie would want him to do the exact opposite: to free Ladybug, not take her back to captivity. Squaring his shoulders, Adrien takes a deep breath and then makes a run for it down the sandy trail to the beach. He doesn’t remain unspotted for long; after a few moments, Gabriel shouts his name.

“Bring my mermaid back or you’ll be in more trouble than you could ever imagine!” his father bellows. Adrien’s lungs are burning – his legs are like jelly – he’s fit, sure, but this could be a literal matter of life or death – just a little further, over the soft sand and down the wet, crunchy layer –

The minute his legs hit the waves lapping the shore, Ladybug wriggles and squirms until he loses his grip on her. Although they’re in the shallows and she can’t swim, she’s able to gracefully roll further into the water until the waves catch her and pull her out. Adrien’s heart stops in his chest at the sight of the beautiful mermaid in the light of the setting sun, her tail such a beautiful, deep red and her blue eyes just as piercing as they’d been in the tank.

“Adrien Agreste!” Gabriel’s emerging from the sandy path now. His eyes are wild behind his glasses, and he’s practically frothing at the mouth. Whoops. Adrien is so grounded.

“Adrien!” Ladybug holds out her hand. “Come with me?”

Stay with his fuming father, who’ll probably lock him away for ten years for letting a mermaid go? Who hasn’t even really raised him while obsessing over Ladybug’s kind? Or go with Ladybug, who’d only shown him hostility out of self-preservation and had given him even just a little closure about his mother?

“How can you steal years of work from me?” Gabriel shouts. “Your mother would be ashamed to even call you her son!”

Time seems to stand still as Adrien makes his decision and sprints out into the crashing waves. His hand closes around Ladybug’s just as Gabriel reaches the ocean, and the mermaid grips him tightly and heaves him out until he can’t even touch the bottom.

“Adrien?” Gabriel says. Adrien looks over his shoulder, directly into Gabriel’s eyes.

“My mother would have been proud of me for doing the right thing,” are his final words to Gabriel Agreste before Ladybug tugs him into the orange ocean. When he tries to breathe and gulps in water, he realises that Ladybug’s bubble magic must have worn off…but then she’s cupping his face and kissing him, and all he can do is inhale seawater and kiss back, his eyes fluttering closed, her lips plump and salty…wait, why can’t he kick anymore, why don’t his legs work, how can he breathe so much better than before…

His eyes fly open when Ladybug pulls away. The first thing that catches his eyes is the glimmering black tail that’s replaced his legs, with brilliant green fins instead of feet and green fins up the sides of the tail. Then he looks at his hands and finds green webbing between his fingers, and there are black scales going up his torso diagonally – and there are gills on his neck –

Holy. Heck. He’s a merman. Ladybug had been telling the truth! A melodic giggle escapes the mermaid beside him, and it’s a trip to realise that he can see her clearly despite the growing lack of light.

“You make a very handsome merman, Adrien,” Ladybug says, kissing his cheek. She takes his hand and interlinks their fingers. “Are you ready to go now?”

Adrien looks back towards the shore, where Gabriel’s face can be seen above, twisted in fury and distorted through the water. Then he looks at Ladybug and her shining eyes and pretty smile, and his decision is made.

“Let’s go, Ladybug,” he says.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fic #aotq fic #aotq oneshot #ladybug #adrien agreste #ladrien #gabriel agreste #mermaid marinette #mermaid au #kisses #leap of faith

218 notes · View notes

yearsaheadzine · 4 years

Text

Hi everyone!

Due to some circumstances given, it has been a hard choice but we have decided to put our zine into a hiatus until our pandemic is over and from there a lot more things would be changing. We might have a new set of Mods and we would be having a new schedule that will be announced later on. We decided to do this since with the pandemic we have noticed that many people couldn't afford to join our zine without receiving a part of the profit during these dire times. Sometimes with online classes, things get a little more difficult for us causing a higher chance of dropouts. Other than that, we still have the production and shipping aspect to lookout for. We want this zine to go as smooth as possible without having any production or shipping delays especially since most production companies and postal services on certain countries are affected by the pandemic.

Therefore, we have decided to put our zine on hiatus until things clears up and hopefully by then everything can go smoothly.

We would like to say thank you to all the lovely Artists, Merch Artists, and Writers who as applied to the zine. We will re-open applications once our new schedule has been set. To those who have applied, don't worry you won’t need to apply again unless you want to change your samples. An email will also be sent to you guys confirming if you would still like to apply for the zine. If not, then your application will be removed. Further announcements will be made on this before our applications open again.

And with that we would like to Thank everyone for supporting our zine so far. We will be back after the pandemic. Please stay safe and healthy! Don't forget to wear a mask when going out! Let's do everything we can to end this pandemic.

See you soon everyone!

Thank you♡

@fandomzines @faneventshub @zine-scene @zinefeed

10 notes · View notes

akayonatarotzine · 4 years

Text

Hello everyone! This is Mod Azu. We wanted to write a statement regarding the three months since the preorder period ended. I'm sure a lot of people have been wondering why shipments have taken so long to get out.

We already mentioned that we were deliberating over shipping carriers—almost as soon as the preorder period ended, articles in the United States started to pop-up surrounding packages going missing or consumers getting misleading notifications about the state of their packages. Because of those articles, we spent a lot of time carefully deliberating on the best course of action regarding shipping. As a lot of you know, AkaYona Tarot Zine is a charity zine, and our budget was initially planned with that in mind—the idea that we would have a solid amount of money left over to donate to the Rainforest Alliance. For the past few months (during which the PDF was finished and we had to double check the tarot deck and zine shipments, all which added to the delay), we had tentatively been planning on going with UPS as a guarantee, because we reasoned that the best option would be the one to guarantee delivery in the most timely fashion.

However, after once again looking at the rates, using UPS would mean we would go over budget. We would no longer have anything significant to donate to charity. Due to this realization, we had to change our mindset regarding UPS being our only option—because we have leftover products and can afford compensating any orders that the USPS might potentially mess up the delivery of, we switched from UPS to USPS. From what we've seen from other zines and based on our conversations with others in the United States, USPS should get you guys your packages safely; it may be delayed, but they should get to you. We hope you guys can understand why this has been a conversation that needed many months to make a decision on as the information available to use, as with many things throughout covid, has been highly varied as time went on. If things go badly for any reason, a leftover sale will no longer be feasible, but rest assured, everyone in the preorder period will get what they ordered. Thank you for understanding and supporting us—above all, we want everyone to get what they ordered. Thank you!

#akatsuki no yona #akayona #akayonatarotzine #zine update #zine

10 notes · View notes

agent-yolk-writes · 3 years

Text

Year in Writing - 2020

Well...I really don’t know where to start. One year ago today I was pretty optimistic that I’d get a lot more done and even get at least one person on my Patreon, but (gestures to 2020 in general) shit happens I guess.

Somehow in this messy year I graduated college and managed to get a PT job while the world. In between all that, I somehow had the time and energy to write. So, like last time, here’s a summary of what I can remember writing in 2020 as the final hours dwindle down to zero.

Okay, where to begin?

I guess we can go with zines since that can be dealt and done with. I moderated a lot this year, and will probably do some more modding next year once the pre-order period for the ones I’m currently on have passed. I contributed less than I mod since I’m guaranteed to be rejected every time. It sucks that there’s hardly any zines that even include writing in the first place. The perks of being a mod that, if writing is available, you can bypass the application process. That’s what happened with the Slime Rancher OC Zine and my piece Trials of a Rookie Rancher which features my OC from Summer Essay, Riida. It was a financial flop, but atleast it was a charity zine anyways.

I’ve applied to another charity zine about Pokemon called Helping Hand, which I forgot to apply as a mod to. I got accepted as a pinch hitter and, surprisingly, I was called to action as someone had to drop. As of writing this, it’s still in the production phase so I can’t tell you much. I meant to post a preview of it, but the formatting of which the mods wanted the writers to post scares me. I’ll probably post it on ao3 when I get the go ahead.

I only updated Friends Like You and Us with only one chapter back in May, but lately I’ve made excellent progress on the next chapter since action and fighting isn’t really my forte and yet here I am, getting sucked into fandoms that are action-oriented. I think watching ITSV again before it got pulled from Netflix helped.

Of course, it can’t be a year unless I write an FGO fic. In fact, I somehow managed to write two! Part one of a two-shot, and a crossover one-shot! The two-shot is Night SURFING which is a continuation/sequel of my Asterios fic called Ebb and Flow of the Sea back in 2018. I have to give a special shoutout to my friend Pallan Minerva, author of Saga of Shirou’s Summons and irl friend, who enabled me to write more cute shit for the minotaur. The only reason why it’s not completed yet is, surprise surprise, the second part has an action/fight scene and as you probably know by now, I’m not very good at writing those. Especially since it involves two huge monsters...which is ironic considering I’m a big fan of tokusatsu.It’ll figure itself out one day.

The other FGO fic is Udon for the Drifting Warrior, which is a crossover fic with Isekai Shokudou or Restaurant in Another World. It came to me during one of those days during the pandemic where I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t go outside and do shit. In a sleep deprived haze, I decided to pick up Shokudou again, got hungry in the process, and thought “This would be the perfect setting for Musashi.”. Few months prior, I told Pallan that I wanted to do something with Musashi since she’s my waifu and he suggested an udon date. Well, I got the udon part down at least. I haven’t finished the anime yet, but I have bought the first book of the light novel. I’m hoping to at least do a Shokudou crossover with Dorohedoro but other than that? Who knows.

And finally, I have fallen in and out of fandoms throughout 2020...and there’s one that I’ve fallen hard for. It’s Obey Me, the latest addition to the Shall We Date? otome mobile game franchise. I think I tried another SWD game years ago but never got into it because reasons. But Obey Me definitely hits all my buttons...which is just hot demon guys plus the obligatory human and angel. I wrote A Sleep-In Demonstration for funsies when I was planning out like at least two longer-form stories. Satan and Belphie aren’t my top faves if you would believe it. It’s Lucifer and Diavolo bc of course it would be

That...seems to be it on my end. While my quantity is less than desirable, I can only hope I improved in quality. My job can be pretty draining, and I know I don’t want to do it long term, so I hope juggling to find a better opportunity alongside writing fics will be easy for me in 2021.

I hope I can update Summer Essay too in the new year. I’ve done tremendous progress for the latest chapter and I would like to think it’s almost done. The mental block that’s preventing me from finishing this fic already is going to catch these hands when I find it. I hope I can gush about it in next year’s YiW as well.

And that’s it for real. Thank you so much for reading this. If you’ve been sticking around for some time, I thank you for your patience and support. We may not talk, and only one person drops something in my inbox once in a blue moon. It gets very lonely on this blog, but I know you people are out there. Knowing that you’re reading my fic as well as liking and reblogging it so other people can see it works just fine. Thank you, and I hope the new year treats you kindly.

See you in 2021!

#agent yolk talks #my writing #man i wrote a lot for this despite not writing a lot of fics this year

1 note · View note

kaokki · 5 years

Photo

Part 25 They had a bonding moment!! OMG GUY THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's with a pain in my heart that I announce this is the end of my dating site au comic ;u; I already miss it lmao! And I want to thank you all for following my comic and supporting it, it was an amazing experience and I had no idea it would entertain so many people! ;o; All of your feedbacks and comments were super important to me and I'll cherish every single one of them ♥ And as I said, I'm planning to make this comic into a zine (which means, make it into a physical comic book) and I have some nice ideas! I hope I can make it happen! ;v; Once again, thank you so much for staying with me and I hope you guys can enjoy my non-comic art from now on ♥

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15 • Part 16 • Part 17 • Part 18 • Part 19 • Part 20 • Part 21 • Part 22 • Part 23 • Part 24

#klance dating site au #lance #keith #voltron #vld art #kaokki #my art

2K notes · View notes

guiltyhearts · 4 years

Text

FIC: The Treasured Chest (KH)

I was fortunate to be involved in The Destined Oath: A SoKai Server Zine, which was made available on Gumroad for free back in January (You can get the zine here if you haven’t yet). Silly me didn’t put up their story on this site after the zine was made public. So for your reading pleasure, please enjoy my short story!

The Treasured Chest

Words: 2937

Summary: Sora may be a little older and making big moves in his life. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have time to go down memory lane.

-------

Time was funny. It always seemed to pass by much faster than expected. Days, months, years would all blur together, no clear distinction of where it started and where it ended. For Sora, this was no different. The years of grand adventures to other worlds were behind him and he was happily settled back home in Destiny Islands. He often felt that his adventures and battles had all happened recently, maybe one year prior. In truth, six years had passed since the final showdown with Xehanort and the new Organization XIII and he had spent that time content on the islands with his friends, old and new, finally settling into some semblance of a normal routine. The funny thing was, time now felt like it passed by him in a blur and it always caught him by surprise when a major event came up. In this case, it was preparing to move into his new house.

Sora was technically an adult now, and this meant it was time to make big changes and move forward, starting with moving out and setting up his own home. With moving day looming on the horizon, Sora had no time to dwell on the mix of emotions he felt over leaving his childhood home. Not when he had to sort through his possessions. As he had informed his mother, Sora had a system for organizing his things between those he would take with him and those he would leave behind.

One look into Sora’s bedroom and its current state would overwhelm anyone. Boxes in varying degrees of emptiness were placed all around the room, with clothes scattered across surfaces and most definitely not in his own closet or drawers. Bottles of different shapes and sizes that were never properly recycled but were certainly repurposed (according to Sora). His mother, who had long been since resigned with his habit for messiness, left him alone to sort through his possessions. But it only took half the day for Sora to organize all his clothes, he would have you know! While he grabbed a heap of the clothes he planned to get rid of, he discovered the fabric had been covering a bright purple treasure chest: a chest he had repurposed for his own use. It contained numerous trinkets, knick-knacks, whozits and whatzits galore. Items of interest that he picked up, or gifts he was given from each world he visited in the three years he had been away from home. He hadn’t looked at, let alone put anything in that chest in ages. Setting the clothes aside, Sora sat down across from the chest to open it.

The effect was not immediate, like a flood of memories hitting him at once. But to Sora’s credit, he did recognize each and every item in the chest as the feeling of rediscovering a past life and all the joys that came with it settled in deeply.

The first thing Sora picked up an off-white piece of parchment and unfolded it. The paper depicted a detailed pencil drawing of himself when he was younger and starting out on his intergalactic travels, standing next to Tarzan. At first glance, Tarzan in the drawing seemed stoic, but the finer details presented a lighter side to him like upturned corners of the mouth and relaxed shoulders. Sora was openly smiling with his hands behind his head. His face and cheeks were almost perfectly round. Had he really looked that young? Sora hadn’t seen him in a long time, but how could he forget Tarzan, the King of the Apes?

---

The Deep Jungle was home to a truly glorious array of flora - flowers, plants, trees and those of the sort. So Sora had been told. But it was hard to see for himself when these plants and trees were only a blur. His focus was squarely on what was ahead of him, and in this case, it was Tarzan and the fact that the man was leading by a slim margin. Sora would have to maneuver through the intersecting branches and speed ahead to overtake him. In what felt like mere seconds, Sora could see the opening that would lead to the campsite and he willed himself to keep going. He had to keep pushing and not lose his footing. He bent low before pushing off hard to leap forward, aiming to land right in the middle of the campsite. To his dismay, Tarzan landed before him by seconds.

“You won again!” Sora dramatically groaned. Tarzan beat his chest triumphantly and grinned back at Sora.

“Keep trying!” Tarzan proclaimed cheerfully, even if the affirmation was brought down slightly by his smugness.

Sora stretched his back and turned forward with a look of determination. “Fine! I’ll race you back!”

“But Sora, we gotta go!” Goofy called out. He and Donald had been with Jane Porter while he went tree-surfing with Tarzan.

“Aww…” Sora pouted, feeling like a small kid again. He was having fun, too…

“Where will you go?” Tarzan asked.

“I don’t know.” Sora answered honestly. Remembering what Donald said about the world order, he would have to choose his words carefully. “All I know is that we’ll keep going until we find our friends.”

Tarzan was quiet, seemingly in deep thought. Before Sora could continue, Jane approached them with papers in hand.

“Good luck on your travels. I hope you will be safe. Here,” she handed the stack to Sora. “I hope you’ll like these.” Sora went through the papers, pressed flowers and hand-drawn pictures of the animals and scenery. He stopped once he saw the picture of himself and Tarzan. Tarzan looked over his shoulder and-

“Tarzan! Sora!” He exclaimed, looking surprised and pleased.

Jane smiled kindly, her cheeks turning pink. “Yes, that’s the both of you. How do you like it?” She directed the question at Sora.

“Thanks a lot!” Sora smiled graciously. “We look great here!” He and the others pored excitedly over Jane’s papers, which he now saw included individual drawings of Donald and Goofy. Through their pleased exclamations, Sora could have sworn he heard Jane say something quietly, thinking no one could hear her.

“He’s still so young…”

---

Sora kept the drawing for himself, while Donald and Goofy kept the other papers. He had thanked Tarzan ten times over for finding and rescuing him when he was separated from the pair. Still, at times he wondered if Tarzan understood just how grateful Sora was to be found when he was alone again in an unknown world.

He carefully folded away the drawing and placed it back in the chest. As Sora placed the item down, he caught sight of his membership card for the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee. It rested on top of a pixelated printed picture of himself, Donald and Goofy, the latter being a gift from Tron. A thought occurred to Sora, and to confirm his suspicions, he flipped the picture over. On the back, a sequence of 0’s and 1’s filled two-thirds of the page. He didn’t have to look too hard to find another piece of folded paper, branded with “From Tron!” in blue letters and a cartoon doodle of Tron’s face that he drew himself. Grinning at the recollection, he unfolded the paper.

---

Sora, Donald, and Goofy were about to leave Hollow Bastion – or Radiant Garden, rather – for the next leg of their journey. They were saying their goodbyes in Merlin’s house when Cid came up to them, and said in his characteristic gruff voice, “You guys got something from Tron.”

“Really?” The trio looked up in surprise.

Cid handed Sora a single sheet of paper with a picture of the threesome in a pixelated style printed upon it. Underneath the image, ‘Thank you!’ was written in large block letters.

“This is great! Tell him we said ‘thanks’.” Sora smiled happily at the picture.

Donald, shorter than the rest, could see the back of the paper. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing. Sora flipped the paper over and was met with a sequence of 0’s and 1’s running down the page.

“I have no idea,” Sora shrugged before looking back at Cid. “Do you know?”

“I’m just delivering the message. I don’t have to know what it means.” Cid replied offhandedly.

Donald squawked impatiently, “Come on! You do know what it means!”

Cid smirked as he suppressed a chuckle. “That’s binary,” he relented. “To grossly oversimplify for you punks, it’s computer language. It’s how they give and receive information.”

“Does that mean this is a message from Tron? How come it came out like this?” Goofy questioned out loud.

“Maybe he wanted to mess wi’ ya,” Cid added with a laugh.

“What does it say?” Donald asked again.

“Do I look like a computer?” Cid shot back. This kicked off a bickering session over computers, magic, and each other’s intelligence.

In the midst of this, Goofy approached Sora with a separate piece of paper in hand. “I found this on top of that keyboard-thingy,” he said quietly pointing over at Cid’s computer. “I don’t know how binary works, but I think this is what the numbers mean.” He showed Sora the paper. This time there were words that he could read and understand.

Sora, Donald and Goofy,

I want to thank you once more for your support. I will not forget what you have done for myself and for the mainframe. It is thanks to you I am confident in my capabilities to assist the other Users.

I wish you safe travels in your journey.

Come back soon!

From Tron.

---

In the present day, Sora smiled, his chest feeling light with joy and wistfulness. He recalled Cid’s attempt to explain to the trio how binary worked (which Sora still did not understand to this day). He hoped Tron was keeping well.

Like with Jane’s drawing, Sora folded Tron’s gifts carefully and put them back into the chest under a toy-sized, yellow energy canister. Tucked to one side of the chest, a small velvet pouch caught his eye. It bore an unfamiliar crest surrounded by a border of alternating fleur-de-lis and diamond symbols. The unfamiliarity just as quickly gave way to recognition. Arendelle, it occurred to him. Opening it, a delicately shimmering crystal landed on his open palm. Sora had never seen a snowflake up close - all he knew was that no two snowflakes were identical. The crystal snowflake, now safely in Sora’s palm, was cool to the touch, but not quite as ice-cold as he recalled it had been when he received it.

---

“I don’t know how to begin to thank you for all your help.” Queen Elsa said as she held her sister’s hand. After a series of trials and tribulations, the two were finally reunited. Their sisterly bond was reaffirmed, the eternal winter spell (literally) was broken, and the world was safe.

“What about a knighthood!” Anna exclaimed excitedly.

“A knighthood, you say?” Sora grinned at the prospect. Already he envisioned himself donning a classic suit of armor. Maybe even a fancy cape, if that was still a thing. A sharp tug at his pant leg broke the reverie and brought his attention down to Donald, whose look of disapproval all but told him to keep his mouth shut and to quit while he was ahead.

Donald cleared his throat and spoke with uncharacteristic formality. “That is most gracious and generous of you, Your Highness. We are honored, but we couldn’t accept.”

“Even if we can’t knight you, we still want to give you something.” Elsa replied instead.

“It’s kind of you to offer.” Goofy said with his usual warm smile.

Elsa brought her hands up, with one hand hovering over the other. She wiggled her fingers in a manner that Sora recognized as an act of magic. It poured from Elsa’s fingers like flurries of snow and twirled together tightly into a bright orb of light. The orb spun between her hands until it transformed again. The light had faded to reveal a shining, shimmering, cobalt-blue crystal snowflake. To say that Sora was awe-struck by the feat would be an understatement.

“For you, Sora.” Elsa presented the crystal, now hanging delicately on a string, to Sora, who offered his thanks and cautiously reached for the crystal. What he hadn’t expected was for the crystal to be so cold to the touch. The shock of the cold on his exposed fingertips was enough for Sora to yelp and send the crystal flying out his hands. The snowflake was descending far too fast to Sora’s horror, prompting him to desperately scramble for the crystal. Donald and Goofy had the same idea. So three pairs of hands were grabbing at the crystal, resulting in an unintentional game of hot-potato. The crystal fumbled from their grasps and made a steady descent to the ground. Before anyone else could act, the crystal was suspended mid-fall by its looped string, hanging off a branchy arm.

“Safe and sound!” Olaf said cheerfully. The group let out a collective sigh of relief. Donald gently took the crystal from Olaf.

“Thanks, Olaf,” Sora smiled, partly grateful and partly sheepish. He bowed low in front of Elsa. “I’m so sorry.” Donald and Goofy took his cue and bowed alongside him.

“That’s alright,” Elsa smiled kindly. She created two more crystal snowflakes for Donald and Goofy, who accepted them just as graciously and were far more careful with handling them.

“I hope that whenever you see these, you will remember us.”

Sora carefully returned the crystal back into the pouch. He could never forget any of the people he met in his travels, especially not when he had these memories he could hold in his hand. He spent the better part of an hour going through the contents of the chest and revisiting his past.

And then he saw it. When did I put this in here? Sora gently picked up the old thalassa-shell charm. He used to keep it in his pocket, but its presence started to cause as much anxiety as it did comfort. What if it broke, or worse, what if he lost it? It was likely why he kept it in the chest for his own peace of mind.

“It’s my lucky charm. Be sure to bring it back to me.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Sora found it odd that he didn’t return the charm back to Kairi this time like he always promised he would. It had slipped his mind, though she never asked for it back. So he kept it away among the other trinkets. Here in his hands was perhaps his most precious possession. The charm was the promise of her memory and her unconditional devotion that he literally carried with him wherever he went. She had brought him back up on his feet and back to life more times than he could count. Where would he be without her, or Riku, Donald, Goofy, Axel, Roxas, Naminé, and all the other friends he made in his adventures? Probably long dead, for starters.

He closed the chest, but kept Kairi’s charm with him. Sora looked around the room once more: there were still some half-empty boxes, and his designated piles seemed to now make up one indistinguishable pile.

They could wait.

---

One phone call, one hasty apology to his mother, and fifteen minutes later, Sora sat on the porch of his new house. Their new house. He hadn’t waited long, but he was staring into space when a voice broke through the reverie.

“Sora?”

He looked up and there was Kairi standing before him. He shuffled to the side to make room on the steps, a silent offer.

“You were cryptic on the phone. Is something wrong?” Kairi asked with a look of concern as she sat beside him.

“No, not at all,” Sora replied. “I wanted to surprise you, but I guess I made you worry.” He looked down in embarrassment. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the lucky charm. From the corner of his eye, he saw surprise on her face.

“I just thought I should return this. It is pretty long overdue,” Sora said, handing the charm to Kairi.

“I wasn’t expecting this.” She said with a bemused smile.

“It’s yours, Kai. I did promise I would give it back to you.”

“Keep it. It’s as much yours as it is mine.” Kairi placed the charm back on Sora’s palm and closed his fingers around it. “It’s probably always been yours.”

Feeling overwhelmed and flushed, Sora looked away. “I found it in a chest where I was keeping a bunch of stuff people gave me during my travels. I must have kept it there for safe-keeping. I was afraid I’d lose it.”

“I didn’t really care. I just wanted you to come back safely.” said Kairi. “I’m willing to bet your other friends would agree with me. As long as you’re alive. That’s what matters.”

“There’s no heart my smile can’t reach, right?” Sora grinned teasingly.

It was Kairi’s turn to blush and pout, a look that said she regretted ever giving him the letters she wrote. “No teasing!” She lightly slapped his arm.

“Sorry!” He said looking appropriately apologetic. She seemed to accept this and rested her head on his shoulders. He instinctively wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“I wanna see this chest. It sounds like it has a lot of good memories.”

“It does. Before or after we move in?”

“Yes.”

Sora laughed, falling in love a little more. “It’s a promise.”

#Sora #Kingdom Hearts #Disney #SoKai #at the end #KH #fanfic #My writing

8 notes · View notes