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pokeexehasstoppedworking · 4 years ago

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Love Doesn’t Do Encores Ch12 Battle Gym Leader Kabu

You had been so, so confused at first when Gloria all of a sudden announced she wanted to use your sobble against Kabu. And to be honest you weren't really too keen on the idea either. Your little cute roll-y poll-y sobble who'd cling to you when scared?? Fighting against the second strongest gym leader in all of Galar??......Yeah. You really, REALLY weren't feeling up for the idea, and had asked her why for goodness sakes!? Her answer was simple.

"The tears ability! Sobble's tears will be my winning strategy against Kabu. I already gotta plan in mind but I can't do it without your pokemon's help since I ain't got a sobble 'o my own! Please Y/n! I'm beggin' ya!"

Well.....You really didn't want to just hand over your sobble even if you trusted Gloria by now, but you also didn't want to make her lose the gym challenge either. After all completing the game was your only shot at making it back home so far. If Gloria couldn't beat Kabu and was snuffed out of the challenge by him then what would you do? So...You agreed. Your sleep didn't come easy to you that night but somehow you managed to fall in a deep dreamless sleep. The next morning literally having to make Gloria push you off the bed in order to wake you up as she shook you. Not on purpose of course, as she had just been trying to get you to wake up but the moment your groggy body fell to the floor with a thud she began apologizing purfusely.

"Y/N!!" Your body rattled more than a maraca as you suddenly began pulling out of the darkness blinking rapidly at the blurry vision of everything shaking before you like an earthquake. "WAKE UP ALREADY!! WE'RE GONNA BE LATE!!"

"WHAT- AH!!" Your world tumbled as you fell from the comfy bed and was met with the hardness of the wooden floor by Gloria's feet. "OW!!"....You groaned as the blanket slowly fluttered down to messily cover you.

Gloria's hands shot to her mouth, making a hissing sound as she watched you experienced pain. "Y/N!! Oh my Arceus! I'm so so sorry!," she quickly apologised.

"...Good morning to you too, Gloria," you mumbled before kicking the sheet off you and pushing yourself off the floor, your hair a mess, and yawning. "What time is it?"

"Um..Seven in the morning I think?" You turned to her tiredly and noticed she was already wearing her white challenger uniform and all ready to go.

"Did you get the others up?," you asked stiffling a yawn as you stood.

"Um..." She chuckled nervously as you stretched your back and rose a brow at her as she held up a hand. "Uh..About that...They're gone." Her face frowned more as you paused...and blinked at her.

"...What do you mean 'They're gone'?"

"They weren't there when I knocked on the door, so I guess they left early! I'm sorry I didn't know!"

"Oh for the love of-..." You sighed and waved her off. "Nevermind." Quickly reaching over, you bent down and pulled the blanket off the floor, throwing it back neatly over the bed before going for your bag. "Are you all ready?" She nodded. "Good. We'll find them later. For right now let's just worry about getting to the stadium and seeing what's up! Ok?"

She had quickly agreed to that and you wasted no time throwing yourself together, tossing your bag over your shoulders, and grabbing your sobble's pokeball. From what she told you last night, you thought it'd be best to put the little critter into it's pokeball and give it to her before her battle to avoid any complications should your sobble start acting up. Which lead to now. The two of you were already in the elevator on your way down to the lobby. Anxious tention in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife as you lightly gripped the pokeball in your hand slightly harder. After a moment or two of silence Gloria went digging through her bag and pulled out something that looked pretty much like the goggles you'd see a diver wear before entering the water.

"Did you eat anything?," you asked glancing at her as she slipped the straps over her head making you give a confused look. "...And what are those for?

She silently shook her head slightly as her head was bent down and you watched in silence as she silently tightened the black straps tightly around her head. When Gloria finally managed to look up at you, the goggles were tightly clamped around her eyes and she shook her head no. "No. I was too busy tryin' too get ready. 'sides I feel pretty queezy. I don' know if food's a good idea right now." She blinked obviously noticing the look you were giving her goggles. "What are you- Oh these?" You nodded and she smiled. "Well last time he cried ya'll didn't stand a chance. But I figured if I covered my eyes real good I won't get affected by whatever's in those sobble's tears that makes ya cry rivers!"

You stared....."That's bloody genius!! Why didn't I think of that!?"

She chuckled. "To be honest it really ain't my idea anyways. I remember Hop telling me the idea back when I got my toxel. I remembered it when I thought of usin' your sobble and stopped by that clothes shoppe in town. They were sellin' swim wear n' stuff since it's summer and picked up these lil babies. Like I said. He's a genius."

Ah! That must've been why it took her a while to get back to the hotel. She really was preparing for her gym battle. As the elevator went you had reluctantly handed over your sobble's pokeball to her and she gently took it. Giving it a look before deeply inhaling and slowly exhaling, most likely psyching herself up before relaxing her posture and slowly slipping the pokeball into her pocket. You watched as she did so with worry and a little bit of guilt eating away at your stomach. You weren't sure if this was really the right thing to do after all, especially without telling your pokemon. This was surely going to be quite the shock for it, and you weren't too sure what the outcome could be. A ding interrupted any of your thoughts as the both of you looked back towards the doors as they opened, and you were lightly surprised to see the girl there. The same girl you had been worriedly thinking over last night. Marnie!

She was standing there in the lobby kneeled down handing her hamster like pokemon some kind of fruit to eat, which it took eagerly, but upon seeing you two blinked and slowly stood to her feet. "Mornin' Gloria. ..Oh. And you too Miss."

"Uh hi!," Gloria greeted a little unsure since she must've looked a bit strange in the swimming goggles. "Are you headin' off to battle Kabu too?"

She shook her head no. "No. We were 'bout to shove off on the next leg of our journey now. That friend of yours already went off to challenge the next gym, tho."

"He did?," you asked and Marnie politely nodded towards you. "...How early did those two wake up?"

"I couldn't say for sure, but by how happy they were it seemed like they had a plan."

"Oh! Well we have a pretty great stragety too!" Gloria smiled proudly. You were glad at least her nerves were seeming to be getting better.

Marnie only nodded. You looked at her for a moment and it didn't seem as if she had any nefarious schemes or malicious intent behind that polite exterior of hers. But still last night's questions swirled in the back of your mind as you narrowed your eyes in thought, raising your brows as she calmly reached into her leather jacket pocket and pulled out a small reddish card before handing it out to Gloria.

The brunette blinked at it for a moment before raising a brow in question. "What's this?"

"Kabu's League Card," she replied calmly, "It's supposed to help against him, but I ended up with a few copies, so I'll give you one." A look of surprise passed on both your faces as you two exchanged looks before looking back to Marnie. "Don't look so chuffed. It's no big deal. 'N I already got two others already."

Gloria stared for a second longer before smiling and taking the card from her. "Wow. Thanks!"

Marnie nodded in reply. "Oh. Here." She reached back into her pocket and pulled out a second card before holding it out towards her. "Take this too. A little somethin' for our battle yesterday. As a thanks for helpin' me out."

"What's this?"

"My own league card. Your friend gave me one of his so I figured you could have one too."

"Whoa! Thanks!" Gloria gladly accepted the other card with a smile. "That's real nice 'o ya!"

Marnie gave the smallest of smiles. "I bet you'll have no trouble beatin' that ''man of fire'' Kabu chap, right? Why don'cha get over to Motostoke stadium and get that gym badge already?"

...Gloria jumped. "OH!! RIGHT!! We need to get to the stadium!" She stuffed the cards into her pocket as fast as she could as Marnie peered up towards you and you blinked at her. ...You opened your mouth to ask her about the Team Yell involvement that's been going on. Not expecting really any answers outta her, but before you could say anything something tightly gripped around your arm and you yelped as Gloria yanked your forward in a run. Almost making you hit the floor for the second time that morning. "THANKS MARNIE!! GOOD LUCK ON YOUR NEXT STEP!!"

Marnie waved a hand back at your retreating forms. "Good luck out there!"

Gloria yanked you along, nearly tripping down the steps and over your own two feet as she raced ahead putting one arm out to shove the door open in her mad dash to the stadium ahead. Thank goodness the Budew Drop Inn was literally right next to the stadium. You didn't think you could last too long with Gloria's way of yanking you forward in a frenzy without falling over for too long. Cheers and loud noises were clear as day as soon as the two of you stepped out the doors and started running over towards the stadium. How early did these people wake up around here!? Thank goodness at least you two didn't have to worry about bumping or tripping over other people. It was a short distance, but with the adrenaline pumping and worry in your systems it felt as if you two ran a marathon by the time Gloria moved the two of you towards the double doors she had gone through previously during the Entrance Ceremony. Her sudden stomp making you stumble and catch your self clumsily on your knees and free hand as she still gripped your arm tightly, thankfully not smacking into the ground, as she skidded to a stop. Low and behold guess who was already waiting for you two? Victor gave the two of you a raised brow before sighing and reaching up to rub at his temple, as Hop chuckled and crossed his arms at the sight of you two girls.

"Slow moving aren't you, Glory?", Hop teased.

"O-Oh...S-S-Shove...o-off!," she forced out back at him between deep breaths. Letting lose your other arm. You hissed in sourness as you pulled it towards you, reaching up to rub where Gloria had gripped it.

"Where had you two been?," Victor asked frowning, "We spent half an hour knocking on your door before we left."

"I've already gone and earned my fire badge," Hop said in agreement, "The man of fire Kau is just what you'd expect. Nearly got burnt in my battle with him."

"LITERALLY," Victor added, "I'm surprised his pokemon weren't turned to ash when he barely made the second round. .....Was a very lucky close call that made him win."

"Even with my strongest team it was definitely tough- and - go .....but I still won in the end!"

"Just barely. He lost the first round, won the second, and third ended with a tie. Since no one won or lost the third round it counted as a win towards Hop as well and he managed to walk away with a two out of three win victory."

"SERIOUSLY!? How early did ya'll get up!?"

"Nevermind all of that!" Hop interrupted everyone waving a hand. "You need to get a shift on, Gloria. I bet you could beat the man of fire toooo....." He blinked. Staring right at her face seeming to FINALLY notice the swimming goggles on her face. "...Hey. Whatcha wearing those swimming things for? Afraid you'll get fire blasted at ya?"

She blinked as Victor was nice enough to walk over and help pull you up to your feet, pointing to her face. "Y'mean these? It's sobble protection."

he gave her a confused look. "Sobble protection? But Kabu doesn't have a sobble on his team."

"Not for Kabu's pokemon." She gestured to you as you thanked Victor. "I'm borrowing hers. I remembered what you said about using goggles to maybe help block the effects or their tears, so I'm tryin' it out."

Hop gained a look of surprise. Not sure if it was from what Gloria said or the fact she was using Sobble. "You...remembered t-that." He asked shyly. Yep. Def from what Gloria said.

She nodded. "Yeah. Why wouldn't I? By the way, how was the challenge?"

"Huh?" He blinked before turning an embarrased pink. "Oh uh r-right. *ahem* It went well. I mean you have to catch t-three pokemon but it's no big de-"

"WHAT!?" He blinked at her shout and watched silently as she quickly patted her pockets. "We have to catch pokemon!? B-But I didn't bring any empty pokeballs!!"

"Gloria, calm down-"

"Calm down!! CALM DOWN!?," she snapped towards her twin shouting with a look of panic, "I don't have any pokeballs on me except the ones that already have pokemon in them! How am I supposed to battle the gym LEADER if I can't make it past the gym CHALLENGE, Vic!?"

"You can borrow some of mine!," he shouted back at her.

Gloria shut up and stared at him blankly for a moment. "......Come again?"

Her brother groaned giving an eye roll before slipping the large (suitcase-) pack off himself. Silently you all watched as he brought it up and opened it before shoving his hand quickly inside for a second before pulling out a trio of pokeballs. Shoving them all at Gloria who barely managed to catch them all fumbling as she did. "Here!" He insisted already starting to close his bag. "Don't worry 'bout paying me back. You can keep 'em. But for crying out loud, Glory!! Become more prepared!"

Her brown eyes glanced between the poke balls and her brother. Looking to be at a loss for words. "I-....Uh....T-Thanks??"

"Don't thank me yet! You still have to get in there and beat him. So get to it, Glor! I know you can pass this challenge like you do every other- AH!!"

"THANK YOOOUUU!!! You're the best brother EVER!!"

Victor groaned as she hugged him before squirming his way free like a worm. "Yeah, yeah. Nevermind that now, you have a battle to win! Remember?"

"YEAH RIGHT!!......Um."

"What now?"

"You might want to stay out here instead of going inside, I uhhhh...Don't know how this might turn out."

"That might be a good idea," you commented. "Especially if those tears are gonna get BIG from Dynamaxing....But would you be able to do it without us there?"

"Yeah!...Wait." She glanced back to Hop with a slightly worried expression, "You'll still watch me from the live footage, r-right?"

Hop nodded without hesitation. "Of course we will!,'' he smiled whipping out his phone, "You don't even have to ask us. As your best rival and friend it's my sworn duty to support you in your journey even if it's from behind the scenes! We'll be here cheering you on all the way!"

"But first she actually has to go inside and do the challenge before Kabu decided you're not coming at all."

"R-Right! Yeah." With a turn of her head Gloria faced the doors before her before with another inhale and exhale, her face steeled and she started forward. "Wish me luck!"

"You don't need it!" "Go get 'em, Glory!" "Good luck!" The three of you shouted at her as the doors opened and she slowly walked her way in.

The worry feeling in your gut increased as you realized you wouldn't be watching your sobble battling within the stadium, but it might be better you all weren't affected by the giant tears if Gloria really was going to be dynamaxing the sobble. Hop pointed over towards a bench nearby where the three of you could sit and watch and you agreed, following the boys over as the cheers from the stadium was ever present. Guess the crowd must've gotten wind of another challenger on their way in to challenge Kabu. Hop had turned his rotom phone on and went to what he said was the Gym League's official website where you could find everything from past Gym leader's biographies, to their pokemon, to even content the Gym Leaders themselves posted. You could even find live footage if they currently battled anyone to watch if you couldn't be at the stadium. How convenient! It didn't take Hop too long to pull up a video turning his phone sideways to full screen as you and Victor huddle around to watch. What was shown on screen was the inside of the stadium, the many people in the stands, and an empty field. Gloria must've still been just starting the challenge presented to her. To which Victor commented it might take a bit to catch all three pokemon. So all the three of you could do was wait it out for the moment, which you did. You sat there for the longest time just staring at the phone screen mind wondering off into space as the boys chatted among themselves next to you glancing at the phone every so often. Would this really work out ok? You were starting to feel like maybe you shouldn't have let Gloria borrow sobble but you also really wanted to get home so if this really was the way she could win you were doing the right thing.....Right?

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!" You jumped at the loud man's voice that shouted out in what sounded like two different directions. And it kinda was, the announcer's voice was loud enough to be heard outside the stadium and came from the live feed being recorded live from Hop's phone as well. "The battle between Gym Challenger Gloria and Gym Leader Kabu shall now commence!!" The three of you quickly snapped to attention at the phone Hop held as the camera recording the live feed zoomed it just close enough where you could watch the battle at it's fullest, but also too far away to see their faces sadly. You hoped Gloria wasn't feeling too anxious. The crowd roared again in cheers as at last both the figures of Gloria and Kabu jogged their way towards the very center of the big field before stopping. Here we go. "Battlers please take your place on opposite field and face one another!!" It looked like they exchanged a few words before turning and walking a decent amount away from one another. " SET!" They faced one another. "Pokemon at the ready!! BATTLE BEGIN!!"

In a flash of bright light, both parties sent forth their pokemon as the crowd cheered. Kabu a fox looking pokemon, Nine tales if you remembered right. And Gloria her Roselia.

"Wha- Why's she using a grass type?," Hop asked confused, "Grass-type pokemon are usually weak against fire-types. Shouldn't she know the type disadvantage? "

You were confused at first too. Why would she be using a ro-...Your eyes widened remembering something from your past encounters. "....Stun spore."

"What?," he asked turning to you.

And you them as you spoke. "I bet you more than anything she's going to use that stun spore move on that thing."

...Hop's eyes widened. "Of course! Stun spore leaves a paralysis effect on it's opponent! She could that to get an edge up on Ninetales if she's able to land the hit!..If she can that is. Ninetales has the time advantage and more speed than any other nine tales I've seen. I couldn't even get passed it."

You said nothing after that and turned back to the screen as a flame thrower type move nearly hit the roselia by a couple inches. OH Crap- The battle must've started while you weren't paying attention! So far Gloria seemed to be doing ok. With a point from her form she must've been giving an order, because that roselia in all it's agility used tackle and ran straight towards the ninetales. ..!? WHAT WAS SHE DOING!? She was gonna get that poor rose pokemon hurt! A tense and cold feeling grabbed a hold of your body as the fox pokemon opened it's large mouth, and filled with the burning fire as it shot towards the roselia. A collective aw reaction coursed through the crowd and you three as the roselia....slid. That's right. SLID. The grass pokemon suddenly dropping back as it it slipped and fell to it's knees (Or you guess what counted as knees on it) and as if in a rock star pose, leaned all the way back as the fire passed above it literally inches from it's face. No doubt the speed from the tackle added in it's aid of sliding across the grassy field. As if time slowed down, the fire soon left the ninetales's mouth, and it turned it's head down towards the roselia sliding towards it at break-neck speeds. Lifting the roses on it's arms surrounded by burst of electricity, you could've sworn the fox thing gave a look of panic, before there was a flash of light as bright as a camera's flash as the roselia continued it's journey under the ninetales as it was enveloped face first by electricity. Now if you thought the corvinkight's loud cries when you crashed into it's nest was terrifying, it was nothing compared to the high pitched dog like wails that came from this pokemon really made your stomach flip. Through the static shock surrounding it, the ninetales gritted it's fangs and looking as if pain, forced itself to snap towards the roselia who stopped just behind it. And in one swift motion, in a white blur the pokemon turned and swiped at it. HARD. With a cry from the pokemon it went flying across the feild, tumbling head over heels, round and round in summer salts until finally with a thud the poor thing landed with half it's body crossing one of the perimeter lines.

"MATCH!!" The announcer's voice called back through and it honestly made you jumped by how it surprised you, too lost in the battle to notice. "THE GYM CHALLENGER'S POKEMON IS OUT OF BOUNDS!! GYM LEADER WINS FIRST ROUND BATTLE!!"

The crowd roared out again at Kabu's obviously win, and you weren't too surprised since he is supposed to be the second strongest gym leader. So it shouldn't be surprised that the ninetales was still able to move like that after Gloria's stun spore surprise. Tho you were a bit sad at her loss.

"Aw man! She totally got canned out there!," Hop sighed lowering the phone a little disappointed as both battlers returned their pokemon

Victor hummed. "Well, yes. Glory lost first round but it's not a total loss. Stun spore's affects increases the more the recipient of it moves, so it'd be dumb if Kabu forced his ninetales to battle again for the second round. It'd just be giving her a better chance at winning. So she still managed to wittle down them to an equal two pokemon each."

....Hop nodded. "Yeah! You're right. But it doesn't mean the other two won't be just as powerful."

"SECOND MATCH START!!" The voice returned. "POKEMON AT THE READY!! SECOND ROUND BATTLE BEGIN!!"

Two more bright lights appeared and the BIGGEST arcanine you had ever seen appeared before you! That thing was huge! Much better than the ones in game. And Gloria had sent out her raboot. A fire type against a fire type. They should be equaled out but you had a feeling the arcanine was the more powerful in terms of strength and skill. Gloria better have had a trick up her sleeve for this one. Kabu was the first one to make a move. As it quickly leaned his head forward just an inch and the raboot jumped a good yard back away in fear.

"That's arcanine's intimidate. Hope that raboot's not too scared."

The arcanine took a step forward the rabbot took another step back. Kabu pointed and in an instant it charged. Flames spewing from it's mouth the moment it opened it's maw and it fell. Well at least you thought it did by how fast it dropped, only to flip using it's back legs to kick off and a envelope itself in fire to perform Flame Wheel- Raboot. Charged! It's feet gaining fire with it's speed when you realized what was going to happen. Was Gloria attempting to use Flame Charge as a way to counter the Flame Wheel like back when she used her Scorbunny's move to deflect Hop's Wooloo's tackle? That may have worked out back then but Arcanine was much bigger and stronger than an ordinary wooloo! There's no way as strong as raboot was they could deflect that flame wheel....Except..Well...That wasn't what they did at all. As soon as that raboot jumped and made contact with that fire hoop of death, it was like a catapult suddenly went off under it's feet. Using the momentum of the moment that crafty little bunny used it's own fire as a shield for it's feet from the flames of it's enemy to leap itself into the air. The three of you watched in awe as the raboot launched itself a decent twenty or so feet in the air above the arcanine who had stopped and then looked up in confusion as it most likely didn't expect that. That's when it struck. With a surprising speed for being in mid air, the raboot shot back back down straight towards the arcanine. The dog pokemon in retaliation growled and opened it's maw WIDE to catch it within it's fangs at the same time as the raboot flipped, and landed a perfect double kick to the upper part of the pokemon's face. The. Arcanine. WAILED OUT!! The jerk it's head gave shoving the rabbit pokemon to the ground with a loud squeak as it hit the dirt but as quick as ever sprung itself back onto it's feet to face it's enemy. The much taller fire type shaking it's head and pawing at it's eyes.

"A Quick Attack and Double Kick combo!! How'd they do that so fast!?"

None of you had time to answer that before Gloria was already pointing at the arcanine and the raboot swiftly followed. The arcanine snarled it the approuching raboot's direction eyes closed and again went to use Bite, but with a quick side leap to the left, it easily delivered another double kick to the side of it's head. Making it recoil. And thus it had begun. Side! Back! Gut! Front Leg! Back Leg! Under Chin! Front Leg again! The raboot as quickly as a real rabbit in your world, was light on it's feet. Using quick attack and double kick over and over again to kick the blinded and confused arcanine in random places jumping over, under, around and sometimes latching onto it's fur to propel itself in a different direction from the jaws or swiping paws as it growled and blindly went after him. One time literally trying to slam it's whole right side onto the smaller pokemon before the rabbot quickly thrust itself forward under and away from the falling body before giving it a tackle to it's exposed middle in retaliation for the body slam. Using it's speed and smaller body to it's full advantage. The blinded pokemon's only saving grace was to suddenly use the order of flame wheel to break away from the small menace. Rolling fast away in a hoop of flames. You nearly choked on your own breath as you all watched in disbelief as the tinier much smaller raboot CHASED. Yes. CHASED after the spinning wheel of death faster than you had seen it run. The flames gathering on it's feet again. Another flame charge?? The arcanine stopped just a few yards away from him, flames still gathered within it's mouth as it turned, presumably to launch a strong flame attack at the smaller beast. And raboot with all it's speed and flaming feet. KICKED!! As fast as a jet streaking through the sky, a flaming rock was launched right at the pokemon's face. And connected. With a yelped and smoke going off from getting straightly hit by it, the arcanine went down.

"ARCANINE HAS BEEN RENDERED UNCONCIOUS!! GYM CHALLENGER WINS THE SECOND ROUND!!!"

THE. CROWD. CHEERED!! Ember....That raboot used ember to knock out that arcanine!! You didn't know whether to be impressed or surprised at what just happened but both the boys next to you exchanged a few cheers of their own and high fived. And you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. Holy canoli that was tense!! ....But then you froze. Wait...If both first and second rounds were over..that meant only the third was left. And the third round was the dynamax specialty. And Gloria was planning on using... all the worry came rushing back in an instant.

"Oh no-"

"FINAL MATCH DETERMINES WHO WINS AND LOSES!! YOU FOLKS KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!!" Oh please don't say- "DYNAMAX ROUND SET!! GET YOUR POKEMON AT THE READY!!" You could all suddenly hear the crowd begin chanting the word 'Dynamax'. Your eyes widened as, as tiny as Gloria's figure was on the camera, you could CLEARLY make out her reaching into her pocket and pull out a pokeball, her other hand coming up to her goggles. In than instant your face paled and your blood ran cold. A heavy feeling of cold settling in as you saw that unmistakable red energy gathering around her wrist band as she held your ball. Your poor baby's ball. "FINAL BATTLE BEGIN!!"

The first to make a move was Kabu as the pokeball in his hands swelled up to the size of a watermelon and with a firey look in his eyes, swiftly turned on his heel and with one arm chucked the giant thing into the air. It sored through the sky until popped open and THE BIGGEST centipede you had ever seen came forward. The ground where you three were sitting shook from the force of the giant pokemon in the stadium in front of you landed on the ground. Sending a wave of wind and rubble from the field flying in it's wake as dark reddish-orange storm clouds darkened itself overhead, making it look even MORE horrifying than it was....OH. SWEET. MOTHER. OF MILTANK!! If that thing was scary to you than it'd be an utterly drop dead terror for your poor sobble! The pokeball in Gloria's hold swelled up to the same size as a watermelon. Using both arms to lift the thing over her head, and tossed it into the air. It soared through the air and all three of you watched like you were watching a trainwreck happening. Too scared for the results but unable to look away feeling as it popped open. And your sobble made it's entrance. The blue pokemon now several times bigger than it's usual cat like hieght. It landed in the same fashion as Kabu's centipede thing did. And instantly a look if confusion graced it's face as with a montrous chirp it started quickly looking around at itself. Although that confusion quickly dashed away as soon as it's eyes laid upon the terror in front of it. It froze. Staring unblinking with that blank stare of his as it laid eyes on the centipede pokemon.

"Oh no-

Now you weren't entirely sure what move it was called that it used, but all of a sudden this giant bug thing decided to play....But this thing moved so fast in air as Kabu leaned back and pointed up at it you nearly had a heart attack then and there. It took the form of a sideways zig zag pose and gathered a great deal of fire within it's coils. The GIANT ball of flames launched in a moment's notice as it sailed out. And hit your sobble directly with an explosion. You cried out, hands coming to clasped at your mouth at the noise the water pokemon made as it connected and tumbled over. The three of you had to grab a hold on the bench as it wobbled, Hop nearly dropping his phone in process as he did. Thank goodness he didn't because you still had your panicked eyes stuck to the screen even as it shook. .......Your now giant sobble with storm clouds gathered over it's head was just laying there for a moment....before it pushed itself onto it's bottom silently, dirt from the field falling off itself as it did. He stared blankly back at the centipede-...thing for a moment....before it's giant mouth quivered. And in a flash the giant sobble threw it's back and began to cry. The loudest cries you ever heard rung out through the sobble's mouth, it sounded like someone took the world's largest bagpipes and cranked it's volume to eleven. But that's not what concerned you. Thousands of shining droplets starting floating down everywhere. And in an instant the centipede thing violently shook it's head. A loud cry of protest coming out of it.

"Holy Arceous..."

Was all any of you could manage to say at the situation as you continued to watch your sobble cry as the centipede thing continued to shake it's head and yell out. Kabu's small form on the screen even shown him using whatever towel he kept around his shoulder to suddenly smush his face against. The centipede thing suddenly dove. A giant crater forming in the field as it attempted to bury it head away from whatever was irritating it. After a moment your sobble stopped. Giving it a look as it twitched and kept it's face in the giant crater it made for itself like an ostrich, eyes watering a bit as it did. It gave a look around again but seemed to be scanning more of the stadium than the field. Most likely looking for a way out. That didn't surprise you in the slightest. What DID surprise you next was what it did next. Your. Sobble. Scowled. In the direction of the centipede thing who still rubbed it's head in the dirt, most likely trying to settle down the burning sensation of the tears it experienced before. You blinked as it gave off a montrous sound of it's own towards the other pokemon. Did....Did your sobble..The one who who dive under your arm or hide behind your head just...growl at the other pokemon?? By the end of the war cry it gave as a shock, it pushed itself forward. Landing it's hands right onto the ground as a wave of energy expelled from it. The force making crackes in the earth around the thing's buried head before blue light seeped through the depths of the earth and a geyer of blue light shook the stadium and the three of you.

"T-T-THAT WAS A SOBBLE'S MAX STRIKE MOVE!!," Hop managed to force out between holding onto the bench as everything shook.

"IT WAS A WHAT!?," You shouted back at him trying to make out the shaking screen in his hands between holding onto the bench yourself.

The centipede things wretched it's head up from the dirt and with a loud cry began shaking it frantically like a panicked snake. That was before it was attacked again of course by your sobble. A torrent of water rushed out from it's mouth the moment it was opened and hit the thrashing fire type straight in the face as it cried out. The fire becoming so bright it turned white...except it wasn't coming from the giant pokemon. The bright light was coming from the other side of the field as your sobble cried out again- The screen shut off with a beep. A flash of 'No Signal' coming over the sudden white screen. The three of you stared at Hop's phone. No one moving. No one saying anything. As the three of you just....stared at the lost signal-

"NO!!" Hop yelped and wretched his arm back in surprise as you snatched the phone from his hands. Frantically bringing it up to your painicked face as your body drawled in quicker breaths. You shook the phone within your hands and furiously tapped the screen in rapid moment before the rotom within it wretched itself from your grip with a scowl to escape your grip. "NO NO NO!!" You snapped back to Hop. "WHAT HAPPEND?!"

"We must've lost the live feed signal," Hop replied back reaching over and grabbing the rotom from mid air and bringing it back to him.

"Can you get it back?!"

"I can try, but I don't know if-"

"GYM MATCH IS OVER!!" All three of you froze to stare in the direction of the voice coming loud and clear from the stadium. ....You slowly stood up. "CENTISKORCH IS UNABLE TO BATTLE!! GYM CHALLENGER GLORIA WINS THE MATCH!!" The crowd cheered...And you leaned forward-

"OOF!!" You were yanked back by your backpack by Hop before you could fall to the ground below and you landed with a thud back onto the bench. "....Thanks.''

Hop nodded before he put the phone quickly away and stood along with Victor. "C'mon. I don't know about you guys, but I'm gonna see what happened."

You stood up quickly with a scowl. "You bet your pokeballs I'm going to see what happened! Gloria and my sobble is in there!"

There was no questions or doubts about it as the three of you unanimously started towards the inside of the stadium doors in worry for the young trainer and your pokemon. ...Except as soon as the doors opened the trio of you were stopped by some man wearing a gym suit and sunglasses. Surprise, surprise. You and Victor weren't allowed in as unregistered gym challengers. ....ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? You wanted to yell at this guy and push past him if you bloody had to to see them! And Hop looked as if he was about ready to argue in your favor as well squaring up. The only one who seemed to be thinking clearly in the situation was Victor who had to pull the two of you back to wait outside for her. You wanted to get it!! Who cares if they threw you out kicking and screaming!? You were seeing your pokemon!! Oh the irony when Victor yelled at you two it would only put Gloria's and Hop's places in the challenge in danger if either one of you did anything dumb to threaten their places. Oh....Well when he put it like that, then it did make the two of you seem foolish. But that didn't you liked it standing right outside those giant double doors leading to the inside of the gym pacing, and tapping your foot, staring at the doors in worry, mumbling to yourselves. Poor Victor standing deadpanned in the wake of your two's worried mess with a sigh. You all nearly jumped as the door opened and the slightly dirt covered girl of the hour finally came out-

"GLORIA!!" The brunette yelped as she was all of a sudden encased in a tight hug by her worried friend. "OH GOSH!! WE WERE SO WORRIED ABOUT YOU!! I figured if anyone could do it you and raboot would be the ones....But STILL!! That match had me right at the edge of my seat! I thought for sure you would've been crushed-"

"Hop! Geez! I'm perfectly ok! See?" She pried herself away from the clinging boy to make some space between them both. "I'm as fine as a deep fried curry! And I walked away with more than just my safety!" She beamed brightly as she spoke. "I got my bloody fire badge!"

His eyes widened. "WHAT!? No way! That's incredible!"

As the four of you were a little busy focusing on Gloria and worrying, none of you noticed the blue thing walking past her legs and up to you.

"WAIT WAIT!!" Hop nearly stumbled as you dove and Gloria blinked in surprise as you grabbed her shoulders in worry. There wasn't any signs of a sobble around her so it must've meant she put him back in his pokeball!!...Or at least you hoped she did. "Where is he!?" You asked in a worried tone. "Where's my sobble, Gloria?!"

......She blinked. "Oh...Ummm. Yeah about that." She gave an almost cringe as she said the next few words. "He's uh....Not exactly a sobble anymore." The three of you stared at her....A pit dropping in your stomach strong enough to make you feel like hurling.

"WHAT!?"

"No no no! He's fine I swear!," she insisted holding her hands up to your scared face. "It's just that-"

"ACK!?" Gloria blinked as you were suddenly whipped back by something heavy latching onto your backpack. It felt like someone had dropped the weight of a toddler on your shoulders all of a sudden. The three looked on in confusion as you stumbled back in panic waving your arms wildly for balance before throwing yourself forward to right yourself and grabbed your knees in a leaned over position. "What in the actual-" You paused. Something shifted on your back and grabbed your shoudler. In an instant you whipped over your shoulder to look at the thing pulling itself up onto you. And what you were met with was a face to face encounter with a frowning blue head who gave a small thrum sound at you. ............You blinked. "What the heck!?"

"Uh...That's what I was trying to tell you about," Gloria said pointing to it.

Without breaking eye contact with the thing that was half sitting on your pack half slumped over against your shoulder, you slowly stood up and pointed at it. "What the world is this thing?" To which it gave a indignified chirp and grabbed your nose. "Hey!"

"Oh hey! It's a drizzilie!"

...You looked at Hop for answers brow raised. "It's a what?"

"A drizzilie," he repeated pointing at the thing slumped over your shoulder. "They're considered highly intelligent pokemon but also really lazy ones." Another pouty chirp was thrown in Hop's direction. " I think I read somewhere that they're good at making traps."

"This still doesn't tell me where my sobble is!"

"Y/n, drizzilie is the evolved form of a sobble!," Gloria pointed again, "Sobble evolved near the end of the match! He's literally right there on your shoulder!"

You paused...whipping back to the drizzile who only moved his eyes from where it's head laid upon your shoulder. ....THIS was your adorable tiny little sweet innocent baby sobble!? It reminded you of a moody preteen. You two continued to stare at each other a bit regarding each other silently...before you asked a question. "You want food?" It immediately lifted it's head up and gave a deeper chirp noise in approval and you laughed. " Ok...It's definitly him alright. But how come he evolved?"

"Because...it's what pokemon do?? They're always evolving and growing as they go, there's no stopping it."

"....Fair enough."

"Hey." Gloria blinked as her brother gently grabbed her shoulder with a concerned look. "Are you sure you're ok?"

"Of course I am. It'll take more than a dynamax battle to stop me."

Hop laughed. "With all the badges we've earned ourselves, I reckon we should be alright even against the fierce pokemon you find deep in the Wild Area. Let's go find out for ourselves-"

"NO!!," both you and Victor screamed at once making Hop blink...And Gloria snorted.

Surprisingly you did not want to stay there any longer in fear of what else might happen to you all, so after a bit of convincing on Victor's side to Hop who was eager to go straight to the Wild Area for the rest of the day to battle and catch wild pokemon, you five just went back to your hotel. You felt entire exhausted, and not because of the extra added weight to your load now thanks to your sobble's new and maybe not so improved form. But mentally from the exhausting experience you had been put through. It...was a day you'd have to get used to but in the end Gloria won her third badge and your sobble...uh..Drizzlie was perfectly fine even if he changed a bit. So at the end of the day it was in fact a win win situation for everyone. You had felt relief when you got back to your hotel room and slid off your bag, plopping yourself on the bed with a sigh. Your new drizzile standing there for a moment before flopping itself onto you with a small 'Oof' escaping you....Yeah. You guessed you'd have to train him out of just jumping on you anymore now that he was the size of a six year old child.

"Hey, Y/n? Are you going to sleep right now?", Gloria asked curiously.

"....I dunno. Maybe,'' you answered muffled by the pillow. "Why?"

"We're getting lunch. Want me to grab you a curry?"

"......Yeah. As long as it doesn't have any eggs or tails on it. Grab me one-" Your drizzilie patted your shoulder and you sighed. "Make that two. Something tells me he's going to be more hungry from now on." Gloria laughed again and you sighed.

The rest of the day went by rather quickly in your eyes. You all ate lunch and you ended up falling asleep way earlier than usual with your drizzilie watching the three teens curiously as they ate and ended up chatting and showing off their league card collection card collection thus far before you ended up closing your eyes. By the time you woke up again Gloria and Drizzile was already up and ready to go eating what must've been the room service breakfast, but she was also kind enough to order a small stack of waffles for your hungry self. Perfect! It wasn't long for the both of you to get packed and meet up with the boys outside the inn waiting for you two by that weird mechanical elevator.

"Hurry it up, Gloria!," Hop called over waving an arm.

"We're coming! Boy how early do you all wake up?"

You were a bit cranky. Still a bit groggy so early in the morning and having to lug around extra weight on your back as your drizzilie had insisted on jumping onto your back and took residence inside your back pack. Most of his body was inside the backpack amongst your other belongings but his head and arms were thrown over your shoulders as he refused to start walking chirping in protest when you tried to reason with him and wouldn't let you put him in the pokeball so you had to get creative with a compramise. Moving all the food you carried into the secondary pocket leaving just your clothes in the main space of your pack and leaving enough room for it to find acceptable. You wondered if the reason Drizzilie didn't want to go back into it's pokeball was in fear something like what happened yesterday would happen again, being used to getting carried by now, or if this was just because of the lazy behavior Hop mentioned before?..Or maybe a combination of the three? The boys gave a couple chuckles at the sight of your new situation but stopped when you tossed them a look and changed the subject by making the elevator go.

"So. Have you two decided where you want to go next?," you asked walking up to the exit of Motostoke that lead out to the Wild Area.

Both nodded.

"Yeah. I wanna stay here for a few more days and catch some pokemon," Hop answered.

Gloria blinked at him. "Wha- But I wanted to stop by Hammerlocke."

Hop stopped walking immediately just outside of the giant exit. Making Gloria stop and blink at the bewildered expression on her friend's face. "Hammerlocke? Why would you go there? You know Raihan doesn't battle anyone unless they have seven badges."

"Yeah. I know, but it's on the way to Stow-on-side." She explained with a smile. "Bea sounds like a good challenge for me to tackle next being the fighting type gym leader. Hammerlocke just happens to be on the way there."

"Eeehhhh. I dunno Glor. I really had my mind set on taking on some wild pokemon. With a stronger team comes a stronger trainer right?"

"I...guess so..."

"'kay. How 'bout this? If you're all that dead set on going to Hammerlocke, you can go and we'll we'll meet up with you there!"

Gloria seemed not too keen on that idea for a moment but sighed and nodded. "Alright. But how are you planning on getting there?"

Hop went to answer, but paused. Gold eyes blinking widely before leaning over to the right to look behind you all. "Huh? Hey. Is that who I think it is coming this way?"

Brown and f/c color eyes followed the path of Hop's gold ones to look behind you and the three of you paused at seeing who exactly was jogging towards you all. Coming towards you in all his firey glory was the 'Man Of Fire' Kabu himself. What was he doing here? ...Oh no! Were you all in trouble with what happened yesterday!?Was he angry from your sobble-..Er..Drizzilie's tears?! Were you all going to be billed or something!? You all couldn't pay any medical bills! None of you had enough money! The gym leader jogged right up to the four of you as you all exchanged confused or worried looks before stopping in front of you all.

"Thank goodness I managed to catch the lot of you before leaving Motostoke," he stated. It..didn't sound like he was angry.

"You're the gym leader, but you still came all the way to see us off?," Hop questioned, "...Oh! I bet you can already tell that I'm the one who'll become the next champion, yeah?"

To your surprise the older man chuckled and gave a smile. "There are many trainers who never manage to gather three or more gym battles, and they just give up on the gym challenge all together. So I make a point to see off any trainers who are able to defeat me. So allow me to send you off with a proper, sporty chant." He cleared his voice as you raised a hand to say he didn't have to- "Hustle, hustle, hustle Hop! You can do it, you can do it, Gloria!" ...Gloria gave off a few giggles and you lightly kicked her foot to get her to stop. "The Gym Leaders you will face ahead are all tough opponents. But I believe you will prevail! Believe in your pokemon and keep pushing on!"

"Thanks y'all! We're gonna keep winning!," Hop confirmed with a smile and thumbs up towards the older man, "We've got too if we want a face-off in the Champion Cup after all! C'mon, Everyone!" He spun on his heels and pointed towards the exit. "Let's head for Hammerlocke!" And ran off.

Victor groaned turning to walk after him. "Not again."

You chuckled and rolled your eyes. You wish you had that much energy. "Gloria correct?" You blinked and turned your head over to Kabu who was looking at Gloria. "That was a most unexpected battle the other day. As I already said, I'll have to learn from it. But I don't suppose you'd mind telling me how you thought of such strageties?"

She beamed. "Of course! Your league card listed your pokemon and their main abilites like everyone else! So I used that info. Your ninetales was pretty fast on it's feet, so it made sense to use a move that wouldn't let it use that speed. But arcanine are built bulkier and have more muscle than a ninetales. They may be fast on their feet too, but no where near the speed of raboot or ninetales. So speed and agility would've been the way to go. And as for your centiskorch, I didn't have a lot of pokemon that could withstand it's fire power, so I had to find a way around that. A sobble's tears seemed like the greatest force to fight it."

He hummed before nodded once again. "I see. Well then I must train my pokemon to overcome your sobble's tear attack before another trainer gets the same bright idea as you did."

"Oh it wasn't my sobble." She pointed at you and he looked at you. .....Then to the Drizzile's face lazily staring back from your shoulder. "It was hers."

"I see...Well then, Miss. I'll have to congratulate you on raising such a strong water type. I have no doubt that it'll make a mighty Inteleon one day."

You smiled as your drizzile patted your shoulder. "Thanks! I think he's a good boy too. Ain't that right?" Embarrassed your pokemon tutted and looked away making the old man chuckle.

"We'll then. I shall leave you. I must be off to start training up before the next gym challenger comes knocking at my door."

"We outta get going too. I have a feeling we're in for a long trip ahead of us." .....Hey. Now that you thought about it...Your eyes widened. Wasn't there some kind of character development or a tragic event that happened to one of the characters after the player received their third gym badge??..."Yeah. We better catch up to the other two."

You managed to pull Gloria away bidding good bye to the jogging gym leader and pulled her out of Motostoke at last. Onto the dirt path leading out of Motostoke and splitting in three directions to chose from. You spotted the two boys somewhere up ahead as the two of you approuched. Hop throwing his hands up into the air pumped.

"Hello again, Wild Area, my old friend!," he shouted to the sky, "I've come back to you even stronger than before!"

"Hop you don't need to shout." Victor adjusted his pack on his back with a roll and stretch of his shoulders. "If anything you might scare away any good potential pokemon with that racket."

....He hummed. "Well I guess you have a point about that, Vic." ..He turned his head more towards the two of you girls approuching before he smiled and twisted around fast to face the both of you. "Gloria! Hammerlocke is up that way." He pointed towards where the road split off towards the left. "Got it? Over Motostoke bridge and straight on down the road a ways. And yeah, you could certainly rush there without a single detour....But now that you and I have a few gym badges, we should be able to catch stronger pokemon! So I know what I'm doing!"

" And what's that mate?" Gloria asked in a tease.

"I'll be catching myself some amazing pokemon to fill in the next page in the tale of my legend!" You chuckled at his enthusiasm.

All of a sudden your Drizzilie turned to look behind you as footsteps approuched. "Don't waste your efforts." The rest of you followed suit to stare at the figure just now leaving Motostoke as well. And your eyes widened slightly. "It's not like either of you would ever make it through the gym challenge anyway." The one who approuched the two of you was none other than Bede. The poor gave that smug smirk he always did and placed a hand on his hip staring at the lot of you. "The Champion really must have been off his rocker to endorse likes of you."

"WHAT DID YA SAY YOU LAVENDER SOAKED EYED COTTONEE FOR BRAINS!?" "DON'T YOU INSULT MY BRO LEE LIKE THAT!!" Gloria shouted and made a move to step forward but you grabbed onto her back pack to pull her back effectively also blocking Hop with your other arm as the two shouted with glares at him.

"Whoa there you two." You gave him a glare and he slowly looked up towards you the smug grin turning into somewhat of a frown. "I thought you left after collecting those Wishing Stars from the mines. Did you stay behind just to insult them? That's a pretty petty thing for you to be doing with your free time."

He didn't answer right away which made you raise a brow until he tutted and turned his head away. "I was going to leave after a day's rest here, but after hearing these two were going to battle Kabu I decided to stick around and watch the pitiful efforts of my enemies. I mean, Hop here can't even throw a poke ball properly."

You saw Hop flinch. Oh no..You remembered somewhat of him saying he practiced throwing the ball sometime during your first meeting with Leon. "Rubbish! More like you don't know enough to recognize greatness when you see it! My throws are the greatest and my bro is the finest champion the world has ever seen! I'm not gonna listen to you insult him!"

"How tiresome," Bede mutter again running a hand over his hair. "Fine. I'll battle you over there." He pointed a hand towards some trees. "Maybe that will help you finally understand just how weak you are."

Hop growled and your brows rose in shock at his sudden anger. You didn't think the ever chipper Hop could've gotten so mad. "You're on then. I know you challenged Gloria in Galar Mine Number Two and lost to her there." Your eyes widened more glancing between the two of them as Bede frowned more....So THAT'S what Bede meant by them causing him trouble. "And I'm her greatest rival. In other words there's no way you're beating me."

"All this prattle about Gloria and the Champion and whatnot. Do you not have anything of your own to show?"

"YOU BET YOUR SORRY PINK TUTU BUTT HE DOES COTTON FOR BRAINS!!," Gloria shouted giving another tug against your grip on her as she leaned forward, angry glare that could put a dynamaxed pokemon to shame, hands balled into fists at her sides. Her sudden spout of anger caught Bede off guard enough to take a few steps back from the red faced girl spitting her scottish accent at him. "I'll have you know Hop's one of the smartest, most kindest people I know! He's a bloody genius who knows all kinds of pokemon skills! 'E's like a walking dictionary of smarts that's how skilled he is! He knows more than you and me put together so badger off with your sorry excuses!! I don't see you doing anything but complain about everyone else and praise the chairman like he's Arceous 'imself!" Victor grabbed onto his sister's other arm pulling her back with you at this point. "Yet ya complain 'bout us talkin' 'bout how amazin' Lee is!? When are ye gonna step up from being a walkin' billbourd for the Chairman n' his bloody secratary and show me somethin' huh!? HUH!? How 'bout you take ya own advice!?"

"GLORIA THAT'S ENOUGH!!," Victor shouted in his own scottish accent at her pushing her back by a wide eyed Hop as she continued to glare angrily at Bede who remained silent and wide eyed at her. "CALM DOWN!! Ok!?...I'm pretty sure he's gotten the point by now."

"Oh he better!"

"Hey! That's enough now!," you agreed giving her your own frown, keeping your grip on her back pack in case she tried anything. "I think you're scaring him." Gloria paused enough to give you her own stare, as you turned to look at Bede who continued to stand and stare....before he blinked, quickly whirled on his heel and sped walked away with his hands forced into his pink coat's pockets.

"I-I'll wait for you over there! Don't keep me waiting!"

Gloria huffed, jerking her body from her brother's grip as she glared at his leaving form. "Yeah? Well he started it by causin' all of us trouble n' insulting us for no reason. The bloody cottonee born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Ey Hop?".....She rose a brow when her friend didn't answer and turned to the silent boy staring wide eyed at her. "....Hop? Are you ok?"

".....I-..." He coughed reaching a hand up to rub at his neck as he looked off. "I mean uh....That was some roasting you gave h-him back there. Heh."

"Well it's true!," she insisted pointing at him, "You were the smartest kid in school! And y'know so much about science, and history, and you can calculate math in your head faster than a calculator could. You know so much about pokemon that I know you'd be a great Champion. That's why I got so angry at him."

Hop stared at her again mouth opening a little..before sputtering on his words. "I- You- R-Really?"

She crossed her arms and nodded with a huff. "'Sides, I wasn't about to let the Mareep Head get away with smack talkin' my best friend and his brother. If he's going to bring a fire then he better expect someone to roast him back!"

He stared at her a moment longer before an unmistakable red washed over his face as he quickly looked away. "R-Right! T-T-That's what friends do after all! D-Don't worry. I'll show this wally my skills in battle! S-So..." With that he quickly turned and began jogging off from the three of you. "See you later, Glory! L-Let's meet up in Hammerlocke when I'm through with him!"

Well whaddya know!? You smiled watching as Hop scampered off in a knowing way as Victor sighed before turning to his twin. "DONT DO THAT!!"

"Do what?"

"Try to fist fight another gym challenger like yer in a wrestlin' ring! Ya cook! What would've happened if that guy told ye off to the Chairman especially after you had dinner with him in Hulbury?! You'd get yourself kicked out by him or worse both yaself and Hop since you were defendin' 'is honor like in the bloody stone ages!?" You had started to notice a pattern that the accent would become more prominent in their voices when they were angry.

"Like I would've actually tried to punch to punch him! I know better then ta throw hands and risk somethin' like that now."

Victor groaned reaching his hands up to rub at his face. "I love ya but you drive me crazy!"

"I could say the same for you too."

.....Still rubbing his temples Victor turned. "I have to catch up with Hop before they start fightin' again. Make sure she stays out o' trouble."

"I can-"

"I was talkin' to Y/n!" He shouted back making Gloria pause as he walked off....And it was finally your turn to chuckle.

With a huff she placed her hands on her hips with a glare. "Well that's just a bunch of flamin' Rapidash crap if I ever heard it!"

You nodded reaching up to rub your face, finally letting go of her backpack as you did. "He has a point tho. If you and your opponents want to have a battle then that's fine, but you guys shouldn't get into fights like that." She hummed but didn't say anything else to that. "Come on. Let's get going to Hammerlocke. I'm curious about this place."

"Oh. Then if we're lucky we might meet the selfie guy himself hangin' 'round his gym!"

"Oh boy. Can't wait to see what the big bad strongest gym leader has to show."

"I think you'll like 'em. Lee said he's one of the kindest people he's met in the industry...But there is one thing I should warn ya 'bout."

"What?"

"He's a playful teaser so he'll probably try to flirt with ya when he sees ya."

"........He's going to what?"

#pokemon shield #pokemon sword #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #pokemon piers #piers x reader #reader x piers #pokemon piers x reader

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tsukikoayanosuke · 4 years ago

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Behind the Fic: TW:OPT - Chapter 134 - 136

Unexpected road trip arc go brrr...

WARNING: This will contain a bit of spoiler for the newest chapters of my fan fiction Twisted-Wonderland: Our Precious Treasure.

Chapter 134: Philosophyz

The chapter title and summary are from the song Philosophyz, the opening song of Key VN Rewrite. The summary is the first refrain.

This chapter is unexpectedly long, which comes as no surprise.

The original plan was only telling a brief moment with Grim before going fully into Deuce's POV (which also includes the first POV in the next chapter).

However, unexpected Mustafa's POV happened. Now, this scene is rather interesting because, again, it was unexpected. This scene canonically happened after the winter break, but here it happens before. The main reason is similar to the overblot explanation back in Chapter 36 where instead of it happening in Savanaclaw Arc, it was told right at the end of Heartslabyul Arc because of the urgency.

Since we probably wouldn't be seeing the Scarabia NPC gang again, it's only fair if we have some closure/final encore for them. Now, I have a possible vision of the Scarabia NPC gang having a short cameo in Kalim Arc, but it's still unclear.

Let's talk about Grim's scene. This is sort of related to Mustafa's scene. The dialogue between Mustafa and Grim was supposed in Grim's POV, however because of the Kalim and Scarabia NPC flashback, it was changed into Mustafa's POV so it won't be too jarring to switch for the next scene.

Speaking of the next scene. In canon, Grim ate the rock at night time and alone, but here it was during the day and Jonah was there with him. This is actually intentional, one of the reasons is for the build-up hint to Jonah's potential falling to the darkness.

Another thing is Jonah is handing the rock toward Grim only after he listens to him. Also, Grim stops thinking about wanting more rocks when Jonah touches him. Basically, even if they are pokemon and trainers, there's a power dynamic between them.

And starting from Deuce's POV, the plan of 4-episode mini-arc shattered, because this is the start of the unexpected road trip arc.

Now, originally, Scarabia Arc would end with this chapter, with the Rescue Squad going back home. I honestly had no idea how to transition from Scarabia Arc to Christmas Arc with characters who aren't related to the previous conflict. It would be pretty jarring. Honestly, I'm glad that I decided to write the road trip arc, no matter how frustrating it was.

Now, remember back in Chapter 120 I asked whether Crowley basically kidnapped Ace and Deuce? Yeah. We have no time to fix that during editing, so let's put it here.

I actually had to think about Deuce's family's name. While not spoken, Deuce's mom's name is Galadriel Spade (you know, that elf princess from Lord of the Rings).

The conversation between Crowley and Deuce's mom is inspired by All Might and Inko's conversation about UA dorming system.

Yeah. I tried to make a timeline for the trip. It was still rough even at this point. I'm trying to make all of the boys get back home on the 24th of December.

Chapter 135: The Big Dango Family

The chapter title and summary are from the song Dango Daikazoku, the ending song of the anime Clannad, which is an anime adaptation of Key's VN with the same name.

Now, as usual, this is supposed to be one chapter full of Valley of Thorn/Diasomnia boys interaction, however, blame it on the sleepover section, it became so long that I have to cut it again.

Speaking of Valley of Thorn, I decided to name Malleus' grandmother Carabosse, which is the name of the wicked fairy of the original Sleeping Beauty ballet. Basically, it's the original name of Maleficent. Personality-wise, I'm leaning toward your usual gentle grandma, or maybe Dowager Empress Marie from the Anastasia (1997) animated film.

Early Tsunotarous revelation. Nuff said.

Adapted mafia game. Also a funny call back to Break & Gosh’s Tale of the Unfortunate Sacrificial Flower. Maryanne I miss you

I have no idea how this chapter is so long. Again, I blame it on the sleepover mafia game. This might be the longest chapter I've written. And this is a filler arc.

Chapter 136: My Soul, Your Beats!

The chapter title and summary are from the song My Soul, Your Beats!, the opening song of the anime Angel Beats!. Angel Beats! has a VN adaptation with the same name.

This chapter is actually quite interesting in the process because I think it's time to reveal some things about Jonah.

When I finally decided to keep the road trip arc, I knew at one point I have to visit Jonah's hometown. How it will go, I didn't have a clue. I'll pull it out, somehow...

Flashback chapter let's go. Malleus' flashback is interesting because it wasn't planned this way. Originally, young Jonah and Malleus would meet just randomly without the meteor shower, reminiscing the Aurora and Maleficent meeting in the live-action. However, adding the meteor shower part was in part an additional characterization of young Jonah who was curious and adventurous.

A small call back to Chapter 20 where Jonah mentioned that it felt natural for him to climb tree during the chestnut picking. In Malleus’ flashback, young Jonah could climb a tree.

The storytelling was an obvious reference to Treasure Planet.

Now. I read that if you give your name to a fae, they'll have control over you. But if you know their name, you can make them leave you alone. Jonah basically unknowingly giving Malleus power over him, but now that Jonah knows Malleus' name, he can counter his power. It's only a matter of who speaks the fastest.

Arriving at Radiant Haven, which was first mentioned in the Twisted, Twisted, Shooting Stars series.

And also the first appearance of my baby girl Bridgette! Interestingly, Bridgette wasn't supposed to appear. Her first appearance was planned during Fairy Gala, along with some Three Wishes Institute characters.

In the first draft, the Rescue Squad just straight up went to the inn and meet Jake there, without Magda also. But here, we have a brief old Shooting Stars gang reunion.

This also marks the first appearance of Magda, who was supposed to appear during the School Festival Arc.

In fact, the whole OG gang reunion was supposed to happen during the School Festival Arc.

#twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland fanfiction #twisted wonderland fanfic #twisted wonderland fic #twst fanfic #twst fic #behind the fic: tw:opt #twisted-wonderland: our precious treasure #tw:opt 1st anniversary celebration #jonah argentum (my oc)#bridgette eduarda newton (my oc)#magdalene killigrew (my oc)#jacob orion columbus (my oc)#malleus draconia #deuce spade

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mackeydoodledoo · 4 years ago

Text

Who Knows

Part 2 to the "Not So Cold After All" Series!

Pairing: Jade Thirlwall x (Fem!)Reader

Summary: You were a very caring child, no matter how many times mean kids would try and discourage you. However, there was one in particular girl that caught your eye; Jade Thirlwall, she'd always drive your bullies away, but would always act sour around you. However, years, many years go by and you practically forget about your "Barely Notices You" crush however, your paths cross again, when you realize you are Little Mixs' touring bassist, seeing Jade for the first time in years, resurfacing some unspoken love.

Warnings: Angst(?)

A/N: This is in 1st person, Bold = Thoughts, Italics = Singing

"Not So Cold After All" Live Band Mini Setlist

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

As Jesy, Perrie, Leigh-Anne and Jade seat Laura, Jax, Beca and I, Jade and I catch a glimpse at each other and she gives a small wave at me. Not thinking of how to greet her back, I wink at her. I look at Laura and she gives me a face. A face I recognize as her saying; "Get her b**ch!" I kick her leg and and winces but tries not to make it noticeable.

"So along with out supporting group," the tour manager starts, "As for the final show of the tour tonight, the girls and myself would like to showcase our live bands' skills."

Laura and I are taken aback, whilst Jax and Becca are all for the idea.

"So like...." Laura questions, "Each and every one of us plays a song of our choosing?"

"Thats correct," Jade answers, "You okay with that?"

"Yeah I was thinking we'd play a whole song together as a band, that plays instruments," she replies

Not knowing how to properly word it, Laura leaves it at that.

"What if, I’m just thinking out loud here. We end up doing a short setlist?" I ask, noticing Jade look at me like I'm insane

"Thats fine by me," Tour Manager says, "Good thinking."

“Are you singing Y/N?” Jade asks

“Oh, good heavens no,” I answer, “I don’t sing. That’s all to Laura.”

Once the meeting was finished, I begin walking back to my car to the hotel Laura and I were staying in, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

"Hey you," Jade says as I turn around

"Hey," I say, smiling

This is the first time she actually has come up to me in years. We've caught glimpses of each other during shows, rehearsals and we'd both greet each other at the same time but neither of us had the chance to really catch up.

"You maybe want to grab some lunch on the way back to the hotel?" She asks

I look to Laura for an approval and she... Again gives me that same face from earlier.

"Sure," I smile

I hop into the driver's seat as Jade gets into the passenger seat. Laura hops in the back, hijacking the aux chord. She puts on some acapella music and the both of us jam out while Jade laughs at us.

As soon as we got back to the hotel, I tell both Laura and Jade to eat without me, that I need to go talk to Jax and Becca. I go knock on her door.

"What’s up shorty?" She laughs

"Very funny," I chuckle, "How would you two feel about performing a three part setlist for our little portion of the show?"

"Really?" She asks

I nod, "Well, I think having 3 songs that feature all of us is a cool idea and the encore song could be a song I really like and I think it'd fit and it would show how well we can all sound as a band. Though we aren't really a band. Also, I think I'm going to sing lead for this one. I have to talk to Laura about that."

"So you want us to help you so you can impress your crush?" She asks

I nod, blushing at the fact Jade is my crush, “Don’t tell her I’m going to sing lead.”

"We're in and your secret’s safe with us," she smiles, "Did you tell Laura yet?"

"Not yet," I answer, "Jade's in there."

We fist bump and I go back to my room, where Jade and Laura are almost finished eating, but they put on some music.

"What'd you talk to Jax for?" Laura asks

"Nothing special," I say

I seat myself next to Jade and begin eating. As I listen to Jade and Laura talk about our beginnings and how Laura and I started out as a band.

"Wait," Jade starts, "You two were drunk?!"

I nod in agreement as I almost choke on my food. As I look at Jade, a spark flies across my body as her thumb gently runs across my cheek. She giggles as she licks the piece of lettuce (and mayo) right off her thumb. I shake my gawk off and laugh with her.

"So you're called-"

"Saints of Starlight," I answer

"That's actually a pretty dope name," she smiles

"Thank Y/N for that one," Laura states, "She was high off her ass and she managed to spot that name for us."

"Somehow I was conscious enough for that," I smile, finishing my food

We end up playing a game of "Cards against Humanity" and so far Laura is in the lead: I’m horrible at card games. Games in general.

By the time we nearly get through all of the cards, a knock comes onto our door.

"Jade?" Jesy calls from the other side of the door

"Yeah Jess?" She calls back

"You ready to go?" She asks

And it hit Jade, she was supposed to get dressed for a birthday party for Leigh-Anne.

"Is Y/N and Laura invited?" Jade asks

"Jade," I whisper, "We don't have to go. It'll be fine."

"Oh for sure," Leigh-Anne says

Jade gets up and helps us clean up the cards before going to her room to change into a nice outfit. Laura and I do the same. I manage to shove on my 2019 indoor drumline season uniform; 1940s style detective outfit. Suspenders n all. However, the only thing that didn't go with my fit were my shoes. They were Doc Marten brand boots. However, I believed it was a nice subtle touch to my black m white outfit. I wait outside the door for Laura and for Jade.

"Oh well Y/N can sure clean up nice," Jesy teases, "Jade's gonna have a kick looking at that." Jesy points to all of me as Jade comes walking down the hall.

"Y/N?" Jade calls out

I turn to her. I smile and wave over to her as Laura opens the door and reveals a casual-formal outfit.

"You sure look nice Y/N," Jade blushes as she catches up to us

"You too," I say, "Well, you look beautiful."

We follow the rest of the Little Mix members and Laura out to hail a cab to a bar that Jesy, Perrie and Jade had rented out for the evening. There was barely enough room for all of us to fit into the cab. As I seat myself next to Jesy, Jade hops right into my lap.

"A little warning next time," I gasp, but laugh

"Sorry," she smiles, "Your lap is the only good seat in here."

My face turns into a ball of flame as I look at Jade, who laughs at my face. Two can play at that Game. Her guard was down as I slowly and gently coil my fingers around Jade's waist as the cab driver drives off. I look up at Jade's face and it was just like mine not even 20 seconds ago. I laugh as do Jesy, Perrie and Leigh-Anne. Laura gave me "the look" as I subtly make and "ok" with my hand.

We reach the bar and its practically filled with party-goers and we walk upstairs to a VIP room and I seat myself next to Jade.

"You really know how to pull some strings to get us a room," Leigh-Anne says to her girls

"We are extra," Perrie states

We order a couple of drinks and within those said drinks, I notice Jesy already drunk. She begins ranting on about how much fun everything is and how excited she is to see Laura and I play for them.

"Yeah what do you guys have planned?" Jade asks, looking intently at me

"Well," I clear my throat, "You lot are just going to have to see."

I look at Laura to not spoil anything and that I'll explain to her later once we head back to the hotel.

After helping Jesy to her hotel room and getting her to drink water and eat bread and get her to bed, I help Jade get to hers.

"You know," Jade starts, "You're really fun to hang out with. Why haven't we done that more often?"

"Well," I start, "You were always cold to me and always turned down my invitations to hang out. Though, that never phased me and I've always kept on trying to get you to hang out with me." I look over to Jade, who's clearly looks and feels guilty.

"Well," I add, "Like I said, it never really hurt me when you turned them down. That's because you saved me."

Jade again looks up at me.

"Do you remember when there were bullies in elementary school and you always managed to scare them off. Little did you know that little kid you saved-"

"Was you?" She asks

I nod, "However, when we did finally become friends, you ended up going to audition for Britain's got Talent? Or something like that. So I guess you ended up forgetting about me. But then again, I moved to America."

"Sorry love," she says, "A lot of people come and go in my life. However, you're the first one who came back around."

"Yeah," I sigh, "Well, goodnight. See you tomorrow."

Before I stand to leave her room, she wraps her arms around my waist and her face pressed gently against my back.

"Thank you," she says before her grip loosening on me

"Always," I say, leaving her room

As I close the door to my hotel room with Laura, she looks at me.

“Okay, listen," I say, "So I already talked to Jax and Becca, and they agreed that we do a 3-song setlist when they want us to perform."

"So," Laura asks, "Are you singing lead or am I?"

"That's a good question," I say, "Well, I arranged the mini setlist and I have this."

I show Laura the mini setlist I made on my YouTube page and she nods in agreement to play this setlist for tomorrow.

"I just want to sing the last song," I suggest, "That one specifically is basically saying what could have been with someone."

"Oh so is that song gonna be for Jade?" She asks, making "that look"

"Yeah," I exhale, “Also, don’t tell Jade I'm going to sing the last song.”

"Okay," Laura answers

We both head to bed, for the big night tomorrow; showcasing a live band.

I catch Jade just about to leave her hotel room and she waits for me as I catch up to her.

"Sleep alright?" I ask

She nods, "Hungry?" She holds up a banana and a breakfast muffin

"Yeah, thanks love," I say, taking the items, "You know, bananas are a great source of potassium. I always eat one before I do a competition. Both high school marching band and indoor winter percussion."

"You did all of those?" She asks. I nod

"When I did my first year of marching band I got talked into doing indoor percussion for the winter time. Best decision ever," I say, hopping into a cab with Jade following suit

"You have to tell me how you did all of them and if you have any good stories," Jade smiles

"Well," I smile, "I have many stories that can be saved for another night."

Jade pouts as we exit the cab to enter the venue. Fans and paparazzi immediately circle around Jade, nearly pushing me out of the way to get to her.

"Y/N!" Jade calls out

I nearly wrestle a couple of fans and paparazzi and reach out for Jade. I feel a strong tug and Jade buries herself into my jacket. I hold Jade close as fans begin to make a path for her and I to walk into the venue.

"You guys are chaotic," I say, glaring at the Paparazzi specifically

I push the doors to walk inside, "You alright?"

Jade nods as she lets go of me and walks over to her girls.

"I saw that," Laura teases, "What happened out there anyway?"

"A bunch of fans and paparazzi," I answer, "They practically pushed me away from Jade."

"You fought people?" She asks

"No, I was close to though," I reply, "I just was sick of fans and paparazzi not giving the girls space."

Laura nods as their tour manager comes up to us, "Jade needs time to cool down so go ahead and rehearse first you guys."

"How is she?" I ask

"Shaken up but she'll be alright," he answers

I sigh in relief, having temptation to go check on her, but I assure myself that Jesy, Perrie and Leigh-Anne have gotten Jade calmed down. I go back to rehearsal.

"Jade," Jesy calls out, bringing me back

Jade's POV

As I inhale and exhale, Jesy, Perrie and Leigh-Anne comforting me, I could hear a singing voice. Is it Becca? Laura? Even Y/N? No, Y/N even said it herself, she doesn't sing.

"Yeah?" I look at her

"You feeling better love?" She asks and I nod

I continue listening to that singing voice. Regardless if it was either Becca, Laura or even Y/N, they're bloody talented.

"Do you hear that voice out on stage?" I ask the girls

"Yeah," Perrie answers, "That voice is bloody f**clinging talented."

"Do you think it's Y/N?" Leigh-Anne suggests

"It couldn't be," I smile, "Y/N told me she doesn't sing. She only does backing vocals. But she never sings lead."

"If you say so Jade," she replies

"Just wait until Jade sees you," Laura teases

Y/N's POV

I sing the last line with Laura and Becca. I stop the sound of my bass and wipe sweat from the sides of my head with my shirt and begin stripping. I tuck my shirt in my back pocket.

"Shut the f**k up Laura," I laugh, "I'm toasty. Okay, so how do we feel about that?"

I get OK's from everyone and I put on a song from one of my playlists, having a gut feeling Jade is going to come back any moment, I don't sing. I didn’t even intentionally pick the song; Black Magic by Little Mix. Instinctively, we all manage to play through however long we decided to play until we were moved to the back for Little Mixs’ rehearsal.

I put on my button down shirt and leave a couple of buttons unbuttoned, to give my lesbian look. I tuck my shirt into my pants and roll up my sleeves. I roll them up just enough for them to not interfere with my hands.

“Jesy was right,” Jade says

I look up and smile.

“You really do clean up nicely,” She adds, walking toward me

“Might as well look good for the occasion,” I reply back, “And you look exquisite.”

I see Jade’s cheeks flush a deep pink as she comes even closer, “Would you want to get dinner after the show tonight?”

“Wouldn’t it be late?” I ask

“Some places here are open late too,” She replies back, hugging me from behind

“I’m down,” I reply, lacing my fingers with hers

“If you’re gonna get it on, get a separate room and keep it quiet,” Laura teases from the doorway

“Laura shut up,” I sigh

“Band’s warming up Y/N,” Laura finally says

Jade lets go of my hips and she places a kiss onto my cheek, “Good luck Y/N.”

“You too Jade,” I reply, returning the same kiss, but onto her forehead

As the lights go down and the fans cheer.... Not only for Little Mix, but us too.

"Hey guys, we're Little Mixs' live band. We are so honored to be playing as an actual band for their tour as well." Laura says into the microphone

Laura begins singing the first verse as I slide my left hand up the bass neck to where I need to go for it. At the song’s climax, I watch Laura hit the high note Colby Benson usually sings when she sings this particular song live. Laura turns to me as the fans scream and cheer for that high note and I cheer too. I look to the side stage as the women of Little Mix watch us hype the crowd. I wink particularly at Jade.

When Laura sings the last note of the second song, she steps away from the mic as I step in her place.

“This song,” I start, “Is no original, but by one of the coolest girl bands in California. But this goes out to a special person. Although we never dated and never had those ups and downs of a relationship, I felt something between us two. That was a long time ago however, the both of us drifted apart in that time. We were both the ones that got away, but, she showed up into my life again. And that something I began feeling for her, came back.”

Jade’s POV

I watch as Y/N gives her speech. I felt Jesy touch my shoulder, as I begin to think of who that person was in Y/N’s life all that time ago.

Y/N’s POV

I subtly turn my head to side stage, using my eyes to further my eye contact and Jade meets mine. I smile at her and turn my head to the microphone

I listen to Becca as she plays the opening riff. Jax begins playing her drum part;

Oh no, I'm feeling you watching me

Same way you did when we were seventeen

Dim lights, this bar was alright

Until I saw a ghost of you

I look to Becca and she nods, hinting that I’m doing a good job thus far, I inhale and exhale, close my eyes for a split second and open my eyes.

You tried to pull me closer

I start to fall again

Tell me you still remember

'Cause I remember

Jax has us enter the chorus as we begin getting into the music.

Baby, we were fire in the rain

Burning through the night just to fade

When you say, "I could have loved you longer"

Who knows where we could have gone?

It's a lie if we stay

Living for the past and the pain

When you say, "I could have loved you longer"

Who knows where we could have gone?

As I continue singing on through the song, I look over to Jesy, Jade, Perrie and Leigh-Anne as they watch me sing; they look like they’ve just seen a ghost, but then cheer me on. Except for Jade; whose arms are against her chest, smiling excessively at me. I smile back.

Who knows what we should have done?

(Who knows) Who knows where we could have gone?

(Who knows) Who knows what we would have done?

(Who knows, who knows?)

The crowd cheers as I hit the high note and I notice from the corner of my eye that the girls were cheering too.

You tried to pull me closer

I start to fall again

Tell me you still remember

Where we could have gone, whoa, oh

As I sing the last note with Laura and Becca, Jesy, Jade, Perrie and Leigh-Anne run onto the stage as I walk back to put my bass on my stand. Jade in particular looks at me.

Who knows what we should have done?

(Who knows) Who knows where we could have gone?

(Who knows) Who knows what we would have done?

(Who knows, who knows?)

(Who knows) Who knows what we should have done?

(Who knows) Who knows where we could have gone?

(Who knows) Who knows what we would have done?

(Who knows, who knows?)

“You did a bang up job Y/N!” Jesy screams into her microphone

“I thought you didn’t sing?” Perrie asks

“Listen,” I smile, “I wanted to surprise y’all.”

It worked too, Little Mix was thoroughly impressed.

As we go into an interlude to give us a small break and for Little Mix to change into their encore outfits, I notice Jade was tense.

“You’re usually hyper love,” I say, sitting next to her, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she says, “My family isn’t here. They always come to our shows.”

Before I could say anything, Jade’s phone rings. She immediately picks it up and answers.

“Hello?” she asks through the phone

I couldn’t hear what was going on on her phone, but I could tell Jade was getting even more tense. Jesy, Perrie and Leigh-Anne try to comfort her but to no avail.

“Would any of you be mad if I leave?” Jade asks, “It’s a family emergency.”

Immediately the girls said yes. However, the tour manager was reluctant.

“Laura and I could do something,” I suggest, “We explain to the fans what’s going on and why Jade isn’t on stage. The fans are sure to understand Jade.”

Laura agrees with me, as do Jax and Becca. I follow Jade to help her out with getting her out of her outfit to change back into her outside clothing. I follow Jade out through the back as I hail a cab.

“I might have to take a raincheck on that dinner date Y/N,” Jade says, sorrowfully, “I also might not see you off tomorrow either. I was really hoping to spend more time with you and-”

“Don’t worry about that right now Jade,” I force a smile, “Just go make sure whomever family member is okay. Do that for me.”

She nods as I close the door for her. I watch the cab drive off into the cityscape. I could feel an overwhelming need to sob my eyes out however, nothing came out.

“Y/N!” Laura says running out the door, “You okay?”

I force myself to nod, “Yeah-Yeah I’m fine.”

“The fans agreed to having a one-song encore, featuring Saints of Starlight,” Laura states

I nod as she walks back into the door while I take one last glimpse of the cityscape Jade disappeared into and then force myself to step back into the venue.

The encore goes well, however, most fans left but we understood that. It was a quiet drive back to the hotel as all of us just go to our hotel rooms.

“You're clearly not okay Y/N,” Laura states, “Spill it.”

“I understand her situation but,” I start, “I just feel like my 10 year old self again when I moved to the states. Missing Jade but, I feel that this is more sad…”

“You two were going to catch up finally?” Laura questions

To which I nod, “I don’t know if Who Knows gave Jade the hint.”

“You know what?” Laura asks, “We’ve had a long day and we’re about to have another. Why don’t we rest up?”

I take Laura’s suggestion and lie in bed.

Part 3 (Final)

#jade thirlwall x reader #jesy nelson #leigh anne pinnock #perrie edwards #little mix #little mix imagine #little mix x reader #female reader #female bassist

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cxplqnce · 5 years ago

Text

Behrad Tarazi - Naked

Based off Naked by James Arthur

Word Count: 1597

Hey, you there

Can we take it to the next level, baby, do you dare?

Don't be scared

'Cause if you can say the words, I don't know why I should care

Your relationship with Behrad was interesting, complex and difficult to explain. You had been a close friend of the Legends for years before joining them after your trip to Earth-X. You had met Behrad a few times but hadn’t really interacted with him about anything outside of superhero stuff.

One of the reasons you had joined the Legends was because you had been through a pretty bad break-up and Star City just wasn’t a good place for you anymore. You had hundreds of bad memories, of your family’s deaths and almost dying yourself so you thought it was best to leave. You were going to leave the superhero life all together, travel somewhere and work through your problems but when you were offered a place on the Waverider as the team’s newest scientist, you couldn’t refuse.

That’s when you started getting closer to Behrad. You became friends with him and didn’t even consider him as anything more until Nate mentioned how much you and Behrad acted like a couple on one of his trips over from the Time Bureau. You had chickened out of telling him about your feelings for weeks, until Heyworld. Nate almost died and so did Ray, you knew that it could be you or Behrad in that position at any time with your line of work so you told him after you got back on the ship.

Your confession ended with the two of you in bed together, but that’s all it became. The next morning, Behrad was acting like it never happened and when you asked him about it, he told you that it was a mistake and never should’ve happened so you agreed to forget it.

Unfortunately, it was easier said than done. It was obvious Behrad didn’t share your feelings and you weren’t going to push him but it hurt. You had completely fallen for him and after your last relationship; it had taken you a long time to trust yourself enough to want a relationship with someone else.

Hey, get out

I've got nothin' left to give for you give me nothin' now

Read my mouth

If you ever want me back, then your walls need breakin' down

After you guys had taken down Bugsy Siegel, you were headed to the lab to retrieve the blanket you had left in there when you heard Nate and Behrad talking. You were going to interrupt but stopped when you heard Behrad mention your name.

“What the hell am I supposed to do here, Nate? I was a complete dick to Y/N and I’m pretty sure she hates me now.” Behrad huffed, plopping down on the couch with his head in his hands.

Nate sat next to him, “Just tell her how you feel. Be honest with her.”

“What if she just wanted our night to be just that?” Behrad asked with a saddened look on his face.

“Well, you won’t know until you talk to her, like I’ve been telling you to do for the longest time.” Nate said, before getting up to leave the lab.

You immediately moved and hid around the corner from the door and once Nate had left you decided now was the time to talk to Behrad about everything. Unfortunately, the team was called by Gideon to deal with the next Encore.

'Cause here I am, I'm givin' all I can

But all you ever do is mess it up

Yeah, I'm right here, I'm tryin' to make it clear

That getting half of you just ain't enough

Gideon had informed the team that the next Encore was a guy named Freddy Meyers, a serial killer from 2004. Most of the team had gone down to try and find Freddy at his class’ high school reunion. You were coming out of the kitchen when you bumped into Behrad, who was heading in there. “Hey,” You said simply.

“Hi, Y/N. You didn’t go with the team?” He asked.

You sighed, awkwardly, “No, I am QB-ing today. With you, apparently.”

“Cool. Well, I’m gonna grab a burger.” Behrad said, moving past you. You turned to leave as well but quickly changed your mind.

“I heard you.” You started, Behrad turned back around to face you, “I heard you and Nate talking in the lab earlier when you mentioned my name. What did Nate mean when he told you to tell me how you feel?”

Behrad’s face lost all colour. What was he supposed to do now? You clearly didn’t feel the same way as he did and he was scared that if he told you, your friendship would be ruined forever. “It was nothing, just I didn’t want that night to ruin our friendship that’s all.” Behrad lied, well, it was more of a half-truth. He didn’t want it to ruin you friendship but he wanted way more than friendship to begin with.

“Oh.” You started, your heart breaking at his words, “Well, don’t worry, we’re all good, B.” You smiled, stuffing your feelings inside of a locked box and burying them six feet under.

I wanna give you everything

You cried that night, so much that you began to get a splitting head-ache so at around one in the morning you left the safety of your room to go to the med bay, stopping off at the galley to grab a glass of water on your way.

Once you got to the med bay you notified Gideon of your situation and she prescribed some painkillers that you took with your glass of water. Since you knew you wouldn’t sleep now you decided to go to the lab and play some video games.

However, a certain someone had had the same idea.

I'm not going to wait until you're done

'Cause you pretended you don't need anyone

'Cause you see that I'm naked (naked, naked)

Oh, you see that I'm naked (naked, naked)

I'm not going to try 'til you decide

You're ready to swallow all your pride

I'm standing here naked (naked, naked)

I'm standing here naked

Behrad saw you before you could scurry away and you knew he could tell that you’d been crying by the concerned look that washed over his features. He stood up from his place on the couch and came over to you, “Have you been crying?” He asked, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder.

“Yeah, b-but it doesn’t matter. I’m fine.” You lied.

“It doesn’t look like your fine. And whatever it is you were crying about had to matter because it made you cry, what’s wrong?” He asked, pulling you in for a hug. You couldn’t stop the tears from falling again as you stood wrapped up in his arms. You desperately wanted to yell and scream at him that you were crying over him – over the feelings you had for him but you couldn’t form the words. “Whatever it is, I can help but only if you talk to me.”

“I can’t.” You snapped, a little too loudly, pulling away from Behrad. “It’s the one thing that I can’t talk about with you.”

Behrad’s face held a look of utter confusion, he didn’t understand what had gotten you so upset and so riled up, “What? Why can’t you talk to me about whatever it is?” He argued.

“Because it’s about you!” You cried, instantly regretting the words that came out of your brain. It was like the filter that was between your brain and your mouth just broke for a few seconds.

“You were crying… because of me?” He asked, his voice was soft and quiet like he felt guilty and was wondering what he’s done to make you so upset. “What did I do?”

“It’s not what you did, it’s how I feel.” You admitted, you’d already sprouted the seed so now you had to continue, “I like you, B. And after we slept together – you called it a mistake and it hurt so bad… and earlier, you said you were worried about our friendship. I was literally friend-zoned by you… So, I’m standing here, in all my stupidity, telling you that I like you and I want to have a relationship with you because you make me feel so happy and so safe and I like you.”

Behrad stared at you intently, you didn’t know exactly what he was feeling since his facial expressions were a bit ambiguous and hard to understand until he smiled, standing closer to you, “I said those things cause I thought you only wanted to be friends and I didn’t want to lose you by admitting how I really felt about you. I like you too, and that relationship thing… sounds real good.”

“Perfect.”

#behrad tarazi #behrad tarazi x reader #behrad tarazi imagine #legends of tomorrow #legends of tomorrow imagine #legends of tomorrow x reader

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bl4cklabyrinth · 5 years ago

Text

Live Report: MY FIRST STORY TOUR 2019 Semi-Final at Kobe World Memorial Hall

Disclaimer: Take note that all of these reports were translated by ear, so there is no assurance of accuracy. Because of this, please do not retranslate my work. I am no Japanese or English native.

I am only reposting the relevant MCs from my Twitter thread for archive purposes. Please check my tweets to read more about my thoughts on the show.

Photo by Takashi Konuma | Taken from MFS’ official Twitter

Setlist

不可逆リプレイス

Black Rail

ブラック・スワン

花-0714-(Re:arrange)

monologue

虚言NEUROSE

KING & ASHLEY

mine

君のいない夜を越えて

終焉レクイエム (Acoustic ver.)

Love Letter (Acoustic ver.)

LET IT DIE (Acoustic ver.)

Band session

無告

Missing You

Weight of my pride (Pay money To my Pain cover)

MONSTER

絶体絶命

ACCIDENT

モノクロエフェクター

REVIVER

With You

Encore

THE OVER (UVERworld cover)

LET IT DIE

ALONE

Story about Weight Loss

Hiro: Anyway, this has no relation (to the acoustic session) whatsoever, but didn’t I get super thin?

Kid’z: You did! Tell us more! You really did lose weight! Nob too!

Hiro: We declared during Hall Tour that we’d lose weight within one month, but we couldn’t do it. We made a promise though, didn’t we? I did my very best, you know?? I seriously gave it all I got!!

Kid’z: I’ve been avoiding carbs for a long time, and even tried diligently apportioning my meals and stuff like that. But before I knew it, I was already eating curry!

Crowd: *laughs*

Fan: How much weight did you lose?

Hiro: I dropped 6 kg.

Crowd: Ohhh! *claps*

Kid’z: That’s a lot!

Hiro: Amazing, right? On the contrary, I’ve always been fat.

Kid’z: No, seriously.

Hiro: I lost weight so that I can get fat again. I want to get fat so I lose weight. When I’ve lost weight, I’ll gain weight again. It’s a never ending cycle.

Kid’z: Don’t leave it as it is!

Hiro: I get told that all the time. I mean, I’m gonna gain weight before METROCK again anyway.

Kid’z: Isn’t METROCK great though?

Hiro: Can I say this? Why do they hold festivals at such a season?

Kid’z: Because (the weather) is cool? I once thought Doraemon was the one singing.

Hiro: Who you calling 123 cm tall?

Kid’z: Nobita-kun.

Hiro: I’m not the blue geezer.

Kid’z: He isn’t a geezer!

Hiro: He’s a geezer, isn’t he?

Crowd: *laughs*

Hiro: Generally, we release a CD around spring or summer. Then we start tour around autumn, right? From the beginning of fall, Hiroki starts losing weight. Little by little. Then, year end starts rolling in. By the end of the year, tour ends, it becomes production season, and eating Hiroki comes out. Hiroki enters hibernation, just like any other large mammal.

Kid’z: You need to stock up, right?

Hiro: Yep, so I can get through winter. Then it becomes spring again. METROCK is waiting for me, but I don’t want stocked-weight-from-hibernation-at-its-max Hiroki to be exposed there! Why do I keep getting told I got fatter or thinner every time?! Leave me alone!!!

Kid’z: But you did your best, right?

Hiro: ...Yep.

Kid’z: Good job.

Crowd: *claps*

Kid’z: How about Nob? How are you doing?

Nob: I lost 5 kg.

Hiro: You lost weight only because you were sick, right?

Kid’z: Because his tonsils were taken out.

Nob: I haven’t gotten my sense of taste back up until now.

Hiro: Don’t let yourself lose one of your most important senses!

Nob: Some time ago I had pickles and it was the best.

Hiro: What an old man.

Story about Poor Kid’z (figuratively and literally)

Kid’z: This story has no relation to anything we’ve talked about so far, but you (Hiro) started an IG account, right? During Hall Tour. Since then, you did a lot of things to me, like that game with the paper cups and the 10,000 yen you put inside one of them, which I played along with having good intentions in mind. I chose the right cup and you gave me the bill, but you revealed that there was 100,000 yen in the other cups.

Hiro: Yep.

Kid’z: ...I tried that with a friend. I was caught. 100,000 yen.

Hiro: Eh?? They made a winning move, huh.

Kid’z: I was like, “Oh no, what should I do?? Should I take it back?” I wanted to be able to fool someone, to get a taste of how it feels! So I started turning the cups around thinking I could do it like you did. When it was time for them to pick, my friend chose a different cup, and in my head I was all, “No no no, not that!!!” and eventually they got it...

Hiro: That person probably saw my IG post and thought you were an idiot.

Thoughts on Marriage

After Love Letter, Hiro and Kid'z talked about being excited yet nervous to play the next song, since it's been a while since they last played it.

Kid’z: Speaking of which, the person beside me seems to be nervous!!

Nob: *rubbing his palms on his pants*

Kid’z: Can I do a hand check? *touches Nob's palm* It's all sticky!

Hiro: Eh? You're scared of making a miss again? Like in Yokoari? Higedan. Ah! Speaking of which, Satoshi-kun got married! Congratulations!

H&K: *congratulate Nob*

Hiro: Eh? Official?

Kid’z: This is Unofficial.

Hiro: Ah, sorry. Unofficial. He got married, huh... There's been a crazy marriage rush recently...

Kid’z: Yeah, it's been all over LINE NEWS lately.

Hiro: Right. back number, Higedan, Maple Chogokin.

Kid’z: You're mean for putting Maple Chogokin as last!

Hiro: No no no. *laughs* The marriage rush is insane, right... Right... Insane right...

Fan: Do you want to get married?

Hiro: ...I don't wanna get married.

Crowd: Eh???

Hiro: Do you? Someday, I assume. As for me, I don't wanna get married at all.

Kid’z: *in a teasing tone* Is it because you don't have a partner?

Hiro: *taunting tone* Ha? Ha? Ha? What the hell are you saying, you.

Kid’z: Ah, sorry we had a little quarrel.

Hiro: Let's get a divorce first!

Kid’z: What the hell is this breakup!

Poor Nob

Photo by Takashi Konuma | Taken from Hiro’s IG post

Hiro: Anyway, are we good? You (Nob) still seem nervous. How are his fingers?

Kid’z: They're tender.

Hiro: If I had to play it in a room like this, I'd be pissed.

Nob: *strums a tune*

Kid’z: It's that song!! It's definitely that song, right? Can you do it, Nob bear? Are you alright? You practiced last night without sleeping.

Kid’z: Give him your support.

Crowd: Cute!! You can do it!!!

Kid’z: The pressure on you is rising, huh.

Hiro: *in an old man voice* You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!

Kid’z: Eh? What was that voice? Father?

Hiro: *taunting tone* Ha? What the hell are you saying. Who you calling father, come home and I'll kill you.

Kid’z: Ah, sorry. Father, I apologize.

Hiro: to Nob You okay? Dududadududa~ (T/N: the intro of LET IT DIE) The last song for the acoustic session. Please listen, LET IT DIE.

Then, Hiro crouched down from his seat and kneeled, looked at Nob closely, and so did Kid’z. Nob stared back, aced the dududadududa intro and everybody clapped for him! However, Nob made a mistake towards the very end, playing the last string of notes twice. When they were walking back to the main stage, Hiro put his arm around Nob and teased in a mocking tone, "Hey, in LET IT DIE, in LET IT DIE, hey, during the acoustic set, hey, I was satisfied with the beginning, but in the middle of the song, hey, you made a mistake, right? Even if you were doing so well." When they got back to the main stage, Nob bowed down in apology.

Weight of my pride MC

Hiro: Your voice has been heard! There were a lot of requests for PTP, and in my heart, PTP is my eternal hero. It shouldn't be just us; so that he can also hear your voices, shout as loud as you can Kobe!!! Next song is called Weight of my pride!

Check out their version of the performance at Saitama Super Arena here:

youtube

モノクロエフェクター MC

Hiro: How are we doing Kobe? I thought everyone in Kobe could handle it, you know? Aren't y'all drinking too much milk tea? Your nipples are gonna become tapioca if you drink too much milk tea, you know? Well, if you're sure you're not drinking too much then you should be able to handle it, so let's all dance together!!

Reviver MC

Hiro: Thank you so much for today! It's been a great day, I'm really grateful. I've always been alone. I've lost so many people I didn't want to lose, and I've let go of things I didn't want to part with many times. I might not be able to change the world with music, but because of music, I met the members, I met all of you, and it made me think that my life was pretty impressive. I want to believe it was my destiny to meet all of you here tonight, so let's keep walking together Kobe!!!

With You MC

Hiro: Thank you so much for today, Kobe!!! After this, the tour will be ending soon. Thinking about it makes me sad, but knowing that you will all be supporting us next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and even after 10 years makes me feel very grateful. But there's one thing I want to say before today ends: Kobe, I love you!!!

THE OVER MC

Hiro: How was it? MFS' UVERworld. Did I become Hiroki∞? This song was really difficult. The way the lyrics jump, especially during the part before the last chorus.

Kid’z: I didn't learn that note.

Hiro: *emphasizes the difficult enunciation of a line from the song* Unbelievable, I had a hard time remembering it.

Kid’z: The instruments were tough, too. Even Nob was complaining, there were notes he had never seen before.

Hiro: I couldn't match the timing of the lyrics either. I had to enter at an exact time, 3 characters in one second!! If MFS were to do it, we'd go with a lower key.

Kid’z: You say MFS but it's your key, right? Your voice is hella loud you know.

Hiro: It's because if I'm alone, then it's not MFS.

Kid’z: Nah, we were able to match the key, but only you can sing it that high, right? (T/N: They seemed to have raised the key by 2 octaves)

Hiro: You guys thought the cover song was only Weight of my pride, didn't you? You're wrong! We did UVERworld but we received many other requests. There were a lot of PTP songs in the tags. Who else was it... Sheena Ringo, Oral, and King Gnu too.

Kid’z: Weirdly enough, B'z was highly requested too.

Hiro: It'd be weird if I sang their songs.

Crowd: Sing! Sing! Sing!

Hiro: 萎えぇぇ！萎えぇぇ！萎えぇぇぇぇー (T/N: Nae is Japanese slang that roughly translates to “no” or “ugh” in this context) Wait a minute. Change the song.

Kid’z: *offended tone* Huh?

Hiro: Well then, sing a line that starts with A!

Hiro: You're an Ultra Soul Idiot. Do you know any other song apart from Ultra Soul?

Kid’z: Of course I do! Don't you? All of you? I love them more than anyone else, I'm even in the fanclub! こいよ！！

Kid’z: *sings a B'z line that starts with A*

Hiro: Gi!

Kid’z: Gi? *sings a line that starts with Gi* I told you, I can do anything.

Teru: Yu!

Kid’z: Yu? YUME JANAI ARE MO KORE MO SONO TE DE DOA MO AKEMASHOU, SHUKUFUKU GA HOSHII NARA KANASHIMI O SHIRI HITORI DE NAKIMASHOU, SOSHITE KAGAYAKU ULTRA SOUL!

Crowd: HEY!!!

Hiro: Oi, Teruki!! Why did you say "yu"?! You should've let him build up first before making him sing "yu"!! It was too early to make him sing that as the third song!

Kid’z: It felt really good!!

Hiro: Why did you say "yu" so quickly?!

Teru: I just made a mistake.

Hiro: Don't be an airhead!!

Kid’z: I'm really grateful!

Nob’s Redemption Arc

After their UVERworld cover, Hiro asked the audience what they should do next. The crowd started screaming different songs, to which Hiro said "I'm seriously fine with anything." Nob suddenly played the first three notes of LET IT DIE, to which Hiro said, "Ah, from earlier?" Kid'z said, "He made a mistake a while ago, so let's give him another chance." Then Nob started practicing. The crowd screamed, "You can do it!!!" then Nob walked towards the center stage and did a moonwalk. Hiro was all, "You can't do it, you're not Michael Jackson!" then sang a MJ line and howled his signature "Woo!"

Final MC

Hiro: Today was truly an amazing day, thank you all so much. We had such an intense gathering here at Kobe World Memorial Hall. The first Coming Kobe was also held here. We have so, so, so many memories here in this place. Right now, we're still on our way to reaching our dream. From hereon, we don't know if we could make such a big dream come true. We still have a long way there, but we're doing our best every year, making music for everyone and visiting various places as well. Next year, and the year after that, and even after 10 years, it would be nice if we could all make amazing memories together. Thank you so much! We're definitely coming back, Kobe!!

Photo by Takashi Konuma | Taken from Hiro’s IG post

#my first story #マイファス #live #2019 #still sad we didn't get a DVD of the Kobe show #liked it better than Saitama #we could've gotten the MCs and the encore at the very least #sighs #ah well

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blowingoffsteam2 · 6 years ago

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Part 1: I would like to apologize ahead of time, this might be a bit long. I can't help but feel a bit confused by Square Enix/Nomura as well. For me, it is pretty clear that Sora's feelings for Kairi were not much more than a crush, and it did not really become much more than that. As of Kingdom Hearts III, it seems that Sora's feelings are starting to change, that he possibly does not feel that way for Kairi anymore/he is getting over (or has gotten over) that crush.

Part 2: Or, at least, Sora is not sure of his feelings yet (for Riku or Kairi), and he is starting to figure it out. I hope that this may not mean anything, but I heard that at one of the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra shows recently, there was an encore performance of Don’t Think Twice. During the encore, they showed footage of Sora and Kairi from KH1 to 3, ending it with Sora fading away. I honestly do not know what Square/Nomura is trying to get at when it comes to Sora’s “relationships.”

Part 3: There has been major development and build up involving Sora and Riku’s relationship throughout the series as whole. Sora and Kairi’s “relationship,” not so much. Riku’s character grew more (in KH3) by expressing and accepting his feeling for Sora for what they (taisetsu na hito), Sora’s heart lead him to the worlds he was visiting in KH3/he went to these world to learn things about himself and his true feelings.

Part 4: Then there are Riku’s actions he has done for Sora prior to and during Kingdom Hearts III. (His sacrifice for Sora cannot be downplayed as not an act of true love, especially with that focus in KH3 itself). Sora is now close to to realizing the things (for the most part) that Riku has done for him, how Riku feels about him, that Riku is Sora’s light, and how Sora might feel for Riku. I refuse to believe that all this was for nothing.

Part 5: I understand that KH3 was for wrapping up the Xehanort Saga, but, before Sora went to face Xehanort, he went on this journey of self-discovery for a reason. I do not want Square to pull the rug out from under our feet and say Riku recognizing his true feelings for Sora and Sora’s journey was pointless in the end.

Part 6: Besides Xehanort’s story arc coming to a close, if Sora’s adventures and soul searching leading up to that moment is (possibly) not going to amount to anything, then why would Square even have Sora go on this journey to realize these things about himself? To have us, the audience, pick up on non-verbal cues and a deeper meaning to what is presented to us, for it to mean nothing? Don’t get me wrong, I love the Kingdom Hearts series.

Part 7: I loved and enjoyed KH3 and discovering these things involving Sora and Riku on my own, through you, databoy-reekoo, and the Sleeping Realm Theory, etc., but if it possibly amounts to nothing in the end, then is KH3 only good for wrapping up Xehanort’s story and not Sora’s “self discovery” journey in between? I know you don’t have a full answer yourself (since we can’t look into Nomura’s mind), so I guess I am just wondering what you think?

Part 8: I also cannot help but be a bit concerned over how SENA will handle Sora and Riku’s possible relationship from here on out. For Riku’s true feelings getting extremely downplayed and with the romantic angle between Sora and Kairi that is still being pushed in the English version, in which these aspects were going relatively untouched in the Japanese version. Things are not quite as “romantic” for Sora and Kairi and Riku was free to express his true feelings.

——————————————————–

I understand it can be confusing when we can’t know exactly what Nomura is planning, and for so long we’ve all been under the impression that while Sora and Riku’s relationship was developing beautifully, we all expected it would never lead anywhere more explicit, while the main games continued with a mediocre,undeveloped straight romance. After all, we have seen this pattern many times in media, haven’t we? As I’ve said before, the bar for straight romance is so low it’s in the ground, and I honestly thought this was what we’d have to deal with in KH in the end. But then KH3 came, and boy was I wrong. Almost everything Nomura had been setting up thematically, primarily since the end of KH2 (but some things even from the very beginning), culminated in KH3. The question of “what is true love”, what is light, what is the power that comes with being able to protect someone precious to you (the power of waking). These were things Sora himself was learning in KH3, and will continue to learn. But for Riku, KH3 was the result of having learned those things- he reached the break of dawn when he realized the strength to protect his most precious person came from love. And the climax of this was his sacrifice.

So, Nomura knows very well how to set up themes and follow through with them even across multiple games (even through the mobile game!). We have no reason to think that he would all of a sudden do a 180 on everything he’s been building slowly and deliberately between Sora and Riku. If Nomura really was as bad at writing romance as people like to say he is, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have confirmed a romance between Sora and Kairi in this game. It was what everyone was expecting anyway, and being so bad at romance, would he really care that he hadn’t properly developed their relationship, that Kairi had been virtually absent from all the games since KH2?

Yet instead what we got was very transparently uncomfortable and hesitant looks from Sora in the paopu scene, where he didn’t move to take the paopu until she essentially downplayed it as “just a lucky charm” (in jpn), and very big parallels on the themes of separation and fading connections. Which, again I have to remind everyone that Nomura explicitly stated it was his intent to show how childhood friendship change and don’t stay the same as we grow older (And specifically with Kairi, the theme of friends growing apart has been on his mind since KH1, as shown in the KH2 Ultimania). So we can at the very least know without a shadow of a doubt that changing connections (or rather, fading connections, taking into account the Pooh parallel) was a theme of the game and 100% intentional.

My point here being that I would be very shocked at this point if all of this was thrown down the drain in the future, as long as KH is under the direction of Nomura. Could it happen? Sure. But I would say it’s not a 50/50 chance if we are taking an honest look at everything. Not even close. But hey, that’s just my onion :) All we can do is wait and see to be sure.

As for the orchestra encore, I’ve said this elsewhere but having watched the montage myself, it really does come across as a heartfelt farewell montage. It starts off with the ending scene, up to Sora and Kairi on the tree, then cuts to scenes of them together through KH1, KH2, and KH3, and ends with Sora fading away. Certainly doesn’t end on a happy note. And important to know: the tunnel scene is not included. What an odd choice this would be, if that scene were really meant to be Sora’s grand realization that she is his light and if those flashbacks to “true love” were really about her. (and don’t forget that Sora and Riku got their own montage during the “Always on my Mind” section of the KH1 medley- which was actually just the Dearly Beloved part). In any case, the orchestra is nothing to be concerned about.

And as far as the English translations go in the future, all we can do is hope that Nomura and team have a sit down with them and make it clear what their intent is. And hopefully not have such a haphazard process with translating as we know they did with KH3. Besides…if things keep progressing, there will only be so much they could do to obscure the truth.

So yeah, I guess those are my thoughts. So much is continuing to be uncovered about kh3 and Sora and Riku’s relationship, I can’t wait to see what comes next.

#soriku asks

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liars-make-me-sick · 5 years ago

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Dice’s hands trembled as he realized he’d been figured out. The purple haired male, while his intentions were pure, had killed her. He knew what fate had in store for him now. Their eyes burned holes through his skin as he was finally coming to the same conclusion everyone else had. He killed Maki Harukawa. She was dead by his hands. He didn’t even know who he would have taken with him if he left. This sick game had done two things, brought him back with someone he hadn’t seen since highschool, the man he’d fallen in love with twice now, and brought him back with family he hadn’t been in touch with. Would it have even been possible to give his place to them? He'd never know now. Kitaro had been in his stand, crying his eyes out. He looked to Rantaro to see a cold, distant look in his eyes. In their eyes, it was likely he betrayed them. "I," He finds his voice finally, "I'm sorry- Let me expla-"

"Alright everybody! It's what you've all been waiting for! Dice's been found as the blackened. Can we get a drumroll please?" A poor joke on Monokuma's part, having the ex guitarist glare daggers at the stuffed bear who claimed to be a headmaster. "Upupupu! If looks could kill I'd be deader than you! Too bad they can't!" Before another word can be uttered the bear hit the hammer against his button to start the execution.

He's not sure how he got on stage, guitar in hand. It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to what he was seeing around him. That's when he hears a familiar sound, drumsticks hitting together in that familiar pattern only one person he knew did.

Execution: Purely Purple’s Last Show

Kokichi "Dice" Ouma

Status: Executed

There was a meter across the room. It was likely an audience satisfaction meter. He starts playing. His hands are shaking but he needs to do this. He can see the others in the crowd of Monokuma's. He can see the tears in Kitaro's eyes as they're forced to watch this. He sings his heart out on stage as he always did. He watches the meter rise slowly as he does. A grin spread out on his face as he did.

Throughout the entire performance, the meter fluctuates. Kokichi doesn't think he's ever put this much of himself into a performance before. But then again, his life has never been on the line before. Once the concert is over, the meter is full and the crowd is cheering for an encore. The male is covered in sweat, panting heavily. He looks up from the stage floor to see the horrified looks of everyone.

The stage light had been loosening the entire performance as the meter raised and crushed him.

#happenings #execution #tw death #tw execution

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woolishlygrim · 5 years ago

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Winter Weebwatch #1

So, because it is Good when I get to have opinions about things, I figured I’d try out doing a bunch of mini-reviews for the current season of anime, doing a new batch of reviews with each episode and seeing how they evolve and change over time, whether some do better, or some fall behind, or if I end up dropping any of them (and by any of them, I mean Plunderer).

The winter anime season is kind of a dead zone: Since it starts in January when everybody’s starting to get busy again and Christmas has screwed over their sense of work-life balance, it’s the season with the lowest amount of viewers, and so it’s the season where the shows tend to be noticeably low effort and low budget. It’s telling that, despite having huge franchises with a lot of brand recognition, Sunrise and A-1 Pictures put Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise and Sword Art Online on hiatus for the entirety of the winter season, choosing to take the hit that comes from a three month hiatus instead of wasting twelve or thirteen episodes on the Death Season, The Season Where Shows Go To Die.

So by and large, what we’re reviewing here are either the shows distribution companies didn’t care about, or the shows distribution companies did care about but couldn’t get a channel to pick up in any other season. We’re also not reviewing all of them, because there’s like ninety and my store of time and opinions is finite, so we’re reviewing seven.

While the intention is to follow these seven shows through to the end, what will probably happen is I might drop a couple that aren’t keeping my interest, and pick up a couple that catch my eye. If I pick up new ones, then whatever I pick up will get some kind of bumper review covering several episodes.

Also, I really dragged my heels getting this done, so most of these shows have already aired their second episodes. I’ll be trying to put out the second episode reviews a lot quicker, so that I can be relatively current by the time the third episodes roll around.

Anyway! Week 1, first episodes.

Infinite Dendrogram.

★★★☆☆

Infinite Dendrogram has a terrible and ridiculous premise that crumbles into dust if you examine it for more than 0.2 seconds, and I kind of don’t mind that at all.

The show follows Ray Starling, a player in the titular Virtual Reality MMO, which promises infinite possibilities owing to its two unique selling points: The first, that all the NPCs are fully-fledged AIs, meaning the world ‘exists’ distinct from its players or any manned oversight, with quests emerging naturally from the NPCs’ wants and needs, and with NPCs able to permanently die; and the second, that each player character has an Embryo, a superpower generated using their personality as a model, with infinite possibilities.

This is an inconceivably dumb premise. Leaving aside the obvious game balance issues with the Embryos, it’s clarified early on that this AI technology is unique to the game, which means that some game company discovered the technology to create fully conscious, sapient life, and decided to use that technology to create a video game (and in doing so, directly led to the deaths of thousands of those sapient lives).

But I … kinda don’t care? Infinite Dendrogram’s episode was fun, lively, not terribly original but consistently engaging, and managed to introduce five characters who I actually kind of like while telling a self-contained episodic story with good stakes and nice pacing. It feels like Sword Art Online if Sword Art Online was written by a competent writer and also not just a delivery system for creepy, irritating fanservice, and that’s pretty nice.

Also, bonus points for actually making the in-universe game look fun? We’ll call that one another advantage it has over SAO.

ID: Invaded.

★★★★☆

ID: Invaded has indisputably the strongest first episode of this season of anime (really first two, as it aired both episodes one and two back to back), by a gigantic margin. A video called ‘Defending ID: Invaded’ floated by my youtube dash a few days back, so clearly some people don’t agree with me on that, but that’s fine. It’s okay for them to be wrong.

When ID: Invaded picks up, a young man awakens in an empty white void full of floating chunks of a city, with his own body in pieces and no memories. Pulling himself back together, he realises, upon seeing a dead body of a young woman, that his name is Sakaido, and he’s a detective here to solve the woman’s murder.

Sakaido, it quickly turns out, is exploring a cognitive world formed out of a telepathic link with the killer, with a team of investigators in the real world watching through his eyes and picking out evidence to find the murderer with. When the murderer, a serial killer called the Perforator, kidnaps a member of the investigation team, the race is on to find him before he can kill again.

So, ID: Invaded has kind of mastered the art of dripfeeding information in a way that gets a viewer hooked very quickly while steadily delivering a series of twists and turns, and recontextualising the story and the mystery (which, it rapidly emerges, is not the mystery of the Perforator, but rather the mystery of Sakaido himself). It’s gripping and inventive, with a strong if slightly convoluted premise and a lot of interesting material to set up going forward in the series.

In a nice touch, director Ei Aoki turns the mental worlds Sakaido visits (two in the first two episodes) into homages to other surrealist anime directors, mimicking both their compositions and their cinematography. The world of the Perforator draws marked influence from the works of Mamoru Hosoda, an apprentice of Hayao Miyazaki and one of the original creators of Digimon Adventure; while the second world visited pays homage to the works of Akiyuki Shinbo, best known for the unsettling surrealist landscapes and equally unsettling cinematography of Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Fate/Extra Last Encore.

Pet.

★☆☆☆☆

Pet looks like a cheap OVA from 2004. Let’s just get that out of the way, it looks bad, but in a really inoffensive way where it just kind of looks cheap and outdated.

It’s … fine. It’s okay. If you’ve ever had a Burger King bacon and cheese burger, you basically know what Pet is like. If you haven’t ever had a Burger King bacon and cheese burger, go and have a Burger King bacon and cheese burger, and then you’ll know what Pet is like.

The first episode doesn’t really give away anything about the premise of the series, save that it involves psychic criminals, but it tells a decent self-contained little story about a guy who learns something he shouldn’t and is then psychic-ly tormented before his memory is eventually wiped.

There’s also just not a lot to say about Pet, though. It fulfills its function as a work of storytelling, and it doesn’t really ever do much more than that, at least in its first episode. It finds its comfortable niche in just being very average and unremarkable, and sticks there, being average and unremarkable.

Of all the first episodes I’m reviewing, Pet seems the most passionless. It’s such a middle of the road piece of art that I struggle to imagine why it was even made. It doesn’t seem like it’s trying to sell merchandise, it doesn’t seem like a passion project, it doesn’t really seem like much of anything. It feels like someone asked a creative writing class to write a short story about psychic criminals, and then one of those stories was turned into an anime episode.

Plunderer.

☆☆☆☆☆

Plunderer offers a moderately interesting premise that literally nobody watching the first episode will even remember because oh good god, from the second scene onwards the entire episode is just non-stop sexual harassment and assault, first from the protagonist to the deuteragonist and then from the antagonist to the deuteragonist, and I hated it. I hated it so much.

In a bizarre turn, when the protagonist sexually harasses and attempts to sexually assault the deuteragonist, it’s played as wacky comedy, but when the antagonist does basically the exact same thing, it’s played with all the sense of horror that those actions warrant.

I just … don’t really get how I’m meant to ever sympathise with the protagonist after this. I don’t know how you rehabilitate a character in the audience’s minds when our very first introduction to him tells us that he’s a sex pest.

Also something something numbers something something die if your number reaches zero something something magical items who even cares what the premise is, my patience for this show ran dry thirty seconds into the second scene.

If I had a way of representing it, I would give this first episode a negative number of stars.

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen.

★★★☆☆

Let it just be noted that ‘Sorcerous Stabber Orphen’ is the most unintentionally hilarious anime title of the season, so there’s that.

A remake of a 1999 series of the same name, Sorcerous Stabber Orphen follows Orphen, a disgraced former sorcerer turned small-time crook and moneylender whose ill-advised attempt to commit marriage fraud is abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a dragon crashing through the roof of his potential bride/mark’s house. This isn’t just any dragon, however, but Orphen’s sister, Azalie, magically transformed after a spell gone wrong, leading Orphen on a quest to turn her back into a human before the sorcerers of the Tower of Fang can kill her.

Side note: While he names himself ‘Orphen’ because he is an orphan, I’m not misspelling the name, that’s how it’s spelled in-show. This is everybody’s fault except mine.

So, this first episode rather shows the age of its source material. It looks very much like a spruced up late 90s anime made with current day animation techniques, and that’s actually not a bad look for it. It’s also not really a good look -- Megalo Box this ain’t -- it’s just kind of a … look. Which is there. It exists in a state of Neutral Retro.

As first episodes go, though, this is probably one of the emptier and slower ones, somehow managing to cover less of its plot than even Plunderer (although it wins out on a massive margin the basis of that plot not being 90% sex crimes), because seemingly not only is its animation style cribbed from late 90s action anime, but so is its pacing.

What’s there, though, is pretty fun. None of it is dazzlingly original, it probably wasn’t that original even in the 90s, but we get introduced to a likeable cast of characters, we get a decent central conflict set up, and the worldbuilding is, while bare bones at present, at least interesting enough to hook a viewer who likes fantasy.

Also, it’s called ‘Sorcerous Stabber Orphen,’ so, you know. Extra star just for that, man.

In/Spectre.

★★☆☆☆

I’m not sure what In/Spectre is trying to be, and it doesn’t seem to be sure either.

The marketing set it up as an atmospheric, brooding supernatural mystery. The first third of the episode frames it as a romantic comedy with emphasis on the comedy. The second third of the episode switches back to atmospheric, brooding supernatural mystery, only for the third third of the episode to switch tracks yet again, this time to an action comedy with an emphasis on the action.

I don’t know whether I’m coming or going with this show. I get mood whiplash constantly, as it veers from genre to genre like a drunk driver on the freeway. By the time the last third of the episode hit, I felt completely unmoored not just from the plot, but from how I was even meant to interpret the characters.

It’s not bad at any of those genres, either. The romantic comedy section was actually pretty funny, the supernatural mystery section was suitably ominous, the action comedy section established stakes and followed through on them pretty well. None of it was blow-me-away-amazing, but it was all competent, it’s just that there’s no coherent sense of tone to any of it.

Darwin’s Game.

★☆☆☆☆

Full disclosure, I completely forgot I was watching Darwin’s Game. I finished these reviews, thought ‘haha, well done, I’ve reviewed all six shows I wanted to review’ and didn’t remember that there was a seventh on my list until I saw its name come up on a streaming website.

That’s a large part of why I’m scoring it so low. It’s better than In/Spectre, Pet, or Plunderer, it’s probably at least as good as Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, but at least those shows actually made some kind of impression on me. Darwin’s Game is good, but I can’t exactly justify giving two or three stars to a show that had such little impact that it vanished from my memory as soon as I stopped actively watching it with my eyes, like some kind of middling Doctor Who monster.

So, Darwin’s Game follows, um. It follows … a guy … with a name that I can’t recall … who is unwittingly dragged into a death game played in the streets of Tokyo. With each player given Sigils, seemingly magical abilities that they can use to gain advantages in the game, and with points exchangeable for vast sums of real money, the players of Darwin’s Game are set to the task of hunting down and murdering other players. Unable to back out of the game, Some Guy finds help with, er … with … a person … whose name I also don’t recall … and …

God, trying to recall the details of this show is like trying to recall what you had for dinner last week just after a severe head injury. You know, but the details just aren’t there.

I’m kind of at a loss as far as opinions go, because I don’t … know? If I think hard, I can remember the order of events that happened in the first episode, but I can’t remember what, if any, emotional response I had to them. All of my memories of this show are a blank, emotionless void, this is like asking me to review Solitaire. Like, I guess it was fine? I guess?

I can’t remember the main character’s face or voice.

Note to self, write all Darwin’s Game reviews from now on immediately after watching the episode, otherwise all recollection of it will melt like ice cream in a heat wave.

I’m still giving it one star, though, because I refuse to put it on the same level as Plunderer. For a start, the main character doesn’t belong on some kind of registry.

#infinite dendrogram #plunderer #id invaded #sorcerous stabber orphen #darwins game #anime #winter weebwatch

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mikauzoran · 6 years ago

Text

Lukadrien/Lukadrienette Drabble: Nachtmusik Chapter Eleven

A Little Night Music (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) Chapter Eleven: Dies Irae, Dies Illa

“What were you humming just now?” Marinette inquired through a yawn as she took Hugo from Luka, careful to support the baby’s head. “It seemed to calm him down.”

Luka froze. “…Uh…”

He’d been absentmindedly humming a Gregorian chant, the Dies Irae from the requiem mass. Literally, the title meant “day of wrath”, and the lyrics in Latin described the Day of Judgment: ashes and fire and punishment and despair. Not exactly the most age-appropriate lullaby for their four-month-old.

It was quoted in a lot of classical pieces, though, and, thus, currently stuck in Luka’s head.

Not that he wanted to try to explain any of that to his wife at three in the morning.

“Nothing,” he lied but then immediately repented. “It’s just a little snatch of something the Orchestre is playing at an upcoming concert.”

“Teach it to me?” Marinette requested as she got situated in the rocking chair and held Hugo up to her breast to feed him.

“How about we do Bach’s Little Fugue in G Minor instead?” Luka suggested, coming over to give the side of Marinette’s head a kiss. “He likes that one too. That’s the one Adrien always sings to him…when he’s not singing something from a musical or a video game.”

Luka hummed softly as he gently bounced Hugo, walking him round and round the island in the middle of the kitchen.

“Why are you humming the Dies Irae?” Adrien finally inquired from where he leaned in the doorway watching.

Luka jumped.

Adrien sprang forward to steady his husband and make sure their eight-month-old son was secure in his sling. “Sorry. Sorry. I am so sorry. I thought you knew I was there. I’m so sorry, Luka.”

“It’s…okay,” Luka struggled to get out, breathing ragged.

“You okay, Sweet Prince?” Adrien peeked down at Hugo to find the baby laughing happily.

“Looks like someone enjoys jump scares,” Luka snorted in amusement, leaning in to rest his forehead against Adrien’s.

“Sorry, Orpheus,” Adrien whispered, hands going up to Luka’s cheeks to gently pull him in for a kiss.

Luka hummed contentedly into Adrien’s lips as they waltzed with his own.

“So why the Dies Irae?” Adrien mumbled, back on task the instant they pulled away.

Luka groaned, bouncing Hugo once more. “Not only is the Orchestre doing Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, but I’m also soloist for Liszt’s Totentanz, so that melody is doubly stuck in my head.”

“My poor baby,” Adrien teased.

Luka rolled his eyes.

“I loooove Totentanz,” Adrien chuckled, catching one of Luka’s hands in his own. “Play it for me?”

“Now?” Luka laughed incredulously, shaking his head at his husband’s capriciousness.

“I mean…we’re up anyway, and Hugo seems to enjoy the Dies Irae, so…why not?” Adrien reasoned. “Besides, why did I go to the trouble of marrying a sexy piano virtuoso if I can’t have songs played live on demand at any hour of the night I want them?”

Luka tried not to grin as he tugged Adrien into the front room where they kept Adrien’s old baby grand piano. “You certainly didn’t marry me for my money or my body. I honestly don’t know what you were thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking.” Adrien shrugged. “I’m so in love with you, I’m not capable of rational thought.”

Luka snickered. “You weren’t capable of rational thought before you fell in love with me.”

“Rude. See if I make babies with you anymore.” Adrien flicked his husband on the cheek before carefully taking Hugo in his sling from Luka.

“Angel,” Luka cajoled, lifting the lid on the piano keys.

Adrien shook his head as he sat on the piano bench. “Nope. Don’t you ‘Angel’ me. I will not be seduced.”

With a shrug of defeat, Luka sat beside Adrien and began a quick warmup.

“You’re not even trying to seduce me,” Adrien pouted. “What’s the big idea here?”

“I thought you wanted me to serenade you with macabre dance of death music about the black plague,” Luka replied with a smirk.

Adrien’s lower lip jutted forward. “Well, yes…but you could at least kiss me first.”

Luka gladly obliged, and when he pulled back, Adrien looked deliriously happy.

Luka grinned, chuckling at Adrien’s expression.

“What?” Adrien pouted, rocking Hugo from side to side.

“I love your smile.”

Luka could just make out a pastel pink blush on Adrien’s cheeks in the dim lighting.

“I love you,” he added.

“I love you too,” Adrien whispered back, scooting closer on the bench to rest his head on Luka’s shoulder. “It’s good to finally just be together and happy, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” Luka agreed, content to sit there with the man he loved and their child for as long as the moment lasted.

That turned out to be about thirty seconds.

After that, Adrien decided that they’d cuddled enough and that it was time for Luka to play piano. “I’ll go ahead and sing the orchestra parts. You play the piano solo.”

“My baby!” Adrien cooed, eliciting a happy shriek of laughter and an answering, “Daddy!” from sixteen-month-old Hugo.

Hugo reached out his arms, and it was all Gabriel could do to keep a hold on the squirming toddler.

Adrien took his son, covering him with kisses and nuzzles.

Gabriel grinned, putting a polite hand over his mouth as he chuckled.

Plagg and Nooroo shared an amused look before returning to their posts in Adrien’s left and right shoulders respectively.

“How was he? Did he wake you guys a lot?” Adrien smiled up sheepishly at his father.

“Not too bad,” Gabriel replied judiciously. “A little fussy, and he wanted you three, but Nooroo and Plagg helped a lot as far as his homesickness went. Hugo ate just fine and eventually went to sleep after we laid him down last night. He didn’t disturb us too much. Not unreasonably so for sleeping away from home, anyway. You were much, much worse at his age.”

“Good to know,” Adrien snorted, a bright smile breaking out on his lips as he hugged his child to him, bouncing Hugo slightly. “Thank you so much for doing this. Luka and Marinette are super grateful too.”

Gabriel waved the thanks away. “It was no trouble at all. You know how much we enjoy babysitting. Hugo is a joy to spend time with.”

Adrien’s grin widened. “I’m really, really happy to hear you say so.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Nathalie and I would be glad to watch him whenever you need. Tom and Sabine hog him too much, and I’m uncomfortable with you leaving him alone with Anarka.”

Adrien grimaced. “She’s his grandma too, Dad. Play nice.”

Gabriel gave a petulant scoff. “It’s a wonder that Luka managed to raise himself so well with a mother like that Gaelic witch. She thinks she has more right to Hugo than I do.”

Adrien refrained from commenting that Gabriel himself had been a little slow to embrace Hugo as his grandson in the absence of a genetic link. “Well, she’s wrong. Try to be the bigger person when we have a green-eyed baby, okay? Regardless of biological paternity, all kids of this union belong to all three of us equally, so make sure you treat them all the same. Hugo adores you, and I’m sure it would really hurt if you started giving a hypothetical green-eyed sibling preferential treatment.”

“I would never,” Gabriel snorted in disgust, reaching out to stroke Hugo’s thick, dark hair. “He may not be biologically yours, but he’s one hundred percent your son, Adrien.”

Adrien blinked, taken aback by the certainty in his father’s voice. “Really? What makes you say that?”

Gabriel chuckled. “He has your mannerisms. Sometimes he’ll do something that’s obviously Marinette or patently Luka, but, a lot of times, he’ll make a face, and I can tell he got it from watching and mimicking you.”

“Yeah? Like what?” Adrien pressed, excited by this revelation. He had never really thought that Hugo resembled him even though both Marinette and Luka had commented upon it separately before. Perhaps it was because Adrien couldn’t see himself to have a mental picture to compare his son with, but…

“His pout is a carbon copy of yours,” Gabriel sighed. “He’s got your puppy dog eyes too.”

Adrien’s smile turned pained. “Ah. I see. So all the manipulative ploys, huh?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “He has your smile too…and your sweetness with none of your mischief. He’s inherited a lot from you despite the lack of shared genes. Don’t pout so, Adrien.”

“I’m not pouting,” Adrien pouted.

Gabriel gave Adrien an eyeroll encore. “How was your date last night? I trust you three had a nice dinner out?”

Adrien immediately perked up. “It was wonderful. Thank you. It was also nice to be able to get a solid eight hours of sleep without having to get up with Hugo.”

Gabriel assumed an air of nonchalance as he inquired, “Just out of curiosity and not to sound like I’m competing with Anarka, when are you three planning on having a green-eyed child?”

Adrien’s brow scrunched up like gathered fabric folds. “Seriously?”

Gabriel shrugged primly.

“We’re not actively trying, but we stopped actively not trying two or three months ago, so…but it’s not like we’re being intentional about who the biological father is. You and Anarka really need to cut it out.” Adrien shifted Hugo onto his hip with a sigh. “Should I have Luka talk to her?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Gabriel assured sullenly and then abruptly switched topics so as to put an end to the discussion. “By the way, I’ve wondered this for a while, but…why does Hugo hum the Dies Irae? He wanted it as a lullaby last night. It was rather…odd. Not that I’m one to comment on your parenting choices, I suppose.”

Adrien gave a snort as he struggled to stifle a bout of laughter. “That’s Luka’s fault. It’s one of the most quoted musical passages in the repertoire, so it gets stuck in his head a lot, and when he’s tired and up in the middle of the night with Hugo… I think it’s because he didn’t get a lot of traditional lullabies when he was little. Anarka sang him rock and roll, so he doesn’t have the standard classics to fall back on, and he fills in the gap with music he does know.”

Adrien bit his lip. “…Kind of like how you and Maman had crappy parents who didn’t sing standard lullabies to you two, so you didn’t know them to sing them to me, so now I sing musical numbers like All I Ask of You from Phantom of the Opera or video game music like Zelda’s Lullaby from The Legend of Zelda to my own child. I think Marinette’s the only one who really knows traditional lullabies, and half of hers are in Chinese…which she doesn’t speak, so she’s not even sure she’s getting the words right.”

Gabriel frowned. “Can’t you tell?”

Adrien shook his head, bouncing Hugo gently. “They’re not in Mandarin. Sabine’s parents both spoke Mandarin, so that’s what they spoke in the house growing up, but her mother was originally from a different region in China before they moved to France, so the lullabies she sang to Sabine were in a different dialect which I do not speak.”

Gabriel pursed his lips, tempted to ask whether the dialects were similar enough that Adrien could make any of it out, but he remembered Adrien once telling him that most Chinese dialects sounded like completely different languages to him.

“What dialect do Bridgette and Félix speak?” he inquired instead.

Adrien shrugged. “Mandarin. I’d have to ask Sabine about the lyrics…. Well, I should probably get going. The first thing Luka asked me this morning was when I was going to pick up Hugo. I think he’s going through withdrawal,” Adrien chuckled, giving Hugo a nuzzle. “Your Papá misses you.”

“Papá!” Hugo trilled happily.

Adrien turned back to Gabriel. “Thanks again, Dad.”

“Bring him back any time,” Gabriel stressed. “Make sure you ask us before Anarka.”

Adrien shook his head, making a mental note to have Luka talk to the Capitaine about this grandparent rivalry she and Gabriel had going on. “Will do. Thanks, Dad.”

Adrien turned to go, and Gabriel hesitated a beat before calling out, “Adrien?”

“Hm?” Adrien looked back, tipping his head.

“Do you…” Gabriel worried at his bottom lip. “Does it bother you that you’re not familiar with the traditional lullabies?”

Adrien shrugged unconcernedly. “Not really. In a way, it’s more fun to sing anime theme songs and Bach and the Dies Irae. I think it makes Hugo more cultured too, so it’s not a bad thing.”

Gabriel nodded, relieved. “Good. That’s good. Take care, Son.”

Gabriel later stopped to think that his grandson was going to be a very eclectic child with so many varied influences. He wondered if the other children at school would appreciate Hugo’s uniqueness.

Gabriel winced and wondered whether Marinette, Luka, and Adrien would allow Hugo to be homeschooled.

#Adrien Agreste/Luka Couffaine #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #Lukadrien #Lukadrienette #Adrien Agreste/Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Luka Couffaine #Adrien Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Gabriel Agreste #Hugo ACDC #Future #Fluff #Domesticity #Music Nerds #Mikau's Writings #A Little Night Music (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik)

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beneathawesternsky · 6 years ago

Note

#28, Roger!

#28: “Make Me”

Word Count: 3,694

Rating: Smut

Warnings: Unprotected sex (be smart, kids– this is just fiction)

The tour bus sped along the highway through middle America. The band had just played four shows in four days, and you could see by the looks on their faces, they were spent. The first few days between venues, the band had partied a little hard, but now they were more reserved. You, Freddie and John were immersed in a game of Scrabble.

“That’s not a word,” you argued, looking at the word John had put down on the board.

“Yes it is,” John said, taking his head off his hand.

“Where’s the dictionary?” you asked, looking around you for the pocket dictionary you all referred to whenever there was a hotly contested word on the board. You couldn’t find it, and grumbled in exasperation.

“Damn it,” you said, and turned around to where Brian was reading a book. “Brian, tell my dear big brother that g-r-i-g is not a word.”

“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” he said, flipping the page, only giving you a passing look.

“See, the astrologist doesn’t know the word, so it’s not a word,” you intoned.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, sis,” he said. “It’s a word. There’s a phrase, ‘merry as a grig’,” he reasoned.

“Oh, you are so full of shit,” you said, laughing.

“It’s a word for a small eel,” a voice came from across the aisle. Roger was writing in a journal– song lyrics most likely– and looked up at you.

“And you know that how?” you asked, stunned, but still challenging him.

“It’s from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” he said. You held his gaze, and his eyes dared you to challenge him further. You sighed, and picked up your pencil, counting the points totaled for g-r-i-g.

“Children, I will stop this car right this moment if you don’t stop fighting,” Freddie said with reserved mirth.

“Yes, dad,” you said, and shook your head at him.

When you agreed to come with Queen on their first tour of America as their personal photographer, you hadn’t expected it to be so… chaotic. Night after night of shows, and you weren’t even halfway through the tour. It was fun, but already exhausting. Some members of the band, however, seemed to relish in bouncing from town to town.

Roger mostly. He said he’d gained an affinity for midwestern girls, and had to sample at least one from every state. When he said this after a show one night, you rolled your eyes and made a sound of disgust. He really could be a pig sometimes. When you thought of that exchange, your heart picked up, and you hated yourself for it. Every time you remembered an exchange with Roger, your heart did the thing. Maybe it was why you two were always picking at each other, starting little squabbles.

It made you sick– what did that say about you as a woman? That a man like that, who treated women the way he did, could make you feel those things? You stuffed it down in your mind, and before you had a chance to consider the Scrabble tiles before you, the bus driver hollered that you were stopping for gas and lunch.

There was an audible sigh of relief from all on the bus. It was always a chance to stretch their legs, smoke, and eat. The bus pulled in to a nondescript diner and petrol station, and you grabbed your camera, slinging the strap over your shoulder. Bus breaks were breaks for the boys– for you, it was time to work. All four of Queen’s members went off on their separate ways, either to stretch their legs, go to the loo, or strike up a cigarette.

You had snapped a few photos of Freddie smoking a cigarette against the brick wall of the gas station when Roger caught your eye. He had been acting peculiarly all day, and now you were convinced something was off. He was sitting on a parking bumper, notebook and pen still in hand, writing intently. You sauntered over to him, ready to give him hell, but first you wanted to capture him in his vulnerable state. You put the camera’s viewfinder to your eye, and focused in on him, pressing down on the shutter release, capturing his image on black and white 35mm film. He heard the click, and looked up at you.

At that, the spell was broken. He gave you the look of annoyance that so often accompanied your encounters. It stoked a fire in you, and you couldn’t leave it.

“Sulking, are we?” you asked, putting your foot up on the parking bumper next to where he sat, slinging the camera over your shoulder again. He placed his pen in the notebook, and closed it. The gesture was not lost on you.

“What would I have to sulk about?” Roger countered, with only a portion of the bite that accompanied your squabbles.

You smirked and crossed your arms. “I dunno, did Oklahoma City girls not live up to your expectations?” you taunted.

He shook his head and gave an exasperated sigh.

“Well, if you won’t tell me what’s wrong, then I’ll have to find out myself,” you said, snatching the journal from his lap. He reacted, but you were too fast. You took a few paces back. He maintained his distance, but held his hand out.

“Give it back, y/n,” he said calmly.

“Make me,” you said, opening the book to the page he was working on.

In a flash, he was standing, and you dodged him, looking at the first few lines. You read them aloud, meaning to tease him, but with each line, the smile on your face faded. You kept walking backwards, but when you saw your name in his admittedly beautiful script, you stopped, and kept reading. The words were beautiful. Before you had a chance to finish, Roger plucked the journal from your hands, and stood there looking even more vulnerable than he had before. The words could only be described as a love song in the making.

“You—” you stammered, “you don’t even like me.”

“Just drop it,” he said, and made to walk past you when you put your hand on his chest to stop him. You don’t know why you did it—the gesture surprised the both of you, and you both looked down at your hand before looking into each other’s eyes.

“Roger,” you said. You didn’t know what else to say. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He just shook his head, and gently removed your hand from his chest before walking toward the diner, leaving you in stunned silence.

When you sat down for lunch with the boys, the tension between you and Roger was palpable. It was so strong, in fact, that Freddie commented on it.

“Are we going to have to put you two in a room to work out whatever is going on?” he threatened, completely unaware of what had just transpired between you two. The implications of “working it out” in a room were now… so different.

“No,” you said, diffusing the situation, Roger’s eyes meeting you for a split second. “He’s just being a prat as usual.”

“Roger, as I’ve told you before, there’s only room in this band for one hysterical Queen,” he said, referring of course to the cabinet incident.

Roger finished his meal in silence, which visibly set the three other men on edge, but no one said a word. They each chalked it up to stress, and when they arrived in Memphis before their gig, they set about getting ready for the show.

The hours after your discovery, you couldn’t keep your eyes off Roger—and he couldn’t be bothered to look at you, the act of which only heightened the severity of your discovery. So when you were backstage in the green room, photographing the boys getting ready, you walked over to where Roger was getting ready. He was buttoning a shirt (which you knew he would end up taking off during the show anyway, he always overheated under the stage lights), and when he noticed you, his face froze, and he sighed.

“Y/n,” he said, “don’t…”

“Roger, you have to talk to me,” you said quietly. “We have to talk about this.”

“Why?” he challenged, and that stung.

“Why?” you countered. You were almost angry now. “Because ever since I met you, you’ve been nothing but nasty to me. And what you were writing in that journal is the complete opposite of how you’ve been treating me for years.”

“It’s just a song,” he said. “Don’t read into it.”

“Bullshit,” you said, a little too loud for both your liking. You lowered your voice after you two checked to see that Freddie, John, and Brian hadn’t noticed. “Do you think that it hasn’t torn me to pieces for years, the way you treat me?”

That surprised him. His eyes immediately snapped up to yours.

“Yeah, Roger,” you said, slowly nodding your head. “Other people feel things too, Roger Taylor. So if you actually want to have a mature conversation about this, see me after the show. Break a leg,” you said with your best disapproving tone, and walked away.

Roger played with a fury you’d rarely seen that night. He was on fire, hammering out some kind of frustration only the two of you were aware of. Brian, Freddie, and John all noticed the passion he was putting in to his work. You thought to yourself that as soon as you were able to get into a dark room to develop the film, there would be some great shots of not only the whole band, but Roger than night.

And with a sheen of sweat across his chest, you knew the images would make your stomach hitch. Like they always did.

When the band had finished their encore, you were waiting side stage with your camera, and Roger almost blazed past you before he stopped.

“Meet me out back,” he said over his shoulder, and that sent your pulse racing. Without thinking, you put your camera down in your camera bag in the green room, and calmly made your way to the alley out back.

You opened the doors, and relished in the cooler night air after being under stage lights for an hour. Even indirectly, they always made you sweat. You tucked your hair behind your ear, pulling the sweaty bits off your temple. You looked around you, and finally found Roger, leaning against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette. When he saw you, he threw the cigarette to the ground and stamped it out. He stood up straighter, looking almost… hopeful.

You walked over to him, and stood a respectable few feet from him. He couldn’t look you in the eye for very long—he kept looking down at the ground, or at an unfixed point behind you.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” you asked.

He smiled sadly, and shook his head. “Because it’s you, okay?”

“What do you mean, ‘it’s me’?” you asked.

He almost chuckled, plunging his hands into his jeans pockets. “One of my best mate’s—band mate’s—sister? Do you—do you think for one minute he would be okay with that?”

You struggled to follow his logic. “I don’t see what John has to do with it.”

“I know, okay—” he said, licking his lips, looking at yours. “I know what they all think of me. So what’s the point in trying to prove to them, anyone, that I’m anything else? Can you honestly say that they wouldn’t object to you and me?”

This shut you up, but only for a second. “That’s not fair. And you know it. And do you have any idea,” you said, suddenly growing angry, “any idea, how hard it is for me to watch you with girl, after girl, after girl? Any idea how much it tears me up, and how long I have hated myself for feeling this way?”

He looked wounded, but something in his look told you he felt utter disbelief.

“That’s right,” you said, almost tearing up now. “If you’d just get your head out of your arse for one bloody minute and think about what someone else thinks, then maybe the last four years of my life wouldn’t have been so miserable.”

You took a step closer to him, still angry, but wanting so badly to end the wait that had built up over the years. You were practically whispering at this point. “Is it so hard to think that someone might actually care for you? And that you deserve it?”

His chest heaved a minute at your words. And then he couldn’t take it any longer. He took you by the wrist, and pulled you bodily into him. His other hand found the back of your neck, and he tilted your mouth up to his, and brought his lips down onto yours. Your breath caught in your chest, and you stood there frozen a moment, feeling his gentle pressure on your mouth before you melted slowly into him. When you began to respond, he increased the pressure of his kiss, and ran his tongue along your bottom lip, coaxing your mouth open.

Your hands reached out and grabbed him by the waist. You opened to him, and brought your tongue to his, letting out a small sigh. He snaked the hand that wasn’t on your neck around the small of your back. He reached down, grabbing your ass in your tight, high-waisted jeans, causing you to let out a breathy moan, breaking your kiss.

He took the moment to breathe a bit, looking down at you with those perfect blue eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, knowing you still weren’t over the hurt of the last for years. He shook his head, bowing his forehead and resting it on your shoulder, taking you in.

You breathed and tightened your grip on his hips, running your thumbs along his bare skin.

“How are you going to make it up to me?” you countered, your want for him smoldering low, ready to combust at any given second.

“How about a public whipping?” he said with a small chuckle, and looked down at you.

“I’ve got a better idea,” you said, and his breath hitched. “Mott the Hoople’s still on… The boys are probably in the green room having a drink… the bus is empty.”

His eyes widened, surprised at how bold you were.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“After four years, Roger Taylor,” you said, grabbing the waist of his jeans, and pulling his hips into yours. “I’m going to show you just how sorry you should be.”

Before you could get pulled into the vortex of lust out in the alley, yet again, you turned on your heels and walked towards the bus, leaving Roger standing there dumbstruck. In a few seconds, you heard his steps, and smiled to yourself. You never looked back once, opening the doors to the bus forcefully, stepping onto it, and turning around when you reached the bunks. In a few seconds, he had caught up, and froze a few feet from you. He set his jaw, and walked up to you, suddenly determined.

His fingers laced in your hair, and he brought you in for a bruising kiss. You held onto his wrists and let him kiss you. The two of you crouched to the lowest bunk, and he settled between your legs. His hands traveled to your waist, applying just the right amount of pressure, resting at your ribcage, just below your breasts.

When he felt that you weren’t wearing a bra—not altogether uncommon in 1974—he let out a guttural sound.

“Do you have any idea what it does to me when I can see your nipples through your shirt?” he said, his thumbs dancing over them.

“Why do you think I do it?” you challenged, smirking against his lips. He pulled your shirt up over your head, and you gladly assisted. Your bare skin against his was sweaty, fevered from being on stage, but you didn’t care. Neither of you were here for a romantic interlude. There was four years of tension to work out.

His mouth found your breasts, and he lavished attention upon them, kissing them and tracing circles with his tongue, while his hands worked at the buttons on your jeans. With your help, you shucked them off, leaving you in only your cotton underwear. When he came back to capture your mouth in a kiss, your hands found his jeans, and began unbuttoning them. You couldn’t even wait to get them off—you reached in, and found his length—of course he wasn’t wearing any underwear. What else did you expect?

You worked him over a few moments before he grabbed your wrist, and pulled away, “this will be over before it gets started if you keep at it.” That was enough for you. He pulled his jeans off, and going to his knees, he hooked his fingers into your underwear and pulled them down your legs, completely exposing you.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, changing the mood from frenzied lust to something… more. Holding his gaze, you opened your legs, an invitation. He was more than happy to oblige, taking up his place between your legs, wrapping his arms under your shoulders, holding your head as he kissed you sweetly. How could Roger Taylor be capable of such a tender touch?

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, looking down into your eyes adoringly.

You nodded. “Y-yes,” you managed after a moment. He answered you by pressing his lips to yours gently, and gently tipping his hips forward, the length of him meeting your entrance, which was dripping wet—and he hadn’t even touched you.

He pressed forward into you steadily, but full of a need that came bubbling back up once he was fully buried in you. The two of you moaned aloud at your coupling, and took a moment before you started to rock your hips in sync.

When you both started to move, you found the rhythm you settled into was effortless, like you two were two pieces of a puzzle that just clicked into place. Just when you thought with every thrust, he couldn’t go any further, he added a little extra force, meeting your g-spot, driving you closer to the edge faster than you thought possible.

The first time you came, you clutched at his back, and bit into his shoulder gently. That seemed to spur him on, and he thrust into you faster until you reached the bottom. He slowed for a moment after you came, letting you recover, and then picking up the pace, bringing you to orgasm upon orgasm. You were starting to realize he had a reputation for a reason.

After your fourth orgasm, you decided you couldn’t take any more—you had to finish him. You pushed against his chest, and rolled him onto his back, straddling his hips in a few movements. You sunk down onto him easily, and he gripped your hips in desperation, begging you to move. You were happy to oblige him, tilting your hips and riding him without any mercy. Slow enough to be pleasurable, but steady enough that you knew he wouldn’t last another minute.

His breath caught in his chest, and he snapped his hips up into you as he came.

“Y/n,” he said, panting and holding onto your hips, filling you completely as he spilled into you.

You smiled in satisfaction as you rode him down through his high. When he had completely finished, you pulled him out of you, and collapsed beside him. He drew himself up against you, and pulled you to him in a deep kiss. That deep kiss turned into tender, small pecks that melted your heart. Thiswas the Roger Taylor you had hoped lurked beneath the conceited, cocksure exterior.

He rested his forehead against yours, breathing gently. He pulled back enough to look into your eyes. “If I wasn’t sorry about the last four years before, I certainly am now.”

You laughed fully, and he smiled, resting his forehead on your bare chest. When he pulled back to say something to you, a commotion at the bus door snapped the two of you out of your post-coital haze.

Voices came, and the door was being opened—steps up the bus stairs. All the while, Roger was pulling a crochet blanket from the bottom of the bunk onto the two of you, hoping to preserve some modicum of modesty, more for you than anything.

“Bloody hell, do any of you knock?” Roger yelled, and when he looked down the aisle, he saw Freddie.

“Well I’ll be fucked,” Freddie said, frozen in his tracks. He stood there and smiled widely.

You buried your face in Roger’s chest, mortified.

“It’s about bloody time,” Freddie said, and turned around. “The two of you squabbling like an old married couple was getting tiresome. I’ll hold the rest of them off for a moment, darlings. Make yourselves decent,” he shot back a saucy look at Roger, who warned him with his eyes.

Roger grumbled, and looked down at you. “I’m sorry,” he said.

You giggled and shook your head. The two of you began dressing haphazardly, making yourselves somewhat presentable, and making your way off the bus together. When you two stepped off, you saw Freddie and Brian leaning against the bus.

Brian’s face registered what he saw, and his jaw hung open. “You’ve got to be joking,” he said in disbelief.

“On the contrary, darling,” Freddie said, holding his palm upwards out at Brian. “They looked rather seriousin there. I believe I’m owed. What was it, then? Twenty quid?”

Brian brought out a twenty pound note and pressed it into Freddie’s hand, turning and walking away from you and Roger, leaving your jaw hanging. Roger chuckled, and wrapped his arm around your waist, kissing your neck, and followed Briand and Freddie back to the venue, pulling you along.

#roger taylor #queen #bohemian rhapsody #ben hardy #fan fiction #thanks for the writing prompt!

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sharpdressedbman · 6 years ago

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A Tribute to Chester: Life, Death, Rebirth, and How He Lives on in Memory

How do you properly memorialize one of your childhood idols? Are you supposed to scream, cry, and gnash your teeth? Or do you put on noise-canceling headphones and block out the ambient noise of the outside world for a while? All of these are difficult questions to answer. I guess that’s why they’re rhetorical. It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since Chester Bennington passed. So in a way, this simple little essay is how I can honor him. It feels nice to write something that isn’t fiction or related to a blog for a change[1]. Let’s see how it goes.

Part Zero: Notes from the Underground

I must confess that I was never a member of the official fan club, the LP Underground. I suppose in retrospect that’s how I could have proven I was a legit fan despite never seeing them live in concert except via live stream. But even then, that was a rare occasion. I do remember a t-shirt I got from Hot Topic when I was 12 or so – it had the faces of all of the guys gathered around the classic script font of the band’s logo.

I don’t remember what happened to it. The last time I remember wearing it was in August 2014. I supposed by then I had outgrown it. But still, buying whatever merch I could and getting all of the CDs and eagerly anticipating the next music video all had to count for something. I knew the names of all the guys, even Mark Wakefield, who was never an official member, and Phoenix Orion (Dave Farrell?), who left before Hybrid Theory but was back in time for Reanimation – more on that later.

But I digress. Let’s get on with the real meat of why we’re here. In terms of structure, I thought it would make the most sense to go album by album, discuss some memories I have associated with each, and attempt to unpack why they remain so important to me even as time has marched on since then. Growing up with the band, as I’m sure many of you did, you might feel a similar connection that you never fully grasped until the night of the tribute show in December 2017.

Part One: Hybrid Theory

#Forfeit the game/Before somebody else/takes you out of the frame and puts your name to shame/Cover up your face, you can’t run the race/the pace is too fast, you just won’t last. [HT Track 4: “Points of Authority”]

Although Hybrid Theory came out in October 2000, I think the first time I heard it was for another month or two after it came out. It’s still one of the most vivid memories I can still recall, the first time “Papercut” blared out of a cd player. I was sitting in the basement at my buddy Andre’s house and we were playing Perfect Dark with our mutual friend Alberto. It was honestly the perfect soundtrack for the game. Here’s what I said back then: “Dude, who is this? This is awesome!”

“It’s Linkin Park.”

Even then I thought the name was cool, the way that they intentional misspelled Lincoln – the rule of cool and all that. Elementary school hadn’t even ended yet, but it was still part of my formative years, musically speaking. Before then, I had never discovered any music on my own – my friends had always shown me. My parents didn’t raise me to enjoy music – I hated classical and most of the “standards” went over my head. My parents were still throwing karaoke parties. My old neighbor John showed me James Brown. That’s how I latched onto my first favorite song of all time “I Feel Good”. Then came Third Eye Blind, another early love of mine. But that’s a story for another time, as is my recollections of Limp Bizkit. This tale is about LP.

I wouldn’t realize it at the time, but Hybrid Theory would continue to be one of the most important albums to be me as I left elementary school and hit middle school. The days of Perfect Dark and WCW/nWo Revenge began to fade[2] as Diablo II and Starcraft emerged. The sound of Chester’s howls and Mike’s swagger along with the rest of the bands driving instrumentals provided a backdrop like you wouldn’t believe. “In the End” stood out in particular, although as middle school came to an end, it became clear that those reasons weren’t ones I wish to discuss here, now. Ask me again another time. It was at the end of middle school (hell, even before) that I confronted the notion of how deeply uncool I was, and probably tangled with imposter syndrome, anxiety, and depression long before I knew what any of those terms meant.

I already knew I was an introvert who was much more inclined to stay inside playing video games, reading, or writing instead of going outside to play street hockey or anything like that. That shouldn’t have meant that I was an easy target for bullying, but hey, it was the 90s and then the early 2000s, so what could you do? LP helped me cope, even if I couldn’t always express my anger in responsible ways.

I think here is a good place to stop and point something out: mental illness has been something that has been immensely important to me – it affects me and I know it damn sure affects my wife and mother in law. I went through a very dark time in my life roughly five years ago that LP also helped me pull out of – but I’ll get to explaining that more in-depth later on. Right now we’re still in the HT era; I just wanted to talk a little bit more about my motivations for writing this piece.[3]

Part Two: Reanimation

#Keep that in mind/ I designed this rhyme/ when I was obsessed with time. [RA Track 3: “Enth E Nd]

Full disclosure: when I first heard Reanimation, I thought it had its moments. But it wasn’t something I could listen to end-to-end and love every single song. Heck, even HT wasn’t like that, since some of the songs had to grow on me. The video with the robots and aliens having a war while the disembodied robot heads of the band sing the remixed version of “Points of Authority” by Jay Gordon of Orgy was definitely awesome, but I don’t know, I had mixed feelings about the album that took years for it to resolve into me think of it as one of the LP’s early era classics that would culminate with Meteora and Live in Texas.

I have a very distinct memory of popping this cd into the car’s stereo while we were out in…Houston? Taiwan? The details are blurry now because it’s been too long. Seventeen years was a long time ago, and 2002 me was simpler, less refined, and yes, much dumber and naïve. On an emotional level, “p5hng me Aw*y” stood out, and even though it wasn’t actually a true Linkin Park song, “It’s Goin’ Down” stood out from this time period too.

Part Three: Meteora

#I’ll never fight again, and this is how it ends…I don’t know what’s worth fighting, or why I have to scream, but now I have some clarity to show you what I mean… [MA Track 9: “Breaking the Habit”]

Meteora is one of those albums I more clearly associate with Diablo II and Starcraft more than any other games. Just something about the overall darkness and broodiness of the album really fit both of those games. Also, this essay project is making me want to go back in time. Not really from a nostalgia standpoint – okay yeah I guess from a nostalgia standpoint. But it was during this era that I really started to enjoy their music videos. Believe it or not, for the longest time, not all of the songs on the album were rated five stars. I used to be stingier with that rating that I am now. It took a while for some of the songs to grow on me, but “Somewhere I Belong”, “Faint”, “Easier to Run”, “Breaking the Habit”. “Nobody’s Listening”, and “Numb” were instant standouts. I’m still not sure what happened to my original copy of this album. The last I checked, I had a burned copy, but not the real deal.

Part Four: Live in Texas

#When I look into your eyes there’s nothing there to see/nothing but my own mistakes staring back at me# [LIT Track 8: P5hng Me A*wy – Live]

Man, I remember this too. It must have come out six months or so after Meteora did, and grabbing it from Kmart was one of my best days. I think it was also the first LP album to have the dreaded Parental Advisory sticker on it, and this is probably the album I blame most for me disliking the edited versions of songs. Sometimes edits can be clever, but when they’re just bleeps or certain naughty words are blanked out, then it gets annoying. Then again, I probably wasn’t a stranger to this concept thanks to early exposure to Third Eye Blind and Limp Bizkit, as I mentioned before. Was this the first time I heard “live” performances of LP? I think it was, and it probably stoked my eagerness to see them live in concert. Alas, it was never to be.

Part Five: Collision Course

#Yeah/Thank you, thank you, thank you, you’re far too kind# [CC Track 4: “Numb / Encore”]

It’s fitting that as I pick this up on (7/21/19) it’s the day after the 2 year anniversary. I meant to have this finished by the 20th, but it just didn’t happen. Plus “Numb/Encore” was one of the first songs that started up on this go-through of the playlist. If you’re interested in listening to it, I can direct you to my Spotify profile! Numb is one of those songs that have taken on new meaning since his death, but out of all the collaborations on this mashup album, I think it’s the one that works the best sonically and thematically, especially with the juxtaposition between angst and bravado[4].

Part Six: Fort Minor & The Rising Tied

#So sick, if he’s gonna think/That the good lord would come take him/I’m shaking him, “Wake up, you son of a bitch!”# [TRT Track 14: “Red to Black”]

It was four years between the era of Meteora and Minutes to Midnight. In between that time, there was a sea change. First there was the mashup with Jay-Z, and then this came along in November 2005. I remember being more stoked for it than probably any other music that I discovered that year – and this was when Fall Out Boy, 50 Cent, and Coheed and Cambria dawned on me, among others. For those who don’t know, Fort Minor is/was Mike’s side project. He’s since done other solo stuff under his own name but between then and now he would bust out verses from The Rising Tied and incorporate them into existing songs. I always thought that Red to Black was the most LP-sounding song on the entire album and that for the longest time I thought Chester used Jonah Matranga as an alias and it wasn’t a separate person.

Part Seven: Minutes to Midnight

#In this farewell/There’s no blood, there’s no alibi/Cause I’ve drawn regret/From the truth of a thousand lies/So let mercy come and wash away# [M2M Track 6: “What I’ve Done”]

In the interest of time, these entries are probably going to get shorter and shorter. At this point, I just want to get the damn thing over with. “What I’ve Done”, the lead single was the one that struck me the most at first; I remember LP making a big deal about how they wanted to start a new sound after leaving their classic era behind. The music video was awesome, and I think LP was one of the best choices for the Transformers movies. I always thought that “What I’ve Done” would make a great wrestling song. Not necessarily as an entrance theme, but as a hype video for a PPV or a feud or something like that. EWR back in the day helped reinforce that belief though I can’t exactly remember what I associated it with – anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The day that I got this album was the same day the shooting at Virginia Tech happened. Finding out that the shooter was a mentally ill Asian dude spooked me. In today’s parlance, I was shook.[5] That’s something that has always stuck out even though it’s something I’ve not been fond of discussing, for obvious reasons. Still, for our purposes here, it is for once, actually relevant.

Part Eight: Dead by Sunrise and Out of Ashes

#Don’t want to lose my innocence/Don’t want the world second-guessing my heart/Won’t let your lies take a piece of my soul/Don’t want to take your medicine# [OOA Track 2: “Crawl Back In”]

The melodies that emerged on Minutes to Midnight, especially when it was Chester’s turn to take the mic, evolved. They turned into another platform for his music: the side-project Dead by Sunrise and their only album, so far as I know: Out of Ashes. I lump this album in with Welcome to the Masquerade by Thousand Foot Krutch and Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin. All three emerged during my sophomore year of college[6], which was another difficult year for me. I think that is when I had the most trouble sleeping, either by choice or for other reasons. Out of everything LP-related, I think I have given this the least amount of attention. It’s probably time for that to change, ten years later.

Part Nine: A Thousand Suns

#Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds/I suppose we all thought that, one another# [ATA Track 2: “The Radiance”]

If Minutes to Midnight was an attempt to step out of the shadow of Hybrid Theory, then A Thousand Suns represented an aural breakaway. It was vastly different, integrating more spoken word and turning up their signature sound to 12. I can’t remember exactly if it was in 2009 or 2010 that I was meant to go see LP as they rolled into DC. Ultimately, I couldn’t go because of a lack of transport. It all ended up moot anyway because that was the show that got canceled because of Chester being sick. Trying to dig up that post on Facebook is probably beyond me now because it’s a day late. Maybe someday I’ll be able to find it again because those days were golden (at least my pathetic little eulogy for him that I wrote two years ago.)

Part Ten: Living Things

#Fly me up on a silver wing/Past the black where the sirens sing/Warm me up in a nova’s glow/And drop me down to the dream below# [LT Track 6: “Castle of Glass”]

So if LP had been striving to break away from the sound that made them famous, it was at this point where they were “Nah bro” and went full bore back around into an ouroboros[7] of awesome. While the vast majority of A Thousand Suns[8] had to grow on me over the intervening years, Living Things grabbed me by the throat and never let go. It followed the Hybrid Theory blueprint to a T. After all this time, “Castle of Glass” still stands out as my favorite from the album, but as is often the case, it’s hard to pick favorites.

Part Eleven: Recharged

#When I was young, they told me, they said/Make your bed, you lie in that bed/A king can only reign ‘til instead/There comes that day it’s off with his head# [RC Track 1: “A Light That Never Comes”]

The less said about this, the better. It had its moments, especially “A Light That Never Comes” which showed me the potential of Steve Aoki. But the memory that stands out most clearly about the day I got this album was getting a case of Hell or High Watermelon beer. I think since I got it from Record and Tape Traders, it was the day I found the TARDIS socks for Ally and sent them to her later that week. As you probably gathered from the cluster of footnotes, this was deemed my least favorite “official” LP album, and that ranking has held up in the last six years. It does to Living Things what Reanimation did to Hybrid Theory, but for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to enjoy it more.

Part Twelve: The Hunting Party

#Cause you don’t know what you’ve got/it’s your battle to be fought/until it’s gone# [THP Track 7: “Until It’s Gone]

Ah, here we go. LP seems to follow patterns in the creation of their albums. Cause roughly a year after Recharged, there came The Hunting Party. After A Thousand Suns came and went, it seemed like LP was on a creative lull. But then we got LT, Recharged, and THP in three straight years. This came out in 2014, and it’s hard to believe that five years have passed already. To this day, I still think that my favorite part was all of the guest appearances on their album, especially from collaborators they hadn’t featured before then, like Daron Malakian and Tom Morello.

Part Thirteen: Welcome

#First time I did it, yeah I’ll admit it/I kinda hit it and quit it and left y’all hanging# [“Welcome”]

In all honesty, this should be a footnote for The Rising Tied. It came out 10 years later, as a way for Mike to tip a wink and a nod at all his fans that were still waiting for a full-fledged sequel. Fate had other plans, though. I can still remember helping to clean Tidewater while this song blared through my headphones. This probably became one of my most played songs of 2015.

Part Fourteen: One More Light

#Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do# [OML Track 9: “One More Light”]

We’re almost to the finish line. I was super excited for One More Light because it broke a drought of no new music until 2017[9]. The song One More Light became more poignant after his passing. I hope it still makes him proud.

Part Fifteen: Afterword

So where do we go from here? Honestly, not even the remaining members of the band know. They’re not actively looking to replace Chester, and as a group, they’re still officially on hiatus. I didn’t even touch on any of the DVD or special edition releases that I’ve barely heard. I guess in a sense they’re honorable mentions, but without having listened to them, I can’t form any honest opinions or associations for them.[10]

[/mrhahn]

[1] It seems fitting that I mention that shirt I got as a twelve-year-old because that’s when I started picking up on writing as a hobby. It was a way to release my imagination and translate what I had in mind into a story, even if those early stories were embarrassingly bad. These footnotes will serve to flesh out those asides since they’ll more than likely distract from the main narrative I’m trying to spin here.

[2] Although Revenge remains iconic! Even to this day, I still long for an N64 and another copy.

[3] Chester struggled with MI too, even though hardly anyone knew it. It’s what ultimately got the best of him.

[4] My fascination with Genius Lyrics is really helping me to analyze and better understand the meanings of the words.

[5] It didn’t help that he bore an uncanny resemblance to me…

[6] 2009, how time flies!

[7] Not sure how to spell this dang word.

[8] I regarded it as my least favorite LP album until Recharged came out. More on that later.

[9] It wasn’t until that I built the playlist that inspired this essay that I learned that there were some other singles issued between The Hunting Party and One More Light. These tracks include “We Made It” with Busta Rhymes, which actually fell between Meteora and Minutes to Midnight; “Not Alone”, which was between A Thousand Suns and Living Things; and “Darker Than Blood” with Steve Aoki that was between The Hunting Party and One More Light.

[10] One was called “Frat Party at the Pankake Festival” and the other one was “Road to Revolution”, I think?

#chester bennington #Linkin Park #mental health #mental illness #make chester proud

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