#quickly became him now mainly listening to fox news

[srvphm]

I’m kind of worried about how my father is turning increasingly right wing and conservative

[deathwishy]

x MARVEL CROSSOVER x

Marinette knew that Tom Dupain wasn't her biological father. Nonetheless, she loved him and he loved her. He married her mother when she was two and have been inseparable ever since.

On the other side, her biological father was a prick.

He first came to visit her after she developed a ... rather interesting set of abilities. She was five when that happened. Her mother had somehow contacted him and, even though he doubted it, he came.

It is safe to say that he was beyond shocked when he saw that Marinette was his spitting image, not counting the blue eyes. She had a mischievous smile and sharp eyes, carrying herself like royalty, worthy of the title of the daughter of the god of mischief.

That day, Loki found out he had a demigoddess daughter.

While he was reluctant at first, the little girl grew on him. He visited at least twice a month, mainly to help her control her powers but also to let her know that he actually cared about her, to ensure that he wasn't with her like his father was with him. No other Asgardian knew about Marinette and he would like to keep it that way. There was no need for his brother of father to swoop in and ruin everything.

As the years passed their bond became unbreakable. Marinette still thought that Loki was a prick and an idiot at times but she wouldn't have it any other way. Life was boring anyway, why not sprinkle it with a little bit of mischief?

When she became Ladybug, he knew. He called out Tikki as soon as he stepped in her room and her parents were out of hearing range.

"Tikki, you can come out. You should know better by now."

Marinette was dumbfounded when the goddess came out from behind some books, with a pout and with her arms crossed.

"I knew it. Trixx did say that you came to Midgard and Marinette looks like a miniature female version of yourself."

"I'm actually surprised the guardian gave her the Ladybug miraculous. I would've guessed she would have been a better fox."

"She is a very good match for me too. Her soul is a creative one, but yes, she would be a perfect fox."

"Um... Can I get in the loop too?"

The two gods turned to her. Marinette had her arms crossed, tapping her foot on the floor. Loki gave her a sheepish smile.

"I am a God, Marigold, I do know the other gods too."

The day passed talking with the two deities about all sorts of things, Tikki especially scolding him for the New York disaster, Marinette joining her. It happened before she was born so even if he changed it was still a horrible thing

"Look, daddy issues are a pain to deal with. I was very angry."

"Dad, it's no excuse to be an asshole."

"I know." Loki rolled his eyes then grinned. "But what's this I'm hearing about from Tikki about a boy?"

Marinette flushed, glaring at the offender, now munching on a cookie, her eyes sparkling with laughter. She was shaking her head and vigorously gesturing with her hands.

"Nope. I'm not talking with you about this and, Odin forbid, if I see you around him I'll cut your macaron supply."

Loki only raised his hands in surrender, laughing heartedly. He wouldn't dare cross his daughter, so he swore, between tears of laughter, that he would keep his distance.

"But if he breaks your heart I'll throw him in Jotunheim."

                                                         ...

A few years later, when Lila came around he knew. There was no mistaking the dimming of the fire in her soul. He could see that she didn't want to talk about it by the way she was dodging the subject so he had to take the matter in his own hands.

He shapeshifted into a horsefly and flew after her when she went to school. It took a lot of his power to hide from Marinette's sight but if was worth it. Now he knew why she started closing in on herself.

Loki could admire a good lie. After all he was the god of trickery, lies and deceit. But this girl spouting off the worst lies he ever heard. Not only were they ridiculous, they were also completely devoid of any drop of truth. That was the base of any good lie, and she was lacking it entirely. What confused him more what that some of her classmates believed her. Only a handful others didn't seem to believe her, one of which was a blond boy that looked at the leech, glued to his hand, with disgust. By his aura Loki assumed he was the holder of the Black Cat.

He confronted Marinette when she came back from school. Some of the lies were concerning, they were hurting his daughter and he couldn't let it fly. He assumed the harpy was set on Marinette because she wouldn't buy her lies. That was not surprising, she could see even though his best lies.

"I know, Marigold."

Marinette knew what he meant. She inhaled deeply and looked around.

"Can we go somewhere else, outside of Paris?"

The furrowed his brows, getting more concerned by the second. He couldn't read her in that moment. He could read most people like an open book, but that was his daughter. She knew how to hide things from him.

"Yes. Tell your parents, we don't want to concern them."

After she told her parents that she would go with Loki on a short trip, he opened a portal to a high rooftop over a city. She could feel the darkness of it, potent and corrupting. She figured that was why her father would bring her there, no one would notice them. As soon as the portal closed, she broke down. She hugged him, crying into his chest.

"I'm so tired, dad. The responsibility of Ladybug, Lila and her lies, half of my class turned against me, Hawkmoth just sending out akuma after akuma, it's just so much."

He let her cry, hugging her closely and patting her head. Even after all these years he didn't know how to properly comfort his daughter but it was something he actively was working for.

"But I assume you still don't want me to help?"

"The Avengers or The Justice League would notice if you do something. I managed to keep them away, for the time being, but I doubt they would hesitate coming if they heard that you came into a highschool, knives flying after a teenage girl or if you burnt down half of Paris searching for Hawkmoth."

She sighed, sitting on the edge of roof.

"I can handle it, I think. It's hard but I can manage it. I have Chat Noir and the others, we will succeed."

"You know that I will always be by your side if you need me, right?"

"Of course, dad." She hugged him once more, not letting go for some time.

When she calmed down, she asked him to get them to Paris.

"Dad, where was that? I've never felt a more malicious feeling to a place in my entire life."

"Gotham City. That place holds a centuries long curse."

Marinette nodded then hugged her father one more time before he left. She then went on her balcony, sketchbook and laptop in her hands. The afternoon sun was providing perfect lighting for sketching. She set aside the sketchbook for the moment, opening the laptop. She heard about Gotham from Alya when she was gushing about the vigilantes. She wasn't especially interested about them so she listened politely but forgot everything the next day.

Gotham was dubbed the Crime Capital, which was not surprising. The maliciousness surrounding the city was overwhelming, even if she was there for only a few minutes short of an hour. She could only imagine what that could do to the locals. A meeting with Fu after her patrol that night was mandatory.

Apparently he knew about the situation in Gotham. An old friend kept him updated. He confessed that he wanted to talk with her about it but decided to tell her when she was prepared. Fighting that kind of corruption would be hard and it would take years. They decided to put a pin in it and deal with it after they defeated Hawkmoth. Marinette did NOT need this on her plate now.

                                                          ...

Things got a little complicated when Wonder Woman decided to drop by. It was night, just a few hours after an akuma attack. Ladybug had to patrol on her own, Chat Noir was held back in his civilian life. She caught Ladybug on the Eiffel Tower, just when she was finishing her round.

"Ladybug."

"Wonder Woman. I wasn't aware that you would be coming by."

"I apologize, but this is important. Your presence is required at a summit between The Avengers and The Justice League. Some discussions will be about the situation in Paris and as the city is in your jurisdiction, you are invited to attend."

Marinette felt like she didn't tell the whole truth but agreed, under the condition to bring Chat Noir too. They were a team.

Loki wanted to come along but Marinette shot the idea down quickly. The was a chance that Thor would notice and everything would go south very quickly. She didn't need an international incident on her hands. The others didn't trust Loki but they were civil with each other after the brothers made amends and he helped them a couple of times. Still, she didn't think they would appreciate Marinette bringing an unauthorized guest.

                                                           ...

A few weeks later they were in a secret base in the Alps. After she got the coordinates of the location she used the horse miraculous to get there. They were fairly early, only a few members of both teams being present. Batman with his team, Thor, Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Winter Soldier and Green Arrow.

Batman was the first one to greet her, soon after she closed the portal.

"Tikki, Kaalki, divide."

The horse kwami landed in her hand, where a sugar cube was waiting for her. She then nestled on top of her head. She slid the glasses there too, for easy access, just in case.

"Ladybug, glad you could come." Batman greeted her cordially. She shook his outstretched hand.

"Of course. After all, I was said this was concerning us."

Before Batman could say anything, a man dressed in black, with a blue bird symbol on his chest jumped in front of her, grinning like a child.

"I can't believe it, you are a real magical girl!"

Ladybug took a step back, blinking, a little shocked by the grown man's reaction.

"Tt. Nightwing, be professional."

"Yeah Wingman, you're going to scare the little Pixie."

"Ignore them, they are idiots." Said one of them, coming beside her. She identified him as Red Robin, one of Batman's... Associates? It felt wrong to call him a sidekick. That would be Robin.

"Red Robin. The idiots there are Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin."

"Pleasure meeting you." She smiled to them warmly. Robin narrowed his eyes, looking at her head.

"What is that?" He asked, taking a step closer to take a better look. Kaalki flew in his face, indignated.

"I'm a goddess, you oaf." Robin took a step back, hands on his katana, shocked by the little goddesses reaction. She narrowed her eyes, suddenly tamer. "Are you famous?" Robin was sputtering, clearly not prepared for the change in her demeanor.

Red Hood burst out laughing.

"Fucking hell, his face. I've never been more grateful for the camera in my helmet."

"Kwami don't show up on camera, but his face definitely will." Chat Noir pointed out. He went beside Ladybug, up until then scanning the compound. "I'm Chat Noir, the fabulous purr-tner of Ladybug, at your service." He made a mock bow, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Ladybug, Red Robin, Red Hood and Robin groaned.

"Not ANOTHER ONE!"

"Tt. I can't handle two of them. I'll inevitably going to break the no killing rule."

"Um, what's going on?" Ladybug turned to Red Robin, who was grimacing.

"Nightwing." He said, giving her a pitying look.

"Oh, come on, it can't be that claw-ful." Retorted Nightwing. Chat Noir lit up like a Christmas tree.

"My lady, see. I was sure I was feline a fellow paw-nner nearby."

"Kill me." Ladybug and Red Robin said at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed.

As more heroes were arriving, Ladybug introduced herself to each of them. She tensed a bit when Thor came beaming at her.

"Ah! I haven't seen the miraculous for centuries! I am not really that familiar with the Chinese Miracle Box but I did encounter a wielder of Trixx."

She smiled tightly listening to his encounter with Fylja. She knows from her father about her, a trickster just like him, who managed to seduce Thor and steal Mjolnir and hide it. Thor decided to omit that detail. He liked the young hero but something seemed oddly familiar about her.

When Aquaman came, he looked very uncomfortable with his proximity to Chat Noir. He was cordial but kept his distance after finishing introductions. Chat Noir did tell her once that Plagg said that he was the one who sank Atlantis. It was a real story, apparently.

Ladybug preferred the company of Red Robin. They had a lot of things in common, from mutual interests to similar experiences as heroes. He asked a lot of questions without being invasive or trying to find out things about her civilian life and actually seemed interested about her answers. She actually blushed when Nightwing called them cute. She could see with the corner of her eyes how Chat Noir was wiggling his eyebrows but swooped up the other boys when they started teasing them.

"Everyone is here. Only the official members of the Justice League and the Avengers are allowed, as well as Ladybug and Chat Noir. The rest will stay here." Wonder Woman announced, leaving the rest of the young heroes pouting and protesting.

Ladybug turned to Red Robin and gave him a wave.

"See you after."

"Definitely." He grinned, making her blush.

Chat Noir came beside her, smiling knowingly.

"At least you're not a stuttering mess this time."

"Shut up you alley cat, that was four years ago."

"So you do like him." He smiled even wider. Ladybug blushed furiously, punching him in the ribs. He only giggled.

"Nightwing and Red Hood owe me 50 dollars."

"You're unbelievable."

All the heroes were seated at a circular table, everyone having an assigned seat. Even Ladybug and Chat Noir, their symbols gleaming brand new on the backs of the black chairs.

"The summit begins. We are now gathered here to discuss the Paris situation." Superman began, opening a slide on the projector.

Ladybug narrowed her eyes. It became obvious that they called the summit just for this. They were trying to take control. She clenched her fists, but didn't say anything. She hoped this wasn't what it looked like. She put her hand on Chat Noir's shoulder when he looked like he wanted to say something. She squeezed twice. ' I got this.'

"Ladybug, Chat Noir, it's been four and a half years since Hawkmoth has been active and so far we haven't seen much progress. The akumas seem to become more powerful and aggressive and the damage to Paris greater each time. We think you might be over your heads."

"What we are trying to say," Batman stood up, glaring at Superman for his lack of tact, "is that the situation is becoming increasingly difficult and we feel the need to intervene. We know that you are young, let us help you."

"You are kids, we can tell. We thought that because of the nature of the miraculous you will be able to neutralize the threat in due time, seeing as it's the same type of magic." Added Captain America.

"We trusted that you could handle it, as you said, but some of us already have doubts." Iron Man said, crossing his arms.

"Your miraculous might not be enough this time. But that's ok. We want this to end as much as you do." Professor Banner added, looking at them like he was explaining to children why they couldn't cross the street when the traffic light was red.

Most of the heroes didn't notice the way the two young heroes narrowed their eyes, faces darkening, but some, mostly those who knew the power of the miraculous, did. Aquaman was uneasy, a sense of foreboding dawning over him, Wonder Woman looked like she didn't know what her peers were going to say. She stood still, but tense, like preparing for an attack. She knew they were somewhat right, but that wasn't the way to help them. Green Lantern was leaning in his seat like he wanted it to eat him. Thor looked around the table, damning every one of them present. They were going to get them killed. Black Widow was glaring at Banner, knowing what his words did to the Parisians by their increasing straining to say nothing and stay in place. Batman was following them carefully. Something about the two of them screamed danger.

Then Superman dropped the bomb.

"So, effective immediately, we take jurisdiction of the city of..."

He was cut off by a sudden boom reverberating through the room. All heroes jumped in a battle stance. When there was no threat in sight, they looked at Ladybug, who had made a dent in the table with her fist. Her eyes were entirely blue. But it was not her usual color, it was an icy blue, that could freeze the fires of hell. Thor held his breath. They looked exactly like frost giant eyes. And familiar ones.

"How. Dare. You."

She didn't yell but the heroes could feel the ice in their veins.

"For four years we've been tirelessly fighting an emotional prying bastard, while controlling our own to the point where it seems that we have none, handling our civilian lives at the same time, trying to minimize the destruction of Paris even though we new the cure with bring everything back to normal, tending to our citizens after they've been akumatized, ensuring they would get therapy and support, even stopping minor crimes around the city and you have the balls to say that we are in over our heads?! We may be but we are handling it way better than any of you do! You are not one to speak, Superman. Metropolis gets trashed every other week with you're messy fights, and there is no cure. You obviously have no regard of the destruction or the victims most of the time. The rest of you are mostly the same. But there is no one getting in your way saying that you're doing a horrible job and trying to replace you. And if there is, gods forbid, you just send them to prison or in a mental asylum. You have NO right to criticize our ways when yours are statistically worse!"

Both the Justice League and the Avengers were silent and wide eyed. Thor was the first to recover. Her eyes went back to normal after she finished but there was no mistake. The girl wasn't human.

"Who are you?" He pointed his hammer at Ladybug. She rolled her eyes.

"Put that down, you're not intimidating anyone."

"Those were frost giant eyes. Answer me or perish."

"Dad would not appreciate the perish part, you know."

The Avengers and the Leaguers were now exchanging confused looks. What were they supposed to do? What was that about? After exchanging glances, they remained silent, watching the exchange curiously.

"What are you talking about?" Thor retorted, now gripping Mjolnir tighter.

"I guess this is as a bad time as any but... Hello uncle."

It wasn't ideal but she couldn't have both the Justice League and the Avengers trying to arrest her. She took the yo-yo from her hip and slid it open. She scrolled through her contacts and tapped the one named 'The God of Bullshit'. After a few beeps, during which the heroes were recovering from their stupor, Loki's face appeared on the screen.

"Daughter dearest. What's the matter, are the others bothering you?" He said in a sarcastic sweet voice. She rolled her eyes then pointed the screen towards Thor.

"L'Oréal blond knows."

After a few seconds Loki starts laughing like a maniac.

"This is the best way they could've found out. This is PERFECT."

Thor walks in wide strides to an unimpressed Ladybug and takes the yo-yo from her hand.

"I have a niece and you didn't TELL ME!"

"Of course not. You pieces of shit are not worthy of the presence of my daughter. I don't know why she even agreed to come to the meeting. She is doing a wonderful job in Paris and does not need any interference. Beware, brother, if you upset her I'll come for your heads. I have to go now, see you soon, daughter."

Ladybug closed her yo-yo and looked around the room.

"I don't care what you decided. Paris is my city. You don't come barging just because you think you can do a better job. And yes, I'm the daughter of Loki but that doesn't mean that I have bad intentions. I'm a hero as much as you are. Now, have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, Ladybug." Wonder Woman was the first to respond. Even if she was a daughter of Loki, the young hero earned her respect. She stood her ground against them and made her point crystal clear.

The rest of the heroes agree, though some reluctantly.

"Now, I agreed to come here mainly because I wanted to say that I have a strong lead. Hawkmoth may soon fall."

After some other arguments with some of the reluctant heroes and a few protests that were quickly shot down by Ladybug and her supporters, the heroes dispersed. She and Chat Noir were between the last ones to leave, having a shushed conversation while the others left.

"We will discuss it back in Paris. But yes, it's true."

"So you're a half goddess?"

"Demigoddess, but yes."

"That is awesome."

When they entered the hall, they saw it was almost empty. She was disappointed that maybe Red Robin left until he was in front of her. He gripped her shoulders and looked in her eyes.

"I think I'm in love with you. That was the greatest hero smack down in history."

She was a blushing mess by the time the other boys and Batman came around. They were all snickering, even Batman and Robin.

"How did you..."

"Father turned his com on when he saw that you looked like you were ready to kill someone."

"B, you are not allowed to adopt her under any circumstances, do you understand me? We do not need another sister."

"Yeah Bats, don't ruin your only chance at grandkids."

Now Red Robin was blushing too.

"So... You don't care about the Loki thing?"

"We noticed that he toned down a few years ago. We didn't know why. Now it makes sense."

"Yeah, trust me, you're not the only one with a villainous parent 'round here." Red Rood pointed, putting his elbow on Robin's shoulder. The latter looked like he wanted to rip it off.

"And you are clearly taking your job seriously. Even father respects your efforts."

"I didn't intend to make you feel like you are not good enough. We wanted to help you, but it got out of hand. I apologize."

"Apology accepted. I understand where you're coming from, but trust me. This is coming to an end. Soon."

When the Bats were going to the zeta tubes and Ladybug was merging the horse miraculous with her own, Red Robin stayed behind. He handed her a phone.

"It's a non traceable phone. Of you ever want to talk, my number is programmed in there. I really enjoyed our conversation"

She took the phone, smiling brightly.

"I did too. Thank you."

She pulled him into a hug. He hugged her back, kissing her on the cheek then running to the zeta tubes. Her cheeks were as red as her suit. She touched the place where he kissed her, smiling like an idiot.

"Aww, I'm going to die of fluff. I ship it."

"Shut up." She grumbled but still smiling.

                                                           ...

A few months later Hawkmoth’s reign of terror came to an end. It was messy and heartbreaking but they were finally free. Adrien was exonerated by both the Justice League and the Avengers when accusations started to appear in the media. Not wanting to live with the Graham de Vanily’s, Adrien was taken in by Selina Kyle a.k.a Catwoman. It was quite fitting.

They have revealed their identities during the battle when they had to recharge and barely found one place to detransform. When they had the Butterfly and Peacock miraculous secured and Gabriel and Nathalie in police custody, they swung to the Eiffel Tower and collapsed there on each other, crying their hearts out for the first time in five years. Loki got there at some point but he kept his distance, understanding that it was their time. That was how they were found by the Justice League and the Avengers. Huddled together on the railing, not talking, with Loki next to them, smiling serenely. Thor almost had a heart attack. When she noticed that Red Robin came too, she ran to him and kissed him like the world almost ended, which almost actually did.

Fu passed guardianship to Marinette not long after, deeming her ready.

After everything was solved in Paris and the trials of Gabriel, Nathalie and Lila, for her aiding Hawkmoth, were done, Marinette began her first mission as Guardian. Cleanse Gotham.

Soon, a new vigilante, with a black fox theme, swung through Gotham with the Bats and Tim Drake appeared in public with his new girlfriend, Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

When I first saw what the prompt for today was I had no idea what to write. I didn’t want to do the class trip to New York so I took my favorite character, Loki obviously, and brainstormed. This came out. I don’t know if this has been done before but I love biodad!Loki.

So this is approximately 4326 words (I added and edited things on here so I don't know for sure) which is a new record. I did enjoy writing this. Maybe I will do something biodad!Loki again in the future, it's fun to write.

And as a sidenote, Marinette can lift Mjolnir.

@timari-month-event​

[thatonestarryhuman]

It’s time to give Sleepy (My Version Of Natemare) some love because Nates egos don’t seem as popular as the other ones! Have a one shot I wrote a week ago!

ᴛʏᴘᴇ : ғʟᴜғғ

ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ : ʏᴏᴜ sɴᴇᴀᴋ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀʙᴀɴᴅᴏɴᴇᴅ ᴘɪᴢᴢᴇʀɪᴀ ᴀᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ��ᴜᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴜʀɪᴏsɪᴛʏ ᴀғᴛᴇʀ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴅ ᴅᴏɴᴇ ʀᴇsᴇᴀʀᴄʜ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ɪᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴛ's ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴɪɴɢ ᴏғ ᴄʟᴏsɪɴɢ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ sᴇɴsᴇ. ᴜᴘᴏɴ sɴᴇᴀᴋɪɴɢ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴏ sᴇᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪᴢᴢᴇʀɪᴀ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀɴɪᴍᴀᴛʀᴏɴɪᴄs ᴀɴᴅ... ᴀ ᴍᴀɴ?

ʏ/ɴ's ɢᴇɴᴅᴇʀ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜɪs : ɢᴇɴᴅᴇʀ ɴᴇᴜᴛʀᴀʟ 'ᴛʜᴇʏ/ᴛʜᴇᴍ'

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ : 1,954

You slowly close the laptop before rubbing your eyes as you let out a yawn. “Is it time yet?” You wonder out loud to yourself as you check the time, it’s 1:02 A.M. “it’s time to go.” You nod to yourself as you pick up a bag you had prepared, you had quite a few things you’d need for your little... journal. You open the bag and check to make sure you’ve packed everything “Flashlight? Check. Pepper Spray? Check. Some snacks? Check. Camera? Check. Power bank just incase? Check. [Energy drink/Tea/Coffee]?.... Not check.” You let out a soft sigh before heading to the kitchen and grabbing the drink of choice. “I need some sort of liquid if I’m gonna be there for quite the few hours, I don’t want dehydration.” You talk out loud to yourself as you go back to pack the said drink.

After packing the drink, you put on shoes that you’d be able to run in, but as well as a jacket because who knows how cold that place could be at night time, or early morning. You wrap the jacket around your waist as it was quite warm currently and you didn’t want to over heat yourself. You pick up the bag after closing the zipper “Let’s hope there’s something at least interesting there.” You hope quietly to yourself as you leave the house, you cross your fingers that no one would be at your destination, after all, why would someone guard an old abandon pizzeria? You wonder to yourself as you shake your head. You grab your house keys and exit the house, locking all the doors as you leave as you wouldn’t want burglars at your house when you come back.

You feel the cold wind hit your face as you breathe in the nice and cool night air, you haven’t done anything like this in a long time. You smile to yourself as you begin jogging to your destination, it wasn’t far from your house so you didn’t need to use a vehicle, it’s not like you have one anyways. It took you around 20 minutes to get there by jogging, you let out soft gasps as you get to the location, you felt really out of shape as you did this. “It’s been ages since I was out.” You smile to yourself “fresh air feels great.” You talk to yourself as you stretch, but take a minute to calm your breathing from the long jog. You look around the outside, it looked like it wasn’t visited or cleaned in many years.

You let out a soft sigh as you walk up to the main doors, you tug on them to try and open them but they were locked “Of course.” You mumble to yourself before walking around the building trying to find any other way of entry, spotting the backdoor you try opening it but it wouldn’t budge. “Well there’s only one thing left to do.” You whisper to yourself as you barge at the door with mainly your shoulder and back as to not hurt yourself badly. With a loud thunk, you managed to open it as the door flung open. You rub your shoulder as you walk inside, you take in a deep breath before wishing you didn’t, you were in the kitchen and it smelled like... rotten pizza you could say, it was clear that this place was abandoned very suddenly as they hadn’t even taken out the products before they left.

You pulled out the flashlight you brought with you from your bag and turn it on, looking around as you flashed the light upon the kitchen. It wasn’t a mess surprisingly, it was quite neat as if someone recently tried to clean up, key word, tried. It was mostly messy but there was an attempt at cleaning and it showed clearly. Upon realizing there was nothing in the kitchen that was worth of interest, you decide to head into the main room that lead from the kitchen. You noticed animatronics but.. they were very small, they were around 8 inches tall and they looked like puppets. You were confused at that “huh, I don’t remember these.” You wonder to yourself as you walk around the dining area, your shoes clicking on the marble checkerboard floor.

You walk past the stage where the animatronics were but you didn’t quite seem to notice the violet bunny animatronic tilt it’s head at you as you walked by. You headed towards the carousels as you had quite a few memories of those, you used to visit the pizzeria when it used to be open, which was around 6 years ago from now. You smiled as you placed a hand on the carousel, some memories coming back to you, but while you were being in your own little memory world, you haven’t noticed the sound of another pair of clicking shoes heading your way. The man’s shadow was still visible even if it was dark, his heavy shoes clicking as he walked slowly, he seemed to be in a defensive state as he slowly inched closer to you.

He stopped at the end of the hallway that lead to the main area, a deep yet smooth voice that had some... possible hesitance in it was heard. “Who are you?” The man asked, snapping you out of your daze. You immediately panicked as you hadn’t expected anyone to be here, let alone it be a human.. or so you thought he was human. You assumed he was a guard and quickly apologized, “Ah! I’m sorry! I didn’t think this place had any guards here anymore, I came to remember some of my old memories.” What you said wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. You couldn’t see the mans face, you didn’t dare shine your flash light on him “Leave no-“ He was cut off by the bunny animatronic jumping at your feet “New friend!” You two hadn’t noticed the animatronics walk over to you two.

“Bonnie! You blew it!” Chica, a yellow chicken animatronic had pouted as she complained, it seemed like them sneaking over was supposed to be a secret. You were freaked out by the animatronics as you hadn’t expected them to... still work or even talk! “Gah!” You yelp and take a few feet back making you stumble and tripping causing you to fall on your butt, dropping your flashlight to the ground while doing so. “Good job, Chica!” A brown bear animatronic, Freddy said a bit sarcastically “You scared our new friend!” The bear animatronic continued as the Chicken animatronic rubbed the back of her neck “Whoops... Sorry..” She apologized to both you and the bear, but seemingly more to you.

You could hear the sound of small feet hitting the ground very fast, almost as if a child was running. “Raaaa!” Soon enough a fox animatronic was by your side, looking the most excited out of all the animatronics. You could see the man let out a soft sigh “You guys weren’t supposed to do this, I told you to stay on the stage if anyone came.” The ending bit was more stern, the animatronics looked down “Sorry” “I’m sorry” “Sorries!” “raaa raaw....” All of them apologized and you can tell by his shadow, that his once tense form had became a bit more relaxed. “Now, Who are you?” He turned to you and you gulped. “I uhm... I’m [Y/N]” You said quietly at the towering shadowy figure, you had now realized he wasn’t a guard and became more and more nervous as to who this man was.

“Well you got your memories, you can go now.” He crossed his arms, it seemed he wasn’t a big fan of visitors. He grimaced as a bright light was shined in his face and he covered his eyes “Can they stay a while? Pleaaaseeeee!” The chicken animatronic said while holding the flash like she used to get his attention “Chica put that down, and I’m not so sure about a stranger staying.” You could see his face a bit better, honestly you could even see his silhouette. He seemed already quite tall, he looked quite.. muscular. Your eyes slowly met his face, you noticed it was.. quite different than normal, you noticed he had puppet like tear make up, or at least you thought it was make up. Other than the make up, he looked like an attractive young man, you wondered what brought him here. It seemed like he was here for quite some time as he could talk and get the animatronics to listen to him.

“Well they won’t be a stranger after we get to know them!” Bonnies voice snapped you out of staring at the man “Raaa!” Foxy almost cheered as he agreed with Bonnie, at least that’s what it seemed like. They seemed to all give him puppy dog eyes and he let out a soft sigh “Fine but only for a few hours and that’s it.” He said a but hesitantly and the animatronics cheered and ran up to you, you were still confused about everything going on. “Thank you!” “Thanks!” “Yay! Thanks, Sleepy!” “RAA!” They cheered, but you caught onto something, you noticed one of the animatronics call him ‘Sleepy’. You smiled upon noticing that, you found it a cute nickname.

The animatronics crawled up and cuddled to you, Chica was examining your hair, Freddy looked at your eyes, Bonnie fiddled with the flash light while sitting on your shoulder and foxy curled up in your lap. The man, who you now will call Sleepy, sighed “It’s way past your bed time guys.” He said to what seemed to be the animatronics “Hey! You allowed us to be up by letting them stay the few hours.” Chica pouted and Sleepy seemed to give up, knowing he would be trying to fight a losing battle. You looked down at the fox in your lap and pet the fox, smiling at him.

Eventually all animatronics curled up in your lap and fell asleep as it got later and later, the man had seemed to go back down the hallway where you remembered the security room was, you decided to stay the whole night, how could you leave these cuties which rested in your lap alone? You smiled, maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as you thought it was gonna be, you could make a bunch of friends, a few furry ones and one seemingly human. You soon enough fall asleep yourself as your body couldn’t handle staying up any longer. In the morning you realized, you and the animatronics were covered by a nice and warm blanket and the man was no where in sight.

You smiled quietly and would wait till the animatronics wake up to move, you wanted to get to know all of them for some reason, you just had a feeling in your heart that they just need someone, a friend, they seemed like family to each other and so maybe they just want a friend. Even if they didn’t want a friend, you were going to become one no matter what. You wanted to know more about the mysterious man, and the cute animatronics. The animatronics seemed to like you already.

[my-soul-sings]

This Is Everything I Never Wanted: Chapter 2

Fandom: Wannabe Challenge Characters: Everyone! Mainly Taehee VS. Yooha (but not TaeheexYooha)

Summary: An alternative account of events in which Taehee was the one who summoned Yooha from the scroll instead of MC. 

Read on AO3!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

***

As expected, the rest were shocked to wake up to seeing a strange man in the living room. Yooha didn’t seem too bothered; in fact, he appeared to enjoy the attention and seeing them all get flustered. 

The explanation that Taehee offered (because he doubted the scroll-man possessed enough tact to phrase things properly) was of course, difficult for them to swallow. 

Hansol’s outbursts were the loudest, although he seemed to accept the story quite easily. There really wasn’t any other way to make sense of things.

Biho kept quiet, as usual, only raising the occasional question here and there. Yooha answered him smoothly enough, so his furrowed brow indicated that his worries weren’t entirely assuaged. 

MC was the most perplexed out of the three. Understandable, considering she was the only human here. Even the three goblins had a hard time digesting this much information all at once, let alone MC. But Taehee couldn’t help the rather inappropriate thought that crept into his mind as he watched her frown, struggling to form a coherent response to all this:

She’s beautiful.

“So let me get this straight,” she started, her voice hushing everyone else in the room. “You came out of that painting because Taehee accidentally summoned you by calling your name, which is Yooha. And... you’re a seonho... which means what, exactly?”

"Special beings who are born with an ability to use magic. We’re different from ordinary foxes,” the silver-haired man replied breezily with a proud smile. “Bet you haven’t met one before, little lady.”

“The name’s MC,” she shot back, clearly not appreciating the nickname. Taehee couldn’t help but smirk at her response, feeling an odd sense of victory. “Wait. Did you just say you’re a... fox?”

“A fox who can speak and look like a human after 500 years of training,” Taehee added, although it didn’t seem to alleviate her confusion. 

“Is that so surprising?” Yooha remarked, before pursing his lips in thought. "Should I show you?”

“Show me what?” MC asked, just as a soft white glow began to engulf the man. Taehee braced himself, taking MC’s wrist and pulling her behind him. He couldn’t use his magic against this guy, try as he might, but he would use the damn toilet brush to protect MC if he had to.

As it turned out however, there was no need. When the white light vanished, eight white tails had appeared from behind him. The pure white, almost glossy sheen to his fur was undoubtedly beautiful. They even seemed to be glowing.

“Well?” Yooha asked, eyebrow raised and the corner of his lips quirked up into an arrogant smirk. “Now do you believe me?”

“I’m dreaming, right?” MC murmured, though her eyes were fixed on those tails, entranced by their lithe form as they danced in the air. Like big bushy white snakes, Taehee thought to himself.

“Why don’t you touch them for yourself and see if they’re real?” Yooha asked. Taehee didn’t think much of the gesture, until he looked at MC and found her wearing an uncharacteristically dazed expression with a loose smile playing on her lips. Her cheeks were starting to flush a light pink, as if she was tipsy.

Biho and Hansol seemed to notice this too, although they didn’t seem to know how to respond, since all she was doing was stepping forward with her arm outstretched to pet Yooha’s tails. 

It didn’t seem dangerous enough to cut in.

And yet, he did.

Taehee placed a hand on MC’s wrist, momentarily snapping her attention to him. It was quick to fade, however, because her attention quickly returned to the wagging tails and the scheming fox in front of her. Yooha hardly seemed fazed by Taehee’s interruption, and that only made him angrier.

“What do you think you’re doing to her? Stop that,” he demanded, gently pulling MC into his arms to keep her from getting closer to that man. 

“Nothing, I’m just offering to let her touch my tails,” Yooha replied innocently, but Taehee knew better than to trust that cunning smile of his. His fingers itched to hurl a couple of balls of goblin fire at those tails and watch them burn up in smoke, but he knew better than to start a fight here. A seonho like him, especially one with eight tails, was far stronger than a goblin. 

Just as he thought, this fox couldn’t be trusted. 

In the end, Cleaning Day had to be adjourned for another day, seeing as there was a more pressing issue to consider. Namely, what to do with the seon-ho. Taehee just wished he would go away already, but the fox seemed intent on staying here with them.

“I can stay with you guys, right?” he had asked Taehee with the biggest, most hopeful smile yet, his tails wagging behind him.

“No,” was Taehee’s immediate response. If they ever became housemates, this house would become a living hell. The past hour was already more than he could bear for a lifetime.

“But—” his tails drooped, and his smile faltered, “you have to take responsibility.” 

“What?” Taehee couldn’t believe this guy’s nerve. 

“You summoned me out here. Of course you’re responsible for me now.” 

“And you’re welcome for that. You were trapped in there, and I released you. I owe you nothing.”

“Is he usually this cruel?” Yooha asked, directing the question to MC.

“Well, I’ve never seen him this annoyed before,” she commented, at the same time that Taehee replied, “I’m not being cruel. Besides, I’m not the one to ask; MC’s the one who owns the house.” 

“Oh.” A devilish smirk lit up Yooha’s features. 

Taehee immediately regretted revealing that tidbit of information.

“So, MC, right?” Yooha strutted over to the girl, his tails wagging a little more excitedly now. “What do you say, can I stay here?” he asked in a sweet, charming voice that was obviously fake. “Please?”

Taehee expected to hear an immediate ‘no’. After all, this was a complete stranger they knew nothing about, and to top it off, he was dangerous. The three goblins couldn’t use their powers against him, a higher being. If things ever got out of hand, none of them would be able to stop him. MC was the one most vulnerable here. The answer that she should give was obvious.

“...Sure.”

Taehee had to do a double-take. His head jerked towards her, only to find that her eyes looked slightly glazed over, just like before. She looked almost tipsy, except that had happened in the span of a few seconds, without any alcohol.

Which meant the culprit was... 

Taehee’s glare turned on the cunning fox who was grinning at MC’s response. The answer that he had made her utter by using his magic. Some kind of hypnosis, perhaps. And it probably had something to do with those tails of his that he was offering to let her touch again.

That dirty fox!

Taehee immediately grabbed MC by the wrist and teleported them into her room, all the while holding her tightly to his chest. She snapped to her senses soon enough, but it didn’t stop anger from boiling in his blood at the thought of what that sly fox had just done to MC, of all people. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, to which she nodded.

“Yeah, I am.” She looked a little confused, like she didn’t what Yooha had just tried to do to her. 

“You’re not going to let him stay here, right?” Taehee asked with a worried frown. She couldn’t possibly be entertaining the thought of letting that man stay together with them.

To his dismay, she hesitated in giving her answer. Instead, she began to look a little perplexed, and he could see that she was thinking hard about this. 

What possible reason could she have to even think about saying ‘yes’? 

“He... doesn’t have anywhere to go, does he?”

Taehee shook his head. It was unlikely, considering he had been trapped in the scroll for about two hundred years now, if what Yooha said was true. 

“I think... I’m going to let him stay,” she said slowly. MC put up a hand, silencing his immediate protests. “It’s just... you guys didn’t have a place to stay either. He reminds me of the three of you.” As if embarrassed, she averted his surprised eyes, and his shoulders slumped with resignation.

How could he argue against that?

“I’m just worried that he’ll hurt you,” Taehee sighed, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She raised her head and locked eyes with his. “He’s a seonho, more powerful than the three of us. If anything happens...”

“You’re his master right? He’ll have to listen to you,” MC pointed out. “He looks mischievous but I don’t think he’s a liar. He’ll probably listen to whatever you say.” 

That... was true. As much as it pained Taehee to think about, that fox was now bound to him... as a servant. There was no escaping that fact. 

Why, why did he let Biho take that stupid scroll home in the first place? He just knew there was something off about it from the very beginning. He should have done something about it then, even if it meant making Biho sad for a few days. 

"So it’s settled,” MC declared, snapping him out of his thoughts. “He’ll stay here with us.” After making sure he didn’t have any remaining objections to add, she left the room to break the news to Yooha.

Those very words sealed his fate, and it marked the beginning of all of Taehee’s anguish. 

***

A/N: Next up: Taehee experiences the six stages of grief as he learns to manage his new roommate. 

[felixsaussieaccent]

To All The (Stray) Kids I’ve Loved Before | vi

Member: Minho/Lee Know

i  ii  iii  iv  v   vii  viii  ix

“So, what about you?” Jeongin asked as I pouted “I got nothin.” I said. Every school in the area wanted students to choose an after school activity, and sadly, crying was not accepted. Jeongin decided to join a trot singing club, aka a trot version of Glee, Jisung and Changbin already had their rapping “club” and Yeojin was already doing gymnastics. I sighed and tried to think of what to do. I asked Seungmin, if he knew where I should go, but he advised that it would be best if I picked out the activity.

Something about actually enjoying myself in an after school activity and not just doing something because I have to or something...damn his smarts. But I did take his advice and try to think about something I was passionate about or wanted to do. Dancing came to mind and the idea stuck. I mean, there was a dance school next to my high school and everyone praised it. 2/3 being because of the dancing, 1/3 being because the teachers were apparently very attractive.

I decided to sign up at the dance school and I was very anxious for it. Mainly because it was something new and I was scared I wouldn’t get along with anyone or that I wouldn’t be good at it. My anxiety got bigger as the date of the first dance lesson approached. Dance lessons every Monday, Wednesday and Friday meant less spending time with my friends. But that also meant I would get to get away from seeing the guys’ faces, which made me want to punch them, due to my confusing feelings towards them.

The first dance lesson on Monday finally arrived and I wasn’t exactly jumping with joy. I got to the dance room where I saw many people already stretching, so I decided to do the same. “You new here?” A girl with ashy blonde hair next to me asked “Yeah, is it obvious?” I asked “Nah, just haven’t seen you around yet. I’m Minyeon, I’ve been dancing here for 2 and a half years now, I’m basically teacher level, so if you ever need help anything, feel free to ask me.” She answered “Thanks.” I replied.

I was happy there was at least one person who was nice to me here.....she seemed really friendly and I kinda gravitated towards her all through the lesson. After the lesson, she invited me to go get drinks with some of the other dancers. We went to a near by cafe where they talked about the dance school and tried to explain everything I might need to know at the dance school.

“Thanks for explaining and taking the time to talk to me about it. I really appreciate it.” I said “Nonsense. We treat each member of this school with as much respect as possible. And we try to talk to each other as often as possible so we have great teamwork.” Minyeon said “Which reminds me, I hear there’s a new teacher who’s gonna start teaching new week and apparently he was BTS’ backup dancer, so you know he both talented and cute.” She added.

As the conversation went on, so did the day, so eventually we all paid for our drinks and went home. I finally got good WiFi, as the mobile data in the cafe was garbage and the WiFi was nonexistent, which meant getting 25 unread messages from the group chat me, Jeongin, Jisung, Yeojin and Changbin are in, Seungmin and Minyeon.

Minyeon

Hey, Minyeon here! just wanted to text you, so you get my number haha. Anyway, see you Wednesday!

Seungmin

End me 🙃

This activity is horrible😒

I thought babysitting was suppose to be fun, not a living nightmare

I want my tutoring job back🙃

Please tell me your failing a class 😫

Also, how did the dance lessons go?

404! GC NAME NOT FOUND

Dessert Fox🖍❤️

Hey, what’s up, it’s your boy,.....star of trot Glee😏

Yeojin🤪💗

Glad you’re enjoying it. There’s some new people here because of this whole activity thing and they are so annoying

Squirrel Boi🐿🧡

And this ladies and gentlemen, is why you make your own club, in order to do nothing and not have to do some stupid after school activity

....

I replied to all of them before falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. The next day, Yeojin was ranting while Jisung and Changbin were gloating. The whole day was just a big pain, as I felt all of the exercise pain from yesterday beginning to start, which made me come to the dance lessons on Wednesday earlier, allowing me more time to stretch and prepare.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t know anyone would be here yet.” I said seeing that there was a man in the dance room. “Oh it’s fine, I was just warming up for my next class.” He said “Are you by any chance in the same class a Minyeon?” He asked as I nodded “Aaa! My new student! Nice to meet you, my name is Minho.” He said “I’m Y/N.” I introduced myself back “I’m quite new at this whole teaching thing, so if I’m a bit weird or awkward, please excuse my behaviour.” He warned “No, it’s fine, I’m new here too actually.” I reassured. “Oh, so we’re in this together then.” He chuckled.The time went by and more of the dancers arrived, but before anyone else arrived, Minho disappeared to the teacher’s room, I’m guessing. Minyeon greeted me before starting to stretch, which was quickly interrupted by Minho walking into the room.

“Hello, I am Minho, your new dance teacher. I’m new to teaching, so I apologize in advance.” He said, making the whole class giggle, resulting in me overhearing some “omg he’s cute”s and “he’s really attractive”s. “Anyway, shall we start? Are you all warmed up?” He asked as we all nodded “Great! So let’s begin our lesson.” He clapped his hands and smiled before putting on the music and showing us the first moves for us to get the vibe of the dance. His body moved as if he had no bones and I had to admit that I did maybe check him out several times, not only during his dance but also the lesson itself.

After the lesson, I felt like I was lacking in some parts of the choreography, so I stayed after everyone left and approached Minho. “Um, one question, would it be possible for you to show some moves again? I can’t really wrap my head around some of them.” I said, with an uncertain tone. “Oh, of course. Which ones?” He asked as the “private” lesson went on. “You’ve got the hang of it! Remember, if you feel like you need any more private lessons, I’m always here, ok?” He asked, smiling again before I nodded and thanked him. “See you on Friday!” I said before leaving the room.

Me

LISTEN

Yeojin🤪💗

Wassup, my homie

Me

First of all, never call me that

Like ever again

Second of all, I GOTTA NEW TEACHER AND HE CUTE

Yeojin🤪💗

OMG SPILL

I explained everything to her before finally going to bed, feeling way too exhausted to stay awake for even a second longer. Friday came around quickly and my anxiety had turned into excitement. The lessons became more fun and more exciting. Minho brought some type of chill atmosphere to the lesson and it became so much fun to attend these lessons and before I knew it, our first performance was near. I was excited but also scared I would mess the choreography up badly, asking Minho for those extra lessons.

“Your hip should be-May I?” He asked, his hand above my hip as he looked into the mirror to which I nodded and gulped. He put his hand on my hip and guided my hips to the rhythm. The move wasn’t very sexual or suggestive, it was a more cute and fun dance so my heart wasn’t beating faster because of the hip movement. It was mainly because I didn’t expect him to be this close. Through out the whole lesson, he was very close, which made my heart beat extremely fast, making me confused and unfocused, causing me to trip over my own legs and falling onto the ground with a lot of force.

I felt a bit of tears start to form in the corners of my eyes and a pain growing in my leg. “Omg, are you ok?” Minho bent down to me before trying to examine my leg. “It doesn’t feel broken, it’s probably just a big bruise...hold on.” He said as he got up to go get a first aid kit as I tried to get the ends of my legging higher so I could see the bruise. “Owww.” I commented at my own leg. It looked very bad, so I tried not to look at it too much. Minho came back and started patching up my leg. Once he was done, he helped me stand up, but with my new injury, I could barely stand properly, so I leaned into him for balance, which made my face turn really red.

I called my parent to pick me up, and Minho helped me to the car. “I hope your leg feels better, but I don’t think you should come to practice, you should rest, ok?” He said “No, I have to come, just to watch, if nothing else.” I said as he sighed and agreed to my idea.

The next time I came to practice, I had alreqdy gotten a crutch for my leg, causing every one of my dance teammates to tell me how I should rest. I tried to calm their worries by saying I’m only gonna watch, as I don’t want my minor injury to effect my dancing. Minho arrived into the room and told me to sit at the teacher’s corner and observe before starting the lesson. As the team went over the dance a few times, Minho came and sat next to me.

“How’s your leg?” He asked “It doesn’t hurt that much, the doctor said I’ll be good enough to dance till next Wednesday.” I said, happily “Do you think that’s gonna be enough time to study the choreography?” He asked as I remembered the performance is the Monday after the week I can start dancing again. “I don’t know, I would hope so, but I doubt it.” I answered, my tone getting sadder with every word. “It’s fine, don’t be sad about it, there’s always next performance!” He said, trying to cheer me up “Yeah, you’re right.” I replied, looking at the ground “Hey, you ok?” He asked, trying to see my reaction “Yeah.” I looked up at his face.

It was like he was examinating my face for any traces of sadness. “I’m not leaving until you smile.” Minho informed “What are you, Gordon Ramsey?” I joked, making him laugh. “It’s good that you haven’t lost your spirit, keep it up, I don’t wanna see a frown today, ok?” He smiled at me, waiting for my answer. I nodded and smiled back at him before he turned around and started teaching again.

He was very sweet the whole class, he kept checking up on me and making sure I don’t feel uncomfortable. At the end of the class, he helped me get to the elevator. “You know, I admire your passion. You didn’t have to come, you could have stayed at home and rested...but you didn’t. I see how much this means to you.” Minho said, waiting for my reaction as we stood in front of the elevator “Thanks.” I blushed and looked at the floor “You’re cute when you do that.” “Do what?” I looked up at him while being confused and probably looking like a tomato. “Look at the ground when you’re nervous or blushing.” He answered, making me blush even more.

Before I could answer, the elevator arrived and he stepped into the small room with me. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.” I said before he hit the button for the main floor “Nonsense! You could get lost in this big space!” He joked, making me laugh and look at the ground again “You did it again.” He smiled “sorry I-“ “Don’t apologize, i said it was cute, remember?” He reminded, which resulted in me matching one of the red walls of the elevator. “You have something on you face.” He said as I tried to look at the mirror before he put his hand on my face. “It’s just an eyelash.” He explained as I realized how close we are again, looking down, making him realize as well. “I-“ I tried to say something, but my mind was blank. He stared at my face, waiting for any reaction before I felt his stare and looked at him. Our eyes were focused on each other and that’s when his eyes quickly made their way towards my lips and back to my eyes. Next thing I knew, he was leaning in as his eyes were closing and I panicked. I took a deep breath before mimicking his actions.

*Ding*

Right as our lips were about to touch, the elevator door opened, making us pull apart. “Oh, um, I’ll see you next lesson, then.” I said before quickly making my way out of the elevator “Um, yeah, see you then!” He said before pressing a button to get back up. I made my way to the car as I sighed and closed my eyes. So close.

Throughout the lessons, Minho still checked up on me and my leg, but there was an awkward aura everyone could sense, resulting in the members asking me about it, and me answering that it’s probably just in their minds. I couldn’t stop thinking about it though. His lips were so close to mine and he smelled so good. If my mind was like this after almost kissing him, I wonder what it would be like after actually kissing him. I tried to distract my mind and not think about the almost kiss or Minho, which was hard, as I kept staring at him during the lessons and I’m pretty sure everyone noticed.

Minyeon💃🏻

Omg, your crush on Minho is so obvious😂 calm down the heart eyes lol

Me

For your information, i do not have a crush on him, my eyes just happen to drift towards him and then resemble hearts, ok 😤

Minyeon 💃🏻

Sure 👀

The day of the preformance finally arrived and I decided to come before it actually started, to cheer them on. I didn’t have my crutch anymore, but I couldn’t dance with them, so I felt really bad and guilty about it, even if they kept reassuring me that it was fine. Minho came into the room with a suit, making me “heart eyes” literally form heart eyes. He looked so good in that suit, that I forgot about the conversation I was having with Minyeon and the other dancers. “Heart eyes.” Minyeon teased, making the other dancers chuckle and me playfully slap her arm. It was time for them to preform and I sat next to Minho throughout the whole ceremony and commented about how no team can compare to ours.

“You call that dancing? My cats could do better!” He whispered to me “You have cats?” I said, excitedly “Yeah, wanna see them?” He asked, his tone resembling a proud mom. “Duh.” I said as he took out his phone and showed me a picture “That one is named Soon-ie and this one is named Doong-ie.” He said “Awwweeee, cute.” I awed at the two cats “just like their owner.” I whispered to myself “What was that?” He asked “Nothing” I answered, smiling. “They’re a pain sometimes but when they’re that cute, you don’t mind.” He joked, making me chuckle.

Our team preformed really well and we hyped them up so much during the preformance, some of the people near us told us to be quieter, resulting in some awkward silence fro us. After the preformance, Minho decided to treat the whole team as they all cheered. I congratulated and praised them all before making my way to the door. “Where are you going?” Minho asked “You’re apart of this team too, come on.” He added, making me smile as we went to a near by restaurants, where we toasted to Minho and the team (with Coca Cola).

He kept looking at me during the meal and Minyeon even smirked at me at times, raising her eyebrow and “taking a selfie” which was really just a sly way of taking a photo of me and Minho. She later sent me that photo, almost giving me a heart attack. “So, thank you all for your hard work, it paid off and I hope you all continue to show your passion and talent! You did great!” Minho said as a goodbye before the members all left.

“How are we always left alone?” He asked me “I’m waiting for my parent to pick me up, I don’t know your excuse.” I joked as he chuckled. “Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, blushing “I don’t know, you’re just real cute.” He answered, still staring. I blushed, looking at the ground before hearing his chuckle “As always.” He commented “Hey, leave me and my shyness alone!” I joked before a stranger bumped into him accidentally, causing Minho and I’s distance to minimize. “Oh, hi.” He chuckled, realizing our faces are centimeters apart “Hi.” I said back before I found myself in the same situation as in the elevator. But this time, there was no *ding*. His lips touched mine and we both just stood there, kissing for about half a minute before pulling away and looking at each other, both of us not knowing what to do or say.

“Oh, I gotta go, that’s my ride.” I said, looking over and seeing a car approach. “Ok, well, um, good night!” He said calmly “Good night!” I said before making my way into the car and driving off.

Dear Minho,

.......

A/N: y’all already know that

1. This is garbage

2. I didn’t proof read this at all

So I hope you enjoyed this, thought I doubt you did, since as I said, this is trash. But yeah I did this super last minute and I didn’t proof read so I apologize for that lmao. I’m also planning a soulmate au one shot but idk which member to write abt so hit my inbox up lmao

[sadisticsmiles]

Beyond a Thief’s Power Episode 11

Initiated Assault

  The Following Morning

           Everyone was gathered inside Le Renard Noir as usual, mainly regarding important matters and so on. Since all seven members of the Black Foxes were there, it was time to discuss what was going on.

           “So,” Hiro began, unsure of the meeting, “what are we here for exactly? I have a class at nine, and if I miss it, the professor’s gonna chew me out. I shouldn’t stay at LRN very long, Boss. There’s also another class after lunch is over too.”

           Riki nodded. Like Hiro and most of the members in their group, he was not glad to be at the bar in the morning, especially because it was seven o’clock during that time of day. “Make it quick before I snap your neck with my bare hand.”

           Takuto had his archetypal, nonchalant expression plastered on his face. “I have nothing great to say about you, old man. I’m not even amazed by this myself, but Hiro’s got college to attend, so why don’t you treat him to some breakfast as an apology for waking his stomach and nearly ruining his artistic hands? What I’m trying to point out is that this is a waste of time and we’re all busy today. Do you know any common sense or survival tactics? I don’t think so. Therefore, you should let some of us go back home and sleep or something. Kenny’s probably gonna be on duty today, so who cares about spending what little time we have at the moment over here in the stench you bathe in every day, when we could all be productive for a change without being dragged to…” He was at a loss as to what else to say, but it soon donned on him. Somehow. “…whatever you’re trying to get to. It’s just a civil thing I’m telling you to screw into your head for the millionth time in all the years I’ve been alive. You might want to consider it while you’re still around, s’all.”

           Atsumu’s eyes broadened. He was stunned at hearing Takuto’s lecture to him but still. It was a normal moment in his household/restaurant. “H-Hey! I may be older than the rest of you all, but this is pretty harsh for my shoulders to handle! Not to mention, it’s a really important matter I have to announce before you guys leave the bar.”

           Kenshi grinned. “You gotta admit. Takuto’s correct on this since we’ve all got something to do before we can talk about what you’re planning on revealing to us. He understands that my job as a firefighter is one of those things that’s more likely to happen as a daily part of my life. The same goes for you, Boss. You look after LRN since you’re the owner and it’s your home. You’re also one of the city elders and you attend the shopping district’s meetings, but you know what? You’re the boss of the group, so it isn’t so bad. Anyway, I should go now. An early day is something I have to prepare for and I can’t miss any more of it. See you later, though.” As cool as he appeared externally, Kenshi stood up from his seat, pushed it back in and walked out of Le Renard Noir.

           “Are you going to tell us what’s on your mind already?” Takuto asked with the same expression he always had. Though, there may have been a chance he was just annoyed or bored. “Time’s tickin’ and everyone else can’t possibly be here for much longer. That’s why you should spill out what’s in your throat, but that’s gross, so give us the details, Beardface.”

           “You’re as crude as ever, aren’t you, Takkun?” the most mature-looking man commented. A smile ran across his face within the speed of light. “But I’ll do what you asked and be gentle. So here goes nothing. What I’ve come to let you know is that I’m thinking we should go on a brand new mission tonight if everyone would like to participate in it, of course!” He was beaming with joy and glowing with it as well. “How about it?” He opened his eyes, quickly skimming the other four seated in front of the counter. “We’ll all kick some ass together and beat the hell out of these knuckleheads in order to save this kind gentleman—or something like that scenario. For example, we could put in some more effort and execute some justice every now and then, just for giggles. I respect my ami Fujioka a lot, and his team’s like a one-hit wonder, so I say it’s about time to repay the favor.”

           Riki narrowed his eyes in irritation. “What favor? We don’t owe anything to those decorous police officers working under him, so don’t make any excuses for going on a mission. That’s the worst thing you could ever bring up to your fellow foxes as a thief. You should know better than to decide on one using those who are after us.”

           Hiro smiled slyly. “Maybe he’s trying to invoke the goody two shoes to do something for him, or for all of us. Kinda makes a person think whether or not he’s trying to lure Sayuri out due to her genuine deeds as someone who’s on the side of the law.” Then, he frowned. “I’d hate to have her get angry at us for doing something like this. With Boss’ personality and harassment attempts, the whole place might be destroyed in no time if he tries to capture her.”

           Takuto glanced at Atsumu. “Well, it is Beardy we’re talking about, after all. I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first time he committed a felony towards women and younger girls. I bet Shinobu’s felt betrayed many times in the other world because of him. See, even trying to think about it is disgusting. He’s also the most perverted out of all of us. That is, if you don’t count Riki.” The light blond switched his attention towards the government official, turning his head to his left to where he could see his older friend in plain sight. “But he doesn’t go after other girls when it’s clear as day whom he’s eternally in love with.” He looked back at the owner of Le Renard Noir and started to snicker mischievously. “Hehehe. You are such a lonely sucker it’s hilarious! How do you not have many female friends? Age has thrown plenty of pies at your face by now, it’s dying for more laughs! Hahaha!” Takuto kept chuckling with his teasing and it was getting to the point where he was having a hard time holding his stomach in place.

           Hiro began to laugh as well. He had his right hand near the side of his charming visage, so it was endearing to anyone who saw his expression. “It can’t be helped, though, Takkun!” Tears formed as he resumed. “Ahaha! Boss is middle-aged, so it actually makes sense that he can’t get the girls after marrying and becoming a widow. He might not look the part, but he used to be an awesome combat specialist. It’s natural for him to have bad luck hovering over his head.” The college student was also amused with the teasing he and Takuto flung at Atsumu. “As for Riki, he’s caught the hearts of so many ladies, he’s turned them down the very second Mitsuki was in his eyes’ view. He wasn’t able to stop staring at her, as it was love at first sight!" He let out a giggle. "Hehe! It was so cute seeing them together! It was like watching a waltz take place without it actually happening; Riki was so happy, a trampoline surrounded him and everything started bouncing off his infectious aura, including small balls and stars. Ooh," the orange-haired artist-in-training added, "and don't forget the hearts, too. Those very really pretty coming from him." When he had spoken of the second eldest member of the entire team, his facial appearance became fond of the past he came to know during the years of childhood innocence that belonged to him, as what he recalled was a long time ago.

           Riki frowned sternly. "You know, I do remember you staring at me with amazement in your eyes during my last year of high school when I brought Mitsuki here back then. Your mouth was even open, Hiro. I was wondering what was going on in your little mind at the time, and now I know why you were being cute yet strange yourself." All in all, he was calm and composed like a mature grown-up should be at his age. "Boy, am I ever relieved to find out it wasn't a serious case directed towards something wrong I may have done." He sighed and looked at Atsumu. "Anyway. If you're going to bring up the subject of having a mission later on, why don't you find something that involves the word 'danger' shining off of it? Then again, we might have to learn and gather some more information beforehand. We can instantly leave most of that to Takuto, but you get the gist of what I'm saying."

           Mitsuki, who had been witnessing the events of the morning at Le Renard Noir unfold, finally spoke in a frustrated manner. "I’m the one who asked Atsumu for this meeting. I wanted to take a break from work since I was away from Ginza for a number of days. To be honest, I didn’t go to work yesterday because I went to visit Takuji in Roppongi.”

           Atsumu smiled tranquilly. “I see.”

           Rina’s eyes widened. “You did?! What did you discuss with him?”

           “A few things,” the dark purple-haired magician answered. “To start off, we engaged in a normal conversation about his home in the Human World, along with the fact there’s someone living with him and Asuka. That’s before I became a bit more serious to inquire about Sayuri’s whereabouts and something nostalgic.”

           “…About Neon?” Rina asked.

           “About Asuka’s lack of presence in their place,” Mitsuki replied. “That’s not the nostalgic portion, rather it turned towards Kousuke.” Her eyes lowered a bit. “It saddens me to say that I didn’t get a chance to be part of those two’s lives as they grew up into the adults they are now.”

           Rina nodded in comprehension. “Right. The Saionji and Hogo families helped those two grow up without their parents around, along with… a few others, even after your absence in Neon.”

           Riki had an anguished facial expression as he listened onward. “…”

           Takuto glanced at the male government official. “You okay?”

           “…”

“Speaking of which," the college art student stated in order to lighten the mood, "I better get going. I actually enjoy going to college, unlike some people." He glanced at Takuto and smiled. Then, he headed to the entrance/exit and waved before going to his designated area.

Takuto blinked. “Hold on.” He took out his flip phone which was the same color as his hair—courtesy of his fondness for Shiffey—and opened it. “That little liar. It doesn’t take that long to walk from here to the university. He went off early.”

“Even though this is an important meeting…” Mitsuki and Atsumu calmly said at the same time.

“Too bad Kenny left before he got to hear what you had to say, Mitsuki,” Takuto added. “I’ll message those two on what they’ve missed out on later. Though,” he shrugged, “it would dampen their reactions compared to having them here in person.”

“It’s fine,” Mitsuki responded back. “Anyway, Takuji told me Sayuri had already left before I came, so I can only assume she knew I was going to seek her out. It’s unfortunate I wasn’t able to find any more information, especially with how secretive they are.”

           Rina let out a short and relaxed sigh. "Well, they do follow Akio-sama’s instructions since he’s their advisor. Sayuri’s getting by even faster with moving from one place to another. I wonder if we’ll be able to catch up.”

           “I can only hope so,” Mitsuki smiled at her fellow magician. “We should all have a little hope that we’ll be able to confront her sooner or later.” A few seconds passed by ere her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of a transparent area of the near her and opened it. “Yes? A meeting? We’ll be there.”

           Atsumu glanced at the dark purple-haired magician. “Was that call for work?”

           “…Of course.” Mitsuki was still smiling as she closed her eyes. “It’s too bad our own one had to be cut short, but since the call I received was basically an order, Riki and I will take our leave and meet up with you all later.”

           Riki’s eyes widened. “What? We’re leaving now?”

           Mitsuki glanced at her husband as she hung up and continued to smile. “There’s no choice in this matter. The Minister of Finance wants us to go to the meeting.”

           Riki frowned. “…Alright.”

           The married couple walked out of Le Renard Noir with Mitsuki going ahead of Riki, with only Atsumu, Takuto, and Rina in the restaurant/bar.

Rina folded her arms against her abdomen. “It seems as if I should get something from my pocket to replenish my stamina."

           Takuto looked up. "Pocket?"

           After the six-letter word came out of his mouth, his past sweetheart stopped in her tracks before shifting her gaze at him. "...We just saw Mitsuki-san take her phone out."

           "Oh, that." It didn't take long for Takuto to figure out what Rina meant. "The invisible 'pocket' magicians have where they can take out anything they want or need when they're not close to the objects for their convenience, including things from their Neon. I'm envious of you and Mitsuki for having one. It makes me wish I was like you guys sometimes, mostly you, though. It must also be fun having super strength, unlike an ordinary person like me."

           A calm expression etched rapidly onto Rina's face. "Don't forget that Sayuri has one as well. Still, I think you're fine the way you are Takuto. You're smarter than most of your kind and as a thief, you use your computer skills to hack into security systems and aid everyone on the missions. Plus, I—" She paused immediately to prevent herself from completing her sentence. "..."

           "...Go on." Takuto urged for an answer.

           Rina frowned. "No."

           "Why not?"

           "I don't want to." Rina averted her gaze. "It's... difficult for me to say. Anyway, do you want to eat something? I'll prepare something for you."

           The programmer cocked his head to his right side. "Isn't that Beardy's job?"

           Rina glanced at her ex-boyfriend. "It's fine. I'm working here for free, anyway. I'll be helping with the cooking and cleaning, so go ahead and order anything from the menu." A kind eye smile appeared on her pretty visage soon after.

           Takuto felt drawn towards the sincerity Rina showed him, and he thought to himself in a trance. How long has it been since I saw that smile? He didn't know the exact answer, but it did feel like several decades had passed by without his knowledge, and it struck his heart with a sting. Ah, it hurts. It really hits me whenever I see you that I feel at ease, angry at myself, so pained inside, and many other emotions continue to pour out.

           Rina stared at her former lover's expression and saw the sad beauty within it. "Takuto..." She reached out with her left arm in order to place her hand on the side of his face, but abruptly stopped herself from doing so before it could touch the tsundere. "...!" Then, she pulled her arm back and let her shoulders fall to their corresponding sides.

           Atsumu placed his left hand on Rina's right shoulder, looked towards her, and smiled gently. "It'll be alright."

           Rina didn't nod, but gazed at Takuto. "You are probably the one who understands me more than you understand the others, Boss. Then again, perhaps Hiro knows me more than you do."

           Atsumu's eyes slightly widened. "Oh? I believe you're right on the mark, Rina. But you're very level-headed towards me out of everyone else."

           Rina smiled and closed her eyes. "Well, it's no wonder you're a pervert in everyone else's minds."

           The wavy-haired brunet laughed lightly. "Ahaha. I guess you have another point there." He poked the side of Takuto's face with his right index finger, instantly catching the latter’s attention. "Takkun~, it's time for you to order something. What'll it be? You can tell me, and I'll have it ready in a few."

           Takuto glared with an irritated expression. "Wh-What are you doing, you sick bastard?!" Atsumu's poke sure did snap him back to reality. "Are you trying to harass me or something?!"

           Atsumu backed away with his eyes raised more than when he was chatting with Rina as he put his hands up. "Woah, Takkun! I was just trying to get you back to Earth! Really! Besides, you still haven't had breakfast, right?" Just as he was freaked out seconds ago, he was currently joyful and beamed at the twenty-four-year-old. "Let's get some food into that belly!"

           "Tch!" Takuto's upper and lower teeth met one another, indicating his grumpy mood. "Whatever, just get me something to eat. I don't care about ordering a meal right now, so serve me whatever you want as long as it’s decent and legal."

           Atsumu sighed. He was down in the dumps. "And after Hiro told you that all of us are concerned about you. A growing man needs to eat his meals three times a day, you know?" He smirked in a clever manner. "You might shut down one day if you keep spacing out for many periods of time."

           Hearing that made Takuto frown indifferently. "Is that supposed to be a joke about me when I'm facing a computer? You're not making me happy, though. Also, I'm not laughing, and if I did, I wouldn't giggle like Hiro, or burst out like Kenny does. Those two need to improve on their laughing styles. I'm in between, so I fit perfectly while Hiro is somewhat girly, and Kenny is too over-the-top. Riki? He's okay—he’s between me and Kenny so he's fine. As for you, I hate to admit it but you're better than Hiro; you're just under me. Out of all five of us guys, I'm the best at laughing. What do you think of that?"

           Atsumu sweat-dropped once the light blond's explanation was over. "Talk about brutal. You've basically butchered everyone's ranks on that. I bet those three would really get mad. The only thing I'm glad about is that you didn't include the girls. You sure overanalyze peculiar things, Takkun. It's your specialty but it's not such a bad thing in your case."

           "Of course not," Takuto objected. "I'm a gentleman and I'm nicer to ladies more than you are in terms of sensitivity, but girls outside our group are mainly an eyesore to me. Well, except magicians. Anyway. Because Rina trusts Sayuri, I'll have faith in her for now. Despite the possibility she could be up to something at the moment, I can't conclude her to be a bad woman, but she's still a little suspicious. I mean, she did lure us to the mountain and almost sent us to our deaths. Part of it was Riki's fault so I'll forgive her for..." He started to blush and continued. "...saving Rina's life. She really duped us after planning ahead but conning us might've been the best karma we’ve had in all our years of being thieves."

           The next thing the two men knew, Rina came out from the kitchen with a tray in her hands. "Well here you go, Takuto. Have a nice breakfast." She shot him a considerate glance with a casual smile after placing a normal Japanese-style morning meal on the counter in front of him. "Oh, and be careful or our identities will be found out by the you-know-who. Remember what I said before in the cave, so make sure to keep a cautious eye and ear whenever you speak about us."

           Takuto could only blush further in embarrassment. "I-I know! I haven't forgotten about it, so you shouldn't, either."

           As the Black Foxes' hacker muttered a, "Itadakimasu," he felt a warm sensation in his chest. Then, he took out his chopsticks from their wrapper, and split them apart evenly to enjoy his food. Having his ex-girlfriend around to remind him of the fact who the seven members altogether were during the night was bad enough since it was also their secret, but... He couldn't deny the reality of the world as it was true he and his friends were thieves who performed hidden deeds behind everyone else's backs. Seeing his expression gave Atsumu the smile the brunet would typically wear on his face, while Rina went back to the kitchen to check on the food cooking inside.

           Meanwhile, Kenshi was in the nearby fire department—the closest to Le Renard Noir, which was actually a long distance from there, though. As he was getting ready for duty, his co-workers smiled splendidly at him.

           "Say, Inagaki," one of them began. "You look pretty happy today. Somethin' happen lately?"

           Kenshi smiled back. "Nothing really. What makes you say that?"

           The same guy who initiated the conversation stared at his fellow firefighter, pondering whether or not he should tease the twenty-five-year-old. "You really don't know? It's all over your face."

           Kenshi's eyes widened in trivial confusion. "Huh? What is?"

           "That you're in love with some chick none of us know about," the co-worker blurted out with a grin on his face.

           Within an instant, Kenshi's visage was flushed with a shade of pink like Takuto's whenever the latter would get tongue-tied. "Wha—How do you know that?"

           The co-worker smirked. "So it is true. Spill the beans, will ya? We all want to hear the details about her. Are you gonna try and make a pass at her the next time you see her?"

           Another co-worker nodded. "We're really curious about the type of girl you've got your eyes on, Inagaki. You've never taken much liking to them in a romantic sense, but girls are attractive in their own way. It's a shame you never fell for anyone until the age of twenty-five. When it comes to us men, love comes and goes in the blink of an eye if you're not serious about a girl. And, you should be going on dates when you're young like a teenager in his second or third year in high school. When you get to the drinking age, you should marry the woman you love, and have a hot night all to yourselves when you're at home. Then, she'll be popping out a baby or two, and before you know it, you're already a father. So you see, you should enjoy the romance while you're young, not old. You won't get to do that at your age, man. You're the only one who's single now, which sorta makes you leftovers from a batch of cookies."

           A third co-worker exhaled. "Face the truth, Kenshi. You've got some looks, but no significant other to share your heart with. You're also dense when it comes to a lot of things, and you're too nice." He crossed his index fingers to form an X. "That's a bad combination and so many girls have been hurt by your characteristics. It's not that we don't think very poorly of you; we're just pointing out your flaws."

           Kenshi looked at the guys who had supported him for several years and looked down. "It's not as easy as you guys think it is. I've had a lot to do and... that's not an excuse. I understand that. Really. But you guys have had better luck than me. I'd like to experience being in a relationship too— and get married, have kids. Those sort of experiences. And I envy you for achieving every bit of happiness with your wives and children. Unfortunately for me, I'm in love with this girl who's out of my reach. She's beautiful and everything about her shines brilliantly." He clenched his hands into fists. "How can I not like her? She's not someone I can be with, and she's around my friends' age. I can't stop thinking about her, and it's so painful I feel like I'm going to die from these feelings if I don't get the chance to see her again. That's how much I like her."

           The first co-worker walked up to Kenshi, placing his hand on the single man's back. "You're an earnest guy, aren't you? Even though she's out of your league, I'm not going to apologize for making you feel bad when you're still—how should I put this—untaken and in your mid-twenties. Continue to suffer from the heartache, will you?" He patted the posterior region he was already touching and smiled lightheartedly. "You're such a sappy guy, Inagaki. It's hard to believe you work with us in a fire station. Anyway, tell us when she dumps—I mean, rejects—you. We'll be around to hear every detail, and we'll berate you even more. Can't wait to pull another one on you. Torture you later!" As he and some other firefighters went to their station for the morning, he gave a wave with his left hand, and the back of it was in full view.

           And then it hit Kenshi right on the face.

           "What?!" He shouted with a shocked expression. His so-called companion at work had just made him confess he was in love with a certain someone without him saying that girl's name to everyone, to which the others joined in with saying horrible things about him, as well. Kenshi felt infuriated; his face was boiling hot with a red color. Oh, it was worse than a lobster or two. Heck. A thousand of them couldn't compare to how angry the spiky-ish-haired son of a restaurant owner was as he was soon alone in the area he was standing in. Within the almost empty space displaying his existence, he took a breath and yelled to the sky. "AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

           Kenshi's frustration and humiliation broke some windows belonging to larger buildings. Surely enough, it may have even shattered the glass of a certain government facility that was one of the most renowned ones in Japan.

  XXX

             Inside the Ministry of Finance, a meeting was interrupted from the sound of glass breaking. One of the employees opened the door each of the agents entered through, and frowned with a tone of disappointment.

           "Oh, that's great," the man who checked on the situation muttered. He had emerald green hair and viridian eyes; wore a beige plaid suit over a white dress shirt [that had clear buttons], whereas his pants extended to a few inches above his ankle; his pale yellow socks and dark brown dress shoes were shown. "We have to fix the windows with our powers now. And yes, I do mean all of them. They're all... greatly damaged by a..." He tilted his head to his right, blinking with a perplex look on his face. "...human man's scream...?" Then, he narrowed his eyes defeatedly. "What the heck?" No satisfaction whatsoever appeared on his nice visage. As colorful as he was with his physical appearance, was contrasting on the outside. That was when he sighed, lowering his shoulders. "To save us some trouble, we'll have to call a repair team and go under reconstruction for a while."

           Claire took a glance from the left door as he stood beside the Minister of Finance.             "No kidding." His eyes were large due to raising his upper eyelids. "We've got to act fast." He took out his cell phone and dialed a call to the company that would be of most help at the moment. "Hi. So you've just heard about it. Yes. There's a huge conflict with our windows. Of course we’d like to have them repaired. Thank you very much. We will secure a large payment after you're done rebuilding the ministry. Have a nice day and goodbye." He hung up and turned around toward his many co-workers who were still sitting in their seats. "We're all clear on that matter. The repair team is currently on their way with a helicopter to provide a net for covering the Ministry of Finance and they're bringing in other materials to fix this entire place up by truck. While we're waiting, let's resume the meeting."

           He and the Minister of Finance returned to their seats and sat down. Then, the latter stood up and cleared his throat.

           "Ahem," he said, covering his mouth with a fist before removing it. "I called this meeting today to recognize the return of our fellow co-worker, who has accomplished an enormous success for us during her trip to Europe. Although it's a bit late to announce this, I'm still grateful of her efforts to go through with work before taking any breaks and vacations. It may have been a bit forced on her since we've been encountering plentiful amounts of escalations for a long time now, but you all know what I mean."

           There was a round of cheery laughter in the closed room; even Riki and Mitsuki gave in to it.

           "So to give a quick ending to my speech," the Minister egged on, "Let us all commend Mitsuki for completing this time-consuming job, and welcome back to our team." He gave a light bow with his head. "Congratulations on bringing us some more pep and negotiations. As a reward, I was going to give you three weeks off from work. However, since we're going to be dealing with an extended period of repairs to make it seem like a normal case, we'll be stopping work at the Ministry of Finance for an unknown amount of time, so I guess most of us can return to Neon without any worries.” It was then that he heaved a sigh. “I wouldn't mind it if we were to shut the office down for good.” He scoffed. “I mean, isn't that an extreme benefit to us owe don't have to keep track of everyone's money in Neon? Man, oh man, do I ever want to give the Japanese government a piece of my mind. It’s the opposite here in the Human World."

           Nao smiled tranquilly. "It certainly would make our lives easier to manage if we tried to change this world to make it fit our standards. While this is not part o he ministry’s ‘business,’ Kei and Rie are more likely to do that in the future than we are at this time and day. We would also be eliminating more than just the ministry. Consider how much we could gain from the losses of most of this world’s government control. Taxes wouldn't exist anymore, so people could be paid the total amount of their work. But. As we're here to aid humans who are kind to others, it would be more for their personal gain. After all, their world is not like ours in terms of the law. I understand it's frustrating, but let's bear with it. We should ensure that they're in a safer place to live in, as well as for us before we try anything against this world’s governments. Sometimes if we wait long enough, someone else will take action to solve our complaints."

           "I see," one of the male employees who had lunch with Riki that day said, and some of the others nodded. He had his arms folded across his chest again as he continued to speak. "We'll have to see what happens before we do anything about it. That gives us more time to go back and forth between the two worlds, but it might take years beyond our guesses to shut the governments in the Human World down. Maybe even a millennium or two."

           With his usual smile, Claire inquired, "But doesn't the world revolve around the business field? Wouldn't international connections be lost if you decided to cancel the governments' authority?"

           "Claire has a valid argument," Riki proclaimed. "We might need several governments to operate how we regulate our supplies and resources, along with keeping track of our inventory and money for—"

           The Minister of Finance looked straight at Riki and commented, "And that's why you're such a realist, Riki. You don't want to accept this under the circumstances other civilians will lose what they have, and other than that, you wouldn't want to lose this job. Think about it: Is it really necessary for you to condemn yourself to working as a government agent when you could just live your life the way you want to with the woman you love? With all the problems this world has, the government isn't interested in human affairs. Those who are supposed to lead your kind aren't doing their jobs properly, and look. People are suffering every day but no one has truly attempted to lend a hand to anyone in need, except for the noble thieves known for stealing works of art to bring decorum back. We as magicians had decided to come here to aid others who are pure and can be trusted in some way or another, but we observe from afar to see if there are 'good' humans who won't stray from that kindness they let us know of. It's not that we're doing this to be terrible beings; we want proof of a human's sincerity before we act out on anything too rashly, which of course we don't want, and what we don't like to do is make mistakes we'll regret. For our reasons, we want what could be a better life for you and some others we come to trust. Do you comprehend what I mean?"

           Riki nodded firmly. "Yes... I know. It isn't as easy to abandon this position and move forward. On the contrary, I'll try to live a life without being a government employee. It's just... A lot has been going on in my life. Not only mine but Mitsuki's, and our friends' lives. There are more conflicts arriving at our door, and we can't resolve every one of them by sheer will. We can't wait for anyone to do something, so we've decided to stay by their sides and support them. We're not sure if it'll turn out perfectly fine for them, but we want them to know they're not alone."

           "Then, watch how things turn out for them," the male magician facing him replied softly. "You'll find the answer in due time. For now, focus on what you can do as a person before resolving a conflict. It'll go away without your presence at times. Without further ado, I believe it's time to end this meeting and take a long break from work. I'll even have them make this place smaller in size and proportions."

           In a brief moment, they all decided to leave the room and pushed in their chairs before doing so. As they strolled side by side, Mitsuki took Riki's left hand in her right to assure him it would be alright. Soon, they met up with Nao outside. She was indeed as beautiful and fair as ever.

           "Mitsuki-san, Riki-san," she smiled casually. "Going on a date now?"

           Riki perked up. "That's right. I can't let the fact we're all out of work for a while get to me when I have my wife by my side. You seem jolly yourself, Aozora."

           "I agree," Mitsuki remarked. "Do you have plans with your boyfriend?"

           Continuing to smile with her eyes closed, the white-haired magician replied. "I'll be helping my boyfriend with some errands and cooking once I get home." She opened her eyes and added, "I better start shopping for a ton of groceries in a bit."

           "Does your sweetheart like to eat a lot?" Riki asked with a smirk. "And cooking for just one person sounds tough when you put it that way."

           Nao placed her left hand on the side of her face with her fingertips touching her cheek. "I didn't say I was cooking just for him; Riki-san, did you misunderstand what I said?"

           "You mean, there's a whole round of others who'll be enjoying the food you prepare besides him?" Riki's eye were currently widened. "Boy, you must have a tough time taking care of your man and getting those meals done."

           "He is a doctor, after all," Nao mentioned. "It's not a surprise several people visit him during the day. He's also very skilled at what he does. Although we're not always together since we both work separately and in different career fields, we do what we can to show that we care about each other. It isn't any trouble for me to at least cook for a big group when he's so busy because I love him."

           Mitsuki put her hands together and smiled tenderly. "That's true. I don't mind preparing a bento for Riki and sometimes for our sisters. They're very important to me, and I can't help but love all of them. It's natural to have a desire to do something for those you care about."

           "Well, I better get going. Have a lovely time together, alright?" She turned round and walked a few steps forward in her direction before teleporting somewhere.

           The dark purple-haired magician glanced at Riki and said, "Shall we resume from where we left off? I like going on dates with you, Riki."

           "Well I believe so." The tall, wealthy human man had a loving expression on his handsome visage as he gazed back into his wife's magenta eyes. He wanted to hold her in his arms so much, but restrained himself to be more gentlemanly in the eyes of those who saw them together.

           "Oh, they're holding hands," a young woman whispered. "How lovely."

           Another one inquired, "You don't suppose they're actually...?"

           A young man nodded. "It has to be true. Just look at the way they're looking at each other."

           The second woman disagreed on something. "But they're so..." It felt as if she wasn't pleased with the height difference.

           Understanding what she meant, a third woman around the other three's ages responded with, "Who cares about that? Don't they look cute together, though? They really suit one another to me."

           Despite the both of them hearing the spectators' comments about them, Riki and Mitsuki kept walking forward before the wife in the marriage called out.

           “Riki,” Mitsuki said and stopped. She turned to face him with a sincere seriousness in her eyes and facial expression. “It’s time for me to tell you my concerns. Rather than to put our romantic reunion as a couple first, I want us and everyone else in our group, to counter the roads ahead of us. There is not a single doubt in my entire being of the dangers towards the magicians, but us as well. You know that, don’t you?”

           Riki gazed back into his love’s eyes in a serene manner. “Of course I do. Being with you and the others has molded me into who I am right now, but being apart from you most of all turned into a time for me to learn more about what you’ve endured since our first encounter. Not only about you, though.”

           Immediately, Mitsuki knew but was not surprised by her husband’s words. “…You’re such a workaholic. No wonder I can’t bring myself to forgive you for yesterday’s—” She cut herself off and took a step back, not once taking her eyes off of the man who loved her; and she towards him.

           Riki smiled slightly, but all so affectionately. “I know, and I apologized for how I treated you after finding out about your pain and the history that’s gone on for a long time.”

           “Yet, knowing the things you’ve learn about me doesn’t sever the love I have for you. I don’t doubt my feelings for you as much as you’ve felt for what I couldn’t tell you myself.” Mitsuki paused and then continued. “What I would like to let everyone know are my circumstances and Neon’s history, but I’m forbidden to as part of my punishment and exile from home.”

           The sun’s rays glimmered in a lovely way on Riki’s black hair and he nodded. “This’ll be our secret until the time comes for us to tell them.” His shoulder’s fell. “No. I’ll be the one to do that so I can protect you, Mitsuki.”

           “Riki…”

           Riki took hold of his wife’s left hand with his right and lowered his legs. He steadily entwined their fingers together before taking hold of Mitsuki’s waist with his free hand. Then, he pulled her body close to his—it was evident there was no resistance from her, in contrast to his advances. The dark purple-haired magician placed her right hand on Riki’s cheek; their eyes gradually closed and their lips met.

The love they held for one another attracted more attention—stares and glances from bystanders, but nothing else was important. They spent as much time together before being called in to Le Renard Noir later that night.

  XXX

             "What's up?" Kenshi asked as he and Hiro entered the bar together. "I heard something was urgent and met Hiro on the way here."

           Atsumu had a serious expression on his face. "..." He glanced at Takuto sitting in front of the counter. The latter appeared to have a flustered look.

           "What's up with Takkun, you mean!" Hiro exclaimed. "His face is totally red!" A sly grin formed from his lips. "Something juicy definitely happened."

           Takuto glanced upward at Hiro and Kenshi. "It's nothing." He may have had a calm tone when he spoke, but he seemed angry. "There's no way that's frickin' possible."

           Hiro blinked once. "Takkun, are you feeling okay? You seem like you would be sick by your voice and facial expression."

           "Of course I'm not!" the light blond yelled this time. "Who would be when they've been humiliated so much in a day?!"

           Hiro glanced at Atsumu. "Boss."

           Atsumu frowned in a way that seemed more like his usual self. "A male customer today was hitting on Rina, so Takkun got riled up and told him not to mess with her. There were a whole bunch of other people who had come to eat here as well, and when they saw Takkun helping Rina out, they were complimenting and cheering him on. They also called those two a couple, thinking they were dating. It was nice but also embarrassing in Takkun's case, so you know how it typically is." He smiled dryly before returning to a somber expression. "That's not what I called you all here for, however. We've got a new mission on our hands, and it involves countering the mafia. What we're dealing with is no ordinary mafia, either. It's a triad. Do you know which one?"

           The men looked at each other before gazing at the wavy-haired brunet. Rina and Mitsuki on the other hand, gave their undivided attention to him as he explained the direness of his statements.

           Atsumu continued. His expression did not budge as he told his teammates. "It's the 14K who're targeting us. Though this might be an assumption, they could be after the magicians as well due to the powers magicians hold within themselves. I'm concerned about Sayuri more than the girls because of the video they sent us." He glanced at Takuto and nodded.

           In response, the hacker took out his laptop and opened it. Then, he clicked on the play button for them all to watch.

           "Yes, may I help you gentlemen?" A man turned around and asked after closing his shop early.

           When Hiro saw who it was, he was stunned. "What?!"

           The video continued to play, despite his surprise.

           A group of three men in suits walked up to the man. They were all wearing sunglasses and had stoic looks on their faces. What was most prominent about them was their sync when they stepped up to the man while standing next to one another in a row.

           "We're looking for a girl who may have worked here," the man in the middle began. He took out a small photo of said girl from his breast pocket located on his suit’s left side, handing it to the man, who delicately grabbed the photo and gazed at it for a second before shifting his focus to the leader of the three. "She is notorious for striking against us, specifically at our master, and has attack us on many occasions since the day she arrived on Earth through a form of teleportation, or so we believe. Her name is Sayuri Mitsuyoshi. She is also a magician with wings that shine brighter than what we picture angels to have, as hers are packed with a power unlike anyone on Earth has seen or experienced when they emerge from her back. Therefore, she is a very dangerous adversary of ours, sir. If you would please cooperate with us, we will give you a large sum of money in return."

           "Sayuri, you say," the man noted calmly. "From what you have just told me, I don't believe she is the same girl I remember. This young lady in the picture does not remind me of the girl I once knew, except for her orange eyes and hair. Sayuri's hair, however, is lighter than this woman's, and her eyes couldn’t be agate. Since the picture is also small, I am not certain if they have the same hair length or not, but I believe hers was shorter. The young woman in this photo probably grew her hair out longer than Sayuri's, too. The Sayuri you've described to me is not the Sayuri I know. Sayuri Mitsuyoshi could never look like this; she couldn't be a magician, or an angel-like being. Sayuri is a human girl who didn't have a place to go to until I met her. I don't believe she is, and I don't wish for money. Sayuri is not a dangerous person, but an innocent—"

           "Innocent? I don't think so." He was cut off by the leader. "If you have a different view of her, you're wrong. You don't know a thing about Sayuri Mitsuyoshi because the way you see her is someone who doesn't have any special abilities--someone who's dull in nature and has no real qualities to create a sense of frustration and lure out someone else's wrath. But the orange hair and agate eyes in the photo? Those aren't what human girls have unless they dye their hair and get cosmetic surgery performed on their irises. No human could ever have those types of physical characteristics at birth, and they certainly can't have abnormal bodies and powers. Though there are some humans who are blessed with unhuman strength and attributes, Sayuri Mitsuyoshi could never be one of them due to being born in the magician world, a world so ancient and advanced before our own." He removed his sunglasses from his face, revealing his brown eyes. "She is, sculpted to perfection. That's not the reason we're after her, but she's interfering with our plans." There was one demand he and his lackeys had in mind at the moment. "Tell us where she is if you know what's good for you." He came closer to the manager.

           The middle-age man's eyes widen. "...!" It appeared as if there was no place left for him to back into as the three members of the mafia cornered him to the edge of the counter.

           The video stopped playing. Riki, Kenshi, and most of all, Hiro were shocked and paralyzed as to what had taken place before their eyes.

           "...Who was that they were after just now?" Riki questioned.

           Kenshi blinked. "And what's their reason for going after that man besides trying to get to Sayuri? Could they be after something else?"

           Hearing those words from the firefighter, it was all coming together to Hiro. "!!" He swiftly turned his head towards Takuto. "Takkun!"

           Takuto gave another nod. "Yeah. I checked before anyone else got here after the video was sent to my laptop. They know the manager of the café has the cymophane since Sayuri left it for him. She probably flew back the same night we gave it to her; plus, the 14K may also have been observing her and us since the night we snuck into the mansion to get that painting of Takuji Uramoto. He's pretty famous, and it's been mentioned many times that he's a magician, so it's likely they're after him as well."

           Mitsuki looked at the floor. "That's correct. He's made himself known but due to the Human World's lack of magic and resources Neon has, he's brought more than enough to last him and Asuka years without having to go back to Neon. There have been times when Asuka's collapsed from overexertion and her fragile state, so he nurses her back to health.”

Rina added, “Takuji was also paired up with Sayuri during their time in high school to train and bring out their best abilities.”

Mitsuki nodded. “Despite the fact he hasn't revealed anything, he's likely to have planned something with her in order to bring the mafia down. As we're magicians, we are restricted on having our powers to their fullest range, unless we're told otherwise by the two highest ranking families of our world. But now, we need to get there as soon as possible." She looked at Atsumu. "I can't let you stay in harm's way, so the rest of us will go. At any rate, it'll be easier to get everyone else to the café now that I'm back."

           Rina turned her head towards the other Black Foxes with a composed expression. "Is everyone ready?"

           "Hold up." Takuto got up from his seat and closed his laptop. "I don't want to be dropped on my ass by the time we get there." He took hold of the electronic device, placing it under his left arm.

           "Who said we would drop you?" Rina asked with the same look on her face.

           Takuto blushed. "W-Well, I can't be too reckless, can I?"

           "Anyway, let's go. We're already late as it is."

           Hiro had a resolved expression etched onto his face. "We can't let the 14K do anything to the manager. He's too good of a person to be beaten and killed by anyone, so let's do this."

           Everyone besides Atsumu nodded and were sent to the location of the café owner after having a bright light of different colors surrounding them.

           Even though I know they'll be fine, I still fear for their lives, the wavy-haired man thought. I'm probably getting too old, but that doesn't mean I can't care about our family. Right, Shinobu? For their sakes, I'll have to prepare a grand feast for them so they can come back with brighter smiles.

 XXX

             It was a dead end for the manager of the café. He had run all the way to the rooftop and was a few feet away from the edge that met nothing else, but the cool air with his back facing it. It was truly a defective time and place for him to be at, as it was also one of the worst situations for someone to go through. The three mafia men were in front of him, and there was nowhere else to escape to. It felt like the end of the world for the frightened café owner.

           "What is your purpose for doing this?" he asked, trying not to show his fear. "I have no clue as to where the woman you are searching for could be! She does not reside, nor does she work anywhere near here, or in the café."

           The leader of the three only said, "It is your fault for not telling us so before running away. You could have saved your life if not for your unethical attitude downstairs. As for our purpose... Slaughtering you might give us an opportunity to lure her out and capture her once and for all. She has given us a long chase this past month, so it's to be expected that we'll have to take our revenge on her and sell her to the black market afterwards." He showed an eerie grin. "Perhaps we'll do some other stuff before that. She does have the looks, after all. We'll violate and torture her as punishment for messing with us. Then again, who needs auctions from the market when we can enslave her to do our bidding. Hehehe."

           It was unbelievable how far the group of men would go to if Sayuri was in their hands. It was sickening and revolting enough to get on a kindhearted person's nerves, which there was no doubt the manager felt livid about.

           "How dare you filthy lot of men say such impure things towards a woman, especially to Sayuri!" the middle-aged man shouted. "You should be ashamed of having been born into this world! Have your parents not taught you any courtesy at all?! No man should ever think about defiling a lady, no matter her appearance and personality! All men should be gentle and polite when a woman is in their presence!"

           The 14K triad member gritted his teeth and snarled. "Why, you—! How dare you give me a lesson on how a man should behave! You're nothing but an old man who likes to run his mouth like a motor on and off until someone gets annoyed at you! I'll show you who's right or wrong!" He was aiming to punch the manager with his right hand and arm when...

           "Hold it right there!" Hiro, who was enraged more than anyone else at the moment, had appeared with every member of the Black Foxes going on the mission. It was a terrible case of anger igniting his fiery core.

           The three triad members turned around, and the leader smirked. "Well, well. What do we have here? So the Black Foxes have finally arrived, have they? It seems you all got our message. We were waiting for you to get here. And look, you managed to save the café owner from death's hands. For now at least. But we'll kill him after you've been finished off by our comrades." He blew onto his index and middle fingers located on his right hand to form a whistle-like sound, but was a bit softer when doing so.

           Immediately, several other triad members jumped out and covered the edges of the roof. Although they were completely surrounded and outnumbered, the Black Foxes’ team did not falter, standing their ground with their backs facing the others'. It was like a scene from an action film but it was even better than one. It was also at that very moment that something phenomenal happened, and in the blink to an eye, too. A bright light radiated above everyone on the scene as if it were a fairy tale glow summoned from a book of the stories that were listed in it. Thousands of needle-like objects spun out and hit the mafia members, knocking them unconscious and evading the Black Foxes. Shortly afterwards, the sharp needles dissipated, and the light sank back to a pair of wings, giving the chance for Sayuri to display her alluring, yet pale form.

           As they witnessed her appearance, Hiro's eyes were taken in the older girl's beauty, more so than Kenshi was; albeit there was the fact Sayuri landed between those two when it came to age. Even the manager of the café was enchanted by the woman balanced above all of them. Soon enough, the winged magician gracefully descended down to the roof's ground.

           Sayuri scanned wherever the 14K triad members were lying. "What a pain in the back. Really. Do I have to go through all of this for a group of criminals looking for me? Just when I was about to go home, too. This isn't a night that's in favor of me now, is it?" Afterward, she confronted the members of the Black Foxes with her agate gaze. "So we meet again, you so-called noble thieves of art. Or should I say, the Black Foxes. It really isn't as great of a pleasure to see you, but that doesn't matter. I have to rally up these foul men and turn them over to the police station before the night ends, thank you very much. I'll be taking my leave, so fare thee well."

           "Wait," Hiro called out, almost as though he were desperate.

           "What is it?" Sayuri glanced at the orange-haired young man whom she once referred to as a friend.

           Hiro frowned somewhat sadly. "Can we talk for a bit? There's a lot we'd like to discuss with you, Sayuri."

           "There's no reason to," Sayuri shot down her words.

           Hiro shook his head. "But there is. Because I just told you that reason."

           Rina gazed at her best friend with her hands folded across her chest and added, "Why don't you hear us out, then? I don't care if you refuse to say anything in reply to the other guys, but at least have a chat with Hiro. He's a good person at heart, which sets apart what a thief at night would commonly be from who he truly is on the inside. You already know not all human guys are like this, so do something for his sake."

           Sayuri's shoulders fell. "Fine. We can't speak inside the café. That's my condition for listening and answering you guys. I don't want to be in a place like that anyhow. Understand?" She arrowed her eyes with order. "I just can't find being in the place I had reluctantly agreed to live in and work at as an employee very fitting since my wings weren't comfortable the first instance I had been here.  I even went home every night but you should get the point by now."

           The owner of the café took a step forward. "Um..."

           Sayuri glanced at him. "Yes?"

           "Are you really... Sayuri Mitsuyoshi?" the middle-aged man asked. "You don't quite seem to be the same girl I remembered meeting over a month ago."

           "Is there anyone else you recall meeting on their twenty-first birthday who has the same name as me?" Sayuri frowned indifferently.

           "Well, no, but..." He looked down. "It's hard to believe you were the very young woman who was once here not too long ago. I was quite fond of you for being such a kind and warm person. You attracted so many customers to my café, and I have always been grateful to you. I can't thank you enough for spreading joy to this place and bringing wonderful smiles to everyone's faces."

           Sayuri let out a worn out sigh. "Well, I suppose I should thank you as well for giving me a place to stay and hiring me. Why don't you join the conversation? I'm positive you wouldn't want to be left out of this." She looked back at the group of thieves, and sat down with her legs crossed.

  XXX

             "Now, what do you want to ask me?" Sayuri inquired as she waited for Hiro to start conversing. Her wings had disappeared after sitting down to face the Black Foxes.

           A sense of nostalgia flowed into Hiro's body and he softly smiled at Sayuri. He thought back to a couple nights ago and the memories of that portion of the past came back to him in a flash. "You're really nice, and I mean more than meets the eye, you know that? You went out of your way to create a trap for us in order to restore Rina's powers and save her from losing them. That's an astounding feat none of us could have thought of since we didn't have Mitsuki back in Japan with us until after we went to the mountain. Thanks."

           "Well, I can't just let Rina die from that rotten woman's plans." The orange-haired magician was looking into Hiro's eyes with a crucial hint in her expression. "It's her fault that Rina was in danger in the first place. Not only Rina, but other magicians who are here on Earth. Of course, I don't want them to perish. Because they're important to me, I can't let them go. It's too sad to never get the chance to see the ones you love ever again, along with not being able to talk to them when they're gone forever; it's even more painful to have to say goodbye to them, especially when they're in your line of sight. I'm not the only one who doesn't want that. There are so many magicians who don't, as well. That's why..." She was filled with a resolve that could move the hearts of others in a short amount of time. "...I won't give up on setting things right. And I'll make sure that woman pays for what she's done. She's pulled a lot of strings, but I'll be working to stop her with Takuji and the others."

           "...Sayuri..." Hiro saw how much Sayuri was purely devoted to save her own people.

           She must be going through a lot to do what she has so far, he thought. It's no wonder she has such a strong sense of justice. I want to help her, even if I'm not fit to stand on the same ground or breathe the same air as her. So…

           There was a curious look on Takuto’s face as he gazed up at Sayuri from his computer screen. “’That woman?’ Who exactly would you be referring to? From what you’ve told us just now, there’s something unpleasant about her. She must be sucking away the magicians’ powers in order to eliminate them from existence, especially in the world you’ve been trying to benefit—our world, the Human World—since there was originally no trace of magic until...” He narrowed his eyes before finally coming to an answer. “ ...the magicians came here as part of their mission to help this world.  So I take it she's hated all magicians enough to strategize and perform a counterattack against you guys. Which means..." He glanced at Rina for a few seconds before turning his gaze back at Sayuri. "Every magician staying here is in peril far more than quadruple the amount the whole planet is going through right now. What about your princess? Is she still on Earth, or is she back home?"

           "For the time being," Sayuri went on, "Takuji and I have sent Asuka home to rest and recover her powers. At the very least, I don't want to involve her in the fight that I'm going to take part in. I don't know if that's going to do anything but... You all may end up going into this if you decide to go with me. It's no ordinary battlefield, but whatever your choice is, I won't stop you."

           Hiro and everyone else smiled at Sayuri. Of course they were going with her. And. It was evidently present that their bond and willpower were powerful and overwhelming for a band of thieves, so much so they wanted the orange-haired girl to be part of their bond.

           "Like anyone's going to stop us," Riki grinned victoriously. "We're the Black Foxes. We don't back down from what we seek to do and we'll finish our missions without a care for anything else. That's one of our mottos we live by when we work at night! I'm gonna ask you this again, Sayuri. You rejected my offer before, but that doesn't change the fact I'm set on having you as a member of our team. Will you join the Black Foxes?" He held his hand out for the magician's reply as he stood up.

           Sayuri also rose from her position and looked directly into the leader's eyes. "I'm sorry to say this to you, Riki. But my answer remains the same. I will not join you as we're on the opposite sides, but I can stay with you all, seeing as you're willing to risk your lives for the magicians. Therefore, let us arrange what we will be doing later on. I will meet you after I recharge in Neon. I need to heal there as well since I was attacked and wounded before arriving here tonight."

           Kenshi spoke despite being flabbergasted along with the others as he glanced up from sitting on the ground. "What? You're hurt?" He frowned in concern. "Is your wound... painful? If it is, I think you should come by LRN another time. Maybe, you should stay home for a few days if you're gonna go back to heal it."

           Sayuri shook her head. "No, it'll be alright. It's... a wound that gives me a feeling of remembrance." She looked down for a few seconds, then raised her head up slowly. "I'll meet you all. At Le Renard Noir. So... Wait for me and don't forget that I'm going to be staying with you, so I'll be sleeping on a bed there for a while. Also. Have Rina return to Neon tonight before I come. She should at least visit her family and let them know she’s doing well in the Human World. I won't be seeing her back home, though." She turned around, walking toward the edge of the rooftop before stopping in her tracks. After that, she turned her head to gaze at the six members of the Black Foxes and the café manager. "I nearly forgot to mention this. Mitsuki-san, you two look good together. It has been over nine years now, but congratulations on your wedding. Manjuki-san must be looking forward to the day you have a kid with your husband.1 And Owner? Live well without me and don't get yourself involved with this. It's about time for you to sever your will to hold onto me, so don't become depressed over the memories I've been in, and resume your life as it already is. You can't look back and sink into despair. You need to be strong for the people around you. If your employees become worried about you, apologize to them and make a decision to remove their anxiety. Thank you for everything you done for me." Sayuri's wings grew out and flapped once before rising again. She flew up and disappeared afterward. Along with her, the 14K triad members were gone and out of sight, indicating where she might have gone first.

           Hiro looked at the manager and smiled. "I know you're sad about her departure, but try to listen to her words. I'm positive she wanted the best for you, Manager. If she didn't, she wouldn't have cared to tell you anything. I believe Sayuri was looking out for us as well. She might not have said much about it, but maybe she's trying to protect everyone who're pure at heart in her own way. That's... my conviction." At that moment, his smile became softer and full of endearment. His support for his friend was to be praised, as he could not be disloyal to the feeling of care towards the winged magician.

           Kenshi felt a wave of excitement for the college student. "Hiro...!" He was glad the young man was dedicated to Sayuri as he was, but felt as though Hiro had a stronger heart for her than he did.

           Takuto looked at the café owner. "Well, she did pull the wool over our eyes the last time we crossed paths with her. Luckily, we weren't killed, but she concocted the perfect plan to lure us—except for Sir Beard-it-all—out to a secluded terrain and replenish Rina's powers." He gave a short nod at his ex-girlfriend. "She was losing them, anyway. Sayuri's a clever one to have done all that in a short period of time. Looking at our missions so far, she was always ahead of us. Even tonight, she stole the spotlight in just a flash. She really beats us to it every time, but with good intentions. It's no wonder Riki wants her to join us. She still rejects the thought of siding with thieves, but now we can compromise on working together to defeat the woman who's going against the magicians. She's a commendable person at least, so don't fret over not seeing her again. The girl you knew was hiding her true self; yet she does it to help her kind. You're already proud of her and you love her like a family member, but with everything that's happened, you'll have to move on and forget about her. She doesn't want you to regret anything. The thing is, she can't go back to being under your roof and working for you. The cymophane returning to you wasn't for nothing, you know."

           The manager of the café was surprised. "You mean... Sayuri didn't receive it from someone she knew? Then..."

           Hiro nodded in confirmation. "That's right. She said it belonged to someone she knew and that person happened to be you, Manager. We didn't know who the cymophane belonged to until Takkun and I visited you. Thanks to you, we were finally able to see her again. But... It wasn't like we were on friendly terms then." He gave an eye smile this time. "I guess the credit should go to Rina since Sayuri seems to have opened up a little whenever she spoked to her."

           Kenshi chuckled. "And with Saionji here, she even acknowledged our married couple." Looking at Riki for a brief second, he laughed some more. "But she totally refused our leader, which of course makes it worthwhile. Hahaha."

           Riki frown with an irritated look on his face. "Laugh all you want while you still can. I'll be giving you something you won't be looking forward to once we get back, you little brat. It's no wonder you never got a girl to keep with you." He smirked sarcastically. "Aren't you the poor old sap of us all?"

           "What are you talking about?" The sniper cocked his head with a dumbfounded expression. "You and Boss are the oldest ones of us all, and Takuto's next in line after me! I'm basically in the middle of everyone, even if you include the women on our team."

           Heh... Takuto narrowed his eyes as he stared at the firefighter.

           Hiro was also watching with a similar facial appearance, but had a dull half-smile to add to it in contrast to the hacker's nonchalant look. Hm.

           The two of them sighed simultaneously in their minds [but not letting out an exhale from their actual bodies]. At least he didn't say anything about Mitsuki's age.

           They then sent signals with their eyes with Takuto being the first to respond.

           That would've been bad. For Kenny, I mean.

           Hiro silently agreed. No kidding. But Mitsuki's feelings would've still been hurt in the process.

           "..." Riki was still looking sternly at Kenshi. Then he turned around. "Let's get going. Boss is waiting for us and Sayuri is going to be at the bar soon. He must have prepared some food for us. Hopefully, nothing's gone cold."

           Mitsuki smiled. The sight of her was as serene as ever when things hadn't gotten to an unpleasant state. "Perhaps the food has already... We can reheat it once we get back. Let's not worry too much about making Atsumu wait."

           Kenshi was still clueless in the current situation. "Did something happen while I was at work this morning?"

           "It's nothing you really need to know about, Kenshi," Rina patted the most oblivious member of the group on the back with her left hand. She glanced at the café owner/manager. "Sayuri will be fine with us. She can take care of herself, no matter what's thrown at her."

           The middle-aged man nodded. "She was capable of saving us while injured. I wonder if she can truly handle being in this foreign place by herself."

           Rina raised her eyebrows. "Oh? That sounds like you don't trust her enough. Sayuri's always like this; she's a bit reckless in some ways, but she's also a magician like Mitsuki-san and I are. We all make foolish mistakes because we're alive. Sayuri probably doesn't want to inform you how she got hurt in the first place, as well. If she decides not to say anything else about it, it's her choice. Do you not think so?"

           "I see you're very supportive towards her," the manager smiled gradually. "Thank you. She must be fortunate to have a friend like yourself, young lady."

           "Not at all," the blonde beauty replied. Her expression was still as collected as usual when she was unprovoked by anything/anyone, especially by a certain someone. "Sayuri's... always been by my side during our high school and college days in Neon. I'm grateful to have her as a companion."

           She looked down and entered her thoughts. Even during my most difficult times, she was placing more effort to cheer me up. And not just her, but everyone else in their own way. I can't abandon those dear to me, not even Sayuri. With the new circumstances we'll be facing with her, I have to ensure her safety as much as I can.

           The café manager gave one last tender smile. "I must really be getting old for my age. I don't even know if I've live half my life yet when I think back at everything that has occurred in it. To think a magician had been by my side all this time, and that one of my greatest customers was a member of the famous Black Foxes. In addition, there are two female magicians aiding this band of thieves. I would have never thought the truth was laid out in front of me like this." Taking a glimpse of the six members who came along that night, he added, "My, you all are an impressive bunch, and so is Sayuri. I'm glad to have had this encounter with you seven tonight. Thank you for saving my life. I shall pray for your success in saving the other magicians, including your own.2 Goodbye and good luck to you all."

           Hiro closed his eyes with a jubilant smile. "Thanks! We'll make sure those evildoers don't get away with their objective. You can count on us!" He saluted the owner of the café. "Teehee! Or should also we say, toodle-loo!"

           The rest of the Black Foxes smiled at the manager and Hiro's last words to each other before heading (teleporting) back to Le Renard Noir with Mitsuki and Rina's help. From now on, they would be moving forward and could not look back on the old things which were peaceful, but the ones that needed to be done for the sake of magic and alteration. That very night was when a new door towards their future was unlocked, and they had decided to step through it without hesitation. It was because of their desire to assist Sayuri and the other magicians in order to save them from a cruel, malicious demise that they took drastic measures into their hands, jumping into an extraordinary frontier awaiting their arrival.

  XXX

 1)        Sayuri used verbal irony in which to invoke situational and dramatic irony, as Mitsuki and Riki cannot have a child together.

2)        In case there is any confusion, the café manager/owner’s words mean to save the magicians, along with Rina and Mitsuki, whom are members of the Black Foxes.

[ghostbustermelanieking]

joy to the world

prompt: mulder and scully get william back as a baby/toddler

They've grown apart in the recent weeks.

The first few days were a whirlwind of time on the run, in the car. Suffocating space, Scully clutching his hand in both of hers over the console. Pressed together under hotel comforters, holding each other tightly. They didn't talk about their son, and it was okay. Their son remains the inevitable ghost between them, even though he is not dead. There are so many dead people between them - the dead are not lost to us, he said, and they aren’t, but William is not dead and is lost. He’s out there somewhere, and the selfish part of Mulder is angry. The selfless part is glad he is safe above all else. But the selfish part wins out too often. He wants to know, wants him back.

They didn’t talk about their son, and then Mulder made the mistake of asking about him one night, when they were sitting on the bed together, curled into each other. Because he wants to know. He immediately wished he hadn’t. The things left unsaid between them hung heavy, but at least they were still void, thoughtless ideas. Now it was real and solidified. They had to face it.

Her jaw had clenched and she huddled back against the hotel pillows, away from him. She let go of his hand. “I can't talk about that,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

“Scully, please…” he tried, his voice thinning out. (He didn't - doesn't - blame her, but he couldn't stop picturing his son. In the hands of cultists. Monsters who want him dead. Blood on the pillow. And the inevitable question: is he really safe?) “I need to know…”

“I can't,” she said fiercely. “I can’t do it, Mulder. Please don’t ask me about him again.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked into the bathroom without another word. He could hear her crying through the door a few minutes later. He didn't try to comfort her. He didn't know what he could say that would comfort her, and a very small part of him resented her. His son. He'd never see his son again. He didn't know what to say.

So they've grown apart, because he asked and she had no answer. Because he left and left and she had no choice. Because she gave away his son while he was gone. There's a chasm, and Mulder has no idea how to repair it. He loves her, needs her. But the resentment is there, in both of them, and he doesn't know how to get past it.

He doesn't know if they can.

---

The Van de Kamps and their temporary son. Now there's some shit that can go on a holiday card.

They (the Van de Kamps) have been the protectors for such a long time that they would've suspected that the kids would start to run together at this point. But they've remembered all of their (temporary) kids by name, age, personality. They are halfway parents, foster parents in the fight for the apocalypse, and they house the experiments, the abductees. The children of abductees.

“I didn't mean to get attached to him,” Lillian Van de Kamp says quietly one night when she's feeding William Scully, another one of their temporary children.

Her husband kisses the top of her head, squeezing her shoulder. “You never do, hon,” he says softly. “But we both do it anyway. I know it's hard.”

They never intended to be this, temporary caretakers for the fighters of a government conspiracy. But that was before Lillian’s cousin, one Susanne Modeski, disappeared off the face of the earth. She reappeared years later and told them her story. What was going on in the government. What they could do to stop it. And the Van de Kamps, quiet Wyoming farmers with boring lives, had agreed.

Lillian and Susanne had been as close as sisters growing up. She couldn't deny her anything. “This is important, Toby,” she'd told her husband the night they'd decided. “We can make a difference in the world. Save people.”

Toby had been sitting on the floor, looking at the papers Susanne had brought. The proof. “Jesus Christ, Lil,” he'd muttered. “What are we getting ourselves into?”

“You don't want to do it?” she asked him from the bed.

“Of course I want to do it,” he sighed. And so they did.

They couldn't do much - they were untrained, better to stay off the radar and out of suspicion. But their isolation worked in their favor. So the Van de Kamp farm became a safe house - for fugitives from the shadowy Syndicate, mainly. A lot of kids who didn’t have anyone to keep them safe. Lillian had guest rooms made over with fluffy beds and toys and books, like she was a favorite aunt with a rotating number of nieces and nephews. (That's how she thought of herself, at least. It helped. It helped a little.)

They hadn't had any guests for a while when Susanne called. Her fiance and his two best friends, she said, had just faked their deaths and dropped off the map. The ones who knew Fox Mulder, of MUFON fame, and whose current whereabouts were unknown. They'd gotten intel that Mulder's son was in constant danger. And that his mother, Dana Scully (of similar MUFON fame), was planning to give him up for adoption to keep him safe. “John doesn't think it's a good idea,” Susanne said. “He says Scully isn't thinking straight - and besides that, it's unlikely that the child will be safer with a family who has no idea how to protect him. Frohike and Langly say they can hack into the adoption agency's  mainframe and put your name on the waiting list and bump you up so you'll be the ones to adopt William. Temporarily, at least. Will you take him?”

Lillian had leaned against the kitchen counter hard, twisting the phone cord around her finger. A baby. She wondered if it'd be any easier to let go if it was a baby. Probably not, she rationalized, but that wasn't going to stop her. “Of course,” she said. “Tell me what we need to do.”

There were certain benefits to being a part of this unofficial project, including guaranteed protection if/when the apocalypse struck. There were also certain painful things involve. Lillian and Toby bought a crib for their temporary baby. Toys, clothes, baby food stocking their fridge. They took on the persona of parents about to adopt a baby boy. (Toby even put on the act of being concerned that the birth mother gave him up, an extra little flair.) And so it went. William Scully moved into their house, and Lillian tried her best to be a good aunt/temporary mother figure.

(“You're not staying here forever,” she told William firmly his first night. “You're going back to your parents eventually.”

“Gaaa,” he'd replied, tugging a handful of her shirt. And that was that.)

The MUFON chat rooms would be buzzing if they knew that Fox Mulder and Dana Scully's son was staying in their house. Agents Mulder and Scully are practically celebrities in the MUFON community, and the lore concerning their son is plentiful. “This kid has got so many powers, I'm surprised he's not Jesus,” Toby had joked when doing research on him, and Lillian had shot him a glare from the doorway. But William isn't the Messiah, or anything resembling it. He's just William. A normal kid like Toby’s sister's kids. A kid who likes to play and listen to old music and crawl around the living room. A kid who might be in danger, but who is still a kid. Lillian is a bit starstruck at first (okay, yes, she's done her research on the famed X-Files), but it fades quickly. They fall into some sort of normal. They've done this a thousand times before, but it doesn't get any easier. It's impossible not to love him, like it's impossible not to love all the other kids that come through. They just… do.

One night, they are watching the news and it is announced that former FBI agent Fox Mulder has been arrested for the murder of a military man. “Oh my God!” Lillian gasps, dropping her knitting.

Toby is bouncing William on his knee. When he sees the screen, he says, “There's your dad, kid,” in an affectionate tone. William gnaws his finger in reply.

“Toby,” Lillian says, part disapproving and part concerned, gathering the tangle of yarn in her lap. Susanne and John Byers had told them that William would only be with them until they could locate Mulder and reunite him with Agent Scully when it was safe. “What does this mean?” If Mulder's arrested - or god forbid, executed - that won't be possible. William would need to stay.

Toby’s silent for a minute. “I don't know, Lil,” he says finally. He strokes William's downy head. “But you know us. We'll go with the flow.”

A week and a half later, the news is announcing Death Row Criminal Fox Mulder's Mysterious Escape From Federal Prison (Former Partner and Mother of His Child, Dana Scully, Also Missing), and Lillian feels a thunk of something between relief and disappointment in the pit of her stomach. “You'll be going home soon,” she whispers to the top of William's head, trying to push aside her tangled emotions.

And sure enough, Susanne is showing up at their doorstep a few weeks later. “John says it's safe,” she tells them in the kitchen, when Toby has William in the high chair and a spoonful of pureed carrots in his mouth. “I've come to take him back to Mulder and Scully.”

William squeals, as if he knows what's going on, and knocks the baby food over. Lillian blinks like she's surprised.

She's used to this, she's packed up more than one kid, made them a sandwich and kissed their heads and sent them into the dark with mysterious Susanne. But William is so little. I didn't mean to get attached to him, she had said, and Toby had said, I know, hon. But she did, of course. She did.

“I'm coming with you,” she says. “I want to make sure he gets to his parents safe.”

Susanne barely bats an eye, tells her to make sure to get the gun. Toby wants to argue, though, follows her into William's room while she packs his things. “Hon, are you sure…” he starts, uncertainly.

“I need to do this, Tobe.” She folds onesie after onesie.

His hand brushes her hip. “Lil, you're not his mother,” he says softly.

Technically, I should be, she thinks darkly. His mother gave him up, even if it was for his safety. Even if she is Dana Scully. She might not want him. I want him, the same way I've wanted every kid before him to stay forever. I want to raise him. I want to knit him mittens.

“I know,” she finally replies. “But I owe him something. I can do this. I can see this through.”

Her husband wraps his arms around her from behind, burying his head in the space between her shoulder blades. “We'll be parents someday,” he mumbles. “And right now, we're making a difference. You know we are. These kids need us.”

She kisses the fleshy spot below his thumb. “I know,” she whispers. She takes his hand and squeezes it. “Go feed William. It'll be a long trip.”

Lillian Van de Kamp packs clothes, toys, his favorite pacifier that his mother sent with him, in a tiny suitcase. She dresses William in the UFO onesie he'd worn his first night here (she has a love of the ironic) and a hat covered in stars. She lets Toby say goodbye at the door and straps the baby into his car seat. I'll take care of you, she thinks. All the way to the end.

---

Lillian knits all the way to Delaware. She's making William mittens. She and Susanne and William stay in several hotel rooms. They stop at the sights briefly, and Lillian holds William up so he can see. He waves his fist excitedly at every single one.

They find Fox Mulder at a convenience store in the middle of the night three days later. He's dressed nothing like his pictures, bearded and worn jacket instead of suit and neat haircut, shoulders slumped. Defeated. Lillian holds William on her hip and watches him from the car. There's your daddy, she thinks, but doesn't say it out loud. She just now wonders if he's a good father.

“This is the best chance we'll have, “ Susanne is whispering, pulling her sleeve. “Let's go…”

Lillian climbs out of the car with the baby on her hip and her purse with a gun inside dangling from one arm. She follows Fox Mulder quietly. He doesn't turn back to look at her, heads straight to his car with a brown paper bag in his arms. Maybe he's used to being followed. “Agent Fox Mulder?” she calls.

The paper bag hits the ground. The cornered man has his gun pulled on her before she can blink twice. But his eyes widen when he turns and sees the baby. His hands tremble.

“Don'tshoot,” Lillian gasps. Her arms tighten around William. “I'm on your side, it's okay. Please don't shoot.”

Mulder wordlessly drops the gun. His eyes are fixated on the baby. William gurgles and tucks a handful of her hair. She sways slightly to try and keep him calm, keeping her eyes on Mulder. “I'm on your side,” she repeats. “I've been keeping your son safe for you.”

Mulder is nearly trembling. “My son?” he repeats softly. A question.

Susanne materializes at her side. “I can vouch for Lil, Agent Mulder,” she says. “She's my cousin.”

Mulder's eyes swivel, somewhat reluctantly, to Susanne. “Susanne Modeski?” he asks, dumbfounded. “What… how the hell?”

“It's a long story,” she says. “I have confirmation you can trust us, though. Old friends.”

Susanne steps closer and passes Mulder a cell phone. Cautiously, he takes it and brings it to his ear, saying, “Hello?” He listens to a minute before laughing tearfully. “Fuck you, I thought you were dead,” he mumbles, a small smile breaking out on his face. “All of you are all right? All of you?” He sighs. “Thank fuck. I thought… I should've known you bastards were behind it all. Scully's going to be so relieved…” His voice cracks and he stops. His eyes are riveted on William once again. He has some look of awe and immense relief on his face.

Mulder talks on the phone for a few more minutes before hanging up and passing the phone back to Susanne. “The guys…” He stops, voice shaking, and clears his throat before starting again. “The guys said we could trust you. They said…” He's addressing Lillian directly now. “They said you and your husband took care of William. That you kept him safe.”

“We did,” Lillian says. She strokes William's head, unable to help herself. “It was our pleasure.”

Mulder's eyes slip closed. “I don't know how to thank you,” he whispers.

“Thank you… for fighting what's right. To keep people safe.” This is the correct answer. And this would be the correct time to hand William over, but she's afraid she won't be able to. That she won’t be able to let go. But Agent Mulder is watching her, almost has his arms held out expectantly. She presses a long kiss to William's head (which is probably impolite, but she doesn't particularly care) before handing him over.

Mulder cradles him gingerly, like he's afraid William will break, but the love is there, visible and immense, on his face. “He's so big,” he mutters lovingly. “I haven't seen him since he was three days old.”

Lillian tries to be selfless. She reaches out and touches William's soft cheek. “Mr. Mulder,” she says. “I know it can't be easy to think about other people taking care of your son. But understand that we would do anything for William, if needed. And if it's ever not safe again… if William or you or William's mother ever need somewhere to go, to hide… know that any of you are welcome at our farm.” She means it. Sincerely.

Mulder presses his nose into his son's head and thanks her again. He's still trembling, but he holds his son close. William looks slightly confused, but not uncomfortable. He pats his father's shoulder with a tiny hand. Lillian tries not to cry.

Susanne quickly transfers the suitcases to Mulder's car, and Lillian moves the car seat and demonstrates to Mulder how to strap him in. Mulder looks embarrassed at his parental incompetence. “His mother will know how…” he explains sheepishly. “I'll get better. I want to do right by him.”

“I know you do,” Lillian says. She thinks she finally feels better about leaving William. He'll be in good hands.

Mulder checks on William about ten times before shaking Susanne’s and Lillian’s hands. “I don't know how to thank you,” he keeps saying.

“John says that they'll be in touch,” Susanne says. Her engagement ring glints in the dim streetlamps. “He says there's things to discuss, later. Right now you and Scully need to get to safety.”

“Right, right,” Mulder says. He checks on William one more time before climbing into the front seat and pulling away. Lillian suddenly notices he forgot his groceries.

She goes back to knitting in the car. Something for the next kid that will grace her doorstep. She will move on, eventually. But still, tears sting the corner of her eyes.

Susanne’s phone rings and she talks as she drives. Lillian tries not to listen. Knit one purl two. “Got another kid for you, Lil,” Susanne says when she hangs up. “Permanent this time.”

Lillian’s heart flutters in her chest. “Permanent?” she whispers, not daring to hope.

“Older kid named Gibson Praise. You've probably heard of him - the chess prodigy who can read minds. His parents have no interest in him, and he needs a stable home. I told John we had a safe place for him.”

A permanent resident. An older kid, sure, but one who might not have to leave in the middle of the night. Someone else to help. Someone they might could be parents to. It's something.

Lillian smiles broadly, yarn tangling around her fingers. “Of course. Of course you do.”

---

Mulder drives probably more careful than he's ever driven in his life. He looks constantly back at William, who seems content strapped into his car seat. Not scared. Mulder, however, is terrified. Terrified of hurting his son. Terrified of fucking this up. Terrified that someone will come to take him away from them. He doesn’t think he could handle losing his son again.

His hands shake the entire way back to the hotel, and they don't quite stop until he gets out of the car and rounds it to scoop William up into his arms. The kid looks slightly suspicious, but exhaustion outweighs it and he rests his head against Mulder's shoulder wearily. Mulder kisses his small furrowed forehead. “Your mom's right inside,” he whispers.

“Maaaa.”

“Uh-huh. She's missed you.” He rubs William's little back. “I've missed you, too, buddy,” he whispers. “So much.” William tips his head onto Mulder's collarbone and looks at up with Scully's bright blue eyes. Mulder kisses him again before turning towards the shabby hotel room.

Scully is asleep in a tangle of blankets when he gets in, dark hair just barely visible over the dusty comforter. “Scully,” Mulder whispers, trying not to scare William. “Hey, Scully, it's me.”

“Mmf,” she mutters, not looking up. “Not now, Mulder. I'm exhausted.”

“Scully…” he tries.

“I can't do this right now!” Her voice snaps across the room, loud and angry, and William jolts in surprise, eyes wide. He whimpers, loud enough to hear, and Scully freezes. Mulder can't see her face, but he can tell she's awake. Knows she's heard the sound and recognized it. Their son.

“Scully,” he says again, softer. “I've got William here with me.”

The comforter moves, Scully shoving it aside and struggling to sit up. “William?” she whispers tearfully, searching the room, eyes full of terror.

Mulder approaches the bed carefully. “William,” he confirms. “He's right here, Scully, he's just fine.”

She sniffles, sitting up on the bed. Her eyes are fixed on William, but she makes no move to take him. “How?” she whispers. “Mulder, what…”

“His guardians were allies of ours. Cousin of Susanne Modeski, remember her, Scully… Scully, the Gunmen are alive. I talked to them.” She covers her mouth with one hand, a tear trickling down her cheek. “They kept him safe for us,” Mulder says softly. “And then they brought him here.”

Scully reaches for him all at once and Mulder shifts him forward. William still looks confused for a split second before he recognizes her - she's dyed her hair, but underneath it all she is still Scully, still his mother - and he eagerly snuggles into her. Scully is crying, about two steps away from hysterical, and hugging him tightly. She kisses him again and again, whispering his name to the top of his head: “William, William, William…”

“Mama,” William says, tugging Scully's t-shirt in his tiny fist. “Mamama…”

Scully sniffles, pressing her nose to his head. “Scully,” Mulder whispers, touching her hair. “Scully…” He leans in to kiss her forehead, cupping William's head in his palm. (He can't believe they're both here.) “Was that… were those… was that his first word?”

Scully sniffles again. “It's not his first word,” she whispers, rocking William. The mattress ripples with their motions. “He's just babbling… and whether it is or it isn't, I wouldn't know, Mulder, because I haven't seen him for months… I gave him away. God. I gave him away.”

He's crying, too, his eyes and nose burning. “Shh,” he tries to soothe, wrapping his arms around them both. Scully tucks her head into the crook of his neck, still clutching William tightly, and William leans back into his chest with ease. “It's okay, Scully,” he whispers.

She's shaking with the force of her sobs. “Don't you realize, Mulder, that if the, the Gunmen or whoever hadn't interfered that we never would've seen him again? Our son. And it's my fault… I sent him away, my god.” A prayer to God or to William, he isn't sure. But she is asking forgiveness either way.

“You just wanted to keep him safe,” Mulder whispers. William's little nose is turned into his chest, and the small contact makes him want to shatter. He sniffles. “You can't… can't fault yourself for that.”  

“I regretted it,” Scully says. Her shoulders tremble under his arms. “As soon as that social worker took him away, I regretted it… I wanted to tell her to come back, that I'd changed my mind…”

“I know, I know.” He cups the back of her head, stroking her hair with his thumbs.

“You resented me,” she mumbles. “You blamed me, I know you did.”

It's true. He doesn't want to say it, but it's true. “He's here now,” he says instead.

“So it's easy for you to forgive me because you don't have to face what I did.”

“I would've forgiven you either way,” he says, and he would've. He would've, eventually - maybe because he needed her and he didn't have a choice, but he would've. “It was as much my fault as yours. I left you. I left you. You didn't have a choice. We both fucked up, but it's in the past. We can't change it. And he's here now. What happened before doesn't matter because he's here and he's just fine.” He pulls back a little bit to kiss the top of William's head. His tears dot his son's downy hair. “He's perfect, Scully. Look what we did.” Mulder thumbs a tear away from the corner of her eye.

“He's so perfect,” Scully whispers. “I never should've let him go.”

“It's okay.” He strokes her cheek. “It's over now. We can put it behind us and move on.”

“Mulder…”

“I love you.” He kisses her, slowly, on the mouth, and then William again on the top of the head. “I forgive you. William forgives you. It's okay.”

Scully sniffles, kisses him before lowering her face back to William's head. “I'm so sorry, baby,” she whispers. “I'm so, so sorry.”

“Mama,” says William, patting her face. Scully laughs a tear-choked laugh and scoots backwards on the bed to lean against the pillows. Mulder crawls in beside her, wrapping his arms back around her. Scully leans into him. He holds her and she holds their son and they sit there like that for a long, long time.

William dozes off sweetly on his mother's chest, little fingers tangled into her hair. Scully falls asleep, too, her head lolling against Mulder's shoulder. Mulder arranges the blankets over them. It's one of the more peaceful moments in his life. And the happiest - definitely one of the happiest. He loves them both so much it hurts. It seems, in the moment, like the entire world, right here in this hotel room. His whole family.

It was hard to decide how to portray the Van de Kamps here, since I wanted to do it in a way that was fair to them. Making them allies who were keeping William safe seemed like the smartest route. It was interesting to explore this alternative possibility and characterize the VDKs as such.

[dirtdiggersanddinosaurs]

#Press Trip

Just So 2019 will go down in history, maybe because it was the 10th birthday of the now well established festival, but mainly because it was the year of ALL THE MUD! It certainly was NOT for the faint hearted! I‘ll quickly explain that this was our first time at Just So…and, did the conditions put us off? Did they heck! I’m not gonna lie, it made getting around the site with a trolley and a baby in a stroller much much harder, but we got a free workout (I used muscles I didn’t know I had!), and the boys absolutely loved doing their best ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ impressions squelching through the deep oozy mud!

In fact, from what I saw there were A LOT of mud loving littles about. I might suggest to organisers Wild Rumpus that from now on they create a mud pit area regardless of the weather so that we can chuck the kids in while us parents relax nearby on dry land!

We had an absolutely amazing weekend despite [or maybe because of] the mud. Full of magic, fun and laughter. Just So Festival really is the perfect place to spend some quality time together as a family.

These were our favourite muddy moments:

Dressing Up and Letting Go

We decided to go big or go home and threw ourselves into the craziness of the Just So tribal tournament, we were all kitted out as a shimmering shoal of five fish – read how I made our costumes here. For those of you planning a Just So adventure, I highly recommend dressing up letting go of your inhibitions.

Seeing herds of stags, swarms of bees and some roarsome lions strolling around the aptly named Spellbound Forest, really is truly magical. A sight you’ll honestly never forget, and your photos will look absolutely amazing too!

Feeding the fish

Eli small fry

It was like being part of a real life fairytale and really helped us to see the wonder of the weekend through our childrens eyes. Stanley really got involved and was instantly drawn to other fishy families, we enjoyed a game of Giant Guess Who with some fellow fish team mates and won a golden pebble in a wager! Woo hoo!

The humongous Tribal Scoreboard situated on The Village Green is updated throughout the weekend as golden pebbles are handed in to Tribal leaders and counted.

Keeping Score!

We earned pebbles for our costumes, picking up somebody elses litter when the wind blew it away, for the Guess Who game, and then for ingenious costume repairmanship using duck tape – note to self: need to vastly improve sewing skills! I’m still not sure if there are any hard and fast rules on how to earn pebbles but it’s certainly fun trying.

Meeting our Tribal leader blub blub blub!

Stanley really was rooting for the fish team to win and was cheering us on all weekend, he also got involved in some lighthearted taunting of the other teams too. We came 5th overall, the Foxes bagged 1st place this year! I think it teaches children a great lesson about competition, teamwork, loyalty and doing your best.

Getting Our Groove On

One of the things we all agreed on when we looked at the programme was that we wanted to take in as much live music as possible. We joyfully discovered at Timber Festival that we have two little groovers on our hands.

My little fish swimming at High Seas

The Footlights stage was at High Seas and after a true trek to get there via the mud (it was at it’s worst at this point), a toilet stop, more mud, then skirting around the field with the trolley, and a bit more mud we finally set up our ‘base’. After all that effort it made sense to stay put for a bit and it was a great excuse to enjoy the music, we were also reasonably close to a bar and some yummy food vendors – perfect!

The Baghdaddies’ exuberant and rampant brand of world music is an exhilarating cocktail of Balkan melodies, ska and latin grooves and sizzling brass played with furious energy and theatrical humour, making them as unforgettable on stage as they are when performing as wandering brass troubadours. They take themselves incredibly seriously so you don’t have to…

The Baghdaddies blew us away, they got everybody (including us) up on their feet and dancing! The lyrics are also hilarious, and you cant help but smile. It’s pure feel good music!

We also caught Harry Bird & The Rubber Wellies who again provided a very toe tapping mix of folk inspired sea shanties, Mexican rancheras and reggae. And finally Mr. Tea & The Minions for some gypsy flavoured party music. Not your average playlist eh?

One of the Baghdaddies songs included the line ‘Have a Tequila son’ which Eli took literally!

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, YES mud does make dancing in a field absolutely 100% more enjoyable if your aged 5 and 2!

We also tried out the silent disco hosted by Our Kids Social in the Flamingo Lounge. My boys weren’t sure at first and found it all a bit odd, but they soon got into the swing of it for a bit of oops upside your head! There was a parents vs kids dance off battle that got very animated – think Dadtastic air guitar moves on one side with some fierce flossing on the other. Great fun!

And finally, it was a bit of a surprise when my cautious 5 year old wanted to try out Circus Swing! So on Sunday we had a lesson in swing dancing that included some neat circus tricks too. I only dropped him on his head once while he did the no hands cartwheel over my legs, so I’m calling that a win!

I love the fact that Stanley was willing to try out new things, James has experienced a silent disco at the ripe old age of 2 and that we all got to listen to some excellent live music.

Singing Along

Watching David Gibb perform in the natural amphitheatre of the Woodland Theatre on with Stanley was my highlight of the weekend. He’s not a big fan of sitting still but the combination of catchy tunes, audience participation and easy to remember lyrics meant that we made it through the entire performance with big smiles on our faces.

We learned all about bats, discovered that we (and the rest of the audience) couldn’t count to five, became roses and showed off our muscles. Stanley also became a huge fan of Teddy at the Disco and has been singing it on repeat ever since. We sat next to our good friends over at Typical Mummy (there’s nothing like sharing a plastic poncho to sit on, to really cement a friendship) and we were all happily singing along together.

It was during this performance that I experienced what I’ll always remember as the Just So spirit, a real sense of camaraderie. The steep incline of the Woodland Theatre plus wet ground made it more than a bit treacherous underfoot. Getting in and out was no easy task and to this purpose I saw children being passed along rows, hands and arms being offered to help steady balance and people sharing seating arrangements to ensure everyone had a great time. There was a real sense of we’re in this togetherness, the mud was not going to stop anyone having fun!

I’m happy to say we now have David’s new album Rolling down the Road (released 23rd August) winging it’s way to us (order yours here) and also Climb that Tree for our Teddy at the Disco fix – my car journeys are never going to be the same again!

Slowing Down

In a way the conditions did us a favour, it made us really think about what we wanted to see and do. Most of Saturday was spent in and around High Seas and the nearby Roll Up Roll Up simply due to logistics, we took in the music as I’ve previously mentioned but we also watched Clown about Town which thoroughly entertained the boys and only mildly terrified me (she was absolutely lovely but I’m not a fan of clowns!)

A clown on the run, wanted for a crime she didn’t commit. In trying to prove her innocence, she finds that the silver lining is daring to be yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. A joyous celebration of what it is to be human with slap-stick comedy, puppets and silly dancing!

Even I admit that the overly theatrical blood scenes (not as bad as it sounds, honest!) were really funny! This then inspired Daddy and the boys to wade over to the big top to try their hand at some circus skills while I stayed with a snoozing Eli.

Again, after watching David Gibb in the Woodland Theatre we ambled to The Spellbound Forest via the Corn Shack and settled in to watch our old favourites at Campfire Stories. I’d been eyeing up the huge corn cobs all weekend and me and Stan treated ourselves on Sunday – they were absolutely delicious!

We love Ian Douglas and have been lucky enough to sit and listen to his stories at several different events so he was an easy and relaxing watch while we nibbled away.

Then it was onto our crazy haired friend Professor Pumpy-Knickers Pumpernickel who we first encountered at Timber Festival. Once again he was thoroughly entertaining, and made the forest come alive with explosive science!

Embracing the Eccentricity

Just So proved to be just as bonkers as we were expecting – we’ve experienced nothing else like it! One thing we definitely wanted to catch was the lantern parade on Saturday evening. We didn’t make a lantern at the workshop as we’d heard that it gets very busy but we were armed with our Jelly fish umbrellas which lit up and looked the part.

Well, it’s hard to describe the spectacle that was the lantern parade, there was a clog wearing lady singing and dancing with some enormous Ghost Caribou. Then, the Baghdaddies arrived, the Caribou suddenly lit up and off we went, following the craziness towards Footlights!

Over the weekend we also bumped into the Dream Antelopes, Boudicca in her chariot (the moving puppet/sculpture horse was AMAZING) and got soaked as water pistol wielding passengers sped past in Vesaqua, shooting at us as they went. What’s Vesaqua? It’s a bathtub on wheels attached to a 1966 Vespa of course!

Vesaqua

Anything We Would Change?

The weather played such a huge part this year that I’m not sure what a ‘normal’ Just So looks and feels like. I would have liked a few more seating areas – we took chairs luckily, but pulling them around in the trolley was really hard work because of the ground conditions. I’m assuming that there are usually more hay bales dotted about to perch on but again due to the weather these were probably repurposed as ground cover on the worst affected areas.

The golden pebbles – are still a complete mystery to us! I don’t know who can give them out, or what they can be earned for! Having said that I’m not sure if a full explanation of this via the programme or a information board would take the magic away? It felt like a secret that you had to learn about from fellow more experienced Just So’ers…but maybe that’s the point, to get people talking and build a community of seasoned Just So families? I will say this – once you’ve earned one it quickly becomes a quest to get more, it’s so addictive!

And Finally…

There you have it, if you want to let go of the stresses of everyday life then this is the festival for you. You can completely immerse yourself in a bubble of make believe for an entire weekend. Got kids? Then it’s a super family friendly festival (mud aside), it has everything to entertain little ones and baby changing, bathing and quiet areas too. We can’t wait for next year!

Earlybird tickets for Just So Festival 2020 (21/22/23 August 2020) will be available from TODAY (Friday 30th August). Visit the Just So Festival website to grab yours.

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the team at Wild Rumpus, the volunteers and site staff who when faced with almost biblical conditions on Friday went the extra mile to ensure people got on and off the site safely and pushed cars out of the mud, all with a smile on their faces.

Disclosure: we were invited to attend Just So Festival by Wild Rumpus as part of their Press Team. Our weekend tickets were gifted in exchange for a review of our experience and promotion across my social media channels. All opinions are my own. All images and media are my own.

Five Go to Just So! 2019 Festival Review #Press Trip Just So 2019 will go down in history, maybe because it was the 10th birthday of the now well established festival, but mainly because it was the year of…

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home Edition 4/7/20 – ENDINGS BEGINNINGS, ABE and More (Sorry. No MY SPY.)

Boooooo … this week would have been when the Tribeca Film Festival was supposed to start, but I barely had a chance to go through the movies that were gonna play there when COVID-19 hit, and it was quickly cancelled. Apparently, they’re doing some sort of online festival this week, but apparently, they decided to wait until Friday afternoon to tell press who had already applied that they needed to reapply by Monday morning. If you didn’t receive or see this important Email, and I didn’t, then you were basically fucked in terms of covering the festival. That being said, this will be only the second time in 17 years that I didn’t cover Tribeca, and since they won’t even respond to Emails trying to fix this, I guess that means we’re done here. 

This was also the week when, at one point, Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour was supposed to open but I saw it last week via screener and liked it more than the first movie. I tweeted about it here:

https://twitter.com/EDouglasWW/status/1248685996612489217

Of course, STX’s My Spy was gonna open this weekend after many delays and that now will be streaming on Amazon instead, so that’s just the way things seem to be going. Who knows when any of us will have any sort of box office to report on, especially with AMC filing for bankruptcy and possibly not making it until studios decide to release movies theatrically again? (The earliest possibility seems to be July at this point.)

This week’s Featured Movie is Drake Doremus’ new film ENDINGS, BEGINNINGS (Samuel Goldwyn), starring Shailene Woodley, who is quite fantastic as Daphne, a thirty-something L.A. woman – and honestly, having interviewed Woodley for Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, I have just as hard a time fathoming that she’s even closer to her 30s as I did believing 34-year-old Alexandra Daddario as someone in her 20s in last week’s We Summon the Darkness. Regardless, Daphne is trying to get over a heartbreaking break-up with a man who was also her boss, and she quickly gets into relationships with two men, Jack and Frank, played by Jamie Dornan and Sebastian Stan, who also happen to be friends, creating a tough love triangle.

The fact that Doremus opened this film with the Cocteau Twins was a good sign, and I do have to say that the music throughout the film is fantastic, but really, it’s more about Woodley and the fact that Doremus is returning to a more improvised style of filmmaking ala his earlier film, Like Crazy, which was one of my favorites. I do think that Woodley’s talent elevates her performance well above her male co-stars, who at times, frankly, I couldn’t keep track of which was which. (Dornan’s Irish accent gave it away most of the time.) But I liked how Doremus explores one woman trying to make decisions about her life and relationships, showing how hard it is to do that sometimes.

Endings, Beginnings is on Digital on Friday and then On Demand starting May 1. I honestly don’t know the difference between the two. I probably should figure it out, huh?

Another movie I quite enjoyed that’s on Demand and Digital this Friday is Brazilian documentarian Fernando Grostein Andrade’s first narrative feature, the family comedy ABE (Blue Fox Entertainment), starring Noah Schnapp (from Stranger Things), Seu Jorge, Mark Margolis and Dagmara Dominczyck. Schnapp plays 12-year-old Abe, a Brooklyn ‘tween and a diehard foodie with his own blog and desires to be a chef. His main goal in the year leading up to his Bar Mitzvah is to cook the perfect meal to bring his half-Jewish and half-Palestinian family together in harmony. He gets some helping learning the ropes from Seu Jorge as a Brazilian food cart chef who takes under his wing, but Abe has his work cut out for him as his grandparents and other relatives can never agree on anything.

Listen, this is a pretty simple premise but that helps make Andrade’s film so much easier to enjoy.  I feel that this is a movie that probably would have done quite well on the film festival circuit (when there was one) since it’s a crowd-pleasing film that gives a very different look into the Israel-Palestine conflict from a Brazilian outsider, as well as in the guise of a warm non-confrontational coming-of-age film that should appeal greatly to foodies. I actually liked Schnapp in this role, mainly because he’s surrounded by such solid actors, including one of my personal faves, Mark Margolis, as his Israeli grandfather. Abe is the type of movie that may have gone completely overlooked in any other environment but actually keeps your attention through its warmth and pleasing storytelling that can bring those going through these hard times a smile or two. It’s not exactly reinventing the wheel or redefining “cinema” but it’s a good film to watch with the family you may now be cooped up with. (Probably for kids around Abe’s age so 11 and up?)

Next up is That Evening Sun director Scott Teems’ THE QUARRY (Lionsgate), a thriller based on Damon Galgut’s novel, starring Shea Whigham as a drifter who kills a travelling preacher and takes his place in a smalltown while being under suspicion of the police chief, played by Michael Shannon. The movie also stars Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno, and with those three alone, I really wanted to like this movie, but it was really dull and never really got me interested in any of the characters, which is especially a shame since Whigham is such a good actor, but this movie just didn’t do anything for me… at all.

Available now via VOD and on DVD/BluRay on April 28 is Tyler Cornack’s bizarre comedic (?) thriller BUTT BOY (Epic Pictures) -- co-written, directed and starring Cornack. To be honest, it’s the type of movie that is just too weird for its own good. I have to be honest that the movie’s title scared me, and if I read the actual premise beforehand, I might have been even more bothered about watching it then I was already just from the title. Okay, so Cornack plays Chip Gutchel, a married IT worker who becomes obsessed with anal probing after a proctology exam. A dog disappeared and then a baby but years later, a child disappears from Chip’s job, and the detective on the case (Tyler Rice), who is also being sponsored by Gutchel in AA, suspects that the missing child has gone up Gutchel’s … well, I don’t have to spell it out. This is one of those WHAT THE HOLY FUCK movies like The Greasy Strangler and Lemon that I immediately wondered (and apologies to the podcast of the same name) “How did this movie get made?!” While I felt the same way about the premise for the recent Swallow when I first learned about it, that movie was actually really good.  I knew as soon as it became obvious what was happening that I had absolutely zero need to watch a movie about a guy who is able to suck things up his own ass. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a competently-made genre film but as it became clearer and clearer where it was going, I was getting more and more queasy about the whole concept. So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend this to my worst enemy, and I’m guessing most people will feel the same but there’s a lot of boredom out there, so who knows?

Wow, that’s it? Four movies? Sheesh…

STREAMING AND CABLE

At this point, it almost seems silly to break this column down into sections ‘cause everything is gonna hit your computer and/or TV sets until theaters finally reopen. Note: I haven’t seen any of the movies or series below.

Streaming on FX on Hulu Wednesday (today!) is the new mini-series Mrs. America, starring Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly, “the sweetheart of the silent majority,” a woman who is fighting back against women like Gloria Steinem (played by Rose Byrne!) and others who were pushing for the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) in the 70’s. The amazing cast includes Margo Martindale, Uzo Aduba, Elizabeth Banks, Tracey Ullman, “sweetheart of FX” Sarah Paulson, Melanie Lynskey and yes, there is at least one man, played by John Slattery. The showrunner is Dahvi Waller from Mad Men, too, so this should be an entertaining watch, and I’m definitely on board.

Lots of stuff on Netflix this week but not necessarily anything that’s been on my radar, like the new docu-series, The Innocence Files, which is exec. produced and directed by a number of impressive filmmakers like Liz Garbus, Alex Gibney and Roger Ross Williams. Debuting on Wednesday (today!), it looks eight cases of wrongful conviction and what the Innocence Project has done to try to get their cases overturned. This is a subject that has really interested me, although I liked last year’s Brian Banks more than Just Mercy.  The Innocence Project is just such an amazing organization with what they’re doing to help those who can’t help themselves go up against the deeply injust criminal justice system, so this is definitely one I’ll be watching.

There are a few new features on Netflix on Friday, none of which I’ve seen but hopefully will be enticing viewing. The three new ones include the German film, Rising High, written and directed by Cüneyt Kaya, starring David Kross (not the comedian) as Viktor Stein and Gerry Falkand as Frederick Lau, two real estate moguls who get sucked into their wealth by defrauding the bank, losing sight of reality.

There’s also the French crime film, Earth and Blood (La Terre et Le Sange), from filmmaker Julien Leclerq about a sawmill owner named Saïd (Sami Bouajila) and his 18 year old daughter Sarah (Sofia Lesaffre) trying to sell his factory, not realizing that one of his apprentices hid cocaine in there, forcing father and daughter to face tough gangsters who want their drugs back.

Brazilian superstar Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas from Knives Out star in Greg Barker’s Sergio, a film about Sergio Viera de Mello, the UN diplomat who is ready to resign and spend time with his wife before he’s assigned to a mission in Baghdad just as the US invasion of 2003, and he’s crushed under a wall when a bomb blasts the UN headquarters.

Amazon Studios will be debuting Tayarisha Poe’s debut feature, SELAH AND THE SPADES, on Amazon Prime Video Friday. It takes place at Haldwell, an elite Pennsylvania board school run by five factions. It stars Lovie Simone as 17-year-old Selah Summer, who runs the most dominant group, the Spades, who caters to supply students with alcohol and pills. As tension builds between the factions, Selah’s right hand BFF Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) has a new boyfriend, so Selah needs to find a new protégé.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[julianpford1-blog]

Time in Clowning

Disclaimer notice: this blog will contain my clowning development process rather than a day to day blog and also please note that the sessions are not in exact order. 

Term one.

Session one: On this day I am quite nervous to be in clowning because I only know Calum form the week before and I don't know any else so I come in my shorts and t shirt because I wasn't sure if we were going to get physical or anything so waiting by the door for Hilary (which she came late say 10 minutes), so Hilary arrives and we start off with chairs in a circle and we say our names so we get to know one another, we do that and start with a game of chairs (no better name that I can think of) where we have to not allow the chosen player a chair to sit on by sitting on them now we are in a small room and there I say nearly 20 of us (give or take) and I am just siting there trying to remember everybody’s name, then we had to partner up and designate one person A and/or B, A tells B what’s in the (which could be anything) and B has to ask “what is in the bag?” which was mad trying to make up (on the spot). Then we played Name tag where one is first chosen to tag another person, that person being approached can call out a name (simply someone in the classroom) and then that called person is it so on and so forth now I didn't get called out or touched (because mainly for touching quick in a small room and packed for being called out just didn't). now at the end of the session we were given an assessment sheet for what dates are happening and terms off and whatnot,.

Session two:  Now I have become quite ok with people names (minus a couple of them) we have moved from cad111 (the small room form session one) to cad107 (a nicely space room) and we start with musical chairs simple rules really walk around the chairs (which are placed around the room facing different directions) and quickly sit on them when the music stops (which Hilary was in charge of) we had to listen out for the music because it did at times go quiet whether the music was meant to be quiet or Hilary was fiddling with the sound, now at one point the music stops and I rush over to a nearby chair because another classmate Laura rushes behind “my chair” and pulls the chair away from me and I just fell down thankfully I didn't up with a sore ass or a sore cheek. so the games are over and Hilary pulls out a couple of white screens and she wants us to pop out from behind the screens and stand natural no fidgeting or picking our noses, so one by one went up and we had a giggle or two whereas  some other like jack got some laughs, when I got up and popped out of the screens got some giggles. Before we went home or another lesson we decided to do 11am instead doing 9am because we wanted our clowns fresh and out of bed. 

Session Three: We are back in ca111 for today (because I think 107 was booked before Hilary) we have a small class today (probably the others had other classes) which is great because we got a better chance to show off our clowns. So we played tag: fox and rabbit edition we had to partner up with another person, the class linked arms which only left two people without partners they became the fox and rabbit so what the rabbit had to do was run away from the fox and don't get tagged by the fox or else the rabbit becomes the fox (simple enough) but the rabbit can stop being the rabbit by linking arms with the linked people and the person on the opposite side is the new rabbit (or fox when we changed up the rules here and there). We pulled up chairs and a pair of screens to we played (I’m calling it escape) in which where there 4 players 2 prisoners, 2 guards now the guards not only keep the prisoners on their chairs by tapping their shoulders gently, they also have to wink to the opposite prisoner to signal the prisoner that they can run away to freedom, when the prisoner is free they have to say something funny to the audience for instance I escaped and said “how many Mexicans do it take to escape? Juan” no laughs just smirks. any way after this we watched TV, more specifically examples of clowns where be it silent movie or looking at duets/solos and also looking at Hilary made page with our blogs on it. 

Session Four: In ca111 (again) we play name tag and when another classmate came for me I couldn't for the life of me say a name so I don't get tagged but I did so I let a growl/grunt of disbelief which made it quite like a horror movie with the victim running away without letting the other characters knowing where I am or what I am doing, so meh. later on in the lesson we again have another look at the clowns (mostly for the others who were not in the session before). 

We do have a session before we break up for Christmas but it was a mostly for last laughs before we get home. 

Term Two.

Session one: We return form a restful Christmas and we are preparing for the final Clown performance and we are in room cab218 so Hilary welcomes us back with a game of keepy upies where we have to keep a ball up in the air and never letting touching it the floor while counting together (which we couldn't do properly) and we changed the rules like can only touch it once (though can touch it again after someone else has touched it) or only can use anything else expect our hands. Then we had a splash at name tag which again repeated term one Session fours of unable to communicate due to being approached by the tagger (good times), so  Hilary reminds us when the performance (when & where) is happening which was 214 the same room we are in today. So we got our clown costumes from the theatre cupboard. I grabbed a tweed coat alongside a straw hat (the hat brought me memories of when I was farmer MacDonald in Bridgend college Pantomime where I was reminded by the audience which were a bunch of kids that was I BALD!) now we put on our costumes where Hilary suggested I’d take off my trousers to expose my underwear but keep my shoes on and have a belt on around my waist (shirt can be anything as long it didn't draw attention form my legs.

That be me on the left side with the tweed coat and no trousers.

Session Two: We have a guest lecturer for this session and next session and he taught us how to trip over ourselves safe and yet comically and this trick was awkward for because I don't trip over myself, I only trip up the stairs if I cock my first step or if I cock my running on accident so this was hard for me to do especially when you trying to make it natural without time the bloody trip. the lecturer was lovely so it would have been nice to have him again.

Session three: We have the guest lecturer again and this time we have more classmates (because they again have other commitments) now we doing stage punching, slapping and then head-butting, He brakes us up into partners so I’m with Calum and we just have to show a simple scene using tripping and stage punching/slapping/head-butting which was quite hilarious because I haven't quite got the head-butting down because I would butt the upper shoulder rather than the lower shoulder where your head needs to be to fool the audience .

Session four: We get our costumes on and have to pop out of the screens and stand neutral and see if we get an reaction out of the audience and go off. Hilary has assigned me in with Martin and Ericka because we were the only three without an group so I  am happy.

We have broken up for Easter holidays which was for 2 weeks and a half give or take. So I will continue the rest of the blog as term two.

Session five: We are in the zen room which is cab403 now we come on stage with a pair of screens and a door and the door handles are easy to take off so there's comedy. So when we finished with the door we showed off our performance at 1 o’clock. So we explain that we don't have anything to show her because we haven't been able to get in contact or rehearse over the holidays she understood and basically helped us what to do. We went over what we did with Hilary and wrote the order.

Rehearsal one: we came in uni. at one and waited martin to finish his stpf which took longer than martin expected so when that was over and done with we went up to the Zen room and practise our piece and martin added a part where we three have a dance off (of sorts) and have the ending with me and martin running after each other over who shall wear the hat running with the benny hill song on.

Performance Day: On Performance day we have to come in for 9am, set up and start at 9.45 we were the second group to show off our performance. when the first group finished we’d set up for ours with a stool in the middle. while setting up I put the door away and almost fell over one of the screens leg wheels (is what I'm calling them) the show hasn't even started yet. We come to the end of the last of the group and ended with shaving cream pie in our faces, first for me was pied into the elbow and then pied in the face by Hilary. Did say to her after washing off the shaving cream “don't you cream me again”. Nadia took a couple of shots of all our shows while Hilary recorded them.

here is my group photo.

To end the day we played musical chairs and I was the DJ.

I’d say that I was a in the moment clown rather than a 24/7 clown..

[newstfionline]

For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.

Farhad Manjoo, NY Times, March 7, 2018

I first got news of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., via an alert on my watch. Even though I had turned off news notifications months ago, the biggest news still somehow finds a way to slip through.

But for much of the next 24 hours after that alert, I heard almost nothing about the shooting.

There was a lot I was glad to miss. For instance, I didn’t see the false claims--possibly amplified by propaganda bots--that the killer was a leftist, an anarchist, a member of ISIS and perhaps just one of multiple shooters. I missed the Fox News report tying him to Syrian resistance groups even before his name had been released. I also didn’t see the claim by Senator Bernie Sanders and other liberals on Twitter that the massacre had been the 18th school shooting of the year, which wasn’t true.

Instead, the day after the shooting, a friendly person I’ve never met dropped off three newspapers at my front door. That morning, I spent maybe 40 minutes poring over the horror of the shooting and a million other things the newspapers had to tell me.

Not only had I spent less time with the story than if I had followed along as it unfolded online, I was better informed, too. Because I had avoided the innocent mistakes--and the more malicious misdirection--that had pervaded the first hours after the shooting, my first experience of the news was an accurate account of the actual events of the day.

This has been my life for nearly two months. In January, after the breaking-newsiest year in recent memory, I decided to travel back in time. I turned off my digital news notifications, unplugged from Twitter and other social networks, and subscribed to home delivery of three print newspapers--The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle--plus a weekly newsmagazine, The Economist.

I have spent most days since then getting the news mainly from print, though my self-imposed asceticism allowed for podcasts, email newsletters and long-form nonfiction (books and magazine articles). Basically, I was trying to slow-jam the news--I still wanted to be informed, but was looking to formats that prized depth and accuracy over speed.

It has been life changing. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.

Now I am not just less anxious and less addicted to the news, I am more widely informed (though there are some blind spots). And I’m embarrassed about how much free time I have--in two months, I managed to read half a dozen books, took up pottery and (I think) became a more attentive husband and father.

Most of all, I realized my personal role as a consumer of news in our broken digital news environment.

We have spent much of the past few years discovering that the digitization of news is ruining how we collectively process information. Technology allows us to burrow into echo chambers, exacerbating misinformation and polarization and softening up society for propaganda. With artificial intelligence making audio and video as easy to fake as text, we’re entering a hall-of-mirrors dystopia, what some are calling an “information apocalypse.” And we’re all looking to the government and to Facebook for a fix.

But don’t you and I also have a part to play? Getting news only from print newspapers may be extreme and probably not for everyone. But the experiment taught me several lessons about the pitfalls of digital news and how to avoid them.

I distilled those lessons into three short instructions, the way the writer Michael Pollan once boiled down nutrition advice: Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social.

Get news. I know what you’re thinking: Listening to a Times writer extol the virtues of print is like taking breakfast suggestions from Count Chocula. You may also wonder if I am preaching to the choir; doesn’t everyone reading this story already appreciate print?

Probably not. The Times has about 3.6 million paying subscribers, but about three-quarters of them pay for just the digital version. During the 2016 election, fewer than 3 percent of Americans cited print as their most important source of campaign news; for people under 30, print was their least important source.

I’m nearly 40, but I’m no different. Though I have closely followed the news since I was a kid, I always liked my news on a screen, available at the touch of a button. Even with this experiment, I found much to hate about print. The pages are too big, the type too small, the ink too messy, and compared with a smartphone, a newspaper is more of a hassle to consult on the go.

Print also presents a narrower mix of ideas than you find online. You can’t get BuzzFeed or Complex or Slate in print. In California, you can’t even get The Washington Post in print. And print is expensive. Outside New York, after introductory discounts, seven-day home delivery of The Times will set you back $81 a month. In a year, that’s about the price of Apple’s best iPhone.

What do you get for all that dough? News. That sounds obvious until you try it--and you realize how much of what you get online isn’t quite news, and more like a never-ending stream of commentary, one that does more to distort your understanding of the world than illuminate it.

I noticed this first with the deal Democrats made to end the government shutdown late in January. On the Jan. 23 front pages, the deal was presented straight: “Shutdown Ends, Setting Up Clash Over ‘Dreamers,’” ran The Times’s headline on the news story, which appeared alongside an analysis piece that presented the political calculations surrounding the deal.

Many of the opinions in that analysis could be found on Twitter and Facebook. What was different was the emphasis. Online, commentary preceded facts. If you were following the shutdown on social networks, you most likely would have seen lots of politicians and pundits taking stock of the deal before seeing details of the actual news.

This is common online. On social networks, every news story comes to you predigested. People don’t just post stories--they post their takes on stories, often quoting key parts of a story to underscore how it proves them right, so readers are never required to delve into the story to come up with their own view.

There’s nothing wrong with getting lots of shades of opinion. And reading just the paper can be a lonely experience; there were many times I felt in the dark about what the online hordes thought about the news.

Still, the prominence of commentary over news online and on cable news feels backward, and dangerously so. It is exactly our fealty to the crowd--to what other people are saying about the news, rather than the news itself--that makes us susceptible to misinformation.

Not too quickly. It’s been clear that breaking news has been broken since at least 2013, when a wild week of conspiracy theories followed the Boston Marathon bombing. As I argued then, technology had caused the break.

Real life is slow; it takes professionals time to figure out what happened, and how it fits into context. Technology is fast. Smartphones and social networks are giving us facts about the news much faster than we can make sense of them, letting speculation and misinformation fill the gap.

It has only gotten worse. As news organizations evolved to a digital landscape dominated by apps and social platforms, they felt more pressure to push news out faster. Now, after something breaks, we’re all buzzed with the alert, often before most of the facts are in. So you’re driven online not just to find out what happened, but really to figure it out.

This was the surprise blessing of the newspaper. I was getting news a day old, but in the delay between when the news happened and when it showed up on my front door, hundreds of experienced professionals had done the hard work for me.

Now I was left with the simple, disconnected and ritualistic experience of reading the news, mostly free from the cognitive load of wondering whether the thing I was reading was possibly a blatant lie.

Another surprise was a sensation of time slowing down. One weird aspect of the past few years is how a “tornado of news-making has scrambled Americans’ grasp of time and memory,” as my colleague Matt Flegenheimer put it last year. By providing a daily digest of the news, the newspaper alleviates this sense. Sure, there’s still a lot of news--but when you read it once a day, the world feels contained and comprehensible rather than a blur of headlines lost on a phone’s lock screen.

You don’t need to read a print newspaper to get this; you can create your own news ritual by looking at a news app once a day, or reading morning newsletters, or listening to a daily news podcast. What’s important is choosing a medium that highlights deep stories over quickly breaking ones.

And, more important, you can turn off news notifications. They distract and feed into a constant sense of fragmentary paranoia about the world. They are also unnecessary. If something really big happens, you will find out.

Avoid social. This is the most important rule of all. After reading newspapers for a few weeks, I began to see it wasn’t newspapers that were so great, but social media that was so bad.

Just about every problem we battle in understanding the news today--and every one we will battle tomorrow--is exacerbated by plugging into the social-media herd. The built-in incentives on Twitter and Facebook reward speed over depth, hot takes over facts and seasoned propagandists over well-meaning analyzers of news.

You don’t have to read a print newspaper to get a better relationship with the news. But, for goodness’ sake, please stop getting your news mainly from Twitter and Facebook. In the long run, you and everyone else will be better off.

[itateverybody-blog]

He’s Making a List

In the lead up to Christmas Eve, many of us elves had started to become very concerned with Santa’s behavior. It had grown unpredictable. Erratic. Even, disturbing. It was not the St. Nicholas we had grown to know and love over our many years of spreading Christmas cheer. There was something happening in his mind, something dangerous. Something violent. And the violence brewing in Santa’s mind had started to transform his body as well.

Normally, Santa spent this most wonderful time of the year focusing on the global surveillance system he managed from the North Pole. How else was he supposed to compile his infamous list? He had to keep rigorous tabs on every living person across the planet in order to judge whether they were naughty or nice. That responsibility required him to oversee a massive intelligence-gathering operation, far more invasive and far-reaching than the CIA, NSA, KGB, or any other spying agency in the history of nation-states. The North Pole was merely the headquarters of a planetary network of covert elves accumulating information for the big man back home. What do you think the elves did during the majority of the year? Make the toys? Feed the reindeer? They are wiring your telephone line and hacking your webcam. They’re tracking your daily movements from an unmarked van parked down the street. They’re placing microphones in your house when you’re not home. Gathering intelligence. Watching. Listening. Seeing you when you’re sleeping. Knowing when you’re awake.  

In fact, only a small number of elves actually lived at the North Pole and made toys. Most of Santa’s gifts were actually produced by outside companies. In the past several decades, Santa had moved away from toy production, deciding instead to focus on distribution and branding deals with outside marketers. There just wasn’t that much consumer demand anymore for generic label train sets and jacob’s ladders. In other words, I was a dying breed; a true christmas elf that met the piddling production quotas of Santa’s dwindling workshop.

And because of my position as a workshop elf, I am much closer to Santa than most of the elves employed in his operation. I see him everyday. I am a direct aide de camp of the great Kris Kringle. I feel as if I’ve really gotten to know him. Even trust him. And I think he trusted me. I can anticipate his moods. I relied on his surefire commitment to spreading Christmas cheer. His unblemished faithfulness to the spirit of Christmas made me faithful in his strength as a leader.  

But, as I said, recently Santa had started to change. He started to grow more detached. He became less and less directly involved with the international covert operations he had always relied on to make his special list. He had stopped attending daily intelligence briefings. He had left memos and status reports unread on his desk. He spoke less and less with his various project leaders; stepping away from the day to day management of his spying empire. He had become withdrawn. Difficult to approach. Guarded.

But even worse than his personality changes, he was physically transforming in a way no one had ever thought possible. Santa was losing weight. Santa was losing weight fast.

We all first started to notice it around midsummer. I don’t think anyone actually said anything, though, till September hit. That’s when I first remember discussing it with some of my colleagues. Right around the time Santa was suppose to start beefing up and reinforcing his girth, the opposite was happening. He was slimming down. He was growing thinner.

This was a troubling prospect for all of us. Whoever heard of a thin Santa Claus? What a serious blow to our brand identity. What a serious blow to our major distribution operations. Santa can only get away with breaking and entering into so many private residences because he looks like Santa Clause. No one was going to believe some thin guy was busting into their house just to give them presents. We wouldn’t make it past the first chimney before he would be arrested and thrown in jail; some frail and confused old man who had somehow gotten lost inside a stranger’s home.  

We tried the obvious approaches. We baked him cookies. We offered him milk. We worked tirelessly in the kitchen to cook his favorite Christmas dishes in mass quantities. Figgy pudding. Roast goose. But he only picked at the sumptuous feasts we prepared. Santa had never been a picky eater before, but now he was looking sideways at every morsel of food we placed in front of him.

We tried to talk to him. We tried to express our concerns. We tried to convince him to eat more, to prepare for the coming holiday. He needed to gain weight, we all needed him to gain weight. He wouldn’t listen. He had other things on his mind.

He had adopted strange new habits beyond his poor diet and rapid weight loss. He started watching a lot more television than he ever had before. American television. Mainly Fox News. Yeah that’s right. Santa would spend hours watching and listening to the main propaganda arm of the contemporary right wing. He started his days with Fox and Friends, spent some time with Laura Ingraham during the day, and always caught Sean Hannity live.

If he wasn’t watching Fox News, he would spend hours on his computer, pouring over online forums and absorbing the toxic culture of internet trolls. Studying the manic conspiracy theories of the alt-right. He antagonized liberals on social media websites. He shared memes of Pepe the frog. He started listening to Alex Jones.

Santa had never really been one for partisan politics. Sure, he may have been slightly conservative in regards to social issues, I mean after all, he is a beloved institution of a mainstream, technically Christian holiday: what do you expect? But he had always been a pretty neutral figure when it came to divisive issues. He had long recognized the importance of embracing the social norms expected of Santa Claus, to be open and welcoming to everyone and to respect the dignity of his office.

Over the past year, however, Santa had drifted towards a harsher view of the world. A more hostile attitude towards politics. A more conspiratorial paranoia made its way into his thinking. Suspicion lingered within his thoughts and drove him to believe wild fantasies. He insisted that millions of votes in the American presidential election were cast illegally. He tried to convince me once, that Democrats were managing a pedophile ring somewhere in downtown D.C. There was one occasion where I even heard him use the term, “Libtard.”

It was uncanny how Santa’s weight loss paralleled his growing obsession with right wing media. The more the pounds melted away, the more invested he became in the visions of agitated pundits, as if his body mass was being replaced by their political agenda. Somehow the politics he was consuming was enough to sustain him, keeping him alive somehow.  

For the hundreds of years Santa had been delivering presents to boys and girls, no one up at the North Pole had seen anything wrong with the complex spying operations required to separate the nice from the naughty. Santa was such a trustworthy figure, so adored and admired, it didn’t matter how invasive or technologically advanced the surveillance became, it would be okay because Santa was in control of all it. He would make sure that it would not get out of hand. He would make sure that his power would not be abused.

Now that Santa was beginning to see the world through a right wing lens, the feeling of protection most of us had held in the past started to vanish quickly. The loss of a rational, benevolent Santa made us realize how thoroughly dependent we were on the central authority of Good St. Nick. Now that Santa was quickly being lost down a hyper-partisan rabbit hole, the institutions he controlled revealed a certain ugliness, a nasty potential that had always been there to begin with. Now that Santa was becoming a devotee of the hard right, none of the elves could guarantee that he would not use his Christmas magic to advance his political views. Santa had been given so much power over the years, and it had all been built on this unfounded assumption that Santa would always be stable. How wrong we were.

As October became November, Santa only got worse. He was struggling to wear any of his traditional Christmas clothing. His big red pants could barely hold on to his slender waist. His big black gloves slipped off his claw-like fingers. His trademark hat slumped over his eyes, unable to rest firmly on his head.

His sleeping schedule changed. Or rather, he radically cut back on his sleeping entirely, staying up until all hours of the night, his face buried in a screen. The elves out in the field gathering intelligence for Santa’s lists tried to keep their heads down and do their jobs as effectively as they could, but their leader’s deterioration had become difficult to ignore. Despite all the material they compiled, despite all the memos they produced and reports they wrote, the elves were increasingly unsure as to the actual content of the naughty and nice list.

Normally the compilation of the list was a collaborative project, that involved the input of several agency heads and trusted elf advisors based on troves of data and evidence. This Christmas, the elves had been shut out of the list-making process entirely. They supplied Santa with the intelligence but they had no idea how he had used it. The elves began to speculate that Santa’s determinations of who was naughty and nice was quickly conforming to his radical political views. The lists would no longer reflect the moral integrity expected of the North Pole. Instead, it would be used as a weapon - a method of attacking the latte-sipping coastal elites. The list had been politicized.

December rolled around and still Santa continued to get thinner. He didn’t even look like St. Nick anymore. His jolliness had gone. His cheeks were no longer rosy. His long beard had become unkempt and ratty. His eyes had changed from wide beaming harbingers of joy, to a coldly paranoid gaze that viewed everyone around him with suspicion. He had become a miser obsessed with the threat of conspiracy, seeing dangerous plots to takeover his power surfacing from every direction. He saw his elves, his most loyal helpers, as a threat to his power. He no longer trusted us, and we no longer trusted him.

As the big day grew nearer and nearer, I started to notice strange things gathering in Santa’s private workshop. Chemicals with long names that were difficult to pronounce. Sealed containers with bright red labels in various languages warning of terrifyingly lethal capabilities. Strange synthetic smells. The sound of hissing and sizzling. What was Santa building in his workshop? What were those clanging sounds? What was being mixed in those gigantic steel vats? Why did Santa need to wear a face mask and gloves?

What was Santa planning for the people on his naughty list?

And still he lost more weight. More and more of him gone with each passing day. No matter how much we tried to get him to eat, he refused. He insisted he was just fine with his Anthroplex supplements that he ordered online from the Infowars web store. He just kept losing it, like snow melting in spring.

When Christmas Eve finally came, a group of us workshop elves went to go see Santa off. We assembled the reindeer, securing the harness and the reins. We were all very worried, but none of us had the strength to say anything. The mood amongst us was more reminiscent of a funeral party than a holiday celebration. Santa struggled into his sleigh, weak from hunger. His long fingers with overgrown nails gripped the handrails as he stumbled his way into the front seat. I glanced in the back of the sleigh, at the compartment where he was supposed to keep the toys. Instead of plush dolls and erector sets there were unmarked metal canisters. I stepped away from the sleigh and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.

As I watched Santa lift off into the sky, off towards human civilization, I was struck with the thought that we were somehow all complicit with what was about to happen. And what’s worse, I knew that Santa had always been capable of something like this, a realization that reinforced our complicity. It wasn’t just a madness that developed over a short period of time. It wasn’t an anomaly or a fluke. The frightening potential for unrestrained political terror had always been part of Santa’s identity, living in him like a virus lying dormant for years until he displayed symptoms. He was a strange old man who broke into people’s houses in the night. He spied on children and gave them presents if they pleased him. He ate their cookies and drank their milk. He judged their actions and organized them according to a rigid moral binary. The list-making hadn’t been politicized, it had always-already been a political act. Making a list, checking it twice. Just another power-relation.  

We watched him disappear into the sky. The workshop elves stood silently in the cold North Pole night. We all looked at each other in a moment of utter despair. Not knowing what else to do, we went inside to watch the aftermath of whatever Santa had planned live on CNN. It was all we could do.