#snail also thinks he's died and gone to hell

[kivaember]

new ac6 au idea help me

okay so i've been playing pacific drive since it came out, and it gave me SUCH brainworms for a post-apocalyptic AU of AC6. In BULLET POINT FORM:

when the Fires happened (the first one), it occured just as a coral collapse started to initiate

this basically fucked up rubicon and its now the bermuda triangle of space

anyone who lands on it don't come back and no sensors or satellites can penetrate the thick crimson cloud that covers the entire planet (looks like jupiter from the outside now, with storms and the like)

still, corpos gonna corpo. so after a few decades when nothing changes, they send a few reconnaisance groups to the planet

some manage to report back before vanishing, and the reports are: laws of physics have been screwed up, nothing makes sense, and everything's trying to kill them

Corpos sent their ac squads bc if its dangerous bring guns

They vanish, and after sending a few more they throw up their hands and are like, planet's haunted. fuck it. no coral ever now

ENTER WALTER

who's been closely observing this whole thing for a while

paranoid this effect will spread to other systems, as ambient coral levels are rising in the vaccuum of space around the planet

sends 621 to the planet's surface with strict orders for him to find 'watchpoint alpha' which should have a functioning comms array that can send through heavy coral interference

621 crashlands on the surface and man, what the hell is this scp shit

anyways, there're still ppl living on rubicon, but they've adapted to the fact that they're stuck in a reality-warped nightmare and roll with the weirdness

they have acs, but they're such precious resources that they're only deployed whenever they're gonna do a big expedition for a resource haul when identifying a safe passage opening up to some intact ruins or old foundries

most of the time they're trundling around the planet's surface on old MRAPs or jeeps, harvesting resources where they can

the redguns and vespers who were sent before have kind of like. settled down there - those that survived, anyways. bc they can't leave, but they can't survive without working together either. so there's like an uneasy alliance between the native rubiconians, the redguns and the vespers. as well as various independents that landed and learned to survive

AYRE OF COURSE IS IN THIS

so sentient coral do exist, and they tend to possess random objects

ayre in this case has possessed a car :| 621's gonna drive it

anyway 621 and ayre come across rusty, who's a scavenger for his rubiconian outpost - and the pilot of STEEL HAZE - and tl;dr rusty takes 621 back to the warrens

621 saying he has a mission to reach watchpoint alpha, bc then he and walter can "fix" rubicon

(621 is unaware of the "burn all the coral" plan. walter only told him they're fixing this mess)

rusty's interested, but says reaching the watchpoint is dependent on the conditions. he may have to wait a while

THEN POST-APOCALYPTIC ROAD TRIP AND FALLING IN LOVE while ayre plays wingman

anyway i had to get that idea out of my mind and writen down. ac combat is super rare and is only done when redguns and vespers scrap over a big haul of resources, and even then they try not to damage each ther too much, bc if their acs get too damaged, that's it. it's not being fixed with their limited resources.

rusty who's never been a spy. born on rubicon when it was already messed up and thinks this is normal. oh hey so the landscape is constantly shifting and transforming a mile long field of grass into an acidic bog that'll chew through metal in seconds? haha yeah that happens. it is what it is. oh those manniquins you see on the road sometime? yeah they multiply when you're not looking and try to creep up on you. they explode. yeah that's normal. it really is!

god rusty would actually be incredibly weird in this. even 621 would be side eyeing him...

[syn4k]

this is ABSOLUTELY jordan with jerry.

(for those unaware: jerry is a baby slime that jordan captainsparklez found in one of his minecraft letsplays a LONG time ago. baby slimes in minecraft are less than a block tall, have half a heart of health, and are in fact so small that they can't even hurt the player by jumping up and squishing them like bigger slimes do, thus making them utterly and completely harmless. after jerry hopped in front of jordan and took an arrow for him, jordan decided to take him as soon as the sun rose. when he got back, jerry the slime was gone. every series jordan has made after that one has either featured a reincarnation of jerry or had some sort of homage to jerry in it. i think about this extremely frequently. wow that got long)

anyways, in every season of mianite jerry has been there at some point and he has always been some sort of gift (either from the wizards (s1) or the gods (s2)). i saw the tweet above and i went okay. Jerry could be a perfectly normal baby slime who nobody fucks with simply because Jordan will literally summon all the powers of Heaven and Hell for revenge if they ever touch his boy. that makes sense. but what if jerry was secretly super powerful and nobody knows because he's so unassuming, kind of like the immortal snail that instakills you if you touch it?

the scenario i'm imagining is this: someone breaks into jordan's house in the middle of the night to get cheese or something. probably tom. he's being super quiet and super sneaky. he has an invisibility potion on and everything. everything is going great until he turns to leave when Suddenly,

jordan, from somewhere out of sight: GET HIM, JERRY!

jerry the baby slime (small) (baby) (pretty damn harmless) drops in from the ceiling and starts hopping slowly but ominously towards tom.

now, you see, at this point tom is like "is he serious?" which is a great question to ask because he knows (or thinks he knows) that jerry cant do shit. he knows that this is definitely a distraction and that jordan is about to wreck his shit. however, he Also knows that if he does anything at all to jerry then jordan will have a great reason to have it out for him for the rest of eternity.

jerry is still approaching.

tom double checks all the exits just to make sure, walks forwards, gently nudges jerry aside with his foot so that he can get the fuck out of there, and Instantly Fucking Dies.

he did not account for the possibility that jerry is partially made up of a very strong, very fast acting poison that kills everyone upon contact (except jordan obviously), which makes sense because that's fucking wild and no sane person would consider that while raiding their friend's house for bread at 3am.

(also nobody except for jordan has ever touched jerry before so how would they know?)

the worst part is that this sounds exactly like the type of thing tom would make up to explain dying after breaking into jordan's house, so he can't even go to anyone to bitch about it. when questioned about the incident, jordan just gives whoever asked a Look that says "you actually believe that Jerry the baby goddamn Slime killed Tom?? Jerry, who couldn't hurt a baby chicken if he wanted to??? Fucking Jerry?????" and they go "yeah ok" and drop it.

thank you for coming to my ted talk. i might write a oneshot about this.

[blacklegsanjiii]

GoldenASL where Ace dies, but is resuscitated and pieced back together by law and left with Marco. Ace losing his fruit because he died and everyone thinks he's dead. Mihawk coming back from the war having failed two of his children and not knowing where the third is to Zoro and Perona. He hides his grief well but Zoro keeps asking why he betrayed the government and Mihawk always hits hits him harder after that.

Law not telling Luffy what he's done and leaving him with Rayleigh so that Ace's recovery is easier to handle. Luffy screaming and crying and not being able to get a hold of his family so he's alone. Even with Rayleigh he's alone and he wasn't able to save anyone.

Sanji sobbing and heaving bile to the point the Okama is concerned and stop chasing him. Sanji refusing to eat from his grief and his failure to make it to his family he doesn't know what to do. Sanji also unable to call his family and has to live with this grief of losing his second family.

Ace waking up to Marco sleeping next to him with his fire healing Ace. His body is full of pins and needles and he no longer has his fruit. He doesn't have his fire and vows to find it and teach and screams as he recovers. Marco explains why everyone thinks he's dead and hAce understands it but his brothers and dad, their pain that he's the cause of breaks him.

Ace, Sabo, and Luffy converge in Dressrosa. Luffy doesn't know it's Ace who's matching him so well in the colosseum and Luffy finds Sabo is alive. Ace has a back up, he has White Beard's fruit if he doesn't get his back but fuck that, that fruit is his and it's calling to him. Sabo loses and screams in pain as Ace eats it immediately and sets himself on fire and burns his disguise off to shock the world and Sabo who is screaming louder. Ace grabs him and flies out and grabs his bag along the way while laughing that the world now has to deal with Fire Fist being alive and back. He gives Sabo the tremor-tremor fruit and smiles and apologizes for everything, mostly hiding him living and getting his fruit back.

They find Luffy sans half his crew after the battle. Everyone is shocked and Law is like "good to see you're back to normal" and Ace bows to thank him. Ace then explains he's there to join the Strawhat crew and see them all and it's weird that half the crew is gone and Law tells him what happened and Ace is like 'i should probably tell Dad I'm alive' and everyone is like 'both your dads are dead? And have been?' like even Law is confused and then the bounties come out.

Mihawk on Kuraigana reeling because okay Luffy's bounty makes sense, why does Sanji's say only alive?, ACE?????? The man is reeling and looking for the denden number for the Sunny he got from Zoro and Perona is watching him show emotion for seemingly the first time as no one answers the Sunny's snail. Mihawk is trying to figure out what to do and then the next set of bounties come out and there's no Ace but Sanji's surname is Vinsmoke? As in the warmongering kingdom obsessed with genetic modification? It explains a lot but fucking hell. Also why is no one answering the damn snail?!

Whenever they all meet up again on Karai Bari, Sabo, the Strawhats, Croc, and Buggy watch Mihawk rip Ace, Luffy and Sanji to him and demand WHAT THE FUCK is going on. Ace especially because he died, in front of them! Ace is explaining what Law told Marco who told him and he got his fruit back in Dressrosa. Mihawk looks to Sanji for his explanation and Sanji is like 'this has to explain so much' and Mihawk agrees it does but what the fuck. Luffy, feeling left out, is like 'Hey Dad watch this!' and does his gear 5 form and Mihawk groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. Ace tells him that it's his fault for adopting them.

Sabo and the Strawhats lose it. Even Robin is caught off guard by them naming Mihawk as their father and everyone is trying to wrap their minds around that. Luffy is excitedly tell Mihawk about how he crashed Sanji's wedding to Big Mom's daughter and how is heart stopped fighting Kaido and he is climbing Mihawk who is doing his best to support his youngest child as he tells him everything and Ace is also pitching in about how it was good to go back to Wano. Mihawk thinks he's going to have a heart attack because Sabo is also alive and Zoro is talking about Sanji asking him to kill him and fire legs and flying.

"Okay, maybe we should stop before he has a heart attack?" Sanji suggests.

"Okay, but he had us three on an island alone with him for years because we all thought Sabo died." Ace points out.

"But I'm not!" Sabo yells. "You went to Kuraigana over me?!"

"Yeah, it was really fun! I became the leader of the humandrills!" Luffy proclaims proudly. "Dad, your heart is really fast are you okay?"

"Why did none of you call me? I'm dealing with two people I thought were dead suddenly not being dead, Sabo is the Chief of Staff for the revolutionary army, Sanji was a Vinsmoke, and you are a god." Mihawk says with exasperation. "I'm not okay, to answer the question."

"We were really busy, sorry." Sanji answers.

"Clearly." Mihawk sighs as Luffy laughs and wraps around Mihawk and lets his dad hold him.

[gtunesmiff]

CEMETERY WATCHMEN

This is a truthful and honest account from an old volunteer marine as he, while volunteering at a national cemetery in Oklahoma and how he helped an 85 year old ex-marine wife as she made what she thought may be her last trip to the cemetery to honor her family members from her father, to her uncle, to her husband and also to her two sons, all of them marines who had died in service to this great nation of ours.

My friend Kevin and I are volunteers at a National cemetery in Oklahoma and put in a few days a month in a "slightly larger" uniform. Today had been a long, long day and I just wanted to get the day over with and go down to Smokey's and have a cold one. Sneaking a look at my watch, I saw the time, 16:55. Five minutes to go before the cemetery gates are closed for the day.

The full dress was hot in the August sun. Oklahoma summer time was as bad as ever--the heat and humidity at the same level--both too high.

I saw the car pull into the drive, '69 or '70 model Cadillac Deville, looked factory-new. It pulled into the parking lot at a snail's pace. An old woman got out so slow I thought she was paralyzed; she had a cane and a sheaf of flowers--about 4 or 5 bunches as best I could tell.

I couldn't help myself. The thought came unwanted, and left a slightly bitter taste:

"She's going to spend an hour, and for this old soldier, my hip hurts like hell and I'm ready to get out of here right now!"  But for this day, my duty was to assist anyone coming in.

Kevin would lock the "In" gate and if I could hurry the old lady along, we might make it to Smokey's in time.

I broke post attention. My hip made gritty noises when I took the first step and the pain went up a notch. I must have made a real military sight:  middle-aged man with a small pot gut and half a limp, in marine full-dress uniform, which had lost its razor crease about thirty minutes after I began the watch at the cemetery.

I stopped in front of her, halfway up the walk. She looked up at me with an old woman's squint.

"Ma'am, may I assist you in any way?"

She took long enough to answer.

"Yes, son. Can you carry these flowers? I seem to be moving a tad slow these days."

"My pleasure, ma'am." (Well, it wasn't too much of a lie.)

She looked again. "Marine, where were you stationed?"

"Vietnam, ma'am.  Ground-pounder. '69 to '71.'"

She looked at me closer. "Wounded in action, I see. Well done, Marine. I'll be as quick as I can."

I lied a little bigger:  "No hurry, ma'am."

She smiled and winked at me. "Son, I'm 85 years old and I can tell a lie from a long way off. Let's get this done. Might be the last time I can do this. My name's Joanne Wieserman, and I've a few Marines I'd like to see one more time."

"Yes, ma 'am. At your service."

She headed for the World War I section, stopping at a stone. She picked one of the flower bunches out of my arm and laid it on top of the stone.

She murmured something I couldn't quite make out.  The name on the marble was Donald S. Davidson, USMC: France 1918.

She turned away and made a straight line for the World War II section, stopping at one stone I saw a tear slowly tracking its way down her cheek.

She put a bunch on a stone; the name was Stephen X. Davidson, USMC, 1943.

She went up the row a ways and laid another bunch on a stone, Stanley J. Wieserman, USMC, 1944.

She paused for second and more tears flowed.  "Two more, son, and we'll be done."

I almost didn't say anything, but, "Yes, ma'am. Take your time."

She looked confused.  "Where's the Vietnam section, son? I seem to have lost my way."

I pointed with my chin.  "That way, ma'am."

"Oh!" she chuckled quietly. "Son, me and old age ain't too friendly."

She headed down the walk I'd pointed at. She stopped at a couple of stones before she found the ones she wanted. She placed a bunch on Larry Wieserman, USMC, 1968, and the last on Darrel Wieserman, USMC, 1970.

She stood there and murmured a few words I couldn't make out and more tears flowed.

"OK, son, I'm finished. Get me back to my car and you can go home."

"Yes, ma'am. If I may ask, were those your kinfolk?"

She paused.

"Yes, Donald Davidson was my father, Stephen was my uncle, Stanley was my husband, Larry and Darrel were our sons. All killed in action, all Marines."

She stopped.  Whether she had finished, or couldn't finish, I don't know.  She made her way to her car, slowly and painfully.

I waited for a polite distance to come between us and then double-timed it over to Kevin, waiting by the car.

"Get to the 'Out' gate quick. I have something I've got to do."

Kevin started to say something but saw the look I gave him. He broke the rules to get us down the service road fast. We beat her.

She hadn't made it around the rotunda yet.

"Kevin, stand at attention next to the gatepost. Follow my lead."

I humped it across the drive to the other post.

When the Cadillac came puttering around from the hedges and began the short straight traverse to the gate, I called in my best gunny's voice:

"Tehen Hut!  Present arms!"

I have to hand it to Kevin; he never blinked an eye--full dress attention and a salute that would make his DI proud.

She drove through that gate with two old worn-out soldiers giving her a send-off she deserved, for service rendered to her country, and for knowing duty, honor and sacrifice far beyond the realm of most.

I am not sure, but I think I saw a salute returned from that Cadillac.

Instead of "The End," just think of "Taps."

As a final thought on my part, let me share a favorite prayer:

"Lord, keep our servicemen and women safe, whether they serve at home or overseas.  Hold them in your loving hands and protect them as they protect us.  Let's all keep those currently serving and those who have gone before in our thoughts. They are the reason for the many freedoms we enjoy.  In God We Trust"

If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under!

God Bless America!

AMEN

[votederpycausemufins]

The next chapter is going to be the last chapter. It’ll mostly end on a happy note, though there will be something at the end :3

@petrichormeraki @helleborusangel

Grian was glad to finally finish sorting through all the paperwork, narrowly missing Lynn arriving with another Watcher to discuss his kids. He dragged Grifter along with him and made a portal back to his base, glad that it seemed everything would be calm for a while. Until Grifter screamed.

Grian was sure it was just going to be a chicken left over from Hermit Challenges since those always seemed to appear at the worst times. Maybe someone wearing a chicken head who happened to be around. But instead, there was actually someone standing there. Someone Grian ever so vaguely recognized.

“H-hi there person I haven’t seen before. I’m Grian and that’s Grian and we cloned oursel-” Grifter quickly tried to say, but then freaked out as a chicken appeared next to him.

“Don’t lie. I already know what’s going on. I don’t like it, but you’ll get out mostly scott free. This time.”

“Ha ha ha... “ Grifter weakly laughed, glancing at the chicken to his side. “Hey, so is Mini-”

“Go home before I change my mind Ze.”

“Um, I actually changed it to-” Grifter started to speak before the chicken next to him hissed, making him jump and then make a portal back to helscraft.

Grian looked away from where his copy stood to where Punch was floating. As a Watcher, Grian could feel the death magic radiating off of the man. The man signaled to the chicken which hopped over to him and fluttered its way up to his lap where he pet it like a villain would their cat. “So. Xel I presume?”

After seeing how Punch had responded to Grifter correcting him, Grian just nodded. “Yeah.”

For a moment, the man just stared at Grian before smiling. “Well I’m sure you’re much better than my nephew. It’s a shame that your guide ignored you all those years ago.”

Grian had no clue what was being talked about. “Guide? What guide?”

“Something that could be discussed another time. You have more things to worry about. I’m sure your mother won’t be happy about me sticking around here too long, so I’ll leave you with a gift.” The man looked down to his chicken. “Kokatori, why not stay with Xelqua for a bit?” The chicken clucked once before hopping back down to the ground and standing next to Grian. “If anyone asks, you got it from a guy named Pablo.”

Punch looked like he was about to leave, but then at the last moment to turn back. “Oh, and by the way, I’d check your calendar if I were you. It’s currently May.”

Grian was left puzzled for a few moments as Punch disappeared. May? What did it currently being May have to do with anything. The only thing going on was closer to the end and- Grian pulled his comm out and checked the date. They had been so focused on the mess of the past week that Grian barely registered the days were actually passing. “I NEED TO FIND MUMBO!”

.

.

.

Mumbo watched as Grian was using Watcher magic to multitask. He had explained everything that happened while Grian was gone to him, and the builder was glad to be filled in, but before Mumbo could ask much, Grian pulled out a calendar, his communicator, a book, and also a lead which he put his new chicken on. “Grian, are you doing okay?”

“NO!” Grian stressfully shouted at Mumbo, making him take a step back. Had something happened? Was someone hurt again? Was it the boys? “I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF GRUM CAN EAT CAKE!”

“I’m… sorry what are you talking about?” Mumbo asked, a bit calmer but much more confused.

Grian thrust the calendar into Mumbo’s face. “It’s currently May 21st! We have less than a week to get everything ready!”

“Ready for…?”

“Are you- GRUM’S FIRST BIRTHDAY!”

Mumbo’s eyes widened at Grian answer. “Oh my word! That really is just around the corner, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I already had some plans in place of course but now it’s basically all out the window since there’s more family and friends involved to invite. Right now the only thing taken care of is presents!”

“Right, and did it get delivered?”

“Of course it did! I hid it in a por- I HID IT IN A PORTAL! THE BOYS COULD ACTUALLY GET THERE NOW!” Grian yelled, freaking out.

“Okay, calm down. It’s going to be fine. If we need to, we can hide it somewhere else. And I’m sure even if we don’t move it, it’s going to be perfectly fine. I doubt either of the boys will manage to get in there.” Mumbo did his best to calm Grian. “I know the boys wanted some people to visit today. Possibly you can get those people to come and we can find time to ask them more about who else the boys might have gotten close to and get a guest list that way.”

Grian was glad to finally finish sorting through all the paperwork, narrowly missing Lynn arriving with another Watcher to discuss his kids

Grian snapped his fingers at the idea before putting almost everything away. “That’s a great idea. Let me message Tommy on the change of plans. You said they wanted Fundy and Michael?”

“And Michael’s parent since he’s young. Parents? I’m not completely sure, I’m sure all those time problems didn’t help.”

“I’m sure they didn’t.” Grian remarked as he finished sending a message. “There. Now I guess we wait for Tommy to respond.” And he didn’t need to wait long as a message arrived. “Okay! He says I can pick them all up, though I might need to search a little for Fundy. But I’m sure he’ll want to visit Iskall at the very least.”

“Oh, that’s right! There’s one thing I forgot to mention.” Mumbo spoke up, making Grian’s head whip in his direction. “It’s maybe a little concerning, but I’m sure it will be fine. It… it just looks like Grum might be skittish around Iskall again. It makes sense after everything that happened of course, but better I remember to tell you now and not let you find out yourself.”

“I guess you’re right about it making sense. It sort of was like he got… void he got brainwashed again.”

“Hey, he managed to do well on his own. Might not be the best way to take after you, but it’s still good he took after your survival skills.”

“Oh ha ha. I don’t have survival skills.” Grian rolled his eyes. “The amount of times I’ve dive bombed or exploded myself. I mean, You know how many times I died testing my minigame mister ‘Watch This’.”

Mumbo chuckled for a moment. “Not one of my finer moments. But I meant about when you were growing up. I know it’s not your favorite time, but you made it through that part of your life. Grum was able to do the same.”

“I wish he didn’t have to. I wish neither of them got stuck there.”

“I’m sure no one did. But they did and got through it, and that’s what matters. So let’s just work on making sure they know everything’s fine now. Go pick up Tommy and the others.”

“Alright. And thanks for the talk Mumbo.”

“Always.”

.

.

.

Jrum was practically bouncing off the walls when he saw Michael. Grum was a bit more reserved, but was also pretty excited. It seemed Michael was a little nervous being in such a new place, but Jrum was quickly at the ziglin’s side to reassure him. To the side, Fundy was currently admiring the marvel that was the spawn area. Since Jrum had gone with their friend, Grum made his way to the hybrid. “Um, hi Fundy.”

“Wh- Oh hey Grum! How’re you doing?”

Grum rubbed his arm. “Better. Thank you for helping me out when everything was happening. You didn’t need to.”

“Of course I did. You’re a kid and what Dream was doing was seriously fucked up.” He got a look from Grum. “Well, okay. Maybe I wouldn’t have normally, but he kept getting me involved and Iskall knew you, so it was kind of different.”

“Well, thank you very much for that.” Grum said, hugging Fundy. “Well, I bet you want to see Iskall’s tree.”

“Oh hell yeah! Where’s the Omega Tree?”

Immediately Jrum was back next to them. “I can take him there! I’ll also see if Iskall is there or can get there soon! You can play with Michael while we’re gone!”

Grum nodded and looked to Michael. “Do you think that your parents will let you follow me through the nether to a place to play? I know a safe path and Dad assured me if something were to happen, you would absolutely safely respawn.”

Michael snorted before running over to Tubbo and Ranboo, interrupting their conversation with Tommy. Grum followed him over to elaborate on whatever he would say, or just translate in general. When they were told of the idea, Ranboo and Tubbo weren’t entirely sure about it, but Tommy put in a good word. “C’mon, Grian and Mumbo let the bots run around on their own all the time. This place is safe, so he’ll be fine.”

“I guess… but only if you two stick to the overworld. The nether might be faster, but it’s also dangerous.” Tubbo relented.

Grum thought it over. They would need to take a boat over to where they were going, and there would be a bit of a trek through the jungle, but there was a path they could take. “Of course! We will do what we can to stay as safe as possible. Now…” Grum pointed to the bubble elevator. “Up the tube!”

Michael followed behind Grum to get to the surface and the bot crafted up a boat for the two of them. As Grum rowed, Michael looked around at everything around them. Though there wasn’t too terribly much in the ocean in the direction they were headed, there were enough large builds that could still be seen to keep Michael in awe.

Eventually they landed and Grum led them through the jungle. “The best place to play is in Uncle Scar’s village. It's got plenty of buildings to work with and the style is perfect for games! And then nearbyish is Larry the snail and the magic arrow.”

Michael oinked a quick question and Grum elaborated as they walked. When they finally reached the village, Michael quickly ran into it and started exploring, Grum quickly following behind the ziglin. Though the buildings themselves were interesting, Michael decided the best thing were the small mushrooms that had built along the path.

“Yeah! My Daddy really likes those too. He also found a haunted bed when he owned the place for a bit. I wonder if it’s still haunted. Ooo!” Michael pretended to be scared before laughing, and then the two went off to play in the village together.

Back at spawn, Tommy was still chatting with Tubbo and Ranboo when Grian arrived. “Hey, have you guys seen my boys?”

“Yeah, Jrum took Fundy to Iskall’s and Grum went with Michael to play.” Tommy answered. “Why, is something wrong?”

“No, I was actually making sure they weren’t around.” Grian looked to Ranboo and Tubbo. “Are you two willing to come back with Michael in like five days? It’s going to be Grum’s birthday and maybe Michael can be one of the guests?”

“Oh hell yeah, you two need to come. It’ll be so pog!” Tommy said, hoping they would agree to visiting again.

“I guess we probably can, but it’ll also depend on how today goes.” Ranboo answered, Tubbo agreeing with him.

“Okay good.” Grian nodded, writing something down. He then looked over to Ranboo. “Do you have any idea some of the people the boys were close to when they were stuck over there?”

“Sometimes I barely remember my name.”

“Hmm, alright I guess I’ll have to ask Fundy.”

“Hey, I do know one thing.” Tommy piped up. “Or maybe two. Wil’s also a big music lover, so there might be something there. The other bit you probably aren’t going to like though.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine. What is it?”

“Pretty sure Grum’s favorite uncle is Techno now.”

Grian was just silent as he contemplated the answer. Tommy nervously glanced at his friends before taking a slight step back, worried about how exactly Grian would react. When the avian’s wings started puffing up, Tommy was sure they would need to run, but instead Grian just took a deep breath. “Alright. Fine. I was already planning to invite him since he’s family and all. Yep. It’s fine. Totally fine.”

“It doesn’t sound fine.” Tubbo spoke up, and Grian quickly looked at them with a glare, though he was still smiling.

“Nope. It’s absolutely completely fine.” Then Grian sighed. “Well, I guess I’m going to find Fundy and ask him some questions. If you think of anything else, just message me.”

Tommy agreed before the avian flew off and then looked to his friends. “Alright, so this is probably the best excuse to show you around the shopping district since I’m going to need to pick something up. And if you guys want to buy something, just say the word, I can spare some diamonds.”

“Are you sure? We could get our own-” Ranboo started to speak up, but got stopped by Tommy.

“Nah, don’t worry. I’ll probably earn back whatever I spend in like a week. Probably from one of the redstoners.” Then Tommy led them to the bubble column. “Now let’s go. Oh, and Ranboo, if you need some armor to help with the water, just grab one from one of the stands. That’s what they’re there for.”

“You mean… the full netherite armor?”

“Yep.”

“Something tells me even I won’t have trouble forgetting all of this.”

[starl1ght-child]

So for that prompt thing you opened of possible id like to see a reader x andal brask out for dinner in the city. Andal finds out they have a crush thanks to a slip of the tongue. He teases them for it and eventually to his surprise finds out said crush is him. I look forward to reading the other prompts you write. Theyre always very good!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH I’M SMIPING AGAIN!!!!!  This is gonna take place before he takes the vanguard dare! Give this boy some lovin before he gets locked away in the Tower

Andal Brask x Reader - Revelations

Hey, I’m gonna be back in town in a bit.  Meet at the South Gate?  

That message from Andal sent butterflies throughout your stomach and a wide smile to your lips.  At the time, you were returning from your own patrol rounds, so you just re-routed your path for the South Gate.  You sat on your sparrow at the gate, arms leaning on the handles, waiting to see his team come over the ridge.

Cayde was the first to ride up on his sparrow to alert the gatewatch.  He greeted you and you welcomed him home; he asked how your scouts were going and you replied honestly; he flirted with you and you shot it right back at him, just as Andal and Shiro came within earshot with a small flock of refugees.

“Welcome back,” you greeted Andal with a smile as he handed off some supplies to a refugee.  “Anything eventful happen while you were gone?”

He looked at you from over his shoulder with a wide smile.  Traveler, his smile made your heart skip a beat or two.  “Nothing too remarkable.  Just another day in the office, bringing people safely to the Last City.”

A smile crept to your lips, and you sat silently on your sparrow while the trio helped people get settled.  “So, uh,” you started quietly as Cayde and Shiro said their farewells, “why’d you ask me to meet you here?”

“Wanted to know if you wanted to catch something to eat,” he stated simply.  “We’ve been in and out of the City for months, though we’re never here at the same time.  Thought we could catch up for a change.”

You nodded, but dared not speak should you trip over your words.  He wanted to get dinner?  With you?  Surely he didn’t feel the same way you did, surely he only meant it as friends catching up and sharing stories.  This wasn’t a date.

You had to keep reminding yourself that the entire evening.  When Andal walked with you into the restaurant.  When the two of you sat impossibly close to each other at the counter.  When you started to share stories and laugh.  And especially when that first drink got into your system.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?”  Your back straightened and you became aware of your surroundings again.  You’d been staring into your bowl, but you hadn’t even taken a bite of it.  Your mind was far away, thoughts of the Hunter sitting next to you filtered through your consciousness.  You mentally shook yourself, and once again, reminded yourself that this was not a date.  You managed to smile, albeit an embarrassed one.  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

He stared at you quizzically as he leaned in close, studying your expression.  Your pulse skyrocketed and your cheeks flushed as he got closer, but you didn’t dare to move.  “You sure?”  He asked.  “You’ve been a little off all night.”

Your voice dropped to a quiet whisper.  “Tired, I guess.”  Mentally, you cursed at yourself for being so obvious.

“No no no,” he chuckled.  ��Something’s definitely going on, what is it.”

You reached out and laughed as you pushed away.  “It’s nothing, I swear, I’m just a little caught up in my head is all.  Got someo—something on my mind.”

“‘Someone’?”  Andal’s grin grew wider.  “You’ve got ‘someone’ on your mind?”

“I didn’t say someone, I said something.”

“You said someone!”  He started laughing.  “I knew it!  You, my friend, have a crush on someone, don’t you?”

“No!” Your voice betrayed you and cracked when you tried to defend yourself against his accusation.  Embarrassed, you buried your face in your hands while Andal laughed at you.  

“Ha! I knew it!” Andal leaned back in his chair and laughed.  “Who is it? You can tell me.”  

“Hell no,” you muttered into your palms.  “No way.”

“I swear I’ll keep it a secret.”

“Andal—”

“Come on!”  He was practically begging now.  “Is it Cayde?”

“Andal, please—”

“I won’t tell anyone, you can trust me!”

You stood abruptly from your chair and stormed out.  Your face was hot from embarrassment, but also from the anxiety that gripped your stomach that took away your appetite.  You should have known that he wouldn’t have taken you seriously, Andal was Andal: he was so carefree, oblivious, maybe even a bit of an idiot.  

A handsome, carefree, oblivious idiot.

“Hey, hold up.”

Andal’s voice echoed from behind you and you kept walking.  Traveler damn him for putting you in this position.  And Traveler damn yourself for being so damn obvious about it.

“Come on—” Andal’s fingers gently, if not tenderly, wrapped around your bicep and stopped you dead in your tracks “—just listen to me for a second.”

You turned slowly to face him as you folded your arms over your chest.  He looked… ashamed, almost.  Maybe even a little embarrassed.  Damn your heart for making you fall even more head over heels for him right now.  The concern that was etched into his expression really did start to melt away your embarrassment.  Traveler, you wanted to tell him.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.  “I shouldn’t have done that.  You don’t have to tell me, but I won’t tell any—”

You shook your head.  Damn the consequences.  You reached out and grasped onto his shoulders, you pulled him down to meet your height, closed your eyes, and kissed him.  He was stiff for a moment, probably from shock, but his hands slowly settled on your waist.  He was wordless when you pulled away.  His eyes were wide with the realization that was still hitting him.

“You’re such an idiot, Andal Brask,” you muttered.

His hand slowly lifted to cup your cheek.  His palm was hot against your skin, or maybe that was still just your cheeks being flushed.  Regardless, you closed your eyes and leaned into his touch.  “Yeah,” he whispered.  “I am.”

His lips covered yours and you shuttered.  There was no shock this time, only the warmth from his lips that you’d daydreamed about.  He chuckled softly as he pulled back and leaned his forehead against yours.

“Don’t tell Cayde.”

“Don’t tell Cayde what, hm?” You teased.  “That you’re an idiot?  Or that you suggested that I had a thing for him?”

“Both,” Andal laughed.  “The ego would go straight to his head.”

You laughed along with him until the laughter died and you two smiled at each other.  “We’ll keep it our secret then.”

“Good.”  Andal pressed a tender kiss against your forehead.  “Listen… I don’t want you to think that I’m doing this just to make you happy.  I’ve had a thing for you too, and it’s been the death of me.  I just never believed you could possibly be interested in me.”

“Andal…” You placed a hand on his cheek and moved him until he met your gaze.  “You swear?”

“On my Ghost.”

Masterlist | Tag List: @mail-me-a-snail @galagd @speed-boop @threevie @squadnos @daggerthegamer @reaped-winnower @lady-efriyeet @eris-horn @basically-nacl @khashoggisship @andromeda-sighs @ihavearandom

[dweetwise]

presenting the weirdest and crackiest but also fluffiest shit i’ve ever written, i bring you nearly 5k words of riconti snail au snippets. if you haven’t seen @skllyr‘s adorable art about them, you should!

ship: felix x ace warnings: none word count: 4850

Felix X Ace: Love is stored in the snail

Ace Visconti thought he’d seen it all; from lavish spectacles of prestigious poker tournaments to the dangerous underworld he inevitably ended up involved with, and finally to a realm where the laws of nature meant nothing and death wasn’t permanent. But what eventually takes the cake for Weirdest Shit Ace Has Ever Seen isn’t one of the otherworldly monsters hunting him or seeing one of his numerous wounds heal up right before his eyes; it’s a snail. A goddamn snail. It just appears at the campfire one day, sitting on top of a medkit Dwight reaches for and causing the boy to yelp in surprise once he sees the small stowaway. Ace doesn’t quite understand why everyone is suddenly so eager to take a closer look at a random slug instead of hearing one of his exciting and totally-not-embellished stories, but he joins the small commotion forming around the snail nonetheless. And then he suddenly sees why. The snail not only has an eye-catching light blue shell with a gaudy flamingo pattern on it, it’s also dressed up in tiny sunglasses and a baseball cap between its antennas. Ace looks down at his own pastel blue flamingo sweater and fidgets self-consciously with his shades, wondering whether he should bring up the uncanny likeness— “Is it just me, or does the snail look Ace?” Laurie asks, glancing between Ace and the bug with furrowed eyebrows. “No, I… definitely see a resemblance,” Dwight says. “What should we name it?” Claudette asks. “I mean it's a snail that looks like Ace, so… Snace?” Nea suggests. “Snace it is!” Meg decides, snickering at Ace’s misfortune. “I'm glad you're having fun,” Ace snorts, glaring at the snail for stealing his spotlight. The girls hurry to make a home for the snail in the medkit, which Ace finds all kinds of ridiculous. They give it some bandages and twigs to hide and "play" in, whatever the fuck that means for a snail, and Claud gives it edible flowers to nibble on.

Ace tries his best to ignore the snail, but when he gets back from a trial and sees some of the group passing it between their hands and taking turns to hold it, he can’t help watching them. It’s Dwight’s turn now, their leader cradling the snail in his hands and looking way too happy with the situation. “Do you want to try?” Dwight asks, noticing Ace's staring. “Uhh… sure," Ace says, not having the heart to ruin everyone’s good mood. He goes to grab the snail from Dwight's hand, lifting it by the obnoxiously colored shell— “Not like that, you absolute moron!” Jake snaps, slapping Ace's hand away. “You're going to hurt him. You need to slide him off, not lift upwards,” Jake explains, showing how to do it, plopping the snail down on Ace's hand. It's… slimy and kind of gross. The snail seems confused, feeling around with its antennas. And then, it slowly starts to slither forward. “It's kinda cute,” Ace realizes, watching the little snail face with its little shades. It's the coolest snail he's ever seen for sure, but he wouldn't expect anything less from his doppelgänger. “You go, little guy,” Ace encourages the snail, poking it gently on its shell in encouragement. The snail wobbles a bit, and then its tiny face turns to look at Ace, and— “Ew, it pooped on me!” Ace realizes and Dwight chokes on a laugh while Jake smirks smugly and removes Snace from his hand. Ace could just be imagining it, but the snail looks way too pleased with himself.

Other survivors join and, sooner or later, everyone except Ace seems to fall in love with Snace. “He's just like Ace,” their newest teammate, Kate, comments. “What's that supposed to mean, Sunshine?” Ace challenges playfully. “He's a little slimey but everyone still loves him!” Kate smiles brightly and Ace’s witty comeback dies on his tongue at the unexpected heartfelt remark.

And eventually, when their small group has expanded to over twenty people, there's Felix. And no matter how hard he tries, Ace can’t help sneaking glances at the serious German. He’s tall. Blond. Handsome. Rich. Smart. Did he say handsome? Oh, and Felix hates Snace. “This is our pet snail, Snace!” Steve introduces with an excited grin while giving Felix the tour of their modest campgrounds. “A… snail?” Felix frowns. “Yeah! Do you wanna hold him?” Steve asks, already reaching his hand into the medkit. “No!” Felix recoils away, before seeming to collect himself. “I'm, um… not a pet person.” Ace tries (and fails) not to take it personally that Felix finds Snace to be repulsive and will just scoff and roll his eyes whenever the others discuss him. What the hell is his problem, anyway?

And then, something never before seen happens; they get another snail. “Guys!” Cheryl runs into camp, looking out of breath and cradling something in her hands. “Look what I found!” Ace goes to look right along with the others, and in the girl’s hands is a pale snail with a dark blue shell and a pattern resembling a suit collar on its neck. It doesn't have fashionable accessories like Snace, but there’s a tiny briefcase next to it. “Oh my god! He's so cute!” Meg squeals, making the snail retract into its shell in fear. “Aww, he's shy!” Kate coos. “Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?” Nea suddenly says with a grin, glancing between Felix and the snail. Several heads turn in the German's direction, taking in his dark blue suit and pale complexion. “…What?” Felix asks, just as standoffish as ever. “Snelix!” Nea exclaims proudly. When several others join in to cheer and chant Snelix’s name, Felix just sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose in a gesture that screams "end me".

Everyone is eager to introduce Snelix to Snace, gathering around the medkit, even forcing Felix to watch. “Look, Snace! A new friend!” Cheryl says, gently plopping Snelix down into the medkit. Snace immediately starts slithering toward him, while Snelix just seems confused, rooted in place. “Aww! He's excited!” Dwight smiles. Snace reaches out his snail whiskers in a greeting, and Snelix recoils, slinking a little into his shell. “Oh, he's nervous!” Kate coos. “Don't worry doll, Snace is nice.” As if sensing the woman's words, Snelix cautiously comes out of his shell, hesitantly reaching out an antenna. “There you go, bud!” Ace encourages his snailself. “Take it slow, don't scare him away.” He glances at Felix, standing at the edge of the group with his arms crossed. If only people had it as easy as snails— “Oh, god!” Nancy exclaims in disgust, making Ace look back at the snails. And seeing Snace groping Snelix with his antennas while backing him into a corner. “Hey!” Ace chastices. “What did I just say!?” “Someone save him!” Laurie urges, but it seems Snelix can take care of himself, turning around and slinking up the medkit’s wall. “Aww, he's running away,” Steve pouts. “Good,” Felix huffs quietly from behind the group, and Ace pretends not to hear him. He also pretends that the comment doesn't sting, after trying and failing to get through the German's cold exterior for weeks.

Quentin tries to give Snelix one of his medkits to give him a place to live, but Snelix refuses to go in until it's cleaned up. “What a little snob,” Quentin snorts. “Yeah, how weird is that,” Yui smirks and glances at Felix in a way that’s definitely not subtle. Felix just scoffs and crosses his arms but, thankfully, doesn’t take the bait.

“Guys, I think Snace is depressed,” Meg says one day, looking into the medkit with a frown. “He's not even eating!” Claudette adds worriedly. “Maybe he's dying of old age,” Feng snarks. “I heard that,” Ace shoots back without any real heat. The snail isn't the only one who is feeling under the weather, Felix ignoring him for the last few days taking a toll on his confidence. “What if he misses Snelix?” Cheryl frowns. “Maybe we should try to introduce them again!” Steve exclaims. “No way,” Yui says. “Just because they're both snails doesn't mean they have to be friends.” “Yeah, let's at least give Snelix some time to settle in first,” Jeff suggests.

“Oh shit! Help!” Nea shouts not long after their previous conversation. “What's wrong?” Jane asks worriedly, immediately going into mom-mode. “Snelix is gone!” Nea says, showing them the empty med-kit. Is only takes those three words for the entire camp to erupt into panic. “NOBODY STEP ANYWHERE!” Jane commands. Thus commences the search for Snelix, with everyone participating and even Felix looking surprisingly worried. They eventually find Snelix is Snace's medkit, where they're just sitting next to each other munching on some leaves. “Aww! He walked all the way to his friend!” Kate beams. “Look how cute they are together!” Cheryl smiles. Ace feels his face heating up upon seeing the snails' close proximity. It almost looks like they're sitting next to each other cuddling while sharing a meal. He can't believe Snelix would actually come around, not to mention go through all that trouble to be with Snace. Someone probably put him there, but nobody fesses up. “Are they k-kissing?” Dwight squeaks in surprise when the snails seem to interrupt their meal just long enough to move their tiny whiskers together. “They're snails,” Zarina deadpans. “Most likely just conversing,” Adam adds. “I'm so glad they're getting along now!” Claudette sighs in relief. “Bro… what if we kissed? And we're both snails?” Feng says, propping her elbows up on a tree stump to watch the snails together. “Best snails forever,” Meg grins, joining the gamer. Ace discreetly clears his throat and mentally kicks himself for being jealous of goddamn snails. Even if him and Felix are getting along better day for day, Ace doesn't have any illusions that he’ll ever get to kiss the handsome architect. Still, a man can dream.

The snails seem happy to share a living space together and the next day, Ace even catches Felix observing them curiously. “It's funny how well our snails get along now,” Ace says conversationally, coming up beside Felix. “I'm not that surprised,” Felix says, looking at the snails climbing over each other and seeming to play together. “Looks like he just needed a little push,” Felix says bashfully. And something in Ace's head clicks at the comment. “Were you the one who put him there?” Ace asks, and Felix immediately clears his throat self-consciously. “I just wanted to try it,” Felix explains. “Maybe it would go better, since everything wasn't so new and people weren't staring. And it worked out.” Are… are they still talking about the snails? Or their own, slowly blossoming friendship? “He's been alone for so long,” Felix continues, looking back to the snails now sharing a piece of cucumber. “He deserves to be happy.” Felix smiles an adorable little smile and Ace realizes in just how deep shit he is with his stupid crush on the man. “I've never seen Snace so happy,” Ace agrees. “Just look at his smug little face.” “I thought he always looked happy,” Felix remarks. Ace fights himself for a moment, debating on whether he should be honest or not, or if he's read the situation completely wrong. “Maybe he's never had a real friend before,” Ace says, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Felix glancing at him, but doesn't dare look away from the snails.

And then one day… “Woah—what's wrong with the snails?” Steve calls from the medkit, Claudette immediately rushing closer to check. And then the botanist gasps in shock and everyone else hurries there too. “What happened—oh. Oh,” Quentin says, face flushing red, and Ace peers over the teen's shoulder to… See the snails in the middle of snail sex. “They're fucking,” Nea states matter-of-factly. “Yes Nea we can see that,” Laurie hisses, face pink from embarrassment. “Wot the—they're both blokes, innit?!” David seems confused. “Snails are hermaphrodites,” Adam points out. “Gay snails!” Feng exclaims cheerfully. “It's not gay if they're—” Adam tries again. “If what, they don't make eye contact?” Feng snickers right back. “No, I mean if they have both male and female reproductive organs,” Adam explains, looking embarrassed now. Ace glances at Felix and sees him staring at the snails with his mouth pressed into a thin line. But… he's also blushing. “Gay snails! Gay snails!” Feng, disregarding Adam's explanation, starts chanting. Jane and Laurie eventually have to pull some of the more eager onlookers away by their ears to give the snails some privacy.

One day, Felix returns from a trial and walks to Bill’s spot a little outside camp to return a map he borrowed earlier. He never makes it that far, because he spots Ace out in the woods, looking much more focused than Felix has ever seen as he fiddles with something in his hands. Ace doesn’t even notice him approaching, and Felix takes the opportunity to freely stare at the man who’s been slowly but surely occupying more and more of his thoughts. Ace’s sunglasses are pushed up into his hair and his tongue is poking out in concentration, and it’s completely beyond Felix’s understanding how someone can manage to look both so handsome and utterly ridiculous. “What are you doing?” Felix asks, and Ace’s head instantly snaps up to look at him in surprise. “I’m, uh…” Ace falters for once in his life, lowering his hands to hide whatever he was up to, but Felix catches the glint of something metallic. “Is that a needle? Do you need stitches?” Felix asks, not failing to hide the concern in his voice. “No, I—” Ace starts, but then falters and sighs in defeat. “Promise not to tell anyone.” He doesn’t wait for Felix’s reply before reaching his hand forward, opening his palm to show Felix… A tiny pink baseball cap with a thread and needle attached. “For… Snace?” Felix asks, struggling to take in the information that, somehow, this flamboyant loudmouth is making clothes for his pet snail. “He deserves a proper wardrobe, okay?” Ace huffs jokingly but pulls the project closer to himself defensively. It’s surprisingly… endearing. “I didn’t know you sewed,” Felix says instead of voicing his embarrassing thoughts. “Yeah, well, it comes in handy,” Ace points out. “Can’t tell you how many times I had to patch up a shirt after I barely escaped the cop—uh, competition,” Ace catches himself, grinning sheepishly. Felix raises a curious eyebrow but doesn’t push the topic. Instead, an idea forms in his head that he can’t help expressing. “Could you make a scarf for Snelix?” Felix says, and almost instantly regrets asking after realizing how stupid that sounds. But it makes Ace perk up in interest, and soon a wide grin is spreading over the gambler’s face. “Sure, I can do that!” Ace beams. “Why a scarf, though?” Felix is already opening his mouth to say because he loves scarves, but thankfully is able to stop himself. “They’re stylish,” he says instead. “Well well well, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were starting to like the little slimy bastards,” Ace grins. “They might be growing on me,” Felix admits with just the barest hint of a smirk. Hopefully Ace realizes he doesn’t mean just the snails.

One evening, Ace is sitting by himself, looking at Snace and Snelix living their best life. They eat a little bit of some of the flowers Claudette gave them earlier, before Snelix turns around to leave and Snace immediately follows him. They slither away to a secluded corner, laying next to each other and doing their little snail kisses, until Snelix eventually slumps and flattens to the ground, seeming to fall asleep. Snace sits next to him for a while, before he carefully moves away, slinking back to nom on the flowers. “Putting your boyfriend to sleep, huh?” Ace murmurs quietly, not wanting to wake Snelix. “I'm jealous of your life, buddy.” Snace lifts his head from the flower, his little shades looking Ace's way. “At least one of us got what he wanted. You did good for yourself, high five,” Ace whispers, holding up his finger in front of Snace for shits and giggles. And Snace, the snail that absolutely hates him, lifts one of his antennas and briefly touches his finger in a high five before going back to his meal. “Woah,” Ace breathes, a grin spreading over his face and glancing around camp, wanting to see if anyone was around to witness the event— And his eyes meet Felix's, standing behind him, staring at Ace talking to his snail like an absolute idiot. And probably having heard everything. “It, uh,” Ace starts when Felix isn't saying anything, the German's eyes wide from surprise. “He high-fived me.” “I, er…” Felix stutters in return, before clearing his throat. “I got some moss for them from Red Forest.” “Oh, neat,” Ace comments. “Snelix just fell asleep, but maybe you won’t wake him if you’re careful.” “No, I don't want to disturb them,” Felix says, crouching down next to Ace and placing the moss next to the medkit. They watch the snails in silence, Snace finishing his midnight snack, Ace debating on whether he should bring up the previous conversation or not. “Thank you,” Felix says instead, before Ace can strike up a conversation. “…For what?” “For being patient with me,” Felix murmurs. “I know I can come across as… cold.” Well that's an understatement if Ace has ever heard one. “Hmm, I guess you could say you needed some time to…” Ace says, pausing for comedic effect while he waits for Felix to turn to look at him for the punchline. “Come out of your shell.” Felix huffs a surprised laugh and turns his head away, but not before Ace sees a beautiful smile spreading over his normally serious face. They keep observing the snails, until Snace has finally had enough of the flowers, moving to lay next to Snelix. “Oh, he's awake,” Ace comments, seeing Snelix groggily lift his head toward Snace. He pushes up Snace's shades, dislodging the cap a bit before doing another little snail kiss. “Damn, that's adorable,” Ace grins. And then there's a hand on his temple, and Ace freezes as his shades are gently pushed up into his hair. He turns to look at Felix, heat rising up his neck, feeling vulnerable without the glasses, not able to hide his wide eyes searching Felix's own in a silent question. Felix's face is redder than usual but he looks more unguarded that Ace has ever seen, gaze dropping to Ace's lips while the hand on his forehead moves to cup his jaw. Ace holds his breath, not daring to say anything lest he ruin the mood and permanently mess up his chance with Felix. His thoughts are little more than white noise and excited screeching as he tilts his head up in silent invitation, and that's all it takes for Felix to lean down and claim his lips.

“Snace is getting fat,” Feng comments one day. “What!?” Ace exclaims, offended. “No he’s not!” “Hon, he does look a little… pudgier,” Kate comments. “He’s just… bloated, okay?” Ace insists, huffing defensively. “He’s a fucking fatass,” Feng corrects. “Yeah man, he’s really letting himself go,” Steve agrees with an infuriating smirk. “Okay, rude!” Ace scoffs. “Felix—” he starts, turning to his newly acquired boyfriend for solidarity, but sees the little shit is shaking from quiet laughter instead of being upset on his behalf. “Babe! Don’t tell me you agree with them!” Ace gasps in mock offense, hand over his heart. “Every time I’ve looked at him, he’s eating,” Felix manages to point out between snickers. “Absolutely terrible, the lot of you,” Ace huffs, peering into the medkit where the completely innocent Snace is… Munching on some berries Claudette placed there earlier. “You were saying?” Feng snarks, making Ace shoot a glare her way while Felix is still holding back chuckles.

When Ace gets back from a rather uneventful trial some time later, he notices Jake staring intently into the snails’ medkit. As he walks closer, it becomes apparent that the snails are having sex. “Jake, what the hell are you doing?” Ace asks the survivalist. “They've been at it for hours,” Jake says, face just as neutral as ever and not taking his eyes off the writhing clump of snail. “I'm a little concerned by how much you like watching my snail get laid.” “Nature is lit,” Jake merely offers. So Ace shuts the medkit, feeling weirdly exposed by having his snail’s private life invaded like that. “Give them some privacy, sheesh,” he chastises Jake. “Prude,” the boy snorts.

It’s only a few days before there is another episode of, as Felix likes to call it, snail drama. “Felix!” Ace shouts, making Felix sigh in fond irritation and pause his sorting of their shared stash of items that Ace has left an absolute mess (again). “Yes, love?” he asks, doing his best impression of an exasperated husband despite them only dating for what can't be more than a few weeks. And then he sees Ace's face full of both alarm and excitement, and immediately drops what he was doing. “What's wrong?” he asks, feeling the panic quickly bubbling up. “SNACE IS GIVING BIRTH!” Ace exclaims ten decibels louder than necessary, grabbing a confused Felix by his sleeve and dragging him toward the snails' home. Sure enough, there's a small commotion around the medkit, and when Felix peers into it he can see Snace in the middle of laying eggs, Snelix by his side in solidarity. “Come on dude! Push!” Feng is trying to encourage the snail. “Shh, you're stressing it!” Claudette chastises. “I told you guys he wasn’t fat!” Ace huffs proudly. After ten or so eggs, the process seems to be over, and Snace happily slithers away to go snack on some leaves. “Oh,” Claudette says, bewildered. “What?” Ace says. “I, um,” the botanist falters. “They usually lay about a hundred eggs…” “A hundred?” Ace screeches. “Don't you think ten kids is more than enough?” “Only a small portion of them actually hatch!” Claudette hurries to add. “Maybe he's going through menopause,” Jake, not so helpfully, supplies. “I'm going to smack you,” Ace threatens. Felix just chuckles and lays a hand on Ace’s shoulder to settle him.

Excited about the possibility of baby snails, the survivors take turns watching the eggs for the next few weeks. Eventually, it’s Cheryl who screams: “Guys! An egg is hatching!” Felix rushes to the medkit before anyone else, and in an instant Ace is peering over his shoulder too, both looking at the transparent, tiny antenna pushing out of one of the eggs. Snelix and Snace are right by the eggs, eagerly waiting to meet their offspring. And then the small snail plops completely out and starts wiggling around, and Ace honest to god squeals. “Look, Felix!” he says, tugging on Felix's sleeve. “We're grandparents!” “I'm… not sure that's how it works,” Felix points out, even as he smiles at Snelix petting his child with his antenna. “I'm gonna make so much baby snail clothes for her,” Ace continues with a wide grin, nearly shaking in his shoes in excitement. “'Her'?” Felix asks, and Ace falters. “I'm, uh…” Ace explains, looking away. “You said your kid's a girl, I mean based on the ultrasound before you were taken, so I figured…” Something in Felix's expression softens, touched that Ace would remember something like that. He steals a quick kiss while everyone is preoccupied with staring at the family of snails.

“What should we name their kid?” Jeff ponders a couple weeks later, watching the baby snail climb all over Snace while Snelix anxiously hovers nearby. “Ask the grandpas,” Feng snarks. “Yeah, have you decided on a name yet?” Cheryl asks, looking up at Felix with wide, shimmering eyes. “Err,” Felix says, glancing at Ace for help. Ace grins and discreetly nods toward the eager Cheryl. “Oh,” Felix seems to realize. “Yes, we were considering Ch—ehm, Sneryl.” Cheryl gasps in awe. “She does look like a Sneryl,” Jeff agrees. “What? It doesn't look like any—” Feng starts, but at Jeff's pointed look, thankfully shuts up. “She's the spitting image of a Sneryl!” Ace says, smiling in encouragement. “Really!?” Cheryl asks excitedly, looking between Felix and Ace. “Ah… of course,” Felix says, and then the breath leaves his lungs in a pained “Oof!” as Cheryl rushes in for a hug. “Thank you! I love having my own snail!” Cheryl beams while Felix awkwardly pats her on the head and looks at Ace with an expression that screams 'HELP'.

Seeing Sneryl grow over the following couple of months, Felix takes it upon himself to start building the snails a house out of a commodious toolbox. He might put in way more effort than necessary, making sure to separate different rooms with interior walls and adding corridors to entertain the snails. “Hey handsome, what're you doing?” Ace asks, placing a kiss against his temple as he comes up behind him to see what he’s working on. “I'm building our snails a house," Felix explains. "They have a family now, a cramped old medkit won't do.” Ace stares at him for a moment, and then a wide grin spreads over his face and he suddenly looks like he’s about to combust. “You’re so friggin adorable!” Ace exclaims and pulls him into a hug. And then he refuses to let go, clinging to Felix’s back like a koala while he keeps working on the house, and Felix would be lying if he said he didn’t like it. “…Can you make a poker room for Snace?” Ace asks after having observed his work for a while. “Poker? But they're—” Felix frowns, turning around just enough to see Ace's exaggerated, ridiculous pout. “…Fine. But you're making the furniture.” “You got it, babe!” Ace grins, before seeming to notice something. “Hey, what's that?" he asks, pointing at a drawn square on the side of the toolbox. “Oh. It's going to be a door,” Felix explains. “But what if Sneryl goes out and gets stomped on?” Ace asks worriedly. “I just…” Felix falters. “Thought that maybe they needed some freedom. Especially Snace.” “Huh?” Ace tilts his head in confusion. “He was alone for so long, I… assumed he'd probably get bored of the family life,” Felix says, looking at the ground in thought. He’s embarrassed for bringing up the subject of Ace’s loyalty like this, but once again, the snails are proving a wonderful excuse to talk about topics they otherwise wouldn’t. “That sounds like a load of bullcrap,” Ace grins, making Felix look up at him, still frowning. “I've never seen Snace so happy. He knew what he signed up for and there's no way in hell he's leaving now.” The reassurance feels like a weight lifting off of Felix’s chest, and he can’t stop the smile spreading over his lips. Hesitantly, he grabs Ace’s hand still wrapped around him, and Ace brings them both up to brush his lips over Felix's callused knuckles. “I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart,” Ace murmurs, the sweet sentiment making warm affection spread through Felix’s entire body. “I, uhm,” Felix blushes, clearing his throat. “Is this a good time to point out I just had the snails crawl over the back of my hand…?” Ace sputters and immediately wipes at his mouth while Felix lets out a few quiet chuckles.

Following the conversation, Felix can’t help but read into Ace’s answer. Especially with the other survivors engaging in another round of the popular “What’s the first thing you’ll do when we escape?” game, Felix finds it difficult to focus on anything other than the possibility of a shared future. So, when he catches Ace alone, he hesitantly brings up the option of the man coming with him to Germany. “I know the possibility of escaping is slim,” Felix babbles nervously after Ace isn’t saying anything, just staring at him curiously. “But I can’t stop thinking about it, and I wanted to see where you are—” “Babe,” Ace interrupts, grabbing his arm to ground Felix from his scrambled thoughts, giving him an encouraging smile. “I’d love to.” Felix breathes out a relieved sigh, returning a shaky but happy smile over not getting rejected. And then Ace smirks mischievously and Felix’s instincts scream “Uh-oh”. “On one condition,” Ace adds, holding a finger in front of Felix’s face playfully. “Um… which?” Felix asks, nerves resurfacing. There’s not much that would make him say no, and he hopes he doesn’t have to, willing to make sacrifices for a potential future together. “The snails come with us,” Ace quips sheepishly instead. Felix chuckles and shakes his head in amusement, before pulling Ace in for a soft kiss. “I wouldn't have it any other way,” Felix murmurs against Ace’s lips, silently thanking the two dorky snails that allowed this to happen in the first place.

[nothisis-ridiculous]

Take Me Home Now: Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve: In Your Head, In Your Head, They are Dyin'

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

Geez, open my big fucking mouth much? Oh Jane, could you go to the Citadel? But why shouldn't you? You said you had spent time there; you're the one person who knows how to get around. She half-assedly kicked at the locker at the foot of her cot, besides, Rogers is too green. We need someone with experience leading the team. It would be best if you kept busy; civilian life doesn't agree with you.

They couldn't order her around.

Jane craned her head, taking in the entirety of the beam that would catapult her into the Citadel. A frown was the sole betrayal of her panicked nervous system, she would never be ready to go back there. But this was not the time for fear, not when Biotic's Division looked to her guidance. At least she could hide the apprehension- they looked like they could piss themselves at any moment. Jane knew the beam wouldn't lead to death but they were not so confident. It seemed insane, she got it.

Roy and Helen talked amongst the students, leaving Jane some time to collect herself. The last time she had approached the beam the entirety of Hammer had died to get her here, it seemed too easy now that it was a simple jaunt down a hill.

"You sure this thing won't vaporize us?" Roger's question interrupted her solitude.

"I'm not saying it's going to be pleasant, or you'll like what we're going to find-" distress crossed the 2nd lieutenant's face, this was the wrong approach, "if Anderson's team could make it to activate the Crucible, I think we will be fine. Besides, think of the bragging rights- being the one to restore communications with the Citadel, and eventually with the rest of the galaxy. It's not a small thing."

"But I'm not leading the operation," Rogers's hadn't taken the forced deference to the Recruit well.

"Believe me, kid, you'll be glad for all the calls you didn't have to make." She had refused to lead on principle, even after several others had tried to guilt her for refusing the mission. Jane wouldn't have stepped up if not for a series of harsh conversations from Mr. Alenko, most of them implying he would take the mantle if she would not, "get the team into place, we leave in two."

Roy and Helen naturally separated from the group, not away from the mass of students but toward her. Roy led a step ahead and Helen fixing her with the usual judgmental stare from behind her husband.

"I'll be fine," the woman snapped the M-77 into a ready form, "it should be easy."

"Be careful."

How many times had she heard that? To boot, in the same somber tone. The last time, so physically close to where they stood now. It was an odd irony that his father stood closer to the beam than Kaidan had managed to get.

"Thank you," regret was a hell of a thing, so unprompted she grasped his hand unflinching under that whiskey-hued gaze. For a blip of a moment, she looked forward to coming back. Hope returned in a microdose.

The students lined up as ordered, each reaction as individual as the person who stood before the blue light while they wouldn't argue with the mission: it didn't mean they had to trust it. Jane would question flinging herself blindly into the beam, she had at a couple of points. On Illos, she at least had the Mako to give her the illusion of safety, here for the second time only experience made her undaunted besides the emotional toll.

"Alright, the mission is simple. Meet with Bailey or whoever is left in charge. After that, we worry about setting up the long-range commlink," it was better to put this off as a simple run, when things got complicated, they would deal with it then, "on arrival, where exactly we'll end up is a mystery. This functions much like a Mass Relay, so small groups and make sure your ass is out of the way."

Jane nodded to Rogers and the female that stood beside him, "anyone else want to go first?"

She didn't wait for a reaction before sauntering brazenly into the beam.

The Spectre had thought she was used to running into the unexpected. She had made a career of dealing with the strange, but awe of circumstance truly never went away. This time it was far more physical than expected. Pulling herself over the lip and onto the metal path, water violently expelling from her nose and mouth. If she were a little more with it, she would have pulled a gun on the Keeper scuttling by- but she was a little more focused on breathing. The next concern was the two in line behind her; one was lucky and ended up straddled over the railing the next erupted from the water much in the way she had.

Once it was clear all was fine, Jane rolled onto her back. Dark laughter barking from her diaphragm. It was a far cry from the body-lined hallways and corridors she had dreamed up, the relay monument looked down on her. God, she felt nauseous. Her sides didn't stop seizing until all breath left her body, eyes stinging with tears. Rolling to all fours, then finally upright the world swirled into sudden clarity.

This was the Presidium. Behind her, the partially broken statue that honored the krogan. A white spire jutting into the sky, a brave blue flower standing tall, heat speckled metal walkways, and the white-walled building. Her fingers raked through a tangle of wet hair, shook out her pistol, pulled Rogers from the railing, and tightly squeezed her fist until the twang of her muscles bid for release. The relay fired again, splashing followed, and the approach of footsteps came from her right side. The tepid water running down her face made pinpointing smells impossible, but she could sure taste the strange flavor of the unfiltered liquid.

"Holy shit."

"See, you should have never doubted me."

The Lieutenant did not find it quite so humourous.

"Lighten up, Kid," she remarked blithely, turning her attention to the squad that corralled them into the center of the walkway, "it's nice to see C-Sec arrive promptly."

The turian officer scoffed but lowered his weapon, "Bailey will want to see you."

"Good, we're looking for him."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

"How is it always you?" Bailey hardly looked up at her, "but I've got to admit, nobody else is crazy enough to walk through a beam on foot."

The man was one of the few who could recognize her immediately, even with grown-out and natural hair. He had seen the scarring left behind after the Lazarus Project before they had faded for the first time. It took only a little imagination to see past the more extensive facial scars.

"The first or second time?"

Bailey's head craned up, concern crossing his face, "Com-"

Jane waved a hand, "please, Bailey, that person is gone. Let her die with her crew."

The concern grew behind the glow of his omnitool "if anyone ever asks, you waved your Spectre status in my face. But I don't think you are here to catch up."

"No, I am not."

The team back on Earth had tried to reconnect with the Citadel, but all attempts to reach them had failed. So a mission to the station became necessary. Bailey attempted to skirt the subject, but life on the Citadel was not easy. Slowly some peace was restored but at a snail's pace. Whatever jammed the comms slowed any hope of a unified force on the station. It also explained their failure to find a tech expert who might fix the issue and perhaps the lack of a Spectre or someone of a higher rank to authorize it—security measures as usual were great until they hindered progress.

"I'll need you before you try and disappear again," Bailey warned, swirling the scotch in his lowball glass. He figured this was special occasion enough, even if the hero returned as little more than a ghost.

"I'll consider it my retirement party," she mused, finishing off the bitter liquid, "seems easy compared to a Reaper invasion."

"Nothing with you is ever simple."

"Hell, this could all be a dream... for both of us." It felt a little cold for a dream, but it was all surreal. For now, she put it off as walking old hallways and the memories of the companions that haunted the place.

"The scotch must be hitting you hard."

"I haven't hit the hard stuff since-" the statement crossed into territory painful for both of them, "but I say there is no time like the present. Must be driving my squad nuts waiting."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

"Shepard before-"

Jane flinched, and Bailey retracted for a moment. Equal parts confusion and frustration with the jumpy woman. Perhaps it was time, untold horrors of war, or the alcohol that made her weird, if not mentioning the other multitude of reasons the Spectre seemed off her game. She went by a different name to the men she led, and it was becoming apparent the problem was far out of his wheelhouse.

"I have to give it to you plain, we found Anderson's body in here. It looked like he was shot."

"I know."

She had shot him after all. For a long time, she had tried reasoning that it was not her fault; after all, the Illusive Man had made her do it. Those strange cybernetic eyes had stared at her in her dreams, one of the thousands of voices taunting her. Those blue eyes had found her again as she walked the hallways to the Council Chambers.

"He must have activated the Crucible before he died, it's funny because we all assumed you had done it."

Jane hadn't activated the Crucible. That was true. Maybe Mary had; it was all a little foggy.

"We gave him the best funeral we could, I can take you there later if you like," Bailey offered, trying to rouse her with a touch.

Jane shook her head, "another time, this is enough."

Too much.

Bailey nodded, falling behind a few paces so she could absorb the room. Mentally, she remarked on little other than it had become a bit overgrown in disuse and that she liked it better without the constant trickle of running water.

"Nothing unusual up here, Ma'am," buzzed the comm.

"Roger, roger."

"It wasn't funny, even when the Major did it."

Fine, "hold position, I want eyes on anything that could go wrong. I'll place the shunt."

Jane moved slowly across the catwalk, the face staring at her accusingly grew clearer as she approached. The simple frame wreathed in upkept foilage, plants, and candles of all sorts making up an altar. She tried to move through littered petals and papers with reverence, but some wound up disturbed fluttering into the pit below. Jane crouched to cradle the picture gently, "Admiral."

Her blue eyes scanned upwards, resting on the bloody handprint covering the virtual interface sensor.

The total weight of another being crashed onto her, attempting to wrestle her from the catwalk. Even after weeks without combat, Jane dislodged the man with ease throwing him over the unprotected edge. The unnatural steel blue eyes, shocked with bright blue patterns, brimming with fury. Quickly as they had entered her vision, the figure went still and dark.

Coldly, empty, she returned the broken frame to its spot. Her complete attention turning to the console that lit up at her presence. The only break from her attention was the dramatic slam of her fists on the sides of the railing behind the console- it wasn't working.

Before she could release her temper upon the undeserving railing again, a keeper nudged her aside. Compiling the necessary commands with ease, the sudden noise of a system erupting in a blastwave. As quickly as the creature arrived, it scuttled back away. Leaving Jane to complete her task.

Bailey looked over the ledge, approaching the woman slowly once he was satisfied.

"Commander Bailey, you should have access to all Citadel systems," her bright blue eyes turned to him with a terrifying hollowness, "don't make me regret it."

"You- but, he," Bailey swallowed, running a hand over his cropped hair, "it's never simple with you."

He grabbed her arm before she slipped by him, "take this."

"I should go."

"Don't worry, you weren't here," he called after the stumbling figure.

Jane didn't recall stumbling back through the relay, or for that matter, picking her way back to the mall. Or the time she had left, or if she had bothered to warn anyone in the meantime. Reality was a persnickety thing at the moment, failing to anchor her securely to the present.

It was dark, the mechs hadn't stopped her, and not even her body was warning her of exhaustion. It was all instinct.

The room she stole into, that was not so much a call of instinct but of desperation. Her world grew colder, and it was beginning to tumble at a speed that she could barely withstand.

"Rahna."

Nothing.

"Rahna."

"Jane?"

[vanillawinston]

Mad World| Chapter FOUR

Joker x OC(Jane Parker)

Summary: Jane was in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly her life was falling apart. The past and future of a dangerous obsession which changed his life and destroyed hers completely.

Warning for this chapter: death, brutal

Back to the start HERE

Previous part HERE

Words: 1833

Joker

I saw their fear. I saw their incredible fear like it was screaming right to my face. Shaking, completely scared and with a wet face from all their shed tears they were kneeling right in front of me, wouldn't dare to look in my face, knowing exactly that all of this would be over soon, or more they hoped it would be over soon. Ohhh no, they could wish for it to be over, a wish I would for sure not grant them.

"You thought you could play a game," I said and walked a little bit closer to the two whimpering men, "a game with ME?" I screamed the last word, saw gladly how one of them sobbed pathetically. Oh, it would be so much fun taking their lives, taking it slowly, painfully and showing them what a huge mistake they've made to anger me. It would be the greatest fun I had for a long, long time. I cocked my head, eyed both of them more precisely, saw how their faces showed some wounds, how their clothes were ripped into shreds. They had no similarities to the noble men they once were, I have taken care of that.

"I-I'm s-so...s-so sorry, Mr. J..." "Na, na, na, na," I rebuked him and interrupted him by this. Even the men who were holding those two pricks seemed scared, feared me in this mood, and they should. Today wasn't a day anyone should anger me, goad me, oh no!

"No one is betraying me, haven't I tried my best to teach you this, Sam?" I asked and knelt in front of the man who hold his eyes shut, too afraid to look me in the eyes, and whose tears, mixed with snot, were falling on the ground.

"I've tried everything," he screamed pathetically and only managed it to make me angrier. Furious I slapped his face, over and over again, laughed loudly while doing so, saw how his blood was splattered everywhere. It was hard to force myself to stop, but I had to if I wanted to make sure, he wouldn't die so fast. He should suffer, he should feel my pain, he should always feel my pain, and I would make sure of it!

"It is your fault she is gone, and I will make you suffer for it!" I said and pulled him closer to me, saw into his swollen face

"S-she..." "She trusted you, right," I laughed and took his face in both of my hands, "And now she is gone, because of you. Bring him away. Let him live, I need to torture him for the rest of his life, will have so much fun with him as my new toy." With these words I stood up, saw how some of my guys took him away, dragged him away, heard him screaming and begging for mercy I would never show him. He begged me to forgive him, begged me to kill him now, but he would never get an easy death, he would suffer like she had to because of him. He would be sorry, I will make him sorry! She was dead because of a mistake he had made, and I could never forgive him.

"What about him?" The other guard asked, and I sighed annoyed of this question, took my gun and shot my other prisoner, who fell to the ground.

"Who?" I asked unimpressed, "Take care of the plan, I want everything to happen smoothly." I left the room, had enough of this mess for today. I would get Harley back. Today I needed her more than ever, today was the day which would always remind me of what they have taken away from me, and I would never let this happen again. Harley would never be Jane, she would always be unable to hold a candle to Jane, but for now she was good enough.

Jane

It was scary and I kind of felt like I was part of one of the Horror games my brother always had played while walking through the destroyed and abandoned city. Instead of my old clothes, I've gotten some new stuff, everything in black, tight to my body, and a belt full of knives, including a gun, was now my only accessories. I followed the rest of my group, hold one of my many knives in my hand, knew there was a high chance of dying soon, but this was just creepy. What the hell had happened here? Why wasn't anyone talking to us? Informing us about what the hell is going on here? Where are we even going? What was the destination?

"If you won't breath more quietly, I will rip your lungs out," Katana hissed threatening to Boomerang who really was breathing loudly like he just was part of a marathon, even though we were walking so slowly, even a snail could overtake us in this pace.

"Sorry," he mumbled, and I smiled shortly when I saw how humble he seemed to be, but fast remembered again where I was and how serious this mission was which I realized when Rick exhaled hardly in front of us, and the reason why was found fast.

"Are those humans?" Harley asked with disgust, and I also looked with horror to the dead bodies in front of us which for sure were humans... some time ago.

"Seems like it," Floyd mumbled, and I swallowed hardly. In this moment the reason for all the dead people mad themselves noticeable, and I really had no idea what the hell this was, but when I saw the monsters, I thought this all must be nothing but a sick dream.

"Holy shit," Boomerang breathed when these weird creatures started attacking us, and I was completely devastated to see things, creatures like this. But what the hell was that? What the hell was happening here? Automatically I stumbled back, saw how the other guys of Rick started to fight against those things while our little group was just standing still, didn't do anything at all. I wanted to help, I really wanted to fight, to feel the same things I've felt in the past when I had to defend myself, it always had been so exciting, but I haven't had to do anything like this for over two years, I would probably die within a minute. What the problems of the others were, was uncertain for me, but they presumably just didn't want to help Rick. This is when Floyd remembered again that Rick was the keeper of all our lives and if he dies, we all would die with him!

I saw how Boomerang, Floyd, Harley and Crow helped the others, started to fight, keep Rick safe, only Diablo stayed next to me.

"Won't you help them?" I asked reproachfully, but I've heard about his powers, they were part of him, he wouldn't have to be scared to forget how they work, he would be able to help.

"No," he simply said, and I saw with a scared look to the fight, how there were more and more of those monsters, and I knew that I had to help, I had to help Floyd! If I die, it would be for something good and in freedom, it was better than dying in the prison. I ran to one of those monsters, threw my knife and saw happily how it landed right in the middle if his head.

"Jane, watch out!" Floyd screamed, and I had to duck away from one of those things, run my next knife in his throat before pulling it out again. I ran to the next monster, was completely out of breath from this little motion, but it was so weird to actually run again, to fight.

"You are better than I thought, little one," Boomerang laughed while I killed the next monster right next to him, smiled happily because of it. I never thought I would still be able to do this, to kill so easily, but seemed like it was part of me, just like he had told me all the time.

"You are not bad either," I said, smiling and I knew it was crazy, but it really was funny to run around, kill those monsters, to fight for your own life, it was exciting, it made me feel so alive. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw how Floyd shot every monster he saw, how Rick fought with all his power and how Harley was hitting some of those things with her bat. Most of Ricks other guys died, only Katana seemed to really be able to protect herself, to kill everything standing in her way. Never would I've thought that one day I would fight next to all those people, not because of some rivalry or because out of fun, but because we had to, because we had to protect ourselves. How could I imagine it? It was absurd, like some dream, and maybe all of this was just that, a weird dream? Maybe being locked up finally made me lose my mind.

"Watch out!" someone screamed right behind me while I was completely lost in my own mind, and before I could react, someone grabbed me by my hips and pulled me away just in time. I screamed when in the same moment a monster landed right where I was standing a second ago, and without thinking twice, I threw my knife at it, killed the last of these monsters.

"Thank you," I said out of breath, looked to Diablo who once again had saved my life and who was now nodding. He hadn't done anything, he hadn't fought with us, and I really couldn't get why, after all, he was the strongest of all of us with his power.

"Why were you just standing here?" I asked reproachful while putting my hair back to a ponytail. This fight had destroyed my last one completely, I must look like a mess, but I couldn't care less about something like this right now.

"Maybe all the stories are nothing but fairy tales?" Harley asked and walked to us, smiling.

"Even if so, he could have done anything to help," I said, but there had to be some sort of weapon he could use, he could handle. He was a prisoner, for some reason he had been locked up, so he was for sure capable to fight! I wouldn't understand him. He didn't seem to care that much, just shrugged and walked away, to the rest of the group, simply didn't care about anything, and still he had saved my life, twice now. What was his problem? Why was he like that?

Aloha :) I hope you liked it. Sorry for any grammar or editing mistakes, tell me if you like to be tagged and the Gif is not mine xx

Tag: @xxqueenwxtchxx

[nathalie-sancoeur-assistant]

Hawkmoth dove.

Mayura had just gotten too weak- far too weak to hold up her own transformation, let alone fight, or even stand.

She had fallen right off the top of the Eiffel Tower, plummeting to the Earth, yet she didn’t even scream. Either she was just to weak, or she didn’t care.

He scooped her into his arms as they fell to the ground. He caught his staff in one of the beams to break their fall, and he held Nathalie close. Ladybug and Chat Noir were in close pursuit, but they stopped many feet away when they saw who Mayura was- and the scene playing out before them. 

Hawkmoth climbed back up onto the beam, cradling the woman as she coughed, weak and damaged. 

“Hawkmoth...” she muttered, but he pressed a finger to her lips. 

“Shh, Nathalie. Be still. Don’t talk- rest,”

She shook her head and raised her hand to grasp his- all at a snail’s pace. 

“No, Hawkmoth...I don’t think I’m going to make it this time...” her voice was barely a whisper as his eyes widened. 

“No, don’t say that- you’re going to be alright, I just have to get you home. You’ll be okay. 

Nathalie smiled. She smiled at him with the same soft, loving look she always gave him. 

“You don’t need to worry. This isn’t your fault- so long as you can be happy, it’s all been worth it.” She muttered. He shook his head. 

“How can I be happy without you?” 

“You can be. You can save her...” Nathalie’s voice kept getting softer. Hawkmoth ran a finger under her chin.

“You mean every bit as much to me as she does,” He said, almost surprising himself, “I can’t do this alone...” 

Nathalie could feel her lifeforce slowly slipping from her. She raised his hand to her lips and placed a gentle kiss on his knuckles. 

“You’ll be okay. I promise...” her hand went limp and her head rested against his chest. Hawkmoth felt his heartrate pickup and his eyes went wide in panic. 

“No- No! Nathalie? Nathalie listen to me- you can’t just- I can’t....” he felt his stomach twisting up into knots and it felt like there was a rock lodged in his throat. He didn’t want to shake her, slap her, or any of those things people did when their loved one died in their arms. He found it disrespectful, and instead he brushed a strand of hair away from her beautiful face as he let out a sob, and with it came an uncontrollable flood of tears and emotion he would otherwise keep at bay. He buried his face between her neck and chest, trying to hide his face, muffle the sound- anything but openly cry in front of these two heros. But he also did this out of need- he wanted desperately to hear her heartbeat, the sound of her taking in a breath- anything that might indicate that she was alive. But all there was now was the now bittersweet sent of her perfume mingling with his tears. He felt someone put a hand on his shoulder and he felt anger bubbling up inside him. He turned and glared at Ladybug, who’s eyes were filled with grief and sorrow- she had no right. He spat at her to leave, she didn’t belong here- this wasn’t her loss. But still she stayed wordlessly in the background. 

He had had enough. 

He ripped the brooch off his shirt and threw it at her along with the peacock. So much pain and agony had come from those demonic little jewels. He had lost two people he loved more than anything in the world to them- if this is what they were going to do to the people he loved, he had to protect the last person he had- because he knew that if he didn’t, Adrien would soon be the next one holding that wretched miraculous. 

“Take them. They’ve made my life Hell.” he said flatly. 

He traced a hand along her gorgeous face, caressing her cheek with his thumb. If only he had come to his sense a little sooner, maybe, just maybe he could have saved her from it. 

But he had been an idiot. And now his last chance of happiness was gone for good.

[dramaphan]

It’s late, but here is: a live reaction to Phil’s second live show

-“I hope you’ve been fed and watered” no Phil we haven’t you don’t make content anymore

-Philip were you about to make a joke about your chocolate bar containing children

-I’m really not sure how to feel about the half black half brown hair thing but like we’ll see

-Stop whispering at me. Christ.

-I can’t believe you missed out on an opportunity to call that person y’arr-eth. Like a pirate.

-“sorry if I decline your message, I’m-“ blah blah excuse we know you’re denying the gaming channel ones

-“oh it looks like I died” and other instances of Phil not testing shit before he goes live

-it’s craw-sant you buffoon

-Gideon. I think I’ve only ever seen that name written down because I thought it was pronounced the same as pigeon

-plot twist: you actually were meant to take the cake but everyone thought it was art and whoever brought the cake went home sad.

-I am 9 minutes into this show and I’ve seen 4 ads already can you please give me my ass back

-oh my god they’ve got shrimp what nerds

-Phil why do you pretend that normancam is live you fool nobody

-he’s gone full fucking aquarium expert he was gonna have a whole other separate tank just for his dinky shrimp what a ridiculous fucking man I love him

-“Snails are super horny” I hate him

-all these fuckin segments. The editing. The production value. How much is younow paying his ass

-Phil I’m sorry but you would make a terrible news anchor get to the pOINT

-why the hell did this story make the news

-Angry Mums™️ sounds like a tv show I’d be into I love pain

-16 minutes in. Literally only a third of the way through, and I’ve now seen 6 ads. Can Phil fucking chill out for one second you’re already rich

-is it not a normal thing to just chill at a friends house while they’re in the shower?

-honestly real talk don’t ever be embarrassed by your parents doing weird shit in front of your crush because if y’all actually get serious that’s gonna be their in-laws and they’re gonna have to live with it so get them adjusted now.

-grad gown with a furry lining. My brain automatically went “ah yes, graduating from pimp school”

-amari really hit the nail on the head with this one. I can never think of embarrassing stories because they’re all buried deep down in the darkest parts of my psyche.

-look at Norman’s little butt wiggles I die

-Do Dan and Phil pass out candy to trick or treaters on Halloween and if not can I kick their ass

-who tf is having pride in October

-Granny Phannies. Who are you and how do I delete your group chat

-Martyn used to have red hair and get chased by geese. Not sure how those things are related but thank you for sharing

-geese aren’t even the weirdest pets I once knew someone who had a porcupine as a house pet.

-yes Phil geese can fly. The Canada variety does it every year. It’s a big deal.

-my seventh ad just appeared. I’m going to commit a crime

-“the gayest mouse ever” alright

-“a gay mouse for a gay rat” followed by the most absolutely unamused thank you I’ve ever heard in my life

-public spice latte

-holy shit I also had a hamster called mouse does this mean me and Phil are friends

-whichever room the streaming setup is in, is a mess. I will avoid any theories as to why that might be.

-at least Phil had a few different clips for this Norman cam instead of trying to fool us into thinking the same clip on loop was live

-Phil those are seagulls in what world do those look like geese

-“I love the apprentice, not the Donald trump one” wow Phil you’re getting awfully political

-the poopoo chat 69. Some of y’all don’t deserve group chats

-Phil has an occasional drag queen friend and in other news I now know what my dream amazingphil video would be

-maybe Red Squirrel can be your drag name

-“shall I just upload a 24 hour video of Norman’s tank” yes. The only correct answer to that is yes

-“those boob women” Phil where’s your respect

-“eye boobs”

-we’re back on embarrassing parents and I’ve had a flashback to every single time my mother had to interact with a customer service person. Literal worst nightmare.

-oh my god now I’m having flashbacks to my mother listening in on every single phone call I ever had and then confronting me about the stuff I talked about with my friends. Having a mother was a mistake.

-Phil, maybe your mum didn’t ruin your movie date with that girl but I’m sure there was a much more pressing reason it didn’t work out

-and it ended. Just like that.

Final thoughts: I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to sit through these live shows every week but gosh darn it I’ll try.

[sweetsmalldog]

The Horrors of Staying Alive pt 1

Part 2

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of attempted suicide, depression, mentioned drug use (it’s sleeping pills), self hatred

Description: Owen doesn’t blame him, Chimera wins, and Curt can’t help but blame himself

Author’s Note: I told three different people I wasn’t going to start this au until I finished one but I’m an impatient bitch so not only am I posting it now I’m posting it unbetaed. Also I’d like to apologize to Olive if your reading this I’m back on my bullshit aka being mean to Curt.

Curt couldn’t sleep. Curt usually couldn’t sleep anymore. Too many regrets. Too many mistakes. And he hates himself so fucking much that sleep feels like an escape he doesn’t deserve. The past is a happier place, no way in hell does Curt deserve to relive any of that.

He lays in bed and tries not to think about where he is and why. Tries not to think about all the things that could’ve would’ve gone different if he had been better. He fails, like always. It all his fault and he deserves the consequences. If he hadn’t done so many things so fucking poorly everything would be better. He ruined everything. And the world had to suffer because of him.

He’s been tempted to end his pain. Almost tried once, Owen stopped him. Then he locked all the knives up. It was selfish of him to think he could just end it all on his own terms. He didn’t deserve to die, not yet. He had to suffer first. Life was horror and he deserved every second. People died and went threw so much agony because of him so what does it matter if he’s deteriorating? The suffering of the guilty can never repay the suffering of the innocent but it comes close.

It wouldn’t matter anyways. It’s not like he can get out of this stupid safe house. Even if Owen wouldn’t go after him Chimera would. He can’t outrun them. And if he did they’d just use his mom as leverage. It would just be another innocent person in pain because of him. His mistakes have caused to much pain already.

Part of him tells him he deserves it. He deserves to feel like this. Chimera won and it’s his fault. Chimera destroyed everything he had stood for and what was he doing? Playing fucking house in god knows where. He’s pathetic.

He hates himself. But who wouldn’t? Owen? Wow the deadliest man alive doesn’t hate him, what a fucking accomplishment. And of course despite Owen being absolutely goddamn insane Curt still loves him. He can’t bring himself to even consider killing Owen. The thought of it makes him physically sick. What the hell was wrong with him?

“Curt?” Owen whispers sleepily.

“Ya?” Curt asks his voice fragile even to his own ears.

“You ok?” Owen looks him in the eye.

“I’m fine.” Curt lies seamlessly at least he wants to believe that, Owen could always see threw his lies though.

“Ok get some sleep, I know you don’t want to go back on the pills but you haven’t slept in two days and...” Curt can’t hear Owen anymore, all he can hear his the dull roar of his blood in his ears and his own panic.

No no no no no no no he can’t go back on those. He can’t get drugged again. He can’t. He can’t! He can’t! He can’t deal with how they make him feel! He can’t deal with the dreams. Or the dizziness. Or how his brain feels like it moves at a snails pace after. He feels like he’s going to throw up. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants Owen to reconsider.

“I just want you to be ok?” Owen voice comes back to him cutting threw the panic the same way the panic had cut him off.

“I know.” Curt responds shakily “I know.”

Owen smiles before giving Curt a kiss on the cheek “Good. Try to get some sleep.” I might reconsider if you do hangs unspoken but heavy in the air.

Curt still doesn’t sleep that night. Owen knows, he always knows. Curt wants to cry again. He feels so helpless.

Taglist: @robertstanion @gone-to-oregone @haniawritesthings @cracks-open-cold-one @agent-megagirl @purplegori @showstoppingnumbrr @imtooaromanticforthis @declansdumb

[raguna-blade]

Revolutionary Girl Utena 4-7

Hm...Not quite as clean as last time, but hey. Less stewing, for better or worse. And God, shit just keeps happening.

Episode 4

Opening 10000@ chunked full of meaning. Similarly, lacking context for any of it right now, so that's s for later,  .

Still trying to get over the bit where the two are in armor and look like they're about to come to blows before going in the same direction though.

Express the eternal beauty huh.

Also, Nanami you trfling what are you....

Woman can put her logic on a man huh...? Odd, but ok.

It's kinda amazing how much folks be putting on Anthy and not people who are actually, you know, who are actually to blame. Gotta get that Rose Bride who does....uh...Something. Girlfriend(?), Muse, Key to reVOLUTION???? Little talk o anthy. For literally everyone so far.

Though Miki at least seems to acknowledge her a bit.

When's Nanami's turn to fight.

Shadow Girls gonna make us feel mad dumb later. Feelin it.

Nanami jesus christ chill the fuck out. The most trifling bullshit I swear. Petty bullshit. Mind, Middle schooler so.

Ok, hey, that's a FUCK ton of snails. Like goddamn. Named them...? Uh... Uhhhhhhhh.

THAT IS A WHOLE ASS SNAKE WHOA HEY WAIT A MINUTE. Garter Snake but.

Makin the maxuse of those repeat frames and text.

Also, all night for the snake...?

An...Octopus....?

AN OCTOPUS? WHAT THE FUCK. YES NANAMI

A ballooon?

Miki, you literally know nothing about her.

Nanami soul crushed. Chuchu just..Trollin.

Seriously though, Anthy and animals that a thing?

Nananmi actually asking a relevant question. Why DOES everyone like Anthy so much out of nowhere? She's cute, but she's kinda reclusive so...?

Where'd Anthy learn that song? Didn't Miki write it...? Also, homeboy's sister? Found your shining thing huh?

Ending Also Clearly has some meaning that I'm not quite getting. Rose Bride Utena is...Kinda weird. Feels wrong? Gotta sit down with the lyrics for op and ending though. But yeah, both them rose brides feels...Odd. And it seems to be mirroring? So that's strange.

Do it for Miki's sake? Right and not for hers...?

Episode 5

Huh. Shadow Girls share VA with the teaming masses of school girls. Also, the budget for these fight scenes.

Why is it always the same three girls btw?

Does the Entire senior Student council just talk in riddles? Saionji was pretty straightforward but he's a dumbass apparently.

Awkward Confusing smiles abound. And this damn monkey again. I don't even dislike him he's just there. And those eyes.....

Wrote a famous song...? Uhhhhh. Sibs huh.

Destroyed the garden own hands? Miki did you do something to your sister? Oh hey caged bird little girl? Sure it's nothing.

And he left her (of no choice of his own cause fucking measles) sis got traumatized, and now idolizing that memory and his sister?

Is she dead or something? Have you talked with her? Also, where the hell...

WHAT ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH MIKI?

Utena: Please be a person Anthy I fucking beg you. This duel bullshit is dumb.

Anthy: Ok, but I'm your bride. I am down with this system my girl.

SHELL BREAKING. Wait a second, does this elevator thing happen right before every duel or revelation?

Are there only- hold up, dissolve the student council. Hey good on you Miki.

Miki: Aint this gonna fuck something up for people.

Touga: Aight, but hey if you feel it fuck the system kid.

Miki, just ignoring his sis and...what's with the dishevelment. Was she...? Piano room's not for HOLY SHIT WAS SHE FUCKING TOUGA

Sis looks just like you, But you're cuter. Uhhhhhhhhhhh

Touga, Only the winner get's to do what they want. And I banged your sister who you seem to hate, y u mad.

Miki: My sis used to look cute as an angel. You look like an angel btw

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anthy: *BLANK EMPTY LOOK” OF COURSE I'LL STOP IF SHE TELLS ME I AM THE ROSE BRIDE

Touga: INCREASINGLY NUDE: Hey, REMEMBER THE ROSE BRIDE SHIT I JUST TOLD YOU. YOU GOTTA BE BUFF TO HAVE THE BRIDE BRUH

Two Steps: Miki I will Trash the System Touga Interrupt Fuck, I guess I gotta fight Utena in this barbaric bullshit. Due Time.

SHADOW GALS APPROVE PIRACY. Also, What do you want.

Dat Absolute Destiny Yeahhhhhhhh Settin the Mood. Someone's about to get Some kind of REVELATION. From DIOS. Or some such. Actually, Dios is pretty close to god (I may be super wrong here) but the possibly flipping nature of it all is I guess, some kind of truth thing since if it were pure skill, as suggested with Juri losing to Miki somehow, utena deffo wouldn't have beaten Saionji. So, Whoever has the better understanding of things get's the power of Dios? Thus the power to change the world? Seems straightforward enough. Though why Anthy has that power.

NEW DUEL THEME. DOPE SONGS What's the meaning cause man, they're  apparently different per duel, as per (?????) which seems so so far.

Miki: I want the Bride!

Utena: YOU SURE THIS IS HOW YOU WANT IT?

Miki, SHE WANTS THE FREE

Anthy: SOULLESS EYES. For real, she needs to emote.more regular like. Seemingly likes Utena so....

Utena Wins, Defloration Complete. Beat, like that, one stroke.

Miki's Sis: I freaked out on stage and was never good. People thought I was though

Miki: I'M GONNA GO ALL OUT ON THIS DUEL SHIT YOU WATCH.

Utena: DO YOU NOT GET IT BRUH?

Episode 6

Ah, the good ole days when you could repeat frames like that.

Nanami almost dies, weird faceless stalker and car driver, mk

Nanami: SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME, LEMME JUST HOP ON THIS TABLE TO PROVE THE POINT.

Touga: I have Important s THOT s student council work.

Oh shit that hit her square in the face..

Utena: Trying to Kill Nanami Clearly.

That ball is lodged in her dome damn.

Utena: TOGAS A THOT, FACT

Touga: KILL THEM. KILL THE VERMIN

Anthy: Life is life. Leave it be.

Nanami: MY BROTHER WANTS ME DEAD. ANTHY IS BEHIND THIS. THAT WITCH SEDUCING HIM

Why does everyone think he'd kill his sister. Damn Nanami. What's your relationship that people buy it immediately.

A whole ass horse and...chickens?

Prince Appeared. Mitsuru Tsuwabuki....?????????? Watch for the name I guess.

Why...Why do they assume all these dudes are her type off hand? Like...

Oh hey he has a face and is a small boy ok. Uh...Hey, Are you prpositioning a child. Um.

UM

Shadow Gals what he fuck does curry have to do with it. Are y'all trollin.

Also, hey Nanami. Uh. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

ACTUALLY DATING A KID? TO JEALOUS YOUR BROTHER? WAT

A Brocon. And a drama queen. Everyone is baffled.

What the fuck is he doing in the locker. Just...snapped her fingers. Under her desk. Man slave boy. Uh

uhhhhhh.

WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU COME FROM SAIONJI. Hidden Love

Hard Ignore.

Nanami: Who are you three idiots. WHERE DID THE BOY COME FROM.

Y'all about to throw down with a kid. And he's...He won, damn. PUT HIS BODY IN THE LAKE JESUS.

Nanami: Mitsuru is my boyfriend. I can treat him how I like.

Mitsuru: ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A BOYFRIEND

Is this...Is this a rosebride thing? Like a kinda fucky mirror jam?

Also, did Touga 1v1 a Bull and win? What the fuck? I agree Mitsuru, he's pretty cool yeah.

Be a Big Bro, not a boyfriend. No choice but to put her in danger again in order to get her to be what I want.

Where did that equipment come from.

WHAT IS WITH THIS SCHOOL. A KANGAROO? WERE THEY GONNA BOX THIS ASSHOLE?

So, Mitsuru as rosebride, Gotta Protec, get’s wrecked. So...Uh..Anthy....?

Boy fucked up that kangaroo. 1V1 me YOU PUSSY DO IT COWARD.

Nanami: Don't be an idiot jesus fucking christ. I CAN'T JUST LET SOMEONE USEFUL DIE FOR ME GOD.

Was...Was Touga the one fighting the Kangaroo...For Real? Why...Why was he...One PUNCH.

Mitsuru: Lemme be your bro please.

Episode 7

Ohp, Serious time out the gate ok. Guess 6 was a palette cleanser.

Juri: Dominant. Sure I'm buff but what for? God.

Juri Arisugawa? Alice Refs...? Seen that name used that way before. I'll watch for it.

Huh, the immediate mirroring with Utena is...odd?

Juri: Fuck Off Vice Principal.

Wait, was he hitting on...her...? Oh that's not.

Chuchu always with Utena? Huh.

Also Juri, Dominant as fuck, offing students left and right.

Oh, she's explaining things. Rosebride gives power to revolution.

Utena: Oh cool, super powers. Dope. Seems MAD FUCKING STUPID.

Juri: Yeah. Seems dumb right.

Ok, juri uh...Has EVERYONE Slapped Anthy thus far? Like...Ok? Does Everyone Get a Turn? Is...Is this a thing? It's kinda.

SHELL TIME. DUEL? DUELL?

End of the World: DUEL TIME

Is touga trying to kill Miki. What's with knives man? Miki. HOW MANY KNIVES. BLINDFOLDS

Juri: I don't believe any of this shit. I'll prove it's bs.

Old love. It's 1000000% not this dude. Don't you. Play me.

ORANGE ROSE AT CROTCH LEVEL WHAT? And she got denied I guess...?

SHES IN LOVE WITH SOMOENE AND ITS NOT YOU.

There was some love triangle shit, and girl is perpetrating.

MUSIC GONE. SHITS REAL

Jesus this show is just full of bullshit.

Ok, we had a moment with why utena is the way is she is, Juri Does not approve. Miracles are Bullshit, I will dunk you in the the fucking OCEAN.

Rabbits Dance all around huh. OK.

SHADOW GALS. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

ABSOLUTE DESTINY TIME. TIME FOR SOMEONES IDEALS TO GET BUSTED I GUESS.

Also, like how the various wings on the garden go from vaguely angelic to kinda ominous. I mean the whole deal is sketchy as fuck, you don't just start singing about the apocalypse and ignore it. DARKNESS OF LIGHT DAWG. DARKNESS DARKNESS EVERYWHERE. KINGDOM HEARTS WISHES!

Also is that castle CG? It feels it but...

Juri: MIRACLES ARE BS BUT IF THEY'RE REAL SHOW ME THE TRUFACTS

Utena: NOT SURE ABOUT MIRACLES BUT WHATEVER I DON'T NEED THAT SHIT.

FIGHT. Oh boy new song.

Lucifers light...? Uh...All of this is ominous as fuck. Then a bunch of night and darkness gods.

Certainty of Death, Namely Light.

Sword Falls Just so to cut the Rose. Uh. Miracle....?

Uh...Juri Was Robbed.

Consistently though, the stronger convictions won. Juri was legit robbed, but she hesitated, so she lost.

Juri: MIRACLES ARE BULLSHIT AND MY GAY LOVE WAS NOT RESPECTED GOD

Also, Juri=Lucifer? For...The Student Council...? She does seem to be the one who least believes in this shit. She didn’t even duel utena for the rose bride like literally everyone else. She just wanted to prove Utena’s ideals wrong.

[forallyourikemensengokuneeds]

Through Hell ch 2

Three weeks prior....

She had gone down hill somewhat fast. The pain from her foot had become unbearable as she tried to walk anywhere even if it was five feet. The simple infection that had plagued her for years had changed but she refused to go to the building medic. She should be able to treat it herself. She knew that. The second day of the pain she had noticed the cuts forming one the bottom of her toes. The open sores now made walking or even standing so painful that she couldn't.

"Go to the medic." Her friends pleaded as they saw her try to hoble anywhere through the building wincing as she went.

"I'm fine." She replied until the day she stood up and went into the hallway walking about the same speed as a snail she propped herself up on the wall and was using it to move through the hallway when she ran into a group of the most elite of the soldiers she worked with. All of them had watched her decline and now her approach.

"You. You look like crap." Their medic said as he looked her over and noticed some signs that alerted him to walk over. "You know better then to push this off."

"It's nothing."she said softly and almost breathless.

"It is something there smarty pants. You know that as well." Ieyasu replied as he looked into her eyes and saw the pain there.

"Ieyasu, get out of my way." She ground her through clenched teeth.

"Your funeral." He said as he moved slightly out of her way. She continued to use the wall to move. Every step she winced more and more until her movement were jerky and uneven.

"What the hell Princess." Hideyoshi asked mostly to himself as he started to walk forward to just pick her up and carry her to her next destination, when she turned awkwardly and they watched as he eyes rolled back and she started to crumble to the floor. It was almost like watching a horrible train wreck in which you were frozen to your spot and couldn't take your eyes off the scene. She was going to hit the floor hard until one man moved and quickly and caught her before that happened. He lifted her in the air with ease and began to make his way down the two flights of stairs to the medics office.

"She passed out. Something is wrong with her foot." Mitsuhide said as he placed her on the gurney and the medics nodded.

"Out you can go now." the medic replied.

"I'm not leaving her." He said and they looked at the man almost everyone in the building feared to have any sort of interaction with. Nicknamed the torturer, the man in front of them was easily the one person they all knew to be the one who could dig up any information on anyone and he had no qualms about using it to become one of the best intelligence officers of their time. The medic debated for a moment and then nodded. He did not want to cross the man.

"Fine help then and take of the shoe of the foot she was having trouble with." The medic said.

"It was both." mitsuhide said as he went to work on her boots. He got the laces undone and started to remove the show in a reverse Cinderella moment that had both men gagging when it was removed. "What the hell?"

The medic walked out of the rooom and yelled for someone to call an ambulance, her foot had turned gangrenish. He figured the other had as well. "This is bad."

"How bad?" Mitsuhide asked as he worked on the other boot.

"She could lose her feet bad." The medic said. "Worse is I am afraid that the infection is in her blood if she passed out. She is septic."

"And that means what." Mitsuhide asked.

"The infection is in her blood stream begin carried everywhere. They might not be able to contain it." The medic said softly.

"You're saying she could die?" Mitsuhide's tone was nothing to mess with. "How the hell could a simple infection kill someone in this day and age?"

"She has been hiding this. If she had treated it before maybe this would not have happened but we are not going to go there." The medic said, "The problem with her is she is allergic to many antibiotics. This is not going to be easy for the doctor at the hospital."

"What is she allergic to?" Mitsuhide asked and was given a run down on the list. It was long but he listened to everyone of the these. He took the packet for the hospital and held it as the emt's came in and loaded her up on their gurney for transport. Mitsuhide followed without a word and got in. No one would nay say him with the look he had on his face. His counterparts and team members were watching from the smoke pit near the front of the building.

"Looks like Akechi has his hands full." Masamune chuckled. As he said this Ieyasu was sending a text for an update when he had one. They all watched as she was rushed away and their friend in the back of the ambulance with her.

"He doesn't even realize does he?" Shingen asked lightly.

"No, I don't think he does. Maybe this will make him realize though." Nobunaga replied.

"I hope he didn't pick right now to find his feet." Ieyasu said not in his normal snarky tone as he received a text from the medic she was just with. "She is really bad off. The medic that just had her in his office thinks she might."

"Don't finish that statement." Kenshin said softly.

"It was just something wrong with her foot though." Mitsunari said.

"Gangrene." Ieyasu said. "Both of her feet were gangrenous and bad."

"That's treatable right?" Yukimura asked.

"Yes but that one." Ieyasu said as he pointed to the ambulance in the distance,"is allergic to nearly antibiotic that is used to treat it." He shook his head and looked at the retreating vehicle, "They could kill her as well."

The group stood in silence with his last words echoing in their heads. All of them liked the woman who was known in the building as a lightning fast fireball with her words and be behaviors. She was brave and daring challenging them all to be their best by being better then them. They also knew their friend that was in the ambulance with her though he never outwardly showed it, was deeply in love with her. It had began about a year prior when he would hang on every word she said. He listened to people for a living but he was never so obvious before to anyone. Any news of her in the field became his obsession. His friends all knew of his plight but they truly believed even the man himself didn't realize why she had become so important. They feared for her life but it wasn't for her that they felt that way, not entirely. They knew if she died he would be gone as well and he wouldn't even know why.

Mitsuhide looked at the flushed faced woman in the gurney as they tried to get vital signs. When they had done a temperature reading on her it had to be repeated a few times. She was burning hot. "This is not going to be an easy case." One of the emt's started as he looked at the woman and then her feet. "This is really bad."

Mitsuhide could feel the unfamiliar emotions rolling through him but he wouldn't let them cloud his judgement. He knew the outcome of this. She simply had to pull through and go back to work where he could watch over her. This was exactly what needed to happen. He smiled at her even knowing that the situation could turn horrible any minute he knew she was a fighter, a fireball, she could beat and then blow all of them out of the water. They finally arrived and he was the first out and he followed as the team of doctors began working on her. Standing off to the side of the room he watched everything and listened as they ran test and cultures. He gave them a list of the things she was allergic too and he realized then as the doctor went over the list and his face fell that this was not going to be easy. This was Mitsuhide's first realization that this was really bad. He watched as the doctors decided to try to treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic and something for her fever. They began to pump her full of things quickly as he stood there and watched.

"She has a long road ahead of her but she is here now." The doctor said softly to him as he just kept his eyes on her. "She is going to go upstairs to ICU but as the person who came in with her you should be able to stay with her. Does she have family near by?"

"Not that I know of." Mitsuhide replied searching his memory for any mention of her family and he couldn't remember any time she had talked about her family. He would make the call to their boss as soon as she was moved and alert him so he could see if she had anyone in the area.

"Can you make decisions for her?" The doctor asked.

"Short term yes, she would allow it. I will contact our boss and see if she had someone else near by who can as well." Mitsuhide said and the doctor nodded. "Then we need to start a more aggressive treatment for the infection however her allergy to the main component is providing a major hurdle to it. We could treat both her reaction to the antibiotic but it is a risk. A major one and we only get one real shot at it. Would you sign off on it, if it came to that?"

"I would have to hear more about the risks involved." Mitsuhide replied looking at the doctor," I won't risk her life if their are other options available first."

"I see." The doctor said and the team of nurses that were prepping her to be moved were done and indicated that they would start the move. Mitsuhide looked down at her now with two IV's in her arms and a breathing mask on. She looked even smaller as she laid completely still on the bed. He followed out of the room as they began the move. They all crowded into the elevator and he touched her hand, it was still so very hot that he almost dropped it back onto the bed. The fever was still raging through her they had packed ice blankets around her and were discussing an ice bath and the pro's and con's of it. He could hear the words but he was focused on her face. That was all he could see and he noticed the color in it. To him it wasn't correct, it was just to red.

As they settled her into a private room in the icu ward he called the building to give them an update. He also asked if there was someone who could make medical decisions for her and surprisingly she had set that up years before. She had completely lined up all her ducks on the worst case scenario and that was now. Their boss faxed over the papers and contact info that she had set up. She had even listed her "family" on them so the correct people could have access to her. He was shocked to see his name on the list along with his teammates. She had thought of them as her family instead of her actual blood one. That was a piece of information to be stored away and find out the background on that story.

He sat there holding her extremely hot hand when the primary on her list of people to make a medical decision for her walked in with the doctor. He looked at Mitsuhide and tried to smile at the man. "How is she?"

"No change." Mitsuhide replied.

Bettison looked at the doctor," Do what you have too."

"Okay we will start the allergy medicine first then we will start the others." The doctors said.

"What did you do?" Mitsuhide asked.

"Gave them permission to treat her properly." Bettison said with a sigh.

"She is allergic to the medicine. You gave them permission to do that without talking to someone else. They told me they only had one shot. There could be other damage done!" Mitsuhidejumped up and stared the other man down.

"Without the treatment she will die." Bettison countered.

"And the treatment could kill her as well." Mitsuhide said.

"I'm sorry Akechi we have to try at least." Bettison said softly.

"If she dies because of this I will kill you." Mitsuhide said softly but loud enough for the other man to hear and even acknowledge him with a nod, excepting his fate either way.

[recoiiled]

                             “ ‘being hurt doesn’t teach anybody anything,’                                  said lily. ‘it doesn’t help. it just feels bad.’  “

☾  ↪  bob morley, cis male, 35, he/his.  ／  ❛  have you heard from THEODORE DANE ROBINSON lately ？ yeah, the THIRTY FIVE year old HISTORY PROFESSOR. pretty sure they’ve been here EIGHTEEN/TWO YEARS, and from what i’ve heard, THEO can be kind of RESTLESS  &  OVERSTRUNG, but i caught them on a good day once, and they were pretty AFFABLE  &  PERSEVERING. i’m probably overthinking it, but given all the crazy shit around here, i hope they’re okay. maybe they’re watching their favorite scary movie, i heard it’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

WARNINGS:   discussions of murder, sibling death, parental death, ghost mention. second section mentions stabbing and open spaces, as well as snakes and scorpions.  ADDITIONAL MATERIALS:   theo’s stats page, playlist, & pinterest board   ADDITIONAL NOTES:   this is pretty much just theo’s app!!! and by pretty much i mean it is his app, like, exactly. if anything doesn’t make sense it is On Me because i have proofread these like TWICE (twice!!!) and still feel like i done fucked up big somewhere in there. anyway i can’t wait to get to plotting with all of y’all!!!!!   (  zoe, 21, she/her, and cst.  )

001. TELL  US  A  HEADCANON  OF  HOW  YOUR  MUSE  FEELS  ABOUT  THE  HOLLOW  MAN'S  ALLEGED  RETURN  ?

the robinson family was a family with a long history, stretching back in holloway long before the murders marked them forever. that long history was told with laughter and warm interjections and embellishments at every family gathering  ( family gatherings included: birthdays, weddings, holidays, and the every-other-week sunday dinners. )  for as long as theo could remember. this cousin tripped on her way down the isle when the whole town had been invited to the wedding, even the mayor, and made front page news. that great-aunt traveled two towns over to compete in a pie-making contest and won, but earned so much scorn from the win that no robinson can ever visit that town again.  it went on   ---   theo was always meant to love history. he was raised on his family’s history, fed a steady diet of passed-down stories from anyone who had something to say. and he was raised on the town’s history, because you couldn’t live in holloway and not steep yourself in the myths of it. not steep yourself in the stories that surrounded every house, every family just as ingrained in the streets as your own; he knew things that were certainly tall tales, like all the myths that came with being in washington, and he knew the true facts of their town’s founding that each student learned when they were in the second grade. ( he knew every bigfoot sighting and alien tale from surrounding towns, could weave tall tales of his own to any younger robinson who would listen. ) there were family secrets, he was sure. there were a lot of robinson’s, and robinson-adjacent people, who flitted in and out of theo’s life growing up. he was a smart kid   ---   he knew how to read a silence that fell over a room as soon as a kid walked in. he knew how to tell when a scrapbook was missing pages. but there were other things on his mind and he knew that if there were things he needed to know, someone would tell him. family was important to theo, that sense of community he found he could find almost anywhere in holloway.  adults kept things secrets from kids, but he didn’t think it was malicious; it was just a sign of being human. he was a pretty chill kid and everyone around him knew it; the sort of child who was always underfoot, but quiet about it, who tucked a toy or a comic book or a paperback with him and sat with the adults. theo just liked being where the action was, even if sometimes the action was subdued because of his presence. he was a frequent receiver of high-fives and hair-ruffles, frequent relayer of information to the other kids of the robinson clan. no one really thought of him as nosy, though certainly someone could have looked at him and seen that; they thought he was a kid who knew that there would always be a place for him. 

growing up, theo had five siblings   ---   their own little robinson clan plenty big, as if holloway wasn’t already full of people they were related to.  mom’s side was big and dad’s side was big; both parents looked at the other when they were newlyweds and said, we’re not going to have that many kids. both remembered crowded childhoods and laughed at people their age, determined to have a big family. and then a few years after the first they said, well, one more. and once they opened the floodgates there, it just kept happening, and before they knew it they had a family the size of the brady bunch.  theo himself was somewhere in the middle; the oldest boy, but not the outright oldest. his sister emma was the leader of all their fun, with his second oldest sister her second in command, ready to carry out her orders.  he was there to reign in anything too outrageous, which felt an odd place for the third sibling to be in the pecking order; the most responsible, in a way, when he was three years younger than emma. but it worked. everything about the six robinson kids worked.  theo’s childhood was both snail-paced and lightning fast. there were moments that buzzed lazily by, summer breaks spent in the drowsy almost-heat of the town, daring other kids to sleep out in the stars. there were months that sped by theo so fast he could barely recall what his fourth grade teacher looked like. theo was un-bothered by time; he was always running an hour late or an hour early, never could quite tell if it was tuesday or friday. he was a go-with-the-flow kinda kid, and it felt like he would never quite shake that mentality off.  ( his responsibility extended to contributing to plans, not to getting places on time or doing homework by the due date. let’s be realistic. )  they were all a little laidback, knew their way around each other   ---   breakfast in the mornings before school was a well-oiled routine, someone manning the toaster, someone brewing the coffee, someone scrambling eggs, and on and on. dinner was also fun, their parents joining in on the chaos in the kitchen, everyone doing their part even if it had nothing to do with what was happening on the stove. it was great, to be a robinson. 

1976 dawned and it felt like it would be a great year.  theo remembered the robinson’s family new years party, everyone waving sparklers around and shooting off fireworks. he was a few years out from even being able to steal a glass of champagne, but everything was golden tinged anyway; like nothing could go wrong that night, like it was a good omen for the year to come.  spoiler alert: it was fucking not a great year.  not for theo. not for holloway. certainly not for emma. if he could scrub the awful, whole three-hundred-and-sixty-five of it from his memory, he would. if he could have a do over, he would take it.  theo was on time for something for the first time in his life, and it was emma’s funeral. he imagined her ruffling his hair for it, giving him a trademark sardonic look. what, I’m worth the punctuality cousin jess’ wedding wasn’t? everything felt awful   ---   he knew the whole town was in mourning, but he felt the gaping hole emma left in the robinson family like a physical wound. he wondered, and hated himself for wondering, how anyone else could know what they were going through.  

life went on for theo, but only because life had to go on; because he knew emma  ( of course he knew emma, the robinsons where tight-knit as they came and he knew his sister like the back of his hand. better than that. )  and he knew she wouldn’t want the family to wallow in her loss forever. in fact, he knew she’d be pissed if he wallowed; could practically picture her whacking him over the back of the head for it, eyes wide as she demanded, what the hell are you doing, theodore?  theo was fifteen when emma died and it felt like he had to go back to normal as soon as possible. he’d been the responsible one of the robinson children; emma had been their ringleader, but he’d been their glue, and he knew if she was gone he could never, ever afford to fall apart. he could leave and change and do what he pleased, but he had to be fine, he had to be okay.  he also knew that if he showed any cracks in his surface outside of the family, everyone would be overly kind to him, soft with pity for him. he wasn’t the only person in town related to one of the hollow man’s victims   ---   but theo couldn’t shake the feeling that if he let himself be seen as one of the dead girl’s brothers for a moment too long, he would never be seen as anything else.  ( the truth was: part of him almost didn’t see anything wrong with that. he loved emma, he missed emma, would it really be so bad to have an identity tied to her? but he couldn’t. he couldn’t. )  he’d always been a softer kid; he had male cousins, and younger brothers, and his dad was always around to play catch if theo asked, but he had two older sisters and a mom who meant business and that meant he’d never really been macho, a guy’s guy. he liked telling stories and reading stories. he knew a shit ton about bog bodies and the riches of king tut’s tomb, had a favorite ancient civilization, a favorite revolution   ---   the whole nerdy nine yards. but after emma  ( after everything )  he joined cross country and the baseball team. he dated a few girls at his friends’ suggestions, went to parties, cracked jokes with ease.  he figured if he became someone entirely different, on purpose, no one would think to question all the ways he wasn’t the same. 

002.  WHAT  IS  YOUR  MUSE'S  GREATEST  FEAR  ?

that few years re-invention was for a good cause; theo wore it like armor. the whole of halloway wanted to move on from the murders, and no one was exactly waiting around him, looking for a stray look from poor theo robinson as a cue to ask how he was doing.  the robinsons were close   ---   they’d always been close. emma’s murder didn’t take that away, but it did take something from it. they were a tightly wound machine that had to learn how to operate without a vital part. if theo thought too hard about it all his heart would break; he knew some families were rife with discord because their personalities were never made to match up, but the robinsons were, in a lot of ways, so similar. they all put up a brave face so the rest of the family wouldn’t worry too much about them. they would never shatter for missing her, but they’d never really be able to move on. it was a double-edged sword, the price they had to pay. his brave face was becoming mr. congeniality. he’d always been open and friendly, but there was something sweeter about it before. soft. he was a boy who seemed like he could break so easily, who no one wanted to hurt. ( he was hurt anyway. his sister died. she was murdered, brutally. imagine thinking he’d stay the same after that? ) after the murders, there was an edge underneath his sunny smiles; he’d never been the popular guy before. but all of a sudden he was untouchable. people parted ways for him in the halls and seemed startled when he gave them a friendly nod, and asked about the volleyball team, or the student council, or their younger brother. no one expected someone with a steel-forged spine to hand you fresh-baked banana bread for your sick grandma.  people had always liked theo; but after everything, they really liked theo.  the thing was: theo wanted to study history. he’d always wanted to study history. he wanted to be an archaeologist, he thought, since he figured that was the best route if he wanted to be elbow deep in the past. he’d come to this conclusion when he was in middle school and even after everything, theo was sticking to his guns. he used to think that he loved holloway too much to leave, though. that he’d find a way to finesse their degree programs to work for what he wanted.  that he’d never be able to find somewhere that filled him with the same warm feeling being so near his family did   ---   close family and distant family and blood-related and not-so-blood-related all as close as could be. holloway was comforting, once upon a time. now he knew that he had to leave.  it wrenched something from his parents when he told them he’d applied and been accepted to school some clean across the country. somewhere cold and old and as far as he could get from the hallows. but he’d known when he was fifteen that emma would have smacked him for wallowing, and at eighteen he knew she would have punched him for staying.  he imagined her saying, are you staying for me? you’ll kill yourself for a ghost, theo. his sister spoke to him a lot, in his head. but that’s what was so great about leaving for college. no one at school expected the boy with an iron forged heart to be haunted. 

people in holloway were so dazed by the news of him leaving that the fact that he was leaving for an ivy league kind of blew right over their heads. and theo wanted it that way. he got the sense that if people forgot all about the soft kid he used to be, before emma  ( in his head, he always thought of it as b.e.; he’d never been religious, but he figured he could adopt the catholic wording to cut his life in half ), they could forget him altogether if he left abruptly enough. in a way, he was right. the ivy league-ness of his choice made the rounds, made the gossip, and then it passed. holidays for the robinsons used to be sprawling affairs, but theo made sure to only come back for his immediate family. he stayed sequestered with his siblings and his parents and boarded a plane back to campus as soon as the festivities waned.  pretty soon, he thought, I’ll be a ghost too. then holloway could be full of them.  cornell university was the culture shock to end all culture shocks   ---   and it was everything theo hoped it would be. the finger lakes, on paper, didn’t seem that different from the region around the hallows. and holloway had its college, too. but he’d thought ithaca was about as different from home as he could get and still find his feet on solid ground. the buildings were all red-bricked and ancient feeling, the air crisp even in the summer heat of move-in day. the hills and the gorges and the rolling trees; it was a place of clean beauty. unbloody, untouched. his classmates came from all over, just bright and eager to get on with their lives as he was. they were all fascinated with his origin story, when they got to see glimpses of it; he’d agonized, a little, over telling the truth. some just knew he came from ‘ that town with all those murders. ’ for others, wasn’t as interesting as his major or his plans for his degree, what he’d gotten on that last exam.  others still seemed curious, though; to get to know him, really get to know him; and this was his time to move on. this was why he’d moved out so far. but. he couldn’t just lie about emma.  why not? the emma that lived in his head asked. in his head, she’d always be seventeen and beautiful. it hurt to think he was older now than she’d ever get to be. I wouldn’t mind if you lied. why would you move all this way to feel just as tied down by the past? but in the end he couldn’t lie. he couldn’t. 

so they were all fascinated with his origin story, but once they heard it and understood, a little guiltily, that theo was caught in the midst of his hometown’s tragedy  ...  they backed off with the questions. and pretty soon it faded into the background of things people knew about him; he went to parties thrown by cornell’s frats and ithaca college’s music students. he went apple picking and to hockey games. and he studied his ass off, pulled more all nighters than he’d ever thought healthy, or possible. the archaeology program was amazing. worth acquainting a new crop of people to the story of the hollows.  theo was practically a chameleon at this point. he wasn’t the soft, sweet kid he’d been b.e. but he wasn’t the surprise people always saw him as in high school, all sun-tempered-steel, either. he still had more steel in him than softness. but he wasn’t making the same effort, to ask about people’s family, or sports team, or whatever. he was just another guy   ---   he had friends in other majors, but he mostly stuck around the other archaeology students, or history majors, people who crept to the same corners of the school’s library. he was nice to the people in his building, and his friend’s significant others, but he was kind of over doing the most to seem perfectly healed.  he was a student, and that’s what he would focus on, and so he did. theo graduated with a few digs under his belt and a glowing recommendation that had him headed to the united kingdom for two years for a master’s program, exploring the secrets of old castles and glens.  it wrenched something a little more from his parents when he broke that news, but by then, theo thought, they’d known to see it coming. they loved him enough to let him go.  

here were the things that kept theo robinson up at night, despite declarations that he was fine  ( and he was, mostly ):  

he couldn’t stand in an open space with his back to it. there was something hollow  ( ha ha, pun unintended )  in all that empty space. there was something awful in the unknown. something fragile in the unprotected skin of your back. 

he had a bit of a problem walking first through doors, too, which was a problem. he’d had plenty of female co-workers who hated having the door held open for them. and he respected that. but having someone at his back like that made the hair at the back of his neck stand up, gave him a cold shiver it took longer than he’d like to admit to shake off. 

he encountered this fucked up snake at one of his dig sites  ---   definitely venomous, though he wasn’t going near enough to it to find out. snakes are a no-go for him. 

it’s probably a problem that he can’t stop talking to his murdered older sister’s ghost. emma’s voice lives in the back of his head and he can’t get her out of there; most days he thinks he doesn’t want to get her out of there. he tells himself he’s not so crazy that he talks to her out loud, so is it really a problem? 

he won’t ever tell anyone he hears her all the time. he can’t handle the gut-punch the pitying, wary look would cause.

scorpions are also a no-go, also because a shitty encounter on a dig.

it’s been said, but it bears reiterating: he cannot stand the feeling of emptiness behind him. 

he’s had recurring nightmares for years now where he’s fighting a lion gladiator-style in an old roman colosseum; he pulls his sword on the bloody thing and at the last moment the lion stands on its hind legs and pushes him, and even though they’d been in a colosseum, theo falls into nothing and wakes up in a cold sweat. every single time. 

he wonders if he wasn’t stabbed in a past life; the blade dug snug in the small of his back and wrenched out before he could do anything.

theo still came home for all the important holidays; tried to make it home for as many birthdays as he could, always bearing foreign gifts and exciting stories. he moved away from scotland and headed to egypt. then he moved from egypt to morocco, spent another chunk of time where he hung out with other people just as obsessed with history and archaeology as he was; there, he decided to keep his own history under wraps. no one needed to know about the hollow.  he fell in love; he fell out of love. he couldn’t recall a second where he didn’t have sand in his hair, under his nails, and a broad grin swept across his face. those years confirmed for theo: this was where he was meant to be.  the voice of emma in his head was quiet, happy for him. came out mostly to chide him to eat healthier, sleep better, call home more.  it was hard to get technology out to the actual dig sites; almost no one had cell-phones, they weren’t cartoonish wall-street brokers. but luckily, theo was living on the edge of a little city, full to bursting with life, and people, and landlines.  ( everyone spoke french, which theo had little practice in. one of his co-workers was french canadian and made fun of him endlessly for any and all attempts. )  life at this particular site was great; then one day his father called him in a panic at four in the morning and said his mother was having a health episode   ---   those had been his words.  theo flew home in a rush, crowded into the hospital room with a dozen other robinsons for as long as the medical center staff would allow.  when she died, he stayed in the thick of his family for the first time in years. but theo was more grown up than he had been at eighteen when he left and thought he was leaving for good. he was ready to be there for his siblings while his father couldn’t be. theo and his sister oversaw funeral arrangements. they were the ones who tried to get their family’s lives back on track. theo said, I’m not going to stay too long, just until everyone is back on their feet. he said, I really do need to get back to the site. he said, I’ll stay until christmas but then I have to go.  some of his siblings were already grown up themselves and were called back into the thick their lives before their grieving period was really over   ---   but they went back all the same. luckily they were all still in the hallow; it was nice to be together again, theo could admit. he’d missed it, even if now it wasn’t the same. and then his father had an unexpected heart attack and theo was the last adult robinson in his immediate family with nothing else to do, and looking after his two youngest siblings fell to him. 

his dad got better, by a certain degree of better, but theo felt awful anytime he thought of leaving holloway again. he put his master’s degree to good use and got a teaching job at the local college, made sure to start spending time with his living siblings. with his living parent. he couldn’t quite figure out what the emma in his head thought about the choice; some days he imagined her telling him, theo, you were so happy in life you made for yourself. others, she said, remember how good home felt, when it was good?  then shelly meyers died, and he wished he’d figured out which version of emma to listen to. he thought, I can’t fucking do this again.  on the one hand he was glad to be around; he couldn’t imagine hearing news of the new murder while he was halfway around the world and had no way of keeping tabs on his family. he couldn’t even picture the spike of fear that would drive into his chest. but his family was still here. and he was still here. and no amount of family dinners, of walking everyone to their car and making sure they had a knife or pepper spray on them, would shake his fear.  he already had one ghost in his head, and it felt like there were dozens of others just waiting to join her. 

003.  TELL  US  A  LITTLE  MORE  ABOUT  YOUR  CHARACTER.  WHAT  ARE  THEIR  QUIRKS  ?  PERSONALITY  TRAITS  ?  FATAL  FLAWS  ?

so theo probably, like, definitely has a multilayered reputation around town. he was born and raised in holloway and I definitely feel like the robinsons are the sort of family that like. everyone definitely isn’t related to, like biologically, but everyone is a family friend of. there’s a lot of them, and they’re mostly warm and inviting and like being well known and well liked around town. theo himself was a very likable kid! when he was a kid!

and the elephant in the room is that theo’s oldest sister was one of the twelve victims of the original hollow murders. so that definitely tinged the way people saw him for a bit. 

he decided that he Have To move on when it seemed like that’s what the town wanted to do. did a full one eighty and was very much a Likable Cool Guy until he left for college and full on left. I doubt anyone but his family saw him in the years between him a.) graduating from high school and b.) coming back for his mom

he’s been back in town for two years! fun!! just in time to get mcmurdered!!!

his primary mode of transportation is a motorcycle which he maintains mostly on his own. it makes him seem a lot cooler than he is. he read a ton of comic books as a kid and definitely still does. he’s an x-men fan all the way. some of his students at the college definitely refer to him as the hot history professor but he is 100% still a nerd. 

he got a b.s. in archaeology from cornell and his master’s in history from some scottish university I’ll figure out when it’s not 3:51am and I don’t have a cold. 

( edit from when it’s not 3:51am but i still have a cold: i’ll still figure that out later aksjdhgf )

he has a rather gnarly scar on his left thumb and another hefty one along the back of his right calf. his job was pretty scrape-happy, so he’s got a bunch of other, smaller scars, but no other big ones. 

theo has a black (former stray) kitten named oscar who he dotes on, like, really really dotes on. 

hmmm. fatal flaw would probably be that he has developed Very Good escapist tendencies. he wouldn’t say that but he does. he’s a runner   ---   super ironic for someone who has a fear of leaving things at his back. 

theo owns an ungodly amount of denim and leather jackets. truly, his closet is packed. when he was in high school he had a letterman jacket, too, with patches for baseball and cross country both. it’s probably still in his dad’s house somewhere; all the kids’ stuff is neatly stored in the attic, and theo knows he could hunt that jacket down if he really wanted to add it back to the collection.

he’s not super open about it because he is a Man of Science but he fully believes in bigfoot. and aliens. though he’ll fight anyone who says bullshit like, the aliens built the pyramids. theo has to draw the line somewhere. 

of all the places he’s lived  ( holloway, ithaca, scotland, egypt, morocco, plenty of other sites for smaller amounts of time )  the hollow is definitely not his favorite. surprise, surprise, but it bears repeating. 

ooc I know he’s probably not going to make it out of this alive, but theo’s plan for when the murders all blow over is to apply to cornell’s grad program and move back to ithaca for a bit to wipe the hollow off of him. then probably fuck off to some more dig sites before eventually settling at a college not in holloway to teach again, because I think he does enjoy being a professor. he just hates this town

[helenarlett-rex]

Goosebumps Review #4

When I started this project, someone who will remain nameless asked me to do Camp Jellyjam. I understand now why you asked for this. You knew didn’t you? You knew what I was about to get myself into and you wanted to see my reaction. You wanted to see me suffer. 

Well, moving on with my quest to read all the Goosebumps books I never got to read as a kid…

(Spoilers ahead)

The Horror At Camp Jellyjam

Goosebumps (Original Series) #33

I have a lot to say about this one. More than I normally do. And let’s start out by saying, WTF did I just read? I remember this book from when I was a kid. I remember not reading it. That cover just freaked me the hell out. The man pictured on the cover is camp counselor Buddy, and just look at him. He’s pure nightmare fuel. Looking at the cover you would think this has the potential to be a really scary book. But then there’s that title. Camp Jellyjam? What kind of name is that? I had visions of a camp where they feed you some kind of weird jelly that turns you into a super happy, upbeat zombie, with an unnatural grin on your face, no longer in control of your mind as you try to force others to eat it while jelly gushes out the sides of your mouth… I think that may have actually been a thing… somewhere… I can’t remember… Maybe it was Are You Afraid Of The Dark… Well, that wasn’t what this was about… 

So this story ended up being about something that is truly scary… to me… Sports Camp. The most extreme sports camp, where kids are never given a moment’s rest, rushed from one sport to the next, constantly playing sports from morning to dusk, and being pushed to always win. There is no such thing as 2nd best. You have to win, win, win! This terrifies me. Sadly the story itself did not. 

So the story is about Wendy and her younger brother, Elliot, who are on a boring road trip with their parents. They decide to ride in the travel trailer hitched to the back of the car to get a break from their parents and as they are going up a mountain the trailer comes unhitched and they roll down the side until crashing into the woods. When they get out they find they have crashed right outside a summer camp called King Jellyjam’s Sports Camp and are instantly greeted by Counselor Buddy, who tells them they can rest at the camp while he contacts the authorities and tries to find their parents. And yeah, Buddy is described exactly as he is pictured on the cover. There is no doubt from the moment you see him that this guy is a grinning, mindless, forced to always be happy, zombie of a human being. So I find these kids really stupid for going with him. 

In fact, everyone in this book, other than Wendy, is too stupid to live. I’m of the opinion that Wendy should have been the soul survivor and everyone else would have deserved to die. And don’t say, but this is a Goosebumps book, people don’t actually die. You clearly don’t know what book we are reading here. This thing has an actual body count. And I’m not talking about ghosts. Yeah there are a lot of Goosebumps that have ghosts in them, and for there to be ghosts, it means someone had to die. But in those books any deaths have already happened and they are already ghosts when the book started. We don’t actually see anyone die over the course of the actual story. I’m talking about people who are alive when the story starts, but by the end of the story they are dead and there is no bringing them back. We actually have that in this one. 

I don’t know if this is the first, or only, Goosebumps to actually kill kids outside of the implied deaths in some of the twist endings, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. So you may be thinking this sounds kind of awesome? What’s my problem with it? Well I have a number of problems with it. 

As soon as the kids get into the camp they aren’t treated like two kids who just went through a traumatic experience and need to find their parents. They are treated like normal campers and the counselors start pushing them right away to start competing in sports and even assign them bunks. And the kids just go along with this. Elliot, in fact, revels in it. He thinks the camp is the greatest thing ever and he doesn’t even seem to care about his parents, who are probably having a heart attack at this point. Wendy at least thinks something is off and wants to get back to her parents, but she doesn’t put up much of a fight when she is told to go play sports and act like the rest of the campers. These kids are dumb as mud… And they aren’t the only ones. 

There is a thing at King Jellyjam’s Sports Camp where every time you win a competition or something, you are awarded a gold coin with a picture of the camp mascot, King Jellyjam, on it. (King Jellyjam is a big purple blob with a gold crown on his head and his picture is everywhere.) And when you win 6 “King’s Coins” you get to walk in the victory march that night. There is a victory march every night for all the campers who won 6 coins, and no one who walks in the victory march ever comes back. Her first night there, Wendy’s bunk mate, Diedre, is in the Victory March and she doesn’t come back. Wendy and her other two bunk mates, Ivy and Jan, decide to sneak out after lights out and try to find her but instead they find a younger girl named Alicia running through the camp crying and screaming, telling them “I followed them! It was horrible! We have to get out of here!” So what is their reaction? Once Alicia runs away they decide to go back to their bunk. Because that seems natural. Clearly nothing is wrong here. But oh wait… Now all of Diedre’s clothes and things are gone. They have been removed from the cabin. So yeah they just go to sleep…

Next morning Wendy asks Buddy about Diedre and he just checks his clipboard and is like, “Oh yeah, she gone. Don’t know where. It just says she’s gone. Oh Alicia? Hmm… Yep, she’s gone too.” And when Wendy tries to tell this to Ivy and Jan? “Sorry Wendy can’t talk now. Got to go to our next event if we want to win 6 coins!” After everything they went through literally the night before, the next morning they have already stopped caring and are back to trying to win coins so they can be in the victory march… that no one ever comes back from… Even her brother, Elliot, suffers from this unimaginable stupidity and lack of concern for anything. Wendy is all like, “We have to get out of here and find Mom and Dad. The kids are disappearing every time they go on the victory march.” And Elliot is all like, “I can’t leave yet. I haven’t won my sixth coin yet. Don’t you ruin this for me. We will find Mom and Dad after I get a victory march.” 

See what I’m saying? Everyone in this book is too stupid to live and it’s ridiculous. Wendy is at least trying, but she’s not trying hard enough. And it’s not like there is some kind of supernatural force making the kids forget or compelling them to need to be in this victory march. The whole time I was waiting for that to be revealed as a thing, but it never was. They are just all literally that stupid and unconcerned with anything other than winning at sports. 

But when you stop to think about it… Maybe this is actually quite brilliant. Have you ever known any super hard core sports fans? People who only care about sports and if you aren’t talking about sports they won’t even give you the time of day? Those parents who just watch ESPN all day long and the only time they spend with their kids is when they take them to play sports that they forced them to sign up for? I’ve been related to people like that. It’s part of the reason I hate sports. Could it be that R.L. Stine was trying to make a point here? Taking this obsession people have with sports and stretching it out to it’s most extreme lengths? Showing us what happens when you let sports rule your life and stop caring about everything else? That’s actually really brilliant and quite frightening. Maybe I misjudged this book… 

Oh… wait… I just read the last few chapters… Never mind. I retract all statements of this being brilliant. 

So in the final few chapters we see Wendy sneaking out after dark again and following the camp counselors who all sneak off into the woods. They all meet up in a building that is shaped like an igloo for… no reason that was ever given… where they all sit in front of a stage and watch as Buddy uses a gold coin on a chain to hypnotize them. Every night Buddy hypnotizes all of the counselors, himself included, into emptying their minds, forgetting everything and becoming blank slates just there to serve their master. And who is their master? Well down in the basement of this secret cult igloo is King Jellyjam, the purple blob who’s image is posted all over the camp. 

Oh but he’s not a blob like you are thinking. He’s not made of slime or goo. He’s a giant (the size of a house) blob of flesh, with a head and two arms. And he stinks. And his body is covered in slime. And he sweats snails. No you heard that right… When he sweats instead of liquid, he has living snails push themselves out through his pores. I can’t make this shit up. And all the kids who win 6 coins? They are taken to him to be his slaves. It’s their job to wash him constantly because he stinks so bad he has to be bathed 24/7. The kids have to just keep washing him constantly, never given a break. If a kid stops working, even for a minute, King Jellyjam eats them. This is the most batshit insane, out of nowhere crap I have ever seen in a Goosebumps. 

But this is also where our body count comes in. Diedre and Alicia, who are still alive somehow even though they have been down there for like 3 or 4 days by this point, tell Wendy all of this. They emphasis it by informing her that he already ate 3 kids today. There’s 3 kids who have actually died in a Goosebumps book and there is no bringing them back after the monster is killed. They are just gone. But when you think about it, if he eats someone the moment they stop working, how many kids has he eaten over the 5 or so days Wendy has been there? Working non-stop? Not even aloud to sleep or eat? I’d be amazed if most kids could last 2 days. This is the point where you have to realize that most of the kids you saw go on the victory marches through the course of the book are already dead at this point. That just strikes me as interesting because it’s the first time I’ve seen it in Goosebumps.

Now naturally Wendy kills King Jellyjam. She tells all the kids to stop washing him and lay fat on the floor. Because King Jellyjam’s fingers are so fat that if they are laying flat on the floor he can’t pick them up. I’m not sure how the logistics of this actually work, but for the sake of the book it works. He can’t pick any of them up to eat them and when all the kids stop washing him it only takes a matter of minutes before the smell is so bad King Jellyjam actually chokes to death on his own stench. I kid you not. 

Again I’m questioning the logistics of all of this because if the smell is bad enough to kill King Jellyjam in only a couple of minutes, how does it not kill all the kids who are having to lay on the floor until he’s dead? For that matter, how did any of this even get started? Has King Jellyjam always been like this? What did he do to keep from stinking to death before he had a camp to help him enslave children? I’m assuming the hypnotized counselors built the camp for him but how did he get a bunch of hypnotized counselors in the first place? This is a summer camp… if he eats the kids the moment they are no longer able to keep working, what does he do during the rest of the year when he doesn’t have a daily supply of fresh kids brought to him? 

But none of those questions will ever be answered. King Jellyjam dies, the kids all leave the igloo, and within minutes the police are storming the camp to rescue them. Apparently the smell was so bad that it only took a matter of minutes to attract the entire police force… I’m not sure how… Was there a police station just minutes away in the middle of the woods on the side of a mountain? But whatever, I’m not sure how anything else in this book worked either. 

I would like to give this book credit for not having a ton of fake out scares at the end of every chapter. There are some but not a ton. Although I did find it weird that Stine ended the book on a fake out scare instead of the traditional “not out of the woods yet” twist ending. Maybe after actually killing a bunch of kids in this book he wanted to end it on a more comical note… But I also have to take away credit for all the sports stuff. I kid you not, the first 12 or so chapters focus more on sports activities than the actual scary stuff you are reading it for. I mean describing every action of every game being played for the first quarter of the book white the scares are just an afterthought. It’s not until Diedre goes missing somewhere around chapter 13 that Stine finally stops talking about sports and starts trying to scare us. 

All in all I just don’t know what to make of this thing. Is it brilliant social commentary? Is it lazy story writing? Or is it just the batshit crazy ramblings of a mad man?