#so;;; for right now i've just. completely left that out. but if the main trilogy he definitely participates in the fight at Bolvangar

[lighthouseborna]

With You in My Heart I Can Bear Everything.

  Born among the Gyptian families who sail the seas to a sailor and a witch during an upheaval: he was out of place right from the start. Before the boy was even properly named, his mother gathered him and fled from the conflict at the coasts, seeking refuge among family friends who had long lived in the narrowboats that ran the channels of Brytain. His father remained tethered to the sea, unable to join them by a matter of both obligation and honor. To break would send others to ill fates, and leave him a cursed and ruined man, so there he remained.

  Henry's home became Eastern Anglia, where his mother made her home on the fens among men. Though she lived well there, and kept their laws, she kept her own way, too. Henry, therefore, was raised on a mix of Gyptain way and Witch's view. As result, he's always had a foot in more than one camp, so to speak. He doesn't lend to tradition very well at all, and loves nothing so much as to question the order of things so that he might decide if he finds that order adoptable or folly. And he does so love to collect. Histories and myths, legends and lore, all of it. A scholar of the fabricated, if you like. He seems rather fond of the idea. It was that, maybe, and the wilder, witchier aspects of his nature, that led him on to be a traveler more than a tradesman, though the two fit neatly hand in hand.

  Near his twentieth birthday, something in him changed. [I'm still torn on the exact nature of this part, but either it was a conflict related to his family history, or he came upsettingly close to intercision via The Maystadt Process. Or maybe those were the same thing, and it's both. Regardless, he goes away from it a bit...haunted.] At any rate, he's a known purveyor of maps and charts, sometimes rare artifacts and difficult-to-obtain goods. Anything with a good adventure in it is like to draw his eye.

  On the matter of his dæmon, her first shape was a wild cat's fiercely mewling kitten, amber colored and audacious. She was named Elektryona a full week before the boy's mother settled on the name Henry.

  In early youth she was wildly unsettled, fluttering easily between shapes borrowed from the adults he knew (birds and badgers, wolves and weasels) while of her own accord falling often into the shapes of marine mammals (otters, dolphins, sea lions, once -briefly- a great wallowing walrus) and an assortment of canines (scrappy terrier to mischievous coyote to enormously silly great dane all included.) Cats and bats and strange little lemurs made appearances, too; anything to get them to the roots of their questions or helpful in the aim of exploring someplace as thoroughly as was entirely possible. The only holding thing seemed to be that reptiles and bugs were out of the question- any whim was fair, so long as it had fur or feathers. Scales and chitin simply would not do. As Henry's knack for collecting and recounting stories emerged, Lektra took on a habit of adopting on the forms of fictional beasts that appeared within them. She'd hold these to accent the story or enact a prank, but never any longer than that. Of these, she seemed to prefer the chimera, albeit a chimera the size of a large dog. (Tragically, too small for riding.)   Once, after an accident in which Henry nearly drowned, she became a common mouse and kept the shape for weeks on end, hiding in his pockets and under his shirt, curling up against his collarbones. Then one day, for no obvious reason, wasn't a mouse anymore, and she never again took a shape any smaller than a wiggly lap-sized terrier. Soon after, she was more and more a sweet, sleek hunting dog, and hardly changing at all. She fully settled -somewhat early- in their eleventh year of life, comfortably a fine golden retriever with a warm reddish-golden coat and open, friendly face.

  Lektra is always playful and warm, but, too, fiercely protective, somewhat rowdy, & sometimes entirely unpredictable. She tends to be more willing than the average dæmon to speak to others directly, and does so with a confidence that defies every reproach. Truly, Elektryona and Henry are cut entirely from the same cloth. Their greatest difference seems to be that she learned a little better than him when to keep her tongue and take her time, and so often acts as Henry's voice of measured action, pulling him out of impulse with a poke of her nose. Excitable as she is, though, when they leap for trouble it's very often in tandem.

Her voice claim is (Lily J.ames.)

[redgoldsparks]

March Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 4 by Ryoko Kui

I'm reading these books so fast I can barely remember which parts of the plot happened in which volume but know that I am still having a great time!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 5 by Ryoko Kui

Oh, this story has taken a darker turn, and also just introduced a whole bunch more characters. Will I be able to keep track of them all? I hope so!

Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb, read by Anne Flosnik 

Unfortunately, this is definitely the weakest Robin Hobb book I've read so far. I was expecting to like it less than the glorious, 5-star previous trilogy, but I actually think I'm going to skip the rest of the Rain Wild Chronicles and read summaries online to get to the next Fitz books. This book follows five main POV characters. This works fairly well for the first half, when the characters are all in different physical locations. However once all of the characters meet up, we start getting the same scene from multiple different POVs, which feels extremely repetitive. Also, almost EVERY SCENE includes a flashback, often a lengthy flashback, sometimes to something that happened only the previous day and could have been told as present-moment action. This writing choice baffled me. It's something I can't remember struggling with in any of Hobb's previous books, but by the end it was driving me up a wall. The book also moved very slowly; the stakes feel lower, and the character far less emotionally true than in the two Fitz trilogies. Disappointing, but I will keep moving forward towards the next part of the series I want to read.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 6 by Ryoko Kui

Damn, a lot of characters get murdered in this volume! Good thing almost everyone who dies in the dungeon can be revived. Also, very excited to finally meet the cat ninja I've been seeing fan art of since before I even started the series :3

Delicious in Dungeon vol 7 by Ryoko Kui

I am still completely caught up in this series. I love the glimpse of Senshi's past revealed in this volume, and the lore of the dungeon that is still being revealed. There was a line in here about how the dungeon leaves you alone if you don't ask much of it, but that if you have strong desires it throws even more obstacles into your way. Our heroes have such big goals right now, but they're marching ahead regardless!

School Trip by Jerry Craft 

A satisfying new installment in the New Kid series from funny, talented, charming Jerry Craft! I appreciated how this volume started to complicate some of the students who had been left a bit one-dimensional in previous books. Several people stood up to and called out a bully; new friendships were built; and Jordan Banks left Paris even more inspired than ever to follow his dreams of becoming an artist. This series has a lot of jokes, but also a lot of heart!

A Frog in Fall (and Later On) by Linnea Sterte 

Minor frog is less than a year old, and is dismayed when winter begins to steal all of the light and warmth from his world. Instead of bunking down safely with his mentor to wait for spring, he sets out on a journey with two vagabond toads passing by on a quest to make it all the way to the tropics. They tramp through the Japanese countryside, encountering tree spirits, new friends, dangers, and views the likes of which minor frog had never even imagined. This is a gorgeous book; every page worth pouring over, an economy of line and detail building a beautiful and mysterious world of talking animals and miniature packaged foods. Made me want to draw.

Dark Rise by CS Pacat read by Christian Coulson 

In 1820s London, orphaned Will tries to earn enough as a dockworker to survive- and evade the killers pursuing him. Violet dresses in her half-brother's clothes and sneaks onto a ship in the Thames to watch a man be branded with his master's mark. Katherine excitedly anticipates her engagement to one of London's richest and most mysterious lords; his gallantry nearly makes up for the fact that he's twice her age. And in the bowels of one of that lord's ships, James tortures a man for information. All of these characters are 16 or 17 years old, but all of them are tangled in an ancient conflict between the Light and the Dark which stretches back into an age of magic before history. This is CS Pacat's YA fantasy debut, and it contains a lot of tropes very familiar to both YA and high fantasy- there are shades of both Tolkien and Rowling in this. Its fast-paced and action-packed, but especially in the first third of the story, the characters all felt fairly thin. None of them have quirks, hobbies, career hopes, relationships outside of immediate family, school, or work; or much more than a brief sketch of past. It took until the mid-way point for what I consider Pacat's major strengths as a writer to emerge: intense, homoerotic interpersonal sparring between characters operating under major power imbalances. Every scene in which the seductive, manipulative, powerful evil gay faced off against the good boy chosen one crackled with energy. Unfortunately, there were only four of these scenes in the whole book. It ends on a cliff-hanger, because of course it does, with a tempting set up for book two; but that doesn't entirely excuse the fact that the first 50% felt like set up. I will definitely keep reading, but long-time Pacat fans should take note that this is toned down version of what I expected based on Captive Prince.

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (re-read before event)

What an accomplishment! I savored every page of Feeding Ghosts, absolutely floored by the labor and courage that went into the writing of this book. The inking is gorgeous, the history is clear, digestible, and devastating. This book threads the line between honesty and compassion in a way that I appreciate so much in any memoir, but especially one dealing with family. Hulls lays out the story of three generations of women starting with her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist who faced intense persecution during the rise of Communism in China, who penned a popular and scandalous memoir and then suffered a mental breakdown. This left her only daughter, Rose, a student at an elite boarding school with no parental figures and no other family to lean on. Eventually Rose earned a scholarship to an American university and in the end moved her mother into her California home. Sun Yi haunted that home during the author's own childhood. The unexamined trauma and codependency of Sun Yi and Rose drove the author to the extreme edges of the Earth, seeking freedom from their ghosts. But in the end, she stopped running from her family history and turned, instead, to face it. Shelve this book with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis and The Best We Could Do. Re-read it for a second time and got even more out of it on a second pass.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 8 by Ryoko Kui

Laios and company realize that their encounter with changling mushroom rings had more consequences than they'd realized- its the body swap episode! This visual humor is contrasted against increasing dangers from both above and below, as nastier monsters and political machinations begin to close in on our heroic adventuring party. I'm now over halfway through this series and almost feel like I should start reading it more slowly to savor it, but I'll probably just keep devouring it instead.

Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang and Leuyen Pham

High school senior Val grew up knowing her family was unlucky in love; for generations, relationships in her family have ended in heartbreak. Her childhood love of Valentines Day ends with a shocking family revelation and what feels like the beginning of a curse. Then her Vietnamese grandmother sweeps her off to a Lunar New Year celebration in downtown Oakland and a pair of cute lion dancer boys catch her eye. Could one of them break the spell on her heart? This story offers a classic and satisfying rom-com, with Val torn between an outgoing, rich, but flaky boy and a broody, shy, loyal one. The story takes several kdrama style twists and includes ghosts, saints, red envelopes, confessions, fights, reunions, tears, and kisses. For a comic, its wordy; the pages are dense with small panels and thick with dialogue, but also illustrated with such warm, humor, and realism. I really liked that the story included as much of Val's relationship with her family and best friend as romance. And the lion dancing scenes practically leap off the page with color and energy!

Witch Hat Atelier vol 10 by Kamome Shirahama

This series remains as visually stunning as ever but I'm struggling with how every single book expands the cast. There are so many characters now that I don't care about that much, and have trouble remembering from volume to volume. I wish the story line would stick more closely to Coco, her classmates, and their main mentors!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 9 by Ryoko Kui

Oh the stories are all converging! The savior at the bottom of the dungeon is probably a demon! Ituzumi saves the day! I am still having a great time reading this series.

A Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson read by Abby Craden 

A short, very queer, very poly retelling of Dracula focusing on his coven of enthralled lovers. I liked the way the book breezed through history, as the dysfunctional little family moved from one major European city to the next, with snatched moments of glittering joy interwoven with violence and plague. The story is fairly simple, and has a happier ending than I expected, or honestly think the characters deserved.

City of Dragons by Robin Hobb

I DNFed the previous book in this series and just read a summary online before skipping ahead to this one. I think that was a very good choice for me. This third one was more engaging and a bit more action packed, with some cool discoveries about the city of Kelsingra and the nature of Elderlings. But the Rain Wild Chronicles as a whole do not stand up to the quality of the Farseer books. There are so many POV characters that a few of them get only two or three scenes in this whole book. I don't feel that I deeply know any of these characters; while at the same time watching Hobb pair them off at an extraordinary rate- in the last book five sets of characters got together and in this book an additional two couples are developing feelings for each other. Between this and a kidnapping, a birth, a murder, and a lot of blackmail, this series feels like a soap opera.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 10 by Ryoko Kui

Almost two TPKs in this volume, yikes!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 11 by Ryoko Kui

You know shit's getting serious when the character who has been the series main villain up until now is partially devoured by a different, worse villain. Exciting changes coming to this dungeon under it's new lord and master!

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle

When Becca gets invited to sit with the popular girl clique at her new high school, she's thrilled. But the friendship turns bloody and complicated when she learns that her new friends are actually werewolves who need to kill and feed on a human once a month. If she joins them, Becca will gain superhuman strength and a pack; she'll never have to fear a male predator again, because she will be a predator herself. I loved the queer rep and the twist on werewolf lore; I wish it had been a little longer and more developed. Give me multi-page transformations sequences!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 12 by Ryoko Kui

I love seeing all these plot lines come together! Building towards a wild climax.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 13 by Ryoko Kui

I went out and *bought* vol 13 of this series because my library didn't have it yet, that's how hooked I am. And now I have to wait until JULY for the final volume! (But also, thank goodness I didn't get into this series any sooner or I'd have a much longer wait).

[samthecookielord]

CURRENT LAYTON STATUS: AL chapter 5, reached the top of the tower but i havent touched anything yet

That's right, I'm dedicating a post to all the Layton content I've consumed and will consume. Wish me luck gamers. (I'll also add the status of my gameplay videos!) (And a list of layton AUs at the end)

Mainline Trilogies

(note: i call the games by which version i played (UK or US) but i tag by US titles)

(note 2: we only record towards the end of the game because my computer space will CRY and also i do not want to edit all that hope this helps)

PLAYTHROUGH PLAYLIST

CURIOUS VILLAGE: 100% completed

(not recorded)

DIABOLICAL BOX: 100% completed

Uploaded---

Chapter 7: (Part 1) - (Part 2) (fun fact: part 2 features the first instance of me using animated sprites for me and my friends!)

LOST FUTURE: 100% completed, all uploaded!

Uploaded---

Chapter 9: (Part 1) - (Part 2) - (Part 3) (fun fact: part 1 is the first time i use game sprites to give visuals to our improv bits, as well as generally being the start of me putting a lot more effort into editing and trying new stuff!)

Chapter 10

Chapter 11: (Part 1) - (Part 2)

Chapter 12

Chapter 13: (Part 1) - (Part 2) - (Part 3) Epilogue: (Part 1) (Part 2)

LAST SPECTRE: 100% completed

Uploaded---

Chapter 8: (Part 1) - (Part 2) (fun fact: from this point on, our playthrough group has increased from 3 people to 4!)

Planned---

Chapter 8 -> 1 part left

Chapter 9 -> 2 parts

Chapter 10 -> 2 parts

Epilogue -> just one

MIRACLE MASK: 100% completed

Planned---

Chapter 6 -> 6 parts left (HELP)

Chapter 7 -> 6 parts left Chapter 8 -> 1 part left Epilogue -> 2 parts left

AZRAN LEGACY: ch5, started recording

Spinoffs & Extras

ETERNAL DIVA: Watched :]

(not recorded)

LB MYSTERY ROOM: completed

(not recorded)

PLVSAA: not started (will play after mainline)

will probably record? perchance?

MYSTERY JOURNEY: not started (will play after plvsaa)

The anime: not started (will watch after mystery journey)

The manga: i saw the lost future one lol ill go check out the rest later probably. I also read up to ch28 of lbmr manga

Layton AUs

i have a lot of clive aus. here's a slideshow. here's their interaction tag

Puzzles Gone Wrong AU: (belongs to pastel-player) A take on "evil Layton" where we ask what if he wasn't evil evil, but morally dubious. Basically he's a dictator now but he hasn't really done much harm to the city of London. He's making some questionable decisions, but... he's still the polite gentleman Layton who cares about his loved ones. Said loved ones have many conflicting feelings about him. Takes place at least 1 year after main trilogy, unclear when exactly. (Ao3 series)

Pastel wasn't doing anything with Clive in this AU so I picked him up and ran off then came back with a whole new design and stuff. Anything I make with PGW Clive that doesn't involve Timeline Hopper Clive's shenanigans is proobably canon to the AU. Basically I'm the ceo of this one guy within this AU and nothing else <3

(PGW Clive's tag)

Layton Assassin AU: (belongs to snekatiemainy and thia-quiche) Layton but he kills people with swords. And also Luke beats people to death with shovels. And Flora also sword. Yayy!!! Initially inspired by our jokes from playing Curious Village, mainly Luke saying the phrase "this man is being VERY RUDE we should KILL HIM" (Ao3 series)

Assassin AU Variant: (belongs to me and snekatiemainy) A variation of the assassin au where Clive is adopted by Layton. Clive picked up a gun and has never been the same since. Guy who loves his 20 guns and is sooo annoying about it <3 Honestly 90% of my assassin au tag is just the variant instead of the actual original au hdtdhdhrfd

(Ao3 series)

(AV!Clive's tag)

Timeline Hopper Clive: (belongs to me, inspired by a-queer-kitkat's post) Post-canon Clive that starts getting tossed across dimensions at random intervals due to an abandoned machine prototype left by one of Dimitri's scientists. Often crosses over with Puzzles Gone Wrong and Assassin AU. He gets worse but then he gets better. Then there's a version where he gets worse again and weird buggified.

Clive Triton AU: (belongs to me and snekatiemainy) what if clark adopted clive. Send post

The BEHUH??? AU: (belongs to me and snekatiemainy) ???? goddamnit timeclive what did you DO (BEHUH??? stands for Butterfly Effect HUH???) (two guys chilling in the river 5 feet apart because get pitted idiot)

CSAU: (belongs to me and snekatiemainy) clive is adopted by descole. I encourage you all to ask us what CSAU stands for several times.

Apprentice Nils AU: (belongs to me and snekatiemainy) that random miracle mask npc's parents died so layton yoinks him

Randall Possession AU: (belongs to snekatiemainy) what if he became a ghost and hung out with his best friend Layton forever now

Layton Object AU: based on those silly object show things. They're living objects with limbs and faces etc etc and the only real changes in this au right now is just names, designs, and minor things that come with those design changes. i make this kind of au for almost anything i touch loll

Vampire Layton AU: what it says on the tin. One of my earliest tagged AUs. It didn't really go anywhere but it's fun to think about sometimes. Based on a joke we made while playing Diabolical Box.

[somesortofcoincidence]

The Pocket Watch in Literary Adaptations of Goncharov throughout History (Part 3)

So now, we are at the final pocket watch described throughout these various literary adaptations of the original Goncharov trilogy and...I'll be completely honest, I'm not really a huge fan of this specific trend of literary adaptations. For some historical context, during the late 1930's to the early 1940's, there were several pulp magazines based off of the original Goncharov trilogy released by this...publishing house called Diamond Dame Publishing, which is now defunct. They had a small team of writers and illustrators working on different stories to see which characters would have sex with whoever they wanted within the original cast of characters in the trilogy and...their most treasured writer was this guy named Alton Finley.

Now, before I start trashing on these adaptations, I'll give Alton his due credit and say that...I feel like there was something very important he wanted to communicate to the reader in his stories. But the problem is that, he had to write each story within the formula that made those stories so appealing to other readers, but at the same time, it made them lose their edge as more of these pulp magazines got published. So then, whatever that message Finley was trying to communicate got lost in the vices portrayed throughout the medium.

In one of the issues, Goncharov pulls out a pocket watch to show Andrey and tells him what they wanna do together as best friends and...the watch that's being described and shown to the reader is just...absolutely ridiculous.

For the sake of following Tumblr's community guidelines, I've taken it upon myself to censor the image in question.

Just...look at it. I genuinely feel like we didn't need to see that pocket watch in those magazines.

There's a lot of things that were so wrong about them, but I think the main problem is that they focused less on the story aspect and focused more on sexual gratification. Now, granted, the pulp novels didn't always have sex. They had gambling, seduction, drinking, and some fist fights here and there. But then, there's other aspects of the story when you realize that...the setting in these stories was always the same, right? Everyone was always walking around in Naples, Italy. The characters in these stories never left that setting and they also never entered that setting.

Every character still retained their nationality, but they never explain where they came from or whatever problems they're going through emotionally. You'd think that particular detail was bad enough, but the way the characters were described in these novels was...just as terrible, if not more so. There was no emotional depth, no conflict, no backstory, no context, and there just didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason why these characters were together in each story. They just were. There wasn't even any emotional satisfaction between any set of characters after having had sex. The characters just seemed so emotionless.

Thank you so much for reading through my literary analysis of three specific examples as to the description and depiction of the pocket watch throughout the history of literary adaptations of Goncharov. I hope you d been able to learn just a little bit more about the story itself. I’ll see you next time!

[stefciastark]

"I'm sorry. I promise-" ~Webpril Day 30

A/N: Here is the final prompt fill! It's crazy to think it's been a whole month of writing every day, and thank you all so much for continuing to support me and leave comments behind and everything, it means so much. Thank you as well to @webpril for making this amazing challenge! It's my first time back into the world of writing after many many years of putting it on the back burner, and I've enjoyed this challenge so much and I'm really surprised and happy that I managed to get all 30 days done without bailing out lmao. It's going to feel super strange not pumping out one prompt fill per day, but it was fun while it lasted! I have loads of WIP that will be getting uploaded/updated after I take a couple of days off of writing, so keep an eye out for those! Hope you enjoy :) x

~Read it on AO3

~Read it on FFN

As Tony weaved in and out between the buildings of midtown Manhattan, he was keeping an eye on Peter’s suit. More precisely, the dashcam-like footage feed that relayed from Peter’s mask into Tony’s HUD. Even though he’d seen Peter navigating the concrete jungle like a spider monkey before, he still internally braced himself to see the kid crash face-first into a block of apartments or miss a web altogether and fall a couple hundred feet.

What worried Tony the most though, was watching combat through Peter’s eyes. The sheer quantity of near misses... it made Tony flinch when he was paying too much attention to Peter’s camera feed and not enough to Tony’s reality in front of his own eyes.

As Tony took a left down a nearby alleyway, he saw Steve fending off seven of the strange creatures. They looked like a cousin of the Chitauri, but instead of the skin being a sickly shade of pale green - or yellow, none of them could come to an agreement - they were a dark red. It was almost sickening to look at; their skin looked permanently slick with blood, and Tony was going to have to get his hearing checked after the piercing cries he’d been hearing nonstop for the last two hours.

Landing as gracefully as he could in the tight space, he joined Steve in the fray. Tony was having some serious déjà-vu as he used Steve’s shield to ricochet a repulsor beam into two of the creatures. They crumpled to a heap on the ground, a sizzling hole occupying the space where their shoulder joints used to be.

When they got to the final one in the alley, Tony was able to get a really good look at it now that he wasn’t being assaulted from all sides. Its eyes gleamed a bright yellow, reptilian slits staring through him coldly. The maw on the creature was longer than its Chitauri (maybe) relative, and its teeth began to gnash with feral vigour as it approached the two men. One perfectly aimed miniature missile to the jugular had it go completely limp as the life left its eyes.

“Thanks,” Steve breathed. He was beginning to tire, especially after the two hour mark of keeping the fight going. The creatures seemed to keep coming with no sign of slowing down and while Steve didn’t want to admit that he was beginning to feel the exhaustion, Tony could tell. They’d known each other for long enough to recognise the signs.

“Anything for you, sweetcheeks,” Tony shot back, voice dripping with satire. Taking off once more, he heard Steve over the comms.

“You just had to make it weird, didn’t you.” Steve didn’t frame it as a question.

About two streets over, Tony could hear the Hulk’s angered roars and the sound of more of Tony’s money needing to be thrown at post-Avengers infrastructure repairs.

Natasha was doing some motorcycle-based groundwork, S.H.I.E.L.D having finally give the agent a vehicle with built-in weaponry. Watching Natasha at work was like watching the sea part as the waves of the alien threat were mowed down ruthlessly in her path.

At present, Clint was sitting on the back of the bike facing backwards towards the swam that was in pursuit. Each arrow fired found its mark. Tony groaned internally as Clint used an explosive arrow right down the centre of the street, and he watched as slabs of concrete went flying.

As they moved rapidly south, they entered the Financial District in the lowest portion of Manhattan. On Tony’s right, there was The Battery park, which eventually ended to become the Upper Bay. The large body of water gave Tony a distinct form of Peter-induced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. All he could see was the bisected Ferry, and Peter crash landing a plane which gave Tony more grey hairs than he’d bargained for by his age. All good things came in threes, Tony noted wryly, and the current situation seemed like a perfect time and place to complete the Trilogy of Unfortunate Events.

The team could really use Thor. The Asgardian was off-world and the dense swarm of snarling reptilians would be disposed of much more easily with a solid bout of guided thunder from the god.

As Tony watched the erratic throng of blood-red skin surge through the streets, he passively noted that they were heading straight for him. The way that they were perfectly lined up prompted Tony to pursue what would be a very expensive course of action.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y, reroute power to the main RT.”

“As you wish, Boss.”

He felt the repulsors in charge of flight weaken slightly as any excess or temporarily unnecessary power was routed into the centre chest piece’s reactor. The unibeam that stemmed from it was powerful but would be taxing on the suit. But, there wouldn’t be another opportunity again to hit hundreds all at once as they funnelled and bottlenecked their way in.

“The power is done rerouting to the primary Repulsor Transmitter.”

Tony lined up the beam as best as he could down the road, but just before the blast left his chest plate, a blur of red swung immediately in front of him. Tony didn’t have time to panic or wonder what the hell that was before the unibeam sailed straight through the centre of the swarm and wiped out what F.R.I.D.A.Y told him was about seventy-five per cent of his target. He faintly recalled seeing his own Iron Man suit reflected in Peter’s monitor in that fraction of a second.

Turning to his left, he saw Peter staring at the slightly smoking path of alien bodies left in the street in the wake of the blast.

“Hey kid, you wanna explain what the hell that was? I could have killed you!” Tony’s helmet dematerialised, revealing an expression laced with a combination of concern and fury.

Peter immediately jumped on the defensive, hearing the aggravated undertone in Tony’s words. “I’m sorry! I promise-”

“I don’t want your promises, Pete, I just don’t want you playing Tarzan right in front of a deadly weapon,” Tony sighed, rubbing a metal-clad hand down his face. “If you die, that’s on me.”

“Sorry, Mr Stark.” Although Tony couldn’t read Peter’s expression through his mask, Peter’s eyes were downcast. As much as Tony wanted to be irritated at the kid sometimes, he couldn’t bring himself to at that moment. At least disaster number three hadn't come to pass...yet.

Walking over to where Peter stood, Tony clapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re doing great, kid.”

Peter watched as Tony’s helmet rematerialised once more and followed the red and gold as Tony flew back towards the centre of the fight. Peter smiled to himself behind the mask, and as he swung back towards his teammates, he softly whispered to himself: “You’re doing great, Peter...you’re doing great.”