#student verse

[crystal-verse]

god i want. an au where it dosn't work. where it's just arr g'raha who's woken up, and he doesn't have all these memories and all these people keep looking at him like they're mourning someone. the world has changed and time has changed and all the people he knows have changed, but he hasn't changed, he was just sleeping, just sleeping, and the world nearly ended several times and apparently he helped prevent yet another end but he has no memory of this. they want him to join the scions. he does not know these people. (he barely knows the warrior of light, now, but did he ever truly know them in the first place?) his little sister is alive and well. she looks at him like a ghost. she's changed, and she's older than him now. he acts bratty and loud and brash to cover up the fact that he does not know anything it seems, and he is tired but he was sleeping for so long, so how could he be tired?

he doesn't know these people. they seem to know him. he wonders if he'd killed someone, when it was him and not that exarch who woke up. he wonders if it should have been him who was "killed" in that way, if it is him that lives and not that man who had known and become friends with all these figures from legend. he wonders if he'll always be fated to be a historian one step back from everything, because he simply cannot be a hero.

[yuesya]

Suguru frowns. 

“Gakuganji-gakucho. What do you think you’re doing?” In front of him, the aged principal of the Kyoto jujutsu school tenses. And for good reason –the ire of a Special Grade sorcerer is not something to take lightly, and Suguru does not appreciate the old man attempting to kill Yaga. Who was looking rather decidedly beaten and battered at the moment; if Suguru hadn’t arrived just in the nick of time, then he’d be dead. 

Just the thought of it sends a cold chill down his spine.

“… What are you doing here, Geto?” 

Suguru pauses. His old teacher’s voice is… strange. And not strange as in ‘surprised,’ which would only be reasonable given that Suguru had pretty much suddenly appeared out of thin air here, after solving the puzzle of that complex eightfold imprisoning barrier he’d been trapped in. He hadn’t expected there to be a teleportation mechanism built into the exit, either.

No, Yaga-gakucho’s voice sounds hostile towards him, which makes absolutely no sense. Also, ‘Geto?’ Why is Yaga-gakucho calling him ‘Geto’ and not ‘Suguru’ as he usually does? Why does he look at Suguru as if he’s an enemy? He’d literally just saved his life!

“What do you mean, ‘why are you here?’” Suguru gives his old teacher an unimpressed look. “I’m one of your teachers, where else would I be? Satoru would’ve driven you up the wall a long time ago if I wasn’t here to rein him in.”

Silence. The look that Yaga-gakucho gives him –Suguru can’t quite put his finger on it, but something about it feels wrong, wrong, wrong.

“What’s your angle here?” Yaga-gakucho scowls. “Stop lying. We know what you did at Shibuya! How long are you going to play obtuse?”

Suguru rears back, startled by the vehemence in the older man’s voice. But at the same time, “What do you mean, Shibuya? I’ve been in America for the past two weeks! You were the one who handed the assignment to me!”

“What?”

“What?”

Another silence. This one is much more awkward than the previous, however, and also blatantly ringed with confusion for all parties involved. Even Gakuganji-gakucho.

... It takes awhile to sort things out. Apparently, Suguru hadn’t just teleported back to Japan when he’d solved that puzzle barrier. He’d been fucking teleported to a parallel reality, and the sheer sideways angle of everything here was absolutely mind-boggling. Firstly, he was apparently dead –but also not, because some thousand year-old curse user had hijacked his corpse? Also, the Geto Suguru of this world had gone off his rocker as a third year student and intended to massacre all non-sorcerers in the world in order to create a world without curses, which, just. What??

“Why would they ever do that?” he asks, completely flabbergasted… and just a touch morbidly curious.

Because Amanai had died. Which had then led to the Suguru of this world questioning the worth of non-sorcerers and the purpose of sorcerers –and then, madness.

… In what world was that possible? Zenin Toji had gotten past the terrifying combination of Satoru and Shiki? How?

Suguru frowns pensively. “Amanai Riko is the teacher for second year students in my world. After the mission in our second year, she rejected the merger at the end, and the Tokyo school accepted her as a new student. She traveled with Tsukumo-san for a few years after graduating, then came back to take up a teaching post.”

“I… see.” There’s a complicated note in Yaga-gakucho’s voice, accompanied by something else that’s just slightly wistful. Clearly, he had his own regrets over how that mission to protect the Star Plasma Vessel went in this world. 

Suguru rubs at his forehead. This world… things are currently an utter mess. And Satoru and Shiki were sealed? How? It boggled the mind –Satoru alone was already unstoppable, and together with his sister the two were invincible. Or at least, the closest approximation to invincible that there was. However, from another perspective, it also painted the current situation in a grim light. They were really in some dire straits.

Good thing that Suguru was here to help, and hopefully he’d also be able to find a way back to his own reality where everything made sense, at the end of this mess.

“You know the students are probably going to attack you on sight, right?”

Suguru waves his hand, “It’ll be fine, Yaga-gakucho. I’m a teacher, I can deal with a few enthusiastic students.”

[zafirosreverie]

Smells like danger (Teacher!Olivia x Student!F!Reader)

You slung the bag over your shoulder as you plodded on down the cold hallway that seemed to grow longer and darker with each step. You hated being there, not the hallway, but the school itself. You hadn't wanted to move from the small town you grew up in, but that damn scholarship had turned your whole world upside down.

You were supposed to be grateful for the opportunity, and you were! But having to leave everything you knew behind, the safety of your small group of friends, your family, everything that kept you going, was too overwhelming.

Add to that that no one at school seemed to really accept you and you were in for hell. You didn't really know what you'd done to everyone besides, well, exist, but your classmates seemed to run away from you like the plague (although if you were being honest, it wasn't like you were trying to get too close to them either).

The only ones who seemed to respect you a little were the professors, and that was only because of the scientific reports they had read when they accepted you into the university. Well, everyone except Octavius. It seemed that nothing you did could be moderately acceptable to the woman, her class was the only one you had failed and if you didn't improve soon, you would lose the scholarship. 

So you were going straight to the Kraken's lair, hoping you could do something about your grades, maybe some extra work or something, even though you knew the woman wasn't known for giving second chances and you doubted she'd make an exception for you.

"Well, here goes nothing" you thought

You timidly knocked on the door and inwardly cursed at the way your knees were shaking and the suffocating feeling you had, you could almost tell you wanted to cry but you forced yourself to keep a neutral face as the woman called you from inside.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Octavius" you said as soon as you entered

The office somehow seemed creepier and colder than the hallway and your insides churned with the desire to run out of there. You were aware that your voice was barely a whisper, but you couldn't do anything about it, there was something about the woman that always made you nervous.

"Can I help you, Miss Y/L/N?"

"I-" you stammered "Mrs. Parker sent me"

Olivia raised an eyebrow. What was May up to now? It wasn't strange that the other woman sent students to her office, with a note asking her to be nicer to them or to correct a note, but she had been clear that her criteria would be maintained, there were no places for second chances. She didn't understand why her colleague kept trying.

"I guess she gave you a note" she said, not looking impressed.

"Y-yes" you said, swallowing a bit as you took a piece of paper out of your pocket and handed it to her.

Liv couldn't help but notice how much your hand was shaking. Actually, everything in you seemed to want to run out of there, as if you were having difficulty breathing, and your eyes looked more and more glassy.

"Are you okay?" she asked without thinking

"Y-yes!" you lied "I-I'm fine"

She didn't seem to believe you, but at least she had the decency not to press the matter. She simply pointed you to the chair across from her desk before reading the note. You tried not to make too much noise as you moved it to sit down, wishing you would just disappear.

Liv, I know you hate it when I ask you to be more permissive with the students, but this is a special case. Y/L/N is here for a scholarship, which, I must remind you, is more oriented to your subject than any other, and yet your class is the only one she has failed. This leads me to think that either you have something against her personally (which I really hope isn't the case), or something is going on with her. I am not asking you to modify the note, just to help her find out what is happening because otherwise, she will lose her scholarship.

-May

Liv resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course, May would find even the slightest reason to accuse her of something, but this was too much. What could she have against you specifically? You were one more student that failed in her class, nothing new with that.

It wasn't the first time she'd run into teary-eyed people trying to appeal to her softer side, and that never worked. Although for some reason, she really doubted that you were trying to pull that trick on her, there was something in your eyes, in the way you kept shaking, that told her that instead, you seemed to want to keep the tears from coming.

That was new.

"It seems that my colleague is worried about your performance in my class, Miss Y/L/N" she said after a few seconds of observing you "is it true that it is the only subject in which you have had a low grade?"

"Y-yes ma'am" you answered, without lifting your eyes from the ground

God, you sounded so fragile. Like a child listening to her parents say that her effort was not enough. And for some reason, that felt like an inexcusable thing to her. She didn't know what was going on with her, but from one moment to the next, she felt the need to comfort you, and help you as much as possible. Weird.

"And do you have any idea why?" she asked, staring at you

You just shook your head. Again, you were lying...sort of. You had a pretty seared memory in your mind of your first class with her. The Dr. had asked you something and you had been too intimidated by her gaze that you hadn't even heard the question properly.

You managed to get it right once she repeated it, but since then you haven't been able to fully focus on her class. In your defense, she seemed to always be watching you, because every time you looked up, her eyes were on you, making you feel too small. But you couldn't tell her that, you couldn't just admit that you were afraid of her.

"Well, you'd better find out" she said "Miss Y/L/N, your scholarship is on the line here, and there's no reason you should be failing the class you came here for in the first place."

"I-I know" you whispered "I-I'm sorry ma'am, I...I-I'll try to improve, I promise"

She thought she was being firm, but not cruel. She wasn't talking to you any different than how she would talk to any other student, but the moment she looked into your eyes and could see the tears welling up in them, her stomach turned.

She had no idea why she was reacting to you like this, why the thought of making you cry hurt so much even though many students had tearfully walked out of her office before. What kind of power did you have over her? She didn't know it, but she was sure that there was something in you.

Liv sighed and stood up, walking around her desk so she could stand next to you. There really wasn't much of a height difference between you, not that she would have noticed it when she saw you in the halls, but right now you looked so small and broken, and for the first time in all her years as a teacher, she decided to help a student a little more. If only to make you feel better.

"Look, I've read your essays, the ones you submitted for the scholarship" she said "they're brilliant, and I can understand why you're here. You have a bright future, Y/N, and I don't know what's going on, but we have to fix this, I would hate to lose a student as bright as you."

Your eyes widened slightly, but you didn't look up. You could feel your cheeks flush furiously and you were sure you looked ridiculous, but your mind was too busy to worry about it. Olivia Octavius just called you brilliant.

Coming from a renowned scientist like her, that was a huge compliment! One of the greatest privileges you would ever have. And for some reason, more than comforting you, it made the urge to cry even more unbearable. It's not that you weren't grateful, but knowing that she thought that way about you only made you feel more pressure, and you didn't know how much more you could take before you broke.

Liv seemed to realize this, or at least sense that you were too close to the edge, because she put a hand on your shoulder, caressing you gently in an attempt to comfort you a little, and her voice was softer when she spoke again.

"I'm serious, Y/N" she said "you have an extraordinary mind, don't lose this. This scholarship is a great opportunity for you"

"I don't even know if I care to keep it anymore" you muttered without thinking

The older woman was surprised and she felt you tense under her touch as you realized what you had said. You quickly tried to apologize for your rudeness or ungratefulness, but she wasn't paying attention to your rambles.

Her mind was racing, trying to understand how anyone could think such a thing of a great opportunity like the one you had, and more importantly, why did she care? Why did the idea of you leaving weigh so heavily on her?

"You want to leave?" she asked, stopping your tirade

You swallowed a bit and concentrated on your hands, not knowing how you could look at her after saying that. Surely she was already thinking that you were sabotaging your own school performance to get back home.

"Y/N, do you want to leave?" Liv asked again, a little firmer but not raising her voice.

"No" you said quickly "I just…I miss home…my friends…I miss not being alone" you confessed

You had no idea why you were telling that to the teacher that scared you the most, but a part of you felt better saying it out loud, to share with someone the burden you had been carrying for months, even if that someone was Dr. Octavius.

"You came to the city alone right?" she asked softly.

You just nodded, and even though you tried not to, you couldn't hold back your tears anymore. You felt pathetic for crying in front of her, but you couldn't help it. You felt so bad, so alone. Olivia didn't know what to do with you at that moment. Sure, she'd seen your tears and knew it was a matter of time before you finally broke down, but she hadn't expected you to do it in front of her, she thought maybe you'd wait until you were out of her office to break down.

What should she do now? She was never good at comforting anyone, especially a student, that was always May's job, but she couldn't just send you to her, she didn't want you to think she didn't care about you. But why did she do? This was all new to her, the idea of wanting to protect someone other than herself was strange and she had no idea how to proceed. She just knew that she didn't want to see you like that.

Acting on instinct (one that was rusty to her, if she was being honest), she squatted down next to you, wrapping one arm around you in an awkward but well-intentioned half-hug. She didn't want to think about the way her pulse quickened a little when you pressed lightly against her.

Silently, she took a handkerchief from the pocket of her robe and offered it to you without saying anything, watching you fight to stop what would surely be intense crying if you weren't with her. Her hand acted on its own and she began to play with your hair, thankful that the gesture seemed to calm you down a bit.

"I'll tell you what" she said after a moment "I'll help you"

You sniffed a bit and looked at her out of the corner of your eye. The older woman internally cursed you for looking so adorable, and she had to get up to put distance between you because she didn't want to get lost in your intoxicating scent, then she berated herself for thinking like that of a student. She could already feel that this was a bad idea, but she couldn't back down.

"Come to my office every day after class" she continued "we'll go over everything and make sure you don't lose that scholarship. I know it can be hard being alone in a new city, Miss Y/L/N, but we can't pass up the opportunities that are presented to us just because we are afraid, can we?"

You thought about it for a moment and finally felt brave enough to look at her. Her face was the same as always, serious and expressionless, but her green eyes seemed warmer. For some reason, that did make you feel better. You didn't know how well you could do, but it wouldn't hurt to try, right?

"I-I would really appreciate it, Dr. Octavius" you said quietly "...thank you"

The woman simply nodded and returned to her chair, taking May's note and shoving it carelessly into a drawer. She was struggling to appear professional and not let you see how much she wanted to hold you close to her again. You seemed to take that as your cue to leave and got up awkwardly, not knowing what else to say.

"Rest for the weekend, Miss Y/L/N" she said, not really wanting you to leave "we start Monday"

You nodded and wiped away the few tears that were still falling down your cheeks before walking towards the door.

"Thank you Dr. Octavius" you said again "see you later"

Liv looked at you as you opened the door and she was glad to be sitting down because her knees went weak at the small, coy smile you gave her and she felt her cheeks warm. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

[estarion]

UNIVERSITY AU. set in a modern-day faerûn.

come learn about CRIME w / professor ancunín

come learn about GOD w / professor dekarios ( @karsussfolly )

come learn about SEX w / professor vela ( @tempestess )

come learn about STUFF w / professor ziromzu ( @bloodyarn )

come get your ASS BEATEN by campus security officer katya ( @silvertiefling )

[story-magic]

{{ @astral-multiverse | 🧸 | }}

🧸 "I'm sorry..." she held her teddy bear tightly "I feel like a bad girlfriend for not keeping in contact with you"

[huntershowl]

@never-surrender ( shouto. )

❝ YO. TODOROKI. ❞ SEPH'S VOICE ALWAYS sounds harsher and more pointed than they mean it. in this particular case, she calls his name like she's about to confront him about some personal slight. but as she approaches him where he sits, seph's face is neutral, if not a little bright with intrigue. rather catlike, they hop up to sit on the table next to him, letting their gangly legs dangle off the edge. ❝ question for you. why don't i ever see you training without your quirk? like — don't get me wrong, you're strong as fuck, but. ❞

a pause; she runs her tongue over her teeth, spinning a little throwing knife between her fingers. how does she word this. ❝ okay — hypothetical. let's say aizawa's not on our side. or let's say there's a villain with a very similar quirk. coordinated attack, you're grappled from behind. what would you do? ❞

[xhonoredone]

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ☆

Estaba nervioso.

No iba a mentir. Se sentía, por algún motivo, con el corazón agitado y emocionado dentro de su pecho. Pero esa emoción, en el fondo, conllevaba un nerviosismo que ocultaba bajo una suave y gentil sonrisa; esa que lo caracterizaba y destacaba los rasgos más finos de su rostro.

En su mano derecha llevaba una cajita con un listón rojo muy mono. Se le había ocurrido llevar algo para Bao. Solo esperaba que le gustara. — Hmm... Tai Bao, Tai Bao...— Su dedo índice vaciló en el aire, hasta que encontró el timbre que correspondía al nombre que estaba buscando. Y sin pensarlo más lo presionó una vez.

Luego otra , y esperó.

@s-theunknown

[mikunology]

[vocal android au]

goofing around with va au purple kids...

[preet-01]

My feed was filled with pictures of Daniel during the post-quali media and this happened. So hope you guys enjoy!!!

With the fundraiser set for late fall/early winter, a car wash had been impractical. Not to mention that Daniel had threatened a boat load of pranks that Seb quite frankly did not want to deal with during midterms time.

So in a moment of unmatched brilliance, he proposed a kissing booth. It didn’t have to be on the quad, they could set it up in the student center of Daniel was so averse to the cold. And to be completely honest, they’d probably raise a lot more money with $1 pecks on the cheek and $5 kisses than they would at the usual car wash fundraiser. After all, a lot more people wanted to kiss Daniel than they had cars. (Though that hadn’t stopped people in past years from bringing wheelbarrows, bicycles, and any other wheeled thing just to see Daniel shirtless, in tiny shorts, and wet with sudsy water. Plus there were other guys from the frat there too, but Daniel had been the main attraction.)

“It better be in a warm place,” Daniel says when the booth is proposed. The others echo their support for Daniel’s demand, after last fall semester’s car wash fundraiser none of them had been ecstatic about spending hours in the cold air.

The rest of the meeting is spent making a schedule for who would be manning the booth during the day. It would be on a Thursday — when Daniel was the only person in the frat to not have a class. Though he had been spending a lot of his Thursdays helping Professor Button with his latest research project.

“Can you stay all day, Dan?” Seb questions.

“I know what you’re doing Vettel,” Daniel says with narrowed eyes but ultimately agrees to stay at the booth the entire day. “I want the nicest room when we have spring formal,” he demands as compensation. Not too hard of a task to be honest.

The others, who aren’t in a relationship, agree to join Daniel for two hour sessions.

____

If Daniel hadn’t been offered fair compensation for his efforts, he probably would be angrily grumbling about all the effort he had to put into kissing just about everyone that walked by. Rick, his companion for the past hour, had barely kissed more than three people. In comparison, Daniel had kissed three people in just four minutes. Rick was a good looking guy, he wasn’t the hottest in the frat, but he was conventionally attractive.

“How much have we made?” Rick questions as Daniel slips another $5 bill into the lockbox.

“Uh close to $470,” Daniel replies. The booth had only been open for about three hours now and they’d raised more money than the last car wash fundraiser they did.

“Mr. President!” Daniel cheers when he sees Lewis step up to the kissing booth. When Lewis had been elected frat president, there was only one way that Daniel could greet him every time he saw him. The running joke between them had somehow led to Daniel doing his best Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to JFK impression.

“Dan,” Lewis greets before greeting Rick.

“Care to donate to save the honeybees?” Daniel asks. Lewis pulls out a crisp $10 bill and slips it into the lockbox himself.

“A kiss for now and a kiss for later,” Lewis explains just before expectantly turning to Daniel.

“Throw in another $20 and well you know,” Daniel says, not really expecting Lewis to agree, but he does and pulls out the $20. Lewis kisses him for a full minute and promises to see him tonight before leaving for his next class.

“What’s the you know for?” Rick questions and Daniel just raises his eyebrow. Everyone in the frat knew that Daniel and Lewis would occasionally hook up and the two loved playing games with one another. “Wait, really??? I thought that was just some prank that Seb was trying to pull on us.”

Oh right, Rick was newly initiated and had not yet seen Lewis and Daniel’s hook ups or the games that preceded them. “The President is the best fuck in the frat,” Daniel says.

“Mr. Ricciardo,” a familiar voice says. They turn around to see Jenson — well Professor Button — standing there.

“Professor!” Daniel says, he’s sure he’d texted Jenson that he wouldn’t be able to make it to their usual meeting due to a frat fundraiser. So he couldn’t be pissed about that. Was it the… oh he’d be paying for that come next Thursday. Hopefully his punishment would be of the spanking variety and not the orgasm delay variety. “Would you like to donate to our fundraiser? It’s for the bees. $1 for a peck, $5 for a kiss,” Daniel questions. He’s curious to see what Jenson will do.

“It would be highly inappropriate to kiss a student, Mr. Ricciardo, but I will donate $5 for the cause,” Jenson says, “and I expect you to be early next Thursday, there are some… articles I need you to go through.” With that Jenson is gone. Kissing a student would have definitely been more appropriate than whatever it was that Jenson’s planning for next Thursday.

The next couple of hours are very boring if you ask Daniel. He’s kissing or giving pecks to whoever stops by. A group of freshmen keep coming back to the booth to get pecks and one of them is bold enough to get a kiss. And he’s avoiding people’s attempts to flirt. He’s just going through the motions until Max Verstappen appears in front of him. They have a political philosophy class together this semester. While Max was very prickly with most other people in the class due to their “very stupid thoughts,” he lit up around Daniel.

“Hiya, Maxy Taxi,” Daniel greets, happy to see a familiar face. “Come to support the honeybees?” He inquires.

“Sure,” Max replies. Instead of $5, max pulls out a $20. “You have been kissing people for a minute when they give $5, so a $20, of course, would mean 4 minutes of kissing,” he says.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Daniel hadn’t really been keeping track of how long he was kissing everyone, but Max was rarely wrong in class so he must be right.

Max’s lips are just as soft as they look. And like he does in class, Max takes the lead with no hesitation. He’s got a hand in Daniel’s curls and the other on his cheek as they kiss. Well technically make out because the amount of tongue is significantly higher than it had been with other people he’d kissed during the day.

If he’s breathless and chasing for more, then no one has to know except him and Max. “Do you want to get dinner after class tomorrow?” Max questions. Daniel, still dazed and wanting more, just nods. Dinner sounded great.

By the end of the day, they raised over $1000 which was much more than the car washes they’d done had ever raised. The honeybees better be grateful.

[ink-stained-student]

☆12.09.2024 ~ Thursday☆

Only two short days until I'm moving out! I packed up mostly decorations and a couple bits and pieces yesterday, but today I'm packing my clothes (except what I'll need to wear over the next couple days) and I'm getting some more decorations packed, like my super cute moon tray so I don't keep losing my keys and lanyard every time I put them down! 🥰

Tomorrow is the big one, I'm packing up my PC and Xbox, as well as my switch, and I always worry I'll end up breaking them! 😅

I'm making good progress through my packing list anyway, ready to pick up the things I have in storage at my nana's tomorrow!

Hope you're all having a fabulous day!

~ Caitlin 🪻

[thesixteenpleasures]

x | @multimuse-chronicles

With his white jacket swapped for a navy blue striped apron and jewelry-free hands washed and dried, he began working on the ingredients for sweet bread rolls. Black sesame seeds and corn kernels would be added later.

[dramatic-delirium]

AU where Howl is considered Spiderman because his house is filled with them.

By Howl I mean Mr Howell Jenkins who owns a castle that can float.

By them I mean spiders. He houses spiders. The absolute madman. No particular reason, he just likes them. (And how they fix their webs even if you ruin them forever, which is cute but also I do not have the stomach to have spiders crawling around in my bedroom my guy)

Also he has no noticable powers, nor actual responsibilities tbh. He's Spiderman like how spider-therapist is Spiderman.

He's is not contacted by Spider society because Miguel is jealous of him sustaining a family in another universe doesn't like anomalies. Howl knows of Spider-verse and all but is, as always, an unbothered icon.

Nothing different happens.

[thatstudyblrontea]

He was akin to a bright evening:

Not day, nor night, – not dark, nor light!

Mikhail Lermontov, Demon

[transl. is mine.]

[tryckthebard]

Tryck as he's being dragged away by the ear from @estarion's school office by @silvertiefling:

"IF YOU ATE SPAGHETTI ALL THE TIME YOU'D BE PASTASTARION. IF YOU SMOKED A COPIOUS AMOUNT OF WEED YOU'D BE RASTASTARION."

[more-than-a-princess]

@fairlybeloved asked: 025.   an abandoned scrapyard

Setting Prompts - Still Accepting!

Well, this definitely wasn't where she was supposed to be.

Sonia Nevermind, in her pressed skirt suit and heels, raised her head and sniffed the air around her in apprehension. She'd convinced her security detail that she was confident enough in her own sense of direction to walk home from her meeting on foot and that they could follow behind, as always, in the black sedans with tinted, bulletproof windows.

In reality, the Princess of Novoselic needed a break. To celebrate, initially: she'd gotten a notoriously difficult Japanese politician to bring a proposal to the Prime Minister. Someone who, usually, reserved his attention for her father and her father alone. But he had put her in charge, now that her school years were behind her and she worked full-time for the Royal Family, of her own initiatives as long as she could deliver the results. It seemed, then, that she had a real chance and she wanted to celebrate it like a real person. Or at least, someone more believable than her own sense of 'normal.' A walk on a busy street, maybe stopping for a meal or a treat, and not chauffeured by private car home.

However, she'd overestimated her sense of direction, and had ended up decidedly not in her neighborhood of Aoyama, where the Novoselic Royal Family's Tokyo condo was located. She was somewhere else, somewhere considerably more dodgy and filled with discarded metal. The scent she'd picked up reminded her of her old classmate, Kazuichi Souda, and the constant automobile parts and oil he'd been surrounded in. She wondered if there was a garage nearby, or at least somewhere with someone more knowledgeable about the area than she was. Her fine clothes already made her look out of place, her foreigner status and appearance a second reason to indicate she didn't belong there.

She needed help, and fast: she'd promised her security that she wouldn't cause trouble for them. Or too much of it anyway: she thought once she'd ducked down a side street, hidden behind a door, and then waited for the car to pass before continuing that she'd been clever but not too dangerous. Overly confident in her sense of direction and all. And now she was paying the price. Looking around, she breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted a tall man, with dark hair and hopefully a better idea of where exactly in Tokyo she was. Squaring her shoulders, she strode up to him: in the most likely case, he would be kind enough to converse with her in her fairly above-average Japanese and give her directions. In the worst case, she'd run into a serial killer and honestly, her day would be much improved by meeting a serial killer in the flesh, and not behind prison bars. She'd have so many questions to ask!

"Excuse me, sir?" She called out to him with a small wave. "Hello! I have found myself a bit lost. Could you tell me where in Tokyo I am, and the best way to get to the Aoyama neighborhood? I would appreciate it ever so much."

[moomoocowmaid]

Idc how many English courses or poetry units I’ve been through, what in the actual hell is Iambic Pentameter? What rhythm?! And how are you stressing it out?!