#the truth is not in between more like a third point somewhere else

[theskywithin]

✦ Natal Asteroids ✦ Karma in the Houses

The asteroid Karma in the natal chart points to what wants resolution, what repeats itself, quietly or loudly, until it’s fully met. It’s about learning the difference between what was placed in your hands and what you are here to release. Like soul-DNA, the house where Karma lives holds a story you’ve been carrying long before you had language for it. And now you get to choose whether that story becomes a cage or a key.

My book waits for you, a mirror for the sky you were born under. Find the link at the bottom of the page or in the pinned post ♡

✦ Karma in the 1st House

Your body remembers. Before your mind, before you ever learned to introduce yourself, there was already a script written on your skin. Karma in the first house is the soul born into visibility it didn’t fully choose, the kind that comes from having once been named too soon, too wrongly, too many times. You were taught to read the room before you breathed too loudly, to wear the costume before asking what you even felt. And now, even in this life, the self can feel like a performance you didn’t audition for. You carry old instincts like a second spine, the way you hold yourself when you’re not being watched, the way your expression shifts the second someone enters the room. This isn’t about ego. It’s about remembering what it once cost to exist unfiltered. But now you’re here to un-armor in slow ways, to speak your name as a becoming. You are are the one that decides how the story unfolds this time.

✦ Karma in the 2nd House

You were born with memory in your hands. The kind of memory that counts, that measures, that keeps score in secret. Karma in the second house is a soul wired to ask: Have I done enough? Have I earned this yet? Is it safe to receive if I didn’t pay for it? It’s the echo of lives where worth was transactional, where every belonging had a price, and love came with a receipt. Now, value feels slippery. You might hoard what you fear could vanish or might give too much just to prove you’re not a taker. You might call it generosity, but underneath, it’s the hope that no one will take more than you can replace. But this placement is not a debt, it’s an invitation to remember that not all wealth is counted. That peace is a currency too. That your presence is not something you owe the world in exchange for safety. You are not an offering plate. You are the garden, and you are allowed to bloom without asking who it benefits.

✦ Karma in the 3rd House

Your mind is a corridor full of echoes. Rooms filled with conversations that never ended, questions that were never answered, thoughts that began lifetimes ago and never stopped speaking. Karma in the third house means language lives inside you like a storm cloud. Words arrive in floods, silence feels like exile. And somewhere inside, you still remember what it meant to speak and be punished. Or to speak and be praised for something that wasn’t the truth. In this life, you often narrate before you feel. You analyze instead of land. You offer clarity where you long to be held. It’s safer, sometimes, to sound composed than to risk being known, but your voice was never meant to be a mask. It was meant to be a window and even if others have forgotten how to listen, you are allowed to speak like someone who has nothing to prove. You are allowed to stop translating your truth into something quieter. The karma isn’t in what you said, it’s in what you still edit. Say the thing. Even if it doesn’t explain. Let the words be keys, not shields.

✦ Karma in the 4th House

There’s a hallway inside you that smells like the past. A door that opens into memory even when you weren’t the one who lived it. Karma in the fourth house means you were born with someone else’s weather in your chest, their grief, their silence, their patterns. Home, for you, is a question: Am I safe here? Am I allowed to soften? You might carry a loyalty to what hurt you. You might shrink in familiar rooms. You might find comfort in keeping the peace even when it costs yours. This placement is here to teach you how to belong to yourself first. You are not the house you grew up in, you are the one building a new one, brick by brick, breath by breath, where your softness doesn’t have to be hidden under lock and key.

✦ Karma in the 5th House

You were born with a song in your chest but the first thing you learned was how to lower the volume. Karma in the fifth house means joy has always felt like a risk. Maybe you were once punished for wanting too much or loved for the parts of you that performed, but not the ones that felt. Maybe you were silenced mid-laughter. Maybe you fell in love and disappeared inside it. Now, you hesitate at the edge of pleasure. You flirt with self-expression, but don’t always stay. You create something beautiful, then apologize for it. You long to be seen, and fear what that seeing might take from you. You are here to unlearn the idea that delight must be earned. To remember that your aliveness is not decoration, it is the flame that changes everything.

✦ Karma in the 6th House

Your body has always been a ledger, even when no one else noticed, you kept track of what was needed, what was fair, what was never returned. Karma in the sixth house is the signature of a soul shaped by service. Not the kind that flows freely, but the kind that was expected. You may carry past-life memories of being the one who held it all together, the helper, the healer, the one who showed up, even when she had nothing left to give. So now, you might struggle to rest, to say no, to want without guilt. You tie your worth to what you contribute. You call it responsibility, but underneath is a longing: When will it be my turn to be cared for? This placement is here to rewrite that rhythm. You are here to create a life where tending to others doesn’t mean abandoning yourself. Let your body become a home, not a battlefield. Let your care include you.

✦ Karma in the 7th House

You’ve always looked for yourself in the eyes of another. Karma in the seventh house is the soul that remembers relationship as both sanctuary and test. You may have once lost yourself in love, given too much, disappeared too quietly, waited too long to be chosen. Or maybe you loved from a distance, a pattern of missing what never stayed. Now, partnership feels heavy with memory. You might crave closeness but flinch when it arrives. You might choose people who reflect a version of you that feels familiar, not necessarily safe. This placement is about recognition. It’s about learning to meet your reflection without losing your shape. You are not here to disappear into love. You are here to bring your full self to the mirror, and stay.

✦ Karma in the 8th House

Your depth remembers everything, even when your mind doesn’t. Karma in the eighth house is the signature of a soul who has been burned by trust, by power, by intimacy that came too fast or not at all. You were built with a lockbox in your chest. One part longing, one part armor. You want to merge, to be met, but the moment it starts to feel too real, too sharp, too true, you pull back or burn it down. Because somewhere in your history closeness cost you everything. Now, desire feels like danger. Vulnerability feels like exposure. But this placement isn’t asking you to fling the door wide open. It’s asking you to stop treating your sensitivity like something shameful. You don’t need to be unbreakable to be powerful. You just need to trust that the right kind of intimacy won’t require your erasure.

✦ Karma in the 9th House

You were born with a compass in your chest and no clear destination. Karma in the ninth house speaks of a soul shaped by belief, inherited, imposed, or outgrown. You may have once followed someone else’s truth too far or preached a truth you later betrayed. Now, you wander. You question. You study every version of meaning because none of them feel complete. This is the karma of wisdom, not just knowledge, but humility. You’re here to learn that truth isn’t a hill to die on, but a horizon you walk toward. Your beliefs may shift. Your story may change. And that doesn’t make you lost. It makes you alive. You are not here to memorize the answers, you are here to keep asking better questions and to let wonder, not certainty, be what guides you home.

✦ Karma in the 10th House

You came into this life with the weight of a name you hadn’t earned yet. Karma in the tenth house means that legacy, success, visibility, have always carried more meaning than they let on. Maybe you were once praised for being needed, not known. Maybe you were punished for having power. Maybe you rose too fast, or fell too hard. Now, you climb with caution. You work with intensity. You tie your worth to your title, your timing, your ability to hold everything together. And yet, it still doesn’t feel like enough because the goalpost keeps moving. The voice in your head keeps asking, Is this who I’m meant to be? Or just who I learned to become? But this placement is here to remind you that you are not your résumé, you are not your role, you are not the image they fell in love with. Your real legacy begins when you stop performing what success is supposed to look like and start living what purpose feels like.

✦ Karma in the 11th House

You’ve always been surrounded but not always seen. Karma in the eleventh house means belonging doesn’t come easily, not because you’re difficult, but because you carry old blueprints of fitting in that required you to fracture yourself. Maybe in another life, you were exiled for being different or blended in so well you forgot who you were. Now, you find yourself among people who almost get it, you nod, you stay, you support. But a part of you still floats above the room, waiting for the moment it will all slip away. This is not about making more friends or finding the perfect circle. It’s about learning that real belonging doesn’t come from being accepted. You don’t have to shrink to stay. The right people won’t ask you to hide the part of you that’s been waiting to exhale.

✦ Karma in the 12th House

You came into this life with memory underwater. Karma in the twelfth house means something ancient lingers beneath your surface, in moods, in patterns, in grief that arrives before the story does. You may feel like you’ve been carrying things that don’t fully belong to you: ancestral sorrow, unspoken guilt, collective ache. And so you stay quiet, you dream vividly, you disappear into others, you seek solitude but fear being forgotten. This is the karma of the soul’s attic where everything lost is still echoing. But this placement is asking you to learn how to rest without vanishing. How to feel without drowning. You are not here to make peace with the parts of you that never had words, and to stop apologizing for being sensitive to everything the world tries to numb. Stillness is not weakness. It’s where your soul goes to remember itself.

[qr-sa]

what is true is that the tobacco industry bought out the food industry when the gov cracked down on smoking and addiction, and then set their flavor scientists / addiction experts onto this new market to intentionally create addiction in an even greater population

dude not to be a bitch but starting my new job and spending every day surrounded by normies is really giving me a good long look at how fucked up the rhetorical landscape surrounding food and fatness is. the other week i overheard a guy confidently saying that the body doesn't actually require sugar and that if it wasn't for our dastardly perfidious taste buds we'd never crave it(???). just now my manager showed me this video of some dude scaremongering about pringles by saying that their ratio of sugar/salt/fat is CALCULATED to TRICK THE BRAIN into WANTING MORE. bitch you mean they made an effort to make their commercially produced snacks taste good? somebody phone the fucking fire department

[pukefactory]

•☽────✧˖°˖ MY LOVE, MY SECRET ˖°˖✧────☾•

★ Summary: A Compilation of Headcannons Featuring Salesperson ENA X Reader Where You Tell Her Something Vulnerable About Yourself

★ Character(s): Salesperson ENA (ENA: Dream BBQ)

★ Genre: Headcannons, SFW

★ Warning(s): None - Completely Safe!

★ Image Credits: @JoelG

★ Requested By: Anon

☆ You tell her in a quiet moment. There’s no music playing in the Casino, no megaphones shrieking about profit margins or destiny or bloodied mannequins. You admit it—whatever it is—your past, your shame, your sore, raw nerve of a truth. And ENA… stills. Her eyes (triangles, uncertain) blink out of sync. Her voice glitches. “…Thank you for your investment.” Her Salesperson smile doesn’t fade. But her Meanie side? It twitches. Her clawed fingers tap her thigh—calculating. You just handed her leverage. But instead of using it, she stores it somewhere deep in her cubist heart. A cursed treasure in a collapsing briefcase.

☆ Later, she talks to herself. You catch fragments of it when you pass her in a hallway. “Must I report it? It’s information, not intel.” “SHUT UP, THEY TOLD ME BECAUSE I’M SPECIAL, NOT A SNITCH!!” “Right. Of course. Business is built on trust.” “Trust isn’t a deductible, you DUNCE!” You pause. You don’t say anything. You pretend you didn’t hear the conversation between her two halves debating what you’re worth.

☆ She starts offering you things. Deals. “Hey hey—confess a little more and I’ll throw in a lifetime subscription to my undivided attention.” It’s teasing. Mostly. You start to notice her red side is brighter when she talks to you. Like you gave her something forbidden to touch, and she can’t stop hovering near it. A secret. A power. A weapon. She holds it like a flower made of nails.

☆ When you’re sad, when you start spiraling because you regret telling her, ENA panics. She rushes in, yelling with her Meanie voice, “HEY! You think I’m gonna backstab you?! You think I’m just gonna BLAB and run a commercial on your TEARS?!?!” She’s waving her arms like a broken marionette, but her face is sincere. The claws don’t touch you. Instead, her mitten-hand pats your head. Once. Lightly. “…I’m glad you told me,” she mutters. “I don’t know why, but it feels like my heart got a new business license.”

☆ She keeps your vulnerability stored somewhere only she can access: A literal safe. Somewhere inside the glitchy neon apartment between two layers of dream code. She has it labeled “EMOTIONAL ASSETS – DO NOT TOUCH.” Sometimes she stares at it. Sometimes she fights herself not to open it. She’s learning what it means to have power and not use it. It makes her brain sizzle. It makes her stomach hurt. But she does it. For you.

☆ You joke about it one day. “Oh no, what if you blackmail me?” She goes still. Her triangle eyes widen. Her smile fades into something small and aching. “…I would never,” she says. Not Salesperson ENA. Not Meanie ENA. Something quieter. Sadder. You touched a nerve. One made of wire and worry. The kind of worry that can’t be monetized.

☆ When someone else figures out part of your secret—some third-party gelatinous oracle or drunk frog banker—ENA defends you instantly. “WRONG. You don’t know the CONTEXT, so STAY OUT OF THEIR FILES.” She causes a scene. She gets banned from the Casino. She tells you it was “an unfortunate networking malfunction.” But her clenched red hand? Yeah. That’s a bruise she got for you.

☆ There’s a point where her meanie side does try to weaponize it. Just once. You hurt her first—maybe you lied, maybe you pushed her away. And she shouts it. The thing you trusted her with. You freeze. Her own voice catches. “…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I MEANT IT, but I DIDN’T MEAN TO MEAN IT—” She stammers so badly the code splits. The world bleeds colour. She doesn’t stop apologizing for three whole hours.And then she builds you a room made of glass, so you can see her coming next time.

☆ She uses metaphors to talk about you now. “Investors trust me with soft data. I am now the holder of precious emotional stock.” Her Salesperson side says it like a joke. Her Meanie side snarls, “And if ANYONE TOUCHES IT I’LL KILL THEM WITH A PENCIL SHARPENER.” You’ve never felt safer. In the chaos. In the sales pitch. You’re her emotional portfolio. And she guards it with claws and megaphones.

☆ You wonder if she ever resents you. You ask, one night. When the stars are fake and the air smells like spilled milk and melted coins. “…Does it bother you? That I gave you something heavy?” She pauses. Then: “I’ve always wanted something heavy. Something real. Something I couldn’t sell.” Her eyes gleam like dying TVs. “I don’t want to use your pain,” she says. “I want to understand it.” And she smiles like a crooked contract. Sharp-toothed. Trustworthy. Maybe even holy.

[taniahylian]

Matilda's memory loss

This is a theory I thought about the other day after finishing the 2.5 event, Showdown in Chinatown (so if you haven't finished that event, click out if you want to avoid spoilers), but before I fully explain it, I'll give you some context.

In the first stage of Chapter 3, we're introduced to SPDM with a teacher asking the kids about the war between humans and arcanists that happened in Constantinople. First, Sonetto gives an answer that pretty much puts all the blame of the war and the eventual result (the arcanists being defeated) on the arbitrary and violent nature of arcanists. Then Matilda interferes with information that was provided to her by her grandpa.

Matilda's version of the story is pretty much the opposite to Sonetto's; the humans ransaked Constantinople to gain access to the literature of arcanum, and then isolated and blamed arcanists, forcing them into hiding.

Although the truth is most likely somewhere in between, you can probably see that Matilda's version is more in line with Manus Vindictae's way of thinking; humans have been marginalizing arcanists for centuries and stripping them from any position of power (although of course the Manus use this as an excuse for revenge, which Matilda never suggests). More so, it hints at Matilda's family knowing something about the origin of the name "arcanists", which I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with Arcana herself.

Now, what happens next? The teacher inquires further to see what else Matilda can tell them about this version of the story and the song it came from, however, strangely enough, Matilda can't remember anything else.

She even goes as far as remarking how weird it is, since she had been humming it just the night before. And it's not like Matilda usually has bad memory; being the third best student in the school, she's bound to have above average memory, so it's even stranger that this is happening to her.

Now, my first assumption (and I most ppl's probably), was that the Foundation was brainwashing the kids and making them forget the outside world... but that's not the case; all of the kids Vertin asks later on remember at least something from their life before joining SPDM. More so, I always saw it as a plothole that the Foundation could erase memories, but then didn't do that to make the kids (or at the very least Vertin) forget about the disastrous parade ceremony, that even Constantine admits was a bad move on their part.

I even thought maybe the whole artificial sonambulism they put Vertin through might have been to, not only keep her in a coma, but also to erase whatever bad memories she had of the foundation and therefore make her more obedient. But as we see in the Tuesday's event, Vertin clearly hasn't forgotten about her friends or how they died.

So... what caused Matilda's memory loss then? Well, the answer is simple: her mom. Hear me out.

During the 2.5 event, we learn that Scott stole and sold 5 arcane items from the Foundation's archives, but her motivations and her methods seem very suspicious, so Black Ibis, a member of the Vigils, keeps her under surveillance after they're unable to learn anything by interrogating her. And this vigilance pays off; she is soon contacted by none other than Matilda's mom.

By the looks of it, Matilda's mom is able to hypnoptize other ppl at a distance (we don't even know where she is), and contact whoever she wants by the use of crystals. She can also lock memories of ppl to prevent any information she doesn't want to fall into someone else's hands from being retrieved. That's what she did to Scott... and to Matilda too, probably.

Listen, Matilda's mom is very suspicious. Black Ibis mentions that one of the items stolen could perhaps be used for "that ritual" (probably Arcana's resurrection), and so whoever stole it likely has that as a goal. However, it seems she's been pretending to be in the Foundation's side all this time, to the point she sent her daughter to SPDM and she herself was staying at a Foundation's safe house. But of course she's highly intelligent and talented, and so, to prevent any sensitive information from being found by the foundation, she locked some of Matilda's memories, just in case the Foundation would try to pry into Matilda's mind.

Matilda very likely even knows where her mother is, but that memory is locked. If her powers were more developed, however, she probably would be able to break this barriers and find her. At least that's how I interpret what her mother said to Scott.

But why lock the memories about the song Matilda's grandfather used to sing? Probably because the song, somehow, is associated with Manus Vindictae, Arcana, or some other group that the Foundation deems as dangerous. Remember that Matilda comes from a long line of pure blooded and extremely talented arcanists (as is explained in her first bond story); exactly the type of arcanists that would be most likely to be approached by the Manus.

In any case, I hope we'll find more about this in the future. Let me know what you think!

[theonlyonesora]

The Third Rule

Lily x Oscar Piastri x You (Reader)

Chapter 19 –  Truth

Instagram Post — @(Y/N).m

Caption:

“Not here to apologize, but to explain. Judge me for the right reasons.”

Image: A black screen with the following text in white serif font.

"Hi, I'm not here to apologize, but to explain so you can judge me for the right reasons.

I met Lily in college and we were very good friends, long before I met Oscar. I've never crossed the line in any relationship before, and I didn’t cross it in this one—at least not without consent.

I didn’t want to expose anyone about something intimate between us, but I think everything is already very exposed at this point.

You’re right—something happened between the three of us in Las Vegas, and that was something I wanted to stay there. It should have stayed in Vegas.

But it didn’t. Not because I wanted more, but because she wanted more.

I never intended to be in a polyamorous relationship. I was always convinced of what I wanted, but somehow it happened, and I didn’t know how to get out without hurting people.

I felt like I was losing my essence—becoming something I wasn’t. So I left. Lily understood. I stayed away. I met someone else. I tried.

But I can’t control Oscar’s heart. I can silence mine, but not his.

I was willing to let him go. I did.

Because I loved Lily. She was my friend.

But the decision to leave wasn’t mine—it was his.

And I wonder if all this judgment and hate is because I really did something wrong… or because he chose me?

That’s all. You know the truth. You decide who to throw into the fire now."

Public Reaction on Social Media:

Twitter/X:

@formulaheartx: okay but she’s spitting?? “Is it because he chose me?” like damn.

@racingteaspill: this doesn’t excuse everything, but at least we’re finally hearing HER side.

@teamlilyforever: nah she still broke girl code idc what she says. she shouldn’t have touched him, even with “consent.”

@neutralf1fan: y’all acting like Oscar is some puppy without a brain. He made choices too. She’s not the only one involved.

@mclareninsider: wild how this whole love triangle has become the biggest off-track drama of the season 💀

Instagram Comments:

@lilylover_00: You still betrayed your best friend. No justification changes that.

@oscarstan31: She’s being honest. That’s more than I can say for Oscar or Lily.

@(Y/N)bae: Can’t believe the hate she’s getting for something everyone consented to. The double standards are real.

@teamchaosf1: This post will be studied in PR classes one day. A mic drop, actually.

.

Instagram Post — @oscarpiastri

Caption:

“I wasn’t going to say anything. But silence has hurt more than the truth ever could.”

Image: A plain black background with white text, mirroring (Y/N)’s style.

“I’ve read what (Y/N) said.

And yes—everything she said is true.

There was never any cheating. There was no betrayal behind Lily’s back. What happened between the three of us started with consent, with trust, and with love.

But somewhere along the way… it got messy.

We were all trying to hold onto something we didn’t fully understand, and in the end, we hurt each other more than we meant to.

I didn’t choose sides out of malice. I didn’t stop loving Lily when this began—I just didn’t expect my feelings for someone else to grow the way they did.

I should’ve spoken up sooner. I should’ve said something when it mattered, instead of hiding behind comfort and pretending everything was still fine.

I want to make it clear: (Y/N) didn’t chase me. She didn’t steal me. And she didn’t break anything on her own.

I made choices. I hurt people I care about. I live with that.

Please don’t direct your hate at her. Or Lily.

We’re all navigating this as best we can, and none of us are villains here.

All I’m asking for now is space—for all three of us.”

Public Reaction:

Twitter/X:

@formulaaesthetic: oh so NOW he speaks 😩

@teamlily: “didn’t stop loving Lily” then why’d you stop showing up for her?

@neutralgridfan: his post feels… honest. messy but real. i feel bad for all of them actually.

@f1gossipdaily: “She didn’t steal me.” that line 👏👏👏

@(Y/N)defense: if y’all still blaming (Y/N) after this, you’re not listening.

Instagram Comments:

@lilyangelxo: still doesn’t excuse how you treated Lily like a placeholder.

@teamoscar: brave of you to speak, but late. some damage can’t be undone.

@mclarenbae: finally some accountability. maybe now people will stop attacking (Y/N).

@dramaunfolds: Formula 1 got more plot than HBO rn.

.

Instagram Story — @lilylane

Black screen. Small white text. No music.

“I didn’t ask for this attention. I didn’t ask for this story to be told in front of the world. But now that it is, here’s what I’ll say.”

Yes, I brought someone I loved into my relationship. I thought we were all on the same page. I thought love could expand without tearing things apart. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I held on too tightly, or not tightly enough.

Oscar was mine for years. (Y/N) was my best friend. I don’t hate them. But I won’t pretend I’m not hurt. Or that I didn’t lose something I thought I’d have forever.

I’m not asking for sides. I’m asking for peace. For all of us. So stop messaging me. Stop posting theories. This isn’t a show. These are our real lives. Our real losses.

Please just let us move on.

Public Reaction:

Twitter/X:

@lilyloves: oh my god. this is… mature and heartbreaking.

@f1girlies: she didn’t name names. she didn’t throw dirt. class act.

@bitterf1tea: this is the kind of pain you only write like that if you’ve lived it.

@truthhurts: no drama. no accusations. just grief. and that somehow hurts the most.

@neutralnettie: idk how people can still take sides. they all lost something.

Instagram DMs Screenshot (unposted but implied): Messages flood in—some supportive, others still trying to dig, pry, or pit her against the others. But she doesn’t answer. She said her piece.

Tag List:

@freyathehuntress, @mimisweetz, @aleatorio1234, @totallynotluluu, @rorabelle15, @prongslena, @linnygirl09, @mangotaitai, @forensicheart, @devilacot, @lilorose25, @landofotographyy, @paolexsstuff, @sanctify-mp3, @emma-manuhpe, @virtualperfectioncat, @kopigivesup, @rikersmunky

[ethereacals]

so american <3

Chapter Four: Operation: Get Him Back!

synopsis: Remus grows attached to an American transfer student from Ilvermorny

trope: idiots in love, grumpy x sunshine

pairing: remus lupin x american!reader

(R is alluded and mentioned to be in gryffindor)

content: r and remus are seperated ):, but not for long <3

wc: 1.2k

series masterlist

a/n; happy valentines day!

EVERYTHING WENT WRONG so quickly.

And you were still trying to wrap your head around the situation regarding Remus.

“I trust you, Remus.”

“Can I kiss you— Remus?”

“I—I don’t want to force you to do anything—“

He lashed out.

“Why do you want to kiss me? Out of everyone?” He moved himself back a bit, and you frowned softly.

You were drunk and still recovering from your closet incident.

“You don’t want to kiss Sirius?”

“I— no I don’t want to kiss him! I’m asking you!”

“Y/n, you don’t want to kiss me.”

“Remus—“

“Y/n, you don’t want to kiss me.”

“If you don’t like me, Remus. You can just say it.”

“I’m just protecting you!”

“Protecting me from what?”

“Myself!”

“Why?”

“ ‘Cause i’m a bloody Werewolf, okay?”

Once Remus had realized what he said— silence fell upon both of you.

“Remus..—“

“I have to go.”

“No— please— Remus—“

“I’m dangerous, Y/n. And if you’re smart, you’ll never speak to me again.”

Never speak to him again? Absolutely not.

Were you a bit bold in asking him to kiss you so abruptly? Absolutely, but why did Remus assume you weren’t being truthful and wished to kiss someone else?

And why did he run away?

Did he mean to say he was a were-wolf?

You needed to know more, and potentially bridge the gap between yourself and the boy of your dreams.

But where to start?

So, you came up with a plan. (after you spent hours being inconsolable, [sorry, dorcas.])

Operation: get him back.

First; You needed to speak with Sirius (or James, he works too.) immediately, figure out if Remus really is what he said he was.

Second; Explain to Lily your situation, perhaps she would know how to make amends? They do study together.

and Third; Regain your friendship with Remus and vow to never fall in love with him ever again.

That third step will be the hardest.

"JAMES!"

The bespectacled boy quickly pivoted to lay his eyes on you.

"Y/n? What's the matter?" He strutted across the common room towards you, and Remus shared some uncomfortable eye-contact with you for a moment.

"Um.. we need to talk somewhere... private." You urged, all while ushering him away and into the portrait hole near the entrance.

"Merlin, seriously- what's all of the fuss about?" He whined.

"It's about Remus, last night- He took me to the Boathouse after the whole incident with Lockhart and- I was stupid and jumped the gun and asked him to kiss me-"

"Stop, you asked him to kiss you?" James gawked.

"Yes, now-"

"That's rich."

"Stop interrupting me!" You snapped.

"The point is, Remus freaked out and blurted out that he was a.. a werewolf- and ran off and I don't know what to do and-"

"Calm down, okay? Wow, that is incredibly unlike Remus to just blurt that out." James perceived from your situation.

"What do I do?"

"I'll talk to him, try to help him sort out his feelings."

"Godric bless you, James Potter." You patted his cheek in thanks.

"Mum always told me I was a god-send." He beamed, clearly a bit full of himself but you know what they say- James had an ego the size of a lake but a heart to match it.

"Do make sure he knows that I'm not... like- against lycanthropes?" You suggested gingerly.

"I'll make sure." James grinned, before going back to his company.

First step- Complete.

REMUS IS EXTREMELY AND irrevocably torn.

It's been three days since you have spoken, three.

And he's beside himself with how upset he is.

He didn't mean to lash out, he really didn't.

"Remus! That's the girl of your dreams!" Sirius argued from across the couch.

"Maybe, she was meant to be- but I fucked everything up!" Remus took a long sip from his fire-whisky.

"Then go un-fuck everything up!" Peter cheered, clearly missing the memo.

"It's not that easy! I told her about my- problem.. and she probably doesn't want anything to do with me anymore!" Remus defended.

"No, mate. She distincively told me that she had no problem with your problem." James explained simply.

"Ha! I knew she wouldn't care!" Sirius barked.

"Still, I told her to never speak to me ever again."

"Ooh.. that's low, mate." Peter ceased his mindless celebration and silently judged Remus' life descisions all while taking a bit out of his bread.

"Do you think I don't know that?"

"Well- you need to fix it! Both of you need too!" Sirius slammed his hand down on the coffee table.

"I know- but how?" Remus sighed, his face falling into her hands.

"Perhaps when you have to meet for astronomy?" James suggested. "That's not till Saturday." "At the Slytherin Vs. Gryffindor game?" Sirius pointed out. "She might not even go." "Send her a lovely letter from an anonymous sender to meet somewhere rather romantic and pretty?" Peter joked, but Remus' face lit up.

"Yes! Peter, you are a genius!"

"What did I say?" Peter asked, confused.

But Remus couldn't find time to respond, as he rushed to his parchment and quill.

This was going to be the best damn letter ever written.

"SO, REMUS ISN'T SPEAKING to you, hm?" Lily combed her fingers through your hair.

"I totally messed everything up." You cupped your face into your hands.

"No- honey, you didn't. Everyone was a bit intoxicated and you should never feel the need to apologize for liking someone." She wrapped her arms around you consolingly.

"I don't know what I would do without you, Lily." You smiled softly.

"Same to you, lovely." Lily cooed, brushing a stray hair out of your face.

"What do I do, Lily?"

"Well... Remus does like chocolate." She suggested wirily.

"But what kind?" You turned to face her.

"Well he loved Galaxy Minstrels, but that's a muggle chocolate-"

"I'll get him those then." You announced.

"Y/N, Galaxy Minstrels aren't sold at Hogsmeade." Lily warned, an expression of concern for your determination.

"Those are his favorites, right? I'm getting those for him come hell or high water." You insisted, and Lily couldn't hold back her smile.

"You're going to bribe him with chocolate?" She chuckled softly.

"Exactly." You smirked, a wicked smirk if Lily had any input.

A FEW DAYS LATER, the chocolates so graciously provided by your parents arrived.

And you had recieved a letter from someone to meet you by the Black Lake after hours.

And with some help from Lily (and a hint from James), you were almost certain it was from Remus.

You had flowers and chocolates in hand, and you looked like you had just stepped out of a grocery store with an post-valentines sale.

You were nervous, understandably so.

As the Black Lake came into view under the star-stricken night sky- he came into view.

Remus, and was it a relief to actually be able to speak with him again.

You stood infront of eachother, silent as a grave.

Godric, let this go well.

Tune in next time on; so american (:

(this one is a bit short, i've got cool stuff in the works!)

so american taglist;

@hisparentsgallerryy @lydpop @amatoanima @po3tbbygirl @thequeen0fhearts @yourlittlefries @jsprien213 @liviessun @wandasbitch22 @michtellch @hellokitty-girl666 @bmyva1entine @n1ght-vngel @anehkael @wolfstcr @assorted-knives @mrsblackx @moonyswifee @sunset-toast @sammyreid @wsplalala @msfandomsblog @yimthesynonym @flowerytombx @rubyinthebooks @

[celtigxr]

The Pink Dread (Master List) - - - - - ch. xiii: Girl's Night

Chapter Summary: The night is young, and so are they. 🍷🍷🍷

Word count: 4530

Sneak Peak: Aegon turned to look at his brother, shit eating grin plastered on his alabaster face, “This is the best day of my life.”

Warnings: Copious amounts of alcohol, public intoxication, a fun time.

T H E   R E D S

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Valeana was quite surprised at how fast she fell into friendship with Wylla Stark and the third Baratheon daughter, Ellyn. It was within their company that she realized a fundamental truth of her life: she had no real female friends. She had her sisters, but sisterhood bonds through blood and marriage was an obligation. Valeana was always on guard with Floris, and Shyla was… Shyla. A cross between a cat in heat and a drunk butterfly. She had little in common with her.

The day of the two house’s arrival was the same day the King and several of their family members left to attend the funeral of the late Princess Visenya, the youngest grandchild and only daughter of Rhaenyra. Val would have gone with her brother, but she was more of a stranger now to the crown princess. She might have known her better as a child, but after a decade, it felt improper to reunite under the dire circumstances. Clement, however, knew them more closely, having sailed back and forth to Dragonstone and Driftmark more times than she cared to remember. 

The days began somberly now that the Keep was garbed in black and bleak clothing. While the sun still blared overhead, there was a dark cloud over King’s Landing; even the smallfolk mourned the loss. Though life at court still went on, and the convergence of the castle’s occupants was required as if it was a job.

It was expected for all eight of the young ladies to mingle. Cassandra, the eldest, was nearly as hard to endure as Floris (Grafton). Always complaining and pinching her face in clear disgust over the most trivial things that bothered her. Maris was quite the talker; she loved the sound of her own voice almost as much as she loved correcting people. Though, Valeana had noticed whenever a male was present, she would go silent and red-faced. Little Floris was delightful though, but incredibly naive. She took to Shyla early on, but seemed to be struggling to keep up with her. When she did talk, it was only ever about Daeron Targaryen. To balance that out of course, Shyla would talk about Aegon, so it was really an endless circle of prince talk between the two. And then there was Ellyn, who was mostly quiet but often made silent looks behind the rim of her cup that clearly communicated her opinions.

At one point, Cassandra scoffed at younger Floris when she swooned over her absent lover boy, claiming it made her look desperate, and how she– Cassandra that is– “would never be so easy for a man” and how Floris should act more “mysterious and unavailable”, like her. Ellyn’s eyes widened and her perfect U shaped smile quickly hid behind her cup while her trembling shoulders exposed the internal battle she had with her own giggles. 

Valeana felt a bubble of laughter from the girl’s expression alone, and tried fruitlessly to swallow it, but it ended up coming out like a suppressed hiccup. 

Then there was Wylla Stark, who embodied mysterious and unavailable. She sat with her legs perfect crossed under her grey and blue skirts, glass goblet in her elegant hand with her long almond shaped nails, and asked:

“How is that going for you, Lady Cassandra?”

Valeana and Ellyn could have died at the way they were holding their breath to prevent themselves from laughing. 

After that moment, the three spent as much time together as possible. Valeana needed the distraction to keep her mind off of Aemond and his rejection of her peace offering. With Helaena and her brother at Dragonstone, and Aegon fucking off somewhere, she didn’t have anyone else to turn to. 

It was the evening sometime after the hour of the bat, and the three girls were deep into their cups. Their faces flushed with laughter, liquor, and the humidity that still lingered in the night air after a long hot day. 

“It is so bloody hot here, I do not know how you southerners stand it,” Wylla pulled at the loose fabric of her bodice to air herself out. It was enough to see the tops of her breasts, which Valeana caught Ellyn openly staring at. “I miss the cool breeze coming from the North.”

“You get used to it,” Ellyn said, moving her fan to cool off Wylla, who arched her neck in gratitude. “In Storm’s End, it’s always humid. We’re so close to Dorne, but with all our rain, it is never a dry heat.”

“I can’t imagine living somewhere where it storms that frequently,” Valeana leaned her head back into the armchair she sat on, closing her eyes in an attempt to stop the spinning of her head. “Claw Isle has its storms, but at most a few times in a moon’s cycle.”

“I do envy your home, Valeana,” Wylla sighed when Ellyn stopped fanning her to relax her arm. “I’ve always wanted to go to the beach.” 

“You’re in the south now– plenty of opportunity to see the beaches,” Ellyn suggested. 

Valeana made a face, “King’s Landing isn’t a place known for it. Unless you want to smell like fish and shit, and find severed feet along the shoreline.”

“Severed feet?” Wylla said appalled, “Why feet?”

“When people die at sea – or dumped in the water – fully clothed, overtime the water causes it to bloat and decompose. However, the shoes keep the feet afloat, so eventually it just–” Val makes a motion with her hands, micking a limb being pulled off. “--pops off and floats around until it gets beached.”

“That’s disgusting!” Ellyn looked both shocked, but morbidly entertained. “How in the world do you know that?”

“Me and– and Prince Aemond,” invoking his name already gave her a headache. “We used to walk along the shores of Blackwater Rush with Ser Criston, and we would find them more often than I’d care to admit. Maester Orwyle explained to us why. Now this knowledge haunts me to this day, so I must pass it onto others.” 

“How considerate of you, Val,” Wylla shakes her head and takes a sip of her wine. “I will treasure it always.” Val cracked open her eye and pointed at her with a heavy arm, “Good! It will be useful information. In the North… where there are no beaches. Just snow… and hairy men… and-and, whatever it is in the North. Whatsitcalled? Cold Walkers? Ice Soldiers?”

“Shhhh,” Wylla chastised her through her laughter, “They’re called White Walkers, and please do not say it so loudly. It will summon my brother and that is the last thing we want.”

“I mean,” Valeana lifted her head and wagged her eyebrows, “It’s what you don’t want.” 

A pillow went flying at her face, causing both her and Ellyn to bark out laughing. 

“What? What?! Is that not why we are all here? To marry? Find a husband, and all that–” Valeana made a raspberry noise with her lips. 

Ellyn snorted, covering her face, “Oh, gods, do not remind me. That is all I’ve been hearing from not just my father, but all my sisters.”

“You would not want to marry Cregan, darling, trust me,” Wylla waves her off. “He will bore you to tears.”

“But he’s nice on the eyes,” Valeana smiled sheepishly, knowing she was baiting her Northern friend.

“Just wait until your brother returns from Dragonstone, Celtigar. I’ll climb him like a tree.”

“What’s stopping you now, Stark? I’ve got a brother right here.”

“Little Arthor,” Wylla mock pouted, “He’ll suffocate too easily between my thighs.”

“Oh, gross,” Val covered her face, “Please do not paint that image in my head.”

Ellyn shook her head, mildly amused, mildly horrified, “I am so glad I do not have brothers.” 

“Yet,” Wylla reminded. She adjusted herself in her seat, tucking her bare feet under herself to get more comfortable. “So, ladies, tell me: what are your goals for this Conclave? Who do you desire to be betrothed with?”

The Baratheon snorted, “Like we have a choice?”

“Let’s suspend belief for a moment, and pretend we do.”

“I haven’t thought of it,” Ellyn confessed, pulling her knees up to her chest, mug delicately cradled between both hands. “To be honest, if I had a choice in the matter, I would not marry at all.”

“Here, here!” Valeana raised her drink. 

Wylla snapped her head in her direction, “Oh, I find that hard to believe. You grew up in court, surely you, of all people, are more knowledgeable of all the noble born bachelors here in the south, and have an idea or two who you’d like to attach yourself to.”

“I lived here as a child. I spent most of my years here tailing the princes like a lost pup… I barely remember anyone that ever visited,”  Val scrunched up her face in thought. “I vaguely recall the Greyjoys visiting one moon… Only because they were hard to forget. Their sons were absolutely batty, especially the eldest, Dalton.” She straightened herself in her seat, now that her memory was catching up with her. Gesturing with her hands, she continued, “I remember, actually, even at seven years old, that little shit would find every opportunity to accidentally bump into, graze, or even so much as grab my arse! I was nine!”

Wylla huffed a shocked laugh, “Hells, what a little monster. I can only imagine what he is like now, a man grown.”

“Did you tell your father this?” Ellyn asked, face equally appalled. “Mine would have lost his mind.”

Val heaved a sigh, laying her head back against the chair once again, her entire body practically melting in the seat. “No.There was some tension at the time, not sure what it was, but I remember my father telling me to not upset Lord Greyjoy’s sons,” Suddenly, lost in her reminiscence, the blonde laughed. “But-but, Aemond, he–he, oh gods…” She snorted loudly to contain her laughter, covering her face as it got beat red. “He, Aegon and the Greyjoys were sparring in the training yard. He kept on dodging Dalton and using the flat end of his training sword to slap him on the rear, like thirty bloody times. He-he–” Her laughing intensified as she used her hand to illustrate the image she was trying to explain, “He was bruised all over, and so severely he could not sit or lay down on his back for two days.” 

While Valean giggled (by herself) Wylla and Ellyn exchanged knowing glances and smirks, then turned back to the drunk flustered crab.

“Well, I suppose that answers my question,” Wylla quipped smugly, nestling into her seat, smile barely being hidden behind the rim of her goblet. 

Val ran a hand over her face in an attempt to calm herself down. She blearily peered at her raven haired friend, a bit confused, “What question?”

“Who you desire to be betrothed with.”

Valeana looked at her incredulously, “Dalton fucking Greyjoy?!”

“No, you idiot!” Ellyn flailed her arms, “Aemond. Prince fucking Aemond.” 

“Ooh, gods,” Val scrunched up her face, digging the butt of her palm into her eyes as the two girls gushed and agreed with themselves. She had forgotten for a moment that she was no longer friends with Aemond, and he, in fact, hated her. “No, no, not Aemond,” she shook her head vehemently. 

“What!” Wylla nearly shouted, dark icy blues wide, “My Lady Valeana, what do you mean not Aemond? The way your face glowed at just talking about him.”

“And it makes perfect sense!” Ellyn added, “The two of you grew up together, you were quite close from what I was told. Of course it would be Aemond. It’s so sickly sweet, it almost makes me want to vomit my dinner.” 

“No, no, no, Aemond– Aemond would never want me,” Val kept on shaking her head. “He hates me. Loathes me, even. Do-do you two even know what he did to me? Why my family left King’s Landing in the first place?”

The two exchanged looks, faces scrunched as they tried to recall. 

“You injured yourself, I believe?” Wylla tilted her head.

“My father told me that Aegon accidentally knocked you down the stairs? I think?” 

“You two are close– It was Aemond,” Val noticed her cup was empty and bent forward towards the squat table to refill it with red. “And it was not an accident. Our fathers were discussing our betrothal, which he disapproved of, apparently. I was under the foolish impression we were the best of friends, and were meant for each other. Stupid, really, in hindsight. 

“He decided that he disliked me so much that he needed to get rid of me, so he pushed me down a flight of stone stairs after calling me a pig.” She surprised herself at how casually she spoke of the event, but it was likely the alcohol that numbed the reality of her emotions. “Broke my leg so severely they had to cut it off a few moons after.”

She lifted her left leg then, her dress falling down above her knee to expose her wooden foot and calf. Then with a gentle wave of her hand, she motioned along the appendage as if presenting a great trophy, “I call her Lady Footlyn Woodsby, first of her name. Her heir is Ser An-toe-knee Woodsby, the E-bone-knee Knight.”

The two other girls had fallen into a shocked silence for a moment, but that was short lived after Valeana’s introduction of her leg. 

Wylla clamped her hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, “Val-Valeana…” She snorted into her palm. “That’s– I’m so sorry.”

Ellyn had both her hands upon her face, brown eyes peeking through the cracks of her fingers, “Oh-ooooh, I should not be laughing. I am sorry, Valeana.” 

Val waved them off, returning her skirts over her leg, “Worry not. If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.”

Her heartbreaking admittance, despite being veiled with self-deprecating humour, did not go amiss. Wylla and Ellyn’s expressions went soft as they shared another knowing look between each other. The former reached out and placed her hand on Valeana’s knee, thumb moving in comforting motions. 

“I’m sorry that happened to you, my dearest. Men are horrible creatures, especially the ones closest to you.” 

That simple gesture and those kind words were enough to crumble her all at once. It had sobered Valeana enough to allow her sadness seep through the armour of numbness she had been trying to craft around herself. Her mouth, nose and eyes felt watery all of a sudden, forcing her to swallow and tilt her head back to stop herself from crying. 

Ellyn made a cooing sound as she unfolded herself from her seat and walked over to her friend from behind and enveloped her shoulders in a hug, resting her cheek on top of her head. It was that gesture of comfort that had made the waterfall finally break through. Valeana had not realized how touch starved she was, how hungry she was for comfort over her heartbreak. This was a level of vulnerability she had never allowed to be exposed around her family, not even Clement. Despite her love for him, men were not well equipped to handle emotional women; he would’ve reacted how men usually did, either dismiss it with aggressive advice, or unsheathe his sword and wage a war in her name. Her step mother, despite her natural maternal instinct, was a woman who would cuddle her to her breast and smother her as if she was a child, not unlike a kiss on a bruise or scraped knee. Nothing substantial, nothing deep or empathetic. Just a salve to numb the pain for a few hours.

No, the comfort from a friend– from a fellow female –was different, almost stronger. 

Like her tears, everything rushed out of her; a great purge of words, of pent up sadness, of suppressed emotions. She shared how much she loved Aemond, missed him down to her bones, how he broke her in more ways than physical, and then she shared the story of her return and the catastrophe she had made that could have been avoided, and how in her most earnest attempt to reconcile, she was ultimately left scarred more, and still yearning for him. A stuttered breath left her lungs when she finished, her shoulders caving in as if the weight of her heart finally did her in. Ellyn still cradled her head from behind, but Wylla had moved to squish in beside her and hold her middle and lay her head upon her shoulder. 

“He does not deserve your love, my darling,” Wylla stroked Val’s hair. “No man alive deserves any of our love. Selfish, fickle-hearted beasts, they all are.” 

Valeana sniffled, head laid in Ellyn’s arm, cheeks sticky with tears, and red from humidity, alcohol, and spending the last several minutes pouring her heart out. These three women were effectively strangers not three days ago, and yet now Valeana never felt more close to another human being. Not since him. Not since Aemond. 

“Except for Cregan,” Val muttered in a small voice, light but coarse through the dryness of her throat. She reached out and patted Wylla on her arm, “Him and his manly shoulders and broad chest–”

“Please shut up,” Wylla replied with a small voice and a weak smack to Val’s face. 

“Let him know I’ve got the hips to birth more of his heirs.”

“I will kill you.”

“Ladies,” Ellyn lifted her head up with a heavy sniff to clear out her sinuses. She wiped her nose and peered over to the table in front of them. “We’ve run out of wine.”

All their heads perked up to glower down at their empty bottles and carafes. This would not do– the night was still young, and so were they. The three ladies also sobered too much for their liking, and the only way to heal this disease was to drink more. 

“Where’s that serving boy?”

“We sent him away for the night, remember?”

“We were fools.”

“Indeed.”

There was a beat of silence, until: 

“Wait, wait,” Val sat up, forcing the two girls to unravel their arms. “I know this castle. I know a shortcut to the kitchens… There’s a secret door over there– behind that tapestry.”

“Which tapestry?”

“The one with the orgy.”

“... They’re all having orgies.”

“This-this one! Where she’s sitting on his face and eating a fig out of the other woman’s mouth,” Valeana stood up, wobbling a bit when she did. She hadn’t realized how much she drank and how long she had been sitting until that moment. But, she was convinced that she was too sober, and that wouldn’t do, so she marched over to the tapestry, unevenly and ungracefully. With one swift movement she shoved the tapestry aside to expose a stone wall.

“Valea–”

“Shush!” The silver haired girl eyed it for a moment before moving her hands along the edges of the stones until she could feel the cracks that formed the outline of a door. With a wicked smile she pushed her shoulder into it, throwing her whole body weight into moving it. With a groan the secret entrance wedged open, an amber glow emitting through the gap from the torch inside. 

Ellyn gaped at it, “How did you know that was there?”

Val waved dismissively, “I was a fat child. If there was a quick route to the kitchens, I was aware of it.”  

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They had reached the kitchens in a fair amount of time, but they did not, in fact, find wine. But they found bottles and bottles of dusty ale, and they weren’t about to complain. The problem they inevitably had was the trek back. Now that their minds were fully in the thick of inebriation, they got lost within the walls of the Keep and ended up in a completely different part of the castle than they were originally. 

“Valeana, where the hells are we?” Wylla hissed as they rounded yet another stone corridor with very few windows. 

The blonde squinted around them. The three were hanging off each other’s shoulders for dear life. Each clutched a large bottle of ale by the neck as if it was a lifeline; as if it was the only thing that was keeping them from floating away. Valeana craned her neck over their arms and took a sloppy swig of her drink, a droplet escaping her lips and dribbling messily down her chin.

“The barracks hall?” She said after a swallow.

“Are you askin’ us?” Ellyn laughed. “Chisisyerhome, and y’dunno where you ARE?”

“I know where I am!” Val shouted, brow furrowed in determination. “And this is not my home.. It’s-it’s– hic – my personal hell. Fuck it’s so hot, why is it so hot?” She cried out, slumping a bit, forcing the girls to bend at her weight. 

They stumbled forward until they heard the tell tale sound of metal armour clanking ever near. A form of silver and white rounded the corner and immediately halted at the sight of the three noble women linked together by their shoulders, sloshing around drinks shamelessly.

The knight stepped forward, concern marring his face, “My ladies. Are you quite alright?”

“Ser Arryk!” Valeana shouted, arms shooting up in the air, narrowly missing Ellyn’s brow. 

The knight bowed his head, “Erryk, my lady.”

“Oh, right, ‘m turribly sorry,” She threw her head back and jutted out her bottom lip in a pout at her own stupidity. “Forgive me.”

The corner of Erryk’s lip twitched upward. It didn’t take him very long to understand that these three girls were skunked out of their gourds. He gave her a nod, containing his amusement, “You are forgiven, Lady Valeana.”

“You see!” She launched herself forward, disentangling herself from her friends and reaching the white cloak’s side. Her bottle of ale fell from her fingers, clattering and rolling away along the flagstones. She then prodded her finger into his plated chest and looked over at Wylla and Ellyn, “Y’see how easy that is? I apol-ap– apolojiz–fuck me– Apo. Lo. Gized– there you go…— hic — N’you forgave me. Because yer a good man, Ar-Erryk. ‘M sorry, yer names are similar too, is very confusing.”

“Good Ser,” Wylla sauntered over, “Mayhaps you aid us troubled maids… Our foolish guide, full of hubris, led us astray, and now we are hopelessly lost.”

“How dare you insult your future Lady of Winterfell!” Val shoutted, pointing an unsteady finger at Wylla with a step towards her, but ultimately ended up wobbling on her bad leg, forcing Erryk to hold her upright.

Erryk was having a hard time keeping a straight face. It wasn’t every day that he stumbled upon drunk noble born daughters; it wasn’t very ladylike to get this drunk this publically, but he wagered that this wouldn’t be an isolated event these upcoming weeks. 

He snaked an arm under Lady Valeana’s shoulder and hoisted her up on her feet, allowing her to lean against him.

“You’re below the Throne Room, my ladies,” Ser Erryk informed, and the three of them exchanged looks. 

“How the hell did we end up here?” Valeana asked, chin turning up to her anchor. “Erryk, we were in the kitchens. The-the north one. I think.”

“No wonder we are lost!” Ellyn threw her head back. “Ugh, father will be furious.”

“Do not worry, ladies, I’ll safely escort you back, and arrange for a wheelhouse to bring Lady Wylla back to her pavilion.” 

“Such a good man. Ser Erryk,” Wylla’s words slurred when she took an uneven step towards him. “May I ask…Why– no –would you ever consider breaking your vows?” 

“Wylla!” Valeana weakly smacked the Northerner, then promptly turned to the knight. “Do not – hic – listen to her, Erryk. Don’t let this–this–temptress tempt you.”

“I am only saying,” Wylla and Ellyn started to follow the knight as he made his way out of the maze of halls beneath the Throne Room. “All the honourable ones end up being a Kingsguard. It’s such a bloody waste to womenkind!” 

Erryk smiled to himself, though decided to ignore the comment, “Up these stairs, ladies.”

“Oh no,” Ellyn grinned, “Valeana’s mortal enemy.”

Wylla barked a loud laugh and the victim in question craned her neck to shoot her a poisonous glare. 

“I’ll send you to the Wall! Ser Erryk, send this Baratheon traitor to the Wall.” 

“Mayhaps tomorrow, my lady. The hour is already late as it is,” was the Knight’s gentle, albeit amused, reply as he helped her up the stairwell and into the cavernous Throne Room, where he immediately paused upon seeing a pair of men with silver hair.

The women’s collective gasps and loud attempts at quieting themselves had naturally gained the attention of the Throne Room’s sole occupants. 

Ser Erryk immediately bowed, “My Princes. Apologies for the disturbance, I was merely–”

“Egg-On-Toast!” Valeana shouted so loudly it echoed like a lion’s roar. Her arms flew to the air above her head, then immediately marched over, completely ignoring the second prince. Her vision was tunneled, and hadn’t realized that Aegon wasn’t alone. Her warm and slightly sweaty hands gripped the eldest’s face, then she started laughing when he started laughing.

“Valeana–” Ellyn tried to reach her, eyes flickering over to the stiff Aemond that stood not six feet away. 

Aegon’s eyebrows reached his hairline, his grin uncontainable. His hands gripped her wrists, but he didn’t remove them from his face.

“Are you drunk, my darling?”

“... Yes,” she giggled sheepishly. “I see why you do it so often now, is’so fun. Egg-y. My Prince of Scrambled Eggs. Eggs and Bacon–” Val sharply gasped, mouth agape at her genius. “We are Eggs and Bacon, Aegon. Tha’s a good bard song– Ellyn, write that down.”

Aegon turned to look at his brother, shit eating grin plastered on his alabaster face, “This is the best day of my life.”

Valeana’s entire body swiveled around, brow furrowed with clear confusion. “Who are you– SHIII–T!” When she turned she was immediately greeted by the imposing, towering form of Aemond Targaryen. Standing there, head tilted, with his judgey one eye, lips in a thin line and looking delicious with his narrow waist she openly stared at. 

Wylla and Ellyn were snickering behind their fists, nearly down to their knees, failing to contain their nervous laughter. 

Val turned her wobbly, heavy head back at Aegon, lowering her voice in a very poor attempt at a whisper, “Where the fuck did he come from?”

“Darling, he was here the entire time.”

She peered at him skeptically, then looked back at Aemond, and then back at Aegon. Her head dipped to his ear, and attempted to whisper conspiratorially, “Fecker comes outta nowhere all the bloody time, pilfering through the darkness like a thief of joy– hic. Is he a man or a forlorn ghost?”

Aegon contained his laughter when he bit down on his lip, and then glanced up at the silent shadow that was his brother.

“I can hear you, Lady Valeana,” Aemond finally spoke, his voice irritably condescending, which instantly bristled her. 

Val peeled herself off of Aegon’s side and approached Aemond, angling her chin in the air to peer at him with as much dignity as she could possibly manage. And on wobbly knees, she curtseyed and said in the most patronizing tone the Throne Room has ever witnessed: 

“Prince Almond.” 

His eye narrowed, alight with challenge and something else.

Notes: This and the next two chapters are my favourite chapters of this series, so I really hope you guys enjoy it too.

Tag: @queen-of-elves, @keylin1730, @anakilusmos, @weepingfashionwritingplaid, @sugutoad, @desireangel

( if you wish to be tagged for this story, just give me a reply! )

Please do not re post, redistribute or plagiarize my work. The only other place this story is posted on is ao3 under the same username.

[ladyhoneydarlinglove]

{one piece fic} blunt force comfort — robin & zoro

{previous chapters: nami | usopp | sanji | chopper } CONTENT WARNING: this chapter has depictions of self-harm, specifically cutting. it’s nothing graphic, but anyone who could be triggered by that might want to skip this one. i haven’t been part of the one piece fandom long enough to know if robin self-harming could be considered a controversial take, but based on my own experiences with severe to suicidal depression (including self-harm tendencies), i think it makes a lot of sense.

Rating: T Notes: takes place somewhere between Skypiea and Water 7

{Read on Ao3}

~~~~~

There’s a strange physiology to the limbs summoned with Robin’s devil fruit powers. For all intents and purposes they function like extensions of her real body, complete with sensory feedback; temperature, texture, even pain—though the damage they take doesn’t transfer to her physically. But, for whatever reason, they don’t bleed the way that real limbs would.

Robin doesn’t remember exactly when she discovered this particular quirk that’s quite useful, in its own way. Good for things like sneaking and spying, keeping her from leaving any kind of physical trail behind. But the place that she makes the most use of it is alone, in the quiet and the dark, with a sharp knife and a heart full to bursting with pain.

See, Robin’s existence is defined by suffering. To live is to hurt, and there is no escape from it, not really. This is a fundamental truth of her world that Robin has known since she was only eight years old, watching Ohara burn for the crime of daring to seek out what others didn’t want them to know. 

The problem is, the pain she feels on a day-to-day basis is largely on the inside, where no one else can bear witness to its existence. A festering wound that only she can see, a toxic sludge born of all the tears, the anger, the screams that she can’t afford to let loose, lest it draw the attention of the World Government. And that pain will just keep building and building and building inside of her, until finally Robin can’t bear it any longer.

She read in a medical text once that when a boil becomes filled with pus, it needs to be lanced before infection sets in. So when all the pain and hurt inside her becomes too much to bear any longer, Robin will sit down, knife at the ready so she slice and slice and slice, until finally it feels like all the suffering of her existence has been made tangible.

Of course, if she tried to do that on her real body, she would have run out of space—and blood, for that matter—a long time ago. That’s where her powers come in handy; Robin can summon arm after arm, and no physical evidence will be left behind. No wounds, no blood. Just pain. Easy and clean.

She’s been doing it for years. No one else has ever known, though even if they did, Robin doubts they would have cared enough to try and stop her. It’s gotten to the point where she barely even thinks about it when the need arises, which is perhaps why Robin doesn’t take more precautions not to be caught the first time she does it onboard the Going Merry. She figures doing it in the storeroom in the middle of night when everyone else is asleep should be enough to ensure no one walks in on her, so it’s a bit of a surprise when Zoro does.

“Oh, Robin,” he says, standing in the doorway to the storeroom, holding a bottle of what Robin presumes is liquor. “What are you doing in… here…”

Robin watches as he blinks several times in rapid succession, clearly trying to process the scene in front of him, which is two blossomed limbs already cut to (bloodless) shreds sprouting from the floor, while Robin works on a third, her knife point still buried in its disembodied flesh. She doesn’t usually vanish them until she’s done, because she likes—or needs, maybe—to see the physical evidence of her handiwork. She supposes she could get rid of them now, though there doesn’t seem much point; from the bewildered frown she watches overtake his expression, Zoro’s probably already seen enough.

“What… are you doing?” he asks, an entirely uncharacteristic hesitation in his tone.

Robin smiles at him blandly, trying to be as disarming as possible. “Just a little ritual of mine,” she says lightly, like it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“Oh.” Zoro blinks slowly. “What, uh… what… kind of ritual?”

Now it’s Robin’s turn to blink. She wasn’t actually expecting him to ask.

“Call it… a catharsis ritual,” Robin says after a moment, which is true enough.

Zoro’s frown deepens, taking on a slightly harder edge. “What kind of catharsis?”

Robin blinks again.

“I—” she begins, and suddenly her mind blanks, tripped up by the fact that Zoro is even asking. Before she can stop herself, Robin blurts out, “Pain.”

One of Zoro’s eyebrows shoots up almost comically high. “Pain?” he repeats, and there’s something in his tone that Robin hasn’t heard directed her way in a long, long time.

Concern.

Robin is suddenly, horribly, acutely aware of two things.

The first is how macabre this little ritual of hers must seem to the outside observer. The second is that despite their rough and tumble exteriors, the Straw Hat Pirates are all, at their cores, fundamentally kind people. The type of people who, when they see someone in distress, rush in to help, heedless of consequence. And Robin doesn’t want help, not for this. It’s her strange little habit, her burden of pain. Accepting help would just feel… wrong. 

(Wouldn’t it?)

“It’s not… It isn’t a bad thing,” she says hastily, feeling entirely out of her element, which does not often happen to Nico Robin. “It’s sort of like, um…” 

She casts about frantically for a metaphor Zoro might understand that will satisfy him while also stopping him from pressing any further. “When you train really hard, your muscles get sore afterwards, right?” she says after a few terribly tense moments of silence. “It hurts, but doesn’t it also feel good because you know you’ve accomplished something?”

“… Right,” Zoro says slowly, clearly not buying it. “Except that when muscles are sore after a workout, it’s because you’ve been breaking them down so that they can become even stronger. This—” He gestures at the shredded arms in front of her “—just seems like you’re trying to hurt yourself.”

There’s something about the way Zoro says it. No hesitation, no doubt; just a simple, honest, brutal truth. It cuts right through to Robin’s core, and she finds that she can’t help but answer in kind.

“… I suppose I am, in a way.”

She thinks that might be the first time she’s ever said so out loud.

For a long moment, Zoro simply looks at her. There’s nothing particularly scrutinizing about it, and yet Robin still feels like she’s being flayed alive under his gaze. Then, after an interminably long silence, Zoro suddenly nods and says, “Okay.”

Robin blinks. “Okay?” she repeats, surprised.

“I mean, I don’t get it but…” Zoro shrugs before reaching up to rub at the back of his neck awkwardly. “This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you quit doing just because someone tells you to. So if this is how you need to find ‘catharsis’ or whatever, I’m not gonna tell you to stop.”

That wasn’t what Robin was expecting him to say at all. On one hand it seems almost callous and uncaring, like Zoro’s trying to wash his hands of the whole thing. But on the other, she finds it… strangely reassuring. Like he’s acknowledging it’s a problem he knows he can’t fix, but he still wants her to know that he’s aware of it.

It feels… kind.

“… Thank you, Kenshi-san,” Robin says after a long, quiet moment. It doesn’t seem quite adequate enough, but she’s not sure that anything would.

Zoro nods again before he moves to leave the storeroom, but then pauses for a moment in the doorway before turning back around. 

“Hey, uh…” he says, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck again. “You know, if you ever want to try a different kind of catharsis, I could… teach you how to start lifting.” He coughs nervously before adding, “You can, um. You can get pretty sore. If you do it right.”

There’s a rising lump in Robin’s throat, and she has to swallow around it before she can respond.

“I’ll… keep that in mind.”

[shock]

"Don't just play—do something!", Jack Abele, 01.21.24.

This is a companion piece to the collage I made about moving into the first place that felt like my home back in '21 (shown below). They have matching frames and are displayed together above our dining table! This second piece is a reflection on how my relationship to "home" has evolved since then, especially after proposing to my now fiancé last month. I'm really proud of it!

Text transcript:

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

In the cold, thin clouds of interstellar space, written in the precise message of starlight:

What made you so interested in fireflies?

Imagine that they propel the environment into play: they STAND OUT, add color, chaos, curves moving behind and below, inside, outward along feedback loops, perplexing positive panic persuaded to make another form of animal art.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, a beautiful structure, flamboyantly scuzzy, sassy, a full bouquet of many wild ideas — a dazzling interplay between lightness and unclarity, trying things out, fancy, whimsical records looped with webs, half-truth surface textures composed of swirls within swirls, a performance of information, scene-setting details with many impressive, more tongue-in-cheek, unforeseeable aspects relatively stable and evolving at the same time.

Distinctly transitional.

The trouble with love is it's hard to describe in simple and consistent words. Beyond the jolting familiarity of self-similar, self-referential tessellating hues, the little comedy-drama fictions... you see openness, possibilities toward change; our very existence together antidote to the dull grind of the paradox that we live every moment in an indifferent universe yet having so much fun with friends, local communities, places, faces, even muddy bog holes.

Music! A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, The Breeders, Nick Cave, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Santana and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, mud-caked at Woodstock, picking up Space Age scrap, cutting collaged paper, playing with magical little lights, heretically evolving in this meaningless, magnificent place fine-tuned just right to allow for life, love, and grunge to exist nevertheless.

Maybe what keeps me here, making art, is how beautiful it is for optimism to become the first expression of hope despite danger amid the disparate depth of our universe created by chaos.

Movement characterizes my "youthful, dynamic" journey, escapes to infinite other places somewhere else, afraid of considering complicated survival long-term, wherein risk is worth the reward. But something about your windy city reminded me what strange, cascading effects the fingers of two hands form together, intersect one another, interfere with fate, interlace like light radiating rays woven, at certain points, into dynamic singularities.

Mutualism is a happy hybrid of symmetry and chaos — a relationship, it's like the entire forest is blinking in sync.

Just as the fun is to make up a great story, the writer in me calls this piece, "Don't just play— do something!"

This time around, living offers a profound pivot from playing a game. Today we confront as animals, we're not far from dogs, domesticated punks at heart, manifold.

I am humbled, exhilarated, afraid yet strangely calm and clear "On Bended Knee"

(The term ground seems inapt.)

...Nor is it possible to describe...

The closest feeling to being the world itself? It is to have loved someone so much that you wanted to spend the rest of your lifetime with them, with each other.

We're writing a book. Adding a stroke of paint and words to illustrate what we became, a bright third dimension that can be seen from space to meet the generations to come, to simulate the uncountable whimsies they could achieve.

The mind already knows before the key touches the lock.

To watch firefly swarms with a mangy mutt.

That must be quite a sight to see.

BECAUSE THEY EXIST

NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH.

[biblicallyaccuratefour]

|No Mercy Rants| Rant post: Profily, the puppeteer and hiding from the truth

AND ANOTHER ONE DOWN, AND ANOTHER ONE DOWN, ANOTHER ONE BITES DA DUST- /ref

Anyways, hello, lads, lassies, fellow letter mafiosos and attack helicopters, since this is my THIRD rant on this blog, I decided to make a series out of it called the ‘No Mercy Rants’, which is a play on Undertale’s ‘No Mercy Run’. Now, to stop myself from further digressing, I’ll put in a disclaimer. (I know that PAF was done to death at this point, but bear with me- T^T)

(Disclaimer: This rant will be discussing topics of harassment and theft. If you’re not a fan of these topics, then please click off and view something else. Do NOT harass anyone mentioned, as I don’t want yous to stoop to PAF’s level. All of the testimony is screenshotted with the users’ consent.)

Now, the next one on the chopping block is @profily-and-friends, which I’ll refer to as PAF for short. So, let’s start from the beginning. In around August, 2023 (I was on my summer holidays, btw-), PAF had started posting several artworks that have been stolen from Twitter (or X, as Elon Musk puts it. Such an eejit-), Deviantart, Tumblr, and other sites. Somewhere around that time, maybe later, @knighttobreath, a user on Tumblr, started the spree of crediting the stolen art to their respective artists. This is where the drama and the beef began…

Now, a few months later, @akalikestodraw, a mutual of mine, was harassed multiple times by PAF because she ‘allegedly stole her art’. Now, take note that this is false, and that Aka has made amazing artwork on her own. She was also accused of tracing artworks. There’s also been asks sent to other users, like @justapplenothinghere, @galaxy-brushs-posts, and many other users, telling them to cancel Aka. Fortunately, no one took the steps to cancel Aka. They instead supported her. PAF told @wowwzaaxei-aster, that Aka was deactivating her account (also false). I’ve interviewed Aka on the matter, and she sees this as them trying to pin the blame on her. All of this had happened on her birthday. (Wow, that’s a shitty way to celebrate one’s bday… ) This whole thing made Aka, and her partner worried, and I’d be worried too, if I was in her place.

Another sin that PAF has committed was the harassment of other artists, requesting them to draw Profily with multiple asks, presumably using alternative or burner accounts, otherwise known as ‘sock puppets’. For some unfortunate artists who fulfil said requests are met with harsh criticism from PAF that they drew Profily ‘incorrectly’. They even get upset when their request is ignored, spamming the artists’ inboxes. I’ve seen them and their sock puppets interact with some of my posts, and the only criticism that I had from them was asking where were the other algebraliens when I made the Eight as Sans post. (In my defence, I was lazy af, and I had school shit going on).

Now, another thing I’d like to mention is that they’ve tried to cancel @talkingteardrop, another mutual of mine. There was a conversation between PAF and their sock puppets about how TD was ‘allegedly racist’, (another false claim) because they ignored PAF (I smell insane troll logic here-). They even claimed that they and TD were ‘best friends’, which they weren’t. (That pissed me off the most, as assholes in my school claimed that they were my friends, even though they’re not.)

Now, as the drama goes on, it becomes even more apparent that PAF is a manipulative puppeteer who’ll harass others to get what they want. They actively hide from the truth and tries to bend the narrative as to how they see it. Their actions have real life impacts, as it has made people feel terrible and having anxiety about going on with their business.

With that said, “What the fuck do we do now..?” Welp, for starters, block every single alt and sock puppet PAF has and report them all for harassment and art theft. Do NOT engage with them, just for your own mental health and to not waste your time and energy on them. (The fact that they use sock puppets reminds me of ZR0finix).

Make sure to drink plenty of water, get plenty of sleep and stay determined, lads. It hurts me to see that people like PAF are making this much trouble in our little community on Tumblr. (I guess my work on rants will never be done-)

Evidence under the cut-

Evidence and testimony from these files:

Knighttobreath's testimony

Talking Teardrop's testimony

Aka's testimony

Screenshots

[fiore-region-appreciation]

Work Meetings

Words: 3,807

Pairing: Joel/Lucian

Synopsis: A conference in the Sinnoh region ends in an unexpected way.

____

Well, thank goodness that's over.

Though Joel had never personally encountered any of the trainer-on-ranger prejudice that was supposedly rampant in regions like this, that didn't make these seminars any easier. Giving a presentation in front of a room full of people not necessarily obligated to respect you was never an easy feat to begin with, but coupled with the grim suspicion that nobody in that room was going to agree with your points (and indeed, they very often didn't), and these things could get exhausting.

Truth be told, he still didn't understand why the Union insisted a Ranger be present in these meetings in the first place. So far, the Interregional Pokémon League Association hadn't taken a single point they'd ever made on board, and at this point Joel (and many of his colleagues) doubted they ever would. Minimum age to become a trainer was still between ten or twelve in most regions, Pokéballs could still be purchased with pocket change from just about anywhere, breeding was still barely regulated (if at all) in every member state. It was lip service, in all honesty, on behalf of the League Association, so that they could claim any new law they imposed was done so with a Ranger's "approval", and wishful thinking on behalf of the Union that they could implement any serious overhauls.

The conference room was nearly empty, with only a handful of who he assumed were members of the same League hanging back and paying no attention to him, so he finally took the opportunity to release his Dodrio from his Styler's storage system, doing so with a flurry of feathers and cacophony of annoyed squawking. The system, though incredibly useful, was far too similar to a Pokéball for his (or Dodrio's) liking, and he watched somewhat guiltily as she set to work preening herself with two of her heads whilst her third gave him what he could only describe as a disappointed glare. 

"I know, I know-" Even holding his hand out to pet her earned him a disgruntled growl, though this of course quickly dissipated into a slightly-less-disgruntled hum. "I promise we'll go for a run later-"

"Excuse me." 

Perhaps it was the suddenness of the voice from behind, or perhaps it was the fact he didn't really know if Pokémon were allowed in this room, but nevertheless the voice still made him jump. The voice, embarrassingly, noticed this. "Ah, sorry, didn't mean to startle you there-"

"It's fine." Turning around revealed the source of the voice to be a smartly dressed man, elegantly composed despite his sheepish expression and, dare he say, quite attractive on top of it all. "Do you need anything?"

"Actually yes." There was a gleam in his eye that Joel couldn't quite place as he took a step forward. "There were just a few points in that meeting that I'd like some… clarification on, if that's alright with you?"

Hm, this could take a while. Any time a trainer wanted him to elaborate on any of his points it usually ended in a frosty debate, albeit something he'd developed a talent for shutting down efficiently. He pressed that suspicion down, adopting his "leader face", as some of his underlings called it. "Of course, what is it you want to speak about?"

"Just a few things, but first…" The man smirked, that glint in his eye ever more apparent as he stepped forwards, raising a hand to fan himself with a dramatic air. "It's rather stuffy in here, don't you think? Perhaps we can go... somewhere else?"

Oh. Oh. He knew that tone. He'd heard it before, many times in fact. Perhaps too many times, though at least this one seemed somewhat respectable.

"There's a bar downstairs." Joel dropped his "leader face", returning the coy smile. "Would that be more suitable?"

The man offered a soft grin. "It certainly would."

*

His name, he found out, was Lucian.

One of the highest ranked trainers in the region (from what he could tell; he'd never bothered to familiarise himself with trainer lingo), and by his own admission, an avid reader. Perhaps too avid, he'd said, confessing he'd been known to rush battles in order to get back to reading. 

"It's a bad habit of mine." Lucian chuckled, swirling that splendid Paldean red wine he'd ordered for their table around his glass. "I'm trying to kick it, but well… old habits die hard, as they say." 

Joel mused over his own glass, his free hand running up one of Dordrio's heads, which now rested contentedly in his lap. "Don't I know it, have a few I should try kicking myself." 

"Oh? If I'm honest, I find that rather hard to believe." "How so?"

Lucian thought, savouring his next mouthful of wine. "You seem very… distinguished. Not the kind to have bad habits, you know?"

"Distinguished, eh?" 

"Well, more so than any of my previous dates at least. Make of that what you will." 

The nervous chuckle behind that statement suggested that Lucian's dating history was just as disastrous as his own. 

He continued, "The scene out here is rather… dire, I must confess. You're honestly the first date I've had in quite some time."

"Same here." Not that the gay scene back in Fall City was lacking, far from it, he just… 

"I don't really have the time for dates these days. Anyone who knows me will probably say I'm married to my job, and unfortunately for me I can't really refute that."

Lucian raised an eyebrow. "Certainly an interesting thing to admit on a first date."

"Ahaha, that's true." Perhaps a subject change was in order. "What made you approach me, anyway?"

He pondered for a moment. "A lot of Psychic specialists out there believe in the likes of auras, and energies, horoscopes and all that. I've done quite a bit of reading on it, and although I don't really believe in much of it at all, I will admit that there was certainly something about you that just… drew me in. I can't quite explain it, other than perhaps… it was your aura after all?" 

With a smirk, he savoured another mouthful of wine. "Also you could say I've always had a thing for Fiori men."

"I see." Truthfully, he always wondered what other regions always seemed to see in Fiori men, outside of them being stereotyped as tall and hairy. Two things he was decidedly not. "So I have an alluring aura then, eh?"

"Well, like I said, I don't necessarily believe in auras myself. Not to the extent other Psychic users do anyway. But yes, there certainly was something alluring about you, you could say."

His eyes not-so-subtly roved south. Joel crossed his legs, eyebrows raised but smirking nonetheless.

"I'm sure one of my exes would be happy to give you a review."

"Oh? I was rather hoping I'd get to find out for myself."

"On the first date? My, aren't you hasty."

He said, as though he hadn't slept with numerous men he didn't even bother to learn the name of before. 

Lucian smirked, the toe of his shoe briefly yet deliberately brushing against Joel's shin as he changed positions. "Well, we've only got until the end of the conference, I'm assuming. Might as well make the most of it."

"Touché." He refilled his glass, duly noting the bottle was now empty. "But at the very least I feel we should get to know each other more first…?"

"Unfortunately I'm not really all that interesting." Lucian sat back in his chair, eyes diverting to the ceiling with a sigh. "Did the whole rigmarole with school and university, couldn't figure out what I wanted to do after that… Took up battling out of boredom, one thing led to another and next thing I know I'm in the League full time."

He drummed on his glass as his voice dropped. "I still don't even know if training's my true calling. It's a rather dead-end job once you reach a certain point, and I think I hit that point a long time ago."

A rather glum smile. "So yes, I'm not really the most interesting person I know, I'm afraid. I'm sure you've got far more interesting stories to tell."

"You could say that." "Interesting", obviously, could mean a lot of things after all. It could mean anything from his days beating boredom at the Jungle Relic, to the time Spenser put a padlock on his glasses and told him he'd hidden the key somewhere in Fall City base, only to keep it in his pocket all day. "Is there anything you'd like to know about in particular?"

Lucian thought for a moment. Joel braced himself for the inevitable lecture of how performing a capture actually works that every Ranger has to provide at least five times over the course of their career, though he'd gotten the impression his companion wouldn't ask something so obvious.

"Tell me about her." Lucian eventually pointed to Dodrio, who lifted her head briefly before settling back into Joel's lap. "Is she a pet, or-?"

"We prefer the term 'partner'." Of course, he knew how she must have looked right now, a head under each wing and the third resting on his right thigh, clearly enjoying the absent minded petting she was receiving. Certainly not the steely and distinguished partner his colleagues and the citizens of Fiore were so used to seeing. "I know she doesn't seem like it now, but this old girl's arguably been the best colleague I've had these last twenty years."

That made her other two heads stir, and look up at him briefly with a contended coo. Lucian giggled. "I think she understood that."

"She understands every word I say, trust me." He ruffled her feathers, causing her to nip against one of his rings with her beak. "Isn't that right?"

Lucian tilted his head curiously.  "How exactly do you acquire a partner? Do you get one assigned?"

"Well unfortunately for me, and some of the points I made in that meeting, she was actually wild once upon a time." Though to be fair, he wasn't even too opposed to non-Rangers domesticating wild Pokémon in the first place. Providing they were well-intentioned adults, of course. "Doubly unfortunately is the fact that the Doduo line is incredibly rare in the wild back in Fiore. I sure had some explaining to do back at base, leader at the time wasn't too thrilled with me taking an endangered species out of its habitat."

"Well I can't imagine you set out to do that on purpose." 

"Ah…" Perhaps that lecture on how to perform a capture wouldn't have been so bad after all. "I didn't try to find a partner on purpose, but I will admit I was intentionally trying to track down either half of the Doduo evolutionary line. It was just research, really. I wanted to see how endangered they really were, and so the best way to start would be, well, finding and capturing one."

He briefly stopped stroking Dodrio (much to her annoyance), lowering his now empty glass to his lap pensively. "It took far longer than I'd anticipated. I actually reached a point where I genuinely thought they'd gone extinct in the wild, something I'd feared from the start, so when I finally stumbled across a wild Doduo, completely by accident might I add, I was just so overcome with emotion that my relief must have been conveyed during the capture and well…"

He tilted Dodrio's head up, scratching under her chin and earning him a very contended hum. "She's been by my side ever since."

"Wait so she was still-" Lucian's thought process was visible, to say the least. "So how did she evolve then? Surely you don't battle."

"Slowly." Slowly was probably the best way to describe it without giving his companion nightmares. "I wouldn't think about it too much." 

"I won't." Lucian distracted himself by looking around the bar, before perking up, seemingly more aware of his surroundings. "Looks like they're closing the bar now. Shall we…?"

"Oh, of course." He'd lost track of time again, it seemed. Perhaps this is what he got for not wearing a watch. "Your room or-" 

"Unfortunately I'm having to share my room with a colleague."

Joel mused. "My room it is then." 

The bird sleeping in his lap was woken up with a ruffle of her crown feathers, and a slight jostle as he finally stood up. She rumbled in protest, adjusting her short wings to cover her side heads, her middle one duly following his hand up. "I know, I know, but you can sleep when we get upstairs, okay?"

He turned his head to notice Lucian watching him with a mildly awestruck look on his face. "I know you probably hear it a lot, but I don't think I've ever seen a Pokémon as well behaved as she is."

"I actually don't hear that at all, surprisingly." The people of Fiore were perhaps accustomed to well behaved domesticated Pokémon, especially those accompanying a Ranger. One of the many side effects which came with a largely Pokéball-free society. "But it's nice to hear. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Lucian turned to the elevator panel. "Which floor-"

"Fifth." The lift appeared to be far too cramped for Dodrio's liking, and she rumbled as it started to move. He absently petted her back, struggling to think of small talk. "I must confess, I may have finished off the complimentary wine last night I'm afraid."

"We can always order more." His tone suggested he may have had other plans in case the wine had been depleted, and that he was also perhaps hoping for this outcome rather than spending the rest of the evening downing even more than they already had.

The door opened with a click.

"Goodness, your room's a lot tidier than ours." He noticed Lucian immediately removed his coat as he entered, hanging it up on the rack near the door, and that his hands also reached for his tie before hesitating, and eventually settled on his hips. "Wish I was sharing with you instead."

"Suppose it's easier to keep the room tidy when it's just me and the old girl over there." The old girl in question had made herself comfortable on the chair by the window, carefully tucking herself into a ball in preparation for sleep. "She's cleaner than most of the humans I've shared with."

"I could believe that." Lucian was now sitting on the bed, hand idly smoothing out the creases. "At this point I always request to have a room to myself, but it's rare to ever get one. Most Pokémon Leagues, ours included, are… rather miserly, to put it nicely."

"The Union's the same." He was honestly surprised they even paid for any official trips and didn't just expect them to fund them personally. "They'd have ten of us to a room if they could."

Opening the minifridge revealed that it was regrettably, though unsurprisingly, empty. Joel grimaced. He'd only topped it up yesterday.

"I'm afraid we'll have to find other forms of entertainment tonight." He stood up, turning to his companion. "Any ideas?"

"I can think of one thing I'd like to do." Lucian approached, tilting Joel's head upwards, quietly studying his face, playfully running his thumb over his Cupid's bow with that same coy smile from earlier. "But before we start, is it alright if I…"

Joel didn't give him the chance to respond, lunging in for a kiss squarely on the mouth. Lucian squeaked in surprise, before it evidently wore off and he pushed back fiercely, forcing Joel back against the wall, and in the process dislodging his glasses from his nose, bringing the kiss to an abrupt stop.

"Aha, sorry about that…" Joel quickly readjusted. He was rustier than he thought, apparently. "I probably should have seen that coming."

"Indeed." Lucian, it seemed, had the same problem. How romantic. "I see you really wanted to get in first, huh?"

Joel smirked, pulling Lucian in by his oversized shirt collar. "Ask any of my colleagues, they'll all tell you I'm quite competitive."

"That's a relief, I was almost worried you weren't that interested in me."

"I apologise for giving you that impression." He pulled Lucian in even closer, feeling his lips brush against his ear as he spoke. "If you'd like, I can show you just how interested I truly am?" 

"Well, that certainly sounds wonderful, but…"  Lucian glanced at Dodrio, then back to him. "I do need to ask, does she really need to watch?"

Joel admittedly felt a pang of guilt as he realised he'd never taken her on that run he'd promised earlier, exacerbated by the combination of disappointed, annoyed and both expressions between her three heads. 

Still, he was free all day tomorrow.

"Sorry old girl." He retracted her into his styler, earning a squawk of protest. "But I don't think you'd want to watch this."

*

It had been a long time since he'd woken up naked.

Longer still since he'd woken up with the general ache of someone who'd had one Hell of a night last night. Perhaps he should've seen that coming. Gone were the days of that spry and newly out twentysomething capable of going all night and still being ready for round two the next morning. Sometimes he forgot he was a lot closer to forty than he cared to admit.

Unfortunately, it hadn't been that long since he'd last woken up with the mind fog and headache that came from drinking far too much wine the night before, nor had it been long since he was last woken up to the incessant beeping coming from his styler indicating a voicemail about to come through. He wrestled his glasses onto his face (jabbing himself in the eye in the process), flicking his styler open to reveal an incoming voicemail from Professor Hastings, and accidentally unleashing a decidedly irate three-headed bird into the tight hotel room space in his embarrassing attempt to accept the call. 

"Good morning, prof-"

He made the mistake of bringing the receiver to his ear. "Good heavens man, where on Earth have you been?"

"I think you'll find I'm currently in the Sinnoh region at the moment-"

"I've been trying to get a hold of you since three thirty, I thought your meeting would have ended by then-"

"There's an eight hour time difference, Professor-"

"And what has gotten into that bird of yours?"

"Your call woke her up." And, even more regrettably, appeared to have woken his bedmate. He gestured frantically that he was on a call, hoping the gesture got across. "And woke me up as well, might I add."

"Oh, confound that! I've been waiting on an update for seven hours straight, you told me you'd get back to me with a report as soon as your meeting was concluded, I was worried something had happened to you, damn near called that hotel out of concern-"

He looked over to Lucian, who appeared to be suppressing a giggling fit. "I just got talking to one of the other delegations-"

"I swear, if it wasn't for Spenser stealing my phone from me, I would've had the police called six hours ago-"

He was just able to make out a loud "I tried" in the background of the call, before Hastings cut it off. "For all we knew, your hotel could have been taken hostage by any number of those awful trainer gangs that run rampant in those regions-"

"The connection in this hotel is patchy at best, my apologies." A white lie, perhaps. Though the connection certainly wasn't great, especially in the conference halls, having set his styler to mute for a good few hours prior to the meeting certainly may have contributed to him missing the professor's calls. "Also, as I said earlier, I've only just woken up."

"Nonsense, you had several hours yesterday to update me, by my calculations, your meeting should have ended around four in the evening your time-" 

"Mhm." 

"-so even if it ran over, there's no way it would have dragged on so for long-"

"Mhm."

"-that it took you right up to the time you'd usually go to bed at-"

"Mhm."

"So don't try and lie to me Joel, you must have-"

"Yes, yes, apologies professor, but the connection in this room really isn't good, you're starting to break up-"

He clicked his styler off. Lucian giggled.

"Was that your boss?"

He removed his glasses, rubbing his nose with an exaggerated groan. "Unfortunately, yes." 

"Sounds complicated."

"That's one way of putting it." He flopped back, glasses and styler returning to the dresser, and letting out a sigh, whilst Dodrio laid all three of her heads on his chest, demanding pets. "Anyways, good morning, sorry about the rude awakening there."

"It's fine, I wasn't able to sleep well anyway." He stretched out, face half burying into his pillow. "You sure know how to show a man a good night."

"You're not the first one to tell me that."

"I must admit, I'm impressed." He giggled. "I wasn't really expecting you to be so… vigorous."

Joel mused. "That's a new one."

"It shouldn't be." He sat up, stretching his back with trained elegance. "That was just the first word which came to my mind, I could have said you were intense, or fierce, or…"

He burrowed back down into the sheets again, looking up with that same gaze from last night. "Ferocious."

"You're overestimating the vocabulary of some of my previous partners." "Partners", he said, as if any of them had been any more than a drunken hookup. The price he paid for desperation, it seemed, was having close to no standards.

"Well, I'm glad to be the first to tell you." He yawned dramatically. "I forgot to ask, how much longer are you here for?"

"Till the conference is done, then it's back to business." A shame, really. These League conferences were really the only trips he ever took outside the confines of Fiore and Almia, and courtesy of the Professor's terrible planning, he rarely had time to sightsee. Fly out, meetings, return to Fiore. Maybe he'd get one spare day, but that was usually reserved to recover from any jet lag. "I swear the Professor thinks the region would just fall apart without me. Can't let me be away for too long."

"That's a pity. Would have loved to have shown you around."

"Well I'm free tonight." And the night after. And every night until his flight home, really. One of the only "joys" he got from being single. "I'd love to see some of the sights around here, if you're free as well."

That signature smirk. "I certainly am."

[therealcocoshady]

(I’m rambling in this, apologies)

So, here’s my two cents on the horrible, toxic relationship that cheated on both sides thing. And I know it’s absolutely no ‘who’s more right or who’s more wrong’ situation, the entire thing is just messed up and horribly tragic from the start:

From what I can gather, and I may be wrong which I apologize, but it started off on one side at first. There was a breaking point somewhere that ended up revealing an even deeper hole they were digging. Essentially, it was a lose-lose situation. No one was getting out of it with something positive.

Now, there’s no excuse at all and there’s no beating around the bush in saying that both did horrible things to others and especially each other. But if we consider the environment they lived and were raised in, not to mention that the cheating likely happened after YEARS of fighting and fighting and fighting as kids, then teenagers, then young adults; despite all of that, they likely had no one else to turn to but each other. It was a matter of survival under the facade of living.

But there’s a question that remains to be answered: Who started the toxicity, and continued to push the other to the point of fighting back?

And yet, they still knew each other more than any other stranger; You can’t just let go of someone so familiar so easily.

And then there’s the multiple reports of others that knew them, and they pretty much agreed on the same thing that (according to them), Kim was the generally more unpleasant one. You can be treated unfairly, be a victim, but also be incredibly difficult to get along with let alone help, and that didn’t help her case at all.

(In my opinion, I think everyone’s an ass, and I’m taking their words with a grain of salt.)

Still, Marshall going out with Kesia whilst being married? Yeah that’s fucked up. If Kim was also cheating during that same time then it’s doubly fucked up.

Final point: Marshall used his music as a way to express his rage and retaliation. And it definitely worked… a bit too well. Probably riding off of that satisfaction of feeling like you’re finally getting something good in a warzone of bad must’ve felt like a sick sort of heaven.

Don't you dare apologize for rambling. Nothing fills my heart with joy more than people leaving long ass messages in my Asks ❤️ (nice ones, at least 😅)

I absolutely agree with you ! The whole thing was tragic and unhealthy and it really pisses me off to see some people romanticize that situation. If Marshall Mathers hadn't turned into a successful rapper who, it seems, cleaned up his act, everyone would look at him for what the situation makes him look like : a lying, cheating asshole who eventually turned into a abusive husband.

Now, I know it takes two to tango. But from what I see online (algorithm might make me biased though ?) tons of people call out Kim's abuse towards him. Yet, only few people call him out. And I'll be honest : as much as I like him as an artist, as much as I love his music, it bothers me to see a woman treated this way when, in truth, the whole situation was messed up, on both sides.

From what I know, both of them had a rough upbringing and it certainly didn't help matters. It is a fact that the situation of the household, the family structure and the potential abuse in the family have an impact on people's development. For her as much as for him, guess it sort of made sense that they reproduced a fucked up pattern.

As to the question of who started it, we may never know. I don't think Marshall actually spoke about the situation in depth, and neither did Kim, I think ? I Most accounts we have come from third parties so who knows the credit we might give them... I don't doubt that there's some level of truth there, but I tend to be wary of people who step forward to give insider scoops about other people's relationships...

In truth, I don't think it matters who started it. If the matter is settled between these two, then it's their business. What counts, is my opinion, is that people are aware of the mechanisms that might lead them to vilify one while absolving the other.

As for both Kim and Marshall, I hope they're happy where they are in life now, that they got the help they needed and that they're able to maintain healthy relationships for the sake of their kids.

[yuriosakawa]

Project R.E.X - A.N.G.E.L 

Summary: Artificial Nanite-Guided Evolutionary Lifeform

——————————————————

As the two brothers lounged in the lab’s quieter corner, César’s voice dropped to a softer tone, almost nostalgic.

“I never believed in God,” he admitted, eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the room. “I was raised on logic, reason. Cold, undeniable science. But… Abuela—our grandmother—she believed. She had her rosaries and her saints. She'd tell me stories of angels as if she had met them herself.” He chuckled dryly. “I never bought it. But I suppose… some part of me held on to the idea.”

He glanced at Rex then, who had paused mid-sip from his energy drink, watching him curiously.

“When I made you, I didn’t think of angels. I thought of equations, stability curves, and DNA integrity. But the moment I saw you, fully formed, alive... with that spark in your eyes...” César’s gaze softened. “You were life incarnate. Mirth. Innocence. Power. Beauty. I realized I hadn’t made a weapon. I had made an angel.”

Rex blinked, face flushing. He rubbed the back of his neck and mumbled, “That sounds... kind of narcissistic. Considering I was made from your blood and all.”

César smirked. “It’s not narcissism if it’s objectively true.”

Rex groaned, chuckling despite himself. “You’re the worst.”

“And yet, I’m also the best,” César quipped, tapping his brother’s head lightly. “Statistically speaking.”

César’s smirk faded into something more serious, more reverent, as he looked at Rex—not just as a creation, not even as a brother, but as something far more profound.

“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “You’re not just an angel. You’re an avenging angel.”

Rex furrowed his brow. “What, like… wings and a flaming sword?”

César let out a quiet breath, eyes sharp with conviction. “One that guards the innocent… but punishes the guilty with the wrath of a thousand suns. That rage you carry—it isn’t a flaw, Rex. It’s part of your purpose. It’s why when you see someone suffer, something in you snaps. You were designed to feel that. To respond to injustice with power. You’re not just the crown jewel of the Nanite Project. You’re judgment incarnate.”

Rex looked down at his hands, flexing them slowly, almost as if seeing them for the first time.

“So…” he murmured, voice quiet. “You didn’t just make me to be smart or strong… You made me to fight.”

César nodded, then reached out and gripped Rex’s shoulder with quiet pride. “I made you to protect. The fight was always just part of the job.”

Rex was silent for a beat, then snorted. “Well, now I feel like I should wear sunglasses and quote holy scripture before every mission.”

César chuckled. “Only if it makes you feel cool.”

“It kind of does.”

They laughed, the weight of their truths lingering in the space between them like firelight—burning, but warm.

“You know… maybe I should’ve named you something else. Forget Revolutionarily Evolved Xeno-Organism—how about Project Angel?” César smirked to himself, clearly enjoying the image in his head.

Rex groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “Oh God, could you imagine? Ángel Salazar? That name doesn’t slap, César. It whispers.”

“You say that,” Bobo piped in from the side, swinging from a pipe overhead with his signature banana in hand, “but Ángel Salazar? That’s got telenovela heartthrob energy. I’d watch that show.”

Six, ever the minimalist, chimed in dryly without looking up from his blade maintenance. “It suits you. You’re dramatic enough.”

Holiday peeked her head into the room with a sly grin. “Honestly? I think Ángel fits. You’ve always had a bit of a savior complex.”

Even White Knight, of all people, passed by the corridor at the exact wrong (or right) moment. “I always assumed Angel was the prototype name,” he muttered, arms crossed. “Had the poetic weight, if nothing else.”

Rex looked like he was about to combust from secondhand embarrassment. “Okay, first of all—I regret bringing this up. Second, I’m sticking with Rex. Period. End of discussion.”

“Third,” Bobo added, grinning as he tossed Rex’s red ball at him, “if we start calling you Ángel, you can’t punch us. It’s in the contract. Angels don’t punch.”

Rex caught the ball with ease and narrowed his eyes. “Wanna test that theory?”

Bobo winked. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Ángelito.”

César laughed into his hand, and even Rex couldn’t help the small smirk tugging at his lips. 

Embarrassing? Absolutely. But… kind of nice too.

[contrasting-realities]

Star Butterfly as Emperor Belos AU

A while ago I made a post about a potential au where star butterfly was emperor belos, I thought about it a little and decided to write it down here

Warning: Mentioned Suicide attempt

Branches off from Cleaved, where things went horribly wrong after magic is destroyed.

I consider there to be 5 different ways that monsters interact with magic, some are made of the stuff and would instantly vanish after it was destroyed, another group would be heavily reliant on it to the point of death if it was removed, the third group rely on magic physically or for their daily lives which would be disrupted massively, the next used magic here and there but didn't it wasn't the primary thing they used, and the final group never used magic at all

So by destroying magic, Star accidentally eradicated the first two groups and made life hell for the third, however there was a far more personal consequence of her actions.

When she came back, she wasn't met by Ponyhead and when she asked about her, the ugly truth is revealed as Star and her family hadn't just killed her but her entire species and many more.

By attempting to stop the Solarians, Star had committed her own genocide, this was too much for her and the guilt began to weigh down on her mind.

Until, that strange misty rift that was in the finale appeared with no explanation, she hoped that somehow the destruction of magic wasn't finite or could even be reversed, which is why she ran towards it.

The same thing happened as in canon, Earth and Mewni fused, however this wasn't as good as it seemed at first.

Parts of both worlds were randomly erased or went missing and what remained was scattered on random parts of this newly fused planet, it left almost everyone confused, scared, in danger or even just straight up dead.

The long term effects were nasty. Both the Earth and Mewni governments were suddenly on each other's land with no prior knowledge of how this happened, sudden wars were declared everywhere due to the loss of secure borders which typically ended in a quick but brutal win by the earth nations (assuming their administrative capitals hadn't gone missing) due to their more advanced technology.

Many more people died and the Mewni royal family went into hiding after the US won the war against them (the fusion had left them particularly weak by bad luck).

The Earth governments had also went after the monsters, who also had their own nations in some cases, for the same reasons as the Mewman nations, but also because humanity had the same reaction that the Mewmans had.

Before you ask, no, nobody cared about any out group at the time because of the chaos and danger plaguing the world, this goes for everyone including the monsters and Mewmans, humanity did the most damage because they were the winners of these wars, simple as that. There was a lot of internal unity created by the wars on all sides, but that's it.

Star alongside her family and Marco were all on the run after the kingdom fell, and Star blamed herself for all of this, her impulsiveness and blindness to the obvious has led to the deaths of likely billions.

Marco had a similar reaction, even though he didn't have the full context at the time that happened, his family were part of those who had been erased.

They continued to be on the run until Moon was captured. She was arrested for her part in both the Solarian and Star's genocides. This is where Star couldn't take it anymore and ran off in secret, she found what remained of the well that led the the realm of magic and tied a large rock to her feet with the intent to die.

Instead, she woke up inside the in between realm that exists in the owl house, which is what remained of the realm of magic.

She was confused but tried to take her own life once again, but the green-black sludge just transported her somewhere else every time.

Star eventually figured out how the cubes worked and used it to watch the world she had left behind as there was nothing else left to do. (No, she couldn't meet the collector as he was completely locked up at the time and couldn't leave his mirror at all).

She watched both Mewmans and monsters get agitated at the Earth governments and start revolutions that often failed, she saw Marco looking for her but due to the destruction of magic in that reality she was unable to even speak with him and he couldn't see her.

Centuries passed and Star was stuck in the in between, watching what was left of both world, Mewmans were eventually fused with humans as they were biologically the same species without magic and they continued to fight with the monsters, who in tern fought back with the same hatred. The countless wars and genocides that followed eventually led to Star rationalizing her mistakes.

Mentally, she started to consider the destruction of magic as a good thing due to it stopping the Solarian warriors and being nothing compared to the fusion of the realms and blamed her second error for every bad thing caused by her, even shrugging off the initial deaths and even Ponyhead's passing.

One day, she found an alternate version of Earth that, while being a few centuries behind the one she knew, was untouched by magic... mostly.

There was a different realm, the demon realm where magical beings lived just like Mewni, and their inhabitants were visiting Earth and interacting with humans like she did.

Two people, Caleb and Evelyn, caught her eye. Evelyn was a witch and Caleb was a human, just like her and Marco... and Star began projecting onto them.

She started to think that Evelyn's recklessness would cause damage to Caleb (as the way humans reacted to magic in this different Earth was, well, murderous to say the least) or the rest of the world, so she intervened.

Caleb had a brother named Philip who was looking for him after he decided to stay in the demon realm, Star appeared to him one day inside a mirror and offered to tell him where his brother was and how to get there as long as he kept him from the demon realm all together. Philip actually already wanted to do that so it was a simple choice for him to make, ignoring the fact that Star was a girl in a magic mirror.

Star taught him how to build a portal and Philip arrived in the boiling isles to bring his brother back, which didn't go too well and culminated in a knife fight that led to Philip's death.

Star was once again horrified that he actions had led to another death and she decided that this would be her last mistake. She made it her goal to stop what happened in her world from occurring in this alternate Earth and believed that the only way to stop it was to eradicate every witch and demon before anyone did what she did (lots of psychological projection if you couldn't tell).

Through unknown means, she managed to break a mirror she was trapped in from the other side and set off on her quest to prevent the "destruction of the Earth."

Along the way she wrote a number of books called the Saga of Star Butterfly to document her adventures, which are about as biased as Philip's journal was (I'm not entirely sure why, just go with it).

Thanks to the time travel incident with Luz and Lilith, Star got her hands on the collector who was probably the only one who could teach her the magic needed for the destruction of the isles.

The collector also taught her another thing, his past and exactly what the Archivists were, godlike beings that traveled between universes to document what happens in them, but a few had a tendency to mess with other realities for their own amusement.

Star is now convinced that an archivist created that unexplained rift, as no other evidence of magic was found again. This filled her with rage and gave her a second goal, find the one who planted that rift there and get her revenge (she still partially blames herself for falling for what she should have known was an obvious trap out of desperation).

She took over the boiling isles after that and instituted much of the same systems that Belos would have, becoming the tyrant empress

That's all I have for now.

[antihibikase2]

Immediately after Hilbert Blackburn continues his challenge, only two more left, Grimsley Slater hears that a challenger is simultaneously challenging the league as he is- except the challenger started out with Caitlin, then Shauntal, then Marshal, and were now heading towards his chambers.

He wonders which between him and Blackburn would claim the throne first, if that peculiar challenger- N, hasn't beaten Alder yet.

He wants to put his bets on Blackburn; that kid was something else.

He hears someone step into his chambers, and Grimsley readies a coin in his fingers to be flipped- if the supposed heroes of Ideals and Truth were on a race against time, then who could this secret third challenger be?

The Heart, maybe.

Grimsley snorts a little.

As if The Heart had any truth or ideals to call his own.

The challenger climbs up the steps to his platform, accompanied by a Liepard. A totebag hangs off their shoulder and a pair of red glasses rest on their face.

The sight of their hair- almost black, but just the same shade as Grimsley's under the light, gives Grimsley enough of a clue on who this challenger is.

Still, they state their name.

"My name is Cheren," They say, shoving one fist into their pocket. "Cheren Slater. I'm your brother."

This one doesn't beat around the bush at all.

Like a Fake Out, they've caught Grimsley off guard and completely stumped on what to say next; the information they had just dropped on him hasn't even fully sunk.

They don't even give him a chance to open his mouth as they speak next. "You know, 'little Cheri'?"

That strange child, that crybaby sibling of his, the one that nearly drowned in- "Little Cheri?"

"Little Cheri," They repeat again, one of their fingers pointing at themselves. "Unless, you really did forget about me?"

Oh.

There was a twinge of bitterness in their tone, the brief look of sadness and resentment in their eyes.

Grimsley supposes such a reaction was fair- he hadn't come home for any of little Cheri's birthdays since they were.. seven? Eight? Nine?

Dragons. He couldn't even remember how long it's been.

He shakes his head, an amused smile finally forming on his face as realization sunk in. "No, no. I didn't. How could I forget about my little Cheri?"

For as off-putting and admittedly creepy Grimsley found them at times, little Cheri was still his baby sibling, one that he had promised himself to look after one way or another- even if he could not be around physically.

Yet, he knows he's failed in that aspect- sending over gifts could not make up for his lack of presence.

Little Cheri no longer stared off into the distance or quietly ran off from their babysitter to get into some trouble.

Little Cheri now had eight badges under their belt, a team of five, and was radiating an aura of an exemplary trainer, one worthy of facing against the champion.

Little Cheri had grown so much.

And with that frown of his in his face, they take out a Pokeball from his totebag, and Grimsley could feel the restlessness of the sea.

"I said my name is Cheren," Though his gaze is icy, he seemed more embarrassed than anything; like a child being doted on by an embarrassing relative. "Cheri is fine, but I'd rather reserve that for close friends and family,"

Ouch!

Well, that too was fair.

Grimsley couldn't be expected to call himself family if he had spent most of his life away-

"And you're Elite Four Grimsley right now, aren't you? Not Giima," There's a slight look of amusement as he says that. "So, get it together."

Somehow, somewhere, little Cheri had learn to become quite a blunt child.

Not that Grimsley complained.

Family reunions and catching up could wait. For now, he takes one of his Pokeballs into his own palm, readying himself and his partners for battle.

He chooses not to do his usual spiel this time, instead, mirroring his brother's almost smug look.

"Very well then. Challenger Cheren, show me if you're still that crybaby from before!"

[erseac]

Tail as Old as Time

Explicit, PRPR Adrinette one-shot, based on a prompt in the ML Kink Meme

Adrien loved seeing Marinette asleep. It was beautiful, adorable, and a perfect opportunity for pranks.

He landed quietly on her balcony and looked around. In the weeks since they revealed each other, they’d become almost inseparable, best friends, hanging out at every opportunity. Sometimes you needed to create these opportunities with the help of a little black cat magic.

Slowly, he approached from behind her chair, watching her. A book was on her head, and she was snoring. Underneath her was like a pillow or something, black and fuzzy, probably something she’d made herself.

Her legs were completely bare; she was only wearing a top and panties. That was not unusual. Since the reveal they’d been totally comfortable in their underwear around each other.

Well, to tell the truth, comfortable could be a difficult thing to define. He’d always been comfortable in his boxers around her anyway. As a model you quickly dropped these kind of inhibitions. Then one fateful day, she decided it was okay for her to do this to. Now when she wanted to show off a new outfit she’d made, she kept changing right in front of him, with no regards for his feelings. If anything, she seemed to enjoy how he lost his ability to speak. It was both mean and glorious, and he didn’t dare protest.

Maybe he deserved it, for all the times he pranked her. Speaking of…

He slowly tiptoed closer and leaned over.

“Boo!”

“Wyaaargh!”

Marinette shot up with an adorable scream, flying herself almost as high as the sun sail on her roof. It was beautiful, graceful, elegant, all the things he loved about her… but he could barely focus, as he saw something else.

First of all: Those were not her normal panties. That was a pink thong, something she’d never shown him before. Her butt cheeks were almost completely exposed.

Second: That fluffy thing was not a pillow. Long and snaking, it was clearly a tail.

Third: The tail was attached to her. Not to the thong, though. It went past it, to a silver disc that sat right between her butt cheeks, barely covered by the sliver of cloth.

Adrien was not quite that much of an idiot. He knew what a butt plug tail was. He’d just never seen one in person, or imagined a scenario where he’d do so. To see it on Marinette, there was really only one reaction his brain could form.

Pure and utter terror.

“Aaah!”, he shouted, as he jumped back.

Marinette turned around to face him, and his brain unhelpfully pointed out that she was wearing one of her thinner shirts and no bra.

“Aaaah! Kitty!”

“Aaaaah! Princess!”

“Aaaaaah! Adrien, what are you doing here!?”

“Aaaaaaah! I dunno, I just wanted to see you, but uhm…”

He was flailing. “I… I didn’t realise that… I mean clearly you… I don’t want to disturb your special alone time…”

She followed his eyes, and saw that he was looking at her butt. The plug was now clearly hidden, but the tail was in full view.

“Aaaaaaaah! You saw that!?”

“I am so sorry, Marinette, I didn’t-“

“No, no, it’s okay”, she said, laughing an octave higher than usual. “That happens, you’re always invited to my balcony, I just didn’t think…”

“Right, and now I’ll leave you to your, uhm, masturb… to your private-“

“What!? No! No, it’s nothing like that!” Marinette was somewhere between screaming and singing at this point. “It’s… it’s not what it looks like.”

“Don’t worry, I understand, it’s perfectly natural to-“

“No, you don’t worry!”, she barked, more an order than a reassurance. “It’s-“

She paused, took a deep breath, and looked down on herself.

“Well, okay, it is what it looks like. But it’s not a sex thing. Not really. It’s just… I just like feeling what it’s like to have a tail.”

Then she giggled, and looked him dead in the eye. “I actually got the idea from you.”

Adrien looked at his belt in shock, but she continued.

“Without the suit magic, well, I gotta find other ways. And… and this way of attaching it is really fu… it works really well, I mean.”

“Oh, okay.” Adrien had no real clue what to say to that, but he had to admit that having a belt-tail was great. Everything Marinette said logically followed, as usual, even if parts of the chain of thought were a bit beyond his understanding.

“Yeah, normally I get it out and hide it before you come over. So you don’t think it’s weird.” She was looking small and tired and sad. “But today, I fell asleep and I just forgot.”

“Oh no, it’s not weird!” Adrien had no clue what he was saying, but he knew that he couldn’t leave things like that. Marinette was great and awesome, and any moment where she didn’t think so herself was one he needed to fix.

“I mean, unique, sure, but weird? And what’s weird really, anyway? Our whole lives are weird, with the super heroics, sentimonsters, live-action How To Train Your Dragon remakes, I think you have the right to be a little bit weird. It’s okay. In fact, I fully approve. A beautiful tail for a beautiful lady, how could this cat say no?”

She smiled at him, warming his heart.

“Thank you, kitty. That was a good speech.” Then something shifted, and suddenly she looked at him like… well, like Ladybug did, when she had a plan.

“So it’s okay if I stay like this, right?”

Adrien looked at her. Her thin shirt with very prominent nipples, due to the cold air. Her thong, which did cover more from the front, but still sent his mind spinning. And the tail, directly attached to Marinette’s butt. He thought about the pressure building in his pants.

“Yep, it’s going to be no problem”, he lied.

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