#then his best friend (ivan) dies off screen??

[jaypentaghast]

let's be real for a second

fang is the one true victim in all this

[broken-footstool]

could you write a tale about m! Kylar forcing the m! PC into a lewd D&D campaign and jacking them off under the table? I just imagine kylar makes the Pc run into tentacle monsters every seven seconds

I'm gonna be real, this one kinda got away from me a bit

Kylar chewed the already mutilated eraser of his pencil, fumbling with a set of dice in his other hand. It was Friday, a time of the week that he looked forward to often. Not because it meant that the weekend had finally arrived, but because it was the one day Kylar got to spend without being alone. By some random stroke of luck, he had managed to find a friend named Ivan. And by even more luck, this friend wanted to spend time with him outside of classes. Ivan had bonded with Kylar over their love of tabletop games, specifically Dungeons and Dragons. As they got closer, Ivan suggested a one player campaign which led to the two meeting at Kylar’s house every Friday afternoon. 

Now that time had come once again. Everything had been set up and prepared prior, and yet nerves still had a hold on Kylar. They were good nerves, but nerves none the less. Today, he had planned something a bit different for the campaign and was unsure how it would work out. Ivan was a nice boy and made Kylar feel…good inside. It only seemed fair to return the feelings. 

Ivan sat across the table from Kylar, half of a sausage roll hanging from his lips. The visual sent a strange flutter through Kylar’s chest and he had to adjust his gaze to keep cool.

“Ready to start?” Ivan asked around a mouthful of bread and meat. 

Kylar only nodded behind his screen, flipping open his notebook that contained the story so far. He briefly explained the situation of a dark, empty cavern. There was a small amount of light coming from the end, but it was impossible to tell how far away it was. The ceiling was damp and there were puddles of some sort of liquid all over the floor. It sounded a bit clique, but it worked well for a single player adventure. 

“Can you roll for dexterity?” Kylar asked, flicking his D6.

With a confident grin, Ivan tossed his D20 on the table. His heart sank almost immediately to his ass as the die showed a bright yellow “2.” His luck always seemed to falter in battle scenarios, as if the gods themselves wanted him to die. Nearly biting the eraser tip off, Kylar’s face became covered in a nervous sweat. 

“A grell descends upon you and restricts your limbs with its tentacles.” Kylar’s voice was trembling with excitement. “You’re completely at its mercy.”

Rolling his D20 between his fingers, Ivan tried to think of a solution. His character couldn’t speak Grell, so persuasion was off the table. They also weren’t magic based, being that they were a monk skilled in hand to hand combat, so projectile spells also wouldn’t work. The best choice he had was to attempt an escape.

“Can I roll for dexterity again?”

“You’d need a 15 or higher,” Kylar responded, sounding a bit disappointed. 

Ivan took a deep breath and clutched his D20 hard. There was a slim chance that he would escape this encounter, but it was his only hope. From how suspicious Kylar was acting, he assumed that there were more than of these creatures lurking in the shadows, ready to attack. He took his chance and tossed the die, watching it noisily clatter on the table. The last bit of hope in his heart died out like a flame as his roll fell just short of 15. Even his dexterity modifier couldn’t save him. Kylar perked up at Ivan’s failure from behind his dungeon master screen, struggling to contain himself.

“Your character squirms and twists, back can’t break free.” Squeezing his thighs together, Kylar’s teeth finally broke through the top of his eraser and snapped it in two. 

Stretching his leg out under the table, Kylar timidly pressed his foot against Ivan’s crotch. Ivan didn’t seem to notice, far too wrapped up in planning his next moves, and Kylar took this as a sign to keep going. He worked his foot up and down, his movements rough and uncoordinated. A dark red blush crept up Ivan’s face, but he still didn’t say anything about what was happening.

“I’m gonna keep doing this until I’m free,” he panted after a moment, leaning over the table a bit more than earlier. “It’s my only hope.”

A nod was all Kylar could muster and he tossed his D20 from behind his screen. Ivan followed suit, meekly spinning his die on the table. 7. Great. A somehow worse roll than before.

“The grell works a tentacle past your lips and down your throat.” Kylar increased his movement speed, applying a bit more pressure as he worked. “It’s rough and thick, nearly choking you.”

Something was growing within Ivan. It was desperation. An undying need for release. Release from what? From his horrible luck with rolls. From this damned floating brain with its tentacle down his throat. 

“One more time.” Ivan’s voice was now trembling as he bit back a moan.

Kylar went to speak up, but found it more amusing to watch Ivan try over and over again. The way Ivan’s eyes would sparkle with hope and determination before darkening with defeat. It did something to his heart, and he couldn’t find it within himself to deny Ivan a chance. Nodding his head, Kylar tilted his foot so that his ankle was caressing Ivan’s testicles. Ivan jumped at the sensation as he threw his die, nearly tossing it off of the table.

16. Finally, Ivan was getting somewhere. The determination inside was growing more and more, and he felt a tingle of hope. 

“You manage to free one of your arms.” Kylar moved his ankle side to side as he spoke. “What’s your next move?”

Straightening his posture, Ivan thought for a moment. Now would be the perfect time to strike, or at least try to. But would that work? His character only had one hand free and was slowly being suffocated. Anxiety burned in Ivan’s stomach. For some odd reason, his thoughts seemed clouded and heavy. Was it the anticipation? The urgency to make a move? Gripping the sides of the table, Ivan gasped as an orgasam rocked his body. A sizable wet patch formed on the front of his pants, soaking through the fabric and partially through Kylar’s sock. Ivan fell back against his chair, out of breath and sweaty. The rush of a long awaited victory must have gotten to him, sending him straight over the edge. He ignored Kylar’s presence all together as he recollected himself, enjoying the afterglow. Once it began to fade, however, Ivan became aware of the very obvious issue he had.

“Can I use your bathroom?” Ivan finally asked, standing with his hands in front of his crotch. He barely waited for an answer, awkwardly shuffling out of Kylar’s room and into the dark corridor.

Once Ivan was gone, Kylar slipped the sock from his foot and placed it in his pocket, saving it for later.

[mc-lukanette]

GOD Furious Fu genuinely pissed me off SO MUCH so hopefully you don’t mind me coming over here to ask for some kinda Lukanette fix it for that train wreck??? Like, not even anything super detailed, if you don’t feel like it, maybe just “Marinette caves, gives the Miracle Box to Su-Han, gets spotty memories and Luka (+ Kitty Section and Kagami, maybe) help her out and worry over her.” Maybe Tikki even realizes she screwed up. If not it’s fine but Lukanette makes everything better so I had to ask.

Warning: it’s gonna be a ride.

—————

Luka looked over as his phone started ringing, brows raising at the sight of Marinette's icon popping up on the screen. It'd been rare for her to call him after all the complications that came with them dating, so he was surprised to say the least.

Nevertheless, he rested an arm on his guitar and reached across his bed with his other to pick up the phone, answering the call and moving the device to his ear. "Hey, Marinette."

"Hey, Luka..."

His heart sank at the sound of her voice. It was a whole mix of emotions, but above all else, she sounded tired. He wondered what she'd gone through for her voice to play those sorts of notes.

"Did anything happen?"

"No," she answered almost instantaneously. She paused, then let out a small whine. "I-I'm sorry. I'm so used to lying, but—I guess I don't have to do that anymore."

He stayed silent, allowing her to continue.

"I—" Marinette took an audible breath, then let it out, her voice lowering to a whisper as if she were scared of someone else hearing.

"I'm...I'm Ladybug, Luka."

Luka's first reaction was shock, though he couldn't be sure if it was the identity bomb she dropped or just the fact that she told him at all. Then, once the surprise died down, the idea that Marinette was Ladybug wasn't that surprising in itself. and he couldn't imagine who else it could've been otherwise.

Smart, talented, caring, selfless... it all added up.

But that also made it all the more painful when he realized what it meant. Immediately, all the dates that she'd missed and all the things he'd been concerned about made sense, and it hurt.

That was the secret she couldn't share with him, no matter how badly she might've wanted to.

The last thought in particular was odd to him, and he couldn't help voicing it, "I... thank you for telling me, Marinette, but... why now?"

She took another breath, more unsteady this time, like she were a guitar with something jammed inside the base. "Because—I'm about to forget it, and now I can't stop thinking about everything I might forget; how I want someone to know. You were the first - the only - person I thought of." Then, hesitantly, she asked, "Is that okay?"

Luka swallowed, feeling the whiplash of another dropped bomb right before the kind of casual compliment that made his heart race. "Of...of course it is."

She sighed in relief. "Thank you."

He tried to keep quiet, but couldn't hold back from questioning, "You said 'forget'..."

"Yeah, because I'm guardian now. There was someone else before and they gave me the ladybug miraculous, but—" She paused, as if considering something, then seemed to shift the conversation. "See, I didn't know anything about being a hero at the start, and... I screwed up." Before Luka could ask or recall the event, she continued, "I let the first ever akuma go, and it let Hawk Moth spread his butterflies everywhere when Ivan got akumatized again. I fixed it, but it was still my mistake that started it."

"Marinette—"

"—and I always tried. I tried my best no matter what I did. I tried to be a good Ladybug, a good student, a good daughter, a good friend... and I tried to get Adrien's attention." She groaned, though the sound seemed muffled, perhaps by her hand. Her voice cracked as she went on, "That's where everything went so wrong, Luka. I knew I had bad luck, but no matter how hard I tried, things would go bad. It was humiliating, and I kept thinking that maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough. My parents had such a happy relationship and I wanted that, but I was just wasting my time. He was barely in my life but he got put into everything I did, and I made so many mistakes from him. There's a liar in school who wants to turn everyone against me, and Alya thinks I'm just jealous because of Adrien. Chloe convinced me to do things I'm not proud of, and it took a while for me to be Kagami's friend. I didn't listen to my kwami and used my miraculous for my own gain, and..."

"What's wrong with that?" he questioned, voice pained. "What's wrong with using your miraculous for you? You save Paris every other day—"

"—because bad things happen, Luka," she stressed as if it were something urgent. "Bad things happen when I... feel."

There was a pit in his stomach. He knew he shouldn't ask - knew he wouldn't like the answer - but he hoped for better regardless. "Feel... what?"

"Anything."

He hunched forward, not strumming his guitar but running his fingers along the strings, desperate for something to busy himself with. His shoulders were stiff and his chest felt tight, unable to fathom what she'd been going through compared to what he'd merely seen on the surface.

"No matter what I did, no matter what I felt... it was wrong, Luka. I embarrassed Chloe in front of the whole class and she wanted to move to New York. She'd bullied me for years and I was so happy." She sounded conflicted, like instruments that didn't go together. "Adrien told me it was terrible. He didn't know why I could celebrate it. I felt awful, so I gave her a chance; I gave her a miraculous."

Luka anxiously rubbed one of the strings between his thumb and index finger, torn between seething and trying to reassure her despite knowing that she'd cut him off.

"She got it in her head that she deserved it, but with Mayura around, it wasn't safe to let her keep having it. I had to tell her 'no,' and..." She let out a defeated noise. "Do you remember that day? At the park?"

She didn't need to specify, and his voice lost all life at the memory. "Yeah..."

"Adrien and Kagami were together. I let them go. They seemed so happy together and it was the right thing to do, but..."

She paused, and he braced himself.

"When I was going to see the guardian to get a miraculous, I saw them. I got distracted and I forgot to de-transform. Because of me, Hawk Moth found the guardian, and he got the miraculouses from him. By the time I realized what happened, it was too late, and Chloe got akumatized again to ruin me. Those bees you saw—they were hers. They mind-controlled everyone, and that's why your identities were compromised. The guardian had to give up the box with all the miraculouses in it to me - ladybug me - because Hawk Moth was probably about to kill him and become the next guardian." She let out a sob. "Giving up the box... it takes your memory with it."

Luka gripped the string he'd been rubbing.

"I don't know how much he lost, but... anything about the miraculouses was gone. He didn't recognize me. He didn't even recognize the love of his life. He had... feelings, but that was it. All because of me."

"Marinette—" he desperately tried to interject.

She cut him off, as he'd feared, "I'm just fixing my own mistakes. People think I'm a good Ladybug because they don't get that. They don't get that I'm just going in circles. My friends don't believe in me, my parents think I'm too clumsy to carry a tray, and... it always feels like someone - somewhere - is laughing at me, with every screw-up." She whimpered. "What good is a ladybug who gets people akumatized? Who gets her own boyfriend akumatized?"

"I don't blame you for that!" he shouted, intentionally raising his voice to talk over her.

He heard a small noise in response, though he couldn't tell if it was another whimper or a giggle.

"I'm sorry," she said, though what she was apologizing for seemed vague, "and thank you, for always being there for me. I'm glad I have time to talk to you before he gets back."

Luka had to calm himself down to ask worriedly, "He...?"

"The guardian; the one that came before the one I knew. He showed up in my room today and saw how I had all the kwami outside of the box; I guess you're not supposed to do that, and he wasn't happy. He told me about all these rules I broke and how I had to give everything back. I took him to meet Chat Noir, but Chat ran for it when he realized that I'd forget about him. The guardian is chasing him down now and I'm just here, with the box, waiting for him to get back."

Luka leaned back and stared at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the rush of information she'd thrown at him all at once. He hadn't even been the one to experience any of it and he still felt worn down as if he had.

"I—" He paused, not liking how his voice shook. "I wish I could've helped you, Marinette. I wish you hadn't had to do all of that alone. I know you feel like it's your fault, but even the best musicians miss notes and mess up. Please don't blame yourself."

She let out a non-committal noise and he knew then that nothing he said would help her. He was sure that she believed him, but words could only do so much, and unlearning what apparent months of suffering had taught her would be difficult.

Though, he supposed it wouldn't matter. "Will you forget... everything?"

"I don't know, but at least everything about Ladybug or the miraculouses will go." She let out a half-hearted chuckle. "I guess it was all for nothing in the end."

"It wasn't," Luka replied. "Marinette, no matter how many times you feel like you screwed up, you were still an amazing ladybug. Everything you said didn't change my mind about that." After a moment of thought, he added, "And that other guardian... how is he?"

He heard her take a breath, as if to give an automatic answer, but she stopped herself. "...He's away from Paris, living with the love of his life."

"See? That sounds better than being the guardian, in Paris, where Hawk Moth is," he pointed out. "Maybe he forgot more than he would've wanted, but—"

"Luka," she interrupted, as if something had just occurred to her.

He considered finishing what he was saying, but stopped himself in favor of wanting to hear her out. "Yeah?"

"A-ah... mm." She struggled briefly while trying to get the words out. "If—if I forget too much... if I forget you... would you still visit me?"

It wasn't that he hadn't thought about the possibility, but it hadn't been on the forefront of his mind either, mostly for the sake of keeping himself grounded.

After having an internal debate with himself, he settled for asking, "Would you want me to?"

"Don't say it like that," she pleaded. "Don't leave it all up to me. I...I'd understand if you decide you don't want to see me again. I wouldn't blame you, I just—" Her voice lowered to something both shy and fond. "—I'm my best self when I'm with you, Luka. We didn't date for that long, and maybe it would've been better for you if we never met, but I..."

The pause she made had him holding his breath, his grip on the phone tightening. He couldn't believe she would dare to imply that he wouldn't do it all over again; meeting her, writing songs about her, dating her...

Marinette let out a breath, and Luka noted that it sounded so... final, like this was really the end.

"I love you, Luka."

His heart hammered in his chest. "Marinette."

"Thank you, and I'm sorry," she whispered. After going quiet for a few seconds, her tone suddenly shifted as she said, "I have to go now. He's on his way."

Luka took a sharp intake of breath, but the click of the call came before he could speak. He could only stare down at the phone, Marinette's contact image staring back as an emptiness washed over him.

Then, he was on his feet, guitar tossed aside, and he'd never moved so fast before in his life.

—————

Marinette gazed at Luka's picture for a few more seconds, as if doing so would permanently imprint it into her memory, then sighed and tossed it onto her chaise lounge. She rubbed at her eyes, wiping away tiredness and unshed tears, unable to help wondering if Fu falling unconscious after his memory loss was something peaceful for him.

When she uncovered her eyes, she noticed the kwami, all distancing themselves from her but staring at her like she was a corpse in a coffin.

"What...?" she asked, though part of her already knew the answer.

They all exchanged glances, like they were debating telepathically, then Wayzz flew forward.

"I - we - we're so sorry, Marinette," he said. Bowing in respect, he added, "We got so excited, and we only caused you more problems."

Marinette shrugged, only able to offer a defeated smile. "There's nothing we can do now. It's too late to change anything."

Tikki approached, her body hunched over and making her look even smaller than she already was. "I-I should've said something. I let him talk to you like that and I didn't do anything to stop him."

Marinette reached over, tempted to pet or touch her kwami in some way to help reassure her, but pulled back at the last moment, too conflicted about it.

The sound of something landing on the balcony followed, and Marinette stared up at it like she could see through her ceiling.

"...He's here," she stated. After giving one last look at all of her kwami, she focused specifically on Tikki and said, "Spots on."

Su-Han descended into her room, Ladybug standing in the center and wanting nothing more but to get things over with. He approached her, raising his fist and then opening it to show her the ring inside; Chat Noir's ring. Plagg, meanwhile, hovered aimlessly around the room, not meeting anyone's eyes and probably sensing the tension.

"That crybaby was even more of a fool than I'd thought," Su-Han commented, "giving a miraculous to a boy whose face is all over this village."

"What?" Ladybug blurted out. A boy whose face was all over—but that meant—"Adrien?"

Su-Han raised a brow. "A friend of yours?" He promptly scoffed. "That makes him even more foolish."

She couldn't even find it in herself to respond, too busy grappling with so casually being told something she'd intended to never learn about if she could help it.

Adrien was Chat Noir? It explained a little bit of everything and made her feel a lot of everything at the same time, like the two personalities meshed together to create something both shocking yet profoundly upsetting. She saw her memories with Adrien in place of Chat Noir and vice versa, unable to separate the two and pursing her lips as she recognized that, perhaps if things had been a little different...

"Young lady," Su-Han called strictly, pulling her out of her trance. "I don't have time to waste here. Relinquish the Miracle Box to me, at once."

"A-ah..." Ladybug could only nod, still dazed but at least focused enough to respond. She stared down at her hands, staring at the red and single black spot on the back of each, then sighed and closed her eyes, accepting that it was the last time she'd see them.

"I, Ladybug, hereby relinquish the Miracle Box..."

The last feeling she'd remember as Ladybug was a deep, unrelenting regret; regret for all the things she did do, didn't do, and the things that weren't even in her control.

Then, as her mind was fogging and she was slipping into darkness, she felt something else.

She felt free.

—————

Luka didn't bother saying a word to Tom or Sabine when he charged inside the bakery, both of them letting out various shouts of concern as he bolted past them and ran up the stairs. He nearly tripped multiple times, but he never stopped moving. He dashed up each flight until his eyes locked on the door to Marinette's living room.

He opened the door in a hurry, ignoring the sound of it slamming against the wall, and headed right for the stairs to Marinette's room. He threw caution to the wind and pushed open the trap door in the same fashion, his eyes scanning the place in a panic.

Then, his gaze fell upon Marinette, lying there on the floor, earrings gone, and he realized that he was too late. If he were honest, he hadn't known exactly what he'd rushed there to do - try and prevent the memory loss? tell her how wrong she'd been during their call? call out the guardian for treating his beloved so cruelly? - but now that he was there, all he could think about was being there for her.

He took a moment to catch his breath, then approached and knelt down next to her. Slipping his arms underneath her, he lifted her up and brought her over to her chaise lounge, wanting to at least get her off the floor. Her phone had been resting on the chaise’s cushion, but he simply moved it to the table after setting her down.

He paced around the room, raking his fingers through his hair and ruffling it. His mind was still racing, as was his heart, and his running had nothing to do with either. He knew that, whether Marinette had her memory or not, she was the song in his head, and any pain that would come with her not knowing him couldn't compare to the pain of not seeing her again. She wasn't a burden, and no matter how many excuses he might have to come up with, he wasn't going to let her be alone, especially not when she trusted him with a secret that she'd only let him hear.

He was so distracted by his thoughts that he almost didn't hear the slight shuffling noise, though the sound of Marinette stirring was what made him fully turn around to look at her. While she laid there, her eyes were half-lidded and unfocused, darting aimlessly around the room as if in search of something.

"Marinette," he whispered, rushing over to her. Bending over the chaise lounge, barely thinking, he asked gently, "Are you okay?"

"Mm..." Her eyes found his, and she blinked a few times before she actually seemed awake enough to answer him. "Luka?"

His breath, his words, his very sound, all caught in his throat. If he were a guitar, his strings would've snapped from the sudden release of tension.

"Y-you... know who I am?" he asked in a small voice.

She tilted her head at him, confused by the question. "Of course I do? You're my boyfriend."

Boyfriend. She said boyfriend. She didn't just remember him, she remembered her feelings for him.

He got misty-eyed from the realization, and Marinette's eyes widened in alarm.

"L-luka?" she called, brows furrowed with concern. She reached up with a hand, sliding it along his cheek. "What's wrong—what happened? I swear I'm okay, I—"

He shook his head, gently holding onto her wrist and feeling the steady rhythm of her pulse to ground himself. "Nothing, Marinette. Nothing happened. You—you just had a bad fall."

"O-oh. I...I'm sorry." She pushed herself up with her free hand. "I'm so clumsy. I didn't mean to worry—"

He couldn't wait any longer. He hugged her, squeezing her with every ounce of love that'd been accumulating since they'd originally broken up. Marinette didn't seem to understand the intensity of his actions, but didn't hesitate to hug him back either, even humming with content and burying her face into his shoulder.

Her song sang freely to him. It wasn't torn or twisted up, playing openly instead of staying locked in a music box. He couldn't have been happier after she'd given him such a scare before, and any remaining questions could come later.

For that moment, he just let their duet play free-er than it'd ever been able to before.

—————

"Luka~" Marinette called from the kitchen. When he looked over to her, she raised two different bottles of iced tea, waving them a bit for emphasis. "Which one do you want?"

He hummed, then pointed to the one in her left hand. She nodded at the decision, then put the other bottle back in the fridge, retrieving a bottled drink of her own before leaving the kitchen to join him on the couch.

The last few weeks had been a bit of a rollercoaster, but not necessarily in a bad way. He'd had to deal with Marinette's memory loss and simultaneously piece together how exactly it'd all worked out, but all in all, it was good for her.

Most of Marinette's memories outside of being Ladybug were in tact, and Luka had realized soon after she'd woken up from her memory loss that the reason she’d forgotten about their break up was exactly because it'd been related to her being Ladybug. He'd tried vaguely to explain it to her as if he hadn't known that she was Ladybug, wondering if those negative feelings still lingered, but they both still wanted to date each other and thus concluded that not dating after all that would've been silly. He knew full well that she wasn't going to be stressed or strapped for time anymore, so it wasn't a subject worth debating over, especially if it meant that they could move back into dating without issue.

She'd initially cried when he assured her that he was happy to continue dating her. She couldn’t comprehend why and he'd merely hugged her in reassurance, imagining that he was also hugging the Marinette of the past who didn't believe he'd want to date her again.

Outside of that, there were additional gaps in Marinette's memory that she couldn't explain, and Luka was certain that they were either Ladybug or guardian-related. Her parents had been particularly concerned by the losses, but Luka noted to himself that the lost memories were for the best. It was as if all of the memories that had caused her stress had evaporated, leaving only good ones behind.

Adrien was the big one, as she hadn't been able to remember him at all. At best, she was uncomfortable around him, and Luka did her the favor of removing any pictures of the guy from her cork board and phone. It took him a while to figure it out, but once he put together that Adrien was Chat Noir, things fell into place. Marinette had explained during their phone call that the previous guardian had lost his memory of the love of his life, but Luka imagined that she might've been his confidant for so long that thinking of her as anything else was impossible. Factor in that Marinette had also explained that her crush on Adrien had seeped into her being Ladybug, and it all added up; so long as the connection between the person and the miraculouses was unavoidable, they were forgotten.

And Marinette seemed all the happier for it. To some degree, it was tragic that Paris didn't have Ladybug anymore, but as far as Luka was concerned, Marinette needed to be rid of Ladybug more than Paris needed her, and Marinette's health took priority over all else.

The new ladybug holder was no replacement from the original, but Luka had expected that. Despite them being an adult and having access to as many lucky charms as they desired, no one could substitute Ladybug's instinct and ability to think on her feet.

But that wasn't Luka's problem, and he wholly intended to make sure that it wasn't Marinette's either. She'd heard that there was a previous ladybug, but had no interest in anything relating to the heroes nor their miraculouses. The most she'd said about them was one time where she'd idly commented that her homeroom and PE teachers had been "busier than she remembered," though she'd brushed it off as being related to her mild memory loss.

He'd giggled at that. He had been prepared to have to fall in love with a slightly different Marinette, but she honestly hadn't changed much; still caring, still generous, and still the adorable mess that he loved so much. She could afford to work on her confidence, sure, but he didn't fall for her due to what Ladybug had given her.

"Luka?"

He blinked, then looked down to her; her and her bright, happy eyes, the darkness underneath having faded long ago. She smiled at him, oblivious to his thoughts and a brow raised in amusement.

"Were you daydreaming?" she asked curiously, her hand covering his and giving it a casual squeeze.

Luka still couldn't quite believe that he was hers and she was his. He recalled Desperada, that fateful day where she - Ladybug at the time - had given him the snake miraculous, presumably after she'd tried to give it to Adrien. He wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but there was a pride in being able to do something that Adrien couldn't. He'd never forgotten her words either, knowing now that they were Marinette's.

"You were the right choice, Luka."

He sighed blissfully, bending down to press his forehead against hers and replying, "I'm just happy."

She let out a small whine at the sudden and sweet gesture, but still pressed back in return. "Me too."

They stayed in that moment until a sudden thumping noise brought them out of it, Luka jerking his head up to stare at where it'd come from: Marinette's room. Immediately recognizing what was happening, he groaned and rubbed his face in irritation.

As expected, the man Luka had come to know as Su-Han emerged, descending the stairs and locking eyes with Marinette. She recoiled, her hands clutching Luka's sleeve as she murmured, "Not you again..."

Luka gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then got up from the couch and walked around to face Su-Han himself.

The man huffed. "I'm not here for—"

"Marinette wants nothing to do with you," Luka said lowly. He went for the living room door, opening it and gesturing outside. Su-Han followed with an air of self-importance and Luka closed the door behind them, leaving Marinette safely out of the conversation.

"The former ladybug had not even informed me of what she'd done," Su-Han explained. "Therefore, it's time she take responsibility and—"

Luka snapped, "You don't get to blame anything on Marinette. She did everything you asked her to and you made her give up her memories." He purposefully left out the fact that she was better off without said memories. "You're the one who insulted her song before you even got to hear it."

Su-Han squinted, the phrase clearly going over his head. "...What?"

At that point, the sound of footsteps came from downstairs, Luka glancing past the railing to see Tom coming up, perhaps having heard the voices even if he didn't hear any specific words.

The moment he saw Su-Han, Tom glared.

"Honey! That man bothering our daughter is back!" he shouted.

More footsteps followed, this time from Sabine and simultaneously much faster than Tom’s. Su-Han clearly caught on that this would be a repeat of "last time" (one of Luka's fonder memories of seeing the man be dealt with) and quickly fled back into the other room to return to Marinette's balcony and escape.

Once Luka had confirmed that everything was okay, he returned to the couch to sit at Marinette's side again. She tilted her head at him, but didn't ask any questions, Su-Han having become something on a "frequent but harmless weirdo" who she didn't understand.

Luka held an arm out invitingly, then wrapped it around Marinette when she snuggled against him. He used his free hand to open the bottle of iced tea - finding it difficult but also not worth leaving their cuddle to allow for both hands - then tipped the drink to his mouth to take a sip.

"Hey, Luka?" Marinette called, slightly shy in her delivery.

Luka met her gaze, setting the drink back on the table so he could give her his full attention. "Hm?"

"Could we... go on a date tomorrow?" she asked, one of her hands idly fiddling with the fabric of his pant leg. "I was thinking we could go buy a movie to watch? The one with Jagged Stone?"

He didn't know if the request had anything to do with the failed date that she may or may not recall anymore, but regardless, he was grinning like a fool. He pulled her closer, his free hand falling upon one of hers as he nuzzled her. "I'd love that."

He silently looked forward to the day where all the new memories he made with her outmatched the time lost from her old ones.

[flakelion]

Ahh I have so many thoughts about the Shadow and Bone show, here's a random list (spoilers):

-Nina and Matthias's scenes were PERFECT and I was falling out of my seat about how cute they were.

-BEN BARNES😳

-I never knew how much I needed that goat in my life

-Show Mal >>> Book Mal

-ALINA IS SO PRETTY WOW

-Ketterdam/the Crow Club sets were SO INCREDIBLE WOW LET ME GAMBLE AWAY MY LIFE SAVINGS THERE PLEASE

-honestly I wished I got to see Kaz beat up more people but I'll take what I can get

-Kaz was too kind/soft for my taste sometimes, they rushed that wayyy too much imo. However I think they just wanted to show that he wasn't really a villian, and it's hard to do that when you don't have internal dialogue like in a book. Plus very limited time.

-JESPER HOLY SHIT

-the portrayal of Jesper was honestly so perfect and I was smiling every second he was on screen, he was brought to life so well

-Alina's gold veil thing was... something...

-Inej is so freaking cool!!! Her acrobat performance was so beautiful

-Kaz's cane was amazing

-even tho Kanej was rushed it was so cute and wow I loved them

-seeing the trilogy characters / SoC characters interact was weird but in a good way

-the flashback to the Darkling creating the Shadow Fold was CINEMATIC

-Nina and Matthias eating waffles🥺

-the keftas😭

-GENYA❤️❤️❤️

-I really liked Mal's two himbo friends it hurt me when they died

-SO EXCITED FOR NIKOLAI AND WYLAN NEXT SEASON AHHHhh

-KAZ AND THE DARKLING FACE OFF WAS EPIC, still wish Kaz smacked the bastard with his cane tho

-the funky hats the Crows always wore lmao

-why was every single character so hot wow

-Jesper can you please flirt with me like you flirted with that random stable dude

- "Oh. Hello!" *DAVID THROWING A BOOK AT JESPER'S FACE*

- I died at "Fine. Make me your villian."

-I liked how they showed Alina's stag collar, I was wondering what it was gonna look like

-Fedyor and Ivan being a thing🥰

-subtle nods to Jesper being grisha was amazing

-every actor and actress portrayed their characters so incredibly well and I think that was the best part of the show for me

Overall, although I didn't like everything in the show I think it was very enjoyable and I'm REALLY looking forward to more seasons.

[morceid]

Beating the Dead Swan

Chapter 2: lonely angels wrapped in silk

read on ao3

<- chapter one

Summary: Penelope gives the profiles of Camille and other victims like her to the team.

Word Count: 1928

Category: angst

Content Warnings: general criminal minds murder stuff

A/N: noting here that this fic takes place in 2005 when criminal minds starts and spencer is 24

It started out a simple equivocal death investigation. Seven women had been found in their apartments, dead with their wrists slashed. Unfortunately not an unusual occurrence, Detective Conner thought nothing of it. Upon trying to contact the employers of each victim, Conner found they all worked for the same people, and decided to mark them down for further investigation just in case. When the fourth victim was found in her father’s beach house just outside of Virginia, the case became federal and handed to the FBI.

The case, being low priority, was given to Derek Morgan to monitor the progress of. 

“You’re completely sure there’s nothing about the bodies that connect these victims?”

“Agent Morgan, if there was anything I would tell you. I think it’s time you tell Detective Conner to rule these deaths a suicide.”

“Alright, will do.” Derek hung up with the coroner. Just then his mobile phone rang with the number of the detective displayed on the top of the screen. Derek sighed.

“Agent Morgan.” He answered.

“Agent, there’s another victim-”

“Conner, listen, they aren’t connected, there is no signature unless you can consider the suicide, I think you oughtta-”

“She was called in by a friend. Not a family member, not an apartment manager, not a coworker, a real friend. Derek, he’s devolving.”

Derek sighed, “Detective, I’ll let you send her body over to the coroner but I doubt there will be anything remarkable.”

There was some mumbling on the other end of the line before Detective Conner gave a response.

“That’s the thing, Agent Morgan, this victim is remarkable. She had piercing holes in her ears just like the others.”

“And how is that remarkable?”

“Her ears weren’t pierced.”

“And you’re sure about that, Detective?”

“Her best friend swears it. Do you think they could be puncture marks?”

“I’m not sure, let me tell Doctor Phyllis.”

Derek set down his mobile phone and dialed the coroner on his office phone.

“Doctor Phyllis?”

“You back again so soon, Agent?”

“Look, we got a new victim, she's got puncture marks on her ears. Not piercings, puncture marks. Can you check the other victims to make sure they’re not puncture marks?”

“Okay, give me a minute.”

Derek heard the sound of doors opening.

“Well, shit, they are puncture marks. On every single ear.”

“Thanks, Doctor Phyllis.”

Derek hung up on the office phone.

“Do I still have you here, Detective?”

“Yep. Were they piercings?”

“Nope. Bring in the girl’s friend and call in the family members of the other victims. We’re gonna need to talk to them.”

Derek hung up the phone and ran up to Hotch’s office.

“Something up, Morgan?” Hotch asked.

“You know that case Detective Conner asked me to look into?”

“The one with the suicides?”

“Yeah, well they might not be suicides. I’m having Conner bring in some people to ask them some questions. You mind if I ask Rossi and Prentiss to help?”

“Of course not, but if we get another case then leave the questioning for Detective Conner, alright?”

“Gotcha, boss.”

Derek gathered Rossi, Prentiss, and Penelope in the break room to discuss the case.

“Babygirl, you want to read out the profiles of our victims?”

“Reluctantly,” Penelope pulled up each of the files onto her laptop. “Danica Wilson, a 45 year old woman, was found by her landlord. She grew up in Victoria, Canada, but when she was 12, her parents got a divorce. Her mother moved her and her three siblings to North Dakota shortly after. All throughout highschool she seemed immensely interested in biology and chemistry. She was really good at it too, she took AP classes and she was a promising student. Unfortunately, her mom didn’t want her to do anything of the sort, and set her up for ballet classes her junior year. To appease her mom she studied the history of dance during college and ended up climbing up from an intern at a dance company all the way to a choreographer. Her love for science was still there the whole way through though, she’s been taking free college courses online for biology for about a year. She was found with her wrists slashed and spread out in a star shape on the middle of her bed. There were no fingerprints anywhere in her home and the slashes appeared to be self inflicted. Her mom died a week before she was found, all of her siblings live in other states, and she didn't have any close friends. She never dated, even though she had perfect brown eyes and blonde hair. According to her siblings she had all of the boys at her school after her. Despite there being no evidence of depression or other mental illness officers deemed her mothers death as a stressor and marked her death a suicide.”

“Then we have Maya Peto, 22 years old, found by her sister.”

“So there’s no age preference?” Rossi asked.

“Precisely,” Penelope continued, “She grew up in Detroit. Her parents raised her in a Christian household and shes been openly gay since she was 18. Her dad died when she was 14, leaving Maya and one sister to be raised by their mother. She did exceptionally well in math, but seemed to have no interest in pursuing it as a career. Instead, she became captain of her dance team in highschool and went to Wirtson’s Dance Academy for college. Her last year there, she was picked by Next Star Theatre Company, the same one as all of the other victims, to be on their ballet team. She was found just like Danica, and would be just like the rest of the victims. Her now ex-girlfriend and her had a kid, his name is Gene, he’s a year old, and Maya had full custody of him because Khloe, the girlfriend, had begun doing drugs about a week after Gene was born. How could lesbians have a child? Khloe was cheating. Maya gained full custody of Gene after a year long legal battle, and she had left him with her sister for a weekend while she baby proofed her house. Unfortunately, when she went to Maya’s apartment to return Gene, she found her dead. It was the anniversary of her father’s death when she was found, so the ever so ignorant officers deemed it another suicide.

“Then we have Annie Carr, 24. A coworker found her. Born here in Virginia, Annie was raised by her dad after her mom died when she was about one. She seemed to have a pretty awesome life. Her dad worked two jobs and she’s never had all that much money, but she was a happy kid. She went to a community college and ended up taking the same internship that Danica Wilson took, but she has stayed in that internship for years, mooching money off of her dad and siblings. Mabel Golden, the coworker that found her, claims that there’s no way Annie could’ve killed herself. She didn’t show any signs of depression or mental illness, though she could be pessimistic at times. Mabel said their boss was threatening to let her go, seeing as she hasn’t improved her work ethic in the last five years. Deemed another suicide.

“The fourth victim was Valentine Orange, 36, found by her father. She grew up in Maryland, started acting and dancing at six, her family was pretty wealthy, and she got accepted into the same dance academy and theatre company as Maya Peto. She also danced on the same ballet team. She told her team leader she was going away for a week to her father’s beach house, and when her father came to get her on the day she was supposed to leave, he found her in the guest bedroom, just like the other victims. The beach house was located in Maryland, and due to Detective Cooper’s hunch, the case got handed to us for an equivocal death investigation.

“Francis Falstaff, our fifth victim, was found by her adoptive mother. She was 22. Both of her parents died in a car crash a month after she was born, so she grew up in a multitude of foster homes. When she was ten her and her sister were adopted by Baron Falstaff and Maggie Falstaff. They seemed to be good parents. They went to all of their school events and paid for both of the girls’ college tuition. Francis was trying to make it into the same theatre company that employed the rest of the victims, specifically to work as a jazz dancer. She seemed to have killed herself, just like the rest of the victims, but her mom insists that she couldn’t have. She had a very promising life ahead of her. When they dissected her room they found an evidence board in the back of her closet. Her sister, Yvette, was stabbed to death a couple years back on the way to a party, and Francis was obsessed with finding the killer. Which is why she didn’t have many friends. When it was all processed, they found that the evidence led to Yvette’s boyfriend at the time. It was assumed that this weighed heavily enough on Francis that she ended up, well you know, on the same day she found out.

“Jane Sweeney, the second to last victim who worked on the Next Star Theatre Company ballet team, was 29. She’s been with the company since she was 20, and unfortunately her private teacher was the one who found her. Her father left when she was young. She liked expressing all of her success, almost narcissistically so. According to some other people on the dance team she was the best dancer and loved flaunting it. She was a kind of queen bee and seemed to value herself more than others most of the time. It just doesn’t make sense for her to kill herself.

“Lillian Bonner was the next victim. She was 54. She taught modern dance at the company. She lived with and was found by her only son, Tyrell, who she had with her husband Ivan. Though they were still legally married, the two were separated. Tyrell, who’s 16, said she was a fantastic mom. She always made sure he was fed and had someone to talk to. He told her practically everything about his life and he is having a really difficult time without her. He doesn’t believe that she would do that to herself.

“Our last victim was Camille Price. She was 25. Her best friend, Spencer Reid, who was on the same ballet team, found her. She was the only one who really had people around her. She grew up in Virginia with her parents and two brothers, one older, one younger. She visited them whenever she could. Everyone in her apartment building loved her, she even made dinner for one of the elderly occupants every Friday. Spencer doubts there is anything that would want to make her commit suicide, and to put the icing on the cake, there were puncture marks on her ears that police mistook for piercings. ‘What were they?’ you ask? Injection sites. How do we know this? Spencer swore that there was no way they could be piercings because Camille never wore earrings the entire 8 years he knew her because the Next Star Theatre Company does not allow their dancers to wear piercings or jewelry.”

“Alright, let’s go see if these people got any info for us.” Rossi got out of his seat and headed towards the interview rooms.

TAGLIST: @hotchrocket @hotpotatowoman @thisdeathtollbringsnopeace @endingsbeginnings @d3pr3ss3d-w33d-wh0re @nonbinary-spencie @moss0ntherocks @scandinavian-punk @drinkingcroissants @penemily @izzyl13 @leomo0n @tiedyedrose1705 @natclis

[letterboxd]

Green-Light Yourself.

As Merawi Gerima’s debut feature Residue lands on Netflix, he tells Gemma Gracewood about being the son of indie film legends, duty of care as a director, and why Akira is his go-to comfort movie.

Sometimes it’s impossible to move forward with your art until you’ve taken a good look back. In Merawi Gerima’s impressionistic and hypnotic first feature, Residue, a young man, Jay, returns from college on the West Coast to find that his Washington, DC neighborhood has been hugely transformed within a few short years. A white neighbor barks at him to turn his car stereo down. Familiar faces have disappeared. The gentrification is debilitating, but Jay’s efforts to work out his disorientation and rage through art meets opposition with old friends.

Like his lead character, Gerima is both a DC native and a graduate of a West Coast college (USC’s School of Cinematic Arts), and was similarly confronted by change when he got home. Making Residue was “absolutely something that I had to do because that was the only positive direction to pour my energies into,” he says. “I think that there was a lot of destructive potential in my life at that point. The film really was the first moment when I started to feel that I perhaps was not powerless in this situation.”

Derron “Rizzo” Scott as Mike in ‘Residue’.

Gentrification as a form of structural racism has long impacted Black communities, and Gerima is not the first in his family to cover this ground. His parents are the LA Rebellion filmmakers Haile Gerima, whose work includes the Golden Bear-nominated 1983 slavery drama Sankofa, and Shirikiana Aina, who documented changes to their DC neighborhood in her 1982 non-fiction short Brick by Brick.

Residue was a family affair; the Gerima name is all through the credits. “My aunts were the chefs; my sister, she was, like, the head of the catering.” Although his legendary father managed to get off lightly with Costco runs, Gerima’s equally impressive mother ended up anchoring two of the film’s most affecting scenes, as Tonya, the Mom of Jay’s childhood friend, Mike (Derron “Rizzo” Scott).

“I had somebody else cast—she was a no-show. My mother was on set that day, just kind of helping feed people. I knew that she had what we needed, emotionally speaking. She was actually trying to drive away to go find the woman; I was like, ‘Nah, I need you right now’. She did it, but at a great cost.” The thing about filming in your own neighborhood, Gerima explains, where you’ve raised not only your own but also everyone else’s kids, with varying outcomes, is you end up bringing that lived experience to your scenes. “It’s very real for her. She’s not acting. I almost cried once we finished filming. Nobody spoke for a long time.”

The scene taught Gerima much about a director’s duty of care—particularly when he dared to ask his mother for a second take of a pivotal scene that takes place in a downpour. “In preparing to shoot in the rain we made a few mistakes, with the camera, the placement, there was miscommunication with me and the DP [Mark Jeevaratnam]. I, he, we both agreed that we needed another take. When I asked my mother for another take, she just looked at us like, it hurt, it was painful to ask. She did what she could, but you could tell that she didn’t have it in her.” As it turns out, the first take was the one. “I thought we ruined everything, but once I slowed down, I just saw what a miracle it was.”

It’s impossible to separate Residue from its limited budget and circumstances. Structurally rich and technically unusual, the film is a triumph of local knowledge, happy accidents, and “hood auditions”, where people were pulled straight off the street into the cast. It’s infused with an all-hands-on-deck spirit, constructed scene-by-scene during a home edit by Gerima himself.

“We shot the first draft of the script. You know what I mean? We didn’t have time to wait for a rewrite. We didn’t have time to wait for money. We didn’t have time to wait for anything. In many ways, it was the source of many of our problems, but it was also the source of a lot of our freedom, because we weren’t tied down by money. We weren’t tied down by a locked-in script.”

Mark Jeevaratnam, Merawi Gerima (with camera), and Obinna Nwachukwu on the set of ‘Residue’.

At Slamdance this past January, Residue won the audience award, and an acting prize for its star, Obinna Nwachukwu, whose story is a lesson for other aspiring actors. He was right for the role (“He fit the bill in terms of, he knows DC lingo, he knows the culture, he’s from the area, which was incredibly important”). More importantly, he was available. “The fact that we didn’t have resources, we needed somebody like him. He wants to act. He designs his life in his way where he was able to give us two weeks without knowing much about us. Once we got him, everything else became a lot easier.”

After Slamdance, of course, 2020 took a bit of a turn. Residue was shortlisted for Cannes, but that was cancelled and in May Gerima told his college paper: “I think that the festival prospects for the rest of this year are getting dimmer by the day.” When we speak, however, he is in Venice, where his debut feature has just screened in the independent Venice Days section of La Biennale di Venezia. It turns out that Cannes Directors’ Fortnight head Paolo Moretti had put in a word with Venice Days. As 2020 goes, this is as good as it gets for new filmmakers—and is a beautiful demonstration of how the global festival community has pulled together to make something good out of the mess we’re in.

Likewise, Gerima is grateful to Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing, who made the Netflix deal. He notes that a Black-led distribution company is a luxury his parents never knew. “I think if Ava did not exist, our film probably would not have distribution. The broad imagination necessary to see the commercial potential of Black films is still not there. I’m often sad thinking about the fact that my parents had no such opportunity.” Like a scene straight out of Dolemite is My Name, Gerima describes how his folks would book their own theaters across the US and use the African diaspora to help fill them, “proving the commercial nature of these films, in communities that hungered for real Black stories”.

Merawi Gerima directs Jacari Dye on the set of ‘Residue’.

Gerima’s film appetite is wide, and he’s often looked outside the US for inspiration. Some of the most crucial films in his development as a director have been the 1968 post-revolutionary Cuban films Lucia and Memories of Underdevelopment. He is also a fan of La Lengua de las Mariposas (‘Butterfly’, 1999, José Luis Cuerda), which has “one of my favorite endings in film, period”. Japanese influences include Akiro Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) and Kaneto Shindo’s The Naked Island (1960) and he also looks to Chilean legend Miguel Littin and Soviet directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisenstein and Nikita Mikhalkov. His go-to comfort film? “Akira. I don’t know if it’s comfort, but I watch it all the time! I just think it’s one of the best films ever made.”

On the home front, an “incredible, important” American film is Ivan Dixon’s 1973 action drama The Spook Who Sat by the Door, while the movies that “really put me onto talking to girls” are Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball and Rick Famuyiwa’s The Wood. “These are the types of films, circulating within the Black community [that] we memorize the lines to. That set the sexual compass of Black adolescents, you know what I mean?”

‘Sankofa’ (1993), written and directed by Haile Gerima.

His parents, however, remain Gerima’s greatest influence. “Sankofa was made without arbitration. Black stories that have no minders like that, nobody to answer to, often are far and away, the most honest types of Black storytelling that we see in film.” For other storytellers yet to take the first step, he offers this: “My best lesson from this film has been to always and at all times green-light my own self, my own actions, because that’s the only thing that I can control—and to not wait for conditions to be right or perfect.”

Acknowledging the privilege of being born into a filmmaking family, Gerima adds: “That may not apply to everybody. There are many, incredible things which prohibit action at times. But I think that there are many incredible conditions under which people can take action with the camera. I think that it’s really just a matter of how urgently that story burns within you. I can only say for myself, that’s the way the film got made. Without that, it would have been literally impossible.”

When asked who we should watch next, Gerima recommends 200 Meters, written and directed by Palestinian filmmaker Ameen Nayfeh. (“He’s an incredibly poised and principled filmmaker.”) The film won the audience award at Venice Days. He also recommends Really Love by Angel Kristi Williams, which won a SXSW Special Jury Recognition for acting, and will feature as a Special Presentation at AFI Fest next month.

‘Residue’ is in select US theaters and on Netflix now. Follow Gemma on Letterboxd.

[whatisthiscontentyouspeakof]

The One Where They Know

tag list

@laurcad123

I’m going to be honest, I’m  not feeling this chapter. I may come back and rewrite it until I’m satisfied. It just feels flat and forced to me but I wanted to move on instead of killing myself creatively when it comes to this story.

AO3  First  Next

Chapter 2: It’s Been A Day

Chat Noir and her had both tried searching for the akuma but since they were both so close to their transformation they had to give up. Marinette felt dread fill her heart. This was worse then her first day as a superhero when she had almost forgotten to purify the akuma but Chat Noir had reminded her but they still had to chance they thing half way across town before she could capture it. She had no idea what was going to happen now. 

Unfortunately all she could do was cast the Miraculous Ladybug cure and head home since the akuma was long gone. 

“Tikki, what do I do now?” Marinette softly asked her Kwami once she was in the privacy of her own room. She felt drained now that she was alone, shame at her failure overcoming her. She shouldn’t have gotten distracted and let Chat Noir handle the situation, he would have made sure Ivan was safe and she wouldn’t have gotten the akuma. 

“I’m afraid there is nothing you can do, Marinette,” Tikki said, floating up to look her in the eye. 

“But what does not purifying the akuma mean?” Marinette asked. “Ivan is obviously back to being himself and I was able to fix everything so what’s going to happening? Does the un-purified akuma give Hawkmoth some sort new power? If so why hasn’t he used it before? Will he-“

“Marinette!” Tiki yelled, having already said her name a few times, getting no reactions. “Take a deep breath.” Marinette did as she was told, taking a deep breath before looking at Tikki. “So there’s two things that could happen since the akuma wasn’t purified. One, Hawkmoth won’t do anything, either because he doesn’t see the point in reusing the akuma, or because he doesn’t know how to he can reuse it. The other thing he could do is reuse the akuma if he’s aware of the ability. That means the second Ivan gets upset again he’ll be re-akumatized into Stoneheart again. He’ll also get the ability to control minions.”

“Minions?” Marinette asked. “You mean like how other akumas can take control of people?”

Tikki nodded before shrugging. “Sort of. Instead of Stoneheart needing to come into contact with someone to turn them into a minion like other akumas, Hawkmoth will actually be able to turn anyone upset into a stone being for Stoneheart to take control of when Ivan turns into him again.”

Marinette bit worryingly at her lip. On one hand, she needed to keep Ivan from getting upset since she doesn’t want him being re-akumatized, but a part of her wanted Ivan to get upset as soon as possible so that if Hawkmoth was planning on akumatizing Ivan, she could purify the akuma before a bunch of other civilians got turn into stone minions.

Tikki seemed to know what she was thinking because she said, “There’s no point in worry about it now, Marinette. We don’t even know if Hawkmoth will even re-akumatize Ivan. We can wait until tomorrow to deal with all this.”

Marinette allowed herself to relax like Tikki said, sending Chat Noir a message to tell him to do the same. She had a nice supper with her parents and finished a few tiny projects she was working on before heading to bed a bit earlier then normal. After all, the early she was to bed, theoretically, the easier she would wake up and make it to school and check on Ivan.

Marinette made her way downstairs the next morning trying to figure out how to bring up Ivan’s akumatization with him since it was an unspoken rule that bringing up someones akumatization to them is really rude. 

“Good morning Papa,” Marinette greeted, kissing her dad on the cheek. “Maman in the bakery?”

“Yes. She’s training Harmony on the cash register today.” her dad responded. Harmony was their newest hire. She’d help with the front end aspects of the bakery so that her maman could focus on custom orders and decorating while her papa made the stuff for customers that just walked in. They had other bakers on staff but it was only on a part time or casual basis depending on how busy the bakery was. And her maman and papa both like making sure everything made was to their standard so it was just easier to hire people to run the front end and help customers. 

Marinette grabbed her cereal bowl just as the news turned on. Nadja was onscreen, showing pictures of other stone beings that were frozen in place.

“Don’t be amused, it’s just the news,” Nadja said, before going onto news coverage. “The stone beings are all over Paris.” The screen filled with a clip of a police officer standing guard over the frozen stone being while a civilian was taking its photo. “For now, they’re showing now signs movement.” It cut to another stone being, this one outside the Louvre. “Police have cordoned off the areas.” Was that one by the Arc de Triomphe? There was going to be a lot of angry people if the Police had to block off part of the road.

The Screen turned to show the Mayor standing in front of Hôtel de Ville speaking to what Marinette assumed was a bunch of reporters since he had a press podium in front of him. “We won’t stop until we get these people back to normal.” the mayor was saying. She noticed that Sabrina’s dad, Roger Raincomprix was standing behind the Mayor, his arm in a sling. She would have thought Lieutenant Roux would have been standing there since he was the lead on all Akuma cases. Not that she missed him. Officer Raincomprix was more understanding and empathic to Akuma victims. If he had been there in the stadium yesterday, he would never had ordered his officers to shoot and Marinette would have gotten the Akuma just like she had all the other times.

“We’re not making much headway but with the help of Lieutenant Raincomprix, who has been promoted to take over for Lieutenant Roux as the lead on Akuma cases, and our heroes, I’m sure everything will be back to normal before supper tonight,” the mayor said jollily. Marinette couldn’t even feel happy she no longer had to deal with Roux and his views on Hawkmoth and Akumas since the mayors promise of having everything normal by this evening was making her anxious. What if she and Chat Noir couldn’t fix this? What if Hawkmoth kept the people as stone beings and never reakumatized Ivan?

The screen cut back to Nadja with the picture showing a image of her and Chat Noir instead of any of the stone beings. “Paris is relying on our guardian angels, our heroes, Ladybug and Chat Noir, to save us all.” she said, making Marinette feel worse. If she had just dealt with Roux quicker she would have been able to get the Akuma and none of this would have happened. “Our lives depend on them.”

Marinette couldn’t help but gasp a little. She knew if she failed that Paris would suffer but this was the first time that something had happened that could actually be considered a failure and it was weighing heavily on her. 

She felt her father place a large, warm hand on her should. “I know all this is scary and upsetting,” he told her gently. “We’ve never had an akuma attack that’s lasted more then a day, but don’t worry, Ladybug and Chat Noir will fix it, just like they have in the past. We just have to show them that we’re not scared, that we believe in them because we trust them and know that they’ll find a way to turn those people back to normal.”

“But what if Ladybug fails?” she couldn’t help but voice the thought she had had since she first started doing this. If she failed then there was no one to purify the Akuma or rebuild the city. Hawkmoth would win. The little voice in the back of her head, the one that she thought had died the more comfortable she had gotten with being a hero, was telling her to find someone better to be a hero, someone older with more experience. God, there was the entire Justice League who dealt with this kind of things. Another voice reminded her that Chat Noir and her had agreed that getting the Justice League involved was a bad idea since it ran the risk of someone capable with their own powers getting akumatized.

“Then, I’d come and save you,” her papa said as if it were the easy. “Superbaker to the rescue!”

Marinette couldn’t help but giggle as her dad picked up a baguette and held it forward like a sword. She turned and hug him, placing a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks, Superdad.” she told him, genuinely feeling better. If her dad could believe in her, then she could to. And she knew her partner, he always had her back. They’d be able to figure this out, together. 

Now energized for the day Marinette made her way back up to her room, a hop in her step. She had this. 

Marinette walked through the school doors, having met Alya right outside the doors. Was this what having a best (civilian) friend was like? She was just glad she wasn’t late so Alya didn’t have to wait for her or risk being late herself.

“Look at this,” Alya said handing her her cellphone. “Apparently a bunch of other teens are a bit freaked out that another person their age got akumatized, it’s becoming more and more common after all, that they all decided they need more information on Akumas, Akuma attacks and all news related to either, including that of our heroes. My blog had a major spike in visitors last night, especially since the news used my footage of the battle. I may have update my blog to make sure it doesn’t crash.”

“That’s great. At least something positive came from having one of our classmates become an akuma.” Marinette said, handing Alya her phone back.

“That’s a good way to look at it, girl. Staying positive is the best way for us to fight against Hawkmoth. Ladybug even said that herself you know. I bet you won’t have to worry about getting akumatized with kind of attitude.” Alya said, completing her as if it were the easiest thing to do. Marinette wasn’t used to be completed as Marinette, at least outside of the Art Room. Chloe had made sure that anyone who did would later regret it. 

Before Marinette could say anything nice about Alya, both of their attentions were grabbed by a group of people surrounding Ivan. Marinette frowned as he started to look upset. You’d think by now people would realize that upsetting people was a bad and mean idea, not to mention stupid since everyone had the chance of becoming an akuma.

“Come on Ivan.” Kim was needling. “You have to know what went wrong. Why are you normal and there a a bunch of stone monsters still hanging around? What did you do?”

“Everyone knows akuma victims don’t have any memories,” Rose said, trying to defend the gentle giant. “You can’t blame them for their actions.”

“Yeah, and everyone knows that after an Akuma is defeated the city is repaired and everyone is returned to normal and yet here we are, the city in ruins and several people have been turned into stone beings,” Kim argued. “So who’s to say that he doesn’t remember exactly what he did?”

Several people looked uncomfortable with what Kim was saying but no one spoke up. She notice Ivan looked towards Mylène, as if hoping for her to either say something, or to not look at him like he was a monster.

Well no one nice anyways. “Once a monster, always a monster,” Chloe said form off to the side, Sabrina standing half a step behind her. “We all saw the way you were going to beat Kim up even without the Akuma. Are any of us surprised that you turned into one of those monsters? Now with innocent Parisians turning into a bunch of stone versions of Akuma you, I’m surprised you haven’t been brought in.”

Iva stood up, obviously sick of everything he was hearing, storming off angrily. 

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Chloe called after him.

Marinette felt angry on Ivans behalf. If anyone was a monster here, it was Chloe. She saw Alya turned angrily towards Chloe, and decided to let her deal with the bully since she had dealt with her so well the day before. Concerned about Ivan, she raced after him. She knew there was a chance he’d be reakumatized, and while that would give her the chance to purify the akuma, she didn’t want her classmate going through such negative emotions. If need be she’d get Chat Noir and the two fo them would take Ivan somewhere private and let him know what’s happening before trying to get him akumatized so they didn’t risk the chance of any civilians getting hurt.

She found the larger boy sitting on the floor of the locker room in front of his locker. He had headphones one and seemed to be trying to destress as not to get reakumatize, something Marinette applauded him for. He knew he was upset and was trying to calm down and deal with it in a way that was helpful and relaxing to him.

She knelt down beside him and place a gentle hand on his arm. His face relaxed at bit seeing it was her, pulling his headphones off and looking at her.

“You should tell Mylène how you feel,” she told him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ivan insisted.

Marinette smiled encouragingly. “Come on, I saw how you look at her.”

Ivan looked at her as if trying to tell if she was making fun of him. She tried to look as supportive as possible. She genuinely thought he and Mylène would make a cute couple and that the shorter girl felt the same way about him. Ivan looked away, still looking upset.

“No, no negative emotions.” he looked up her angrily and she had to back track. It did sort of sound like she only cared that he didn’t become a ‘monster’ again. “What I mean is…be positive. I’m sure she likes you too.” She leaned closer. “Do talk to her.”

“I’m no good with words.” Ivan said and Marinette could almost shout in joy. She was making headway. He was no longer denying that he liked Mylène and pretty soon the two of them would become the schools cutest couple.

“Who needs words?” Marinette said. She was so going to make this happen. “You could draw her a picture, send her flowers….”

“I could write her a song?” Ivan asked hopefully.

She smiled widely at the idea. Maybe he’d be better with words when it was an art form and something he could practice. Especially since this was the most upbeat she’d seen him yet. “That’s a great idea!” Marinette said firmly, her hands forming little determined fists. She’d love it if someone wrote her a song. It’d be so romantic. “Who wouldn’t want a love song written for her? Go for it, Ivan, and stay positive. We can all make the world a better place, one full of love, if we were all just more positive.”

Ivan nodded at her, shooting her a smile, before heading off to write his love song. Marinette smiled as she watched him disappear. She couldn’t wait to hear what he wrote, or see what a cute couple he and Mylène will be. 

“You did good Marinette,” Tikki said, flying out of her purse.

“Even if I didn’t take the chance to fix everything?” she asked her Kwami, sure that Tikki would be disappointed with her.

“You’re classmates feelings are more important. And I’m sure you’ve already come up with an idea of how to fix everything later. You looked out for your classmate and his feeling and that’s what’s important.” Tikki said. 

Marinette smiled at her before opening her purse back up, allowing Tikki to fly back in. It wouldn’t do her any good to be on school property and still make it to class late. She’d never hear the end of it.

Marinette was happy to Alya was still downstairs. This way, if she was late, at least she wasn’t going to be late alone. 

“Oh, I can’t stand Chloe,” Alya said. “Who does she think she is, making fun of people and making them feel worse then they already do.”

“She thinks she’s the mayors daughter.” Marinette muttered. She sighed. “I get, Chloe can be really upsetting but you have to be careful. I admire the way you’re able to stand up to her, but the school won’t punish her in case they piss off her dad. You have to be careful that you don’t get punish instead.”

Alya placed a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for looking out for me, girl, but I got his. Chloe and her dad don’t scare me.”

Alya walked through the classroom door and gasped. Marinette walked up behind her to see what had caused her to react like that. She saw a blond haired boy kneeling down by her seat doing something to it.

“What are you doing?” Marinette demanded, rushing forward. She saw a chewed piece of gum on her seat, his finger against it as if he had just placed it there. 

“I..” he was cut off by Chloe’s laughter.

She should have known that the heiress was involved in this. 

Marinette placed her hands on her hips, pushing down the upset feeling that was building in her chest. No way was she going to give Chloe the satisfaction. “Ok, i get it. Good job, you three. Very funny.”

The boy jumped to his feet. “No, no. I was trying to take it off.”

She didn’t believe him. This had to be some sort of mean trick on Chloe’s behalf. “Really?” she demanded.

She huffed, placing her backpack on the ground and leaning down to get the piece of gum off her seat. She poke it before decided to just cover it up with a napkin. She’d deal with that later when she didn’t have an audience. She turned to the blond boy who she could feet still standing behind her. “You’re friends with Chloe, right?” she remembered Chloe mention yesterday that her friend was joining the class. 

“Why do people keep saying that?” he asked as if he didn’t know.

Marinette just stood up angrily, not giving him the time of day, before sitting at her spot, making sure she didn’t step on the napkin. At least it wasn’t that far across the bench so she wasn’t going to be crowding Alya.

“That so wasn’t cool,” Alya said as she sat down beside Marinette. “See what I mean about who the real monster is.”

Marinette just hummed, not ready to talk about it yet. She would have thought after all these years Chloe’s bullying wouldn’t affected her anymore but she was wrong. She glanced over at the boy growing even more as she looked at him. Something about his face seemed familiar.

“I know I’ve seen him somewhere before,” she muttered. Alya must have read her mind because she handed her her phone which was pulled up to the issue of Paris that had Gabriel Agreste, aka Marinette’s fashion designer role model, was on the cover. That brat was his son. Figures he was rich with that attitude.

“Of course. He’s the son fave’ designer, Gabriel Agreste.” Marinette said just in case Alya didn’t know who exactly Gabriel Agreste was, since she was new to Paris. She flipped through the dozens of photos of Adrien, that was right his name was Adrien like her Chaton, though he’d never behave like this, recognizing some from some pretty popular Gabriel ads. 

“Daddy’s boy, teen supermodel and Chloe’s buddy?” Alya scoffed. “Forget it. That boy is bad news.”

Marinette made a noise of agreement. Any friend of Chloe was trouble to her.

Marinette and Alya both turned forward focusing on class as Ms. Bustier walked in. No need to think about Chloe and her bully friends. 

“Agreste, Adrien.” Ms. Bustier called. There was a moment of silence as they all waited for him to say something. After all, they all knew he was there after that little display.

Suddenly the model shot to his feet, throwing his hand in the air and yelling ‘Present!’

Had he never had a roll call before? No one was the excited to have their name called. 

“Bourgeois, Chloe?” Ms. Bustier asked, continuing the roll call after letting out a small giggle at the boys enthusiasm. 

“Present,” Chloe said, giving a half hearted raise of the hand. 

“Bruel, Ivan?”

There was a large bang and Marinette was startled enough that it took her a second to realize that Stoneheart had bursted into the room, literally.

“Present”! the giant stone akuma yelled. He turned to look at the class. “Mylène.” he called.

Marinette ran as Stoneheart shoved her desk to the side to get to Mylène, ducked under one of the desks, hoping Stoneheart hadn’t spotted her. Once he left she’d be able to sneak away and transform. Until then, she just need to stay safe and out of sight. 

“Let go of me, Ivan,” she heard Mylène say. She risked a peak around the desk, seeing Mylène being held up in the air in Stoneheart’s right fist. 

“I’m not Ivan anymore. I’m Stoneheart.” 

“Why are you doing this?” Mylène asked, as Marinette ducked back behind the desk. 

“So you and I can be together, forever!” That so wasn’t the way to get a girl. 

“Daddy, the akuma is back,” Marinette heard Chloe saying. She risked another look and say Chloe ducked under her own desk, speaking on the phone with her father. 

“You!” Stoneheart said, lifting the desk up and throwing it. Chloe screamed as Stoneheart picked Chloe up with his other hand. 

“Please, my hair,” she begged. 

Stoneheart didn’t listen to her, kicking a hole in the wall and jumping away. 

“Put us down, Ivan!” she heard Mylène yell as she pulled herself up from under the desk. Now all she needed was to get away without anyone noticing. At least fleeing to her room was a good excuse with this akuma. 

Before she could sneak away, Alya turned towards her. Guess there was a downside to making friends. “Let’s follow him.” she said.

She threw up her hands. “Oh no, you go. I’m finding a place to hide.” She put on her best terrified face. “I don’t like being around during akuma attacks.” There, hopefully Alya wouldn’t think anything of it in the future when she randomly disappeared. 

“You’re gonna miss Ladybug in action.” Alya said, not knowing that if Marinette didn’t disappear, there’d be no Ladybug coming.

“Well… I see everything that happens on your blog, right? It’ll be like I was there myself” She smiled at Alya, hoping this was enough to get the blogger to leave her be. At this point, Chat Noir was going to beat her to the scene and the akuma appeared in her classroom.

Bingo, Alya seemed to realize that nothing she said was going to make her come with and left the room, not willing to lose out on the follow up story of Stoneheart’s akumatization. 

Marinette creeped from the room, taking a moment to look down the hallway to make sure Alya wasn’t lurking around to try and convince her to come with still. Satisfied, Marinette rushed towards the girls bathroom, taking just enough of a moment to make sure all the stalls were empty before opening her purse. “Tikki, spots on!”

Instantly she was surrounded by the comfortable pink glow of her transformation. As soon as if fell away, leaving her as Ladybug, she bolted from the bathroom and used her yoyo to propel herself into the air, over the school wall and out into the city. She took a moment to survey the scene, to try and locate where exactly Stoneheart was. She caught a clamps of colour out of the corner of her eye and looked over, the streets having quickly been abandoned when Stoneheart had burst through the school wall, though Marinette would bet that several streets away there were car jams and lots of people milling about in a panic. 

Turning to see what had caught her eye, Marinette just caught a glimpse of Alya as she rounded a street corner. Where Alya was going then that was likely where Stoneheart had gone.  She swung herself over to the building of the street, to get a better view and felt her heart drop. A car was being flung towards Alya. Not having a good enough view, she dropped to the ground just as Chat Noir threw his baton to knock the car off course from squishing Alya. Ladybug flung her yoyo forward, wrapping it around Alya and pulling hard. Alya flew through the air towards, just missing being pinned by the car. She saw Chat Noir being grabbed by a stone being but she could only deal with one thing at a time.

“Oh my god, I was just save by Ladybug!” Alya said, speaking to her phone camera excitedly.

“Let’s get you out of the way.” Ladybug said, trying to not seem to familiar with the blogger. 

Ladybug jumped onto the closet rooftop and set Alya down. “You should be safe here.” She took off running across the rooftops, but not before grabbing Chat Noir’s baton. Her Chaton would be every so sad if she lost that. 

She turned around the street corner that the stone beings had gone, dropping to swing through the buildings, jumping off a stone beings head, before bouncing off a wall and throwing Chat Noir baton towards him where he was trapped in the one stone beings fist. 

“Chat Noir, extend it!” she ordered, before she landed on a lamp post. 

Chat Noir did as she said, extending the baton, forcing the stone beings hand to open, releasing him. As he dropped to the ground, she wrapped her yoyo string around the lamp post before throwing her yoyo out, wrapping it around his leg and pulling him out of the way of being squashed by the same stone being he had just escaped. 

“Milady, fancy seeing you here,” Chat Noir greeted her even as he dangled upside down. “Have I ever told you you turn my world upside down?”

Ladybug went to make a quip back but was interrupted by the stone beings roaring. She glanced over and saw the three pissed off stone being approaching them. 

“Now’s not the time,” she said, glancing up to the rooftops. “Hold on.” 

Not waiting for him to say anything, she jumped into the air, dragging him behind her, and onto the rooftops. She got enough air that she was able to retract her yoyo, releasing her partner, without worrying about him falling off the roof. As the two bound across the rooftops, Ladybug pulled her yoyo and and slid the top half off to bring up the screen. She pulls dup the news to see what they were saying about Stoneheart, knowing that Chat Noir would let her know if she was in any danger, or close to running straight off a roof, which she did once and they will not speak of it again. 

“Got a plan Milady?” her partner asked her.

She glanced down at the yoyo screen which showed Stoneheart standing on the second platform of the Eiffel Tower. “I have a few ideas but nothing solid.” she said. “We need to get to the source first.”

The two of them took a moment to survey the situation happening around the Eiffel Tower from the safety of steps of the Trocadéro. It hit Ladybug as she looked at the scene, that Lieutenant Roux was no longer in charge of Akuma cases. She knew that she had heard that on the news, but watching how the police stayed back, not attacking Stoneheart or risking civilian lives, really made it a reality to her. She just hoped they were staying back because they knew attacking would just make the situation worse and not just because Stoneheart had the mayors daughter. 

The police had sectioned off the area around the Eiffel Tower, blocking off a large radius along with the entirety of Pont d’Inna, likely either evacuating the surrounding buildings and stores, or sending out a shelter and place order. Or she at least hope they did, sometimes they forgot to give out warnings so people who didn’t watch the news would sometimes wondering into the middle of fights, though the Eiffel Tower was enough of an Akuma hot spot that the police and news helicopters should be enough to keep people away. 

“I demand my daughter’s safe return!” Mayor Bourgeois was saying through a megaphone as the two heroes approached. 

“Daddy!” Chloe yelled, her voice carrying all the way down to them on the other side of the bridge from the tower. 

“You’re welcome to her!” Stoneheart bellowed.

Oh, that wasn’t good.

Ladybug rushed forward as Chloe was thrown from the tower towards the mayor and the police that waited with him. As the mayor and Chloe screamed, Ladybug threw her yoyo forward, wrapping it around a part of the tower and pulling herself forward. She slammed into Chloe, skitter a stop a couple meters away form the mayor, landing on one knee, holding Chloe bridal style. 

“I didn’t promise.” Chloe said.

“What?” 

Chloe didn’t answer her, instead rushing towards her father, who met her half way and pulled her into a big hug. “My little princess,” he muttered.

“We’re clear to attack!” Lieutenant Raincomprix yelled from atop one father police cars. So much for have an officer in charge that wasn’t going to be more of a problem then a solution. 

“Wait! Don’t attack! You’ll only make it worse.” Ladybug said, turning to the officers. Did they not pay attention to yesterday's battle at all. “Look what happened yesterday when Lieutenant Roux attacked instead of letting us do our jobs.”

“You mean where you failed to stop Stoneheart from continuing to attack the city?” Lieutenant Roux demanded. “You failed us yesterday and its time for the pros to step in and do our jobs of keeping Paris safe.”

“Attacking him directly is only going to make him more powerful.” Ladybug insisted. “And you run the risk of injuring a innocent civilian, an innocent school child. Just because Stoneheart release Chloe, didn’t mean he release the other civilian.”

“What about all those innocent civilians that were turned into rock monsters last night? We take Stoneheart down and they’ll return to normal.”

“But you don’t know that. Let Chat Noir and I deal with this, and in an hour, if everything isn’t back to normal, then you can do it your way.” Ladybug tried bargaining. 

Roger Raincomprix seemed to think over her offer. “You have half an hour.” he finally said. 

Ladybug nodded, turning around to face her partner. Before she could come up with a plan with him, Stoneheart started coughing, falling back from where her stood to the actual Platform. Ladybug felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. The last time an akuma had started coughing was when, during their first akuma battle, when Hawkmoth had contacting them, and informed all of Paris of his presence, via a giant face of baffled up butterflies. Purifying all of those had been a pain in the ass, and Ladybug wasn’t looking forward to doing again. 

She tried not to sigh out loud when a face of dark purple and black butterflies had been caught out by Stoneheart, forming Hawkmoths face. There were almost triple the amount of butterflies as the last time, creating an even larger face.

“For months now,” Hawkmoth said through his butterfly face. A part of her wondered if she could use ladybugs in the same way, or if Chat Noir could do it with a bunch of cats. “You have lived in fear, unable to express you emotions. Ladybug and Chat Noir could have out an end to all of this that first day. All they had to do was hand over their Miraculouses, the ladybug earrings and car ring now, and you’d no longer have to live in fear. Ladybug and Chat Noir, the two of you have done enough damage to the people of Paris.”

Oh, Ladybug felt anger building inside her, no way was he going to let the blame fall on them when he was the one terrorizing Paris. She took a calming breath before starting to slow clap, as she slowly walked closer to the floating face. “Nice try,” she said, “but we know who the bad guy is.”

She wasn’t going to let Hawkmoth radicalize the people who were already iffy on her and Chat Noir and create a divide in Paris, allowing Hawkmoth to have more victims to akumatize. 

“Let’s not reverse the roles.” she continued. “You turned these innocent victims into villains. You have taken people who have rightfully felt upset or angry, something every human should be allowed to do, and made it into something people fear. You are the true villain here, not us and not the people of Paris. Hawkmoth, I make this promise to you, and to the people of Paris, no matter how long it takes, we will find you and you’ll hand us your Miraculous!”

She rushed forward, twirling her yoyo in the air as she went before flinging it out and wrapping it around two streetlights and slingshotting herself into the air and towards the floating butterfly face. She wasn’t going to put up with this BS. She twisted herself in the air, her yoyo flinging and twisting out around her, catching each and every butterfly with a yell of her now iconic saying, ‘time to de-evilize’. Hawkmoth didn’t even try to fight back against her attack making her think that the only capabilities of the butterfly face was as a communication form. 

She landed on the first viewing platform of the Tower and turned to face the people of Paris, either the officers and officials that were down below or to all the people of the Paris watching from the safety of their homes. 

“Let me make this promise!” She called out to them. “Whoever wants to harm you, Chat Noir and I will do all we can to keep you safe.” She took out her yoyo and released the mass of purified butterflies. She made a silent promise to herself to never let herself get distracted again, to never fail again. 

“Ok, Hawkmoth,” Ladybug turned around and saw the neon purple butterfly outline on Stonehearts face. Seemed like since Hawkmoth failed to intimidate them, he was falling back on  trying to beat the Miraculouses off of them. 

Chat Noir joined her into jumping in front of Stoneheart. 

“Help me!” Mylène called, unfortunately not having been released from Stonehearts hand when he had collapsed.

“You’ll never take Mylène from me!” Stoneheart yelled. He jumped across the platform, shaking the entire tower as he landed, causing her and Chat Noir to fall down. “Come to me, my stone beings!”

“We’re surrounded.” Chat Noir said as he glanced over the towers edge. “What are we going to do now? Attacking him is only going to make him more powerful.”

“At least we know where his object is,” Ladybug said, happy they had one less thing to worry about. 

“In the fist he’s got Mylène in,” Chat Noir finished for her. 

“Exactly,” she frowned in thought. “So, he’s in love with her… That’s it! We don’t separate them, we bring them closer together. They’re made for each other, they just don’t know it.”

“Sure.” Chat Noir said, as she flew off. She knew he didn’t quite get what she meant yet, but if there was one thing her partner was good at, it was going with the flow until her plan became more obvious. It’s one of the things that made them such great partners. She was a strategist, coming up with the ideas, while he was the muscles, executing the important part of the plan most of them time, while keeping her on her feet and from getting too stuck in her head.

She flung her yoyo up the tower, hopping up the side of it, as she started to plan the smaller details of how she was going to get Ivan and Mylène closer. Chat Noir followed behind her, able to scale the tower without the use of his baton. Once she was past the bulk of the tower, she flung her yoyo up, using it to propel herself all the way to the top of the tower, past Stoneheart and Mylène and the news helicopters that Stoneheart was swatting at. 

“Help! I’m scared of heights!” Mylène called out to her, seeing her land land at the very top of the tower. 

“It’ll be alright!” she called back, trying to reassure her classmate. It wasn’t like she was trying to be stealthy at the moment. 

Stoneheart didn’t like that, throwing his head back and roaring at her. 

“Anything you need to me to do yet?” Chat Noir called out, as he prepared to fight off the stone beings which had quickly scaled the tower and were closing in. 

“Not quite yet.” she yelled down at him. She was missing a key element. Good thing she had the perfect thing to get said element. “Lucky Charm!”

A parachute fell down to her. At least this was a lucky charm that made sense right off the bat. She slipped the parachute onto her back, ignoring Chat Noir flying through the air behind her back. She knew he hand things under control and could handle the stone beings, especially when he looked on form and determined as he flew through the air. 

She stood straight up from where she had been perched, flinging her yoyo around in the air in the same manor she would if she were trying to shield herself. She studied Stonehearts body position before flinging her yoyo down at him, wrapping it under his arm and torso, leveraging it so that when her pulled, quite hard, stone wasn’t light after all, his fist went towards his body, pulling Mylène closer until her lips gently pressed against Stonehearts. She retracting her yoyo as Stonehearts had flew out in surprise, releasing Mylène, who just managed to grab onto one of Stonehearts fingers to keep from plummeting to the ground. 

Chat Noir, the clever kitty, threw himself off the edge of the tower, using his baton as a bungee cord, falling just far enough to smack the akumatize object back up to her, without her even asking. She caught the akumatized object with her yoyo, wrapping the cord around it and pulling tight, cracking it. She slipped the piece of paper that was left, into her yoyo to give back later. 

She ran her finger along her yoyo face, opening it up to catch to yoyo. She started swinging it, “No more evil-doing for you, little Akuma.” she stopped though, before she could catch it as she saw Stoneheart turn back into Ivan, something that wouldn’t sometime happen until she casted the cure which was something she was hoping for. He and Mylène started plummeting to the ground. 

She set her face in determination, taking a moment to glance at where the Akuma was before diving from the tower. “Chat Noir, take care of Ivan,” she order, focused on Mylène as she pressed her legs and arms tightly in, allowing her to fall faster then both of her classmates who were flailing around.

She saw Chat Noir call for his power, jumping from his baton and grabbing onto a piece of rusty Eiffel Tower that had extruded from the tower when he touched it with his hand. It extended until he was under Ivan, catching him easily. Satisfied that Ivan was safe, she dropped down to Mylène, grabbing her around her torso before turning around and shooting her yoyo up in the air catching the akuma before it could get any farther away. “Gotcha,” she said as her yoyo returned to her. She yanked on her parachutes cord before they could fall any farther. They sailed gently to the ground, handing at the base of the tower. Mylène fell to her knees, mostly likely shaky from the days events. 

Ladybug pulled her yoyo back out and opened it up. “Bye bye, little butterfly,” she said as the pure white butterfly flew away. She grabbed the parachute and tossed it in the air. “Miraculous Ladybug!” The parachute instantly dissolved into thousands of little ladybugs. She loved watching the cure fly about the city as the little ladybugs fixed everything that had been damaged or changed throughout the last two days. 

“I don’t think I’m ever going to find this not beautiful,” Chat Noir said as he helped Ivan over to them.

“Yeah. It’s the best part of doing this.” There was something just so magical, so miraculous about watching the cure work.

She stood by Ivan and Mylène as the police started breaking down their barricade, and helping the people who had been turned into stone beings down from the tower. Chat Noir stood a couple feet away, letting Ivan and Mylène have their privacy, while keeping his eyes on them, making sure none of the police tried to harass or grab Ivan to interrogate him. It hadn’t happened in awhile, but was still a worry that the two of them had. 

“I think you two need to talk,” she said to her classmates. 

“I-I,” Ivan stuttered. He glanced away, embarrassed.

She turned to Mylène, deciding to help out her larger classmate. “It may help if you read the lyrics to Ivan’s song.” she told the shorter girl. She pulled out the piece of paper that the song was written on, handing it to Mylène before heading over to her partner, leaving the two to figure out their feelings by theirselves. She’s meddled enough for the day.

She watched as the two talked before Mylène hugged Ivan tightly, causing the bigger boy to blush. Smiling she turned to her partner. “They’re made for each other.” she announced. 

“Like us too,” Chat Noir said, leaning to put an arm around her. 

She grabbed his arm, pulling him forward and pointing to his ring. “See that? You’re out of time,” she told him. She may of let him put his arm around her had them been out of public eye but she wanted to stay professional when they were being watching and a relationship wasn’t professional. Not that she and Chat Noir were in a romantic relationship. She couldn’t be in one with someone who she didn't know beneath the mask they wore, whom she couldn’t share most of her life with. She cared for her partner dearly, but she wouldn’t allow her emotions to go there. 

She turned and started to head away as her earrings let out their own beep. “Time to split. See you soon, Chat Noir,” she said to him. She glanced back in time to see him waving to her before she flew off, heading home to see whether or not school was going to reopen for the day though it likely was. She wonder as Akuma attacks became more often if the school board would decided to force kids back to school right after attacks whether they were in a traumatizing situation or not so that they didn’t fall behind on their studies.

The next day she, once again on time, heading to school and met Alya right outside of the building. She was really liking having a civilian friend. 

“How’d the akuma attack go? Get some good footage?” she asked Alya. She had been too tired, and her parents had wanted to spend extra time together the night before, and hadn’t been able to check the Ladyblog. 

Alya let out a dramatic sigh. “By the time I biked to the Eiffel Tower, it was all over. I’m way bummed.” she said. Marinette wasn’t. She was glad her friend hadn’t been in any danger besides almost being pinned by a flying car. She didn’t get how Alya could be so gung ho about putting herself into dangerous situations. 

“On the plus side,” Alya continued. “I did get rescued by Ladybug which was amazing.”

“You’ll get your scoop eventually,” Marinette reassured her friend. Hopefully it’d be from a safe distance. 

“You’re right,” Alya agreed. “Next target; ‘Ladybug: An Exclusive Interview.’”

“Sounds exciting,” and Chat Noir had been insisting that they do more interviews to connect better with the people of Paris and make themselves more relatable to try and battle the officers and officials that had been speaking out against them, saying they should leave the akumas to the police. 

“Oh, wait, even better,” Alya said, looking excited. “Finding out who’s really under that mask!”

And that was a lot less exciting. “Good luck with that one,” Marinette said nervously trying to keep Alya from sensing anything off about her. She’d have to warn Chat Noir about this development. So far they hadn’t had any press trying to follow them but that may change. Alya trying to figure their identities out them spark a fire under professional reports and the two of them find themselves in sticky situations. 

The two of them heading into class, Marinette taking a moment to deal with Chloe for a day. The second Marinette walked into the classroom though, she felt a spike of anger overtake her calmness. She was Ladybug. Why did she let Chloe walk all over her? Alya had proved that she wasn’t all powerful and she defiantly wasn’t scarier then any Akuma. 

“No, wait.” Marinette said as Alya went to their seat, determined. She hopped up the steps and gestured to the seat she had sat in last year and the years before, smiling at her friend. Alya smiled back up at her, joining her on the second platform, sliding in first so she sat close to the wall. Marinette slid in after her, both of them smiling to each other as they sat down. They fist bumped each other before Chloe walked in, Sabrina trailing behind her. 

“You’re in the wrong seats,” Chloe said, turning to the angrily. She pointed to where the two of them had been forced to sit before. “Go on, get lost.”

Marinette looked down at Chloe, determined. “All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good people do nothing,” she quoted. 

“That’s that supposed to mean?” Chloe asked, puffing her shoulders up in a little huffed laugh.

“It means I’m not putting up with your crus anymore, either is anyone else.” Marinette informed her. She stood up and pointed to the seat that had previously been hers and Alya’s. “So take your attitude and go and get lost!”

The rest of the class started laughing at the sight of Chloe being told off, not exactly what she had wanted but at least it showed Chloe that she wasn’t by herself with being done with the heiresses BS. 

Chloe glared but the laughing seemed to deter her from doing anything at the moment. She stomped off the seats Marinette had pointed to, all while still glaring at her. Marinette just confidently put her hands on her hips and smiled at her, refusing to let the blond get to her. If she couldn’t handle Chloe, how could she be expected to handle Hawkmoth.

She sat back down and Alya gently pushed her shoulder. “Good job,” she said.

She smiled softly at her friend before looking up to see the blond boy, Adrien, who had put the piece of gum on her seat. He gave her a little wave as if she was going to remember what had happened the other day. She turned to look away from him with a huff. At least Chloe had the decently to act like the bitch she was. 

She spent the rest of the day ignoring the models existence. She just got Chloe out of her life, she wasn’t about to invite new trouble in.

Marinette headed out of the school building at the end of the day, disappointed that she couldn’t use the Ladybug miraculous to get herself home, especially when she had forgotten her umbrella and it was raining cats and dogs. She stood under the roof and stretched her hand out before dropping it with a sigh. She was so going to get soaked. She pulled her backpack off, knowing she would have to wait for the rain to die down a bit. Knowing her she trip on a wet step, break her leg, and then who would be Ladybug?

“Hey,” She turned around to see Adrien standing behind her, an umbrella grasped in his hand. 

She huffed, looking away from him. Why couldn’t he just act more like Chloe? Why did he have to act like everything was okay.

He extending his umbrella and took a step out into the rain. He took a step, maybe two, before stoping. “I just want you to know,” he said, not turning to face her. “I was only trying to get the gum off, I swear.” Marinette just starred at him, sensing no dishonesty from him. “I’ve never been to school before. I’ve never had friends. it’s all sort of new to me.” He glanced back at her, shrugging as if to say he didn’t care if she forgave him, that he just wanted her to know the truth.  He stared at her a second before handing her his umbrella.

Marinette stared at him, glancing between the umbrella and his face, which showed genuine emotion. Either he wasn’t playing with her, or he was the best actor she had ever seen. She hesitantly reached out and took hold of the umbrella. No one had ever apologized to her, especially not for something Chloe had done. They just expected her to get over it. They met each others eyes for just a moment before her world went dark. it took her a second to realize the umbrella had collapsed, just her luck.

Adrien started to laugh, but it wasn’t one full of venom, it was one that was surprised that the umbrella had collapsed and didn’t know how else to react. Marinette pulled up one edge of the umbrella to peak up at him, her heart beating as her cheeks warmed. She couldn’t help it, she started laughing with him. 

“I’m Marinette by the way,” she introduced her self. “Sorry that I jumped to conclusions the other day.”

Adrien look at her surprised on his face. “Well Marinette,” he said with a familiar smirk on his face. “My name is Adrien, but you can call me Prince Charming.”

Marinette felt her world come to a halt. She flashback to several months ago when she and Chat Noir had made the decision to share first names. She had gone first, surprising her partner but when he shared his name he had said the exact same thing.

“It’s nice to meet you Adrien,” she said numbly. 

“It’s nice to meet you as well, Maribug.” 

And she was an idiot. The person she thought was a massive jerk was actually her very kind and well meaning partner. 

Before she could say anything else a car horn sounded from the road in front of the school steps.

“That’s my ride,” Adrien said as if they hadn’t just discovered each others identities. “I’ll see you later.”

“S-see you l-later,” she stammered. She watch him approached the car, unable to tell if she felt numb or was about to have a panic attack. “I think I’m in trouble, Tikki,” she muttered.

Tikki flew up and pressed against her cheek. “Things all happen for a reason. Maybe there’s a reason that the two of you have met like this. You just don’t have all the pieces to see the bigger picture yet.”

That made her feel a bit better. At least Tikki didn’t think them meeting was the end of the world. 

Marinette watched Adrien drive off, or well be driven away, before she made her way home. Today had been a day, yesterday had been a day, and she couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow would bring, especially with Adrien, her Chaton, in her everyday life. 

Next

[always-winter-baby]

feel free to add anything i missed, endgame haters.

This is a Wordpress post that I never posted about a Facebook post that I made last fall (2019) about how godawful Endgame was.

-------- I know I've been gone for a while and when I was here, I was writing about films I had watched. (Maybe I should start that.)

However, I am a HUGE fan of Marvel and their cinematic universe. I have the movies, the comics, the clothing, and far too much memorabilia to be considered a "casual" fan at this point. I've been reading comics for about twelve years and I started dedicating myself to the MCU around the end of Phase One.

That being said, it means everyone comes to me with their Marvel questions and everyone comes to me to see what I thought of each new film. And I don't give simple, "It was good. I really liked it," answers. I make complete strangers regret their own questions sometimes because I dive into the deep end immediately describing how they really pulled off the Mysterio "mind-bending" stuff fantastically, but how the story hinged really hard on Tony Stark when Peter in the comics stands on his own and Peter in the MCU should be able to as well.

I can give you speeches on the reason why Natasha's backstory would have been better established in The Winter Soldier than Age of Ultron or and how killing off Pietro in his first film did a disservice to Wanda's character, etc, etc. In the words of a person I passed by at work the other day, "I can talk the ears off a snake."

That's not the point of this post. That was just establishing that I am very dedicated and I Care deeply about these characters and this world.

That being said, when someone on Facebook not too long ago asked me to share my opinions on Avengers: Endgame, I asked him if he was really prepared for the novel I was going to spill on why I think that Endgame was a poorly written and directed film. He said his was. But his lack of any response to my novel was proof that he clearly was not.

However, for anyone else wondering, I copied that little book of a response and I'm posting it here. It's a little scrambled up (it was a facebook post so these things happen, okay?). I think it will still get the point across as to why I tell people that if I pulled the good parts of Endgame, I could make a really great thirty minute Avengers movie.

The post went as follows:

-Thor’s characterization was a three hour long fat joke. Thor had the most character growth out of anyone in Infinity War. His part was fantastic. Then they turned around and made everything about it completely idiotic. Thor has lived over a thousand years. He’s lost battles and lost countless, countless people before. Infinity War wasn’t the first time he made a mistake in battle that cost someone their life. He lost his entire family and almost all of friends and none of that turned him into lazy, sloppy, unshowered, fat Thor. I refuse to believe this time would magically break him. Character annihilation.

Banner has hated the Hulk for the entirety of Hulk’s existence. He’s talked about how exposed and vulnerable it makes him feel. He’s always been a quiet, shy, reclusive, and work-focused kind of guy. Now magically, he’s happy being Hulk 24/7, dabs, and takes selfies with kids? He’s hanging out in public as Hulk and drawing attention to himself? Sorry. Refuse to believe it. I know Professor Hulk is from the comics. It seems stupid and forced there too. I’m not of the opinion that just because something is found in comics that it’s necessarily a good thing. I’ve read plenty of bad comics as I’m sure any decent comic reader has.

-Tony isn’t awful. I actually think he’s done pretty well. No complaints.

-However, Pepper is awful. And it makes sense now that they’ve released the info that Gwyneth Paltrow just made up a lot of her own lines. She doesn’t know the character despite having played her for a decade. Pepper is always super cautious and she is constantly on Tony’s case about his heroic ventures, etc. Therefore, I find it incredibly hard to believe that she let him go without a fight after he “solved time travel.” I also find it absolutely impossible that she sits beside him as he’s dying and is peaceful enough to just tell Tony that he’s okay and he should rest. Per her character for the last decade, she should have been frantic. Of course it wouldn’t have been as sad and poetic an ending, but it would have been much more believable for the character.

-Clint. Meh. I can live with Clint, I think. I don’t love it or hate it. I am glad they reestablished his closeness with Natasha after AoU tried to erase it.

-Natasha. I actually like Natasha’s character in this one. Same as Tony, I think they wrote her without compromising her. Good for them. Even though I hate that they killed her off, I think that the final scene where she fights Clint is SO WELL DONE. (Except her father wasn’t named Ivan. Not even in the MCU. But whatever. Maybe Markus and McFeely know absolutely nothing about Russian names despite giving Natasha’s full name in CA:TWS. I’ll chalk it up to ignorance. Whatever.) HOWEVER, despite liking Natasha’s character and death scene, the death should not have happened. I don’t know if you’re a comic reader, but if you are, you know that the trip happens where you see the bad guy or a random person or whatever do a Bad Thing. Then later in the comic, when the Bad Thing comes into play again and there seems like absolutely no hope, the hero pulls out One Last Magic Trick. The hero manages to do what the previous person could not. And they Save the Day because they are the hero. And the hero is the one designed to give readers hope that we can overcome all odds, etc. It is literally the entire point of superhero stories to tell the stories that “realistic” books never could. We’ll come back to my complaint with Natasha’s death in a moment.

-Scott, Rhodey, Rocket, Carol were all fine. No complaints. But Okoye.

They made it out in promo that Okoye was going to have a much more significant part. She was barely in the thing. And I think it was a very missed opportunity. We saw T’Challa turn to dust. And we were told Shuri did (although, I would have paid much bigger money to see her alive and operating as The Black Panther. She’s assumed that mantle in the comics before so definitely not out of the realm of possibility.) I wanted them to show us what Wakanda would look like with half its population dusted and its ruler gone. Does M’Baku rule? What do Okoye and the Dora Milaje look like now without their King and who do they protect/defend? They had a great opportunity to show us how the world was faring after five years post-Snap, especially a place like Wakanda that rarely suffers any devastations due to their tech. Now without that protection, how are they handling the aftermath? Enormous missed opportunity.

-Steve. On my god. Where do I even start? Going into Endgame, Steve Rogers had the BEST story arc of anyone in the MCU. But here is where Marvel really shot themselves in the foot. They let the opinions of fans after Civil War severely alter their original plans for this film. (That’s a fact that’s been admitted by former Marvel employees. I didn’t make that up.). After Civil War came out, there were two strong opinions being voiced. 1) Fans who didn’t know the comics didn’t understand Sharon being there and didn’t like her quickly becoming Steve’s love interest. 2) Fans saw the always-present and ever-growing bond between Steve and Bucky and got bolder about their campaign that Steve and Bucky were a couple. Doesn’t matter if you’re for that or not. The fact of the matter is that the idea of them as a couple has A BIG FOLLOWING. I don’t think people were really pushing to see it become a real thing on screen or anything, but the execs at Marvel suddenly did this thing where they all quickly shouted “NO HOMO” really loudly and promptly dropped Bucky from as many scenes as possible. They admitted to creating distance between Steve and Bucky for this reason. And because Steve and Sharon didn’t get the reaction they wanted, they had Steve go back and get back with Peggy.

But let’s recap here and see if any of that makes sense for Steve Rogers.

—He and Bucky were “inseparable on both playground and battlefield.”

—He literally broke the law and went behind enemy lines against orders just in case he had even the slightest chance of finding and saving Bucky from a Hydra base. He didn’t even know if Bucky was still alive.

—He added Bucky to his elite team and they fought side by side until Bucky’s “death.” When Bucky “died,” Steve went from saying, “I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies” to saying, “I’m not going to stop until all of Hydra is dead or captured.”

—Years later, when he realized Bucky was still alive, he literally stopped mid-fight and dropped all defenses. Later in the same film (on the helicarrier), he refuses to even fight Bucky. He drops his shield and was going to very willingly let Bucky kill him rather than fight him.

— When the Accords become a thing, Steve defied his own friends and 117 countries to get Bucky to safety. And then continues defying them with Bucky at his side because he is determined that Bucky deserves due process and a lawyer and help, not imprisonment.

— He helps Bucky get somewhere safe to hide and recover and visits him there. (Russos said they even discussed showing that Steve and Bucky were in regular contact between CW and IW.)

—He fights the Battle of Wakanda with Bucky and then gets to see him disintegrate right in front of him. It’s built up to be a very big moment. Bucky collapses into nothingness and Steve sits there touching Bucky’s dust remnants and with tears in his eyes. “Oh, God.”

—Then, magically comes Endgame and Steve is in a support group for people lost in the Snap and he’s grieving over PEGGY??? HE NEVER EVEN WENT ON A DATE WITH PEGGY. NOT ONE DATE. He kissed her ONE TIME very briefly 75+ years ago! HOW CAN HE BE SO SURE THEY WERE SOULMATES?! This is just awful writing.

— Then when everyone is brought back through the portals, Steve doesn’t even look for Bucky to make sure he’s there. They fight far away from one another. They never acknowledge the other one. These men have literally looked at each other before thinking that would be the last face they ever saw and then at the Battle to End All Things, they don’t even glance around to see if the other is present.

— Steve literally barely says goodbye to Bucky. He fought and was willing to die for the man, but now he is in such a rush to get back to that one girl he kissed that one time that he forsakes the people he should care about. (Sebastian Stan says he questioned this to the Russos and was actually told to just imagine Steve and Bucky must have talked it over offscreen and Sebastian tried to fight it, but was shot down.)

— Steve jumps in a time machine and goes back to live with his supposed soulmate thus creating an alternate timeline.

I have a real problem with this. A man who has been selfless his entire life chose to go and be selfish for 75+ years instead of helping anyone. This man lives to fight injustices and we are supposed to forget that? In order to believe that he went back to a woman he didn’t know that well and who already had a husband/children. CA:TWS showed that she had lived a happy life. She told him she only regretted that he didn’t get to live his. She didn’t regret them not getting to spend theirs together. And he didn’t seem to either. He was actively moving forward with his life. Thus the reason for Sharon.

Anyway, his entire story arc which is based around him being partners with Bucky and him being selfless got absolutely destroyed when he went back in the time machine and just ran away from everything he had built.

Which seems more likely? That everything in the three Cap films and IW was wrong about his character? Or that Endgame just slapped a big “No Homo” sticker on the script and did whatever they could possibly do to make sure fans could not say that Steve and Bucky were a thing?

Furthermore, I have no problem with Sam becoming the next Cap. I have a big problem with them doing it if the reason was to further the sever the ties between Steve and Bucky.

-And the Russos said that Bucky couldn’t be Cap because his mind had been compromised and that he couldn’t be trusted with a weapon. Which means that Bucky’s whole recovery story was what? A lie? They established that Bucky was really a great guy and not a terrible terrorist. And they said Shuri fixed his mind. And we still can’t trust the guy with the shield?

So either Shuri failed dramatically even though we saw her talent and progress with him in Black Panther and IW, Bucky is now magically “too broken,” or the writers and directors are stupid.  Your call, I guess.

They literally foreshadowed Bucky!Cap in all three Cap films. Bucky handles the shield in ALL THREE FILMS. But now he can’t be trusted with a weapon? Now he’s dangerous? He literally fought the battle of Wakanda with knives and an assault rifle. The shield is a DEFENSE weapon. So this excuse is the flimsiest argument ever and says horrible things about putting trust/faith in people after they’ve been victims and recovered from trauma. Gross.

-At least they FINALLY got Scarlet Witch right. I’ve been waiting to see my favorite Avenger done right for years. No complaints here except it took them long enough.

-Let’s not even discuss how their time travel ideas and theories are a MESS. Plot holes everywhere. (Steve would have created a new time line by going back. Did he just magically put the aether back in Jane? Did he have to kick Red Skull’s ass again on Vormir because I can’t imagine he would just stand by idly. This stuff would take me too long to even add onto here.)

-But back to Natasha. If it’s a “soul for a soul,” then when Steve returned the soul stone, he should have gotten Natasha back. Apparently a lot of fans saw this plot hole because they asked the Russos about it and the response they seriously got was something to the idea of, “No, you can’t do that. It doesn’t work that way.” Which WHY NOT? (Apparently because of poor writing.)

-Also not bitter (yeah right) that Tony got this big deal send off and everyone forgot about Natasha half an hour after she died. Shouldn’t the big send off at the end have been for both of them?!?! Would that have been SO hard?!

-Should I even discuss the fact that for some stupid reason Steve goes back in time and the serum stops working? Why does he age? Thor establishes in AoU that he doesn’t think Steve is mortal. And Peggy says in CA:TFA that Steve’s cells regenerate at four times the rate of average human cells. So he should still be fairly young even if he went back to the 40s. He shouldn’t start to age like a regular human just because he time traveled. He didn’t travel back to before he got the serum. I literally said, “No,” angrily the second they showed the back of Steve when he was sitting on that bench at the end. The other people in the theater turned to look at me and I was already pissed as hell and the movie wasn’t even over yet.

-Nebula having to kill her last self just seemed sloppy and cliche. I wasn’t impressed. That character had been through hell.  She is the one who really turns the tides in in the Infinity Saga comics so for her to get such poor treatment in the film?  SHE should have been the one to kill Thanos.  I know what Thor said, but Nebula literally has a lifetime of torture to make up for and she would have gotten some small consolation in avenging the death of her sister. GUH.  THIS MAKES ME SO ANGRY.  SHE DESERVED THIS.

-So we really just backtracked and retconned Gamora’s whole story like that, huh?  I’m sure James Gunn is thrilled. (I’m joking. I’d be annoyed to high heavens if I were him.) Gunn had literally written this character’s story arc and progression and the Russos and Markus/McFeely took over and then literally wrote the story equivalent of “and then they all died” with Gamora’s story.  Such a jerk move and I sincerely hope Gunn finds a way to make GotG Vol 3 work out really well despite this.

I’m sure there’s more I’m unhappy with, but you get my point. I had high hopes for this film and they did not deliver.

It’s been months and I am still so immensely disappointed in Endgame. I expected the people who had written such great films in the past to deliver with another great film and they did not.

It wasn’t a completely awful film though. I thought they did a really good job with Doctor Strange and Wanda (finally!). And I loved Steve lifting Mjölnir! Carol’s short hair made me hot and bothered.  So the film had a few perks. 

I have friends who liked the film until I started pointing out its flaws. Sorry, not sorry. I'm glad Marvel broke box office records, but I'm not going to lie to anyone and say it was with a great film.

They are ----- And look, I never posted it on my blog because the rant ends there mid sentence and was never completed, but I think it’s safe to say I’m not happy.  That great cinematic masterpiece is a mockery of good character arcs. Anyone is welcome to try, but I’m unlikely to change my mind.

ETA: Since writing this, I have found multiple things about Tony’s character that upset me too.

[my-creepypasta-story]

Found a Missing Tape

“Okay, okay! Are you ready for the big adventure Fred?” he looked at his friend with excitement, his body jittered with joy, as he was like bouncing off the walls.

“Yes! Now can we need to hurry up Ben, I don’t want it to be too late” his friend rolled his eyes as he got a cam recorder in his hand.

Both guys were excited to film their first YouTube video. It was 2009 and Youtube only started to become popular They packed their rucksaks with food, extra batteries , torches, lights that’s attached to the recorder and tripods to take epic pictures. Even tho it was middle of Winter in January, they were still rearing to go. For a while they had their own Facebook page to take abandoned photos of builds, the eerie lifeless of buildings, gave it a creepy surprise. Like it was from a zombie movie. Both guys were best friends since highschool and they do everything together. Fred was tall and skinny, at least 6.2ft, his hair was brown but curly and he hardly brushed it, everyone called him ‘bush’ but since leaving school he like his own name, he had a skater style along with Ben. Ben was Chinese but he spoke English fluently and could only say a few Chinese words to pick up women, even tho it never worked. Ben was 5.8ft, an average looking guy, but love to wear black, even tho had the skater heart. Brown hair, brown eyes, with a tan too match, compared to Fred, he was a pastey white boy. They were still best friends without a doubt.

“Okay I’m all set” as they got into Ben’s car, stopped by the gas station before they hit to their destination. “Heyy Fred, Do you think it’s still abandoned? I’ve heard stories about that place man? I don’t think we should go?”

Fred ran back and jumped into the car, shouting out through the window “dude! It’s going to be awesome! We are going to take wicked sick videos and pictures. And anyways, our friends been there before you know, that big party they had but we were sick. It should be okay”. Ben just nodded as he finishing up the tank and paying it on his card. They drove into the distance, early hours in the morning.

Hours went by, soon as they came across the building, they parked up and hiked to the place where they were going to film. Fred and Ben were infront of the camera “heyy guys! It’s me Fred and Ben! Coming to you, to this abaoned location. Now this place is so old and so creepy, we had to see it! It’s an asylum but was going turn into a hotel. But now abandoned! Ain’t that cool!”

Ben smiled and using hand gestures “dude it’s going to be fucking cool! So I looked into the buildings history! We are in Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. This place was said to be haunted! Cool right! Apparently they tested on their own patients and did lobotomies, where the doctors used an ice pick and went through your brain, from your eye. Dude that’s creepy”

Fred interrupted “and and and, local people are still saying, the patients who died here along with doctors and nurses, are still here. Spooookkyy!”

Bed interrupted “so we are here! Going inside and look around! Ain’t that cool dude?”

“So cool” replied Fred, with extreme anticipation.

Ben was holding the camera will Fred was looking around, both followed into the dark rooms and the light lead them the way. Each find of a wheelchair, an operation table was well documented. The paint was peeling off and the green mould was growing in the corners of some of the rooms. Each of them had this sadness that they couldn’t wait to be here. Fred insisted Ben to hold the camera while Ben was doing the entertaining and giving out more history stories.

“So, this room I bet is where they did the lobotomies...” then suddenly they both got interrupted by a sound near by. They both went quiet and tip toed to the noise.

11 years later.

“Omg I cannot believe you found this place” Bailey flirtatiously teasing her boyfriend John, their friend Ivan couldn’t wait to leave. Bailey a typical girl with died red hair, black shorts with a grey tank top and John wearing his jeans with a graphic tee that had on ‘Rick and Morty’. Ivan was wearing something similar to John since they were friends. All three in college and a few YouTubers visited the asylum too; then all went to this Building in Virginia because they all went to college near by. They all got bored during summer break and before they head back home, they wanted to do some exploring. Searching on the web, Bailey wanted to go to an Asylum to cross off her bucket list.

After a few minutes of guessing on google maps, they finally found it. All derelict and no one around, the only sounds are the birds cheeping in the distance. It felt peaceful, they tried to go inside the asylum. The doors were falling off and the black mould growing up the walls in the hallway. As they approached a dead end since the building was falling apart, they decided to head home. As they were walking, Bailey shouted “wait a minute guys, I think I see a cam recorder” John grabbed Ivan and they both followed Bailey. The room was an old office and nothing haven’t been touched for decades. The papers were still there along with documation of the patients that stayed. John grabbed them and Ivan followed, he went into the filing cabinets and took as much information as they could. Bailey put the cam recorder in her bag and all of them headed to the car.

Driving back to the college, she said “most of this tape is fried and slightly damp. Do you think Paris can take a look for us?”

Ivan replied as he was driving on the highway “I don’t see why not. What do you think is in there?”

Bailey handed over the cam recorder to John “whatever is inside, it’s been there along time. Strange that something like this is in there”

They all headed to Paris, who was the head at the media department. For a teacher, she had piercings on her lips and ears, tattoos all over her body. For a 42 year old, she looked 10 years younger. “Wow I haven’t seen something like this in 11 years! Back then, this was state of the art! Still working just the tape is a bit damp. Maybe tomorrow it will be finished. Where did you guys find it?”

Bailey shrugged and was nervous to talk “we found it at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum”

“You fucking what! That place is bad news! How did you even go there?” Screamed Paris as she folded her arms looking at John and Ivan. They both shrugged and looked down with disappointment.

“Do you know what... fine I will do it. Only because I’m curious myself” Paris held the cam recorder and took out the tape which was slightly damaged. The three of them walked out and closed the door behind them.

3am the next morning

*Ring, ring ring* “ugh... hey babe, can you get that” muttered John as he woke up Bailey. She muttered, picked up the phone from the bed night stand “yeahh, this is John’s phone. What the fuck do you want at this... yeahh. Wait now?! .... Do I have... okay... yes we getting dressed.... fine I will get Ivan too.... yes we will be there.... okay, bye” she poked John till he got up. She put on a black dress with her blue sparkley converse on. “John get up” as she took the covers off him “we need to get up now. Get ivan, he needs to come too”

John still in his pjs, he went next door to his dorm and got Ivan. Ivan was in his sweat pants and no top on, luckily he worked out and had a six pack to show off. All half asleep expect for Bailey, she was anxious and her nerves were running high. They both got into Paris’s office and she had beer cans all over her desk; including empty beer cans in the trash that was piling over ready to burst at any moment. Her room was dark and musky, the blinds drawn as you can see the sunrise appearing through at any moment. She got spair chairs from another class room and the three of them sat down, huddled over the computer. “Okay this is fucking creepy and I’ve already called the cops, they are coming in the morning. But you need to see this” as she opened up another beer can, Ivan felt uncomfortable as her breath stank of stale beer. She pressed play as she saw two guys in the video.

Fred and Ben were having a blast, recording everything they could find, even the old theatre. Suddenly they both screamed as the door flew open and a bird flew past them. The guys were laughing their heads off. A few more minutes in, they saw something in the hallway, they ran after it “omg do you think someone else is here” Fred panting to Ben.

“Well whatever it is, it’s fucking cool” then they both stopped. A gastly apparition was following them back, they started to scream. Ben dropped the camera and Paris, John, Ivan and Bailey saw a black face starring into the camera with red eyes. Then black. Suddenly the cam recorder was switched on, Ivan, Paris, John and Bailey all held each other close tight, as they saw something carrying the camera. The background noise was heavy breathing, walking around the asylum as if nothing happened.

Paris pressed stop “that was was fucking freaky”

John was built well and had a deep voice, but it cracked “what the fuck”.

“What was even is that?” Bailey looked over at Ivan as he was in a fetal position, rocking back and forth.

“It doesn’t stop there. 4 years ago when the building was going to change into a hotel like everyone had been promised for fucking years. The builders found the mummified remains of the boys in the basement. It was all over the news, apparently they were missing for years!”

“Omg I remember that... but how did they die?” John asked as he was biting his fingers.

“No one knows, but maybe this video will help” as Paris brought up the screen again with the black face starring at them on the computer screen.

[ecofinisher]

Adrigami Week - First Fight

I totally forgot about the start of the week and just posted it now 😭 @adrigami-week

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21872389/chapters/52204459

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13456678/1/Ecofinisher-s-oneshot-for-the-Adrigami-Week-2

Adrien Agreste stood in front of a two-leveled house holding a red paper bag, then the blonde placed the hand inside the pocket of his pants to take out a bundle of keys, then picked out one by the green hold to unlock the door afterward he entered into the house and closed the door behind him. 

“I’m home” Adrien announced into the corridor of the house, then entered into the living room to see Kagami standing with the smartphone leaned on her ear. “Happy anniversary,” Adrien said, then Kagami looked back at the blonde and sighed in relief as she saw the young man standing behind her.

“There you are,” Kagami said as her husband stood there holding the red paper bag in his hands.

“Didn’t you read my note on the fridge?”

“You mean the note, that you would meet Luka out for a coffee?”

“Yeah….wait were you talking with Luka on the smartphone?” Adrien questioned looking at Kagami, which had crossed her arms and holding on her left hand the smartphone.

“It was Marinette, but she mentioned that Luka was the whole evening with her dinning at the Couffaine’s, there was no chance that you and Luka had actually been together”

“Okay, I got a very good explanation for that, Kagami...”

“It’s 8 pm, I tried to call you to ask if you would arrive later or not,”

“I’m sorry, I forgot the AUX cable at home and couldn’t charge my phone or call you from there to warn you about the traffic around the train station. There were so many police cars and everything was blocked there, you couldn’t enter there” The blonde explained. “I don’t know, what was going on there”

“I saw it on the news” Kagami answered waving at Adrien with the smartphone. “It showed a distorted image of a man similar dressed as you being pushed into the railway in front of a train and I thought it could have been you…..you didn’t attend any of my phone calls, you…..I thought you died!”

“Shhh Kagami no, I’m here, I’m alright, see?” Adrien assured grabbing the Japanese descendant woman on the shoulders to comfort her. “Look I…...”

“Where did you go before?” Kagami asked glaring at the blonde, still unhappy about Adrien’s lie. “Why did you lie to me? Are you hiding something?”

“No, I’m not. I wanted to get you a gift for our wedding anniversary, which I wanted to buy you yesterday, but I’ve forgotten it”

“But why did you lie?” Questioned Kagami raising an eyebrow up. “You could just have said that”

“I could, but it was supposed to be a surprise. I didn’t want to hurt you” Adrien explained grabbing Kagami on her hands, seeing, that his wife still was annoyed, then both shrieked as they heard something break and they looked at the entrance to see a broken vase on the floor with a rose lying over the wet floor and beside it walked a small Tuxedo kitten, tipping with the left front paw on the head of the rose, then it started to play with the rose while Kagami and Adrien watched the cub play.

“I clean that up” Kagami mentioned walking in the corridor. “We got leftovers from last night in the fridge. If you’re hungry, just warm it up” Kagami said passing beside the kitten, which observed the woman pass beside him, making the kitten smile and follow her into the kitchen.

Later Adrien was on the second floor of their house on the balcony having a video call with his best friend Nino, which was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital. Adrien was already dressed in a red boxer shirt and a white tank top, ready for heading to bed afterward.

“Alya’s good, she’s in there with Ivan to see Myléne,” Nino explained. “She’s all good too,”

“That’s great, I’m happy for them” Adrien answered.

“Yeah it’s a memorable moment, mostly for our wives”

“Yeah right,” Adrien agreed, then rolled his eyes into the bedroom to see Kagami wasn’t there yet, then Adrien looked back at the screen to see Nino look at him neutrally as he could sense by only looking at the facial expressions of his best friend, that something wasn’t right.

“Is there trouble between you and Mrs. Agreste?” Nino asked making Adrien shrug his shoulders.

“She hasn’t talked to me for two hours. I think I messed up a lot today”

“What did you do today?”

“I just went out to buy her a gift for our wedding anniversary and I haven’t finished to fully explain my story…..you know I told her instead of going out to buy her something, that I went to meet Luka and somehow today there was something going on at the train station, that a guy similar dressed to me was pushed into the railways and Kagami saw that on the news and believed it was me and spent the whole afternoon believing I was gone”

“Well, that’s shit.... Well, you could have just said you needed to get something from a store without saying it was for her, but I speak now from experience, that almost every one of us lied once or more in their lives to our partners just to prepare a romantic dinner or something else. I know you lied to her out of love because you wanted just to bring her something without her knowledge.”

“That’s even the reason. I just wanted to bring her a gift and just because I told her I was with Luka instead of saying I went to buy something she now doesn’t speak to me”

“Talk to her again, when you see her. If she doesn’t talk to you write her a message or a letter. She has to understand it. You can also promise her you won’t do that again or you do something else instead of coming up with a white lie to cover any of your plans to woo her.”

“I’ll do it. I need to be careful though, she’s pregnant and women are during pregnancy kind of….

“Thin-skinned?” Nino asked. “Dude if you saw Alya’s mood swings you probably would question yourself if that is actually Alya,”

“Just two days ago Kagami acted similar to Rose as our kitten tripped over his toy, calling it mommy’s favorite”

“Could be worse dude, last week Alya just told me Lila went out to eat with her family and she called her husband daddy in front of her own father and believe it or not, if Alya would have said that in front of her dad….I would be dead”

“Okay, that sounds way too far-fetched”

“The blonde barista you met last month at my house told me his wife wanted almost an hour before dinner to eat strawberries with crème and she wouldn’t shut up about it until she got it”

“Oh yeah I know, but….”

“Or Claudine from Alya’s old class in business education watched a comedy movie and had to cry just because someone got hit in the groins”

“Uh okay, but….”

“And Jin from your class his wife was inspired outta nowhere to play rock on a violin.”

“No Nino, that’s actually wrong. She was asked if she could play rock on it and she tried to learn it and I think she got it,”

“Oh then I misinterpreted that”

“Maybe” Adrien said with a chuckle, then Nino moved in the screen his head aside to see behind his friend.

“Look Kagami is going to undress herself” Nino mentioned while Adrien looked back to see the woman sit on the bed opening up the buttons of her black blouse.

“Good” Adrien said looking at his friend, which was still looking at Adrien’s girlfriend, then Adrien realized what Nino was doing and turned the tablet away from the window. “Hey, hey, hey that’s my wife, you’re looking at” Adrien warned making Nino laugh.

“Sorry dude. I got distracted. Go on and talk with her. Just be calm and honest and if she cries, just let her cry. The first months of pregnancy bring you a lot of ups and downs, just don’t let yourself go down during that time. That phase will pass”

“Alright, I’m off for now”

“Bye bro” Nino said and Adrien took the tablet into the bedroom placing it on the drawer that stood vice versa to the bed, where Kagami sat putting on a red-colored nightgown made of silk.

Adrien approached his wife, then sat down on the bed beside her.

“Can I talk with you about before?” The Frenchman asked watching the woman opening the door to drop her clothes into a basket with clothing, then she walked back to open the bed. Adrien went to the side of the bed, where the windows of the balcony are and opened the bed cover along with Kagami, then he looked up at the blue-haired woman, which looked at the blonde watching her with a sad look, then Kagami sat down on the bed looking down on the floor.

“I’m sorry about how I acted towards you before” Kagami whispered, then Adrien rolled his eyes down thinking on their argument from before and he got on his knees on the bed, moving forward at the wife and placed his arms around her for an embrace.

“It’s not your fault, it’s also mine. I didn’t mean to hurt you as I told you I went out with Luka. I just came out with this excuse, so you wouldn’t know I was out to buy you a present for our wedding anniversary” Adrien explained. “I just wanted to surprise you. Sorry, if I couldn’t warn you before about me being late” Adrien apologized caressing her on the shoulder.

“I was afraid if I would never see you again. That I would have to raise our child all on my own”

“Shh this is not going to happen, I promise,” Adrien said observing Kagami lean her head on his chest, followed by the blonde drop his chin over her head. “Everything is alright”

Adrien kept patting the girl on the shoulder, then looked into her eyes, which were a little watery and he passed his thumb under her right eye to clean her teardrop, which ran her cheek down.

“Can I ask you a favor?” The Japanese woman asked earning a nod from the blonde.

“Go on,” He said quietly, watching Kagami move on their bed back against the board of the bed to sit straight and Adrien gazed at the woman, waiting for her to speak.

“Can we always finish our arguments or disagreements during the day, before we go to bed?” The Japanese descendant woman asked. “Make amends?”

“Sure, always” Adrien answered watching Kagami nod, then she looked at the blonde, which watched over her with care.

“Are you maybe wondering why I’m asking that?” The woman asked making Adrien shrug his shoulder.

“Could it have something to do with your dad?” Questioned Adrien seeing Kagami nod at his guess. “That makes sense”

“I’m afraid, that something like that happens to me again, mostly if it would happen to us. I couldn’t pass through this all over again” Kagami mentioned, followed by Adrien place his arm behind Kagami’s back to soothe her.

“This won’t happen Kagami” Adrien assured pecking her on the cheek, then gazed at her eyes, which rolled up locking up with his emerald green eyes and Adrien looked at the bed to see their kitten try to leap at the bed, making him chuckle and Kagami picked the kitten up, holding him closer to her face, then the kitten rubbed his head on Kagami’s neck purring. Adrien smiled lovely at the cuteness of the cub and lied down on the bed watching the wife fondle the kitty, afterward she lied down on the bed and dropped the kitten over their covers and the kitten walked down at the end to lie next to the feet of the woman and the couple looked at each other with a smile as their pet lied down, then both lied their head down on their pillow closing their eyes to fall asleep.

[smittenvixen13]

Kore Complex (6)

Ch. 6: This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race

“if you don’t fight for what you want, don’t cry for what you lose.” – a.h.

~

Early evenings at the “La Vie En Noir” was always sublime. The music was relaxing, the café held an almost nostalgic feeling, and the drinks were amazing.

“I should bring Marinette here. Asher and David liked it the last time I brought them here.” He hums to himself at the memory, smile playing at his lips as if he could hear Asher gushing over how vintage the establishment felt, David rolling his eyes fondly at his boyfriend, as Luka let the chatter fill him with warmth.

The past nearly three months had weighed in heavily on his heart with how things were progressing. At first it had been little excited tales Jules told him, about this special, amazing girl who had travelled the world and done so much! She was going to get them in contact with the Music Industry’s biggest producer so Kitty Section could get their name out there!

Then there were the snide remarks about Marinette’s jealousy, how Marinette was being petty and being childish over a situation that could so easily be fixed if she just apologized. Then it became how Marinette obviously lied to them all, to trick them with her ‘kindness’, for Luka to be wary of such a manipulative witch. That she wasn’t sincere.

Then this Lila slowly convinced their band members that it might look weird to be in a band with an older teen, that Jules, Rose, and Ivan were all about the same age while he was about three years older. Lila could join their band and they would be so much better now. Didn’t you know? Jagged Stone had asked her to guest star on an album but she couldn’t because she had to go to the Nile to assist villagers in getting water.

When he had met Marinette outside of school that one day, he had approached her with the intention of finding out the truth in all the gossip, snide remarks, and cruel words spilled about her. So she told him the truth, told him as she cried, as her wonderfully bluer than blue eyes dimmed down to a foggier color.

Until her wonderful melody had tempoed off, the minor keys could’ve broken even the strongest of hearts.

When he had held her close after her confession, the poor girl seemed to sag with relief at being believed, after being apologized to. So, he vowed she’d never have to experience it ever again. Not so long as he drew breath.

Marinette. The girl was almost always on his mind, huh? It was hard not to think of her, actually, but it wasn’t a complaint in the slightest; she had came stuttering into his life and only proved to make it brighter, warmer, with each new experience together.

Sure, she wasn’t perfect-who was?- and he was no stranger to Juleka’s old talks about how wild Marinette could be when it concerned her old flame, said girl had admitted that she had crossed the boundary too far and realized her infatuation was more akin to that of an obsessed fan, not of a friend crushing on another friend.

He had reassured he wasn’t too different when he was younger, but the discipline and realization of age helped outgrow old habits. None of them were saints and emotions held the best of them at any age anyway.

Da-Ding~!

“Hm?” Glancing down, he chuckles at the image of her icon flashing on his phone. “Wonder what she’s going to share today?” Swiping the screen to her contact, the musician expected the latest design she drew or progress with the pale mint blouse she was making, and read over her text.

And just like that, his mood soured and a fire bloomed in his soul.

~

“H-Hello?”

“What do you mean Alya yelled at you?”

Marinette sighs softly, curling on her patio chair as she gazed out towards the horizon. Tikki was silently curled on her shoulder, her warmth giving Marinette the courage to talk about that afternoon.

“She and Nino saw us at the park today. S-She saw us and came over, saying it was rude for me to leave without telling any of them I had left, how it was just like me to just d-disappear.” The softest of sniffles could be heard across the line, tears edging at the corner of her eyes. It had hurt to hear her yelling, memories soured with each insult hurled towards her.

“So I countered back, asking her why should have I told them? All of them had been alienating me for a month when Spring break hit, Alya managed to convince Madam Bustier and Madam Mendeliev to switch me to be solo, bringing up my tardiness as a good excuse so I wouldn’t drag anyone down.” Tikki presses more firmly against her, letting her know that they were both listening. Luka was good, he listened to her tales just as much as she listened to his.

“And then she began to call me a coward, tried to attack you guys! Saying you all were pathetic for believing a big liar like me! H-How you all were snobs or weird or just a big monster like me! I just- I couldn’t STAND for that.”

Head throbbing, Marinette groaned as she slumped back into the pink and white fabric, eyes sliding close, “And then Adrien came and tried to say I was all to blame for this. As if I was some person unreasonably fighting back against Alya’s words!” She snarls, fist slamming down onto her thigh. Taking a deep breath, she slowly released it as she opens her eyes once more. “Let’s just say, I’m so glad to be out of that toxic environment.”

His sigh carried out over the line, “I’m so sorry, Mari. You didn’t deserve any of their words. Do you want me to come over? We can watch those baking competitions you like so much, I heard Gordon Ramsey’s new season in the United States is pretty good.” He was much too kind for her, and his offer only made her cheeks bloom pink as she offers an airy laugh.

“As good as that sounds, I think I just need alone time. Can we all hang out tomorrow, though? I’d love to meet your friends too.”

“Of course, Marinette, whatever you want.”

They spoke for another ten minutes before she hung up. Luka, Felix, Claude, Allegra, Saranya, and Allan…she was so lucky to have them all in her life. So what if her old life didn’t want her? She was borne anew anyway.

She was Marinette. She was Ladybug. She could face any challenge in her life and laugh as she defeated it.

~

It had started months ago. It was little nuggets at the time, little things, things that went unnoticed.

Marinette being always late to class, the occasional ditch from a group hangout, bailing out of plans. She hadn’t noticed it at first because she wasn’t exactly a saint in that regard either, her journalism career came first, after all.

But then it became more frequent, and then the Lila hate started coming on, Marinette sometimes avoiding calls or texts all together.

Lila confided that she heard Marinette laughing to someone over the phone about her and their classmates, how gullible they were in believing she was their friend. She was always ditching; how could they not take the hint?

And who was she to deny Lila’s claims?! The girl was connected to /Ladybug/. She did amazing things all the time! Charitable, kind things. So Alya made sure the rest of the class knew the horrible things Marinette said about them. And it began to click together. Marinette stole Mylene’s role in Nino’s movie, all to kiss Adrien! It was her fault Alya was akumatized into Lady Wifi, for not BEING there for her. And all the truths came out!

So as punishment, they avoided her, kept her out of the loop and let her feel as horrible as she should be. She was a horrible human being, even Ladybug didn’t like her, they were never seen close to each other. And poor Adrien, he hadn’t known he had been basically stalked so the girls agreed to at least save him of that truth. Poor kid dealt with enough.

And then she left. Without a warning, Mrs. Cheng came to the school and excused her daughter from further attendance, and she vanished from their lives. Like they were nothing. She should’ve apologized, should’ve begged them to forgive her, for Lila to forgive her.

But no. She was rather chummy with her best friends, each of them looked stuck up like Chloe with their uniforms for Jeanne d'Arc Académie; so of course she confronted the little bitch over her childishness. How couldn’t she have seen that Marinette was nothing but a little liar, no better than Chloe!

Adrien was right, she should know better! Then that egotistical blond had called them idiots, the brown haired kid pointed out the  ‘lies’ in Lila’s stories. Yeah, sure, Marinette knew celebrities but they didn’t like her. Lila told her.

Besides, the Ladyblog was her prized possession! If she had lies on her blog, she would be a laughing stalk! All she had were hard facts and plenty of Paris’ superheroes saving the day. Who needed that stupid little girl anyway? She was no everyday ladybug.

~

Lying was one the simplest skills she ever learned, ever tested, and it only proved to make her better. Honestly, it wasn’t her fault no one was as smart as that pathetic baker girl. She’d never even spoken to the girl before and yet Marinette had known from the start! Lila could appreciate a person so observant, but the poor thing had chosen the wrong side.

Adrien didn’t though. He let her lies continue under the naïve idea that she could be a “better person”. So she left him alone, for now, so long as he played a good little kitten and behaved for her.

He was such a cute little plaything.

~

“I should’ve known to talk to her more as Chat, she would’ve learned to be a better person.” He growls, prowling the wide expanse of his room. “And then she tells her she’s done with us?! That I was the bad guy in all this? I’m one of Paris’ heroes!”

Adrien was furious to say the least. He thought he knew Marinette. Thought he knew the amazing girl she was, but all she was, was a selfish, rude little brat that couldn’t behave like she should’ve. Why couldn’t she understand that there was an order to these things? He had been in the spotlight his whole life! He knew how bad gossip could be, how liars could be, so Lila’s little exaggerations would’ve been found out eventually. Then Lila would’ve learned! She would’ve seen it was better to be honest, apologize for all she had ever done! It was so close to working too and then she ruined it.

With a roar of frustration he threw the charm bracelet, the beads breaking on impact against the wall, raged pants filling the bedroom. “I don’t need her! Saying she’s cut me off! Well, I’ve needed her! I have my Lady. That’s all I’ll ever need. She’s no princess, who needs a peasant when I have the Queen of Paris?”

Wait, why was he even losing his head over this? God, it was like he forgot who he was thinking of! He laughs, shaking his head, fingers brushing back the strands of his hair, taming the mess, as he remembered who he was talking about. Marinette.

“Why am I even losing my cool? She’ll come right back, like she always does. She’s overreacting. She’s learned too many of Chloe’s habits, it seems.” He chuckles to himself, smiling fondly over the thought. Of course she’d come back. She was his friend! She’d apologize for overreacting, for being so damn stubborn and selfish. Didn’t she know they needed to set a good example for Lila?

The God of Destruction watched it all unfold, flicking his tail behind him in agitations as he regarded the spoilt child rationalize to himself over this entire mess.

He cared for Adrien; of course he did, Adrien was a sweet kid with a really big heart and too oblivious of a mindset. He was ready to start the fun of being a superhero, to help people out, to be free from his life. But as time progressed, Plagg began to note the sour. Adrien was spoiled, entitled even, due to his upbringing. Sure he wasn’t Chloe levels of entitled attitude, but he had a sense of air that he deserved things instead of earning them.

The simplest examples was the irony just before him. Adrien felt entitled to Marinette’s friendship, her loyalty; Adrien never reached out a hand in friendship with her, never ventured over towards her home or her desk to just talk-or attempt to-or just to hang out with her. Marinette always put forward the effort in trying to hang out with him, include him in class activities, and helped him watch his mother’s movie! Of course Adrien protected Marinette, but that shouldn’t be connected towards an obligation. A hero, regardless of in or out of a costume, helps others selflessly. Besides all that, he was her friend, a friend should always try and protect you!

Don’t even get onto the Ladybug topic, the toxic attitude was something that needed to be curbed out of him as a child-hell, he is a child still but that damn bastard refused to raise his own brat-but yet it remained. Could Adrien grow from it? Sure, of course he could; but the brat refused to accept any ideologies that he was in kind of wrong.

The hissy fit at Syren was understandable, even if it was a punk move, because he was young and he did hate being held out of the loop. It was one of the many slights Plagg could forgive. He was only hitting his mid-teens, childhood, so he was still learning. It’s why he could forgive Adrien wanting to have fun with the role; his life was dull, lifeless, and the kid deserved adventure and excitement. So he encouraged the rebellion, advised Adrien to sneak out when his dad ordered him otherwise. But then Adrien seemed to almost regress back into his need to please his father, so the rebellions lessen to the point of only occuring for Akuma battles or for a planned romance for Ladybug.

Then there was this whole Lie-la situation that had gotten far too out of hand. It was utterly wearing on his nerves, no matter how old he was, with this whole higher ground strategy. Was pigtails’ idea the right course of action? No. But is the higher ground strategy? Also no. They should’ve nipped this liar in the ass months ago during the events of Volpina. Sure the lies would hurt but they were /fresh/ back then. Now the balance was broken.

He felt bad that the kid was going to lose him, the mausoleum of a home was cold even for him, but Adrien had been getting lessons from the Guardian since Spring Break and hadn’t learned a damn thing. Just because your hero, doesn’t mean you knew all. And he called himself a superhero fan! Even those weirdos in his comics learned lessons to improve themselves.

The time was drawing near, and the blond had used up too many chances.

~

It had taken everything he had not to throttle that blond that afternoon, because he knew Marinette wouldn’t like it. Knew he was better than that too, they all did. It just killed him not being able to do more for her, to show her that they cared and even though her previous schoolmates had been crap about her friendship, they weren’t going to be.

Claude groans as he flops back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as the memory of her tears filtered through his mind. She didn’t deserve to be hurt again. Allegra was ready to destroy that pathetic tabloid writer, they all had been, but the thought of taking care of Marinette first was what mattered to them.

They didn’t need to bother themselves with those people anyway.

It’s a spicy meat-a-ball!

Grin spreading its self over his face, he sprung up to look over to his phone where Mr. Grump’s pretty mug was on. “Alright, Fé, what’s up.”

{From: FéFé }: I can hear your infernal music from over here. Turn it down, some of us are trying to rest.

Snorting, Claude smirks as he replies right back. Fé was such a drama king.

{To: FéFé }: You love Djadja just as much as I do.

{To: FéFé }: Don’t forget who caught you attempting to create a ballet from one of her songs~

{From: FéFé }: ….

{From: FéFé }: Just turn it down.

Laughing softly, he did as he was asked, turning down the beautiful singer. Lying back down, Claude knew that they had all still been in a funk after school. And it wasn’t exactly hard to see Félix had been furious earlier, and the boy didn’t anger easy. Annoy, yes, but not anger.

{To: FéFé:}: You worried about Marinette too? ☹

{From: FéFé }: ….

{From: FéFé }: /Sigh/, I am. I hated seeing her tears today, no woman should cry over such an idiotic situation.

{From: FéFé }: The liars’ claims are outrageous! How could they be such ignoramuses? Her lies are as obvious as a white ball in a hall of BLACK. She said she needed time but should we do something for her? I could ask mother if I could visit her with you lot tomorrow.

Claude smiles, seeing the absolute care in his friends’ words. Félix could be a hard ass and as cold as a Finnish winter, but his heart was set in the right place.

{To: FéFé:}: I’ll ask the guys to see if they’re up for it. Night Fé.

{From: FéFé:}: Very well. Good night, Claude.

Claude shut his music off, but sleep didn’t even creep on his body, it didn’t even whisper in mind. He was still too awake so he might as well go for a run. Setting a note with the time he left and the path he would take, Claude took off outside.

With summer just around the corner, the night air wasn’t cold, letting him enjoy Paris at night. After moving here from Wales, Claude never expected to love Paris as much as he loved Cardigan, his family’s hometown, but it had long since made him feel like /Paris/, here, was home. His home.

The city of love and all it’s interesting quirks. The superheroes were just a bonus.

He had been out for he thinks half an hour, deciding to head back home, when he heard a frightened cry not far off. His mother used to always lecture his impulse control would get him killed, his father fondly shaking his head and telling him his luck would run out from his decisions, but when did he ever listen to sense? He ignored all those warning voices as he sprinted towards the woman’s cry.

“P-Please, I-I’ll give you my money! My jewels! Just let me go.” Her bargaining fell on deaf ears as the man gripping her sneered at her offers.

His voice was the stuff of /nightmares/, Claude snarling as he heard the man taunt. “LEAVE HER ALONE!” Bam! His fist stung but he swung again, jerking the woman back, barking at her to run, blocking the man from persuing the issue further.

“You’ll pay for that you little asshole!” He growls, moving to draw something out when a yoyo wound around him and jerked him back into trashcans. “Don’t you dare!”

Ladybug landed down, a Valkyrie moving into battle before she wound the idiot once more, trussing him up onto a lamp post. “I’ll call the police, but are you alright? You’re lucky I heard her scream on my patrol, this man’s known for hurting people.” She lectured him, burning gaze cowing him into feeling ashamed before it softened her. “Thank you for helping her, but you could’ve gotten hurt too. Will you be fine running home? Or would you like a ride back?” She jokes softly.

“I’ll be fine, Ladybug.” His throat was dry, nerves raking through him, but he grins down to her. “Sorry, but I couldn’t just stand by waiting for you or Chat Noir to rescue her.” Taking a deep breath, he released a weak laugh. “But thanks again. Um, could you do me a favor, Miss Bug?”

She tilts her head, frown playing on her lips.

“Could you check on my friend Marinette? She…she had a really rough time lately and I’m worried about her. She means a lot to me. To all of us really.”

“Of…Of course! Yeah, I could do that.” Clearing her throat, she activates her ladybug communicator. “Get going, I’m sure your Maman is worried for you.”

Nodding, Claude took off, planning to call the guys so they could all visit Marinette tomorrow. Maybe they could go to visit the Eiffel tower?

~

Fu looked over his tablet, reading over old words long lost to the passages of time as he sipped at his tea. Chat Noirs’ actions as of late were troubling, creating a visible rift in the team as he justified his actions along the way, a self-righteous human in his own right. Now he needed to assign someone the Black Cat Miraculous.

He had several candidates to decide from, but he was old and would be seen wandering around too often near people so he had sent Wayzz in his steed. Wayzz had known far more Cat holders than he, had known many great holders in his time. So he told Wayzz which he was deciding upon and for the god to see if the potentials passed tests of a true hero.

They would not fail this time. ~ First Chapter: link Last Chapter: link Masterlist: link AO3: link Patreon: link

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 13: "Which Witch Is Which?"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 13)

AKA "That Voodoo You Don’t Do"

In a misty marsh, a strange, hunch-backed figure pushes a punt boat through the water, pausing to look behind him so the camera can see his face. 

What a looker.

Not far away or long after, the gang are taking a shortcut on their fishing trip. They've gotten lost due to Fred’s terrible route-planning (seriously, I may need to start keeping track from here, i feel like the gang getting lost while on the road becomes a trope later on), and catch sight of a figure by the road, holding a lantern but apparently not visible enough to register as anything strange. While Scooby “fishes” in the back of the van by dipping a line tied to his tail into a bucket full of water, the Mystery Machine pulls to a stop so Shaggy can ask for directions.

Fleeing in terror from the “zombie”, the gang arrive in a community evidently named “Swamp’s End”, if the sign on the General Store is any indication, still quite badly lost. 

While Scooby raids an open tin of beans (wouldn’t they be dry? I can’t imagine wet beans being left out for sale in a non-refrigerated environment), the gang speak to the store owner, a thickly-bearded fella by the name of Zeke. He tells them that the zombie was created by an old witch with “voodoo magic”. Zeke and his buddy Zeb Perkins first caught sight of her six months back, having gone into the swamp for some frog gigging. 

Seen above: the landscaping concept for my fallback retirement plans. The witch chants above her fire, “Smoke of darkness, demon of evil, take the form of the living, and come forth from the flame!” and the logs and fire fade away, replaced by the zombie. He’s even already got his lantern!

While Zeke relates that the town is abandoned except for the two of them and that Zeb has been scared so bad he won’t go outdoors, Scooby’s inattentive eating wind up giving him a mouthful of jumping beans, leading to him bouncing around and hiccuping.

This was a popular bit in older cartoons, especially Hanna-Barbera ones, but it seems like nowadays, “jumping beans” aren’t really part of popular culture. It’s probably because the reason they “jump” is that they’re parasitized by a caterpillar, and novelty items powered by insect larvae are not as popular as @bogleech​ might hope.

While Fred, Velma, and Daphne clean up Zeke’s shop after Scooby’s bug-induced hopping fit, Scooby and Shaggy are tasked with checking on Zeb. They arrive to find his cabin showing sings of having been inhabited, but dusty and full of cobwebs—there’s no sign of Perkins himself.

Well, except for one.

Shaggy assumes that Zeb’s been shrunk, but Velma explains that it’s a “voodoo doll” made in his likeness. “Voodoo” is tossed around a lot in this episode, and that could be blamed on it being the mistaken assumptions of white people and pop culture about any folk magic practices, but pretty much everything observable about the swamp witch except her zombie servant is actually rooted in European and especially English and Germanic folk magic and superstitions. 

Her “Halloween witch” looks draw on the typical mishegoss of stereotypes of feminine villainy that include a vaguely antisemitic hooked nose, and a hat style that i’ve ranted about before (and others have noted is linked to the beer-brewing traditions in Europe, along with things like the broom, solitary old women, and having cats around); the “voodoo doll” is in fact an English-style poppet and most of the connection to voodoo/vodou is based in racist propaganda. Even her hut looks more like something illustrated by Arthur Rackham or Ivan Bilibin.

The gang take a boat out into the swamp and catch sight of their targets, but lose them among the reeds and waters. Continuing further on, they find signs warning them to BEWARE and GO BACK, but press onward, and find the witch’s "shack”—complete with pin-pricked poppets in the likeness of Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy propped up against a mirror! .

Velma thinks it’s “phony baloney”, but  Scooby can’t resist testing it out.

Ah, the loyalty of Man’s Best Friend. “Coincidentally”, Shaggy backs into a fork just as Scooby literally stabs his likeness in the back, and the witch appears in a puff of smoke. “So, you dared entered the swamp in spite of my warning signs!”

Daphne’s response?

Everyone else is stunned by her sick burn, but i notice in this moment that there’s a portrait of the witch up on the wall. What an oddly extra touch on the part of the villains! How long do you figure it took them to make it, or did they acquire it somewhere and tailor the witch disguise to match it?

Enraged, the witch casts a spell on Daphne, bidding the “smoke of evil, make her vanish!” and causing the redhead to disappear in a puff of smoke, leaving only her footprints behind on the rug where she was standing.

The bright pink rug that was not visible in any prior shots, in spite of Daphne’s full body and shoes on the bare wood floor being on-screen. 

But Velma and Fred realize that the way Daphne’s footprints seem to slide backwards mean that there’s a trap door, and find it when investigating below the house. Following footprints further into the swamp in hopes of finding their friend, they catch sight of a derelict river boat and the zombie’s punt... which has an odd little extra.

The end of the punting pole is embellished with a metal tip that has clearly had more intent and care put into its design than the episode’s villains themselves (not to mention such things as bright pink rugs), with extra little indentations and rivets that are far from necessary to convey its role in the scheme.

The gang go to investigate the riverboat, unknowingly watched by the cackling witch and her undead minion, who begin to terrorize the foursome as they split up and search the boat. 

While Shaggy and Scooby flee the zombie, Fred and Velma hear a muffled voice behind a wall with no clear entry, and try to find a secret entrance. Velma tries tugging on a lantern because “it’s always done that way in the movies”, but instead pulls it clean off the wall and tumbles backwards, knocking over an old bucket and sending a bar of soap flying at an emergency axe mounted on the wall—which was the actual trigger for the secret door.

Why is there always a secret door? It’s never just that the door is somewhere else and they happened to take a wrong turn, there’s never just a dead end.

Finding a grunting sheet-clad shape inside the secret room, Velma initially mistakes it for a ghost, but pulling away the sheet quickly reveals it’s Daphne... and a search of the room finds a very modern electrical winch, cutting torch, and set of power tools.

An aside for observation on characterization: i’ve joked a lot about Velma being not as skeptical as she makes herself seem, but i think the “credulity to skeptic” scale of the gang goes something like this:

Shaggy

Daphne

Scooby

Velma

Fred

I rated Scooby in the middle, though it varies in later series, because he actually seems to wind up noticing something isn’t supernatural faster than the others, either due to circumstance or canine senses. When he doesn’t, he usually reacts to a threat because the others are reacting to it, taking cues on what to fear based mostly on Shaggy. Much of the time, he seems innocent to what something could be except “big and angry”, and only really reacts with terror when one of his human friends says something.

Speaking of fear: the witch and zombie take advantage of being a team to terrorize both divisions of the gang at the same time, including the witch seeming to fly after them. But the discovery of a modern fan-powered airboat tucked into a passage in the riverboat also leads to the discovery that the flying witch is nothing more than a painted sheet thrown over a balloon, a cheaper trick than most Halloween decorations.

The airboat’s throttle gets stuck, and Scooby tosses down an improbably large anchor. The jarring stop brings up a lot of swampwater... and an entire armored bank car. Soon, the gang have improvised a rope-and-pulley system with some sturdy trees, and pull the truck to shore, finding sacks full of money with big old dollar signs drawn on, in case you were confused about what the enormous bags secured inside an armored bank car could possibly be.

Fred’s trap this time around is to leave some of those bags out in the open, where the witch and zombie—who the gang rightfully conclude have been hunting for this, using the metal-tipped pole to sound out the swamp floor for the metal roof of the car—can find them. Without breaking character, the gruesome twosome run up to the bags, cackling and mumbling with glee.

Of course, the bags are mostly filled with Scooby and Shaggy.

Kasem’s delivery on this line is magnificent, by the way. Leading the costumed crooks into a trap, the plan almost goes off without a hitch, but as usual, Scooby gets knocked along with the villains into a waiting wagon that rolls downhill towards the open back of the armored car. It’s only Shaggy demonstrating improbable line-casting skill that keeps Scooby from being trapped with the villains, as he uses a fishing pole to snag the bag Scooby is still wearing and pull him back uphill.

Jinkies, but Shaggy is strong. Why is this boy scared of anything? He could probably lift most of the villains of the week with one hand. I feel like there’s a lot to be said about the fact that Shaggy is a jock who doesn’t realize he is one, especially when we get into the episodes and movies where he actually competes in sports.

The gang meet up with a sheriff outside of the General Store, and it’s unsurprisingly revealed that the witch is Zeke, while the zombie is Zeb, explained as having hijacked the armored car in the first place, sinking it to find it later after the heat died down. The Scooby wiki notes that this episode seems to feature a rare example of a character from outside of the gang being reused: the Sheriff originates in the very first episode, as seen in this model sheet from a now-defunct Cartoon Network page, though the episode number doesn’t match up.

The episode ends with the gang musing on this having begun as a fishing trip, and Scooby is still dipping his tail-strung line into a bucket in the back of the Mystery Machine. “Give up,” says Fred, but less than a second later, Scooby pulls a hooked fish out of the water!

As Scooby defies the laws of physics and common sense once more, the gang share a laugh, and... fade to credits.

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order) 

[wantedladybug]

Things on Earth

"But I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved one is just poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed so you'd be spared your pain.."

-Ra's Al Ghul (Batman Begins)

Alya scrolled through her blog at the list of questions that had been piling up for a while now. Ever since story broke about how Ladybug stopped a bus jacking and then dropped the criminal responsible off a roof, her blog had been overwhelmed with people asking the same thing: why? And she wished she could answer their questions. She was the girl who'd gotten to personally interview Ladybug more than once, including taking photos of her activities around Paris.

But she couldn't get Ladybug on demand. And Ladybug had practically disappeared afterwards. No one had seen her since. People had sighted Chat Noir, but always without Ladybug. And if he was asked, he could only say that she wasn't answering his calls. All of her journalistic instincts told her to look into it more. But how could she focus on this when her best friend was in need? Especially today? After all, today was her mother's funeral.

...

"Marinette? It's almost time to go. Please...get ready," her father called from beneath the hatch into her room. She reached for her phone from under the covers to find messages from her friends saying they'd be there soon. She'd been dreading this moment. Today was the day of the funeral. Time seemed to just be passing her by and she hardly noticed. Her father added, "I'll be waiting in the living room. I'll check back on you in a few minutes."

"You really should go Marinette!" Tikki said.

She didn't want to go. She had to. This would be the last time she'd see her mom. Ever. She had to be there. It took a moment for her to find the energy to get out of bed. It took a moment longer to find the will to get some clothes together and head for the shower. All through her shower and getting dressed, she felt nothing but drained. It was only with help from Tikki that she was able to make herself look presentable. Once she joined her father in the living room, she found her friends there waiting: Nino, Alya, Alix, Rose, Juleka, Myléne, and...Adrien?

She was surprised by his presence, but was barely able to get a smile out for them. There was an awkward silence between them as they helped her outside.

The funeral was quiet - only a few family members and close friends. Even though it was supposed to be a sad day, the sky was bright and clear. In movies and TV shows, they usually set funerals as somber against the rain or cloudy skies. But this was a day like any other. Bright, sunny, birds singing in the air playfully. It was like the world was mocking her by being happy on this day of all days. If it weren't for Alya there beside her, she wasn't sure she'd be able to handle it.

Then came the time to see her mom's body one last time before they closed the casket. She seemed so peaceful, so calm. But seeing her brought back memories of her mom's horrible, painful death. Then the gunshot, the loud bang, echoed in her mind. Again and again, followed by memories of her mom laying at the bottom of the stairs. Her heart raced and tears swelled. She couldn't do this. She couldn't be here.

She had to be here. For her dad. To say goodbye to her mom.

It took all she had to keep from running away. If Alya didn't take her hand and squeeze it, she was sure she would've. When the time came to finally bury her mom, she buried herself into Alya's shoulder. It was becoming too much. Her mom was gone now.

...

After the funeral, all of Marinette's friends accompanied her and her dad back to the bakery. She still couldn't bring herself to talk to them or to say anything to them. Remembering her mom died reminded her that she'd thrown a man off a roof. And she still had his phone in her room. What was she going to do with a phone number?

Her friends spent the afternoon to make sure she was okay, and she could hear them quietly wondering if either of them would be the next Akuma. That thought drowned out anything else they said. Part of her wondered if being Akumatized would make this hurt stop. She still couldn't bring herself to talk to them. In fact, by the time she heard what they were saying, it was because she realized Alya had been hugging her from behind, "Marinette, you know you can talk to us. We're your friends. We're here for you."

It was only now that she realized her Adrien was kneeling in front of her with a hand on her knee. The look he was giving her was pitying. It was ironic. She'd always wanted Adrien's attention and now that she had it, it seemed like it was only because he felt sorry for her. And meeting his gaze hurt. What would he think if he knew what she did?

Her eyes went down again to avoid their gaze. Then she heard music - a happy beat. It was her favorite song. Nino had brought over some speakers and was playing her favorite song on them. He pumped his arm in the air, "Aw yeah. Here we go. You've been so down lately, Mari. Thought you'd need something to cheer you up!"

"What, like a dance party? Hardly the time," Alix answered.

"That's not a bad idea, though," Alya said, approaching the console and starting it up, "How about a round of Ultimate Mecha Strike III?"

She nodded. Alya passed a controller her way and they started playing. At first, she felt nothing - mindlessly pressing the buttons as her character fought on screen. Normally, winning would've come naturally but this time she was out in the first thirty seconds. Alya cheered, "Alright! My win!"

Marinette looked from her cheering friend to the tv and smiled, "Rematch."

"Oh, it's on girl!" Alya said. They played a few more rounds while the boys cheered them on. With each round, Marinette got a little bit more of her confidence back until she was playing on at least even ground with Alya. Alya still beat her but Marinette was at least lasting longer than she normally would. And, for the first time since in a while, she found herself laughing and giggling with her friends. She felt happy, in a way she hadn't felt in a while.

...

That night, Marinette lay in bed - thinking of the day her friends gave her and quietly wishing it didn't have to end. Even Tikki noticed, "You're smiling again, Marinette."

Was she? She looked at the mirror and hardly noticed a difference. Then again, she was feeling more motivated after the day she had with her friends. Despite the sad beginning. Then her attention turned to the mountain of school work piling up because she couldn't bring herself to do it. The longer she ignored it, the bigger it would get. It wasn't due to laziness but a lack of any motivation to actually do it. Or anything.

But how long could she just sit around feeling sorry? She couldn't do it forever, could she? What would her mom say if she were here? She'd encourage to get up and do it. Maybe now was the time to do just that. She sat at her desk and began her work while Tikki asked, "Marinette? Are you thinking of going back to school?"

"Tomorrow…or maybe the next day," she said quietly, beginning to go through the papers. She noticed Tikki smiling at her fondly, "What?"

"I'm just happy you're not moping in bed any more," Tikki said cheerily, "I'll help! Here! Let's start with this one. I think it says history?"

History…is that all that happened was? History? Something so long ago that she could just forget? Then the fire returned. The bitter resentment.

"Or maybe not."

She noticed Tikki hanging sadly and took a deep breath to calm herself down, putting on her biggest smile, "No, I'm sorry Tikki. Let's get started."

...

Marinette left early to finally go to school and be on time for once. She felt nervous going back, and the school never seemed so far and so big before now. When she finally arrived at the steps, the sight of it daunted her out of walking through. She'd been coming to school here for years but she felt like a stranger standing outside the school.

"It'll be okay," Tikki said from her purse, "Don't run. I'm right here."

Marinette nodded. She could do this. She was Ladybug, after all. So why couldn't she take that first step. And why were the steps so high? Just as she was about to break out into panicked sweats, she felt a warm hand on her shoulder and a soft voice, "Marinette?"

She jumped, not expecting to encounter Adrien first thing in the morning, "Welcome back."

"Hi," she smiled nervously, now feeling more anxious than she had been before. But the fear that would normally have compelled her to stammer her words and run in a panic instead froze her where she stood. Adrien offered her a calm smile, "Here, let me walk you inside. Everyone's going to be so happy to see you back."

Before she could say anything, Adrien took her hand and pulled her up the stairs and through the school entry way. Her heart started to race as all of her senses focused on the warmth of Adrien's hand, the smoothness of skin, the gentle way he held her hand.

"MARINETTE!"

She broke away from warm thoughts of Adrien's touch to see Alya throwing her arms around her in a big hug, "Welcome back!"

She hugged Alya back, relieved to see her and feeling calm now that she had her there. It only lasted a moment when she saw the rest of her class coming to see her: Nino, Rose, Juleka, Mylène, Max, Ivan, Nathaniel, Kim, and Alix. Even Sabrina and Chloé approached although they kept their distance. Then there was Lila - she was saying something about being sorry and how she could talk to her if she needed to. She wasn't sure exactly what but she could tell it was a front for the others. And whatever it was suddenly got lost in a sea of noise.

They all started talking to her and it made her heart race. Her head spun. There were too many people talking at once. Too much noise. There was too much going on. Breathing started to hurt. She was suffocating. There were too many people. She wanted to go away. She would make them go away. She only snapped out of it when Adrien and Nino pulled her back, "Whoa dudes! Give her space!"

"Come on. I'll walk you to your locker," Alya offered, helping to push her out of the crowd. She was glad she had them. She would've had no idea what she would've done if she stayed there.

...

Adrien watched Marinette ascend the stairs with Alya to the lockers, wondering aloud, "Do you think she came back too soon?"

"Yeah, bro," Nino adjusted his hat to better glimpse them as they disappeared. She hardly stumbled or tripped as she made her way to her classroom. She was not okay. Marinette had always been…awkward around him. But the way she'd been the last few days…especially now, freezing up in front of the school and now having a panic attack around her own friends. That cemented it in his mind. She was not okay, "Maybe someone should talk to her?"

"I can do it," Lila offered. Adrien wasn't sure she was the best choice - she and Marinette didn't really get along. Having Lila of all people talk to her, especially now, might make it worse. He pocketed his hands, "I was thinking I should."

"Don't waste your time Adrikins," Chloé said, tapping her foot impatiently. That remark took them all of guard and even Sabrina had to call her on it, "Chloé, that was mean."

"It wasn't mean. It's the truth," she stated matter of factly, becoming annoyed at the dirty looks she was getting. She rolled her eyes, "Look. Her mom was killed in front of her. She's not okay. What she should do is get her stuff and head back home. It's for her own good. And before any of you get mad at me, Sabrina and I weren't the ones who smothered her. Maybe you should all think about how you're acting before you get mad at me. Maybe you all should be more considerate! Hmph!"

She crossed her arms and turned to walk away, stopping only to wait for Sabrina to catch up. It was a rare thing for Chloe's snobbish and rude remarks to be so on the nose. There was a still calm among them until Alix grunted, "She's such a brat."

Max adjusted and added, "She's correct, though. Marinette has experienced a traumatic and life changing event. And she's still recovering mentally. We may want to shower her with affection to placate her distress but recovery comes at its own pace. It would be best to give her space until she's ready to be approached by us."

Adrien glanced towards the lockers one last time before sighing and making his way up there. There he found Alya helping Marinette sort out the things she would need for class that day. He did the same, trying to avoid bothering her as he sorted through his own stuff when there was a loud slam behind them. Marinette gasped and jumped, locking up in place as her breathing got heavy. Alya tried talking to her to calm her down while Adrien looked towards the offending noise to see Kim shrugging apologetically, "Sorry."

He'd closed his locker too hard. Adrien could only imagine what must've been racing through her mind. Max was already trying to drag him out of there despite his protests so that he could apologize but it wasn't helping. Adrien finished grabbing his things and gently closed his locker, making sure not to startle her before helping to push Kim out, "Let's go."

"Come on! I said I was sorry!"

...

The noise echoed inside her head over and over, bringing back the memory of that night. It just seemed to get louder with each shot, the image of her mother lying in a pool of her own blood coming back to her. It only stopped when she felt someone's arms around her and she heard Alya's voice saying, "Marinette! It's okay. It's okay! Everything's okay!"

It took her a moment longer to become aware of her surroundings and she realized she squeezing her locker door so hard that her knuckles were white. As white as the phone she squeezed in anger. She let the locker go and Alya said calmly, "I'm right here. Everyone's safe."

She nodded her understanding, closing her eyes and taking another moment to calm her thoughts, "I'm okay."

"Girl, you're not okay," Alya said, "School hasn't even started yet and you've locked up twice! You should head home!"

"I'm fine!" she insisted, closing her locker slowly, "Let's just get to class."

She was fine. She would be fine.

They made it to class before the bell rang and she noticed right away that everyone seemed to be trying their hardest to pretend she didn't just freak out in the main area. Trying because everyone kept glancing at her, if only briefly. Whether it was out of concern or morbid fascination, she wasn't sure. She wanted to ignore it, but the staring just made her more uncomfortable. It was like trying to ignore a blinding light staring her straight in the face. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she shouldn't have come. It was obviously too soon and she wasn't well enough to come back.

"It can trace a phone number backwards and find the point of origin of the call!" Max said ecstatically, "It's still in early beta but Markov and I think it's very promising. Of course, the only reason we're researching this is for phone number masking. You know, stop those annoying robocalls that come from one person. After all, you can only do it so much if they can all get traced."

Marinette looked over her shoulder at Max. He could trace phone numbers? She could feel the wheels turning in her head as she gave it a lot of thought. She knew what she wanted to do…but should she? Would she? No, she needed to let it go. And she needed to get after them. Was this right? No, of course not. But what if she did nothing and someone else died? Could she live with that? No! Of course not. She assured herself that this wasn't revenge. This wasn't payback. It was taking action to prevent more death. She was Ladybug. That was what a hero would do.

[jmsebastian]

A Marvelous Failure: Panzer Dragoon

So far I’ve written quite a bit about the 32-bit era of video games, more specifically about games released for the Sony Playstation. The reason for that is mainly that I owned one and enjoyed the heck out of it. Thanks to its popularity and laughably large library of games, there’s a lot to talk about. While I did and do love the Playstation, there was another console, one of a very similar vintage, one that I always felt was just a little bit cooler: the Sega Saturn. Only one person I knew ever had one, and even that friend gave it up to get on board the Sony train once it was clear they were going to be dominating the console gaming industry for a while. Strangely, the first game I ever saw in person on a Saturn, The Horde, wasn’t even particularly good. It had Kirk Cameron starring in its cutscenes (the fact that it had actual live action video was actually really impressive to me), but the game itself certainly didn’t knock my socks off.

No, my excitement for the Saturn mostly spawned from a video game magazine I picked up off the rack one day while accompanying my mother to the grocery store. On the cover of that magazine were all of the playable characters for the upcoming 3D fighting game Fighting Vipers. Instead of being hand drawn concept art, these were real 3D modeled characters. This was the future and it looked incredible. Naturally, I tore through that magazine, scouring every article, many of which featured reviews and previews of Saturn games. I remember seeing Krazy Ivan, the aforementioned Fighting Vipers, Guardian Heroes, but there was one game in there that sparked my imagination more than the others. It seemed as if it didn’t really belong with the other games, as it didn’t fit into a category that I was familiar with. It wasn’t a fighting game or a platforming game. It wasn’t a beat ‘em up or RPG. One thing I did know, however, I wanted it.

The game I’m talking about, of course, is Panzer Dragoon. A North American launch title for the Saturn, Panzer Dragoon is a game that still mystifies me. Over fifteen years after first learning about the game, I finally got to sit down and play it for myself. To answer your question, yes, it was absolutely worth the wait. To start with, it is an absolutely beautiful game, featuring some of the best 3D art of that generation. For all the common wisdom about the Saturn not being on par with the Playstation in terms of 3D capability, one look at Panzer Dragoon makes that argument a bit more difficult to make. It opens with some pretty well animated pre-rendered cutscenes, but the actual character models, enemy designs, environments, they are all expertly crafted and put the Saturn’s best foot forward with regard to what was, at the time, cutting edge for home console games.

Aside from just the technical quality of the graphical standpoint, from a design perspective, Panzer Dragoon stands out even more today than it did then in terms of the overall gaming landscape. There is a Eurasian element to do, from the clothing of the protagonist, to the vast deserts and jungles that you see below as you fly mounted atop your dragon, that isn’t really utilized in very many games. The opening level has you flying just above the top of a city long since flooded. The various pillars that breach the water’s surface are weakened with time and crumble easily as you fight off various fauna that have seemed to make this habitat their home. There is an awful lot that wants to kill you in this game, but in the early going, it’s not really clear if the creatures are part of some army of beasts or if they are just disturbed by the conflict between you and the Dark Dragon you seek to stop.

It’s a little unclear why we are over what appears to be an ocean after being in the desert, but that’s not important.

Panzer Dragoon’s first level is a tour de force. The setting itself is intriguing and unlike much else in video games, even today. It featured a lot of fantastic effects, such as water splashing when you fire your gun into it. There are even more impressive wave effects that help sell the illusion that the polygons below you are fluid, and some convincing reflection effects that give the water a kind of shimmer to it that certainly doesn’t hold up to modern standards, but was miles ahead of what most developers were able to pull off at the time. Toward the end of the stage, your dragon flies into a building that has bullets shot down at you through the roof. As chunks of the ceiling fall into the water, you see light pour in on you before the entire building gives way. Seeing all this for the first time in 1995 must have been breathtaking. My mouth was hanging open in awe in 2015 and I’ve played Bloodborne!

  One thing the Saturn did not handle very well was transparency effects.

After the first two levels, the setting becomes considerably more industrial. The third level has you shooting down flying ships in rocky terrain amidst what appears to be some kind of mining operation. The fourth sees you flying through the tunnels of the previous stages mining facility, which looks not unlike the interior of the Death Star from Return of the Jedi. What I like about the level progression in Panzer Dragoon is that the player goes from wide open natural landscapes, or at least areas that nature has reclaimed over time, to what is the heart of the empire the protagonist is at war with. As we are shown in the intro movie, the player character was not a soldier, but definitely had stake in the war that was going on. His chance encounter with the defeated pilot of the blue dragon you ride throughout the game is what spurred him into action. He isn’t quite clear as to what is going on, and the blue dragon seems to really be the one in control.

  The uncertainty about which faction the flying ship belongs to says a lot about the character’s circumstances.

The game itself is a bit like Space Harrier or Star Fox in that your trajectory is more or less fixed. You are always moving forward. You can move about within the confines of the screen in order to dodge enemies and projectiles, but your route is fixed. What gives the game its unique feel is that you have the ability to set the camera in the four cardinal direction, giving you a full 360 degrees of vision as the camera pans around to lock in any given position. Enemies fly in from the sides, behind you, on top of you, making tracking your targets a difficult challenge. Thankfully, there is a radar-like icon at the top of the screen which indicates which way you are currently facing and the general location of nearby enemies relative to your position. It’s extremely limited, simple, and no more than needed to give the players all the information they need to know in order to accomplish their goal.

  Level 4.

Though the structure of the game is basically just a flying shooter but with dragons substituted in, Panzer Dragoon does stand apart from other games in its genre. The blending of the natural and mechanical that permeates the aesthetic of the game’s world, the fact that your dragon doesn’t handle as precisely as a plane (and whose ability to fly predictably is reduced when enough damage is taken), and of course, the incredible musical score, make this particular Sega game and series one of the more unbelievable releases of the era.

The  Panzer Dragoon series saw sequels of various types and quality for a handful of platforms (even an animated series), yet it never became the pillar of Sega’s library the way it seemed it should have. Of course, the Saturn platform acted like a bit of a swan song for a number of series, even in the case where multiple games from the same series were released. The number of  Shining games available for the Saturn is incredible, yet the series basically died there.

Panzer Dragoon did receive a follow up on Microsoft’s XBOX, a good one, in fact, but the amount of time between the games and the lack of a presence in the North American market during the series’ formative years created a mountain just too high to climb. It’s unfortunate, as there was a great deal of promise that Panzer Dragoon made good on. All this time later, there are still aren’t any modern games that fulfill its legacy, and there might never be.

[biointernet]

The Death Does Not Exist

The Death Does Not Exist, Bekhterev Academician Vladimir Bekhterev worked all his life on the secret of genius, the secret of the superman. The Death Does Not Exist - Russian movie. We will translate it soon. If you are ready to help, please mail to Kirill@Korotkov.com https://youtu.be/XgAKzoHtptA Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev (January 20, 1857 – December 24, 1927) was a Russian neurologist and the father of objective psychology. He is best known for noting the role of the hippocampus in memory, his study of reflexes, and Bekhterev’s disease. Moreover, he is known for his competition with Ivan Pavlov regarding the study of conditioned reflexes. More: Wiki, Time Philosophy, Time Symbolism, Time Travel, The Full History of Time

Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev works, 1913 At the end of 1924, the soviet authorities thought about creating a secret laboratory for the study of Lenin’s brain, which was supposed to unravel the mystery of the “Kremlin superman”. As futurologist Melik-Pashaev subsequently wrote, who was aware of these works, Lenin’s brain “is undoubtedly the prototype of the brain of the coming superman.” In fact, it was a question of developing a methodology for the development of a superman, a Soviet superman, in the future. That was the main interest of the authorities! At a meeting of the OGPU (KGB) board, chaired by Felix Dzerzhinsky, they discussed the structure of the brain. The KGB paid special attention to the ability of the brain to respond to radiation invisible to the eye (light, electromagnetic, etc.), to emit and receive biopsychic energy (in the old terminology - "N-rays"). Today it is called parapsychology and telepathy. By decision of the heads of special services, a document was adopted on the creation of a secret laboratory of neuroenergy. The security officers were especially interested in the work of Ankylosing spondylitis, who had long studied the secret possibilities of the brain. The Death Does Not Exist

The Death Does Not Exist, Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, 1913 See more: Dr. Okhatrin on GDVPLANET Korotkov on Academia.edu Dr. Sergey Avdeev – inventor of Translighters technologies and co-founder of the Biointernet project. Dr. Alexander Kozhemyakin – inventor of AK TOM The report of N. P. Bechtereva on the topic “About Alternative Vision”, made during the meeting with representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity. Moscow 29.10.2003 Intuitive Information Sight Research on IUMAB website: Intuitive Information Sight Research Energetic Influence of Ayahuasca Память Будущего Translighters Games Episodes and more about Intuitive Information Sight The Death Does Not Exist https://bekhterev.net/ Robert Lanza, MD After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us ... know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." New evidence continues to suggest that Einstein was right, death is an illusion. Does Death Exist? New Theory Says ‘No’ https://youtu.be/WFjGz28yTQ0 One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). A new scientific theory – called biocentrism – refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling – the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other? Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it’s still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection. According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together. Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether. This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine’s husband – Ed – started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time. Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn’t make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn’t make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine’s life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away. Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow. “Ed,” she said “I can’t feel my leg.” She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum. After the death of his son, Emerson wrote “Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.” Whether it’s flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it’s the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister’s dream house. Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It’s going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe The Death Does Not Exist  “Biocentrism” and “Beyond Biocentrism” (BenBella Books) lay out Lanza’s theory of everything. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world—a US News & World Report cover story called him a “genius” and a “renegade thinker,” even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe. Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, towards doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universe’s genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around. In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe—our own—from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the reader’s ideas of life—time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal. The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again. Who is Robert Lanza Robert Lanza, M.D. is currently Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, and is Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. His current research focuses on stem cells and regenerative medicine and their potential to provide therapies for some of the world’s most deadly and debilitating conditions. More about Robert Lanza, MD. The Death Does Not Exist on MHC virtual museum

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[strappedwithrage]

Long Overdue

Fuck this place. Me coming back was not a good idea.  The funeral was just a bunch of assholes that already hate me, and you’d think they saw a ghost when they saw my face. In the end, the asshole was dead and buried and that was my sole reason for coming back.  Some part of me needed to see that.  I had changed my mind about coming after my run in with Lilah.  It wasn’t pretty.  Not that I thought it would be.  Turns out if you flee in the middle of the night with not so much as a fucking text, a chick is gonna be pissed.  Actually, pissed was an understatement.  I got read the riot act.  I was yelled at, cursed, pushed, punched.  It was all deserved.  I couldn’t get a word in, not that anything I said would have helped.  All that shit and somehow /I/ got kicked out of the fucking bar.  

I hopped on my bike and was about 20 miles away before I turned around and came back. I don’t have any idea why.  When I heard that bastard of a stepfather had died I felt nothing. Shocked for 2 seconds because I thought evil lived forever, but then nothing. How can I feel anything for a man I hadn’t seen in over 10 years and who treated me like the bastard step kid I was?  I admit once upon a time I actually tried to please and make him happy, but that shit changed fast.  My attitude changed his, and as soon as he saw I was tall enough to beat his ass he didn’t lay a finger on me, but at that point I was never home.  I stayed as long as I could for my mom, but even she took his side at a certain point.  He was always more important to her than I was.

My best friend, Andrew, was my family growing up.  We grew on the same street, and we were inseparable from the first time I had to bail his ass out of trouble. We were 12 years old and he was picking on the biggest dude in school.  That kid would’ve have killed him, but Drew didn’t give a shit. I always had to bail him out of some stupid shit.  Where he was there was trouble.  Not always his fault, but most times it was.  I always managed to save him.  Well, not always.  That’s the reason I left this town, but that’s not shit I like to relive.  It’s the reason I left this city and why I didn’t want to come back. His mom was more of a mother to me than my own.  I spent all my time over there when I was younger.  She raised me along with Drew.  I hadn’t seen her in 10 years either, but there I was.  I don’t know if she wanted to see me, but I think I owed /her/ an explanation more than anyone that’s ever been in my life.  I’d been sitting on her porch swing for 10 minutes trying to work up the nerve to knock on her door.  This is my only stop before I head north and back to my life.  

I inhaled a deep breath, rubbed my sweaty hands along my jeans before I stood up, knocking on the screen door.  I wanted to turn and walk away, but before I could finish my thought the door swung open. The shock on her face, and the tears that immediately rimmed her eyes broke my piece of shit heart. “Hey, Ms. Taylor.” Before I could say anything else her arms were around my neck in the biggest hug. I heard a strangled sob escape her and I had to inhale a ragged breath not to lose it.  This is the one living person I would never want to hurt and I did. I knew I did the second I left this city, but I was a selfish bastard. That tender moment lasted all of 30 seconds before I felt a hard smack on the side of my head. “The f…”

“Where the hell have you been Ivan!?’ Another smack. “I’ve been worried fucking sick about you!” She dragged me in the door, another smack to the back of head before she slammed the door shut. I took it. I deserved it. “Sit down. Tell me where you been. Why you left. Why you didn’t call!” She disappeared into the kitchen as I took a seat on the couch near the front door.  I’m not sure how much more smacks I could take or she was going in for a sharp object.  The worried, yet angry, tone in her questions was serious. I’d heard it before.  When Andrew and I wouldn’t come home all night, but this was different. She knew back then we’d come home.  She hadn’t heard from me in 10 years, and Andrew will never come home again.

I scrubbed an inked  hand down my weary features as she reappeared with a beer in hand. My gaze met hers and I can see the tears still threatening in her eyes but she plastered on half a smile as he handed me the beer. “I’m sorry, Ivan. I just haven’t seen you in so long. I didn’t know where you were or what happened to you. I thought you were… dead.” I know how difficult that last thought was to her. She’d already lost Drew and I know it must have killed her to think I was gone, too. I took a long pull of the beer before I could answer her.  “No. Ms. Taylor. I’m sorry. I’m a selfish bastard.  I just wanted to get the fu... I mean hell, out of this hole, and I didn’t think of what you were going through.” I ran my finger through my hair in frustration. I was pissed at myself now. There’s so much shit I wish I would have done differently.

I took another swig of my beer before I continued.  I needed to take the edge off and a shot of whiskey would be nice, but I needed to get this out and the beer was all I had.  “After Andrew died.  I didn’t feel like there was shit left for me here. I couldn’t look at this place anymore without reminders of our entire lives here. All the shit we would get into and all the good times we had.  And… And I felt like complete shit for not being able to save him. I should’ve been there that night…” I felt my rage building, my jaw clenched as the grip around the bottle tightened like a vice, but before I could finish that sentence I felt an arm around my shoulder and a warm, shaky hand on my cheek. She turned my face to look at her, more tears. This time they were stinging my eyes, too.  I’d never said that out loud. I never spoke of that night at all.

“No, Ivan. Don’t you dare blame yourself for that. You hear me? Nothing you did would have saved him. That was shit Andrew got himself into and it caught up to him. That was NOT your fault.”  I looked away, swallowed down a lump in my throat, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand as I cleared my throat and gave her a small nod. I knew that. Logically I knew I knew I could not have saved him.  Even if I did that night, eventually it would catch up to him. But that was my job. My whole life I felt that I was his guardian. Whatever shit we got into, whether it was alone or together, it was my job to get us out of it. Andrew was a good guy, but he had one vice, and in the end that is what killed him.  I knew I would’ve had this conversation eventually and it would’ve turned out the same.  That doesn’t mean I won’t carry around some kind of guilt with me my entire life.  He was my brother. Maybe not by blood, but he was the closest I ever had to one, and I would have killed for him if it ever came down it.  He would’ve done the same for me.

I stayed and spoke to Ms. Taylor for a few of hours after that.  We talked about everything, good and bad, and I remembered what I missed so much about our relationship.  We could talk about anything.  She gave me shit about leaving Lilah, too, and the typical mom conversations. We shared memories about Andrew and all the shit we would get into. I hadn’t laughed so hard in a very long time. As hard as it was to do, I’m glad I had seen her.  She didn’t let me leave without feeding me and made me promise her that I would call her at least once a week so she would know that I was okay.  I made a promise to myself that I would do more than call her once a week.  I’d come see her whenever I could or my job brought me back this way.

The sun hadn’t set when I left, and if I was lucky I would get to L.A. before it did.  I was going to spend a couple of nights there to meet with some local artists and have a show in a small gallery near Venice Beach before I headed up to San Francisco for another job. A buddy of mine set me up do a kickass mural up there for a local business owner.  I would have me up there at least a couple of weeks, but I didn’t mind. I loved that city and the pay was excellent. It was a good distraction I needed from the last few days I’ve had.  I felt a little less weight on my shoulders as I rode, but I couldn’t help the sadness that I would always carry with me. I could’ve been taking this ride with Drew. We always talked about doing this kinda shit for a living. We always thought it was only a pipe dream.  I was only half the artist he was, but he’s the reason why I do it.  Why it’s my life now.  As long as I continued he would never really be gone.