#there goes a hundred years' worth of skull collection :( ]]

[whirling-fangs]

There was an eerie silence in the Room of Remembrance. Forsaken, in the temple backrooms, where the faithful never ventured. It was not openly stated to be off limits. The temple was a home to all lost souls. And the people there usually were too encumbered by their troubles to pry. Somehow, not even the sound of flowing water dared reach back here.

It was a vast arrangement of skulls, stacked one next to the other. Some had teeth, some didn't. The bone could be off-white or chipped and pale like alabaster. Ornaments, pieces of hair, were all left intact on the bone. There were a few vases among them, porcelain white.

"Wouldn't touch it, if I were you."

The child's senses were sharp. He would've sensed them coming, even if their footfalls were feather light, because of the soft, cool breeze that was their aura.

"It's a gift. From a friend of mine." The same, unfaltering amicable smile. As if they had nothing to hide. He was a very troublesome kid; but he wasn't completely stupid. He knew what would happen if he ran his mouth — he could see it in front of him.

"You know, it's a show of poor manners to sneak into private rooms like that." A step forth brings their towering form closer; and now the boy is standing between him and that wall of cadaver. The demon calmly reached up, over them, to gently push a skull further into the shelf. A bit too close to the edge. "This room is very important. And you have a record of being a little clumsy, don't you?" Most of those incidents had, of course, been intentional. Still, the tone was aimless and strangely cruel, as a child's might be.

Inosuke's steps were as silent as a snowfall. It was a skill he had developed without meaning to, from years of sneaking around the mansion. At first, it was only to spook his mother or other inhabitants, until he figured that it was a needed skill for his regular outings in the forest.

He had learnt to make himself perfectly silent, whether wearing socks or barefooted against the wooden floor. His light frame was a great help, his small stature allowing him to slip where most couldn't fit.

He knew better than to expect anything normal beyond these chambers. No one knew what lay further, and the child's morbid curiosity got the better of him. Only he would be foolish enough to go against the monster's unspoken wishes, and willingly trouble the sanctuary of a creature elevated at the same level as the gods.

The child froze as he reached the furthermost chamber. The lack of direct sunlight only served to make the room even more terrifying, the skulls casting distorted shadows on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Inosuke swore he could hear their eerie laughs, the screams, the pleas of the people they had belong to.

The shine of hair ornaments caught his attention. A brooch in the shape of a plum flower, a vivid memory jumping to his eyes. The smile of a kind young lady, freshly arrived in the mansion, as she served him a second helping of rice. She was gone the morning after.

He tore his gaze away, trying to find anything in this room that didn't chill him to the bone. He spotted a vase, and immediately felt goosebumps spread across his skin. There was something slimey about it.

He approached with careful steps, a small hand reaching out – when he heard him.

Inosuke spun on his feels, blue locks of hair brushing against his cheeks. He could feel his heart pounding under his ribs, threatening to break out.

"... you always say that this place is everyone's home. If it's really my home... then I'm allowed to go wherever I want."

He watched with wide eyes as the man's arm reached above his head. A step back, unvoluntary, and the misdeed was done.

His back hit the vase, with just enough force to send it into the ground.

[grootficguy]

Hi guys! For my Creative Writing Masters, I’ve been crafting a short horror story, and I’ve got the final draft hopefully complete. This is roughly 25% of my degree. Please give me any feedback you can! Thank you!

Weep of Widdershins

Against my will and with great irritation possessing me, we gathered at the gate shortly before midnight. A motley crew of personality, none of us would ever have befriended anyone else in our circle were we not all writing for the same student paper.

           I’d applied for my Masters on a whim, hoping two letters at the end of my name would let me make… somethingof myself. Ten newspapers, fifty publishers and one hundred literary agents later I’m no wiser, but a thousandfold more bitter. For an extra flair on my CV I decided (against my better judgment) to start writing for the same low-brow student paper for whom I penned atrocities during my Bachelor’s years. I won’t divulge too much, but the content barely passed for a gossip magazine, let alone a paper.

           It was with this group that I took up the offer for a night of drinking. Different faces; same droll visions on writing. The article was to be entitled “The Shocking TRUTH About the Parlour Bar!” When Rebecca announced that we’d be working on it this week, my eyes rolled so far back in my skull, I could see my own grey matter rotting in my head.

In a whirlwind of events, a peculiar girl with snow-white hair had approached us, and not the other way around. Nameless, ethereal and cold. Those were the three words I suggested we use to describe her in the article.

We barely talked for five minutes before she grabbed our conversation by the throat and bent it to her will.

           ‘Would you know about the Weep of Widdershins?’ she asked.

           I felt my blood freeze. Something about the fake intrigue, the suddenness of her injection on the topic hit me somewhere I’d never been hit before.

           ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

           ‘You haven’t heard of it?’

           ‘No,’ Rebecca said, tapping the conception of the article into her phone.

           ‘It goes back long before the construction and establishment of the Queen’s University of Belfast in 1845. As per legend, a deranged spinster by the name of Mary O’Shaughnessy took the walk around the grounds that would now be considered the campus of the university at midnight on the night she died. Holding only a lantern to guide her way, she stepped backwards and counter-clockwise across the grounds and met three strangers along the way. No one knows why she walked the way she did, or with whom she encountered on her journey, but by the end of her walk she was driven to madness, and took the stiletto from the inside of her stocking and opened herself up at the throat.’

           We fell to a collective hush. Rebecca clicked the side of her phone and returned it to her pocket. A wince grew across all of our faces.

           ‘All you need is a lantern,’ The Girl said, clinking a long, white fingernail against the rusty lantern that sat on the antique cubby behind us. ‘And you’ll have your story. Walk the Weep and detail what happens.’

           So there we stood, assembled at the gate at the front and centre of the Lanyon Building, the anchor and panopticon of the university. I was slightly out of breath, having ran for dear life seconds after Rebecca had stolen the lantern on our table and snuck it through the front door undetected. Up the road by the park were a rat and a cat. Through the gate ran the rat, where the cat halted fast. With a hideous hiss like a Count in disguise, the cat vaulted the wall and fled into the night.

Our spirits were giddy, a mix of edgy excitement of the paranormal and the prospect of finally writing a piece worth more than wet muck. The Girl retrieved the lantern from Rebecca’s bag without asking and held it before me.

           ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Why me?’

           ‘Only one can walk across the bones of those long-gone,’ The Girl said. ‘Mary O’Shaughnessy entered alone, and so should you.’

           ‘Either way, Maitiú’s writing the piece on his phone right now,’ Rebecca said, ‘and I’m going to interview her and for a few quotes we can throw about in the first half of the article. Everyone else… Jesus, look at the state of them. They can barely walk. We need someone sober to do the nitty-gritty so they can remember everything along the way.’

           ‘Remember what?’ I said. ‘I’ll talk the same walk I take every Tuesday and Wednesday but backwards with a lantern in my hand like a tool. I can tell you right now what I’m going to remember.’

           ‘We need to know what you see, Shane.’

           Rebecca harassed one of the other writers – a druggy looking lad whose name was either James or Séamus – into lighting her cigarette. Then, with all the authority a student paper editor could have, she snatched the lighter from his hand and held it inside the lantern, lighting it correctly on her third attempt.

           With heated reluctance I took the lantern from her grip and held it by my side.

           ‘There are rules,’ The Girl said.

           ‘Quickly,’ I said.

           ‘First—' The girl reached to my throat and plucked the Ichthys away. The necklace was held in place by a weak clasp in the back, so it detached in one piece with no issue. ‘You must abandon your religion at the gate.’

           ‘Take the necklace, then,’ I said, smirking. ‘There are always two sets of footprints in the sand.’

           ‘Your God is too afraid to walk beside you in there.’

           I turned around and saw the journey beyond the gate. There was nothing out of the ordinary in my field of vision, which stretched all the way down to the McClay Library.

           ‘Next, you must walk backwards the entire way. Do not walk forwards. Do not turn around.’

           ‘Do not pass Go. Do not collect two-hundred dollars,’ Maitiú said, earning a titter from the group.

           ‘What happens if I turn around?’

           The Girl leaned close to my face, enough that the sulphuric stench of her throat spilled out before my nostrils. ‘Do not turn around.’

           Up until now I took her as some quirky loon, but the weight she loaned her words and the severity of her face made me rethink questioning her. My fingers trailed along the dip above my collarbone, longing for the cold reassurance of my faith.

           ‘On the night she walked the Weep of Widdershins, Mary O’Shaughnessy encountered three strangers. The first, a man who wanted to help her; you must refuse his help. The second, a woman you want to help; you must not help her. The third needs your help; help them.’

           ‘Thought you said nobody knows who she met?’ Maitiú asked irritably, looking up from his phone after deleting a line. The Girl ignored him.

           ‘Finally, if the light inside your lantern dies, through the whistle of the night, through spiteful rain or through all that wills it, stop. Stop dead in the road and lay down. It is coming, and you need to make it believe you are already dead, or so help you all the angels and saints.  Don’t think about running; you aren’t fast enough. When the light returns, you may continue.’

           We waited three lurid, agonising minutes for our watches and phones to tick eleven fifty-nine to midnight.

           I began at the war memorial statue — an angel coddling a falling soldier, immortalised in meticulously crafted stone. I turned my back on the angel to face the gate.

I took a step behind upon a leaf and heard a wicked crunch beneath my feet.

Further, further, until the figures of my companions shrunk to spots of dust, and the harsh, cruel night suffocated their voices.

By the time I’d descended the eastern wing of Lanyon Hall, I was alone. No souls to be found along the way but the moon and I, gazing deep within each other’s hearts, her bathing me in silver radiance. Wailing winds brought frigid stings upon my face and I cursed myself for forgoing a scarf and hat.

My foot glided along something slippery by the bottom of the lane, on the right angle turn outside the McClay library. I skidded along the ground and slammed against the cold, hard ground.

My lantern clattered on the cold concrete, but managed to stay lit.

After my body registered and dealt with the shock, I circled my leg in front of me and peeled off what was stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

And with rapidly flapping hands, I squealed as the rat fell with a squelch and a splatter beside me. My hands found themselves automatically scraping off its unclean aura on the brick. On its side, I saw a bite wound so deep its ribs were visible, with a putrid yellow pus gathering around the red outline.

I cursed myself down from panic rather quickly.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Y—'

I froze.

Primal. My thoughts turned primal. The instinct was to run. To scramble to my feet. To turn. But a resounding voice in my head strangled that thought.

‘You must refuse his help.’

‘Here, let me get that for you,’ the voice said with soothing malice, veering off to my right where my lantern lay on its side.

‘No!’ I barked. I didn’t dare turn around to find his face.

We scrambled. On hands and knees I crawled with incoordination to grab the damned thing before he could lay a finger on it. My body transformed in feral dread, adrenaline flushing out my veins.

Closer.

Almost there.

The bony white hand was inches away when I smacked it, still never turning to see its owner.

I laid my hand on the lantern.

I must’ve looked like a pathetic worm, curled on top of the lantern in the foetal position, shaking its metallic frame with my trembling body.

After a few minutes, I got to my feet, lantern in hand, and glanced as far over my shoulder as fear would let me.

Once the drizzle began to fall, I assumed the Helper was gone.

Even with no mirror I knew my face resembled the construct outside the library. The ghastly green man with a gaping jaw. I had to remind myself to close my mouth and pluck up my courage to carry on. After carefully sidestepping the desecrated remains of the rat, I flung my hood over my head to keep my hair from getting wet.

One spiteful drop of rain fell heavy from the sky and landed straight onto the candle’s flame. A miracle. Or deus ex diabolos — one or the other. Depends on who sent it hurtling from the sky.

I flung myself hard onto the ground and caught my arm upon a jagged branch. I left my blood and flesh somewhere on that tree. The sharp pain seared up and down my arm. I could feel the drips of blood exiting the wound and merging with the rainwater. Though I wanted to scream, to curse the pain down, I lay still. I had to.

All was black for a while. Just as the urge to move became too great to ignore, it came.

I could not even try to describe its shape if I wanted to. At first I thought it might have been a dog, but it definitely had two feet from what I could hear. It came so close to my face that I could smell its breath. The vile miasma of its wretched innards. Like fresh vomit, rat musk and diesel all at once. As much as I needed to throw up the contents of my own stomach, I fought the urge as it ran its hand over my body. I say hand only because I felt five appendages trailing down my chest, but they were cold and metallic. I would have easily believed it had steel in place of its fingers.

So I waited. Though my body wanted to do many things at once — throw up, force a reaction to my bleeding arm, cry, — I lay still. I felt a few rogue tears escape the corners of my eyes, but the pounding rain must have masked it enough, as the thing did not emaciate me there and then.

My vision behind lidded eyes brightened with the lighting of the lantern once more, and I flitted them open.

It was gone.

To this day, I don’t know how to describe it. I have fashioned many drawings on paper trying to rationalise the thing that hovered over me, using my other four senses to imagine its shape, its colour — but nothing I can reproduce ever strikes the same chord of fear into my soul as that Thing did on that night, so I can say with certainty that none of my concepts are remotely close in design.

I slowly got to my shaky feet and inspected the wound. It was certainly nasty; caked with dirt and green with sap. But I didn’t believe it was deep enough to hospitalise me. I removed my shirt and tied it around the wound, wincing as I pulled.

The flame in my lantern was weak as I turned the corner to the bottom of University Square.

As I travelled up that road, I passed a woman on the ground. Swaths of cloth coddled her frail body, though they grew damp with the rain. She quivered violently in the frigid cold.

‘Change?’

My bottom lip began to tremble. Sick. This was sick. The least I could’ve done was untie the shirt and give her one more layer to clasp on to. I could have called the police and let them guide her to shelter.

‘Change?’

I shook my head. Speaking would have revealed the tears in my voice. I stayed silent and kept walking.

‘Please?’

I walked further. Her weak voice barely reached me, drowning in the wicked wind. Once I’d passed the McMordie building, I saw that her trembling had stopped. I wasn’t to help her, and by now, I couldn’t. Her empty tin fell from her grip and rolled off on its own way, searching for a new adventure in the deathly echoes of the night. I abandoned the Helpless and continued, teary-eyed and apoplectic.

I didn’t know whether I was sad or relieved that she was dead.

I neared the Lanyon building once more, tasting salvation on my lips. Situated on its western wing was a security hut, a garish red cubicle that staunchly refused to conform to the rest of the university’s aesthetic.

There came a sudden scraping from the inside of that door. My common sense was whispering, ‘Run away and live.’ But louder than that whisper was The Girl’s voice, commanding me to help the stranger. I clambered backwards across the barricade, my lantern in my hand.

What lay within that cubicle still haunts me to my core. I saw a sick perversion of myself, like a mirror that distorted every feature of my face, and every limb it had was broken and contorted.

The thing inside cried, its words gurgled and deformed. I knew what it wanted me to do, as if its guttural choke was a language I could decode to broken English, an approximate definition through a fusion of throaty spits and crooked body language.

Knowing what I had to do, I wrestled with the bricks in the nearest broken wall. The weakest one came barely free from its nest within the mortar. I wrestled with the slab of stone more than my own thoughts — my conscience, passed to me from Adam and Eve’s hunger. I did to it as Cain to Abel, and sent it to the Lord.

I stood above the bastard beast, the dripping brick within my hand. I felt the guilt wash over me like tides across the sands. And what about “Thou shalt not kill”? True, the chilling fingers of sin should have closed across my throat and claimed me for damnation, but the seventh commandment only refers to living things; my brothers and sisters, the beating hearts of billions, fuelling flesh with coursing blood. Red blood.

Droplets of black dripped off the brick. Were I brave enough to bring my face close to the still-writhing mass, I would have seen the source of black, a contusion of vulgar fluids and shards of brick and dust. But I dared not venture any further, for fear of what that thing could have been. Help it needed; help I gave.

Needless to say, the girl had long since taken off by the time I returned to where it all began. The others vanished too, having waited their willpower to its end. I found my Ichthys lying disgracefully on the ground at the spot where The Girl had been standing. Taking it with tightened grip, I clutched it close around my chest.

And when they asked what I had seen, I told them I saw nothing.

[theasteriae-arc]

HOW DO YOU MEASURE A LIFE?

IN LOVING MEMORY OF LEOPOLD CONSTANTINE MORAN 7 AUG 1984 – 12 MAY 2004 1ST BATTALION, B COMPANY, ROYAL ANGLICANS 18 SEP 2002 – 12 MAY 2004 WE WILL REMEMBER HIIM

May 12th, 1984 The shades are closed. The city on the other side of the windows is greener than she ever expected it could be, but the sunlight hurts her eyes, gives her such headaches that she can’t even open them. She spends a lot of time in bed. There’s three months to go, still, till the baby is due, but she feels sick and tired all the time, just wants to lie here in the quiet, dim, coolness of the room with the fans humming, undisturbed.  

She’s almost asleep when noise erupts in the corridor outside. Running feet, shouts, laughter. Sebastian is almost four, August a little over a year younger and probably a couple of paces behind, determined to catch up. There’s a bit of a scuffle outside the door, then a flurry of knocks that feel like something sharp being driven into Vivienne’s skull. She groans and puts a hand over her eyes.  

Sebastian is loud and restless, likes to bounce on the foot of the mattress. It’s too much for her to handle on a good day, and she’s not had one of those in months. Thank God for Nanny, who shepherds both boys away, insisting, “We don’t want to disturb Mother now, do we?”  

Vivienne sighs, relieved, and hopes the new baby is a girl.  

May 12th, 1989  

“… Ready or not, here I come.” Sebastian is seven years old and clumsy with numbers. He starts counting on his fingers but loses track somewhere after twenty and skips a couple. He repeats a few more and finally gives up, calling to his brothers who are hiding elsewhere inside the residence.  

Leopold, the youngest ( and their mother’s favourite, despite the fact he’s another boy ), is hiding inside a wardrobe in one of the empty state bedrooms. He’s not scared of the dark like Sebastian is.  

The British High Commission is not a cosy building—a lot of the furniture is antique, breakable, and there are many rooms the boys are not supposed to go into—but if they ignore that, which they often do, it’s a great place to play hide and seek. So many rooms and cupboards and corners to squeeze yourself into.

He waits for what feels like hours, but really, is only fifteen or twenty minutes, hands over his mouth when Sebastian thunders into the room, but after ducking to look under the bed and yanking back the curtains, he wrenches the wardrobe door open, and for a second, the two brothers just stare at each other, identical blue eyes, before Bash grins and holds out his hand. “Help me come and find August?”

May 12th, 1994

August seems like a long time away. Leopold’s not sure whether he wants it to come quicker or slower. He’s looking forward to seeing his brothers again, though they seem like very distant figures now, voices on the other end of a telephone every two weeks or so. But when they left to go to school, they didn’t come back, and that’s what’s making him nervous. Torn between staying close to his mother’s side and spending every minute he can out of doors, playing cricket with the friends he might never see again.  

It’s very hot out today, and Vivienne’s taken to bed with another of her headaches. Leopold doesn’t need to pack yet, but he’s trying to decide what he wants to take with him when he goes to England in a couple of months’ time. These, definitely. His father’s always telling him he’s far too old for toys now, but Leopold still loves the collection of little tin soldiers he was given one Christmas when he was younger. They go with him everywhere.  

Once upon a time, he’d had a whole platoon of them, but now there are only three left. He makes them parachute into the open suitcase one at a time. Sebastian. August. Leopold. Then they crawl on their bellies under the mesh that he thinks he’s supposed to put his socks in or something, climbing up and out the other side.  

Absorbed by this game, he forgets about his upcoming trip again until bedtime. 

May 12th, 2000

Bash and August look very grown up in their parade dress uniforms. Dark blue jackets and trousers with a red stripe up the leg, gold braid on the shoulder, and a crimson band around their caps. Leo scans the rows of cadets, more than two hundred of them saluting the General as they pass by the stand, for their faces. Shoulder to shoulder, though one slightly taller than the other, both with their chins up and their chests puffed out. They have every right to be proud.  

Neither of their parents thought it worth flying out for, and Leo, sitting next to his uncle and his aunt, looking very smart himself in a navy-blue suit and a blue and red striped tie, is privately relieved. No doubt his father would have found some fault somewhere and ruined the day for them, whereas Uncle Thomas realises how important this is for them both.

“Will you come to my passing out parade too?” Leo asks him, while they wait for the ranks to be dismissed so they can go and offer their congratulations to the two brand-new 2nd Lieutenants. He’s already decided he’s going to be one too, when he’s older. “Only two years, then it’ll be my turn.”  

May 12th, 2004

Bash’s hand is outstretched again. Leo thinks back to that afternoon at the Embassy, fifteen years ago. “Help me come and find August?” Then, he’d let go of Bash’s hand as soon as he could and gone tearing off down the corridor ahead of him, little legs flying as he was determined to find their brother first. Now, he holds on tightly for as long as he can.

He thought it would hurt more, dying, but mostly, he’s just cold. Even with the fiery, Afghani sun beating down on the back of his neck, he’s shivering. Must be the shock. His fingers contract around Sebastian’s, nails digging into the back of his hand, but Bash does not react. Not at all. “Don’t let go!” he calls, but it’s his fingers that are slipping out of Leo’s grip. “Helicopter will be here, help’s coming, you just have to hold on.”

“So do you.” Leo grits his teeth and tries to pull Bash’s hand back. He can taste sand and iron when he coughs, chest spasming. “You can’t—” It’s getting harder for him to talk in between coughs. “—You can’t give up; do you hear me? No matter what happens, you can’t—fucking—” Another cough, longer this time. When the fit’s passed, he’s so tired, he can hardly keep his eyes open. He screws them up against all the grit and the dirt and sand and fixes them on his brother, two pairs of identical blue eyes.  

“—I love you, brother.” A red-toothed smile, then his eyelashes flutter, and he can hear Bash calling to him from the other end of a very long tunnel, but when he tries to turn back, the blackness is too much. It swallows him up whole. 

[blackssuunn-mandoandyodito]

Big dreams, expensive taste

Part one: How does it feel, to treat me like you do?

A Maxwell Lord x f!reader fanfic

Pairing:Maxwell Lord x f!reader

Rating: PG-13? Say the ratings again?

Words: 2.1 K

A/N: This is the first chapter of a series I'm working on (it's more like an introduction though). I hope you like it!

Warnings: swearing, talk of unwanted flirting, embarrassment?

Summary: you meet Mr. Lord in a very odd way.

Is working for such a big company supposed to be this tiring?

The phones keep ringing and ringing. Powerful, arrogant men enter and leave the building without so much as looking at you, and the ones who do, are just stares filled with lewd. It makes your skin itch.

The vase that decorates the counter stands tall over your head, full with some kind of white flowers that, even after four years of working in the three thousand eight hundred million dollars worth business, you fail to recognize. One would think that such an obscenely rich enterprise could easily afford to have even orchids as a way of impressing all the investors that come every day. 

The amount of time you've spent working there still amazes you. It was supposed to only be temporary until you had enough money to rent your own apartment and not obliged to rent with someone you have to pretend to like for the sake of reaching the amount of money the landlord asked for. And then the pay had been great, it wasn't such a bad schedule and four years passed in the blink of an eye. The sight over New York City in your apartment was worth every day.

Another phone at your left rings in such a noisy way that it's as if it was a person screaming at you to pay attention. Might as well be, with all the condescending assholes you have to deal with daily.

Taking a deep breath, you pick up the receiver and put on a fake smile, instinctively making your voice sweeter and falsely warm.

"Lord Enterprises, how can I help you?"

A nasal, petty voice of a woman asks you to communicate her with the head of the advertising area. Must be the girl from accountancy. "Yes, I'll put you through"

Diane's laughter comes from your right just as you hang up the phone and sigh, exasperated. It puts a smile on your face. Her fierce, genuine personality never fails to feel like a blow of fresh air in this suffocating world built on mountains of money.

"Accountancy again?" she asks, grinning. The black uniform that she never fails to look marvelous in makes her stand out in a way that even you understand why every guy and some girls drool at her sight. No one's stupid enough to flirt with her though. After that one time she sent a guy to ER for an obscene comment aimed at her, everybody understood that if she wanted something, she'd search for it. Otherwise, better stay away.

"Yes," you answer, "they seem to be going crazy with the new campaign"

Her hair moves in waves as she shakes her head, giggling. It sounds like bells.

She's better than you at handling the lines. You still can't understand how Diane can make her voice like dripping honey, convince everyone to be nice and want to kneel at her feet. And it wasn't even with malice, she was just that great. 

Another phone rings, this time one of her lines.

"Lord Enterprises, how can I help you?"

Shouting comes from the speaker as she picks up, making your blood boil as someone on the other side of the line screams at her.

She just grins and rolls her eyes.

"Sir, I can't understand a word from what you're saying. Breathe and I may be able to help you." she winks at you, leaning over the counter with a pen held between her fingers.

The shouting stops as her pen scribbles down something on her notepad, nodding. "Yes sir, will do"

She hangs up, manicured nails contrasting beautifully with the black plastic of the telephone. She looks up to find you with an arched eyebrow and an amused smile.

"It never fails," you say, amazed by how easy she can handle everything.

"It never fails"

Her skirt raises over her thigh as she bends down to pick one stack of papers that have been collecting dust all week, waiting to be taken to Human Resources. 

"I have to take this to the girls at HR," Diane mutters as she walks outside the confined space of the reception. 

You nod as her heels click away to the staff elevator, turning your attention to the phones again.

Before you take the new call, a deep voice reaches your ears as a blonde man enters the building. It sounds weirdly familiar.

"You have to schedule both reunions the same day," he orders to one of the three men walking behind him. "I can't be taking a flight every week to London when the shareholders feel like it"

His stance lets you know he's angry about something, and the men that follow him seem completely intimidated by the strong tone of his voice. It makes something hot settle on your stomach.

But not one of them bothers to show you their IDs, ignoring completely the fact that registration is needed.

You walk to them with a frown. Did they really think they could get through one of the most important buildings in the city without identifying themselves? They watch too much Tv.

"Excuse me, sir," you walk to stand in front of the blonde man. "who are you coming to see?"

His eyes burn holes through your skull as he stops talking to the man carrying his suitcase to turn towards you. "Pardon me?"

He sounds so offended that it makes you recoil slightly, but you're not getting fired over some stupid, conceited man. You look at him and he holds your gaze, impassive.

"You have to register with us before you walk in", you say, "if you're not wearing a badge, you have no access"

For some reason, the incredulous laugh he gives settles a void in your stomach and anger lights in your veins.

"Do you know who I am?"

Your eyes roll to the back of your skull. You've heard that phrase at least a hundred times in the last three months by far more intimidating men than him.

"You could be the president and there would still be rules to follow, with no badge you don't have access"

He crosses his arms right at his chest, fury shining in his brown eyes. A shiver runs down your spine but you refuse to budge, holding his stare with conviction. His upper lip twitches.

His arm points to the picture of Maxwell Lord at the back of the room behind you.

 And you turn.

That's when you realize you've really fucked up.

"Oh my God", your heart goes wild as you take in the picture of the millionaire.

You just stopped Maxwell fucking Lord from entering his own building. You're gonna get fired because you just denied access to the boss of your boss of your boss, the fucking founder of the company you work for. 

Fuck.

 "I-I'm so sorry sir," the apology leaves your lips as you stumble over your words. Your face gets hotter when he grins, amused by your embarrassment. Your chest begins to feel tight and breathing becomes harder the more you realize the mistake you've made.

And then, as if the situation wasn't bad enough already, he throws back his head and laughs. He laughs like you just told him the best joke in history, holding his stomach and covering his mouth, with shrieks of laughter that make everyone turn to look at him.

It leaves you speechless. The blood drains from your face and your hands start to feel sweaty and cold. His gaze never leaves your face once he calms down again.

 "Well," he smiles, tucking his hands inside his pockets, "it's been a while since I last met someone so efficient in their work."

You grimace. "I'm just doing my job the best I can sir"

He laughs, extending his hand towards you. "Maxwell Lord, nice to meet you"

What are you supposed to do? Take it?

You find it hard to look at him after what you just did, but he doesn't even seem to think about walking off and firing you. That would be less painful.

He raises his eyebrows, cold eyes looking at you. He doesn't look very happy now.

Despite every instinct that tells you not to do it, you grab his hand, tell him your name and give him his so desired handshake, trying not to let your whole body combust or evaporate like it wants to. 

You scold yourself when the first thing that comes to you is how warm his hand is, how soft his skin feels. His rings feel cold to the scorching heat that your whole body seems to be enveloped in. His grip is strong as he holds your hand, an entirely different kind of fire lighting his pupils as he looks at you. A bolt of electricity runs from the tip of your fingers and all the way up your arm, settling something hot and overwhelming right at the center of your stomach. His head tilts slightly to one side, studying you.

When he lets you go, all the air you hadn't realized you were holding goes out of your lungs. If he realizes, he doesn't comment. 

"Go register," he orders his men, with a much stronger tone than the one he used with you. All three of them give him incredulous looks but are smart enough to shut up and do as he says. 

With a weird sense of being in a dream, you walk to the counter and take their IDs, ignoring the glares that they're giving you. You quickly register their names in the computer and give them a card that identifies them as workers, and each takes them and pins them to their clothes.

Maxwell walks to you again and squeezes your arm, smiling.

"Keep up the good work," he winks as he turns around, grazing your arm with his gold ring. It leaves that patch of your skin burning. Now, watching as he walks away, you realize how much power he carries with every step he takes, how everyone seems to leave the way free no matter what direction he goes to. 

You wonder briefly what would it take to bend that power, to break that sense of superiority he owns in such an exquisite way.

Someone calls you from behind as you stand there, stunned at what you just lived through. One of the most powerful men in the country gave you a handshake.

You just talked with the owner of one of the most lucrative companies worldwide and he complimented you for your job. And not only that, he made his men follow the rules per your request.

When Diane calls your name again from the counter, you turn around to see her with her jaw on the floor. You feel numb as your legs take you back inside reception.

"What the fuck did I miss?" she hisses, pulling you closer to her by your arms when your legs feel close to giving out. She pulls one of the chairs to you and pushes you down, making you sit. Then, she bends down at your level and looks you straight in the eye. It feels close to what you imagine would feel if someone could search through your soul.

You open your mouth, but no sound comes out. She shakes you by your shoulders.

"Tell me what happened!"

With trembling hands, you grab her fingers and squeeze until yours start to hurt. She lets you, not showing signs of pain.

'I…." You hesitate for a moment, "I stopped him when he came in because he wasn't wearing a badge"

"You what!?" She says, close to shouting. "And you didn't recognize him!?"

Your head snaps up to look at her, defensive.

"Well, I don't spend every hour of my shift looking at him!"

She laughs, pulling her chair in front of you to sit down. Her fingers start to draw circles in the back of your hand, trying to calm you down.

"But you're keeping your job, right?"

If you had met her back when you had to rent and made her your roommate, you'd probably still be living together.

"Yeah," you smile, squeezing her hand "you're not getting rid of me that easy"

She opens her mouth to say something else when one of your phones rings. She picks it up.

"Lord Enterprises, how can I help you?"

For a moment, she listens to the person on the other side of the line. An incredulous chuckle leaves her mouth as she turns to look at you, handing you the speaker.

"They're asking for you," she says, astonished about something you're not sure you want to find out.

"From where?" You ask, scared.

"From Lord's direct office"

All air leaves your lungs. She shakes the phone in her hand, urging you to take it. With a deep breath, you grip the phone and hold it at your ear.

"Yes?"

An old lady speaks to you.

"Miss, I've been told by Mister Lord to call you so you come up to his office at the end of your working hours please"

Diane's eyes look like they're about to pop out of her head as the lady speaks.

"Y-yes, I will," you stutter, "thank you for letting me know"

When you hang up and let your head fall in your hands, Diane covers his mouth with both hands and gasps, laughing.

Calls keep coming in from every line.

You let the phones ring.

[kbstories]

Entangled

en·tan·gled (adj.) Twisted together; interconnected.

Eustass Kidd joins the Flying Six. The Kidd Pirates go to war.

(Or: Welcome to the worst timeline.)

Tags: Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, References to Brainwashing, Rescue Missions, Hurt/Comfort (It’s a solid 80% hurt you have been warned)

Set in Wano, Act Three. Spoiler warning for all of Wano. This is an AU where Kidd is imprisoned on Onigashima and Killer doesn’t eat SMILE.

Content warning for some torture, some blood and references to brainwashing.

***

They’re dead, they said.

Wiping blood from his mouth, Kidd had laughed. “My crew? Dying to cock-faced cunts like you? Never.”

They fought to get to you and they died, they said as cruel hands dug into Kidd’s hair and put him under, over and over.

“They didn’t”, Kidd bit back. “They’re alive”, words fractured by the water in his throat, his lungs. Again – they will come – and again – they’re fine – and again – they’ll come for me. By then he couldn’t catch enough breath to speak but it was there, conviction burning bright in his chest.

They said, he’s dead, and even though his eyes could barely see and his ears were ringing, Kidd recognized blue and white and Killer. Kidd’s veins ached with whatever they pumped into him, his brain struggling to tell truth from lie, dream from reality.

The mask is there, real. The seams Kidd worked a full day and night on to get them just right, cracked apart and caked with blood where Killer’s temple would be–

They’re dead, they say and Eustass Kidd’s world shatters apart.

***

The Victoria Punk strains against the raging of the sea, waves mighty as mountains crashing against her skull and bursting into a thousand pieces. Killer doesn’t turn his head away from the spray, lets the ocean sting every inch of exposed skin.

Under his mask, his eyes stare straight into Onigashima’s soulless gaze.

“Hey, you there! Spikey’s friend!”

Strawhat’s voice rings true through the winds and the rain. Killer keeps his arms crossed and nods, the gesture over-articulated to carry despite the storm. “Stick to the plan, Strawhat! We’ll catch up to you on the other side!”

A smile and a thumbs-up from Strawhat to his right, a sardonic laugh from Law to his left. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for an optimist, Massacre Soldier.”

All Killer gives him is the bird. Kidd would’ve laughed at that, he thinks.

Wire is at the helm, hands steadfast and solid. “Keep course”, Killer tells him as he hops down on deck. “There’s a spot at the bottom of the bay. The Punk should be safe there.” Heat flanks him as the rest of the crew gathers, every face around him retaining that grim sort of tenacity that carried them through the past month.

There’s exhaustion there too, so keen Killer can sense it: None of them can quite shake that phantom presence permeating the Punk, the constellation of their very being-together fundamentally incomplete.

To sail into battle without Kidd is… wrong, inconceivable, almost. Killer has endured all magnitudes of that feeling while they scoured every corner of Wano Country in search for that element that will make them whole again, that unique gravitational pull that makes their individual parts click into each other like carefully-crafted machinery.

(It doesn’t get easier, being without him. Missing him. Killer can’t tell why he ever expected it to.)

“Stay low”, Killer reminds his crewmates, his voice as steady as it’s been since this nightmare started. “Find the Flying Six, that’s our priority. We have to get to Kidd before the raid starts, or things will get messy.”

For years, Killer’s mask has been a comfort; the immediate “Aye, Captain” he gets in return makes him wince where the crew can’t see it. It’s a necessity, for them to remain in the dark about his weakness – about the visceral fear that shot through Killer when he realized Kidd is gone and all eyes fell on him to make the next step.

(This has been a possibility since the very beginning yet Killer never expected to live long enough for it to become reality. Always together, even in death, that was the plan.)

*

From the moment their boots touch land, all Killer can think of is Kidd. Find Kidd, save Kidd, a near-obsessive mantra playing in his head on an endless loop as they leave the Punk behind.

For weeks he lived as Kamazo the Manslayer, every scrap of intel extracted in crimson splatters under moonlit skies. Alliances made and information combined for one purpose alone, and it’s worth it to pass by hordes of drunks and people-soon-to-be-drunks unnoticed. Every step the Kidd Pirates make on Onigashima is accounted for, their approach methodical sans the perpetual chaos Kidd’s mere existence brings.

Killer hates how easy it is, to become something other than themselves. There is no time to waste on regret, not here. They have to keep going.

Finally: There is the fortress, there are the Flying Six – and among them, a flash of red Killer would recognize anywhere, anytime. His vision narrows down to the shape of Kidd perched on the parapet, dressed black-on-black like the rest of them, and a murmur goes through the crew behind him. By some animal instinct, Kidd’s head turns and he stares right at them, too.

And for the first time in a month Killer inhales and feels his lungs unfold, his chest swell with a full breath. Kidd is there. He’s right there, and Killer’s too far away to pick up any details but Kidd is alive and now he knows they’re here, too. All that’s left is to get him out of here and regroup and–

“Soldier, watch out!”

–the shout is almost drowned out by Killer’s instincts. He tears his scythes up in the last second to deflect the little bits of something raining down on them. Shrapnel, the ground littered with it in moments.

What the…?

The thunderclap of Conqueror’s Haki precedes a furious roar he has heard a hundred times, a hundred battles over. Killer catches sight of Kidd, and how scrap gathers and swirls around him, the eye of a silver-tinged hurricane about to hit, and his mind stalls as that murderous glare locks on him.

Then Kidd is upon them.

Metal screeches against metal, the air turning sharp and heavy with Kidd’s will as his fists clash against Killer’s scythes. There’s not a shred of hesitance to the strike: A fraction of a second is all Killer gets to seek out Kidd’s eyes, glowing with the sparks exploding in all directions between them, and Killer’s gut drops at the cold fury he finds there.

That, and bloodlust so strong he can taste it. Oh fuck.

The force of the attack has Killer’s heels skidding back a few feet – motherfucker, Kidd isn’t holding anything back, is he? – before Kidd’s gaze flicks to the side and he scoffs, a pissed-off tch.

A breath, drawing deep. Flames engulf them both, then, the fire throwing up a wall that gives Killer some room to breathe.

“Heat”, he gasps, and they motion for him to move. Wire isn’t far behind, grabbing Killer by the elbow and dragging him away from the inferno swallowing the person they came to save. “You okay? Killer. Did he–?”

Killer can barely look elsewhere. “No. I’m fine, Wire, let me– What the hell did they do to him?” The last part is little more than a snarl, something venomous and ugly within him stirring. Just a glimpse of it sends Killer’s heart on a warpath, beating hard enough to throb even in his fingertips.

Wire’s expression is drawn, lips a tense line. “I don’t know but this is bad. There’s too much metal on all of us.” Which is by design, to help Kidd get around in a fight and– Fuck. Fuck.

A handful of seconds, that’s all Heat can buy them. Fire can’t hold Kidd, not for long, the man himself forged in heat and pressure just as the metal he commands. Killer grits his teeth to see Kidd emerge from plumes of smoke wiping soot off that same look on his face, lethal and so cold, and he pulls both Heat and Wire behind himself.

“Leave him to me. Take the others and–”

Wire’s hand goes bruise-tight on Killer’s arm. Heat hisses, “Killer–”

“Listen to me. Kaido’s forces will follow him here any minute. Keep them off our backs. Buy us time. Whatever this is, Kidd will fight it. I just have to make him listen.”

Two little words stick to Killer’s tongue, almost making it out of his mouth. Captain’s orders. He doesn’t have to say them, though, the tense sigh Wire exhales an answer in and of itself.

“Fine, just– Stay sharp. Let’s go, Heat.”

“Yeah”, Heat says with a final glance Kidd’s way, and they’re gone. Disappearing from Killer’s limited field of vision, and Killer trusts they will keep the crew safe. It’s not like he can turn and check, not with Kidd stalking ever-closer.

Coming for him, not the crew. Just him. A joyless smile stretches Killer’s lips wide. Good.

“Care to explain what game you’re playing, Kidd? We’re here to take you home.”

Kidd snaps at him, “Shut the fuck up”, teeth big and white against the backdrop of black leather Kidd is wearing. His face is bare for the first time in years, his hair slicked back like he couldn’t give any less of a damn how it looks. Killer’s gaze falls on the symbol of the Beast Pirates on the thick belts crossing over his chest and his heart lurches, skips out of rhythm–

“I don’t care who you are. I’ll fucking kill you for wearing that mask.”

Killer stares.

“Who I…? The mask is mine. It’s mine, Kidd, you made it for me. I’m–”

Oh shit, the earth itself shakes from the pulse of magnetism Kidd draws in every last bit of metal with, Killer’s arms threatening to snap out of their sockets as his scythes are pulled in, too. “Don’t you dare”, the words are a growl more than anything. “Don’t you fucking dare say his name”, and the pressure drops to be replaced by brute physical force as Kidd lunges.

Killer doesn’t stand a chance against Kidd, he knows that. There’s his Devil Fruit, his natural strength, his skill with damn-near every weapon he’s collected – ever since he unlocked the Haki to match, Kidd has shrugged off any and all limits imposed on him. Killer knows what Kidd can do, knows his body better than his own, some days, knows every emotion that flashes in that rust-red gaze of his.

And, with Kidd hellbent on ripping him apart, Killer knows he’s but one misstep away from a very violent death.

Countless times they’ve fought yet this is an entirely different beast: The only advantage Killer has is speed, and even that is rendered meaningless in the face of Kidd’s powers turning the metal on his body into anchors, his wrists and neck aching trying to withstand that particular gravity. Time and time again they collide, a spray of sparks and panted breath as Killer stares into the hate-filled eyes of the man he loves and doesn’t back down.

As he tells him, “It’s me, Killer, it’s me, I came back for you”, and Kidd snarls, beyond words.

Something has to give and for a moment there, Killer thinks it might not be him. Kidd is panting, growing pale and covered in sweat. This close, Killer can see the fresh wounds left to scar, dotting his chest with sickening precision, and the mottled bruises blooming on his neck, right over his pulse point.

Whatever they put him through, it’s recent enough for Kidd to look like he’s on the verge of collapse once he’s burned through his rage, and Killer despises himself for drawing hope from that.

Then Kidd stumbles, Killer hesitates – and Kidd nails him in the side, a punch too swift for Killer to block, and the taste of copper spills on Killer’s tongue as he feels his ribs give before he twists. The second fist is inches from connecting when Killer slips his hand out of the metal guard slowing him down and elbows Kidd in the face, stomach turning at the immediate gush of blood that clearly spells broken nose.

They fall apart, Killer holding the scratched-and-bruised mess of his midriff and Kidd groaning with his face tucked into his elbow. Struggling to breathe through the pain, Killer fumbles for his second scythe, throwing it to the side where it lands with a dull thud, unseen. Kidd is staring at him, mouth open and painted crimson.

Then Killer’s fingers hook into the back of his mask and he pulls it off, the world suddenly too-bright, too-loud, overwhelming – it all pales against the fear choking him, smothering any ounce of reason Killer clung to without Kidd there to guide him.

“Kidd, it’s me”, he says, the words small between them, on the brink of vanishing altogether. Well and truly lost, for the first time since they met. “Your partner. Please. I don’t know what to do. Please come back to me.”

And Kidd– He staggers towards him, like he can’t help it. “You’re dead”, he whispers, helplessly hoarse. “You died. You’re dead, Kil.”

Killer’s eyes sting as tears well up; he bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds. Thinks, oh, and his mind puts together the puzzle pieces even if all he feels is his heart break.

“I’m right here. Right here, Kidd.”

Step by step Kidd’s fists lose their substance, metal falling to the ground in chunks and pieces and loose gears. Kidd asks, “…Killer?”, and it sounds so painfully uncertain, so threadbare and fragile that Killer throws caution to the wind.

Kidd’s knees give the moment Killer reaches for him. He doesn’t manage to catch the fall but it doesn’t matter, the feeling of Kidd’s arm sliding around his neck like breaking the water’s surface, like coming home at long last. His stump is left bare, bandaged and sore-looking, lacking the mechanics that have become Kidd as much any other part of him. Killer holds that shoulder before he does anything else, the tension there beyond unbearable to watch.

“Killer”, Kidd rasps, and Killer kneels so he doesn’t have to strain himself so much. “K-Kil, fuck, I didn’t– I thought–”

Half-realized words turning to heaving gasps, and Killer wraps himself around him as his shirt grows wet where Kidd’s head is tucked against his neck, equal parts blood and tears with how fucked up Kidd’s nose is. Murmurs against his hair, “It’s okay”, rubs a hand up and down the groove of his spine.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m here. We’re all here, Kidd. Not leaving you behind, ever, got it?”

It’s there, with Kidd in his arms, that Killer becomes aware of their surroundings once more: There’s distant cannon fire, and battlecries cut short; the cracking of rifles and ringing of blades being drawn and crossed; bit by bit, the world reshapes itself into the beginnings of a war around them. The first thing Killer sees is a loose circle of backs turned towards them. Dead ahead, the signature woosh of Heat’s breath-turned-fire illuminates the silhouette of each and every member of their crew fighting tooth and nail to uphold the perimeter.

Closest to them, Wire’s trident blurs with motion as he smashes a volley of arrows out of the air, aimed directly at Kidd’s vulnerable back. A glance over his shoulder, and Wire’s eyes widen as they meet Killer’s.

Properly catching his gaze, for the very first time. Killer nods at him, mouths, we gotta get outta here. Wire reads his lips and smiles, unwavering.

Kidd is stirring as well, eyes red-rimmed and weirdly naked without the heavy black around them. He wipes at the blood that hasn’t quite stopped dripping down his chin before he looks up. Stares at Killer like he can’t quite believe he’s there, and then:

“Shit. Fuck, Killer, your mask”, Kidd mumbles urgently, an exhausted motion of his hand pulling closer the scattered remnants of their fight. “Where’s– Ah.”

And something in Killer breaks a little more at the gentleness with which Kidd handles his mask, his fingers unsteady as they wipe dirt and blood off the blue-white stripes before offering it to Killer, those red eyes tender with unspoken emotion.

Kidd doesn’t do apologies, mostly because there aren’t many actions he deems truly reprehensible, but... If apologies were Kidd’s thing this would be it.

Killer exhales a soft breath and presses a kiss to the line between Kidd’s shaved brows. “C’mon”, he says, and he hides his face before hoisting Kidd up to his feet, a breath shuddering out of him as his ribs shift in his chest. Kidd’s hand brushes over the furrows he left on Killer’s skin, frown deepening yet he doesn’t speak.

Piece by piece, they put themselves back together until they’re Eustass ‘Captain’ Kidd and Massacre Soldier Killer once more. There is hell to pay, a war to win and an Emperor to kill – when Kidd steps forward to rejoin their crew, he doesn’t waver and neither does Killer, following close behind.

[secret-engima]

Axis, Shield of Nox Izunia, meets Axis, traitor Kingsglaive. Just, for once, it's not Nox/Noctis tripping across dimensions, it's Axis. But it's an Axis who's barely accepted that he doesn't want his idiot LC to disappear from his life entirely, never even to brush shadows, who's barely ADMITTED he has a LC. And then, meeting his canon counterpart, bitter, traitor. N!Axis: Where's Nox? MUST FIND PERSONAL IDIOT! C!Axis: Nyx is over there, but he's more of Libertus' personal idiot.

Oh.

Oh boy.

Ohhhhhh boy.

Angsttttttt. Prepare for angst and lots of rage and insults coming your way because Axis has a temper and this turned into a ficlet.

So this is non-canon, but would hypothetically take place pre-Axis learning Ardyn is an LC in the Nox verse and just a year or so before the Kingsglaive movie in Canon.

-It’s a very short meeting. No more than a day or so. Of course all the glaives are very weirded out when Axis accidentally cuts himself on a rock and the Solheim ruin they’re passing through glows at the touch of his blood before spitting out a very confused double dressed in Hunter garb rather than glaive garb. But after some shouting and wary staring, both sides conclude the other aren’t demons trying to steal any souls.

-That’s when Tredd notices that the new Axis is not just dressed in Hunter Garb he’s ... younger. Years younger. This Axis looks just on the border between teen and adult. Only a year or so out from the Burning. They ask and N!Axis confirms their suspicions, then looks around in agitation, as if expecting to find someone. They assume he’s looking for his Tredd and Luche. But some searching reveals no one but N!Axis and he ends up going with them through the ruins toward their outpost. Since he had no idea how to get back and they couldn’t just let him wander off and get hurt.

-N!Axis meets C!Axis and feels ... unease. There’s something about his counterpart he doesn’t like, something dark and bitter. And yes, N!Axis knows he’s bitter about a lot of things but this feels different. This feels ... poisonous.

-He notices with dread that C!Tredd and C!Luche feel the same way too.

-That evening in the outpost, the Glaives get to talking over (smuggled) drinks while N!Axis lurks and frets internally (Nox was in those ruins when he got pulled, had Nox come too? Or was he out there all alone, looking for Axis and getting into trouble without him? Did N!Axis really care? (Yes, yes he does, so badly it hurts and he refuses to think why) and then N!Axis tunes back into the chatter when Crowe angrily tells Tredd to “knock it off”. “It” being some astonishingly hateful diatribe against Insomnia and Insomnia nobles. It’s not slander against the royal family, not treason by the letter of the law, but ... the intent is there. The intent is there and N!Axis can see agreement in his counterpart’s eyes, burning and bitter and deadly as a snake and something inside him goes very, very cold.

-Nyx (who is male in this world, weird) tries to defuse the situation, but Tredd is drunk and on a roll now and N!Axis knows only Luche or C!Axis could stop him but they- won’t. They AREN’T. Tredd out and blurts something to the order of how “They” (possibly meaning Insomnia nobility in general but everyone knows he means the royal family) don’t have any clue what it’s like out here, that none of them can fight worth anything, none born of their blood have ever had a hard day in their lives-

-And N!Axis thinks of Nox. Of Nox who has so many scars. Of Nox who can’t remember when to eat or how to take care of himself. Of Nox who watches the world with inhumanly old, broken eyes sometimes that make him seem a hundred thousand years older than he really is. Of Nox who fights, who wades into Imperial Bases, alone save for when Axis finds him and tags along. Of Nox who has already lost so much (a blindspot the shape of a man, his innocence, his ability to care for himself, so many hints Axis tries not to notice but can’t help seeing anyway). Of Nox with a Niflheim Chancellor for an uncle who is just as much of a broken human disaster for all he doesn’t have the magic burning under his skin like his nephew.

-Of Nox who’s magic burns him. Carves him up so that all that’s left some days is a shell working on instinct, staring out at the world like it is a stranger while thunder and wrath and grief as deep as Leviathan’s tides press against mortal skin, trying to shatter him from the inside out and break free into the open air. Axis has seen it, the suffering that comes with magic, and while the Glaives hold only a portion, only enough to use without hurting, Nox is an LC of blood and soul and Axis has seen the toll that takes. The way he looks like some days he’s one step away from burning up and turning to dust in the wind unless he does something to bleed it off and out even when so many spells in a row leave him shaking from pain-.

-N!Axis is in the crowd of glaives, knuckles stained with blood and Tredd gaping at him from the floor before N!Axis is even aware of leaving his corner, “You take that back,” he growls and all the glaive take a collective step back because they have never heard Axis use that tone at a fellow Galahdian, a fellow Glaive. Let alone directed at Tredd. N!Axis breathes and can feel his blood pounding in his veins, a faint ringing in his ears from trying to suppress the red in his vision. Maybe it’s his Amicitia blood acting up, loyalty imprinted into his bones after generations of magic and oaths. Maybe he’s just stressed from being in this parallel world.

-Secretly he knows it’s neither. It’s all him. It’s all Axis Arra, the refugee and Hunter who stumbled across a Lucis Caelum teen outside a ruined Nif base and somehow can’t seem to let go of him not matter how much he tries not to be attached in the first place.

-In the astonished silence that follows his words, N!Axis bares his teeth, voice a near-Coeurl snarl that sends shivers down more than one spine (the wrath of an Arra is a rare thing, the wrath of an Arra given sound is an even rarer, more dangerous one), “You. Take. That. Back.” A breath, a flex of the fist with Tredd’s blood on it (he’s broken Tredd’s nose, he’s broken the nose of one of his oldest friends for Nox and he doesn’t regret it), “How dare you. How dare you pretend to know what it’s like. How dare you wish our fate on anyone, let alone the Chief who took you in. Maybe our conditions could be better, and maybe he doesn’t do enough but at least he tries. You hold his magic in your skin and you think that gives you the right to curse his entire Clan and say none of them ever suffered?”

-Tredd bristles on the floor, but lying there holding his broken nose he seems too afraid to speak up. C!Axis breaks the silence, stepping forward and moving to rest a hand on N!Axis’s shoulder, “All he means is-.”

-N!Axis swats the hand aside, looks into his counterparts eyes and sees the same venom, the same ignorance. And he knows- he knows in a heartbeat that Nox does not exist in this world. That he died before C!Axis could meet him, could know him, could learn because otherwise this counterpart would never agree with the poison coming out of Tredd’s mouth. “I know what he means,” snarls N!Axis, “and I know he’s full of pyre-ash. If you had any idea what it’s like to have been born with their full weight of magic, the full touch of the Draconian’s Blessing rather than the pittance you think makes you impressive-.”

-Tredd sits up, but still doesn’t dare stand, “What and you do?”

-N!Axis growls down at him, wordless and warning and Tredd stills in shock.

-Nyx and Libertus intervene, push their way between and Nyx starts nudging N!Axis away, “Ignore Tredd, he’s just drunk and trying to start something. We all need to take a minute and cool our heads, yeah?” N!Axis lets Nyx nudge him a few steps away, breathes past his rage and tries to let it go-.

-“Someday,” Tredd says as Luche finally helps him up, “someday you’re gonna think just like me. You might think he’s kind and just trying his best now, but give it a few years and you’ll know that he doesn’t care beyond making sure we’re good little soldiers.”

-“Tredd!” several glaives snap in horror, because now he’d definitely gone too far.

-N!Axis looks past Nyx’s arm to lock eyes with Tredd, his rage suddenly going from burning to freezing as something in his mind replaces King Regis for Nox in the “he” of Tredd’s words. He pushes Nyx’s arm very slowly down so that it isn’t in the way, looks Tredd, then Axis, then Luche all straight in their eyes before refocusing on Tredd-

-And spitting on the ground at his feet, “Storm-Father as my witness,” N!Axis intones with far more calm than he actually feels, “I’ll gut myself with my mother’s blades and feed my entrails to the Voretooths before I become a filthy little Pink-Tongue like you.”

-Tredd roars and lunges, because this time it’s N!Axis who has pushed too far, said too much, and while all the glaive freeze in astonished horror that any version of Axis would call his best friend a Pink-Tongue (not referring to the color of the mouth, but the colors of Galahd, of poison and betrayal. Liar, Axis has called him, Poisoner and Betrayer of Clans, because a tongue dyed in poison is a single step away from hands drenched in the colors of Kinslayers), N!Axis lunges to meet Tredd halfway. Tredd is bigger, more experienced, he’s been a glaive for years now. N!Axis can feel his lip split and his cheek get cut open by the force of the hits. But N!Axis has been traveling with Nox for months, fighting Nifs and keeping up with a wayward LC despite having no magic of his own. He fights hard and dirty and doesn’t flinch as he brings his knee up into Tredd’s groin, rides the screeching Glaive down as he falls and begins beating the redhead’s skull against the ground before he’s forced off and winded by Tredd’s brutal kick.

-The Glaives snap out of their shock and fall on the two en masse, pulling them apart, shouting and struggling to stop the two from going at each other’s throats and N!Axis thinks his own voice might be in the clamor, screaming at Tredd and Luche and his own counterpart, calling them Pink-Tongues and White-Wearers. Traitors to their Chief, blind to what they’ve been given and what that gift must cost.

-In the end, N!Axis has to be dragged to the far side of the outpost and kept under guard by Nyx and Libertus for the rest of the night, far away from the three he has just given full grounds to challenge him to a death match.

-He sits and broods the entire night, listening to the daemons scream far past the lights and contemplates his hurts (he refused to take the potion Libertus had stiffly offered, he picked that fight and they were soldiers, they would need it more than he did).

-He contemplates the fact that he just called the counterparts of himself and his two best friends the worst kinds of traitors.

-He ponders over the fact that he doesn’t regret a single word of it.

-The next morning, he’s woken from his doze by an alert going up from the watch. Someone is approaching the Outpost. A civilian kid by the look of it. He hears hubbub and chatter, confusion and disbelief and then suddenly Nox is there, right in front of him in all his tiny, scraggly glory, a gaggle of Glaives following behind and staring in confusion as he smiles at N!Axis, “Hey, Axis,” he says easily, as if they just ran into each other in the wilds like normal and aren’t in another dimension.

-He stares, sighs, stands up and he sees Nox eyes sharpen on his injuries, “What are you even doing here, idiot?” N!Axis grumbles because seriously, how.

-Nox is still staring at his injuries as he answers, “Called in a favor from a friend. We got an hour to get back, so we should start walking.” He pulls a potion out of his pocket and shoves it at N!Axis with a scowl, who would laugh at the hypocrisy of Nox fretting over injuries when he’s the one always halfway dead from fighting things too big for him to handle alone. Instead he takes it and uses it, feels his lip heal about halfway before stopping, it’s been hours since the injury was inflicted after all, potions lose potency the older the injury is. Nox’s eyes glitter red for a fraction of a second and then go back to blue as he starts leading N!Axis out of the base. The Glaives trail behind, whispering over the kid and a few calling out goodbyes to N!Axis even though he’s done the opposite of making friends.

-N!Axis hears angry footsteps behind him and a furious curse that is probably supposed to be his name and starts to turn, braced for a last-minute punch from the counterpart of Tredd.

-Instead Nox is suddenly there and the air is seething with magic, heavy like storm clouds and churning like waves. C!Tredd and all the other Glaives freeze at the sight of a ghostly blue-white armiger, rotating slowly in the air, all blades pointed directly at Tredd’s heart. “Are we going to have a problem?” Nox asks with a false sort of serenity, his voice rumbling with the faintest undertones of Other. Other voices, older voices, cold and cruel ones that Axis has only heard bleed into Nox’s voice once before.

-N!Axis rests a hand on Nox’s arm, “It’s fine. Let’s just go.” Nox accepts the dismissal, lets his armiger fade as he possessively grips N!Axis’s hand and resumes leading the way. A glance over his shoulder and N!Axis meets the eyes of his counterpart and his counterpart’s two best friends one last time.

-Mine, he knows his eyes say, and I will fight to keep it that way.

-Traitor, their eyes say back without words, bootlicker. Naive.

-N!Axis turns his head and resumes looking forward. He tries not to feel the yawning chasm between himself and the counterparts, uncrossable and deadly, that he leaves behind. They’re wrong. Wrong to think that, wrong to say and agree to what was said last night and Axis will not be moved from that stance. Perhaps if he’d never met Nox, their words would have seemed like the truth. Perhaps if he’d never seen Nox and all the things both great and terrible and eerie his magic could do and in turn did to its wielder, he would have believed their poison. But Nox is here, having crossed dimensions to find him and bring him home, Nox is here and ready to fight an entire outpost of Kingsglaive if they threaten Axis.

-And Axis knows he will not regret his own choice. His own opinion. His own loyalty.

-Nox leads them back to the ruins, there’s a flicker of magic like thunder and ozone, and when Axis opens his eyes, they’re back in their world where they belong.

-A few days later, Axis meets up with the others- with his glaives, and doesn’t breathe a word about what he saw and said. He just watches his Tredd and Luche and feels something tight in his chest unwind in relief when he sees no poison in their eyes or on their lips.

-Words echo in his memory, Someday ... someday you’re gonna think just like me. You might think he’s kind and just trying his best now, but give it a few years and you’ll know that he doesn’t care beyond making sure we’re good little soldiers.

-Leaning on the shoulder of his Tredd and listening to them laugh over something that happened in their training, Axis snorts. Maybe when the Rock of Ravatogh freezes over. But until then? He might not like King Regis that much, not when Axis’s father was the King’s Shield, but the way he saw it, Nox had to get his idiotic levels of compassion from somewhere and ... well.

-He hadn’t gotten it from his Izunia blood. That was certain.

[aethelar]

there are lots of fics where newt gets sexually harassed/molested to the point that graves has to come rescue him. do you think newt would be able to defend himself against such advances or would he freeze up and be unable to act?

Personally? I think Newt would be one hundred percent able to defend himself. With fists. With magic. With pocket Swooping Evil. With a shrug, a complete lack of concern, and a sudden apparition to the other side of the room.

I mean, just picture it. There’s this social function - work party, maybe? The annual ball where people tog up and gather together to sit through several hours of talks about the last year in review and the five year plan from here and insert inspirational tagline and look at this motivational speaker we found before being rewarded for their patience by a chaotic buffet dinner where everyone wanders around in black tie with a drooping paper plate and a plastic cup of wine waiting for the lights to dim and the band to start playing so they can drunkenly embarrass themselves by doing limbo with someone’s pashmina. And there’ll be speeches at some point. Probably.

So anyway, there’s this social function and Newt is bored out of his skull because Graves had to go up and collect yet another award (it’s like they’re trying to apologise to him or something and have decided that six inch gold-painted trophies are the way to do so) so he’s just slouched over at one of the tables in the corner and amusing himself by pretending the people are a new species of creature he’s found. So far, he’s decided that they are a creature with a strict social hierarchy communicated entirely in fake laughter that they rely on for survival - he’s not sure if that’s due to resource gathering or protection from predators, lack of data on other creatures in the area - and that the bright colours of their plumage are probably not related to how poisonous they are, but it would be a lot funnier if it was, and that their natural habitat is some kind of thick forest with deep cover if the way they’re terrified of being alone in the open is any indication.

And in the middle of a thought about camouflage and ambush hunting tactics, this absolute sleezeball slides in and leans over Newt with one hand on the table and the other on the back of his chair. Newt is caged in. The guy is looming over him, too close to be comfortable, and Newt’s other side is blocked by the wall. He looks up, eyes wide and curious under his messy fringe, and the leer he receives is aiming for sexy with roughly similar accuracy to Columbus aiming for India when he reached America.

In defence of the sleezeball, Newt is hard to resist at the best of times. Give him a suit, a bow tie, and a lonely seat all on his ownsome neatly out of the way in the corner of the room, and he’s like a magnet to anyone with eyes. It’s something to do with how unfairly sexy and attractive he is. Either that or how incredible he looks when he pops his collar and starts flinging spells around like confetti, but there’s no collar and no spells at the moment so it’s probably the sexiness that’s done it.

“Hey doll,” the sleezeball drawls sleezilly, one eye drooping in a particularly pathetic wink.

And here, Newt narrates to himself, here we see the courtship ritual of the lesser spotted officius partius.

“You here with anyone?” McSleezeAlot continues and Newt nearly snorts his drink.

This appears to be an unsuccessful attempt by a weaker member of the group he drily adds to his field notes.

Out loud he says, “My fiance.” If that wasn’t enough for the wine-soaked moron currently breathing all over him he clarifies: “Graves. Percival Graves.”

The embarrassment of humanity draped over his table waves a negligent hand. “And he left you all by himself? Oh honey, he’s not worth your time. Let me show you what a real man can do.” He smirks lopsidedly. His elbow lands on Newt’s carefully stocked paper plate.

My guacamole, Newt laments.

“Sorry,” he says, “I have a sudden need to go to the buffet table.” He slides down off his seat but the persistent annoyance rolls off the table and blocks his way out.

“Don’t be like that darling,” he breathes, managing to knock Newt’s drink out of his hands as he goes and coming dangerously close to stepping on Newt’s feet. How, Newt would like to know, how can the man be this incompetent.

“I now also need to go the bar,” he informs the embarrassment and steps to the left to go around him.

The man follows, like a particularly off-putting kind of fungus, and Newt rolls his eyes.

“Stay,” he says firmly, in the tone he uses on recalcitrant nundus that still think they can sleep at the foot of the bed. And, because god knows Addie has more brains than the specimen currently attempting to herd him back to his seat, he follows it up with a mumbled sleeping charm.

The now dead-weight collapses the table on his way down, of course he does, and Newt employs a quiet disillusionment charm and a sudden burst of speed to remove himself from the scene of the crime.

Ah, he thinks happily when the assorted party-goers start crowding the snoring lump Newt’s left on the floor. Dessert.

[ecotone99]

[NF - Non-fiction] A Night with John

In a dimly-lit room in the city of Cebu, you will find a man named John. Right now, he’s smoking by the window, while a huge mirror from across the room reflects the faint light of his cigarette.

See, John’s mind has been troubled lately—disturbed even—by a question that wouldn’t stop echoing inside his skull. The question i— oh, pardon me. Where are my manners? How could I tell you a story about John without introducing who I am? My name is Adam and you could say that I am John’s roommate. Yes… Let’s… Leave it at that.

I’ve known John his entire life, from back when he got bullied in high school and he threw a rubber pot at his assailants, to when he got his first job as a corporate slave who let his ears be bukaked by hundreds of ringing telephones that never stopped ejaculating the irate voices of customers from distant lands. I’m pretty sure you get the picture of how… Close John and I really is.

John is your typical guy. Typical looking. Typical built. Typical intelligence. Everything about him, from the nails of his toes to the last strand of hair on his head, is typical. He’s also a quiet and shy guy. He mostly keeps things to himself and would deliberately avoid social interaction whenever he gets the chance. But John does have a confidant (I really wish it was girlfriend though) and that confidant is none other than yours truly.

On this chilly night, the skies offered a gentle drizzle to the lands below. It slightly moisturized their parched, asphalt skins and slightly wetted their dry throats caused by the summer. You would expect John to go out and visit the beach, but we are talking about John here. Being the ever socially awkward and bashful him, John just stayed inside and played video games all summer long. One could say “that’s so like John!” But tonight… Tonight John is different. Looking from across the room, I could see how the plateau between his eyebrows scrunched up from tension. I could see how his eyes were blankly fixated on the streets where cars sprinted towards home after a long day at work. “This is so not like John,” I whispered to myself, so I got up from the floor and called his attention.

“Hey John! You okay dude? You seem kinda lost in thought there,” I casually sparked a conversation with him.

“Hey Adam. Yeah… I mean no… I mean… I don’t know. I guess I just have something in my mind,” he answered, while letting smoke slip through the crack between his lips.

“So… What are you thinking? Is this about the new game you’ve been waiting for?”

“No, I just… I just feel…”

“You just feel what?”

“Nothing… It’s nothing.”

“C’mon man, you know you can tell me anything. Wait, I know! Let’s play a game! I’m going to try and guess what’s on your mind in the form of a question, and you’ll go ahead and answer the question. Deal?”

“But you always win—“

“Stop. I don’t want to hear excuses. Let’s begin!”

I took a moment to read John’s body language. He was sheepishly looking at me, his eyes reluctant to meet mine, indicating that he doesn’t want the truth to be seen through his pupils. His sitting position was very defensive: legs close to his chest, one arm wrapping his legs, while the other held the cigarette in between two digits. He looked like an upright fetus sitting down in his mother’s womb, signifying that he was trying to defend himself because he felt exposed. He was also silent, like he was keeping his tongue from saying too much. In a normal situation, one where he had someone else in the room, he could’ve just stayed silent and they wouldn’t know what’s wrong with him. But like I said, I’ve known John for a very, very, very long time.

“Hey John, do you think you belong in this world?” I asked. Judging from the sudden stillness in his eyes, I’m sure he felt every letter of that question seep into his bones.

“No. I honestly think I don’t belong in this world.” John answered without hesitation. His words were calm and collected, as if he was certain of the very weight each of them held.

“Why do you feel that way?”

“It’s because I think differently from others. My mind doesn’t work in the same manner that ‘normal’ people do. I’m not as invested in material things that most of my peers seem to go berserk about. A new phone comes out and they lose their shit. They jump up and down in anticipation of buying it and how powerful it could be. On the other hand, I’m fine with buying a second-hand phone that was released 2 years ago.”

“Is that all?”

“No, that’s not all. I’m not as focused on looking good as well, particularly being vain about my physical image. I don’t know… I just think that there’s so much more to a person than their physical appearance and that they shouldn’t focus too much on being pretty or being handsome. I honestly believe that what we should be focusing on is being more honest with ourselves and to each other. We should also be kinder too, but every time I say my opinion, everybody goes insane! They end up calling me a misogynist, a beauty shamer, a self-righteous cunt, and so on. Hell, if I ever get into a relationship, I’m pretty sure my partner would be calling me manipulative and controlling for trying to make her see that physical appearance isn’t everything. Also, with the rampant rape and the perverse individuals out there looking for a meat to pound, my efforts of wanting to keep my partner safe by telling her to stop wearing ‘revealing’ clothes would be considered an attack to her femininity, and it would be interpreted as a means of ‘controlling’ a female when it was just out of concern. It’s fucking messed up.”

A bead of sweat slowly trickled from his forehead. It seems that it took a lot of courage and effort for him to say those honest and unfiltered thoughts; but I could tell that wasn’t all. I could tell there was still something brewing deep within him, judging from the bubbles of cold sweat that began to slowly manifest. I knew I just needed to ask the right question.

“Hey John, do you still want to live in this world?”

His head turned and his eyes quickly locked unto me. His gaze had such intensity that it felt like his eyes were magnifying glasses positioned directly beneath the sun, burning a hole to my face. For a while, I felt a bit nervous. Maybe I struck a wrong chord and I must now make amends for such an insensitive question. But before I could open my mouth to ask for forgiveness, John started talking.

“If I’m honest with you Adam, I don’t want to live in this world anymore. You want to know why?”

There was authority in his voice now, like a businessman having lunch with his apprentice and confidently asking questions to show how “wise” he is. I knew what I had to do. All that was needed for my part was to ask “why?” and the answer to the question would immediately follow. However, am I ready for the answer? If you were there, you’d see how my laryngeal prominence moved in my throat to make way for the lump of spit that I had to swallow.

“Why?”

“Because this world is not worth living in. This world is so unfair and it rarely gives you what you want. It’s even sadistic sometimes because just when you think you’ve finally gotten what you’ve wished for, it then brings out the hidden cameras and shouts at your face ‘It’s just a PRANK bro!’ Sometimes, you even end up with something that’s completely different from what you thought it was, waking you up from a lie that you never asked for via punch to the gut. Sometimes, it even takes away the people we love the most, either from disease or by suicide, and it juat leaves you with this emptiness that no amount of drinking, having fun, and passion can fill. This world is fucking scary with all the wars and deaths that we bring to others like, who died and made us grim reapers with guns for scythes? I can’t even go outside without having to worry about white vans snatching people away, or motorcycles that spit out lead have their barrels aimed at me. There’s so much apathy nowadays that taking videos of tragedies by phone is apparently more important than using said phone to call for help. You know what Adam? I actually want to kill myself so I could escape this hellhole—this simulation—and hopefully wake up somewhere better. This world is, and always will be, better off without me.”

John’s breaths were heavy. It’s apparent that his heart was beating faster than his lungs could dance to. I guess conversations like these really feel like physical confrontations or altercations to him. He begins to rub his chest, trying to calm down and prevent a full-scale panic attack from happening. Now I know that he, and other people, sees himself as typical and boring, but I would beg to differ. What he just said were not words from a typical and boring guy. They were words from a genuine, empathic, and broken individual who is trying to live in an uncaring and vain world. I know John better than anyone, and I might be the only one who really knows how special he is, which is why I couldn’t let him keep his thoughts about dying.

“You know what John,” I said while trying to catch his gaze “Yes, the world is messed up. Yes, the world is vain. Yes, the world is apathetic, unfair, and all of the terrible things that you mentioned, but that’s exactly the reason why the world needs more people like you. People who are not perfect, yet willing to be honest with themselves and to others. People who are not perfect, yet willing to be kind to others. People who are not perfect, yet prefer to look at others beyond their physical appearances. The world needs more people like you, John. People who are not afraid to feel, to think, to be vulnerable, and to bleed.”

The wind began to pick up and the drizzle was slowly starting to become a light shower. Given enough time, the skies would soon cry their hearts out and the lands would be quenching their thirst by drinking the skies’ tears; but not before John’s eyes began to pour, as he cried in front of me, inside the four corners of solitude that this room offers. I knew what I had to do. I needed to leave John with something… A food for thought, perhaps? Something that would keep him thinking. Something that would help him process what he was going through…

“Hey John,” I gently called his name as a precursor to my final question.

“Yeah, Adam?” His voice was deep and crackling. He sounded a bit like an improperly tuned radio.

“Do you think this world belongs to you?”

Suddenly, a flash of lightning ripped through the skies followed by the loud boom of thunderclap, as if they were cued to happen after I finished asking the question. For a split-second, the flash brightened up the room to a point where even shadows ceased to exist. For a split-second, the flash brought light into this dark place and might have sparked something in John because now, he was smiling at me. His gaze met mine and he said “Thank you, Adam,” and it was at that moment, I once again saw him genuinely smile after a very long time, which in turn made me smile pleasantly.

Rain has now descended upon the city, and if you were there, you could clearly hear the roof being turned into a xylophone. John picks his lighter up and proceeds to place a cigarette between his lips. But before he ordered the flint to create a spark, he stared at the mirror, muttered something unintelligible, and smiled.

In a dimly-lit room in the city of Cebu, you will find a man named John. Right now, he’s smoking by the window, while a huge mirror from across the room reflects the faint light of his cigarette.

12-05-2019 16:56 Kregian Vareare Miral

submitted by /u/Miralian459 [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2OUsrAc

[tessatechaitea]

Black Condor #1

After this caption, I'm going to pretend that I didn't buy this comic book because this guy looks fucking hot.

If there was a Comics Code Authority symbol on the front, why then am I now sporting a boner?

After getting his powers of flight, Black Condor decides he's not going to use his amazing new power that is super unique and totally worth two hundred years of painstaking research and sacrifice for his grandfather or his grandfather's organization (called The Society, I think. Even though the building really just looked like S.T.A.R. Labs). Also, he's probably going to destroy them. The one thing I think I remember about this book is that Black Condor operates out of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. I don't remember if he battles the Jersey Devil though. He'd better! Glancing at the cover to Issue #2, I see he battles the Sky Pirate. Don't tell me you don't know who the Sky Pirate is! Because I was just going to ask you who he is and I don't want to be disappointed when you shrug and say, "Who the fuck knows?" Oh, I remembered another thing about this comic book as I was reading the part with the bad guys escaping into the Pine Barrens: Black Condor is a reluctant hero! That doesn't mean these bank robbers are going to get away with their crime. It just means Black Condor is going to punch them in the face while sighing and saying things like, "I didn't ask for this!" and "Stupid great power bringing stupid great responsibility!" Intermission time: here's a fun game from Wyler's, the company nobody remembers:

I could only find one thing wrong: the fact that this kid gives a shit about baseball.

A reluctant park ranger, bored out of his mind while lazily searching for some missing campers, hears about the bank robbers and thinks, "I'm having enough trouble today! I hope I don't get mixed up in this!" Which is completely the wrong thing to think when you're in a comic book. Idiot. He instantly gets mixed up in it.

Ugh. Empathic sense must be the worst super power for a reluctant hero.

Black Condor's empathic sense leads him to the two missing campers. They're a bickering couple that I'm sure he'd rather leave to die in the woods. But he's a hero, even if only reluctantly. So he has to help them find their way back to camp. And after doing so, that means in nine pages, Black Condor did more heroic and selfless things than the Teen Titans in one hundred and twenty issues! Maybe that's why I kept buying this series. I was super impressed by how good this guy was at his job. Black Condor stops by the Park Rangers Office to check on his friend Ned but discovers he hasn't checked in for a bit. That's because Ned was kidnapped by the bad guys because they needed his truck. The person who tells Black Condor that Ned hasn't checked in is Eileen, a woman who just ruined her underpants with her love honey. At least I'm assuming she did because look at that chest.

She's thinking of a way to accidentally suck his cock.

Look, if two people walking down the street can somehow accidentally get one person's chocolate bar in another weird idiot's open jar of peanut butter then I'm certain it's possible for a dick to accidentally get sucked in much the same way. Excuse me. I'm off to go jerk off to Reese's commercials on YouTube. BRB! Look at that picture of Eileen again. It might be another Wyler's advertisement: "Can you find the two hermit crabs hiding in Eileen's skull?" Ned's truck ran out of gas and now the bad guys are stuck in the Pine Barrens where they're terrified of being ass raped by the Jersey Devil. This comic book was written in 1992 so they didn't know it wasn't a great idea to mention rape in a comic book. Also, they didn't mention it but I'm writing about this comic as if it were 1992 so I don't know any better right now which is why I imagined they brought it up. Also if you check Wikipedia after I get around to editing it, you'll find that the Jersey Devil totally loves to rape the asses of hikers. Anyway, it was nice knowing you, people who followed me after Gail Simone reblogged my Scarab #7 review! I'm sorry I was problematic! I try so hard not to be and then WHAM, my stupid brain goes, "Hey! This is funny!" And then my brain also says, "That's not funny and even if it was, it's not funny enough to deal with the backlash, brain. Maybe say the Jersey Devil likes to give purple nurples!" But then my brain replies by saying, "Oh, go ahead! It's not like you're ever going to enter politics anyway! Besides, you once wrote that terrible story about A Dolphin's Tale 2 or 3 that's super gross!" Then my brain poked my brain with its brain finger and said, "It was not! You take that back! That was satire!" And then I lost my place and I forgot which brain was on which side so my brain just said, "Satire is dead, idiot. Even if smart people understand who you're really making fun of in the satirical piece, the stupid idiots you're making fun of will just think you're agreeing with them! It's just not fucking worth it, brain." Then my penis said, "Hey brain, have you watched a Reese's commercial while imagining the chocolate bar was a penis and the open jar of peanut butter was a butthole?" And then my brain was all, "What? That sounds awesome. I'll delete the stupid rape thing after we watch some commercials." Then I watched some commercials. So, now that I'm back from my nap, where was I?! I think I was going to do something? Oh, probably finish reading this comic book!

Oh look! They are worried about getting butt raped by the Jersey Devil! Grandmaster Comic Book Reader!

What's really weird is that nobody had even mentioned the Jersey Devil when I wrote that they were scared of it. I'm so good at reading comics! Man, I wish I was good at something that mattered! Like finger banging! The lead bad guy shoots one of the other bad guys because every story about bad guys is basically a Coen Brothers movie. Black Conder hears the gunshots and thinks, "Ned!" I wonder if Black Condor is in love with Ned? I was hoping he'd be in love with Eileen, especially after I mentioned her love honey. I sort of developed a crush on her after I imagined her soaking wet underpants. Is that weird or is that why so much fanfic exists on the Internet? Black Condor arrives to save Ned and the female hostage and the bad guys suddenly believe the Jersey Devil has arrived to do some untoward things to them! Really untoward even! Luckily it's just Black Condor, reluctant hero, and heroes don't do untoward things! Now that I've said untoward three times (four times!), I'm hoping I used it correctly. It doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Black Condor saves Ned and captures the bad guys by using his "blow up a gun with his mind" power. That's a great power if a little specific. Maybe he can do that with other things too! I don't know how that fits into the whole condor theme. Maybe I just don't know as much about condors as I thought I did. Or maybe I need to update the condor Wikipedia page: "Condors can blow up guns with their minds, if they've recently filled their belly with love honey." Black Condor #1 Rating: B. This was a really solid if a bit uninspiring start to this series. I guess I can see why I kept buying it. The guy has a great look, sleek and sexy. Plus he's heroic in the way the Teen Titans never were. And he's mysterious! The art was a bit weird at times but that weirdness also created some really striking panels. I might read it now and think it's uninspiring but putting it up against a lot of other comic books I've reviewed on this blog, it would probably be a solid A on story telling and character development alone. Plus, I mean, he stopped some baddies! I was like, "DC heroes are allowed to do that?! What a revelation!" Anyway, that's all. I'm going to go walk around Portland with an open jar of peanut butter now.

[yourslovinglecter]

The Duchess - Part 5

Summary: She hated him, for everything he had done to them, the damage he had caused, the suffering and pain he had left behind. She hated him… Didn’t she? Emilia comes face to face with the leader of the Saviours and is confronted with his true nature, which in turn has her questioning her own.

Warning/s: Eventual smut, slow burner, profanity/swearing, graphic descriptions of violence.

Pairing: Negan/OC

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

No gifs are made by me unless otherwise stated. All credit goes to the original creators.

Alexandria

The days seemed as though they passed too quickly and reaped too little in the way of rewards for them. The outlying areas had already been picked clean and each time they ventured out it was a little farther. Today it was her turn and usually she would have been accompanied by Daryl…

Rick had tried to persuade her to take someone else, but in the end what it boiled down to was that she just didn’t trust anyone else to have her back. Michonne was off doing whatever it was she did nowadays, Rick was needed at the compound and Carol had vanished. She was just fine with Logan trotting along at her side, she trusted him with her life and she was used to it being just them. They worked better alone.

Daryl had fit right in with them, he was so quiet when they scavenged that it had barely felt like he was there. With Logan to her right and Daryl to her left she’d felt safe… She wasn’t prepared to let anyone else try to bond with Logan so that they could scavenge together.

He didn’t exactly like strangers.

She snorted to herself as they worked their way through the undergrowth. That was the understatement of the year. He was damn unsociable was what he was. He hated strangers, men especially.

He would tolerate woman, but barely. Most of the Alexandrians found him intimidating, which was why she had the house furthest away from the others, alone, with a very large garden. They felt much safer knowing he was there as opposed to roaming around their picture perfect suburb.

Daryl and Logan had come to an understanding, they stayed out of each others way, respected each other, and Logan tolerated him because he kept Emilia safe. Rick… Well Logan didn’t like Rick too much, growled at him quite often, most likely because of his unpredictable emotions. But Rick trusted the beast with his infant daughter-who Logan had taken to immediately. He knew when someone needed protecting and no one was more vulnerable than Judith.

She’d been stunned herself when he’d taken the protective stance over her the first time, when the psychopaths with W’s carved in their foreheads had stormed the compound. He’d ripped a few throats out of the living that day and even she had been impressed when they’d found him surrounded by bodies with Judith playing in the centre.

Rick had trusted him ever since.

They didn’t get on, but she didn’t think Logan would ever actually like another male. Especially around her, he was protective to the extreme and refused to allow men near her for the fear of fighting for her affection.

She didn’t mind. If anything she was grateful, It had kept her alive.

She heard him panting somewhere to her right and the soft snapping of twigs under his paws. She couldn’t see him but she knew he was there, flanking her should she need him. She didn’t have a vehicle with her because he wasn’t after a big haul, she had gone on foot because today was about walkers and the loot they carried.

Everyone in todays world had weapons on them and that’s what they needed. She figured that out of every 10 walkers she killed at least one should have a knife. Something they could use to replenish the stores Negan and his men had ransacked.

Her bow was slung over her shoulders, the makeshift arrows sticking out of her backpack. She’d done archery as a child and quickly realised the most easily resourced and replenish-able weapon was one which solely relied on nature to create. She’d had a crappy handmade bow when she’d met Rick’s group. It wasn’t anything spectacular, it had been thrown together in haste from a dead ash tree branch which she’d whittled down with a hunting knife and some knotted string. It had done the job but certainly could have been improved upon.

Then she’d met Daryl, he’d shared her affinity for arrows but she disliked the crossbow, preferring instead to use her longbow. That was until Daryl had one day presented her with the weapon she favoured now.

He’d tried to give her some bullshit about how he’d happened to find it, but she knew full well he must have travelled over a hundred miles to the old abandoned hunting lodge she herself had passed on her way to Alexandria. She hadn’t dared enter it because it seemed someone had shut a whole load of walkers in there, she wasn’t about to let them out and face twenty on her own… But she was sure that’s what Daryl had done to get her the bow she now had.

It was a thing of beauty really, and as her shot had improved she’d outgrown the last one. He’d even found 6 accompanying arrows in the lodge, which she recovered and reused where possible, just as he did. This was a black compound bow, lightweight and deadly and she adored it. She had even been thinking of naming it… That was until Negan had come along swinging Lucille and ruining that thought for her.

She paused as she heard a shuffling noise ahead and crouched low, she instinctively sensed that Logan had stopped too as they listened. She knew what it was before she heard the gurgle because Logan had started his low pitched warning growl, the type of noise that if directed at you would set every nerve ending on your body alight with fear.

“Shh.” She whispered and he stopped immediately, accepting the signal for what it was. She would take this one. If Negan’s visit had proven anything to her, it was that she had lost her edge behind those tall walls, she needed the practice.

She shifted her bow from over her back and held it gently in her hands, knocking an arrow she held it with her forefinger as she looked through the trees, waiting for her target to appear as the noises got closer. More shuffling and simultaneous gurgles were now heard, which informed her that it wasn’t just one walker. Four maybe?

Her eyes saw movement ahead and she pulled her bow taught, the arrow beside her cheek ready to fly. She let them come closer, feeling the tension in her arm and loving the familiar ache in her shoulder, this was where she belonged.

Three, four… Six. There were six of them, one for each arrow she had. She knew Logan would be flanking them, lying in wait should she need him, so she wasn’t afraid.

She let her arrow loose and cursed as it hit the tree trunk beside the closest walkers head with a thunk. They knew she was there now and became more agitated, stumbling toward her faster, their rotting arms outstretched.

She breathed deeply as she concentrated her focus, automatically reaching behind her for arrow after arrow as they closed in around her. They fell one by one, no match for her speed until she reached behind her to grab an arrow and groped at thin air. Her eyes shot to the tree trunk where her arrow was firmly lodged and so she threw her bow over her head and one arm as she simultaneously bent toward her boot where her hunting knife was concealed.

The walker tripped over the body of one of the others and pulled itself to its uncoordinated feet. It fell toward her and its weight and stench overwhelmed her as she fought to hold it off, her hand pushed against it’s chest cavity which gave way, the rotting flesh congealing around her fingers.

Shit

Shit, shit, shit!

Skin was hanging from its exposed jaw as teeth gnashed at her and decomposing fingers stretched forward like tentacles, determined to reach her.

She heard that all too familiar growl and let out a sigh of relief as it turned to a snarl and teeth snapped as Logan leapt onto the walkers back and pulled him over, leaping off just in time and moving out of its reach. He was crouched low, his ears pressed against his skull and his lip pulled back menacingly as he snarled, drool dripping from his exposed teeth which were now coated with blood.

She didn’t waste any time and closed her hand around the handle of her knife, removing it from her boot as she lunged forward and lodged it in the walkers temple. It stilled suddenly.

“Good… Boy.” She panted, ruffling him behind the ears as he approached, licking his lips as he dropped the snarl and his ears pointed back up as the danger passed. He shook himself off and moved closer to her, accepting the hand which she placed on his neck for support.

She made her way around each of the bodies, first collecting her arrows, if for any reason she needed to run they were her priority over whatever the bodies may be carrying. Once she had dislodged the final one from the tree about 15 yards away she returned to the bodies to search them.

They were at varying stages of decomposition and unsurprisingly the oldest walkers had nothing on them of worth. There were two which looked a little more recent though and so she ran her hands over the chest of the first one, a male. Her lip curled upward in disgust but it had to be done, she found an old photograph of a young girl in his chest pocket and looked at it sadly for a moment, before returning it to its place. His pants pocket held half a pack of cigarettes and matches. She didn’t smoke but she’d bet men in Negan’s crew did. She put them in her pack and searched his other pocket which yielded a small swiss army knife. She opened each mechanism one by one to check for rust and found none, it was perfect. Almost useless against walkers of course, but she was sure Negan and his men would appreciate it. She put that in her pack too.

She patted down his legs, disappointed to feel he had nothing else on him. She rolled him over just to make doubly sure. He was heavy and the more she’d gotten used to moving bodies, the quicker she’d realised where the term ‘dead weight’ had come from. She patted down his back and smiled as his shirt rumpled over something tucked into his waistband.

“Bingo.” She whispered as she pulled the shirt up to reveal a handgun tucked into his pants, she removed it and checked for ammo, half a clip.

Elation filled her and she looked up and grinned at Logan who was watching her with interest, his head tilting sideways when she spoke.

“We got something boy.”

She placed that in her bag, making a mental note to ask Rick about it. She wasn’t good with guns, she preferred her bow and knife and as such knew very little about them. She had been at a disadvantage here when this had all began, many Americans had a working knowledge of firearms but being from England she knew next to nothing, hell she’d never even touched one before she’d arrived in the land of the free.

She considered the footwear before she moved away and decided she didn’t like the thought of his foot decomposing in them and so left them where they were and moved onto the next one.

It was female, probably not much older than her from what she could tell. Probably hadn’t been a walker for more than a week. Emilia sighed as she dropped her head in sadness, her eyes lit upon the bite mark on the woman’s shoulder, guessing that was probably how she met her end.

Which was precisely why she kept her own shoulders covered when outside the walls, her jacket wasn’t exactly army standard in material strength but it would most certainly buy her more time to kill a walker trying to take a chunk out of her shoulder than nothing at all would. Logan’s cold wet nose nudged at her neck and she let out a soft huff of laughter, appreciating his attempt at uplifting her mood.

She felt so awful doing this. Looting the dead. But as Daryl had told her, they wouldn’t be needing anything they were carrying anymore.

With this thought at the forefront of her mind she removed the gold necklace which held a wedding ring, judging by the size and thickness it had belonged to a man. Emilia glanced down at the woman’s hand and saw the matching ring on her finger. She removed that too along with the simple single jewelled engagement ring which sat behind it.

“I’m so sorry…” She whispered, shaking her head as she put the jewellery in her pocket and zipped it up.

She looked at the woman face again as she patted her down, finding nothing else of value. She wondered where she had come from, she didn’t look as though she had been dead for very long and the speed which the walkers travelled she couldn’t have come from very far… Maybe she’d had a base or a group with supplies?

Emilia looked up at the sky, she estimated she had five, maybe six hours of sunlight left. Whilst she hadn’t expected to be away from home overnight, it could pay off for them. She licked her lips and flinched as her sore wound made itself known. She had seen how The Saviours acted and that was when they had plenty of supplies to take, she didn’t want to think about what would happen if they didn’t meet Negan’s quota.

“What do you say Logie? A couple of nights out in the wild for old times sake?” She looked at her companion who woof-ed softly in agreement. She knew he couldn’t understand her, but sometimes she really felt as though he did. She smiled at him and hoisted her pack over her shoulder, slinging her bow over her head and arm so that the wire rested diagonally on her sternum.

They walked for hours, taking out every walker they crossed. Usually she wouldn’t bother, but now they were desperately scavenging any supplies they could get and every little bit mattered. She’d collected a man’s wristwatch, a large hunting knife with a serrated blade and a couple bullets. Unfortunately no other guns.

The sun was starting to hang low in the sky so she dedicated her last couple of hours before darkness fell to finding them shelter. She had been hoping for some kind of building but she wasn’t that lucky, instead when light became scarce she settled for a small clearing in the trees and set up a perimeter, using industrial strength rope she’d brought along with her to wrap around the trees in a circle at shin level. Then she repeated these steps at stomach height and again at neck height, never once did she cut the rope, instead she just repeatedly wrapped it around the trunk, using the tension and her own weight to make it taught. When she was done she wrapped the remaining around the largest trunk and tied one of the strongest knots she knew, of course taught to her by Daryl.

Most of the skills she knew now had been taught to her by him, knots, tracking, making better arrows…

She tried not to think about him.

Her rope wall wouldn’t stop regular people, but she had Logan for that. It was just enough that she could get a couple hours of shut eye without worrying her face would be chewed off in her sleep. She doubted anyone would find her out here anyway as she refused to light a fire, she didn’t need it for food as she was currently chewing on half a granola bar and she most definitely didn’t need it for heat.

She looked down in amusement at the 50kg beast who was draped over her legs, making her lose all feeling in them but also warming her with his hot belly. She was being watched with large amber doe eyes and she laughed at his expression, when drool began pooling on her leg she wrapped up her remaining granola bar and opened her pack, feeling out for the large can of dog food.

His head lifted immediately and his ears perked up as he watched her pull the can open and stick her fingers inside.

“You can’t eat the whole tin.” She warned him, holding it slightly out of his reach as she fished around for roughly a quarter serving of the can. “We don’t know how long we need this to last.”

She offered her hand out with the measly portion and his large rough tongue descended on her open palm, swallowing the offering down in almost one gulp. She wiped the drool on her jacket once he had finished licking the residue from her fingers and returned the can to her pack.

“Sorry pup.” She said as she caught his pleading eyes and placed the pack behind her to rest on. A large muzzle rested itself on her shoulder as his hot breaths tickled her ear and she knew she was forgiven. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes, trying to forcefully evict the image of Negan which seemed to appear there at every opportunity.

When she awoke it was to the sound of Logan’s growls, by the weight on her chest she deduced he hadn’t actually moved off her yet so she peeled one itchy eye open and tried to see through the darkness.

She raised her hand to his neck and began gently stroking his fur, calming and quietening him so that she could hear whatever it was he was growling at. His head was up and looking behind her, she couldn’t move to try and see what it was without dislodging him which would make a whole lot of noise considering his size. Almost as though he knew what she was thinking and really didn’t like it, he quietly readjusted himself to lay fully over the top of her, his head descending so that she was now laying on her back, face first into his throat and had a mouth full of fur. He was so long and large that only her shins and boots stuck out from beneath him, but in this darkness that wouldn’t be seen.

She thought about shifting him but decided against it, he had made the choice for her and was pressed against her fully, shielding her from whatever it was. She listened as carefully as she could but her hearing was somewhat muffled by the 50 kilograms of canine which sat atop her.

Then she heard it, voices.

Part 6

A/N: Thank you so much for everyone who has liked, reblogged and commented on this story so far! For something I began writing months ago to myself I’m so please others are enjoying it. 

Tag list: @negan–is–god  @negans-network @aeiflegonphoenix @monizzle96

If you would like to be tagged just drop me a comment and i’ll make sure you’re added to the list. 

[spiteandalice]

Judas Touch pt. 6

ONCE AGAIN. This is my third attempt at posting this stupid chapter and if it fails again I will call you all personally and read it to you because I have officially given up on trying to do the internet. To make up for a month without anything I have decided to post everything I have so there.

@beltz2016 @beautifulramblingbrains @kenzieam and if I have forgotten you I am sorry, my brain has more holes than a colander.

THIS CONTAINS SMUT, VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE AND MENTIONS OF TORTURE AND PHOBIAS. Proceed with caution, mkay.

Hold on to your hats people because we seem to be switching gears throughout this chapter. Enjoy. That is an order.

PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR PART FIVE

The next day is beyond interesting, Eric refuses to acknowledge my existence like the big child he is just because I tried to steal his assistant. Let me be clear, I did no such thing. I did message her if she knew someone who would fit my standards for an assistant, which basically are… someone exactly like her. Being a leader's assistant is a coveted job in most factions and in Dauntless it is one of the few ways for those with lower initiation ranks to rise up. It's not a job that involves active duty of any kind and we do try to keep those with better combat skills in jobs that require them.

But there is the slight problem of our personalities and Eric changed  assistants like some their underwear - once every few weeks.

Being the insufferable snoop he is he saw my message and freaked out just a tiny bit, which amused me because I'm still on bed rest and in desperate need of entertainment. I even rifled through his book collection, but after war strategies, human psychology and a well loved book about a tower in a field of roses that are all somehow universes I'm done with printed words for the next decade or two. Reading is not something I generally enjoy doing, it requires a level of staticity I am not willing to commit to. I'm Dauntless, I'm too restless to sit still and focus on a book.

Some lower life form brought my brand new tablet so I can work, Max sent me a few notes on various subjects that require my immediate attention and Four keeps me updated on the initiation process which is as sad as ever.

In other words, I am completely and utterly bored out of my skull.

There is a knock on the door around noon and I get excited for a moment before I remember that an intruder probably wouldn’t knock to alert me to their presence. Maybe they would kick the door in. I grab my gun anyway and make my way to the door, remembering way too late that I am in my standard issue tank top and not-so-standard issue… shorts. Eric replaced the ones he tore off me while I attempted to work out the other night and said something about me better not going anywhere in those. Which, of course, had me contemplate parading around in them through the entire compound.

Ripping the door open I get ready to snarl but it’s just Raven, so I drop my gun that was pointed directly at her forehead and step aside. You can tell that she has been working for Eric for a while because she doesn’t even flinch, just breathes slowly and I swear she is almost smirking.

“Eric asked me to bring you some lunch. He’s expecting the test results back from Erudite this afternoon.”

She holds out a tray of dubious food related items, a half wilted salad, a protein bar Erudite claims is the best nutrition ever but that tastes like the chopped up soles of old boots, and a browning fruit salad. Why is there no such thing as good food in this blasted faction? That’s right, because we get all the stuff that doesn’t go bad within moments. I kind of miss Amity. Then my eyes travel back to her face and I lift an eyebrow.

“So he’s still pissed, huh.”

Something akin to amusement quickly flashes across her face, and I admire this woman because around Eric that poker face must come in so incredibly handy when he is throwing one of his tantrums and you can’t help but find it ridiculous, which in turn causes him to try and kill you if you are not me. He usually just tries to fuck me when he gets livid, which some would say is an advantage. Angry Eric is a force to be reckoned with, unless he's buried to the hilt inside you. Or especially when. Depends on my mood.

“If I were suicidal I would say when is he ever not, but if you are referring to your particular situation then yes. He punched a fence guard in the face this morning for stuttering.”

Ah. Well. Maybe my actions have consequences and now that I am a leading leader type of person I should think about the things I inflict upon the people around me. But I can’t be solely responsible for keeping Eric in a good mood, sometimes the sun shining too much or not enough seems to aggravate him greatly and as important as I find myself sometimes, there is no way I can tell the sun what to do. But I can try, I guess.

“Well. I’m sorry, I guess. Do you want to spend your lunch break here? If you keep me company you are guaranteed that you won’t be seeing him at least during your break.”

Raven smiles at me and gingerly steps into the living area, making it very obvious that she is trying not to look around too much. I guess it is weird to be in the home of the guy you work for, without his permission. Which may or may not piss him off even further.

My tablet beeps and I roll my eyes. Ten credits say that…

Why the fuck is she in my apartment

Rolling my eyes again, this is going to give me a massive headache, I flop down on the couch and type my reply.

I thought it was OUR apartment

I’m not sharing her with you

Don’t worry, not my thing

Mina.

I’m not stealing her. We’re talking. About things. Not you. I'm fucking bored and craving human interaction. Stop watching me you perverted asshole

There is silence after that and when I look up Raven is watching me with a broad grin on her face.

“You’re both looking like you’re on peace serum when you’re talking to each other, it’s kind of cute. Weird and freaky, but cute.”

I pretend to throw my tablet at her head and she laughs, maybe I can make her forget that I’m doing her boss or that this is his place, technically, and that the spot on the couch she sits in has probably seen more of both our naked asses than the training room showers.

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to a about that.  Maybe Erudite can do something useful for once and completely destroy the nerves in my face so I can’t move a single muscle.”

While Raven pulls an apple out of her pocket I begin to dissect the salad like substance in front of me. There are tomatoes in there, which tells me that this is not your regular salad from the mess hall because we don't usually get those in the winter, they are grown in experimental greenhouses the Erudite built. And there is a good dose of chicken in this salad, not exactly uncommon here, but also egg and what looks like cheese. The nurse said something about better food and I guess a certain someone listened. I know I sure as hell didn't.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

My eyes snap to her and try to burn holes into hers as I growl but she isn't at all impressed. No wonder Eric loves her, she must be a transfer from his old home. For a moment I study her, fascinated by her composure and the way her hair is braided into tiny little braids. Before I can get distracted any further I straighten up and try my best scowl on her, which usually inspires terror in lesser beings. Raven just chuckles.

“You’re a transfer, too?”

Now she outright laughs at me and throws her hands up.

“What gave it away?”

“I like you. For some reason I am drawn to transfers, especially you no-good, brainy Erudites. Quoting Shakespeare doesn’t help you conceal it, either.”

It’s her turn to look at me like I just sprouted a second head right between my eyes.

“But you know who Shakespeare is and can identify a quote? He’s been dead for hundreds o years and outside of Erudite I’m pretty sure nobody has ever heard of the guy. Pretty boring, actually.”

I shrug and attack a piece of chicken, which is unfortunately half covered in something green and slightly slimey. If that is avocado then Eric and I are going to have to have words, once they served this to me in Erudite, where they have avocado plants absolutely everywhere apparently, because it is such a nutritious plant and healthy and good for your brain or something, but we can’t get it here because it’s not worth it. You have a window of about five minutes between rock solid and rotten where these things are edible, but they are delicious.

And it is avocado. Mother. Fucker.

“I could tell you that Eric likes reciting poetry, but before my tablet goes off… like I said, I seem to hang out with the transfers and no matter how much I try, some stuff just starts to rub off. There was a guy in my initiation class that liked to say that. Insufferable moron.”

My sole mission now is picking out the avocado and tomato bits while I ignore the sad green leaves, spinach and whatever else kind of garbage the rest is. If I’m spoiled with actual food I can’t just sit here and pretend I don’t hate the rest of it, life is too short.

“Really, what happened to him? I wonder if I know him, I’m only two years behind you.”

With a smug grin I stop the fork halfway to my mouth and sigh inwardly because this being social is seriously hindering my eating habits, which have previously been described as disgusting, gross and likened to various animals.

“He came in second. Yet another problem Erudite boys are having. I will stop making comparisons there for my own safety and your brain,” I pause to acknowledge her mouthing ‘thank you’ by raising my eyebrow at her, “and his ego never quite survived that blow. He wanted to join the fence guards but is leading one of our surveillance teams out in the city. His name’s Blaze. Formerly known as Balthasar.”

That name still gives me the giggles. We could have turned into sworn enemies like Four and Eric, who at this point remind me of two old neighbor dogs that snarl at each other out of habit, none of them really able to remember why they are supposed to hate each other in the first place. Or we could have turned into lovers, something I could also see with the other two but please don’t mention that to Eric. Instead we ended somewhere in between, we tried hooking up twice during initiation and decided we were quite compatible but not enough to make it interesting, it ended up feeling like fucking my brother who happens to be into the same kinks.

Eric can’t stand him, of course.

But, as it so happens, blaze is one of the very few people that I consider a friend, most of them are coincidentally male and most of them have shared a bed with me once upon a time. Or a wall. A surface. You know what I mean. Women and I never seem to get along, but Raven is a nice exception to the rule. If I can’t steal her, well, I think her and I could team up and strive to make Eric’s life hell. My day just got a lot brighter.

“I think I know who you’re talking about, pretty tall, mohawk, a dragon tattooed on the side of his head? His parents must have known he was Dauntless since he started to walk. That guy probably hasn’t touched a book his entire life.”

Oh Raven, you would be surprised. Much like someone else I won’t name, Blaze is still very fond of his books and keeps a stash of them under his bed. I’m not sure if this applies to all transfers, but it seems that most of them keep just a smidge of the Faction they were born into, no matter how long ago they transferred.

We talk some more, about things that happened while I was gone - Eric hired Raven after the previous assistant threatened to jump into the chasm and was talked out of it by Four, Eric wrecked three doors in his first week after she started, a month after my apparent death. You know. Fun little tidbits - and about looking as Dauntless as possible. Raven is shocked that I don’t buy anything but the standard uniform stuff and I am shocked that she has never gotten a tattoo. Granted, her skin is almost as dark as our clothes, but when she says she has never even gotten a piercing I am positively outraged and promise to drag her off to get something done.

In the end she has to go back at some point and leave me alone in this boring little prison, even though I have to admit that it is a lot better than the one I was locked up in before. Eric doesn’t show up until eight in the evening, carrying his tablet like it is about to explode.

“So?”

He barely glances at me before frowning at his screen, but I can see his eyes roll upward ever so slightly. Public Eric is back in full force and he doesn’t want me to see that he is as nervous as I am. Probably. Did I mention that I suck at this human interaction thing? It’s a lot easier if you don’t give a shit about what they are thinking about you, to be quite honest. And he is far from the ideal practice subject because he is as easy to read as some of the books Erudite keeps that are written in long dead languages.

“I obviously waited to open the message until I got here.”

Obviously. Asshole. Resisting the urge to hit him in the head, probably breaking my hand on his thick skull in the process, I sit up instead when he walks up to me and sits down at the very edge of the couch, looking as if he is about to flee. Which he probably is. Wordlessly he opens the message and doesn’t bother to look at me again, he probably feels my breath on his neck when I lean in to read over his shoulder.

Not pregnant.

Great. Right? It’s a good thing. I mean. We’re clearly not ready to be parents, I’m pretty sure I will remain in that category until I die. People as messed up as we are shouldn’t have children and I just got back from being tortured and nearly starved to death so this is a very, very good thing. Why am I suddenly feeling weird? There is a little pull in my stomach that makes me uneasy, almost as if a part of me hadn’t minded the idea of becoming a mother. Or rather, the mother of a child of Eric.

Before I can say or do anything stupid I get up to get dressed, this is not something you think about, you better drink about it. And since I am not knocked up my bedrest should not apply anymore.

I actually did buy a skirt when I got my new clothes, crazy me, and before I can change my mind I pull off the shorts and pull up the very short and very tight skirt, not bothering to change otherwise. Without a single word or glance towards Eric I leave and make my way down to the Pit, ready to drink myself into a stupor and then, maybe then, figuring out what to do next.

Two hours later I feel pleasantly buzzed. Which is a lie because everything around me is spinning but I hold on to the bar, glare at the moron who tried to refuse to give me another drink, and casually elbow a guy next to me that doesn't quite understand that I am not interested in going back to his place - which is a matter so important to him that it was the first thing he said to me. Now he hisses and calls me a bitch but still slides right back next to me. His friend tries to get him to leave - for the third time - but buddy here is painfully slow at understanding all the subtle hints.

“Come on, man. You really don't want to mess with her. Eric will kill you.”

Oho. So it's totally okay to harass drunk women if they're single or seeing someone less intimidating? I'm mentally preparing to give a speech, even going as far as putting a hand on my hip and drawing in a deep breath that makes my head spin even worse, but the guy decides to put an arm around my neck and pulls me even closer. I barely hear him slimily state that my boyfriend isn't here because I think about a tall factionless man grabbing me from behind and holding me just like that while his friends beat me to a pulp. But this time I'm not sedated and before I can register that I am in the Pit and not some long abandoned building I have slammed the back of my head into his nose, turned us around and flipped him over my shoulder. Panting heavily I stare at his bleeding face, my boot on his neck ready to stomp out his lights when I feel someone behind me and tense, ready to attack.

“This is why I didn't do anything, Peter, I don't know why his friend was worried about me. Mina can handle herself and I think she's even more dangerous than I could be, especially considering that she drank half the bar at this point.”

That smug bastard probably enjoyed the show. When I slowly turn around the world is tilting to the right but I manage to adjust just fine. Eric is leaning against the bar, arms crossed and looking like a man casually observing some fucking clouds with a friend that thinks every second one looks like a tit. He is cold and cruel as ever, and I don't want to be here. Too many people that are too close and that makes me want to scream and kick until they go away.

Something must have given it away, because Eric drops his cold grin and steps up to me, frowning when I flinch away from him. My skin is crawling with invisible insects, ghosts of the not too distant past that are recurring stars of my nightmares. Eric puts an arm on my shoulder and it takes all my strength not to punch him for it.

“Are you okay?”

Of course I'm not okay. That's what I want to yell, but I also want to be sarcastic and tell him that I have never been better. But my tongue is strangely dry and swollen and I can taste bile, giving me the distinct feeling that someone replaced my tongue with a dead slug. So I just look at him, hope I don't look as panicked as I feel, and shake my head just slightly.

Suddenly he pulls me closer and my hands fly up automatically to fight him off, but Eric whispers in my ear to play along. Because if he carries me out of here having a panic attack I will look weak, that's bad whether you are a leader or not. But if we start to make out after I just punched a guy that got too handsy? People will most likely cheer.

And they actually do. Morons.

Eric doesn't put me down until we are home and I immediately want to take my clothes off, feeling the need to take a shower. Somewhere on the way I began to talk, about the ambush, about getting shot and stabbed and abandoned by my own team. About dark basements and fever and infections. About cold water in freezing temperatures soaking my clothes. About sedatives and beatings and endless questions I never answered. About being covered in spiders and all kinds of bugs and being too weak to even try to brush them off. About death and thinking about it coming for me so much it became all there was. About being too tired to cry. And about hate, festering and swelling like a bloating corpse until it bursts, consuming everything else until there is nothing but rage, giving you the strength you didn't know you still had left.

Eric doesn't say a word. He carries me home and sits with me on his lap until I'm done. There is absolutely no expression on his face but I can see something shift in his eyes and my drunk mind wonders if that insane level of hatred that's scared me so much is contagious, like some nasty virus that spreads slowly and kills everything in it's path.

But then he carries me into the bathroom and, ignoring my protests, takes off my clothes before stripping down himself and turning on the shower. The water is so hot that the mirror fogs up almost instantly but I'm still shaking when he lifts me into the tub, making me wonder if the cold will ever really leave my body or if it will stay inside my bones until I die.

We stay until I stop shaking and only then does he remove his arms to turn away and shut the water off, leaving me standing all by myself and I hate that more than I want to admit. Suddenly I feel tired, drained and boneless but before I can slip down into a pathetic pile of limbs Eric is back, wrapping a towel around me and carrying me to the bed. Our bed. I crawl under the covers and when he doesn't follow I want to whimper like a scared child. It would be easy to blame this on the alcohol, but the truth is… all it does is let me be vulnerable for once. It was one of my worst fears. Humiliation, not being in control. Darkness. Confined spaces. Insects and birds, those sketchy assholes. I could deal with all of those. But being vulnerable was the worst, it almost cost me my first rank.

When he finally returns I feel relieved, and I notice a low humming in the background. Eric turned on the heat and that is such a thoughtful little gesture it almost makes me cry. Instead of rolling to the side I stay on my back and pull him on top of me, I want to forget for at least a little while. Our kiss is almost desperate but we keep things unusually slow, when Eric begins to kiss a trail down from my neck and across my breasts I almost growl with impatience, but he doesn't stop or speed things up. Instead he seems intent on covering every inch of my skin with his lips, saving the best for last. By the time he buries his head between my legs I'm wound so tight I feel like I'm about to explode but that kind of slow torture is very much acceptable as it turns out. Eric has me howling and screaming with a few slow strokes of his tongue and when he pushes two fingers into me I grab the sheet underneath me and scream, not at all deterred by the smug grin I can feel against my skin.

Before I can even catch a breath, much less think about returning the favor, Eric is on top of me and moaning into my mouth when our tongues find each other, my taste still on his lips. All it takes is for me to wrap my legs around his waist and he is inside me, I never had time to ponder just how well our bodies fit, especially in this position. We are usually fighting for the upper hand, clawing and biting and wrestling until we both collapse. This time we're slow, holding each other close, but it's not less intense. Maybe even more so. There is a strange undercurrent that wasn't there before but I'm too busy focusing on him, on us. Then our foreheads touch, both covered in a thin layer of sweat that would honestly disgust me otherwise, and we enter in what I have to describe as an intense staring match. We are both quiet, there is an occasional hiss or a low groan, but it is far from our usual athletics.

My orgasm leaves me literally speechless and I would be embarrassed about looking like a fish on land, mouth wide open and all, but he looks just as ridiculous. It’s ferocious in it’s own way and we both collapse, limbs tangled in that awful way i have gotten so used to already. Maybe I can sleep now, at least for a little bit. Before I drift off I think I hear Eric speak but that might just be my tired brain and the alcohol conspiring against me, although they manage to keep Eric wonderfully in character.

“I’m going to get you the guy’s head as a wedding present.”

Yeah, you do that. I’ll be here, sleeping.

[aaronheatonwords]

Yakuza 0

Sometimes a series exists on the periphery without being able to engage a certain audience. Despite being full of things that a person might like, be it intrigue or strong characters which challenge stereotypes or even just good old-fashioned dumb fun, something about it just won't grab the part of the brain that says, hey, set some time aside and enjoy this! Breaking Bad occupied this space in the part of my brain reserved for TV shows; even though the basis of the show checks every box I would want to see in a series, there's something about it that just pushes me away time and time again. At this point, it could just be the immense amount of hours that would have to be dedicated to it, and the fandom that would need to be fought off to talk candidly about it. Ultimately, though, a large part of the issue is that the zeitgeist surrounding the show has vanished. There are still plenty of people who think highly of it, but the frantic fan fervor surrounding it has come and gone.

Enter Yakuza 0. This series has existed since 2005, and as soon as it began to pick up steam in the West it has surfaced in one way or another with a very dedicated playerbase pushing for its release. Though the releases that have come to the west started out very questionably, the localization eventually found its footing and ditched English voice actors for a subtitled Japanese-only audio track. With that, the quality of the story seemed to soar and the people who loved Yakuza really loved Yakuza. A gritty crime drama full of double-crosses and intrigue, betrayal, violence and a healthy injection of Japanese culture set in a lovingly-rendered and small-scale city block; with a description like that, who could resist?

Unfortunately, me. Even though Yakuza sounds like precisely the sort of game I'd love, so much about it pushed me away. By the time it was feasible for me to acquire a copy of Yakuza in a timely manner, it had already had three prior entries. Start a series on the fourth game? No, ma'am! What about all of that rich characterization I was missing in the previous games? The hundreds of hours of ups and downs, tears, laughter, blood and sweat of our beloved cast of intrepid well-meaning criminals and their companions? Simply unthinkable.

When Yakuza 0 released in the west, it was on a wave of red-hot fans clamouring for a regular release schedule for the series. It came in hot, aided by the cheerleading of several industry figures I followed and respected very much (what's good Austin walker!), and it posed itself as a no-experience-necessary entry point to a series that had become daunting to approach in any other manner. With a few videos of breakdancing mafioso-types and some gratuitous violence, Yakuza 0 had grabbed me with its clammy hands, looked into my eyes, and ignited a fire in my loins that would make the bravest firefighter think twice about their line of work.

Starting with a loan collection spearheaded by a young Kiryu Kazama, Yakuza 0 quickly sees things go south for who would become our main man in the series. Kiryu's mark turns up dead by way of hot lead to the brain, he was the last one known to have seen the man, and on top of that the murder draws attention to a heretofore unknown piece of land that stands to dismantle a carefully-constructed real estate takeover. As a greenhorn in the yakuza, he makes an easy target for three lieutenants vying for position inside of the clan. Refusing to bend to their will begins the tale of the Dragon of Dojima's rise from lowly recruit to legend within the organisation. Parallel but in tandem with Kiryu's situation is Goro Majima, a disgraced ex-yakuza whose existence has been relegated to brown-nosing and shoe-kissing until his untold crime has been atoned for. Together, they rattle the chain of the yakuza and cement their standing.

Before you can dismantle a clan from the inside, though, you have to get used to the lifestyle. Yakuza 0 revels in its setting, filling the city of Kamurocho with bright lights and crowds and attractions galore. Despite being a PS3 game ported to the PS4, its density of crowds and detail is impressive. Trading pure scale for intimacy and detail, walking the city streets inspires a sort of awe for the times. There are restaurants of every corner, people soliciting you from doorsteps and crowds getting in your way. Even walking is a struggle as you bump and bounce off of the people strolling up and down the streets. The economic bubble of the times is played up and the revelry can be felt from the non-stop noise to the random bar hoppers you can find stumbling around and puking in alleyways. While the framerate isn't always very happy with this attention to detail, a few hours of adjustment will make it all worth it.

Yakuza 0 affords a special spotlight for the interactions between Kiryu and his friends and rivals, however. The three lieutenants who stand in Kiryu's way as he attempts to clear his name are imposing figures, despite mostly operating from the shadows. Their faces are rendered in face-punchingly beautiful detail, every crow's foot and furrow present during close-ups and fights. With such expressive and detailed faces, it makes it incredibly easy to get lost in the situations they present to Kiryu as he fights his way through his predicaments.

On that note, fight you do! At such a young age, we get to see Kiryu at his meanest and most impulsive, and Majima as he falls back into his scrappy ways. The game starts with two beatings, one of a group of hooligans and one of a couple of (presumably) innocent drunks. As you fight, your fists glow with intensity, called Heat, and you can use it to unleash brutal power moves. Combat itself is a basic brawler with simple punches, kicks and grabs at your disposal supplemented by the ability to pick up and swing a variety of environmental items. You can brandish bats, swords, trash cans and benches, motorbikes and a number of other ridiculous objects as you throw down in the streets. The Heat moves are what serves to make the combat stand out, however. Frankly, they're just rude. Slamming heads in car doors, shaking salt into eyeballs, throwing people into rivers, breaking arms and legs and smashing faces into brick walls all while yen explodes out of the poor souls caught between your knuckles and the ground makes for an empowering (and sometimes revolting) combat system.

Majima and Kiryu are capable of more than just busting skulls, though, as good as they are at it. Between story missions and fist fights are a staggering amount of side quests. Some are happened upon by accident, some are brought on by intentionally seeking things out, but all of them are worth at least a smile and many more are worth some genuine laughter. A big thumbs up goes out to the localization team, of course, but the bulk of the work must have been done by the original writers. Though this game has such a self-serious and intense story, the side quests offer a reprieve from the emotional tax that the main story levies from the player. In the span of an hour, you can go from helping break up a panty-selling ring to break-dancing with a world-famous pop star to helping a reporter infiltrate a weapons-trading ring to helping a poor soul sell some mushrooms. No, like mushrooms. Like really mushrooms. Actual cooking mushrooms. Majima and Kiryu, who are generally straightforward and ambitious characters, are given a chance to revel in silliness and break character in a way that lets both the players and the story have room to breathe and decompress between intense beats.

As fun as the world is to exist in and as well-detailed as the city is, it can sometimes lead to disappointment. There is so much to see that there's a compulsion to attempt to take part in everything, which often leads to a feeling of having hit a dead end. The mini-map and map denote which buildings have interactions built into them, but visually there are almost no differences between buildings which house a minigame or unique characters and buildings that are simply set dressing. Without a clear visual tell, it can lead to situations where an NPC asking for your business is nothing more than audiovisual noise, rather than the potential sidequest or event that they seemed to be setting themselves up as. Even towards the end of the game, I was hoping for more of the city of open itself up to me, in density rather than pure size. Unfortunately the two playable areas don't change very much, aside from the occasional story beat forcing the player down a predetermined path. The city feels more alive than most open worlds accomplish in their entire maps, but it can often lead to disappointment when trying to enjoy the area.

The biggest issue with the game is how ancillary Majima's story feels in comparison to Kiryu's. Kiryu serves as the driving force and heart of the game, being the central figure that the Yakuza are trying to track down and the de-facto lead of the series. He is driven, determined, and unafraid of the threats on his life in a way that gives his story an almost unstoppable sense of momentum. Majima, on the other hand, feels as if he's constantly being played by other forces in the story. While he is a far cry from Kiryu in the sense that he's more willing to get his hands dirty and engage in foul play, his character feels somewhat caught in the currents of the story instead of a force shaping the events. While Majima's story is well-written, I found myself dying to get back to Kiryu nearly every time Majima came into play. There is plenty of ridiculousness to be had with Majima and Osaka is a fun playground to exist in, but without a connection to him I found myself more curious about the opposing half of the story. This may come own to preference, but Kiryu's story felt the stronger of the two by a significant margin.

After years and years of holding out on the series, Yakuza 0 feels like the perfect point for newcomers to jump in. Even though it's full of nods to the later games (even as a newcomer, they feel fairly obvious), none of it feels obtuse or played up in such a way that new players will feel left out. Kiryu and Majima are introduced and set up with lots of room to grow, and indeed do change and adapt over the course of the game. While anyone with knowledge of later games will have a decent idea of where things will end, the journey of getting to that point is consistently gripping and dripping with dramatic tension that few other games even approach. The city clocks of Kamurocho and Osaka make for very beautiful and intricate locales, even if they do sometimes feel slightly restricted. For lovers of crime dramas and brawlers, for those who can sink into a well-realized space and everyone who loves Japanese culture and history, Yakuza 0 is a treat.

[impsangki]

i. dreams of leaving.

Peaty-green-damp smells and the pollen he kicks up as he runs fills Sangki’s nose, soles skipping easily over dead leaves and spindly twigs. His breathing was practiced, even; set at a pace that would have him blending in with the other living, breathing things inhabiting this stretch of land. Anxiety streams through his veins and buzzes in his muscles while he leaps up and over fallen logs, dodges boulders. His nimble legs navigated this part of the forest on memory alone, a blessing he didn’t have the time to be thankful for right now. Lucky for him, the adrenaline was doing it’s best to mask the pain searing in his right arm and doing decent enough that he wasn’t still lying on his back in that clearing by the stream. It hung limp and useless at his side, one bone broken in three different places. He could be the poster child for some wilderness safety notice, arm twisted at a sickly angle that shouldn’t be feasible by human anatomy, all he needed was a witty caption. 

Spring was sprawled across the rolling green mountains, hushed and sleeping with burgeoning flora of purple, pink, and red as it’s pillow. The yawning trees reached for him with their outstretched branches as he sprinted past, thick, elongated roots gnarled by centuries threatening a twisted ankle with every step. He had been out to fetch fish in the stream for mother to make stew of for dinner later, having left early to make the trek across the mountain with enough time to get back before she returned from the market in town. Sangki had hoped there would be a while to spare for him to read a few pages of his copy of The Grand Design, the one mother had bought him only because he begged and she couldn’t hit him instead when there were people around. He paid the price for it later.  

His first mistake was having the arrogance to believe he was any more capable today than he was yesterday, or the day before that. The second was greed. The persimmon trees were bright with bulbs in an array of orange and yellows, their stiff, swollen leaves promising a juicy snack for him to munch on during the trip back home. Each branch bent with the weight of the heavy fruit, just out of his reach to merely skim the bottoms with his fingertips. So when he aims an outstretched hand at one of the branches and sends half of the tree crashing down with too much force, it’s the combined result of shattering bone and the crack of his skull on stone that makes him go out like a light. They weren’t even ripe.

What soft rays of golden sunlight that were filtering through the treetop canopy last he remembered were now gone, the cracks between the linings now filled with the dulling blue of the sky as the sun sank behind the trees. His mom would be home any minute now if she wasn’t already waiting and his head throbbed like a warning. Get up. Hurry. Seeing as he didn’t have the option of waiting around for someone to come to his aid, or a mother with enough compassion to care, Sangki sucked it up, collected his bag from where it had fallen in the pond, slung it over his shoulder and got the hell out of there. New land speed record. Bats out of hell had nothing on him. 

His calves burned with the effort, carrying him as fast as a twelve year old boy’s legs could manage, the thickets of vegetation he would usually stop and take his time to admire but a blur of green as he weaves through them with nothing but his faith alone. Fire spread from his lungs, coats them til they feel like ash logs in his chest, like if he breathes too hard they’ll collapse into piles of silver-grey embers. 

Sangki comes up on the path leading to the hanok and the panic is suffocating now, makes him clumsy, sends him flying until he’s bruised and full of aches. They didn’t get many visitors up here. Either because they weren’t sought out or the climb up the several hundred steps wedged into the side of the mountain that their farm laid atop of wasn’t worth anyone’s time or energy. For a while, he thought no one would come for him because they didn’t know he existed. The devastation when he realized the stairs had stopped them before he could even know someone was coming left him in ruins. He finally accepted his fate as a prisoner. 

That’s what he’s told himself. He’s a prisoner, had to admit it before he could take the steps to accept it. It’s not as bad as he thinks, he tells himself when he remembers the book she bought him, now hidden under the floorboards for reasons he won’t confess right now. He can fix this, he tells himself after the countless broken ribs and mangled animals he left in his wake. 

He didn’t ask for this, he thinks every time he finds himself secured to a pillar or a tree with rope that bites burns into his arms. Someone out there would’ve loved to take him in, he imagines, they would’ve loved to love him. Someone who would never hit him when he wanted to learn more, who wouldn’t ignore him when he needed help because he’s a kid and got into trouble, because that’s what kids do. 

He loves her, he tells himself, because he does. Loves her the way any child would when they don’t know they could have it better. That they could be loved better. When they don’t know there’s more than embarrassment and guilt.

He should kill himself, he thinks when she doesn’t feed him for the third night in a row. Maybe then she’d notice him, maybe then she’d care. But then there wouldn’t be anyone to feed the animals, no one small enough to crawl under the house and retrieve a frightened chicken, no one limber enough to collect fruit up in the trees. So he doesn’t. 

He’s a prisoner, he tells himself, he’s a prisoner. 

Sangki knows he’s too late when he sees the glow of the tv bobbing in the center of the hanok like a lonely boat in a sea of black. His legs stop running when he reaches the walkway and sees his mother waiting, flashing cold and hot and seeing dancing spots in front of his face. He doesn’t have to see her face to know she’s scowling. “ What did you do? “ Because of course this was his fault. “ Look at me when I’m speaking to you. “ She demands and Sangki shrinks. “ What did you do? Playing with your powers again, huh? “ Her hands aren’t gentle as she grabs him, making him wince, and hauls him inside. “ Do I need to tie you to the daedulbo to keep you from hurting yourself again? “ 

“ No. “ He says with a throat like sandpaper.

“ What? ”

“ No. “ He mumbles.

“ Don’t get an attitude with me, you only have yourself to blame. “

When he answers with silence she can’t help but take the opportunity to guilt trip him. “ Do you really hate me so much that you’re willing to risk your own life to make a point? “

He’s knitting his brows together and wearing this pensive little frown as he looks her in the eye, “ It’s necessary-- “

The sound of her open palm cracking across his face hits him before the sting in his cheek does.

Sangki snaps his head back, barreling on, “ It’s necessary if I want to be a hero some day-- ” Another slap. Harder, sharper. 

“ Be quiet. I can’t bare the sound of you. “ Needles prick his skin where her hand struck him. “ You’re not a hero, and you won’t ever be. “ She seethes, a cold and heartless rage. “ You’re going to help your mother run this farm and stop entertaining these silly daydreams. Nod if you understand. “ He nods. “ You’re going to stop using your powers. You’re going to stop doing this. “ She gestures to his mangled arm. “ Stop this, Sangki. Please. “

The dead weight of his arm somehow feels heavier suddenly. There’s something stuck under his tongue that might be a sob.

He goes to bed without supper that night. 

[puckish-saint]

the mercy, reaper, genji, s76 s/o having a existential crisis because they are some type of monster(can you make more close of body horror, like 4 eyes or a third Eye, sharp teeth, they nail will be sharp enogh to cut someone if they dont trim them enough and a tummy mouth you can change these characteristics if you want) i really want to see how they'll comfort the s/o (bonus: s/o ask mercy to "cure" them/ reaper s/o say they envy reaper because he is a human and they arent)

Soldier: 76

During the first omnic crisis, you'reone of the soldiers under Major Reyes’ command. You don't belong tothe strike team itself, there's nothing special about you that wouldsecure you a place there, but you still follow his orders, no matterhow rarely you see him in person. Captain Morrison is more of afamiliar figure, as he makes a habit of checking up on the troops inperson whenever he has the chance. Which is increasingly often as thewar thins out the people and forces them closer together. And once,towards the end of the crisis, he leads what remains of your platoonin person. The major delegated the task to him and from the second hewalks up to you, orders in hand, you know just completing the missionwon't do. Captain Morrison flew up the career ladder and this,despite his rank, is his first real command.

He's nervous, eager to please, bent ongoing above and beyond the call of duty. He sees you all walking homewith medals.

Barely any of you walk home at all.

It's not his fault, you admit even atyour most bitter. For all his enthusiasm and pathos he's a goodofficer. It couldn't have gotten worse, but you're still glad it washim who led you into hell.

The moment you infiltrate the omnium,tasked with disabling the god program, shit goes up arse over tit.The omnic forces divide and conquer and as you flee towards the mainframe you are accompanied by the agonised screams of your people. Atthe end it's just you and the captain and neither of you expects tosurvive this.

“Specialist.” he says to you withthe gravity of a man who's about to send someone to their death.“Complete our mission.”

The parameters have changed, theoriginal plan no longer going to work. But you interface with the godprogram because captain Morrison gave you an order and you'll bedamned if the lives lost today will be lost for nothing.

Hephaestos overwhelms you withinseconds. You never stood a chance. You scream as the AI burns throughyour synapses, scream until your vocal cords tear and your jawunhinges. Your body twists and contorts, bones snapping, musclestrings pulled apart like rubber band. The AI keeps you consciousthrough it, forces is way into your brain and isn't afraid to makeadjustments to the hardware.

It takes hours, hours during whichCaptain Morrison is forced to listen and watch, powerless to act.

When it's over, Hephaestos fused you tothe machinery it inhabits. Part of your face is left, skin scarredand pulled over the tech jutting out of the side of your head. One ofyour eyeballs has stretched towards the back of your skull, givingyou a hazy and distorted view of your surroundings.

Your body is a mess of limbs in thewrong places, metal plating growing out of your bone, sharp halforganic spikes jutting out from your arms and hands. Your legs, whatremains of them are unusable. It looks like the AI was about toconvert them to its tastes, too,  but was interrupted. You feelits presence, inside your head but weakened. Dying. It tried to forceits way into a human body to escape imprisonment and failed halfwaythrough. It doesn't comfort you in the slightest.

Captain Morrison, although visiblyrepulsed, stays with you and waits for rescue.“Shoot me.” youask more than once. “No.” he answers every time. He won’tgive the killing blow, not when he just lost his entire unit but you.You’re the only survivor in the massacre that was his first owncommand. If he can keep you alive, he must think, he won’t havefailed completely.

“We killed a God Program.” he saysafter a while, to distract you from the oily pus seeping out of thescars where tech meets flesh. It’s hard not to look at.

“It killed itself.” you say,finding no satisfaction in your victory.

“Come on.” he says and for thefirst time you notice his despair through your own. “We did a goodthing. We did, we … I’m sorry.”He pulls his knees up to hischest, hides his face between them.

“I fucked up.” he says, digs hisfingers so hard into his arms the fabric tears underneath his armour.“I just wanted to make everyone proud but I already got my peoplekilled and you are practically begging me to finish the job. I’msorry for what happened, I am, but … I don’t know.”“Staypositive?” you mock and he flinches, shakes his head.

“Of course not-”“Good.Because I have to live with this for the rest of my life. I’m amonster, Captain. Look at me.”He does, forces himself to lookat the wires running along your exposed muscles, at the lump ofmolten metal that would have turned into your legs. At the hardwaresticking out of your brain, protected by skin stretched so taut ittears when you frown.

“You’re not a monster.” he saysweakly. “You’re a hero.”

He believes it, you realise as youstare into his sad but honest face. He really believes you’re ahero. That your actions may have saved the world, and that yoursacrifice was worth it.

You sigh, lean back against the wall asbest you can.

“You’re too damn naive, Captain.”you say, no heat behind your words. He manages a smile, reaches outand hovers over your arm, as if he really wants to touch you. Younod, give him permission.

“I just know good people when I seethem.” he says.

Good people, you think. Well, if yourcommanding officer says it, it must be true.

Genji

He’s the one who gives you your humanname. Your true name, given to you by your people (all dead, allgone) you’ve long since forgotten, hiding in the underbelly ofa castle so vast, hundreds of years you evaded the humans’detection. Until a little boy, impossibly frail, stumbles into yourlair and doesn’t cry or scream. He smiles.

“So cool!” he says, his voicedistorted as you try to adapt to the little one’s speech. It’sbeen almost a thousand years since you last heard human voices.Longer since you heard the songs of your own kind. But the telepathicwaves he unwittingly sends out with his excitement allow you tounderstand most of what he says.

“You’re kaiju. Like in themovies!”He wanders around your body, massive compared to him,and pokes and prods with his tiny little fingers, utterly devoid offear. When you wrap one of your appendages around him and set himdown at the opposite of the room, he clings to it and demands you doit again.

And so, having literally nothing elseto do, you heed his request.

He keeps calling you kaiju and thoughthe word’s meaning escapes you for the longest time, you accept itas your name. In return for his company you … play. Let him climbyour body, ride on your tentacles as you whip them through the air.He’s shrieking with joy, makes up adventures in his head and playsthem out in the catacombs, never in fear of drowning in the waters orgetting lost. He has you to watch out for him.

Genji grows under your watch, neverstops visiting you even when he jokes he’s getting too old to havea monster friend in his basement. When he argues with his brother heoften comes down here to sleep, nestled between your tentacles andcurling his hands around the rolling waves of your flesh. He’snever been repulsed by you, calls you cuddly and sings praises ofyour warmth. When he doesn’t feel like getting up to mischief, hebrings his computer down here and makes you watch his favouritemovies.

Until one day he stops coming.

You don’t know what happened, waitfor him as you always do. Days, weeks. Months. A full year passes bywhen you realise that Genji is not coming back. Even when you strainyour ears, feel the vibrations of the stone and listen to theemotions and thoughts that surround the humans above, you can’tfind him. There’s only sadness and grief until that, too, goesaway. Something horrible must have happened to him up there, whereyou couldn’t protect him.

Over ten years pass before you seeGenji again, looking different but that’s never mattered to you.He’s the same at heart, matured but as pure and bright as he alwayswas.

“Kaiju.” he says and by now themoniker has become a term of affection rather than a word describinga monster. You draw him close, explore his body, send him thoughts ofjoyful reunions. His kind is not telepathic but he can feel the moodin the air.

“I’ve made some new friends.” hesays after you welcomed each other duly. “They would like to meetyou.”

You cradle his cheek, wonder what he’strying to say. He’s never before suggested bringing others downhere. It’s too dangerous, both for them and for you.

“We, them and me, we’re trying tohelp, and there are a lot of weird people there. You would fit rightin.”“Leave these catacombs?” you ask, incredulous. Has hecome back just for this? To try and take you with him to whereverhe’s gone this last decade?

“You don’t have to. I just thought… you’re a good soul. And Overwatch, my friends, we can do a lotof good.”“They would not have me.”“They would. I toldyou, there’s lots of weird people-”“I’m not people.”

He stills, presses his forehead againstyour body.

“I thought the same of myself for along time. You trust me, right? Then trust me when I say you’repeople in any way that matters.”

You’re not convinced. Genji is tryingto do something nice for you, convincing you to join a collective,but leaving your hiding spot that has kept you safe for hundreds ofyears sits ill with you. The humans, what little you remember ofthem, don’t favour things that do not look like them.

“Please?” Genji says, so soft thatyou don’t hear him, only feel the vibrations of his speech on yourskin. “I have to leave again soon. I don’t want to leave you allby yourself.”

In the end you agree. A monster you maybe, but you trust Genji. If he says you will be accepted, you willbelieve him.

Reaper

Gabriel is, ironically enough, thefirst person you ever see unmasked. For the longest time all you knoware men and women in labcoats, experimenting, torturing. When theyhave had their fill, they lock you in a cage, far below in a placethat can be remotely shut off and blown up if you ever were to escapeyour prison. They take you up to their labs less and less often.Eventually they forget about you.

Time becomes a hazy construct ratherthan a guiding idea, but eventually you’re face to face with theman in black, tilting your head to allow all of your eyes to take inthis new apparition. He does not look like the scientists. It is notonly the colour of his clothes, or the nature of his mask that hideseven his eyes. It is the fact that even hidden, you feel his eyes onyou, looking at you rather than through you. What he sees you don’tknow, nor what moves him to unlock the cell and let you out.

You tower over him, able to stretch forthe first time in your entire life. Your third arm catches on hiscloak by accident, but the softness of it nearly overwhelms you. Youplay with it until he pulls it away with a snarl.

“I need you to be my meat shield.”he says. “Can you do that?”

You shrug. It’s worth giving a try.

Being a meat shield is easy work. Standin front of Reaper when bullets fly his way or carry him out ofharm’s way if that does not suffice. Your body soaks up the damagelike it’s nothing, regenerating uglier each time you bleed, butnever any less functional. Protecting the man in black becomes yourlife’s purpose, at least while you learn what else there is.

Reaper never tries to shelter you, denyyou information like the scientists have done. He even helps out whenthe mood strikes him, gets you gloves that go over your unnaturalhands that allow you at long last to use touchscreens. He teaches youhow to use voice commands to their full potential, gives you a fewplaces to start.

Omnic Crisis. Overwatch. Talon. Theworld out there is nothing like you imagined, but then again you hadvery little to imagine it with. Your best guess at what things looklike outside your prison were based on the pictures on the calendar.Raging seas, vibrant flowers, animals that the camera angle made youbelieve were 90% nose.

For the most part it’s dirtier. Andalso much more cruel.

The stone thrown at you causes no realinjury. The fear and disgust with which it came do.

“At least you’re human.” you sayas Reaper tries to get you out of your sullen mood. “Look at me.I’m a … a ... ““Golem.” he says. “Made from meat, notclay, but the principle is the same.”“Yes.”

He sighs, drags his hands through hishair under his cowl, mutters to himself.

“Figures I get the one monster in theworld that mopes around all day.”

Says the right person, you want to say,knowing how he can be. You bite it back. He is just trying to buildup a hard shell to survive the mushiness that’s about to follow.True enough he sits next to you, pushes away the third arm, thathas a life of it’s own and is still obsessed with the fabric of hisclothes. That’s what you tell him at least.

“You’ll never make them like you.You could be the born again Jesus but looking like that they’llstone you to death before giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“What a pep talk.” you say drily.He looks at you as if he’s regretting ever teaching you what a peptalk is.

“My point.” he says sharply. “Isthat I may be human but even I won’t have a place in society with aface like that.”And with that he takes off his mask, shows youhis face, chin to forehead, scarred in some places, revealing barebone in others. As you watch one of his teeth falls out, evaporatesand is immediately replaced.

“You look like death.” you say. “Nowonder they call you the Reaper.”

The mask stays off, his shoulders slumpand then he takes your hand and squeezes it.

“Stick to the people you know. It’ssafer that way.” After a second of hesitation he adds: “And callme Gabriel.”

“Gabriel.” you repeat and smile,with all three mouths at once.

Mercy

There's a glass of black smoke standingon top of a shelf in a part of the laboratory that's rarely beingused. It stood there when Angela began her work here all those yearsago. Don't touch, the safety instructions say, don't interact, don'teven look at it.

And she doesn't. Not until she tries toresurrect Gabriel and fails. His screams, begging her to let him die,haunt her sleep and force her to walk the dark halls in an attempt tofind some measure of peace.

The jar of black smoke looks sofamiliar, so much like the form she forced Gabriel to take, thatbefore she knows it, she has taken it from the shelf and unsealed it.Nothing happens, which is rather anticlimactic considering thestories she's heard.

She upends the jar. The smoke fallsout. It stays jar-shaped.

When she carefully pushes a Q-tip inshe finds it's indeed just smoke. Nothing should keep it fromevaporating or at least spreading out on the table. But jar-shaped itstays and eventually she gives up for the night and returns to bed.

In the morning the smoke is stilljar-shaped but definitely, after carefully measuring the jar, larger.The reason becomes clear when she reaches into the bowl of sweetsthat always stands on the counter and finds nothing. Not evenwrappers.

Angela feeds it everything she canthink of in the next days. It eats sweets fastest. Easier for it todigest or maybe it just likes them most. Meat is almost as good,vegetables are a mixed success. It eats a bit of string from her coatand some pliers left behind by one of the others, but doesn't muchseem to favour the taste.

Three days after being freed, the blacksmoke is large and powerful enough to reboot its dormantconsciousness.

You open a quickly formed eye and useit to look at Angela. She's curious, but not frightened.

“Dr Gervaine promised me he'd turn meback into a human.” you say, creating more and more eyes to lookaround. “Guess he played me for a fool.”

Angela blinks. She knows the name fromseveral research papers and her own textbooks.

“He retired before the Omnic Crisisand donated his equipment to the war effort. Overwatch kept it safesince then.”

“But you’re scientist, too.” yousay, pushing the questions about what the hell the Omnic Crisis andOverwatch are to the side. “You can cure me.”

Angela doesn’t know if she can. Youwere Dr Gervaine’s project, one she never even assisted in. Anddespite superficial similarities all the tests she runs in the nextdays show no connection to what became of Gabriel. There’s nothingshe can do and so she tries a different approach.

“Why would you want to be cured?”she asks one day, months after first unsealing your jar. You give hera Look with three eyes. She points to her temple, makes a motion asif she wants to point your attention to a spot of dirt. The third eyevanishes.

“Because the best imitation of ahuman body I can manage makes me look like a slenderman knock-off?”

It’s true, she has to admit, andscared the living daylights out of Winston when he bumped into youone night on his way to get a glass of milk before bed. Neither ofyou have recovered from the incident.

“You’re getting better, though.Your face has the right number of orifices.”

You nod and, with a defeated sigh liftthe sweater she gave you to wear to make you feel more human. On yourstomach you stored all the extra eyes, mouths and noses you kept awayfrom your face.

“Alright.” she says, everoptimistic. “So it’s more of a … winter look.”But atleast today her jokes fall flat. She’s never been very good at themanyway.

You lose your form again, turn into themany-limbed heap of smoke so thick it seems solid and curl up againsther legs.

“You don’t understand.” you say,even your voice turning hollow without the effort of making it soundnormal. “I remember being human. I used to go to the beach and getmy fingers sticky eating ice cream. I had real skin, toes and fingersand now … look at me.”

Angela looks at the formless pitchblack mass to her feet, the eyes that keep popping up only todisappear by your increasingly frustrated efforts.

“I think you’re perfect.” shesays. You create a hand just to fondly smack her upside the head, butyour many mouths are smiling.

“I’ll still look for a cure.” yousay and she shrugs and lowers herself to the ground, fullyencompassed by you. She’s long since stopped worrying about beingsuffocated by you.

“And I’ll love you still, no matterif you find it.”

[getseriouser]

20 THOUGHTS: Greene, Eye-Gouge Monster

AND then there were four. 

Two redemption stories, a minor premier seeking validation and an underdog looking for quality over quantity 

Richmond were fantastic in 2017 and arguably looked better the following year. A grand an opportunity to go back to back you’d never see yet in the penultimate weekend they stuffed it. Tipping they’re still dirty.

Collingwood, the winners that night a year ago, came from nowhere to lose agonisingly a week later. Tipping they’re dirty on that still too.

Geelong has a monkey on its back the size of Naomi Watts’ co-star in that 2005 film set in Skull Island. The minor premier yet not rated a legitimate flag chance. They’d be dirty on that.

And lastly the Giants. Third prelim in four seasons, no-one has put together a more consistent body of finals work without tasting ultimate success. They’d be dirty they haven’t converted a golden opportunity yet.

Lot of get-even stories going on, three will go unsatisfied, yet one will succeed and nothing will taste sweeter.

  1.       Start with Toby Greene – still don’t get it. Last week, Bont, that was either a free-kick at most or a couple weeks for doing something properly grubby and in need of a spell. A contrived outcome later and he plays last week, instrumental in their win. Given the margin you could say he misses through suspension it’s a Brisbane win. Now, he gets a week and its upheld, but on the vision available the Bont incident looks worse. Don’t get it.

2.       Theory – Michael Christian wanted to see Greene go to the Tribunal last week on a serious charge where the Tribunal could come to its own conclusion, away from the constraints of the matrix Christian uses, and the Giant gets a suspension through that channel. It didn’t work, an agreed guilty-verdict into fine-only eventuated and the Christian plan failed. So this week, to avoid that happening again, he gave the suspension up front so Greene would have to work down from a week instead of the Tribunal working it out from scratch.

3.       As of writing this his suspension has been upheld but surely the Giants appeal on Thursday. Costs them $5,000, it’s a free hit, and given the size of the task Saturday afternoon and how important he is to them, they’d be mad not too. I expect them too, and in reality, it’s a 50-50 to be a success such is the crazy case it is.

4.       It’s an impressive four-year block for the Giants after that win last Saturday. Lost that epic prelim by a kick to the Dogs three years ago, were really in that prelim against the Tigers the year after a long way in, remembering they didn’t have Dylan Shiel for three quarters, and once again into a prelim this year. Leon Cameron has his detractors but they say winning a flag doesn’t just take planning and talent but a little luck as well. Given he continually gets this far, maybe that last ingredient is all they’re missing?

5.       Last one on GWS, from a league perspective it was actually encouraging to see that the left of screen displayed decent Giants coverage in the crowd in Brisbane Saturday night. Not a massive contingent but hardly the token couple-dozen of the early years, there was something half-decent for what is still a club shy of ten years old representing what is otherwise rugby and soccer heartland. Encouraging.

6.       Right, Brisbane. Told you so. This is a team who had zero injuries until Mitch Robinson and a draw softer than the Russians paid for at least year’s World Cup, so straight sets doesn’t surprise one bit. This is not a top four team, it’s probably a sixth to eighth team at best. Straight sets dot com, doesn’t surprise this column one iota.

7.       Luke Hodge though, what a jet, enormous career, huge for the Lions the last two years too, and we just love the look of Jarryd Lyons motioning to the two-time Normie winner for a chair off and the Colac product in body language alone gave it the “nah mate, cheers”. Love that. Well done Hodgey, certainty for a Hall of Fame Legend status at some point you’d think, with that resume.

8.       How was the Sam Reid ‘George Gregan’ impersonation on the game-winning-goal? Three or so posessions before the jockey Brent Daniels cheeky checkside, pretty sure it was Reid who dished the ball out like he was given a freshly-baked jacket potato unawares, very quick hands but by the letter of the law incredibly illegal. Umpy was never going to see it but gee, if only he could, would have paid a forward pass for sure.

9.       Speaking of umpiring, that spirit of the game free kick nonsense with Adam Kennedy and Charlie Cameron. My Lord. I hope the umpire mistakenly meant the stuff about constant niggle where a free is awarded if its just too much. But otherwise, under the letter of the law, Cameron coming back on was not injured. Play on. Ridiculous.

10.   So umpiring, was a shocker this weekend. Match Review and Tribunal not good either. Who is responsible for that? Old Steve “having a shocker” Hocking. My mate is just enduring the nightmare to end all nightmares. Rules, done nothing, scoring, down, I can’t see any portfolio he looks after better than this time last year. Lift Steve.

11.   Oh, and whilst we need to whack some folks – how about all that fuss about Mark Blicavs out of defence against the Pies and it cost them the game. They brought Rhys Stanley back in and where did the Blitz play most of his footy in the first half, a first half where the Cats played well? On the wing! David King was the main culprit. So we know not to ask him about the Geelong backline like we don’t ask him to be designated driver. Low blow, but he doesn’t read this, too busy with the behind the goals vision looking for Blicavs on Kennedy or Darling. He’ll be a while.

12.   So this week, what we got. Richmond playing a better Geelong but without Hawkins. Anyone see that going any other way than a Tigs win? Didn’t think so. Surely last year’s cock up doesn’t repeat. So one inner-suburban army of hundreds of thousands will bombard all of us in Grand Final week.

13.   Then, the day after, weather-pending the greatest collection of Collingwood supporters in one place ever since Pentridge hit capacity once back in the late 80s, hosting a GWS who have been tough for two good weeks but can they go again? The Pies might like the wetter conditions, the mosquito fleet up forward and a classy onball brigade. So we might end up with another huge inner-suburban army up and about in Grand Final week. Giants are in decent nick but, very decent nick.

14.   Good to see the Gulls make the VFL Grandma this weekend. Not just coz we like Willy almost as much as Liz Taylor, but because if it had been Richmond reserves versus Essendon reserves it would have been mega scratchy. Let’s just call the VFL for what it is, what used to be the well-respected VFA is now just the AFL Reserves comp with appearances by Port Melbourne and Williamstown. It’s a magoos competition and this Sunday one club will be caring more about the GF the Saturday after, the other will be hellbent on winning so they can secure a local real estate agent as a sponsor the year after to pay for the club jumpers.

15.   Jordan De Goey, oh, not worth the risk, he has only played ten seconds of footy in seemingly eight months and is made of tissue paper and is missing a limb and has Rickett’s. One thing though, aside from the German witchcraft and the fact he will have 22 days between the first final and a potential Granny – he hurt his hammy against Geelong in the opening two minutes but ran out, to little impact granted, most of the first half before heading for the tracksuit. No gratuitous stride out where the back door comes off the hinge and there’s the full dramatic hobble off the ground like you’ve got a bad case of pins and needles. Sure, he has a bad history, but this was not your typical tear. If the Pies win, I think he is a certainty to play Grand Final day.

16.   Ashes, all done. But please, Timothy. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times: if you win the toss, nine times out of ten you bat first. On the tenth time you think about bowling, but you bat first. We lost the fifth test at the toss.

17.   Davey Warner. Couldn’t middle shit. You know you’re going busted when Stuart Broad gets you LB and doesn’t even bother turning around to appeal, he goes immediately from delivery stride into celebrating to gully. Was his brand new baby daughter on the eve of the Ashes a distraction enough? Perhaps. Was it just one bowler having him by the pills and otherwise, if Broad wasn’t playing he could have averaged say, 40? Possibly. Or, he averages 59 in Australia but averages less than 34 overseas. That’s telling. Remember, Steve Waugh and Allan Border, proper batsmen who don’t mind if your TV is an OLED TV or something from ALDI, they actually averaged higher overseas than at home. Proper batsmen.

18.   We need to find a new opening pair asap. Not bothered by playing Warner again, because if we do he’ll score a mount of runs against Pakistan and New Zealand on home conditions, but all it does is delay finding his successor for when we need to win tours, I dunno, in India, or England, or anywhere not at the SCG basically.

19.   Cam Bancroft, only averaged 11 from his two tests, sure, but gee, they swiftly moved him on because he was so bad, he was bringing such bad cricket juju to the place they brought in Marcus Harris who went on to average 60. No. That’s not right. Harris averaged 9 from his three tests.  Brilliant. Harris is now averaging 24 from 9 tests. Bancroft has 10 tests @ 26. Semantics perhaps but I’d be picking the sander before the Victorian first come the summer. But we have four Shield matches before the Gabba, I want to see Matty Renshaw ton up, get into the test team again and stick.

20.   And I love this, Steve Smith, missed a test and an innings but still amassed 333 runs more than the next best for most runs in the series. That man is a freak.

[sad-4ever-blog]

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20mm Bench Dog Accessories

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Legend Of Zelda Dog Accessories

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