#these sketches are kind of old and were really quick. just to prove a point. proof of concept. etc

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

i don't think i'm ever going to take my cultist/worship au phoenix anywhere but i may as well post it bc idk

theyre kind of a freak. so nothing's changed really

[inkmimicry]

i know they're not /technically/ muses here, but character questions about Toulouse & Isvic- how much are they like their "elders"/otherworld counterparts? is it as simple as "it's them, but they made different decisions-" or are they completely different? how do they carry emotion/mannerisms?

those boys will probably be getting slam-dunked on this blog once I actually fix up their sketches and start making decent icons for them.

I did draft a little note about them over on the villain blog, but there's a reason they ended up here - the two differ from their counterparts so much I actually considered them ocs.

Toulouse

Far from the opportunistic, cruel and uncaring ruler who straight up enslaves people. Humsin in the animated series is quick to anger, despises noise, though is craftier than people give him credit. Toulouse is a creature of fun, music, and fanfare. Always moving, always swooping around. But while Humsin has no attachments, be it to minion or otherwise, Toulouse is very attached to Isvic and his people. Eager to please. One would even say clingy, and bad at handling negative emotion. He does get sneaky and mischievous, but it's all in good fun. I'd say they share a 'trickster' nature, and he has a lot of 'not helping you case moments'.

The whole point of these two and their story is that Tabaluga arrives in their realm thinking they are villains, but when Toulouse hears his old friend has appeared, he's overjoyed and tells his servants to bring him over right away --- which they do. In a sack. Tabaluga is greeted by a very jovial spirit, offering him a banquet in the Oasis Gardens his sand palace inhabits, and Tabaluga and co. find the whole thing very suspect. Toulouse really should think more before he leaps. He has a high, nasally voice with a pep to it, and his mischievous nature can come across as sinister at first.

(They go by Humsin and Arktos at this point and it isn't revealed that they were Tabaluga's little friends until later. In fact, Taba may have come here looking for the two missing children...)

Isvic (eyes-vik)

Isvic understands that 'Arktos' is more of a role. Even the top-hat on his head is constructed of ice rather than leather, and I draw him not wearing it a lot. He's a gruff, slow-moving creature, much like Badger from Wind in the Willows, he's perfectly amicable but can come across as...curmudgeon. Arktos in both iterations is theatrical, loud, always gesturing. This one is reserved and brooding. Again, doesn't help his case when not trying to appear as a villain, but he doesn't feel he needs to prove anything. He's straight-forward, stern, and upfront. The only time he resembles his counterparts in personality is when he sings his iteration of Schlüssel zur Macht, which is again, more performative and ironic.

But, he's got a good heart and loves his land and people. When he heard Tyrion's egg had arrived, he knew the time had come to sculpt Lilli into being. For him, the movie! Lilli was his older sister, and it broke his heart to leave her behind for good. His own daughter senses sadness from him, and he can appear a tad distant, however loving he is. He isn't seen nearly as much as Toulouse is seen by his subjects and has a kind of legendary status. He's gruff, scowling, and grumpy, but when he smiles he's just...this old man. This darling old creature. The little snow child who Lilli and Tabaluga from the movie-verse knew was shy, timid, and playful. He's been through a lot since then.

I'd say the two are straight up different people. Maybe they would have been more similar to their counterparts if forces hadn't intervened and they didn't grow up with different personas (instead of princes) and eventually come to know what key moments will happen in their lives (Lilli and Tabaluga's birth, the wars, etc) but since Tyrion is villainous in this world, they were always going to be very different.

That said, they're still technically an Arktos and a Humsin. They have to share attributes, mostly based in their powers and locations. But while my tv! Arktos struggles with accepting love and affection, Isvic struggles with buried heartbreak and is well aware of love and is almost resigned to the pain of it. So maybe my version of the canon Arktos and him share that.

A funny scene I imagined between him and Toulouse is the sand-spirit discovering the arrival of this reality's Tabaluga, after 2000 years and using a giant slingshot to toss himself from the Desert, across Greenland to land on the Winter Palace. Isvic is sitting in an armchair, in a smoking jacket with a newspaper when he smacks into the window to inform him that yes, they have gotten old, and the baby dragon is already here, isn't that great?

(Isvic has a kind of observatory at the top of his palace, so.)

[astaroth1357]

Demigod MC Series: Athena

So. I have to deal with the virgin goddesses… By mythos, there really shouldn't ever be children of Artemis, Hestia, or Athena (yes, Athena was a virgin goddess). PJ got past that by making it canon that Annabeth and her siblings were born from cracking open Athena's skull (yes, that's also more or less the canon explanation). They gloss over it real quick but I remember, Rick. I've always remembered and that mental image has haunted me for years...

I can't, in good conscience, ignore the history around Athena's worship (call it an academic restraint) but I REFUSE to do the skull thing. So, since I make the rules here, I'm going with magic adoption. They still get magic powers, they're just more human than demigod. Cool? Cool.

Demigod MC Series: Intro, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hades, Dionysus, Demeter, Athena

Lucifer

The human that popped out of the portal seemed to have enough sense not to attack everyone in the room for a change, but even Lucifer could tell that was more of a strategic choice than for lack of ability...

Their very existence was highly unusual… and quite worrisome. He wasn't even aware Athena could have "children" of her own, but apparently she had been taking in some particularly bright humans to raise and train like her own...

Unbeknownst to him, a surprising amount of human scholars, diplomats, and generals have her to thank for their trade… and that alone should speak to the level of intrigue at play here. 

Was this an accident or Athena's attempt to plant an Olympian spy in the Devildom too…? Either way, he didn't trust them from the get go…

Look, Lucifer isn’t stupid. Athena is a goddess of Wisdom and War and war happens on more than just the battlefield… 

Since they've shown up records have been going missing, official documents keep getting misplaced, and he swears that there's some kind of bug in the student council room...!

It's infuriating watching the MC suck up to Diavolo when he's almost certain that they're running their own agenda behind the scenes! And he can't prove any of it!! They cover their tracks too well!

Lucifer has one of those corkboards covered in newspapers and string in a secret wing of the Castle - 100% dedicated to just tracking the MC's activities…. The longer they're there, the more obsessed he becomes...

He swears between Simeon, Solomon, and MC he feels like a shepherd wondering why the sheep are growling… The Devildom has never been in more danger than it is right now... Send help.

Mammon

To be honest, he kind of thought that they were just going to be Satan 2.0 but that's not really true.

They're more than just a book sponge! Though they do read, like a lot. Let’s just say from one schemer to another… Game recognizes Game.

They come up with plans and ideas soooo fast, it’s insane! Honestly, there are times where he has a new money-making plot and he just brings it to the MC first to run it over. 

Nine times out of ten, not only do they sniff out any problems but they have a solution for him in a matter of minutes! His scheme game has been on point since they’ve shown up!!

They’re also even better tutoring than Satan is, so he’s even managed to get a couple A’s for the first time in his life! Lucifer actually told him he was proud (which he secretly recorded and now uses as a ringtone much to his brother’s regret...)

So yeah, he likes them... buuut that doesn’t keep him from thinking they act a little weird sometimes... 

Mammon: *points to a unused tower close to the RAD building* Over there is the Tower of Sorrow. We use it for storage.

MC: Ah. Interesting… *starts writing in a notebook, muttering* It may need a few minor tweaks but the location is defensible...

Mammon: *stops* Ya say somethin’?

MC: *looks back up* Nope! Say, you’ve been to the Castle a lot haven’t you? Do you know any good ways in?

Mammon: Uhm… Why do ya want to know that…? *starts looking around for Lucifer*

MC: In case of emergencies. I like being prepared. 🙂

Mammon: Look, I don’t know what Lucifer might’a told ya…

MC: I’ll pay you a thousand Grimm for it.

Mammon: Well shit, ya want those maps with or without color?

... Yeeeah, that’s pretty weird… But it’s probably fine. I mean, as long as they keep giving him money, who’s he to complain? 🤷‍♀️

Leviathan

Also thought that they’d be a lot more like Satan but was pleasantly surprised that they were into more than books.

What else did they like exactly? Military strategy!!

It’s been a looong time since he’s been able to talk to someone who’s actually interested in all the battles he’s fought, both in the Celestial Realm and the Devildom, and their curiosity is kind of flattering...! Not a lot of people take his strategic prowess all that seriously anymore...

Plus, they are the BEST partner to have any turn-based strategy game. Hands down. He once got stuck on a level of D-COM for weeks until the MC walked in and mopped the floor with the AI!! They have a serious head for probability and tactics.

The House once made the mistake of letting these two be on the same team during a Hell Game and they absolutely demolished the competition. Mammon didn’t even get a single shot off before half his team was lost to a rigged paint grenade… It took a whole day to clean up… 

However, Levi’s also noticed some odd things about the human… He likes that they’re interested in his past but maybe they’re a little… too interested?

Levi: -and that’s how we defeated the Four Horsemen before they escaped from Purgatory. 

MC: Wow, Levi that’s seriously impressive!! *furiously scribbling on a notebook*

Levi: Well t-thanks… 😅 But, uhm... are you writing that down…?

MC: Hm? Oh no, just doodling. *they lift up the notebook to show a bunch of cute little sketches on the page… and not the magic-based invisible ink all over them…*

Levi: Oh you draw too? Can you do fanart???

MC: Eh, sometimes. But say Levi, can you tell me about your naval ranks again? I’m still really curious… *gets the pen ready again with a smile*

Satan

Oh, it's been a long game of cat-and-mouse between these two… and unfortunately, it’s been pretty addicting too.

He honestly had every intention of tricking the human into making a huge mess do he could bother Lucifer, but at every turn they proved just a hair too clever for him...

He once gave them a cursed book to “lend” to Lucifer, but they saw through it the moment they touched it and lifted the spell before handing it over.

He rigged a podium to spray glitter during one of Lucifer's speeches but the MC disconnected the trigger mic before he even got on stage. It was pretty dang frustrating...

At one point he got so desperate that, just as a test, he tried to trap them in the House's Music Room. Fortunately for them, it only took a few minutes to work out an escape. They even passed by him in the hallway with a wink!

It's confounding! It's infuriating!! 

...and it's so damn sexy... He should be furious but he’s just in awe!!

Add on that they know their art, literature, and multiple different crafts thanks to the tutelage of their adopted mother and that’s it. He’s finished. This boy is in love.

Truthfully though, a part of him is 90% sure that they’re also gathering state secrets… Like, they’re watching Barbs and Diavolo far too close for comfort - but he just can't bring himself to care. 🤷‍♀️

The MC could walk into his room one day and say, "Hey, do you want to help overthrow the monarchy with me?" and he dreads it because deep down he knows that he wouldn’t say no…

Take some notes, kids. Some bad influences get you to drink or do drugs. Others pull you into a centuries long conspiracy to destabilize and topple rival realms from within… But he has fallen for their brain hard. Devil help them all…

Asmodeus 

They’re pretty clever, he’ll give them that, but uh… Are they a little off to anybody else?

Asmo is a charmer by birthright so he has a bit of nose for when someone’s just a liiittttle too nice… Not much of a nose mind you, because he can be thrown off by compliments himself, but enough to think that the MC might be a little too… “kind” for their own good...

First off, who wants to spend that much time with Levi?? They don’t even seem that interested in anime! They just keeping asking him for old war stories…

Then all the sucking up they do to Diavolo and Barbatos? Look, he gets it. Diavolo is a delicious piece of man-hunk and his butler could give him a lesson or two in sweet-talk (and he has), but they seem to be just a little too… nosy.

Of course, Asmo’s suspicions disappear pretty quickly after they start to spoil him with spa nights and beauty secrets they picked up from “casual research” into the subject.

And you know, get a little Demonus in Asmo and start massaging his back? Oh, sweetie he’ll sing like a bird!! … with gossip. Singing with gossip.

Asmo: So I’ve heard that Lucifer has been spending more time at RAD than usual… His whole club is talking about it, they think he’s meeting with some witch!

MC: Hm, is that so? *works on a knot near his shoulder blades* What do you think?

Asmo: Ooh~! Right there, MC! *purrs and lays his head on his arms* Well come on, this is Lucifer we’re talking about! I’m sure he’s just working.

Asmo: Hmm... though come to think of it, I think I heard him asking Barbatos for the spare keys to the Tower of Sorrow…

MC: Oh really? Huh. *works out the knot and gets up* I just remembered that I left some papers with Satan... I’ll be right back.

Asmo: You’re going already??

MC: *waves him off quickly* I’ll be right back, Asmo. *hurries out the door to do totally on-the-up-and-up things… surely*

Beelzebub 

Honestly he doesn't like this one… But not for the reasons you'd expect.

He agrees with everyone else that they seem a little shady, but Solomon and Simeon are too so it's not like that's anything new... 🤷‍♀️

No, no. He dislikes them because they're the person who FINALLY figured out how to keep him from eating all the food in the kitchen!!

Turns out that the trick was to put a teleportation charm on the fridge door that would send all the food away if it’s opened after a certain time of night… 

And where does it go? The Purgatory Hall fridge. And where does the Purgatory Hall food go…? The HoL fridge…

It doesn’t sound so bad until you remember that it means half of their fridge is now Solomon’s leftovers…. 🤢

After they put the same kind of spell on the pantry, it was all over… He couldn't get midnight snacks from the House anymore… Everything was contaminated by Solomon…

The MC is a nice enough person, he doesn’t have a lot of complaints about them, but he wants them to leave. Now. This is inexcusable… He’s so hungry… and he doesn’t want to die by “goulash” or whatever Solomon calls his latest culinary catastrophe… He’s still too young for death… 😓

Belphegor 

In a way, he absolutely could not have asked for a better person to help him get out of that attic.

… In another way, he got one of the worst possible people to try and kill... Like. They saw through his scheme sooo fast…

How was he supposed to know that the human had training in body language and sniffing out lies???

Getting the door open was a piece of cake for them. They knew enough magic to undo the seals and just rummaged around Lucifer's stuff long enough to find the key to the door. He could not have found a more competent individual for a break out, really.

It’s just… well he didn’t expect to go from locked in a room like a prisoner to tied up in enchanted rope, still like a prisoner but now mobile. 😑 

They even used his own hug ruse against him! They caught his wrists when they got close and tied him up before he could shake them off...

Admittedly, it wasn't exactly the best look for them either - what with walking Belphegor downstairs to the others like a one-man-prison-caravan but they're as silver-tongued as they are sly so they talked their way out of it beautifully… 

And like hell was he going to trust them after that!! And not even Beel liked them so something had to be up...

Well, you want a detective? Look no farther than Belphie (no seriously, it’s in the canon). He can put things together pretty fast when he puts his mind to it and watching the MC for a while gave him enough proof to work off of...

He always knew that, humans were bad news and the MC just proved it to him all over again. They are bad news, bad bad news and they’re going to-!

Overthrow… Diavolo…? Is that what he is getting from them…? Huh…

Wait a second, MC. You might just have him interested… 😏

[imaginesbymonika]

“Until they discover what a mess I truly am.”

Pairing: Pete Davidson x reader

Warnings: Angst, mentions of depression, fluff at the end

As a writer for SNL Y/N knew a bunch of famous people, she worked with almost everyone since she had started in 2013. The young woman began writing at the age of 17, being the youngest female writer in Saturday Night Live history. On the one hand, it was super fun, the thrill of working among people such as Seth Meyers or Lorne Michaels filled her with pride. At the same time, it was intimidating and occasionally mentally exhausting. It felt like she frequently had to prove herself to everyone, prove that she was worthy of being a writer for SNL at such a young age. She constantly had to work twice as hard.

The first person that looked at Y/N as an equal writer was John Mulaney. John treated her like an adult and whenever she happened to be in the writers' room with him, he always wanted to hear her ideas and opinions on scripts and previous shows.

He explained that he saw a piece of himself in her, and he knew exactly how tough the first year could be without having at least one friend.

To this day still, Y/N was incredibly grateful for him.

Over the years she had met a lot of writers, some of them grabbing her attention more than others. But at the end of the day, none of them seemed to be 'dateable'. John always wanted to set her up with one of his friends, but she always declined saying he was her friend, not her dating service. Until Y/N met Pete Davidson.

„Sorry, I’m late.“, he announced after entering the writers' room. He sat down on the opposite side of Y/N and flashed her a quick smile, before leaning back in his chair.

„I saw how you stared at Pete this morning.“, John later said as the two left the SNL building. She simply rolled her eyes and turned her head away from her friend, humiliated that her cheeks were burning up.

The very first-time Y/N realized she had developed quite the crush on Pete was after his proposal announcement.

He held up Ariana’s hand, while a huge smile played on his lips: “WE‘RE GETTING MARRIED!“. She could see the little tattoo behind his ear and sighed.

She could feel her heart breaking, but when his eyes met hers, Y/N smiled softly and nodded her head at him. Forming the word „Congrats“ with her lips.

From that moment on, she tried her best to get over him. Dating guys and having one night stands- Y/N did everything to keep Pete of her mind. She hardly saw him, during the time of his engagement, which was a miracle. But after the engagement was canceled, he was around more often. They sometimes made eye contact in the writers' room or at an after-show party. But Y/N kept her distance, knowing that once they would start talking again- her old feelings would resurface.

„Pete asked about you again.“, John explains while handing her a cup of coffee. „Thank you.“. Making her snap out of her thoughts: “Are you alright?“.

She simply nods: “Yeah, I’m fine.“.

„Did you hear what I said? Pete-.“.

„Yeah, I heard you.“, Y/N interrupts him, a bit more cold than she intended. She takes a sip before looking at her old friend apologetic: “John, you know how I feel about Pete- I don’t want to get my hopes up. He’s out there dating these supermodels, I just don’t-“, she pauses for a second: “I just don’t fit into that picture.“.

John, confused and a bit overwhelmed by her words swallows thickly: “Okay, wow. I never expected you to think that little of yourself-.“.

„Pete’s too good for me. Hell, he’s too good for anyone, really.“, she explains: “Let’s not talk about him. Please.”.

„That’s exactly what he said about her.“, Anna, John's wife, exclaims after Y/N left their apartment: “We need to do something about this mess.“.

„I don’t know.“, Pete says, holding a cigarette in his hand: “I mean, it’s not like I don’t find Y/N attractive... she’s really pretty, but I feel like she deserves more- better than this.“. He makes a hand gesture, pointing at himself.

„But Pete-.“.

„Look, I appreciate your concerns but - it’s always the same. I like a girl, we date then she gets to know the real me- like the real me. You know how fucked up I am. She breaks up with me.“, Pete explains: “And I don’t know, I can get it when they’re famous- like Ariana or Kaia...but a normal girl like Y/N? That would probably break my heart.“.

Anna and John exchange a look.

Y/N who walks into her office turns on the lights. One hour earlier she received a weird text message from John saying:

Sorry to text you this late, there’s some trouble at the office considering the sketch for tomorrow. Would be great if you could go there, rehearse it and look it over. Anna and I have our date night, so it would be you with another writer. Thanks. Love you.

„Hello-?“, a voice asks and Y/N lets out a high-pitched scream. She quickly turns around and sees Pete Davidson standing in the door frame.

„Oh my god, Pete.“, she says and runs a hand down her face. She can hear how he chuckles slightly. “You scared the living shit out of me. Don’t ever do that again!“.

„What? Say hello?“, he smiles and Y/N just rolls her eyes in response.

„I guess, it’s just you and me.“, Y/N points out and hopes that John was mentally preparing himself for what’s going to happen the next time they see each other again: “John said there’s some sort of Sketch, waiting here...but I can’t find one.“

„John texted you too?“, Y/N asks and her eyes widen: “Maybe he made a mistake?“.

„Nah, I don’t think so.“.

An awkward silence falls upon the two and after a few seconds Y/N walks over to her computer: “Maybe he sent me the script via E-Mail, let me check.“. Meanwhile, Pete sits down on the little couch and watches her.

„You should get a bigger couch.“, he exclaims and when Y/N looks up from the screen, he smiles at her. It makes her cheek blush and she quickly hides her face beneath the computer.

„Now... how’s life treating you?“, Pete asks and lays down, he stares at the ceiling.

Y/N sighs: “It’s okay, I guess. What about you? I heard you’re currently dating this actress. Kate. How’s that working out?”.

„No.“, he replies: “I’m not, we- well, she broke up with me a month later. I feel like they all think I’m a great guy until they date me and discover what a mess I truly am. Or maybe it’s the fact that Ariana said my dick is huge so- they want to check that out themselves. I don’t know.”.

The young woman stops typing and looks at Pete again, she leans back in her chair: “I hope you know, that’s not true.”.

“How do you know? I never showed you my dick. Or did I? If I-.”.

“Pete, you’re not a mess, you just have some mental health issues. If these women can’t 'handle' you that’s not your problem but theirs. You are a great guy and every girl would be lucky to have you by their side... I can’t seem to find an email, I’ll call John.“.She gets up from her chair and leaves the room: “I’ll get myself a cup of coffee afterward, you want some?.“.

Pete, speechless by her words slowly sits up straight on the couch. He never expected someone to say something so kind about him. He gets up and leaves the room. At the end of the hallway stands Y/N, slightly slapping the coffee machine.

„I can’t reach John, and this stupid machine isn’t working-.“, she says, frustration audible in her voice.

„Did you mean what you just said?“,he asks and Y/N looks up.

She stares at him for a few seconds: “Yeah, why-?“.

„This might sound ridiculous.”, he starts, crosses his arms, and leans against the wall:” But... did John talked to you about asking me out for a date?”.

As soon as the words leave his mouth the color on Y/N’s face disappears. She can feel how her mouth runs dry and her hands start to sweat.

“Because he talked to me about asking you out. And-.”.

“What did you say to him?”.

He wrinkles his forehead:” Of course, I said no.”.

“Oh.”.

Y/N can feel it. She can feel how her heart is breaking in ways she didn’t know were possible. If dying of a broken heart was a real thing, maybe now it would happen to her.

“Of course.”, she repeats his words and scratches her eyebrow.

“Yeah, I mean- you wouldn’t date me either. That’s probably what you told John.”, Pete chuckles but stops when he sees Y/N’s facial expression. His eyes widen:” Shit, no.”, he says, almost like a whisper.

Y/N rushes past him into her office before the tears are falling. She didn’t care. Not now.

“Y/N- I...”, he starts but the girl shakes her head.

“Go Home, Pete. I’ll call John and tell him I didn’t find the script.”.

“I just assumed we were on the same page.”, he says, ignoring what she just said:” Like, look at you and look at me- I’m too much of a jerk for someone like you!”.

“Excuse me?“, she replies, her voice growing louder with every second passing: “Since when do you decide what’s best for me?“.

„I don’t want you to get hurt, I’m difficult. Fuck, Y/N, you know that. We’ve been working together for such a long time now. If we would get together, I don’t know if I could survive you thinking the same way these girls think about me now.“.

Y/N sighs and crosses her arms in front of her chest, as if she was trying to protect the last bit of her heart: “You’re right, we shouldn’t get together.“.

„W-what?“.

„Pete.“, she slowly takes his hand, her voice breaking: “You need to work on your mental health, you can’t just jump from one relationship into the next. That’s unhealthy. But... I will help you. I will be there for you until you’re truly ready to date again.“.

A soft smile spreads on his lips: “That sounds good.“, he leans down: “One kiss, though?“.

„Sure.“, she replies:” You can get more than one..”.And when their lips meet, it feels better than she could have ever imagined.

[lovelivingmydreams]

A story by heroes and villains

Book 2: secrets revealed Virgil Anker: trust and caution

Masterlist book 1

It's not easy to know who to trust and who to be wary off. But Virgil better learn soon.

When Virgil got back to the new house, he took a shower and sat himself on the couch in his pj’s. He was listening to his ‘winding down’ playlist. He was grinning to himself. Someone else was wearing his design. Sure he’d made Janus a shirt way back in freshmen year, but he barely wore it outside the house. This would be seen by tons of people. And it looked so good! He couldn’t wait till Monday. He could imagine Roman’s reaction. Would there be pictures in the papers? On the news? He just might buy a paper so he could keep a clipping to look back on later. Thinking about gushing over the costume with Roman at school made him think about seeing Janus again. J had skipped school after what happened in the hallway, leading to him having detention all of last week. He hadn’t even so much as looked at Virgil since. Not in a, “I am mad and ignoring you way,”. He looked ashamed. Scared. That was what made it so hard for Virgil to stick to his plan. Janus looked so hurt and lost and ashamed. And during lunch, he was nowhere to be found. Virgil needed to talk to Picani about this tomorrow. It would be a busy session. He contemplated where things had gone wrong for the millionth time for a while until he heard the door and looked up to see his fathers enter the room. “You’re back!” he greeted as he sat up. “So I gotta know, who’s your fourth guy?” he wondered casually. His dad just looked at him confused. “What do you mean?” “For your poker nights,” he clarified with a chuckle. Imagining Patton or uncle Thomas playing poker was kind of funny. It seemed so out of character for them. Still he couldn’t imagine what else would take all three of them getting together like this. Thomas had taught musical theatre classes, back when he was still a professor, and now he was the dean. Then again, Virgil wasn’t certain his uncle was always present. Tonight might just have been one time he happened to be there. But Patton definitely had been part of this project as much as Logan was. The past six months at the very least, but most likely from the start. “No cardgames I’m afraid kiddo. We’ll tell you about the project once it’s finished. It’s all confidential for now I’m afraid,” Patton told him gently. Virgil looked long and hard at Patton. He wasn’t lying. And confidential stuff made a lot of sense. He shrugged, letting it go. Even if his first guess was right after all and his dad was doing some kind of superhero stuff as BrainStorm, if Patton was there to help him Virgil felt assured that they’d be safe. Though he wouldn’t know how Patton, or Thomas, got wrapped up with anything involving a former super villain. “Okay, keep your secrets,” he sighed as he stretched. “Night Pat, night Lo,” he bid before heading upstairs. “Goodnight Virgil, I love you.” Virgil looked back at his dad when he heard that. “Love you to dad,” he replied with a smile. “Love you three kiddo!” Patton added, making Virgil laugh. “Love ya Pat.” And with that he went upstairs to his room. His new room was bigger than the one in his old house. But he didn’t care much about that. His old room had memories. He missed it honestly. He started to worry that he’d been too quick to say that he wanted to move out. No matter how nice the new house was, and how conveniently it was positioned, it would never quite be like the one he’d known most of his life. He let himself drop on his bed. It was pointless to think about that now. At this point, another family had probably moved into their old home. They’d brought their own furniture. Probably painted over the walls. Erasing the little doodles he’d made when he was little and bored. Before his mind could go any farther down that path, he heard a buzzing. Roman sent him a text. “Greetings! I just got back. Sorry for not checking in earlier. Could not be helped. Did you get home alright?” Virgil chuckled and texted back. “LOL. You worry too much. Hope you had a fun night.” Virgil certainly did. Just thinking about it made him impatient. Oh why not? Before he could second guess himself, he pressed call. “Virgil?” Roman sounded surprised, but Virgil was already way to giddy about his news. “I had to tell you now. I saw him!” he whispered. “Who? And why are we whispering?” Roman asked, mimicking his volume. “I’m supposed to be asleep,” he admitted, earning himself a chuckle. “Ok… Who did you see?” Roman asked. “Dream Prince!” expecting the logical next question he edited his story a little. “I went for a walk and I guess he was doing patrol in my neighborhood, I caught a glimpse of him,” well, that was an understatement. But he couldn’t tell Roman everything. Not yet. He’d lectured Prince about being cautious just today. He trusted Roman. But anyone could overhear them at any time. “He was wearing my costume! You were right! I can’t wait to get a good look at it in action!” Again. “You think someone got a picture? I didn’t have a chance. God I should’ve taken a picture so I could show you!” Though he wasn’t sure if he could’ve managed to get a believable citizens picture of him. He doubted Prince could be photographed if he didn’t want to be. “I’m sure I’ll see your work plastered around the front pages Monday. Pretty sure you missed out on the Saturday edition. But the news stations might talk about it.” Virgil’s cheeks hurt from smiling. “You sure you don’t want your name attached to it?” Virgil considered that for a moment. It would be kind of cool, he supposed. But he was trying not to draw any attention to his civilian self so long as he did the vigilante gig. Asides from that, he didn’t want anyone to be able to claim any of his future successes were due to his connection to a superhero, or have expectations based on this one work. “Yeah… I just… I know I should want the credit. But, just in case he becomes like this big time hero,” which seemed very likely to Virgil. His powers were pretty amazing and he had the personality to make it big. “I don’t want my possible career to be defined before it starts, you know what I mean?” He hoped he did, because he was starting to get confused by his own phrasing. “Maybe I’ll come forth with the original sketch when I’m like, 30, to prove it was me if it still matters by then,” he concluded. “Sounds like a smart plan. I’m going to let you go. I do need my beauty sleep after all.” Oh, he made it too easy. “You said it, not me,” he chuckled. “Night Princey.” “Buenas noches. Mi querido amigo,” Roman replied dramatically. Virgil rolled his eyes. Though he smiled as he realized Roman just called him ‘dear friend’. Trying to hide the way that warmed his chest he let out a groan. “Bon nuit,” he huffed in retaliation before hanging up. Janus had taught him a bit of French over the years. And just like that his thoughts returned to his old friend. Janus had been well behaved the past week. He hadn’t gotten in a single fight. Maybe he should try and show that he noticed. Just saying ‘hi’ wouldn’t be that bad right? Show that he meant it when he said he wanted to get back to being friends, real friends, at some point. With thoughts of a happy ending for everyone, Virgil fell asleep. The next morning he woke up early. He made sure to be quiet as he got ready for the day. Once downstairs he turned on the tv. And sure enough, the local station was talking about Dream Prince. A professional picture of him leaping across the street from one rooftop to another serving as background. The anchors were talking about his heroic deeds of last night, ranging from walking a girl home to taking down those criminals ‘single handedly’. “No one can deny it. This young hero finds no feat too great or too small, and he does it with style. Looks like he’s settled on a look.” They thought his costume had style! Virgil was vibrating with excitement. He couldn’t sit still. He had to do something with all this energy. He started on breakfast. Bacon, eggs… It had been a while since he’d felt up to making a big breakfast and been the first to wake up. Patton was as much of an early riser as he and Logan. Which meant he hadn’t had Virgil’s secret omelet recipe yet. He was bouncing on his feet as the two anchors were analyzing the costume in as much detail as they could. They found the heels a bold choice and the mask an elegant way to incorporate a crown. When Virgil heard his dads move about upstairs he turned the news off and set the table. Patton really liked the eggs. That or he really wanted Virgil to think so. Three servings made him think that it wasn’t pretend though. After breakfast, uncle Thomas picked him up for their trip to the zoo. Virgil had been looking forward to it. It felt forever ago since he last spent some one on one time with his honorary uncle. “That’s a nice one. You really got the eyes down well,” he complemented as Virgil finished a sketch of a koala. “Thanks,” Virgil said, pretty happy with the result as well. “You are really talented. Guess it runs in the family. I remember your dad scribbling away in his poetry notebook all the time.” Virgil looked at his uncle with wide eyes. “You knew my father?” he asked perplexed. Thomas frowned down at him for a moment before his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, no. I never personally met your birthfather. I meant Logan,” he clarified. Virgil was a little disappointed. For a second he’d hoped to learn a little more about his birthparents. But if Thomas had been talking about Logan… “My dad wrote poetry?” Thomas chuckled. “Yeah. He was pretty good. Though he’d disagree. He felt more comfortable using his sharp tongue on the debate team. He won us some prizes,” he recalled. Virgil took this in. He had wondered what his dad was like at his age before. Now was a good time to ask more. “So poetry and debate team… Guess that is why you two became friends, huh?” he asked. Thomas shook his head a little awkwardly. “Not exactly. With my social anxiety I probably wouldn’t have approached him if my mom hadn’t told me about his mom losing custody…” “What!?” Virgil gasped. He never knew that. Thomas cringed realizing he had maybe said to much. He looked down at Virgil. “Your grandparents weren’t parents of the year. Not abusive, but… neglectful I suppose. Logan never talked about it, so I don’t know the details. Just what little ” “He was in the system?” Virgil asked with a shiver. He’d heard about the system. He was glad he never had to experience it. “No, like for you there was someone ready to take him in right away,” Thomas told him. Virgil wanted to ask who had adopted his dad. But he had an idea… And he kind of didn’t want to hear he was wrong. He wanted it to be his parents. It would explain why Logan had such a hard time talking about them, but had so much love and respect for them when he did. “What was it like rooming with him? Was he secretly a slob in college?” he asked hopefully. Thomas relaxed and started talking about a few college stories, though he quickly veered into high school and early parenthood stories. At the end of the day Virgil had a good handful of animal sketches, an idea for his art project for the semester and Thomas dropped him off at Picani’s office. “Hello Virgil. How are you today? I heard you had a good scare earlier this week.” Virgil let out a deep sigh, sat down and started his story. Leaving Picani’s office a little bit later than planned, he felt a lot better. Or, well ‘better’ never had been the right word. He’d realized that sometime during the camp. After talking about Picani about what bothered him, he was still bothered by it. But he understood things more clearly. He felt less confused and had an idea of what to do about it. Picani never told him everything would be okay. He helped him understand what was wrong and how to either steer it in a better direction, or learn to live with it. He now felt less uncertain about wanting to give Janus a sign that there was still hope for them, even after what happened last week. He felt less guilty over indulging the people asking him out even though Roman was still very much on his mind. He even felt better about getting more information than he should’ve from uncle Thomas. It had been a relief talking about his theory that his dad had been in his parent’s custody for at least four years and that that was, maybe, the reason why he took him in when they passed. And the fact that he had at least one set of grandparents that might be still alive. He wasn’t going to ask about them though. If they held bad memories for his dad, he didn’t think he wanted to know them. It was very low on his list of priorities. The fact that his dad never mentioned them told him enough. The whole scare with the ceiling lamp was discussed and Picani left it alone when Virgil said that he didn’t want to waste too much time on it. “I’m home!” he announced as he came through the door. He heard Patton call a greeting from the kitchen and saw his dad come from the living room to meet him in the doorway. “Dad!” he called out eagerly as he gave his father a hug. “Virgil? Not that I do not appreciate you seem excited to see me. But is there a particular reason?” There were a few honestly. Knowing a bit more about how he ended up being raised by the smartest, most patient man he’d ever met had him excited. On top of that knowing what his dad was like at his age made him feel closer to him. He decided to focus on the latter. He’d turn sixteen soon. If Logan hadn’t initiated the conversation by then, he would. He could be patient for another month. “Uncle Thomas told me about your teen years. I didn’t know you were on the debate team!” he told him. He could imagine his dad thriving in that environment though. Maybe they should check out the debate team this year in between Roman’s play and Virgil’s art exhibit. Logan gave Virgil a small smile, a bit of pride in his eyes. It was rare for Virgil to see his dad proud of himself. He liked it. “Well, yes. It was a bit of a hobby of mine, as well as an attempt to get better at socializing,” Logan said modestly. Virgil picked up on the operative word in that sentence. ‘Attempt’. “You were a socially awkward nerd,” he concluded with a chuckle. He was so used to being nothing like his dad. Finding flaws and similarities to himself in the man he’d idolized as long as he could remember, it was strangely exhilarating. Logan, however seemed to misunderstand what had Virgil so thrilled. “Hey, that’s a complement! I’m a socially awkward artsy kid. Sounds like I’m your son after all!” he clarified. That reminded him though. “Speaking off. Uncle Thomas told me you wrote poetry back in the day.” “Really!?” Patton exclaimed from the kitchen. Logan was blushing. Scrambling for a way out of the conversation it seemed. “I… Experimenting with different forms of self-expression is a natural part of discovering one’s identity as a teenager. It was a phase. I would like to forget about it.” Virgil was about to argue against it, but Patton beat him to it. “Aw, but poetry is so romantic,” he pouted. And Virgil could see the way that affected his dad. Well, their date nights were about to get ten times more sappy. Hopefully going for the heart, and his ego, would work out just as well for Virgil. “That’s too bad. I thought I could make a project around your old work for art class,” he sighed disappointedly. And just like that his dad’s firm posture melted away. “I’ll see if I can find some of my old notebooks. Just ask my consent before you pick one.” Virgil couldn’t resist hugging him again. “Thanks dad. You won’t regret it. I promise.” He felt his father put his arms around him gently. A wordless “you’re welcome”. Virgil was feeling very chatty during dinner and so told his parents all about his day. They had to go to the university again tonight. Since Virgil was planning on meeting up with Prince and not sure if he’d be out all night or just long enough to talk to the guy, he bid them both a good night now. Just in case he’d be too tired to wait for them to get home once he got back. As soon as they were out the door Virgil dug in his closet for his face mask, something he wore when he was feeling sick and didn’t want to infect others. And his shades. He was going to take a chance on Prince today. He made sure he had his evidence at the ready. He’d updated it earlier that week and last night he hadn’t learned anything new. He decided to go with the same look as yesterday so Prince would recognize him more easily. He made his way to the street and vanished in the alleys. After a few minutes he found the rooftop they’d used as their rendezvous point last night. Hopefully Prince wouldn’t make him wait too long. He lowered the intensity of his cloak to be more easily spotted should someone be looking for him. Suddenly he heard a sound behind him. “Good evening my shadowy friend,” the grand voice of Dream Prince drifted through the air. Virgil turned around, his coat flaring out with the movement. “Hey there highness,” he greeted as he tossed him the evidence bag. Clear of any fingerprints or DNA as far as he could manage it, as usual. Prince studied it for a moment. “Is this…?” he sounded surprised. “A show of good will. I thought about it…” not enough. Maybe he was biased because he reminded him of Roman. Or because he’d seen him during his training wheel days. Maybe he didn’t want to be alone anymore. “You seem alright. I’ll… I’ll have your back. If you have mine.” They could help each other. Grow stronger together. Weren’t heroes always at their strongest once they learned to work together? “You do know that if I hand this in, they’ll know I made contact?” This guy. Virgil chuckled, finding this strangely endearing. “You mean you haven’t told them yet?” Prince’s posture straightened almost defiantly. “You didn’t say you were alright with that!” Was he actually insulted by the idea of reporting back to his people without Virgil’s permission? Guess he’d read him right. Good to know. “Okay. Well, consider this my permission. If I don’t want to be found, I’ll disappear Prince.” He’d find a way to avoid Prince if it was necessary. “Tell the chief all communication with me goes through you. If you don’t mind.” Because Virgil didn’t trust the chief enough to go anywhere near her. Prince nodded as he reached for his ear. “I am currently debriefing Phantom. I’ll let you know when I’m done here. Tell chief I’ll stop by with a package. Radio silence until further notice.” Virgil couldn’t stop himself from letting out a chuckle. This guy. He really needed to be more careful. “You ever thought I might be a bad guy? You shouldn’t cut off your back up like that in front of me.” Had they taught him nothing at the GTH? “You’ve had plenty chances to take me out,” Prince pointed out, much to Virgil’s surprise. “You could have let those goons get me the first time you saw me. You could have attacked me while I was busy with those guys yesterday. And who knows how many times over the summer. And on top of that. Who says my communicator is my only way of contacting back up?” Okay, so maybe Prince knew what he was doing after all. “Fair enough. So what now?” He had no idea what would come after this. He just knew that Prince reached out, and he’d accepted. The ball was back in Prince’s court. “Now… I warn you about the collector.” That sounded very serious. He almost wanted to get out before he could get involved, but a gut feeling told him that this was important. He eyed the edge of the roof. Well might as well get comfortable. “I feel like this is a sitting down kind of conversation.” Once they both sat down, Virgil put on his sunglasses and dropped his cloak completely. It was symbolic or whatever. Letting his guard down in a visible way. He turned to the prince expectantly, a little annoyed at how the dark glasses limited his vision. Prince took in a deep breath and started his story. “The collector is an old enemy of Manifestor. He recruits Gifted, and those he thinks deserve to be gifted for some kind of revolution. You and I are probably his kind of people. Young, full of potential. All that stuff creeps like that love to go on about.” Virgil’s eyes widened. That did sound bad. He was suddenly very glad he had not confided in anyone about his powers so far. Who knew if the Chief was on the Collector’s payroll? Or maybe Picani was being spied on. “So we should be careful, you and I. I want to help you out,” Prince told him as he offered him two small objects. A stone and lip balm? “These can help you hide your identity without having to use your… Do you have a name for it?” Prince wondered. Virgil wasn’t sure if he could disguise his voice. But if he did, he was not going to risk Prince being someone from school who might recognize his voice. “Cloak,” he replied before dropping his guard again. “Cloak… Cool,” Prince nodded as he showed the black stone. “So this, is a voice modulator. I adjusted it to fit your tempest voice as best as I could.” Virgil couldn’t help laughing. Tempest voice? That sounded so cool honestly. But man was it dramatic. “You clearly have not heard it,” Prince pointed out and he had a point. He sounded normal to himself. “What’s with the lipstick?” he asked. “This will paint your hair black faster than any hair dye. It’s also a very good hair gel and it washes out right away,” Virgil bit his lip as Prince offered him the items. He was not used to being helped. Not as ‘Phantom’ at least. He still struggled with it as Virgil. Letting Roman help him with his English assignment yesterday had been hard. But he had to let people help him. He had to take a leap of faith here. So he took the items and got up to try them out. “No peeking!” he warned, though he would keep his cloak up. It was more to test if Prince would be tempted to go against his wishes. He didn’t. Virgil placed the modulator on his throat where Prince had his red stone and applied the balm to his hair. He spread it out and took a moment to decide on the style he wanted to go with. He tried for windblown, though he wasn’t sure if he did it right without a mirror. “Okay, let’s try this,” he said testing out his new voice. Wow, if that was what he really sounded like then Tempest voice might just have been the most accurate description. He looked back at Prince who was getting up and waling over to him. “Okay. So… what’s the plan?” he asked, curious what Prince was expecting out of this collaboration. “Well… We could try and meet up here regularly. We might not always patrol at the same time, and you might be busy. But I could… If you are okay with it… I could help you coordinate with the cops. Like you kinda suggested earlier. Or we could like, do some patrolling together? Keep each other company…” Oh, that was cute. Prince could be insecure. Virgil was starting to think he was unshakable. “It might be nice talking someone who gets it you know? You’re my age right?” he wondered. Nice try. Very subtle. “I mean… I guess, but I’m not sure how old you are exactly,” he shrugged casually. He wasn’t going to give anything away that easily. “Fair point.” Or maybe there hadn’t been an ulterior motive. He was getting paranoid. “Anyway… What do you want?” Virgil thought about that for a moment. He hadn’t expected to be asked for his opinion. “I mean… Debriefings sound cool,” he said casually. “I’d like to patrol with you, but my parkour is no match to that walking on air trick you got…” He was kind of jealous of that one if he was honest. “I was thinking of hanging around the clubbing district at the end of the night and making sure some party goers get home safe. I’ll see you around there when you’re done?” This talk was fun and all, but Prince should probably check in with his team soon. And Virgil needed to think about things for a minute. “That sounds like a good idea,” Prince agreed as he gave him a bow. “Until then. Know that the GTA’s resources are now at your disposal through me. So if you want to get a proper suit or other fun toys, you need only ask.” And with that Virgil’s new ally sprinted of into the night. A real suit huh? Virgil shook his head. He’d have to think on that some more. For now, he had work to do.

Hero au

@cirishere @hestianerd1 @moonlightshow00​ @naturallyunstablegamer @alias290 @meowthefluffy @frida0043​ @angelic-cali​ @selenechris​ @theblackveilinreverse

[marksinn]

Passion Project: Inspiration

I don’t think I’m starting at the beginning with this post. Keep your eyes peeled for later posts that explain what I’m doing and why.

After a month of thinking about, sketching and painting designs, I have finally done something. Essentially, recently watching two films has pushed me into action, and a part of me is ashamed to admit it. There isn’t a word count or any typesetting to curtail my thoughts here, so strap in.

When I created this brief I figured I’d draw a million wee skateboards, colour a few of them in, then fling my favourites into Adobe illustrator and make them look good. From there I would take the 5 best up to the skatepark and ask some of the patrons there which designs stood out to them. Next, I would adapt the three front-runners and create sweet PhotoShop mockups that would show what my designs would look like as skateboards. If I had the time, inclination or money by the end of the project, I would have the design laid onto a real skateboard (I’ve been looking to buy a new one for some time) and then be proud of myself.

So I’ve drawn some wee skateboards. Then I started upscaling the designs onto the floorboards of my loft:

This was an exercise to let me see how small things need to be adapted to be blown up. Skateboards can have any level of detail that you like on them, I hadn’t considered this until I was trying to draw a semi-perfect triangle for the traffic cone, or until I was using chalk to recreate four cubes. It’s also been fun to work with different media on chipboard - I have learned that most kinds of pencil, paint, chalk and charcoal do not like being used on chipboard. Decorating paint, however, has no such issues. Thanks, Dulux!

And so, with a few of these under my belt, I decided to try some digital designs. So I jumped into Illustrator and totally ignored my sketchbook, coming up with three designs that were all inspired by the day I had just had. The top design, I’ll focus on last, for reasons that will become apparent (unless you follow me on Instagram, where you’ll already know that it’s an absolute hit, with over 19 likes already!). I was told by a guy at the skatepark that he likes decks with very basic designs, just a colour or two, nothing overly detailed. Another skater told me that he often likes the basic wood background with one small emblem or sticker just beside the wheels.

The duo-tone design felt nice, I’m usually one for over-complicating things. I definitely have an attitude of “If there’s more in it, there’s a greater chance someone will find something they like”. The first colour choice put my girlfriend in the mind of a hand-bag she had seen photographed in the arms of Carrie Fisher - it was designed to look like a Prozac pill. So I changed the colours up, and added the separating black lines and textures to give it some subtle character. I then went full meta with the Minimal design. And, if I’m being honest, I’m incredibly happy with how it looks like a wee character. Expect to see that making a comeback in the very near future. But the top design is what really got me going. 

I’ve recently been watching...

...Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and have been loving Miles Morales’ multiple hobbies of graffiti, mixing beats and saving his neighbourhood from a variety of dangers. 

I then went to the cinema to see In The Heights, telling the tale of the Latin community during a blackout in North Manhattan. I found myself wrapped up in the romance, tribulations and music of the cast, and was felt oddly proud of Lin Manuel Miranda - who wrote this as a stage-musical while he was in college, had a modicum of success with it, then went on to create Hamilton, one of the most important musicals of our time. With the success of that particular show taking the entire world by storm, he was given the opportunity to make his old, relatively only semi-popular play into a blockbuster film. You can’t help but be inspired by someone like that.

I often find towards the end of a film I’m inspired by the characters’ journeys: be that from zero to hero, from lonely to loved or from rags to riches. Then I walk out and carry on with my normal life doing normal things. And as the hero of the story’s dreams all came true in the closing minutes (sorry for the spoiler, but it’s a musical, they rarely end in despair), a thought floated across my mind:

I’m utterly sick of being inspired

Now, to my credit, I did figure out in the car home that ‘tired’ would be a far more fitting and rhythmic word to use in this sentence, but this was a mentality that I found resonated really strongly with me. I’m very good at being inspired, I think most people are. We hear stories of people starting their own business, achieving some sporting brilliance or overcoming a personal hurdle and we say “Wow, isn’t that inspiring?” or

“It really inspires you to go out and make a difference!” or

“They are such an inspirational speaker!”

Then we go off about our day, not acting on the inspiration, and, for the most part, remaining uninspired. So I decided to act. 

I did some very quick research (/acquiring of images of graffiti) in order to get the right shapes and textures to create a spray paint effect in Illustrator. I did some very quick research (/confirming the colours) of South American flags, taking the blue and red used in flags of the home nations of Miles Morales from Spider-Man and Usnavi from In The Heights. And I created the top design.

YES! I had been inspired and I had drawn a wee picture to show that - I had acted on my inspirations!

Then I looked to my left and spotted three, blank skate decks that I had bought on a whim from Re:Ply (a wonderful wee company who do a great deal of charity work supplying boards to people who need them, selling boards to people who can afford them, and for a very reasonable fee, providing unusable decks to people who want to use them for artistic purposes). I realised I hadn’t acted on my inspiration, I had just drawn a few pictures of skateboards with the eventual aim of PhotoShopping them onto other pictures of skateboards.

So I took myself...

... into the city centre with a shoddily prepared speech: “I’m looking for some cheap, small cans of spray paint. I’ve no idea what I’m doing, or if I’ll be good at it, so don’t want to invest too much into this.” Hiding behind this self-deprecating shield I barged into multiple art-, pound- and model-shops and pleaded with the staff to help a young idiot out. Amazingly, a very kind shop assistant pointed me in the direction of Fat Buddha, a clothes shop I’d always ignored as it seemed a bit to “...” for me. I don’t know what it seemed, but I knew it wasn't my kind of shop. Happy to prove me wrong, the guys in there were super helpful and they helped me buy my first cans of spray paint. 

Now I’d spent money...

... and as a skinflint, that meant I had to get use out of my purchases. I had tricked myself into being inspired. Inspiration led me to the drawing, inspiration had led me to buy decks and the paint, now inspiration had to make me spray paint.

I’ll stop yammering on now. Essentially, I had planned on creating some analogue designs then digitising them (I’m guessing I should do a post on my brief, yeah? Might just upload the PDF to save me talking more), but then I found that I was doing the complete opposite. Genuinely accidentally. I had played with a few typefaces from various websites to get fonts that represented the ideas I wanted. The top one was semi-stolen (I can’t use the word ‘inspired’ any more in this post) from the end credits of In The Heights. The larger font is something of a nod to inspirational quotes you see on Facebook or on glittery frames in B&M.

I printed those out and cut them into stencils (very impressed that my digital boards have been drawn to a workable scale, thanks Maths). And after putting down a tack-layer (GRAFFITI JARGON (I think)) I sprayed the whole lot in blue.

Next, I tried to get a little fancy. Using cardboard blockers to create straight lines I added stars* (borrowed from the Puerto Rican flag) and made the bottom stripes vaguely reminiscent of America’s Old Glory.

I peeled the lettering off, and I’d done it. I may have to explain the overtly-negative inspirational quote to people, but to me it’s a clear sign that there’s no point in just being inspired, and that’s all I wanted.

A weight I didn’t know I was carrying was lifted from my shoulders. The plan was to possibly end up with a self-designed skateboard. And now I have one.

*Yes, I know they’re crosses.

[unmaskedagain]

I Forgot (Queen Of Mean Au)

     Hey Everyone, This is another Queen of Mean update.  This was in reponse to ask. I listen to Taylor swift I Forgot That You Existed. I thought it was different than what I had been previous going for so I thought I’d give it a try. If anyone wants to do a continuation of the Queen Mari Au they can. Just tag. 

  Marinette could still recall all the days and nights she spent thinking about her friends’ betrayal. Stressing and crying over just how quickly they turned on her, wronged her, and made her out to be the villain. Despite everything.

           In some of their cases, despite years of friendship. Kids who had grown up with her, who Marinette thought she knew as well as anyone ever could, who she thought knew her as well as anyone ever could. But Marinette was wrong. She was horribly, horribly wrong. And wronged. So badly wronged.

           They had thrown away her friendship. Taunted her and bullied her, while claiming that she was the bully. The people that were supposed to be her friends damned her until Marinette was nothing more than a crying, miserable, mess. Cutting words had hurt more than a thousand akuma attacks. The entire situation had left Marinette friendless, alone, and a shadow of her former self.

           No matter how hard Marinette had tried in the beginning, she couldn’t stop thinking about them, of how much it hurt. She had drowned so much in her feelings that every time she thought about it she was still surprised she hadn’t been Akumatized. She talked about Alya and Adrien and Nino more than she had when they were actually still friends; constantly on her mind. Especially after Marinette had returned from lunch to see her precious sketch book in pieces at her desk; the other students throwing vicious smirks at her. (“Should’ve been more careful,” Alix hissed at Marinette, ignoring the tears building in the bluebell eyes.) Marinette kept wondering what she could have possibly done to deserve this.

And the harder Marinette fought to not to think about them, the worst it got. Though actively plotting their downfalls, probably hadn’t helped the situation. But it did make her feel a bit better. Even more so, when the plans when into effect.

She could still remember Alya’s face when Aurore had unleashed her new website: Miraculous Nation; a tell-all news site for everything related to Paris’ favorite heroes. Its first release? An exclusive interview with the entire new team miraculous (with a little TV magic, and miraculous magic, to edit Aurore and Icefox into the same interview.) Marinette had used her connection with Nadja to get help to rent an empty studio big enough to do the interview in a professional way. Nadja, of course, wanted producer credits. The interview answered all the big questions:

Aurore relaxed in her seat like she wasn’t doing the biggest interview of her career. “So I guess, we should start with the questions that’s been on everyone’s mind thank to a certain nasty little blog. What’s with the replacements? What happen to Rena Rouge? Chat Noir? The turtle guy? Why the change?”

           Ladybug: Rena proved she couldn’t be trusted outside the mask. The fox is the master of not just illusion but truth. She fell quickly to someone else’s illusions and willful blinded herself from the truth hurting an innocent in the process. She is no hero.

           Chat Noir: The Old Alley Chat proved too immature for the mantle. He is the balance of Ladybug, and he was unable to show that.

           Queen Bee: Who’s care about the turtle?

           Aurore’s blue eyes narrowed, “Ladybug; Rumors have persisted for years that you and the old Chat Noir, I’ll call him Alley Chat for simplicity’s sake, have been in a relationship or at least dating. Did a bad breakup have anything to do with the replacement?

           If Ladybug hadn’t been prepped and or written the questions herself, she would’ve bit the head of the journalist who dared imply anything of the sort. “I would like to state this as clear as possible,” Ladybug looked directly into the camera. “Chat Noir, correction Alley Chat, and I have never and will never be romantically involved. These lies have been instigated by the paparazzo that is the Ladyblog. If they had bothered before releasing any of the information, I would’ve corrected them.

           Queen Bee: What can you expect when its only Journalist doesn’t know how to fact check? I’ve said for years that Ladybug could do better than that Mangy chat.

The website was endorsed by Ladybug and all the heroes... Offered helpful information about how to deal with Akumas, group counseling, first aid instruction videos, etc. It had active threads for fans to post their work. Marinette as herself gave instruction videos for making your own cosplay outfits or just outfits styled after the heroes. Sometimes the heroes would post short quick video about the fan works; their favorite and which made them laugh. There was even a virtual reality video where you could see an akuma fight through Ladybug’s eyes. Marin

Suffice to say the website had gained popularity quickly.

Again, it didn’t help her stop thinking about her friends.

However, one night with Marinette, Kagami, Chloe, and Aurore doing a gigantic slumber party at Chloe and then had a blast laughing and gossiping and giving each other makeovers. It was during this night that something magical happen, Marinette forgot they existed.

She actually forgot Alya, Adrien, Lila, and the rest of the her classmates and all the problems they had caused existed.

Marinette used to think that all the heartache would kill her, but it didn’t. It was so… Nice. Peace. Amazing. Perfect.

She forgot they existed and everything was just… great. It wasn’t love. Or hate. Just indifference.

Marinette’s reputation at school had started deteriorating as soon as Lila came to class. To the point where some went out of the way to actively try to trip her and laugh when she hit the ground

It was insane because… Marinette would’ve never done that to anyone. Not even Lila. For friends, she would’ve defended them, had their back, and stuck around. If anyone had tried to do what they did to her to any of them, she would fought for them. Marinette would’ve fought all of Paris if she had to.

If Nino would’ve been made a social pariah, Marinette would’ve gladly been right there with him. She would’ve showed up to every one of his shows, right in the front. Even if nobody else came. She’d have done the same for Alix, Kim, Alya, Max, Nathanial, Mylene, Rose; EVERYONE.

Then they showed who they really who.

And Marinette had broke, and became a villain so much worse than the one they had painted her as. Granted, she wasn’t a bully.

Still revenge didn’t make her feel better. At least not for long. Because for a while, in the middle, when she was every plan was in motion and her name was starting to appear in lights, Marinette would still think about them; still nurse a wounded heart. After all, Marinette had become the Queen of Mean because she originally wanted them to hurt as badly as she did. To know what it was like to have a perfectly good heart broken.

Nothing had helped until that slumber party. And then Ice cream with Felix. Ice Skating with Luka. Hiking with Marc. Dancing with Aurore. Fencing with Kagami. Mani-pedis with Chloe. Nights out with all of them. Every instance made her forget her old friend existed. To the point where she wonders why she ever thought losing them would kill her. It was nice and perfect. For just while to not feel anything but indifference to people who’ve proven themselves unworthy of her affections.

Marinette forgot that that her old friends sent her a clear message that they didn’t want her around anymore, didn’t want to be friends anymore. Marinette was forced to learn some hard lessons and truths about being too trusting, too loving.

But with her new friends, with her love, she kind of forgot what those lessons were. She’d laugh and all past pain would be blur.

Still, it was only in those moments with her friends and family that she forgot. But Marinette knew, vowed that one day those moments would extend to days, weeks, months, and then years.

Marinette would move on to bigger and better things, and their names and faces would blur from her memory. Until she would have to force herself to think back and try so very hard to remember because her kids probably wanted to know what she was like when she was little like them. And she’d bring out old family pictures and school photos; and they ask about the strangers in them. And Marinette would struggle to remember their names and maybe even fleetingly wonder what’ve been up to. Who’d they became? And maybe even feel a slight sorry in her heart as she tells her kids all sorts of stories her school days. Her friends, her crushes, her loves, her dreams; everything.

Remember her grade school friends. The nights she spent laughing and giggling with a vivacious glasses wearing redhead who’d swore to always have Marinette’s back, over far-too handsome, ball of sunshine, green-eyed boy she swore she was going to marry someday. And then, she’d tell her children

She’d take one last look at those photos; the one with the entire class in them. And feel nothing but indifference. Not love. Not hate. No sense of longing. Just nothing.

And briefly realize she probably got a few of their names wrong. But Marinette will just shrug the thought away.

After all,

Queens can’t remember the names of every peasant.

[dweetwise]

I feel like Doctor/Hillbilly is so niche but I really love the ship atm, may I rq some hcs of them mayb? 😔💕

[oo this is a rarepair if i’ve ever sen one! hope you like because i definitely got carried away!]

getting together fluff, some nsfw mentions at the end!

Herman X Max headcanons

Max has always admired the more authoritative killers, like Evan and Herman, while Herman has always mostly ignored Max. Herman is kind of a snob in that he values intelligence above all else, and just brushed Max off as an uneducated, well, hillbilly

Max isn’t stupid and is desperate to prove himself to Herman. This causes him to awkwardly approach the older man and request that he “Show Max how to make ‘em gennies sparkle an’ go boom”

Herman raises an eyebrow. The kid wants to learn how to overcharge a generator? It’s not an easy task and took Herman several weeks to perfect. Herman promises to get back to him later, causing a disappointed Max to wander off

Herman writes a numbered step-by-step idiot-proof guide to learning the technique, even throwing in a few rough sketches of the machines in case Max doesn’t know what some of the terms mean

When he finds Max and gives him the instructions with a smug grin, Max’s whole face lights up, until he looks at the papers and his smile drops into a disappointed frown. “Is something the matter?” Herman asks, prepared to give the young man a stern lecture for questioning his hard work. “Ah well, this ‘s mighty fine of ya Her--err, sir! Thanks!” Max drawls nervously before sprinting off with the papers

Herman doesn’t see Max for the next few days and assumes the scatter-brained youth gave up on learning altogether. He’s in the middle of complaining to Philip about Max squandering all his efforts, when Philip points out a crucial fact, “You know Max can’t read, right?”, and Herman feels like smacking himself in the face for not thinking of the possibility sooner

Herman swallows his pride and ventures to Coldwind farm to teach Max his technique the old-fashioned way, expecting to find the young man moping in a corner somewhere or perhaps making stick animals or whatever it is hillbillies do

Instead, he finds Max by the generator in the shed, hunched over and tinkering with the machine with papers scattered about the entire floor. “Hiya Herman!” Max greets him enthusiastically, wiping his oily hands on his overalls

“Max, what are you doing? What are these?” Herman questions and glances at the papers

“I did it! Look!” Max exclaims and gives the generator a solid kick, short-circuiting it and causing it to spark violently. “I uhh--I couldn’t read ya book, so I look’d at tha pictures ya drew an looked inside a genny to see wha I was s’posed ta do,” Max explains, gesturing to a pile of papers next to him where he’s--Herman inhales sharply in surprise--drawn pages upon pages of mechanical diagrams of the machines, pinpointing the exact locations the kick will impact!?

Herman is at a loss for words, completely taken aback by the other man’s resourcefulness and technical skill. He sees Max looking at him nervously, clearly awaiting some sort of response from his tutor. “Excellent work, boy. Would you like to accompany me in my next generator experiment?” Herman compliments and Max goes beet red and shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Tha’ would be mighty fine, sir.” Max mumbles

Max starts spending a lot of time in Herman’s office, assisting him with any research that requires a knack for machinery. Herman often visits Max’s tool shed in the farm, where they test many of his ideas and Max tinkers with the generator to troubleshoot for or fix any failures

Herman, recognizing and impressed by Max’s potential, demands the younger learn how to read so he can further participate in the research. Max is giddy at the prospect, but after a couple of disastrous attempts Herman admits he’s a lousy teacher and bribes Sally to teach Max by offering the redhead unlimited access to his office

Max is happy and making great progress with his reading, and Herman feels a strange sort of pride for his protege. That’s why it takes him completely by surprise when one day, Max decides to kiss him out of the blue. Herman pulls the man off of him and demands answers. “Just what do you think you’re doing!?” he asks sternly. “S-sorry! ‘S just, me an’ Sally were readin’ them books a-an I thought ‘s what people do, like them fellas Heathcliff an’ Cath’rine--”

“Of course Sally has you read that fictional garbage over the anatomy books I provided,” Herman sighs and runs a hand over his face in exasperation. “’M sorry Herman, Sally said ‘s what people do when ‘ey luv some’un,” Max explains, shuffling awkwardly. “Hold on. Love? Me?” Herman asks, voice uncharacteristically breaking into an even higher octave from the shock. Of all the stupid things--

“Ya! I luv ya,” Max says without hesitation, beaming. “And you want to kiss... me,” Herman clarifies, trying to wrap his head around this sudden turn of events. “Already did. An’ I wanna kiss ya more an’ do naughty things with ya in a hayloft,” Max cheerily remarks. Herman feels his brain short-circuit from the implications coming out of his seemingly innocent apprentice’s mouth. “Come ‘un, I ain’t dumb, I know wha Evan ‘n Phil dis’pear in tha woods fer,” Max grins with a slight blush.

Herman’s always been a quick thinker, so he manages to run through all possible outcomes of this scenario in his head. It’s stupid. He should reject Max. But he can’t say that he’s not intrigued, and seeing the kid’s enthusiasm... Herman finally just shakes his head fondly and allows himself to lean into Max’s personal space. “I know you’re anything but dumb, kid. I also don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into,” he can’t suppress a dark chuckle, half expecting the younger to feel intimidated--

“Try me, pops,” Max challenges instead, grinning. “That’s it you little shit--” Herman has the time to give an idle threat before Max’s laughing mouth shuts him up with a kiss

It’s not the most healthy relationship as there’s a clear power imbalance but Herman is kind of a narcissist and gets off on it. Though he does genuinely care about Max, he’s not gentle and you’ll never hear him use the phrase “Are you sure?”

Max loves being praised both inside and outside the bedroom. Herman is stingy with his compliments, only giving them when he’s genuinely impressed, which makes them all the more special to Max

Max has a daddy kink ok I don’t make the rules. He doesn’t realize it and probably doesn’t even know what it means, but Herman is perceptive. When he takes a gander and urges Max to call him ‘daddy’ during one of their trysts he doesn’t expect it to do much of anything, but hearing his lover cry out the word and almost spill himself makes him realize it’s a control thing and now he’s very much on board

Herman tops at first, but once he sees Max’s enthusiasm and the younger learns to channel his energy, they fall into a habit of Max topping. Herman discovers himself to be a bit of a power bottom and begrudgingly admits that Max fucks better than him, making Max’s confidence soar

The other killers quickly find out about their relationship because Max can’t shut up about his adoration of Herman. They get some snide comments from the Legion brats and a blushing Amanda threatening Max to “Stop oversharing your fucking sex life or I’ll reverse beartrap your dick”, but nobody seems to really care what they do behind closed doors--with the exception of one

Evan is pissed, being somewhat of a father figure to Max and 1000% ready to bash in Herman’s skull for seemingly taking advantage of the younger, impressionable man. Max is upset a the accusations, Herman pretends to give a shit about Evan’s opinion because of Max, and eventually Philip and Sally have to get involved to calm Evan down, vouching for Herman’s non-sinister intentions and Max’s ability to make his own decisions

[i came up with max’s personality on the fly but i kind of love him now?? also i don’t know how old herman is but i always hc max as early twenties at most so have some age difference on the side]

[loyally-unfaithful]

desolation!au (lunatic!kaede au)

summary: in canon, kotetsu manages to restore barnaby's memory at the last second, but what if it didn't work? what if kaede ex machina never got the chance to save her father at the top of the apollon media tower and restore the other heroes' memories? in fact, what if she never knew they were being brainwashed in the first place?what if kotetsu died that day?

basically me developing my idea of an au where, consumed by anger and grief, kaede seeks lunatic to help her in carrying her revenge and murdering her father's killer.

illustration of lunatic!kaede is attached at the very end of the fic :3

a/n: tbh, i was watching tiger & bunny w/ my friends and at some point i thought about kaede being lunatic's student because i just want to see her start shit and it wasn't anything much at first, just small headcanons here and little doodles there. but then idk , i made a little sketch and it all snowballed from there.

i ended up developing this au and have become quite invested in it.  

i’m aware the format looks like cat shit on mobile, im sorry. if it’s super disruptive to the reading experience, feel free to refer to the ao3 version (links are in my desc).

alternate names lmao

lunatic!kaede! au

cats-on-the-moon!au

revenge girl!au

revenge-girl-out-for-revenge!au

vendetta! au

synopsis

follows the same storyline up until the memory loss arc, where the au experiences a massive canon divergence.

kotetsu receives a chance to escape after being aided by lunatic, and, not letting his unsuccessful attempt at making his friends remember his true identity deter him, he gathered them at the top of the apollon media tower. he tries again to make them remember that he is wild tiger, and not a murderer, but much like in canon the rest of the group do not believe him—though some falter briefly. unlike canon, however, is that kaede ex machina does not appear in time to unleash maverick’s next power that she copied to restore everyone’s memories.

she does make an attempt to reach the tower where her father is taking a stand, but she does not encounter maverick and on her way up the roof the elevator stops—as it should during emergencies... without her interference, the rest of the hero team overpower kotetsu who is smashed through the roof and lands into saito’s lab. realising that the latter doesn’t remember who he was either, kotetsu quickly grabs his suit and motorbike to try to escape and regroup with ben. the rest of the heroes rush to go after him, though some (blue rose, etc) are more hesitant than others (rock bison, etc). on the way down they [the heroes] find kaede and become preoccupied with her. they’re experiencing an emergency but the child refuses to leave, so some of the heroes have their hands full handling her.

during this, the cameras continue to follow kotetsu. in the end, barnaby pursues kotetsu on his own vehicle and they fight at the bridge where they first teamed up. kaede can follow what is currently happening as the event is broadcasted and grows increasingly hysterical, screaming that she needs to be there and that they’re [blue rose, sky high, etc] supposed to be helping her dad, not pursue him. at some point before the final blow, the feed cuts—the camera probably got hit by chunks of armour or other sort of debris.

the fight follows canon up until barnaby intends on delivering the final kick

« so this is it, eh? take care lil’ bunny…»

this time, the kick connects.

at this point kaede is inconsolable, not being able to handle the fact that the broadcast cut and she can’t check her father’s condition in real time anymore. the heroes’ attempt at getting her to speak or to tell them who her guardian is is met with choked sobs and no response.

there’s two way i see her finding out about her father’s defeat, and subsequent death:

the least traumatic, but still traumatic option: the feed was the last time she ever saw her father. the heroes only hear that « the criminal has been captured/dealt with by barnaby » on their private channel so they slowly excuse themselves and disperse, leaving kaede alone. some of the security guards approach her, trying to get a number to contact but eventually learn that she wasn’t speaking and let her sit there for a bit before calling the authorities.

the intensely traumatic “whoa you ruined a perfectly good 10-11 year old” option: as kaede grows increasingly distressed and the heroes try to keep her under control, she sees members of staff trying to cart something off discreetly. she gets a quick glance on what is being carried and recognises the hand poking out under the large tarp covering the rest of the body. it had her father’s wedding band, which he continued to wear, and upon realising what had happened, she immediately goes catatonic and wouldn’t react to the heroes anymore.

she either sits in the empty building until very late at night, sits outside on the bus stop with no intention of getting on simply watching the last of the buses disappear in the horizon, or waits at the police station with no intention of telling them who to call.

she eventually reaches the conclusion that her father will probably never come back as he died on her own and breaks down.

much like option 1) she sits in the empty building, waiting for someone who will never return.

in both options, ben ex machina (yes kaede got demoted in this au im sorry) finds her and explains to her that he was her father’s boss. this gained her attention somewhat, and she let him drive her back home after he told her that her grandmother has been frantically contacting ben after realising that kaede wouldn’t pick up.

during all this, she remains silent and out of it, still not fully accepting that her father wasn’t coming back home: kaede knows it’s no use to wait for her father anymore, but doesn’t outwardly admit the fact just in case he really is alive. she knows she’s just lying to herself.

on their way back to the kaburagi home, ben explains to her that he tried to get on that bridge as fast as possible to intercept the two, but only arrived after barnaby had left the scene. he doesn’t go into much detail, but does give her the few things he had found and recognised was kotetsu’s:

the tiger emblem that he kept this whole time

the two matching christmas pins that (unknowingly to both ben and kaede) he shared with his former partner

the first sound kaede makes in a long time is more wracking sobs as she clutches the small objects.

she passes out sometimes during transit, and wakes up the next afternoon in her room, the memorabilia safe in her pocket.

the next day, hero tv, and the organisations that funds it, refuses to make an official statement on kotetsu’s whereabouts after being intercepted by barnaby—they know that the latter murdered kotetsu, but they avoid the question in order to save his and the company’s reputation. they would answer something like:

kotetsu running away

being imprisoned for 250 years, with no visitors.

accidentally got himself killed

for the most part, the general populace accepted this outcome and thanked the diligent work of the heroes, but kaede and her family know better. kotetsu wasn’t the type to just leave, and he wouldn’t have committed murder in the first place. this official statement further cemented the fact that kotetsu had died—been killed. within sternbild, another powerful figure also doubted the credibility of the statement. yuri would literally see the red flags, but the situation really isn’t in his favour and he doesn’t know where to even tackle this. he’d need to do more digging up before planning out his attack.

kaede concludes (correctly) that barnaby was behind her father’s death, and possessed with anger and hatred, decided that she will get revenge one way or another and prove her father’s innocence.

basic plot

headcanon form now, because it’s more convenient.

the lead-up:

during the few days/weeks that followed, she barely went out of her room unless necessary. 

she barely ate, even ignoring the flan pudding she adored so much. 

in her self-imposed isolation, she marinates in her own grief, which turns into anger and hatred. 

at first she regrets not having spent more time with her father and reaching out to him, instead of expecting kotetsu to do that for her. 

but the focus slowly shifts to wanting to make kotetsu’s murderer suffer as he has made her dad suffer. 

you know what, throw in the rest of the heroes. 

they should’ve been kotetsu’s friend and believed him instead of pursuing him relentlessly: they’re complicit too and should be punished accordingly.

it’s important to note that, since kaede didn’t interact with maverick and inherit his next power, she doesn’t know that the heroes have been brainwashed. 

she just thinks that they’re secretly an evil group posing to be heroes.

she loses faith in them, and their flawed justice that got her father killed

she wants to avenge her father and prove his innocence so badly, but doesn’t know how or where to begin. the odds are stacked against her, since only her family and a few people here and there believe in kotetsu’s innocence.

while she’s holed up in her room, she mindlessly replays the video clips that featured her dad over and over again until she memorised every single word and committed her father’s movements to memory. 

one day, as she flips through the different collectibles and magazines that featured him, she came across one such issue which showcased a different type of “hero”: the sanctioner with blue flames.

the vigilante who’s idea of justice was becoming more and more appealing to kaede the more she thought about it.

she’s seen the clips, how his next power allowed him to continually keep up with the 100 power duo. how it always allowed him to have the upper hand and to deliver his justice. 

kaede wants that kind of strength, that kind of power, to avenge her father.

she resolves herself to find or contact the vigilante no matter how, though that seemed to be a complicated enough task in and of itself.

kaede figures that when she does find him, she’ll either get him to work with her to get her revenge or copy his power if he refuses.

her searches prove more or less fruitless tho since lunatic can't be found when he doesn't want to be found lmao

after a few weeks/months, she grows disheartened and becomes rather depressed again.

the actual encounter:

i don’t have an actually have a concrete idea on how they met and how kaede convinced yuri to work with her, just a bunch of possibilities going from plausible to straight up crack

one way she could meet him is by bumping into judge petrov when she’s tagging along with her fam to try and claim kotetsu’s body.

the intent was to go to sternbild to recover kotetsu so that they can bury him in the family grave (and rejoin tomoe), but since the city refuses to acknowledge that kotetsu is dead and admit that a hero killed a person, the kaburagi fam can’t get his body back.

very sad times, maybe after the unsuccessful hearing kaede cries and rlly begs to be able to get her father back, and grabs hold of yuri to make her point come across or something.

do you even see a judge when you try to claim a criminal’s body? idk it’s probably illegal to make physical contact w a judge but kaede is only bby so maybe she won't go to jail? i don’t know i’m dum

anyway, he’d probably carefully peel the child off of him and say something vaguely sympathetic before going wherever the hell judges go after trial? court? i know nothing about the legal system and it shows

uh oh skin to skin contact

kaede unwittingly copies his power and moves on with her day. it wasn’t until she came home and felt a burst of anger that she noticed that??? she can summon blue flames??? like lunatic does??? except she doesn’t recall meeting him at all???

she puts two and two together and susses yuri out

or instead of literally harassing him in court

maybe she just stumbles on lunatic because his favourite hobbies are standing ominously on roofs and killing murderers, in that order.

kaede: why is there a funny looking scarecrow on the roof…???

kaede: hoLY HECK

how she manages to get lunatic on her side is more convoluted

one way would be her going back to the city and confronting yuri about it. of course, he’d deny her claim until she gets angry enough and her eyes light up. 

yuri’s like “oh sHIT”. 

she could threaten him by saying that if he won’t help her then she will just seek her revenge by herself. 

yuri doesn’t want her to do anything rash and cause him to get in hot water because he rlly doesn't want to deal w/ the aftermath. also he doesn’t want to like, see a whole child get hurt :(

so i guess he’s like, “this is my lot in life now”, and accepts to take her as his apprentice so long as she doesn’t cause any trouble

that was the peaceful route

kaede could also fight fire with fire

just hound down lunatic instead of yuri and when she finds him it’s on sight. chuck a whole fireball to catch his attention and demand that he takes her as his apprentice. idk maybe threaten to fight him mono e mono unless he complies. 

lunatic would probably just ghost her lmao 

but she’d continue to show up whenever he’s raring to kill a murderer so maybe he’ll accept because it’s getting more disruptive if he doesn’t

if anything, her persistence would impress him somewhat: she’s determined, and even when she’s only had the flames for like, what? 3 days? she can already control it well enough to shoot projectiles. she has potential and would be a helpful ally instead of burdening him.

the chaotic crackhead route is for kaede to somehow get her hands on yuri’s address and bully him until he listens to her

just show up outside his room at 3 am, eyes glowing, floating 3 feet from the ground. hell, t-pose outside his window. 

terrorise him.

she’d play loud music or shout at him day in day out 

she may even follow him to work and just pester him

constantly asking him to mentor her so she can have her revenge, poking and prodding about his secret night job as lunatic

kaede will leave mama petrov alone this doesn’t concern her

her beef isn’t w mama petrov

ever since that encounter, yuri has not known peace

yuri has 2 ghosts to deal with 

that’s 2 too many

he’s gonna take one out

the minimum age of criminal responsibility in japan is 14, while in new york it’s 18 (thanks google)

take your pick

kaede is 10-11

so either way yuri can’t take her to jail for harassment 

she’s coming out of this scott free

he snaps and literally begs her to stfu if he follows her wish :b:lease

he hasn’t slept for 34 days

regardless, kaede will come out victorious and yuri is now stuck with a child 

on a more serious note, yuri’s and kaede’s agenda are the same and it just so happens that their goals align. he has been suss since day one ever since the kotetsu debacle.

in hindsight maverick really should’ve brainwashed the only judge, the person in charge of the justice bureau, the curator who has access to the hero’s files

maybe i’m jumping to conclusion

for all i know maybe maverick also attempted to invite yuri to that announcement “party” thing

but yuri was like 

« no ? fuck off »

and went on his way

yuri wants to look oddly menacing in his basement dungeon thing 

and maverick brushed it off because he didn’t think yuri was lunatic, or a next one the first place

we know that yuri learns that maverick is behind all of this and is probably a next on his own, but decides against taking action. i suppose in canon because he knows it’s not his battle to see through, but in the au maybe because he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. also he kinda injured his arm after being shot by H-01, so he doesn’t want to fight with a handicap.

he doesn’t want to take any rash action and cause more problems for himself.

potentially putting his whole secret identity scheme in jeopardy.

he chooses to take a moment to regroup and plan his actual attack. he couldn’t take on 7 heroes and 1 android at once, and risk getting brainwashed too.

at first, even if working together seem to only benefit kaede, the situation also gives yuri some strategic advantages. 

like once he finds out that kaede’s power is a mimic ability, not the flame ability. i feel like he’d find that hella useful

also kaede is a child who’s also basically a nobody in sternbild. she can infiltrate spaces he can’t, and not raise any suspicion.

  possible denouements:

i see 3 major endings possible, with secondary endings which is just a one of the 3 major endings with some slight changes:

1. all sinners must die ending

pretty self explanatory. kaede gets her revenge: with the help of lunatic she kills barnaby and maverick, potentially killing or maiming the rest of the heroes. her father has been avenged, but the city is more or less in a panic because there are no more heroes to protect them. “faith” in the vigilante, or at least in kaede, plummets because they attacked “innocent” people. it’s possible that she brings her father’s framing to light (but not that the heroes were brainwashed), though it’s doubtful that she gets the chance after causing such an uproar.

kaede probably never learns the truth: that the heroes were brainwashed.

this may or may not leave kaede incredibly bitter and nihilistic, as even though she got her revenge she doesn’t feel any satisfaction or sense of closure. she doesn’t get any form of catharsis and probably still has a difficult time moving on and coping with her grief. the city of sternbild adopts a very cold atmosphere and regains a strong distrust towards nexts, kaede may or may not continue to be a vigilante as she’s still trapped in grief limbo, yuri has to deal with the messy aftermath.

overall, it’s probably the worst possible ending.

of schemes and double agents ending

a kinda slow burn route, i suppose? in this ending, kaede realises that the heroes are being manipulated unlike in the previous one. she decides to restore the hero’s memories one by one and getting them to secretly help her. i don’t think she could recruit everyone, but i’m thinking about those like blue rose, who seemed to remember somewhat after kotetsu’s speech thing. kaede could slowly remind them, and despite initial mistrust and animosity they would come round and realise there was a huge discrepancy in their memory.

outright rebelling against maverick would be rash and the heroes risk being brainwashed once more, so they figure they would pull the strings somewhat and provide kaede/lunatic with internal knowledge to help them.

in the epic showdownTM, when the heroes and kaede finally have a face off, barnaby (and those who weren’t approached by kaede) would experience quite a curveball: those who regained their memories would side with kaede.

safety in solitude ending

in this ending, kaede works alone (with lunatic) without having recruited the other heroes even after realising they’ve been brainwashed. perhaps because it’d be too risky just in case they get brainwashed again or that they don’t agree with the vigilante’s idea and rat them out, whatever the reason may be the duo works alone.

this will lead into an even more epic showdownTM where it’s 2 v. 8: even though the stakes are not in the duo’s favour they somehow manage to come triumphant? or maybe the heroes regain their memories one by one and decide to stop fighting, even though they don’t exactly join the duo’s side.

constants:

maverick dies. lunatic kills him. i doubt many are against the idea though.

barnaby’s memories would be the last one she “restores”: (courtesy of my friend) it would probably go something like, in a burst of anger she jumps him and gets his hundred power. as she punches at him, she tearfully confronts him about how her father must’ve felt in his last moments and how much kotetsu seemed to adore him back when he was alive.

if bunny dies (ending 2/ending 3) kaede would not feel as angry and cynical, but more regretful or grievous. she’d probably stop using her next powers to do much anything (instead of continuing to be a vigilante like in ending 1). she’ll move on eventually, with more than less difficulty. the city of sternbild is on edge, but continue to place their faith on heroes.

if bunny lives (ending 2/ending 3), kaede would get a stronger sense of closure as she would be able to dialogue with bunny. barnaby would however, feel unending grief once he realises what he has done. 

regardless if bunny is dead or not, the truth is revealed to the general public along with maverick’s scheme and true intent in ending 2 and 3. so basically canon episode 25 ending except more angst and kotetsu is dead a while ago

not a constant… but it’s possible that because of lunatic’s whole code being “kill murderers and those who protect them” he’d be displeased with kaede choosing to spare bunny. maybe he’s the last boss… kaede and bunny defeat lunatic with 100 power, much like barnaby used to do with kotetsu?... nah that’s too messy and honestly i prefer lunatic and kaede to remain on peaceful terms lmao

lunatic’s satisfied with killing maverick, he’ll back off of this one—barnaby was manipulated anyway. so technically... it wasn’t his conscious decision nor his fault???

basically i don’t want kaede to fight her mentor figure, but i’m merely acknowledging the possibility.

actually…

maybe he walks up towards barnaby, the other heroes too beat up to do anything but watch while kaede remains by barnaby’s side

and lunatic just stands ominously in front of bunny, looking like he’s about to shoot him

but then he turns away

« hmph, how ridiculous. repent for the rest of your life, barnaby brooks jr. »

and then lunatic disappears in a flash, leaving a singed mark—the only proof that he had stood there.

heck, remember how she recovered the christmas pins? she could chuck those angrily at barnaby’s general direction to put emphasis.

kaede knows she’ll never be able to bring her father back, but she’d manage her grief easier. if barnaby lives, kaede would probably become a hero to honor her father and to use her power for good as her father would’ve wanted her to do.

miscellaneous

headcanons in no particular order, certainly not chronological. crack, fluff, angst, just whatever comes to mind. for ease of reading, i will try to organise them thematically.

relationships

tiger x bunny

rest in peace king, you will be missed.

kotetsu ded so the gay cannot be, rip in species.

but i’m putting this here because prior to the brainwashing they do be kinda gay tho, and even if kaede doesn’t know the exact nature of the relationship between the two she knows that her father was very fond of barnaby and cared for him deeply.

lunatic | yuri petrov & kaede

this au is pretty lunatic & kaede centric, because well,,, kotetsu kicked the bucket, and barnaby and the heroes are considered the villains here

i see lunatic and kaede having a mentor-student kind of relationship, that can be fluffy sometimes a found family trope could eventually be established, but that’s super delicate

on another note, if you really want to fuck up your 11 year old because you absolutely want to give kaede the worst possible outcomes for some reason, she could—as a young child who has lost both her parents at a very young age—develop an unhealthy dependence on this [lunatic] new authority figure. she might incorrectly interpret his concern for familial care, etc… but i’m not even going there, that’s too messy.

tbh the real tragedy would be kaede imprinting on yuri’s garbage sense of fashion… the secret to dressing well died with kotetsu.

idk if i should explicit this, but just in case: this is not a romantic ship please don’t come for my throat. literally this au was created because i wanted to see kaede start shit—just go absolutely feral and start chaos lmao

i would like snapshots of him teaching her how to control the flames better but also look out for her general well being because this kid has issues. basically give me a montage of yuri mentoring kaede and slowly becoming fond of her or give me death:

lunatic probably made his own costume so? i’d like to imagine yuri takes the time to make one for kaede too?? also he makes sure it wooshes cool in the wind and idk, flammable enough to allow her to burn the cape off before she attacks???

just yuri hand sewing some apparels for kaede uwu

also give me vaguely domestic yuri or give me death

also mayhaps, gives kaede affirming headpats?

like if she performs well and her mastery over her powers improves in leaps and bounds? or when she finally unlocks a skill she’s been struggling with for a bit?? just a proud head pat and a well-intentioned-but-cold-sounding « well done »???

maybe when kaede first actually learns how to use her powers, her emotions might get the best of her or maybe she’s plain nervous because fire = danger and scary. 

and it shows because the flames grow more erratic and out of her control, and yuri grows very concerned for her well being because he doesn’t want her to get burnt like he did when he first awakened his power.

before it all degenerates, he helps calm her down and prevent his house from burning down. or wherever he goes to when he’s doing lunatic stuff…

a dungeon ?

his basement ?

my basement don’t look like that

we know where all the judge money is going: renovating the basement

much like her mentor, when she gets rlly angry her eyes burst into flames. to prevent her from getting into trouble by accidentally activating her power and injuring someone or simply revealing her identity, yuri would teach her grounding exercises or anchoring phrases that he himself uses.

idk just teach her breathing techniques to ease her anxiety or a mantra to recite if she feels like she’s gonna set someone on fire

also idk if i should give kaede a different weapon from lunatic (i know i will because the crossbow is lunatic’s aesthetic, and his only), but i like to imagine yuri teaching her how to shoot crossbows and her becoming oddly proficient at it

grandma kaburagi wondering why kaede has wicked aim all of the sudden

tbh kaede would just shoot w her hands. just pew pew finger. 

or she does the kamehameha thing she did w blue rose’s power lmao

at first he kinda sees being responsible for her as a bit of a chore and annoying, but maybe he slowly grows fond of her and idk, dotes on her. 

protecc the bby

help her do her homework

« i’ve only had kaede for a day and a half. but if anything happened to her, i would kill everyone in this room and then myself. »

on the flipside, at first kaede thought that yuri is hecking weird, man. just creepy suspicious prosecutor dude who she allies with because revenge girl rlly wants revenge

but he grows on her and kaede thinks he’s not so bad after all. an good authority figure whom she respects and cares for 

she still probably thinks he’s hella weird tho

kinda weird but also sometimes kinda cool 

eccentric but like in a good way

like your weird neighbour henry who means well despite what he says sometimes 

kaede would learn his corny cool catchphrases and repeat them when she’s out and about as a vigilante. 

just adopt/mimic his speech pattern of saying things slowly for more oomph

gotta do the whole code of justice and thanatos speech before she bombards barnaby with flaming arrows

yuri feels oddly proud

they’re both probably hella protective over each other tho. because that’s just kaede’s personality and yuri feels responsible for the safety of this child that he has been entrusted with.

children love sweets right? yuri secretly likes sweets. they can share sweets after setting murderers on fire uwu

idk man i just want some good mentor-apprentice relationship

it doesn’t have to always be angst

we can have fluff

maybe they can learn from each other and be semi-functional human beings 

that thing where the apprentice’s outfit is like directly taken from their mentor’s but also vaguely different. i want that.

sometimes the real revenge is the friends you make along the way uwu

  school + domestic life

ok so like

kaede gets big depressed because duh your dad just got murdered by his partner 

and she rlly misses him and wished she was more understanding back then. she wished she spent more time w him back when he was alive

but it’s too late now and that makes her big depressed

so i feel like for the first few weeks/months after her father’s death, kaede wouldn’t go to school?? and i feel like her grandmother would understand and just like

not pester her about it and let her sort out her emotions first before talking to kaede about the elephant in the room

but also like, the school board also agrees to wait it out because the parents are kinda iffy about what has transpired

to be fair, oriental town is probably one of those small towns where everyone knows each other? so the parents/adults who know kotetsu are like??? kotetsu wouldn’t kill a person??

but the children who are more connected to the media and don’t know him personally believe that kotetsu murdered someone and deserved to be “arrested”? because why would you doubt hero tv and the heroes, they’re the good guys after all.

so when kaede found it within herself to finally go back to school, she has a rude awakening and learns that words travel fast in a small community

the other kids, not knowing any better, believed that kotetsu is a criminal w their whole chest and started all kinds of rumours on kaede

when she went to class she was greeted w her desk being pushed far away from the rest of the class, the other students steering clear from her

all sorts of nasty things were carved/marked with a sharpie on her locker and table—some others stuck paper with w the word “murderer” on it

kaede lost most of her friends and the rest of the classmates avoided her like the plague as they say vile things about her and her father

« look she’s back »

they don’t even try to hide the fact or bother to mask their voice and speak in a hushed whisper. 

« they said her father killed someone, who knows what she could do »

so kaede hears everything.

« don’t get close to her, or we might end up finding your body in a ditch »

kaede doesn’t follow through, but sometimes she thinks about running away from school to escape the bullying.

« come to think of it, she was always weird wasn’t she? she’s so creepy! »

maybe at some point it gets so disruptive that kaede can’t have a functional or healthy school life due to the constant harassment and alienation, so the school board agreed to let kaede do the rest of the year through online classes or homeschooling

in a way this works out very well for kaede, because it allows her more freetime to do vigilante stuff and she gets to avoid people’s gaze. 

she’s grown to dislike them, the scornful gaze of her peers and the pity from the adults.

the student’s parents always come to apologise to her, but for some reason their pity infuriates her to no end.

sadly this means that kaede isn’t as cheerful as before and becomes more closed off and reserved :(

kaede would continue to do ice skating tho

because it’s her passion

but also because she’s obstinate like that

« oh the others don’t want me here? they hate me?? they think i don’t belong on the ice??? they can go stick it, i’m gonna be amazing out of spite! »

at home kaede becomes even more protective over her grandmother, as seeing as she’s being homeschooled means she gets to spend more time w her and help her out with the housework

idk the blue flames could be handy for doing housework

oh the stove won’t light up? oh you’re gonna go get a different lighter? nice this is a convenient time to use my next power to spark the stove! when grandma is back kaede is just like « look i got it to light up, guess u didn’t have to go through all that trouble huh? » :D

since the fire doesn’t burn indiscriminately, could she, theoretically, control the heat/where it burns to make laundry dry faster???

kaede nearly gets a heart attack seeing the new scarecrow for grandma’s cabbage patch, but turns out she just found kaede’s vigilante costume laying around and didn’t think twice about it 

bonus points of grandma uses lunatic himself as a scarecrow

lunatic would make an incredible scarecrow fight me

despite not being able to retrieve kotetsu’s body to bury him with tomoe, kaede often visits their family grave and the shrine in kotetsu’s room and bring them flowers. 

she knows she’s just talking to air, but she likes to recount her day to her parents. about whatever she’s up to, and keeping them updated on everyone’s condition: grandma and uncle are doing well. grandma is still healthy thank god, while uncle sometimes like to joke about how his store is terribly quiet now without kotetsu around.

she tells them the whole truth, how she found lunatic and was going to avenge her father. that she was going to prove his innocence to everyone, if it was the last thing she’ll ever do.

in a bittersweet way, it comforts her somewhat that her father is finally with his wife again and that they’re both watching over her.

  of next powers and secret identities

to this day, kaede is the only one who knows about yuri’s secret identity

they’re both complicit in this secret matter

schemes 

this continues even after the endings 

even if she became a hero she’d refuse to reveal lunatic’s real identity

it’s a matter of principle

she will always hold a great deal of respect for her mentor 

schemes

on another note, i’m fixing kaede’s next power because it’s too broken and is kinda inconvenient lmao: in this au she needs actual skin-to-skin contact to assimilate someone else’s next power, so if the individual is wearing gloves or touching clothes it won’t work.

adding on to this, kaede starts wearing gloves when she’s up and about so that she can limit the amount of nexts she may unknowingly make contact with and keep her current ability [blue fire].

the power would be super useful tho. like you can make yourself disappear into a puff of flames,,, so theoretically if kaede finds herself in a situation she’d rather not be in she can just ghost you irl

« y’all ugly. boom. »

remember how kaede’s room is filled to the brim w barnaby merch???

great for target practice and for letting out your anger

also to dramatically scribble out the eyes in black sharpie to get the revenge girl aesthetic 

oh man she’ll probably be sad that she snipped her father off from that one picture with barnaby 

in that regard her attitude towards bunny will take a complete 180

she used to think the world of him, but now all she thinks about is crushing him under her heel

also, i know she’d imitate lunatic’s whole speech thing, but what if she repeated her father’s catchphrase to provoke barnaby?

also in homage of her dad ofc

« it’s time to let out a wild roar! »

*strikes pose*

*angery barnaby noises*

what if as time goes on it gets increasingly harder and harder to hide the fact that kaede is a vigilante. 

like at first, her family is like “oh she’s grieving in her own way, let’s give her some space” and they’re surprised by how well kaede is taking it because she’s so calm, even if she’s more distant 

while kaede sneaks out at night to start shit

and her grandmother starts to notice how she seems more alert and jumpy, or sleep deprived. how kaede seemed to be hiding bruises and injuries, and tries to clean her wounds herself late at night. 

when asked kaede would deny everything and say she doesn’t use her next powers anymore because it freaks her out

but grandma is suss

she concerned for her granddaughter

maybe she doesn’t know about kaede’s secret identity but maybe she finds out she’s been meeting with yuri

a grandma beats up a man in his late 20s-mid 30s on live television 

maybe at some point the heroes learn kaede’s real age, or assume correctly that she’s barely a teen and they’re like

is lunatic forcing you to do this ?

you don’t have to do something you don’t want to

it’s not too late for you if you give up

when rlly this was all kaede’s choice in the first place, not even lunatic’s

and that assumption rlly makes kaede angry, because their inactivity led to her father’s death and forced her hands

so it’s not their place to act like they’re concerned for her and her safety

just rlly distrust and dislike the heroes 

has a strong disdain for them

real talk, but kaede doesn’t know that the heroes were brainwashed. that’s why she’s able to be so ruthless against them, because she thinks they’re evil and working for some big conspiracy while playing a helpful and friendly front.

but when/if she does learn the truth? the kotetsu factor jumps out.

they aren’t acting as if they were the good guys, they rlly think that they are because to them they just took out another criminal and not their longtime friend.

she’ll have an inner conflict. because on one hand, the heroes don’t know any better and are being manipulated so it would be cruel to punish them so harshly. on the other hand, they got her dad killed and for that she wants to inflict them as much pain and grief as they have caused her.

the kotetsu factor would keep her going tho. now she’s determined to not only clear her father’s name, but also restore everyone’s memory, because it’s the right thing to do.

but now everytime she has to face them and fight, she feels a slight hesitancy and feels sorry for them.

mayhaps blue rose as double agent ???

origami got big double agent potential, but he wasn’t having any of kotetsu’s shit so alas

another important character we gotta talk about: h-01

hear me out

so the android isn’t built with a voice box so it can’t speak. it don’t got any acoustics. but because of maverick’s brainwashing, when the heroes talk to the empty air they hear “tiger’s” response, which is purely borne from their own psychosis.

h-01: …

barnaby: perfect idea tiger, you can cover me

or

rock bison: who is that guy?

h-01: …

rock bison: yeah they look very suspicious to me too…

or

or

h-01: …

barnaby: i know!

anyway, it’s very weird and surreal to watch

just the heroes having a very one sided conversation

lunatic and kaede don’t know what to make of it and finds it really bizarre, because they know the android isn’t saying anything at all

yet the heroes are convinced he’s communicating with them

so maybe if kaede manages to restore someone’s memory, they start to notice that “tiger” doesn’t actually talk. he never did this whole time.

and it gets hard to come up with a response and pretend he answered them. 

the restored heroes also find it super creepy how it’s just silent and watching, how the others seem to think that the robot can speak.

maybe this will cause some suspicion amongst the heroes (who will brush it off) and maverick, and the restored hero will have to pretend to still be brainwashed to not get manipulated a second time

basically h-01 is creepy and just generally not fun to be around

illustration

edit: thank you @kyarymell​ for cleaning the sketch up on photoshop ;w;

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[nickelkeep]

Twas the Night

Pairing: Dean/Cas - Timestamp to Like the Angel Rating: Teen, to be on the safe side. Word Count: 3500 Warnings: Tooth. Rotting. Fluff. Written For: @notfunnydean​‘s 2019 SPN Advent Calendar Day 11 - Christmas Story On Ao3

Quick Side Note - I’ve been sick, which is why you haven’t seen one of these in a while. I missed days 12 through 15, which I have made reference to in the fic. There’s a better explanation if you follow the Ao3 Link. 😘

---

“Daddy?”

Dean shook his head as Emma called him from down the hallway. Sixteen years old, and she knew that she could get just about anything she wanted by singsonging ‘daddy’ instead of just calling him Dad. “What’s up, Em?”

“It’s Christmas Eve!”

“Uh, yeah.” Dean got up from his bed and walked down the hallway to Emma’s room and leaned against her doorframe. “You gonna tell me something I don’t know, Kiddo?”

“We need to get started!” Emma was sitting on her floor with her back to the door. “It’s Cas’ first Christmas with us, and I want to make sure he enjoys it.”

Dean smiled. “Whatcha got there?”

“It’s uh, it’s a part of his Christmas present.” Emma looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“You’re not going to tell me what it is?” Dean stepped closer to look over Emma and see what she was making or doing. “You know I can keep a secret, Em.”

Emma blushed bright red. “I was gonna, you know, that thing we talked about a week ago.”

“Say no more, Kiddo.” Dean squatted down next to Emma and pulled her into a hug. “Cas is gonna love it.”

“Thanks, Dad. I’m glad one of us is sure of it.”

Dean stood back up and rested his hands on his lower back. “You gonna come help me make breakfast?”

“Cinnamon Rolls? Or are you going to try that new recipe you found?” Emma gathered the items that had been spread out on the floor around her and stacked them neatly in a pile before standing up. “I’m okay with trying something new for breakfast.”

“Is this that new tradition thing you’ve been pushing?” Dean crossed his arms over his chest and smiled fondly at his daughter. “I love how much you want to make sure Cas is included.” He started backing up towards the door. “Come help me make the Honey Bread?”

Emma returned the smile and followed down to the kitchen.

---

Cas made it downstairs to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and something baked or baking in the oven. Emma was sitting at the kitchen island drawing while Dean was standing over the stove dancing and singing along to some Christmas song. “You still working on that drawing, Em?

Emma looked up and shook her head. “Nope, these are just some warmup sketches. Wanna see?”

“Of course.” Cas stopped and gave Dean a kiss before sitting on the stool next to Emma’s. “Looks like you’re in the Christmas spirit.” Cas pointed to one of the figures. “Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Be?”

“Yep! I really liked Mr. Roche’s lesson on A Christmas Carol.” Emma smiled. “Did you check to see if I get to be in your class next semester, Cas?”

“Which one?”

Emma shot one of her Uncle Sam’s bitchfaces at Cas. “Really, Cas?”

“Yes, you are in my Mythology in Modern Literature class.” Cas chuckled. “But, remember, Ms. Milton wasn’t really sure that with your dad and I dating that it would be a good idea. We gotta prove that this will work.” Dean set a mug of coffee in front of Cas, and Cas immediately picked it up to drink. “I know that we’ll be fine, but we have to make sure I’m not showing favoritism.”

“I didn’t slack last year.” Emma pouted.

Cas tucked a piece of hair behind Emma’s ear. “Which is why Ms. Milton said it was okay for you to be in the class and for me to teach it.”

“Coming in!” Dean placed a plate in front of Cas and waited as Emma moved her drawing stuff before setting hers breakfast down. “Sorry to interrupt serious school talk.”

“Dean, you told me you guys do cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.” Cas tilted his head. “What’s this?”

“Em and I found the recipe online and thought it might be something you would like.” Dean set some sort of spread on the table. “It’s a honey bread, with cinnamon sugar butter. And of course, bacon, because God forbid I don’t ever make you two bacon.”

Dean’s quip earned a chuckle from both Emma and Cas. Cas watched as Dean finished putting together his own plate and sat down with them before taking a bite of the bread. “Wow,” Cas replied with food in his mouth, causing Dean to roll his eyes. Cas swallowed his food before speaking again. “I’m serious, this is really good.” He reached for the butter and started spreading it on.

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Cas.” Dean popped a piece of bacon in his mouth.

“I am.” Cas took a bite of the bread with the butter and moaned happily. “So good.”

“Cas, you’d think you never had food before.” Emma snarked.

“I’m always a sucker for new foods that are delicious.” Cas winked at her. “So, you two haven’t told me what you all do on Christmas Eve, besides breakfast, of course.”

Emma looked at Dean, who nodded in approval. “Well, after breakfast, we usually go and get any last-minute gifts and pick up anything that Gramma Ellen might need for dinner.”

“Ma feeds us at the Roadhouse,” Dean elaborated, “She won’t know for certain what she needs for dinner tonight until she does a quick inventory check after closing. She’ll probably be calling in the next…” Dean looked at the clock on the microwave. “Ten to fifteen minutes.”

“That sounds like an adventure.” Cas propped his chin on his hand. “So should we get dressed?”

Dean shrugged. “Not to sound apathetic, but while it sounds like a day of adventure, we’re still kinda lazy. Usually, Ma calls, then we get dressed. But, if you’re raring to go.”

“Sorry, just looking to spending this Christmas with my…” Cas looked back and forth between Dean and Emma. “With my family.”

“Well, Cas. We want to celebrate it with you too.” Dean stood up and grabbed the empty plates, taking them over to the sink and rinsing them off.

“We want to know your traditions too. We don’t want to force you into a mold. We’ve grown as a family, so we have room to take in and make new traditions.” Emma took Cas’ mug and took a drink from it. “You really need coffee with your cream, Cas.”

Cas laughed and ruffled Emma’s hair. “Let’s go get dressed then, and your dad can follow suit. I’ll show you two what I do on Christmas Eve.”

“Do we need to get fancy-dressed?” Emma raised her eyebrow.

“No, Emma, jeans are fine.” Emma did a little happy dance and headed off to her room. Cas looked at Dean. “‘Fancy-dressed’ is your phrase, isn’t it?”

“What can I say, Angel? Emma and I are simple creatures.” Dean closed the dishwasher and started it before crossing over to Cas. He pressed his lips against Cas’ temple, leaving a soft kiss. “Let’s go get changed.”

---

As Dean had promised, Ellen called with a list of groceries for their dinner. After stopping to pick up their last-minute Christmas Gifts, Dean, Cas, and Emma stopped by the grocery store to grab the items for dinner. They swung by the Roadhouse and dropped them off, asking if there’s anything they could do to help with dinner. Ellen playfully swatted at Dean with a towel and promised that Jo and Charlie already claimed the elf honors for the year.

After joking about food poisoning - “Did they forget that Charlie could burn water?” Dean complained in jest - Cas took Dean’s phone and plugged in an address in the maps app.

The location Dean pulled the Impala in front of turned out to be a homeless shelter. “What’s all this, Cas?”

“It’s a bit of a story,” Cas explained, but he continued when Emma leaned over the front seat. “I haven’t told you much about when I was in college, Emma. But I didn’t go for what my parents wanted me to go for. It was bad enough that I was gay, but to completely misuse their gift of college was the last straw. I was just short of disowned. So, my first year after I graduated college, I was completely alone on Christmas Eve.” Cas paused and ran his fingers through Emma’s hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay, as you can see now. But then, I was a new teacher, I didn’t know anyone well enough, and I had nowhere to go. 

“Instead of moping around my empty apartment watching TV by myself with just Chinese food to keep me company, I pulled out my laptop. I found the closest LGBT friendly shelter.” He gestured to the building they were parked next to. “I called and asked if they did any kind of dinner, and the rest is history. I felt loved, I felt safe, and I felt good giving to people who didn’t have even the little bit I had. So, every Christmas Eve I come here. To thank them for taking me and accepting me when my own family wouldn’t. Some years I even join in for Christmas, even though they don’t necessarily need me on that day.” Cas turned to face Dean. “Remember, you asked where I sometimes go when I don’t come home right away?” Dean nodded. “It’s here.”

Cas patted the back of the seat and smiled. “Let’s get you two inside and introduce you both to the people who run the shelter and those in charge of the kitchen.”

“That sounds great, Cas.” Dean beamed at him.

Once inside, Cas was greeted by several members of the staff with whom he was familiar. They were excited to meet Dean and Emma. They had heard so much about them over the past several months. Cas had bragged about Dean’s skills in the kitchen, and he was quickly got roped into helping cook. Cas took his usual spot on the serving line. Emma was a little too young to help with the food– “I just turned sixteen!” She complained. –but they asked her to play with the younger kids and watch over them.

They stuck around for as long as they could. Dean had to literally pull Emma away from the younger kids, and Cas bribed her with the promise they would come back sooner than next Christmas. She spent the entire drive to the Roadhouse recounting her stories of playing with the kids, bringing smiles to Dean’s and Cas’ face.

Once they pulled into a spot, Emma practically leaped out of the car and ran inside. Dean and Cas took a moment to look at each other and revel in her enthusiasm before getting out themselves and grabbing presents out of the back of the car.

“You think she would have helped us.” Dean smiled at Cas, kissing him on the corner of his mouth before heading inside. “Oh, by the way. Ma has probably hung up at least a dozen sprigs of mistletoe.”

Cas laughed and looked up. “Looks like we hit the first one.” He leaned over and kissed Dean on the cheek.

---

After dinner and introducing Cas to their Christmas Eve Present tradition, Dean excused the three of them from the drinking games portion of the evening. There was no argument from any member of his family, which Dean was grateful for. He walked behind Cas and Emma, watching as Cas wrapped his arm around Emma and hugged her tightly. Warmth flowed through him, and he silently kicked himself for not having his phone out to snap a photo.

Emma curled up with a new blanket that Charlie made her, while Cas admired a first edition copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that Sam gave him. Dean snuck glances at them both on the ride home, excited for what was next.

As he pulled into the driveway, Dean looked at Emma. “You wanna tell Cas about our last tradition, Kiddo?”

“Cas, do you know The Tailor of Gloucester?” Emma yawned and slid out of the backseat before Cas could answer.

“I do,” Cas replied, getting out of the car right behind Emma. “Beatrix Potter. It’s a Christmas story of hers. Why?”

“Dad tucks me in and reads it to me.” Emma blushed. “I know I’m probably too old for that now.”

Cas pulled Emma into another hug. “You’re never too old to enjoy having someone read to you. Your dad bugs me to read to him occasionally.”

“Will you read it tonight?” Emma asked.

“But, you just said it’s you and your dad’s thing.” Cas looked at Dean with a look that Dean was pretty sure equated to asking for help.

“It’s fine, Cas. I already knew Em was going to ask.” Dean winked and walked to the front door. “Let’s get inside, so we don’t freeze, and then we can all curl up in Emma’s bed and enjoy the story.”

The suggestion appeared to calm Cas down, and the trio entered the house to warm up. Emma ran ahead upstairs, while Cas and Dean took their time climbing the stairs.

“Dean, I don’t want to step on your toes,” Cas commented, concern still in his voice.

They entered their room, and Dean cupped Cas’ face in his hands. “I promise that you’re not. Do it this year, and next year we can do it together, or we can take turns to who does it.” Dean ran his thumb over Cas’ cheek before crossing to their dresser. He grabbed a pair of Cas’ pajama pants and tossed them to him. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”

Cas and Dean finished changing and walked down to Emma’s room. She had left the door open for them to come in. 

“Hop under the blanket, Kiddo.” Dean pointed at the bed, and Emma obliged him, quickly scrambling to climb under the covers. She grabbed the book off of her nightstand and waited until Cas was sitting next to her.

“Last call, Emma. Are you sure you want me to read it?” Cas hesitated as he took the book and opened the cover.

“Yes, Cas, I’m sure. I’m positive. I’m 16, not six.” She stuck her tongue out at Cas and was bopped on the nose playfully.

“I hear you. Just…” Cas took a deep breath and relaxed, leaning back against her headboard. “Thank you, Emma.” He shot a warm look at Dean, which Dean responded to with a hair ruffle. “‘In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester…’”

As the story continued, Dean would occasionally poke Emma to keep her awake, knowing how she was prone to fall asleep when being read to. He smiled as he watched Cas animate the story with his body and his voice. Even Dean could admit to finding a new love for the story, with Cas reading it in his own way.

“‘He made the most wonderful waistcoats for all the rich merchants of Gloucester, and for all the fine gentlemen of the country round.

“‘Never were seen such ruffles, or such embroidered cuffs and lappets! But his button-holes were the greatest triumph of it all.

“‘The stitches of those button-holes were so neat—so neat—I wonder how they could be stitched by an old man in spectacles, with crooked old fingers, and a tailor’s thimble.

“‘The stitches of those button-holes were so small—so small—they looked as if they had been made by little mice!” 

Cas turned the page to get to “The End,” but found in its place a sticky note. “What’s this, Emma?” He pulled it off and read it. “‘Ask Emma for your card.’ What card would that be?”

Emma reached under her pillow and pulled out a card. “Merry Christmas, Cas.” She handed it to him and smiled, cuddling up against Dean. Dean wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her head.

“Thank you?” Cas tilted his head and opened the envelope. “Oh, good, no glitter.”

“Glitter is the herpes of the craft world, Cas.” Emma laughed.

“Is that your Dad or your Aunt Charlie?” Cas pulled out the card. On the front was a stylized picture of two dads and a daughter. “‘Your art only gets better and better, Emma.” He opened the card and started reading it to himself. Cas smiled until he got to a particular spot and froze. He looked back and forth between Emma and Dean, tears building up in his eyes. “Emma?”

Dean had pulled out his phone and set it to record. “What’s it say, Cas?”

“You knew.” Cas pointed at Dean and sniffled, fighting to hold back his tears. “Dear Cas. I want to thank you for so many things. First, for being my teacher. You have taught me so much, and not just from the books you share. I’ve learned about caring and compassion.” Cas smiled at Emma, “Your dad has taught you a lot of that too.”

“Hush, Cas, keep reading.” Dean smiled.

“Thank you for making Dad happy and becoming apart of our family. While we were content, you brought a new kind of happiness to our lives.” Cas reached forward and tucked Emma’s hair behind her ear. “You two have brought such joy to my life.”

Emma leaned into Cas’ touch, smiling.

“Since I’m running out of the room on this card, let me thank you for being my other Dad. I never knew I was missing a second parent until you became mine.” Cas sobbed softly. “Merry Christmas, Papa. I love you, Em.” Cas pulled Emma into his arms. “I love you too, Emma.”

“If you don’t like Papa, we can pick something else.” Emma looked up. “Or I can keep calling you Cas.”

Cas wiped away a tear from Dean’s face, and then one from Emma’s. “Emma, I am proud to be your Papa. Thank you for letting me.”

Emma surged forward and wrapped her arms around Cas’ neck. “Love you, Papa.” Dean wrapped his arms around both of them, causing Emma to giggle. “You know I love you, Dad.”

“Of course I do, Kiddo. I just needed to hug my two favorite people.” Dean planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Time for bed, though.” Dean stood up and walked to the other side of Emma’s bed and offered his hand to Cas, helping him to his feet. “If you don’t go to sleep, Santa won’t come.”

“Really, Dad?”

“Yep. No presents for daughters who remind their Dads of their age, either.” Dean pointed at Emma, winking as Cas dragged him out of the room. Dean quietly closed the door behind them and turned to smile at his partner. He gently cupped Cas’ cheek and rested their foreheads together. “Can I give you your present now?”

Cas smirked as they walked to their room. “Did you get me the nutcracker I asked for?”

“You were serious about that?” Dean laughed, entering their room, and heading to the closet. “I thought you were just a Grinch when I asked what you wanted.”

“I was a little facetious.” Dean handed Cas a few presents as he continued. “Remember what I said at the shelter earlier?”

“Of course, Angel.” Dean loaded up his own arms and gestured to the door. “I knew about your family, that was one of the first things I learned about you. I want to give you the holiday that you haven’t been able to experience in years.”

Cas led the way downstairs to the Christmas Tree. “You’ve already done so much, Dean. You and Emma both. I haven’t had a Christmas this memorable since my first one after graduating college.” He set the boxes down and turned to look at Dean. “I love that you want to do this for me, and I love you.”

“I love you too, Cas.” Dean set the presents under the tree and took the ones out of Cas’ arms. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

“I did, I asked if you got me a nutcracker.” Cas crossed his arms. “None of those boxes look like they could be a nutcracker.”

“Cas.” Dean rotated toward Cas while dropping to one knee. He pulled a box out of his pocket. “I know this is probably a little soon, but when you know something is right, you shouldn’t let it go.”

Dean watched as Cas’ face twisted in confusion before brightening in understanding. “Dean, is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah, Cas.” Dean swallowed and nodded, his hands shaking slightly as he cracked the box open. “Emma said it best: We were happy, but you brought us something we didn’t know we were missing.” Dean paused and let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. “Marry me, Cas?”

Cas broke out into a brilliant smile and reached to the Christmas tree, pulling off an ornament. “I lied about this one.” Cas fell to one knee in front of Dean, putting them at the same level. “I’ll marry you on one condition.” He twisted the ornament and took the top off, revealing his own ring. “You say yes, also.”

“Hell, yes.” Dean lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Cas’ - his fiance’s - neck, and enveloped him in a tight embrace.

[likeamattoutofhell-archive]

Money - Alain & Matty

Alain and Matty do some dirty business, the Babineaux dogs are good boys, a certain katana-wielding slayer-killer gets lightly roasted... and sold out, for cash. You know what Pink Floyd had to say about that stuff.

The sun had disappeared west of White Crest, signing the beginning of Alain's extra hours. And yet, he was not on his way to the nearest mausoleum tonight. Alone in his garage, he was taking care of a client's bike as he waited for Dave's contact to appear. Music played on the radio although he was not paying too much attention to it. His thoughts were elsewhere. Asking him to trust a vampire was really asking him a lot, and if he had not known Dave for a long long time, he would have never contacted the damn undead monster which was about to arrive anytime. At least, that was if the damn thing was able to respect a set date for a meeting. 

Tidying up his workspace, the hunter then moved the bike back to the side and threw his glove on the workbench, picked up his phone and headed to his office to reheat his dinner. He replied to Evelyn's texts, took the lasagna out of the microwave oven and headed to his desk. Orion's snout reached for his owner’s hand, but was dismissed to his basket. Alain knew too well that this was only a ploy to get a bite of his food. “You have food in your bowl,” sitting at his desk, he kept the door to his office open to have his eyes on the front door. He could have gone to the vampire’s place, but knowing where he lived was enough information, and he didn’t care much for visiting it, although he was intrigued. Matty, if this was even his real name, did not sound anything like usual vampires : full of pride, arrogant, like the world was owed to them just like the gift of immortality was. Seeing someone approaching from where he stood, the hunter called out “come in,” and pushed away his half empty plate.

Oh, this was a bad idea. Not that said idea was his. Obviously. Matty slunk along through the dark, well past regretting… a lot of things. Not that that mattered much, when you were not just stuck, but entirely fucked, between a rock and a hard place. Or a leech and a slayer, as the case was. But. If this all went how it sensibly ought to, there’d be no going wrong, exactly. Would there? One less scary motherfucker in White Crest. One less scary motherfucker in White Crest who knew way too much about Matty for his personal comfort, seriously. At least he could add… some garage, to what he knew about this guy. Garage Babineaux. A detail to throw that old bastard’s way, when the time came. Remained to be seen if this dude was Babineaux himself, but. Who the fuck else but the owner would be hanging around a place like this, after closing time? 

Someone who had the imagination to look around a garage and see plenty of opportunities to be an intimidating son of a bitch, maybe. Opportunities like monkey wrenches, power-lifts, tire irons, and blowtorches. All solid choices, so far as scare tactics went. 

As were the fuckin’ dogs. Catching the invitation, Matty pushed himself into the glow of the garage, and stiffened. German Shepherds. Two. Oh, no. No, thank you. With a thick, nervous swallow, he dragged his eyes up to the guy sitting between them. “Uh. Hi.” God, he hadn’t been this close to one of those damn dogs since… a long fuckin’ time, but. Still. Matty inched nearer, swayed to a stop. He’d come sober. Not, like, all the way. Obviously. But as much as he could stand. Functionally on edge. “We’ve - we have a mutual friend, right?” Friend, yeah. “Dave? Just… making sure.”

Sitting back in his chair, Alain looked at the vampire, starting by looking at their hands, then their face. Only after this did he take time to take into account the man’s general appearance. Not exactly what one would expect from your stereotypical vampire. Good for him, because he hated those even more. Standing up from his office chair, he left his office to stand in the workshop, a couple meters apart from the vampire. The dogs followed behind, although they were more curious than in the mood for a fight, even if they could not hear a heartbeat coming from the vampire, and had been trained to lunge at such monsters. Alain had trained them for this, and they were ready for his order, although such an order would not come, not tonight. He had no interest in killing Matty, as long as he proved to be useful.  

Shoving his hands in his pockets, the hunter remained silent for a couple more seconds, a frown appearing on his face right as he started talking: We’ve - we have a mutual friend, right? Dave? Just… making sure. The odds of Alain being a different person were low, weren’t they? Instead of replying, he sighed and blinked slowly. Right. “Do you have what I asked ?” Motioning toward a paper bag on the workbench, he then crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

Yeah, that had been… yeah. Stupid question. Seriously off chance this wasn’t the dude he was after. But if he was gonna get punked - and he had been, before - might as well get it over with quick. Not that there was much Matty could hope to do but play through, when these douchebags felt like having a bit of fun. A lifeline was a lifeline, and shit as it was, that’s what the hunters of White Crest amounted to: blood he didn’t have to kill for, hurt for, bite for. Or, well. The means to get it, in theory. Fuck, why couldn’t this asshole have just gone down to the meat counter, or something? Even that was better than having to hit the Night Market himself, knowing how many slayers were watching. And how many things like him were skulking around, down there. 

 Speaking of. He dipped a hand into his back pocket, and waved a bit of paper, folded up. “Mhm. Took some looking, man. Slick son of a bitch, this guy.” Not wrong. Matty had stayed put, as the slayer moved. And the dogs. He hesitated, then took a cautious step towards the bench, his payment. “You mind if I, uh, count that out, before we get down to the details?” 

“Huh uh,” at the vampire’s request to count the money, Alain sighed and blew heavily through his nose. “If I wanted to screw you, you’d be dead already,” he commented, raising his eyebrows as he looked to the ceiling. “But suit yourself,” taking a seat on the workbench, he looked down at his two dogs and smiled at them, tapping his leg to get them to approach him. 

"You know, vampires usually don't sell out their own kind," you could not trust them, but within their species, they usually were knit together and this was what made hunting them so hard sometimes. If newly made vampires were easy to dust, as most of them never had to get in a fight in their whole human life, the same couldn't be said about the older ones and while Alain could enjoy a fight, he'd rather have it happen at the Silver Bullet than in a cemetery.  Killing vampires was not fun, and he treated it as such. Whoever was responsible for killing those slayers would know the same fate as many vampires before him. This much he knew.

Alain glanced over at the vampire and tilted his head. "Do hunters usually pay you in blood?" If so, he really would have to have a word with Dave, although nothing stopped him from dusting dear Matty once he would be done with the other vampire. "So, those pieces of information ?"

You’d be dead already. They always said that kinda thing. As if it was any comfort, at all, come on. As if his new pal, here, wasn’t plenty likely to stake him for the hell of it, when this was done. But. Not a point he was about to make. “Right. Totally.” Matty threw a fragile smile across the garage, and helped himself to the envelope. Counting fast. Because yeah, it fuckin’ suited him. Bad enough this bastard had dicked him around about the price, in the first place - he didn’t want to walk away underpaid, to boot. Blood didn’t come cheap.  

Neither did his extremely dangerous so-called job. A dry, sour sort of laugh shook out of him, there, as Babineaux (presumably, anyway) started to poke. No, vampires didn’t tend to do what he did. They tended to chew open your neck and drink you dead. “Yeah, well. The fuck do I owe those freaks, huh?” The money looked to be all there, but. He’d be damned if he didn’t go all the way through, just to be sure. Tossing a bit of hair out of his face, Matty hazarded a glance at this slayer, and his dogs. “And yeah, they do. That’s kinda the whole idea? The deal. I eat, stay outta trouble, and save you people some legwork. It’s symbiotic, or whatever. Everybody comes out better off.” Like hell he was gonna mention that more than a few of them were happy to short the snacks, and make up the difference with substances. Which worked out, most of the time, but… didn’t seem likely to earn him any points, here. 

He waited on the delivery until he was sure, to the last bill - not taking his time, exactly, but. Not about to miscount. But, there it was. To the dollar. “Alright. So. You’re looking for this.” Matty dipped two fingers into his back pocket, holding up a sharp sketch. That motherfucker’s face, from the alley, as clear as he could remember it. “Don’t have a phone, or whatever, so. Best I could do, media-wise.” He set the drawing down the bench, and took a step back. Liked his distance. “He’s old, like I said. Enough that he can go to mist, real quick. Likes to use that, in a fight. And a - a fuckin’, you know…” what were they called, even? “A samurai sword, or whatever. Put that right through Evgeni Sidorov’s chest, I saw it. If you knew him.” Possible he hadn’t. Hunters were in a niche business, sure, but. White Crest was crawling with these fuckers. Understandably. “Your guy has something he uses to break the bodies down, after he’s done. But, first, he takes their teeth. Yeah.” Matty reached up, pushing his upper lip aside with a thumb, indicating the canines. “Big on souvenirs. Sounds like he’s got a real pile of the things. And he jogs. At Hanging Rock. Around eight, most nights.” Sliding a little further away, Matty watched the shepherds, watched Babineaux. “Definitely this Friday. Heard him talking, at Teeth. Seems like the kinda dude to keep a pretty tight schedule. Places to be, slayers to melt, I guess.” Another slinking step, towards the door. “Speaking, uh, of which, I should… get going. If we’re cool.” As cool as they could possibly be. So. Asphalt in August, in, say. Houston, maybe. 

“Or you could feed on animals like a normal person? Those blood bags should be going to humans who need them. People don’t donate blood to save dead people like yourself,” he looked at Matty, and his nose scrunched up just a little as he kept staring at him. If Alain was more than aware that animal blood was not exactly as suitable as human blood, he did not care much about it. Even if the “feeding on human beings and causing them harm” part was bad enough, it was the fact that they could spread their disease to others that made them such a big problem to him. Moreover, some vampires had their heads so far up their asses that they considered becoming one of them to be a gift, a blessing. 

“You know, some of us don’t have an eternity to spend on Earth,” he commented once Matty was, at last, done counting his payment. Picking up the piece of paper from the bench, he raised an eyebrow. Wow. Even if the drawing was far from a bad one, was this truly the best he could do? Not that it mattered much what the fella looked like. He had never needed photos to know if someone was a vampire or not. And so, he did not comment, and instead listened to what he had to tell. Still, at the mention of samurai swords, he couldn’t hold back a scoff. “It’s called a katana,” he corrected him. This wasn’t the reason why he had laughed. The idea of someone who looked far from Japanese, owning such a sword, sounded extremely tacky to his ears. “How original,” another comment. Still, he had taken note of the mist. This part worried him more than the fact that this vampire seemed to idealize samurais. Evgeni. The name sounded familiar. He had heard it before, right after that hunter disappeared. He never spoke with that guy, but that did not change a thing. Vampires had no business killing slayers, no right to defend themselves. They were abominations, and they had to be destroyed, each and everyone of them. “Souvenirs, huh?” Wouldn’t be the first or the last vampire to feel like they could do whatever they wanted to their victims. “Right.” He rubbed his hands, fingers stretched out. That part about Hanging rock and schedules screamed coup monté but he did not make any comments. He half expected Matty to tell me to show exactly at 3am next. Alone. With no weapons. Surely he would have to be careful, but this would hardly be his first time against an old vampire like that one, and he had a few tricks up his sleeve if things didn't go quite as planned. “Of course. Places to be, people to scare and harm,” he waved in the vampire’s direction idly. “If this goes well, I’ll see you soon. And if this goes wrong, you won’t see me at all.”

God, he could kiss Nic. If he weren’t, you know. A hunter, and generally terrifying. But - at least he didn’t pull this kinda shit. Like Matty didn’t know. Like he didn’t care. His eyes would’ve rolled, if they weren’t too busy keeping a sharp watch on this slayer, over here. “You think they stretch to blood bags? Fuck, man. Comes in a jar, half the time. Outta morgues, or some shit, I don’t know…” The other half, well. Yeah. Blood, for the living. Feeding the dead. The only reason he didn’t crumple more, under the weight of that, was - there just wasn’t much left to wring out of him, at this point. “I take what I get, alright?” Sounded tired, there. Because he was. Didn’t matter that none of it was his fault. Didn’t matter to hunters, at least. 

He shot a look across his counting, still flicking through the envelope. No comment. Yeah, supposed-Babineaux did look like he was getting up there, for a guy in his, you know. Line of work. Which meant he was a special kind of scary. The sort with experience. Matty couldn’t speak to the ravages of time, or whatever; missed those, lucky him. So goddamn lucky, totally. The crack about the katana - apparently - sent a smirk sneaking over his face, a more than half-nervous snicker chasing after it. “Right? Like Blade, or some shit. Couldn’t believe it. Fuckin’ asshole…” No, he didn’t want to think about whatever this maniac went killing with. Didn’t see anything too obvious lying around - besides crowbars, maybe - and it was plain enough that the slayer was sharp as hell. Had to be, to make it to his age, doing what he did. So. Matty wasn’t going to push the intel-gathering. Instead, he nodded, vigorously. Souvenirs. It’d almost seemed like too much to throw in, but. Babineaux had bit enough, at least. Enough to seal the deal, and let him go. 

Not without a parting jab, but. Honestly. He’d heard worse. Thought worse. Appearances, though. These people, in Matty’s experience, they liked to see it hurt. And it still did, so. Wasn’t hard to cringe, believably, on his way out. “Something like that,” he sighed, thinly. Remembering that face, this place, the pant and whine of those shepherds, sprawled around their owner’s feet like… like something out of a painting, old-school hunting dogs, ready to lurch for a fox. Never seemed like a fair fight, but. As if fairness had ever been the point of anything like that. Of anything, period. Whatever this turned into, it wouldn’t be his problem. “Happy hunting, yeah?” Slipping through the door with a creak and a flat, tossed-off wave, Matty took a deep, shaky breath of the dark, and started walking. Fast.

[alexthepartyman]

Fine Line

Chapter Two: Hold it, focus.

“I was teaching an in-serivce at the Baltimore field office when this came in,” Derek tells us as we walk through the house. “Baltimore PD’s seen some pretty grisly stuff, but never anything like this. We got two bodies ID’d as William and Helen DiMarco.” I look around, the house seems very antiqued. “Retired, lived here for thirty-seven years, no kids.Neighbourhood reports a white male, twenty to forty years old, fleeing the scene, and I quote, hopped up on those damn drugs.” 

“Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable.” 

“So far, it sounds like a standard double homicide. Why are we here?” Aaron asks as we walk up the stairs and into the master bedroom. I note the blood smeared on the walls. 

“Massive overkill.”

“You don’t say.” 

“Helen DiMarco was found here, tied to the chair in front of the vanity. No defensive wounds. Ligature marks around the wrists, one clean lacertation from ear to ear.” 

“She was either too weak or she knew she wouldn’t make it,” I comment. “But that is a weird amount of overkill.” 

“Looks arterial. Probably the carotid,” Elle says. “At least she went quickly.” 

“The husband, William, was found in the shower. But he wasn’t quite as lucky.” I look into the bathroom, noticing the shower floor covered in blood, dried blood splattered on the glass sides and door. Yikes, it looks like the aftermath of the shower scene from Psycho. This amount of blood outside of a human body makes me nervous. “Ligature marks on the wrists and ankles and one long laceration up the abdomen through both layers of muscle.” 

“Evisceration - that’s typical of disorganised behaviour.”

“Despite all the blood, this crime scene shows method, order, control. I’d say it’s pretty organised.”

“There was also evidence of torture with the husband. Burns, contusions, lacerations. You name it, this guy tried it.”

“If torture is the unsub’s signature, the methodology is usually unique. A person who burns someone usually doesn’t use a knife.” 

“So maybe he have more than one killer, or we have one killer with more than one personality,” Aaron says. 

“We also have three victims. Blood on the vanity, wife’s body was found there, husband was in the shower. From the looks of the level of the ring in this tub, whoever was in it lost thier entire blood volume.” 

“I’d say that about all of the victims,” I add, peering into the bathtub. 

“Approximately ten point six pints.” 

“Which means the victim was dismembered.”

“Pints?” I ask. 

“It looks like our guy took all the parts with him.” 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Okay, so I’ve got Helen DiMarco tied to the chair,” Derek says. “He probably killed her first.”

“To prove to the others that he had no mercy. Psychological torture before the physical pain.”

“Only there was no satisfaction from her death.”

“The death was too quick. Arterial, jugular, trachea, she died within seconds, especially with a cut like that.” I answer. 

“The husband...with him, he took his time. There doesn’t seem to be any wasted effort, no hesitation on the unsub’s part. I mean, Gideon, look around. What he did...it’s a lot of work. We’re either dealing with a professional or -”

“A pure psychopath.” Uncle Jason stares blankly at the bloody shower. “Nothing more we can do here until the third victim turns up. I’m guessing there’s a connection to him.” 

“He doesn’t want that victim identified.” 

“Have Garcia go through open files in Maryland, see if any of the involve this level of torture.”

“Got it.” 

“Have her check the surrounding states as well. If...the guy’s a pro, why do jobs only close to home?”

“How far back do you want her to go?”

“At least ten years. Guy’s no rookie,” Uncle Jason answers, walking out of the bathroom. 

“Where is he going?” I ask.

“I don’t know, kid, but you should stick around here.” 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Third victim was positively ID’d as a low-level mob guy,” Derek reports. “Frederick “Freddy” Condore. He was the nephew of the older couple. Body parts were found in seven different trash cans two blocks from the crime scene.”

“Were they able to completely reassemble the body?” Spencer asks. 

“Killer didn’t keep any trophies.” 

“Is there any evidence he got off?”

“No.”

“Garcia has a number of unxolved murders in DC, Virginia, and Maryland over the past fifteen years. Many of them have ties to organised crime, all different MOs.” 

“What’s the connection?” Elle asks. 

“Torture. Marks on the ones are consistent with the same cutting tool.” 

“Tortured victims, most tied to organised crime...no signs of sexal sadism.” 

“Hitman,” I answer. 

“Excuse me?”

“You’re looking for a hitman.” 

“No, a hitman doesn’t need to torture to get the job done.”

“Two things - Baltimore just forwarded a sketch of the man running from the scene, and uh, you’ve got some agents out there who think you’re poaching on their turf,” JJ cuts in, hanging Jason a sketch. 

“I’ll handle it.”

“Doesn’t federal trump over local?” I ask, looking up from my book again. 

“Come on, we’ll set you up in my office,” JJ offers, grabbing my backpack.

“Why?”

“Because you’re gettin distracted from your school work, and Aaron said you can’t be here if you can’t get your work done.” 

“JJ, I can do my work, I promise,” I tell her. Kids don’t steal my assignments and cheat off of me for nothing, you know. 

“So, we just going to drop it?” Derek asks as Jason comes back and approaches the whiteboard. I slip my bookmark in place and put my book away. 

“These guys don’t know what they’re dealing with.”

“Our unsub is male, intelligent, organised, and methodical. He has the confidence of a man who’s been killing for a long time. Only victim removed from the scene is Freddy Condore, indicating some tie to him. Elle, you and Reid stay on Condore’s background with Garcia. Dig deep, see what turns up.”

“Condore worked as a supervisor at a scrap metal yard in Baltimore. It’s owned by a guy named Michael Russo, boss of a small mob crew. I’m gonna grab Hotch and go check him out. Jamie.” I nod and throw my bag over my shoulder, jumping from my chair. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Michael Russo?” Aaron asks. “Agents Hotchner and Morgan, FBI. This is our intern, Rossi.” 

“What do you want?” Michael asks.

“Freddy Condore.”

“He didn’t show up for work today. He didn’t call, nothing.” Well...you can’t exactly make a phone call when your body is divided between seven trash cans. 

“Probably because he, his aunt, and his uncle were murdered last night,” I state. 

“Really? Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“I can tell you’re all busted up about it.”

“Look, I don’t speak smart-ass, so you got something to say to me…”

“It was a professional hit. Either you’re in charge of your business or you’re not.” 

“What kind of business do you think I’m in, huh? Look around. I’m in scrap metal. It’s all about recycling. That’s where the money is, my friend. Saving the earth.”

“You’ve got a big problem. You know, the mob isn’t what it used to be.”

“Ain’t easy always fighting for respect, is it?” Derek steps closer to Michael. “You always gotta fight for what’s yours. One of your boys steps out of line, tsk, tsk, tsk. You hit him hard, you make it count, right? Is that what happened to Freddy?” The man chuckles.

:Look. You got a case to make, run along, get your papers, and come back with the bracelets. Otherwise, I got a business to run.” The two men walk away from us.

“They don’t dress scrap metal,” I retort.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Derek kicks the door in, and he and Aaron storm in, guns pointed. “CLEAR!” Aaron yells. 

“Copy that.” 

“It’s clear here.” 

Aaron and Derek holster their weapons. “Morgan, this is weird. There’s nothing here.” I step into the room and look around, finding a barren home. “It’s like nobody lives here...guess he wasn’t expecting company.” 

“Something’s wrong?” 

“Yeah, I know.”

“Look at this place. It’s an artifical dwelling...to match an artifical past.” We start searching through everything, and I hear Derek tapping on a wall, before a loud thud. 

“Derek, what the - what the fuck? Why did you punch that?” I ask, peering up from the other side of the oven. 

“Hotch!”

“Yeah?” 

“We got a hot weapon. Jamie, get back.” Derek gently pushes me away as Aaron approaches us. He pulls out a towel and sets it on the stove, unwrapping it to reveal a gun and a cartridge. “Oh, no.” 

“What? What is that?” I ask.

“It’s a Glock nineteen. And this round is standard law enforcement issue.”

“So you’re saying Baker’s an undercover cop.”

“I’m saying I did eighteen months deep cover, and this place has got all the makings of a crash pad.”

“That does make a lot of sense. You can tell a lot about a person by how they decorate their house and if you just have nothing...then they can’t figure you out.” 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” A guy with a yellow tie bursts in, slamming the door behind him, I can hear him over my music.

“Sorry?”

“I told you, this is my case!” 

“Alright, first of all, don’t shout at me,” Aaron says, rising to his feet behind his desk. I sneakily pause my screamington playlist so I can hear this whole thing. “And secondly, you don’t decide what cases the BAU works on.”

“You ran my agent’s gun through IBIS?” I look out of my periphreal and see Uncle Jason standing outside the office door with files in his hands. 

“Cause I wanted to know who he worked for, and now that I do, I’d like to talk to him.” 

“You don’t have him.”

“No. You don’t know where he is?”

“He’s missing,” the man says, sitting down by me and sniffling. Uncle Jason opens the door and lets himself in, closing it afterwards. 

“How long?”

“Twelve hours.” 

“Before or after the murders?” I look back to my book, scanning the words to pick up where I was.

“You think Jimmy’s a suspect?” 

“Well, there’s a sketch of someone who looks an awful lot like him leaving the scene.” 

“That’s because he was there. After. Look, he ran into a couple of Baltimore detectives, and they made him while he was with Condore. Now, Jimmy tried to play it off, but he didn’t think that Condore had bought it, so he wanted to  go back and talk to him. When he saw what was left of the DiMarcos, he called us for a pickup. We showed up. He didn’t.” 

“You think he ran?” Aaron asks.

“No. Jimmy’s too experienced to run without contact.” Contact, contact, contact, con...con...con-tact. No, that can’t be it. Con-ca...that sounds even worse. “If he’s not calling in, then someone’s keeping him from doing it.” 

“Who’s Jimmy Baker’s target?” Uncle Jason asks. 

“Michael Russo. We’ve been after the guy for three years. Jimmy’s been under for almost two.” 

“We talked to Russo yesterday. He seemed genuinely surprised by the murders.”

“And you bought that? Let me tell you a little something about Michael Russo. The guy is a liar, and a good one. If he didn’t do it, then he knows who did. Oh hell, you know what? I’m wasting my time with you. You obviously don’t get it.”

“Agent Cramer, we’re not the enemy. Please sit down,” Jason says, blocking the door. Agent Cramer sits at Aaron’s desk, and Jason joins him. “We;re dealing with a very dangerous killer here...and we need your help. You know these people better than we do.” 

“This guy - if he is what you say he is and he has Jimmy, did he kill him already?”

“We don’t know.”

“I’ll help you in any way that I can. You help me get this man back to his family.” I pull off my headphones and put my book away again, grabbing my bag to go hang out with someone else.

“If it’s any comfort, Agent...I knew he was lying. They didn’t dress scrap metal,” I say, before walking out of the office.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You’re gonna need a bigger board,” Penelope says, bringing in a cardboard box. 

“Please tell me you brought some breakfast.”

“Huh. Trust me, sugar, you’re not going to want to eat when you see what’s in here. What is Jamie still doing here, I thought he had school?” Penelope asks, turning to me.

“Two day weeks for the rest of the month. Doctor wants me to take things slowly,” I answer. 

“This place is not slow, Jamie. You should be staying home with your dad.”

“He thinks it’s good that I get out. As long as I’m with one of you guys, I’m fine.” 

“How many more are there?” Derek asks Penelope. 

“Well, I’ve gone back fifteen years, and there’s over a hundred.” 

“A hundred unsolved murders?”

“Yeah, that we know of. And then there’s more coming in.”

“I can help bring in boxes,” I offer.

“Sorry, little noodle. You have to focus on school, and you can’t do any heavy lifting.” I pout at Penelope, who ruffles my mop of hair. 

“Torture’s consistent. You know, we thought this guy might have been at it a while, but this many victims, Garcia?” Derek sighs. “John Wayne Gacy killed at least thirty people. This guy’s more than tripled that.”

“Yeah, but this guy gets paid for it. He’s a hit man.”

“No...he’s more than that. Not all these victims were mob hits. You know, my guess is that he started hunting when he was really young...perfected his craft...moved on to bigger prey. Garcia, look at this, there’s no hesitation in the wounds, one clean cut through flesh and bone.” 

“Okay, so what does that tell us?”

“Most people wouldn’t imagine doing something like this to another human being, but this guy, he doesn’t even flinch. He’s got no conscience.” 

“Is that psychopathy or sociopathy?” I ask. 

“Sociopath. We’ve got ourselves a serial killer with the perfect career. Russo has no idea what he’s dealing with. I think we can shake him. Keep looking. Jamie, stay with Penelope and do your work.” He says, ruffling my hair and walking out of the room.

“Do I really get that distracted that easily?” I ask. 

“Yeah, you do.” My phone beeps and I peer at it, finding a text from Cal. “Give the phone. Ooh! A text from a boy!” 

“Penelope!”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Is this gonna work?” Elle asks.

“The beam is reflected off the pane according to the law of optics.” 

“Yeah, the angle of instance is equal to the angle of reflection.”

“Uh-huh. Is it gonna work?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“We’re gonna find out right now,” I comment.

“I need to see you tonight. I’ll call you from a secure line.”

“Apparently, it does.”

“Hey. Listen, you brought a lot of heat taking down Freddy like that...What - I’m dealing with the feds...Listen, meet me here at the office...they don’t know nothing...I’m dealing with them...stop being paranoid, Vinnie…”

“Bingo.”

“No. Vinnie.”

“Look for either VIncent or Vincenzo. Mob members are usually Italian, so focus on names of Italian origin...and keep it around Baltimore, look for a rap sheet indicating sociopathy to this level,” I ramble. 

“Well, he’s got eleven associates named Vincent,” Spencer says, collecting files. 

“No, make that ten. Vincent Cellito died last summer,” Elle corrects him. “You know, here’s something. What can you tell me about Vincent Sartori?” Elle then gives Penelope a look of surprise. “I was still drinking that.”

“Not only is this equipment expensive, it’s also extremely sensitive.”

“Don’t leave your coffee on the files next time,” I reprimand her. 

“Vincent Sartori.” 

“Currently doing six at Dannemora for racketeering.” 

“How about this Perotta? There’s not much on him.”

“Can you get into those records?” Elle asks Penelope. 

“Despite the fact that they were probably expunged, she can find the faintest echo of deletion and successfully re-create the file, thereby sending us all to prison for computer felony fraud counts.”

“We can make bail. Garcia?”

“Already in. Alcohol addiction at fourteen. Violent outbursts. Assaults. Once threw a molotov cocktail at someone sitting in their car.” 

“That sounds like a party,” I comment, not looking up from my book.

“Several notations for aggression. He once scheduled a visit to an infirmary to gain access to a boy who looked at him for too long?” 

“No hear, no remorse. Quick temper. And he was smart enough to stay off the radar as an adult. Paranoid personality. He could be our guy.” 

“There’s absolutely no information on him as an adult. No driver’s license, no utility bills, nothing. It’s like he became a ghost.” 

“Let’s just hope that they can catch them.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“This was all in his van?”

“Yep. The guy wasn’t exactly neat.” 

“Classic anti-social personality.” 

“What are these tapes?” I ask. 

“I don’t know. Why don’t Reid and Garcia take a look, let us know, alright?”

“Yeah. Movie night. I’ll make popcorn.” 

“I’m gonna join movie night,” I comment. “I’m not innocent, Derek, and I don’t need to tell you how.” 

“You’re twelve.”

“Fourteen. In case you haven’t forgotten, I’m not like the other kids, either.” My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out to see an image from Jasmine, a drawing of us and our friends. 

“Is that the boy?” Penelope asks.

“No,” I remark, typing back a quick ‘looks awesome!’ before tucking my phone away again.

“A boy?” 

“Derek! It’s not a boy!” 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You got that address?”

“In Glen Burnie like you thought.”

“Yes.” 

“It looks like Frank Perotta died in a suspicious hunting accident with Vincent, he was seventeen, it was like, thirty years ago.” 

“My guess is that it was no accident.”

“Well, you said he was looking for bigger prey, and it looks like he found it.” 

“Garcia...you’re my girl. Thank you. Jamie, keep it up, get ready for school. It’s Thursday morning.” Derek kisses her head and then leaves, closing the door to the cave behind him.

“I’m gonna need, like, five energy drinks to get through today,” I groan, throwing my head back and taking a light spin in the chair. 

“What are you even doing on my system?”

“Helping. I heard you say Frank Perotta and I just...did it. I’m gonna head to the bathroom, try to look like I haven’t been awake for the past three days. Gym class first thing in the morning fucking sucks ass.” I tell her, kissing her head and walking out of the cave with my bag on my shoulder. I stop at the glass doors to the bullpen, watching as officers take a man away in handcuffs, before stepping into the bullpen and heading to Derek’s desk, nicking his 3-in-1 from his go bag. 

“Why are you stealing Derek’s...soap?” Elle asks me from her desk. 

“Is he coming yet?” I ask.

“He’ll be a few minutes. What are you doing?”

“I was going to use the gym showers so I don’t go to school and people think I live in a cardboard box and then hitch a ride to school from Grant, but if you’ve got better ideas-”

“Come shower at mine and tell your dads.” 

“I only have the one dad.”

“You mean Hotch and Gideon aren’t your dads, too?” She jokes. “Just come on, I’m headed home, anyways, I’ll take you to school.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I insist. Besides, Grant and Spencer are probably going to want some time alone.” I sigh and pull out my phone as Elle grabs her things. 

“Hey, Dad, so I’ll be home tonight...I’m getting ready at Elle’s house this morning...the case just ended…”

“Make sure you eat, and tell Aaron and Jason where you’re going. How long was the case?”

“It started Monday morning, and I’m so...I’m gonna need a nap when I get home, we had to deal with the mob in Baltimore, and… I slept, I promise, I’ll make Elle get me an Egg McMuffin or something.”

“Alright, piccolo, just make sure you’re taking better care of yourself. I left yesterday to go to another signing, so go home after school and feed the dogs, and if you need a ride home, call one of yourr brothers or the BAU. And get a decent night’s sleep.” 

“I will. I love you, Dad, I’ll see you next week.” I hang up and put my phone in my pocket and climb into the passenger seat of Elle’s car. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t eat breakfast. Something’s wrong.” 

“Nothing’s wrong!”

[timespanner]

Earth. They called it that, because they were standing on it.

Putting together some (too many?) words on The Dan in the High Castle, before it falls off the iPlayer in just a little over a week. 

(Speaking of which, you might want to have your say on the future of the iPlayer - you know, just in case you’d like to stop your favourite shows from disappearing into the void after a measly thirty-day time span.)

Here be spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.

If there is one good thing that’s come out of having to wait two long years for Time Spanner 2, it’s that we all time-travelled to Martin Gay’s future in the meantime. (Everything’s a very slow time machine, if you think about it.) 

The new episode starts right where we left off, only with Laika the Dead Space Dog doing a quick recap of - well, you know, everything. It’s been two years after all, and the pilot episode’s no longer on the iPlayer (though you might want to try here, if you haven’t already.)

As Laika quite rightly points out, the exact logic of the Angel’s plan - tasking our feckless hero with stealing the Time Spanner, and then using it to bring back some unspecified technology from the future in order to save the world - has yet to be tested. Even more so when the Angel reluctantly admits to the true nature of said technology - a flesh-eating death laser, which she claims ‘is to be used only for good’. (Which, for some reason, keeps reminding me of that JFSP sketch featuring a young Hitler, and a time machine. Oh, well.)

As the story develops, the Angel seems to be gradually losing her aura of aloofness and power - not only does she appear somewhat bumbling at times, but she also sounds a tad jealous of Gabbie’s role in Martin’s life, such as it may be. We also find out what happened at Kraken Self-Storage: the explosion towards the end of the previous episode was caused by the Metatron, who blew up Mr Kraken’s scrying glass from the Heaven’s end - yikes, indeed - and there are now factions of angry Not-People (angels? some other supernatural beings?) after our Angel/Muse/Lady Wizard, and possibly Martin Gay, soon. 

(I am aware I’m most likely reading too much into this, but I find it quite intriguing that the aforementioned factions call themselves ‘The Usual’. You know, what with Martin mentioning he’s ‘the usual, thirty-eight’ in the pilot episode - apparently forgetting he’s a whole two years older than that. But hey, this is probably just me, so you might as well ignore this bit.)

We also learn that, along with granting its bearer the power to travel through all of time and space, the Time Spanner also serves as a means of communication between the transcendental dimension and the physical plane; either by functioning as some sort of transceiver implanted straight into your brain, or by turning any old mirror into an otherworldly version of FaceTime - provided that you mark said mirror with a sigil, that is. 

(Apparently, any and all sigils would do, but for some reason the Angel sees fit to start with a swastika, only to end up having to hastily reassure a rightfully indignant Martin that she definitely, definitely didn’t give the Time Spanner to Hitler. Which is even funnier in the context of the episode’s title being a reference to The Man in the High Castle, as I believe we can safely assume.)

And yes, the future. As rubbish as 2018 looks to Gabbie and Martin’s eyes - and heaven knows they’re not that wrong - things are not as bleak as they appear to be at first glance. The Nazis didn’t take over, or at least, Dan(iel) Kraken didn’t - he may have been made a Lord, but his overzealous Yellowcoats are a mere private security force, and the titular ‘high castle’ turns out to be nothing more than a flat in Vauxhall. 

(While it’s true that I do not know enough about South London to fully appreciate the extent of this joke, the whole ‘that’s Vauxhall’ exchange is one of my favourite parts of the entire episode. Lord Kraken and Gabbie are truly wonderful throughout this scene, especially when addressing one another - and may I just say, David Mitchell and London Hughes did a pretty amazing job there, which is really quite something when you consider how talented the entire cast is.)

And here we find Mr Mergatroid as well, who’s apparently been in the service of Lord Kraken for the past two years. Oh, and it (he?) has also been holding on to Martin’s shoes for all this time, which means our hero can finally stop wandering about shoeless; and while he’s not getting future shoes like Gabbie suggested at the beginning, he’s still getting his past shoes back from the future, which is - significant, somehow?

(On a somewhat related note, how did Lord Kraken successfully locate Gabbie’s phone - in the future? Do phones still work when you suddenly jump two years ahead of when you last paid your bill? Am I just fixating on an entirely irrelevant detail for no reason?)

So, yeah. Daniel Kraken may be little more than a rich (and possibly disturbed) individual, but he does seem to be perfectly fine with using force to extract the truth of what Martin saw on the other side of his magic mirror. Which in turn leads to some interesting questions about the morality of Gabbie’s choices at the end: Kraken is not lying when he says he didn’t kidnap Martin two years ago, but he did technically hold him there against his will, and while he never had the time to use force, it’s reasonable to assume that he would have done - does he deserve to be arrested, then? (To be fair, I’m just as terrible at this kind of question as Martin is when asked what he wants to do, so let’s just leave it at that.)

But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. We finally get another very interesting piece of information, which is that the Angel is not only capable of opening a portal that will bring you back to the real world, but also a portal to any (?) chosen point in time and space. (Incidentally, if on November 3rd, 2016 Martin skipped eight hours of his life to get to six o’clock in the afternoon, that means the first episode took place around, let’s say, ten in the morning? Well, its ending, anyway.) At least now we know how on earth she expected Martin to be able to bring those ‘ideas’ (or weapons, as they may be) back from his world’s future, when she spent the better part of the first episode claiming that you cannot travel backwards in time. (Never mind that Martin proved her wrong by travelling all the way back to the Big Bang, and then out the other side. Cool.)

And then - those final five minutes are such an emotional rollercoaster that I was left reeling in the aftermath of my first listen. The Time Spanner’s broken, so the only way they have to go back to 2016 is through the portal 'Bridget’ opens up for them; only then she claims she will remain trapped in the mirror until the sigil is erased, and my goodness, that moment when Martin volunteers to stay behind - well. (I’m so proud of him, I tell you.)

Martin’s trapped, and then he isn’t, as 2018 Gabbie shows up in a Yellowcoats uniform, and rescues him. I’m so here for this now twenty-two-year-old badass coming in to save the day, and that’s even without taking into account how much ‘time travel story where character A has to wait for n years to be reunited with character B’ is my cup of tea. 

(Speaking of which, might I interest you in this lovely and quite touching audio play written by Peter Davis of Monster Hunters fame? That’s the first thing that came into my mind right after this whole scene played out, anyway.)

And then - oh my days, that ending.

“But Gabbie, the Time Spanner’s broken.”

“Everything’s broken. Fix it! Oh, sorry, am I sounding old and grumpy?”

“Everyone gets hopeless.”

“Ha! Who said that? Was it someone amazing?”

That’s one of the most inspiring, life-affirming bits of writing I’ve listened to in a long time. We can but hope that not only Martin and Gabbie will succeed in making the world a better place, but that we the listeners will somehow do, too.

[onisionquotes]

The Call/This Is Cray/etc

mirror of video Hi there, yeah, hi it's me. How you doin'? Hah. So, I gotta talk about the elephant in the room, the elephant you don't know is in the room, but I wanna talk about that elephant. You guys know I like sharing my personal life with you. I LOVE SHARING ITS SO FUN! It's kind of like I gossip but I dont really like gossiping about other people, I moreso enjoy gossiping about myself. So with that being said. I wanna talk about something that happened recently. First of all, my spouse manages my business emails. Laineybot [GROAN]. So after six years or uh, seven years… six sev six sev… seven years. I had somebody record videos with me a long time ago, over six years ago. And they're obviously enjoying being in the video, I mean they volunteered to be in the videos. And you know down the line that person and I, because we were dating and stuff, well I decided to end things with them and they went home to Canada. And then I decided to get back with them, for like the ninetieth[?] time and they were taking money from me so they could survive in Canada for a while, and they picked that money up that I sent to them on a regular basis with their "guy friend". But later on, one of my fans informed me that that "guy friend" who they were regularly picking up money in the car of at the money tree or whatevers in Canada. That person had actually gotten them pregnant while they were dating me and taking money from me. I, of course, fell apart and walked 6 miles to Dennys. And in that Dennys, I uh, there's nothing really that happened at Dennys I just fell apart more. I walked home, six miles or whatever, and eventually a person named Taylor my spouse put me back together. So I used to work with somebody in videos a long time ago and then they got pregnant with someone elses baby and recently I've been uploading those videos that I did with that person so long ago because even though they did that to me, even though they took my money and we were dating and then they got pregnant with someones baby. Like even though there's all that really like not-so-great feeling there, I still enjoy the art. You know, the work we did together. It's very… nice. It's wonderful really. That person was really very funny and I can see that, despite… having gone through those things with them. But I got an email, or Lainey got an email, because Lainey manages the business. And I can't show it to you, because the last time I showed you guys and email, I got in a lot of trouble on youtube. I don't know why I got in trouble, but I did. So I can't like, show screencaps anymore I just have to like, repeat them. Oh! But I will post this to the corteria[?] on onision.org/forums which only like six people have access too. It's a hidden forum within the forum. It's pretty cool. But I will post this screenshot there. Anyway, it says: "To whom it may concern, you are being advised that any and all material containing imagery, sound or likeness of that persons name is to be immediately removed from any public sites." NO. The answer is NO. Okay. You can't do that. When somebody volunteers to be in a video you can't just say "you know what, I revoke it" NO. The agreement was you are giving me property. It is mine now. There was never any talk of anything outside that. Just because it is years later and you no longer feel like "oh I love these things" you still did them, and you still volunteered yourself to be in those videos. To revoke the right for me distributing content that I made, with you as a volunteer, that is totally bonkers. If that person from over six years ago, wants to go and try take everything that's mine just because it slightly involves them, uh well, then I say you give me back the thousands of dollars that you took from me. You give me back the money I sent you when you were with that other guy, uh, you give me back all the money I spent on plane tickets for you, you give me back all the money I spent on outfits and food and housing et cetera. I think we're about… $50,000 by now? You give me back all that, and yes I will take them down. But here's the thing. I am not even really making any money off of most those videos. Reality check. And I am keeping those comedy sketches up because they're awesome and I love those comedy sketches. And I'm not going to just throw away all that wonderful stuff, because somebody who got pregnant with another persons baby while dating me, no longer enjoys the sketches as much as I do. Anyway, they say "You have not been given any rights to publish these." Yes. I was. They were in them! They were literally… UGH. Ok guys, so when you voluntarily collaborate with someone, when you play out characters in a video. Like lets say I got in a banana costume and I was featured in a DanIsNotOnFire video, or I was in a uh smosh video or I was in any of your favourite youtuber video ok? If I was in like a banana costume dancing around in the background, could you imagine just because I didnt like them anymore that I went and sent them a letter saying "you must remove all this immediately!" It just.. to me… it seems…. there's not better word than bonkerschnitzel. Tha-thats literally… its beyond bonkers. It's bonkerschnitzel to just - because you feel like it. To pretend you were never ever totally cool with being in a video and totally gave permission does not like "I JUST FILMED SOMEONE SLEEPING" it's not how it went. They say they expect to receive proof that everything is gone within five days, and it's like dude, come on. Wha? This just makes me think why do I work with anyone ever? Why do I have anyone in my videos ever? If down the line they are just gonna cause an issue. I just want to make awesome funny videos, and if I can't make an awesome funny video with someone without them worrying that later on they'll be like "I dont want this video out there anymore" its like ugh you're ruining everything!! Anyway they say if I don't comply with their demands it's going to result in a cause of action. I dont know what that means. It says I should govern myself accordingly. Again, question mark. Anyway, its cute that they think they can just pretend permission was never given to something even though it is beyond obvious that permission was given for something. But in no rational world does this hold merit. In fact I have my phone here, lets see if we can call call this guy (G = Greg, M = Manager) G: Hi I got an email that says I need to remove videos with an artist of yours. M: Yeah G: Yeah M: Greg? G: Yeah. M: This is her manager. Uh, hi Greg. G: Permission to use those videos is beyond obvious. M: uh, what is it written? Can you send me a document where she signed off to agree to do that? G: Are you saying I had a gun to her head? M: No I'm not saying I had a gun to her head, I'm asking for the agreement. Can you send it to me? Then we're good to go. G: Yeah, well to prove in any court that someone was unwillingly participating in a video I would be amazed to see that happen. M: Yeah well if you give me your address we can get to court if that's required. I'm asking you, one professional to another, uh, these videos are six years old to remove those videos completely from your site and to have some human decency to get that - G: You realise these are comedy sketches right? And when you volunteer to be in a comedy video sketch and its beyond obvious that someone is willingly volunteering in the sketch does that seem, uh, wait Ok lets be real and honest real quick ok? It's obvious she's voluntarily in the videos. It's obvious. Like there's no situation in which you say "oh that person wasnt willingly in a video?" cause they are. It's obvious! M: Oh.. ok I'm not interested in a debate - G: That's because the debate doesnt work in your favor. it's so obvious like do you understand that if somebody is doing something that they're either willingly doing it or they're not willingly doing it which means someone's holding them at ransom or something. M: okay well again - G: You know you're wrong is my point? M: Whether I'm wrong or right is not relevant to this discussion G: It's totally important. M: What I'm asking you to do is to simply take those videos down. If you wanna send me your information, if you want to escalate this, I am more than happy to escalate this to a court and lets see what they say. G: Oh my god, so you know for a fact that this person is willingly in those videos, yet you're gonna escalate this to a court because you're so dishonest? it's so obvious that somebody is in the videos willingly and you know this. Yet you're gonna try and take legal action against somebody despite the fact you are so obviously wrong? M: Greg, let me tell you something G: Just be a real human, just be a real person dude. You know they were willingly in those videos. M: So do me a favor and send me your contact information - G: you're trying to avoid the real conversation because you know you're wrong M: I'm not having this conversation because it's not a conversation I want to have G: because you're wrong. you are so wrong. you know they are voluntarily in that video. why would they be in costume? why would they be in costume? why would they be in costume, acting, playing a character unless they were voluntarily in the video? And they were compensated! They were compensated! M: if you're going to do all the talking, this is going to be a one way conversation. G: because your only response is "Send me your address" thats just creepy. M: No, I'm not asking for your address, send me your attorneys address and I'm happy to escalate this if you want too. G: why would I waste money proving on that someone was who was obviously in a video was obviously in a video voluntary? M: then simply take the videos down they're volunt- G: WHY WOULD I DO THAT WHEN I OWN THESE? Ok I paid this actor through housing, through food etc M: How much did you pay her, I'm sorry? G: Housing, food, et cetera, plane tickets, everything. M: Do you have a contract? G: Do I have proof that the person was voluntarily in the video you fucking idiot? M: No do you have a contract? G: YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT DUDE. THEY WERE OBVIOUSLY VOLUNTARY BECAUSE THEY'RE IN A COSTUME, THEY'RE PLAYING A ROLE. THERE'S NO GUN TO THEIR HEAD HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE? M: actually there was a gun in that video if i recall G: OH MY GOD YOU ARE SUCH AN IDIOT ITS OBVIOUSLY A FAKE GUN. Are you actually saying you're going to try and prove in court that they are actually held at gunpoint to do a video? You are so fucking stupid. You are a fraud. You are a fucking fraud. M: Greg, if you continue to disparage me, this conversation is over. G: you are not a real human. you're not a real human. you can't have a conversation M: Right, and the only person who has been talking is you. G: Actually you've been talking too Mr Technical. -CALL END- Alright, so that guy is a jerk [LAUGH] I have to make that whole phone call private, only patrons are going to hear it, it might not even be on there for long … patron only thing? I cant believe this. I just [exhales air] This guy, I'm on the phone with this guy. and he's literally saying this person wasn't voluntarily in there if i dont have a contract with them when they're obviously voluntarily in the video. they're in costume, they're acting out a character. Like this is the world we live in were someone who is obviously participating in something and someone is gonna be like "Well technically I'm taking this to court" ANYWAY. So I really really dont like that fella. In fact lets call him back. [VOICEMAIL] Aww he didnt answer. Darn it, anyway. So, feel free to let me know what you think in the comments. Should someone be able to revoke permission to be in a video because down the line they are no longer happy about the fact that they were in comedy sketches forever ago? Should people do that? Ugh I'm so frustrated. This is the differenc between honest, saying yeah, I volunteered to be in this video all that time ago so I can't take away that rights or anything like that, and someone who is like in the most not honest way possible, lash out at this person from so many years ago by taking away something that isn't even mine. I just can't believe that question. Is it in writing? As to whether or not that person was voluntarily in that video. Because are you not human? Can you not see with your eyes that that person is literally in costume, in character right there totally willing. Like what do they think happened? I'd like for them to explain a situation where that person wasn't voluntarily there. Like any proof whatsoever. That that person wasn't voluntarily there. if you look at comedy sketch after comedy sketch after comedy sketch, they are there, recording in different costumes and I have all the behind the scenes footage too! So I can literally prove all the conversations that we had, there was nothing except them volunteering to be there. In fact I have footage of that person asking to continue recording a video even though I had stopped recording with them, because I knew I could play the character better than they could in that scene. And they were like "no no no I wanna continue". It's one thing to have something in writing, but to have someones voice and face on film saying they want to be on video? You lost.

[freaoscanlin]

Lost for You to Find

Rated PG, 2011 words, part of the Safekeeping ’Verse. Tony meets his Aunt Bobbi and everybody catches up with each other. Written for @jewishsuperfam and @ohladybegood. Song, as ever, from Everything Changes from Waitress.

“The problem with stick figures,” Bobbi Morse said as she unloaded bags onto the hotel room bed, “is that they’re not very specific. So all I knew was Daisy-Jemma-baby but not age or gender. Luckily, Star Wars is gender-neutral. Though I did get some strange looks from the cashier for buying such a range of outfits.”

“And so the nerd indoctrination begins,” Daisy said, holding up a little onesie that said ‘My Other Ride is an X-Wing.’

“Start ’em young.” Bobbi unloaded the last bag, pulling out a little rattle, which she handed to Daisy. She turned expectantly to Jemma, eyebrows high. “So? You two aren’t going to be the kind of moms that never let anybody hold their kid, are you?”

“Of course you can hold him,” Jemma said, laughing. It was less of an ordeal to transfer the baby over than it had been last night—for one thing, Tony, despite being up half the night fretting, was wide awake and gurgling away. And she was getting a crash course on how not to awkward and ungainly when holding him.

Bobbi took the baby with practiced ease, cooing and chirping at him. “Oh, he’s precious, you guys. You, sir, a chunk. A precious chunk. Look at those cheeks! Oh, my god, I could just eat you up.” She looked over at Daisy and Jemma. “I guess you’re not going to need the twelve-month sizes I bought for a while, huh, are you?”

“We think he’s about two weeks old, but he weighs in, like, the ninetieth percentile,” Daisy said. “We had plenty of time to look it up, as this little guy didn’t want anybody sleeping last night, did he?”

He truly hadn’t. Jemma had always felt that every human being could be rationed with, but that belief had nothing in the face of a baby ripped from his reality and put in a strange place with new people. Tony had cried whenever put in the bassinet. Holding him had reduced the tears to fussing. Walking with and singing to him had seemed to be the only thing that comforted him. And since neither she nor Daisy knew any lullabies—“They weren’t exactly that loving at St. Agnes, it was more ‘go to sleep or you won’t get supper tomorrow.’”—this had led to Jemma dozing while Daisy paced back and forth, singing Queen songs she’d probably learned from the cassette Coulson always kept in Lola.

Jemma had fallen asleep sometime during Fat-Bottomed Girls, which wasn’t exactly lullaby-appropriate.

Jemma shook her head at that now and began to sort the miscellaneous items Bobbi had brought with her, steadfastly ignoring the slightly crumpled sketch drawn in a childish hand. Daisy had examined it and set it down for her to study, but Jemma wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to think about her having a baby with Daisy being some kind of prophecy. Not just yet. In the meantime, she sorted through the rest of the offerings.

“How’d you find us?” Daisy asked.

“Lance set up a proximity alert at the base,” Bobbi said. “We had a vague idea when you’d be back, but, you know, life goes on. And it’s not exactly a quick hop from Mozambique to get back here in time.”

“And it’s okay that you’re here with us?” Jemma asked. After all, Bobbi and Lance had been forced from the team under some dire circumstances.

Bobbi cooed at the baby, who regarded her like some kind of strange alien. “No smile for your Auntie Bobbi? That’s fine, we’ll work on it. And yeah, it’s completely fine. Those orders against us being SHIELD agents have been lifted.”

“How?” Daisy asked.

“You were gone eighteen months. A lot’s happened.” Bobbi let Tony wrap his hand around one of her fingers, grinning with delight. “He’s so cute. He looks so serious.”

“He hasn’t smiled yet,” Daisy said.

“If he did, it would be gas,” Jemma told her.

“I think that’s a myth.”

“You two are cute, too,” Bobbi said. Both Jemma and Daisy wrinkled their noses at her, and Bobbi seemed to jolt, obviously remembering something. “Oh, right, and we cleared your name, Daisy. Talbot’s fine and everybody knows it was an LMD that shot him.”

‘What?”

“You were gone eighteen months,” Bobbi repeated. “Did you think we would really sit around and let the entire world drag your names through the mud?”

“No?” Daisy asked, warily. “But you did have Lance with you, so…”

Bobbi grimaced, as though to say that was a fair point. “It didn’t go perfectly. There might still be a warrant out for your arrest, but if you stay out of Georgia, you should be fine.”

“Gotcha,” Daisy said as Jemma asked, “Do you mean the state or the country?”

Bobbi thought about it. “Both?”

“Good old Hunter,” Daisy said with a laugh. “I have missed you two.”

“So you knew we would be coming back?” Jemma asked.

Bobbi nodded over at the drawing, which finally made Jemma pick it up and look it over. The dark-haired stick figure with the brown eyes and the smile, that was clearly Daisy. And her own stick figure held Daisy’s hand. Between the two of them, on the ground, was a little baby with a black hair. But what she had assumed was just a blur of color in the corner behind them, she realized, was a childish rendition of the sign for their hotel. “Ah,” she said.

She couldn’t wait until science had advanced sufficiently as to explain Robin’s gift, she decided.

“Ideally, we would’ve been at the base waiting for you,” Bobbi said. “But then you wouldn’t have been at the hotel at all, so I should’ve known. And ooh. I’m going to pass him back to his mommies, as honorary auntieship means I don’t change diapers unless I have to.”

“I’ll handle it,” Jemma said. She picked out a onesie that said ‘I Am A Jedi Like My Aunt Before Me,’ and took care of the soiled diaper, listening with one ear as Bobbi caught Daisy up on everything that had happened while they’d been in the future. It appeared they hadn’t had much more fun in the current timeline than the SHIELD team had in 90 years in the future.

“What about you?” Bobbi asked, taking the baby again as Jemma moved over to the sink to start heating up a bottle of formula. “What the hell happened to all of you, that you come back with a baby? Who knocked up whom? And how?”

“Nothing like that, gutter-brain,” Daisy said, looking oddly pink. “They engineer babies in the future.”

“So all the responsibility and none of the fun?” Bobbi asked, wiggling her eyebrows at Daisy.

Had the hotel room always been this warm? Jemma focused on measuring out the proper amount of powder into the bottle.

“Enough of that line of questioning, Agent Morse,” Daisy said. “Tony wasn’t something either of us did. You know Caligula?”

“The Roman emperor?”

“Turns out even in crazy future times, history repeats itself. Ours was a Kree named Kasius and he ran a little base on what was left of earth. Think feudal oppression levels of awful meets the Hunger Games. Even worse, he liked keeping the prettiest people on the base as silent and deaf slaves.”

Jemma focused carefully on the water temperature, listening to the way the water hit the sink. Her breathing remained steady—and perfectly, comfortingly loud—in her ears.

“And there was also the inhuman slave trade going on, too,” Daisy said. “So that was a party.”

“No,” Bobbi said, her eyes wide.

“He liked to put us through gladiator death matches.”

“Seriously? Are you okay?”

“Simmons took a bigger hit than I did,” Daisy said, looking over. “But she insists she’s fine.”

“I am,” Jemma said. The scar from her right shoulder to the center of her chest was still an angry red—she’d checked in the shower—but it only ached a little. The tech Fitz had used to heal her had done its job, more or less.

Daisy gave her a dubious look now, as though she didn’t believe her.

“I’m hardly going to disrobe to prove it to you, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” She finished making up the bottle and handed it to Bobbi, taking a seat on the bed next to her friend. “We came so close to losing Daisy to slave traders. We would have, if Fitz hadn’t showed up.”

“Anyway, things went to hell in a handbasket the way they always do,” Daisy said. “We had to fight our way out of there and Fitz and Simmons magicked—”

“Scienced,” Jemma said before she realized that didn’t sound any better.

“—something to get us back here. On the way out, we went through their baby-making lab, and we spotted him.” Daisy nodded at Tony, who was suckling at the bottle, his little hands waving in the air. “And it was kind of obvious.”

“He looks a lot like you,” Bobbi said, nodding.

Daisy shook her head at herself. “Jemma ran the DNA results back at the base. What is it—fifty-three percent me, forty-seven percent you?” she asked.

“Thereabouts,” Jemma said. “We’ve already established that he has my nose.”

“You two are taking this rather well, all considering,” Bobbi said.

Daisy and Jemma exchanged a look. “Ever been in a room with like twenty copies of yourself?” Daisy asked.

“I—can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“All our friends were robots, and then we went into a computer simulation where Ward was still alive—”

“—and Fitz was evil—”

“—and upon escaping from that, we had to fight Dr. Radcliffe’s assistant who was now inhuman,” Jemma said, as Fitz’s journey was a long and thorny subject for her. “She set up an LMD of Daisy to kill Talbot, which mercifully appears to have failed.”

“And while we’re reeling from all of that noise and we just want a slice of pie,” Daisy said, “we get sucked into the future. This is not even getting into the story of our friend Robbie, whose head turns into a flaming skull. So, like, on a scale of one to ten for weirdness? Tony is like a three.”

“You guys really need a nap,” Bobbi said.

“No kidding,” Daisy said.

“Well, I can help with that bit. Pack your things. We set up temporary housing for all of you while you get back on your feet. I imagine Lance is finished telling the others. We even got a car seat for the munchkin.”

Bobbi, of course, was all too happy to hold—and burp—Tony while Daisy and Jemma re-packed all the baby supplies (“We’re going to need diaper bags.”) into the shopping bags, slotting their own meager possessions in among Tony’s things. That surely must be a metaphor for how their lives had changed in the past twenty-four hours, Jemma thought as she followed Bobbi to the lobby, where the others waited.

Lance immediately brightened up, making grabby hand motions until Bobbi passed the baby over. “We’ll get you in Liverpool duds soon, mate,” he said, chucking Tony under the chin.

Of course, the baby began to wail (“Serves you right. Liverpool,” Fitz scoffed) and had to be rescued from “Uncle Lance.” Things settled somewhat after they were loaded in the SUVs Lance and Bobbi had brought, driving all the way to the other side of town.

Daisy and Jemma, seated on either side of Tony’s car seat, didn’t speak a word until Bobbi pulled up into the driveway of an unassuming single-story brick home that she reassured them had all of the amenities they—and Tony—would need. Jemma let Daisy unhook the car seat as she climbed out to study the house.

Bobbi collected their bags, leading the way to the front door, which she unlocked with a key that she passed to Jemma, as Daisy had her hands full with Tony’s car seat.

“Welcome home.”

[cutiesonthehorizon]

Exorcist Fic - The Price of Vision part 3

I’ve posted the third part of my fic, if you are interested, you can find it under the cut or on AO3 - Price of vision 03. The chapter cuts of at a strange place, but the scene was too long so it’ll continue in the next chapter. Hope you enjoy and let me know your thoughts:)

By the time they reached the motel, Tomas was lightly dozing on the passenger seat. Marcus wasn't planning to wake him before they got a key, but turning off the engine was incentive enough. Tomas blinked and looked around with some confusion. It was late at night and there were only few street lamps lighting the road and the unfamiliar building.

 "What's going on?" he asked sleepily and Marcus wondered if he was confused from waking up or if it was because of the concussion.

 "At the motel. You okay?"

 "Yeah, sure," came the answer even as Tomas winced and reached for the door. "Want me to get a room?"

 During their six month journey it was usually Tomas who took care of the motel, the collar often bringing a warmer reaction and fewer questions.

 "No, I'll take care of that. Stay in the car."

 "Why?" Tomas paused, the confusion showing on his face and Marcus rolled his eyes.

 "There's still blood on your face," he explained, pointing at his own face. "Right now, my tired old mug looks less suspicious than your bruised one."

 "Oh," Tomas gingerly touched his face and felt the flakes of dried blood on his skin and hair. "You might be right on this one," he admitted, receiving a snort in reply as Marcus left the car.

 Five minutes later they were both inside a warm apartment.

 "We have our own kitchen, fantastic." Marcus stated and went to look inside the fridge. It was of course empty except for some bottled water, but there was also a stove and a microwave. "I can cook us some breakfast in the morning."

 "As long as you get to buy the eggs," Tomas muttered, looking around. Once again they had to share a room with two beds, though there was also a comfortably looking couch in the living room. While usually Tomas didn't mind sharing a room, he had a feeling tonight would be anything but peaceful for him. Maybe he could just fall asleep on the couch and let Marcus have a quiet night. As if reading his mind though, Marcus headed right for the couch and flopped down on it, bones creaking and all, not leaving much space to share.

 "Think I'll grab a shower and lie down," Tomas said with a sigh, heading towards the bathroom, when Marcus' voice stopped him.

 "No shower!"

 "What?" Tomas turned around, a little bit miffed. "You wanna go first?" he asked with a confused frown, only to get another eye roll. Man, if Marcus continued with the eye rolling Tomas would get dizzy just from that.

 "No, you idiot. The doctor super glued the wound on your head... you're not supposed to shower a few days. Or at least not get the wound wet." Because not showering a few days in their type of work and living in close quarters with another bloke was quite out of the question.

 "Oh. I forgot," Tomas admitted, then frowned. "I doubt the doctor used Superglue though."

 Marcus shrugged the smirk back on his face.

 "They used it in the war, so who knows." Marcus stood up, stretching his back then headed towards the door.  "Just wash up and go to bed, I'll wake you in few hours, to make sure your brain isn't leaking."

 Tomas wanted to answer 'Yes, father,' just because it seemed so ridiculous getting ordered to bed, but thought better of it. That would open a whole new can of worms.

 "Where are you going?"

 "We haven't eaten the whole day, if I don't count that junk food in the hospital. There's a 24/7 around the corner, I'll grab us something to eat. Anything you'd like?"

 The thought of food slightly turned Tomas' stomach, so he grimaced and shook his head.

 "I'll pass, thanks. Maybe tomorrow."

 Judging from Marcus look, the 'maybe' tomorrow was not going to be accepted. Shrugging it off, Tomas walked to the bathroom. He looked into the mirror just as the front door closed shut, so Marcus didn't hear the muttered swear when Tomas got a first good look at himself.  Now he understood why Marcus didn't want him to go to the front desk. The bruise looked vile and the dried up blood didn't help. He was lucky that hammer didn't do more damage. The doctor told him the same that being mid motion might've saved him. Though if this was just a glancing blow, Tomas really didn't want to think about how taking a full blow to the skull would look like. He grabbed some paper tissues and turned on the sink, rubbing the blood off as gently as possible, wincing at every touch. Finally looking a little less like a victim of a robbery gone bad, Tomas cleaned up the sink. He was about to throw the dirty tissues into the trash, when his head started spinning and he had to lean against the wall for support.

 Taking several deep breaths, trying to push back the sudden nausea, Tomas slowly slid down the wall, eternally grateful that the bathroom was properly cleaned. Closing his eyes proved to be a mistake though as all he could see was the glint of the hammer heading his way and there was a ringing sound in his ears eerily reminiscent of Harper's screams. Tomas pushed his fists against his eyes, trying to push back the images that assaulted him. His head felt like it was going to explode. All he wished for right now was to get into bed and get some sleep, but he really didn't think he could make it there without throwing up. So he let his aching head rest on his knees and tried hard to think about anything else but the last 24 hours.

 He must've fallen into a light doze, because he didn't hear the rattling of the keys in the door, or Marcus putting down the groceries. What he heard was a rustle of clothes dangerously close and the swish of air as the door opened...

 "No-" Tomas jerked, pushing his back against the wall, eyes wide and disoriented.

 "Tomas?" Marcus spoke, his voice as soft as if he was back in the house, talking to Harper.  He was leaning down, the place too cramped to allow him better access to the young priest, but he still managed to put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze it lightly. "It's me, Marcus." There was worry in his eyes and Tomas felt stupidly guilty for being the cause of it. He seemed to feel guilty for a lot of things lately.

 "Sorry," slipped out of his mouth, but it seemed to only make Marcus frown more.

 "Are you-"

 "I'm fine," Tomas quickly said, still trying to calm down his wildly beating heart. "Sorry for... I didn't hear you return."

 "Maybe we should get your hearing checked out as well," Marcus said with a small grin, but it quickly vanished.

 "Why are you on the bathroom floor, Tomas?"

 Tomas looked around, hoping to come up with a totally natural answer, but there was nothing. His brain was mush and he was just happy to see Marcus.

 "I just... felt like it?" he said with a grimace and earned a sigh.

 "Do you perhaps feel like getting up now?" Marcus asked, offering his hand. Tomas grabbed it shakily and with Marcus' help managed to stand up. The room once again went on a merry ride and he felt himself leaning against the older man, worrying that they would both fall, but Marcus was steady as a rock. Tomas thought he should tell him that and so he did. Marcus chuckled, the action causing Tomas to sway a bit.

 "Okay, you are definitely off your rocker," Marcus said with a sigh and wrapped his arm around Tomas' waist, helping him toward the bedroom. Tomas was quickly deposited on one of the twin beds. The motion made him clench his teeth and groan in discomfort.

 "If you feel sick, tell me. I'd rather bring you a bucket than clean up vomit."

 Tomas mustered up enough strength to glare at the older man, who just raised an eyebrow challengingly.

 "Well?"

 "I'm good, thanks," Tomas uttered, hoping he won't regret it later. Once he was lying on the bed, unmoving, the spinning lessened, but he still felt queasy. He winced a bit when he felt the bed dip and opened his eyes, only to be met by a studious look.

 "Did you lose consciousness while I was gone?" Marcus asked, his voice lower than usual, as if knowing that any loud sound was currently making Tomas wish for a quick and easy death.  

 "No. I just got dizzy... that's all. Thought sitting it out would help."

 "Good. I won't have to call an ambulance then," Marcus said, suddenly sounding chipper. "Here, take this," he handled Tomas the pills they got at the hospital and some water. Once Tomas dutifully sipped it down, he leaned back and hoped his stomach won't rebel.

 "Thanks," he muttered, eyes already slipping closed. He heard a soft 'You're welcome', then felt Marcus standing. His boots were removed and a blanket was thrown over him, but Tomas was already out.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Marcus wasn't really planning to sleep. Finding Tomas on the bathroom floor gave him a scare he didn't wish to repeat and the confused state of the young priest made him worry, even though the doctor warned them about it. So after whipping up some quick dinner for one, Marcus settled on his bed and pulled out a sketchpad he used for his drawings. Maybe putting some of the images on paper would stop them from haunting him during the night.

 Sketching helped him focus, to put his thoughts in order. He wished for the relaxing sound of his cassette player, but knew Tomas wouldn't appreciate it right now. Maybe if he felt better tomorrow Marcus could use it as kind of a payback for being a smartass earlier. With that thought in mind, Marcus let the pencil slip from his fingers as his head fell back on the comfy pillow.

 The nightmare was expected, but it hurt nevertheless. Standing in his old house and watching his parents argue was something Marcus was used to seeing. It was one of his usual nightmares, always ending the same way... with his mother lying dead on the floor, her head bloodied and squishy. Marcus still remembered seeing the broken pieces of skull protruding from the wound and the grayish mush of the brain matter peeking out. In the dream he was still a seven year old kid, watching as his father took the hammer and bashed his mom's head in. He was the seven year old kid reaching for the poaching rifle and shooting his father dead before he could do him in as well. Most nights the nightmare didn't end there. Most nights, the gruesome scene with both of his parents dead turned into any of the other scenes from his past. He was back at the orphanage, back in the catacombs with only the demon for company. He was back in Mexico trying futilely to save Gabriel.  Nowadays there was also the nightmare of a possessed Casey Rance staring at him with a double pupil in her eye.

 Tonight though the dream went different. Tonight, instead of his mother lying on the floor with her head bashed in it was Tomas, and instead of Lorraine it was Marcus' mother holding the hammer. His father was standing next to Marcus, arms crossed on his chest and a sick smile on his face as he turned to the stunned seven year old.

 "See? I knew she was a bad seed. You should have just let me kill her." With a shrug of his shoulders the man turned back to the scene, looking on as his wife used the hammer to beat Tomas into an unrecognizable pulp.

 Marcus wanted to scream, to stop the woman he couldn't even recognize anymore, but he was frozen in place.  All he could do was stare with his mouth open in silent scream as the scene went on and on. Finally, after what seemed like eternity, something in the corner of his eyes moved and he saw Harper walking slowly towards the rifle on the wall. As she took it off the wall and checked if there were bullets inside, she spotted Marcus looking at her. With an impish grin, she put a finger to her mouth in a universal gesture of silence.

 "You took care of mine, I'll take care of yours," she mouthed and pulled the trigger.

 Marcus woke up with a gasp, the sketchpad falling from the bed with a thunk. His heart was beating fast and his ears were still ringing from the sound of the shot he heard as Harper fired the rifle.

 "Holy hell," he muttered half breathless and sat up, looking towards the other bed. Tomas was still asleep but judging from the grimace on his face and faster breathing he was in the grips of a nightmare as well.

 Marcus rubbed at his eyes, trying to push away the images from the nightmare. Seeing Tomas alive and albeit bruised but with his skull still in one piece was a relief. Being able to speak with him would be even better, but Marcus was still too shook up to face a possible conversation in the middle of the night. Still, Tomas seemed to be fighting some sort of nightmare himself. When he winced in his sleep and a small whimper escaped him, Marcus couldn't stop his hand from reaching out. Resting his palm on Tomas' chest he was surprised to feel how wildly his heart was beating.

 "Hush," Marcus soothed as Tomas reacted to the touch. "It's okay, it's just a dream." He knew that what he was doing was illogical. After all, Tomas wasn't a child in need of soothing. He was an adult man having a nightmare and the best thing would be to wake him up or let him work it out himself. But after his own nightmare, Marcus needed some reassurance that none of that was real and feeling the heart beating under the palm of his hand was reassuring enough.  Tomas also seemed to sense his presence, because he was starting to calm down. It seemed like he and Tomas shared more than just their faith in God. Although the young priest surely didn't have such a turbulent childhood as Marcus, he wasn't immune to nightmares either.

 Marcus waited until the heartbeat slowed down marginally then pulled away his hand as if burned. After everything that happened, he should try and keep his distance, keep a cool head so to speak. But it seemed that he was doing quite the opposite.  With a shake of his head, he headed into the bathroom. He could feel the sweaty shirt sticking to his skin. The cut on his arm was stinging like hell too. While he wasn't about to turn on the shower in the middle of the night, throwing some cold water on his face and changing shirts sounded just about heavenly.

 When he left the bedroom, Tomas looked to be sleeping almost peacefully. When Marcus returned five minutes later it was a whole different picture. Tomas was either back in the throes of a nightmare or he was having some kind of a fit, because he was trashing like mad and groaning as if in pain. Marcus cursed his previous decision not to wake him up and rushed across the room, worried that with all that trashing his protégé would end up on the floor.

 Grabbing Tomas' face in both hands, Marcus gently slapped his face.

 "Hey, wake up! Tomas? It's just a nightmare. Come on, wake up!" Marcus repeated several times until the brown eyes opened, unfocused and hazy but still a welcome sight. For a second Marcus thought he would see only the whites of the priest's eyes as happened earlier in the hospital when Tomas connected with the demon in Cindy. That blind look still gave him the creeps.

 "Harper?" Tomas asked, blinking and looking around searchingly. Marcus could feel his pulse beating hard under his fingers.

 "She's okay. Calm down, it was just a nightmare," he said but Tomas still seemed disoriented, caught in some dream. His eyes roamed across the room then finally settled on Marcus. Brown eyes focused on the familiar face as Tomas grabbed one of the hands still holding his face.

 "Marcus," he sighed and some of the tension left his body.

 "The one and only," Marcus quipped with a smirk, hoping to calm the man even further. "You back with me?"

 "Si," Tomas gave a shaky nod and Marcus finally let go of his face, though Tomas still kept his hold on the older man's hand, using it as an anchor.

 They sat there for a minute in total silence, unmoving. It was Marcus who gave a gentle pat to Tomas' chest and gave him an inquiring look.

 "Are you alright now?"

 "Y-yeah, fine," Tomas answered and as if just now realizing he was still holding Marcus' hand as a prisoner, he let go.  A little bit shaky, but he managed to sit up without any help and Marcus stepped back, giving him some space.  

 "What's the time?" Tomas asked, rubbing at his eyes then wincing from pain as he managed to hit the bruise on his head.

 "3:20 am."

 "Damn," Tomas looked up with a grimace that quickly turned into an apologetic look. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you up."

 Marcus didn't comment. He just stood back, giving Tomas the look.

 "What?" Tomas asked, perturbed.

 "What was the nightmare about?"

 Tomas looked at Marcus and his teeth clenched.

 "I need to use the bathroom," he said after a few seconds, ignoring the question. Marcus watched him go, relieved to see he didn't wobble. While Tomas freshened up, Marcus picked up his forgotten sketchbook and pencil lying on the floor and looked at his drawing of Harper. She looked healthy and dare say even happy on the picture and Marcus wished to get a chance and see her that way. Maybe in few days, when the drugs are out of her system and she'll be on her way to the new family, maybe he'll see that smile on her face. For now he made sure the picture was safely tucked away in his suitcase.