#they are essentially random strangers who make cool things I enjoy to watch

[falconwhitaker]

.

[rexxdjarin]

💕👀❓

Ask game !

💕 How is your OC like with physical affection? What are their boundries? Do they enjoy being touched or is that a no-go? Is there any reason behind this?

So my OC/reader in Captain’s Log loves physical affection and she’s actually the one who teaches Rex the beauty of what that feels like. She loves little touches, to touch and be touched…circles on her back, caressing over Rex’s face, especially his jaw and cheek bones.

However, she highly dislikes being touched if she’s angry at her partner after a fight or something and needs time to cool off. In situations like that, no touching is allowed until they have a conversation and smooth things out.

And she absolutely HATES unwanted touching from strangers since it’s something she finds intimate and doesn’t want just anyone feeling entitled to her physical being. Her body is for herself and for Rex.

Combining these two !!

👀 Describe your OC through the eyes of another person! (bonus + specify who) +❓A random fact or short drabble! Or make up your own question to ask the OC!

This is through Echo’s eyes, who’d always had a crush on Reader before Rex essentially got there first:

“The 501st was dispatched to a senators conference/party of some kind once years ago because Padmé wanted Anakin there and it was just convenient that they be the ones assigned the protection detail. Echo and Fives, always partners of course, found themselves assigned to patrol the hallways of the palace that night.

Echo first sees her storming away from what he was pretty sure was Rex’s position and her dress is absolutely drenched. She was beautiful to him, dark hair, even darker eyes and heavy brows pinched together in anger that made her look so fucking passionate and pretty. Kind of like how you just can’t stop staring at a fire as it swells and climbs higher or how sometimes you just can’t look away from an explosion.

It looked like someone spilled a lot of something down the front of her and ruined a look that must’ve taken her hours to do. No wonder she was mad. Fives stood mouth agape next to him, very clearly noticing how the wet fabric now clung to every part of her body. Of course that’s what Fives notices first. They both turn to look at each other realizing she’s in distress and that it could technically be considered part of their assignment to help her out.

“Miss, are you alright?” Echo called out, somehow finding bravery he didn’t know he had to reach a hand out to her for help. “Here, take my hand, I’m sure my brother and I can find something to clean you up.” He offered, watching the outrage flaming in her big doe eyes soften at such a kind suggestion.

“Thanks…sorry you have to see me raging like this. I just- I can’t believe this happened. How can he pay so little attention to where he’s going?” She asked out loud, handing Echo her small bag filled with way too personal shit.

Fives looked around before kicking open the door of a bathroom in the hallway and ushering us all inside. “Who did this? What happened?” He asked, his jaw tightening as if he was mentally preparing himself to slug the face of whatever imbecile did this to her.

“One of yours.” She sighed, the huff of air blowing loose strands that had fallen from her carefully constructed updo off her cheeks. Echo didn’t think he’d ever seen someone look so put together and so stunning when they were so obviously flustered. He took several deep breaths to calm himself before firing up a cleaning droid in the corner of the room.

“Which one? Description? Colors? Name if you’ve got it.” Fives questioned, cracking his knuckles and chuckling. “Because he’s about to be in deep shit.” If there’s one thing Fives couldn’t stand, it was an idiot bothering women, especially one this pretty.

“Ordering other ones around. Too busy planning something to watch where his broad fucking shoulders are going.” She chuckled, clearly annoyed but not enough to pretend she hadn’t noticed something moderately pleasing to the eye. Echo watched her eyes twinkle with mischief, lips drawing into smirk. “Cute though. Blue, 501st, I think. Blonde?”

Echo turned to glare at Fives when he realized who she was talking about. The Captain. Whose ass they definitely could not and would not beat. “Shit that’s our Captain. How’d you fluster him enough that this happened? He’s never that reckless.”

“I dunno. You think I might’ve had an affect on him?” She asked, her gaze bouncing between Echo’s face and Fives’. Echo was almost positive that’s what happened. Rex would never fuck up anything, especially not on the job, unless he was really affected by something. Or in this case someone. And he definitely didn’t blame him. If he watched this angel walk by in a dress like this, he probably would’ve fallen on his face too.

No sooner had he opened his mouth to answer her, there was a knock on the door, before it flew open. “Uhm miss? I’m- I didn’t mean to- I’m so sorry. I- don’t know what I was doing. I apologize.” Rex stood there, empty tray in hand, fumbling for words. And immediately Echo knew. His Captain was struck by her too. Literally ran into her. Echo knew better than to stand in the way of fate and he stood up, motioning to Fives their need to get lost. Their superior, their best friend, their most headstrong brother, had already captured the attention of the prettiest woman Echo had ever seen.

Always observant and caring, always thinking of his brother’s feelings, Echo let himself forget how starry-eyed he felt the first time he saw her. She’d chosen his brother or maybe he was chosen for her. And that was that. Echo would wait.

[jaeheewillalwaysbemyfav]

so since you're gonna do the avatar!mc au with the entities you think each brother would fear the most (SO excited for that btw, my friend can attest to the fact that i've basically been rambling about tma x om nonstop since the first post you made that put the two together), i'd love to hear your thoughts on which entity each brother would *be* an avatar of, if you're cool with sharing! personally i love the ideas of specifically vast!levi and dark!belphie but i'd love to hear your takes on the concept! <3

So because of how time works, despite receiving this ask on July 12, by the time you see this it’ll be August! So the entire Avatar!MC series should be out by now, which I hope you will/have enjoy/ed. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of Vast! Levi, which I’ve talked about before (as you know ;) ), but I will happily ramble about it again!

These aren’t gonna be short fics though bc I do Yearn to save that energy for The Longfic, which is still in the planning stages because a) I can’t pick a timeline, and b) trying to match up the timelines of Obey Me and TMA is hard, especially when I tend to have a violent disrespect for actually paying attention to the timing of plot events in both. I already fucked up a part of the plotting because I forgot the order we get pacts with the brothers lmao

Content warnings: Mentions/allusions to tma-typical Spookies, yet another installation of my Cursed Crossover idea, lengthy debates about what makes someone choose to become an avatar of fear, spoilers for Lesson 16+ of Obey Me and S5 of TMA

What Entity Do I Think The Brothers Would Serve? (Cursed TMA x Obey Me Crossover)

Lucifer

So I put him as falling victim to the Eye/Beholding bc of his whole thing about Secrets and Pride being about wanting control over your own image

And he does have a creepy tendency in canon to always know when his brothers are up to some Dumb Shit

BUT! You know what we see in Lucifer’s character that we see in a certain Entity?

A simultaneous manipulation of others and submission to being manipulated by a higher power

That’s right, I think Luci would be a Web avatar

But Winter, Lucifer wouldn’t wanna take marching orders from someone/thing else! He’s too proud for that— You’re right! He doesn’t want to. But he will.

He willingly submitted himself and his family to Diavolo for eternity to get what he wanted (saving Lilith)

And from how much we see him work, it’s safe to say that he’s a pretty damn essential part of running the Devildom

If he really wanted to, he could probably successfully pull a coup on Diavolo

But he doesn’t, because he’s trapped himself by his own honour code

Thus, the sexual tension bromance we all know and love/insist is Deeply Problematic and blacklist (depending on how much you like/hate dialuci lol)

10/10, would fill with spiders again

Mammon

I put Mammon as falling victim to the Buried for pretty obvious reasons

But admittedly picking a fear he’d serve is trickier

I had to get a bit abstract with it, but I think the Hunt might suit him

Not necessarily the primal *cough* and police brutality *cough* parts of the Hunt tho

More like how Basira was considered an avatar of the Hunt in the fearpocalypse because of her mission/promise to Daisy

See, Greed can stem from fear

Fear of losing what you have, of no longer being able to support yourself, of being preyed upon by others

So people become greedy as a defense mechanism, to protect what they have

If they’re on the offensive, they won’t be targeted

Also, if you’re constantly pursuing more more more, there’s no time to think about anything else

Like consequences, or guilt, or Feelings

If Mammon let his little tough guy act go too far for too long, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say he could start heading down the path to avatarhood

After all, people pay big money for hitmen and bounty hunters…

Leviathan

As I said last time, I can see why people would associate Levi with the Lonely first: he’s a shut in, he acts like he wants nothing to do with people/would rather be alone, and I get it

BUT! All of that actually stems from the fact that Levi has terrible self-esteem and thinks he deserves to be this gross shut in loser

While envy can make you want to bring others down to your level, so to speak, Levi tends to just shun “normies”, not actively conspire to sabotage them

He actually does crave understanding and to have people in his life, he just doesn’t know how to go about it

Boy’s got Mega Social Anxiety is what I’m saying (funny how both the Lonely and the Eye can be real bad for that, huh)

But the Vast? Nihilism? Takes all the pressure off

If everyone is a small, insignificant speck in the face of an uncaring, unfathomably large cosmos, who cares what you do? Who cares what people think of you?

Yeah, you’d be kinda weird too if you stared into the infinite abyss of the ocean and realized it was just the maw of a gargantuan sea monster too, Karen, lay off

Plus aesthetically, the great Awful Deep most people fear in the ocean is a comfort to Levi

And again, THE VAST IS MORE THAN JUST THE SKY

I WENT ON A BOAT ONCE

LIKE REAL FAR OUT, SO I COULDN’T SEE LAND FOR DAYS

IT WAS JUST ENDLESS B L U E

AND I WAS ON A CRUISE IN THE CARIBBEAN

I SAW A FRACTION OF THE OCEAN’S S U R F A C E AND IT WAS I M M E N S E

Did you know we’ve only explored like 5% or whatever of our oceans? Think about that! Every Single Thing we know about what’s in there is just the tip of the iceberg!!! GOD KNOWS WHAT’S DOWN THERE!!! PROBABLY FUCKED UP FISH IS WHAT

*ahem* anyway, fishee

Satan

Another tricky boi

I marked him down as fearing the Desolation, as a reflection of what he fears most in himself

I probably could have also gone with Slaughter, but I’d say that’s more baby/early-Satan

Desolation is also about destruction of potential, and Satan has very carefully built himself into a non-rage-monster person

So tearing that all away from him is :)))

But what would Satan give himself over to?

Ceaseless Watcher, I want that twink OBLITERATED—

Satan clings to knowledge and erudition to distance himself from the rage he was born as

“Watch and learn” is literally how he became a person

I find it deeply funny that it could also easily be how he becomes a monster once again

Also if you think the avatar of Wrath wouldn’t have a use for supernatural blackmail you’re just straight up incorrect

Couple that with Satan’s various connections and he’d be a Force to Reckon With

Asmodeus

I put him as a victim of the Corruption bc I found it extremely fitting considering the duality of his romanticized image vs the “dirty” fluid-filled nature of Lust.

Lust can be really nasty, but as licentious as Asmo’s supposed to be, he’s surprisingly coy

(now part of that comes from the fact that Obey Me isn’t strictly 18+/full-on porn, but still)

There’s a lot of Interesting Ideas to unpack there with attitudes towards sex vs sensuality and idealisation vs reality

Now as for an avatar… I debated this for a very long time, tossing around Eye, Stranger, Spiral, even Web for like one second

But I think I’ve got it

Slaughter!

Specifically the musical/random outbursts of violence side (not so much the war side)

Why? Well for one, Biblical Asmodeus is said to “"transport men into fits of madness and desire [...] with the result that they commit sin, and fall into murderous deeds (Testament of Solomon, verse 23).”

But also, Obey Me Asmo’s affair with that portrait chick from the earlier lessons started a whole ass war

Like it or not, the boy is very good at instilling manic violence in people

They don’t call it bloodlust for nothing

Beelzebub

I paired Beel with an End avatar MC bc the boy fears losing his loved ones like he lost Lilith

You could argue that Desolation would fit there too but I liked how it fit Satan better

Now as for a Vibe…

I’m tied between Flesh and Corruption tbh

Though corruption is mostly bc buge :)

So I’ll talk about the Flesh

So uh, mass consumerism, meat is meat, cannibalism… see where I’m going?

Ignoring the Hans because that was super racist, the two Flesh avatars I remember best are Jared Hopworth and The Guy Who Stuck His Arm in a Spooky Meat Grinder To Feed His Buds

I think of Jared in relation to Beel not because of the gym thing, but because his very chill/apathetic attitude towards his patron is similar to how I’d picture Beel’s approach to all this

Like “well, guess I’m here now”

I love Beel as much as everyone else, but he’s not exactly apologetic about his… habits

Not to the degree that he’d actually try and change them anyway

So if he got started on the path to Flesh avatarhood, he’d be pretty fucked

Belphegor

I put Web for him as a fear almost entirely because of the concept of Uno Reverse Card, ngl

It does technically tie into his whole thing about being trapped in the attic, since he’d denied all agency and freedom in there, but… Uno Reverse

Dark!Belphie is an interesting concept, and MAG86 “Tucked In” is iconic, but tbh I don’t really… Get the Dark

Don’t get me wrong, put me in a dark place and I will be scared, I don’t like not seeing things, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around why one would become an avatar of the Dark

It’s not a very “primary” fear imo? Like, I’m scared of the dark bc I can’t see what’s there, ie. a threat could be there and I wouldn’t know, but intellectually I know it’s just the absence of light. That’s not really spooky on its own.

I guess what I’m saying is I can attribute spookier things related to the Dark better to other Entities, so I’m not sure what its draw is specifically

According to the Entity Sexiness Survey I did a while back, there’s apparently some Catholic stuff going on with the Dark so maybe that’s why i don’t get it lmao

Anyway I’d put Belphie down for Spiral

“What lies behind a smile” indeed cowboy

Apparently it’s getting choked

Is it because MC’s entire relationship with him is originally founded on a lie?

Is it because the Spiral deals with distortions in your perception, gaslighting gatekeeping girlbossing, as well as foggy liminal mental spaces like between sleep and consciousness, death and life?

Is it because I think Belphie would absolutely delight in driving someone bananas by fucking with their dreams until it bleeds into their waking life?

Is it because being a person or consistent being at all is too much effort, consistent internal geography is hard, fuck it, just be an endless twisting series of hallways?

Yes :)

[citadelspires]

Amphibia Oneshot Thing(I Never Claimed To Be Good At Titles)

I had an idea for a fun little story thing while I was at work over the weekend, and decided to take the time to write it up into this. In all honesty this is ridiculously self indulgent, and I wrote it late at night with no editing, beta reading, or even just looking back over it once I finished. Essentially I wrote this entirely for myself and just threw it on here in the hopes maybe a few other people might enjoy it like I do. That’s all I gotta say up front so just, here you go. (this is a long one so most of the story will be under a cut).

Anne found herself wandering around a lot of parks these days. After all her time inAmphibia sitting around in her house only made her anxious, and the city was just dull. So she would sit in the areas with the most foliage, where it always felt the most comfortable. Like one of her old adventures could come find her any second. Like she could pretend her friends were just around the corner and surely if she waited just one more second Marcy would come tumbling out of those bushes, launching right away into a rambling speech about a new plant she'd found, the perfect mix of adorable passion and somewhat interesting information that would always make Anne smile.

She knew that wasn't going to happen. She'd known and tried to force herself to get used to the idea, but even as her miserable daydream was interrupted by the rustling of the very bushes she'd imagined, she hoped for a second maybe she'd imagined it all. She hadn't of course, and the boy who pushed his way out of the bushes was anything but her Marcy. Even so, he must have noticed her solemn expression, because he immediately walked over to where she sat with a look of concern on his face.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Anne was surprised by the question for a moment, then again, she realized, she probably did look pretty miserable, moping around in the dirt in a random park. She was tempted to give an offhanded reply of dismissal, she was fine and his concern was almost certainly just a polite formality. But she was never good at following through with all that smile and say Im fine stuff.

"I've been better," she sighed.

The boy in front of her frowned, and took a seat beside her.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Anne blinked in surprise, not expecting that reaction. She took a second glance at the kid, wondering what his deal was. He looked a few years younger than her, probably about Sprig's age, dressed for wandering around the woods. He looked like a kid who liked an adventure, maybe that's why Anne felt like she might be able to talk to him. She couldn't say everything of course, god knows she'd need a full time therapist for all her turmoil, but maybe she could simplify it a little bit, dance around the truth slightly. Besides, the more she thought about it the more the idea of talking to a regular kid sounded nice.

"Well," she began, searching for each word and phrase carefully, "a while ago, me and my friends found this weird place. It was scary at first, and I was nervous for a bit, but after a while I grew to love it a lot. I think- I know my friends felt the same. It was a really magical place, but it, uh, well its not around anymore. And I feel like I left a part of myself with it." Anne suddenly became overwhelmingly aware that she had just poured her heart out to a random stranger, and probably sounded insane on top of it, "Ugggh I sound stupid, nevermind kid just ignore me, thanks for trying though."

She started to get up and walk away but the boy jumped up at the same time.

"Wait, hold on. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but from the sound of it, I think I kind of get it. I've got a pretty magical place of my own, I can't imagine loosing it. I know it's not the same but, I could take you there, if that would help?"

Anne turned back to look, not sure why this kid was so eager to help, until she saw the look on his face. He just looked like a kid who wanted to help, just for the sake of being nice. In that moment he reminded her of Sprig again, and she couldn't help it, she laughed.

"Seriously? You don't even know me. You sure?"

The boy shrugged and smiled. "There's lots of cool people I don't know yet. And you seem nice. So," he reached out his hand, "my name's Craig, nice to meet you."

As weird as this was, Anne had seen weirder, so sure, why not. She took the boy's hand.

"Call me Anne."

---

As they walked Anne started to wonder where this weird kid was taking her. Sure “magical place” in her situation was fairly literal, but she didn’t think she was exactly in the most common position for a kid. Or really for anyone for that matter. Still, the boy seemed pretty excited about it, so she figured she’d give it a shot. Better than moping around in some random bushes all day. Who knows, maybe she could even get her hopes up a little bit there would at least be something cool out there.

‘Something cool’ turned out to be a tree stump. Anne wasn’t sure if the kid was serious or not when they first got to the clearing, but based on the way he jumped up on the tree base and spread his arms wide.

“Welcome to the stump!”

Anne stared at him for a few seconds, not sure how to respond. Before bursting into laughter. She just couldn’t help it. There had been so much buildup, all for, apparently a regular tree stump. Craig crossed his arms and spoke up.

“Hey, I know it doesn’t look like much, but you haven’t seen anything yet, watch this!”

Whatever he was about to do, though, was cut off by a battle cry and a flash of orange hair flying at Anne from the trees. It was pure instinct, really, when Anne dove behind cover of the stump screaming,

“It’s an ambush!”

She realized her mistake a few short seconds later. Ivy Sundew literally could not be here. So, with no small amount of hesitation, she peeked over the edge of the stump to see a small girl pointing a homemade sword at her while trying to cover up a pouting expression. Anne could vaguely make out the girl muttering under her breath about how “noble warriors don’t ‘ambush.’“

“So, uh, are you gonna put the sword down orrr...”

Anne trailed off as the girl gave her a weary glance and muttered something about ‘intruders.’ It was at this point that Craig, who seemed to have tripped and fallen off the stump in the chaos, also poked his head back up and called out,

“Kelsey, wait! She’s with me!”

The short girl’s demeanor changed immediately.

“Oh, cool! Hi Craig, hi new girl, sorry I attacked you, I thought you were a devilish intruder.”

“Don’t worry about it, I get randomly attacked a lot, it happens.”

The girl, Kelsey, apparently, looked over Anne again, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“You do? Do you need a heroic guardian to protect you?”

Well, Anne noted, maybe this girl wasn’t so similar to Ivy after all. Though she still got the feeling the two of them would get along exceptionally well. She gave Kelsey a grateful smile, but shrugged off the offer.

“Nah, I’m good.”

Kelsey nodded, seeming to finally relax, though she did pause for a moment and stare off into the distance, though to Anne it seemed more like she was probably just gazing into the depths of a random tree. She gave Craig a curious look, but he only waved it off, apparently this was just how things worked with Kelsey. Noted. When she came back down to earth Craig was waiting with a question,

“Where’s J.P.?”

“Oh he found a butterfly and then chased it into a mud puddle. It was close though so I went on ahead.” Her tone of voice suddenly changed into a much more dramatic one. “He and I both had our own battles to fight.” Before immediately going back to her normal one. “But he should be right behind me.”

Sure enough it was at  that moment another boy crawled out from the foliage outlining the clearing. This one already in a considerably messier state than either of the kids Anne had met so far. He wandered over to the stump, repeating the tale Kelsey had just told them, this time with a much higher focus on the mud puddle. He didn’t seem to notice Anne at all until she cleared her throat and waved hello. The boy, J.P. she assumed, immediately jumped with an exclamation of surprise.

“Relax J.P. she’s cool.”

Anne was a little pleased to notice this reassurance came from Kelsey this time, and didn’t miss the way Craig nodded in agreement.

“She was off by herself so I thought we could give her a tour of the creek.”

That last bit caught Anne off guard, just a bit. Up till this point she had just been assuming Craig had took her here to see the stump and his friends. She wasn’t sure how much more exciting one creek could be, but after all her time in Amphibia she wasn’t one for making too many assumptions about that kind of thing. Turning her focus back to J.P. she noticed how he looked her up and down with squinted eyes, before seeming to focus on the leaves and sticks that had (again?! seriously?!) gotten tangled in her hair, and nodding sagely.

“Good call Craig! I like her style.”

As J.P. immediately began to inspect the ground for his own leaf, which he immediately deposited snugly in his, much shorter, hair, Craig waved Anne over to the stump, where he’d rolled out a large piece of paper.

“This,” he announced proudly, “is my map of the creek!”

Anne wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but a fully detailed expansive rendition of what must have been a really large area of land, complete with notations of inhabitants, activities, landmarks, and literally anything else one could find to write down, had not been it. She gave a low whistle of appreciation. Man Marcy would’ve loved this.

Craig beamed at her show of awe, allowing himself a pleased, “drew the whole thing myself” before asking, “So, where do you wanna see first?”

---

After that, Anne was pulled around the creek to all sorts of locations, each one more intricate than the last. There was an entire colony of kids in these woods, a civilization even. Even on Amphibia she had never seen anything quite like it. It was wild, and, kinda cool? The more she saw the more she started to get what Craig meant. The whole place had its own feeling to it that didn’t quite mesh with any of the surrounding area. After a while, she was even able to push (most of) the weight that had been on her shoulders for so long to the back of her mind.

Which wasn’t to say that her time in Amphibia left her completely. In all likelihood it was more inclined to have already made her a primary target for whispers and gossip to all the kids there. Though she never would’ve expected it before she’d gotten flown away from earth so long ago, she was kinda an expert at being in the woods now. Though she did slip up once or twice. For one dangerous moment there she was mortified that everyone would think she was insane when, upon being shown to the trading tree she had casually remarked,

“I don’t see why you need a whole place to trade for snacks when there are so many perfectly good bugs to eat out here.”

In her defense, she also preferred a good bag of chips over tiny dirt critters, but what could she say, she’d gotten used to a lot of weird things. While her immediate first reaction upon the words escaping her mouth had been to play it off as a lame joke(especially considering the way all the kids stared at her, some in horror, some in awe, at least one clearly wondering to themselves why they didn’t think of that first, the clearing totally silent save one kid who apparently didn’t get the memo and loudly exclaimed something Anne thought sounded like “my candy!”) her backup plan ended up being totally unnecessary as J.P. just started laughing, confidently proclaiming,

“I told y’all, she fits right in here”

And sure, maybe that made Anne smile just a little bit.

After that they had a few more people to meet, including a few girls prancing around a big open field, one of whom blushed slightly as she informed J.P. that she liked his leaf, to which J.P. gave a cheerful giggle and a thanks. (Anne considered it one of her foremost signs of character development that she didn’t break out any magazines as soon as they got back to the stump). But eventually things started to wind down, and the trio of friends, along with their new straggler, made it back to the little home base.

Anne took a few minutes to discuss the finer points of exploring woods with Craig, who had been eager to talk about it since they’d gone out earlier, while out of the corner of her eye Anne watched Kelsey do mock battle with an imagined enemy.

“You know, my little brother is much better at this stuff than I am, maybe you’d like to meet him sometime?” Though she’d posed the question to Craig, she didn’t bother to wait for an answer, as she saw Kelsey perform another made up sword move, and something occurred to her. “Hold that thought.”

Walking over to Kelsey, Anne continued to watch her form, confident enough based on where she was swinging and where her eyes were trained on that she had a pretty good idea of what the fake enemy the other girl was fighting might look like. Eventually she offered,

“You’re pretty good, but if you’re fighting something that much bigger than you, you’re gonna want to switch up your strategy a little bit.”

Without waiting for Kelsey’s reaction Anne grabbed a stick off the ground and performed a demonstration of a few moves she’d picked up in Amphibia. Though sword fighting was never something she had expected to be proficient at, she couldn’t deny that at this point she’d picked up a decent amount of skill. Once she’d finished her quick combo demonstration she turned to where Kelsey was standing, a little surprised to see a look of pure awe on the younger girl’s face, before she shouted,

“YOU KNOW HOW TO USE A REAL SWORD??????”

Anne grinned sheepishly at her excitement. “Uhhh, yeah, a little bit I guess?”

She’d barely gotten the words out before Kesley was on her, begging her to show more moves or better yet, spar with her. Anne waited for the tirade of excitement to slow down before smiling and offering,

“Sure I guess I could, but honestly my little sis knows way more about this fighting stuff than I do. If you want someone to practice with she’s your best bet. I could bring her out here some time, if you’d like.”

Kelsey’s excited nodding was interrupted by an instrument Anne couldn’t quite place, and suddenly the smaller girl’s shoulders fell in disappointment, before immediately perking back up again.

“That’s dinner, but you can bring her tomorrow! I’ll see you then!”

She waved goodbye as she rushed off, as did J.P. though with considerably less rushing, leaving just Anne and Craig, who seemed to also be on his way out. Anne figured that was just one more of the natural ways of the creek. As he left, though, Craig paused for a moment.

“I’m not sure where your special place was, but this is a pretty good one for a lot of kids here. I hope you had fun, I know we did. See you around Anne?”

Anne could tell the last bit was phrased as a question, and she paused to think, if only for a moment. Sure this was no Amphibia, and sure a lot of the stuff that had happened since Craig had tumbled out of those bushes was pretty weird. And maybe she did feel a little guilty that she was off playing around while her friends in Amphibia were, well... But still, for the first time since her birthday, Anne had gone one day where she actually felt like the 13 year old kid she was. Sooner or later she could blow their minds with magic powers and frog siblings, but for now, she was just Anne, she was just a kid. She gave a grateful smile.

“See you around, Craig of the Creek.”

[bangchanshehe]

The Vacation pt. 4

You always had a fantasy of hooking up with a perfect stranger while on vacation, and what better place to make that happen than Cabo San Lucas? A bachelorette party was already supposed to be wild and unforgettable, so why not take it up a notch?

Word Count: 2.5k

You and the girls sat at a booth and decided that before any of you became any more inebriated it ,would be a good time to take pictures. You all smiled, huddled in together, showing off the cow print and bedazzled interior. You all chit-chat for a while and you somehow couldn’t shake the feeling of someone staring at you. You gazed behind you to see not only Kai still staring daggers into your soul, but Sehun also staring at you blankly on the floor, while he danced with a random stranger.

You didn’t understand what he was so seemingly angry about to make him glare at you so often through the night. You shifted your gaze back to the girls and they all gave you curious looks of confusion.

“what’s gotten up his ass?” your best friend asked

You raised your eyebrows and gave her a smirk “no clue”

“do you think that he’s mad because you danced with someone else at the other club?” another one asked with a laugh.

You all took a moment to think about it and found no other reason than that for him to be angry about.

“yikes! The dude barely knows you and it’s not like you owe him anything” another one of the girls said

“I know” you said just loud enough for even you to hear over the blaring music

You looked over to the dance floor and smiled at the rest of the members of kai’s group dancing, smiling, drinking and having fun. you turned back to the girls, and none of you were really talking or drinking anymore so you gave them a confident smile and then broke the silence

“let’s go dance some more!”

The girls put their drinks down almost immediately as if they were waiting on cue and you jumped out of the booth waiting for the rest of them to join you. They climbed out and you all held hands or had an arm around your shoulders as you guided them onto the floor, off center from where all of the crazy crowds were, hoping to have a little bit more breathing room.

You closed your eyes and allowed for the song to move your body, not worrying about how you looked as you danced. You weren’t even a full song into dancing when you felt someone put their hand on your shoulder and felt their firm tall body directly behind you.

You paused and turned around to look at whoever had approached you in such a serious manner, instead of just pulling you in to dance. You froze when you realized that it was Sehun who had approached you. You gave him a curious once over, looking him up and down and then at his face that seemed so serious still.

“can I dance with you?” he asked without a single grin or twitch of his eyebrow

Maybe he just didn’t wear his heart on his sleeves and show emotion, You thought to yourself… he could be really nice guy and just doesn’t really show it. you gave him a small smile, and instead of speaking you simply nodded your head.

You were about to turn around when the song changed to a much more sensual sounding song came on. by the time that you had figured out the beat Sehun had already had his arms wrapped around your waist, and his body was pressed firmly to yours. He swayed his hips to the beat, and you moved along to the rhythm, following his lead. You watched your hips as the two of you moved together, practically merging into one human being.  And as much as you would hate to admit it since you are supposed to be more easy going and free living on this trip, you were more relaxed and appreciated Sehun for asking to dance with you before just, basically…dry humping you. It made dancing with him a lot more relaxed and fun.

You looked up and you lifted your chin up, trying to take gulps of air as you became hotter and hotter from the extra body heat that Sehun put off, and you noticed your friends smiling at you with wide Cheshire grins. Your head snapped down to them and you couldn’t help but smile back.

You were embarrassed that you were receiving so much attention. But not in a bad way. You were feeling shy that you had so many eyes on you … and maybe because a man who you thought hated the sight of you was grinding his hips into you perfectly on beat.

You were smiling from ear to ear having so much fun and you raised a hand to fan your face since you were beginning to sweat so quickly. Sehun leaned in closer to you and yelled loudly over the music

“do you need to catch your breath?” he asked

You smiled and turned your head closer to his ear so he could hear you better “I could use another drink”

You were having so much fun that you didn’t want to stop any time soon because for the first time in a long time you were actually having fun and letting go of all of your problems instead of just maintaining sobriety and taking care of everyone else.  And if you were being honest it wasn’t too often that you felt attractive anymore, so any attention that you could get you were rolling with.  But avoiding how tired and how hot you were could ruin your entire mood if not give you the worst headache.

Sehun pulled away from you and looked around the dance floor for a safe way to get out of the crowd, meanwhile the entire time his arm was still wrapped around your waist. And in the moment you couldn’t feel or hear anything but you felt the weight and heat from his arm as he held onto you.

“here” he said as he removed his hand and held it out to you “follow me” he said

You took his hand and followed closely behind him as he guided you through the crowd and to the bars. And when you finally got to the bar he quickly spoke to the bar tender and ordered your drink on your behalf. You looked up to him with wide eyes, impressed that he ordered you what you wanted to drink. Sehun noticed and cocked his head to the side.

“what?” he asked you with a strong voice that cut through the sound of the music and the busy bar.

“nothing, I’m just surprised that you ordered exactly what I wanted to drink” you said with a small smile trying not the make the conversation awkward.

Sehun finally cracked a small smile and looked out to the crowded dance floor as if avoiding making eye contact with you.  “you’re totally unaware of how many eyes are watching you…” he said quietly to himself

You barely heard what he had said over the noise but was able to capture enough of what he had said in order to put things together. You were confused about what he had meant. eyes watching you? What? “what?” you asked wanting to get a little more clarification.

Sehun looked down at you and then at the glass that the bartender had slid towards you. He picked it up and handed it to you with one had as if he had done it thousands of times. “you’ve been drinking this all night” he finally said as if it was the simplest explanation.

“oh” you said to yourself quietly as you looked down at your glass. You took a sip and felt relieved now that you had something to cool you down. You smiled to Sehun and uttered out a small “thanks”

He nodded his head and gave you a very tight and formal smile before he turned his head and scanned the crowd. Suddenly he stopped scanning and made eye contact with someone. His face fell and he went stiff, making you aware of how on edge he was by whatever it was that he saw. You tried your best to scan the crowd to see what it was that Sehun was so concerned with, and like magic you found kai starting back at Sehun with a deadly glare in his eyes. You could tell that obviously whatever was going on between the men was obviously serious.

Just as quickly as he had froze up, Sehun looked back at you with pursed eyebrows and asked “want to go to the balcony outside? I think it’s a little quieter. Doesn’t look like there’s too many people outside right now.”

You faced him with confusion written all over your face. You didn’t know if being alone with sehun was safe… I mean the two of you didn’t really know each other and you were obviously in the middle of some awkward fight. But despite your inner thoughts telling you no you nodded your head and decided to follow him to the balcony.

As you arrived outside you noticed that the only people out here were smaller groups of people who were mostly out just to smoke a cigarette and then go back inside. But if you were being honest with yourself you were happy that there was someone out there with you at all, otherwise the quiet between the two of you would have gotten really awkward.

The two of you stood against the railing of the balcony, looking out at the night sky and people walking in the streets.  As you looked down you noticed exactly how many people were around, drinking, eating and even dancing in the street. You smiled at them as they enjoyed themselves and looked back over to sehun who was quietly staring out at the sky as if he was in a trance.

You swallowed another sip of your drink begging for it to make you brave enough to talk to him seriously…. But it wasn’t working. You didn’t know what exactly It was about him that completely unnerved you but you felt like you were being tested or watched too closely when he was around… almost as if he was scrutinizing every move you made.

“are you okay?” you asked him unsure if it was okay to ask him since he was essentially a complete stranger

Sehun looked at you with curiosity as if he was debating on whether or not he wanted to entertain your question or not. “what do you mean?” he asked with pointed eyes

You took a moment to register his body language before you decided to press anymore. He was clearly not putting his guard up to tightly , but he also was obviously pretending like he didn’t know what you were referring too.

“I mean the look that your friend gave you was pretty intense….” You said unable to make eye contact as you proceeded “so are you okay?”

Sehun finally stood up straighter and turned to face you. He smiled a sideways cocky smile and chuckled to himself “are you concerned for me?” he asked

You turned to face him after hearing the sarcasm in his voice and you quickly apologized “I’m sorry, I know that its not really any of my business, but if one of my friends was looking at me like kai was looking at you then I would have to have done something really bad.” You explained

Sehun dropped his side smile and his features became cold. “it’s nothing that won’t be forgiven after he sobers up tomorrow”

You nodded your head after hearing that things would be better even though you knew that the look was more serious than he was letting on.  “is you friend usually aggressive whenever he drinks?” you asked him after a long pause

Sehun looked at you with a cocked eyebrow and confusion in his eyes “not typically… why? Did he do something?” he asked with deep concern

“no not really….” You started and then decided to just out right ask him “I mean yes… well his entire personality flipped in an instant after someone had danced with me at the last bar and it seemed really…” you looked around for the right word

“unusuall?” sehun finished your sentence for you

You looked up to him with wide eyes glad that he understood what you were trying to get at. Sehun once more chuckled to himself and then finally turned away to face the sky once more

“he was jealous” he finally said

“Jealous?” you asked him surprised “of WHAT?”  you almost yelled “that I danced with someone in a place where people dance together and have fun?”

Sehun smiled up at the sky as you let out your thoughts. When you were finally finished he quietly chimed in “because he’s possessive, and once he has his eyes set on someone he hates seeing them being taken away or uninterested”

You gaped over at him with horrified eyes. You didn’t know whether to be offended by what sehun had told you or thank him for keeping you away from him.  You turned to look inside the club and saw your friends still having a good time dancing on the dance floor and then kai not too far off wrapped around some poor other girl. It made your blood boil thinking about how dangerous the whole situation could have turned out and how shitty of a person kai turned out to be.

“you know you should really be careful about who you talk to.” Sehun said and you turned to face him once more

“you mean people like you?” you asked him with a bitter tone

His eyebrow raised and he leaned forward a bit towards you “are you angry with me?” he asked and then scoffed “after I told you what you wanted to hear…” he leaned back up and looked a way for one second

“right.. well have a good night then” he said with no emotion before returning back inside of the club.

You stared off at nothing as he walked past your line of vision and then shut your eyes. You really needed to calm down before you went back inside and met your friends again. But damn were you mad at how shitty things turned out to be for you.

And truth be told it wasn’t really that big of a deal if it were to happen to anyone else. They would have simply moved on and found someone new to flirt with…. But you weren’t just anyone. It took a lot of nerves and guts to flirt back with kai like you did all day. And you were essentially as good as new when it came to really letting loose and getting confident in yourself.

And that’s why we don’t open up and make ourselves vulnerable you said to yourself as if it were a reminder.

You let out all of you anger in one last deep exhale and then went back inside ready to pretend like you had never met any of the men at the pool today.

[preservationandruin]

Rhythm of War Liveblog, Part One Part 2 (Chapters 3-8)

Previous Post Next Post

[to the tune of Things I Bought At Sheetz] Now It’s time for Notes I Took At Work. This is going to be a weird experiment, because I read these chapters while at my job and took extensive notes on my reactions, which I’m now going to try to condense into something coherent. 

Navani revels in a successful invention, Shallan encounters a very bad cult, I quote--of all things--Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Certain Fucker reappears, Leshwi becomes a character I like, Shallan finds a journal, I digress on Renarin’s abilities, and everyone is rightfully worried about Kaladin. Content warning; discussion of suicide and suicidal tendencies

Alright, we open Chapter Three with Navani’s AIRSHIP, which is a kickass sentence. She’s leaning over the side of the ship, to the distress of one of her fellow scholars who attempts to appeal to Dalinar to get her to stop. 

“It’s Navani’s ship, Velat,” Dalinar said from behind, his voice as steady as steel, as immutable as mathematics. She loved his voice. “I think she’d have me thrown off if I tried to prevent her from enjoying this moment.” 

This is great both because Dalinar and Navani are great, but also as a contrast to Gavilar saying that Navani doesn’t accomplish anything herself, she just pretends to be an inventor and stays behind other, smarter people. Dalinar says no, this is Navani’s ship, this is her victory. The ship’s base design is one of the chasm bridges; it’s operated on the same principles as spanreeds, a kind of sympathetic link where you link two fabrials and whatever happens to one, happens to the other. Just augmented with aluminum and a LOT of pulleys and hard work. 

My notes also say “Eat Shit Gavilar” which i think is just, a general note. 

Anyway she also wishes that Elhokar was there because he loved being up high and also watching her draw...so now I’m feeling emotions, and if that wasn’t enough, I get hit in the feelings again because the name of the ship is the Fourth Bridge, after Bridge Four because of the time they saved Dalinar and Adolin at the tower, and it not only has the Bridge Four glyph inlaid but the original bridge inlaid. 

We see Dalinar and Lirin interact (my notes call this a “Dad convention”) --Lirin, of course because he’s Kaladin’s father, doesn’t really defer to Dalinar at all but does see the potential of this platform as a movable hospital; he’s discomfited by the reminder that Edgedancers are usually used for that now. Lirin really is a practical man who doesn’t believe in heroes or hero stories, which is unfortunate because they’re coming to life all around him. Also Dalinar calls him Lirin Stormblessed which is pretty funny because Lirin is Not Having It. 

Also, we get this great line from Navani about Lirin and Kaladin: 

However, as she stepped up beside Dalinar, she caught Lirin’s eyes--and the familial connection became more obvious. That same quiet intensity, that same faintly judgmental gaze that seemed to know too much about you. In that moment she saw two men with the same soul, for all their physical differences. 

This is really interesting in light of how Kaladin and Lirin are at the moment arguing; they both are at their core very driven, caring people who want the best for their community, but they are at odds for the best way to achieve that in part because they’ve had such different experiences; Kaladin’s life hasn’t let him be the surgeon Lirin is. 

For more changes in the year since we last met these characters, Dalinar has learned how to recharge stormlight and open perpendicularities at will, which essentially makes him a portable battery for the Radiants. That’s super useful. Navani likes observing the process, hoping that somewhere in it is a key to how Urithiru functions; she knows that it used to be powered by the Sibling, the third god-spren of Roshar, but after the Recreance the Sibling either died or fell so asleep the spren treat it as having died. 

That’s interesting; the Sibling has been something I’ve been wondering about a lot, and confirmation that it was tied to Urithiru seems to preclude it being a godspren of Odium like I’d thought for a bit (and in any case, Odium has the Unmade and doesn’t seem the time to fragment himself into a godspren). Another spren of Honor or Cultivation? Or perhaps a spren of both? More importantly, if it really is dead, is there still a way to revive Urithiru? Last book talked about possibly recruiting Sja-anat; if we do, could she serve as an alternate power source for the tower? 

We also get the Mink, the Herdazian general, slipping up on Dalinar and Navani without them noticing and also calling Dalinar the fuck out for the many atrocities that his armies and nation had unleashed on the Herdazians, which Dalinar can’t really refute. I like this guy, honestly; I’m not sure what’s up with him, if he’s just really good at sneaking around or if he has something Up With Him, but I like him. 

Back with the Three (Shallan/Radiant/Veil), they wake up to find themselves in the chasms with an EXTREMELY melodramatic cult. They’re looking for proof Ialai is now running the Hypocrites Association--sorry, the Sons of Honor; Radiant refuses to move against Ialai without proof, even though Shallan and Veil both kinda wish Adolin had killed her at the same time as Sadeas and saved everyone some trouble. Anyway, the Hypocrites association wear deep, fancy hoods that leads to a great Shallan thought: 

Shallan had a fleeting thought, wondering at the seamstress they’d hired to do all this work. What had they told her? “Yes, we want twenty identical, mysterious robes, sewn with ancient arcane symbols. They’re for...parties.” 

They claim both to have guided the return of the Radiants and to be overthrowing Dalinar, which is hilarious because Dalinar is a Radiant so the only real extrapolation here is that, in the fantasy where they’re right about any of this, they brought the radiants back and lost control of the situation immediately and now are recruiting random strangers to try to help rein it back in. Which is still not a good look. 

Oh and also they claim to be “something greater” than the Radiants, and I really doubt they’re the Heralds, so everything they say is horseshit, as is proven a second later when they test if Shallan is wearing an illusion with a device she herself sold them at an exorbitant price. And then claiming that Radiants can’t tell untrue oaths, right in front of Shallan, who is bonded to a liespren. 

They’re just a very bad cult. 

Also they say Ialai is the true queen, which raises many questions to me about the line of succession that gives them THAT math, especially with Gavinor alive and there. Like, somehow Sadeas’s widow gets priority over the last king’s living child? I know they’re just a stupid cult but guys, that’s not how lines of succession work in monarchies. 

Anyway, Shallan hears them say that they have a mole in Dalinar’s inner circle--bad--and goes off-script, taking control to say she’s not who they think she is, and we cut back to Kaladin for the next chapter, which is called Broken Spears which prompted my note of “I don’t trust like that.” And then instantly I started laughing because of this quote: 

[The windrunners] hung in the air like no skyeel ever could: motionless, equidistant.

This is not a particularly funny line unless you, like me, have never been able to forget a line from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: 

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”

So there’s that. 

Kaladin has apparently fought with Leshwi before at this point (she is, iirc, the Fused who was one of the main points of contact for Moash during his arc in Oathbringer); last time, Rock’s daughter Cord managed to shoot her down. The Windrunners, like the Edgedancers, have grown in number; there are about 50 knights, now, and five times that in squires; the problem is that there aren’t enough willing honorspren to bond. Kaladin mentions that “almost all” of Bridge Four had bonded honorspren and that he knew one honorspren who was willing but unbonded, all of which leads me to believe that Rock hasn’t sworn the Oaths yet. 

Meanwhile, these Fused--the Heavenly Ones--prefer one on one battles, as Kaladin noted in earlier chapters, so the Windrunners do the same; as long as they do this, the Heavenly Ones will keep to the ideals of honorable combat and will not gang up on the Windrunners. Again, it shows that they are both the orders that deal with Honorspren, even if the Heavenly Ones deal with...void-honorspren, I guess. 

Also, it’s another nod to the idea of if there can be such a thing as honorable combat in a war. Both the Heavenly Ones and the Windrunners are trying for it, clearly, but is that sustainable? 

Leshwi is in fact there, with a very cool aluminum-edged sword that can absorb stormlight into a gem at the hilt. She, along with the rest of the Fused and apparently the Heralds (Shalash and Taln are both in Urithiru), are stunned by the Fourth Bridge; fuck yeah, Navani and her team. She’s so cool, guys, I love Navani. Also, everyone is worried about Kaladin. 

Shallan, meanwhile, is ad-libbing having even more information, which leads to a hilarious moment of her being accused of treason by a member of the cult who are trying to overthrow the current queen, so...there’s a reason I’m calling them the Hypocrites Association, alright? Anyway, Adolin decides it’s time to attack, and Radiant and Shallan manage to bluff their way into being taken along to the hideout as the Hypocrites Association retreats. 

With Kaladin again, we get that the Fused see him as a particular challenge they enjoy fighting, although Leshwi always has first dibs; he fights another Fused and manages to disarm him, but decides not to kill him because killing him is pointless. Also, the teleporting fucker comes back, and yes, that is what I’m calling him until further notice. 

Something happened in Aimia that led to Cord getting a set of shardplate. Is this the Dawnshard novel? Is that what happened in Aimia? I’m going to read it next regardless but now I’m curious about what happened on the Radiant expedition to Aimia. 

So it turns out that the Hypocrites Association has a secret passage into and out of the chasms with a hidden door, which was probably a bolthole for escape that Sadeas put in early during the war at the Shattered Plains. His keep is also noted by Veil to be fortresslike; she notes that he was a cunning man, not just the blowhard that Shallan had taken him for. Ialai is now the sole remaining leader of the dissident Alethi army; while Radiant wants evidence against her that can have her be taken in, Veil is here just to assassinate her and have done with it. 

And honestly there is a nice symmetry in Adolin killing Sadeas and Shallan/the Three killing Ialai. 

Anyway, we go back to Kaladin as Leshwi fights Sigzil now; she manages to spear him through the chest, and I swear to god if any of the original Bridgemen actually die, I’m going to kick Brandon Sanderson’s ass. Those are my BOYS. In any case, Leshwi doesn’t kill Sigzil, because Kaladin spared one of the Fused earlier--honor in combat, again. There’s definitely a whole essay I could discuss about this opening few chapters and the idea of if continuing a fight is the right thing to do and if that fight can be continued in a way that is moral, but I don’t have the time for that, I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo and read this book. 

I’ll shelve it along with the Oathbringer and the idea of personal responsibility essay. 

We go back to Navani and get another real sense of how well she knows her team; she knows the personal tics and oddities of all the ardents and scholars who are helping her on the Fourth Bridge, which is nice to see. We also get that Renarin is here, distracting crying children by having Glys form a ball of light, and Navani has this observation: 

Renarin claimed the spren [Glys] was trustworthy, but something was odd about his powers. They had managed to recruit several standard Truthwatchers--and they could create illusions like Shallan. Renarin couldn’t do that. He could only summon lights, and they did strange, unnatural things sometimes...

Really excited to see how Renarin’s powers develop similarly to or different from standard Truthwatchers; I agree that Glys is probably trustworthy because Renarin is the best judge of that at the moment and also because “the corrupted spren turns out to be evil” isn’t a very interesting plot development compared to “there can be good corrupted spren” 

And then I got yanked forcibly off-topic because guess who fucking showed up. Moash decided to show his backstabbing, treacherous little face again, wearing--of all things--a uniform cut exactly like Bridge Four’s but in black rather than blue, which is just a stupendous dick move. Navani is the one who sees him, too, and we get a sharp reminder that he murdered her son.

Kaladin doesn’t hear the alarm that Navani raises, though, because he’s busy fighting Leshwi, something he seems to genuinely enjoy as a test of his skills. He pushes his home-field advantage here, managing to distract Leshwi to the point that they both seriously injure the other; Kaladin is grinning throughout, which is actually somewhat disturbing. To me it reads like Kaladin’s stopped caring about his own life in favor of trying to help others at any cost, but I’m not sure if that’ll play through as an accurate read. 

In any case, someone set Roshone’s house on fire, and the teleporting fucker is there and actively attacking civilians. Leshwi is pissed off to see this and gestures for Kaladin to go and deal with that rather than continuing their fight; at this point, I really started loving Leshwi as a character. I’m a sucker for a good principled antagonist lady, they’re just a good trope. 

Anyway, we get to Chapter Seven. Navani’s epigraph notes that zinc makes the spren in fabrials more active, while brass quiets them. So...you could say...that brass soothes them...while zinc...makes them riot....

Anyway, back to Ialai, Shallan notes that she seems extremely worn and tired, and she claims to support Gavinor to the throne--with herself as regent, of course. She and Shallan proceed to have an entire conversation in wine metaphors, talking about who they are working with or for, and Ialai assumes that the Ghostbloods sent the Three to kill her, claiming they want the Sons of Honor out of the way and will send her after Restares next. Veil instantly switches her vote to not killing Ialai bc she doesn’t like to be manipulated, and Adolin kicks down the door. 

Ialai tells Shallan to search her rooms for “the rarest vintage” before the Ghostbloods can, and then--before she can even leave the building--she dies of poisoning, implying there’s a mole somewhere in Adolin and Shallan’s people. That’s not great, and the Ghostbloods aren’t fucking around in the slightest with her. 

Meanwhile, with Kaladin, the teleporting fucker took Godeke--the one named Edgedancer here other than Lift--hostage to lure Kaladin inside, where he uses a strange, void-fabrial to drain Surgebinder powers in the room. And then makes a critical error in thinking that that will be enough: 

The Fused laughed and spoke in Alethi. “Radiants! You rely too much on your powers. Without them, what are you? A peasant child with no real training in the art of warfare or--”  Kaladin slammed himself against the soldier to the right. 

Oh you poor idiots, Kaladin was a prodigy with the spear LONG before he was a Windrunner, went most of his army career without bonding Syl, and--crucially--one of you is carrying a physical spear. Checkmate, assholes. Kaladin quickly beats most of the ones there, including killing the teleporting fucker before he can teleport again, and lets the last one go--of course--before helping Lift get Godeke out and telling her to get the void fabrial to Navani. 

Meanwhile, he’s going to go make sure Roshone is alright, where I have the very prescient note of “I bet actual money Moash is killing him as we speak.” 

Ialai’s probable method of death was blackbane poison in her bloodstream; one of Shallans’ people examines the body for it, while Shallan goes to search ialai’s rooms. 

Another epigraph note, this time about bronze and heliodor being used to make warning fabrials. Scadrial really was just a primer on the uses of various metals with investiture, huh? 

Meanwhile, Kaladin finds the prisoners below the manor killed with a shardblade, and spins around to find Moash slitting Roshone’s throat before making what I called, in a late-night worktime daze, “just a series of rat bastard moves. Hate that guy. Just honestly hate that guy.” 

Specifically, he surrenders so that Kal cannot keep attacking him--because Kal’s a good person--just after taunting him for wanting to rescue someone. 

Back with Shallan, Veil is pushing her again to continue remembering their past, but she still resists; she finds a rare Shin wine in Ialai’s store, before using that to find a pattern on the floor of old, shadowyears-era glyphs with maps of the ten Epoch Kingdoms, under one of which is a notebook of Ialai’s; she tucks it in her safepouch, and we go back to Kaladin. 

I really think the arc for Kaladin in this book is going to be accepting that he can’t save everyone,  particularly from themselves, because he pauses and remembers how Moash had been a friend, but even more than that, he had been Bridge Four--someone that Kaladin had sworn to protect, and he’d failed: 

Kaladin had failed Moash. As soundly as he’d failed Dunny, Mart, and Jaks. And of them all, losing Moash hurt the most. Because in those callous eyes, Kaladin saw himself. 

Kaladin can’t keep blaming himself for Moash’s choices, because Moash chose to do this, and was given ways out, and didn’t take them. It’s not Kaladin’s fault, and believing that it is is going to get Kaladin killed. 

And then, Moash winds up and delivers a grade-A Odium-powered Breaking Speech: 

"They're going to die, you know," Moash said softly. "Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They're all going to die anyway. There's nothing you can do about it." [...] "Do you remember the chasm, Kal?" Moash whispered. "In the rain that night? Standing there, looking down into the darkness, knowing it was your sole release? You knew it hen. You try to pretend you've forgotten. But you know. As sure as the storms will come. As sure as every lighteyes will lie. There is only one answer. One path. One result. [...] I've found the better way," Moash said. "I feel no guilt. I've given it away, and in so doing became the person I always could have become--if I hadn't been restrained. I can take away the pain, Kal. Isn't that what you want? An end to your suffering?”

Odium’s deal all over again--he will take away your pain and your responsibility for your actions, but the price for that is your integrity and your honor. It’s so insidious, especially because Moash is exploiting the fact that Kaladin was suicidal to play into the idea of life being hopeless--he’s implying that Kaladin’s suicidal impulses were right and then offering another way out. It’s so, so so so awful, and Kaladin can’t even bring himself to fight it, because it’s coming from an unarmed man and it’s targeted so directly at him. 

 “The answer is to stop existing, Kal. You’ve always known it, haven’t you?”  Kaladin blinked away tears, and the deepest part of him--the little boy who hated the rain and the darkness--withdrew into his soul and curled up. Because...he did want to stop hurting. 

He wanted it so badly. 

Ugh, Moash’s whole thing here is just seeding that suicidality back into Kaladin--because frankly, most of the time? When someone is suicidal, in my (admittedly limited and personal) experience? What they genuinely want isn’t to die--they just want not to hurt anymore, and they see that as the only way. 

Light exploded into the room.  Clean and white, like the light of the brightest diamond. The light of the sun. A brilliant, concentrated purity.  Moash growled, spinning around, shading his eyes against the source of the light--which came from the doorway. The figure behind it wasn’t visible as anything more than a shadow.  Moash shied away from the light--but a version of him, transparent and filmy, broke off and stepped toward the light instead. Like an afterimage. In it, Kaladin saw the same Moash--but somehow standing taller, wearing a brilliant blue uniform. This one raised a hand, confident, and although Kaladin couldn’t see them, he knew people gathered behind this Moash. Protected. Safe.  The image of Moash burst alight as a Shardspear formed in his hands.

FUCK YEAH, RENARIN. 

I’m gonna end this section by just discussing what happened here, because there’s a lot to unpack there. We’ve seen Shallan use her illusions to create versions of people who they could be, but this isn’t doing that--if you look at the cause and effect, it’s not that Renarin created this illusory Moash, but more that the light Renarin created called forth that Moash from this one. 

More than anything, it reminds me of the effects of Gold Allomancy--creating a past version of the self, splitting the self into who you are and who you were, or who you are and who you could have been. This is not a version of Moash that could exist. He’s burned too many bridges and killed too many people in front of their infant children for that to happen. 

But it could have been Moash. It’s not calling forth the truth, really, it’s showing an alternate path. It’s strange and I can’t wait to see it explored more, and it shakes Moash to his core--because of course it does. Moash’s entire speech was saying “there are only two ways out, dying and giving in to Odium,” and Renarin’s light showed that that was a stark fucking lie. There’s the third choice of deciding to stand up and protect people anyway, and it was a choice Moash could have taken, and that kills him. It eats him up inside; it’s the pain that Odium can’t fully take away. 

As Kaladin said to Amaram: if what Odium says is  true, if what you claim is true, than why do you still hurt? 

[jimlingss]

A Fair(y) Crime

➜ Words: 22k

➜ Genres: 50% Fluff, 45% Crack, 5% Angst

➜ Summary: While you might hate fairytales, it doesn’t change the fact that you are the descendent of the fairy godmother. With a wand in your hand and magic running through your veins, you have to search for your Cinderella and grant them their happily ever after....but things might be a bit more complicated than that when you find out your little Cinderella comes in the form of troublemaker Kim Taehyung.

You hate Cinderella.    Actually, you hate all fairy tales. The storylines are terribly vapid, love made to seem one dimensional, characters awfully helpless that it makes you frustrated. But at the young age of six, none of these thoughts came across your mind nor did you care much for good storytelling. Rather, you didn’t like these stories so much anymore simply for the fact that…   You are the fairy godmother’s descendant.   “What?” You blink in confusion, head lolling to your side. “What’s that mean?”   “It means you have to find your Cinderella and grant them their happily ever after,” your father explains with a bright smile, his cheeks puffing out, eyes crinkled as if he’s trying to convince you to eat broccoli. You are unimpressed, leaning on the table and looking over.   “You know Aunt Yeri?” your mother pipes up.   “Yeah!” You nod enthusiastically, recalling the pretty lady that gave you lots of toys. She visits sometimes with her doggy and you went to her wedding a long time ago. It was at a garden and very pretty.   “Well, she isn’t just my best friend. She was my Cinderella and I helped her to her happy ending.”   You’re silent for a moment, letting it sink in. Your parents wait patiently and you quirk your head to one side. “When will I find my Cinderella?”   “...later.” There’s uncertainty in her voice, unsure. She has the same tone as when she debates if she should give you a snack before dinner. “Maybe in a few years, honey.”   “Will they be my best friend too?”   “That’s entirely up to you.”   “How will I know it’s them?” you ask, firing question after question.   “You’ll just know.” It sounds weird like she doesn’t know herself, and she must read your expression because then she says— “Didn’t you always want to be a fairy godmother?”   “No!” You stand straight on the chair, nearly climbing onto the table even though you’re not supposed to. But no one scolds you, too concerned as you shriek, “I wanna be a princess! Not a fairy!”   “Well….” Your father is at a loss and he smacks his lips together, looking for the right words. “You can still be a princess, sweetheart.”   You pout, suddenly feeling very sad. “I don’t wanna be a fairy godmother…”   “Take a look at this, Y/N.” Your mother draws your attention away before you can burst into a tantrum and immediately, you stop sniffling. You lean fully over, sprawled over the table and the tips of your toes on the chair cushion.   There’s a narrow golden box that she brings up. You’ve seen something before — Valentine’s Day when your father brought you to the store and you helped pick out a gift for your mom.   The necklace you chose ended up in a similar box.   “What is it?” But you’re unsure of what the contents are and you peer over, as close as you can get with your short height.   Exactly as your suspicions, it isn’t gold jewelry. It’s a silver stick. It’s thicker on one end and narrower on the other, coming to a point. The stick seems to shimmer and shine against the fluorescent ceiling light above the table, glimmering as if there are sparkles embedded into the surface.   “It’s a wand.”   “It’s magic?!” Your eyes glimmer, grown wide and your jaw drops.   Both your parents laugh, exchanging relieved expressions. “Kind of.”   “Can I grant wishes then?”   “Only the wishes of your Cinderella. You can’t use it on yourself,” she tells you but you’re too excited to fully understand and be disappointed. “You like it?”   “Yeah! It’s cool!” You take it, waving it straight up in the air like you’re a magician about to conjure a dragon up. It’s heavy, but sits perfectly in your hand.   You were an idiot.   You didn’t know then. At first, it was fun to know you were some sort of secret fairy. That your great-great-great-great-great grandmother’s grandmother was actually the fairy godmother of the fairytale you had read so frequently. You had magic. You had superpowers.   But as you got older, the true gravity of your situation crumbled down onto your shoulders. You were someone’s fairy godmother, forced to serve a random stranger out there. You can’t even grant your own wishes, bring away the suffering that you faced, or fulfill your deepest desires.   You’re someone’s servant.   And with the anger that came with puberty and your teenage years, you threw away that wand. You abandoned it, left it in places, tried donating, throwing it in the dumpster or even a bonfire one summer at camp. But no matter what happened, it always appeared in your surroundings again.   You wish this was an awful prank your parents had set up and continued over the years. But it’s not. And you know that fact deep down — this is very, fucking real. This nightmare is your life.   “Goddammit!”   You’re on the floor of your college dormitory, roommate thankfully out lest she sees the way you’re sobbing and concludes you’re psychotic. The boxes around you circle you, towering like buildings in the city. Yet, on top of all of it, the stupid stick you left back home has somehow appeared in your belongings once more. And you’re aware neither your mom nor dad had anything to do with it.   So here you are, on the ground, gripping it with both hands and trying your best to snap it.   “Break already!”   You’re screaming, teeth gritting down, jaw clenched, face growing red as your muscles strain.    But it won’t. It’s like concrete or made of the strongest material despite being so thin. It’s unyielding, fighting for its survival, not budging or even bending the slightest bit. It mocks you.   You end up flinging the wand to the wall and it makes a dent in the paint. “Who the fucking hell is my Cinderella?!”   The question asked for decades on end isn’t answered and that special someone doesn’t appear until you’re at your absolute lowest.

You needed this.   A vacation, that is.   The stresses of your life were about to eat you alive. It started a little more than half a decade ago — years of breaking your back to get good grades and obtain your degree. Then it was months of unemployment and crippling debt that forced you to trash your beloved History master’s for a job in the candle industry.   It was temporary, you said. But the bills and debt payments weren’t temporary.   So here you were, dealing with a psychotic boss, doing a job that felt like you were selling your soul to the devil.   Needless to say, you needed a vacation desperately.   So this was perfect. Sort of.   “Is there a purpose for this trip?” the reception of the dingy hotel asks with a bright smile that almost cracks her face. “If it’s for pleasure, there are a lot of fun and adventure packages I can offer you. Macau has plenty to do during your stay here!”   “No, it’s okay.” You hold back a sigh. “It’s for business.”   This place was essentially the Vegas of Asia, but for you, it wasn’t so much of a vacation as it was more a business trip. A trip where you had a budget of less than a hundred dollars for — meant for you to solely buy convenience store food and maybe a tacky shirt as a souvenir. A trip that required you meeting some investor and convincing him to invest in thousands of candles.   “I see.” She nods her head in sympathy, reading your exhausted expression and dead eyes. “I hope you enjoy yourself nonetheless. Here’s your key-card for room two-hundred nine.”   “Thank you.” You take the card off the counter, not sparing another glance. Pulling your baggage behind you and letting the wheels roll, you walk towards the elevator. But something stops you, making your feet halt.   Or rather, a feeling.   It’s intense, pulsating through your veins. It’s as if you’ve been shot or had an orgasm, or both things occurred at once. The tips of your fingers tingle, your muscles tense, core clenching and head aching. The overwhelming emotion ricochets through you, giving you whiplash and it rips the air out of your heaving lungs. Euphoria fills every crevice of your body, intuition screaming out, and it’s like you’ve scratched an inch you didn’t know was there.   Your neck cranes over.   There’s a young girl half across the lobby. She’s in a straw hat decorated with a pink bow, wearing a soft sundress that hugs her curves and cools her skin from the heat of summer. The female is tapping on her phone, looking out the window like she’s waiting for a taxi and immediately, you beeline towards her. She’s the person you’re supposed to meet. She’s your Cinderell—   But she walks away.   The girl walks out the glass doors before you can get to her and you halt again, watching her get in the taxi and how the vehicle pulls away from the curb, taking off. And as you stand there, jaw slack, dazed….the feeling you have still lingers, not fading away. The person you’re really here for cuts through the lobby and exits the same doors you’re staring at.   He’s homeless. Or at least, he looks like it. The man is in rags, wearing oversized bohemian clothing with loose bags slung over his body. A five o’clock shadow is plastered around his mouth and it matches his blonde bed hair that’s in a disarray.   The deadbeat dude is your Cinderella.   And he’s leaving.   “Wait!” you scream across the lobby to no avail. Several tourists and workers turn to stare, but you pay no mind, moving based on animalistic instinct, frightened as the feeling begins to fade the farther he gets. Your luggage is pulled until you get to the bellboy and you pass it towards him. “Can you please bring this up to my room? I’m in four-hundred eight— no, I mean, four-hundred nine!”   “O...o-kay…” He’s bewildered, but before anymore can be said, you’re already out the door.   “Wait! Wait!” You’re screaming at the top of your lungs above the roar of traffic and the engines of motorcycles. The sun beats down on you, causing you to break into a sweat. Your shoes are flimsy and your clothes are wrinkled, the same ones you wore on the entire plane ride.    Still, none of this particularly deters you as you run against the grain of people.   He keeps getting farther and farther away despite your shouting. He doesn’t hear you, or at least he doesn’t know you’re the one calling out to him. Frustration eats at you alive and you stop in your spot, inhaling a large breath to scream—   “Taehyung!”   Miraculous, he hears you calling his name. He halts in his sandals and turns around. In the midst of the people, his brown irises lock right onto yours. You stare at him, lashes fluttering before you run again. By the time you get to him, you’re panting and hyperventilating heavily, crouching over as you feel your lower gut ache from the unprompted exercise.   “Do I know you?” His voice is deeper than expected, taller too, and he’s surprised, wondering how you know his name.   “No.” You shake your head. “No, you don’t know me. I don’t know you. But...I’m about to.”   “Alright…?”   “I know this is going to sound completely insane and crazy and you’re not going to believe it, but I’m your fairy godmother.”   “.....” There’s a long silence. It is awkward. In the middle of the bustling morning, there’s quietness between you and him until he says, “Pardon?”   “I...am a descendant of the fairy godmother.” You cringe but without knowing any other way to say it. And with his expression, you know Taehyung doesn’t believe you. If anything, he thinks you’re legitimately crazy, that you escaped out of the mental ward at the hospital. “And I’m here to grant your wishes.”   “I’m sorry.” He backs away. “I’m not interested.”   “I’m not trying to sell you anything!” you yell in exasperation, knowing you sound less like a saleswoman depending on her commission to make a living and more like a scam. You don’t blame him. You even sound insane to your own ears.   “I-I’m fine. I don’t need any wishes granted. Sorry.”   “No. Wait!” You grab onto his arm before he can run off. “You don’t understand. My entire family are descendants of the fairy godmother. You know Cinderella, right? It’s like that. Everyone in my family has their own Cinderella and it’s one of our life missions to grant their wishes and give them a happy ending. You’re mine.”   “....Umm...are you staying at a hospital right now?” His thick brow quirks. “Need me to call someone for you?”   “No! God!” You give up, arms dropping to your side, at a loss for words. But then there’s a last thought that strikes you, a last hope. “Let me show you. Let me grant a wish of yours.”   Taehyung looks at you, staring directly into your eyes. He’s obviously weirded out, skeptical of the nonsense you’re sprouting. And you’re even more embarrassed and horrified. You were here for a business trip, goddammit. Not to run into your Cinderella. But now that’s here in front of you, you’re not letting go.   You’ve been waiting for him for years now.   He is your obligation. As bullshit as this is, you must honour your family and respect what they’ve given to you.   So, you beg him to trust you one time, “Please. Give me a chance.”   //   As you enter the lobby, the receptionist and bellboy eye you warily, especially considering a young man is trailing after you. It looks like you’ve picked him off the street which is technically true. But unlike their suspicions, you are most definitely not inviting him back to your room and paying him for a night of pleasure.    You give him your name, mumbling a bit about your background to relax him and he says nothing as you take the elevator up to your tiny room. The queen sized bed is clean with sheets tucked in, not as sketchy as that time you went to Iceland. It’s fairly nice for it being such a small space, but the bed takes up most of the area, forcing the single-stalled bathroom in the corner and there’s only a tiny window in the other corner.   There isn’t a chair or desk in sight or even a television like usual rooms.   “Sorry, I’m just here on a business trip. Meeting an investor.”   “Uh-huh.”   Quickly, you drop down to your suitcase, tugging the zipper to dig into your belongings. You’re like a wild animal scavenging for food. “W-what are you looking for?” he asks and you know this doesn’t look good. It’s like you’re about to drug him and someone else will enter the room, help drag his body and the pair of you will harvest his organs.   But you would never resort to such a method to make money….no matter how desperate you are.   “My wand.”   “Wand?”   “There it is!” The silver stick is found in your underwear pocket of your luggage and you pull it out. Taehyung’s brows raise once more and you admit to him, “I..I’ve never used this before. It only works if you’re the one who wishes for something.”   “So...I just make a wish?”   You nod. “You should start off with something small.”   “Then…” He steps back, still on alert. “I wish for a flower.”   The blonde male expects nothing while you’re waiting patiently. It takes a jerk of your hand that the wand begins to quiver in your grasps. Dust and sparkles come from the tip like it’s a bubble gun and you both watch in amazement, breaths hitched. The fairy dust falls on the ground and begins to stick together. It glows white, too bright that you’re forced to look away.    It morphs into a perfect red rose, three leaves on the thornless stem. The hue is strong, reminding you of blood and the petals are abundant, flourishing in front of your very eyes.   “Oh my god!” You fling the wand across the room, hands grabbing fistfuls of your hair. You can’t believe it — some part of your brain always had doubts, but they weren’t lying after all. “It fucking worked!”   “Holy shit!” Taehyung’s jaw is dropped, eyes doubled. “What the fu—! You’re my fairy godmother!”   “I’m your fairy godmother…” you repeat him and allow it to sink in, speaking with bitter acceptance. You’ll get this done and over with. The faster you can give him his happy ending the faster you’ll be free from this obligation.   The two of you try again, making sure this isn’t just an illusion or a one time occurrence. “I wish for a hundred dollars.” And just like that, the crisp bill is conjured up. “Oh my god….oh my god...this is real...this is real, isn’t it? It’s not a dream?”   “It’s not a dream.” The ability for you to grant his wishes is both terribly tragic and ironic. Here he is with a hundred dollar bill that you haven’t been able to see in ages. But you shake off your self-pity, something you’ll reserve for later. “I’m here to give you your happy ending.”   “My happy ending….” The realization hits him and a rectangular grin spreads across his face.   “Yeah.” You shift from sitting on your knees to the floor, seated across from him. “So...you have any ideas what is it you want?”   He hums and shrugs. “Can you make me handsomer?”   The question is odd. As...dirty and disoriented as Taehyung appears, somehow up close he doesn’t appear that bad. But you shrug and try nonetheless….though nothing happens.   You try again, flicking the wand as Taehyung wishes for it aloud. Nothing.   “I think….I can only conjure up physical things….so I can’t alter you or your personality…”   “Or give world peace?” He pouts and sighs. “Oh well, guess we’ll have to make do.”   “Uh-huh.” You wear a blank expression, though internally you glare. Make do? God, he doesn’t know how fortunate he is and how envious you are. “Is there a dream or aspiration I can help you with? You...want me to give you a house or...better clothes?”   “My clothes are fine,” he argues in offense. You mutter an apology and he smiles, carefully considering it. “There’s nothing I particularly want….well...I guess there is one thing…”   It’s the best thing you’ve heard all day. “What is it?”   “You should be asking me ‘who is it?’” A soft smile comes across his features, tinged with a bit of sadness and regret. You recognize it well after considering you see it in the mirror. “You told me you’re here because you...work in the candle industry?”   “Y...yeah?” You’re unsure of where he’s going with this.   You’re not particularly proud of your occupation. The company that you work for isn’t Yankee Candle or Bath and Body Works. It’s for some crazy lady that’s passionate about candles and somehow engineers the worst smelling ones that you’ve ever had the unfortunate opportunity of sniffing.   When you’re in the office, you’re constantly getting migraines and headaches, enough that you have headache relieving medicine in your top drawer at your desk. All year round, they light the campfire roasted blueberries five wick candles — which smell more like the sweetest perfume mixed with axe body spray that boys used to spray around their lockers in high school.   The worst part is that you can’t even openly gag, second to the fact that the awful odor always becomes stuck to your clothing. You can leave your work at work, but you always bring home the scents back into your home, making it linger on your curtains and in your bedroom.   The mere thought of the candles brings shivers to your spine.   “I’m here because I’ve been looking for someone.”   “You’ve been looking for someone?” you echo him with a frown, unsure if you heard correctly, but Taehyung nods.   “I...I wasn’t a good guy back in the day. I’m someone who you might’ve called a….fuckboy….but I swear I’ve straightened out.” His hands lower, slowing down his wild gestures and you patiently wait as he explains himself. “I might or might not have dumped, well, no, that’s not the right word...I...cheated on a girl I really liked.”   You’re unimpressed, but the dots are easily connected. “And you’re here to win her back?”   The bohemian-hobo styled man nods. “When she left, I realized how much I love her. It really broke me and made me think a lot about things.”   He came all the way here to find her and win her back.   You have mixed emotions — not sure if he’s an asshole for cheating in the first place, moved that he’s learnt his lesson the hard way and came all this way, or if he’s just a plain idiot to think anyone would come crawling back after being cheated on. He doesn’t look like he’s been doing well either.   But you don’t know their relationship, so you make no comments.   Instead, you eye him up and down. “How long have you been here for?”   You thought he was a permanent resident. He certainly acts very accustomed to the lifestyle here, enough that he travels around with a few bags from this place to the next.    “A year.”   “You’ve been here for an entire year searching for her?!”    He’s definitely an idiot.   “I don’t know where she lives, only that she’s here in Macau. She doesn’t release a lot of info on social media and all my texts and messages to her are ignored. I think she’s changed her number too. Her friends don’t know much about her whereabouts either and they wouldn’t tell me if they knew.”   You frown, at a loss with his situation. “How long has it been since you….parted ways then?”   “Few years?” He shrugs. “Three or four.”   “Huh. Well, okay then.” It’s not too bad — his issue is simple enough. He just wants to win back this girl. Though you’ll admit, it feels more like Taehyung’s the prince than Cinderella. But you don’t mind what’s been presented in front of you. Through love and romance, he can achieve his happy ending and you'll be set free. You were scared he was interested in a political career which would mean you’d have to stick by his side for the rest of your life or until he retires. “D-do you know where she is now?”   “If I did, she’d be here with me.” He smiles.   “So...you have no clue?”   “No clue!” he chirps back and you’re yet again unimpressed.   “Oh god,” you groan, running a hand over your face in defeat. You’ll do whatever it takes to make it a success, but that means his problems are yours.   “I have a few leads though.” Taehyung smiles again, eyes twinkling like you’re his sun and maybe you are. At this rate, anyone who can help his hopeless ass is his savior. “But I’m starting to think based on your reaction that I should take you on that offer of getting better clothes.” A tinkling laugh spills out of his mouth. “I can’t go to her looking like this, right?”   He puts his arms out, staring down at his own body. It’s comfortable attire, but dirty with many stains and holes as if it’s been his only clothes for the past several months. You sigh, nodding. “It’s good to have some self-awareness.”   Taehyung scoffs playfully. “I’ll let that insult slide because we’re going shopping, my fairy. But I won’t let it happen next time.”   His fairy? You guess he’s not wrong there.   //   You quickly learn that Kim Taehyung likes shopping. He enjoys it enough that he doesn’t want you conjuring up clothes for him and wants to make it a full on activity. He enjoys it enough to hop in a cab with you beside him, looking at the driver and saying “Galaxy Macau, please.”   The two of you are driven to the ritziest part of the city where the most affluent tourists are shopping with one another. It’s grand and beautiful, making you stop to take it all in. The place you were staying at was more dingy, part of a suburban area where there were alleyways and stray dogs, streets emptier and only full during rush hour when citizens go to work or return home.   Here, resorts and five-star hotels are all around you. There’s fine dining restaurants and one of the biggest shopping centers towering above your frame. Here, you learn Kim Taehyung doesn’t just like shopping. He fucking loves it.   “Look at this. It’s cashmere.”   “Cool.” You feel out of place. But Taehyung owns it with his confidence. He has an unlimited amount of money anyways, you’ve conjured up two thousand in the proper currency. There’s no reason for him to feel self-conscious, even if he looks like a caveman — his pocket is literally bursting with bills. It looks like he’s robbed a bank. As he walks past clerks and attendants, their eyeballs nearly fall out of their sockets from the sight of the side bulge of his pants.   “Hello, do you need any help?”   “Yes, hello.” Taehyung flashes an eager smile. “I was actually looking to get your most expensive suit. Could you tailor it right now too?”   “It might be additional costs to get it done right now, but we can certainly do it for you.”   “Awesome. I’ll do it for whatever cost.”   “R-right this way.”   It feels like you’re a mother-in-law, watching the bride try on wedding gowns. You’re sitting on the plush lounge chair, waiting patiently. Three attendants crowd Taehyung, measuring tapes slung by their necks, convincing him to buy these shoes or that belt. When he has a hard time deciding, he decides to take all of it.   “What do you think of this?”   He pulls on the edge of his sleeve, fiddling with it nonchalantly and you’re amazed. “Wow.” It’s the only thing you can utter. The saying that a fitted suit makes any man look good is all too true. The makeover is drastic and despite his hair being disoriented and he still has a five o’clock shadow, he looks like an aged scientist going to a fancy gala. He’s slimmer and taller than you thought too, and you try not to focus on the bulge in his tight trousers. “Yeah, it’s good.”   “Enough to make her speechless.” He laughs heartily, joking around with one of the attendants like she’s his new best friend. All three ladies laugh loudly and it’s obvious that they’re faking it. “I’ll take it.”   “Great choice!”   As she scatters off, another attendant waltzes up to you and hands you some fancy bottled water for free. “Would you like to look for anything, Miss?”   “Oh, I’m fine. Thank you.”   “Are you sure?” Taehyung turns, halting before he goes back into the dressing room.   “Yeah.” You wave him off. At the end of the day, you’re not here for yourself, even if you want to be the one trying on all of this and go shopping to your heart’s content. You’re here for him.   Taehyung ends up picking two suits, two pairs of socks, one belt, and three sets of ties. He’s already wearing his Italian loafers that are personally hand-stitched by some sixty year old man with fifty years of experience. He’s reeking in wealth and one might believe he won the lottery.   The next place the pair of you enter is a salon. You’re ecstatic when he tells you he wants to get a haircut with a blowout style and wants his face shaven. But as he’s getting himself cleaned up, you sit at the waiting area, tapping on your phone. You’re answering texts back from your boss who’s asking if you’ve arrived yet. You can practically hear her squawking voice in your ear.    “Y/N?”   “Hmm?” You look up and you almost drop your phone. “T-Taehyung…?”   “You looked so focused. What’s going on?”   “N...no...nothing.”   You can’t believe your eyes. His hair is cut and styled, slightly swept to the side with part of his bangs down. His face is shaven, skin clean and smooth underneath, showing his sharp jawline. The cherry on top is that he’s changed into his suit too. Holy fuck. You may or may not be salivating. He looks ten years younger than before — princely too.   “What do you think?” He shows himself off, spinning in slow circles without registering that everyone’s eyes in the salon are plastered on him. Those waiting are gawking over their magazines, folks in their chairs have turned around and even the hairstylists are frozen with scissors in mid-air. One accidentally cuts off a chunk of the lady’s curls without realizing.    “Y-yeah. It’s nice.”   “Let’s go. I wanna look for some cologne.”   There’s no time to waste, no more ogling.    If Taehyung wasn’t going to kill you through envy, then you guess he wants to kill you from shopping till you drop. Anything that he likes, he buys. You end up holding all the bags and it doesn’t help when attendants give you looks of pity. To them, you appear as his poor maid that he’s stringing along. In a way, you are his maid…   Well, you’re more like a servant.   You just have a prettier, fancier title of ‘fairy godmother’.   The name bestowed to you makes you bitter, and that bitterness expands tenfolds with the realization of how fucking unfair it is that Taehyung’s beautiful too. Ever since he got his makeover, transforming from head to toe, hoping that girl he’s looking for will accept him back in a blink of an eye, he’s been even more captivating than before. His clothes are well-fitting, aura strong and confident. Taehyung commands attention simply by walking into a room.   “Are you sure you don’t want anything too?”    He glances at you once he hears the sigh you release. Taehyung’s leaving the spa after getting a facial and naturally, you pick up all the bags to follow him out onto the hot street.   “I’m fine.”   He hums a low note and steals another peek at your profile. “So…….what is the candle business like?”   “You’re curious?” You eye him suspiciously, wondering why he’s trying to make small talk with you. Candles are the most boring subject in the world, but when he nods and insists, you tell him, “Well….you sell candles. Every season there are new candles released. You usually have to go to the lab and try out different scents, test which you want, see what the trends are, try mixing things with each other. There’s the whole marketing and sales aspect to it too….”   “What’s your job?”   “I’m an assistant to my boss. I do whatever she doesn’t want to do...so here I am, about to meet an investor.” You give a lifeless laugh that morphs into awkward silence. It’s now that it hits you — you’re a servant through and through. “It’s….as fun as it sounds.”   “It sounds kind of exciting. You don’t like it?”   “God, no.” You scoff, shaking your head.   “Then why are you working there?”   “I need money.”   “Everyone needs money.” His lips are pouty and his eyes twinkle. “Is there something else you like to do?”   “....history,” you murmur, “I have a master’s in it.”   “Really?!” His brown eyes widen, impressed. “That’s so cool!”   “Actually?” It’s your turn to be surprised. “I thought that would sound….lame…”   “Why would it be? Think of it like this, if you end up in a time machine or you fall into some hole and you’re forced to travel to the past, then you know what’s going on. That’s super cool!”   You laugh, caught off guard with how wholesome he is. “I guess. I never thought of that.”   “Why aren’t you doing anything with that degree since you obviously like it so much? Like...be a historian or something.”   “Yeah, that’s easier than it sounds.” You shrug. “People aren’t looking for people with history degrees.”   “I’m sure you can find someone out there. Opportunities always come and go,” he says and looks off into the distance, slightly wistful. “I don’t have any fancy degrees like you, but I went to an art program for a while and I have a few certificates in photography and painting in photorealism.”   “That’s amazing…” And you really mean it too. You took an art class once and it went so atrociously that you have high respect for anyone who pursues that kind of academics. “Think you can paint me?”   “I’d have to charge you.” Taehyung playfully bumps your shoulder with his own. “But because you’re my fairy godmother, maybe I’ll let you have a discount.”   You scoff and your eyes travel down to the numerous bags you’re holding. “Are you done shopping now?’   “Ummm…..one more store.” He leans down and takes the bags off your left hand. Taehyung ends up sauntering off, holding the bags and throwing it over his shoulder casually.   You smile, a tiny scoff coming from your chest before you pick up your pace, catching up with him.   The both of you enter the last store and this time, it’s not for him. Taehyung insists that you wear something half-decent as well. It’s amusing how he rifles through the racks of clothing and hands you things to try — it feels like you’re a poor girl in a drama and he’s the son of a rich mogul. You both end up choosing an expensive black dress and you can’t remember the last time you had something so nice.   It’s been long since you’ve been pampered and you’re surprised at how thoughtful he is.   “Are we going to go look for her yet, Taehyung?”    He has his clothes, he’s cleaned himself up. There’s nothing else missing.   “We can search for her tomorrow.” His arm drapes over your shoulder. “Once I get my happy ending, my little fairy godmother’s going, so I should make the best out of this, right?”   You open your mouth to say something before closing it. You can understand where he’s coming from. Plus, if he finds her tomorrow then your job is done. Tomorrow it will be over.   “Then where are we going next?”   “To the best place here!” Taehyung hollers and cheers, other arm shooting right up. “Venetian Macau!”   //   You end up conjuring some red, obnoxious sports car upon his request, so you have him to blame with why your hair is whipping you in the face and you have yourself to blame on why you chose to envision a vehicle without a roof.   But your parents would be so proud of you right now — you gave your Cinderella the perfect ball gown to wear and provided the pumpkin carriage...metaphorically, of course.   The drive is less than ten minutes and soon, he’s parking in front of the grand hotel that has fountains springing up in front and the bustling sound of ringing and clanging from inside spilling out. The valet happily takes the key and you two cut through the casino to the lobby, taking the largest room they offer — the Presidente, a 12-bay suite with four bedrooms.   It’s at the very top floor and it’s massive, the size of an entire house. You set all the bags down, staring in awe at the rotating bed, the jacuzzi and bathtub out in the open. It’s all white and glass, the mere kitchen the same size as your apartment back at home. But what takes your breath away is the view of the entire city.   The windows take the entire side of the wall, pristine to the point where you feel like with an outstretched arm, you could touch the city with your fingertips. The towers and buildings surround you, the smoke curling up to the blue sky. The entire world is at your feet.   “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Taehyung approaches, standing at your side as you both look out.   “Yeah…” You’re speechless, mouth full of cotton. “It’s gorgeous.”   “I love this city,” he whispers and then turns towards you. “I’m glad you’re here.”   “Because I’m your fairy godmother?”   “No. Just because.” He walks away, leaving you confused, but before you can ask anything, Taehyung throws a glance over his shoulder. “You should change into your dress. It looks weird if I’m the only one in a suit. Makes me look overdressed.”   “Where are we going now?”   “Down to the casino, silly.” He laughs and his gaze intensifies. “We gotta win some, Y/N.”   Taehyung knows fully he doesn’t need to win anything. He has an unlimited supply of money right now, of wishes for that matter. But you give into his will out of defeat. You change into your own dress which is tighter than you remember, though he tells you it’s just fine. And with your wand, you grant him his wish of a hundred thousand dollars.   No sooner are you walking alongside him in the boisterous casino. Taehyung’s hands are dug into his pants pocket like he owns the place and he throws his money carelessly. He acts recklessly and boldly, but in doing so, he wins.   “This gentleman has put fifty thousand on red! Double or nothing on red!   “Let’s go!” he hollers. “Let’s go!”   It feels like you’re babysitting. Taehyung doesn’t need this — he’s simply playing with his money at this point…..no, money is practically useless to him now that he has an infinite amount. Yet, everyone around you is watching with bated breath, egging him on, cheering and clapping. There’s a crowd circling the table and the hype is infectious, making you nervous too.   You’re frozen as the ball is thrown.   It rolls around as the roulette table spins, ticking like a metronome. It lands on red and black and red and blank until it stops…..   Right on red.   “Oh my god!” There’s sharp inhales before it breaks out into applause and cheers. Immediately, Taehyung turns beside him and hugs you as if it was on instinct. He laughs and squeezes you before lifting you off your feet, arms wrapped around your waist. He spins you around in circles, making you giggle. “We did it! We fucking did it!”   You’re still being spun. “Taehyung!”   “Congratulations! You’ve just won a hundred thousand dollars!”   People are congratulating him, watching with envy and clapping. One man smiles and sips on his bourbon. “Is she your lucky charm?”   He finally sets you down on your feet, wearing a ginormous grin. “Oh, she’s my lucky charm, alright. She’s my precious fairy.”   You’re embarrassed by his declaration and others laugh, seeing how close you both are.   “A fairy indeed. I should get a lucky charm myself.”   The lights in the casino whirl around you, neon lights making you dizzy. Your senses are in overdrive, taking in your chaotic surroundings. Without windows, it’s easy to get drunk off the atmosphere, caught up in it without knowing if it’s day or night. There’s a constant barrage of noises, the pink of slot machines accompanying the jittery fall of chips. Levers are pulled, coins flowing through slots, dealers standing back or shuffling their deck of cards.   You’re mesmerized over the bright colours and it’s Taehyung who grounds you. The way he turns around, always checking up and reading your expression, sometimes calling your name — it helps you from being overwhelmed. And you can only stare at the way the vivid lights glow on his skin, thankful that he’s here to tread in this new world with you, a world you are too unfamiliar with.   He lives it up in the casino, gambling and going crazy, popping bottles of champagne. The minute you leave for a bathroom break and return, he’s somehow gotten to know a crowd of young folks. Taehyung’s charming when he wants to be and maybe that’s how you two end up in a limousine on the way to a club with these people.   While you’ve enjoyed yourself thus far, this was most definitely not a fun part for you.   Your feet ache, you’re sweaty and tired….and some girl is perched right on his lap, directly on top of his crotch.   “You should let me come back with you later,” the doll-like girl whispers seductively while twisting a strand of her curly hair with her finger. She knows what she’s doing, you’ll give her that.    There’s hollering all around you, strangers acting idiotically and pouring vodka down their throats. You feel out of place. Too old for this. You’re a woman with a job who pays her own bills and these kids are acting like dogs in heat or it’s the first time their parents aren’t watching them.   But you sit still, narrowing your eyes onto Taehyung and picking up on the private conversation because you’re his fucking servant.   “Sorry, babe. I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.” He flashes a sly smile. “I have someone special to me.”   “But I thought you said she was only your fairy.” The girl gives an exaggerated pout and spins her head around to stare at you. You look back at her impassively and she returns to Taehyung, playing with the collar of his ironed dress shirt. “How about this...if she’s your fairy, I can be your angel. I promise I’m a good girl. I won’t misbehave.”   Taehyung chuckles as he leans back, legs widening a bit more. “No, I have an angel already and it’s not Y/N. This other girl...I love her.”   Despite what he says, you’re beginning to doubt his feelings — otherwise, why would he let some other chick sit on his lap. But you don’t make any comments. Instead, your death glare intensifies and you angrily chew on your chocolate bar that the limousine provided. You haven’t had a proper meal all day and you needed something to bring your blood sugar up.   “Then where is she? She’s obviously not here with you.”   “I’m looking for her.” He grins proudly. “I’m a monogamous man now. I don’t like playing around so much anymore. Sorry to disappoint.”   “Aww...you won’t make an exception for me?” She bats her lashes back and forth.   “I can’t,” he answers and before the girl can huff out and try to coax him otherwise, her friends call her out for being desperate and thirsty. She pouts, sliding off his lap and in the next two minutes, the limo is pulling up at the obnoxious nightclub.   As if the neon lights from the casino weren’t enough, now it was strobe lights flashing to the back of your eye balls and making you see stars. Taehyung doesn’t seem to mind as he dances with his new best friends. On the other hand, you slide up to the bar, making an order of the cheapest drink to sip in. Unfortunately, there’s no food and when you asked to suck on some lemon slices instead, the bartender shot you a weird look and told you they weren’t for sale.   “You’re not gonna dance?” Taehyung joins you briefly, strands of his blonde hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. It was no wonder he was drawing in women and men alike as if he were a magnet — the man looked like a sculpted Greek God that descended from the heavens.    “No!” you shout back, straining your voice against the booming music. The vibrations were shooting all the way up to your bones.   “Why not?! Don’t be a downer! Let’s have some fun!”   You barely finish your drink before he’s pulling you out on the dance floor. It’s terribly awkward and feels like you have two left feet as you stumble out, trying to dance with him. You don’t appreciate others rubbing against you either, so you move close to Taehyung. And he doesn’t have any grievances as he pulls you against him too.   You wish you could shut your eyes and wave your wand around right now. If only your wishes could be granted, you’d hope to be in bed, curled up in the sheets at a cozy house, perhaps a cottage in some secluded place with mountains and a waterfall.    But when midnight strikes the clock, instead of Cinderella rushing back home…..   The both of you end up here.   “Why do you look so sad? Want me to hire a male dancer for you?”   “No.” You’re sitting in the corner with your hands in your lap. It reminds you of when you were put in time-out at home. “And why do you think I look like this? We’re in a strip club, Taehyung.”   “And what’s the issue with that? If girls stripping isn’t your thing, there’s plenty of guys too.” The idiotic boy points off and you don’t even bother looking. “Look, dude’s wearing a thong.”   It was an exclusive booth, the best seat in the house and full view of the stage. Several girls were off to the side, giggling and giving a private show to the ‘friends’ Taehyung had made hours earlier. He paid a lot to get a spot like this in the top strip club of Macau — but of course, money meant nothing to him now that he had an overabundant amount of it.   The more and more you get to know Taehyung, the more disgusted you are. The rich lifestyle doesn’t suit him at all. He was at least cute and somewhat wholesome pre-fairy-godmother-magic. Now that he had endless wishes via you and he’s gotten rich, he’s adopted the ‘fuck bitches, get money’ that rappers promote in mainstream media.    You swear Cinderella’s story had more decency than this.   Should you really be surprised though? Fuck boys never change. And you’re especially witnessing that feat as he cheers on his friends that are trying to slap some asses…..   Before you can get a hernia, you end up falling asleep. The last thing you see is a magician on stage using his thick wand to undo his pants. When you come to consciousness, Taehyung’s shaking you awake, all his ‘friends’ gone and it’s three in the goddamn morning.   Finally, the pair of you are going back to the hotel. Taehyung’s arm is draped around your shoulder as usual and he’s teasing you for being grouchy while petting your bed hair.    But damn straight you’re grumpy. You went gambling, then to a club, then to a strip show. You’re tired and sticky and disgusted with Taehyung. Still, you can’t come to hate him for dragging you around like this or for being an absolute douchebag. He’s too happy with you and the grin on his face is too infectious.   You collapse on the bed as soon as you get in, not having enough energy to wash your grimy skin or peel off your tight dress. Like you, Taehyung simply undoes the top button of his dress shirt and he collapses onto the soft mattress.   There is silence.   You nearly drift off to sleep, but then he interrupts.   “Thanks, Y/N.”   One of your eye opens and you find him staring at you. You stare back at him. “...you’re welcome. Did you have fun?”   “Sort of.”   “Only sort of?”   “It was alright.” The answer takes you by surprise since he seemed to have the time of his life. Taehyung continues to explain, “I wanted to see what it was like — it’s been a long time since I did anything like that. But once you get home….it’s kind of quiet, huh?”   “The quiet’s nice.” You shuffle, getting comfortable and relishing in what he’s most afraid of.   “Makes everything else from earlier seem empty though,” he murmurs softly, but you hear it. He wears a contemplative expression, gazing straight into your eyes. Before your lips can part and you can say anything, he plasters a grin on his face like earlier and changes the subject. “You wanna go eat?”   “Eat?”   “I know you were hungry. I’m sort of hungry too.”   There’s a pause. As tired and sleepy as you were a few minutes ago, you were wide awake again. It was obvious to see that Taehyung’s adrenaline was still coursing through his body too. And he was right — you were starving. You imagine that some food in your system would make sleep even nicer.   So with any determination that you can muster, you haul yourself up, scratching the back of your neck. “Sure. Where to?”   “I know a place.” He tugs on your wrist before you can walk off. “Wait, can I make a wish first?”   “What is it?” You automatically look around for your wand. Of course, it appears on the coffee table, always there no matter where you go off to.   “I was thinking about things and I really want to...travel. I want to make the wish now in case something happens. Y’know, it’s good to be prepared. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”   “Alright.” You grab your wand without a second to waste, not thinking twice. “Where to?”   “Umm…..I haven’t decided. Can you just give me tickets to every destination in the world? The most popular places to visit. Two of each in case I want to visit again. And if it’s possible, they don’t have a set time or date, so I can fill it in later and decide whenever I want to go.”   “Sure.” You shrug, finding his specific request achievable. “But can I also make a request?”   “What?” He grins as you look down at yourself, pinching at the skin-tight fabric of the dress.   “I’d really like jeans and a sweater.”   //   It’s not a fancy restaurant. Not in the least bit. There aren’t any lobsters, fresh crabs or truffle for sale. Rather, it’s a run-down burger joint that runs for twenty four hours. He shrugged and told you nothing could beat a good burger and that he was quite the fan of fast food.   You laughed and slid into the booth across from him after picking up the order from the poor teenager working the night shift.   “Are you going to finish all that?” You’re looking right at his two burgers and his mountain of fries.   Taehyung puts a hand on his chest in mock offense. “Are you shaming me right now?”   “No. It’s just a waste to throw away food.”   “Trust me, I’ll eat this all.”   “If you need any help. I’m sittin’ right here for you.” You give him the hint, pretending to nudge him across the table and he grins, sliding the fries in the middle.   “I thought we were sharing anyways.”   “Oh. We were?”   “Course we can share.” He bites into his burger and hums at the taste, having missed it. You eat as well, food tasting glorious on the palette of your tongue. There’s been too many days and nights of nibbling on instant noodles that even greasy, cheap fast food tasted delicious.   “I was staring,” you mumble past a mouthful.    Taehyung stops. His cheeks are puffed up and he stares at you through his thick lashes without you realizing. Slowly, a soft smile spreads into his face, all too fond of you.   “Sorry.” He looks away the same time you glance up at him. “For dragging you around all night. I know you weren’t having that much fun.”   “No. It was alright.” You set down your burger, dusting your fingers off and picking a fry to dip it into ketchup. “I just got tired and I was a bit….bothered.”   “About?”   “This girl you’re searching for….” You don’t mean to question his intentions, but it’s been pressing on your mind ever since you met him. “.....do you actually love her, Taehyung?”   There’s silence in the restaurant.    The fluorescent lights whirr above you, flies circling the light. Taehyung swallows his mouthful, caught off guard. A knot is made between his brows. “What do you mean? Course I love her. Why?”   “I don’t know…” You shrug, trying to brush it off, but he insists you explain.   “Y/N.”   A sigh leaves your mouth and you look directly at him, deciding not to spare the blonde man from your thoughts. “If it were me, Taehyung, if someone I loved was out there and I truly cared about them and I was looking for them — I wouldn’t waste a single second.”   “Well, I’ve been searching for an entire year now.”   “Macau isn’t that big,” you retort. “Have you been looking for her all this time?”   “Yes! I—”   “Then why not search today? Because you wanted a break? Because you wanted to enjoy what I’m giving you before I’m gone?” You’re breathless and the truth of your anger divulges, “If you were in love, you wouldn’t let other girls sit on your lap—”   “She was the one who sat there!” he argues and from an outsider’s view, it looks like you’re both a couple fighting. The teenager standing at the counter stares and eavesdrops like he’s watching a television drama. “It wasn’t my fault!”   “Doesn’t matter. You let her sit there.” Staggering breaths are ripped from your lungs. You’re fighting in place of the girl that Taehyung’s searching for, a girl you don’t even know. “What about the strip club?”   “What about the strip club?!” His arms are thrown in the air, burger nearly flying out of his hand. “That has nothing to do with anything!”   “What about calling me your—” precious fairy.   But the words catch in your throat, caught in your mouth. You lean back and look away. “You know what? Never mind.”   He exhales in frustration, running a hand through his hair and realizes the ruckus the two of you are making. Taehyung leans over the table and speaks in a low voice, “You’re right, okay? I know how it looks…..I was the one who cheated on her at the end of the day and now I’m going around and it looks like I haven’t changed.”   The food becomes more tasteless as he continues, “The moment she left, I knew I fucked up badly. All his bullshit of partying and drinking and girls, it’s fun. But it was fucking worthless. It still is. I don’t expect her to take me back, Y/N. I just...want to apologize and get some closure. I know I’m an ass, but I’d like to think I’m at least trying to improve myself. I don’t want to be the person I was back then. I never want to go back to being that person.”   You eat again, forcing yourself to swallow it down and let the sugary liquid of the soda tingle your tongue. “Then what do you find fulfilling? Painting and photography?”   You’ll always be skeptical at the whole ‘I’ve changed’ narrative, but you can at least understand where he’s coming from. You know most people can’t keep up with the partying lifestyle. At some point, everyone wants more for themselves. More and more. To make the most out of life.   You’re the same — always wanting better.   The problem is if you can ever fulfill those desires.   A twinkle in Taehyung’s eyes ignites, glad you asked and a cute smile comes across his face. “You remembered?”   “You only told me a few hours ago. My mind’s not that of a goldfish. Who do you even take me for, Kim Taehyung? I’m your fairy godmother.”   “You don’t act like you want to be,” he points out and you’re surprised. You look up at him and he smiles as if his intuition senses more about you than you’ll even realize.   “I...just want you to get your happy ending.”   “You seem stressed.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “That’s all. And I guess, you make me feel a bit rushed too.”   “I don’t,” you murmur, finally admitting it aloud. You called him out on his feelings, brought question to his convictions. It’s only fair if you’re honest as well and you have an inkling he might be sympathetic to your situation. “I don’t want to be. You’re not wrong. I never wanted to be anyone’s fairy godmother.”   Taehyung quirks his head to one side. “You don’t like magic? I think it’s pretty cool.”   “Yeah, but I’m your servant,” you mumble with a pout.   He immediately interjects, “You’re not.”   “I can’t make my wishes come true. Do you know what it’s like when it’s your magic, your wand, but you can’t use it for yourself or your family?”   There’s a pause. “Well, when you put it like that, I guess it really sucks.”   A small laugh pulls out of you. “Psh, yeah. I know that sounds incredibly selfish but—”   “It doesn't. It’s completely understandable.” Taehyung’s expression is blank and he blinks innocently at you. “It’s like your lottery ticket is given to someone else.”   “Yeah…” It’s moments like these that he catches you off guard. When he isn’t so unbearable, but sweet, compassionate and empathetic. It’s no wonder so many people are drawn to Taehyung without needing to know him for long. “Since I was young, my parents shoved down my throat that this is the reason I was born...to serve whoever was my Cinderella. This is supposed to be my life purpose.”   “I don’t think so.” His lips are pouty, gaze intense. “Maybe it’s part of what you have to do, but it shouldn't be your sole purpose.”   “Well it isn’t, but sometimes it sure feels like it.”   He hums a low note and chews on a few fries thoughtfully. “What would you wish for? If the tables were turned and I was your fairy godmother.”   “I don’t know.” You haven’t really thought about it. Coming up with desires that couldn’t be fulfilled would leave you even sadder than before. “I guess, I’d want a house and some money. I’d buy a place for my parents and I wouldn’t have to work anymore. I’d take care of their retirement completely. I’d pay off all my loans too and give money to charity.”   Taehyung acknowledges your choices, finding it pretty close to what he’s going to wish for as well.   A thought comes to mind and your eyes light up. “God! I’d quit my job! Yes, I would actually do that first above everything else!”   He laughs, finding your enthusiasm endearing. “You really must hate candles. But what would you do after that?”   “I’d travel. I’d go see the entire world and then eventually, settle down and work as a historian.” The more you think about it, the more eager and energized you become. This fantasy you’re constructing around you sounds so uplifting that the moment reality sets you, you’re guaranteed to be disappointed. But for now, Taehyung gazes at you, admiring how passionate you are. “I’d lead a research team at a university or at a museum. Or maybe I’d work as an archivist and preserve historical pieces. That would be really cool.”   “That sounds really cool. Would you let me work there too?”   “What would you want to do there?”   “I could paint or take photos and you could put it on display at the museum. I’m not half-bad, y’know.”   It’s pleasant to the ears, the mere idea of it sitting well with you. In this fantasy world, you are the princess and it’s a dream you want to relish in. “Sounds like a plan then.”   Taehyung finishes his burger, stuffing his cheeks to the brim. He drinks his soda, sliding the food down his gullet. He hums, thinking of something and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “What about your romantic life?”   “What about my romantic life?” You eye him with feigned suspicion while a smile tickles at the corner of your mouth. “You think I got time for love, Kim? I’m about to make history here.”   He laughs again, heartily and rowdy. His eyes are crinkled, lips spread into a rectangular shape and he nods firmly. “You’re right. I don’t need to find your prince charming when he’s already sitting across from you.”   You grin, finding the situation unbelievable. “Are you flirting with me, Kim Taehyung?”   “I’m stating the truth.”   You scoff. “Aren’t you supposed to be in love with someone else?” The playful question suddenly draws out a silence. He doesn’t say anything, chewing on fries and your brow lifts. “Now that I think about it, you haven’t seen her for years, right?”   “Listen, time makes the heart grow fonder.” His irises twinkle with mischief. “Haven’t you heard of that?”   Another laugh spills out of your body. “Time makes all wounds heal, Taehyung. Time makes you forget.”   “I disagree,” he counters, “I won’t ever forget us.”   Taehyung says it so casually without knowing that the weight of his genuine words makes your cheeks warmer than they should be, You don’t say anything, simply scoffing. But it’s because you’ve been made speechless by him, mouth filling with cotton, caught off guard.    The chatter and banter eventually continues. Conversations come easily between you and him, spilling out without any awkward pauses. He’s charming, a conversationalist that makes you laugh and feel at eased. Soon, the two of you are walking on the street, side by side with synchronized steps. The bustling city is quieter than ever before when it’s four in the morning.   “You won’t leave me as soon as I get my happy ending, right?”   “But what else would you need me to do?”   Taehyung gasps in mock offense. “I thought we were friends!”   “Nah, this is just a business relationship,” you quip.   “Here I thought you were becoming my friend. I can’t believe it’s been one-sided all this time.”   “Thought you’d be used to it by now,” you bite back, this time making him the speechless one.    Taehyung begins to chase you down the street and laughs. “I’m gonna choke you!”   “I bet you like that, huh?!”   Two blocks are made before you’re both tired out from running needlessly. The both of you are less drunk from drinking hours earlier and more off of each other, feeling oddly giddy and happy.   Taehyung walks with his arm draped around your shoulder like that’s the way it should be. At this point, it feels natural even. “You gave me a few ideas.”   “About choking?”   “No! Jeez!” He laughs, the tinkering sound making you giggle. “About wishes. I should prepare more and think about things in the future, not just short-term enjoyment.”   “Wow, Sherlock. You’re a real genius.”   From your sarcastic tone, he pokes your side, tickling you slightly. “I’m being serious here!” He laughs. “I should put some money into my bank. Pay off my loans and buy some stocks or something to make sure my family’s retirement is secure. I want to buy my parents a house and give to charity too.”   “I approve of these wishes.” You bob your head, nodding enough for your neck to break while stumbling in your steps and leaning closer to him without realizing.   “I want to make your wishes come true too,” Taehyung murmurs softly.    Automatically, your head turns and you find him staring down at you. He’s pulled you close and you watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. You could count his lashes if you wanted, see how his cupid’s bow dips, imagine lines through his freckles and moles like it’s stars in the sky and you’re trying to map out constellations.   You look away from him before you do something worthy of regret. “You don’t have to…”   “But I want to.” Taehyung smiles. “It would be an honour to grant your wishes.”   “How would you go about doing that?”   “Well, your wand listens to me and only me. So I can just make your wishes for you. I can say the word.”   You scoff, elbow jutting out to his ribs. Yet, it does nothing to deter him and only puts a wide smile on his face. “You’re going to travel with me?”   Taehyung shrugs. “Sure.”   “Wouldn’t that girl you’re looking for mind?”   “I don’t know and I don’t care if she does or doesn’t. You’re important to me.” He is warm, not just his skin against yours like this, but also in his personality. “You’re my fairy.”   You don’t detest the nickname so much anymore. It’s kind of sweet when he says it like that.   “That’s a big promise to make.”   “Then I’ll have to step up when the time comes.”   “Alright, Kim. Don’t be all talk and no action.”   “I won’t,” he promises. “We should secure a source of money right now though. I don’t feel safe carrying around so much.”   There’s an ATM approaching to the left and the pair of you slow down. Taehyung lets go of you and your hand digs into your pocket, finding the wand magically materializing there. “How much do you want?”   The man hums and picks a number off the top of his head. “A hundred million?”   “You’re going to put a hundred million in your account all at once? That sounds like a bad idea.”   “No one’s going to notice.” He waves his hand off. “Don’t be such a worrier. You’re going to get wrinkles by the time you’re forty.”   “There’s nothing wrong with wrinkles,” you mutter with a sigh. The want trembles in your pocket and a second later, you hand a cheque to him. Taehyung smiles and turns to the ATM. You watch his back, making sure he doesn’t get mugged.   He puts it into his bank, ready to pay off his loans in one go and eventually transfer it to his family and those who are important to him — to charity and to you too.   It was wrong of you to dehumanize Taehyung and boil him down to some ex-fuckboy. He’s more than that, just a little lost, but he’s a ray of sunshine, passionate and eager, thoughtful and sweet. You can feel your heart softening for him and maybe that’s why you’re turning more into an idiot as well.   //   Ken scrolls through his computer.   He’s bored looking through the records and the numerous spreadsheets that have enough numbers to make his brain implode. He blinks wearily, feeling his eye bags deepen in its purple hue. The man has turned off the fluorescent lights, sitting in the darkness. The bright light of the monitor screen casts on his face.   He exhales in exhaustion and drinks his coffee in the thermostat, leaning back in his chair.   But suddenly, there’s a notification on the corner of his screen.   His eyes grow wide on what he sees on the monitor. And Ken spits out his mouthful of coffee. The brown liquid spews off his tongue and drenches his keyboard and all over his dress pants.   He screams, bloodcurdling at the burning temperature and he dabs the mess pathetically with a crumpled tissue while his other hand grabs the phone, going on speed dial. “Boss? Yeah, I’m sorry. But you’re gonna want to see this.”   It goes through a long chain of command. Phone call after phone call until every department is awoken at four thirty. There are grumbles from each person, but the floor becomes alive again. Though there’s more bewilderment and confusion than outright panic.   The phone rings, blaring. It nearly falls off the bedside table.   Seokjin is shocked awake.   He crawls out of his bed, emerging like a bear after a season of hibernation. “What the hell are you calling me for, Namjoon? Do you know that the goddamn time is?” The dark-haired man’s voice is thick and groggy. He scratches his scalp and looks at the time — the red digits reading four thirty seven a.m.    “It’s an emergency.”   “It always is.” Jin stands up nonetheless and switches his lamp on. He grabs his clothes from the closet and sighs, glancing at how puffy his face is in the mirror. “Is it another murder?”   “No. It’s worse.”   It sounds dire and the detective drives quickly to the station. As he arrives, the floor is bustling with people and he doesn’t waste a second to look at the files provided to him. Except—   “This isn’t worse than murder!” he shouts in exasperation, “It’s just some guy under the suspicion of printing money!”   “Yeah, but we’re still part of the investigation team.” Namjoon leans on the desk and takes a sip of his coffee cup like it’s noon and there’s no reason to be grumpy. “It’s still a job.”   “I didn’t even brush my teeth.” Jin glares narrowly at his partner.   “And you still came late,” Namjoon argues back. “I already took a look at his profile and found where he’s staying at. Let’s go.” The older male follows and Namjoon talks as they both walk out. “His name is Kim Taehyung. Male. Late 20’s. Single. Unemployed. But he put a hundred million in his bank account about an hour ago.”   “A hundred million dollars?! Jesus christ, where did he get that?!”   “Yeah, it’s not something you can get from just spending a few nights at the casino. It’s most likely through some kind of money laundering. They’re suspicions that it’s tied with the Jeon family. That’s why our department took the case,” he tells and it all clicks in Jin’s head.   After all, they’ve been investigating gangs and corruption in the city for the better part of two years now.   Though one thing doesn’t make any sense — “But why would they choose this guy?”   “No idea.” Namjoon is honest and as befuddled as the rest of the team. “He’s completely clean as far as we’ve seen. No connection to the family whatsoever, no criminal background, no relations. He came here a year ago and hasn’t been doing much.”   “Is it possible he could be just a new recruit of Jeon’s?”   “To entrust a new recruit with a hundred million dollars?” Namjoon shakes his head. “I’m not sure. Doesn’t sit right with me. We’re going to get him now since there’s reason to believe he might be a flight risk. This Kim Taehyung may be what we need to bust Jeon once and for all.”   Seokjin nods and they both get into the car.   //   At the same time, half across the city in a high-rise building, a shorter man with black hair and frighteningly cold eyes knocks against the door once. It is eerily quiet and after a second, there’s a smooth voice from the other side.   “Come in.”   Jungkook is sitting at his desk, swirling a cup of bourbon in his left hand. The ice clinks against the fragile glass, liquid inside sparkling against the dim chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The person entering automatically lowers his head towards the younger male.   “What’s the matter, Yoongi?” he asks curiously at why he’s being disturbed at this time of night. The walls are dark, expressionless portraits grand, curtains drawn like it’s permanently a state of night in this office.   The man named Yoongi lifts his head. “I received a message from our informant.”   “And?”   “They’re going after an individual named Kim Taehyung. They believe he has connections to us.”   It’s absurd and the leader is made confused. He searches his mind, but is unable to recall such a name. Jungkook has never heard of him in his entire life. “Why would they?”   “This individual deposited a hundred million into his bank account.”   He almost chokes on air. Instead, Jungkook masks a composted exterior he was taught since he was born and sets his drink down. He sits straight and clasps his hand on top of his mahogany desk. “That’s….bold.”   It isn’t idiotic. It’s a tactic. By doing something so brazen, this Kim Taehyung was trying to send a message to everyone else. “Who is this man?”   “We have no idea,” Yoongi answers honestly. “The police force is as confused as we are. He appeared out of nowhere.”   “Then he must be a rival. He may be from Taiwan….” Jungkook considers it and sharply inhales. Kim Tae from Taiwan. This was the Great Gatsby in real life. This mysterious stranger could perhaps have an empire overseas. In less than a day he’s become infamous in Macau. But whatever the case may be….   “Bring him to me.”   “Understood.” Yoongi lowers his head, preparing to leave.   “And whatever information you receive, tell me.” Jungkook stands. “We need to take each threat seriously.”   //   It’s five in the morning when you and Taehyung finally arrive back at the hotel. All the sleep that you had ached for earlier has left your body. You’re past the state of exhaustion and into the stage of deliriousness. But the diminishing logical side of you tells you that you should go to bed anyhow and rest up before going on the search for Taehyung’s girl.   Unfortunately, Taehyung is still hyper energetic, more so than before now that he has two burgers, a mountain of fries and a liter of sugary soda in his gut. He becomes curious of the twenty-four hour gift shop in the lobby, looking at all the knickknacks and snow globes.   You whine to him enough that he laughs and tells you to go up to the room first.   “—floor is he on?”   “Top floor,” the taller one answers and then there’s a pause.    The two males turn their heads to stare at you and it takes a delayed moment for you to enter the elevator. Maybe it’s deliriousness getting to you but both are incredibly handsome men. The slightly shorter one has princely features, full lips and dark hair, clad in a long taupe jacket. The other is a brunette, dressed in a casual topcoat and wearing thick rectangular glasses that reminds you of what a modern spy would wear.   You realize you’ve been drooling when they smile politely at you. “Uh...what floor are you going to miss?”   “Umm…” You swallow your mouthful of saliva, turning to the elevator buttons and finding the top floor already pressed. It strikes you oddly considering you didn’t see anyone else staying there. And for some reason, your mind tickles and you blurt out— “Thirtieth floor, please.”   “Alright.” The brunette presses the button and you watch the metal doors close.   “You know, now that we’re here, we should check out the Paiza Club and Dining lounge. I heard they have something called Chocolate Brioche Bread Pudding that is to die for.”   “We’re here on an investigation, Jin,” the taller one scolds, whispering under his breath.   “You need to lighten up, Namjoon.” He gives an exaggerated and playful sigh, hand plopping on his partner’s shoulder. “When you can have some fun, you should take it! At this rate, you’ll die a workaholic.”   “I’m not going to go eat Bread Pudding.”   “You’re no fun.” He clicks his tongue and stares straight ahead, speaking lowly, “We went all the way here, but we might not even run into Kim Taehyung. Should make the most out of this trip.”   In the midst of their conversation, you’ve turned to stare at them. This time not because you’re marveling at their handsomeness. The name rings in your ears and you don’t realize just how intensive your gaze is, hardcore even. It doesn’t take three seconds before the hair on the back of their necks raise and they crane their necks over.   “Can we help you?” the man named Namjoon asks.   “N-no, I’m okay.”    You whip your head to look forward again. But it only arouses suspicion and the two experienced detectives exchange an array of expressions with one another.    Seokjin smiles and glances at you. “Did you have a fun night tonight?”   You’re shocked that he’s speaking to you, but you manage to scrape up something coherent. “Me? Yes. I was down at the casino.” The corner of your mouth lifts stiffly. “It was fun.”   Jin steps forward, closer, and you feel cornered. His hand slips into his coat pocket and he pulls out a picture of someone you recognize all too well. It’s a fuzzy photo, one that looks like his driver’s license. “Did you happen to see this man?”   You wear a blank look, mind delayed and then you peek up at them both, quirking your head to the side. “Oh. I met him in the lobby earlier this afternoon.”   “So, he’s staying here, correct?”   “Yes, I think so.” You nod once, not sure where all these lies were coming from. It was instinctual to protect Taehyung and your intuition told you not to trust these two men. “We talked briefly when he sat next to me at a slot machine. He seemed fairly nice. Are you looking for him?”   “We’re just searching to inquire about a case he may have witnessed,” Namjoon says simply without revealing much. He turns his body towards you, narrowing his eyes and watching your every movement. “Did he happen to say anything to you? Anything important at all?”   “Not at all. I believe we talked about the….gift shop and the snow globe sales in there. He left afterwards, but he seemed pretty nice.” It’s a good thing your body is too tired to make any suspicious movements. You feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. Luckily, your concern for Taehyung comes across as concern for society. “Can I ask what happened?”   “It’s a private investigation, we can’t reveal anything.” — “He’s under the suspicion of money laundering.”   Namjoon and Jin answer at the same time. And as it tumbles out of their months, realization sinking in, there’s a suffocating silence drawn out. The two detectives exchange expressions, Namjoon glaring and Jin knowing he fucked up badly.   You give your best gasp that’s not completely fabricated. “T-that’s horrible!”   “Well, hopefully we can catch him soon and make the streets safer.” Jin offers a tense smile to comfort your worries.   The elevators open to the thirtieth floor. “Good luck and good night then.”   “Yes, goodnight.” The handsome investigator nods and you smile, walking away as the doors close and you hear the two men bickering with each other.   The moment it’s quiet again, you whip yourself into the fire escape, running. Your feet shuffle as if you’re doing drills, step after step, leaping down the staircases. You nearly trip and eat shit on the hard ground, but you catch yourself, gripping onto the banister.   It’s thirty levels you have to dive down and you just hope Taehyung hasn’t gone up yet. Every five floors, you peek out to the elevator, finding the numbers increasing to show Namjoon and Jin are continuing upwards. Luckily, the other elevator remains stagnant and you can only wish for the best.   A deep breath is stolen through the seams of your lips and you pass a few drunk people giggling. Sweat drips down your head. Curses spill out of your mouth. You almost start crying, but you make it to the lobby, launching your body out, startling several strangers as you burst out the door.   The person you’re looking for is standing right there.   Taehyung is innocently waiting in front of the elevators, rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes. You don’t waste a second, throwing yourself at him. The second Taehyung sees you, on instinct, a grin spreads across his face. He opens his arms and catches you, hugging you back.   “Y/N? What’s wrong? Did you take the stairs?”   You’re hyperventilating. “T-T-Tae…”   The blonde man has an endeared expression as he looks down at you. His smile softens and he holds your arms before lifting up his left wrist, showing off the plastic bag. “In the end, I couldn’t choose any snow globe or postcard, but I got cat mugs for us. They’re matching and in the shape of a cat! Fifty percent off for the second one too! Cute, huh?”   “T-Taehyung…..th...e….the….p...p-o...lice…”   “What?”   “Th...e...p...o..li….c….e”   “What?”   “The police are here!” you whisper harshly and out of desperation. All at once, his expression falls and he pales.   “What?”   //   The two investigators linger outside the door. They shift the weight of their foot from one to the next, waiting patiently as if they’re trick-or-treaters on Halloween or simply very insistent missionaries who want to enlighten people and lead them away from Hell.   But after a full minute, there’s still silence and no movement made on the other side.   Seokjin leans over and rings the doorbell again. The sound can be heard echoing throughout the suite. Jin rings the bell yet again and this time he knocks five times.   “Police! Open up!”   Silence.   Jin cranes his neck to his frustrated partner. “I don’t think he’s in there.”   There’s no choice and Namjoon’s patience is running too thin. He digs in his pocket, taking the keycard out and he swipes it at the handle. It flashes green and he pushes the door open.   “Ooh, breaking the rules, aren’t we, Joon?” Jin teases, “Look at how bold you’re getting. Barging in without a search warrant? I’m proud. Never thought I’d see the day you’d actually bend the rules a little.”   “Hey…” Namjoon enters the room without looking back.   “Yeah?”   “Can you shut up?”    “Will do.”   The two of them enter, yelling out that they’re police. But like before, there aren’t any responses. They check each room thoroughly, peeking in the closet, looking underneath the bed. It’s empty. There aren’t any suspicious belongings either and when Jin and Namjoon regroup, they suspect this Kim Taehyung must’ve known they were coming and purposely slipped under the radar.   “Damn.”   This person wasn’t to be messed with.   //   “Oh my god, oh my god.” You’re shaking your head, whispering in disbelief. Panic has set over your body and caused you to hyperventilate, blood rushing in your veins, air never staying in your lungs. “We are so fucked, we are so fucked, Taehyung. Holy fucking shit. We’re going to jail.”   “We’re not going to jail,” he counters.   “They think you’re involved in money laundering!” you spit at him. “How are we going to explain the one hundred million dollars?! God, I knew that was a bad idea. I should’ve stopped you. No...it’s not your fault. You wouldn’t blame a four year old for eating candy—”   “I’m not a four year old!”   “—you’d blame the parent that gave it to them. I fucked up.” You’re pacing back and forth, fully aware that it’s not helping, but you don’t know what else to do anymore. In the span of a day, you’ve screwed up your entire life. “I fucked up!”   “Y/N, stop.” His hands drop down to your shoulders, halting you mid-step. “Can’t we just tell them what actually happened? It’s not like you and I did something actually illegal.”   You shove his hands off of you, narrowing your eyes. “You think we can just waltz up to law enforcement and tell them we got a hundred million from magic?!”   “If we show them, they’d believe us.”   “And then they’d take me away!” Your arms in the air, already envisioning you strapped down to a medical table. “They’d take my wand, take my blood and my family, take me in for experimentation! It’s a family secret for a reason, Taehyung! There’s a reason we don’t go around parading we’re the fairy godmother’s descendants!”   The pair of you were hidden in his old apartment. It was a sad and small room, falling apart in the corners. Taehyung was evicted a few months ago, but he knew it was empty and helped you climb the fire escape as he busted a weak spot on the door outside. Despite it being relatively reclusive, there was no possible way that you could stay long.   The police would know this place and come investigating sooner or later. They’d probably pull the floorboards apart to make sure he’s not hiding any money or drugs. And eventually, they were going to find you tied up with him in all this.   There is no escape.   “How do we undo this?” you ask him, completely lost and hysterical.   His eyes spark with an idea. “Can I wish for an invisibility cloak?”   “I can’t grant you something that doesn’t exist,” you sigh out and begin to consider the possibilities. You had magic on your side after all. It was definitely a choice to give him a gun to protect himself, but then that would be an unregistered firearm and could land the two of you in a bigger world of trouble. The car was unregistered as well. Getting a plane or spaceship out of Macau would be impossible as well. If you snuck out of Macau, you don’t know where you’d go.   It’s funny how you can grant any wish, yet you feel so limited.   Cinderella never went like this — she was never chased down by the fucking police.   “Y/N, we’re going to be okay.”   “How can you say that?! We’re not going to be okay. We’re not! That’s a fact! We’re screwed!”   “Can you please just trust me?!” he shouts above you, probably allowing the neighbors to hear. But his deafening volume shocks you to silence and your mouth seals. Taehyung’s gaze is intense and he licks the seam of his lips, swallowing hard. “I trusted you once. So trust me. Can you do that?”   “I...I don’t know….”   The man in front of you reaches down, holding your hand and squeezing it. As he soothes you, he makes a promise, “I won’t let you get hurt.”   “And what about you?”   “I won’t go to prison.” He wears a soft smile. “Why would I? I didn’t do anything wrong but indulge a little with my fairy.”   It’s stupid of you — but you chose to believe him. Taehyung trusted you once. It’s only right if you give him a chance as well, let him prove to you whatever he wants as you once proved to him your abilities.   For now, the two of you have to look for another place to go to and after a bit of rest, he takes your hand and leaves, never once showing any fear for the circumstances ahead.   //   The security room is cozy with monitors all around, staticy screens showing every corner of the casino. The athletic male is leaning over, watching with intensity as the technician delves into the hours of CCTV footage and searches thoroughly.   Namjoon mutters under his breath, obsessed with figuring out this puzzle, “Where did he go?”   Jin hangs up the phone and joins his partner. “Hoseok and Sowon’s patrol car broke down.”   “Again?”   “Yeah. They’re jump starting it now, but the battery might be done for.”   He shakes his head. “Everything always falls on us, huh?”   “Sometimes it can be easier like that.” Jin’s hand plops on his partner’s shoulder, giving a cheesy grin and squeeze. “Remember all those old days when we were new to the department and we dug up cases even when boss said they were done? But we broke the rules and solved them anyhow? Those were the days! Doesn’t it make you feel nostalgic?”    “No.”   “Oh, come on,” Seokjin whines much to the working technician’s amusement. “We solved so many cases with just the two of us! It was fun!”   “We almost got fired.”   “But we didn’t,” he chimes.   “Stop. Right there.” Namjoon’s finger juts at the monitor and the two detectives lean in with their eyes squinting. As far away as the camera is, the features of the male are indistinguishable. He was dressed cleanly, but looked like he had a whole night out, wrinkled dress shirt with the top buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He definitely looked like a man of money, power, and sophistication. “Huh. He’s right there.”   “And that was at five twenty…...what time did we arrive, Namjoon?”   “Five fifteen.”   “What in the—” The footage continues and the two men watch as you come running from the fire escape door and launch into Taehyung’s arms, observing the way he hugs you. “Oh my god. That’s her! The girl we talked to in the elevator!”   They exchange looks with one another.   A radio call is received that helps piece things together. Earlier yesterday, half across Macau in a lower class hotel, Taehyung was spotted. The people in the lobby said they witnessed Taehyung and thought he was a gigolo. And yet again, you were there with him the entire time.   “Jin. Get those arrest warrants.” His partner nods in response and he turns to the security technician. “Can we see what direction they went?”   “Sure thing.” The man smiles. “Our CCTV goes for blocks.”   //   Taehyung has spent an entire year in Macau. It’s needless to say that he knows all the kind spots — even if those are places are underneath bridges or in secluded alleys. You trust him enough to lead you as you figure out what to do or at least evade the police for long enough and buy some time so you two can somehow figure out what to do with all the money in his account.   If there was a way to get rid of it, you could act like it was never there in the first place or it was soft of mistake that neither you nor Taehyung have anything to do with.   So, you go with Taehyung, never once realizing who was following you two.   It’s not until you’re standing at an alleyway, taking cover after hearing sirens and being relieved that it’s just an ambulance, do you truly come to realize the detrimental state of the situation.   “We’re safe,” he breathes out as the ambulance passes and you nod.   “Are you Kim Taehyung?” A deep, rumbling voice comes from the end of the alley and you both jolt with a scream. A short man emerges from the darkness. His black hair matches his dark eyes and the colour of his clothing. He is in a leather jacket, boots and gloves too.   You’re alarmed, his piercing gaze sending chills down your spine. You catch the tattoos on his neck, the only skin on his body revealed, and it appears to be symbols spiraling upwards like the tail of a dragon. He’s not holding any weapons as far as you can see, but his presence still sends goosebumps all over your arms.   He’s dangerous — and it’s not only your instincts that scream it.   You and Taehyung are holding onto each other, backing up slightly. “Who are you?”    “Are you or are you not Kim Taehyung?” Yoongi steps forward, coming more into the light and the man holding you pushes you behind him.   “That’s me. What do you want?”   Yoongi scans him up and down as if he’s looking to purchase a fish at the market and is sorely unimpressed with what he sees. There seems to be a glimmer of uncertainty and confusion before he masks it with impassiveness. “There’s someone who wants to speak with you. Come with me.”   “I’m not going anywhere.”   “You don’t have a choice,” the stranger says pressingly. “You can come with me willingly or not. It’s your choice.”   “Who is it?” you pipe up over Taehyung’s shoulder. “Who wants to see us? We’re not going unless you tell us.”   “Jeon Jungkook,” the man becomes tired of the negotiation and hisses the name in a husky timbre like it is a name worthy of a king’s honour.   But there is silence.    You and Taehyung look at each other. “Who?”   The gangster is gawking in disbelief, appalled at this show of ignorance that might be an indication of Taehyung’s sheer power — to not know Jungkook in this world was to either be deaf and blind or high up enough that he never spared a glance at any rival. Just how powerful was this Taehyung? But why is he curled up in an alley with some girl? None of it made sense.   Yoongi is puzzled.   “Jeon Jungkook from the Jeon family.”    Taehyung nudges you. “He sounds familiar. I think I read his page on wikipedia.”   “What did it say?” you whisper despite Yoongi being able to hear everything.   “He’s the leader of a….a….cart.”   “A cart? Like a food cart?”   “No, wait. I think I remember now. Not a cart….a cartel.”   “He’s part of the mob?!” You’re shouting, eyes almost falling out of their sockets. Oh my god. This just got a thousand times worse and you’re starting to wonder if this is a terrible nightmare you’re having on the plane and you haven’t actually landed in Macau yet or maybe this was a hidden camera and you were going to be famous on a variety show. You hoped it was either one...   There was just no way Taehyung could be wanted by the police and now the mafia in Macau.   “You don’t know who Jeon Jungkook is?” Yoongi inquires with raised brows. “Are you sure you’re Kim Taehyung?”   “Yes, but I don’t know who you think I am,” he tries to reason, but it unknowingly sounds like he’s boasting. “I have nothing to do with your cartel.”   “If you show up on our turf, in our space, you are now.”   “What? No! I’m not part of any cartel. I didn’t know this was your turf, but I’m not dealing with any drugs or anything. I am literally not involved in any criminal activity!”   Yoongi’s blank expression is washed over with bewilderment. “Are...you not from Taiwan?”   “No!”   “You….don’t have an empire?”   “What empire?” Taehyung is at a loss as he tries to clarify. “I’m not related to the mafia whatsoever. Not here. Not in Taiwan. Not in Korea. Not anywhere!”   “Then where did you get the money?” The dark-haired individual steps closer, gaze narrowing in. “Where did you get the hundred million dollars from?”   “I...won it at the casino.” Taehyung backs up, holding you close behind him and you shuffle together.   “A hundred million?” The man scoffs before coldly chuckling. “Doubt it. The biggest winning is twenty one million dollars. Yours is almost five times as much.”   “W-what do you want with us? Do you want the money?!”   “No.” He rolls his shoulders and smirks, tugging his gloves to secure them. “At any rate, you should come meet my boss.”   The true lottery that Taehyung won is Kim Seokjin and Kim Namjoon arriving in the nick of time.    He’s down the avenue and flips on his police car siren. Everyone moves out the way and he zips through traffic like he’s part of Fast and Furious. Namjoon leans over and turns it off. Jin turns it back on a second later and flashes a glare.   “Leave it!”   “We’re not chasing anyone! We shouldn’t turn on the siren!”   “But we can avoid all this traffic!” He grips the steering wheel tighter. “My car, my rules.”   “It’s the station’s car.”   “I drive, my rules.” Jin turns his nose up into the air, purposely acting snotty. “If you want to drive, then be my guest. But let me remind you that the last time you did, you hit five trash cans consecutively and skimmed against three other cars.”   “They weren’t parked right at the curb!” he argues and in his rage, turns off the siren.   Seokjin turns it back on, face getting red and hot. He screams, “Hands off my fucking siren, motherfucker!” The warbling pitch of the siren is deafening. It wails in the air, drowning out Namjoon and Jin’s arguing inside the vehicle, while red and blue lights fly into the sky, flashing onto pavement. It comes closer and closer and Yoongi curses underneath his breath. He steps forward, but Taehyung holds you back, making it obvious that he’s not giving you or himself up without a fight.   Your hand wraps around Taehyung’s and you take the opportunity to run. It’s risky to go sprinting across the road while the police car is approaching, but you barely make it and Yoongi has no other choice — forced to retreat and withdraw back into the shadows.   It was amazing, really. In just a few hours, Taehyung became infamous and now everyone wants a piece of him. Too bad you come with him like a buy one, get one free package.   //   The four glass walls trapped you, but not necessarily suffocating your spirit with its transparent surfaces. Instead, it makes you feel vulnerable, like the police or mafia could catch you here.   It was a bit better when Taehyung’s body covered one side of the phone booth, his back towards you as he’s on the lookout. You had conjured a face mask and a dark hoodie for him to cover himself up with, sunglasses as well and you wonder if it just makes him more suspicious.   Thoughts pushed aside, you gain the courage to pick up the handle, slide the coins in and dial the memorized number. It was morning now with people beginning to stir and you know the person on the other line was awake too at this time. But considering the number would appear as unknown on her phone, it’s a streak of luck when the dial tone stops and it’s actually picked up.   “Yeah hello?”   “Hello?”   “Who is this?”   “It’s Y/N….”   It takes one split of a second. Your boss’ chirping morphs into rage, dropping into a deep pitch and growly like a monster. “What are you doing calling me on this number?! I texted you last night several times! Do you think you’re going on vacation, Y/N?! I expected better from you! What time is it over there?! Aren’t you supposed to go to the meeting?!”   Shrill screams ring into your eardrums and you have to pull the handset away from your ear for a moment. This had to be considered as some kind of verbal abuse. “Do you know how important this investor could be to my business?!”   “A-a-about that…”   “What?! Speak up!”   “I...I might have to reschedule,” you murmur, “I...I’m sorry. I don’t think I can meet him today.”   “Are you kidding me?! Y/N!” She’s yelling at the top of her lungs. “What the hell are you doing over there?! Why are you rescheduling?!”   You don’t realize you’re crying until your cheeks feel wet and you wipe your eyes quickly with the sleeve of your sweater. “I’m sorry.” You bow from your waist despite her not being able to see you. It’s instinctual as if you’re part of Pavlov’s Dogs, and she’s trained you to be this way. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”   “I don’t need your apology! I need you to meet him! How will my candles sell now?! Will you buy them?!”   Suddenly, there’s knocking on the glass. You lift your head to find Taehyung worries, his brows knitted together tightly. He mouths ‘are you okay?’ and you nod, wiping your eyes.   “I’m sorry.” Truth be told, you weren’t okay. Not in the least bit. You were on the verge of being fired.   The phone call eventually ends when you run out of coins and you’re no longer able to hear her even when she’s still screaming at you and making you face her wrath and fury. You don’t care about your job or about candles. But you don’t enjoy being humiliated by anyone and at the end of the day, it’s your means of survival. Without your shitty job, you don’t have anything and that’s the sad part.   There’s silence as you sit on the bench, facing the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea. From the distance, you can see the docks of Macau and the shadows of the nearby islands. It’s serene and you feel yourself relaxing, giving up. They could come take you now — arrest Taehyung for money laundering and take you to investigation. He’d be imprisoned and they might take you in for experimentation. Or better yet, the Macau mafia could take you first, kill you and Taehyung, and then steal the money….   This is not what Cinderella was like.   You much prefer the fairytale version that you detested for so long.   “What are you thinking about?” you ask him, breaking the quiet and turning your head to his handsome profile. Taehyung is looking out at the horizon, oddly calm too. No one was freaking out anymore.   “How I don’t want you to get caught up in all of this.”   Even when he’s in this predicament, he’s not thinking about himself — Taehyung’s thinking about you. You admire his selflessness and your hand reaches out, pinky first before your palm slides on top of his. Taehyung gets used to your touch before flipping his hand over and lacing your fingers together. It was comforting to hold his hand like this.   Your gaze softens on his profile and he turns, locking his eyes with yours. “I want to find who I’m looking for.”   “Right now?”    He nods. “If I can get my happy ending, you can escape from all this. You can be free from me.”   “You can’t get your happy ending if you’re being chased by the mafia or by the police, Taehyung.”   He squeezes your palm. “I want to try. I don’t want you to be stuck to me.”   “I can leave, Taehyung,” you tell him in a gentle murmur, “I could leave right now. I’m not stuck to you. I’m choosing to be here.”   “Yeah, but you have an obligation to be with me at the end of the day or at least fulfill my wishes.” The corner of his mouth lifts with a sad smile. “I don’t want you to have to feel that way.”   “I don’t—”    “Let me go find her.”   “Is that what you want?” you question him, searching his expression. “Forget about me for a moment. Think about yourself…”   “I am,” he assures and helps you stand up.   You’re uncertain — you don’t even know what a happy ending means.   //   It’s a slip of paper with an address messily scribbled on it, the blue ink slightly bleeding on the crumpled paper. Taehyung tells you when he came here, he had an old picture of her and asked around the streets of Macau like she was a missing person. He followed faint trails here and there, going on a wild goose chase until someone told him they had seen her before and wrote down where.   And here you were with him — on some dingy street, standing in front of a butcher’s shop.   “She’s supposed to be here?” You stare at the shop, reading the name of it written in bold red.   “Maybe. An old lady at a fish market saw her working here before.” Taehyung glances at you for an extended time and you turn your head, blinking at him.    “Are we going in?”   “Y-yeah….right…” He pulls the door open, letting you in first. The butcher owner is grinning, asking if you two want to buy some meat and what kind, but Taehyung greets him and then slides the picture over to him, explains why he’s here. “Have you seen her?”   “Bae Jenny? Yes. She lives across the street!” The older man points out the window. “Right there.”   You’re surprised. Taehyung seems even more shocked. Her location is finally pinpointed into a definite place, so close. It occurs to you all this trouble so far could’ve been avoided. Heck, Taehyung probably would’ve found her two days ago if you never ran into him….   The man frowns. “But who are you?”   “I...I’m an old friend of her’s.”   He nods in understanding. “She should be home at the moment. I believe it’s her day off of work.”   The bell chimes as you two exit the shop. It’s quiet. Taehyung is contemplative and you’re on autopilot while you cross the street safely, taking the stairs outside the run-down building. You shuffle to the open apartment complex, stopping right in front of the door.   “We’re lucky, huh?”   “I guess.”   You brace yourself with a deep breath, but when Taehyung doesn’t move, you frown. “Well, aren’t you going to knock?”   “Y/N. I need to tell you something.” He turns to face you, swallowing hard like he has something important to say and it’s simply caught in his throat and he’s not used to this kind of thing. “This happy ending that you’re trying to achieve for me. I...I don’t need this. What I want is—”   The door swings open. There’s a girl holding her trash bag. She freezes.   “Taehyung?!”   His eyes are wide, rounded with horror. “Jenny?”   The female is short and petite with long, black hair. She is a doll with delicate features and you wonder if she always looks this amazing at home — dressed like she’s going out, eyeliner and pink lipstick. She is gorgeous and breathtaking. This is what you envisioned your Cinderella to look like.   “What in the ever living fuck.” She glances at you and glances back at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”   He waves meekly. “H-Hi.”   Eventually, the two of you are invited into her cozy home. It’s small, but comfortable. Though you can’t get settled down, feeling too awkward as the third wheel. With a harsh nudge from you, the suffocating silence is interrupted by Taehyung who starts off with, “It’s good to see you.”   “Yeah? Can’t relate. How did you find me in the first place? Last I checked, I ghosted you on everything and I haven’t posted about my whereabouts in a long time.”   “I...I’ve been looking for you. I asked around for a long time.”   “Why?” Her brows raise, genuinely confused and unable to rationalize it.   “I...I’m in love with you…?” The last syllable of Taehyung’s weak declaration has its pitch increasing like he’s unsure of himself and questioning it too. It sounds weird and you don’t know what his issue is. Wasn’t this what he wanted?   Jenny is unimpressed and also unfazed. “Are you serious?”   “I...guess.”   “You know we were together for less than five months?”   “Yeah.”   “You didn’t even consider it official.”   “I..know…”   “And that was four years ago.”   “Uh-huh.”   “You cheated on me, remember?” Jenny looks like she’s five seconds away from slapping him or splashing him with her glass of water and when she puts it like that, your initial disbelief with Taehyung returns. He nods and you realize how ridiculous this all is. It’s obvious — he doesn’t love her. Or whatever he thinks, whatever he feels, it isn’t love.   Jenny sighs tiredly, aged an additional fifty years with him in front of her. “You’re an idiot. An absolute idiot, Taehyung. For coming here. For saying that. I don’t love you. Never had. Never will. We didn’t even have anything special. It was a basic relationship.”   He nods again, unable to say anything.   The girl regards him with narrowed eyes. “If you think it was anything great, then frankly, you’re just idealizing our relationship and romanticizing it after it’s over because you live a fucking sad life. You’re projecting your ideals onto us, onto me, because you’re lonely.”   “That’s….harsh.”   But Taehyung is not surprised. He’s rather unaffected, letting the insults roll off his shoulders, fully aware and even embracing that he is indeed an air-headed dumbass.    “Well, it’s true.” Jenny sets her cup down and leans back in her seat, crossing her arms. “You’re lonely. Always have been. You just never wanted to admit it, so you found all these girls to try to temporarily fix your problems. And once I realized your issues, I dropped you. I’d understand if you came for me to look for closure, but to announce you love me.” She scoffs and rolls her eyes to the back of her skull. “Are you kidding me?”   “Sorry.” He’s fiddling with his fingers and scratching the back of his neck. Taehyung came all this way. This was most definitely not the outcome you were expecting. You thought she’d leap into his arms, that they’d go prancing into the fields together and get married. But you suppose romance never worked like that in real life.   It’s not your place to say anything either.   “I’m sorry for you too.” She sighs again. “Honestly, I couldn’t love you even if I wanted to, Taehyung. I like girls.”   He quirks his head to the side, mildly interested at the new development. “You like girls?”    “Yeah. I mean guys are fine too, but I prefer girls. I can...tolerate them better.” Jenny steals a glance at you, the corner of her mouth curling. “This one’s a cute one.”   “Thanks..?” You’re sheepish, having stayed quiet and out of the conversation. But all the while, she’s noticed you and read your expression like it’s an open book.   “Is that all?” Jenny looks back at Taehyung. “I gotta get ready and leave soon. I got a hot date scheduled and frankly, I think this conversation is over..”   “Yeah, we’ll get going.” He stands up, waltzing outside without begging to stay or pleading with her to be heard. He acts nothing like a person who wants to redeem himself in front of the woman he supposedly loves.    Jenny leans against her door frame. “Hey, Taehyung. Wait.” He hums, spinning on his heel and she smiles. Between the two of them, there aren't any harsh feelings or emotions of resentment left. You can see it on her face that she’s mostly apathetic about his existence and only slightly annoyed by his antics. “If you ever wanna stop being dumb and go clubbing with an old friend some time, call me up. I know a few places.”   He smiles, a puff of air coming from his nose, having expected nothing less. “Okay.”   “And bring this one too.” Jenny smiles at you. “I haven’t seen someone tolerate your bullshit in a long time and she’s a pretty one.”   “Y-yeah.”   The two of you walk without saying anything for an entire block. You’re reeling, not sure what just happened. But Taehyung isn’t heartbroken at all or as devastated as you thought he’d be. He seems to only be embarrassed for the rejection and having his issues said aloud, all the things that haunted his mind coming to confront him.   “So...that was that...are you hungry? I’m sort of. Maybe we should go get some waffles.” The blonde male turns his head and then freezes up. You’re crying silently, tears shedding down your cheeks as if you just splashed your face with water. “Y/N?”   “Fuck, what are we supposed to do now?!” You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. You’ve lost it. Everything was crumbling down onto your shoulders, the weight of what you’ve done heavy. “She was supposed to take you back! But she insulted you and you didn’t even say anything back!”   “Well, what she said was true—”   “No! You’re not that big of a dumbass.”   A smile pulls on his lips, endeared and he wraps his arm around your shoulder. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”   “I failed.”   “You didn’t.”   “I did. I’m supposed to give you a happy ending, but I can’t even do such a simple thing that the rest of my family accomplished! I don’t even know what a happy ending means! What does it mean, Taehyung? What does it mean?! Things don’t end until we die! Life always continues and there will always be issues. How can you have a happy ending? How can you be happy forever?! Do you even want that?!”   “No. I don’t want a happy ending. You’re right.” Taehyung composes you, calming your turmoil and he grins. “I want adventure and I’m having that with you right now. My precious fairy that makes all my wishes come true.”   You’re catching your breath. “This is what you want?”   “Well, maybe not being chased by the police or by the mob, but being with you. It’s fun, right?”   “Fun?!”   “It’s fun,” he assures and his arm slinks off of you. Instead, Taehyung reaches down to hold your hand, lacing his fingers with yours. “And it’ll be better when things are okay again. Right now, I can think of one or two ways to make things better...and to solve our little issue. Do you trust me?”    There’s a pause. You sigh and nod once. “I do.”   As distressed as you may be, lying isn’t easy — you’re relieved that Taehyung’s with you.   //   Yoongi follows closely and swiftly, yet discreetly as he remains in the shadows. He’s been tailing the two of you since he parted ways hours ago and it was curious. So many things he was befuddled about despite being so well-informed about this world. You spoke to someone at a telephone booth, to who Yoongi has no idea. But Taehyung watched your back — that means you had an important part to play in all this, important enough that the man has to protect you.   Then the pair of you also sat on a bench for an extended period of time. Perhaps waiting for someone else or maybe signaling to another person nearby that things were progressing. It’s the most mundane activities that often signify the most.    Yoongi followed you to a butcher’s shop, an innocent little place that has potential of being more, perhaps where the money was supposed to be laundered. And then you went to see someone, a woman who quickly shut the door after you entered.   The gangster is intrigued, that much is clear. He doesn’t know what’s going on and the longer he follows after the both of you, the more he’s learning your techniques of getting around Macau. Though it still struck Yoongi as odd as to why this Kim Tae denied coming from Taiwan, refuting that he had any part of the illegal world, of having any affiliation with a family or empire. Perhaps he wanted to remain discreet, to conduct his business without arousing any attention.   Whatever the case may be, he was a man with a talent in lying.   Yoongi almost believed you and him were innocent for a moment.   But what truly provokes his curiosity is when you disappear into an alley and you both come back with a white envelope and purposely let it fall to the ground, walking away without looking back.   Yoongi picks it up after a minute and he isn’t disappointed by what he finds.   “What is this?”   Jungkook’s own question is answered as he opens the envelope and finds a cheque of exactly one hundred million dollars. He glances up at his right-hand man and finds another slip of paper with an address and time written on it.   “I’ve been following them.”   “And?”   “He denied having any affiliations with anyone and from being from Taiwan. I believe he’s lying since he doesn’t want to draw attention from anyone. He seemed to want nothing to do with us. I don’t believe he’s a threat.”   Jungkook nods, taking it all in and Yoongi continues divulging the information he’s collected, “I think he’s targeting police and trying to taunt them more than anything. Though I’m not sure why. I don’t know the specifics of the business they’re conducting, but they went to various locations around Macau while evading the police.”   “He must have some kind of vengeance against the department if he’s willing to go out personally. I wonder if he works for someone….” The leader’s voice draws on and he ends it in a thoughtful hum. “And you were telling me about a girl?”   “Yes. He protects her. I have reason to believe she may even be the mastermind behind these plans.”   Jungkook rolls his tongue inside his cheek, looking at the cheque and the amount of zeros behind the number one. “This money is a sign of an alliance.” It’s a truce, perhaps a request to join hands and destroy the police department once and for all. While the intentions are still unclear to Jungkook, he knows what to do. “Launder this money properly. I’m going to meet this Kim Tae myself.”   He lowers his head and takes the cheque. “Understood.”    Jungkook fixes his suit jacket, tugging on the sleeves as he considers how respectable a character Taehyung is. He has to see this man for himself.   And in the meanwhile….   The department floor comes alive. The ceiling fan whirrs in rhythm with the coffee machine. Phone calls are ringing and officers greet each other as they pass. In the midst of the usual chaos, Namjoon leans back in his swivel chair, feet propped up on his desk and he sips on his caffeine drink. His feet ache, eyes weary, counting the hours since he’s been awake. But as exhausted as he is, he continues to flip through the file and re-reads the profile of the suspects.   He’s brought back to his senses when his partner plops something down. “Hoseok wanted you to see this.”   Namjoon takes it and sits up, looking through the crisp printed pages. It’s information on the nightclub they've been keeping an eye on and that has suspicions of being linked to the Jeon family. The profits aren’t out of the ordinary but for today’s circumstances, it is.   Seokjin adds, “All the money in Kim Taehyung’s account is gone.”   “A hundred million?! Are they tracing it?”   “They don’t know where it went, but we might be getting a sniff of it soon.”   Namjoon scoffs. “I knew it had something to do with Jeon Jungkook.”   “I’m starting to think Kim Taehyung is a red herring.” He meets his partner’s eyes. “A pawn in the grand scheme of things.”   He nods. “Something Jeon threw out to distract us, huh? He must know we’re closing in on them.”   “It doesn’t make sense otherwise. I keep looking into Taehyung and he’s a nobody.”   “They must’ve had internal issues and transferred the money to him and used him to throw us off his scent. Make it so damn obvious by going to the Venetian and having shopping sprees so we can’t ignore him.” Namjoon slams his fist against the desk. “That damn Jeon. We won’t be tricked!”   It’s not worth going after Taehyung — one shouldn’t capture the pawn when they could capture the king.   Yet, it still makes the detectives frustrated. They detect Jungkook’s play, but an entire night and day has been wasted going on a wild goose chase after someone who’s essentially a smoke screen. While they’re thankful they realized this before wasting any more time or investing weeks into Taehyung, they don’t know what to do anymore.   That is until Jung Hoseok comes running towards them. “We just got an anonymous tip.”   //   Jeon Jungkook stands at the docks. His hands are dug within his dress pants pockets and he faces the sea, allowing the cool mist to carve through his hair and recall simpler days when he was just a child innocent of the world he belonged to. His childhood memories only ever consist of his late mother and the nannies, never of his frightening father, a father who seemed absent from all things until he was fourteen and he groomed Jungkook to become what he is today.   As he waits patiently for the infamous man he’s only heard about, he relishes in all these thoughts of a time that was simpler. His men have circled the area, securing it from anything suspicious and Yoongi is standing by, perhaps more alert than Jungkook is.   Suddenly, a black sleek car pulls up. Its wheels dig into the sand and asphalt from the road, stopping harshly without a lurch forward. The windows are tinted and Jungkook raises his left hand up, stopping Yoongi from walking over. Jungkook allows this Kim Tae to approach him first and he listens to the noise of both sides of the door opening.   Then immediately, without time to breathe the ocean’s scent, the two spin around to Jungkook.   Their pistols are pointed right at him.   “Get down on the ground!” Namjoon is shouting, deep within his stomach. “Hands in the air where we can see them!”   “Hands in the air!” Seokjin screams over top of his partner. “Do not reach for anything!”   Yet with one flick of Yoongi’s wrist, his handgun from his back pocket comes to point at the two officers. He cocks the gun back, preparing to fire if need be, but no one shoots.   “You’re surrounded, Jeon Jungkook! Give up! You have nowhere to go!”   The mafia leader’s hands lift in the air lazily, right next to his head. He spins slowly around on his heel to face the undercover officers and the corner of his lip curls. “Really now?”   “The roads are barricaded off. Your men have been identified and are surrounded. We have our officers all over the docks.” Namjoon remains calm and composed. There wasn’t a single fisherman on the docks, all undercover police officers. “It’s over.”   This was the moment they had been working so hard for. The evidence they had compiled are simply missing a few puzzle pieces. If they get Jeon Jungkook and strike a deal with him, they could shut down a chain of underground businesses and corrupt politicians. Everything could come crumbling down.    The man’s brow cocks. “What are you arresting me for?”   “On suspicion of being involved in solicitation, extortion, and embezzlement.”   “And where’s the evidence?” he mocks them, singsonging the question. “None of it has my name on it. None of it connects to me.”   Seokjin smiles. “Yeah? Well, you’re under arrest for money laundering. The evidence is in the hundred million dollars!”   The police department received a tip, a deep voice that mumbled Jungkook’s name, a time and a location. They were hung up on, but tracing the call, it came from a phone booth. The CCTV footage showed a person in a dark sweater, face indistinguishable, more of a shadow than a human. Perhaps it was Taehyung betraying his mafia family, but that wasn’t important — the information was enough to devise a plan. It was the quickest and most hasty thing they’ve come up with in this investigation, but it worked.    They have Jeon Jungkook cornered.   As the muzzle of the gun is pointed at Jungkook, the tunnel of the barrel that seems endless, a chilling chuckle emits from the man’s throat. He knocks his head back and laughs, scaring the two officers. At the same time, more police cars pull up, siren deafening. They truly have him surrounded…   It hits Jungkook like a freight train — it was a trap.   This is the cost of wondering about Kim Tae from Taiwan. This was the repercussions of digging into his business in Macau, meddling in his work. Jungkook doesn’t know if he respects this Kim Tae or finds him truly fearsome.   “Curiosity kills the cat, doesn’t it?” His cold chuckles end and he shakes his head in regret, murmuring, “I should’ve never poked the bear with a stick.”   They’re confused, but there’s no time to react, much less to make sense of his words or respond. In a blink, Jungkook’s smirking again and with the muscle-memory that his father hammered into his skull, he reaches into his inner blazer pocket and has his own handgun.   His smirk morphs into an eerie grin and like a brat, he says, “You’ll have to take me dead.”   Someone shoots first. No one knows who or from what side, but then bullets begin spraying into the air. They take cover, glass of cars shattering, screams of ‘get down!’. It’s chaos and Jungkook’s men run over, protecting their boss with their own bodies, a full shootout erupting.   “This is your anchor Park Jimin, here to deliver some breaking news. Several miles south of Macau Port, several male suspects have opened fire against policemen. As you can see, shots are being fired as we speak—”   You’re watching the news with Taehyung through the window of a store, standing shoulder to shoulder on the street. Your jaw has dropped, mouth full of cotton and Taehyung’s eyes glimmering in equal amazement. It’s something out of a movie and you’re not sure you can believe this is actually happening — but considering you’re a fairy godmother, you guess anything’s possible.    “Do you think this was our doing?” you mumble out the corner of your mouth.   Taehyung grins. “Let’s just say it is. That would make one hell of a story.”   “Yeah, a story I don't think we’ll ever be able to tell anyone.” You look away from the screen towards him, blinking at how blazing he is and how the sun has kissed his skin, making him glow. “I think you might be a goddamn genius, Taehyung.”   “I know.” His grin widens and the sheer size of it might break his face. He looks so happy with your praise and you don’t care that you’re feeding his ego. “You’re only starting to realize?”   You scoff. “I knew you weren’t a complete idiot.”   “Psh. Your expectations for me are too low. I’m going to have to keep trying to impress you, aren’t I?”   “If you want to impress me, you’re going to have to step your game up, Kim.”   “Will do.” His arm slings around your shoulder as you both resume walking down the street.    The money was gone. None of you had it anymore so that problem was solved. The police should be off your tail and as for the mob...you hope they’re too scared of Taehyung to do anything. But you don’t know for sure. Regardless, the two of you will have to leave Macau as soon as possible for the sake of safety.   “What are your plans now?”   You hum, haven’t had time to think about it. “Probably go back home. Catch up on some sleep on the plane considering I’ve been awake for forty-eight hours now...and then, I’ll go crawling back to my job and apologize to my boss again. Assuming I haven’t gotten fired yet.”   “Why would you go back there? You hate it.”   “Where am I supposed to get money to live?”   “I still have the money that I legitimately won from the casino…”   “That’s yours.” You tease, “And you should keep it — it’s not like you have a job.”   He gasps in mock offense, hand over his heart. “I’ll have you know, I make a decent living selling my picture and drawing people on the street.” Taehyung pulls you closer to him, looking down at you. It’s too intimate and to outsiders, the pair of you appear more like a couple than friends. But there’s no time to linger in the way your heart is thundering in your chest when his smile falls and he becomes genuine.   “I’m serious. You shouldn’t go back to that place if it makes you so unhappy. You should….come with me instead.”   “Come with you? Where?”   “I still have my plane tickets. The ones you gave me,” he reminds you and points to the old bag slung across his abdomen. The two of you had ran to get your belongings in the hotel room and got out as quickly as possible. Everything you need is with you and when he puts it like that, he’s technically right. You could go anywhere in the world.   “I asked you for two not because I wanted to go back for a second time, but because I want you to come with me,” he admits as his cheeks begin to deepen in hue, embarrassed that he had thought about this before and many times at that. “I was even happier when you said you wanted to travel too and...I made a promise, right? I...I just want to keep it.”   You’re speechless. “Taehyung…”   “I have to leave anyways. I want to leave with you.” He stops walking and you halt with him. Taehyung is a scrambling, stuttering, nervous mess and you eat it all up. “I know it’s a lot to ask. You technically met me yesterday and now I’m asking you to travel the world with me and we don’t know each other that well—”   “I think we’ve gotten to know each other a lot in these past two days,” you refute. You can’t think of anyone else that’s been chased down by the mob and police with you. The experience definitely drove you closer together and you’re full-aware of his issues as he is aware of yours. Everything is out in the open. There’s nothing to hide and nothing you want to keep hidden from him.   Taehyung laughs and you add, “Too much actually.”   “Will you still come see the world with me?”   You never thought there would be a day where someone would ask you such a thing. It’s mind boggling to consider that you could’ve been with anyone. Anyone in this world that could’ve had unlimited wishes, that would’ve used you until the last moment, that would throw you away afterwards. But it was Taehyung of all people. You’re the one who’s lucky.    And you’re so glad that he’s your Cinderella.   “It would be my honour as your fairy godmother,” you mean it. Nothing excites you more. As long as you’re not chased by the police or the mob, you’re happy to go anywhere with him.   Taehyung’s smile almost makes his cheeks burst and he nods. “But before we go, there’s something I want to do.”   “You know we can’t stay here for long, right?”   “Yeah, but this will only take a second.” Taehyung’s body is facing you and his arm extends, palm opening and pointing towards the sky. You glance up at his face, trying to decipher his blank features, not knowing what he wants or if he wants you to hold his hand again. But what he says is not what you expect. “Give me your wand.”   You trust him enough at this point to hand it over. “You know you can’t do anything with it, right? I’m the only one that can use it.”   “Yeah, I know.” He holds the silver stick. It shimmers and shines against the light, glimmering as if sparkles are embedded into the surface. Taehyung grips your wand with both hands.   “What are you— Taehyung! No! You can’t break it! I tried—”   But the stick bends. And then suddenly it…   Snap.   Much to your horror, he announces it blankly, “I just broke it.”    “What the fuck?!” Your eyes are wide and your hands are curled around his wrist, trying to see the damage done. It’s snapped in half. And you can’t wrap your brain around it. It never even so much budged in your hands. It was concrete, unbending, unyielding. Yet, he snapped it as if it was an uncooked noodle. “How?!”   “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Wasn’t hard. Maybe I got the power to do it cause I’m Cinderella.” His brows playfully wiggle, joking around, but you aren’t amused. You’re shocked.   “Why?”   “I don’t want you to feel like you’re my servant. I don’t want you to feel obligated towards me.” A shy smile spreads into his face and he lowers his arms, your grip on him loosened. “Happy ending? I’m already happy with you…”   You’re emotional, stunned to silence. But the words that croak out of your lips first is— “Wh-why are you so cheesy?”   His shy smile becomes another enormous grin. “You’re my fairy either way. I don’t need wishes.”   You let out a breathless scoff, walking away from him and trying to ignore the way a lump has formed in your throat, how your chest feels light and fluffy. He quickly catches up to your pace, synchronizing his steps with yours and he steals glances of your profile like he can’t get enough of you. “You’re paying for our taxi ride to the airport, right? Where are we going first?”   “Mumbai or Italy?” He laughs. “Your choice.”   He throws the wand into the nearby trash can, chucking it away and neither of you look back as you continue on your way down the street of Macau.   You’re still not sure what a happy ending entails, but you wonder if this is it — this contentment and bliss of being Taehyung’s fairy and princess.

[twitchesandstitches]

Ranamon Redemption

(Warning, this one gets PRETTY long!)

Another day had come; another conquest, another loot, and it all felt pretty much the same to Ranamon.

A down rose on Treasure Planet, light blooming across cities of actual gold. Not gold colored or gold-plated, but buildings made of actual gold. Windows sparkled, the glass perfect prisms of diamond and sapphire, the streets shimmered in complex netways like liquid chocolate, and turn your gaze far enough past islands that seemed to be huge chunks of looted land masses coated in sparkly things, and you might see that the seas glittered, with an effect similar to what happened if you scattered a number of prisms over a lit flashlight. Hard to say what they were made of, but it was probably very expensive.

In orbit there hang a vast ship, several miles long and bristling with armaments, enough multi-directional engines to make it ludicrously mobile, and all shaped in a fashion to look both dangerous and very aerodynamic. Mostly it just looked cool; so awesome that it was in peril of slipping around from being too cool to stay still in one spot for long. You’d have expected any of the thousands of people present as essential personnel to all have sunglasses and disdainful expressions at the world below. Many other ships like it, though far smaller (ranging from battlecruisers to city-wrecking destroyers to glorified barges meant to just hold loot on their way back from their adventures) floated around, or were being polished back to perfect and getting the gemstone luster plated on again.

Around the artificial planet, every single inch whispered of enormous wealth, luxury, and the fame of having a world so fabulous. The very continents were made from the loot of a thousand worlds (or so it was said, mostly by Vriska Serket herself). The sea, something like distilled wine rendered into a biologically appropriate substitute for water, sold for hundreds a dollars a bottle on the very finest of worlds. And that wasn’t even anything to do with the massive stores of loot occupying the center of the planet itself, like tribute to the mighty Fountain of Conquest at the core, radiating its power to every world within the reach of the Cobalt Stingers, so that everyone knew their name and power…

To the digital being presently encapsulated in material-space via a small and very wobbly robot that managed to resemble her true form by coincidence, it had rather lost its luster a long time ago. The extremely wide hips of the robotic avatar swayed, almost drunkenly, as she stared at the ground, thinking hard. She found it hard to walk and think at the same time. She had spent a very long time - but had it been? she wondered. Maybe she’d only been herself for a few years. Maybe much longer than she thought, all the same. How did you really, in your code, KNOW? But however it might be counted, she hadn’t needed to be introspective for much of it.

She was Ranamon. Some time ago, the fleet of adventurers, rogues, scoundrels and mercenaries she had joined had found themselves, along with their rivals in a nomadic group of hedonistic mutants and outcasts, stumbling into the discovery of another plane of reality made from the flow of information. Everything had a shape and a form somewhere, and the concept of data, the existence of it on a server or through the networks between stars, made life. Her own people called this world, their world, the Digital Realm. They were the digital denizens of it, the digimon, and she was among the mightiest of them all, bearing the power of a long-passed heroine and command over the seas.

Join me, had said Vriska Serket then. The glamorous leader of the pirates, the Cobalt Stingers. It had been a threat, an invitation, and an offer all at once, and Ranamon had been intoxicated by the thought of something new.

I’ve seen so many things, she thought glumly as she walked past a gaggle of serfs polishing the walls and bowing low to anyone who came near on pure automatic reflex. Stars getting up and walking away. Monsters rising out of the dark and screaming at what they found there. Giant robots with great big bouncy boobs!

She tried hard not to think about the next thought coming her way, the dreadful taste of it.

It wasn’t boredom. She could handle boredom, and with the Stingers, you could never stay bored for long.

She fled from the thought, and her flight eventually brought her far from the serfs, all the way to a random bar in one of the underground cities, clinging in the warrens like a chamber of a castle beneath the world. And it shouldn’t be possible for a digimon to get drunk in the physical world, especially not in a robotic avatar, but she fancied giving it a try anyways.

“Listen here,” she said irritably at some point, and the image of those serfs bowing stuck in her mind, itching like a bad wound. “Okay, listen here, just listen. Right!?”

“Right,” said one of the Decepticon racers that hung around Admiral Serket’s favorite doctor. The Stunticons. This one was… Motormaster, a big and tough truck-type femcon with a curvaceous figure that had been carefully engineered to be big and strong. She was regarding Ranamon’s robot avatar with a disdainful air.

“Yeah. So.” Ranamon dimly noted a woman in the background, just barely visible. Blue skin, purple hair, an extremely curvaceous body on par with any of those weird moms from the rival fleet… but none of that stood out on this fleet, either. Ranamon was having a hard time thinking about something besides the weird feeling she was trying to articulate, and she kept flashing back to those serfs. Bowing not out of respect, or fear, but just because she was there, as indifferently as breathing.

Were the serfs mind-controlled? Did Admiral Serket have them chained to her will and set them loose like automatons? Were they free in their own mind but not their wills, raised to slavishly adore their lords in the Stingers to the lowest gunner and boarder? Ranamon had no idea and it got her really going.

“Okay, seriously.” Motormaster raised a hand, and she waved it indifferently. “Who cares how the serfs feel? They’re serfs!”

Ranamon held a finger up in protest. She paused. “Shoot. Did I say that whole thing out loud?”

“Yep.”

Her finger lowered. “Oh, okay.” She paused again. “I had. I had. I had. I had a point! I don’t… what was my point again?”

An elf in the crowd raised a hand. “Was it that you’re gonna pay for happy hour?”

“Nuh uh!”

“I HAVE LOST INTEREST.”

Ranamon groaned. “Ugh. Just a few hours ago I was dumping a few tons of interstellar currency into the vaults and, and. Ugh. What is even the point of it all?”

“What’s the point?” Motormaster leaned in, looming over her. Metal breasts, soft like flesh and tough as shields, hovered menacingly beyond Ranamon with a sense of weight, larger than cars. “You were in on a huge score! You’re famous! Rich!”

“Yeah,” Ranamon said. “Rich. Famous. That kind of thing.”

Motormaster leaned back again, seemingly satisfied. “What more do you need?”

Ranamon staggered up. “Don’t know,” she said, staggering up and walking away gloomily. “Don’t know anything anymore…”

The bar watched her go for a moment, and after it became clear that nothing more interesting than her oversized breasts briefly getting her stock in the doorway was going to happen, they went back to concentrating on their revelry.

Only the blue woman Ranamon had seen wasn’t concerned with her drink, but instead got up and quietly left, sashaying only a little bit out of sheer habit.

And it would be nice to say that, at this point, Ranamon’s life changed forever.

A chance meeting with a stranger, perhaps. A conversation that opened her eyes to her own doubts, her misgivings. And from there, a better path to take. Leaving the Stringers and using her wealth for a better means, or repaying the damage she had caused-

But no. Life doesn’t really work like that.

Even in a universe of magic, where the laws of physics were so loose that they were constantly slipping away, there were stronger considerations and nothing was that easy, nor free. Guilt is a hard thing to face up to when everyone around you won’t acknowledge such a thing. Society bounces people around, and normality, shame, morals; those are all reinforced by what bounces from one person to another. And in the Cobalts, self-indulgence and satisfaction was the only real importance.

And so, more than a year passed for Ranamon to contemplate these matters. She retreated from active duty aboard pirate-y affairs, declining offers for raids or archeological missions, and she’d done enough that she was allowed to hang back and enjoy the fruits of her efforts. Eventually she’d run out and had to return to work, but that would take many years before she ran out of the goodwill she had earned.

A year, mostly of getting wildly drunk on data-records of being blissfully out of it (Digimon handle substances very differently, dear Reader), and doing her best not to think about anything much lately. Sinking deeper and deeper, ruminating more intently on the problems she was starting to notice, and all the while, the blue woman… observed. Like a spider on the wall.

A year of losing all interest in anything that had once mattered to her. None of it satisfied. People were already getting used to her public rants about how fame didn’t matter, not if those prophecies like the Lapis Lazuli Visions were true about something coming. That all the wealth in the world just didn’t feel fun anymore.

She didn’t know how to admit she wasn't happy anymore, and she didn’t know why. And in the fashion typical of the Cobalt Stingers, she dealt with it by getting even more wrapped up in basic pleasures to block out the bad thoughts.

At some point, she wasn’t aware of having left her private manor near the surface, right next to the network channels in… she didn’t even know anymore. Weeks? Months? She didn’t remember anything. Just… a yawning sense of awful.

There came a knock at the door.

Awkwardly, Ranamon came to the door in a makeshift body; a slender robotic model that felt so wrong to wear, too thin in all the wrong places, and too tall, it just didn’t feel right one bit, but she wasn’t in the mood to bother with it.

A vaguely familiar human woman, her skin blue, looked down at her. Ranamon was vaguely surprised to see eight eyes, spider-like, set into her face, and several additional sets of arms (cybernetic, from the seams, but very sleek), and at this point it occurred to her that it was very hard to see anything of her face past those massive breasts jutting out.

“You are slimmer than I expected you to wear,” the woman said curtly, her voice accented with… Ranamon took a moment to place it, synching up with the local computers and taking much too long, a few microseconds, for shame, to recognize it as a sign of one of the languages of the Gaulic language family. Descended from human… French, she guessed.

“And you are goddamn stacked and I hate you for reminding me,” Ranamon groused. “Are you the data lady?”

“No. I am not. May I come in?”

Ranamon considered. “No.” She shut the door.

The woman outside stared at the door for a moment. “Hrm,” she said, and sidled around the edge of the manor. She found a window, putting all her hands to it, and began to climb straight up it, exactly like a spider.

The manor was not hard to navigate. As she suspected, the owner of this place was not in a condition to move fast, and she prepared her game accordingly.

Ranamon took a long route to get back to a drinking room, and even so, she took a moment to recognize the blue woman sitting in a chair and sipping at a cup of fine wine. “What the heck!?”

“It’s not a bad vintage,” the woman observed. “I am not sure what you bother with actual wine, however. You can’t drink it, so I presume it is for friends. Not,” She added, “That you’ve had anyone here for some time.”

Ranamon gaped. She tried to work out something to say, in order of relevance: What are you doing in my house!? How did you get in here!? Who ARE you? Are you spying on me!? But what she actually managed to say was, “Does it taste okay?”

“I did say so, yes. But you have fine taste in wine.” She sipped the glass again. “Do forgive me. I didn't mean to make a wordplay joke.”

“...What joke…?”

“Never mind.” The woman stood up, draining the glass in a single swig, and put it away. “My name is Amelie Lacroix. And you are Ranamon; one of the digital beings that inhabits the data networks of the Stinger information servers across all their known worlds. Uploaded into a robotic body to interact with this world as a whole.”

Ranamon blinked. “Okay…?”

“And you first achieved consciousness in a weather analysis system,” Lacroix said, speaking flatly and without interest, and Ranamon did look up at that.

“Wait, what?” Ranamon stared. “How do you know about-”

“Rather,” Lacroix went on. “ You were that system, given further definition by taking in the power of an ancient heroine.”

“I didn’t! I mean, I didn’t mean to, I mean… how do you know that!?”

“You took her legacy,” Lacroix said, dispassionate.

For Ranamon, everything froze up. “I… I didn’t.”

Lacroix’s gaze was absolutely pitiless. “You were a thief in your very birth. And here you are, comfortable and wealthy, in theft.”

Ranamon instinctively rose up, the wind rattling in the bottles - just enough liquid to react to her powers - and then she thought What’s the point, She’s not wrong, and she stopped.

“Y’ain’t wrong,” she muttered, not looking at Lacroix. She sat down on the floor, too tired to argue. Not tired with thoughts like that, though she was well-acquainted with them. Just… fundamentally worn out in ways she was not prepared to deal with.

Lacroix did not tilt her head quizzically. She gave no indication of being surprised or… of anything really, but chilly and inhuman calmness.

“You regret it,” Lacroix said evenly, and at this, something like warmth came into her voice. It was… softer, perhaps. “I think that you have.”

“...Maybe,” Ranamon said guardedly. “Why do you care?”

“Perhaps someone should. And I think that you may well go a long way before you find someone here who is equipped to grasp why you no longer care for this life-”

‘Wait, how do you know I don’t like being like this anymore?”

“I’ve my sources, dear. Trust that.” Lacroix tapped her temple. “They are there when you dream and when you arose. They were there in the dark, and in the glimmering of the power that gave you shape. They know you, as they knew me.” She reached into a pocket of a long and elegant coat-

Cold numbness flew up Ranamon’s phantom back. She started to scoot back.

“”Don’t be afraid.” Lacroix withdraw a small card. She held it out. “It is only a way for you to… get into touch with my employers, we might say?”

Ranamon awkwardly took the card. It had only a simple number on it.

“Call this number, should you decide that you are truly done with this life,” Lacroix said, walking away towards a window, hands in her pockets.

She was gone. Ranamon scuttled over to the door, peeking out to see her, but there was not even the slightest glimpse of her. Only a single solitary purple spider, upon a leaf, staring straight at her. And then, even that was gone; Ranamon wondered if she had imagined it.

Ranamon was left alone, with a card that had a single number on it.

As she looked it at, a slogan appeared in slow, lovely writing: “For when you’re ready.”

Several weeks more passed.

There was a periodic sign of Amelie Lacroix amid the treasure planet, and Ranamon looked for her. She wasn’t sure why. Seeking more answers? Curiosity? Maybe even an accusation of something. Lacroix never returned her gaze, whether across the bar, at one of the dueling ranges, or from a distance of a dozen feet before one of the light bridges connected the decks of buildings measured stories hall, new catwalks and streets instead of gutters and the light bridges connecting them.

The sight of the light refracting through ten hundred bridges, mixing and refracting into something bright and beautiful, struck something in Ranamon. How long had it been… that she just appreciated something being beautiful?

She looked around at the world, of shining diamonds and gold and splendor, so beautiful and lovely that every second was rich… and now, as always her gaze was drawn to the groupies toiling away, smiling in a distant way.

If she stayed, was she any different from them? A servant to someone else that probably barely knew her name. The way she heard it, Admiral Serket had no idea who anyone else in the fleet was. That was left to administrators like Lusamine and Courtney of Team Aqua.

The phones called to her.

Well, she thought glumly to herself. Why not?

“It’ll just be to check out what they’re offering,” she said to herself, ringing up the number through her onboard phone systems. “I’m not committing to anything. I’m not serious about this… really…”

The phone was picked up immediately. “Come to the fast travel train station around the corner, beneath the hab complex,” a calm and tired voice said, with a Cybertronian synthetic twang to it. “A train will be waiting for you. Blue, with a large X upon it.”

“Wait,” Ranamon said. “What is this about-”

“Be there. You may depart, if you choose not to accept our offer, but you will have no memory of what you may see there. Please, do not dawdle.”

The phone hung up.

About fifteen minutes later, give or take a hurried chauffeuring to the train station in question, Ranamon slunk into the crowd of mingled groupies, pirates, brutes and technicians, all of whom wore some variety of the tight white clothes and pseudo-leathers preferred by the Cobalt elites, and Ranamon felt very exposed in her robot body. No one paid her any interest, though, suspiciously so. Especially as she cautiously approached a small train idling on the monorail, so streamlined as to be like a bullet, and strangely old; age radiated off it like a chill. And there was a large X upon it. Not an ominous kind, just a very discreet set of diagonal lines.

No one seemed to look directly at it. That was strange. Around here, you’d think people would zip straight toward anything novel or intriguingly new, even if it wound up being a catastrophically bad idea or was super suspicious.

As she approached, the doors of the train smoothly opened for her. She stepped inside, not entirely sure of what she was doing.

“Sit down, please,” the same voice from the phone said. She looked around, but saw no one. It was a single cab, of the modern kind that was totally automated, and there wasn’t a conductor that she could see. The voice came from all around, welling out from the train itself.

Ranamon, too off balance to reply, went to the nearest bench. A seat belt obligingly wound around her framework. The train started to go, and she definitely felt a sensation of movement.

This was the point that she no longer really had a frame of reference; the windows chose that moment to suddenly jerk, the view outside distorting like a tub of paints being thrown into a washing machine at full cycle.

The train accelerated, and fired forward far faster than should have been possible at all, and it was moving… sideways? No, down, up. Both, all of those, at the same time, and REALLY FAST, why did she feel like she was turning inside out-

No one saw the train leave, as no one had seen it enter. It was simply gone, though to the sole occupant, it was a much stranger experience.

There was a long moment, perhaps several hours worth of a single moment stretched out much longer than it was comfortable for even a digital entity, as Ranamon experienced dimensions of existence she really had not been programmed to comprehend or deal with in any respectable way. It felt weird, she had absolutely no idea what was going on, WHAT WAS HAPPENING-

“I’m gonna be sick, HELP, I FEEL SICK, MAKE IT STOP!” she wailed.

“Please do not be ill inside me,” the unseen voice said, sounding a bit curious at the prospect all the same. “Hold a moment… you are inside a platform. CAn you even BE ill?”

“Can we please table this discussion until after I stop being about to throw up!?”

“Certainly. We are here.”

And then, they stopped, with such a sudden jerk that it was almost as bad as going that fast to begin with.

Ranamon stumbled down out of the bench as the belt came away, and data streamed out from the little robot. Here, in a space very different from what she had just been in, her information flowed away from the robotic body she had been inhabiting, and it clattered to the ground, devoid of animating force, and then.

Her feet touched the ground. She wobbled, and that was a well-chosen word indeed, to a stop, too dazed to even realize what had happened. “Out!” She gasped, stumbling out the open doors, her legs moving without any dignity at all.

She fell onto her knees outside. Her first sign of something being off was the air, cold and brisk and full of a strange vitality but then… she wasn’t breathing at all. There was nothing to breath, no atmosphere, but the idea of breathing did it for her. Then she realized that she didn’t need to breath at all, so why was she experiencing that?

The third, and probably more strictly sensual one, as her breasts touching the ground. Her actual body! RAnamon looked down and squeaked as she saw not metal and clicky joints, but light green flesh, for the first time outside a computer! She squeaked, standing up as her massive breasts wobbled in front of her, almost toppling her over again. Slowly she placed her hands upon them. Her webbed hands, the blue organic armor of her true digital form right there. Her fingers made little indentations in her spheres, and she squeezed just for the novelty of it.

A bad idea. “Ow!” She whined. Her breasts bounced, in the way that only a bustline as big as sixty percent of a person’s entire body mass can, and she took a few more confident steps forward. She was starting to get familiar with her own body again, and she whirled around, examining herself in wonder. Yes… this was… familiar.

Her skin, moist and faintly green. Smaller than the average human, but obscenely stacked in hips and bust so that she wobbled from every inch with a single step. Blue armor, or perhaps a tight jumpsuit that looked disquietingly organic, clung tight to her hyper-sexed form, two angler fish lights dangling from her forearm gauntlets.

The feathery gills against the side of her face, projecting out from her elongated helmet and the angler lure projecting out behind it, flapped happily. She stamped on the ground, patting herself in wonder. “I’m… I’m here? I’m actually here? The REAL me!? My coding! My everything! My bigness!”

She hugged herself, causing a muffin top of breastflesh to flow over her face, and between her arms, and against her stomach. “I’m here again…!”

“Perhaps I should have warned you, dear,” the unseen voice said again. Now, perhaps more comfortable, it was warming up, with a bit of bounce, and sounded positively jolly, like a gift-giver or a rich and slightly loopy uncle. “We are not in what you might think of as the material realm. The rules are… looser, here.”

Ranamon looked up - in her own body, no platform, just HER - and saw only the train. She stood upon a platform in what looked like an empty void. No, scratch that. She saw a city of sorts, but barely any people walking across… she squinted. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of… no way. Platforms? Mile-long platforms, or perhaps islands floating freely in the void, connected by streamers of vibrant light. Perhaps surges of intense magic, so strong they had become a stable force. In the distance, she saw a small castle, floating around between several other platforms in a way that reminded her of a power core. Perhaps it was… fueling this place, somehow?

She looked away from the strangely shaped islands floating in the dark, and turned to the train. There was no conductor coming out. It was just her. “Okay, am I alone here? Are you… somewhere else? What am I supposed to do?”

“Hold a moment,” the voice said, and it was definitely coming from the train now.

The train… stood up. At least, that was one way to put it. She stared up in alarm as the train shifted forms and transformed into an entirely new form, reformatting itself and moving into a more humanoid configuration. She felt silly; she knew Transformers! She should have expected that! She hadn’t been in a remote controlled train, she’d been inside a Transformer!

The train, interestingly, shed it’s kibble. Most Transformers had elements of their alt form, but she knew that the ones in the Endowed Fleet, rivals to the Cobalts, had engineered a way to allow Transformers to assume entirely new ones on the fly; perhaps this one had gotten the same trick. The cab, the wheels, the underslung rail riding gear all disappeared into its body, exchanging itself for the signs of a born flier. Integrating engines, antigravity pods, a streamlined appearance and jet projectors all along the limbs that were quickly materializing.

It was a lot larger than many Transformers she had seen, too. Broad all over; the hips were very slim, but the arms and legs were huge. The chest was extremely broad, almost like a flat screen, and something about that was very worrying to her. There were no faction decals, brands or insignias. There were a few places which looked like there had been… at least, before they had been scorched away, most likely by this robot’s own hand.

Only one hand, at that. A huge and powerful set of claws, indelicate and badly scarred at the wrist. The secondary form of an old punishment practiced on ancient Cybertron; empurata, mutilating a Transformer’s body and replacing their parts with crude, clumsy replacements to publicly shame them and render them unable to act outside a given function. The other hand, though, was a mass of tools, a shifting and whirring bulk of micro-tools to accomplish any task, but it was also very clearly a massive cannon.

A flat broad chest. Empurata. A cannon-arm, and a distinctive bulky frame. She knew this Transformer.

Thousands upon thousands of horrified aliens knew his name. MAny more had seen his pitiless eye, before they were lost forever in his labs. Their pieces and parts scattered, bloodied bodies abandoned on the floor, entire worlds used for experimentation so horrendous and cruel that it was said even the legendarily vicious Mindfang thought they were too inhumane to even think about-

And now, staring down at her, was a head that had suffered the fate of primary empurata. His head removed, cut away, scarred and mutilated and placed back, all ability to expression emotion stripped away from it, cut down to the very framework. The living metal was a mass of burns and blade wounds, and a single large eye stared down at her.

“Greetings,” he said in a surprisingly cheerful voice. “We were not introduced. My apologies, I am-”

“Shockwave.” She took several steps back, trying not to upend herself with her own overlarge assets. “Oh God. You’re Shockwave.”

“...Ah.” He stared down at her. His tone was very soft. “You know of me.”

He’s a fucking MONSTER. He makes that maniac Grimlock on the Endowed Fleet look reserved and calm. He’s the one who turned Grimlock and his flock of monsters rabid! He melts down organic planets and uses them for fuel! He’s tortured people to death just to measure the sounds of their screams! He’s made parents eat their own children in psychological games just to test how far people are willing to go to survive! He stitches people to one another after turning them inside out, he replaces living metal with wood, he fills people with parasites, he’s done so many evil things that actual DEMONS are horrified by it. He’s defined what the world ‘cruelty’ actually means and, oh god, I AM ALONE WITH SHOCKWAVE.

It WAS A TRAP, he wanted a Digimon to cut up and do things to, I’m ALONE WITH SHOCKWAVE.

Ranamon raised her hands. “Don’t step any closer,” she said, keeping her voice level, the terror rising in her and putrid-sick. “I’ll put a hole in you. I still have my powers here, I can absolutely destroy you, you sick freak!”

Shockwave stared at her. “I doubt that you can,” he said eventually. “My people are incredibly hard to put down. We can be cut open, melted down, ripped apart, exposed to the emptiness of space, have our minds fried with electromagnetics… and still, we just cannot die.” A faint horror came into his voice. “Processors, cut open and exposed to the world. Spark champers removed and replaced with progressively more incapable fuel systems. The body slowly shuts down as it is damaged, one piece at a time… and yet, no matter how loud we want to die, we just cannot. Not without certain terrible means that, I believe, are not available to you.”

She paused. Something wasn’t quite right here.

”Cosmic rust. Total bodily failure; destroy all the organs of a Transformer simultaneously, and perhaps that will kill us. But do it even slightly wrong, and we won’t die. At least, not right away. We will live. No matter how much we deserve to die.”

Ranamon’s arms lowered extremely slightly. ABsolute terror was slightly fading away in favor of bewilderment. “Oh. You’re… not Shockwave. Are you?”

“I am.” The robot turned his eye towards her. She had seen pictures of it. The photos of the multiverse’s most evil criminal scientist and torturer were always the same: pitiless, heartless, utterly without morality or the hint of any feeling whatsoever. Nothing but logic, cold and empty.

This was anything but empty. The eye was wild, moving this way and that, his entire frame continually shuddered like some awful emotion was trying to tear him apart from the inside out, and though he was quiet for a moment, his body language suggested a mind that was screaming if only it could find a voice big enough for it.

“You remember me as I was,” he began.

“I was Senator Shockwave, a long time ago,” Shockwave continued, voice marginally under control. “Idealist, reformer. I was, i tried to be… good. And then, the Functionalists took my mind from me. They cut it apart and sliced away everything from me but my ability to think logically, and they taught me what cruelty really was. And then, and… oh, yes.”

He spread his arms mockingly.

“Yes,” he said again. “You know of what I became. A true monster. An evil upon the multiverse, exceeded only by young Megatron.” His tone became soft and weary.

Distantly, Ranamon thought that she had heard that Shockwave had disappeared some time ago, after the formal dissolution of the Decepticon Empire. She had assumed he had gone to unknown worlds, to inflict his special brand of scientific curiosity upon all unfortunate enough to meet him. “What happened to you?”

Shockwave turned, rising out of whatever deep pit he had been in, and pointed. Ranamon turned to see a vast blue shape regarding them politely, floating in the vast abyss around them. A huge shape, beautiful and terrible at once, and inexpressibly sorrowful; perhaps mourning for all existence. A vast curtain of white light fluttered around a beautifully alien face, and enormous, kissable lips measured in miles, the rest of the giantess so massive that she was exerting her own gravity, little planetoids around her, and her body was… big. And curvy, really very curvy. Unbelievably massive breasts even larger than Ranamon’s in comparison, hips almost wider than this giantess was tall.

And, nestled between her interstellar cleavage, there was a massive blue diamond. A gem core.

“Oh my god,” Ranamon whispered. “That’s Blue Diamond! I heard she vanished after she was freed from the clutches of the Emperor of Destruction!”

“Megatron, yes,” Shockwave said, now apparently calmed down. “I… met her afterwards. When I was still that thing I had been remade into. And she made me feel…” he trailed off.

“Feel what?”

“Everything. Everything I had ever done. The true enormity of all those lives lost by my hand, the horrors of the things I created. She made me feel the pain of it, and made it so that I could never forget again who I truly am.”

Shockwave began to walk. “Come, little one. We have plenty of time to discuss matters with our patron, but it is impolite to keep an appointment waiting.”

Ranamon hurried, glancing back again at the intoxicating sight of Blue Diamond. The giant gem looked so… serene, and she had always heard that Blue Diamond had her heart broken long ago. And yet, she looked… at peace?

In a strange way, so did Shockwave. “May I offer you a lift?” He transformed again, this time assuming a cylindrical craft approximately the size of a jet fighter, the design somewhere between a baroque rocket and a very fancy plane. He hovered above the ground for her, politely.

“Um. Sure.” She climbed aboard, and the two took off towards the castle… or whatever it was… she had seen earlier.

They parked within it, departing into the depths of the castle, and Shockwave assumed his biped form again as they came to some kind of shabby office within it. As they waited to be seen, Ranamon asked, “Where exactly are we?”

Shockwave looked thoughtful. “An interesting question. A good answer may be another question: where are we not?”

She blinked. “Um. I don’t think we’re in the material plane: I was breathing in something but I’m a data entity. I don’t have lungs or a metabolism. I can feel all kinds of magic around me, so… the magical realms, maybe? But then things would be more hectic and it’s just kind of… empty here? Are we outside, in some other lost realm?”

“Good reasoning! But no, not quite. We are nowhere at all.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Think of it like this!” They were both sitting down now, and somehow their chairs were just big enough to seat their wildly disparate sizes. Shockwave sounded downright enthusiastic, like a gentleman professor eager to be teaching again. It was surreal given his reputation. “We are in a place that is defined by not being anywhere else. We are quite literally outside reality; a special pocket realm, outside the multiverse as a whole, maintained by powerful divine influences. From here, it is possible to access any point in the multiverse, particularly the mortal universes, but time does not pass for us, nor do most normal laws of physics.”

Shockwave went on like this for a while. Eventually three figures appeared; a tall man in a super cool black outfit that was mostly body armor and longcoat garb. Beside him was a giant woman, apparently human and over fifty feet tall, nonchalantly stepping around him. She wasn’t wearing much, and had a lot to keep covered up; breasts bigger than her entire upper body, hips wider than a doorway her size would be, powerful thighs suitable for her frame, Covering her modesty was a pair of micro shorts, in red, a spangly bikini, and a short jacket like something an old school jester might wear but updated for the times.

She was also, apparently, very pale. She leaned over, breasts almost bouncing into the ground, and the other two had to dance away to avoid getting caught. “Heya, doc! You borin’ a newbie?”

“I do not bore, Doctor Quinzel,” Shockwave said loftily. “I educate! There’s a difference but not much of a distinction, perhaps.”

“Hah.” She stood up. Her hair was pulled up into two huge pig tails that dangled down to her waist, dyed alternating colors of red and blue. The overall effect was of zany cuteness. “Don’t forget, we got an appointment tonight. Therapy session pronto, ya hear me?”

“I hear you.”

Doctor Quinzel - Harley Quinn, as Ranamon would later know her - skipped away. The other two figures approached; Ranamon gaped at the taller of the pair. “Amelie Lacroix!”

It was her, and she raised an eyebrow. “Ah, so you decided to come. Good work.”

“Told you she’d take us up on it,” said the other guy smugly. He was wearing a mask that sort of looked like a skull, and a lot like a very stylized barn owl face. He stuck out a clawed hand to Ranamon. “Gabriel Reyes. My call sign is Reaper. When we’re out in the field, I make sure you don’t die horribly.”

Ranamon shook his hand. “Uh… field?”

“...Hrm. She doesn’t know?” Reaper, or Mr Reyes, directed this to Shockwave.

Shockwave nodded curtly. “We are here about that.”

“Right. Well, Waller will see you know.”

Behind them, a door opened. In between explanations about the people they had met (‘Miss Quinn used to be a fearsome villain, but reformed after rethinking a very bad relationship she was in’ ‘Mister Reyes helped found our group here, he was once human but was empowered a long time ago, and made contact with some strange entity that was interested in this whole affair; Zarathos, I believe was the name of it’ and ‘Miss Lacroix; a custom made clone series designed to be physically perfect superhuman soldiers, she was programmed for assassination but once she was freed of it, she sought to make amends), Shockwave gave her some quick instructions.

“Be polite, don’t waste time, and don’t mess about. Miss Waller does not approve of that. But be honest, even rude, and she might approve. Just don’t lie to her, she will know.”

“Okay,” Ranamon said, more confused than ever.

“And bear in mind. If you choose to walk away, no harm will come to you. You will return to where you were, just fine, no harm done to you, but you will have the memory… ah, removed. To be safe, you see.”

“Seems fair,” Ranamon said, in a bit of a daze.

She expected to see an ominous and foreboding figure, perhaps a demonic entity of some sort, but it was nothing more unusual than a robust and heavily built human woman. Dark-skinned, broad featured, her hair cut closely to her scalp, every inch a consummate professional.

Her broad expression was grim, even dour. “Ranamon, I believe,” she said curtly, as Shockwave stood there politely. “Please. Feel free to sit down.” She glanced up, expression softened slightly. “Senator. Feel free to sit, or transform into a more comfortable position.”

He shifted mode into his flight form, laying down on the ground contentedly. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Very good. Now, Ranamon.” She went through a heavy dossier, and put it on the table in front of her. “Take it, if you wish.”

Ranamon did so, nervously. “What is it…?”

“Your life, in fact.”

Ranamon opened it. A word right from her thoughts was on the top of a page: ‘I’m so tired of feeling like… nothing.’ “What the heck!?”

Ranamon rifled through it, Miss Waller studying her without any apparent expression.

Ranamon read from the beginning, for it detailed her early life as an In-Training Digimon and Baby. Then, the way her powers had mingled with the ancient force of the heroine AncientMermaidmon; her evolution into her current form, and the vast powers she had developed.

The dossier wasn’t general facts. It detailed her thoughts. Her memories were on open display here, her ideas, idle things they were, written down as plainly as text. Even cross-referenced with events that had led to her being affected by them, and other parts of the multiverse that criss-crossed and influence her own life, and how she affected it in turn…

She read onwards. To her joining the Cobalt Pirates… and her crimes as part of them.

Her growing dissatisfaction, her weariness, her emotional exhaustion. Her desire to be part of something better, to do something that mattered…

All of it so very detailed, precise and knowing. It was written in a way that she couldn’t argue with it, truth radiating from it like heat from a summer-day stone. It simply was. It would be foolish to dispute it.

“We are in contact with certain… shall we say, forces,” Miss Waller said calmly, perhaps aware of exactly what she was thinking. “That have an interest in the multiverse’s safety as a whole. Powerful entities that give us abilities, and information on people like you.”

“People like… me?”

“People who have done terrible things,” Waller said flatly. “Unforgivable, by many standards. And who want to do something better with themselves, all the same.”

Ranamon looked down, into her deep cleavage, for lack of anywhere else to look. That got her pretty good, she had to admit. “Yeah. Like me.”

“Yes.” Waller didn’t smile, but she did seem to approve. “You see, the powers who entrust this mission to me, and in turn approve all those whom Reyes and his allies scout out, can wash the board clean for you… so to speak. If you act in their name to make the multiverse a better place, to genuinely save it, and pull it back from the absolute mess it has become… then we can give you what you want most.”

Ranamon sat back, stunned.

Waller tilted her head. “It differs from person to person. A new start, for some. Perhaps you want a new life, somewhere in the multiverse, where you can start over, clean of your mistakes. Or maybe you want some troublesome curse removed. And maybe you just want nothing so materialistic, just an opportunity to fix things.” Shockwave radiated a bit at that. “And of course, there is always the option to remain with us, and be a part of an organization that wants to help and is equipped to do so.”

Ranamon stared blankly. “You want me to work for you? And I can… help people?”

“Help people? In a sense. You’d be helping the multiverse. Which is comprised of people so… it works out the same way.” Waller smirked faintly, crossing her fingers. “The conditions are simple. Work for us. Every mission you participate with turns the multiverse closer towards safety and long-term happiness for everyone. That, in turn, wipes away a bit of the debt you’ve accrued towards fate and whatever doom you may have visited upon yourself. Continue to do so, working for us in good faith, and eventually… all the evil you’ve done? You will have paid for it. If you can stick with us.” Her expression became cold. “Provided you are sincere. And believe me… we can tell.”

Ranamon gulped. “And… if I die?”

Waller smirked again. “Well. That might be a bit of an impediment. But we can work around that. It won’t slow us down, or you. Believe me.”

“...What would I have to do, if I joined you? Like, kill anyone!?”

“Perhaps. If they deserve to die. Or are evil enough.” Waller contemplated this. “Or if their deaths serve the multiverse as a whole. But we don’t do that sort of thing lightly. The tasks given to you are highly individual; hard to say exactly what will happen. I’d imagine something like what you have already done, but not for the sake of greed or just doing piracy.”

“Ah…” Ranamon thought about it.

Eventually, in very level tones, trying her hardest not to think about everything she might be leaving behind - all her friends, the comforts she was used to, but then was it even worth anything anymore? - she said, “Um. I have a question, miss.”

“Feel free. This is a recruitment interview. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

Ranamon tilted her head. “You know in advance anything I might say, don’t you?”

Waller’s expression did not so much as twitch. Walls and stone had more emotion than she did. “I can���t see the future.”

“No, no, I don’t mean that. What I mean is… um.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts and the vague idea she had floating in the back of her mind. “Would you have reached out to me at all, if you weren’t absolutely sure I would probably say yes? On the spot?”

Waller stared at her for a moment longer. Her mouth twitched at one side, very slightly, in the manner of someone hiding a grim smile. “Well, well. You’re more perceptive than you let on.”

“Would you?” Ranamon pressed.

The human was silent, for a time, her expression not so much blank as refusing to admit even a hint of whatever she was thinking, or feeling.

Waller than spoke, and Ranamon was not at all exactly the most perceptive of Digimon but nonetheless she still felt a shiver go up her back, the watery portions of her body freezing solid and unfreezing so she could move. This woman, she sensed, was very dangerous, and when she spoke now, there was a sense that every word was being carefully chosen, weighed for effect, and deployed as strategically as a single well-placed shot.

It was impossible to say how much of anything Waller said was an honest truth, or what she believed Ranamon needed to hear.

Nevertheless. She was involved in some serious stuff right now.

“That depends entirely on who I invite down here,” Waller said. “Perhaps I would bring in a wildcard that would like to do the right thing more often than not, and I would hope for the best possible outcome. And as I’m sure you’ve been told, there are safeguards to protect us if that does not pan out. But… well. Known qunatities are the best possible option. I am always sure before I ask someone down here.”

Ranamon noted that this wasn’t really answering the question; at least, she would have preferred a more straightforward answer. But that was likely the best she would get, from the impression Waller gave off.

Ranamon smiled faintly. “Well… okay. I guess you know me better than I know myself.

“I’ll do it.” And Ranamon stuck her hand out.

Waller raised an eyebrow. “...Hrm. That was quick. You sure you wouldn’t rather have some time to think about it, at least? Not even a minute to consider the ups, the downs, the possible traps at play here?” Her tone was challenging, daring: go on, I wanna see what you’ll do.

“No.” As she said it, Ranamon felt… freed. Like anything bad from here on out honestly didn’t matter that much, compared to what she hoped could happen. If it was a trap or not… who cared? If anyone here was being honest or not, did it matter that much? This felt like a good thing she was getting into,

The first good thing she was doing in a long, long time.

“I’m in,” Ranamon said. “I’m joining up, I’m signing for it, I’m all yours. Okay? A chance to make something better and actually do something worth me?” Ranamon said, grinning. “Count me in.”

Waller stared at her a bit longer than was strictly necessary. Then she grinned. She shook Ranamon’s hand.

“Welcome to Task Force X, Ranamon,” Waller said, with pride.

[canigetuhhhhsomenerdyshit]

Tagged by: @this-is-mysuperwholockd-design

Rules: Answer 20 questions, then tag 20 bloggers that you want to get to know better.

Name: Zoe

Nicknames: Z

Age: 19

Gender: female

Orientation: bisexual as HELL

Favorite colour: love cool colors, esp. purple and dark blues and teals

Book recommendations: “IT” by Stephen King & the novelization of Alien: Covenant

Movie recommendations: I mean, how do I pick just a few? The Big Lebowski, Call Me By Your Name, Adventureland, Ex Machina, Creep (don’t watch if you’re easily susceptible to secondhand embarrassment though, it’s very hard to watch), The Truman Show, Penelope, Silence of the Lambs, the first How to Train Your Dragon, Baby Driver, The Girl With All The Gifts, Hairspray, Zombieland, 17 Again, Back to the Future

TV recommendations: oh, god, this is even harder than the movies! Rick and Morty (but don’t get lost in its sauce, it’s actually a good show if you’re not a whiny white boy), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sense8, Black Mirror, the Office, the Great British Baking Show, the Mindy Project, Stranger Things, the X-Files, Bob’s Burgers, Broad City

Music recommendations: Sufjan Stevens, the Shins, the Be Good Tanyas, the Zolas, BORNS, alt-J, Gorillaz, Childish Gambino, Current Joys, Lou Reed, Alabama Shakes, slenderbodies, Mazzy Star, Willow, the Kills, the Black Keys, the Japanese House, Fleetwood Mac, Bonobo, Bon Iver, Current Joys

Video game recommendations: this isn’t a real category in this, but I’m too excited about them to not bring them up. The Last of Us is the best video game I have ever and will ever play, and I highly recommend you play it. Also, GTA V was a huge part of my adolescence (beating up rich people in the Hollywood Hills and then stealing their cars so I can rob their banks? yes please), and I also really enjoyed Alien: Isolation and the Outlast games.

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate. Give me some sugar

Cats or dogs? I have an unfortunate allergy to cats, so I’ve never really been able to get to know one. I identify more with dogs’ energy, anyway.

Favorite meme? I’m going to say any and all of the memes related to John Mulaney because that bitch is FUNNY

I want to live long enough to witness: some semblance of equality, and SuperMega finally post their movie review series

Weird obsessions: oh, god, so many. SuperMega, Adam Driver, Shane Dawson & his group of friends, v-neck dresses, journaling, cookie dough, my growing collection of lotions & essential oils, dogs, sleeping, Peter Parker’s gen z attitude in a millennial group setting, squid & octopi & other cephalopods, Gorillaz virtual band, Casey Frey vines, Thor’s soul being the same soul as a dog

Tumblr birthday: no idea

How many sideblogs: Idk if they’re ‘sideblogs’ but I’ve had four blogs in the past few years. I ain’t saying what they’re about lmao

Random fact about me: My hair is currently a light azz blue

Goals for 2018: Pay off most of my debt, get furniture for when my current roommate moves out and takes all of hers, make new friends, travel a lot, get another tattoo, take a nap on a beach in the sun

I tag @cupkayyyke and @ptite-shit , and anybody else who would like to do this! Seriously, anybody.

[concussed-to-pieces]

Bookish

Fandom: WWE

Pairing: Dean Ambrose/Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins/Female Reader

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Thirsty crew! This is some self-indulgent, romance-novel levels of hurt/comfort, touchy-feely shenanigans. I hope you like it! Tagging @toxiicpop, @oraclegazes and of course, @hardcorewwetrash! Enjoy!

(Also apologies on this being a little late, the wifi was not cooperating)

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains rampant, wanton parental neglect.]

Since you had been very, very young, you’d been informed of your parents love for you. Numerous caretaker figures had reassured you of this, and there always seemed to be a package waiting when you got home from school with far-off places on the label, brimming with odds and ends to enrich your mind or new toys for you to play with.

But they were rarely home in person. You grew accustomed to hearing their voices through speakers or seeing their faces lit with tired, blueish light from whatever screen they had in front of them.

Loneliness wasn’t so much a feeling as it was a constant drone in the background. You thought you were used to it but it would flare brighter at random intervals, softly whispering about your solitude.

Maybe my parents don’t like me.

As you grew older family movies made your heart ache and you began to change the channel before the melancholy could ruin your day. Sixteen came and went, eighteen came and went.

Your last caretaker departed sometime during your nineteenth year and left you well and truly alone in the large house, aside from the individuals who came in to clean. You decided to take some rudimentary classes at the local college. It wasn't exactly like you had much to do now that high school was done with, and you did love reading almost everything you could get your hands on.

Twenty-one came and went, and with it went the end of proverbial 'milestone' birthdays. The years continued to file by in a neat, orderly fashion.

Maybe there's something wrong with me.

On the rare occasions where your parents came home, it was so brief and predictable that the instances began to blur together in your mind. The stiff hugs, the oh you’ve gotten so big!, the kiss on your cheek. You weren’t sure as you got older whether you were the idiot for rushing to the door every time they arrived, or whether they were the idiots for coming back.

But this might be different. A spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. Your mother had come breezing by entirely unannounced (which was unheard of), and she was thrilled.

“There’s a gala,” Your mother said with what sounded like real excitement in her voice, “And you’ve been invited too! You’re an adult now, sweetheart. You need a dress!”

You wanted to point out that seeing as you were well into your twenties, you’d been an adult for a while. But you kept your mouth shut.

You had never spent any real length of time with your mother. It was odd, wandering through a bridal shop with (essentially) a stranger who somehow had intimate knowledge of your goings-on. Occasionally though, you would catch a glimpse of a black suit and your shoulders would relax again at the implication of your safety.

Dean, Roman and Seth had been assigned as your personal security after an incident almost a year ago; someone had broken into your parent’s house while you slept peacefully and you had woken up to a loud bang when the door to your bedroom flew open. You had screamed and the intruder had fled rapidly, but the damage was done. For the weeks afterward you were escorted to and from your college classes by numerous severely-dressed women or men at all times, “until I figure out a permanent solution,” your father had said over the phone.

You amused yourself in classes thinking about them sitting outside the door like a group of bored puppies.

When at home it was like living with three to four interchangeable ghosts. The roster and names varied over the days but the personalities stayed the same. Cool, calm, the definition of organized. Not a hair out of place. You thought about The Matrix and mused on whether you were Neo or Mr. Smith. Most of the time though, you just felt like the woman in the red dress.

Sometimes you wondered what on Earth other people must think as they watched your veritable battalion of suits sit with you in the library. Maybe they think I’m in a witness protection program! That would be kind of cool. Or that I work for the CIA. Anything really, to distract or downplay the fact that you sat at an empty table.

...

You had come home from classes one Saturday, looking forward to a day off from schooling as you waved goodbye to the group that had escorted you to your front gate. “I can take it from here guys, drive safe!” You tried your best to always be decent to the people watching out for you, figuring that this glorified babysitting was way more embarrassing for them than it was for you. After all, these were individuals with actual training! They hadn’t grown up in a plush house with someone to take care of their needs and parents that loved them, you were fairly sure.

You punched in the code, unlocked the front door and stepped in, hanging up your coat and quickly taking off your shoes. There were house rules, after all. You made your way to the kitchen for your after-school snack once you did your usual check to make sure that the security system was armed, then froze in the doorway when you realized you weren’t alone. And not in the usual, the foursome shifts overlapped kind of way!

A young man with a prominent blond streak in his brown hair was hanging upside-down by his knees from one of the stylistically-exposed rafters in the kitchen, absently swinging himself back and forth like it was the most normal thing in the world. You stared for what felt like forever, utterly confused.

“Um…excuse me?” Your voice made his head turn in your direction and he dropped gracefully to the island below him, somehow managing to land with hardly any noise. “W-Who are you?” Brown eyes focused on your face as he quickly stalked on all fours over the counter, heading for you. You went to back up, suddenly terrified for your life, and you ended up backing into someone. Instinctively beginning to apologize, you half-turned to bolt and a set of arms wrapped around your waist, immobilizing you.

“Easy, you’re safe.” Said a voice that was so gravelly it sent a shiver through your body. “Rollins, knock it off. They’re shakin’ like a leaf.” The man who had spoken was tall with fierce blue eyes and messy blond hair, his jaw coated with a day's worth of growth. He looked at you curiously. “You okay, kid?”

“Aw, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Rollins apologized as he got down from the counter. “Was just having some fun.”

“W-Why are you in my house? Who are you people?!” You began struggling frantically in the other man’s grip. “Let me go! Don’t touch me!”

The blond chuckled and released you, your sudden freedom making you stumble forward. “Your parents hired us full-time. Said you needed some protection. You ought to have a notification about it.”

“I…” You whipped out your phone, moving to check your normally-barren text messages. Sure enough, there was a new one from your father. You could see Rollins shifting back and forth as you read. Their names are Dean, Seth, and Roman. “I just…please don’t touch me.” You said nervously.

“Yeah, I scared them?” Rollins huffed indignantly. “Good going Ambrose.”

“Reigns ought to be done by now, where the-” Whatever the blond man was about to say was halted by a loud thud from upstairs. “Oh Christ.” He groaned. Rollins beckoned for you to follow as Ambrose headed off towards the grand staircase. “Fuck me Roman, if you broke something...”

“I tripped! All I did was trip. It’s just really empty in here.” Protested a third man from the top of the stairs. “Echoes. Oh! They’re home. Hey.” He offered a nonchalant wave and you waved back dumbly, taking in the smooth black ponytail hanging over his shoulder. And that tattoo! It covered the majority of his right arm and spilled onto his chest beneath his loose tank top. “Oh God, did you see Rollins in the…whoops, you did. I told him he shouldn’t-”

“Don’t start, Reigns.” Rollins growled. “You encouraged my ass.”

“I said within reason!” Reigns corrected.

“If we could focus for five seconds here, gentlemen.” Ambrose whipped back around to face you. “My name is Dean Ambrose. That’s Seth Rollins.” He gestured towards the young man with the blond streak. “And that’s Roman Reigns.” There was a finger aimed at the large man at the top of the staircase. “We’ve been hired to apparently lurk on your every move.” Dean raised an eyebrow. “Your parents didn’t tell us why, but I guess that’s need-to-know information and we don't need.”

“S-Somebody broke into our house.” You said shakily. “I’m kind of alone up here, since my last caretaker left. They don't want me walking to my classes by myself either.”

“So pretty standard stuff. A sheltered young person with overprotective parents.” The looks Dean kept giving you made you even more nervous. “Do you keep a copy of your schedule somewhere?”

“I found it already, top of the fridge.” Seth produced your folded-up class schedule from his pocket and Ambrose pored over it while you stood there awkwardly. “Not really any points that need attention, honestly.”

“I can see that. Reigns, why are you still up there?” Ambrose scolded. “Get down here man.”

“Ambrose you’re being kinda’ rude.” Roman pointed out. “We need to explain. They’re obviously confused.”

“No no!” You said quickly, determined to not seem like an idiot. “I totally understand.”

“See? They’re fine. C’mon.” Ambrose grunted.

“Are you sure?” Rollins asked, his brow furrowed as he gave you a worried look. “We don't mind explaining, if you need it.”

“Absolutely. My dad keeps me in the loop.” That was an outright lie. “I guess I just forgot today was the day you guys were showing up, is all.”

“You're really isolated here, y'know.” Dean commented absently after they had huddled up for a minute or two. “Kid like you must have a lot of buddies. We figured you'd come back with your friends or something. ”

Your breath caught in your throat.

“S-Sometimes I do.” You wanted to be indignant about being called kid, but you were too snagged on the idea of friends. The word hurt a little, chipping at parts of you that you'd thought had smoothed over ages ago. “My parents said I should keep most people at arm's length.” Seth looked like he was about to say something so you quickly offered, “Would you guys like a snack? I...usually once I get out of school I make myself some apple slices with peanut butter.”

“Culinary wonders abound with you, huh kid?” Ambrose asked sarcastically.

“Dean.” Roman chided. “We've already had lunch. Thank you, though.” He continued to you.

“I'm sorry, I don't mean to...I'm not used to dealin' with someone your age.” Dean apologized awkwardly.

“If you try to pat me on the head, I will hit you.” You warned and Rollins exploded into laughter. Roman looked shocked and Ambrose's crooked grin caught you off-guard. “'Someone my age', please. Someone who's an adult? You've never dealt with an adult before?”

“So there is a personality in there!” Ambrose chuckled. “Was beginning to worry. Nah, we're just used to dealin' with old, scared businessmen. Y'know, more wrinkles than skin, pickled in brandy and reeking like cigars. Not used to interactin' with a person under the age of seventy, except for these fine gentlemen.”

“I'll take you up on your offer. Kinda' hungry still.” Seth admitted. “Didn't want to take anything out of the fridge without asking.”

“Help yourself, please. My parents have weekly deliveries. It's a bit much considering it's just me here.” You ushered him back into the kitchen.

Their names are Dean, Seth, and Roman...

...

The three men took some adjusting to.

That’s an understatement, you thought ruefully as Dean carried on an increasingly-loud conversation with Rollins about Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. The book in question was open on the table in front of them. You had been hoping to study during your lunch in the library, but instead you were being subjected to what felt like the world’s slowest battle of wits while Rollins asked what Jacobites were for the hundredth time.

Maybe it was because you knew the source material of their discussion so well, or maybe it was because you were actually trying to study, but you found your knuckles whitening on the book you currently held. You'd stumbled across the decks and highlands a thousand times in the shoes of 'young Davie', seeking an escape from the echoing silence of the house around you.

Roman was a saving grace in this situation, standing behind both men and pulling strange faces at you over their heads in an effort to get you to laugh. You finally caved in and started to snicker, startling both Seth and Dean into looking up at you. “Sorry, I just…” You floundered for a minute and then buried your flushed face back in the book you’d been trying to read.

“Oh shit, we're in a library.” Dean hissed like he'd forgotten. Sometimes the way the three men behaved made you think that they'd never had an official detail in their lives. Your rotating phalanx before they had showed up were men and women who either took themselves seriously or took themselves too seriously.

For example, the other day you had awoken to shrill yelling and maniacal laughter. When you stumbled from your room to find out what on earth was going on, you ended up running smack into a fleeing Ambrose with Reigns hot on his heels. Dean practically giggled into your neck as you laid there underneath him, still half-asleep and confused while his arms wrapped around you and gripped tightly.

Roman picked the both of you up as he grabbed Dean by the back of his pants, grunting when Ambrose refused to release you. Seth came whipping around the corner with a towel draped over his hips, looking excessively put-out. In his hand was a cartoonishly-large toy spider. “Ambrose!” He was caterwauling and you got the feeling that this arachnid-related torment was nothing new. “How many times do I have to...tell...” Rollins quickly lost steam as his eyes fell to you. A blush began to tint his face and he opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally making an indignant sound and throwing the spider at Ambrose's back with all his strength.

It bounced off harmlessly and landed on the rug, limbs moving feebly back and forth. It was a simple wind-up toy, and you supposed in this instance it literally wound Seth up. A little giggle issued from you when you pointed that out and Roman looked like he had the barest handle on his laughter. Ambrose didn't even try, just dissolving back into hysterics and burying his face in your shoulder as Seth stormed off angrily.

They made it extremely difficult for you to hold them at arm's length.

Each man was endearing in their own way. Roman got you into the habit of finding two exits from every room you were in. “Whether you gotta' make one of 'em yourself is up to you.” He had said, glancing pointedly up at the ceiling tiles of the library.

Seth showed you a few of his workout routines for when you had extra energy to burn. You had yet to swing from any rafters, of course, but he kept promising that was the next step. “You'll be Keaton-ing before you know it!”

Ambrose was rough around the edges and the quietest of the three, though he always had a random tidbit of useful knowledge to share (always at the strangest times). “Eight pounds of pressure per square inch will break a jaw real easy.” He'd stated out of the blue during one study period, making you nearly choke on your soda. “Punch or pinch the throat if you really wanna' stop a guy, though.”

The funniest part was the way that Roman and Seth always nodded after he spoke, like they were also absorbing the sage advice from their counterpart.

“What's Dean's story?” You asked Roman curiously one day.

“Not one for you to worry about.” Reigns answered, his voice oddly curt. That of course only added fuel to your fire and you resolved to suss out the mysterious tale of Dean's life.

By grilling Seth.

“Listen, he's had a hard time of it. I mean, we all have in our own ways. Dean just deals with it differently.” Rollins said finally after you refused to let up. “It's been a long road to get to the relatively-cushy setups. We've always stuck together though, even when shit got hard or dangerous. There's been a lot of times things fell through. To have this job now...shit, it's like a dream for us.” He mumbled the last bit, glancing up at you through his hair.

He carried on fiddling with a sticky lock on one of the windows in the guest bedroom. It kept giving the security system false readings, usually after two in the morning, which had resulted in more than a few sleepless nights.

Roman had very little patience when it came to you waking up during alerts; the large man always gave a two-second warning and if you weren't upright by then he scooped you into his arms like you were a child, carrying you easily down the stairs to the foyer with Rollins and Ambrose flanking him.

One night you weren't so sure it was a false reading. The window had actually been open, according to a tense Dean. “I don't like this shit one bit. It's like someone is fucking with us or feeling us out.” He had growled once Roman left to do a thorough sweep of the upstairs. You sat on the kitchen table, knowing without looking that Rollins was perched on one of the rafters overhead.

“Maybe we're just being paranoid.” Seth suggested. “What if one of the cleaners left it open?”

“I feel like we would have noticed, man. I dunno'. We'll see.” Dean hopped up onto the table beside you, pressing his thigh against your own. “Catch some 'Z's.” He ordered, like you would instantly pass out upon hearing the command. You shook your head and he grumbled under his breath, pulling you tight to his side after a momentary hesitation. “Look, you don't have to worry if we're around.” Ambrose said gruffly. “We got it covered.” His fingers dug into your hair for a second and he began to slowly rub the back of your neck. “We got it covered. Sleep.”

“Can't.” You protested, looking up at him warily. The firm pressure of his hand was so foreign, the casual presence of his thigh against yours an alien sensation. When was the last time you had been touched like this, treated like you were someone to be comforted? Your eyes half-lidded and Ambrose made a satisfied noise.

“There, that's it. Shh.” He murmured. “You're safe here with us.”

You had lingered there between asleep and awake for what seemed like hours (Roman's sweeps were very thorough), just allowing Dean to rub your neck and shoulders. When it was finally time to return to bed, you barely remembered Roman's arms around you.

You woke up a little later and drowsily realized you were sandwiched in between the three men, your face snuggled into Roman's chest and Seth pressed tightly to your back. Ambrose's arm was flung over Roman's side, his hand resting on your shoulder.

You're safe here with us.

…

Which was how you’d ended up in this mess, crammed into a dressing room with Seth’s large body protectively shielding your own half-clothed one. You had been in the middle of getting undressed when Seth vaulted over the top of the wall and quickly put a hand on your mouth.

“Be very quiet.” He whispered, and you nodded. “There’s a guy out there and he may be looking for you.”

You were already scared stiff, it wasn’t much of a stretch to be silent. Why would he look for me?

“Nothing is gonna’ happen to you while we’re here. Ambrose spotted him following you and your mom. Have to see if we can get their security to chase him off without a fuss.” Seth turned to face the door, squaring his shoulders like he was trying to make himself look bigger.

His words didn’t do much to alleviate the terror you felt. This was the break-in all over again. Your hands clenched into fists at your sides, tight enough to ache. Seth seemed to notice, because he reached back to take your hand. Hesitated. Then kept going, his fingers loosely wrapping around your wrist. He pulled you closer when you didn’t protest, your cheek resting on his shoulder blade. You could feel his back rise and fall with his breathing, the thudding of his heart nearly drowning out everything else.

There was a noise from outside the door and Seth tensed, his hold tightening on you. You wished you could disappear into the floor, just curl up into yourself and vanish. Seth flinched when the door handle gave a sudden click! as the lock disengaged. You couldn’t see over his shoulder so you grabbed his hand, squeezing it as tight as you could. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-

“It’s us, man. They got him.” Roman said quietly.

Seth turned and exhaled a long breath of relief as Roman’s arm slung over one shoulder and Dean’s draped over the other. Like they had planned it, the three men drew you into a hug. You didn’t realize you were crying until Dean smeared a tear off your cheek, looking more worried than you’d ever seen him. “You don’t need to be scared when we’re around.” He grumbled. “How many times we gotta’ tell you that?”

“I’m sorry, I just-”

“Shh, keep trying stuff on.” Rollins interrupted softly. “I’m sure your mom will be over any second now and the last thing we want is her thinking something is up.”

Ambrose stepped back, his eyes narrowed to bright blue slits. “What do you mean, somethin’?”

“You know exactly what he means man, knock it off.” Roman bumped Dean with his shoulder. “We’re in a dressing room with them and they’re half-naked. Because Lord knows none of us have any sort of restraint, we just go straight primal.” He huffed.

Ambrose grabbed a dress off the wall at random and quickly unzipped the back of it for you. “Here.”

“I-I don’t even like th-that one.” You protested tremulously, making Roman snort.

“It’s irrelevant, she’s gonna’ put you into something you hate and you know it. All you are is a goddamn doll to her.” Dean snapped, the words hitting you hard. “Besides, what’s wrong with it? S’ that princess cut. Everyone likes a princess cut.”

“Why do you-!” Now you wanted to argue, how dare he say something like that about your mother? The woman I barely know. What an audacious assumption!

“Not important. Color is godawful, but nothing we can do about that.” Dean shook the bunch of fabric at you impatiently. “C’mon.”

“I feel stupid.” You complained even as you stepped into the skirt.

“Trust me, no matter how you feel, you look even dumber.” Dean promised, making Seth slap him on the arm. “What Rollins, s'just a joke, we all know they look fine no matter what they’re wear…” Dean’s sentence trailed off as he zipped the back of the dress up and his eyes met yours in the mirror for the longest second of your life. “…ing.”

A knock on the dressing room door made all of you jump. “Honey, you doing okay in there? I have a bunch more for you to try!” Seth started mouthing swears, all but windmilling his arms.

I need to be a diversion, you realized suddenly.

You put your finger to your lips and reached for the door handle. “Actually Mom,” You began slowly, opening the dressing room door just enough to slip out. “I was wondering if there was something in this style, but a different color?” You circled your mother so she turned her back to the dressing room, swirling the skirt of the dress around your legs. “I like this one, it’s just the color.” You grimaced, trying not to watch Seth and Dean slink out of the dressing room and flee down the hallway back to the store. Roman winked at you before following the other two men and you felt yourself start to blush, your fingers twisting the skirt nervously.

Your mother clapped her hands together, seeming weirdly excited. All she wants is a doll to dress up, all you are is a doll to her. Dean’s words sat in your stomach like a brick. Not her kid, just a toy. “Of course honey! What color did you have in mind?”

…

The gala was shaping up to be a royal pain. Every time you turned around there was another person you needed to be introduced to, another person who got to react strangely to your parents announcing that they had a fully-grown child. Had you been aware that you were such a closely-guarded secret, you would have opted to stay that way. As such, you were stuck clumsily trekking through unfamiliar posturing and niceties. Your face already ached from smiling.

The worst part was that your father had given your security trio the night off. “You boys go have fun, alright? Our treat. You’ve worked hard enough. Hope our little one wasn’t too much trouble.” Your father had said grandly, like you weren’t standing right there.

“We’ll report back by eight o’ clock tomorrow morning, sir.” Was all Roman had said in reply.

Dean and Seth both remained silent while your father blustered “that’s too early,” and “I want you boys to enjoy yourselves!” You had never noticed how much your father stank of cigar smoke until you saw Seth's nostrils flare and Ambrose seemed downright twitchy while dealing with the older man, his whole body tense.

“Eight o’ clock. Sir.” Roman repeated sternly.

You longed for the comfort their company brought you, the safety you felt when you caught sight of a suit out of the corner of your eye. You were nervous, so nervous, still confused about the man in the shop the other day. Why would he have been looking for me? The evidence you’d gathered tonight alone seemed to indicate that no one even knew you existed. What if he was a hitman, sent to kill me? What if I’m in danger right this second? You glanced around furtively. Everyone looked suspicious to you, well-dressed men and women clustered in their little groups. Maybe you read too many murder mysteries. What if my parents are secretly not my parents at all, but robots?!

“Ah, have you met our child? Honey, come here.” Your mother's sweet tone interrupted your frantic thought process and you whipped around, tacking your smile back on quickly so you could interact with more people you would (hopefully) never see again.

“They are remarkably plain for being your child, my dear.” The older woman standing by your mother sniffed. “I would have thought the two of you could muster up someone a bit more...striking.”

“Hey easy, they take after me!” Your father chuckled, a heavy hand landing on your shoulder. You felt like the room was too small. “What did you expect? We sure as heck weren't keeping some beauty cooped up in that place after all!” His laugh was a sharp guffaw that made you flinch. “Nope, brainiac through and through, this one! But I think they clean up pretty good.” He cupped your chin and turned your head to the side, displaying your perfectly-applied makeup. “The wife works miracles, am I right?”

That was it. That was it. You jerked your face out of his hand and if looks could kill, he would have been on the eleven o' clock news. Your father shifted back, seeming concerned. “Don't.” Was all you said through your clenched teeth before you made your daring escape.

Slowly, tripping over the skirt of your dress as you fought your way through the groups of people and tried your hardest not to cry.

While your mother had been doing your makeup and prattling away with your father you'd felt like a princess, like they might actually love you and care about you, like their absence had been a misunderstanding. You stayed quiet and let the conversation wash over you, just listening to your parents talk to one another.

Like I wasn't even there.

Your lower lip quivered as you stumbled out into one of the many hallways that branched out from the main room like a rabbit warren. Everything was so unfamiliar. More than anything you wished you were home right now, curled up in your bed with a good book.

Someone grabbed your arm as you passed a shadowy alcove in the hallway and you lashed out for the person’s throat like Ambrose had taught you, savagely gratified when you heard a muffled grunt after your hand connected. A set of black-framed glasses tumbled to the floor, knocked loose by your enthusiastic movement.

“Christ.” Seth gasped, rubbing his neck as he stepped forward into the light. “Go easy on a guy, will you?”

You were unable to keep from lunging at him, wrapping your arms around his waist and clinging to him silently. Your tears started to soak the fabric of his shirt as he paused, then hugged you back.

“Easy, easy, it’s okay. We’re getting you out of here.” He murmured once you let him go, patting around on the carpet for his glasses. “Didn't mean to scare you.” The frames settled back onto his nose. You had never seen him with his glasses on. And in his street clothes for the first time since the day you'd met, his painted on skinny jeans! It was strange, like there was a part of him you didn't know. Logically that was true, you didn't exactly ask what he did in his free time. “Reigns and Ambrose are around the block. You ready?” Seth held out his hand and you took it without a second of hesitation, making him give you a happy, boyish grin.

...

“Look at that! Somehow you managed to spirit Cinderella away from the ball before the clock struck twelve, right out from under the noses of their evil parents!” Dean praised Rollins, “Back to your princes where you belong, eh gorgeous?” His teasing tone differed so much from your father's; you rolled your eyes when he called you 'gorgeous'.

“Alright, everyone in the car.” Roman ordered. They were all wearing their street clothes and you took the opportunity to appraise the three, enjoying what you saw. Seth, of course, filled out his skinny jeans to perfection, but Roman and Dean weren't far behind. Roman wore a simple zip-up sweatshirt with a loose pair of jeans, his long hair tucked up into a baseball cap. Ambrose had on a leather jacket and a set of jeans that somehow made his waist look even trimmer than usual. They looked good. Relaxed.

“How did you guys know I was in trouble?” You asked from your spot between Dean and Seth in the backseat.

Roman snorted loudly as he shifted gears. “You’ve barely been socialized your entire life and now all of a sudden you’re expected to deal with a whole damn party of people? I’m impressed you survived as long as you did.”

“Where are we going?”

“Surprise!” Seth said quickly as Dean opened his mouth. “It's a surprise. You'll see.”

The surprise was apparently a bowling alley. You hung back behind the wall of Roman at the front counter, clinging to his hand as you felt shy and awkward. You must look so ridiculous, dressed up in this silly gown while the three men with you were in normal clothes.

A pair of arms wrapped around your waist and then Dean rested his cheek on the top of your head, swaying you back and forth as he waited for Roman to finish paying for their lane and shoes. Seth was bouncing up and down beside you like a small child, accepting his shoes from Roman with an excited whoop and bolting for the lane. “He's such a kid sometimes.” Dean grumbled, his words laced with fondness.

Roman nodded in agreement, the side of his mouth tugging up in a smile. His hand slid to the small of your back and he guided you over to the chairs by the lane. Seth was already busily tapping names into the display board while you tried to get your dress out of the way to put on your shoes. “I don't know if I'll...” You trailed off as Dean knelt in front of you and helped you escape your elaborate party shoes, the blond man chuckling when he saw your Batman-patterned no-show socks. “What?” You asked defensively, “My mom said I had to put on nylons, she didn't say I couldn't wear anything over them.”

“How many other workarounds you got, gorgeous?” Ambrose asked with a grin. “I feel like we could all learn somethin' tonight.”

“I'm not allowed to wear tank tops, but they never mentioned sleeveless shirts.”

Roman laughed incredulously. “What do they have against tank tops? Those are ninety-five percent of my wardrobe.”

“The skin that they show.” You shrugged and Dean looked up at you, his large hand cupping under your calf so he could wiggle one of the bowling shoes on. “I can't have ice cream after eleven. Frozen yogurt isn't ice cream.”

“Alright, we're all set. Prepare to be crushed, Roman!” Seth announced as the board overhead went live.

...

You were delivered safely to your parent’s house some time between one and two in the morning. The house was dark and silent, like always, and Roman set you down in the foyer while Dean fumbled for the light switch. It didn't appear that your parents were back yet. Seth urged you up the stairs to your room while you yawned and rubbed your eyes, those terrible heels abandoned by the door so you could actually manage the stairs in the first place.

“Bathroom first, we need to get your war paint off.” Roman said softly once you entered your room. Obediently you kept moving to the smaller room, faintly entertained when all three men followed into the tight space.

Seth took the washcloth from you and you just sat there propped up against the sink, letting him carefully rid you of the layers of smooth foundation and bright eyeshadow. “There, that's better.” He said with a gentle smile. “You're so beautiful.”

“Pretty with, pretty without.” Ambrose agreed, scooping you up off the sink counter. You were certain you were dreaming at this point and so you let yourself be carried back into the bedroom, resting your cheek on his shoulder. Dean laid you down on your bed and rolled you onto your stomach, slowly unzipping the dress you wore. “Shh, it's alright.” He murmured when you shivered, his fingers trailing down the bare skin of your back. “You're safe.”

A bearded mouth pressed a kiss to your shoulder blade, whether it was Roman or Seth you couldn't tell. You hummed, arching your back and snuggling down into the bedspread as more kisses landed. “Sleep good.” Roman's voice rumbling was the last thing you could remember before you drifted off.

...

It became a ritual of sorts between the four of you. At least twice a month they would take a 'day off' and essentially loose you upon the unsuspecting populace. You attempted rollerblading and played laser tag, one time you even danced with Ambrose at some weird exercise class Rollins had signed all of you up for. There was always a competition between Roman and Seth, both men striving to one-up and improve each other. It led to some entertaining moments, like the both of them grappling at the top of a rock-climbing wall while Dean hollered just kiss already!

You learned slowly along the way how to interact with other people. You were pretty sure your professor jumped out of his skin when you started raising your hand in class, and your classmates looked at you like you had fourteen heads. It was incredibly satisfying to find out that you could engage with other people the way Dean, Seth and Roman engaged with you. Of course, this also led to much more awkwardness than you would prefer. You hadn’t realized that speaking up in class would put you on the proverbial map.

“Can I sit here?” The young man asking didn't wait for your stammered reply before making himself comfortable at your table in the library. “Now, I've seen you around and I never really caught your name. You're kinda' cute, so I'd appreciate it if you rectified that.”

You shook your head, confused at how rude he was being.

He grunted, seeming a bit startled. “Well, my name is-”

“Irrelevant.” Came the growl from Dean behind you. “Your name is irrelevant.”

“Hey, what's with the posse? Everyone's dying to know.” The young man changed tactics, unwisely glossing over Ambrose's interruption. “I mean, we all figured you must be mute or some shit and that these clowns were-”

Seth hoisted him up by the back of his hoodie and unceremoniously dumped him out of the chair, settling into the seat with his coffee still intact. “Heya' gorgeous, miss me?” He asked, winking at you while you flushed bright red. “Reigns is coming, he had to find the good Subway. The one that doesn't skimp on their meat, y'know.” Rollins was the picture of insolence. Sometimes you wondered if he cultivated the image or if it came naturally to him. “For our date tonight, the boys and I were thinking a movie? Although this super cool trampoline place just opened up across town, so if you're up for it..”

Rollins words faded into background static to you.

Date.

Our date tonight.

Oh my God.

“Hey, you in there?” Dean's hand waved in front of your eyes and you snapped back into focus.

“Yes! Sorry, I just...sorry.” You mumbled.

“If that guy upset you we can go get him to apologize.” Ambrose’s tone had darkened and you quickly took his hand.

“No no! C’mon, you guys are professionals. You can’t just go around strong-arming random people.” You reasoned, “Might look a little weird, you know?”

“Fine. He gets off with a warning this time.” Seth grumbled, reaching across the table to fist bump Dean. “Next time though. Oh, next time.”

A movie was voted on once Roman returned from getting his lunch, the three of them chatting in hushed tones while you toyed with the book in front of you.

Our date. Is that what had been happening this whole time? You were so confused. Weren’t you just their detail? Why would they bring me along on their off time though?

Our date.

…

The movie had been enjoyable. You couldn’t actually remember what it was about for the life of you, though.

Seth’s hand had stayed on your thigh for most of it, his leg tucked up against your own. As if that wasn’t distracting enough, Roman had wrapped an arm around your shoulders. Then, Ambrose (who had camped out in the row behind you) put his hand on the back of your neck over Roman’s arm and massaged the area absently.

Some part of you wondered whether this was appropriate behavior but a much louder part of you clamored for the attention. You were more than flustered by the time the credits rolled, bolting to your feet. “I…bathroom!” You stammered, quickly stepping over Roman’s legs and almost falling down the steps to the exit of the theater.

“Wait!” Seth called, but you didn’t bother stopping to see whether they were following you. Checking the signs to look for a bathroom, you hurried along as fast as you could.

Upon reaching the relative quiet of the restroom, you tried to collect yourself. Your face was all red, your body shaking a little while you patted at your flushed skin with a damp paper towel. What’s wrong with me? You stared at your reflection critically in the mirror, holding the edge of the sink tightly. Deep breaths surged in and our of your lungs as you did your best to calm your racing pulse, tried to get your knees to stop trembling.

Understanding suddenly hit you like a bolt of lightning, your eyes widening. You could barely believe your own thoughts. The three of them?! Your heart leaped in your chest. The three of them. You stood stock-still for a minute and then nodded at yourself, scowling fiercely. The three of them.

You tossed the paper towel away, tried your damnedest to straighten your clothes out a bit and then opened the door to confront your security. Your friends. Your--

The young man from the library earlier was leaned against the opposite wall, his expression decidedly smug. “I thought I saw you. Where’s your groupies?” He asked, glancing around. You cursed your own stupidity as he pushed himself off the wall and loped towards you.

“They’re…they’re going to be here any second.” But you couldn’t even convince yourself, never mind this oversized creep.

The young man nodded, pursing his lips. “Guess that means I’ve got a time limit. S’okay.” His fists pressed to the wall on either side of your head, his large form looming over yours. You wanted to punch him in the jaw (eight pounds of pressure per square inch) but fear snapped like an iron band around your chest, squeezing off your breath. “What, you too stuck up to talk to me? All I wanna’ know is your name.” He complained, sounding irritated. His hands shifted to your shoulders and you flinched without meaning to, hating the way he smiled at your obvious terror.

This is why people need to be kept at arm’s length.

You weren’t exactly sure what happened next. One second the guy was towering over you, smirking. You dimly heard the thunder of footsteps that he didn’t seem to notice. You wanted to close your eyes as the guy leaned in but then there was this blur of motion that launched shoulder-first into the young man’s side and flattened him.

“You do not touch them!” Roman shouted once he got back to his feet, his chest heaving. “Only we can touch them!” His words were laden with an irrational fury, a blinding outrage that you wished you could borrow to keep your body from shaking.

Only we can touch them.

Yes, your traitorous mind begged, a thousand times yes!

“Gorgeous, you with us?” Dean asked, seeming frantic as he pressed his forehead to your own. “Sorry we’re late.” He apologized. Rollins wrapped you in a tight hug and you shivered against his chest, overwhelmed. “There’s restrooms left and right, guess we picked the wrong direction first.”

“What did he do?” Rollins questioned, his voice level.

“I just…I didn’t want to be touched.” You whispered. “That’s all. I didn’t want to be touched. I’m okay.” The words didn’t seem to be able to keep from repeating and you mumbled them under your breath. Didn’t want to be touched. Didn’t want to be touched.

“Are you sure?” Ambrose’s hands smoothed over your shoulders and you made a little sound of distress. “Roman, get over here.” He ordered, making Roman look up from his staring contest with the young man on the ground. “We need to leave.”

“But I was-”

“No, Reigns. We need to go home.” Dean was demanding at this point. “Now.”

Roman frowned, but slowly returned to your side. “Can you move?” The question caught you off guard and you nodded. “Okay. Can you walk?” That one was a bit harder to answer. You tried taking a step and your foot instantly dragged on the rug. You fumbled to grab Seth’s shoulder again.

“What’s wrong with me?” You asked, your own voice sounding distant and tinny to your ears. A hand gently caught your chin and tilted it back up. You had been drifting downward without realizing it. Everything was so heavy all of a sudden. Didn’t want to be touched. Didn’t want to be touched.

“He’s not gonna’ touch you ever again.” Roman snarled. You must have said it out loud again instead of thinking it.

“Just us.” It was Rollins this time who easily picked you up in his arms, obviously hell-bent on ignoring the looks from the other patrons that you were sure you were getting. “Only us.” He kissed your forehead. “Only us.”

You hid your face in his neck, closing your eyes and trying to even out your breathing. I’m safe. Didn’t want to be touched. I’m safe now. It’s okay. Only them. It’s okay if it’s them. Your fingers twisted desperately into Seth’s shirt and he cleared his throat when you mouthed clumsily over the skin of his neck.

“Hey, whatcha’ doing?” Seth’s voice had a strange rasp to it that made hope surge in your belly. “I uh…oh.” He paused. “Oh.”

“Only us.” Ambrose seemed to understand what was going on, detaching your fingers from Seth’s shirt so he could kiss your hand. “Only us.”

“Yes.” You whimpered.

There was a breathless noise from Roman, a short mutter of, “Fuck, us?”

“Keep you safe no matter what.” Seth gasped as you crooned into his neck. “With or without this, you know that.”

“I know.” You breathed. “Thank you.”

Ambrose unlocked the car and Seth carefully sat you in the middle of the backseat, waiting until you had your seat belt on before getting in beside you. His mouth was on yours abruptly, facial hair rubbing your skin in a way that you had never experienced before. Roman got in on the other side, beginning to press kisses to your neck and jaw. You keened softly, stroking your fingers through Seth’s hair as Roman’s mouth laced a hot trail down your throat to your shoulder.

“Seatbelts.” Ambrose sounded a little dazed. “Damn, that is a pretty sight.”

You blushed and Seth groaned into your mouth. “Jesus Christ you are so fucking cute when you do that.”

“It’s sexy as hell. You’ve got no right.” Roman agreed, tugging the neck of your shirt a little further out of his way. “The way you get all flustered over Seth, the way you nudge your nose into my chest when you want some attention, the way you beg Ambrose to rub your neck. You’re…fuck, you’re adorable.”

“I do not beg!” You protested.

Dean’s chuckle was low, like a rumble of satisfaction. “You might not notice it. You might not purposely do it. Maybe.” He allowed, smirking at you in the rearview mirror. “But you definitely do it.”

“Hey, I don’t blame you. He’s got great hands.” Roman winked at Dean. “Big asset in our trio.”

You wondered about that for a second, especially when Dean’s smirk turned into a full-blown grin. “I mean, I don’t wanna’ brag or nothin’.”

Seth was enthusiasm personified, while Roman was more methodical. Between the two of them you were an absolute mess by the time Ambrose pulled into the driveway, your body quivering with a need you had never put a name to.

Your bed always seemed so huge when it was just you. But with three other men on it, suddenly there was barely enough room. You arched up against Seth, whining into his mouth when he slipped a hand beneath your skirt. “Fucking Christ, your noises, I just-” He stopped dead and you were scared you’d done something wrong. Maybe being this eager was a mistake? “Fuck.” Seth said finally. “Ambrose?”

“S’up?”

“Fingers. You’re better at this. They’re…” Seth trailed off, inhaling and dragging a hand through his hair.

“Oh.” Dean tugged Seth’s belt, moving him to one side.

You propped yourself up on your elbows, concerned now. “What is it?” You asked, wishing you could keep the tremor out of your voice.

“Nothin’, gorgeous, absolutely nothin’. It’s just a preference.” Dean explained, “Rollins has a hard time with keepin’ himself under control if it’s delicate work and…I mean I’m making a bold assumption here, but I’m guessing you haven’t exactly had a lot of stuff happen in your pants. He can be a little…gangbusters.”

You felt like your face must be neon red. Roman laughed at your expression, humming into your mouth as you kissed him. “Ambrose will be good to you.” He assured when you pulled away for breath. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“Christ, that barely matters, they’re fuckin’ soaked through their panties.” Ambrose clapped a hand to the side of your thigh, pushing your skirt up out of his way. “You are just dripping, Jesus. Can I taste? Wanna’ taste.” He asked, his smile dimpling his cheeks. “Wanna’ lick you, touch you. Make you come.”

“B-But I'm...what if you don't like how I taste?” You fretted.

Roman fairly roared with laughter, like you had just told the funniest joke in the world. “Ambrose-” He wheezed, smacking the other man on the shoulder.

Dean snickered into the skin of your thigh, dragging your panties down and slingshotting them absently across the room. “Not a chance in hell.” He said firmly.

Rollins moaned at Dean’s words, his jeans doing nothing to hide his arousal. Bravely you reached out to Seth, your fingers sliding his shirt up so you could touch his side. “When you held my thigh,” You began carefully. “Did you want to do something more than that?”

Seth jerked his head down to look at you. “I…” He licked his lips nervously. “I um. If you wanted it, y-yeah.” He admitted. “I like touching you.”

“And when you put your arm around me?” You looked up at Roman.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to not kiss you? We're professionals but you sure as hell didn't make anything easy for us.” Roman reached over you to boldly fondle Seth through his jeans, making the other man squirm and bite his lip. “Any idea how many times we all had to have a good long talk with one another about you? About the fact that we are human, yeah, but we're not assholes.” Reigns shrugged, taking your hand and bringing it to cup Seth's prominent bulge. “Your safety is the number one priority here.” He continued, like Seth wasn't panting breathy little sobs while Roman guided your hand back and forth.

Ambrose's tongue on your clit was like a jolt of electricity, no one had ever-! You cried out, startled at the intensity of the sensation. Ambrose hummed against you, the sound rolling through your body. One finger gently teased over your entrance, almost like how you would do it yourself when you were alone.

“Gorgeous.” Seth murmured.

“You're tight as fuck.” Ambrose pulled back to say, his finger slipping into you. His chin was glistening with your arousal and you didn't know how you managed it but you flushed redder than before. “Oh, and you taste fine.” He added nonchalantly before adding a second finger.

Roman ran his hand through Dean's hair and started urging you on. “You fuck his fingers, got it gorgeous? Fuck his fingers and soak his tongue, that's what he loves.” Dean moaned against you and you gasped, rolling your hips up. “That's it, look at you fucking tremble, God. Move those hips, fuck him good.” Dean curled his fingers up inside of you, nudging your clit with his nose and that was all it took for you to come. You cried out again and writhed underneath Dean's attentive ministrations, feeling more than hearing Seth's groan of approval as you panted for breath.

“You want Seth, yeah?” Roman was asking you a question, waiting until you nodded dazedly before smiling down at you. “God, you're perfect. We don't hand him off to just anyone, y'know.”

“Very picky.” Dean mumbled, settling back on his haunches and almost falling off the bed when Roman kissed him hard. “Tastes great, yeah?” He managed to get out in between Roman enthusiastically delving his tongue into his mouth. “M' rock hard just from that, fuck, Reigns.” He sighed.

“Can I? I know Roman already asked, but I want to make sure.” Seth kissed your forehead before you could say anything and you felt your insides melt to pool in your stomach.

“Yes, please, please.” You begged, shifting your hips eagerly.

Ambrose reached over without looking and easily pulled Seth's zipper down, snickering at the noise that escaped Rollins. “You gonna' fuck that cock, like you fucked my fingers? He's a little thicker than my fingers.” Dean teased, “Probably gonna' have a hard time getting that cock out of those tight pants of his. He still wears 'em though. He likes tormenting us.”

“And fuck, is it torment.” Roman groaned as Dean slid a hand into his basketball shorts. “Fucking Ambrose, Jesus.”

Rollins shoved his jeans down as far as he could before they bunched up and then hooked your knees over his shoulders. “I'm gonna' go slow. Not going to hurt you, okay? You're safe with us.” He promised, pressing his forehead to yours and staring into your eyes. “Safe.”

“Okay.” You murmured, looping your arms around his neck. Somehow, somehow, you knew none of them would lie to you. When Seth's pelvis shifted forward Roman was suddenly there, his mouth on yours and his hands tangled in your hair.

“Shh, go slow Seth.” The large man breathed, like he was calming a skittish animal. “Gentle.”

Seth nodded and you dug your fingers into his back, feeling the tense muscle ripple under your touch. “Won't hurt you.” He said through clenched teeth.

“I know.” You gasped and Seth dropped his head to rest on your shoulder. “Always keeping me safe.” You stroked his hair and Rollins began to thrust in earnest, causing your slick to dribble out down your thighs. “So good to me.” You sighed.

“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck.” Seth grunted. “Can't say that.”

“He likes being good.” Dean supplied helpfully, dragging Seth's head back up so he could lap at the younger man's neck.

“You like that? When you're good to me?” You asked, keening when Seth sped up even further. Something about him pounding into you while Ambrose mouthed and toyed with him coiled in your belly, Roman helping you along by whispering things in your ear. Things like so good, things like come for me. You weren't sure whether he meant them for you or for Seth but either way you could feel a second orgasm threatening to crest. “Seth-!”

“I know, I can feel you.” Seth choked out as you came, his body going so still over you. “Fuck, yes, Christ.” He gasped, closing his eyes and hanging his head.

“I got it from here, gorgeous.” Dean grinned, essentially passing you off to Roman after Seth pulled out of you with a low groan. Roman cradled you to his chest, soothing your body back down to a gentle hum after the exertion of moments earlier. You were vaguely aware that Dean was jerking Seth off to finish him, that gravelly voice saying absolutely filthy things that got Seth to beg so nicely for more.

“You did so good.” Reigns praised, smiling fondly when you ducked your face shyly into his shirt. “Incredible.”

“So tired.” You mumbled, your insides tensing at random as aftershocks raced through your core.

“You're all set for the night, gorgeous. You rest now.” Roman kissed your forehead. “You're safe. Nothing can happen to you while we're here.” You snuggled into his large form, exhaustion lulling you to sleep.

You're safe here with us.

You're ours. Only ours.

Safe with us.

A bearded set of lips pressed to your ear. Seth's voice sounded thrashed in the best way possible. “Sleep good, gorgeous.”

Part Two

[eldritchsurveys]

1112.

1 - Have you ever had your computer or e-mail hacked? Did anything bad happen as a result? >> Nope, thank fuck.

2 - Do you prefer the company of people or animals? >> I don’t see why I would prefer one over the other. Socialisation is socialisation, to me -- sure, maybe a cat or dog or whatever demands a different kind of socialisation from me, but the amount of effort is similar. I don’t buy that idea that animals are somehow “uwu pure creatures” or whatever it is people say in order to disparage humans as evil or whatever, so that’s definitely not a factor for me. I love dogs because I feel affinity towards them and the most logical reason for that is that I was raised with one. That’s all. I wouldn’t choose hanging out with a dog over a person, unless the dog was my friend and the person wasn’t. Ideally, both me and the person would get together to take the dog out to a park and have a rollicking good time.

3 - Are you a religious person? Were you raised in that faith or did you discover it a later date in life? >> No.

4 - When was the last time you went to the beach? What did you do there? >> The last beach I went to was on Lake Michigan, and that was 2019. We just hung out with some other people. The last time I went to an ocean-beach was... 2016? Whenever it was when I went back to NYC to hang out for a few days and bring Sigma back with me. We hung out on Brighton Beach the first night I got there.

5 - With all the COVID restrictions in place, would you feel happy/comfortable travelling abroad right now? Why/why not? >> Nope. Why not? I think that’s obvious...

6 - How would you describe your dress sense? >> Comfortable, casual, fun, spookycute.

7 - Do you wait until the sales start before you buy non-essential items? >> Not always, but if I think I can get a better deal by waiting a while, I sure the hell will.

8 - What kind of milk do you prefer to drink (if you drink it at all)? >> I don’t drink milk. I will drink milk substitutes (nut milk, soy milk, etc), but mostly I just don’t drink that kind of thing on its own. I use milk substitutes for cocoa, mostly.

9 - Do you prefer blonde hair or brunette hair on your preferred sex? >> ---

10 - Would you be embarrassed to own the same clothing as one of your parents? >> ??????? That’s so confusing to me.

11 - When was the last time you wore some kind of fancy dress? >> Halloween.

12 - Do you enjoy dressing up (ie. in suits or smart clothing)? When was the last time you did so? >> I do, I think it’s a lot of fun as long as I feel like I have a choice in the matter (which I usually do). It would not be fun to me to dress up for an occasion where I don’t even want to go (let alone dress up for it).

13 - What’s worse - being overdressed or underdressed? >> *shrug* Doesn’t make a difference to me either way. I do think it’s awesome when people “over-dress”, though -- like, absolutely wear a cocktail dress to Meijer. I will shower you with rose petals.

14 - What do you think would be the worst thing about being stuck in solitary confinement? >> Everything. Literally fucking everything. I’m deathly afraid of solitary confinement.

15 -  Have you ever owned an unusual or exotic pet? Would you want to? >> No and no.

16 - How old were you when you learned to tie your shoelaces? >> I don’t know.

17 - Do you enjoy decorating for the holidays? >> Sparrow does the decorating. I like looking at them.

18 - Would you rather go into a restaurant or just go via the drive-through? >> I will always prefer to sit down at a table and eat at my leisure.

19 - Do you like having your teeth cleaned at the dentist? >> No. No, no, absolutely fucking not. I hate everything about the dentist (no offense to the dentist or hygienist, because it’s not their fault, I just have Issues).

20 - Have you ever had a gun drawn on you before? >> No.

21 - When was the last time you went to a petting zoo? >> I don’t remember. 

22 - Do you bite your nails? Could you physically bite your toenails if you stretched enough? >> Nope, and I doubt the second thing would be possible for me.

23 - How old were you when you first started using Tumblr? Have you had the same blog all that time? >> 23 or 24, I think. Nope, I’ve abandoned/deleted several accounts before I landed on this one.

24 - Are you a fan of practical jokes? >> Not usually.

25 - How many years older and younger than you would you consider dating? Is this a concrete thing or would you make an exception for the right person? >> ---

26 - Who did you vote for in the last US elections? If you’re not in the US, who would you have voted for? >> I voted straight-ticket Democrat.

27 - Are you a fan of reddit? What are some of your favourite subreddits? >> Yeah, I love Reddit. I’ve learned so many cool things and laughed my ass off at so many good jokes. Also, I’ve witnessed a lot of random acts of kindness, just strangers being good to each other, despite all the stuff you hear about Reddit elsewhere. Some of my fave subs are r/FFXIV, r/CPTSDNextSteps, r/CTPSDmemes, r/DepthHub, r/intuitiveeating, and r/IsItBullshit. But not r/GrandRapids, fuck that sub.

28 - Have you ever watched those YouTube videos of people popping their own spots or zits? Do you find them gross or fascinating? >> Nope. I have subzero interest in that sort of content.

29 - What’s a food you hated as a kid but love now? How about vice versa? >> I don’t know, really. I didn’t hate a lot of foods, and the few I did I still don’t like. Oh, except for doughnuts. I overate them once as a kid and developed an aversion as a defense, I guess, but recently I discovered Krispy Kreme and they’re really good.

30 - Do you prefer socks, shoes or going bare foot? >> Barefoot.

[kpopfanficsforthesoul]

Host with the Most - Chanyeol  (EXO)

Prompt: My friend dragged me to this party and I wound up talking to you about how much I didn’t like being here and you start smirking at me and suddenly my friend came up to me and introduced you as the host of this party and now I’m freaking out because I’ve just been telling you how awful it was for the past ten minutes. 

Genre: Romance/Comedy

Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader

Author’s Note: Even after writing this, I still don’t know what I would do in this situation. Hope you enjoy!

“Lizzy, I’m not doing this!” you whined from your place on your bed. Your best friend was currently raiding your closet, picking an outfit for you to wear.

“Oh yes you are!” she demanded, looking at a blue dress. “You haven’t left your apartment in two weeks except to get food!” 

“I’m not ready to be around people yet…” you started. “I’m still hurt.” You were an introvert as it was, but at this time you especially did not want to socialize. 

Lizzy sighed, then sat next to you on your bed. “Y/N, I know that you and Kijoon had a really serious relationship. But just because he hurt you doesn’t mean you have to torture yourself watching ‘The Notebook’ under your covers all day sobbing over an empty tub of ice cream. He was a jerk, and you deserve better.” She patted your back.

“Thanks Lizzy, but I’m still trying to figure out how to go on with my life. When I found out… I felt like collapsing…”

“Look, I’ve never been through the pain of being cheated on, and I can’t pretend to imagine it. All I know is that it completely sucks. However, I can tell you that the answer is not at the bottom of that bucket of cookies and cream. Why should you cry for someone who’s not crying over you?” she asked. 

“That’s true…” you told her, wiping your tangled hair out of your eyes. “Maybe you’re right… I just need to force myself to interact with people this once, and then I can go on like normal.”

“Well that’s great, because you’re going to be the prettiest jewel there!” she smiled, whipping out her phone. “We’re getting a licensed expert’s help!”

“Lizzy, that’s a little extreme.” you laughed. 

She rolled her eyes. “It’ll make this more special for you! If you look good, you’ll feel good! The party is at this guy’s HUGE house, and he’s pretty popular, so there’ll probably be a lot of people there. It won’t hurt to step it up a little.” 

“Fine, but I’m not wearing a dress. Jeans are an essential.”

“You’re gonna wear a skirt then!”

“Deal.”

“Just a little sweep of highlighter…. and…. done!” Nana smiled, setting down her makeup brush. “Go ahead and take a look!”

You walked over to your full length mirror. “Oh wow…”

Nana certainly was a miracle worker. The makeup wasn’t overdone, it was tasteful and refreshing, with peachy blush over dewy skin, shimmery eye shadow, thin eyeliner over natural eyelashes, and a little touch of red in the center of your lips. Your curled hair was textured and accessorized with a teal head band tied into a bow. The cream colored skirt and floral top that Nana picked out was certainly pretty, but not an outfit that you would pick for yourself.

“Oh my goodness, good work Nana!” Lizzy encouraged, smiling at her friend. “My Y/N looks so alive, you’d never even know a break-up hit her!”

“Thank you Nana. I must say, you do have great taste!” you told her. “I’ve just gotta grab some shoes and then we can leave.“

“Let me help you with that.” Nana said following you into your closet. “No client of mine will wear converse to a party!”

“Oh my goodness, there’s Sooyoung, she’ll kill me if I don’t say hi!” Lizzy told you as you stood together in the corner of the crowded room. "I’ll be over there for a few minutes.” 

“No no no, Lizzy, don’t leave me!” you pleaded, but it was too late. She had abandoned you. An introvert’s stability relies on their extroverted friend being with them at every moment in new social situations. 

You looked around, gripping your cup in your hands. You took a sip to refresh your dry throat. God, you felt so awkward. You didn’t know anyone here.

“Enjoying yourself?” a voice said. You whipped your head around, letting your hair fall over your shoulder. A tall and attractive man stood in front of you. You quickly examined his appearance. He looked really soft, but handsome at the same time. He had a friendly smile and bright eyes, which went well with his nude sweater and jeans ensemble. “I’m Chanyeol by the way.”

His warm vibe made you feel like it was okay to talk to him about your true feelings. “If I’m being honest, I’d rather be enjoying a large pizza on my couch and watching a drama right now.” you sighed, looking at the ground. “And I’m Y/N.”

“Are large parties not your thing?” he asked. You took notice of how his eyes seemed to assure you that he sincerely cared about what you had to say. 

“Parties in general.” you told him, rolling your eyes. “They’re really dumb. Everyone crowded in one place making meaningless small talk over cups of beer.”

“Really?” he inquired, still looking interested in your conversation. “I love parties. Free food, new friends, fun times…”

You scoffed. “Oh come on. Look at this place, I get dragged out my house and get dressed up all nice and what am I offered? Generic corn chips and pretzels.”

He gave you a smirk. “So you don’t like it here?”

“I mean sure, its really cool big house, but I don’t see how people have such good fun here. I don’t feel anything but awkward.”

“How can you feel awkward with all these people here with you?” He asked, smile still wide on his face. He had a certain glint in his eyes, which confused you.  

“You must not be an introvert.” you told him, looking in his warm brown eyes. “I’m wearing a skirt and frilly top when I’d rather be in comfy jeans and a two sizes too big t-shirt. Gosh, everyone can probably tell how out of place I am…”

“I don’t think so.” he told you with a small smile and a caring sparkle in his eyes. “I wouldn’t want you anywhere else than right here, with me.”

You blushed, opening your mouth to continue talking to him, but were stopped by a hand placed on your shoulder. You turned around to see your best friend’s familiar face.

“Oh good, you two have met!” Lizzy exclaimed, glancing from you to Chanyeol. “Y/N, this is the host of the party!” 

All the color drained from your face as you widened your eyes. You gulped, slowly looking back at him. 

“I must say Y/N, you’re unlike any other girl that’s walked through the doors of my house.” he smirked, walking away from your corner of the room. “Quite a mystery…” and with that he exited the room.

You smacked your palm on your forehead.

“Y/N, what the heck happened between you two?” Lizzy exclaimed, looking back and forth between you two.

“Oh, not much. I just ranted for ten minutes about how much I hated his party.”

So for the remainder of the night, you stayed attached to Lizzy’s hip, fearing another doomed social interaction. The party went just as you expected. Aimlessly wandering into different rooms to talk to strangers about work and school, cars and bills, you know, adult stuff. You watched others get drunk as they participated in games, shuffled through a lit up dance room, avoided getting hit by the beer pong ball, and as a cherry on top, almost got bulldozed by a passionate couple making out on the couch you were sitting on. Yeah, a real fun time. 

“Can we go now?” you pleaded, throwing another cup of punch away. 

“I guess I’ve forced you to be around people long enough.” she chuckled. You both linked arms and began to make your way towards the door. 

“Wait!” someone yelled out. You looked over your shoulder to see him again. Chanyeol.

“Oh…” you started. “Listen, I’m really sorry about earlier, you really did have a nice party, it’s just that I’m-”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he interrupted you. 

You almost choked on your own spit. “Um, I, ah, I just-”

“She does not actually, she’s single.” Lizzy finished for you, smiling at Chanyeol in happiness. 

He smiled, looking at the ground. “Do you want to go out with me sometime then?” 

“But… I thought you said I was too different than all the other girls you knew… a mystery…” you stuttered, furrowing your brows.

“Yes… different than all the fake girls who put on false smiles and try to get with me for my popularity… God forbid a human being honest and not afraid to tell a random stranger who they really are. Plus…” he leaned in really close and looked into your eyes with a smile. Just when you were about to touch, he slapped a piece of paper in your hand. “I like mysteries.” He gave you a quick wink and then turned around and walked back into the crowd.

You stared at his back in disbelief. “What the actual heck just happened…”

“I’ll tell you what…” Lizzy said, smiling at you. “You just got that guy’s number! I guess it’s a good thing I forced you out of the house!”

On the walk back home, you smiled to yourself as you thought of the guy that was interested in you. His cute smile, his shining eyes, his warm and caring nature…

Lizzy was right. Just when you thought nothing good would come in your life… that you were so hurt that you would never be able to see anyone ever again… you met him. Fate took your crappy heart break, and gave you a bright, shining, new opportunity.

It was at that moment that you realized that you can’t ever give up on everything based on one mistake…. just like a baker doesn’t give up when the pie isn’t perfect, and a writer doesn’t quit because of one period of writer’s block… you couldn’t give up on loving people because one hurt you. And that’s really something every human should know.

Author’s Note: Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this scenario :-) Chanyeol is seriously killing me with that cotton candy hair! *insert heart eyes emoji* Requests are always open!

[Masterlist]

-Marie 💗

[wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey]

Thanks for the tag, @theamiableanachronism!  I really enjoyed this one!

rules: choose any 3 fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions. then tag some friends.

i choose: • Batfam • Scarlet Heart Ryeo • The Walking Dead

the first character you loved:

• Bruce Wayne and Alfred.  My first real intro to the Batfam and DC was Batman Begins, and I thought Bruce Wayne was the coolest, bravest guy ever.  And Alfred was THE BEST.  Kind, fatherly/grandfatherly, loyal, sarcasm lord

• Wang So.  Obviously.  Even before I had actually seen a single episode, because I heard he had a tragic story, and he was also as beautiful as an angel.  A dark, wounded angel, but an angel none the less.  When he stormed onto the scene and revealed himself to totally be a murder angst cupcake, as advertised, well, I was bewitched

• Dear sweet Glenn, who sasses the heck out of Rick while saving his butt.  Yeah, Glenn, the pizza delivery boy who was the bravest, most unselfish of them all.  Who became one of the most trusted leaders.  He could have turned and left Rick to die, no one would have known or cared, but he didn’t.  He helped out a stranger, and saved a heck ton of other people by that simple act.

the character you never expected to love so much:

• All the Robins, honestly.  Look, when I watched the Dark Knight trilogy, all I knew about Robin was from a clip or two I had seen of the old campy Batman show, and I kind of was glad a legit Robin never showed up in the films just because I thought it would be ridiculous.  I was SO wrong.  I had no idea.   I had no idea what dark, tragic, beautiful, light, funny, DEEP stories surrounded the MANY kids who would take up the Robin mantle

• Eun, I guess. I never hated him, but since he was always rather immature, it was easy to laugh at him and make fun of the things he did.  Then things happened, and while he remained naive in many ways, it was rather sweet and sad at the same time.  My dorky son deserved better

•Daryl Dixon.  Starts out seeming like a rough, angry, slightly racist redneck whose one redeeming quality is his concern for his even more messed up brother.  And then I realized how much of a softy he was underneath everything, how much he cared about Sophia, and how it destroyed him what happened to her.  I saw him connect with Carol, and befriend Rick and Glenn, and become Rick’s brother essentially, and be softened by Beth.  And as the seasons go on he becomes more badass, more caring, more indispensible to the group, and he loses the undesirable traits he picked up from his childhood.  We find out what his childhood was.  Daryl with Glenn is Rick’s right-hand man, and HE JUST CARES SO MUCH ABOUT EVERYTHING DON’T EVEN TRY TO DENY IT MAN

*I’m gonna cheat and add another person for TWD: Carl.  In the first season or two he is a little kid, kind of annoying at times, but boy does he grow up and mature.  It’s a terrible tragedy what he goes through, the things he sees and has to do that no kid should ever have to.  But he is so freaking strong, and he respects his dad so much, and I love his friendship with Michonne.  I love his concern for his little sister.  I love how he shoulders responsibility, how he does what he thinks is necessary, how he worries sometimes that he is becoming a monster too.  I FREAKING LOVE HOW HE WILL nOT PUT UP WITH NEGAN HE HAS NO EFFS TO GIVE FOR THE GUY HE IS TOO MAD AND HAS SEEN TOO MUCH

the character you relate to the most:

• Well, I can relate to Jason’s love for books, to Tim’s often more quiet and reserved nature.  However, I definitely relate to Dick Grayson the most.  He is more outgoing than me, more outspoken, but he has such great love for his friends and family.  The care for his little brothers (in canon and fanon) is something that particularly calls my attention.  You see, besides two older siblings, I have four younger brothers, and I have helped raise them, I have fought against them, fought with them, fought for them, laughed with them, and busted with pride over their accomplishments.  I have been the person who tried to organize them, to tease them, to keep the peace, to enforce the peace.  And maybe I am projecting but I just really see a lot of myself in Nightwing.  The man who hopes, the man who tries to bring light to the darkest of places, the man others trust to help them when they fall.  (I also just hold him in the deepest admiration and its a thing, I try to be a better and braver person so that if he were real I would be worthy of his friendship and respect...)

• A little bit Hae Soo, because I also would get increasingly frustrated by the culture at the time.  We also share a deep love with Wang So :)  Seriously though...maybe Baek Ah?  Because he is the quiet and introspective type, he suffers quietly, he listens and hears things and tries to help those who need it, he tries to bring the outcast brother back into the family.  He is a healer of sorts, a healer of the heart, and he loves little kids and everything beautiful.  He sees things.  

• Maybe this is me projecting again but Glenn?  Kinda small and nerdy, scared of a lot of things, but bravely keeps on trucking.  And slowly rises to being one of the most integral parts of the group.  A man who has strong morals and isn’t afraid to punch an ex-military man twice his size if that man gets between him and the people he loves

the character you’d slap:

• I’d say the Joker but honestly he deserves something more like a bullet to the head.  I would totally slap a lot of the writers who don’t know what character development means, and I would slap at least half the Batfam because sometimes they just don’t know how to communicate feelings properly.  And they frequently hurt each other even without meaning to.  After all of this, however, I would pull them all in for individual hugs.  Oh, I will also totally slap anyone who ever so much as tries to give Dick Grayson grief about the awful things that happened in the Blockbuster and Tarantula incident

• Wook.  UGH.  Also his sister and Queen Yoo.  The king, whatshisface.  Taejo?  also the little creep Won.  I would slap Yo but I would be afraid to mess up his eyeliner, which is on point at all times and is too wonderful to destroy

• Andrea.  I am so sorry but I could not stand that woman ever.  I rarely actively dislike a fictional person, and I apologize to fans of the comics, I realize that the show screwed over her character, but I despise Andrea with everything I’ve got.  Mostly because she runs around proclaiming how much better she is than everyone while at the same time making colossal mistakes.  And honestly her end was ridiculous.  If Glenn can take out a walker while beaten up and duct-taped to a chair, you can figure out how to pick up pliers with your feet

three favourite characters (in order of preference):

• Dick Grayson is the love of my life, and then I guess Bruce, Jason, Tim, and Damian are tied for second place, and then directly behind them are Barbara, Cass, and Steph (I need to read more comics and fics about them, and I am sure they will advance to make the second tier even more crowded).  Alfred is in a special category all on his own

• Wang So (love of my life), Bae(k) Ah, and I guess a tie with Hae Soo, Jung, Woo Hee, and Lady Oh

• Glenn is first in my heart now and forever, and Carl, Daryl, Carol, Michonne, Maggie, and Rick all hold second place.  I like a lot of the other characters, but I’m going to give third place to Tara, and she doesn’t have to share with anyone.  She is just that cool (also awkward and adorkable)

a character you liked at first but not anymore:

• I love every single member of the Batfam to with all my heart.  (The ones I am familiar with, don’t know much about Duke and Harper yet.)  To go beyond, to characters in the universe, well I won’t say I ever liked the Joker but I thought he was a really great bad guy, Batman’s ultimate foe, someone who should always be around throwing wrenches into things and whatnot.  This was after I had seen him in the The Dark Knight.  Then I started actually reading comics related things and HE KILLED JASON TODD.  MY SON.  NOW I DON’T CARE I WANT THE JOKER DEAD I WANT HIM DESTROYED, OBLITERATED, AND NEVER LOOKED BACK ON. 

• Wook. I thought he was occasionally sweet, if not exactly the strongest of persons.  And then I met his wife, who deserved SO MUCH BETTER.  And then Wook revealed himself to be a jealous little eggshell

• SHANE.  He’s kind of like The Walking Dead’s version of Scarlet Heart Ryeo’s Wook.  Originally a decent guy, a good friend, but when things go south, he gets selfish and self-centered and bad things happen.

a character you did not like at first but now do:

• No one really?  I think?  Unless you want to bring the show Gotham into this picture...which I don’t, because that would also make me want to write a book about my love for it and certain of its characters

• can’t think of anyone this applies to

• Hmm, I guess Herschel? He was kind of annoying with his whole “let’s round up walkers and take care of them in my barn.”  Then tragedy and a near death experience and eventually he winds up being the cool old grandpa

3 otp’s (in order of preference):

• I actually don’t have a strong preference as of yet...I kind of like BatCat, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle.  I haven’t experienced much media with either pairing yet so I have read and enjoyed both DickBabs (I still say it should be Dabs) and DickKori.  Ooh I like Tim/Steph (is there a ship name for that?).  I ship Jason with happiness.  Actually I ship the whole Batfam with happiness and peace and a good night’s sleep.  I don’t ship Damian with anyone because he is just a bby birb :)

• SoSoo, Baek Ah x Woo Hee, Eun and Soon Duk (Deok?).  Also, So x Happiness/Peace/A Living Family Who Loves Him

• GLENN AND MAGGIE FOREVER.  TO INFINITY AND BEYOND.  Richonne is great and I definitely like Caryl.  (I shipped Bethyl just a little, once upon a dream.)

this was fun :) if any of y’all want to do this @itspileofgoodthings @thelonelybrilliance @nalavistahlia @blackaquokat @castieltaking-hobbits2gallifrey @camsthisky @abadpoetwithdreams @tabbyofwisdom ...I feel like there are other people I want to tag but it is way late (early) and my brain is dead forgive me if I left you out and please consider yourself tagged!