#they have their own code and borrowed some from other clans

[chicken-blitz13]

Now, are the KoK predators bad bloods? We wont truly know until Dan says the word but I believe they're not bad bloods, not by their standards, they take advantage of their prey in tech and strength but still see them as worthy to be sent back to their planet to fight, it's still not a fair fight for their prey but we don't know what they really want.

I like to believe that to other clans, they seem dishonorable but for them they're only following their own way of life.

Idk it makes it interesting than bad bloods or all the talk of the code was bullshit when we could just be dealing with a specific clan who's lifestyle varies from the others

[fumifooms]

The Nakamoto household - facts & theories masterpost

Table of contents:

the hierarchy & general situation

The parents

The Maizuru situation

The siblings

The other retainers

Izutsumi

Toshiro

Conclusion

I also made tldr summary charts here. This post is about collecting facts about the setting and characters, but it’s gonna be a lot of analysis on what it means through the lens of Toshiro as well, his relationship and place in everything etc etc. They have entangled drama the scale of Daltian Clan. Things are so interwoven it’s hard to keep topics neatly in their own section, because of this pictures may be relevant at several point of this but I mostly won’t be putting them in twice, you might have to do some scrolling up while reading if you want the visual proof to accompany statements. Unlike with Chilchuck’s family there’s less ambiguousness and more intricate details and implications so it’s less theorizing & headcanoning and more stringing together all the crumbs canon gave us. I also dig into some cultural parallels, especially since characters from Wa are the most culturally coded in the series. Also disclaimer that I’ll be calling Shuro Toshiro through this whole thing because that’s his actual name & Shuro isn’t even a nickname he’s shown to like, for accuracy’s sake. The servant girls have real names but are always called by their code names so I’ll call them as such, except for Izutsumi who was named Asebi which I won’t be using.

The general situation

To start off, what’s the situation in canon? All three kids of the head of the house, the three sons (Toshiro and his two younger brothers), are sent out on a vague mission to find something interesting for his father to pick the heir. Each son is thus on their own journey, out with their own group of retainers for an unsure length of time, during canon it’s been 2 years that Toshiro left the house for this mission, and they seemingly all drifted towards dungeons. It’s important to remember that this state of things is the exception and not the rule, and before this the sons lived at home and had different uses of their time, and the retainers had other jobs than care after them. See the next paragraph.

The household offers ninja services, no exaggeration or misuse of the term, mostly spyint but also "covert maneuvers" which could include anything including assassination of people high up. That’s the job of their servants/retainers at least, the heads themselves are more like managers probably, possibly samurais themselves though especially since as we see with the heirs (besides the samurai armor) they also got trained in fighting as their skills showcase. I need to dig into the history of samurais more before I can draw the parallel confidently though. The Nakamoto household is noble/wealthy, distinguished as the Adventurer’s Bible puts it, but it works for and puts its service at use for "their local lord". It buys servants, but also has families who have served it for generations like with Hien. The comic shows that there aren’t only women servants, it’s just the ones we see all happen to be because Toshiro’s retainers are only a small team of all of Nakamoto’s servants.

Above, in a page showcasing characters’ relationships with their party leader: 父親の部下を借りてい��状態なので、 距離がある。Doubtlessly there must be a translation of this already somewhere but I’m lazy and impatient so I turned to machine translation instead, this translates into: "Since he is borrowing his father's subordinates, there is a distance between him and them". Calling the servants retainers is what most of the fandom does and it’s accurate so I’ll be calling them this.

Hien and Toshiro were childhood friends which means the servants do have some degree of contact not even just together but with the heirs too, or maybe just specifically Hien, since both their parents were ninjas for the Nakamotos she ended up getting raised there and they let her play with him as an exception? They did end up drifting away as adults as their relationship got more professional, so it’s possible. The servants eat and sleep in shared spaces, separate from the masters, though Maizuru has her own bedroom, if the room configuration at the in is to be believed + it’d make sense since she’s governess/head servant. I’m hesitant wether to say it’s implied that this group of 4 retainers was always a bit of a team or it wasn’t and got formed for Toshiro specifically. We know that Benichidori had little contact with Toshiro before they were sent out together for example, but we do see all three girls with Izutsumi in Inutade’s extra when they were younger, and them eating in the same japanese styled room etc. The inn they stay at on The Island is western styled though they do have futons rather than beds (there’s only one bed in their shared room and Hien has it because of her rank).

From Izutsumi’s Adventurer’s Bible profile: "Maizuru, who was also Shuro's governess, is the one thing Izutsumi fears. After Izutsumi was taken in by the Nakamoto family, Maizuru forced her through a harsh training regimen of speech, common sense, and fighting skills. Since Izutsumi refused to listen to her, Maizuru set a curse on her that would activate if Maizuru didn't touch her within a set time frame: "Ninja Art: Babysitter." "

Maizuru, called a governess, is the one training the girls, at least some of them, we know for a fact she was the one to train Izutsumi for example, and in general she’s the one in charge of the ninja girls we see. She was a ninja herself but retired from frontline missions, but has a central role managing the servants instead. Inutade for example is strong but not stealthy, and it’s said that it’s Maizuru’s job to choose how to train her and what role to give her in consequence. Her training includes manners but fighting as well, notably kunais and martial arts. Hien is shown to use bombs and Benichidori is implied to be good at disguises, Inutade uses a bold weapon like a club but it’s implied with "ogres and clubs just go together" and Maizuru not knowing where to put her to use that it’s uncommon for Nakamoto servants to use those. Their board game artworks also show their specialties neatly. When brought into the household, the servants are given new names and their whole lives become devotion to the house and their duties. The names might be intended to act as code names due to them being ninjas? It’s implied that they never use their non-code names anymore once they start serving the household. Maizuru’s training also contains language and "common sense"… Critical thinking? As well as implied etiquette. This isn’t surprising, as she was the one put in charge of raising not only Toshiro but his brothers as well.

Oh yes I want to mention that all the retainers’ "first deaths" are in the dungeon during canon, considering our main cast we’re used to death being permissible because dungeons make resurrections possible, but it’s relevant to remember that these people never died before. Never. These girls are professionals, ninjas with a sometimes very dangerous job. Messing up means death, permanently.

From what we see and with who we see, the hierarchy is:

Father (head of house, his word goes)

Mother (has status which puts her wishes above others’ and give her some control over the house, it’s unsure how much though, but hierarchy wise she’s very much above the rest but below the father)

Maizuru (governess, in charge of (at least some) servants and raising Toshiro. Two dots)

Hien (leader of their squad, trained servant from a family devoted to the Nakamotos. Two dots)

Benichidori (trained bought servant. Two dots)

Inutade and Izutsumi (bought servants. Power wise from their rank it’s unsure just how much the difference between Inutade (who has one dot), Izutsumi (who has none) and Benichidori (who has two) is, since Hien is team leader between the four servants at least that’s measurable. Inutade gets some janitor duties, and Izutsumi has a curse put on her so she doesn’t run away I suppose. Power wise it’s unsure, but socially/role wise Inutade and especially Asebi are treated worse.)

I didn’t add the sons because I’m talking more generally about the power structure and it’d depend on each sibling, like Toshiro’s wants and directives during canon trump Maizuru’s, but Maizuru is also his nanny and manages the girls so she has a lot of importance and sway even on the final decisions.

The parents

I am so pissed I forgot that we know Toshiro’s father’s name, Toshitsugu, from these panels showing the progression of the family tree. I am so pissed I’m adding this halfway into writing this whole thing, I am not gonna go back and replace every "the father" by his name atm.

The father is the part of this puzzle most important yet most shrouded in mystery, or rather a lack of details. What we do know paints a pretty full and vivid portrait: impulsive and cares mainly about his own entertainment. Maizuru calls him a fool, his sons are exasperated and go "This again?" when he summons them saying that they’re boring/dull, everyone knows he’s having an affair and he often has undignified demeanor, but what he says goes so yes Maizuru will take Izutsumi under her wing, yes the sons will be going out right away into the world to find you the 8th world wonder, yes whatever you want lord. He seems to have little care for how his action affects others, like crashing into Maizuru’s room at night and asking she take care of a catgirl, or sending out his sons suddenly with kicks to the butts. He does what he wants hen he wants and others have to comply.

Like we see with Izutsumi and Inutade, he tends to take a liking to slaves here and there and buy them on the spot, usually at entertainment places, like sumo wrestling matches for Inutade and a freakshow for Izutsumi. The Adventurer’s Bible states him acquiring Inutade as "By coincidence, Shuro's father came to see her first match; he liked her and bought her for the Nakamoto family." and Izutsumi as "She was on display as a "cat-girl" in a sideshow when Shuro's father took an interest in her and bought her." In Maizuru’s extra, he calls Izutsumi a "souvenir" he got for her, and he’s drunk so it could well be assumed that buying Izutsumi was a drunken whim, and that he mitht be alcoholic. You can’t really say that he picks them out because he sees potential in them to be a ninja or would be useful, since with Izutsumi she had no fighting training and Inutade doesn’t fit the skills they seek like stealth and she has trouble fitting in. You could assign noble goals to him like maybe wanting to help or relating to the misfits, but I think with what we see of him it’s more likely that he likes to pick up "oddities", like a catgirl at a freakshow or an ogre, especially since one of the only things we know of him is he wants his sons to bring back interesting trophies from their travels. Toshiro, about his father buying Inutade, says: "People in power desire ogre as servants, and ogres are chosen as opponents in tests of strengths or military exploits. My father bought her for similar reasons."

Also from this we can infer that he goes out to events often, like circus and sumo wrestling, again mostly for entertainment from what we see. I like to think it’s implied that he used to travell maybe still does, due to his own liking for it as a test and because he visits various places like the sideshow, plus his forearm scars in Toshiro’s extra… But him being a samurai in service of a lord could definitely explain that.

This all paints an interesting picture doesn’t it… The Nakamoto’s lifestyle is super encased in rules and social propriety, duty and hierarchy. Old noble man who’s been surrounded by propriety all his life and just wants some spark of interesting stuff happening amongst the humdrum of his lavish cushioned life at home, and is shitty to people around him in consequence and due to his privilege allowing him to. He’s despicable, but from his 3 appearances he becomes an interesting well-fleshed character, at least proportionally to the screentime he gets…

We also know that the affair with Maizuru is well known at least inside the household, so there’s no genuine secrecy around the topic. Makes sense that the wife would hate her guts.

Ahh yes the mother. Little is known about the mother, except that from Maizuru’s profile "Shuro’s mother can’t stand the sight of her, to the point where there are areas on the property Maizuru is forbidden to enter. Maizuru, however, is impressed by his wife’s strength of character." From this I glean that she does have enough power/respect in the house that she can make rules like where Maizuru is allowed to go. Also the implication that otherwise Mazuru would have access to EVERYWHERE in the house despite being only a (high-ranking) servant is a bit interesting. Wether the mother’s "strength of character" is overt and hot-headed or understated and cool-headed is unsure, but I imagine the latter more. I could see Maizuru’s angle in many ways, from being able to tolerate "that fool" aka the father both just in general and with knowing that he’s cheating on her, to knowing how hard it is to be respected as a woman and admiring her putting up with it all and still being able to have sway in the household. This is I think the only mention of the mother anywhere. Doesn’t seem like she is an important figure to Toshiro at all: in fact we hear about her on Maizuru’s profile, and seeing all of this we can see the importance of her in Maizuru’s backstory and life, moreso than Toshiro’s. I imagine she’s a bit of a recluse, which is part of why Maizuru not being allowed to roam the full house is important, because them running into each other at the house is high.

It’s unsure how much contact the parents have with their kids. What we know is that they left the principal tasks of raising the kids, or at least Toshiro, to servants. Toshiro’s profile says that he’s more attached to Maizuru than his parents, and that’s the phrasing. From the comic where their father summons the sons, it does seem like they’re more or less used to interacting, with the sons’ "This again?". So it’s not that they’ve only interacted with them few times enough to count on fingers, but how meaningful were those interactions? From Toshiro’s profile we know he has a complex where he thinks he’ll never get recognition from his father or be able to measure up to him… But is that more born out of secondhand gossip and expectations, or from direct interactions with him that made him feel that way? Likely a mix of both, especially since the father does seem to be very dismissive, uncaring and insulting with his sons. Oh, but it’s definitely notable that in the Hag monster tidbit (below in Maizuru’s section) six years old Toshiro runs to his father scared shitless for help against the shikigami, and his father casually helps him without batting an eye. Toshitsugu knows how to deal with Maizuru’s shikigamis, and he does so efficiently and without any sense of worry or urgency. Although the event traumatized Toshiro and he was very scared, it doesn’t seem like his father offered any comfort, beyond just helping getting rid of it and letting him cower behind him without comment. Toshitsugu gives hungover vibes in that one imo haha. It’s shown he was already training as a ninja, perhaps this event only reinforced Toshiro’s complex, seeing his father, the samurai the achieved man who has expectations for him, so unfazed and uncaring like that.

The Maizuru situation

Let’s establish a timeline first. It’s left vague how much time she’s served the Nakamoto family for, or how she came to be in their service. The central point is that "She was put in charge of raising their children at a young age". If straight from his birth, Maizuru started taking care of Toshiro when she was 15 years old. If from toddler age, then 16. It’s uncertain if when she stopped getting front-line espionage missions, but we know it’s late rather than early despite having kid raising duties. But well, since she’s also in charge of the ninjas she’s definitely has a multitasking role even now.

The dad prob has around 5-10 years more than Maizuru, I’d say. We only see half of his face and only a good few years in the past, around ~3 years ago probably with the shuro quest and a good 7 years with Izutsumi as a kid, but visually those are the vibes I’m getting. From Toshiro’s birth, it’s possible that the father was 15 when the baby was born too? But conception would have been closer to 14 years old then, and yeah I don’t think they marry and have kids that young. Toshiro is 26 years old in canon and is unmarried, and the heir hasn’t been officially picked, so marriage and kids don’t seem to be in the family’s priorities. Even if Maizuru do say that the father would love if Toshiro brought back a wife.

Now the elephant in the room: she has an on-and-off affair with the father and it has been si for many many years, at LEAST 7 years since that’s when we see that comic of him going into her chambers about Izutsumi, and in the comic above, Hien in that panel has an ambiguous age. Regardless it’s definitely implied that it’s a long, long-standing thing. Hien’s phrasing above makes it sound as if it’s not purely physical, as if feelings are involved, "he’s head over heels for his confidante", and who knows if this relationship is part of why Maizuru was chosen to be the governess, or even hired at all.

It’s in the feud with his father that we learn about maizuru’s affair and how after learning it he started shutting her out emotionally. It’s left vague when Toshiro learned about it, Hien made it sound as if everybody always more or less knew but I don’t think Toshiro started shutting her out when he was still pretty young. Regardless, the two are implied to be linked, his dislike of his father/complex and how he stopped getting along well with Maizuru/being emotionally open with her. Is it that he now feels as though Maizuru is actually on his father’s side and not his own, that after all if she had to choose she’d pick him over Toshiro too? Or is it that, because his father’s known to be a self-centered frivolous jerk, that knowing she lets it happen, "can’t seem to shake it", he respects her less? He has an irresponsible reputation and she does give off the vibe of needing to clean up his messes, so that wouldn’t be unplausible either.

On the flipside from her perspective, since he learned she was his dad’s mistress he emotionally shut her out, which can partly explain why she’s SO fussy with him and happy at the slightest hint of happiness or compliance, like when he listens to her and eats, or maybe even being happy that he lets her help him dress and keep tidy (imo this is supported by how they interact in the page showing him interacting with all his party members). She wants to regain that closeness they once had and for her baby chick to be alright as he’s slipping through her fingers. Man so sad to think about him rejecting her when he’s the only thing in her life. She’s raised him for 26 years, no wonder she’s so attached to him, the only thing in her life she feels true unconditional attachment for. Maizuru says that she thinks Toshiro’ll be a better head of the house than the father, too. The respect and care is somewhat onesided, given freely from her side but repressed from his end. When she cares for Toshiro is when her demeanor immediately and drastically softens. She gets easily carried away when it comes to him, rambling enthusiastically or smiling widely or tearing up. Her tendency to ramble or tell anecdotes about Toshiro is shown making Hien and Benichidori go "Here she goes again…" twice through canon.

With Izutsumi’s timeline we see Izutsumi was taken into the Nakamoto household at 10 yo, and since in the comic with Maizuru and the dad she’s shown as stinky and all I imagine she arrived there the same day, so Maizuru was in charge of her since she was first here. In fact if we assumed that it’s the same day as when he bought her at the circus show, then we could assume that buying her was a drunken whim like mentioned.

Since Izutsumi was taken in at 10 and she’s 17, this would mean that Maizuru is 34 years old here. She looks younger without makeup, but lower than that is mathematically impossible besides maybe 33 if Maizuru and Izutsumi’s birthdays line up just right.

Time for the second elephant in the room!!

Maizuru’s magic

Maizuru is the only person in the Nakamoto household, anyone from Wa really, who we see using magic, I doubt she’d be the only one who can use magic in the household but as the governess it wouldn’t be unplausible I suppose. From what we see, the magic is estimated by Marcille to be an "appropriation of gnomic magic" with an eastern script. For my analysis of written magic (though with only a brief glance over Maizuru’s magic), see this post.

If you scroll up and read the little section on Maizuru’s profile, Ninja art: babysitter: "One of the curses put on Izutsumi is Ninja Art: Babysitter, which manifests as a terrifying hag shikigami. Unless Maizuru touches the victim within a set time frame, this terrible curse makes a hag appear and chase them around with a carving knife. Maizuru originally created it in an attempt to keep Shuro from getting lost, but it ended up traumatizing him…"

From Izutsumi’s profile: "Maizuru, who was Shuro’s governess, is the one thing Izutsumi fears. […] Since Izutsumi refused to listen to her, Maizuru set a curse on her that would activate if Maizuru didn’t touch her within a set time frame: "Ninja Art: Babysitter." It was put on her when she was 12. Since Toshiro had it as a kid, presumably the curse can be lifted off rather easily, Marcille was confident on reverse engineering it as well. It’s unsaid what the time frame is, it’s kept vague everywhere and Izutsumi herself says "who knows" how long it is. Izutsumi ran away despite the very real risk of it killing her. Essentially, Maizuru can put people in a timebomb collar

… MAIZURU WHAT THE HELL

As we might have expected, Maizuru being given the task of rasing a child at 15 did not go perfectly. This, a babysitting technique??! This comic happens when Toshiro was 6 and so Maizuru was 21. Interesting to note that Toshiro didn’t even know it was Maizuru’s doing before this conversation during canon, and he doesn’t know how to bring it up or deal with it how it affected him. Maizuru seems surprisingly uncaring of Toshiro’s feelings on the matter here, oblivious to his conflict her and fondly recalling it all.

This curse is a shikigami. From her profile: "A shikigami user, Maizuru has a variety of shikigami that have been sealed in paper as her servants. Her favorite seems to be Gyuki, a bull ogre." Now don’t ask me when Gyuki appears, I do not remember it. But before we go into the cultural/historical basis for this practice, let’s take a second to recognize the parallel that Maizuru has servants she keeps sealed unless useful in the moment, even despite having enough "attachment" to have a favorite. She’s the governess in charge of the other servants, and she has shikigamis, which she has used on the heir and the runt at the bottom of the hierarchy alike.

Shikigami, in traditional japanese folklore, are conjured to exercise risky orders for their masters, such as spying, stealing and enemy tracking. Shikigami are said to be invisible most of the time, but they can be made visible by binding them into small, folded and artfully cut paper manikins.

Shikigamis are from onmyodo, onmyoji is a profession-legal title historically but it’s what you call a practitioner of onmyodo, and so I feel content in saying that Maizuru is an onmyoji, or based on it. Her outfit reminds me of a shinto priest. It’s interestingly closer to a shinto priest outfit than a miko/shrine maiden’s (in picture below, 2 instead of 5), and I feel like red being chosen for the inner sleeve is a very charged decision since the white & red color combo is the shinto clothes color combo. Especially white clothes with red inner sleeve. Shinto priests can be women nowadays but they’re rare, and onmyojis can be considered shinto priests though it’s a more complex than that. Image below as example, source. Now I don’t think Maizuru has the role or prestige of a priest at all- But the association with onmyodo and spirituality is definitely meant to be made I think. Onmyojis are usually clothed similarly to this.

The babysitter ninja art seems to be based off of the hannya yokai. "They were once human women who were consumed by jealousy and transformed into demonesses", twisted by anger and resentment. Interesting considering her being a mistress to a man whose wife hates her. Hannyas are associated with wisdom because of its name, but there is nothing positive about them. At its highest level of "demonic corruption" if I can call it that, their body tend to become serpentine, fun link to make with her name being from the snakeberry plant.

Other cultural ties or symbolism on Maizuru’s character could be found in the motif of cranes due to her sleeves, in the tales of the crane wife, origami cranes (called orizuru, from deformation of 鶴 "tsuru" aka "crane". All names are written in katakanas in Dungeon Meshi, but thus if we had had the kanjis it’s possible her name would have been written with the kanji for crane), tennyos, and japanese crane symbolism in general. I thought cranes might have been associated with motherhood, but seemingly not in japanese culture at least, I was thinking of storks haha.

Ok speaking of her name. Maizuru is the name of an existing japanese city (舞鶴), meaning "dancing crane". From @room-surprise’s work in progress research paper on Dungeon Meshi characters’ names: "Maizuru is her ninja code name, and comes from “maizurusou”, which is maianthemum dilatatum, the snakeberry plant/two-leaved Solomon's seal/false lily of the valley. Lily of the Valley is a plant associated with motherhood and virtue… So Maizuru being a false Lily of the Valley implies that she is a false, replacement mother, and also hints at the way that Toshiro became cold towards her when he realized she was his father’s mistress, and not a pure, virtuous mother-like figure that he thought she was. Also, lilies are toxic to cats, which makes sense since Maizuru and Izutsumi have an extremely bad relationship." For more details I’ll leave it up to Room when the paper is ready to be released. Edit: It’s out!! Click here! Incredible meta that goes into a ton of details not only about Maizuru.

So some big themes of her character are: (false) motherhood, spirituality/magic, control, cranes, woman’s jealousy.

The siblings

Alriight so besides Toshiro the eldest at 26 years old, there is Toshiyuki (Toshitsuge in one fantranslation) the middle son and Toshizane the youngest (Toshikage in one fantranslation). They were all said to be raised by Maizuru. "A strange level of distance" is interesting. Why strange? I feel like this implies they do interact regularly, and that they’re all rather civil wirh each other, but they still have little bond to speak of. That wouldn’t surprise me, especially since even inside the family etiquette and propriety and rules are enforced, the summoning by his father feels very formal and they all listen to him standing in silence despite having snappy inner thoughts. It’s unsure if they were largely raised together or apart, but since Maizuru was their (at least main) caretaker/governess it implies that they were imo. They were put in competition with each other for the title of heir to the house, though it’s unsure to what degree. It’s examplified by their family all having names that start with "Toshi" that the legacy is very important and thrust upon them, cogs in a machine almost. They all think the same thing when their father summons them and has a spiel, so they’re used to the same sort of treatment and they are indeed brothers for being on similar wavelengths haha.

Toshiyuki, as seen in the comic about his retainers, the poor soul sent into Darkest Dungeon, is brattish. Rude, selfish and rather lecherous, does not hesitate to be mean to his retainers and complain he wasn’t given women retainers. Visually he looks what, 14 years old top. I wonder if Maizuru stopped using her babysitter ninja art on the heirs after it traumatized Toshiro, and if so maybe that explains why Toshiyuki Knows No Fear In His Heart™️ and that’s why he can spout off stuff like that.

The retainers for the youngest brother, Toshizane, don’t seem to be as clad in ninja gear as the other two, seems like the priority is to take care of the very young young master there? Rather than truly go adventuring and dungeoneering, perhaps. Not that it’s ever said by anyone that their quest is to go into dungeons specifically, only to find something "interesting" to bring back, but both Toshiro and Toshiyuki are shown to have ended up drifting into dungeons. Toshizane looks young, I’d clock him 8 years old personally. He’s drawn looking rather innocent, especially the headshot doodle above and in the Toshitsuge complaining about his retainers comic. ALTHOUGH on the latter, interestingly as we see with Toshiro having a smug smirk in that same panel (or alternatively a smug indifferent/uncomfortable "i don’t care about this, even though you want it so much" look which at the very least is very exaggerated from how he emotes in reality), it’s Toshiyuki’s unreliable/exaggerated vision of his brothers and it doesn’t necessaeily reflect reality, though it’s still interesting to note that that’s the vision Toshiyuki has of his brothers/the impression Toshizane gives off. That can imply juicy dynamics for the brothers, for example if Toshiyuki feels as though he’s in competition with his brothers, feels superior to them, that instead of pushing the shitty family dynamic angst onto his father he puts the blame for it all onto Toshiro. Toshizane seems maybe too young to notice the tensions and seriousness around him, maybe more coddled… IS WHAT I WOULD SAY BUT in the comic where their father send them away he’s as well-behaved and serious as the others, so clearly he has a grasp on his role.

When talking about which retainers go with who, it’s said it was the father’s choice. I’d like to assume it wasn’t an airheaded/random choice. Maybe he knew that Toshiyuki would be weird about having women in his team of retainers? And wants to forge their character or protect them in the way they need. Though how Toshiro’s party only has women isn’t only pointed out and commented on by the comic with Toshitsuge but also in the main Dungeon Meshi story, both Marcille and Chilchuck going "his party is fully made up of women", one more loudly than the other haha. So it does feel like a somewhat pointed/purposeful decision, if not that the 4 girls were already a team like I mentioned.

The other retainers

Already made an analysis of Hien and Benichidori’s relationship (+ moment compilation) here. Honestly my juices are exhausted so quick rundown:

Hien’s parents both serve the Nakamotos, so she grew up with the family and was even a childhood friend of Toshiro. She assumed he and her might end up in a Maizuru-Toshitsugu situation ‘just because that’s how things are’/‘it’d be a natural development’ if we’re to believe Hien, ahh what growing up at the Nakamotos’ with those role models will make you believe is normal hah, and was surprised when it ended up not in that way at all. They grew more distant with time, in good part because of the professional nature of their roles in relation to each other (truly a reversal of the Maizuru-Toshitsugu situation). She’s the leader of their lil squad, under Maizuru, she’s very confident and she gets the perks, like getting the bedframe in the shared inn room. For all the details just read her page. She has two dots, showing her rank as a full fledged ninja. I made a more in depth more speculative reading of her in this post.

Benichidori was bought, by "the Nakamotos" so we don’t know who made the final decision. She’s perceptive and submissive, her specialty is implied to be disguise. She never had much contact with Toshiro before she became part of his party. She has facial dysmorphia where she fears the judgement of others if she doesn’t wear makeup and highly values beauty, in her extra her anxiety really shows and she ends up angrily snapping at Hien. Benichidori ends up taking a big liking to Hien and from there on they’re implied to be inseparable. She has two dots, showing her rank as a full fledged ninja.

Inutade is said to worship Toshitsugu because he "saved her" from her horrible life conditions, buying her personally from the sumo matches, she’s extremely grateful to the family and is happy to do any work they give her and is highly satisfied with her current living conditions. She seems to find Toshiro intimidating, though. She was separated from her parents from before she can remember and raised as a sumo wrestler in inhumane betting matches, where her front tooth broke. It seems she has very littke ambitions and dreams besides obeying orders day to day, but after Izutsumi fled away she was happy for her and mused that she’d love to go out and find her one day. They’re so besties Izutsumi gave her a dream of her own I’m sobbing… </3 She has one dot, showing she still has to be attributed her role and earn her stripes.

Their approval rating of their leader. The highest total score from all the parties.

Izutsumi

Sighh where to even begin. Her timeline was put in Maizuru’s section of this post but the rundown is "taken away from parents and turned into a beastkin" at 6 yo (the human half of her soul), "sent to a sideshow on the island of Wa" at 7 yo and bought by Toshitsugu at 10 yo when he took an interest in her when he visited the sideshow. Maizuru put the curse on Izutsumi at age 12, so from then on she always had to not stray much far from Maizuru or risk death, it’s unsure if Inutade’s extra is from before that time, before she was 12, so she could still attempt many many tries to run away. If that’s the case, then Maizuru’s curse was very much treated as a last resort, honestly beyond everything else I can see it being a pain that Maizuru would need to touch her every so often on Maizuru’s schedule as well. The alternative is that, not unlike Kabru who had no regrets dying in a dungeon rather than staying with Milsiril, she’d risk her life to get a taste of freedom. Besides, you know, being a slave and having a timebomb collar with Maizuru’s curse, her frustrations with her life with the Nakamotos is most concisely put in the comic just up above, Inutade’s extra.

She has no dot tattoo, meaning she’s at rock bottom of the hierarchy. It makes sense, since unlike Inutade she’s rebellious and needs threats to obey orders, and even then might try shifty business.

This last part where Izutsumi tries sleeping with Toshiro is most interesting to me. So she’s sought out contact with Toshiro before, she considers him "the stuck-up guy" but she doesn’t exactly hate him. I wonder if this comic is set in the inn on The Island or back at the Nakamoto household, because if that’s the latter it implies that she could get access to his room if she’s sneaky.

Oh oh also, this is fanon but since Toshiro’s weapon is one used usually on horseback, and with the steadfast and upright character of horses I associate Toshiro with horses a bit, though this is wild fanon. What’s interesting is that the plant Asebi was named after is a plant infamous for being toxic to horses. Hehe hehehe he wears a ponytail… Hm now that I think of it hairdos have importance for samurais, should look into that.

Toshiro

God. Ok. Everything was leading up to this guy. Need to split open his head like a geode and vibecheck his brain crystals. Let’s get some interesting details out of the way first.

His weapon is a tachi, not a katana. The wikipedia on tachis is more in depth if you want, but I consider the article I linked to be in deoth and digestible. Tachis are heavier and longer blades than katanas, and make for better horseback weapons than close combat. The way Toshiro uses one instead of a katakana shows that he’s extra strong… And does make sense, since most monsters won’t fight in as close quarters as human fighters. If katanas aren’t a thing in the world yet could make a difference, since tachis were invented first, and once the katana was invented and spread tachis became something more common in higher-ranking samurais. In the monster tidbit of the Hag, it’s shown that even at 6 years old Toshiro was training and learning ninja skills, his first instinct to the shikigami besides running being to fight.

Toshiro knew that Izutsumi wanted to leave, for sure. He may have been sympathetic, if his cryptic look back at her in the ‘Toshiro interacting with his party members’ page means anything. As seen below though, him being sympathetic doesn’t necessarily mean that much. Also, Toshiro had to have known about the curse on Izutsumi, where if Maizuru doesn’t touch her once in a while she’d die. "Asebi must have ran away, leave her" can be seen as subtle support for her to gain her freedom, but it could just as easily be seen as him leaving her behind to die. Because the outcome options are 1) she gets killed by Maizuru's curse, 2) she finds a way to break the spell, 3) she finds a way back to them.

He’s very conflict averse. Wether it be in relationships like with Laios or the status quo. Will not stand up for 99% things including himself. He obeys his father quietly despite his anger and dislike. This is the same guy who can't even get himself to speak up to correct the butchering of his name, the slippery slope that got him tangled in the Laios party seemingly without resistance. It’s very japanese etiquette from even nowadays, never saying a direct no to not be rude. ALSO THAT PANEL, has Toshiro beaten an ogre before?? Is that a brother of his?? Does seem in character for Toshiyuki the most, unless Toshiro was desperate to earn his father’s attention with feats. On the right I’d say the ones in the foreground are two of the brothers, maybe the third being the one to gesture to the ogre. It’s worth noting that inheritance laws during the Edo period often made the heir the son with "the most merit".

When with a goal that’s important to him he’s fine with even starving for it. Although what we see him be like that about in canon is Falin, aka self-admittedly in the post-canon proposal comic "the first person he has liked this much", which for him I feel is like admitting she’s one of the first things he has truly wanted for himself and fought for, soo… It’s more like an exceptional freaking out moment than something that would be recurring, most likely. How disheveled he got is a testament to how much he would forego propriety and rules for people of his status for the person he cares about most. Maizuru says the first personal request he’s (ever?) made was for them to help him rescue Falin.

Which ahh yes, his crush on Falin. I do think idealization plays into it, he doesn’t know Falin that well for sure, but it’s more complex than that too. Falin is pretty and can have an ethereal energy to her, she’s caring and gentle kinda motherly which Toshiro would find soothing I imagine, BUT MOST OF ALL. She’s weird!! She’s just weird enough to allow and be charmed by!! Shuro was fully shaped by his upbringing and environment of nobility, social etiquette and whatnot. Yeah she’s weird and quirky, but still quiet and sweet-mannered enough that he’s like "Yes, she wouldn’t bring shame on my family name". And why would he be charmed by her weirdness? Because all he’s ever known is rules!! Conformity, fitting in!! Unlike the others he knows, she is weird without being overbearing as well. "Woah she’s so different… She’s kind and soft and doesn’t care about fitting in… She is out of this world, she’s free, she shows me a world where tenderness and authenticity is possible…" She’s like his comfort character. MOREOVERRR I had totally forgotten about it, but Toshiro was shown watching a snail behind a bush and losing sight of everything else (like Maizuru calling him) as a kid in the Hag monster tidbit, the moment he fell in love with Falin it was when she looked enthralled at a caterpillar and he mentions how "most girls would have screamed or recoiled in disgust", and in the beach chibis page he’s crouching and collecting shells thinking about Falin… He likes bugs and crawly critters guys, he wishes he could be cottagecore too… It’s a genuine shared interest… . Someone pointed out that Toshiro & Falin’s relationship probaboy references this japanese folk tale, and I think that’s very interesting to note.

And Maizuru is like his mom but it’s a Thistle situation where they can’t just be a normal family and normal affectionate either- and when he learns about his father having a thing with her he feels weirded out. And like. Who knows how much he even got out of the mansion. He got homeschooled. He’s distant with his brothers. The family is in shambles

Shuro’s issue is that he was taught to be perfect and have the upmost respectable behavior, so if something annoys him he has to be righteous about it and that it’s the annoying thing’s fault or moral failing. Bro just let yourself be petty sometimes it’s healthier. With the feud with his father it’s explicitly stated that the pressure and expectations of the family name weigh on him a lot.

But then, that makes his beef with Laios so understandable doesn’t it. Not justified, but explained certainly.

Laios & Shuro and the whole mess coming to a head

I’ve made an analysis of the Laios-Shuro fight from Laios’ pov before, here. This is the Shuro pov analysis. Yes yes in The Fight, Shuro is dehydrated sleep-deprived and underate, he’s majorly off his rocker, BUT his frustration and the underlying issues are still things he felt on any day and it’s interesting to note.

Toshiro has been raised from his birth with the priority of propriety, nobility, etiquette, rules, conforming elegantly, appareances and reputation are everything. He’s modest, humble, quiet, stays in his lane and bottles all his feelings up. Wait who is this loud guy coming up to me being inconsiderate and loud af?? Does he not see me blinking in morse code that I’m not enjoying this and want him to leave?? Was he raised in a barn?? He’s overbearing and rude and way too friendly- He’s weird wtf! Not conforming to basic etiquette is illegal??! And people just… Let him do whateve he wants?? He lives well, no one stops him or kills him?? What the fuck, I’ve followed rules and etiquette thoroughly all my life, and it’s thankless work I get no recognition for, meanwhile he gets to be oblivious af and do whatever he wants without getting clapped?? Resentment, frustration, dislike, anger anger anger, jealousy.

Laios might even remind Toshuro of his dad in a way, because he SEEMS impulsive and like he does whatever he wants without a care to people around him, without thinking of how it might affect them. Doing things without thinking through the Implications. And interestingly this is a bit paralleled to to how Shuro is serious, strict, and big on the duties that come with having a leader role and the family dynamic it brings, like Laios’ own father, who Laios also dislikes… Dealing with his anger towards Laios, especially knowing that Laios doesn’t mean anything bad by it like Toshiro admits, is probably very healing to him. He stops repressing and thinks through his issues a bit, realizes what parts of his life he’s unhappy with and where all the negative feelings come from. I do think he bottles up his dislike for his father a bit, he has to at least for appearances. His beef with Laios is repackaged internalized anger for his father, but it’s ALSO repackaged frustration from his etiquette-bound lifestyle. He says it himself, when Laios is like "You never told Falin how you feel…? Alright, when I can I’ll tell her for you buddy!!", "that’s the part of you that I envy". Laios’ ability to just come out and say what he wants to, what he means. He wishes he could be free of all the rules more, that he had te courage to speak out, like with Inutade, or talking things out with Maizuru, or nit having to act like he’s not angry with his father. This narrative point of Toshiro envying Laios’ ability to say things freely and being frustrated by not being able to himself is ESPECIALLY examplified by their first interactions, the basis of their relationship: Laios enthusiastically befriending him, giving him a bad nickname and roping him into joining his party, with Toshiro never turning it all down despite wanting to, too hesitant to act possibly rude.

And now is time for the laishuro addendum… Because of personal experiences it’s a bit of a sensitive spot to me so while I see timelines in which I enjoy it I’m very picky… This is all further theorizing from me btw I’m not pushing my view here onto ppl as facts, but I think there’s more interesting bits and scenarios to bite into here. Laishuro has very cute and sweet potential. I personally don’t see the "Oh wait Laios is just girl Falin… 😳" angle because to me if anything that’d just make Shuro disillusioned with Falin lol, but like yes make Shuro learn that it’s ok to be weird with Laios 🥺 They DO have differences first of all, important ones, especially from Toshiro’s perspective. Laios is overwhelming, whereas Falin is soothing. Laios is loud and asks things of him where Falin is a calm, quiet presence. Laios pushes himself onto Toshiro, whereas Falin is content on just doing her own thing in her corner alone.

Hot take but the ultimate laishuro timeline is the one where he DOESN’T bring Laios back home, because he knows he’ll be seen as an oddity and clown by his father, and he doesn’t want Laios to be treated like the tapdancing monkey there to please and entertain his father the way he himself has always kind of been. Wouldn’t inflict that onto someone he loves. He can recognize when people are taken advantage of (mostly) like Inutade, and it doesn’t settle right with him. He might be especially sensitive to it in Inutade’s case because it’s about seeing his dad in a better light than he deserves, though. His father is his weak spot, THE weak spot.

It gets me so emotional thinking about it actually because seeing Laios played like a fiddle by his father, Laios so happy to find someone who’s enthusiastically listening to him ramble and engaging, would destroy Shuro emotionally I think. Like. On one hand being like "Oh of course my dad would find Laios fun, unlike me his boring son", super angry as coping mechanism for his intense sadness of not having positive parental attention, and then on the other he’d see Laios being treated as a clown and identify with it and that would remind him of how he gets treated similarly which he’s in denial about (more or less, but since he puts up with the family rules and follows along he hasn’t given up on getting recognition. He wants his father’s approval, and he couldn’t blame Laios for being happy with it despite how hurtful that attention truly is without Laios’ knowledge), which would be such an overwhelming conflicted mess of emotions and his worldview would shatter a bit because he has to repress it all even now, and he’d have a breakdown.

And similar deal but if he brought Falin home… Bc ok yes he idealizes her and doesn’t even know her all that well, but like I said imo what he sees in her is that "Woah she’s so different… She’s kind and soft and doesn’t care about fitting in… She is out of this world, she’s free, she shows me a world where tenderness and authenticity is possible…" So meanwhile with Laios he’d have mixed feelings on him getting treated like a clown and identify with it, bringing Falin home and having her be demeaned would be like having his perfect comfort character dunked on and he gets reminded that the world can’t have anything good actually. With both Toudens it’d make his resentment towards his father even worse, he might snap. I’m not the biggest on gendered analysis tbh but Kui evidently does like to do it to some degree, with the genderbending changing their life considerably and different fantasy cultures having different gender roles and all, but Shuro idealizing the Touden sister as something perfect he cannot attain while being jealous and frustrated at Laios for being something he cannot attain is like. So compelling actually. With Maizuru’s hannya of female rage weaponized there could be a theme of pushing the blame and responsibilities of things onto women too, the responsibility to raise and to manage and to dish out the work and to clean after mens’ reckless decisions. Anyways just a tangent.

Shuro on a bad family angst day is everything I love in a blorbo… He can be a lil shitty as a treat to make his healing arc more fulfilling. Toshiro snapping after he sees how they treat Laios/Falin and he gives up the family headship to LEAVE. Maizuru arc where she has to choose between loyalty to the clan and loyalty to Toshiro, will she stay with the boy she raised or go home… To me Maizuru is much less sympathetic than Shuro, but she is pretty tragic and her selfless love for Shuro is her one redeeming quality. Babygirl take no shit no more, but also better yourself and turn your life around please and thank you… She is so evidently taken advantage of but like. What else does she have? So she just takes care of and loves the boy she raised like her own kid and goes about her daily life in servitude and doesn’t think too much about it all.

Shuro is awful a nickname but also, I think Shiro would be a good nickname for Toshiro, because it gets rid of that ‘Toshi’ first part of his name that all the male members of his family share. It severes the link to his father and the tied pressure from his family.

Laishuro brotp turning slow burn romance would be so lovely. I think college au for laishuro would be peak actually… Shuro so is the repressed "I am so normal" guy who has a furry liberation identity crisis arc… I also quite like the potential he’d have with Namari, as both work-oriented misfit foreigners cast out of their homes, and she’s also bolder so it’d be good for him, and he could bring her stability… That’s a topic for another day tho. Even he and falin are sweet tbh, they could have traveled around together even if just as friends… Bc yeah she does value him as a friend at least somewhat, she says she’ll visit him~! Mostly I want Izutsumi-Toshiro brotp fancontent.

Conclusion

The household is very hierarchy oriented, and honestly the system doesn’t seem to make anyone happy, or at least not healthily so. Sighh feudalism.

Obviously their situation are very different, but still Toshiro and Izutsumi react to the same conflict in opposite ways: when a hierarchy and lifestyle of rules and duty is thrust upon them, Toshiro obeys and believes that it’s how things simply are, always having it been drilled into him since being a baby and being privileged enough to live ok with things as they are, meanwhile Izutsumi rages and eventually breaks free and never wants to submit herself to rules or hierarchy ever again, even if that perceived hierarchy is a mutually beneficial professional party dynamic or having a role inside a well-meaning team, like Laios’ party. WHICH IS WHY THEY SHOULD HANG OUT AND HAVE AN ARC TOGETHER. LET HER INFLUENCE HIM TO GET WILDER AND THINK OF HIMSELF MORE. FUCK INHERITING THE HEADSHIP. THE SIBLINGS NARRATIVE.

As always if I find more stuff to add i’ll edit it in. Rn I’m thinking that I’ll look into ninja & samurai feudal history and try to find specific terms that might fit their roles and situations more. I should reread try to cover Izutsumi’s end of the Toshiro-Izu dynamic as well.

I greatly recommend this paper for more excellent meta on all named Dunmeshi characters and their culture!

Ah yes yes, I forgot to talk about it but we don’t know what Toshiro’s retainers have been doing with their time on The Island, especially while he was dungeon diving with Laios and co. Although in the anime’s ed in this shot we see them "stealthily" follow him around, so presumably when he’s not in dungeons they’re tailing his moves.

Afterword here, it has summary charts about the power structure & relationships and complementary pages and artworks, couldn’t put them in here because SIGH 30 pictures per post limit.

[halogenwarrior]

I had a dream last night where someone ha bound all the warrior cats books and put Ashfur on the cover of each one, and in the dream it was a sort of parody of the way Ashfur's fans (the ones who were more common in past years that are actually apologists for him rather than just liking him as a character) often laser focus(ed) on what's going on with him in earlier arcs making it out to be uniquely tragic compared to the other characters. But the dream got me thinking - what would it look like if Ashfur was the main/only POV character! I thought the result was pretty compelling. Note that this borrows a lot of AU ideas from other people, who I credit, and puts them together into one whole.

Arc 1. With Ashfur as the POV, the story takes the form of a coming-of-age tale, from the point of view of an insider to the Clan who personally experiences the shock of betrayal by Tigerstar rather than suspecting all along he was a traitor. It would develop Ashfur's dynamic with his siblings as well as the Bramble/Tawny/Storm/Feather group, culminating in the climax where they kill Bone together and giving a part where Stormfur and Feathertail's fate lets Ashpaw see firsthand how the code can be manipulated. Cloudtail being one of those siblings gives a chance for us to see Firestar indirectly through his perspective, as @troutfur discussed with rewriting the first arc, how his ingratiation into ThunderClan means he suppressed Cloudtail's questioning of their way of life. This allows us to set up the tensions with Clan and outsider, code and breaking it, that will be so crucial in the future. (edit: We would also be able to see the frustration of the apprentices not allowed to be warriors under Bluestar from the perspective of one of those apprentices, which would be an interesting dynamic!)

Arc 2. I think here I'm going to borrow @troutfur 's AU discussed here where Ashfur is part of the journey crew, giving a POV onto everything that happens there. The character beats discussed will be hit here, with Ashfur feeling left behind on milestones of life. The arc builds up his resentment and builds up his relationship with Squirrelflight given the extra journey time, and ends with a shock (for those unfamiliar with warriors/in a universe where these were the canon books) as the innocent apprentice we have watched grow up and try to find his place in the world is motivated by that resentment at and possessiveness of Squirrelflight to work with Hawkfrost. I think to give him more agency as the main character, and also foreshadow the competence he shows in TBC to be able to subvert StarClan in a way no one has before by taking another of @troutfur 's ideas where he turns against Hawkfrost and is the one to kill him to gain the glory of the one who saved Firestar, unlike Brambleclaw who was working with Hawkfrost. But even though he succeeds in killing him and gaining a reputation for it, perhaps he doesn't succeed at framing Brambleclaw and he's still able to deny that he was working with Hawkfrost, so that he stays deputy and the events of the later arcs can still happen closer to canon. I also want to note in this arc that in the "protagonist Ashfur" AU I would want to make some of the amatonormative opinions the authors in canon often express as deliberate in-universe flaws of their society; Ashfur believes he's behind in life milestones because of his own society's focus on romance, and later he gets accepted into StarClan because it's an intentional flaw of StarClan cats to be especially willing to forgive something "done for love".

Arc 3: The growing up of the three is seen through Ashfur's spiteful perspective, with his mentorship of Lionpaw and the tendency for mentors to work together with other mentors and take their apprentices out together meaning we get insight on the other three and get to still see the Jay/Holly apprenticeship drama. Again to make it not seem contrived what he is able to do in the TBC equivalent, I would have the arc with his waiting to announce the Three's parentage until the gathering not being a mistake on his part/plot hole but, borrowing @skinwretch 's idea, being quite willing to risk one of the three killing him and wanting to goad her into it, that way he still destroys his lives and he doesn't care if he dies anyway he already is in "so much pain bleeding onto the stones". I would also use @bonefall 's idea where Ashfur finds out about the Power of Three prophecy, so it's known to the POV character and thus the audience, and that the prophecy and the fear of it might play a role in his actions in the fire, I'm not sure how much of a role though if it's too much it wouldn't make sense that Ashfur didn't just try to reveal that secret instead of waiting for the other secret. Maybe the fire scene is switched so instead of it being the kits' parentage Squirrelflight reveals, it's the prophecy, saying they are so important to the fate of the Clans that they can't be killed, that they might have the power to avenge themselves even in death. But due to Clan superstitions around cats like Brokenstar it's culturally understood that the kind of cat that would be so cursed as to have the power of the stars, and thus defy the stars, would likely be the monster child of a medicine cat, and Ashfur (who I want to have a consistent trait of being observant of the flaws of a system) is able to put this together with all the little hints and irregularities he now notices regarding their birth to conclude their true parentage. And then of course Hollyleaf kills Ashfur at the end.

Arc 4: This is where I'd differ the most from canon, as this is essentially TBC fused with OOTS. It has been years since the Power of Three arc ended, Jayfeather and Lionblaze are now middle-aged cats, and yet the prophecy has never been fulfilled and they have never been able to discover the meaning of it or live up to their potential, and Hollyleaf, the supposed third cat in the prophecy, is...gone - due to the last arc ending at Ashfur's death, I would be able to create suspense over what exactly happened there, and how much it was like canon. Not sure on this, but one thing I might do is that in this AU StarClan would work like a collective with each individual cat's conscious experience in the afterlife being rather alien to how they were when they were alive and blended with others', they might have separate opinions and factions but it has to be an opinion shared by a sizable faction of StarClan (i.e. about how strictly the code should be enforced), individual grudges like those Ashfur bears as smoothed out. The birth of Squirrelflight and Bramblestar's new litter late in life (Alderheart and Sparkpelt) is able to reignite Ashfur's existing spite and anger and lead to him "awakening". With many/a large faction of StarClan cats already believing the Code has been forsaken, Ashfur is able to work together with several of these cats (I always have loved this in TBC AUs because I'm sick of canon seeing Clan traditions as so noble that anyone like Sol, Mapleshade, and Ashfur who shows the negative side of them has to be a hypocrite who doesn't actually believe them and is manipulating it for revenge, here Ashfur is certainly a hypocrite but he's not working alone) and subvert StarClan and possess Bramblestar. In seeing Ashfur's POV we get to see the strangeness of having a consciousness and physical embodiment of a ghost alien to life adjusting to living, while so much has changed in the last few years, allowing us to see his depression, instability and spite from his own POV. His story will also follow how he schemes to betray and separate himself from the code-obsessed allies who helped get him there, ultimately succeeding and becoming the enemy of all StarClan with them helpless to do anything about it.

I think here I would also include the AU I've seen (can't remember who posted it) where Alderheart and Sparkpelt take the place of Shadowsight and Bristlefrost, but here they would also take the place of Ivypool and Dovewing - Jayfeather and Lionblaze believe Sparkpelt to be the third cat in the prophecy (not sure if she actually is or it's in fact the actually alive Hollyleaf), and there is an inherent tension between them where Sparkpelt, as the "good" biological child of their parents as opposed to the "bad" adopted children with scandalous biological parents, is demanded to redeem the prophecy, show that the power of the stars in "good hands" is not inherently a curse. Sparkpelt also takes Bristlefrost's story of being rejected by Stemleaf, and I would play on the canon where she doesn't care about Stemleaf's death because she realizes the doesn't love him romantically - here, that would be something she tells herself, lies to herself about, as a sort of mirror to Ashfur. But I think if she still dies at the end like Bristlefrost, she wouldn't die saving Shadowsight/Alderheart (which has a bonus of making Alderheart's arc not just end with him being rescued for the 10th time), but saving Stemleaf's soul from being destroyed by Ashfur after he rebels against his control, proving herself definitively different than Ashfur and her last moments being memories of love without resentment, outside the bounds of romance encouraged by society. Alderheart, meanwhile, combines his own, Ivypool's and Shadowsight's insecurity and desire to be special even in self-sacrificial ways that leads Ashfur to manipulate him.

In this arc, the prophecy of Three's true meaning will be shown, all five of Squirrelflight's children will have their character arcs and roles to play (which I haven't really worked out yet), and the other main players will be Ashfur's siblings Ferncloud and Cloudtail, who mirror the other sibling group with the dynamic of the adopted child considered "bad" by society and the biological children considered "good". Not sure how they would all play into it, but the story would follow Ashfur's perspective while showing through his personal relationships with them the arcs of both the set of five siblings and the set of his two siblings as the other main characters.

So that's how this alternate warriors would go - the coming-of-age story amidst the rise of a tyrant with a relatable young warrior you can root for, gradually transformed into one of the cruelest villains the Clans have ever known out of his resentment and possessiveness and passion, out of internalizing some of the norms of Clan life and being willing to manipulate others.

[aspenhearrt]

intro post!

hello i am aspenheart/aspen/sylas/dove (you can call me! just about anything!) and this is my warrior cats blog :-) i've been interested in warrior cats for. over a decade now i think and i have so so so much love in my heart for stupid cat politics.

i've been in many warrior cats rps over the years and i've been burned pretty badly by them (you might see me occasionally complaining about the "original storylines" for some of my characters) but now i'm making my OWN clan!

unfortunately just about every piece of art that you'll find on my blog is not drawn by me. my icon is from [this] picrew and most of my character icons are from [this] one. i am extremely new to tumblr so let me know if need to tag anything differently or smthn.

furthermore, ASKS ARE ALWAYS OPEN!!! i love talking about my silly little cats and their silly little worldbuilding so much. please ask me all the questions. lots of things are on my toyhouse and lots of things aren't!!

i intend to tag asks and other posts about characters with their names, so feel free to ask me about anyone <3

links will go below the cut as they become relevant!

Borrowed Bonefall Ideas in Crowpaw Story

The Warrior Code

Thistle Law (political ideology)

Traditionalism (political ideology)

Fire Alone (political ideology)

Fading Kits

Single fading kits

New Patrols/Cats get to sleep a cat amount

Trinary Gender

Honor Siring and Primary/Secondary parent words

Beauty standards pt. 1 (& petalfang notes)

Beauty standards pt. 2 (& dragonflystar notes)

Setting Notes

The Badger & Fox Problem

Why Crowpaw is a healer, not a medicine cat

ShadowClan Culture & Allegiances [doesn't exist yet]

WindClan Culture & Allegiances [doesn't exist yet]

RiverClan Culture & Allegiances [doesn't exist yet]

ThunderClan Culture & Allegiances [doesn't exist yet]

Territory Guide [doesn't exist yet]

History of the Clans [doesn't exist yet]

Character Stuff

Extended character bios masterlist

Characters quick guide

Actual Writing

The Exile (234 words)

Miscellaneous

Crowpaw Story clangen (non-canon)

[codexassassin]

Animus Session: 105

Lati Rutelveson learns she had given birth to a possible Prussian Monarch in Germania in 1343 BCE

Not born from assassin and or templar heritage she "married" a young man who had a mysterious past, who unraveled their marriage long before he actually spoke of doing so. She never knew a thing of it, but he was a Templar.

She gave birth to a young son who only lived to his eighth year but warned her to an impending doom to her estate and her wellbeing, thus ending all future visits with her son then aged five.

He took her son from her to be raised by "Christian Monks" wanting him to be raised by the Priesthood. She was allowed most of her freedom and never saw him again, except during some holidays as well as visits from her son, so he could at least know his mother.

She told her estate people and they vanished into the Germania wilderness where she, as a man, began training as a vicious assassin.

In 1338 BCE, bands of assassins from her branch, broke upon the templar lands, slaying her son in the process. A Man with a prophecy, he would later return as a teen to be raised by "Great Grandparents" from her side, and train alongside his own mother, now his "sister" in the creed.

With this young man, he became a wizened, well trained, Assassin and Germanic "vude" which is something related to an "Alazar"

An "Alazar" here is like a type of ruler, or clan leader. The mother became a "Wis" or a "Clan trainer" of the people and their assassin lineage was like a Germanic Amazon Warrior, with some borrowed south African culture. They were classified as "aborigines" and considered to be offshoots of the Sanhedrin peoples.

They ended up leaving Germania when they felt the threat had ended, with the son going one way and the mother and the others to the north. I want to say this was the year of 1315 BCE, and thus moving into steppes landscape around the 1310 BCE area.

Around 1303 BCE there was an earthquake in the area, destroying the area * (I've looked on the search engine and they say there are no known earthquakes from the time period, because it is an early period of history. They point to 1303 CE or AD in Crete having a huge one with a tsunami. But there were no waves with this)

Having been older now, at least 85 years of age, Lati ran outside when the earthquake begin and fell into a large hole that opened up breaking her neck and shoulder on impact beneath the "Slovakian Steppes". She only still looked 35 years of age, however.

A Search shows now what is considered Slovakian Steppe Country.

A Map showing Germany and Slovakia in modern day times, the son or brother journeyed to the south, towards "Sabahrah" and they went to "Rah" in the north.

The main food seemed to be steppe veggie like lettuces and cabbages and Gazelle, which was plentiful in the steppe country. However, eating this meat the meat, will change who you are and make you "comfortable" which is not known to be an Assassin emotion or way of life for too long, but there was no war at the time of their occupation.

Life vanished in this entire area for about fifty years, so devastating was the earthquake.

I asked DALL E3 to help pinpoint dress code.

*Never mind the dude holding a gun. I liked his head dress.

[alfvaen]

Leap Novel

Here comes another book roundup post, for the books I read in February 2024. What are the odds? It's amazing.

Actual book list and ramblings below the cut, so let me just say that's there's potential spoilers within for Fonda Lee's Green Bone Saga, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Kristen Painter's Comarré series, and maybe more.

At the end of January I had managed to get myself a little bit ahead on my Goodreads challenge, which I usually take advantage of by knocking off one of the thick books which can sometimes clog up my shelf. (Maybe if I set my Goodreads challenge count a little bit lower, I could read more of them…but maybe at the moment this is about the right level of long books for me anyway.) This slot was for a "female diversity" book, which presented me with a few choices (for some reason I have a lot less trouble with this one than I do with the male diversity slot), and I even had three possibilities which would result in my finishing off a series…N.K. Jemisin's The World We Made, C.L. Polk's Soulstar, and the one I went with, because it was the thickest of the three…

Fonda Lee: Jade Legacy, completed February 9

I first ran across Fonda Lee at the When Words Collide festival in Calgary, where she had YA SF books like Zeroboxer and Exo, but then Jade City came out and I was intrigued. I enjoyed the first two books, which are set in an interesting alternate world which is kind of analogous to our own. The map is completely different, but most of the places map to our world if you squint. The story centers around the island of Kekon, which is vaguely Japan-coded (though, for instance, there were no nuclear bombs dropped on it in their All Nations War, so it's not exact). It's set in an era which is basically the late 20th century (people have cars and phones, but not as many computers). But there's also jade, which is special.

Many of the inhabitants of Kekon are Green Bones, which means that they can wear jade and use it to do extraordinary things--healing, telekinesis, sensing other jade users, protecting themselves, giving themselves strength, etc. Others can also use jade, but only with the help of dangerous drugs. The Green Bones have formed into various clans, and at this start of the story Kekon is mostly divided between two rivals, No Peak and Mountain, who between them dominate the Kekonese government, and are frequently engaged in bloody internecine conflict. Mostly we follow the Kaul family, the leaders of No Peak, in a family saga which makes me think of, say, James Clavell (though admittedly I've only ever watched the "Shogun" miniseries and haven't read his actual books) or maybe The Godfather (which I haven't even watched), or at least what I think they would be like.

By the third book the (surviving) main characters from the previous books are moving into middle age and we're getting a new generation rising up, and we're covering lots of other territory--particularly Espenia, the American analogue, which is in a "Slow War" with its rival Ygutan (Russia), and who is eager to use jade for their military but still forbids Kekonese immigrants from using it. The book is probably as long as the first two books in the series combined, but there are a lot of plot threads and characters to follow, and plenty of exciting scenes and satisfactory resolutions. Well done. (There is a novella set in the same world, "The Jade Setter of Janloon", which I should probably read sometimes as well.)

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study In Scarlet, completed February 11

A few decades ago I read something called The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, a book I'd borrowed from a friend named Julia. I don't know if I'd read any actual Sherlock Holmes before then, though I was of course aware of him (how not?) and had seen bits of various adaptations. That book contained a number of stories, as well as the novel The Hound of The Baskervilles. It was years before I learned that what I had read was by no means the entirety of the Holmes cycle, and that there were in fact three other novels: A Study In Scarlet, The Sign of Four (or is it The Sign of The Four? I've seen both), and The Valley of Fear. At some point I picked up a huge coffee-table book "complete" collection, which seems like it does contain the novels as well as various collections. (Though it's not everything Doyle wrote--I have read a collection called When The World Screamed of mostly non-Holmes stories which do not seem to be in here.)

What gave me the impetus to actually maybe read them, though, was my reading, last year, of Sarah "Katherine Addison" Monette's Angel of The Crows. Not related to the magnificant The Goblin Emperor as the other Addison works have been, this was in fact an homage to Sherlock Holmes, in which the detective is an angel named Crow, in a London with other supernatural creatures such as werewolves. It became clear, as I read the book, that it was likely doing more than just "a tribute to Holmes", but that it was recasting several actual Holmes stories into this alternate supernatural London. In particular I noticed that there was a "Sign of Four", and then something that definitely reminded me of The Hound of The Baskervilles. So it was at this point that I decided to put A Study In Scarlet on my virtual shelf.

According to Goodreads, it was a mere 120 pages long--and in this monstrous collection, the pages were large enough that that was reduced to 52. So after spending so long on Jade Legacy, it seemed like a nice short change of pace, something I could polish off in a couple of days. But also, those couple of days would be on a weekend, so I wouldn't have to lug this gigantic book to and from work (I like to read at lunchtime, you see). Oh, sure, I could grab a copy from Project Gutenberg and just read that, but this seemed more convenient.

The story itself is, apparently, the one in which Holmes and Watson first meet; I wasn't even sure such a thing existed for years, that we might have just started with their relationship already established. But apparently not. And apart from that…well, it's a Sherlock Holmes mystery. As a novel it's a fairly short one, as established, and it would be even shorter if it weren't for the bizarre insertion, into the middle, of the actual backstory of the murderer and his victims, which is practically a mini-Western. It involves homesteaders in Utah, a tragic love story, and somewhat demonized Mormons (Doyle apparently apologized later for mischaracterizing them in this novel). And it really doesn't fit--there's no sense in which this is part of Watson's transcription, and the murderer, when revealed, basically gives a summary of the story which is quite sufficient. I can only presume that this was an early work and Doyle got better later.

After reading this, I skimmed over the Angel of The Crows version and discovered that the vast majority of the details were all but identical; in particular, the names of the characters involved in the mystery were exactly the same. The major differences were that the dead girl who the murderer was avenging was actually an angel in this version, and the memento he carried was an angel feather rather than a wedding ring. Oh, and that the family one of the victims was rooming with, whose son was a suspect, were actually werewolves. But apart from that, it was really quite close. So much so that, it turns out, Angel of The Crows is more similar to Pride And Prejudice And Zombies than I was expecting. …So perhaps I should let a little more time pass before I try The Sign of Four.

Guy Gavriel Kay: All The Seas of The World, completed February 16

After the Holmes story, and still needing a male-author book for my cycle, I decided I might be in the mood for a more straightforward fantasy. I briefly contemplated another thick book--Ian Esslemont, Steven Erikson, and R. Scott Bakker all have large volumes which have been stuck on my shelf for a while--but I decided I didn't really want anything that thick. Instead I spotted the most recent Guy Gavriel Kay, which was a more 500 pages (instead of 700-900) and picked that one up instead.

I've been reading Kay for a while--I don't think I read The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy when it came out, so it may not have been until Candas Jane Dorsey (again) encouraged me to read Tigana that I tried him. I did love Tigana (though it is one of the few books where I recommend skipping the prologue, which I found quite dire and mostly irrelevant to the rest of the book), and the Fionavar books as well, and have since read everything of his. I don't like all of them--A Song For Arbonne didn't land for me, or The Last Light of The Sun--but they're mostly good. Most of them are set in a fantasy Europe, and after Tigana there is very little in the way of actual magic. Often they are tied closely to real historical figures or events.

Also, though this book is not marketed as a sequel to anything, it is literally crossing over with the previous book, A Brightness Long Ago, with some of the characters showing up. It also makes reference to "Al-Rassan" from The Lions of Al-Rassan, as the "Asharites" (Muslim-coded) have now been drive out of that land by the Jaddites (Christian-coded), not to mention the expulsion of the Kindath (Jewish-coded), and it's been renamed to "Esperaña". So it seems like everything from at least The Lions of Al-Rassan onward (I don't know about A Song For Arbonne, frankly, or The Last Light of The Sun), with the possible exception of the ones set in fantasy China, are in the same fantasy Europe.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Mirror Dance, completed February 21

Returning to my Vorkosigan Saga reread… As I may have mentioned before, I inserted the Dick Francis book into my reread schedule to simulate the lengthier gap between Brothers In Arms and Mirror Dance (three years in-universe) which has caught me off guard in other rereads of the series. But this begins my favourite sub-sequence of the saga.

I was prepared to dislike Mirror Dance when I first read it. I bought a membership to the 1994 Worldcon, which was in Winnipeg, closest it had come to us, and we were (perhaps foolishly) prepared to even drive there. But then we came over all poor and couldn't afford it after all. But I had made an effort to read the Hugo nominees so I could vote informedly. For the 1995 Hugos I also read all the nominees (my 1994 membership allowed me to nominate, I believe, but not vote--did I get a voting membership? Probably not, if we were still poor), or at least four out of five of them. I read Michael Bishop's Brittle Innings, John Barnes's Mother of Storms, James Morrow's Towing Jehovah, and Nancy Kress's Beggars And Choosers…but I didn't read Mirror Dance because it was in a series and I hadn't read the others yet. I was plumping for Mother of Storms, personally. But Mirror Dance won…and I kind of resented that.

Luckily, by the time I got around to read it in the context of the series, I was willing to forgive it, and now it's one of my favourites, along with Memory and A Civil Campaign. (Komarr is also okay, I guess.) In particular, I like the middle of the book, where Mark goes to Barrayar…in fact, I'd have to say most of my favourite Vorkosigan series moments take place on Barrayar. Great scenes with Cordelia, Gregor, Ivan, and introducing Kareen Koudelka. I also like the opening chapters, where we compare and contrast Mark and Miles's impressions of the Dendarii Mercenaries.

So obviously it's a direct sequel to Brothers In Arms, but almost as much it includes elements introduced in "Labyrinth", and we probably spend more time on Jackson's Whole than we do on Barrayar. It ties up nicely at the end, back on Barrayar.

(But Memory is my absolute favourite, and I can't wait to read that one again…)

Ruth Ozeki: A Tale For The Time Being, abandoned February 22

A few years ago, my wife was a judge for the Sunburst Awards, a juried award for Canadian speculative fiction. (I was briefly on the organizing committee for the awards at its inception, but didn't stay for too long; I have no talent or inclination for such.) This resulted in her getting shipped boxes of books from various publishers for consideration, and in theory she had to read all of them, though in practice she bailed out on some of them partway through. It turns out that not every publisher sends all of the books that are under consideration, and you're not supposed to say which were included and which weren't. But A Tale For The Time Being was on the shortlist for the year, so it's safe for me to mention it.

I liked the title, because you could read it as "for the time being" meaning "for now", but you could also postulate the existence of a "Time Being" for whom this tale was intended. So I was curious about it. I suppose I could have put it into my "diversity" slot, as I believe the author is Japanese-Canadian or something like, but I left it in my "trying out" slot, which meant that I gave myself permission to bail on it early.

It seems like there's three stories going on in this book--a Japanese girl who was writing in her diary; a writer named Ruth (?!) living on the west coast of Canada who finds said diary (sealed up in some flotsam, with a cover that identifies it as Proust's "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu"); and, at least alluded to, the story of the girl's great-grandmother. The girl confessed to being suicidal; the author thinks that her diary was swept across the ocean because of the tsunami.

I wanted to get engaged in this book…but it didn't happen. Authorial self-insert characters (with the same name as the author, no less) lose points for me…80 pages in, we didn't actually get into the great-grandmother's story, just the girl's father, who was also suicidal after he lost his job; and...I don't know, on the second day, I just didn't want to pick it up again. I asked my wife what there was for speculative elements, and she said just some mild magic realism. So, basically, this was Japanese-flavoured CanLit. Maybe at another time in my life I would have read the whole thing, but I just wasn't in the mood this time.

Kristen Painter: Flesh And Blood, completed February 27

Time for another female author…I wasn't sure what I was in the mood for, so I decided to look at some of the books that had been on my shelf for a little while. I'd read the first book in Kristen Painter's Comarré series back in 2017, and liked it. In some ways it was a standard urban fantasy…but it was set in the future, in the world of 2067, which I found intriguing. My wife hadn't finished the series, so, like the Kelly Meding series, it had made me want to try it too. Though apparently I still waited a few years to go on.

In this world, we have vampires, of course, but we also have comars (feminine comarré), who start out as normal humans but have special properties (possibly conveyed though their gold tattoos, I can't quite remember) which makes their blood particularly valuable (and tasty) to vampires. It may also grant them longevity. So we have Chrysabelle, a comarré who is bonded to her patron Malkolm (who killed her original patron in the first book). But Malkolm has a curse which means that he can't drink from someone without killing them. This has apparently led to a certain distance in his relationship with Chrysabelle, even though they are clearly coded as The Romantic Couple for the series. But mostly what's keeping them apart is pride and stubbornness, which I don't find particularly winning.

So we have Chrysabelle and Malkolm being annoying; we have a surfeit of scenes from the POV of Tatiana, our nemesis for the book, a stupidly arrogant vampire from Europe (mostly we are in "New Florida"); we also have a subplot with Malkolm's friend Maddoc "Doc", a shapeshifter trying to bring back his ghost lover, and a new character named Creek, a badass dude from a mysterious secret society who seems mostly to be there to start a love triangle with Chrysabelle. (Not that I don't mind the occasional love triangle, but some are done better than other. And these days I feel that you always need to acknowledge that one of the possible resolutions is a polycule.)

Only Tatiana and Doc seem to be proactive for most of the book; the rest of the characters spend most of their time reacting. Things just happen and they're dragged along. The future setting barely affects the course of the book; it might as well be set in present day for most of it. Eventually we do get to a sort of resolution (though not the one I was hoping for, alas), which is satisfying in some ways but not in others, and some of those ways feel like ham-handed attempts to leave threads dangling for future books, or reach the ending the author wanted even if if doesn't quite fit any more. All in all, mostly problems that could have been resolved with, perhaps, a few more drafts…which it didn't get.

I had bought the third book at some point, and I was considering just going and finishing the trilogy to wrap things up…but it turns out it's not a trilogy, it's a pentalogy. So I guess…no. I won't bother. Cut my losses, put the books into my donate boxes, don't pursue any further. Pity, it could have been better.

That's all the fiction books I finished this month. I mean, it was a short month, and I read Jade Legacy, so that's slowed me down a bit. Currently I'm reading You Feel It Just Below The Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor & Janina Matthewson, but I'll be finishing that one in March so I'll talk more about it then.

I did finish a non-fiction book, though. It's one that I started a few months ago and kept losing enthusiasm for and setting aside (which I allow myself to do for nonfiction in a way that I don't for fiction)--We Are The Nerds by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, a book about Reddit, which I'm sure I bought as a remaindered hardcover as I do a lot of my nonfiction books. I wasn't sure I was going to finish it at all; the early part is all about tech bros and startups and crap and I just wasn't feeling it. I should say that I've never spent a lot of time on Reddit--the only time I recall posting there was to mention that I had figured out how to decode the binary format of Crusader Kings II "iron man" save files, and I never bothered to go back and share the details--so I don't have a lot invested in it, and maybe that would have helped. I might have been more engaged if I knew some of the names, or some of the important site events. As it was, I managed to slog through to the end, and then I shrugged and also put it in the discard box with the Ruth Ozeki and the Kristen Painters. I have another few nonfictions books I'm in the middle of, but more likely I'll try another new one, maybe one from the library. Though first it'll probably be another month of comics on Marvel Unlimited (I'm up to December 1993!), and maybe another issue of OnSpec or another Love & Rockets book or something.

[fromfireandashes]

Meet Bolide, the leader of the laid low gang currently skulking around the scrapyard. He is played by Maddy, one of our roleplayers— who contributed much to this group’s worldbuilding! 

Reminder that his group is currently open for applications, and will close on AUGUST 3RD! Check our pinned post for more information! Now, let's get on with the show.

AS FAR AS LEADERS GO… 

Bolide is by far one of the most controversial in Stonebrook. He’s known as a symbol for social rebellion, though his actions are downright terroristic. It’s hard to resist his good looks, impeccable oratory and cool detached manner. 

But at the same time, he unleashes something toxic in society and in the end, feels problematic to admire for anyone outside of his close community of outcasts. Bolide is admired because he is a savior of broken cats. He’s also a macho figure, one that all cats aspire to be. He opposes the mundane, trapping ideals of both clan and kittypet society and fights for a different way of existence. Bolide possesses an almost Robin-Hood like personality, a savior of the everyman and an enemy to the rich. 

However, this is only a persona that he has created in order to exercise his own anarchistic ideas. After all, he is a by-product of a society that he so ardently criticizes. His actions tend to spiral out of control, with little care for the consequences. He brings destruction and chaos not only to his loved ones’ lives but also to the posse and to innocent cats outside of it, making him into the true anti-hero he is. He is quite willing to turn to brutal violence, and obsessed with the idea of revenge. Bolide’s ideas are certainly promising and abound in endless possibilities, but without possessing the true compassion needed to put the work in… will he really be able to bring his ideal future to light? 

AS FOR THE CATS OF THE POSSE THEMSELVES… 

As a leader, Bolide completely eschews enforcing unspoken rules or codes of morality. Members hunt together, and that is the extent of their responsibility to the posse. Some may challenge Bolide’s leadership, and these matters will be settled with their claws. It is in this way that they also settle matters with other groups of cats within Stonebrook. 

The conventionally strong and brutish type, especially those with their own sources of fury or desires for justice and power after being wronged by the world, often gravitate towards Bolide’s posse— those able to fight for their territory and hunt for the collective’s meals fitting in within his ranks easily. However, it’s not just one type of strength that Bolide values. The physically weak may be granted the protection of his group if they are able to contribute in some other way, such as with intelligence, charisma, or other unique talents. If not, they can also get by if they have a strong ally who is willing to pull twice their own weight in order to earn their companion’s keep.

There is no overarching social concept such as "the clan" that keeps these cats loyal to a higher ideal. Instead, they exist as disparate groups of related individuals, united only by shared lineage and territory - as well as the important bonding activity that is hunting. The wider community of the posse itself only formed due to these families living in close contact with one another. Parents are expected to care for their own kits, the sick or injured to figure out their own way of caring for their wounds, and all other lone cats to look out for themselves. Cliques within the Posse are often formed as a means of protection from infighting or harassment. Favors may be exchanged between surveyors in order to borrow the strengths of others that they themselves lack— for example, a cat caring for a sick friend may offer extra food, protection, or a hit upon another’s enemy, getting a cat with medical knowledge to treat their companion in exchange. 

The presence of a cat within the posse's territory is not a sign of membership, as many cats are transient. Adolescents frequently leave the posse to fork out lives of their own. There are often temporary, unrelated coalitions of young cats who have banded together after leaving their own colonies. Romances with individuals from other communities are not forbidden, although clan cats and kittypets are frowned upon, due to their lifestyle being viewed as trapping and unfree.

The most unified form of bonding within the posse is the hunting process. Having broken the norm of hunting alone, the posse instead works as a coordinated unit, tracking prey for an incredibly long time before they find a good spot where they will execute a swift burst attack. This allows them to take down significantly larger prey than an individual cat could. Cats in the same hunting party as one another form very close bonds.

After relocating to the scrapyard, the posse's hunting strategy shifted to better suit their surroundings. Individual hunting is now more common, as it is difficult to find the wide open land necessary to chase down prey. However, hunting parties have still been able to collaborate when it comes to flushing rats and mice out of the rubbish, with one cat taking the role of the feinter, another the wrangler - to ensure the prey is heading in the right direction - and another the finisher.

As such, Bolide’s surveyors are a group of unique, ragtag cats, all bringing their own strengths to their makeshift gang. But they are united in their desires to carve out the life they want underneath their own power, to never be hungry, helpless, or disrespected ever again. No matter his flaws, Bolide has much of their respect, as he had granted them an avenue to do exactly that for most of his 40 moons of leadership.

Stay tuned for the history of how Bolide's current group came to be. But for now, we thank you for reading this far, and for the effort you've already put in towards joining our ranks! Good luck on your applications! We look forward to seeing you.

[tallstars-rewrite]

Hi!

I read your rewrite from start to finish a few weeks ago, and kept forgetting to give you the compliments due to such great work! You tied up so many loose ends so wonderfully (especially Shadowclan! And Tall's actions at that climax really set up his future leadership beautifully), and your depiction of abuse was so astute and raw it really stuck with me. I love how fleshed out Windclan is, from politics to relationships (platonic and not) and anything in between. I recommended this to a friend frustrated with the latest book release, I hope they enjoy it as much as I did! <3

One tiny tidbit that's stayed in mind - if I recall (can't go back and check right now oop), Talltail was given the nane Tallkit with the specific understanding he would likely be named Talltail as a Warrior, with this being an old tradition. Are any other cats named similarly, or similar traditions in other Clans? It's a really cool idea and justification for some of the weirder canon names (who names a mostly-white kitten with black toes Blackkit unless it's definitely being named Blackfoot later?), and if it's alright with you I'd love to borrow the idea for my own writing! <3

Thank you!! I'm very glad you enjoyed reading!

For starters, yes you are definitely free to take inspiration from the idea that these predetermined prefix/suffix combos come from an old tradition, but I admit I only did it with a fairly negative reasoning in mind--that being since the suffix is the part of the name a cat typically earns themselves based on their own skills/personality/merits, Sandstone choosing a name that would predetermine the suffix was just another extension of him projecting his own ideals onto his kit at the expense of Talltail’s individuality, etc... I’ve actually never been a fan of names like this where the prefix is clearly predetermining the suffix (such as with Blackfoot, like you mentioned). I always felt it was really unfair to the apprentice to take away their opportunity to earn their own name. Talltail is the only cat in the allegiances with a name like this, as in my world this style of naming has fallen out of favor for that reason. With the exception I suppose of Clawface and Brokentail, but that’s a slightly different circumstance, although it stems from the same tradition. Injury-related names are chosen by the cat themselves upon reaching warriorhood rather then chosen for them by parents, hence why those characters have normal names, Buzzardpaw and Darkpaw, while apprentices. They at least had an opportunity to earn a normal name.

For where the tradition started across the clans, I hope you don't mind I'm taking this ask as an excuse to ramble a little about how I imagined the naming system origins because it's something I have fun thinking about! I never fully worked out every detail but I have had the rough shape of it floating around my head for a while

So, I don't envision the old style of names as a WindClan specific tradition, but a relic from the early early days of the clans, before they were officially clans as we know them, and were only just starting to organize themselves into small groups. I think the two-part naming style first began as nicknames, and were pretty much always referencing some literal visual aspect of the cat for a couple reasons:

1: these were rough times where no one had agreed upon codes, little medical training, and there were a lot of desperate cats with a kill-or-be-killed mindset. Ironically, many started referring to each other by blunt simplistic nicknames to avoid growing too personal with cats who you could reasonably expect to be dead any day, to spare themselves grief. You'd know a handful of cats by their scent and appearance and had short-lived tentative alliances with them. It was a courtesy then to not ask for real names. If you needed to address someone, or more likely if you needed to warn your allies about a potential dangerous cat who hunted nearby, it was better to just refer to them as “the white cat with the black tail” or “the pale cat with the dark stripes” (eventually short handed to things like “Black Tailed” and “Dark Striped” for simplicity.)

2: This reason is a little more silly but everyone is a former loner who isn't used to having to keep track of so many neighbors, and no one can remember all these new names, so it helps if their name is a literal visual part of them.

but mostly, I think the reason these names stuck around and became important is when they turned into something of a status symbol. You didn't choose the name yourself, it was made up by someone (often your enemies actually) and passed around by others, and that would only happen if you made yourself notable. like “having a visual-signifier nickname like this is a sign that you’ve become a cat that allies and rivals alike need to remember on sight, for their own sake” and you know, that's a very attractive concept to a bunch of cats who pride themselves on being tough. Battle scar nicknames were very common, as you can imagine, and were probably the most desirable as it made a cat look battle-hardened (those sorts of names are the most common way for old traditional names to carry on in modern day.) Thus what started as simple unofficial nicknames for the sake of easier communication eventually carried this...sort of romanticized sentiment with them. The better hunter/fighter you are, the more cats will have to take note of you and pass a name along to warn about you. The worst thing to be was a cat of so little consequence that nobody ever had cause to recognize you, you were effectively invisible, and that meant you probably weren't very impressive and no one would ally with you. These cats all desperately wanted to be remembered (a sentiment that persists in clan culture today what with how StarClan works, running mostly on the power of remembrance) if only so they could justify that all the suffering they were going through with trying to survive wasn’t for nothing. Thus being “named” by your peers, assuring you were recognized by appearance, was like...demanding that your face be remembered in the world, even if it wasn’t for good reasons. Eventually these simple nicknames became more important to the cats in the forest then their birth names (provided they had birth names in the first place. If they did, no one remembered them because nobody shared them)

When the clans officially formed and everyone started promising to kill each other less and value the lives of every cat in their group, the tradition was more cemented. The association of “this sort of name=importance” was firm in everyone’s mind, and so the leaders made sure that all their members had a nickname, as a symbol that they were all important and remembered already by merit of being part of a clan, and their names(/worth) shouldn’t be determined by their rivals. For a while those given nicknames may have been secondary names alongside a birth name, sort of like a last name (So, if Firestar had come into a clan in those times he probably would have been called something like "Rusty Flame-Furred"). At some point I suppose the nicknames became the only names

When -kit and -paw later became a tradition to separate kittens apart, the prefix that the parents give carries the memory of this--a word they feel is fitting to describe their kit appearance-wise (even if in a more colorful or metaphorical way), and the suffix represents the skills/personality/etc you develop and become known for on your own terms. Of course, there aren’t any hard rules about naming so no one is forced to follow that exactly

As for why Sandstone decided to choose a name closer to a nickname a cat might have gotten in those early days, he may have wanted to make a quiet statement with it. It’s a very notable name because most cats today wouldn’t have one like that, so it draws attention. There’s probably some level of boomer-type sentiment like “back in those days cats had to prove they were tough and could survive long enough to become a threat before they were deigned worthy of any name, therefore those types of names were better.” Maybe he thinks the abstract and metaphorical suffixes that are becoming more popular in the clans now defeats the purpose of why they had these names in the first place-- so they could be easily remembered by others, and more importantly by enemies. Or perhaps he just hated the idea of Heatherstar having any say in what his sons name might be so he thought it was better for him to determine one rather then her.

[redux-iterum]

History of the Clans

There are two versions of the story of how all things began. The one the Clans know deals in monsters and magic, and a rose-tinted idea of the importance of warriors and the feline people in general. The one told here is from the collective knowledge of scholars, and is much closer to the truth.

Once upon a time, there was a seemingly never-ending forest, and it was home to thousands of animals - badgers, foxes, stoats, owls, and best of all, an uncountable amount of prey to feed those animals. No one hungered or wanted for land to call their own. The forest brought in curious visitors every day, who had heard tales of this land of plenty and had come to see if the stories were true. 

Among them were the cats, a very foreign creature that the others had not seen before. Cats are remarkable at taking over an area and exploding in numbers before anyone has a chance to blink, and these ones did not disappoint in that aspect. They quickly took up the remaining available space and settled in to hunt and sleep to their heart’s content. 

But they did not come from nowhere, as the rest of the predators had assumed. They had been brought in by humans, who were even more alien than the cats, and who were on their way after their escapee pets. With humans came a drastic upheaval - the forest was cut down to a quarter of its original size just as fast as the cats had made themselves comfortable; the once wooded slope to the west had a structure built near it and the ground was torn up for planting strange grass; the east was taken over by glass and brick from the humans; and finally, a straight, wide path, stinking of something foreign and dangerous, cut the area apart, splitting the high stones in the west and the growing wetlands in the north from the hills and what remained of the forest. 

This unprecedented shrinking of territory left many animals without a home, or in defense of the little they had left. Friend turned on friend, family forgotten. Quickly, a free-for-all broke out, leading to many predators dead or severely injured and fleeing for their life from the forest. The cats proved themselves adaptable to any situation - the entire community banded together and, as a team, drove out the rest of the predators, sending them in every direction but the east and properly taking the forest for themselves.

The victory was short-lived as a new problem presented itself: everyone had lingered as long as there was food to eat before escaping. Mice, squirrels, birds, rabbits - there were barely any of them left. It wasn’t helped by the cats having a tendency to overhunt when there was nothing else to do. The unity once present dissolved as territories began to overlap and cats attacked each other for pathetic morsels that could be swallowed whole. The few kittypets living with humans had even their terrible food stolen, with some cats deserting the forest to wander the developing streets, hoping for charity. The prey population continued to shrink and some turned to even more desperate, much darker sources of food. 

Things got even worse when a crew of pilgrims arrived, late to the party and unaware of how bad the forest had gotten. Natives immediately bullied them away from their scant reserves. With nowhere else to go, the pilgrims huddled on the other side of the river on the edge of the forest and prayed for help. 

Then she arrived.

To this day, no one knows where the old molly known only as the Crone came from. She seemed to appear from the mist to inspect the forest, sniff disdainfully, and call together a sizeable cluster of cats before leading them away to the hills, where some of the human grass had gotten loose and taken over the moor. 

The decrease in population helped reserve the dwindling resources a bit, and cats temporarily forgot their battles to watch curiously as the new colony in the west found a place to settle at the top of the hills and thrive on the influx of prey that came from the farmland, which had receded its grip on the moor and left it free to hunt on. Several cats discussed leaving the forest to request sanctuary with this colony. Others turned their eyes across the human’s path (that was slowly turning into stinking black stone), where the wetlands were settling into a proper marsh. The pilgrims’ scant territory was growing grass, bringing in some animals to hunt.

Before any action could be taken on its own, the Crone reappeared in the forest and called together the residents. She announced that her test run of creating a colony had gone successfully, and now she was ready to help the rest of the scattered cats create their own groups, organize a hunting system, and allow their land to restore itself to something one could comfortably live in. This, she said, would ensure an era of peace for everyone, and if any were interested, they could come with her to be trained as leaders to complete her mission.

Four cats volunteered: Brawn, a huge, powerful tom that had fought and won many battles in exchange for prey; Ripple, a stray from far off that had fallen in with the pilgrims; Dewdrop, a former kittypet who had been cast out from her home and was desperate for security; and Clear Sky, a pilgrim that was ambitious and eager to join the project. The Crone took all four of them and left for the hills again without another word, except an order to limit the hunting in the forest. This was obeyed, since there wasn’t enough prey to hunt normally anyway.

Before too long, the four cats returned and began to gather cats. Brawn called for those that he considered allies of himself or his friends, which were mostly those he had fought together with before, giving him the strongest fighters, and claimed the forest for his colony. Ripple had his pilgrims already, and they stayed south, on the far side of the river. Those that had been cast away or were weak or distrusted were taken in by Dewdrop, who brought them to the marshes so that they were far enough away to not cause problems with the other colonies. The rest who did not fit in anywhere else or were loners looking to have a proper home again followed Clear Sky to the outlier part of the land, touching only the corner of the forest and river territories. The Crone brought in no one else except one stray pilgrim called Grey Wing as her new second-in-command, a position she called “deputy”. The other leaders followed suit by appointing deputies for their own, carefully chosen to contrast their superiors and speak as the voice of the rest of the colonies. 

With this, the leaders exercised what the Crone had taught them: in an unheard of move, hunting was organized and scheduled, with acceptable hunting areas changed day-to-day and prey of the day altering depending on what had the most numbers at the time. Borders were laid out so that no one accidentally took from another colony and reduced their number of prey. The most amazing of these decisions came from the pilgrims, who Ripple taught to hunt in the water - because no one had dared to jump in the deeper parts or even really fish at all, there was plenty of prey for the pilgrims, leading to no source of conflict with anyone else. The other colonies slowly began to prosper over time as less cats shared more prey with their communities. The exception was Clear Sky’s colony, which he proved to be a poor leader of and was eventually driven out before the colony disbanded and either joined up with the others or left for other areas. 

With the unusual, regimented structure, there came a very faint sense of ranks within the colonies: the leader, the deputy, and queens, with the average member not belonging to any of these and being unnamed in their position. Queens were given special treatment and their own dens to have their children, and they had prey delivered to them while they raised the next generation. 

As time went on and the colonies grew strong, healthy and well-fed, their members’ confidence were boosted. Old grudges resurfaced and the borders that were put in place to help hunting became places to defend or skirmish to settle arguments. Fights broke out, even with the leaders attempting to resolve disputes peacefully. Worse, these fights escalated as more cats joined their new friends to defend their pride or help with revenge. Things got worse and more vicious, until several very young cats got caught in a large battle they had nothing to do with and were killed.

This was the breaking point. Queens across the territories campaigned for a law to be set in place for the protection of their kits, while the more peaceful members encouraged rules of their own to prevent these unnecessary fights. The leaders got together and devised a burgeoning code that every cat was expected to follow if they wanted to stay in their home. 

The first of these was making a new rank for cats that were too young to be acceptably attacked, with a suffix to their name, -kit, which was taken away once they were older. These cats were under six months old, and were absolutely forbidden to be hurt or killed. Those that aged out of it were still in danger, until Brawn’s deputy, Ember, started teaching them to hunt and fight to protect themselves. The rest of the colonies, now under the name of “Clans”, immediately borrowed this idea. Soon after came the next rank of apprentice, and the suffix of -kit was changed to -paw. 

At the time, suffixes were reserved for the young, but the leader of the river Clan, now called River Ripple to give respect to his territory, took his group’s original two-part naming system and awarded apprentices for making it to adulthood with their own individual suffixes. This, too, very quickly became popular with everyone else. 

More changes were made over time - elder as a rank being added, religion and seers blossoming into things of great value, more additions to the code, the Clans being properly named, and so on - but these came to be more gradually. For now, at least, the wild and fast alteration of the forest from a place of chaos and disorder to a variety of territories with law-abiding Clans had been completed. From there, things have only gotten better.

[writerpeach]

Roommates: Part Two

IZ*ONE Hyewon & Eunbi x Male Reader

10875 words

Categories: smut, threesome, oral, rough sex, mommy kink, dirty talk

18+

--

Read on AFF

Read on AO3

“We only have one shot at this. Let’s make it count.”

Detective Kwon took point on the operation. Her primary focus was staring at rows of monitors in the back of a large unmarked van parked stealthily miles away from the destination. Overhead shots were displayed on the largest monitor, giving a full view of the target area - a luxurious white mansion housed the patriarch of the Goda clan, given the information Eunbi received was correct. 

You lost track of how many hours you had occupied, only accompanied by Detectives Hyewon, with newly dyed blonde hair and Eunbi inside a hot van, waiting for just the right moment to strike. Your job was to give any details that would be helpful and to help confirm identities. 

The surveillance van had more technology in it than your entire University’s expensive computer lab. Extensive audio feeds, LCD monitors everywhere giving as many angles as possible, speakers, and multiple laptops that could power a space station all created the perfect portable setup. Eunbi sat up front, monitoring everything, and aiding in preparation. 

“Team one, do you copy?” Eunbi asked over a bluetooth headset she wore on her right ear. 

“Yes, boss. We have eyes on the back entrance. Nobody has gone in or out since we’ve been here.”

“Team two, what do you have for me?” 

“Can’t see much. There’s been no movement on our end.” 

“Keep a lookout. I don’t want anyone getting spooked.”

“Yes, boss.” 

“Team three?”

“Our drones are in the air, but the fog is killing visibility. Can’t get a good visual so we’ll have to almost exclusively rely on thermal. ”

“Do what you can.” 

“This better work,” Hyewon said, shifting in one of the backseat chairs nervously. 

“Dojima has been our information expert for years, he wouldn’t fail us now.”

Eunbi took a long deep breath as she pulled up cameras on two large screens, showing views on both front and back entrances and views of each team awaiting orders.

“On my mark, breach and clear. We want him alive,” Eunbi said.

“Go!”

The simultaneous thud of doors being forced open boomed through the van’s speakers, speeding your heart rate up. The audio feed went silent for a second before being replaced with windows being broken, voices shouting, and inaudible commotion. You expected more. No gunshots, no more yelling. Everything was silent. 

“Team one, what’s your status? I need an update.”  

Nothing but radio silence filled the van as you collectively held your breath and waited for an answer. 

“Detective Kwon, there’s nobody inside. Place looks lived in but it’s been cleared out.” 

“Son of a bitch!” Eunbi hissed. 

“All rooms are clear, Detective. There’s nobody here.” “Those motherfuckers set us up. Check for hidden exits. I want this whole place checked.” 

“What do we do now?” Hyewon asked. 

“We’re back from square one. We figure out they knew we were coming, and where we go from here.” 

“Team three, I want you to stay overnight in case they decide to come back. Team one and two you’re dismissed.”

“Understood.”

Eunbi took her headset off and angrily tossed it away, sighing in frustration. 

“Sorry I couldn’t be of any use, Detective,” you said. 

“Don’t be sorry, if anything you got us to this point to begin with,” Eunbi replied. 

“Back to the office?” Hyewon asked. 

“No, that’s the last place I want to be right now. It’s late and we’ve been here all damn day. For nothing.” 

Eunbi rubbed her temple as she sank back in her chair. 

"I've got a cabinet full of alcohol if you wanna crash at my place, boss,” Hyewon said. 

Eunbi hesitated before answering, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. 

“That sounds like exactly what I need. We’ll deal with this on Monday, let’s get the fuck out of here.” 

                                                          ✦✦

Hyewon keyed in the security code to her place and you and Eunbi followed her inside, slipping shoes off at the entryway. You sat down on the couch next to Hyewon while Eunbi took a moment to look over the place. 

“You’ve decorated since the last time I was here,” Eunbi said, wandering and looking aimlessly.

“I have company now, I can’t live like a slob, boss.” 

“You really don’t have to call me boss outside of work. Unnie will be fine.” 

“Okay, unnie.”

“How has everything been going?” Eunbi asked, directing her attention towards you. “I know we said it would be just for a month, but with everything going on I’m afraid it’s going to be longer. I seem to be really bad at keeping my promises.”

“It was awkward at first, but Hyewon is very easy to talk to and get along with. I won’t mind living longer here, Hyewon has been very accommodating, I’ve even picked up a few cooking tips from her.” 

 Eunbi smiled. “That’s good to hear. Hyewon loves to cook as much as she loves to eat.”

“She’s really good at eating,” you said.

“Yes, she really is,” Eunbi said with a smirk as she sat down. Hyewon caught on quickly and got up embarrassed, heading into the kitchen to fetch drinks. 

“Unnie, what are you in the mood to drink? Beer, wine?” 

“Something strong,” Eunbi replied. 

“How strong?” Hyewon asked. 

“Strong enough to slap me across the face.” 

“Uh, we have Tequila. Is that strong enough?” 

“Yes, that’s perfect.” 

“Ok, but I’m making cocktails, I don’t want anyone to get carried away.” 

“Make mine a double then.” 

Eunbi drifted her gaze over to you as she sat down and crossed her legs, flashing a flirtatious gaze.

“Have you settled into living with Hyewon?”

“Mostly. There haven't been any troubles at all, she’s very easy to live with.” 

“That’s very good to hear, she’s such a sweetie.” 

“She is.”

“Unnie, stop being nosy!” Hyewon whined as she brought a tray of drinks and set it down on the black coffee table in front. 

“I was just trying to see how you’ve been treating our guest.”

“I have been nothing but an understanding host, isn’t that right?” 

“Of course. Hyewon has been wonderful.” 

Grabbing a drink and taking your first sip, you coughed at how strong it was, but soon the burn down your throat became refreshing. 

“I hope we can find whoever tipped us off,” Hyewon said. 

Eunbi rolled her eyes. “Please, can we not talk about work for once?” 

Hyewon nodded apologetically. “Sorry, unnie. Of course.” 

“This is really good,” you said, taking another large sip. 

“It is. Our Hyewon really is multi-talented.” 

“It’s not that big of a deal. I learned a few things in culinary school.” 

You could feel the collective stress leaving the room as the three of you indulged into the strong drinks Hyewon had prepared. Shaking the glass a few times to evenly spread out the ice you took another drink, getting used to the taste. 

“Now that I’m drinking, I guess I should be responsible tonight. I’ll sleep on the couch if that’s okay,” Eunbi said. 

“The couch?” Hyewon repeated. “There’s a spare bed, you don’t need to do that, unnie.” 

Eunbi tilted her head. “Spare bed? If I remember correctly your place only has two rooms, right?” 

“That’s right. Two bedrooms, but we’ve been sharing the bed at night,” she said, as she realized what she was admitting halfway.

“Oh, you have been?” Eunbi laughed. “That explains why you’ve been coming in late more often,” she teased. 

Hyewon turned red. “U-unnie! That’s not what I...I’m gonna go make another drink.” 

She hastily got off the couch as Eunbi filled in the gap, scooting over as she finished her drink, placing it on the coffee table.

“She’s always been like that.” 

“Like what?” you asked. 

“Shy and adorable, ever since I met her. We’re all adults here, so there’s no shame in talking about it.” 

 “Everyone has their limits about what they’re comfortable about I guess.”

“That’s true. I’m just an open book.”

Hyewon returned and refused to make eye contact.

“Ah, Hyewon, I forgot to bring anything to sleep in tonight. Can I borrow some clothes?” 

“Clothes? Don’t you usually sleep naked, unnie?” she responded. You nearly choked on your drink.

Eunbi smiled before she responded. “You’re right...but I’m just a guest here. I have to look presentable.” 

“Why? He’s already seen you naked before hasn’t he?” Hyewon teased back.

“Guess you got me there,” Eunbi replied with reddened cheeks. 

You sat there listening as the two beautiful detectives playfully teased each other back and forth while you nursed your cocktail, trying not to let it hit you all at once. It was tempting to go for another drink given the day's events, wanting to forget the failed operation. Finishing your drink and chewing on a piece of melting ice you rested it on the coffee table. 

The living room clock showed it was just after 1 a.m. Still rather early or late in the morning depending on your perspective.  

"So, Hyewon,” Eunbi said.

“Yes, unnie?” Hyewon perked up. 

“I don’t think we’ve properly thanked our mutual friend for everything he’s done for us.” 

Hyewon put her drink down. “We do owe him a lot. Even though nothing went as planned today, we never would have gotten to that point to begin with.”

The two women shared a look that was directed at you. “Keeping me safe is enough thanks, ladies.” 

“Oh no, that’s just part of our jobs,” Eunbi said. “I think we personally need to show our appreciation.”

Eunbi began caressing your shoulder, and you were thankful that you had been drinking already. 

“You’ve been so helpful, and we should return the favor.” 

“That’s not really necessary,” you humbly said. 

“Oh, but it really is,” Eunbi said, scooting closer to your body, gesturing for Hyewon to do the same, who changed places to your left side. Syncing their movements each woman moved and straddled one of your thighs as your heart started racing. 

Eunbi made the first move, cupping your face and hesitated for a moment. Her gaze lingered on you as she leaned in and your lips merged, filling you with the sweet taste of her as the warmth of her soft lips pressed against your own.

“If you insist, Detective.” 

“Detective? That’s much too formal,” Eunbi said as she caressed your hair.

“Eunbi is fine,” she paused. “But what I really like to be called... is Mommy.” 

“Oh god, not this again,” Hyewon spoke out in annoyance. “Not everyone wants to call you that.”

“Maybe not everyone...but you’ll call me mommy won’t you?” She asked as she turned her attention towards you. 

“I’ll call you anything you want. Mommy.”

Eunbi gave one more kiss against your lips, deeper and with more hunger. Not wanting to be left out, Hyewon tilted your head towards hers and gave you a chaste kiss of her own, the contrast in their lips enticing. Eunbi had thinner lips, Hyewon’s lips were plumper and fuller, while both had an incredible softness and warmth with their own distinctive unique taste. 

The two of them looked at you as if deciding what they wanted to do, pondering their moves. Eunbi didn’t need much time as she removed her shirt, and the purple lace bra that covered up her huge full breasts became the focus of your attention. 

“You can touch mommy all you want,” Eunbi said and you didn’t need to be told twice, running your hands up her body, feeling the tightness of her toned tummy as your hands wandered on their own to her chest, fondling her massive breasts through her bra. 

Not wanting to be outdone, Hyewon removed her own top, her much smaller, but no less satisfying breasts were visible. With a quick movement of her fingers, her bra was unclasped, and bare breasts exposed as she cupped them, enticing you to dive in. 

Starting at Hyewon’s sensitive neck you peppered her soft skin in kisses, hearing her softly moan as you moved down her chest, leaving a trail just below her collarbone. Looking into her eyes for a second you squeezed her breasts before bringing your lips to her nipples and sucking, hearing her sweet moans as you sucked on her soft pale tits. 

Eunbi couldn’t handle being left out, and out of the corner of your eye you could see her slipping out of her bra, her pale tits exposed stopped you in your path. 

“You like mommy’s tits better don’t you?” Eunbi playfully asked, giving out a moan as she pinched her own nipples. You sucked Hyewon’s tits for a few more seconds before hastily switching your interest to Eunbi’s chest. 

“Unnie, you’re playing dirty,” Hyewon complained.

“I can’t help what I was born with,” she smirked, proud at how much bigger her breasts were. You planted several kisses on each of her pillowy soft tits and Eunbi ran her fingers through your hair, smiling sweetly. Licking stripes up her cleavage you flicked your tongue against each nipple, teasing each just a bit before sucking on them, letting out a noisy slurp. 

“Mmm, baby, that feels good.” 

Hyewon looked on patiently, trying to stave off her jealousy. You couldn’t help but moan as you sucked Eunbi’s tits, playing with her sensitive pink nipples and burying yourself into her deep cleavage, a warmth you didn’t dare leave. 

“Mommy’s tits are so amazing,” you said, slurping on her hardened nipples and watching her pleasure as you did so, biting them gently as Eunbi gasped in pleasure. Alternating sucking on each of Eunbi’s delicious breasts you kept them in your mouth until her pink nipples became swollen and glazed with your wet saliva, keeping yourself fed with the taste and softness of her flesh and the way her pretty pink nipples fit perfectly in your mouth. 

Nothing would keep you from sucking on them, not wanting your mouth to leave them but also not wanting to leave Hyewon out. 

You feasted on each pair of scrumptious tits and gave them equal attention, moving back and forth between the delicious chests of each busty woman and didn't want to stop until your lips were numb. 

“I still can’t get over how big they are,” Hyewon said, the envy in her voice obvious.

“Yours aren’t that bad either, Hyewon,” Eunbi responded. 

“You’re just trying to make me feel better, unnie.” 

“I’m not, you agree right, baby?” 

“Your tits are really nice too, Hyewon.” 

“Nobody can compare to yours though, I can't even fully get my hands on them,” Hyewon pouted. 

“It just means there’s more of them to go around,” Eunbi grinned, as if sending an invitation. Both of you teamed up on Eunbi’s tits, each taking one of her swollen breasts in your mouth and sucking, causing deep moans to escape from her. Hyewon was gentle while you devoured Eunbi’s tits, hungrily slurping and biting as if you were trying to satisfy your insatiable hunger for her big milky breasts. 

Keeping your tongues and lips all over Eunbi's swollen pink nipples they became drenched in the combination of your saliva, her pretty moans were music to your ears, earning more with each second that passed. 

As much as you loved teaming up to taste Eunbi, you soon became their focus, feeling the wet smack of their warm soft lips as each gorgeous woman took their time to kiss you, leaving their taste locked on your lips. 

If that wasn’t enough, they turned and playfully kissed each other, leaving you to patiently watch every movement as their lips smacked loudly and both grabbed a handful of each other's supple bare breasts. 

The two lustful vixens switched it up and turned the tables on you. Both took a side of your neck and planted their lips on your skin, sucking both sides of your neck deeply with the intention to leave love marks. 

The two warm mouths pressed on your neck sucking heavily entranced you into a daze, and you barely felt a hand cupping your crotch, too crippled by their effect on you to see the culprit. 

“Mommy can you feel your cock getting hard for us," Eunbi whispered, blowing hot air into your ear that made you shiver. 

“We both want to make you feel good,” Hyewon said. 

Giving your crotch a good firm squeeze, your lap was soon empty and the action kept on moving right in front of you. Running their hands all over each other's tight bodies, Eunbi made quick work of stripping Hyewon to her panties, and Hyewon returned the favor as they both knelt in front of you, eyeing the bulge in your pants they had created. 

With Hyewon to your left and Eunbi to your right, they gave each other a playful look before working together to unbutton your pants, working quickly and yanking them off with your boxers, your hardened shaft introducing itself and throbbing freely. 

Eunbi jumped the gun and took the liberty to play with Hyewon’s chest, earning a moan from her as she sucked on her round pale tits, taking her first taste of the night and sending even more blood flowing to your already stiff erection. 

"Have some confidence, Hyewon, your tits are yummy."

“Unnie…”

“Now go on, Hyewon, show us what you’ve learned.” 

Hyewon nervously smiled and leaned forward, taking your cock into her cold delicate hand and wrapping her fingers around it. She licked it more naturally this time, starting at the base of your shaft and dragging her wet tongue upwards until she reached your swollen tip, swirling around it mindlessly and giving a wet kiss on it. 

Eunbi followed her lead, her tongue on one side while Hyewon mirrored the other, both women painting your hard shaft with their wet flattened tongues, before ascending on your tip and licking up against it, causing you to groan.

The two beautiful women on their knees for you wandered their tongues all over your shaft, not missing a spot before syncing back up and licking your swollen head, both hitting all the right spots, their touch driving you crazy. 

"F-fuck," you moaned to their delight, going crazy at the intense pleasure already. You felt a hand fondling your balls and jerked abruptly, earning a pretty smile from Eunbi. 

"They feel so heavy and full," Eunbi said as she kissed each one, grazing her cute nose against them. 

Hyewon looked for approval, meeting the gaze of Eunbi. Without another word Hyewon licked her lips and parted them with your sensitive tip, taking you into her radiating warm mouth. 

You moaned loudly at the softness of Hyewon’s plump lips as she sucked your tip gently, eyes looking up. Eunbi watched as Hyewon sucked you off, the pleasure of her wet mouth enveloping your shaft. 

“You’re getting good at this," Eunbi said as she smiled. She brought her mouth to your balls, blowing her hot breath against your sack before delicately kissing and licking them. 

"I love how sensitive you get," Eunbi said, licking turning into sucking as her soft lips tenderly slurped your balls one at a time, the double pleasure from each woman overwhelming your senses. 

Hyewon's lips slid deeper, her tongue licking your underside as Eunbi's lips sucked your balls more forcibly, covering them in saliva as she rested a hand on your thigh, stimulating you more by digging her nails into your skin. 

It was as if they were competing to give the most pleasure, not wanting to back down. Eunbi took your cock into her needy familiar mouth, sucking with such force you felt like you might pass out. Hyewon did not keep her mouth empty as she mirrored Eunbi’s earlier movements, gently sucking on your balls, both women eagerly to milk you dry it seemed. 

“Fuck...you’re both amazing at this,” you groaned, and you were met with faster movements.

The difference in experience and techniques was immediately apparent. Hyewon's lack of expertise allowed her to take things slowly, but she couldn't take more than half your cock down her throat, instead focusing on sucking you off more sensually. 

Eunbi was the opposite, proudly able and willing to take all of your cock down her warm throat, deepthroating with ease and sucked rapidly and messily. Both were pleasurable, and feeling the contrast of both as they switch back and forth, practically fighting over your cock drove you insane. 

“Don’t be selfish, unnie, " Hyewon whined as Eunbi devoured your cock down her throat, sliding her lips in long smooth strokes from base to tip, showing off her lack of gag reflex. She was so messy that saliva spilled out of the corners of her mouth and dripped down to her huge tits, the sight arousing you even more.

You held the back of Eunbi's head and pushed her down your base, moaning needily as her throat tightened, slurping on every inch of your shaft while Hyewon kept her mouth full of your heavy balls, trying to learn how best to pleasure them. 

"Mommy loves this cock," Eunbi hummed, and in response Hyewon forcibly stole it from her, the elder shooting a deadly look. 

"Do you really think you can make him cum with this lousy blowjob?" Eunbi hissed, as she went back to work on your balls, lathering them up with her warm saliva and slurping loudly. 

Hyewon sucked faster as a response, moving past her usual threshold and gagging as a result. Eunbi eyed her, watching her take more and more until her lips almost met your base, but retreating at the last moment as she coughed. 

"It's okay, Hyewon, not everyone can be as good as me."

Hyewon cursed under her breath, only motivated by her unnie’s pitiful attempts to incite and dove back in. She didn't care how much she gagged, Eunbi wasn't going to show her up. Starting halfway, Hyewon took as much as she could before retreating, reaching a new point each time. 

"You must like choking on that dick, huh? You sound really pretty when you gag on it, I think you could use some help though," Eunbi said as she grabbed the younger girl by the head and forced her down your base, increasing her gagging sounds and your pleasure. 

Hyewon’s eyes went wide as Eunbi fucked her throat with your cock, not used to her mouth so completely stuffed that she couldn't help feel overwhelmed. 

"Breathe through your nose, baby," Eunbi cooed as she roughly shoved her down all the way at the end of your cock, causing you to gasp and groan loudly. 

"There we go, that's how you do it. Mommy is a good teacher isn’t she?” 

Eunbi smirked as she continued her relentless use of Hyewon’s mouth, not letting up for a single moment, testing her gag reflexes and making her take you as deep as possible until she signaled that she had enough. 

"Unnie!" Hyewon yelled as she gasped for air, wiping drool off her chin and using it to jerk off your cock. 

"This is what you wanted right? To prove you were better?" 

Hyewon ignored her and focused on your cock, licking it wildly.

"Prove it then. Finish him off," Eunbi encouraged. 

Hyewon didn't back down even though she couldn't stop herself from gagging, she was determined. Her soft plump lips kissed the end of your base as your cock hit the back of her throat, but she didn’t give up.

"Fuck…Hyewon…"

Hyewon bobbed her head as she worked her magic in between your legs, slurping and sucking the life out of your cock. Eunbi was more than content to take a backseat, gently massaging your balls as she watched on. 

"There you go, baby, doing such a good job. Empty those heavy balls and suck him dry," Eunbi demanded. 

Hyewon looked straight ahead with a mouth full of cock, her innocent sparkling eyes glued to your own as she was prepared to drain you. Her wet full lips were sealed tight around your shaft, the sounds of her slurping every inch to try and earn your approval was far too much. 

"Ah, fuck, Hyewon. I'm gonna fucking cum."

The duo smiled as you felt your limits being hit, your breathing weakening, and your balls tightening. 

It wasn’t much longer as you felt your climax arriving, tightly grabbing the back of Hyewon’s head as you throbbed inside her mouth and erupted, flooding her throat with copious amounts of your hot cum. 

Your orgasm took over your body as you continued pumping your thick load into the back of Hyewon’s throat, grunting with every spurt that released from your shaft. 

Hyewon handled it well at first, but the more you came the more difficult it became for her as your load began spilling out of her mouth, too much for her to contain. 

"Amateur," Eunbi said. "You shouldn't waste a single drop of his delicious cum.”

Your intense orgasm mercifully came to a halt and Hyewon's lips squeezed tight around your still throbbing shaft, ensuring everything had been milked out of you. 

"There was so much, holy shit," Hyewon said while trying to talk with a mouth full of cum as she removed her lips from your cock, sliding her fingers around your shaft to make sure nothing was left. 

"Show it, baby. Show us how much you made him cum."

Hyewon complied as she opened her mouth for all to see, revealing a thick white pool that had been deposited on her tongue. 

"Swallow it," Eunbi demanded. It took more than one gulp, but Hyewon tilted her head back in satisfaction and opened her now empty mouth, displaying her wet pink tongue to confirm your load was now inside her stomach.

"Good girl," Eunbi purred as she began cleaning up drops of cum that spilled out of Hyewon’s mouth. 

"Mommy has to do this because you couldn't handle such a huge load," she sighed, licking your shaft clean of every spilled drop, taking your tip into her warm mouth and sucking it clean, your sensitivity arousing her. 

“How was it?” Eunbi asked as she made sure to not miss anything, jerking your cock off slowly as your body trembled with the aftershocks of your climax. 

Taking a moment to catch her breath, she licked her lips before answering. “Yummy.”

Letting go of your cock Eunbi licked her lips and fingers clean, sucking on them lewdly with each one making a loud pop. 

"Hyewon and I are going to have some fun in the bedroom. Come join us when you're ready."

                                                            ✦✦

It took a while to finish gathering your senses, catching your breath as you clutched a pillow to your chest. You rested on the couch for several minutes, waiting for your breathing to stabilize. 

Aiding your recovery you downed a glass of ice water in one go, taking another deep breath and as you let it out you heard a sound in the distance that broke the silence. A loud, feminine moan, that you couldn’t quite figure out who the owner was. 

The closer you got to the bedroom the louder the moaning got. Opening the door to your room and the bed you shared with Hyewon left you with an empty dark room as you closed the door and headed down the hallway, down into Hyewon’s actual bedroom. 

“Oh fuck!” you heard crying out behind the shut door, feeling your heart beating faster as the voice became unmistakable as belonging to Hyewon. 

Taking a breath you gently grabbed the handle and turned it as you were greeted with an unforgettable sight. 

With just one lamp illuminating the room on the left side of the bed, you walked in to find a set of panties left in the middle of the floor and found Hyewon’s naked body sprawled out and holding on to the headboard for dear life. 

Neither of the two women noticed your arrival. Eunbi was too preoccupied with having her head buried in between Hyewon’s naked thighs, rubbing at her core and devouring the writhing blonde. 

“Nice of you to join us finally,“ Eunbi said as she held onto Hyewon’s flushed thighs, eating her pussy out like she had skipped an entire week's worth of meals. The sight of Eunbi making Hyewon an absolute mess brought your erection back to full hardness right away. 

“Since this bed doesn’t get used anymore I figured it was a good place to start since you two haven’t defiled it yet.”

“Hey!” Hyewon protested, but any further complaints were drowned out by her whimpering moans. 

“It’s a shame I left my handcuffs back at work,” Eunbi said. “You’d really be squirming right now.”

Eunbi continued her assault on the younger woman’s body, her tongue deep inside Hyewon’s pussy and lapping up all her juices liberally leaking from her spread thighs. 

“Are you just going to stare at my ass all day?” Eunbi asked annoyed. 

“Is that an option?” You fired back playfully.

“No. Don’t make me be the only one doing the work here.” 

“But you’re doing such a good job, I’d hate to distract you.” 

“Enough. Mommy wants that cock.” 

It had been far too long since you had fucked Eunbi, and you weren’t going to keep her waiting as you climbed the bed, staring at the view before doing anything else. Kneeling behind her tight round ass you quickly tugged her thong off her full curvy hips, down her toned legs, and tossed it away.  

You felt hypnotized by the pink glistening flesh in between her thighs, giving Eunbi’s ass a firm squeeze, her velvety cheeks felt so good against your palms as you lined your cock against Eunbi’s opening, feeling the heat radiating as an invitation.

“U-unnie, that feels so good,” Hyewon moaned, gripping the headboard even tighter. You prepared yourself to enter the oldest of the two busty women, spreading her thick thighs and looking down at her wet pussy that looked so damn inviting. 

Running your cock up and down Eunbi’s pink wet slit, you took a deep breath before pushing in slowly and parting her wet flesh with your cock, being met by her intense warmth as you entered Eunbi once more, the feeling of her pussy even better this time. 

You groaned needily as your tip disappeared inside Eunbi’s warm walls, and then pushed deeper inside her until you were halfway inside. She looked back, her eyes telling you to get on with it already. In one stroke you used your hips and gave Eunbi what she wanted, your whole shaft was inside her warmth, the slick of her walls gripping tight around your shaft and refusing to let go.

You watched Eunbi make an absolute mess out of Hyewon as you held to her perfect wide hips, slowly began pumping inside her, feeling her pussy swallowing your cock and lighting your senses on fire as you began to fuck her from behind. 

Having experienced Eunbi in this position already you knew she liked it rough, giving her plump ass a loud slap as you thrusted deep, using your hips to establish a fast and steady rhythm. 

“You’re so fucking tight, mommy,” you said, giving her ass repeated spanks as you began pounding into her pussy, the wet flesh wrapped around your cock squeezing even tighter with every thrust. 

Eunbi wasn’t able to moan freely as she slurped and feasted on Hyewon’s delicious pussy, but you could tell from the way her body reacted to you that she was in love with what you were doing to her. 

It was hard to comprehend what was happening. Pounding into Eunbi as she ate out another woman was heavenly, and it helped that the same woman was one you had slept with already and had become very close in every sense of the word. Hyewon was certainly dripping between her thighs, but the juices coming out of Eunbi’s tight hole certainly matched the youngest, allowing you to thrust as deep as you needed into the older detective with ease.  

It didn’t take long until a trio of moans filled the room, the wet squelch of Eunbi’s hot flesh being driven into harshly caused her body to slam against Hyewon’s sensitive clit, turning her into an even louder, needier mess. 

Eunbi felt even tighter than when you had fucked her in the interrogation room, her pussy so hot and tight and wet around you just wanted to ravage her until neither of you could walk in the morning. 

"Baby, your cock feels amazing inside me. You like mommy’s tight pussy?" Eunbi asked. 

“Y-yes, mommy. You’re so wet. “ you moaned and in response and upped your pace even faster, her pussy gripping your shaft so tightly it almost hurt. 

The smack of your hips against Eunbi’s voluptuous ass was the sound you loved to hear, causing her soft flesh to ripple beautifully in time with each thrust, drilling into her with such aggression that caused the bed to shake in protest, earning higher muffled moans from her and giving one more slap on her beautiful ass.

“Mommy loves being spanked, don’t stop baby.”

“Unnie, you’re such a slut,” Hyewon teased, as you gave harsh hits to Eunbi’s soft bottom, trying to leave your handprints on both cheeks. 

“Me? Because I know what I like? If I remember you were the one who jerked a guy off you met at work for not even five minutes.” 

“Hey! I was curious and he was cute. It’s not my fault.” 

“Not so innocent are you, slut?” Eunbi fired back, slurping on her folds and bringing two and then three fingers deep inside her cunt, eating her out without a care in the world other than shutting her up.  

“Oh fuck unnie! I-I’m so close,” Hyewon whimpered, holding on to Eunbi’s head, desperately chasing her orgasm as she rocked her hips against her face, only encouraging Eunbi to furiously rub and slurp on her clit.

“Oh god..u-unnie, I’m cumming!”

With Hyewon practically screaming Eunbi’s name, you continued drilling Eunbi’s tight pussy, sending waves of pleasure through her all the way to Hyewon’s body as her thighs quivered around Eunbi’s face, as her toes curled and she came hard all over Eunbi’s pretty face. 

Eunbi licked up everything that leaked between her legs, cleaning her folds and licking every inch of her stained thighs before Hyewon gently pushed her away off her.

“U-unnie, you’re so good at that,” Hyewon breathlessly said.

“I’m good at everything I do, baby,” she confidently smirked. 

“Now rest up, Hyewonie,” she said as she looked behind her. ”As good as you feel inside me, mommy wants to ride your face.”

You didn’t want to retreat from the comforting warmth of Eunbi’s pussy, but given the alternative was having your face warmed with her powerful thighs it was quite worth the sacrifice. 

Before using your face as a pillow Eunbi lifted herself into position, giving you a chance to admire every curve and inch of her immaculate beautiful skin as she sat down and locked her warm thighs around your head.

“You’ll make mommy feel good won’t you?” 

“Of course. Anything for mommy.”

“Good boy,” Eunbi replied as she pushed her weight down and smothered you with her succulent pussy, her aroma intoxicating you as breathed hot air against her core and explored her folds with your tongue, licking her juices clean. 

“Mommy tastes so good,” you moaned as Eunbi gyrated her hips and you felt her delicious juices smearing all over your lips, not missing a drop of her nectar. 

While you fucked Eunbi’s tight hole with your tongue, she grabbed onto your head, pulling at your hair to shove you deeper inside her pretty cunt, leaving you sucking and licking her pussy, licking, slurping on her folds to give her the pleasure she deserved. 

“That mouth feels so fucking good, baby,” Eunbi said as you looked up at the pleasure you were giving her, feeling her thighs squeezing tighter as she rode your face faster as you explored and stimulated every inch of her pussy.

Meanwhile, Hyewon stirred back to life, and while you alternated between trying to breathe and pleasuring Eunbi, you felt a cold delicate hand squeezing your cock, wrapping tightly around your shaft as she began stroking you slowly. 

“I can’t believe you’re still so hard after cumming in my mouth,” Hyewon said, jerking off you at a slow rate. 

“We just must turn him on that much,” Eunbi replied, her playful words quickly turned into lustful moans as you drove your tongue deeper into her cunt as her slick continuously leaked into your mouth.

You wondered her sculpted body with your hands while you continued to be smothered by her beautiful thighs. You grabbed onto her wonderful breasts, taking a handful and squeezing, pinching her hard sensitive nipples as she closed her eyes and her breathing hitched. 

You could sense the tension in her body as you made out with her pussy, sucking her clit harshly. Juice leaked everywhere, drenching your tongue and lips as she tugged on your hair harder, trying to force you deeper inside her wet hole. 

“F-fuck, baby, mommy’s g-gonna-”

Looking up at Eunbi you slurped her pussy loudly, still playing with her tits as you felt her thighs squeezing around your head as they vibrated violently and she came all over your face, gasping and moaning breathlessly as you were drenched in her delicious sweet nectar. 

You helped her ride out her orgasm as the grip her thighs had on your head weakened, still trembling and shaking as she looked down between her and giggled at the mess she left deposited all over your face. 

"You're so good with that tongue, baby. You made mommy cum so hard."

Eunbi gently climbed off your face and immediately crashed on top of Hyewon, their breasts mashing together as the older initiated a make-out session as you were able to breathe again. 

“Now, do you think you can handle that dick?” Eunbi asked. 

Hyewon pouted cutely. “Unnie, he’s fucked me before.” 

“But you were in control the whole time, and I’m sure he was gentle. Do you think you can take his cock when he’s pounding your tight little pussy with it?” 

Hyewon scoffed. “I’ll be fine, unnie.” 

“We’ll see. How do you want her, baby?” 

You didn’t hesitate for a second before you answered, knowing just how you wanted her. 

“Bent over. I want you to watch me fuck her, mommy.” 

“I’d be happy to, baby,” Eunbi responded, giving Hyewon one more lustful kiss. 

“You heard him, Hyewon. Hands and knees,” Eunbi ordered. 

Hyewon obeyed without delay like the innocent pup she who always obediently listened to Eunbi at work, this was no different. Her palms and knees placed flat on the black silk sheets, Hyewon laid her head down, lifting her scrumptious ass in the air. 

She wasn’t as curvy as Eunbi, her thighs were a bit slimmer but her skin was just as soft, and her body wasn’t lacking in any way. Hyewon’a pussy was tighter, something Eunbi would kill you for saying had you the courage to admit it. 

You could taste Hyewon’s anticipation as you lined your shaft up with her pussy, her pink pussy ready and waiting to be filled. As you ran your cock through Hyewon’s soft wet folds, you gasped at the feeling of her wet flesh as you pushed against it, groaning at how tight she was as you entered her pussy. 

Pushing in deeper and earning a loud needy moan, you felt the tight clench of her walls squeezing the life out of your cock. Hyewon’s much tighter pussy and lack of experience being penetrated meant you really had to take your time so you didn’t hurt her, but you had a feeling she was going to enjoy the fucking she was about to take. 

“She’s fucking tight isn’t she?” Eunbi asked, positioning herself behind your body as she draped an arm around your chest. 

“She is. I feel like I can barely fit.”

"The first time I fingered her I could barely slip one finger inside. Make sure you stretch out her nice and wide.”

“I will, mommy.” 

Not wanting to disappoint either woman you pushed in deeper, parting Hyewon’s pussy wider as half of your length rested inside. When she was on top it was easy for her to take as much as she wanted to, but being bent over in this vulnerable position you felt there was much more resistance, her almost uncomfortable tightness struggling to take you all in. 

“F-fuck, you’re so big,” Hyewon cried out, as she tried adjusting to your length, Eunbi smirking proudly at the struggle she was facing already.

“He is right? Are you sure you can handle him? He’s going to be able to fuck you much deeper in this position.”

“Unnie, shut up. I can handle it,” Hyewon snapped back. 

“Well, you heard her. Fuck her, baby.” 

Not even letting your cock enter the deepest part of her pussy, you placed your hands on her soft supple asscheeks and you established a gentle rhythm, using your hips as you slowly fucked Hyewon from behind, her wet walls squeezing you with the tightest grip possible. 

“Oh fuck…” she moaned loudly. 

“Take it nice and slow,” Eunbi whispered into your ear. “And when you think she’s ready, fucking pound her.” 

“Yes, mommy.” 

Encouraged by her instructions, you took things at a slow pace, savoring her wet flesh wrapping around your shaft, Hyewon whimpered and whined and moaned needily as you pumped slowly inside her. 

“How’s that pussy feel, baby?” Eunbi asked as she began peppering your neck with delicate soft kisses. 

“It feels really good, mommy.” 

Even halfway inside Hyewon felt so tight and warm, her heavenly soft flesh squeezing your cock as you gave short, shallow thrusts, building up the pace. 

“You feel so good inside,” Hyewon moaned, as you moved your hands to her hips, watching your cock disappearing between her supple ass. With every thrust it became easier to move in and out of Hyewon, stretching her tight little hole little by little, making her wetter at the same time. 

Words couldn’t describe how tight Hyewon felt, even after a few minutes of moving in and out her she still was a tight fit, her exceptionally tight pussy suffocating your shaft. You used your fingers to rub at her clit, creating whinier moans to escape her lips as you created more wetness around your shaft, aiding your penetration. 

Soon after you were able to stretch her out enough to be able to take more of you, and you let out a satisfied grunt as you fully entered her, bottoming her out with your cock as you withdrew, leaving half of you impaled inside her tight warm cave. 

“H-harder,” Hyewon softly whimpered, her words barely audible. 

“What was that?” Eunbi asked. 

“I-I want to be fucked harder,” Hyewon said.

“Speak up, baby, we can’t hear you.” 

Hyewon took a deep breath. “Harder. Fuck me. Harder,” she said, every word this time crystal clear. 

“You heard her, baby. Go wild.” 

You hadn’t heard a better set of words all day. Growing frustrated with the slow tedious pace, you were happy to be able to fuck Hyewon at your whim, quickly settling into a much more natural pace that you were used to. 

Hearing the pleasurable sounds of flesh against flesh as your hips smacked against Hyewon’s ass, you took advantage of being able to freely fuck her, squeezing her hips as you slammed into her tight hole. 

Hyewon scrambled to grab handfuls of the sheets as you opened her up, her moans increased alongside your speed. 

“She said she can take it, baby, so make her take it. Every inch.” 

You grabbed onto Hyewon’s arms and pulled them behind her, holding her delicate wrists as you fucked her hard from behind, her body being pulled upright just a bit as you went wild and hammered into her cunt. 

You made sure to be deep as possible in this position, as Hyewon’s ass jiggled with every thrust as did her breasts, her cheeks clapping together rhythmically as her whines and whimpering moans grew louder and deeper as did the harsh smacking of flash together. 

Eunbi swung your head around so she could plant deep kisses on your lips, taking some of the focus away as you pounded away into Hyewon’s pussy, pistoning your hips without a care as sweat began dripping down your forehead. 

“Keep pounding her, baby. Don’t stop fucking our little slut until she can’t walk straight tomorrow.”

You felt Hyewon tighten at Eunbi’s use of the word slut and wanted to test it out yourself. 

“Do you like when I fuck you this deep, baby?” you asked. 

After moments of groans and gasping Hyewon responded. “Y-yes, your cock feels so big inside me. I feel so filled.”

“You like being fucked like a slut?”

Hyewon tightened again. “I-i’m not a slut! Not like, Unnie-” she protested. 

“You’re not? If I remember correctly you sucked my cock the first week I moved in here.” 

“It was because you were always hard in the morning! I felt bad for you.” 

Eunbi laughed. “Felt bad, or felt horny?” she said. 

“U-unnie! I’m not a slut!” 

“That’s not what your body says right now. I can feel how fucking wet you are, Hyewon. Your tight little pussy loves my cock.” 

“I-i just wanted to help out. To return the favor, that’s all-” 

“Then you won’t mind if I stop fucking you and fuck Eunbi instead?” 

“N-no! Please! I’m already close, please don’t stop!” 

You dropped her arms and they collapsed against the mattress. “Admit it then.” 

“I-i can’t, I’m not-”

You slowed down your pace considerably, Hyewon whimpered even more. 

“P-please, baby! I’m almost there.”

“Then maybe you should admit it. We both know you’re not as innocent as you pretend you are,” Eunbi said.

Hyewon pondered for a moment as you barely moved inside her. “Fine. I-I’m a slut. I loved sucking your cock in the morning, and I loved when you came inside me.” 

“Was that so hard?” Eunbi asked. “Do you want him to cum inside you again?” 

“Y-yes!” 

“Then tell him, baby.” 

“P-please cum inside me! I want you to pound me and fill my tight little pussy!” Hyewon begged. 

You smirked and resumed your harsh pace, running your hands up her tight sweaty body and cupping her breasts, squeezing them and feeling her hard nipples brushing against your palms as you drilled yourself into her. 

“I’m gonna cum!” Hyewon abruptly said as you felt her walls squeezing you the tightest they ever had. 

“Then fucking cum,” you growled impatiently in response. 

You took a bit of pride in seeing Hyewon like this, her innocent demeanor completely broken down and replaced with lustful desire and need. 

With your hands full of her wonderful warm breasts, you felt her pussy pulsating around you and Hyewon screamed as she came all over your cock, her voice hitting an octave you didn’t even think it could go as her juices saturated her thighs, your shaft, and the bedsheets underneath. So much for not defiling the bed, you thought to yourself with a snicker. 

Her body weakly shook as the aftershocks fired off like bullets, each wave of pleasure threatening to make her whole body collapse. 

“Your turn, baby. You better fill her up,” Eunbi demanded. 

You were already on the brink, and with Eunbi’s words along with the look of desperation Hyewon shot at you, there wasn’t much you could do to hold out. Teetering on the verge of exhaustion, you gave everything you had as you hooked both of Hyewon’s arms and brought her upright, feeling her sweaty back pressed up against your chest as you pounded her pussy. 

“Take it all, baby. Take all my cock you fucking slut,” you hissed, the words seemingly appearing out of nowhere as you buried yourself deep inside Hyewon’s dripping cunt. Without anything to grab on to, Hyewon was at your mercy, fucking her with the last remaining shred of energy you had, your carnal desires fueling your urge to absolutely ruin her. 

Without another word you came inside Hyewon, feeling a sense of relief as you sent your thick hot cum inside her, throbbing and groaning with every single spurt until she was pumped full of your plentiful load. 

“You did so well,” you whispered to Hyewon weakly, as you released her and she collapsed to the bed in front and you followed as you pulled out, your sticky cum staining her thighs as you equally gasped for air. 

"Look how much you came, baby," Eunbi said as her view was on the semen dripping out of Hyewon as you crashed on the side of the bed next to her, struggling to breathe with any kind of regularity. 

"Don't move a muscle, Hyewon," Eunbi ordered, as she bent down between her thighs, and began licking her clean. 

"U-unnie," Hyewon softly whimpered as Eunbi cleaned up the mess you had just left inside her, slurping your load directly from Hyewon’s freshly fucked pussy and greedily swallowing it all, rekindling the fire in your loins and bringing you back to full hardness, something Eunbi took notice of. 

“Don’t relax yet, baby. You still need to give mommy your cum.” 

Hyewon crashed to her side exhausted as you laid down in anticipation of what Eunbi had planned. 

"Mommy wants to ride that cock," Eunbi said as she pounced on your body and you felt her naked thighs straddling your waist, caressing your sweat misted skin and smiling sweetly. 

"Just relax and let mommy do all the work."

Her gaze relaxed you as she kissed you again, this time more lustfully, biting your lower lip and holding on. She grabbed your cock, slickened with the juices of both women and stroked it carefully, teasing her silky wet folds with it. 

“You’re still throbbing for me, baby. Does mommy turn you on this much?” 

“Yes, mommy. You’re so sexy.” 

“I’m glad you think so, baby,” Eunbi said shyly, still teasing her warm flesh with your leaking cock. 

“What do you like about me, baby?” 

“Your pretty eyes. Your sexy hips. Your amazing tits. Your soft thighs. I love everything about you, mommy.” 

Eunbi blushed. “You’re so sweet, baby. I hope you still have some cum stored up in those balls. Mommy wants to ruin you.” 

“Please do, mommy.” 

With your tip still aimed at her tight entrance, Eunbi lifted her hips up and slowly sank down onto your cock, parting her wet flesh and impaling herself. She took the first few inches of your shaft at first, and then slipped every part of you inside her with ease as if showing off and moaning freely at being so full. 

“Oh fuck, baby,” Eunbi moaned loudly, resting her delicate soft hands on your chest. You grabbed onto her waist and stared at her magnificent figure, your mouth drooling over every sinful curve of her body so sculpted to perfection as you eagerly anticipated her next move. 

“You’re so wet, mommy.” 

“All because of you, baby,” Eunbi replied with a charming smile as she began slowly moving her hips, taking you in and out of her body at a delicate pace. Your mind went numb at the warmth and tightness enveloping your shaft, her pussy gripping on tight as if to tell your cock it wasn’t going anywhere but inside her. 

Eunbi threw her head back as her pace increased and she created a steady rhythm, rolling her hips as she rode your cock, taking you to the hilt with every bounce. She was in control in more ways than one, not for her comfort but for yours, only giving as much pleasure as she dictated you needed. 

With her pretty hands still resting upon your chest, her nails began digging into your skin as the look in her eyes became more devilish. 

“Mommy loves your cock,” she said as she picked up the pace, her warm thighs smacking against yours, as you felt mesmerized by the way her huge breasts bounced.

Eunbi grew tired of her sensual nature and began slamming herself against your shaft, her tight cunt dripping juices each time she was filled to the hilt, She became more and more aggressive by the second, leaning her body forward to kiss and lick your neck before blowing hot air in your ear. 

“Hyewon might get to fuck you while you live together, but mommy owns this cock. She’s just borrowing it when I’m not around.” 

“It belongs to you, mommy.” 

“Don’t either of you forget that,” she said as she violently rode your cock, her warm skin slapping against your own flesh as her cunt was repeatedly penetrated as deep as possible, riding with vigor as her ass plump bouncing wildly against your cock. 

“Mommy needs these balls drained, baby. You’ll give mommy your cum, won’t you?”

“Y-yes, mommy. I’ll do anything you ask.”

“Anything?” 

“Yes, mommy. Anything.”

“What if mommy wants to keep riding you after you cum?” 

“Then mommy can keep riding me as long as she wants.” 

“You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” Eunbi asked as she grabbed your hands and placed them on her tits. You nodded and squeezed them both, playing with her hard nipples with your fingers. 

“You like mommy’s tits, don’t you?”

“I love them. Your tits are so amazing, Mommy.” 

Liking what she heard, Eunbi grabbed the back of your head and brought her chest to your face, smothering you with her delicious breasts. The soft flesh of her heavy tits against your face felt so comforting and heavenly, you never wanted them to leave. 

“Oh fuck, baby, mommy might cum soon.” 

You loved every moment, every sensation sent through your body. You didn’t mind Eunbi using you to get off, you wanted nothing more but to please her. 

Eunbi rode you so hard that you were sure the bed was going to break, clearly enjoying vigorously using your cock. 

“Unnie, don’t break him,” Hyewon teased as she rested her tired body up against Eunbi, burying her face into the crook of her neck. 

“All rested up for round two?” Eunbi asked. Hyewon tiredly shook her head. 

“No, I just wanted to play with these,” Hyewon said as she felt up her chest, cupping her breasts softly and giving a gentle squeeze, stealing the large mounds from the comfort of your face and into her own hands.

“Don’t be selfish, Hyewon,” Eunbi said. The two exchanged saliva as their lips met and tongues clashed, Hyewon giving into the older woman. 

Eunbi’s juices vigorously flowed out of her cunt, the added stimulation of Hyewon’s hands exploring her chest, pinching her nipples brought her new uncontrollable pleasure that she couldn’t hold back any longer. 

“Is mommy going to cum?” Hyewon asked, surprising the room by warming up to the use of Eunbi's insistent title. 

“I am,” Eunbi softly said, laughing at Hyewon’s use of the word. 

“Cum for us, mommy,” Hyewon innocently said, and it seemed to trigger Eunbi’s second climax of the night as she slipped into a euphoric trance as all her senses were shaken, tightening around your cock and leaking enough juices to almost slip out of her. 

Once she came down from her high, you felt the enthusiastic bounce of her hips as she intended to draw out your own climax as Hyewon still clung to her body. 

“I forgot how needy you are after you cum,” Eunbi teased. “I-i’m not-” Hyewon protested, proving the opposite as she kissed Eunbi’s shoulders. 

“Are you close baby?” Eunbi asked as she grabbed your hands and interlocked your fingers with hers, pinning your arms above your head. “If not you will be,” she smirked. 

“Cum inside mommy,” she demanded as she gave her all, slamming herself down with the only intention to drain you. Her hair was out of place, sweat dripping all over her body, making her jiggling breasts look even more appetizing, she had never looked sexier. Eunbi was in total control of you, and you were going to finish inside her whether you wanted or not, not that you ever would have rejected that idea. 

You laid there helplessly as Eunbi rode your cock without mercy, her sweaty thighs slapping against your own as you struggled to gather your senses, waiting for the inevitable as the pressure in your abdomen grew. 

“M-mommy, I’m gonna cum,” you cried out, every syllable difficult to form as they left your lips. Her eyes lit up in anticipation. You didn’t hold on anymore, not that you could, but you stared into Eunbi’s eyes and the lustful look that demanded your release sent you over the edge. 

“Cum for mommy,” she said as if those three seductive words were the final bit of permission you needed. You groaned needily as your throbbing cock exploded inside her, filling up her walls as she drained the final spurts of cum left just for her, somehow equally as much as you had given Hyewon. 

“Such a good boy,” she said as she kissed your forehead. You wondered if she was going to keep going, keeping you to your word of not stopping but mercifully she seemed satisfied. 

Giving you a few moments to rest she slowly and gingerly lifted her body off of your cock an inch at a time, the three of you watching the dripping thick load leaked between her thighs, the result of your combined juices seeping out. 

Hyewon looked in awe. “I can’t believe you can still cum so much. “ 

“I have that effect on people,” she proudly boasted. You laid there barely able to move, twitching as you felt their mouths returning to your cock, lips and tongues cleaning up your shaft and running all over your drained balls. 

Moments after you passed out from exhaustion.

                                                              ✦✦

The morning after was a blur. You arose before anyone else, still wondering if the night before was a wonderful dream that you unfairly never acted out. The mess of stained sheets and naked limbs surrounding you and the weight of both gorgeous women perched on your chest thankfully meant everything became a reality, but you still pinched yourself just in case. 

"Good morning…" you heard a voice softly say sleepily.

"Good morning, mommy," you responded as you saw Eunbi waking up. 

"I love when you call me that," she said as she left sweet tender kisses on your chest. "It turns me on so much."

"Did you sleep well, mommy?" you asked, repeating the word.

"I did, baby, thanks to you. I'm still wet though, just thinking about you."

Eunbi’s pretty fingers ran through out of place strands of your hair, playing with them. 

"And it looks like you're excited this morning thinking about mommy," she said as she grabbed your cock and stroked slowly. You moaned at her touch and she smiled devilishly. 

"Maybe mommy should jerk you off right here."

"We shouldn't wake her."

"Hyewon? She'll be out for a while, you really did a number on her."

"Still, I'd hate to disturb her."

"How about a quickie in the shower while she rests?” Eunbi asked. 

"Now that's a great idea." You carefully removed yourself from underneath Hyewon, trying not to wake her. Eunbi literally grabbed you by the dick and led you to the bathroom, letting the water get as hot as it could before stepping inside. 

You didn’t know what it was about both women that seemed to love their scalding hot showers, but you weren’t going to question it given the view in front of you. 

Not long after you wettened you hair, Eunbi turned the shower into her own erotic show as she soaped up her voluptuous body and lathered up her massive tits. Knowing you couldn’t divert your eyes she played with her own nipples, pinching and pulling on them as she moaned and you quickly felt yourself growing hard as a rock. 

“You like watching mommy get clean?” Eunbi asked as she bit her lip. Before you could answer the shower door opened and Hyewon joined the fun. 

“Hey! You started without me,“ she frowned. 

“You looked so peaceful, we didn’t want to wake you,” Eunbi said. 

"Nice excuse, unnie. You just wanted his cock to yourself."

"You caught me red-handed. And what happened to mommy?"                        

Hyewon blushed and turned shy. 

“Just clean me, " Eunbi said. 

You couldn’t help but feel they were teasing you, soaping up each other's bodies and kissing each other at the same time as the water ran down their flushed skin. As always, Eunbi felt the need to up the ante, using her knee to spread Hyewon’s wet thighs and grinding against her core. 

“F-fuck, mommy-” Hyewon moaned. 

“You wanna ride mommy’s thigh don’t you, baby?”

“Y-yes, mommy,” she desperately responded, trying to force any bit of friction she could against Eunbi’s muscular toned thigh. Eunbi allowed it for a few moments, finding it cute how needy she always was as she brought her fingers to her breasts, playing with Hyewon’s swollen sensitive nipples before grabbing her hips and ceasing her movements. 

“You shouldn’t cum before our guest does,” Hyewon whined but didn’t voice a complaint. 

She grabbed Hyewon by the ass and pulled her towards her body, their wet soapy breasts mashing together. 

“Hyewon.” 

“Yes, mommy?” 

“Follow my lead.” 

Eunbi knelt on the shower’s tile floor, Hyewon quickly followed, both stroking your cock. Eunbi angled her body to the side as the water ran over your chest. Soaping up her tits even more, she grabbed your cock and placed it in between her soapy cleavage, wrapping her breasts around your shaft. 

She didn’t move yet, and Hyewon caught on quickly, matching her position on the opposite side with her wet breasts smothering the other side of your shaft. You realized what exactly was about to happen, and nothing could prepare you for it. 

They flashed each other a look, and the moment they started moving together you absolutely lost it as they created friction, sandwiching your cock in between the heavy warm flesh of their tits.

“Holy fuck,” you moaned, and they both let out gasps at the result of their sensitive nipples grinding against each other. As if that weren’t enough, Eunbi leaned in to take a kiss from Hyewon who returned her advances, as the two messily sucked each other's faces. 

You had no doubt in your mind that this is what heaven was like. 

“Like that, baby?” Eunbi said.

“You have no fucking idea.” 

They both giggled and watched as you lost your mind even more. You didn’t dare close your eyes for a second, keeping your eyes glued to the way their perfect tits assaulted your cock, struggling to keep your composure as the intense pleasure spiked through every bit of your body. 

“Fuck, I’m not gonna last very long.” 

“Mommy wouldn’t expect you to.” 

Just a few more moments was all you could handle, the warmth of both of their breasts squeezing and massaging your cock was too much. You throbbed in between them as you groaned loud enough to echo around the shower walls as you filled up their cleavage with cum and painted their pretty faces and they proudly wore your warmth on their features. 

The two shared a series of giggles before Eunbi licked your sticky warmth off Hyewon’s face, the younger returning the favor before licking each other's faces clean, kissing each other with cum-stained lips and eagerly swapping your load. 

They kissed your depleted shaft as you weakly leaned yourself against the shower’s cold tiles, forcing your eyes open as Hyewon rode Eunbi’s thigh to completion and Eunbi gushed all over Hyewon’s slim fingers in a matter of moments. 

The three of you dressed and dried off in relative silence, recovering from the events of the past 24 hours. 

“What happens now? With the case?” you asked. 

“We don’t exactly know ourselves. We’ll have to figure out what happened, what went wrong, and if our information was inaccurate. This is a huge setback,” Eunbi said.  

“We’ll be spending most of next week recovering from this. And we were so close too,” Hyewon frustratedly said. 

“It can’t be helped, these things happen sometimes and we’ll have to prevent it from happening again,” Eunbi reassuringly replied. 

“No more talk about work. How about some breakfast, Hyewon?” 

“Right away. How does pancakes sound?” 

“Amazing,” you said.

“Make an extra batch. We’re going to need to save up our energy for later.”  

                                                         ✦✦

“Hey. It's me. No, they don’t have any idea. Fucking idiots. Their operation was a failure in every possible way.” 

“No, it was thanks to you too, boss. Yes, the account number is still the same. I can’t show you my gratitude enough, I’ll be able to pay off these fucking loans finally. “

“I’m not sure, I’m sure they’re scrambling like chickens with their head cut off. I’ll be able to find out more on Monday. Yes, I’ll be careful. I’ll see you in a week. “

[rainofaugustsith]

SWTOR - On Wasted Companions

Controversial opinion perhaps, but I think not using Talos Drelik, Felix Iresso, Ashara Zavros, and Akaavi in the main story of KOTFE/KOTET was a complete waste of some really excellent characters who had a lot to add. Talos, my dudes. Talos ,the archaeologist and archivist of the Sith who probably has a handle on Sith lore better than most of the Empire. Talos who is literally working on researching technology imbued with the Force - you know, like YOUR SHIP - when you meet him. And then never has a word to say about any of it - not Ossus, not the technology he and the Inquisitor researched on Rishi, nothing. Having Talos looking into the lore to try to find ways to defeat the Emperor, or looking at the Emperor's past actions at the Dark Temple and on Medriaas had so much potential. He could have actually helped Lana and the Commander figure out what to do with that holocron they pinched from Nathema, or taken them back to the vault to borrow some other formidable tech to defeat Valkorion. But no. Instead of using the resources at their disposal in the Alliance, the Commander just shrugs and says "Well, I don't know. I guess I'll be surprised uwu!"

Felix. Felix Iresso is the one character in SWTOR that leaves me bewildered. Specifically I'm bewildered as to why this guy doesn't have like the largest fanbase ever. He's good looking, he's smart, he's got a beautiful voice, and although I've heard the charge that he's boring, and I accept that people are entitled to their opinions, I'll admit that confuses me. The guy has a Sith holocron embedded in his brain and that's boring? He treats the Jedi Consular like absolute gold - if you tell him you're not interested in a romance he immediately understands and just becomes a good friend to the JC. He sends sweet, awkward emails. He wants to show you the holo shows he liked as a kid. If you take him around with you on class missions, he's got a great sense of humor. He respects the Consular's position within the Jedi Order and makes a point of not wanting to step on any toes with it. He actually goes to Tython to talk to the Council and answer their questions. Like, every fucking box you can check for Amazing Partner, he raises the bar.

I'm sapphic and most of the time I avoid the M/F romances in the game. I don't avoid Felix (the others I like are Andronikos and Urtel, FWIW).

Anyway, in terms of KOTFE and KOTET. He has a history with Aric Jorgan. But maybe they see eye to eye on the fact that they're both fighting Zakuul. That would be a cool arc; the two finding common ground and working together. HE'S GOT A HOLOCRON IN HIS HEAD. What kind of plot points could they have come up with to try to extract that Forbidden Knowledge without hurting Felix? Could he learn to use it? Is there something in there that could help the Alliance stop the Emperor or help the Commander get rid of him and his family? Could Felix be attuned to the Force now and not know it? Hmmm, maybe Talos could work on that. OH WAIT.

Felix was supposedly imprisoned by the Eternal Empire and experimented on. Hmmm, but we go through a place with experiments. And we go through a lot of Zakuulan prisons and rescue prisoners. Maybe he's in Overwatch, where there's a specific bonus mission to free the prisoners. Maybe he's on that Eternal Fleet ship we commandeer with prisoners. So many possibilities - all lost. Now, to Ashara. A huge part of KOTFE is learning about the Force beyond the constraints of the Jedi and Sith Orders; and beyond light and dark as strict binaries. That's exactly what Ashara does in her own personal development arc in the class story. By the end of the Sith Inquisitor's story, she's reciting something that is neither the Sith nor Jedi Code, but appears to be close to the Grey Code. In her reunion she's channeling DS energy but carries yellow lightsabers. They could have used this character as a bridge between the Jedi and Sith - she's certainly lived in both words - and helped the Commander learn more about using all sides of the Force. Perhaps Ashara could have helped out in the Force Enclave. Akaavi. There was a Mandalorian chapter but we didn't see both Mandalorian companions. I'm perplexed as to why they could not have added her here. Akaavi has a great story of losing her clan and finding acceptance in the Smuggler's crew. Could she have found acceptance in the Alliance too? Hey, Mako's followed the Mandalorians even though she is not one. Could she have been the liaison between the Alliance and Shae? She and Akaavi still could have been a couple that way!

We all know there was meant to be far more to the KOTFE/KOTET arc - a longer KOTET and a planned third installment that was scrapped. We know they had to do damage control and patch together everything into what we did get, with the unreturned companions having two minute reunions. Perhaps some of these companions who didn't have Alliance Alerts initially, like Felix and Ashara, would have had far larger participation in the story.

Could have, should have, would have - but every time I come across some of these characters I do think we could have had more with them.

[fencesandfrogs]

clan culture inspiration fic master post

a collection of fics/series/w/e i've used for inspiration. ordered by how much i used them

Flightless Dove, Poison Ivy acaciapines

read it, it’s good. it's 100% my main fic inspiration, i love it, it's very good.

the light that shines on you solacefruit

huge inspiration for my riverclan. just. massively where i get a lot of ideas. probably a larger source of material than flightless dove, if i'm being honest.

RIVERCLAN leaders have a litany of names. weather caller, storm seer, spirit walker. a new leader being made is a chance to find another for the list. these names are to honor leaders for the role they play in their lives.

(names. leaders. meaning.)

so you can see where i got that from.

Warriors Redux Deconstruction Dullard on ao3 (not linked)

i've split this into two parts, because there's a lot. i'm a fan of this in terms of world building, but i've been select in what i've used from it. deconstruction is linked highly because it had a lot of key details that shaped my opinions on what wouldn't be. a lot of this i would've changed anyway, but i wanted to list WR because it'd be dishonest to act like this wasn't shaping my thoughts.

anyway, a short list of things that were mentioned in WR:D that i'd already decided on or am now using

behaviors. i mean, i've said "flicked her tail" or "flattened his ears" so much it's getting old, but by god if i am not being true to cats movements. i think WR:D is somewhat conservative on use of purring, but i've also been writing about kits, and a lot of purring is involved with kits, so special case, i suppose. but i'm very cautious with my descriptions. i've tried really hard not to use smile, because cats don't smile. that's the one that gets me the most.

water. this is kind of a specific thing. but. in ctd's fading echoes. the lake is a concern not because the cats need water, but because the prey needs water.

queens and toms. now. i have always been irritated by this. and the lack of female leadership. because toms should know they're kept on the graces of the queens. the sisters got it right. but i can't just kick out half the cast, so i'm forced to keep them. i have, however, kept toms out of the nursery. queens are protective around their kits. it's the best i can do to appease my strong desire to literally just kick every male cat out of the clan. in all of my stories, though, i keep track of who's in the nursery with what kits, because those kits are going to bond to every damn mother. it's super annoying that this isn't kept more clear anywhere. i have to do so much math and check so many allegiances every time.

kits. it's basically impossible to convince me to write this the way the hunters do, so even in ctd, we see kits not walking, not opening their eyes, until real kittens would. does this make the early chapters of growing shadows a pain because dovekit does basically nothing but sit and listen? yes. do i care? yes, it is important to me that dovekit does nothing but sit and listen because she's a baby. bb. need protect.

genetics. usually i correct coat colors for POV cats. because it bothers me. see: tortie dovekit/ivykit in CTD, and the fact that i think in jaywing, jayfeather is going to end up amber like brightheart. i need to do some research to double check, but...i think that's what will happen. (please don't ask about hollykit, ivykit, and lionkit. i don't even know who their parents are. how is crowfeather "dark grey, almost black"? what does that mean. how is leafpool even leafpool. i don't understand anything.)

religion. i'm not fundamentally changing how starclan works, because i'm writing the books where magic is confirmed real, but...i've tried to distance the connections with it. and god, so help me, i'm going to make things a proper religion for w&f. there will be religious things like prayer. god.

cultures, folklore, names. this is getting long so i'm lumping this together. basically, i've got some name stuff sorted out. it's not "traditional" naming, because i'm not going WR on this and renaming really important cats (altho the reason WR has my respect for traditional naming is because they're not afraid to rename cats to fit the scheme), but i have some pretty defined rules. and there will be folklore and stories. this is especially important for dovefeather, when she goes to riverclan.

Sharing Tongues Icej

a series. i don't think i've used much of this directly, but it has shaped a lot of my opinions on clans. it's why thunderclan is militaristic and why windclan is so strict.

it's also shaped my thoughts on a lot of parts of clan life. i'm writing this all out of order, so i'll say, a lot of the inspiration that warriors redux had, is shared in this series. i'm not sure if there's overlap in the interst, but it's got simularities.

especially in terms of relationships. i have a bit of a fascination with story telling as a form of culture, if only because in my personal life, story telling, especially verbal story telling, has always been really important. so i think a lot about it.

anyway, these are a good set of fics, and they're ranked so highly because they're kind of a paradigm i've crafted my thoughts around.

Tell me about your Ancestors Drowsy_Salamander

so this was what got me started, even over flightless dove. it got me thinking about the differences clans would have.

i haven't written "funerals. mourning. prayer." yet, although as you might guess from the fact that i have a title, it is on my mind. i think i'll draw heavily on this for that.

one other very specific line in this that i draw on is

When SkyClan was reformed by Firestar at the gorge, it was reformed in ThunderClan’s image.

now i say that specifically because i didn't want that. i wanted leafstar to find her own tradition. a lot of skyclan's destiny deals with her struggling to adapt the warrior code to her clan. so Ancestors continues by talking about tree's influence, and this is what i got from it:

SKYCLAN once held ceremonies at tilt, when the birds were quiet, but now, they hold most ceremonies at low moon, when the spirits are strongest. ...

apprentices are made at low sun, born from a time when they were not always gathered.

(ceremonies)

and i'm happy with that

Warriors Redux: Ammendment Dullard on ao3, not linked

this is ranked significantly lower than deconstruction because (a) i'm borrowing superificial things at best and (b) i had already come to a lot of these conclusions. still, i'm writing a full list because there are little things i don't think to write whole essays about sometimes. that said, whereas in deconstruction, i could basically say "yes, everything that's said here, i agree with, i'm only tweaking things for personal taste or because of differences in perspective" here it's more like "here are the things i'm using" and the other stuff is just there, but not really anything i want to use

time and date. in one of my generic CTD posts i had a few paragraphs about this. basically, i like the system of time. except for half, because that confuses me. so it's dawn, sunrise, low sun, (sun) tilt, sunhigh, dusk, moonrise, low moon, (moon) tilt, moonhigh, repeat. and kits are aged to apprentices at the beginning or rough midpoint of seasons.

numbers. math. drawing things in the dirt with claws. in short, yes, no, what the...no. just no. cats in my stories can basically count, but they don't really, like, count the way we do? they might say five leaf bares ago, because i am not saying, "the leaf bare before the one with X which was before the one with Y" and that's what a cat is thinking and maybe they have words for this, i don't know, i'm not writing that. four and nine are holy numbers, or the closest cats get. (apprentices are apprenticed at nine moons in the holy sense, because a queen pregnent for a three --- two, but who's counting --- and in the nursery for six. this will never come up in a story unless it's a background note, because it's confusing and hard to explain off the cuff.) i don't have to explain my last point.

names. i have my own rules. i don't intend on changing character names with the exception of the symbolism in jaywing and dovefeather, but i may at some point make some comments on what, based on my rules, i would do. i don't want to change names because it confuses me, but i don't want to say for sure that i won't. definitely not based on WR rules, i have my own form of "traditional naming" for the w&f world.

clan specific notes. you can find it in my writing. there's a lot of influence in it. i don't want to list everything.

come back to you one by one solacefruit

i haven't really used this for anything, i just generally like it. it's definitely given me inspiration for how i use stories, but not any particular thing.

it really is beautiful, though.

alright, that's about it.

[warriorsfireandwater]

Laurel power of the 3?

Laurel: What changes to the books would you make if you could write the series?

I got two requests for this one! While I'm sort of following the same idea of "sticking closer to canon but making it functionally better", I think this series is really indicative of how poor planning made it functionally worse than its predecessors. So while I'll try to avoid diving too deep into AU territory, there will be some more significant changes to try and make it all work together better. Some of my thoughts on this have been influenced by @tennelleflowers‘s video on their Po3 changes - it’s a really great take on the series!

First, I would straight up butcher this series into three books. There’s a lot of filler here with the ancients and visits to the tribe and the mess that is the last book, and I would just boot all that to the curb. There could be some mentions of ancients, but the tribe visits feel less than necessary to the plot.

The Sight: Lionkit, Jaykit, Hollykit are just starting to grow up in ThunderClan. I would put greater emphasis on how they’re raised by the other queens in the nursery, especially Ferncloud but Daisy as well. They still love Squirrelflight and view her as her mother, but they’re very close to Ferncloud and Daisy. Squirrelflight has kept up with her warrior duties since Ferncloud has nursed the three when Squirrel’s milk didn’t come in. All around their kithood is just fuzzy and warm and they grow up encouraged by everyone - INCLUDING JAYKIT. None of that “everyone looks at him with pity :(((((” shenanigans. If anyone suggested Jaykit was unfit for anything, Mama Ferncloud had some stern words for them.

Things play out mostly the same across the book. Jaypaw starts out his training with Brightheart and Hollypaw with Leafpool, but they do end up switching. For Jaypaw its not because he’s bad at being a warrior or because Spottedleaf is harassing him into it, but because he has been aware of the strange dreams he has and more than once has woken up in the dreams of other cats. He feels like he’s been getting signs from StarClan but he can’t make sense of them, and he likes the allure of being able to communicate with StarClan and have that position of power and respect in the Clan (which is reinforced, because the watering-down of the influence of medicine cats later series is frustrating). Hollypaw conversely realizes that being a medicine cat is far more lonely than she expected, and notices how lonely Leafpool clearly is, even if she isn’t open about it. Hollypaw doesn’t want that for herself and sees the fun the other apprentices have, so she agrees to become a warrior apprentice instead. Brightheart takes over her training.

Lionpaw doesn’t have a huge arc here, he’s mostly kind of a doofus who comes off arrogant due to his skills but starts to learn throughout his apprenticeship that just being a meathead isn’t going to get the other apprentices to like him. Him and Berrypaw have a friendly rivalry. The Sight ends with Jaypaw receiving the prophecy from StarClan.

Dark Eclipse: Borrowing the title from my Wind!Po3 au... this is when Sol is introduced. He arrives to the Clans, showing himself to lone warriors or small patrols, making minor predictions and claiming to be able to preform miracles. He mostly predicts cats futures - if they’ll find love, how many kits they’ll have, silly things like that. Cats start eating it up despite being suspicious of the loner, because their medicine cats don’t do that kind of thing and honestly, it’s fun. Sol is mysterious but friendly, keeping cats at an arm’s length while dangling information in front of them. He also generally positions himself as being very all-knowing of the history of the lake, sun-drown place, and the “ancient cats” that used to live here.

While Jaypaw is out collecting herbs on his own, he happens across a tunnel (by accident, from falling into it), where he meets a cat with no scent that leads him out. He finds the ancient stick, and wants to know more about what the tunnels are all about - so of course, he goes to Sol to learn from him. Sol is more than happy to teach Jaypaw about the history of the ancients in exchange for information about the clans today (under the guise that he is something of a historian and likes collecting information wherever he goes). Sol also has heard of Jaypaw’s prophecy, and he claims he wants to help Jaypaw understand it and grow into his power.

Lionpaw starts having dreams with Hawkfrost and Tigerstar, and while he doesn’t trust them, he DOES want to learn their fighting skill. They also seem to have some sense of his special abilities, and claim to want to help him better understand them. This is when Lionpaw’s power in the waking world starts to have more... uncomfortable tones. Lionpaw starts losing his temper easily, becomes more aggressive, and finally during a training session he unsheathes his claws to claw another apprentice. This lands him in trouble, and he’s told he has to spend a quarter-moon helping Leafpool and Jaypaw in the medicine cats’ den to learn how to take care of others. During this Jaypaw walks in a dream with him and catches him visiting Hawkfrost and Tigerstar. Afterwards, Jaypaw threatens to tell Firestar unless Lionpaw stops visiting them. Lionpaw doesn’t want to give up his training, but he doesn’t want to get in trouble with Firestar, either - so Jaypaw admits he has his own teacher who Lionpaw can visit.

Hollypaw, meanwhile, is adjusting to being a warrior apprentice. She’s unlike her brothers - she’s much friendlier than Jaypaw and more intelligent that Lionpaw, and she’s not bad at hunting or fighting but not particularly egotistical about it. She can be a stickler for the warrior code, but generally she gets along with the other apprentices and begins to become the ringleader of the group. She is notably distant from her brothers, though, which makes her upset but she isn’t sure how to fix it. Jaypaw is fixated on his medicine cat training and is inherently separated from her by his role, but Lionpaw has just been... tired and grouchy and mean. To make matters worse, he starts disappearing during the day, too! Hollypaw is fed up with this and stalks her brothers one day (feeling a bit hurt that they’ve been spending time together without her) and catches them meeting Sol. She finds this absolutely disgraceful - he’s a rogue, smart or not! Jaypaw tells her that he can help them understand the prophecy, which only infuriates her more - because why didn’t they tell her about it in the first place if that was the point of meeting him? Furious, she storms right off and reports them to Firestar. They are both in trouble now for leaving the territory and their training to talk to a rogue, and Firestar is especially concerned to hear they’ve been sharing information about the Clans with him. A ThunderClan patrol tries to track him down, but Sol seems to have vanished.

Sol later shows up at a Gathering (with mixed reviews from the audience - as it turns out, all four Clans have seen this mysterious loner, and some admire his knowledge while others are pissed off about this outsider frolicking across the territories distracting their warriors and NOW having the audacity to strut into the gathering). He says he’s going to make the sun go out. Cats are like “wtf????” and Sol repeats this and says he is more powerful than StarClan and will show the Clans that it is so. Cats grow angry and fearful, some even wanting to kill him for suggesting such a thing, and Sol just sort of smirks and says “If your StarClan is so powerful, then I suppose they’ll keep the sun lit tomorrow.” With that he takes off and cats are freaking out, clouds are covering the moon, and the Clans call off the Gathering.

Cut to the next day when things are progressing more or less normally (with some general nervousness). A WindClan patrol storms right through ThunderClan territory, claiming to have heard ThunderClan is harboring Sol. Of course, they’re not - and when WindClan is about to attack them, a ShadowClan patrol races to ThunderClan asking for help because RiverClan is attacking them for “harboring Sol”, which they claim not to be doing. WindClan turns on ShadowClan, ThunderClan is confused, fights are breaking out, its all around madness. A few hisses turns into all-out war, but no one knows whose side is fighting for whose. Someone cries out that Firestar is losing a life - 

Then the sun goes out.

Outcast: This book picks right back up in the middle of the panic, with some cat shrieking that Firestar is dying. Thing is, no one is sure who killed him, because it’s chaotic and hard to see due to the, you know, black sun. Jaypaw is trying to get his way through the fray with Leafpool to make it to Firestar.

They don't make it in time. They get there and he's dead. Actually dead. Jaypaw is in shock, and Leafpool is shaking with grief—but Jaypaw catches a sense of rage in her.

"He had two lives left," she snarls. "He had two lives."

Jaypaw understands and is horrified. Firestar's wounds are fatal, but they're not horrific. Coming back from the loss of his eighth life should have healed him enough to survive through the ninth. Someone waited and killed him again.

The eclipse ends with Sol atop a tree, declaring he has proven himself to be stronger than StarClan. Cats are horrified by the aftermath of the short but bloody battle. All the Clans are calling for blood, until Blackstar admits that Sol clearly has knowledge that would benefit ShadowClan and brings him back to camp with him.

ThunderClan is feeling really low after everyone realizes Firestar was killed. Cats are willing to accept it was an accident until Leafpool reveals what she realized, and that just ramps them up to pissed. Cats pretty quickly jump to thinking it’s Sol, but Jaypaw isn’t sure. Sol was never aggressive, and he had seemed to be out of the fight. Jaypaw tries to say this with mixed effects. Lots of fingers are pointed, but Brambleclaw doesn’t want to start off his leadership attacking another Clan without being sure. There’s a bit of an early-to-mid book lag here, with cats trying to maintain normal Clan life but Very Stressed about the fact that their leader was murdered twice in battle. Aaaand cue the fire.

Fire scene plays out like canon. Ashfur traps the three and Squirrel reveals the truth to the horror of her kids. It’s a bit more emphasized here that he had some involvement with Firestar being trapped in the fox trap a while back - he specifically says “I just regret not staying to make sure the job was finished”. Lionblaze believes this means he killed Firestar in the battle.

A couple days pass. Ashfur’s body is discovered. Cats are FREAKING out thinking someone is trying to murder ThunderClan cats now. Bramblestar finally gets a patrol together to go to ShadowClan and demand they give up Sol—but ShadowClan won't have it. Things are just weird there, with Sol and other rogues just hanging out and Blackstar declaring ShadowClan is following Sol's wisdom now. Sol comes down and says he did not kill Ashfur or Firestar but is happy to help with their investigation. Hollyleaf and Lionblaze go along and Lionblaze INSISTS Sol must be lying. Hollyleaf is notably feeling eaten up inside from the reveal of not being Squirrel's kit, and starts to work out the whole truth. At the next Gathering, she jumps on the the tree and reveals everything—how Squirrelflight lies about being their mother, about Leafpool and Crowfeather. Chaos ensues. Hollyleaf runs away, and Lionblaze chases her.

"What's wrong with you?" he snarls. "You ruined everything! Do you have any idea what I did to protect us?"

Jayfeather catches up and sees his memory of Lionblaze killing Ashfur. (I think HE should be the one to kill Ashfur so Hollyleaf's breakdown/killing feels less contradictory and because it fits Lion's power + Ash was his mentor.) When he killed Ashfur, he basically beat him to a pulp until Ashfur admitted he was the one that killed Firestar and repeated he was just sorry he hadn’t done it when he last had the chance to hurt Squirrelflight. Jayfeather shares this with Hollyleaf, who is horrified by what her brother has done and is afraid of how angry he is. She runs off into a tunnel, which collapses, and Jay and Lion believe she’s dead. Lionblaze feels a tremendous amount of guilt, believing he just killed his sister. Jayfeather is shaken and asks how the prophecy can still come true without her, which makes Lionblaze angry - “Don’t you care that our sister just died?”

The book ends on a dark tone, with Lionblaze being eaten up by guilt from Hollyleaf’s death, and not speaking to Jayfeather. Jayfeather is upset that Hollyleaf is dead but is extremely concerned for the sake of the prophecy (to the point of being half in denial about her death - thinking she simply can’t be dead because the prophecy needs her). The story ends with him helping Whitewing birth her kits, Dovekit and Ivykit, and when Cloudtail comes to visit his daughter, he is struck by the recollection that Whitewing is Firestar’s kin as well, making her daughters “kin of his kin”. He feels more hopeful after this, thinking to himself that he will keep a close eye on the kits so that they aren’t lost like Hollyleaf. This also leaves some plot threads for OotS to resolve - Sol isn’t gone, ShadowClan is clearly starting to have issues, and the Clan still isn’t sure who killed Ashfur.

[manga2day]

Who is Madara Uchiha?

Madara Uchiha is a fictional antagonist of the anime series and manga Naruto, 📚 he is actually the greatest leader of the Uchiha clan as well as the co-founder of the Hidden Leaf Village, Konoha. After fighting Hashirama for the title of the First Hokage, he is diagnosed dead , but eventually appears later in the series as Tobi. Simply because Obito was posing as Madara uchiwa during the heyday of Akatsuki. ☁️

Madara history

Madara grew up in constant competition with her younger brother, Izuna Uchiha . Both have been recognized as the most talented members of their clan. Their competition led them to obtain the Mangekyō Sharingan , 👁️ and with it, they were able to take control of the Uchiha clan. Although members of the Uchiha clan possess a powerful chakra, Madara and her brother's chakra were exceptional. 🌊 Under his leadership, the clan was almost indestructible. During a fight against the Senju clan, the Mangekyō Sharingan of Madara uchiha inflicted severe consequences on his body, due to its excessive use. One of them was losing her eyesight, 🦯 Madara kept her Mangekyō Sharingan active throughout the fight  which caused her to lose her eyesight. He therefore transplanted the eyes of his mortally wounded brother, by the brother of Hashirama, in order to thus obtain the eternal Mangekyou Sharingan.  

The founding of the hidden village of Konoha

Years later, the Uchiha clan faced endlessly against the powerful Senju clan. ⚔️ To end the incessant fighting, the leader of the Senju, Hashirama Senju, approached the Uchiha clan with a proposal for a truce . Although Madara did not desire peace with the Senju, her clan members wanted a ceasefire, 🔥 and Madara had no choice but to accept their decision. The Senju and Uchiha, along with all the clans they had conquered, then united to form the Hidden Leaf Village. Against Madara's will, the villagers chose to elect Hashirama as the first Hokage . 👑 While he was a Konoha ninja, Madara went to Iwagakure and addressed a young man named Ōnoki accompanied by the Tsuchikage of the time and his guardian, where they were informed that despite the alliance that 'he had made a deal with the Senju, his people 🚻 would remain subject to the power of the Senju.

Battle against Hashirama

Madara feared that Hashirama was oppressing the Uchiha people, and tried to rally the Uchiha clan to his cause in an effort to challenge his leadership. However, instead of helping him, the Uchiha turned their backs on him , believing his motives were due only to pride and the desire to gain more power. 💪 Abandoned by his clan, Madara left the village swearing revenge; after returning to challenge Hashirama to battle. They fought in the Valley of the End, and although Madara appealed to Kyubi , 🦊 he was defeated by Hashirama and diagnosed as dead. Despite his defeat in this battle, he managed to survive and obtain some of Hashirama's DNA , 🧬 which he transplanted within his wounds. As he slowly approached a natural death, he suddenly woke up with the Rinnegan. He also acquired the Mokuton and now possessed the DNA of the Uchiha and Senju. By awakening these Dojutsu, he gained the ability to summon the demonic statue from the outer path, which he used as a catalyst to cultivate Hashirama Senju cells. He later transplanted his Rinnegan into a boy named Nagato without his knowing it, and then replaced his left eye with a new Sharingan. 👁️

Madara personality

When Madara was still a child , he was regarded as kind, somewhat temperamental and competitive . He was a sensitive shinobi who cared both for his family and for others. Madara was very emotional and couldn't stand being laughed at. He also tended to cry when Hashirama teased him, because he was unable to ricochet on the river. 🏞️ The very first time we met Madara Uchiha in the Manga, he was described as a power thirsty person eager for revenge. He did not procrastinate when he had to kill his friends or when he tried to recover the hidden village of Konoha. But according to Madara, his sole purpose was actually to protect members of the Uchiha Clan. Throughout the Naruto saga, several ninjas have described Madara Uchiha's personality. When Itachi told Sasuke about him, he told him that he was a dark Shinobi,  🌑  thirsty for power. According to Kyubi, Madara possessed a much softer chakra than hers. It would appear that Madara represents hatred and the dark side of the Naruto saga.

Madara's appearance

Madara uchiha has a fairly fair complexion as well as black hair with a slightly bluish tint. When he was still a teenager, his hair was shoulder-length and his dress code was that of the Uchiha clan ; 🌔 that is, a fairly large shirt and the badge of his clan worn on his back. He also had bandages on his shins and blue pants. Madara also wore a belt that allowed her to hold onto her bag containing her ninja gear.  As time went on, her dress style changed . As he grew older, he wore a belt over his shoulder which served as receptacles for his many swords. ⚔️  Madara Uchiwa has grown into a fairly tall man with long hair. It was so long that it went to the level of his belt. He also began to wear red samurai armor similar to that of his greatest rival, Hashirama, the Hokage of Konoha. The particularity of this armor is that it protected the various vital points of his body! ❤️ After receiving Hashirama's stem cells, Hashirama Senju's head could be seen on his chest.

Madara equipment

Madara is often dressed in red armor which is suitable for the battlefield , she looks very sturdy and perfect for taking a hit. He also has a pair of gloves. 🧤 Within Madara's paraphernalia, there are several weapons he is used to using like the Uchiha fan! A flashback 💡 of the anime, allowed us to see in his lair , just before his death, other weapons such as several large Shurikens, but also a saber and chains . His equipment was borrowed by Tobi to ensure his victory against various ninjas.  

The meeting between Madara and Obito

Madara lived for many years until the end of the Third Great Shinobi War . At the end of her life, Madara possessed a very weak body, and her only chance 🍀 to stay alive was to use the Outer Way Demon statue as a survival system. He therefore connected with the tree possessing Hashirama's genes, so that the statue could constantly provide Madara with chakra, in order to keep her alive and prevent her from instantaneous death. During this war, he found the young Obito Uchiha, and began a seemingly long healing process to save his life using Hashirama 's stem cells. Madara then ordered the white Zetsu to keep Obito alive and help him rehabilitate, so that he could be useful to him in his future awakening. After Obito returned to him as he had predicted, he took him into an illusory world and told him about the 6 powers 📜 of the Rinnegan and the Ten-tailed Beast, Jubi as well as his plan, the Eye of to the moon . He then taught him various Kinjutsu Uchiha, those of the Rinnegan and the Inyoton element. Before dying, Madara also created the Black Zetsu by imbuing her willpower into the White Zetsu. Madara then disconnects from the statue and on his last breath and  tells Obito to "befriend Nagato" so that he can be resurrected one day . ⚰️ While Madara had been dead for years, Obito as "Tobi" took possession of Madara's identity and began to perform actions on his behalf.

Madara skills

Madara was one of the most powerful shinobi of his time and arguably one of the strongest ninjas of all time . 💪 Supreme Leader of Clan Uchiha, no ninja in this world can question his power. Although the Uchiha family possessed a certain talent for combat through their hereditary eye, the Sharinga. Madara tended to always push her own limits . He also possessed enormous natural potential and trained tirelessly. His skills of Katon, 🔥 of Taijutsu and his Dojutsu were of a different level compared to those of his own Clan. Additionally, with the mastery of the Eternal Mangenkyo Sharigan , 👁️ he was able to compete with the Senju Clan, but more specifically with their leader, Hashirama Senju, recognized as the strongest shinobi of his time. Madara Uchiwa is a ninja who is feared by all sane people! It has various peculiarities such as being able to feel an individual's chakra from several kilometers away, it has an extraordinary resistance capable of withstanding deadly attacks without flinching, 🛡️ but it is also able to use seals like the seal of the master puppeteer. Ninjutsu de Madara

Madara Uchiwa has a predisposition for the fire element chakra 🔥 just like the other members of the Uchiha Clan. Thanks to the Rinnegan, he is also able to manipulate the different natures of the chakra. Without forgetting that his Jutsu Katon possesses a devastating power and a great range, if one compares them to the Jutsu of the other geniuses of the Uchiha clan such as Itachi or even Sasuke. This is why it took during the Fourth Great Shinobi War ⚔️ an entire division to be able to counter his Katons with the help of his natural enemy, the Suiton. it gives an idea of ​​the power that Madara is able to develop within the Jutsu of the element of fire. In order to increase his strength, he deliberately implanted himself with stem cells 🧬 of the powerful Hashirama in order to acquire Jutsu: Mokuton. Madara is a genius , we can also see it once again on his use of Mokuton which is incredible! He is able to create large roots of lotus flowers (the scent of which is deadly to breathe) with the "forest of flowering trees" jutsu . 🌳 ( He was able to bend the 5 kage  only with this powerful Jutsu.) Just like Hashirama, he can also create undetectable clones using the Mokuton. He can also for example create up to 25 clones of himself and transform them into a powerful Susano. For reference , a single Susano 👺 clone can face five Kages. Madara is also very good at fighting the Bijû with the help of the Mokuton! For example, it is possible to create, via the Mokuton, a dragon capable of wrapping around the different Bijû and canceling their chakra. 🐉  We can say that his ability to master the Mokuton is similar to that of Hashirama ! After sealing the Divine Tree within her own body, Madara can now manipulate the various Kekkei Genkai like the Ranton, which is a mix between the Suiton and the Raiton. ⚡💦 Taijutsu

Madara's Taijutsu power combined with her Sharingan is splendid ! We can see this when he destroys several lines of the Shinobi Alliance in close combat. He was able for example, in a fraction of a second, to remove a scroll 📜 from a kunai as well as return it to its user! Although he is very strong in Taijutsu, it seems that this is not his only strength in close combat, he also masters with great agility, the sword and other weapons. We had the opportunity to see his strength with a saber during the Fourth Great Shinobi War against the Number 4 Division. There is no other word than "graceful" to describe his fighting style at the body to body ! 🥊 Of course, all this is made possible thanks to his famous Sharingan, which he allows him to dodge as well as to predict the movements of his opponents and therefore reduce the chance of getting hit! Using her sword, Madara sliced ​​up a dozen Ninjas very easily with her "dance" ability . 🩰 He then finally took his Gunbai back from Obito which he kept safe. In using this same Gunbai, Madara can eg absorb very powerful jutsu and then return them to their users. Overall, Madara Uchiwa is versatile and powerful no matter what weapon he uses! We assume that this ease comes from his long life and therefore from his incredible experience on the battlefield. 👴 It is also assumed that Hashirama's stem cells greatly enhance his Taijutsu abilities! Dojutsu Sharingan is the hereditary dojutsu of Clan Uchiha . Madara handles his sharingan like no Uchiha before him! Madara is also considered the greatest genius of the Uchiwa family. His Sharigan 👁️ awoke the very first time during a fight between the Uchiha clan and the Hashirama Senju Clan . He of course excels in mastering his hereditary Dojutsu, the Sharingan. In  using it, he can use powerful genjutsu surpassing ten times more powerful Genjutsu Itachi Uchiha and his brother, Sasuke Uchiha. It can also instantly stop a shinobi from running and therefore immobilize it. 🔓 Madara is also the only ninja of the Uchiha family to have succeeded in taking control of a Bijû, in this case Kurama with the help of his Sharingan. Mangekyô Sharingan  : Madara has used her Sharingan extremely well from a young age, it is also her handling of the sharingan that has enabled her to rise to the top of the Uchiha Clan , 🥇and thus, manage the clan with her younger brother. When he pushed the evolution of his Dojutsu to the rank of Mangekyô Sharingan, he became able to stand up to the champion of the opposing clan, Hashirama Senju. 🏆 And it is precisely this story that propelled his adventures into future generations. Like the other shinobi using the Mangekô Sharingan, Madara Uchiwa uses Amaretsu, Susano as well as the lunar arcana.   The Susano of Madara

Madara's Susano is extremely powerful , single-handedly capable of fighting multiple Kage, or even chopping up a mount easily with his sword. In addition, Madara has the eyes of his brother which allowed him to reach the final evolution of the Sharingan, the Eternal Mangekyô Sharingan . 👁️‍🗨️ Thanks to this evolved form, Madara can abuse her power without suffering consequences! So he cannot go blind using techniques like Susano or Amaretsu. The only flaw of his Dojutsu is that he consumes a huge amount of Chakra . But faced with the power that this dojutsu grants to its user, it is a weak compensation! The Susano summoned by his sharingan can also serve in defense, almost indestructible, 💎 he seems to be far superior to Gaara's defense. To give you an order of how strong the defense his susano grants him, know that he resisted a punch from Raikage A. 👊  Susano's defensive capacity depends on the base power of its user . Within the Fourth Great Shinobi War, we will have the opportunity to see the final form of the Susano of Madara Uchiha, who is a humanoid! He's an incredibly tall Susano, he's over a hundred meters tall 😲 and wears armor that looks like a samurai . Its final version has four arms, 2 of which hold katana! With a blow of his katama, he was able to destroy several mountains demonstrating his gigantic strength. This susano can also be combined with Kyubi 🦊 and by combining it with the abilities of the Rinnegan, it becomes a power monster greater than 9 Bijûs! It gives its user a boost of both offensive and defensive power! Rinnegan, the most powerful of the Genkai Kekkei

Just before dying, Madara Uchiha evolved her Sharingan into its most powerful form, the Rinnegan 🧿 using stem cells from the first Hokage, Hashirama Senju, which  he implanted in his body. Thanks to this power, he can manipulate the 6 powers of Pain, that includes all the techniques, advantages and abilities related to the Rinnegan . And of course, he once again shows that he is able to harness this new power 💣 with disconcerting ease compared to Nagato. During the Fourth Ninja War, he absorbed with disconcerting ease a Rasen Shuriken from Naruto! The Rinnegan coupled with the Edo Tensei

On the battlefield of war, he will tell Mû that the technique of Edo Tensei, allows him to acquire a source of infinite chakra and to be immortal . 🧛‍♂️ Indeed, even if his body were to be destroyed, he would be able to recompose himself. He was also able to attract meteorites close to earth on the battlefield and successfully kill more than half of the shinobi in Kage Gaara's division. This feat was made possible by the Jutsu Chibaku Tensei or by using a similar variant. The Jutsu Chibaku Tensei makes it possible to create a sphere attracting matter, this Jutsu can therefore potentially attract stars. 🪐 His Eternal Mangekyö Sharingan, coupled with Rinnegan and Edo Tensei make him a legendary ninja comparable to a God 😱 on a battlefield. He therefore represents a very great threat to the Shinobi world! So Great that his presence prompted the Great 5 Kage to cooperate during the Fourth Great Shinobi War. Double Rinnegan

When Madara recovered his second Rinnegan, he was able to use Rikudo's various abilities again to a level far exceeding our expectations. Like manipulating meteorites near the earth, using the Chibaku Tensei , 🌠 in a fraction of a second. His 2nd Rinnegan also allowed him to design several invisible shadows using the Rinbo - Hengoku. Read the full article

[wyvern-tales]

I don’t wanna fall asleep, because I have so much to say

Warnings: Fear (lots of it), descriptions of violence, humans being jerks, swearing, main character being a jerk sometimez

Word count: 24,256

Summary: Zelu didn’t like humans. They were basically fairytale monsters, but real, and somehow 10x worse. Everyone knew to avoid them. That was just common sense. Avoid humans, avoid human inventions, avoid everything related to the surface world. Simple as that. 

So then how the hell did he end up in this crab trap?

Prompt: A human finds a tiny merfolk stuck/passed out/hurt on the beach, they decide to take it home

Author’s Note: Heyyyy so this is the first time I've actually written G/t before, and the first time I've completed a story, so I really hope you enjoy it! Spent a good chunk of my time making this!

Tagging @secret-shifters for the event and @just-some-gt-trash for the gift! Hope you like it!

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the ocean, there are rules.

 Every Merfolk in every water of the world knows them. Five simple rules, made for everyone, regardless of culture or ability. Merfolk are expected to follow these rules like their land cousins, the Borrowers, and their code. The Rules are actually really similar to the Borrower Code, with a few obvious exceptions. Merfolk weren't Borrowers, not even that close. Borrowers looked like humans, but small. Merfolk sort of looked like humans, but more resembled the fish they swam with in more ways than one, size included.

The Rules went like this:

-One: Never speak, approach, or interact with humans. They are hunters and slavers, they take and never give back.

-Two: Avoid all human traps, inventions, and contraptions. Nothing good will ever come of this, no matter how intriguing they seem.

-Three: Should you find a captured being, Merfolk or not, don't help them. The risk is too great and you will most likely end up captured along with them.

-Four: Where the sea meets the land, never surface, no matter the time or place. Humans live on every spot of dry land, no coast is safe.

-And Five: Should you be spotted, do not attempt to fight. Always hide or swim as deep as you can go.

  Every child is taught these rules once they reach seven hundred sun-cycles (around two years, if talking in the newer dialect), the first two especially. They are responsible for the safety and survival of the Merfolk species, after all. From the great Whales and Sharks to the elusive Anglers of the deep sea, the rules have protected the ocean from human meddling for generations. Even the terrifying sirens and shifters, beings from the more magical side of Merkind obey at least two or three.

  Zelu's mother, like most other mothers in the sea, made sure the rules were drilled into her children. Threats of evil humans with their nets and fish-hooks hung over their heads, keeping the young pups from ever leaving their cave at night. Tales of the giants beasts and their crimes were told to wide eyes and shivering tails. Humans were always brought up in lectures whenever a child was caught doing wrong, sort of like a mythical monster of legend, only this monster was real.

 "Swim too far out and a human will catch you!"

 "Put that hook down before it's owner comes looking for it!"

 "I hear humans look for naughty pups to sell. Shark pups are worth lots of land money on the surface!"

 "Say that one more time and I'll throw you ashore to the humans!"

 "Do you want to become human food?"

 "Never go out at night, or else the land-walkers will come roaring with their boats to find you."

 "Behave or you'll end up like your Uncle Tarren. Don't want to end up dried up and put on display, do you?"

  Zelu's mother meant well, she just wasn't the best at expressing it.

 The nursery knew her as the strictest shark in the Atlantic. Her real name was Lain, eldest of an old family of twelve siblings, but that didn't stop the other children from coming up with all sorts of nicknames.

 The old Mershark knew her children would have to leave the seaweed beds and go off on their own someday, even if dogfish grew slower than the other neighboring sharks. She knew she held the smallest family in the beds, with only three small pups compared to the usual five or six. The fact that two of them kept getting into trouble and starting fights with the other families, while the third refused to talk to anyone who wasn't directly related, didn't help at all.

 Zelu's mother didn't really need a sitter or bedkeeper (young dogfish pups usually did fine alone) but Lain had to hire one anyway. Her children didn't meet the number requirement, but apparently in terms of behavior, she needed an extra set of hands and eyes to 'keep them under control'. So she found a kind young Mershark from the Lemon clan, who went by the name of Kepsy.

 Kepsy watched over the pups while Lain was out hunting or running errands. Zelu and his siblings liked her well enough, she treated them like friends rather than stupid babies (like most bedkeepers) and wasn't too strict when it came to Lain's personal rules. But both she and their mother shared one annoying quirk.

  Kepsy could recite the Rules by heart, and clearly wanted the pups to do so as well. Every morning Lain wasn't around, the bedkeeper had them list the first three once before breakfast and once before bed. Zelu and his little sister Mala hated that part of Kepsy's routine, but the oldest, Cain, didn't seem to mind.

 Cain wasn't much of a speaker. He did things without words or explanation, usually communicating with body language and simple eye movements. He only talked to his family and nobody else, the only exception being Kepsy, and even then she usually just got a few one-word sentences. The other pups in the seaweed beds thought Cain was mute. Zelu's family knew better. He and Mala could tell just what he wanted without him ever opening his mouth. Quiet, cryptic, and observant, that was Cain.

 Once, Zelu asked why he was so dedicated to the Rules. Cain just flattened his fins and pointed out the rip in Kepsy's fin. He made sure Zelu was looking at it, before turning his claw to the long scar that curved from the corner of the sitter's mouth. He did this every time, always the same answer.

 Cain never had to elaborate. Everyone knew what had caused those scars.

  So Zelu knew exactly why the Rules meant so much to everyone. But if he's being completely honest, did it really have to go that far? His siblings didn't have to worry about humans until Lain passed on, when they'd be forced out to make their place in the ocean. Mala could probably take on every fish in the sea and come out on top. Their neighbor, Jessin, always went on about how Cain didn't need to fight anyone to win during combat training. Said he had a 'gift', whatever that meant (Zelu didn't understand it, but he knew better than to press, since Lain got annoyed when it was brought up).

 Zelu, well, he could handle himself just fine, thank you very much. Kepsy said he was always reckless, but everyone knew he was the fastest swimmer and had the ability to use his natural defenses offensively. That was something most Dogfish Mersharks couldn't master. Dogfish spines were meant to be used as a shield rather than a sword, but Zelu's shield held iron barbs and serrated edges. He rivaled Mala in terms of agility and speed, if he did say so himself, and could out-maneuver the fastest sharks in the beds, fitting into places most wouldn't be able to.

 Point is, Zelu could take care of himself. He knew that. The Rules kept Merfolk alive, yes, but did they have to be followed so strictly? There was no room for adventure anywhere. Who cares if he bent them a few times?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Famous last words.

 A small part of Zelu's brain knew he shouldn't have wandered too far from the seaweed nursery, away from the safety of his cave and siblings, just four sun-cycles after his birthnight.

 It knew he should have listened to Mala and Cain's calls for his return, rather than ignore them in favor of possible adventure, leaving while Miss Kepsy's back was turned.

 It knew he shouldn't have gone and explored the brackish beaches and muddy sandbars of the coast, not particularly enjoying the sickly sweet feel of fresh water mixed with salt running over his gills.

 It knew he shouldn't have swam closer to the crab traps that littered the barren sea floor, intrigued by the shiny tags and ropes that attached them to the surface world.

 It knew he shouldn't have tried to help the young Mercrab trapped inside. It knew he should have ignored her barely-masked pleas for rescue.

 That part of his mind knew he shouldn't have trusted her. It knew this, yet the rest of him still went to help, the majority ruling out logic. Zelu'd be lying if he didn't kind of expect her to shove him in to take her place, but the urge to assist a fellow Merfolk overpowered his caution. And after all that, here he was, that small part of his brain shaking its head in clear disappointment.

 The Mercrab grinned evilly at him from her perch on the trap ceiling. Zelu snarled at her, tail lashing in both anger and terror.

"This is your fault, you know." She said, clacking her armored fingers mockingly. "The rules forbid helping trapped Merfolk. But I expect nothing less from a brainless shark pup."

 She spat out the word 'shark' like it was something gross, scrunching up her face at the 'k'. Zelu said nothing. He simply bared his teeth, specially made for crushing and tearing at the shells of crabs and lobster. The Mercrab flinched away. She knew that when he gets older, they'll sharpen, ready to take on jellies, sport fish, and even bigger crustaceans, including Mercrabs.

 If he gets older. That was a huge if and both parties knew it.

"I just wanted to help you," He growled, thrashing his tail against the bars. "Is that really bad? Or do you bottom feeders not understand emotions?"

"My my, so touchy. I wouldn't be that rude to the humans if I were you," The crab pointed up to the rope. "They wait exactly one cycle before pulling up these cages. I'd say you have…."

 She raised a hand to test the currents, loudly tapping the metal wiring with a clawed foot. Zelu winced back with each reverberation, hissing as his fins flattened against his head.

"....thirty minutes left. They always come back when the water picks up. Gosh, I really must be going then."

 Thirty minutes? THIRTY MINUTES? When the water picks up? That....that's almost no time at all!

"W-wait a second! Let me out!" The Mershark suddenly cried, original panic pushing aside his anger. He gripped the twisted wire of his prison so hard, his soft skin threatened to break under pressure. "Y-you don't have to leave me here! I helped you!"

"And let you get revenge? Not a chance. I made my choice. You were dumb enough to break the rules, so just face the consequences." The Mercrab grinned wider at him, climbing off the trap and turning to leave. "Did you forget crabs and dogfish are enemies? I'd say this was stupid, even for you."

"B-but….I saved you! I-I rescued you! You should be thanking me!" He pleaded. "I-I didn't do anything to you! I'm just a pup!"

The Mercrab just shrugged. "Sorry. That's just how things work. Don't want another shark to grow old, do I? The less predators, the better."

 With an enraged yell, Zelu bashed his body against the cage and lunged, shoving his arms through the bars to slash at her with venomous claws.

 "YOU DIRTY-" He cut himself off with a snarl, gnawing on the bars that held him back. "I'LL- I'LL RIP YOUR LEGS OFF AND BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH YOUR OWN LIMBS!! LET ME OUT, DAMMIT!"

 The crab trap rocked violently, kicking up clouds of sand and muck in the Mercrab's face. Some of the other normal crabs were knocked into him, but he didn't care. He gnashed his teeth and flared his fins, as threatening as a ten-year-old shark pup could possibly be. His attacks missed by a hair, but his show of aggression seemed to work, making her back away.

"...Fine. Be mad. Won't help anything. Enjoy your doomed life, little dogfish." She shot him one last (albeit slightly irritated) smirk, before scuttling off to whatever whale carcass she crawled from.

 "GET BACK HERE!" He screamed after her. "GET BACK HERE YOU COWARD!"

  After about two whole minutes of shouting and fighting, Zelu's arms fell limp against the bars as he watched the Mercrab's shell vanish over the ocean dunes, rage settling like the seabed around him. His fins drooped, his spines flattened back into a neutral position, and his grey tail limply dragged against the uneven floor. Panting, the Mershark retracted his limbs and slowly sunk to the bottom of the trap, fingers still gripping the wired bars. Zelu let his forehead hit the wall with a depressing thunk.

  He felt crushed. He felt angry. He felt stupid. He felt, well, he felt humiliated. Mercrabs didn't pride themselves on their manipulation skills, no, they were more famous for being shellheads. Mercrabs weren't smart, they were tough and hard, no room for critical thinking anywhere. So for a shark, one of the strongest and most self-respecting Merfolk in the seas, to be tricked by one? The whole situation felt way more than humiliating, above all else.

 Mala and Cain were right. He never should have explored beyond the seaweed beds. He never should have gone chasing after adventure at such a young age, it had only brought him sorrow. Just like Lain said.

"..bloody traitor…." Zelu muttered to himself, turning his head slightly to shoot a look at his unwitting roommates. "....not you guys though. You seem fine."

 The trapped crabs simply gazed at him and clacked their claws, not a coherent thought crossing their minds.

  Zelu crossed his arms and swiveled to lean against the wall, the back of his head resting against the wire mesh. He looked up at the surface with a bubbly sigh. "Stupid shell-back…who does she think she is, ranting about me breaking the rules..."

 He didn't really know who he was talking to, but whatever. The crabs seemed to be listening a little. One of them, a large blue-shell with the biggest claws of the bunch, reminded Zelu of Cain, just a little. It was the quietest of the bunch. Zelu gave it an upward nod. The crab merely blinked at him, not moving from its stance. The Mershark huffed and turned away. Something about having a crab staring at him felt creepy.

 The crab trap felt far too small. The Mershark shuddered. There were only three normal crabs in with him, and they didn't do anything other than stare off into space, display their claws at each other, or stuff their faces with bait. They kept their distance though, which was a plus. Zelu considered eating one of the crabs, but decided he wasn't hungry. Probably for the best. Who knows how old that mystery meat called 'bait' was.

'Maybe Kepsy will come looking for me. It's way past noon, so Lain should be home by now. She'd break a few rules just to help, right?' Zelu thought, watching the sun rays beam through the water. '….Who am I kidding. Rule breaking is the last thing she'll do.'

 Zelu's mind brought up the faces of his siblings. He considered calling out and making tons of noise, off the slight chance one of them heard his pleas. He wasn't that far away from the seaweed beds. Maybe they'd hear him, if he put in enough effort!

 The Mershark instantly swam up and gripped some loose-ish wire. The crabs stumbled back at the sudden movement. He filled his gills with as much water as possible, ready to scream and rattle until his throat burned and his gills grew weary-

 When a long, dark shadow passed overhead, engulfing the crab trap in murky darkness. Zelu shut his mouth with a click, the air in his gills escaping in a stream of tiny bubbles. His hands felt glued to the thin wire, cutting into his palms from the sheer force he gripped it with. All will to speak died in his throat.

A Crocodile?

Here?

In Gator country?

  How the heck did it get so far from shore? They were notoriously reclusive and never ventured far from home, so seeing one out here in the crab beds made almost no sense at all.

 The croc drifted along, heavy tail swishing from side to side as it lazily circled overhead. It poked its head underwater, long toothy snout sweeping aside murk as it scanned the ocean floor. Sharp reptilian eyes went over Zelu's cage twice, sending claws of ice down his spine.

 Crocodiles didn't usually go after crab traps, right..?

  Eventually, it's gaze stopped on another separate trap, and the massive reptile dived down in an explosion of bubbles, tail pumping to build up speed. It seized the trap in those mighty jaws faster than Zelu could blink, crushing through the thin wire bars without trouble and stirring up a cloud of silt, before swimming back to the surface with its prize. The trap had been reduced to a flattened mess of wires and shells in almost no time at all.

A cracked crab shell drifted past Zelu, spiraling down into the sand.

His eyes followed it.

That had to be a clear warning from the universe. Zelu decided that maybe calling out was a bad idea.

  So instead, he hunkered down in one spot to wait until something happened.

 Occasionally, another crab would wander in to join him. Each time Zelu tried to scare it off, hissing (quietly) and flashing his claws and teeth. And each time, it ignored him in favor of free food. Zelu cursed himself, folding himself back up in the corner as yet another stupid crustacean tumbled in. The empty space shrank with each new addition and he hated it. Sure, he was bigger than them, but not by much.

Thirty minutes, huh?

 Probably more like ten now. There was nothing Zelu could really do at this point other than try to fall asleep, or stay awake until either the crocodile returned for another snack, or the humans came to retrieve their trap. It had been designed to let plenty of crabs in, but none out, creatures like Zelu included. Just by sight alone, he knew escape was pretty much impossible.

 Yes, all the Mershark could do was wait. So he adjusted his tail, laid his head down on the stiff metal floor, and prayed to the Great Megalo for a somewhat peaceful sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Zelu awoke to the sound of frantic rattling and squeaking. He ignored it at first, keeping his eyes firmly pressed shut, but then the ground seemed to jerk upward. He bounced up from his coiled position, spines flared and eyes wild. Did the croc find his prison? Was another Merfolk trying to break in? Did the humans return? Was someone trying to help him out?

 The cage jumped again, but didn't float back down this time. Zelu looked up at the ceiling, where the once lax rope now stood taut and firm, and then down at the rapidly shrinking seabed. Well, at least he got one out of four guesses.

 The crab trap jerkily burst from the surface and Zelu instinctively tried to dive back down. The bars stopped him though, and he was forced to watch the distance between him and the cool, comforting sea grow with each tug of the rope. The crabs scurried about like panicked minnows, occasionally running over Zelu's tail with their sharp feet.

 "C'mon Dale, get those traps up already! We left 'em out long enough!" A booming voice shouted from above, making Zelu's heart jump into his throat.

 "I am pulling them up! Gimmie a minute, this one's heavier than the last one!" A second, even louder voice shouted back. "I think we got a good haul today, eh?"

 The trap lurched upward, swinging dizzily from side to side as the outline of a massive, burly figure in a brown coat heaved it from the water. Zelu caught sight of a strange white contraption, sleek and intimidating. Like the skeleton of a whale, only more smooth and pointy. Kepsy talked about humans having things called 'boats' to travel over water. This, Zelu decided, had to be one.

 At first, he felt pretty excited. He'd never seen a human boat before. But then the humans driving it yelled to each other again, and he was suddenly reminded why this boat was there in the first place.

The crab trap bumped against the hull, prompting a squeak of terror from Zelu, who very quickly clapped his hands over his mouth. Pulled over the side rather jarringly, the Mershark watched as the human seized the trap's roof with a massive gloved hand, pulled open a hidden door Zelu never knew existed, and promptly emptied it into a grimy bucket without a second glance.

  Zelu tumbled out headfirst, landing among a squirming heap of even more crabs, who didn't really look as terrified as he did. How they could be less than mildly irritated about this was beyond him. The bucket felt bigger than the maw of a Megamouth, hard and spiky with a floor that moved and shifted, and massive white walls slicked with seawater.

 "How many d'you reckon we got today? Fifteen?" The burly human said to its companion.

 Trembling, the Mershark looked up as the second gigantic shadow of the day fell over his newfound prison. A face big enough to blot out the sun stared at him, looming over it's catch with mild interest. The light behind it blurred most of the human's features, but he caught a scruffy-looking beard and squared glasses, which the giant raised to its forehead.

 "Well I'll be…" The human murmured, sharp, chocolate eyes widening in apparent shock. "Ain't you the strangest little thing..."

 Zelu gave a strangled hiss in response, flashing his ear and elbow spines threateningly. The beastly thing didn't even flinch. In fact, it actually chuckled.

"Feisty too! Oi Redmond, getcher lazy arse over here!" The human called, beckoning for it's companion with the massive sweep of an arm. "We got ourselves a weird lil stowaway!"

 Zelu flinched at the sudden movement, biting back gasps as his gills struggled to reap oxygen from the air. It wasn't immediately life-threatening, but he needed to get back to water. His gills could only absorb so much water from the humidity. He had about thirty minutes tops before he started to actually suffocate.

 The human leaned in toward the bucket flashing flat white teeth, each one bigger than the Mershark's hand. It could very easily bite him in half, like he was nothing more than a twig instead of a living creature that should be feared. Zelu cowered away, curling his tail inward, trying to keep his body as low, small and spiky as he could get. The crabs below didn't help, constantly shifting and clacking against one another, occasionally pushing him closer to the giant above. He bit back a pained yelp as one managed to clamp down on his tail fin.

"What's it this time? You pick up some shiny junk again?" A second voice practically shrieked from far off to his right. Zelu grimaced, ears flattening against his head at the noise. "I'm telling you, I won't make any more stops at the pawn shop."

 Another sunfish-sized head came into view, this time with a clean face and soggy red hair pulled back in a ponytail. A second pair of hollow eyes, this time seaweed green, stared right through him. One giant was more than enough, but two? The Mershark swallowed the sobs that threatened to creep up his throat. He could practically feel his chances of escape swirl down the drain with each passing minute. They could do whatever they wanted and receive little resistance. Not even Mala could fight out of this one.

"...good lord." The new human breathed, leaning in far too close for Zelu's comfort. He dared a swipe at its nose, but the human pulled back before he could make contact. They both snickered in amusement.

"Ain't it cool?" The bearded one said happily. "Crabs be damned, I call first dibs!"

"D-Dale hold on, we don't have any idea what this thing is! You can't just call dibs on it!" Ponytail replied, looking up at the other. "It could be venomous or something! Look at those spikes!"

"Venomous-Shmenomous, I think it's cool as hell!" Beard crossed it's arms with a pout, which quickly turned to vicious glee. "Where d'you think it came from, eh? New discovery?"

 Zelu pressed his webbed hands to ears in a feeble attempt to block out all the chatter. His captors' booming voices just blended together into one loud roar. His hears rang painfully, each massive sound clanging off the bucket walls like an energized ping-pong ball. As much as it hurt, he had to focus. Find an escape.

  His tail-fin twitched from side to side anxiously as the Mershark scanned the walls of the bucket, searching for anything that would aid his escape. A crack, a small hole, hell even a piece of stray seaweed would do. The crabs around him piled on top of each other, trying to escape with no sense of teamwork. One would almost make it out, only for another to seize it by the leg and drag them both back down, rinse and repeat. Stupid dull creatures. Perhaps he could use them to climb out? While the human's backs were turned?

"I'm sure it ain't venomous, Red. Watch this!"

 Something above him moved, and Zelu looked up to see a massive hand reaching down into the grimy bucket. He shrieked in terror, twisting out of the way just in time for the hand to close around a crab instead, which promptly nipped at fingers almost as long as his tail. The owner swore loudly, waving its hand to shake off the little crustacean. It's companion laughed.

"No offense, but watching you get bit by crabs isn't that impressive."

"Ha, ha." The human said sarcastically, before grabbing at the Mershark again. This time with both hands.

 Despite his best efforts to twist, slash, and dodge, the fingers eventually closed roughly around his trembling form, one set gloved, the other bare. The instant he was grabbed, Zelu was reminded just how small he was compared to these monsters. He was just barely bigger than the crabs, and very easily crushable. There was little the Mershark could do to prevent those gigantic hands from seizing him like some prized salmon and hoisting him up into the air.

 The Mershark cried out pitifully, tears stabbing at his eyes as he watched the bucket fall away. For a moment, he found himself dangled upside down, two of the human's fingers tightly pinching his tail. Shot with a sudden rush of adrenaline, Zelu snarled and thrashed, struggling like a rabid animal, hoping his claws would land on something. The human laughed, before carefully bringing up its other hand to stop his attacks.

 After a moment of uncomfortable shifting and lots of struggling, it got him stuck in a crushing fist, arms pinned to his sides, rendering the Mershark's prime defenses useless. Zelu snapped his head around, forced to look up at his captors with burning eyes. He could barely breathe out of water and the extra pressure from those god-awful hands did nothing to help.

"Got some fight in ya, huh? Ha!" The human boomed, peering at Zelu with an eye almost bigger than his head. "If ya were bigger, I 'spect I'd be flat out on the deck, aye? Lil' rough-skin?"

"Dale, don't tease it."

 The Mershark growled at him and snapped his teeth, but it was more out of sheer terror than anger. The human smirked at it's companion, who leaned in to get a better look. It grabbed at the back of Zelu's head with two fingers, forcing the young pup to look it right in those awful, downright predatory eyes. Just the slightest movement and his head would be ripped from his shoulders. A tear threatened to slip out. Zelu just barely managed to keep it in.

"I don't think I've ever seen something like this in all my years on the water. Could it be a mermaid?"

 The bearded human shrugged, jostling it's prisoner a little. "Mermaids are girls, Red. This one looks like a dude. And I don' think mermaids are this tiny."

 "What makes you think it's not a girl?"

 "Well it's got that short hair, an' it tried to bite me earlier…"

 "Girls do that stuff too, Dale."

 Zelu shook horribly while the giants talked among themselves, fins angled down in clear discomfort. His heart threatened to burst from his ribcage and flop out onto the deck. His gills screamed in starvation, begging for more water to fill them. His tail twitched weakly, blood struggling to circulate under immense pressure. Everything in his body wanted the same thing, and that was to get free or die trying. Zelu didn't really like that last part.

 "D'you think he's cold? Thing's shakin like a leaf."

 "It's probably not used to open air. Ignore it."

 Yeah right, it was the air that made his whole body vibrate like a pre-eruption volcano. Zelu mentally berated himself for being so stupid and breaking the rules, blinking rapidly. He would not cry, no sir, absolutely not.

 But it wasn't like there was no reason to. Only seven years old, just turned, and here he sat. Prisoner to these beasts, struggling for air with no foreseeable way out. Just perfect.

"Though, I wouldn't call it half human. Humanoid, maybe, but not fully half. It's got more of a snout than a nose, see? And the eyes have green stuff instead of white."

 The rough hands around him tightened as the humans altered their grip.

 "It looks pretty young…" Ponytail commented, eyes roaming his exposed belly. Zelu swallowed dryly, trying to ignore the spotty, light-headed feeling that started to overcome him. "I think whatever this thing is, it'll fetch us a hefty price. Much more than some silly old blue crabs."

 The bearded one nodded eagerly, messing around with Zelu's tail. "Them marine biology people would go nuts."

 It released his tail, bringing the hand to poke at his head again. "Hey, d'you think it's got proper sharks' teeth or humanish ones? Or a mixture of both?"

 Zelu no longer thought clearly at this point. Whether it was from fear, lack of breathable oxygen, or just plain instincts, he didn't know. He only saw the massive (ungloved) finger coming directly at his face, inching forward slowly and tauntingly. Like a barracuda preparing to strike. His mind played out scenes of bloody carnage, one after the other.

 Knives slicing down through his stomach, pins holding his guts open, a shock collar around his neck, tags stabbed through his fins, hands passing him around like an expensive fruit, a lonely tank on display in front of hundreds of other humans, a blade coming down to separate his tail from his body, a massive boot smashing him into a bloody stain, his family finding his crushed, discarded skeleton in the crab fields-

 It was all too much.

 Shaking worse than a sea lily caught in a whirlpool, Zelu lunged forward as far as he could go.

"MOTHERF-" The bearded human roared, dropping its prize as tiny, hooked teeth sunk into the flesh of its pointer finger.

 It jumped and flailed like a demented chicken, shouting countless human swears and curses as it tried to shake off the frightened Mershark. Zelu just held on best he could, now-freed venomous claws dug deep into leathery skin, wind howling in his ears. He could hear shrieks of laughter from the ponytail human, who didn't do much to help it's comrade.

He was just a pup though. And his small teeth, combined with the sheer force of being whipped around like a ragdoll at high speed, by a giant, made sure he couldn't hold on forever.

 So with one powerful flick, his teeth tore through the skin, disgusting metallic blood oozed into his mouth, his claws ripped free, and Zelu went flying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The first thing Zelu felt when he woke was pain. Just pure, throbbing, dull pain. Nothing different whatsoever. His head felt like it was full of watery mud, sloshing about every time he shifted. He'd like to stay lying down right here, thanks. If he didn't move it wouldn't hurt so much.

 But that's not how the world works, so resting out here in the open wasn't an option.

 Zelu did take a few more minutes to relax though. He couldn't remember much from what happened before, but the clean saltwater that flowed freely over his gills definitely helped. Much more soothing than the brackish mix he'd been stuck in before. The Mershark inhaled slowly, relishing in the familiar freshness. The mud in his head dried a little with each deep breath, clearing out the condensation.

  Eventually, Zelu felt comfortable enough to peel open his eyes, only to shut them immediately. Everything was so bright. Questions came to mind pretty quickly, since the beds were never that bright. Did he drift off into the middle of the atlantic? Was he in a coral reef or something? Did Kepsy find him? Was he in Lemon shark territory?

 Holding up a webbed hand, Zelu cracked open his eyes again, squinting in the harsh sunlight. It wasn't all the way around him, just beaming from a large half-circle directly in front of his face, but it was still overwhelming to look at. The water here was so clear. It even held a kind of blue tinge to it, very different from the seaweed beds' usual muted greens. This definitely looked like a reef, only less crowded. He raised his head and blinked to get used to the glare. After a second, his vision cleared a little, and he moved his hands away to stare at his surroundings.

 A small hotdog-shaped fish with brown speckles and bulging eyes stared back at him. Zelu blinked. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't that. The fish opened and closed its mouth. Then with the flick of an elongated tail, the small fish swam off, stopping a small distance away to nibble at some of the algae that coated the floor.

 A blenny, Zelu thought to himself. Algae eaters. Not very filling.

 Blennies were pretty common in reefs. Pushing himself up on his arms, Zelu winced when his sore elbows rolled over something hard, bending his spines in the wrong direction. The ground felt surprisingly rocky. He looked down to see the floor covered in oddly-colored pebbles. He himself was lying on his stomach in a bed of them. Moving them aside, the pebbles revealed a normal layer of white sand. A thin layer of weird rainbow pebbles over stupidly clean sand? Odd. He expected just sand and mud.

  Zelu moved to float up and swim off, maybe find another Merfolk and ask some questions, only for his head to collide with something hard. Rubbing his forehead, he looked up to see a roof of weird blue stone. Looking around further, Zelu noticed that he was in a small shallow cave. It was just big enough for a family of three Merfolk, completely round like an overturned bowl. Shell-patterned imprints decorated the inside, and his ears just now picked up an odd low hum coming from somewhere above. It vibrated and surrounded him, penetrating his very being with a tone he could barely hear. A small tendril of dread curled around his heart. His shelter looked, sounded, and felt so…artificial.

"Ke….Miss Kepsy? Mother?" He called out, drifting outside the cave mouth. He winced at how weak and shaky his voice sounded. For some strange reason, talking hurt. "Cain? Mala? A-are you guys there?"

 While his eyes struggled to adjust to the light change, Zelu absentmindedly ran a finger over his palm, tracing the lines until it hit something weird. A rough, raw imprint, spreading horizontally through both palms, cutting small rips into the webbing stretched between his fingers. Confused, Zelu held up his hands in front of his face.

 When the heck did I hurt my hands?

 He looked at them for a solid minute, before everything came flooding back.

 The memories. All of them. The memories of Mala's scolding and Cain's disapproving look. The memories of the crab trap and the traitor Mercrab, her sneering grin burning into his eyes. The memories of the thin wire bars, cutting into his palms while he watched a crocodile circle overhead. The memories of the giant humans and the hands around him, crushing and squeezing his life away. Memories of the booming voices and his gills screaming for water, something hard colliding with his head. Memories of the blood in his mouth and sand in his throat, scratching and ripping open his flesh. Very, very faint memories of steamy breath on his face and two freaking eyes just staring at him-

  Zelu had to move. He couldn't stay here, no matter how much his aching muscles protested. With an aggressive flick of a tail, he shot out of the tiny cave, out into open water. The light burned his eyes, hidden wounds stung, and his head hurt worse than before, but he didn't care. Colorful plants and weird statues flew past his line of sight, melding into a multicolored blur. Zelu just kept swimming. He needed to find his mother, he needed to warn his siblings, he had to get back home before something bad happens to them-

 ...only for an invisible barrier to slam right into his face with an awful crunch, stopping the frightened Mershark dead in his tracks.

 "SHIT-"

  Zelu's hands came up to clutch his face, fresh agony blossoming from his nose. It didn't feel broken and there wasn't any blood, but damn the seven seas it hurt. He drifted away from the barrier, almost tearful green eyes frantically flicking around. What did he just run into? Did something graze him and swim off?

 Zelu reached out a hand, feeling the water for whatever stopped his flight. His claws met an invisible wall, and once the shock cleared from his vision, the Mershark noticed a slight smudge where his face made contact. What was this thing? Glass? He spun around, still clutching his nose. The light no longer blinded him as harshly, giving the Mershark a good view of his surroundings.

  Where the heck am I?

 To his left, a white and yellow Butterfly fish gave him an irritated look from its perch under a rocky, red arch. The Blenny from before continued it's algae purge, pushing past Zelu without a care in the world. Like he, a clear predator, didn't exist. Above his weird blue cave, two Clownfish peeked out at the new visitor from a porous rock formation. Red and green plants sat suspended in the water, but did not move with the current.

Actually, Zelu couldn't even feel a current. The water felt eerily still.

 A weird silly-looking great-white shark statue decorated the pebble bed, accompanied by what looked like an anchor and a gold-toothed skull. The humming source, which sat near the surface, turned out to be a strange waterfall-making machine that churned up the water for no clear reason.

 This wasn't a reef. Not a branch of coral in sight.

 Zelu could feel his spines raise in alarm. Now that he could see better, the Mershark noticed that there was not just one glass barrier, but four. Four massive see-through walls, trapping him in a rectangular box with four other fish. Above, a big black lid shut them all in, weird blue-tinged light tubes casting a soft glow over everything underneath.

 Through the glass, Zelu could see a room. Only this room held weird furniture and was hundreds of times bigger than his own den. One glass-filled window on each wall, a pair of simple desks (one in front and the other set on his left side), an ugly red-white flower patterned carpet spread out over the floor, and a small closed doorway set to his far right. For a room, it looked pretty small and empty, lots of open space in the middle, punctuated only by a scattering of strange, four-legged table-things with a tall plank of wood stuck up on only one side. The thing Zelu was currently stuck in sat atop another desk, pushed up against the wall so he could only look at things directly in front of him.

  He…he was trapped.

  No Cain, no Mala, no Miss Kepsy, no Mother. Not even a crab from before. He was trapped, all on his own.

  Zelu's trembling hands fell from his face. His fins twitched erratically as his mouth opened and closed like a dying fish, inhaling almost way too much water for his gills to process. The Mershark ran his hands over his face, pulling at his hair in panic. The pain in his skin came crawling back in the thousands, the adrenaline rush from before having petered out. The ghosts of many sand particles scratched and tore through his gills and throat. A sharp copper tang itched at his tongue.

  Everything felt so sore and achy. His head offered a startlingly good impression of a sinkhole caving in. Stinging wounds lined his torso and tail like Tiger shark stripes, invisible, but still there. Overall, he just felt gross. He felt violated, he felt exposed, for Megalo's sake he felt half dead.

 And to top it all off, Zelu was trapped. The humans, they had dragged him from the sea, tortured him, grabbed at his body, thrown him to the land, and stuck him in this cage. In this horrible tank, put on display for all to see. He would be kept as a pet or studied. Hell, he might even be cooked and eaten. Nothing more than extra calories, fried and seasoned with some random assortment of vegetables. He truly had no idea what humans really did and didn't do, but Zelu knew what humans did do to most of the things they stole from the sea. He'd heard all the stories, told to him by wide-eyed Merfolk riddled with scars.

 Unfortunately, stuck in the midst of his panicking overactive imagination, Zelu failed to hear the rhythmic booming of giant footsteps coming his way. He didn't see the doorway open and close with a muted 'click'. He didn't even notice the approaching human, far too absorbed in his own thoughts, until it leaned down to peer through the smudged glass, burning hollow eyes staring at the Mershark like a cut of fresh meat. He turned his head, ready to bolt somewhere and hide, only to lock eyes with a freaking giant of all things.

 Struck with a crippling sense of Déjà Vu, Zelu's body froze up against his will. His breath hitched and his skin went completely numb. He swore the glass walls started shaking by themselves.

 For several long minutes, Zelu and the human studied each other, Zelu out of shot-up terror, the human in barely concealed wonder. This human looked very odd compared to the other two who'd stolen and maimed him. It had pure-white hair that stuck to its head like a pulled-apart cotton ball, and bone-pale skin smeared with some weird white ointment. Round glasses sat upon a bandaged nose, magnifying them to a point where it reminded Zelu of the eyes of a swordfish. Its irises looked like great blue fish scales, glinting coldly in the flickering glow of the tank, the black void in the center shrinking and growing with changes in light. The worst part was its hands. Two huge hands made for grabbing and crushing, resting almost mockingly on the table in front of the tank. The human very suddenly bared its flat, spine-snapping teeth, lips twitching upward in a terrifying grin.

 "H-Hey there, little buddy."

 The words sounded slightly muffled through the water, but the human's voice was loud enough for anyone to understand. Zelu flinched away at the noise, mouth moving wordlessly. The human tilted its head, some sick impersonation of sympathy spreading over it's massive face.

 "O-oh, right. Sorry." It whispered, holding up a hand to its mouth in what Zelu knew was mock embarrassment. "I must be really loud to you, huh?"

 No response from the Mershark. Not that he could say anything. Zelu felt completely paralyzed. That pesky adrenaline returned, granting him the ability to hear every tiny noise around him; The humming from the tank, the small swirling swishes of water being shifted, the giant monster's heavy, clearly excited heartbeat thrumming through the table, the sound of massive lungs sucking in and expelling gallons of air….it all felt a billion times louder. Too bad all those heightened senses would go to waste.

 "S-so um, I think introductions are in order, yeah?" The human said quietly. "M-my name's Phelix. With a P-H instead of an F. I sort of...rescued you? From the b-beach?"

'Phelix' offered a small, embarrassed smile. Or was it a sneer? Zelu couldn't tell.

"I-I mean, I found you half-stuck in the sand looking like you just went through a hurricane, so um...I'm sorry if you don't like touching, but I uh...kind of had to d-dig you up and carry you back here..."

 Once again, the Mershark found he couldn't respond. His mouth just gaped uselessly, shivering body making small ripples in the water above him. The human touched him? It picked him up? And probably did all sorts of unspeakable things? Without Zelu knowing?

Spotting the devastated look on its captive's face, 'Phelix' frowned.

 "L-Look, I apologized, right? A-And I fixed you up too!" It pointed a massive finger at Zelu's chest. The Mershark's eyes flicked down, hands coming up to feel what he thought was going to be a collar or vest, something put on him to restrain his movements, but instead he touched a thin layer of sea-soaked softness. His claws ran over long strips of cloth, wrapped around him from head to tail.

'Are these…bandages?' He thought, tugging at one of the looser strips. 'What the hell…'

The white cloth wrapped tightly around his chest, around his arms, and around parts of his tail, some spots holding little blotches of crimson. The whole ordeal was confusing, to say the least. But Zelu didn't let his guard down just yet. The bandages could be part of a larger scheme, one step of many.

"W-We should be okay now, right? You have a name, little buddy?"

 Zelu blinked at it, eyes going back to the original size of wide and terrified. His spines instinctively flared up as if challenging the giant to make a move.

 "Okay, you d-don't want to tell me, that's fine... What about a nickname? C-Can I call you something other than fish-boy?" The giant paused. "...Can...can you even understand me?"

 Of course he could understand, Zelu wasn't stupid. Human languages and Merfolk languages were mostly one and the same, outside of the deep waters. Deepwater Merfolk talked in light flashes, hand signs, and click/growl/warble combos, if he remembered anything from Kepsy's lessons. He just didn't feel like letting the human know any of that.

 "...okay, probably a no on that….I'll keep calling you little b-buddy for now. What about S-Spike though? For a nickname? B-Because of all those spikes." The human gave a short laugh, loud vibrations shaking the tank violently. Well not really, but it certainly felt like it. "Nah, that's a horrible n-nickname…what about....Urchin?"

 Zelu let out a pained wheeze, ears drooping. He considered giving the human his name just so it wouldn't call him something dreadful. Anything's better than a horrible pet name. He ended up shoving that train of thought off the rails before it left the station.

 What if names held some sort of power on the surface land, and giving it to one would give the human complete control? Not like Zelu had control over anything at the moment, but he didn't feel like taking that chance. So he made the decision to remain frozen in the water. Maybe humans could only see things that moved.

"Augh….p-please don't give me that look. You don't have to be afraid, little b-buddy! I just want t-to help you."

 Help him? How? Zelu didn't need help, he was perfectly fine, thank you very much. He knew this human was obviously lying in order to make him stick around for whatever it had planned. He wasn't going to fall for that trick.

 "...a-and before you start shouting about how you d-d-don't need help, lemme tell you this. I found you almost fifteen feet away from the water. You were covered in bruises and sand, and you were choking on your own b-blood." The human leaned back, crossing its arms with a fake-worried frown.

"S-so as much as I hate to say this, you aren't le-leaving until I'm sure you're a h-hundred percent okay."

Something inside Zelu snapped.

 With a pathetic squeal, the Mershark shot across the tank and dove right back into his tiny cave, leaving nothing but bubbles in his wake. He ignored the burning pain that spread over his torso and tail like a rash. That could be dealt with later.

 Heaving with barely-hidden sobs, the Mershark hunkered down in the back of the blue-rock cave, the salt from his tears mixing with the water around him. The human had practically spelled out his death. He was stuck here under the ruse that he was injured, which to be fair, was kind of slightly true, but who gave a shit?

 His eyes couldn't really focus anymore and his body hurt so much. The bandages weighed hundreds of pounds against his skin, stinging when he tried to pull them off, wisps of blood swirling out when his open wounds lost their wrappings. His head hurt, his tail hurt, his eyes hurt, his arms hurt, his gills hurt, heck everything hurt and he hated it.

 So much for not crying…

 The human merely stood up and moved around to stare at him again, head tilted in confusion and disappointment, this time from the square end of the glass.

"...dammit….." He heard the human mutter, pinching the bridge of its nose under its glasses. ".... amazing j-job, Phelix….you m-made things s-so much better…..jesus christ...."

 Oh Megalo, he'd made it mad. It could reach in at any moment and pluck him from the water like a dead goldfish. And he (probably) wouldn't be able to do a thing. Nowhere to run and very few places to hide. He pushed the pebbles underneath him aside, making a small circle of sand for him to lie in.

 Zelu curled his body in a tight U-shape, chest to the floor, hands planted firmly in the sand, elbows splayed out to set his venomous spines in a clear display of angry defiance. His fins pressed themselves flat against his head, the smaller spines above them poking up like antennae. Zelu bared his teeth and snarled as loud as he could, prompting his captor to glance up.

 If the human wanted it's pet to cooperate, it'd have to drag him out itself. And Zelu wasn't going without a fight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Except the anticipated 'fight' never came.

 After the initial first contact, which Zelu now knew took place in the middle of the night, nothing happened. No threats, no extra humans with blades or nets, no hands trying to grab at him. Zelu actually found himself regretting his stubbornness, for Meg's sake.

 After two days without danger, the cave had started to feel cramped and dull. Zelu fidgeted constantly, moving, stacking and rearranging the pebbles around his 'kill circle'. He doodled in the sand. The humming of the tank became oddly soothing over time, as weird as that sounded. His fish neighbors never bothered him, though the clownfish sometimes came around for a visit, only to find themselves driven away by loud growling. Through it all, Zelu almost never left his spot.

  As for the human…

  The human didn't act at all like he expected. It made no move whatsoever to grab him or drag him out of the tiny cave. It didn't even stick a hand in the water. It just….watched him. And existed near him, sometimes staring at a strange silver rectangle, sometimes just sitting around or writing on a weird white sheet. This went on for several sun cycles, end to end.

 Occasionally 'Phelix' would disappear, leaving the Mershark all on his own. Almost like clockwork it'd leave with a simple 'goodbye' to him, and then come back hours later to announce it's return, before vanishing into a separate room. Zelu took that time to wander around the tank and look for a plausible escape route. He never found anything of use.

  Sometimes the human never left. Sometimes it just walked around the house, talking absentmindedly about whatever it was doing at the moment. The Mershark never left his hiding spot during this time. He was far too worried about what would happen if he did that. Although when the human wasn't walking around or writing or leaving to do whatever, it did the strangest things.

  Instead of interrogating or torturing him like he expected, 'Phelix' would try to make conversation, even if it was met with complete silence every time. It would talk about what happened during its day. It would talk about random human things like 'horror movies' and 'anime', whatever those were. Sometimes the conversation went directly at Zelu himself, questions about who he was, where he came from, how was he doing, those kinds of things. Other times the topic of discussion went to something completely random.

 "I found a c-cool rock today! It looked like a rainbow, so I thought you'd find it p-pretty!"

 "Do you eat seaweed or just meat? My p-parents always said seaweed was like, a 'superfood', or something along those lines."

 "Are there more of you in the river? You d-don't have to answer, I'm just curious!"

 "I've always w-wondered….how do magnets work?"

 "Those spines look s-super sharp for a shark. Are you a dogfish? I read somewhere that there's a kind of d-dogfish with spines."

 "My sister Sara gave me a call yesterday. She's having t-trouble with finals again, i-if you know what those are. Might c-come around sometime."

 "You should eat what I g-give you. Going that long without food can't b-be good for someone of your size-"

 "I really like plants. They aren't l-loud and can't judge you, y'know? Super chill when you need them to be. You k-kinda remind me of a plant sometimes, minus the no-judging part."

  Zelu never answered, though he did react to some things by narrowing his eyes or blowing bubbles at the right times. He made sure it seemed entirely random so the human never knew he could understand what it said. Once, it offered to change his bandages, but Zelu shut that down with an angry hiss. Surprisingly, the human didn't press any further than that, even though it was clear the greying cloth was starting to fall away.

  After their one-sided chat, the human would drop in some chunk of meat or fish alongside a farewell. Zelu never touched them. He wasn't some pet, he didn't want to be treated and fed like one, ignoring how his outraged stomach protested. Even if they weren't poisoned or drugged, he didn't trust anything the human gave him. He made the decision to just stay put. He could survive on stored fat and stored fat alone, even if he didn't eat for many, many sun cycles.

 The untouched food started to pile up and rot as the nights passed. The neighboring fish sometimes pecked at it, but their efforts barely made a dent.

 The whole time, his human captor kept up the 'nervous' charade, always stuttering or apologizing about something. It never raised its voice, nor did it stomp around like giants were supposed to. In fact, whenever it entered the room, it slowed down and lowered it's tone drastically.

 Zelu despised those actions. All that tip-toeing and fake-casualty made him want to grow fifteen sizes and punch the damn thing right in the face. It treated him like some fragile seashell instead of a tough-as-nails shark. He wouldn't break if the giant breathed wrong, so why couldn't it stop acting like he would? The Mershark actually found himself constantly hoping for the other shoe to drop, but it never came. The darn thing had been falling for about six sun-cycles now, and he hated it. Any longer and Zelu'd end up forcing it down.

 Today was different.

 After returning from many hours of vanishment, 'Phelix' sat down in front of the tank with a less than pleased expression on its face. It stared at the glass for a few minutes, eyes hard, not uttering a single weird question or odd attempt at conversation.

 The Mershark tensed up, spines flared, eyes wide and daring. His mind rang with more-than-frantic alarm bells.

  Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

 He quietly stifled a roar from his stomach, keeping his head low. Did he do something to upset it? Oh Meg it was probably the conversations, he should have tried to respond to those...

The human offered no more than an exasperated sigh. Zelu flinched, expecting an attack, but it simply took off its glasses to rub at its eyes. He just now noticed that it was wearing rubber gloves.

 "L-Look, I didn't want t-to bring this up, but…" 'Phelix' leaned forward, clasping its hands in front of its face. Its gaze flicked over to stare directly into the blue cave, burning glacier eyes cutting through the water. Zelu shrank away at the sudden attention. "You haven't been eating. You d-didn't eat anything I g-gave you, and I-It's….it's been almost a week since I f-found you!"

 "You haven't even l-left that cave! Little buddy, I can't j-just...let you s-starve yourself like that..!" It brought a gloved hand up to the tank, showing the Mershark a rough cube of raw tuna pinched between it's fingers. "Listen, I've worked with s-sea creatures before.….what I'm a-asking is....p-please don't get mad at me for this."

 'Phelix' rolled up it's sleeves with a queasy look on its face. Zelu didn't like at all where this was going.

 With one swift motion, the human flipped up the aquarium lid and lowered a gloved hand into the water, creeping slowly toward the Mershark's shelter. Zelu squeaked in terror, pushing himself as far away as possible. His back hit the fake-rock wall and he pressed himself into it, willing the solid surface to just open up and absorb him.

  The shoe had finally hit the ground and the impact split open the earth beneath it. He'd done something wrong. He didn't eat what he was given. He didn't speak when spoken to. His human captor had finally decided to get rid of its defective pet. He'd be eaten, sold, or simply crushed into a bloody pulp.

  There is nothing you can do.

  Firm fingers wrapped around him like the tentacles of a giant squid, pulling Zelu to its beak, ready to snap him in two. The Mershark was too weak to properly fight back, but he still struggled hopelessly against the human's hold. He raked his claws over the hand, biting and beating it as hard as he could.

 It didn't even make a dent.

 There was no skin to slice, no flesh to bite and claw. Just solid rubber armor.

 You are going to die.

 "I-I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-'' The giant murmured as Zelu's fighting went from frantic to downright pitiful. "It's okay, j-just calm down. I'm not going to h-hurt you..."

 It pulled the Mershark from the blue-shelled cave. The other fish in the tank hid behind whatever was closest. Zelu felt his vision go spotty. Everything was too bright and loud, it made his head hurt bad. He'd give anything to go back to his dark cave where he was left alone.

 But like usual, Zelu didn't have much of a choice. The hand-prison stopped just under the surface of the water, the human's second hand coming in to presumably twist his head from his shoulders. The Mershark cried out and jerked his shoulders violently in a weak attempt to escape. He snapped his teeth at the approaching digits. He'd bite a thousand fingers to get free, no matter what consequences follow.

  "Oh geez, li-little buddy it's okay! I-I'm seriously not g-gonna hurt you! Really!" The human turned it's free hand palm-up, showing the chunk of tuna. "I-I just want to make sure you eat something, that's all! P-please calm down! You're perfectly safe!"

  Zelu snapped his head around, shooting 'Phelix' a disbelieving glare. He immediately regretted it when his head throbbed even more painfully at the sudden motion. Pinching the tuna in two fingers, the human held it in front of the Mershark's face.

 "C-c'mon, I need you to eat. I d-don't even know how you're even alive at this point." 'Phelix' replied, pushing the fish closer to his face for emphasis. "I swear I-It's not poisoned or anything. I read that d-dogfish like tuna, so this shouldn't be a preference thing."

 Zelu made sure his mouth stayed shut, lips firmly pressed together in a quivering line. He shook his head in a violent 'no', eyes squeezed shut, trying to ignore the pain and lightheadedness that came with. He could feel soggy fish bump against his face. The Mershark avoided it like a fussy toddler refusing dinner. He couldn't eat from a human's hand no matter how starved he was. His pride wouldn't be able to survive such a blow.

"C-c'mon, please work with me…." The human muttered in a pleading voice. "I-I really, really don't w-want to force y-you more than I am n-now! P-please, just-"

 The tuna bumped against his face again, with a little more force. Zelu snarled and snapped at the hand behind it. "-work with me?"

 The hand surrounding the Mershark started to shake. The tuna stopped assaulting his face, but it's scent still lingered in the water. Zelu snorted, fully prepared to try and fight his way out, but his own body said otherwise. His stomach cursed him for refusing such easy food, making sure the next hungry growl came with a full-body ache as punishment. Zelu pressed his heated face into the giant's rubber thumb, biting back horrible groans of agony as he continued to shake his head. He didn't even know who or what he was refusing anymore. His fins and shoulders twitched and shuddered, betraying the clear burning pain that festered in his starving gut.

 You know what.

 Zelu raised his head slightly.

 Screw the rules.

 Screw the rules. He needed food. He needed that tuna. Humans and pride be damned, he needed something.

 The human wasn't crushing him, and it kept saying it wasn't going to hurt him….so perhaps…for once, it was safe..? That reasoning went against everything Zelu had been taught, but it was clear that if he didn't accept the giant's offer, it'd probably start using real force...

 Zelu cracked open an eye, turning his cheek to the rubber floor. The free hand was withdrawing from the aquarium, taking the slightly soggy meat with it.

 "WAIT!" The Mershark cried suddenly, head snapping to the side. His rubber prison flinched at the outburst, squeezing Zelu just a little too tight for a split second. "ST-STOP! I-I'LL EAT IT! J-JUST-"

 Zelu's voice dissolved into a harsh sob, hands clenching into fists as he turned to face the human that called itself Phelix, giving it a one-eyed glare that admittedly looked more like a leaky stare.

 The human looked….well, to be blunt, it looked awful. Its face was twisted in a pained grimace, head leaning away from the aquarium like holding a five-inch Merfolk pup hostage was the worst possible thing in the world. Heck, 'Phelix' looked on the verge of crying, fat tears hanging on by a thread behind those round glasses. It was incredibly surreal, to see such a giant apex predator so distressed.

 Zelu swallowed. As horrible as it looked, he'd cut himself off and the human was clearly expecting an answer, lest he make it angry. Filling his gills with fresher water, he gave 'Phelix' a pointed glare, trying incredibly hard to keep eye contact without screaming. "...p-please let me go. Please."

 The human did nothing for a moment, then nodded without a word. The gloved fingers opened and pulled back, releasing the Mershark into open water. Zelu frantically patted himself down to make sure nothing was broken, trying to ignore the sick feeling that washed over when his claws grazed over his well-defined ribs. Even under the wrappings he was clearly  malnourished. Zelu found nothing new and exhaled some bubbles in a sigh of relief, quietly cursing his own stubbornness.

 The exposed ribs and burning pain that came with his hunger wasn't the worst part. The worst part, well, it was the fact that the human had listened to Zelu. It made absolutely no sense. Predators don't listen to their prey, he knew from experience. But for some reason this one did. It stared at him with those huge, awful, sad blue eyes, listened to his embarrassing pleas for release, and actually let him go. Not a shred of malice or ill intent anywhere.

 Another hand appeared in the corner of his vision. For a split second, pure panic seized the reins of his mind. The Mershark whirled out of the way, fins flared, spines up, claws ready to slice open human flesh, as futile as that attempt might be. Leave it to a giant villainous beast to deal such a low blow, striking from behind, he never should have paused-

 Only the hand didn't grab at him. It didn't even get close. Instead, it stopped a good distance away from him, palm up, presenting that little chunk of tuna like an offering.

 "...N-now can you eat?" He heard Phelix ask in a low tone, huge voice cracking right down the middle. It was astonishing how terrified it sounded. ".....pl-please..?"

 Zelu contemplated turning right around, tucking himself away in his cave, and burying his shattered pride under the multicolored pebbles. Every sane instinct inside him shrieked at him to run or hide. The only part that didn't say 'get the heck out of there' was his need for actual food.

 So Zelu, cursing himself all the way, so tense his bones felt like snapping under the pressure, slowly dragged himself toward the open hand.

  He stopped in front of it, hands clutched at his chest, claws fiddling with the loose bandages. The Mershark shot a look at 'Phelix'. The human still looked pretty distraught, but a more hopeful gleam had appeared in its eyes. It stared at him in awe, mixed wonder and apprehensiveness and regret dancing about in its features. Zelu started shivering again. He didn't like the way those eyes locked on to him. Like it saw something rare and worthy of keeping.

 "Can you….look away?" He tried shakily. "I-I don't…like being watched…."

 This was pushing it. He was in no place to make demands. Zelu fully expected the human to refuse and drop this stupid 'i'm so scared or you' act. That's how things should be. Humans were the top predators of the surface, able to take down even the strongest of Merfolk with their cunning brutality and evil ingenuity. He's seen the scars and he's heard the stories, why can't this stupid human stop stalling and do whatever its planning on doing?

 "Hm? Oh, oh sure. S-Sorry." The human replied with a nod, turning its head to the side. Its arm remained in the tank, bent at an awkward angle. "T-take as long as you want."

 Zelu nodded back, though it was more for himself than anything. What was wrong with this monster? Humans didn't have emotions, everyone knew that. Did he happen to get captured by a mutant? Why the hell wasn't it maiming him right now?

  The Mershark willed his nerves to calm down and stop shaking (a futile effort). He turned to stare at the human's hand. More than anything it looked like an open bear trap, baited and set. He'd seen a few of them rusting away on the ocean floor, among tons of other human garbage. The fingers curled slightly inward, every line in that palm defined and etched into thin rubber, the points of squared fingernails poking through at the fingertips. Every so often, a digit would twitch, itching to bend inward and close into a full fist. The tuna rested in the crook of its middle three fingers. A clear trap from any sane Merfolk's perspective.

  Zelu outstretched a shaky arm, reaching for the food as carefully as possible. He shouldn't be doing this. He was swimming in poisoned waters. He shouldn't trust a human. He can't. As he's said before, It was against everything he was taught, completely against the way he was raised. His mother would kill him for being in this situation in the first place.

 But through it all, his stomach won the battle. He only saw the tuna, in all its savory glory. With all the courage he could muster, Zelu shut his eyes and lunged, arms outstretched. His claws groped blindly for the food, brushing against smooth, thick rubber for a split second, before sinking into his slightly soggy target. Zelu yanked it from its perch in the center and bolted, clutching his prize to his chest in a mad dash for shelter.

 Go go go go go get out of there get OUT OF THERE-

 He hit the cave wall head-on, but he didn't care. Headaches were the norm at this point. Zelu didn't even turn to check if he was being followed. The second the tank lights dimmed and the roof passed over him, the Mershark tore into the tuna with reckless abandon.

 And it tasted so damn good.

 Even if it was just soggy, unseasoned fish meat, to Zelu it tasted like the food of the gods. He bit off massive chunk after massive chunk, not even trying to chew as he forced it all down. Flecks of uneaten fish floated around him like snowflakes. His gut offered no more than a pleased gurgle. It probably looked disgusting and was completely undignified, but who cares about that? Who cares about anything? This was the most important thing right now and it's getting all of his attention.

 Zelu ended up finishing in record time. He didn't know just how big that tuna chunk was until he found himself stuffed to the gills, a sizable portion still left in his claws. If Cain was here, he'd be shaking his head at the pup's clear disregard for manners.

'Sharks should be dignified. We aren't complete animals.' Zelu thought he would say, translated from a simple eyebrow-raise-eye-roll-small-frown combo. 'How many times do I have to tell you this?'

 Well Cain can take his 'manners' and shove it up his nose. He should try being captured by giant land-walking predators and starved for practically a whole week. (Although Zelu would never admit the starving part was partially his fault. Who could blame him? Kepsy said humans took and used drugs daily, that all could have been poisoned)

 The Mershark looked down at the remaining tuna in his hands. Something nasty sank into his gut.

 Could…could it have been poisoned? Did the human just…change tactics? Did it decide to force it's toxins into his system, using Zelu's stubbornness against him? Human drugs could do anything and this absolute clam-brain of a shark just downed the whole thing in one go. He essentially drank a whole bottle of poison without thinking.

 Was he going to throw it all up, organs and blood coming with it? Was he going to rot from the inside out? Was he going to pass out and never wake up? Was his body going to seize up in complete paralysis? Were his gills going to stop working? Was his entire organ system going to shut down? Was he going to go mad and start tearing himself to pieces? Was he going to be struck with a horrible rash that burned him on the inside until he succumbed to death’s feather-light grip?

 Zelu looked over his shoulder at the tank outside his shelter. The room had darkened considerably, the sun having left the sky ages ago, leaving the tank as the only real source of light. 'Phelix' was still sitting at the table, face in its hands, light bouncing off its discarded glasses, which dangled from two twitchy fingers. A sign of clear distress, seen mostly in tired old neighbors or depressed travelers who had no meaning left in their lives.

 He shuddered. Zelu couldn't get over how normal it looked, if you could call anything around here normal.

 The Blenny from before swam in agitated circles, but that was just because it apparently lived in the blue cave Zelu called 'home'. The butterfly fish was doing laps around the fake plants, and one of the clownfish had left its rock. It floated just inside the cave mouth, looking far too innocent for a fish. Heck, clownfish liked to bite, Zelu knew from experience, they had no right to look like that.

 "Am I going to die?" Zelu asked it, turning his body slightly. Morbid question, but he had to say to someone.

 The clownfish didn't respond. How could it? Clownfish couldn't talk. He shouldn't be asking a stupid fish about these things, much less another captured pet. He probably already knew the answer anyway.

 The clownfish hovered for a few long seconds, before swimming right on in without a care in the world. It ambled around the Mershark sucking up the discarded flecks of tuna, cleaning up the remains Zelu's mess. Then it stopped to face him, little black eyes staring right into his very soul. Like it wanted something.

Zelu tilted his head.

The clownfish tilted its whole body.

Zelu tilted his head the other way.

The clownfish tilted its whole body the other way.

The Mershark frowned.

 "You're a weird fish, you know that?" He said. "That was probably poison and you just sucked it all up."

 The clownfish yawned as if to say 'I don't care'. It looked down at the remaining tuna in his hands. Zelu blinked in confusion, before the realization of what exactly it wanted hit him. He smirked.

 "Oh, you want the rest of this?"

 The clownfish burped a bubble.

 "Well too bad. It's mine, poison or no poison. Fuck off."

 Apparently that was the wrong answer. The clownfish darted forward and clamped it's tiny teeth down on the tuna, tail pumping in an attempt to shove Zelu out of the way. Zelu yelped and tugged his precious food back, swatting at the orange menace. He and the clownfish wrestled with the rations, Zelu hissing and swiping at it with venomous claws, the clownfish refusing to let go and somehow dodging every attack. Zelu didn't realize their fight had left the cave until a booming voice scared them both into freezing.

 "Mason! S-stop fighting with little buddy!" 'Phelix' snapped, despite still looking like someone just killed its brother. Zelu tensed up at the bite in the human's tone. "I f-fed you earlier and that's j-just for him, okay? No stealing."

 The clownfish made one more attempt at jerking the fish from the Mershark's hands, before giving up and swimming off to the red rock, where the other clownfish waited. Zelu stuffed the tuna into his mouth, glancing up at the human with a raised eyebrow. He felt he should be more scared (the human looked terrifying at night, something about how massive silhouettes could scare the living daylights out of anyone with half a brain), but newfound food had kind of taken the edge off things. 'Phelix' sighed, clouding up the glass a little.

 "You alright?"

 Zelu chewed. The human leaned back in its chair.

 "S-so." It muttered quietly, pulling off the (now damp) rubber gloves one finger at a time. "You….you can understand me? A-And you can talk, too?"

 Zelu hesitated, swallowing. He pulled the tuna from his jaws, hooked teeth tearing small lines in its surface. Perhaps he should think this through. He'd been hiding for days and nothing happened, so maybe he should…..try and break that tradition? As much as he hated to admit, 'Phelix' was pulling possibly the worst pair of pup eyes imaginable without even knowing it. It could be intentional, to lower his guard, but since when had he been correct about this human? Ever? This was probably too fast, for him to try and give the human any information at all.

 But Zelu nodded anyway. To hell with thinking things through.

 "...a-and you've been able to this entire time?"

 Another nod.

 And the human broke down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 To call that reaction startling would be a complete understatement.

 The split second after Zelu nodded, the human had made a weird strangled 'oh' noise and buried its face in its hands. The table shook as the giant started to actually sob, taking great, shuddering breaths between frantic apologies and curses. Zelu cringed away, dropping his tuna with a hiss of surprise, spines raising at the sudden movement.

 "Oh jesus, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry-" It sniffled, looking up at the spooked Mershark in front of it. Small streams of tears flowed freely down its face. "Th-this whole t-t-time I've b-been treating you like a…l-like a…...god I'm so sorry, I'm such a freaking m-mo-mor-moron!"

 Zelu wasn't quite sure how to react. 'Phelix' just started…..crying out of nowhere. Slumped over on the table, face hidden in gargantuan arms, muttering so many apologies it just didn't feel right. The Mershark shifted uncomfortably, picking at his bandages. He decided he didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit. He kind of wanted it to stop. This wasn't correct at all, it didn't make any sense whatsoever. Humans didn't cry, they couldn't. The stories spoke of them killing without remorse and loving without a heart. This both looked and felt wrong.

 As insane as it was, Zelu needed to stop it. What else did he have to lose at this point, anyway? The human made it clear he wasn't leaving, so he'd probably die eventually.

 Might as well use his last living moments doing what he did best. What was that, you might ask? Simple, it's causing trouble and being a general ass to everyone he didn't fully know.

 Zelu raised a shaky hand and rapped loudly on the glass wall. The human looked up at him from behind its arms, watery eyes wide and questioning. Newfound bravery (or was it stupidity?) took over the wheel as Zelu crossed his own arms, clearing his throat with a hardened look.

 "S-stop it." The Mershark announced, voice coming out higher than he wanted. He mentally cursed the small stutter at the beginning. "Stop doing that."

 The human sniffled and shrank away, still opting to hide behind its impossibly long limbs. Zelu took that moment to continue.

 "Stop crying." He demanded. "It's annoying and I don't like it. So stop."

 'Phelix' quirked an eyebrow, massive head rising from the wall of pale flesh made by its arms. It tilted its head to one side, before shaking it, cotton all hair spilling everywhere. The human ran its long fingers over its face in a vain attempt to stop the downpour and straighten out the sorry sight.

 "S-sorry...I d-do that sometimes…." It rasped, taking off its glasses to wipe away the still-oozing tears. Good lord, did this thing just swallow a bucket of sand? Its voice sounded awful. "Just…..f-feeling really bad r-right now…..."

 "About what?" Zelu asked. He made sure his voice sounded hard and irritated. As stunned as his inner self was, there was a possibility the human could be intimidated, even if that possibility went well into the negatives.

 "Y'know….. everything? G-grabbing you like that, tr-trying to f-force you to eat, p-pretty much k-kidnapping you f-from the beach….." 'Phelix' took in a massive shuddering breath, looking up at the ceiling. "I-I'm super, super sorry about a-all that…..I lied b-before, I really d-don't know how t-to handle tiny creatures…."

 The human slumped over on the table with a booming thunk, shaking everything and making Zelu instinctively back away. It pushed its glasses up onto its forehead, eyes glued to the brown wooden surface. A few late tears quietly rolled down its cheeks, sinking into the algae-green fabric of whatever kind of armor it was wearing.

 "I messed up. I j-just wanted t-to help, and I messed up. You have every right to b-be scared and h-hate me."

 Zelu snorted a cloud of bubbles. "Y-Yeah, that was a major double-dick jerk move. You giant brutes have n-no manners."

 Complete silence. Crap. He messed up. That had to be possibly the worst thing to say right now.

There's no way I'm avoiding an early death. If I survive this then I'm gonna eat Mala's stuffed sea sponge.

 " 's rude...." He heard 'Phelix' murmur. "....J-Justified, but st-still rude…"

Well shit. No turning back now.

 "I-I can be as rude as I want. You weren't the one who almost got crushed to death by a lying bone-faced oaf."

 'Phelix' winced, but made no move to respond. It stayed like that for a good five minutes, an occasional sniffle or sigh puncturing the thick silence. After a moment, its eyes started to drift shut.

 Zelu rapped on the glass again to get its attention. He didn't know what the hell he was doing, but his mind had thrown on autopilot and manual control couldn't take back the controls. "Oi, broken nose, i'm not done with you. No…No falling asleep in a pit of your own self hatred."

 The human sat up a fraction of an inch, lifting its head to stare at the tiny form before it. The Mershark tried to ignore the pang of terror that struck him when those tired glacial eyes locked into his own wide emeralds. He was definitely pushing it. The small request from before was a finger dip, this was diving in without thinking.

 Yet Phelix didn't look angry like he expected. They didn't even look mildly annoyed.

  Phelix's entire front was clearly lit up by the fish tank's soft blue light, their outline melding with the shadows of the room. The turquoise eyes still swam with old tears, dark gouges resting under the eyes like shadowy swings. Those thick glasses shone so clearly in the glow, Zelu could see his own warped reflection. A halo of red burned around them like a mask, blotches of pink spilling over the rest of their gargantuan face, a thick droplet of snot hanging by a thread from their left nostril. The soggy bandage on their nose curled up at the ends, and their gnawed-raw lips parted slightly, revealing a very noticeable gap between the yellowing stone squares they called teeth.

 "...eugh. On second thought, maybe don't look up." Zelu added under his breath. The human didn't hear.

For the second time in a row, Phelix looked dreadful. Clearly this wasn't the first time it had gotten upset. If he didn't know better, Zelu'd think it had been worrying and losing sleep over something the entire time he'd been here.

 Zelu took a moment to compose himself. Why did the human choose to look like that? Why that vulnerable and broken? He swore, Phelix looked more and more like a 'they' rather than an 'it' with each passing second. Why not conform to the usual and throw up the 'nasty evil giant har har har' face he knew so well? Why not stick to the storybook definition like he expected?

 "So. You confuse me." The Mershark repeated, louder this time. Gad, this is stupid. "And I hate you for it. So stop being confusing."

The human ran a sleeve across its face, stifling an exhausted yawn. "What's so con-confusing?"

 "Oh, I dunno, everything? You don't act like you should." Zelu replied, tapping the glass with a claw. "Of all the humans to have captured me, I got to get picked up by a crybaby mutant. You're too confusing."

 "Crybaby's a bit harsh…"

 "Well you are one. I don't make the rules."

 Phelix offered a weak chuckle. "S-sounds to me like you do, talking with that kinda atti-attitude."

 "Well I'm not a god, king, or a giant! And I'll talk to you any damn way I want!" Zelu shot back, completely forgetting who and what he was addressing. "And I think you're a crybaby, so a shrimpy little coward crybaby you are!"

 The human outright laughed at that. Their face still burned with past sorrows, but the jubilant smile that brightened their features took many, many edges off things. It still made the Mershark flinch, the sudden joyful sound rumbling around the tank like an earthquake. It took Phelix a minute to calm down.

 "You're..heh... funny." They said through short laughs, leaning forward on their elbows. "Sorry for g-getting emotional earlier….heheh... I cry over stupid stuff all the t-time."

 "You certainly do."

 "So….what about me d-do you find confusing, Mr Shark? You d-didn't really give m-me a straight answer."

 Zelu huffed and made a point in flexing his spines. He pulled at one of the loose wrappings around his chest, holding up the cloth to the human like a dirty rag. "Explain."

Phelix blinked.

 "Y-you're confused about the bandages?" They asked incredulously. "I-I thought I was pretty clear a-about those."

 "Well you weren't, so," The Mershark tugged on the cloth again for emphasis. "Explain, gigantor."

 "O-okay, so uh….they're bandages. I put them on you to help with your injuries," The human offered a mildly confused look, resting their face in their hand. "And I'd like t-to change them without getting b-bit, but ah…..I now know that's p-probably not a g-good idea.."

 "I know what bandages are, thanks, but what I'm asking you to explain is why," Zelu swam up closer to the tank lid to meet the human's admittedly low eye level, making sure every ounce of his energy went into keeping his voice and tone steely. He was a thread away from snapping under all that pressure. "Why did you put these things on me?"

 "Because you were hurt…? And I d-didn't want you to die?" 'Phelix' leaned out of  their palm and tilted their head to one side. "...Is this a trick question?"

 Zelu sighed. He wasn't getting anywhere with this stuttering clam-brain. They were dead set on keeping their plans secret, that's for sure.

 "Hey, if you can ask questions, c-can I ask some too?" The human asked suddenly, shaking Zelu from his dive into the eel burrow that was his angsty thoughts. "S-so it's not mostly one-sided. T-to make things fair, y'know?"

 The Mershark tensed up at that mention, his iron-hard mask starting to crack right down the middle. He'd already given Phelix enough information, what more could it want? His name? His species? His weaknesses? The location of his family? Zelu didn't want to give away anything… but a proposed deal could get him some vital escape info, if the human decided to cooperate (which had a fifty-fifty chance of happening, based on what he's seen of them). He thought it over for a few seconds.

 "....O-Okay, fine, I'll do a deal. What are your terms, human," He snapped, straining to weld his mask back on. "I won't agree to anything if I find it unreasonable."

 "You sure like b-big words, huh?" Phelix chuckled, pushing their glasses back down onto their nose. "A-and it's not much of a deal, little buddy-"

 "Don't call me that."

 "Right. Sorry."

 "I just want to have a c-conversation with you, okay? No tricks or ter-terms," The human clasped their hands together with a small smile, like they were taking to someone important. "Just a civil c-conversation between us, yeah? I ask you something, you ask m-me something. We both get t-t-to learn about each other, so it's a win-win for both of us!"

 Zelu took another second to mull this over. On one hand, he was being promised unlimited information and a deal without any of the harsh terms he expected, if the human was telling the truth. On the other hand, Phelix would be getting information as well, and still held complete power over everything, as proven by….earlier events. They could still change the terms or cut it off whenever they wished. They'd already grabbed him, there wasn't much Zelu had over them aside from his venom and sheer determination. Heck, they could be lying about everything. That possibility was still pretty high, unfortunately.

 ".....Fine. Deal. Just know that if you try to break it off, I will claw the skin off your fingers," Zelu growled, plastering on a look of admittedly shakey defiance. "Ask your question, human."

"Yes!" Phelix gave a little cheer, clapping quietly, but to Zelu it sounded like a war cry. The Mershark cringed away with an undignified squeak, earning an apologetic look from the human. "....sorry. J-just excited."

 "...what could you possibly be so excited about?"

"Oh, just…I've never really t-ta-talked to a merman b-before."

 Zelu chose to not correct him.

 "Alright, first question, ummm…." Phelix stuck a thumbnail in their mouth while they thought. After a few heavy seconds of chewing and thinking, the human's eyes lit up.

 "Oh! I almost forgot! I never g-got your name, little buddy. C-Can I have your name?"

 Zelu fidgeted. Bad first question. Very bad first question. Right to the personal stuff, all stops pulled. If these were siren rules, Zelu'd be dead for answering that kind of question. But he made a deal, and Zelu wasn't the kind of Mershark to break his word. From what he could see, humans didn't really have any magical powers. They were just big. And terrifying.

 "Z-Zelu. My name is Zelu," He answered, voice wavering slightly when the human leaned forward in anticipation. "Don't ever call me 'little buddy' again."

 "Zelu…" They mused, saying his name like they were trying to get a feel of how it tasted. "Interesting name! I like it!"

 Phelix gave the Mershark a hearty grin, planting their hands on their hips. "Well it's nice to m-meet you, Zelu! You were on the b-beach and now you're in my sister's fish tank!"

 "A total pleasure. I'm so pleased to meet you too." Zelu grumbled sarcastically. Why oh why did he give his name so easily? "So glad my kidnapper knows my name."

 "Okay, n-now you ask a question!" The human said happily, making the fact that they ignored the last comment known.

 Zelu thought long and hard. He contemplated asking about the room or the tank to make his escape somewhat easier (though his injuries would definitely hurt his chances). Then he thought about asking the human questions about themselves. Weaknesses, habits, that kind of stuff. So he'd know exactly how to defend himself should they inevitably turn and attack.

 "My question is…." The Mershark looked up at the human, who was gazing at him with wide, excited eyes. Zelu frowned as whatever he was going to ask disintegrated into thin air.

".....okay. First things first. Can you stop with the creepy staring? It's freaking me out."

 "Right, right, sorry. I'll s-stop staring." Phelix replied quietly with a nod. "My turn!"

 "Hold the fucking shell, how is it your turn? I haven't asked anything yet!"

  The human knitted their brows and tilted their head to one side. They made sure to keep their eyes slightly to Zelu's right. "You asked me to st-stop staring. That was a question, so it should b-be my turn now?"

 "That wasn't- augh, just forget it." Zelu grumbled with a snort. Those stories about human intelligence had to be exaggerated. That, or this one knew of the siren's policies and liked playing tricks. "Ask away, whale face."

 Phelix nodded happily and the conversation continued. It went about as well as one'd expect, Zelu answering every personal inquiry with a bladed tongue, Phelix oversharing about pretty much everything asked of them. The Mershark ended up learning a lot of things he didn't even think of asking, which was both good and bad.

 Turns out Phelix didn't own the fish tank that held him prisoner, nor did they own the fish inside. It was their sister's, who was off at a place called 'college' studying something the human referred to as 'siecologee', whatever the heck that was. Phelix also had never owned a pet or slave of any kind, dispelling yet another story about how every human kept Borrowers and captured Merfolk as servants and entertainment. It also explained the human's clear inexperience in handling smaller creatures such as himself. They claimed plants were much easier to take care of, so they never bothered trying to get an animal.

 Phelix worked as this human job called a 'cashier' at some place known as 'Cove-Mart'. 'They' were a 'he', but refused to elaborate how. He lived in his grandmother's old beach house (the human name for den), having inherited it from her after she died. Phelix's white hair and too-pale skin came from him having something called 'Albinism'. That, the human explained, was a human body condition, which meant he got to look extremely pale ("Like an anime character, b-but in real life!"), had awful eyesight (Explaining those abnormally thick glasses), and needed to slather on this ointment called 'sunscreen' whenever he went outside just so he didn't get burned by the sun.

As for Zelu, well, he made sure he told him the absolute bare minimum.

Where was he from? The river.

What was he? Your worst nightmare.

Did he have family? None of your damn business.

Was he poisonous? Yes, very, so don't ever touch me again.

Would he prefer more tuna or something else? Doesn't matter, just no plants.

Could Phelix change his bandages? For now, absolutely not. I can do it myself.

What kind of shark was he? The kind that will bite off noses if you don't stop asking such personal questions.

 Short and sour, that was how he swam, and he had no plans to change it. If the human wanted kindness or some sort of friendly attitude, they'd have to let him go right then and there. Injuries be damned.

 Yet Zelu held back his true ferocious potential. He could be talking to Phelix as horrible as he wanted, but didn't for one simple reason:

 Phelix was a human, a being hundreds of times bigger than himself. Phelix was a creature who could very easily crush the living daylights from his tiny, fragile body whenever he wanted. No matter how timid or stuttery he acted, everything about the human screamed 'massive and scary'. Sure, Phelix had outed himself as a complete emotional mess who probably would cry himself to death if he hurt Zelu, but that natural instinctual fear of the giant kept the Mershark on constant alert.

 Every gargantuan breath was noted, the heartbeat of an organ almost as big as his whole body echoing through the human's hands and into the table grounded him whenever he thought of a good insult, the slight shaking of the aquarium glass whenever Phelix shifted or changed position kept his spines raised, the rumbling waver of a giant voice stabbing through even as the human tried to keep his voice low, all the little details to remind Zelu of just who and what he was dealing with.

 So even as Phelix smiled and laughed and stuttered, Zelu kept his guard up.

 Eventually the human grew tired of their 'friendly interrogation' and the question flow petered out. After one more inquiry about Zelu's well-being and one last comment about how he seemed to be doing better, he bade the Mershark a good night and vanished into the same room he so frequently went into. Phelix had described it as his bed-and-work room, so Zelu could kind of understand why it was used so much. But nevertheless, the Mershark found the wary side of him wondering about what happened behind closed doors.

 Fortunately Zelu didn't have to think about that right now. He just needed to rest. Phelix had left a shrimp-sized roll of bandages in the water so he could re-wrap himself, and as much as he'd like to immediately, the Mershark needed to sleep. He was already many, many hours behind his usual schedule, having spent so many long nights awake and scared out of his mind. Tonight, Zelu would be able to get a full night's sleep. An uneasy one, he still didn't trust much, but a full night nonetheless.

 If Phelix was telling the truth, he'd be trapped here in the fish tank for another two weeks until he was 'recovered and r-ready to go', as the human put it.

 So again, all he had to do was wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 After he learned to accept conversation into his routine and relax a little, Zelu's final weeks in captivity went past in a blur of new information.

 Phelix actually wasn't that bad of a kidnapper, sometimes acting like his kidnappee wasn't currently being held against his will. The human shared his food, answered every question he was asked, let Zelu handle his own problems and injuries, and most importantly, he kept his huge, fleshy, clamshell hands to himself.

 Phelix even started up a trend of having lunch by the fishtank, setting his plate on the half-covered opening while he tapped away on a grey folding device for hours. He let the tiny Mershark steal as much food as he liked, since Zelu quickly made it known that he wouldn't accept anything that was directly handed to him. If either happened to be in the mood, they'd talk for a bit until one got tired of social interaction, or until the grey device ran out of fuel. The Mershark slowly found he actually enjoyed their little chats, even if the size difference made certain things difficult.

  Zelu learned that the green armor Phelix wore was actually an extra layer of fake insulation called a 'sweater', and was made of woven and dyed cloth. Zelu once caught sight of the human shedding his 'sweater' via an open door, revealing a much….rounder body shape than he expected. From a survivalist's perspective, didn't really need any extra insulation. When he politely asked about it (definitely didn't call his natural enemy fat directly to his face), the human turned a funny shade of pink and mumbled about something called 'slow metabolism'. Phelix didn't elaborate when pressed, forcing the Mershark to try and decipher the words' meaning all on his own. He didn't get much.

  Zelu actually ended up telling the human stories about his home life. Phelix mentioned knowing humans like Mala and Cain, and wasn't that surprised to hear about the Rules. He said not many humans were like him, and that whoever made up the Rules had the right idea. Phelix reacted in all the right ways, too. He laughed when Zelu told him about the time Cain mistook a mud crab for a shiny rock, and he acted impressed when he told him about his races with Mala and Kepsy, but a small part of the Mershark said Phelix didn't really believe his boasting and obviously true skill.

  Zelu in return learned that Phelix was almost called Sammy (near miss on that one, Phelix should count his lucky stars that didn't happen), as well as why the human ended up with a funny name. It was, and Zelu will quote him directly, because "My p-parents are b-basic southerners and wanted to be unique."

  Apparently the normal human spelling of the name is actually 'Felix', but his human's name got messed with for whatever reason. Zelu personally preferred the P-H spelling. More aesthetically pleasing than the first.

 Neither Phelix nor Zelu knew how magnets worked. Zelu didn't even know what a magnet was. They had a very deep discussion about it.

 Once, the human came home late and left an entire crab leg on the fish tank lid without a word. Zelu made quick work of it, dragging the massive thing into the water with his teeth like a very tiny great white. He'd never eaten that much in his life and didn't leave a single part untouched, refusing to leave his cave until he felt less like an overstuffed oyster and more like the lean, wiry shark he really was. Phelix offered no real explanation besides the mention of leftovers from a red lobster dinner party. How the human got crab legs from a lobster was beyond him, but he felt no need to ask any more questions, simply pushing the empty shells to the surface of the water.

 As for the final days with Phelix, those were punctuated by two prominent events that happened in quick succession:

 His First Escape Attempt, followed by the Time he Almost Suffocated on Phelix's Writing Desk.

 The human had made a fatal mistake that day. After their usual chat, Phelix gathered up the discarded bandages (he'd learned to change his own wrappings and let them float to the surface for the human to collect), cleaned out the leftover food from the tank, set the lid down on the table as he walked out of the room, and left behind a small glass of water not too far away.

 A simple clear cup, half-filled with tap water, sitting oh-so-close to the fish tank's right side. And behind that glass of water, just a small jump's distance, lay an open window.

 Only a fool would pass up an opportunity that big.

 And only a fool would mess it up so badly.

 Zelu made the first jump, but only after spending fifteen whole minutes thinking it over. He decided on trying his luck, there was still a small chance Phelix was lying about everything and didn't plan on letting anyone go.

 After taking a swimming leap, he burst from the water in a near-perfect arc, landing in the water glass somehow without making a huge mess. The water felt way too fresh and sweet in his gills, like he was swimming in a bowl of liquidized sugar, but it had enough infused oxygen for a thirty-minute stay. Zelu waited to recharge his tail muscles, doing small stretches to keep loose and fit for the Big Leap. One last jump out that window and he'd be home free. He shot a look at the doorway, making sure it was empty before he made his next move.

Zelu ducked down to the bottom of the tiny cup, coiled tighter than the strongest spring, heart racing against many invisible foes, filling his gills with as much water as possible….

And he jumped.

He almost made it, too.

Zelu came within inches of that white-painted windowsill, wind whistling in his ears. His claws could practically feel the cool ocean currents as he soared so close to his target…

 But the next thing he knew, his face smacked into solid glass, something in his nose popped, and he fell down, down, down onto the scratchy flower-patterned carpet.

 Zelu's heart dropped faster than his body, and it was still falling even after he hit the horribly solid ground. Warm blood dripped slowly from his face. His lungs and gills were shocked into inactivity. Not a single part of him moved. No breathing, no blinking, no twitching, heck his brain could have been knocked dead for all he knew. The window was pretty far from the ground, so he didn't doubt everything important had shattered into a million pieces. One thing was for sure, his arms felt like lead and his tail seared white hot whenever it moved, like something thin and many-bladed had sunk itself through the skin.

 The Mershark's eyes finally caught up with the rest of his brain, and he squinted. Zelu was seeing double and it really messed with his head. He laid there for who knows how long, just trying to focus on his surroundings and breathe normally. The ugly red-white pattern of the carpet seemed strangely distant, fading in and out. His brain was a camera (a human device, Phelix showed him his own once) and someone kept struggling to zoom in on a moving target. The room shifted and crossed over one another constantly. His own hands grew like, two more fingers, moving and twisting about without him feeling a thing.

 The floor shook for a spell. Zelu moved a single eye to stare up. Looked like Phelix was back. And he looked absolutely horrified, standing alone in the doorway. Zelu smirked.

Heh. If only he could see his own face right now. Priceless.

"....Holy shit, Z-Zelu!" The human cried, making a mad dash to where the stunned Mershark lay. The ground trembled and quaked, jostling Zelu's motionless body with each footfall. He smiled at the approaching giant, lack of real oxygen already making everything seem funnier than it really was.

 Phelix stopped in front of him, but didn't crouch. Somehow Zelu was high enough for a simple lean-over to achieve full looming capacity. The human's hands came up to cover his mouth in shock. "....little b-b-buddy..?"

"...don' call m' th't..." Zelu heard himself mutter. His tongue felt stuck to the floor of his mouth, words coming out slurred, nasally, and low. If he didn't know better, he would have thought he just huffed some pufferfish venom. "...'s disr'sp'ctful….."

 Phelix sighed, sending a warm breeze over the Mershark. He shuddered in response to the change in temperature.

"O-okay okay thank God, I thought y-you were d-d-dead…"

Zelu raised a hand with a groan of annoyance, letting it hit the ground again with a quiet smack. "...'m alm'st ded…f'ck'n stupid head…..get it rite..."

"Right r-right, okay, you d-do you…" The human said, making quick motions with his hands as if he wanted to do something but kept stopping himself. "Thank God I decided t-to move my d-d-desk under that window….you landed on my hair b-b-brush too.....Jesus Christ….."

 So he didn't hit the floor? Zelu shifted his head sluggishly. Apparently, yeah, he wasn't lying on the carpet. Smooth dark wood met his cheek instead of rough carpet. And his tail? That stabbing feeling came from resting on a massive brush, thick bristles digging into his rough skin. It wasn't broken, just sore. This new information eased his snail-speed thoughts a little, but he still hurt all over. Not a life-threatening hurt, just a stupid-adrenaline-junkie-who-made-a-dumbass-descision-and-is-now-paying-the-price hurt.

 Zelu snickered to himself. Something about that was funny.

"I'm g-gonna pick you up now, o-okay? A-And g-get you back to the t-tank." Phelix muttered, bringing his fingers around the Mershark. Zelu made a pathetic attempt to raise his spines, but they just twitched upward, before going back to lying flat.

  The human gingerly cupped him with shaky hands, Zelu protesting with a weak growl that sounded more like a seagull being strangled. As much as he hated being handled, he didn't do much to fight back. Zelu was way too tired for that. Besides, he knew Phelix wouldn't hurt him. The guy was really gentle compared to the other humans who first found him. Once you got past his alienating hugeness, a guppy could be more menacing. Probably more dangerous too.

"Y-You're an idiot, you know th-that?" He heard the human say while he was lifted. The motion made his head spin, but he was able to power through it. "That was p-possibly the d-dumbest thing you've d-done so far…."

 The Mershark flipped a bird in Phelix's line of sight, arms and head hanging over the edge of the palm like he was slumped over a railing, drunk out of his mind. "F'ck you."

 Phelix snorted, cringing slightly at the sight of Zelu's bloody nose steadily dripping into the lines of his hands. It looked like a bunch of red veins had shown themselves, popping out as the slow-moving ruby fluid filled in the wrinkles and creases. Zelu ran a claw through one of the lines while the human spoke, absentmindedly tracing the highlighted path. Every so often, he'd find a ticklish spot and make the palms twitch.

 "It really is though. P-playing hopscotch with my cups is j-just b-beyond stupid. The window w-wasn't even open."

 "How was I s'ppos'd t' know that?"

 "I-I don't know, by looking? You ca-can't have worse eyes than I d-do, Zee, and I haven't cleaned those windows in years!"

 "I c'n do wh'tever th' f'ck I want, 'Phee'."

 "N-no you can't!" The human shot back. "I swear, If I d-didn't move that desk, you'd have definitely either k-killed yourself or b-broken something important! Y-you can't just….d-do stuff like that! It-It's like you have a death wish or something!"

 Zelu just lazily bit him in response, letting gravity push in his sharp little teeth. He was too tired to talk or bite with any actual force. He could taste blood, but whether it was his own or the human's he didn't know. The hand tensed up and Phelix stopped moving.

"Uhm...y-you aren't venomous, are you?"

 Zelu unhooked his fangs with a tired, wicked grin. "Mmmhm."  

(He wasn't actually venomous in the mouth, but Phelix didn't need to know the finer details.)

 The look of devastation that spread over the human's face pulled a chuckle from the Mershark's throat, but it died when shock molded into annoyance. Phelix huffed something under his breath and practically threw him back into the fish tank, turning on his heel and speed-walking out of the room without a word. Zelu shouted drunkenly at the sudden action, hitting the cold water with a small splash. He righted himself and let his body float to the surface of the water, watching the human march about the house with mild interest, smiling to himself the entire time. The blood from his nose clouded the water around his head, but he didn't really care.

 The air-deprived woozy thoughts had started to clear away, but he still couldn't stop himself from laughing whenever Phelix tripped over nothing or knocked over a random object. After a while, the human poked his head through the doorway with a frown.

 "Th-this isn't funny! I-I have a very w-weak immune system!" He shouted angrily. Zelu clapped his hands over his ears at the volume, but didn't drop his smirk.

 "I was lying you idiotic sea snail!" The Mershark shouted back, sticking his head above water. "Gad, you humans are so gullible."

 Phelix's frown deepened. Zelu's voice gradually died in his throat at the look he was getting from him. The human looked like a strange mixture of sad and irritated. The Mershark shut his mouth with a click and ducked back underwater, hands coming up to pick at his wrappings. Awkward silence fell over the little room like a thick blanket of seal skin.

 "....what's with the sour face? It was just a joke." Zelu tentatively asked, poking his head up so the human could hear him. "...Do humans not have a good sense of humor?"

 Phelix huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, no, we d-do it's just….. nah, it's nothing. I'm fine. J-just a little….hurt…..I guess."

 "Well duh. I bit you." The Mershark replied. "Of course it's gonna hurt."

 "....How are you s-still able to t-talk like that after that fall....?" He heard Phelix mutter before continuing. "I mean the b-bite hurts a little, but it-it's not that k-kind of hurt."

 "Is this an emotional thing?" Zelu rested his head on the tank edge with a fake-sad expression. "What'd I do to huwt your feewings, o massive one?"

Phelix shook his head. It didn't look like the human was in the mood for teasing.

"...sorry." Zelu made a mental note to cut back on the snapping whenever he looked like this.

"You're fine. I-It's nothing important. It's stupid, really. Y-you just scared me p-pretty badly, that's all…"

 "And?" Zelu pressed.

"I...I j-just thought we made progress, y'know? And then you went a-and uh....and almost k-killed yourself trying to es-escape." The human said. "Th-that's why I'm...not in the best m-mood right now...."

 He cut himself off, shutting the door with a disappointed sigh.

 It didn't open for the rest of the day.

 Zelu was left confused for a moment, but when it finally dawned on him, he retreated to his own private room. He made the human mad, but also sad, too. Apparently humans thought a few weeks of talking and sharing food meant full friendship and trustworthiness, even if the 'friend' in question was technically being held against their will. Merfolk didn't really follow that philosophy, friendship was made through years and years of knowing each other or being raised alongside one another. Two Merfolk weren't really true friends unless they hunted or trained together frequently. Zelu understood he 'hurt' Phelix, but wasn't quite sure how to fix it. He liked the human, yes, but he liked the seaweed beds and his family better. In the eyes of another Mershark, what he did was perfectly reasonable.

  Zelu didn't leave the cave until well into the night, when he felt hungry enough to pick at his food stash.

  Phelix ended up spending his time looking over the bite and sulking in his room on his laptop, while Zelu entertained himself with pebble stacking and wordless arguments with his neighbors until they both grew tired of staying awake. Zelu wouldn't know that until much later.

 Had either of them decided to look out the window during that time, they'd have seen the large, grey fin circling the docks, before it vanished back under the waves.

 Had either of them decided to pay attention to the world outside of Spotify playlists and snappy clownfish, they'd have seen a massive shadowy figure emerge from the water and silently drag parked boats and cruisers underwater, one by one until it found the boat it was looking for.

 Had either of them bothered to stay up a little later, they would have noticed that same shadowy figure peer into the beachhouse windows one by one, before stopping at their own and vanishing without a trace.

 But neither of them did any of those things.

 So nobody noticed anything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 "Today's the day!" Phelix announced, pushing open the door without any warning.

 Zelu jumped, knocking over his pebble sculpture. He groaned in annoyance, shooting the human a dirty look before swimming up the tank edge.

 "Today's the day for what." He said as he slumped over the glass edge, arms hanging over the side. "It better be important, cuz you knocked over 'Rainbow Monument part 3'."

 "I-I think it's important enough!" Phelix replied, stopping by the tank to scoop out the uneaten food that had floated to the surface. He gave Zelu a somewhat relieved smile. "You're going home today, r-remember?"

 Zelu didn't remember that, actually. But he definitely would call himself surprised to hear those words. It was shocking enough how quickly each of them got over the events of last night, they spent a full hour talking about it. A full hour filled with apologies and awkward silence. Zelu had been afraid Phelix wouldn't get over it, but based on the human’s attitude now, it looked like hsi failed escape attempt was old news by now. "Like, today? Right now?"

 "Yes today, but I don't know a-about right now. Gotta m-make sure you're actually ready to g-go 'n all." The human dumped out the soggy remains of last night's dinner into the trash can, before pulling up a chair and sitting down in front of the tank like he was ready for some big interview. "J-just a few questions, y'know? I'll start n-now if that's okay."

 For the first time in a while, Zelu let himself smile. He was going home. Like, actually going home. Phelix was letting him go, something past Zelu wouldn't believe even if it bit him on the tail. The only strange thing here was his own reaction. He expected himself to be more giddy or excited about it, but he really just felt a sense of mild relief. No over-the-top reaction, just slight internal happiness. Like the feeling you get when you're still hungry after eating dinner, and find out there's some leftovers nobody touched yet. Nothing worth shouting about, but still a nice feeling nonetheless.

 "I'll t-take your silence as a yes." The human continued, pulling up a small paper list from seemingly nowhere. "S-so, as a whole, are you feeling normal? Like, how you felt before all this went d-down?"

 Zelu gave himself a mental check over, then nodded. "I guess so, yeah. Fit enough to bite through some random fisherman's finger, if that's what you're asking."

 "Okay, good, tha-that's good...any headaches? D-Do the tank lights still seem too bright? Anything li-like that?"

 The Mershark shook his head. "Lights weren't that bright to begin with."

That was a lie, the lights sucked from the very beginning, but they're mostly tolerable now. Sunlight was way better.

 "Do you think you could take off your b-bandages without getting any blood in the water?"

 Zelu paused. "....I guess I could? Haven't….. Haven't really tried that yet."

 "Could you t-try right now?" Phelix asked. "You d-don't have to if you don't want to, I'm j-just curious."

 Zelu shrugged. He ducked back underwater and gingerly began to pull at the wrappings around his chest. They came off easily, unwinding with just a few tugs. He had to work a bit to untangle some parts, sometimes having to saw through the fabric with his claws, but eventually it all ended up in a small bundle on the tank floor. No blood or pain, which both the human and the Mershark took as a good sign. In fact most of his wounds had completely vanished, save for a few small cuts around his ribs, which were still healing over.

 Phelix smiled. "Y-you look great, Zee."

 "I always look great." Zelu scoffed in response, crossing his arms. "Just keep in mind I still blame you for everything."

 "Mhm. Okay." The human muttered, still smiling. He flipped over a page on his notes, exchanging quick glances between whatever was on the paper and whatever he was looking for on Zelu. Occasionally he stood up and looked directly down into the tank, asking Zelu to turn around or flex an arm.

 "....what are you doing?" The Mershark finally asked after another page was flipped. "You said just a few questions, not an examination."

 "W-well, I'm j-just double checking a few things. Th-things look pretty good right now, i-if that helps."

 Zelu huffed, but didn't question any further. Eventually, Phelix closed the notepad and stood up, a somewhat sad smile replacing the usual encouraging or friendly one.

  "I-I think you're good to go, b-bud!" The human said, earning an eye roll from the Mershark. He pulled himself up on the glass wall, leaning almost half of his body over the edge.

 "C'mon then, get me out of this damn tank!" Zelu demanded. "I hate this place! You, you're fine, I like you, but I don't like my neighbors at all. They suck."

 Phelix chuckled and shifted his feet, but didn't say anything else. He looked….a bit lost, really. And maybe a little confused about something. His eyes kept flicking around, and he seemed to be thinking  hard about something troubling, like a math problem or a particularly irritating roadblock. Zelu tilted his head questioningly, raising an eyebrow in frustrated confusion.

 "So ah, h-how do you want to d-do this?" He asked after a bit of (gentle) badgering from Zelu. "L-Like, do I br-bring the whole tank to the dock, or-or do I transfer y-you to a cup or something?"

 Zelu shook his head rapidly at the latter suggestion.

 "No bags, absolutely not, I don't feel like sitting a fuckin water balloon." He snapped. "And I've decided cups can go die. I'd like it if you brought the whole tank, thanks."

 Phelix nodded, but still looked a little confused and hesitant, absentmindedly chewing on his pinky nail. "B-but the tank is…..really heavy…."

 "Then use one of those wagon things you told me about! Gad, it's not that hard!" Zelu jabbed a clawed finger at the giant's face. "You better not be stalling, mister I-can't-think-for-myself. As much as I like you, I'd like to go home more."

 It was almost funny how quickly Phelix nodded and hurried off. The Mershark smirked to himself, but not in a mean way. A human, taking orders from a Mershark one hundredth of his size? And not killing him? Past Zelu wouldn't have believed it. He'd probably call Future Zelu crazy for telling such lies and try to fight him off, assuming Future Zelu was a fear-induced hallucination brought on by human drugs (which, according to Past Zelu's delusions, had been secretly mixed into the tank water). He wasn't even sure anyone at the beds would even believe him. They'd most likely pass him off as crazy too.

 The Mershark snorted in laughter. Their loss.

 Phelix came back a moment later, carrying a foam board which was attached to his wrist via a black rope. The board has images of waves and sharks painted over the front, and Phelix looked more than a little embarrassed about everything. He held it up for Zelu to see.

 "I-i couldn't find a wagon, b-but I did f-find this. It'll work j-just as good, right?" He paused, as if waiting for Zelu's approval.

 The Mershark purposely made a show of acting like he was seriously examining it, but eventually nodded. “Works just fine.”

 Phelix gave a relieved sigh, and very carefully began the slow and difficult process of scooping out the other fish, finding good places to store them until he could plug it back in, picking up a twelve-gallon fish tank, and strapping it to a foam board. It took a lot longer than Zelu liked, especially since the human, despite being massive, apparently had the average physical strength of a sun-dried sea bass. It was pathetic, but he didn't say anything about it. Zelu actually appreciated all the effort Phelix was putting into this, when he could just simply…...ignore Zelu’s wishes and stick him in a bag. It wouldn't be difficult, certainly much easier than what he was doing now. The Mershark felt a small surge of gratitude push through his mask while he watched Phelix work. The sheer amount of luck he'd gotten, having this human find him instead of literally anyone else….

 “Th-there we go…” Phelix muttered, standing up from a very strained kneel. “Is that b-better?”

 Zelu gave the human a thumbs up through the glass. He couldn't talk, the lid was strapped on when the tank had been tied to the board, so really it was the best he could do.

 Phelix nodded and gave a tired sigh, grabbing a wide vanilla sunhat by the door before beginning the slow journey outside, down the stone wheelchair ramp and over to the empty wooden docks. But he looked happy to be helping, so it lessened the guilt Zelu found himself dwelling on. Yeah, he was going home, that should be making him feel happier than ever. But….well it was stupid. The thought that he’d actually miss Phelix? Completely absurd. Nope, he wasn't sad about leaving. He wasn't feeling just a smidge guilty about being so rude or ordering that complete pushover of a human around. He wouldn’t miss talking with Phelix about topics he knew next to nothing about. He wouldn't miss learning about the human world. He definitely wouldn't miss the first non-related person to willingly spend time with him and endure his snappy attitude without making excuses to leave.

 While Zelu shook out his thoughts to clear them up, turning his gaze to the human before him. The tank shook and trembled while it glided over the uneven boards. Phelix walked on slowly, making sure to drag the mostly empty fish tank as carefully as possible, but the Mershark noticed his legs shook a little more than usual. The human kept throwing blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glances over his shoulder, and seemed to put all of his body weight onto one foot while he walked, giving the impression of a hobble. His fingers tapped against the rope as if making sure it was still held firmly in his grip, but he couldn't help but notice how Phelix kept scraping his fingernail over the same spot. Zelu could hear the human puffing quietly (who couldn’t, he was very loud even when he tried to be quiet), which made sense as he was dragging something presumably heavy behind him, but it too seemed to have a somewhat frightened shudder to it. Zelu looked over at the docks around them. It didn't take long for him to see why the human was so on edge.

 The docks were….strangely empty. From what Phelix had shown and told him, the marina usually had at least four people manning the boats or cleaning away bird poop, but not a soul was around.

Crowds were the norm, so for it to be this...dead? Weird. Very weird. Heck, the more he looked, the more he noticed there wasn't anything anywhere. No other giant humans, no squawking sea birds, no abandoned whale-skeleton boats. The marina looked more like an old abandoned fishing dock than the crowded marina of the supposed tourist town Phelix lived in. All the posts had rope and some fishing rods were still in their holders, but the massive, looming boats usually attached to them were nowhere to be seen. They reached the end of the dock, where it stopped pretty far out to sea.

 The water was mostly calm, the sun giving it a very bright blue color as the waves lapped quietly against the wood. Nobody was out on the water, no pale shapes or towering masts off in the distance. There wasn't even a cloud in the sky. Just blue above and blue below. The wind whistled faintly and the water made water noises, but it did little to break the eerie silence that had suffocated the empty marina. Phelix hesitantly knelt down and untied the tank from the board, taking off the lid. Zelu poked his head out of the water with a worried frown.

 “Are the docks usually this quiet?” He asked, not liking the way Phelix’s eyes nervously flicked about, like he was looking for something that wasn't there.

 “N-no…...no they-they aren't….” The human mumbled in response. He pushed the tank closer to the edge, the quiet scuffling of foam against wood sounding like a rumble of thunder in the silence. “I….I, uh, d-dont know….why it’s-it’s so quiet.......it’s pr-probably nothing, you should….you should g-go now……”

 Zelu shook his head and looked back down at the sea. It looked completely normal, cool and inviting, the breeze twisting up small waves so it looked like it was in constant motion. Very different from the fish tank’s artificial stillness. Humans could never truly replicate nature, even if they tried.

 Yet as inviting as the water was, there was something…..off about it. He started to understand why Phelix was so nervous, looking down into the water, hands gripping the glass tank tight enough to crack it if he were bigger. Zelu couldnt put his finger on it, but it was almost as if…..something or someone was waiting for them. Not just Zelu, but Phelix too. He could see the faintest dark shadow, the tiniest ripple of movement, the smallest hint of something hiding beneath the cover of the waves. The obscurest of signs of something lurking under the dock, waiting for the perfect chance to strike. The sea felt almost as unnatural as the silence, even as it innocently gurgled and toyed with the dock’s wooden posts.

 “A-are you…..are you going to l-leave…or-or....?” Phelix asked behind him, making the Mershark flinch.

“In...In a minute. I'm just preparing myself. Big moment, you know.” Zelu replied, but even he didn't find it convincing. Even a toddler could see how afraid he was.

 “Okay, I-I guess…..I guess that m-makes sense…...y-you sure tha-that's it?”

 “Yes I’m sure.”

 “Alright…I’ll just, uh, be over here i-if you need me…”

 Phelix awkwardly shuffled a few feet away, pulling the brim of his ridiculous hat over his eyes. He sat down and pulled his knees to his chest, suddenly looking much smaller than usual. Both knew they were afraid of something, but neither knew exactly what.

 Zelu turned back to the ocean.

 The water bubbled.

 A large ripple wiggled its way out from under the dock. Zelu’s eyes followed it suspiciously.

 Something to his right made a small wave push through the water.

 And from behind him, Phelix screamed.

 Zelu whirled around, heart rate going from zero to 100 in less than a second, adrenaline already zooming into his blood, eyes the size of scallops.

 He didn't know what he thought he was going to see, but a giant hand most definitely wasn't it.

 But there it was, a massive hand bigger than Zelu could even dream of, reaching out of the water toward where Phelix sat frozen to the spot, jaw slack, big blue eyes wide, fingers dug into the wooden dock to keep him from rolling over. Water fell from where it gathered in the webbing between the human-sized fingers, sickle-shaped claws dangerously curling inward, rough, toothed skin stretching and shifting above positively gargantuan muscles. It was bigger than Phelix, like big enough to wrap around the giant human like he was nothing more than an orange. That was definitely saying something.

 Unfortunately for Phelix, he only had a few seconds to blindly stare at the hand before it slammed down into the dock, directly over Phelix’s spot, breaking through the old wood like it was nothing more than paper. Zelu screamed, whether it was from fear or surprise he didn't really know, he just did it. He screamed until his throat grew hoarse and his gills started to burn, before self-consciousness slapped him upside the head and he clapped his own tiny hands over his mouth. It did little to muffle anything, but he didn't really care about how effective anything was at the moment.

 Zelu stared at the swirling water, at the bits of broken wood floating in the waves where a sturdy marina once was, at the exact spot where his friend was awkwardly sitting just seconds ago. Something wet was running down his cheeks. His tail was shaking violently, occasionally twitching in a random direction. His spines were stuck up defensively, but his fins pointed sharply at the ground.

“Phelix..?” The Mershark tried, voice smaller than his sanity.

This can't be happening. It wasn't happening. He was dreaming.

“Phelix?” Zelu said louder.

 The water swirled. No sign of the human anywhere.

He can’t be gone. He can't. Not that soon. Not like this.

 “PHELIX!!” Zelu outright shouted, dropping his hands from his mouth and pushing himself out of the tank as far as he could without falling. “PHELIX!!!”

 Nothing.

 Not even a bubble.

 No blood, no bones, no bubbled screams.

 Just......nothing.

 Zelu sank into the still water of his tank. He felt frozen. Someone just dumped a bucket of ice into his veins and left without a word. His brain had been replaced with a rock. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn't believe anything. His claws found his hair and pulled, like that would ground him. Nothing was real, nothing was real, nothing was real, nothing was real….

 The ocean behind him gurgled and something breached. Zelu spun around, hands in his hair, mouth hanging open like an idiot, eyes following the dark shape as it rose from the bottomless depths.

 A boat-sized head with dangerous, predatory eyes the color of mud, slick sea-greased hair falling around its face like strands of kelp, finned ears displaying a pair of sharp milky spines that sat above them, a mouth pressed shut in a thin line of terrifying indifference, no doubt filled with fangs big enough to crush a fully-grown human into nothing.

  A gilled neck and muscular torso with toothed skin, greyish brown melting into a vanilla white underbelly, a massive dorsal fin curving out from between shoulder blades the size of two great white sharks. In one arm, it clutched something firmly, the other hanging loosely at its side. More massive spines jutted out from those arms, one on each forearm, elbow, and upper arm. The spines folded neatly into each other when the arm was limp, spreading out vertically when it was bent.

 Spines just like his own.

 This beast, the same one that killed his first real friend, looked frighteningly familiar.

 Fucking Déjà Vu. Why the hell do you exist?

 The biggest giant he’d ever seen swept its eyes over the dock, locking onto the tiny tank, closed fist tightening. It lowered further into the water, fist held above water, eyes boring holes into the little shuddering Mershark. It stopped with its mouth above the sealine. Zelu swallowed, his own spines shaking harder than they ever had before. There was no way in hell it didn't see him.

 The giant Mershark opened its mouth, exposing the fangs Zelu knew were there….

 And it spoke.

 “Zelu?”

 The tiny Mershark’s breath hitched. His whole body froze up, eyes glued to the monster before him. Not a spine nor fin twitched.

 It’s voice. It’s voice, it was quiet, it was questioning, it was a voice that clearly had not been used often. He knew that voice. Zelu channeled all of his energy into pushing his head above the water.

“Ca…..Cain..?” He squeaked. The giant Mershark nodded.

“Mom sent me to come and get you.” His brother (good lord that was his brother) rumbled. “Sorry you had to see me get rid of the human.”

“Y-you...you…”

“I haven't killed it yet, if that's what you're going to ask…” Cain held up his fist. “I can do it now, if you'd like.” “What-” Zelu shoved his body up, leaning his torso out of the water to stare right into Cain’s massive face. He wasn’t really scared any more, he’d kind of gotten used to this sort of thing, living with a human and all. Cain was just five times bigger than a human, not much of a difference in his perspective. “No, I don't want you to kill him you dolt! Put Phelix DOWN!”

 His brother looked surprised, but obeyed and held his fist over the remaining parts of the dock. He opened it, and something green and wet fell onto the wood with a cough-punctured yelp. The human scrambled to his feet, sweater soaked to the bone, glasses completely gone, soggy hat clutched in one hand. Phelix’s staring gaze flicked over at Cain, then at the missing segment of dock behind him. He trembled, but did not move, feet firmly rooted to the wood, mouth opening and closing wordlessly.

 Zelu almost fell over in his sigh of relief. Phelix wasn't dead. He was incredibly shaken, but not dead. This was going to take a lot of explaining.

 “Phelix?” The Mershark tried, looking up at the smaller giant. Phelix jumped, but then collapsed to his knees by the tank, hands coming to shakily grip the sides.

“Z-Zee, Ze-Zee, wh-what-what.. what’s…” The human stammered not taking his eyes off Cain. “Wh-who... i’m c-c-cold... it's-it's... I-I d-don't- Ze-Zelu-”

“Phelix, Phee, it's okay.” Zelu comforted (well, he tried to comfort), bringing up a small hand to pat the human’s thumb. “Can you look at me for a second!”

 The human’s watery eyes locked onto him, and Zelo offered a small (kinda strained) smile. “Just focus on me, okay? It’ll probably be hard for you to forget what happened, but I need you to calm down. Nothing’s going to happen if you stay by me, alright? The stupid sea bass behind me doesnt want anything to do with you. You're’ fine.”

 Phelix nodded a little too frantically, talking to himself in breathy high-pitched whispers. He seemed lost in his own little world, kind of hiding behind the tank the best he could, eyes firmly glued to Zelu’s slight left. The smaller Mershark turned away from his friend and shot the nastiest glare he could muster at Cain, who looked very confused.

“You tamed it?” Cain said incredulously, but Zelu held up a tiny hand to stop him. In the corner of his eye, Phelix flinched.

“What the FUCK were you thinking, Cain-in-the-ass?” Zelu snapped, loud enough to be threatening, but quiet enough to not spook the human behind him.

 The larger Mershark tilted his head. “I-I was helping you?”

 “DID I LOOK LIKE I NEEDED HELP?” The younger roared back. “Cain, tell me, do I look like I’m dying?”

 Cain paused. “No…”  “Do I look like I've been tortured?”

 “N-no, you don't…”

 “Then what the FUCK did you think was going on?”

 His brother didn't say anything. Above him, Zelu could hear Phelix’s rapid breathing slow down just a little.

 “I….don't know, to be honest…..” Cain mumbled. He seemed to shrink a little. Like literally, his size reduced by a couple hundred feet. Zelu watched with wide eyes as he kept shrinking until he was about Phelix’s size, looking incredibly embarrassed now that he wasn't a huge shark-zilla.

 Well now I know what that ‘gift’ of his is.

 Cain, Zelu’s older brother by five minutes, was a size-shifter. Size-shifters were extremely rare, born with the magical ability to grow bigger than the largest whale, but at the cost of living to only two-thirds of their lifespan. Legends told of these magical beings rivalling the Gods in terms of brute strength, gigantic warriors able to turn the tides of any war. The shifter abilities mostly stayed within one species, the great Whales of the open waters, but over time, the magical gene somehow spread to the other Merclans. Size-shifters could be found in any species from any clan, but most hid their strength for fear of being kicked out or turned into a weapon. Besides, Cain had incredible power, that much was demonstrated, but he’d only grow to 30 years of age, if he was lucky.

 Zelu was reeling internally, but he made sure his anger at the older stayed in charge.

 “Exactly. You almost killed my friend over actually nothing. He was going to send me home you fucking snail-spine, and how did you thank him?”

 “..by almost drowning him…” Cain answered drearily.

 “By almost drowning him!” Zelu repeated angrily. He knew Cain was just being overprotective, but he wasn't happy with anything at this point. Phelix already had an extremely fragile emotional composition, and his bottom-feeder of a brother just stomped all over them in two minutes flat. “Apologize to Phelix right now, or so help me, I'm gonna...i’m gonna…. Ahhh doesn't matter! You will apologize!”  His brother shifted awkwardly. Phelix had stopped trembling, but Zelu could tell he was pretty afraid. The tank still shook slightly and his breathing shuddered, just not as extreme as before.

 “I...guess i’m sorry, human…” Cain muttered, wringing his hands. “For almost killing you.”

 The smaller Mershark turned to Phelix, a hand still resting on his thumb. Phelix nodded, not breaking eye contact.

 “I-I g-guess, uh, a-apology…..ac-accepted?” The human replied. He looked down at Zelu. “D-do you know th-them..?”

 “Yeah, he's my idiot of a brother. Ignore the whole size-changing part and he's harmless as long as i’m around.” Zelu explained, shooting another look at Cain. “You okay, Phelix?”

 Phelix hesitated, then nodded again. “I-I g-guess…y-you have t-to-to go with hi-him, r-r-right? S-since he s-s-said he ca-came to p-pick y-you up?”

 Zelu snorted. “Unfortunately, yeah. I do. Don't want mom to kill me any more than she would now.”  Phelix tried to offer his signature gentle smile, but it came off as more of a grimace. He already looked on the verge of tearing up, hands twitching a little like he kept wanting to do something with them but stopped himself. Zelu sighed.

 “Oh fine, c’mere you big baby.” He said, holding up his arms. Phelix hesitated, but eventually complied with the quiet confirmation.

 He brought his hands around the tiny mershark, scooped him from the water, and quickly hugged him to his chest. Behind them, Cain gasped quietly, but made no move. Zelu was about to protest at the abruptness of it all, but he stayed silent and let the overemotional human cuddle him, half-heartedly patting the soft, slightly damp fabric of the taller’s sweater. A finger was petting at his hair and he could feel the giant heartbeat thump-thump-thumping away beneath all those layers, chest rising and falling with each shaky breath. It wasn’t half-bad, to be honest. As much as the Mershark hated being held, he felt he could let this one slide. Phelix deserved it.

 “T-Times up.” Zelu muttered after they stayed like that for a good five minutes. He was starting to sweat a little, his body not used to being around that much body heat for so long. The human was like a living, breathing furnace.

 Phelix moved his hands away with a sigh. “S-sorry…”

 “Don't apologize. I gave you permission.” The Mershark shot back, but not in an unkind way. “It was….nice….anyways. I didn't completely hate it.”

 Phelix smiled for real this time. He moved to drop Zelu back into the tank, but thought better of it and instead positioned his cupped hands over the sea. He opened them, and Zelu didn't have to fall far before hitting the intoxicatingly cool water. He darted around in a few circles, taking in the wonderfully familiar feeling of seawater in his gills, something he once thought he'd never feel again. Above him, he heard Phelix chuckle quietly, no doubt enjoying the show. Cain swam up to him, now a lot smaller than before.

 “Should we head back then?” His brother asked. “Before it gets dark?”

  Zelu threw one last look at the docks and frowned. Phelix still looked pretty shaken up, the mellowness from before having worn off already. He now occupied himself by sitting on the edge of the docks, with his feet carefully under his body (away from the water), starting to wring seawater from the sleeves of his green sweater. He took off his hat and shook it around in an attempt to dry it off, which didn't really work out that well.

 "Something wrong, Zee?" Cain asked again. His size had reduced dramatically, but he still had enough inches to loom over him protectively.

 The Mershark shook his head, watching as Phelix got down on his hands and knees to sift his fingers through the water in an attempt to try and find his glasses (the human didn't know Cain had placed them in the dock behind him during their cuddle sesh, but it wasn't impossible for Phelix to not have noticed. He looked like he was enjoying himself too much to pay attention to anything else).

He really must be blinder than a starfish without those things.

 "I'll be right back. Just wanna do something." Zelu told his brother before swimming off back to the docks. He stopped in front of the human, careful to avoid the latter's hands as he stuck his head out of the water.

 "Oi! Broken nose! Your glasses are behind you!" He called out.

 Phelix jumped, but thanked the Mershark and eventually managed to find them after a little more feeling around. He stuck them on and blinked to get used to the change in vision, familiar swordfish eyes returning to his features. Zelu gave the human a brief nod and swam back to Cain without another word, before the human could say anything else.

 Cain's face said enough. Zelu punched his shoulder in irritation at the fake-adoring look he got from him.

 "No, I didn't want another sappy goodbye. Whale face couldn't find his glasses." The younger Mershark explained haughtily. "Didn't want him to spend all night combing the ocean for 'em."

 Cain smirked and rubbed his shoulder, but turned to start his path home, gesturing for Zelu to follow. The younger obliged, but not without one teensy little look back at Phelix. He got a glimpse of the human's timid smile and impossibly small wave, one hand still carefully holding the frame of his glasses, but didn't dwell any further on it. He made a point of keeping his gaze strictly before him. How that giant could rival a baby seahorse in both shyness AND cuteness was baffling. It had to be illegal. A clear violation in the laws of nature. Zelu hated it. He absolutely despised it.

 But not in a bad way.

 And knowing his luck, Zelu knew this wouldn't be the last time he saw him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[countessofbiscuit]

What are your Bobasoka headcanons? I've already gone through all of the (criminally little) fic on ao3 and I especially loved Smothered and Covered, and I saw the majority of the fics in the tag were gifted to you so I'm assuming you're the OG shipper. Feel free to essay if you like!!

Thanks for the ask and kind words about that fic :3 

Oh, Bobasoka … where to begin? It’s a pairing that’s been bumping around in exchange requests for a few years — I figure it’d be easy for anyone invested in Ahsoka’s relationship with the clones to be compelled by the idea. Lledra used to draw Boba and Ahsoka interacting, and it was probably a few panels of their incredible Destinies comic that set my Bobasoka wheels turning. I’m also drawn to them because their journeys traverse so much canon; there’s not just a sandbox to play in, but a whole goddamn stretch of beach, stretching far out into the horizon ...  (#AhsokaLives #BobaSurvived :D)

I have to lead with the proviso that almost everything I write/daydream about/headcanon has a groundsheet of Rexsoka. Ahsoka’s interest in Boba, in my head, is intimately tied up with her attraction to and/or relationship with Rex — or, at the bare minimum, her intimate fellowship with the clones. She went through puberty (maybe with heats!) surrounded by a literal army of handsome, roughly college-aged dudes; that must’ve been a heady mix of heaven and hell. If she didn’t quench her thirst before war’s end and her (eventual) separation from Rex, she’d probably be pretty dehydrated when stumbling across Boba. As for Boba’s attraction to Ahsoka, well ... she’s very pretty, she’s potentially useful, she’s not likely to skewer him in his sleep (+2) on account of being a Jedi (-1), and now she’s the one down on her luck; if he falls in bed with anyone, why not this girl who isn’t afraid of him and stares a lot at his lips?                         

And Boba is like a hot shipping potato — satisfying, hard to fuck up, goes well (read: makes for an intriguing story) with almost everyone. And I think it has everything to do with his liminality, something he shares with Ahsoka and probably recognizes.          

Their neither-this-nor-that-ness overlap in such interesting ways, and they each bring their identity issues to the table — Ahsoka as an on-again, off-again Jedi; Boba as a clone who isn’t a Clone™, a Mandalorian by birth and bearing, but not by the book. At different points in their stories, they identify as different things, and that would affect their headspace and color their view of the other. They wrestle with themselves and each other. Force-user and bounty hunter; privileged topsider and orphaned juvenile delinquent fugitive; GAR commander and outcast clone; Jedi and Mandalorian; Disillusioned veteran and disaffected army brat; Rebellion agent and Imperial contractor.

And as much conflict is baked into these dynamics, it also generates a certain magnetism; and I believe they recognize, on some level, their shared trauma and the symmetry in their experiences. Boba and Ahsoka both have happy childhoods with very little to distress or vex them (beyond the art, I do not jive with Age of Republic: Jango Fett, a Disney-canon comic that not only doubles-down on the Jango-wasn’t-Mando nonsense, but shows him being rather cavalier about Boba’s life); Geonosis happens and their adolescent lives are dominated by war (which is how they came to actively threaten each other as space!secondary-schoolers — whaaaaatf!); they are both dubiously (even wrongfully) imprisoned; and they both suffer alienation and incredible personal loss.  

Boba was set apart from the clones before he was even pulled him from the jar, othered and elevated from the beginning. He never bonded with brothers, he does not identify as a clone. And while there are examples of clones making overtures to him, canonically his relationship with them is fraught and probably made worse when he gets banged up in Republic Central at the tender age of eleven or twelve — and of course, Ahsoka is an accessory to this, the second chapter in his tragedy at the hands of the Jedi. He needed help (whether he wanted it or not), it was not given by clones or Jedi alike (hamstrung by bureaucracy, sure, but surely some other means of intervention might have been lobbied for?), and Boba becomes a right teenage disaster, well-balanced only in the sense that he has a chip on both shoulders.

(n.b. Putting my RepComm hat on for a second, I can’t help but sniffle-laugh at the idea that the Alphas watched him get thrown in a maximum-security slammer and were like “Ah, there he is, the feral vod’ika. First time, we’ll let the little snot earn his stripes. Second time, we’ll bust him out and send him on a tough love retreat with A’den or Jaing.”)

Ahsoka, meanwhile, is part-and-parcel of the institutions that Boba sets himself against, even after she too has been cast out by circumstances beyond her control. She grows up in a supportive Jedi community and then spends some seriously formative years with a whole slew of brothers — brothers that should have been Boba’s! 

Boba, on the other hand, is a great example of the proverb that a child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. (As he tells Hondo, “Why should I help anybody? I’ve got no one.”) 

The resentment that must create! But also, later, the quiet empathy too — maybe when Boba’s having one of his better days and Ahsoka’s obviously not. 

And all of the above is interesting enough, without also touching upon the wildcard that is Mandalore.

Boba’s relationship with Mandalore .... well, that’s contested in- and out-of-universe and I won’t allow myself to essay overmuch. I subscribe firmly to a Mandalorian Fetts construction of canon, even though Boba must be someone who struggles mightily with Mandalorian identity. He’s raised by a bona fide Mando, a solicitous, loving father who’d have no reason not to pass on his language and beliefs; but at the same time, it takes that village, and when Boba’s clan of two is shattered, he has no one else. The loss of his dad unmoors him from his only anchor to Mandalorian culture and clan.

If Boba had been close to the Cuy’val Dar, one would think he’d have turned to them rather than fall in with Jango’s criminal acquaintances; or maybe the bounty hunters just scooped him up first, and troubled lil’ Boba was shepherded through bereavement by folks who enabled and encouraged him to externalize his anger in a way that gave him a (false) feeling of agency and strength. 

Whatever the reasons, Boba does not repatriate himself to Mandalore (much to Fenn Shysa’s melodramatic dismay). He strikes me as a lapsed Mandalorian; he doesn’t exactly follow the creed besides wearing the armor (scavenged? his dad’s sans helmet? canon is confused on this point, but he doesn’t go Mando until the unfinished arcs at the end of TCW, either for lack of stature, lack of armor, or lack of enthusiasm). I feel like if someone rocked up to Boba in a cantina and had the balls to ask “hey, so you a Mandalorian?” Boba would be like “<ominously slow helmet tilt> who’s asking” and never give you a straight answer.

Meanwhile, Ahsoka gets a crash course on Mandalore from none other than someone who, at one point, belonged to a sect that wanted to expunge Jaster’s legacy from the galaxy — and at the very least, had reason to dislike clones. This isn’t the place to explore my Boba/Bo-Katan feelings, but know that they are fathomless, and I would pay good money to be a fly on the wall of that Kom’rk when Bo-Katan gives Ahsoka Mando History 101 with her own special sauce. Ahsoka is probably more up-to-speed on Mandalore than Boba, and at one point, she may even own more beskar than him! (n.b. After the crash, I think one of the first places Rex and Ahsoka bounce is just inside Mando space, to scope out the Sundari situation and maybe try to scramble a signal to Bo-Katan; she’d have the goodwill to at least get them back on their feet if she can’t help them lay low herself. For a variety of reasons worth maybe ficcing down the line, they aren’t successful.)

I don’t really have a concluding statement except, I just think Bobasoka’s neat :) They hit all my depressed-Millennial buttons.

Headcanon by bullet-point isn’t really my style, but this is tumblr so ... tl;dr:

They recognize a lot in each other, even if they’re slow to admit it, if ever. Boba’s a cagey bastard and Ahsoka doesn’t ever like him enough to be emotionally honest.

They bump into each other during Ahsoka’s walkabout(s) ‘cause Coruscant’s Underworld ain’t big enough for the two of them. Without Slave-1, Boba couchsurfs at Nyx Okami’s garage, but he does his laundry at Rafa’s. He might even borrow the Martez’s new, useful friend for a job or two. 

Ahsoka eventually matures enough to be sensitive about her use of the Force on and around clones, and she definitely doesn’t use it around Boba. Definitely not during sex.

Boba is privately weirded out every time Ahsoka uses Mando slang she picked up off the clones or the Nite Owls.

Boba absolutely kills Cad Bane in that shoot-out, keeps the hat, and lets Ahsoka have it. She shoves it out the airlock and uses it for target practice. 

So many great smut flavours! Hatesex. Acquaintances with benefits. “You’re traumatized and touch-starved and you look just like him/them, and I know how to be gentle and what to do, so maybe we could … ?” They’re both privately comfortable with their bodies and sexuality, but Boba’s got trust issues a parsec long and Ahsoka’s lost confidence; it’s always an awkward affair, but desperation wins out.

They exchange comm codes every time they run into each other, which is kind of pointless because they both use burners.

Ahsoka hitches a ride on Slave-1 more than once. There really is only one bed, so it’s either sleep upright, sleep in a pokey prisoner hold, or sleep with him.

For a few years, Boba can pass as a last-generation clone — the ones that got sold off in bulk units to slavers before Kamino sunk another three years’ food, board, and training into them. Boba pretends he doesn’t notice, easy to really, since he tells himself his helmet is his face. But occasionally, when Ahsoka can convince him there’s profit in it, he agrees to play sleeper agent and assists in liberating a few here and there. 

They don’t talk about Aurra Sing.

When an Imp really crosses him, Boba passes on intel to Ahsoka to ruin their day.

Once, when they’re both super skint, Ahsoka volunteers to get handed in to some relatively minor and out-of-the-way Imperial garrison, so Boba can collect, bust her out, and split the pot with her. It’s the closest she ever comes to telling him “I trust you” — and when he brushes the idea aside, citing something about risk, it’s the closest he ever comes to telling her “I love you.”

Boba sees Inquisitors as muscling in on his game. There are so many lousy Force-users around nowadays, it should be easy pickings, but Inquisitors get privileged information. So he makes sport out of misdirecting them, especially from Ahsoka. 

When he pisses her off, Ahsoka fantasizes about Bo-Katan taking Boba down a peg or two while she watches :)))

Boba experienced Ahsoka’s heat once, secondhand through a cabin wall. He thought he was being clever by shooting Rex up with some Nevoota stim pollen, locking him in with Ahsoka, and hijacking their locked ships. Longest three days of his life, limping on broken hyperdrives and shared fuel stores to the nearest waystation to a soundtrack of violent lovemaking : \

Bounty hunters invariably bump into spies and agents because they work in the same areas. The agents pretend to be bounty hunters, eccentric business people, sex workers, or a range of other things. Sometimes each party knows all about the other, but it’s only polite not to mention it. This happens to Ahsoka and Boba A LOT, especially once she becomes Fulcrum; rebel cells and Imperials often want the same people. Occasionally they exchange fire. A couple times Boba gets imprisoned in Ahsoka’s own brig. Once, Boba blows her cover and definitely lives to regret it. 

(this essay was originally punctuated with pics, but replies with images won’t show up tumblr tags so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)