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britesparc · 8 months

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Weekend Top Ten #605

Top Ten Videogame Intros

I had a bash on Gotham Knights this week via the medium of Xbox Game Pass (a great place to try out games you’re curious about but which you suspect are a bit pants – I’m looking at you, Marvel’s Avengers and Redfall). Anyway, one of the things that immediately struck me – because it’s, like, the very first thing that happens – is that the game has quite a long, protracted opening cut-scene with no interactivity. There’s a whacking great fight in the Batcave and then the aftermath of Batman’s death, and I swear it goes on for about ten minutes. It’s all in-engine, except it’s that sort of souped-up in-engine thing that looks a lot better than when you’re actually playing the game. And this kind of non-interactivity felt a bit incongruous; most game shy away from removing control for that length of time. Over the last twenty years, the most common form of introduction seems to be to allow you to actually play the game; even if the interactivity is pretty rote, the fashion is normally to present the story to you as gameplay. Think of Half-Life, arguably the great pioneer and also poster child for this method; a long, slow train ride through an expansive underground facility, hinting at the expanse of the game and the environments you’ll later have to battle your way out of armed with only a crowbar and a natty orange suit.

It wasn’t always this way, of course; Back In The Day, a game’s “intro” was often a mark of its quality. When the very notion of animation (and voices!) was a novelty worth talking about on the back of the box, intros were all the rage. Given the limited possibility for narrative in the days before performance capture and CD-quality speech, an intro might be the only way to tell you the game’s story, especially in a more action-focused title.

I say all this as a preamble because this week’s list is my favourite gaming intros. And, wouldn’t you know it, almost all of them are quite old. There’s only one that’s from this century and even that was fifteen years ago and – even back then – felt like a bit of a comedy throwback (which, of course, is part of its charm). I don’t know if it’s just because intros are shorter, more built into the actual gameplay, or because ever since in-game graphics and animation became sufficiently impressive as to actually tell a story, the very novelty of a bespoke animated film to kick off your game – whether sprite-based or live-action or rudimentary CG – has fallen by the wayside somewhat. Games like to thrust you into the action nowadays, explaining their backstory and how to play the game through gameplay mechanics themselves. I guess it’s probably a better, more immersive way to do it (the Gotham Knights intro does feel hella-long) but maybe something charming has kinda been lost along the way.

Back in the Amiga days, an intro might come on a disk all of its own. Just the intro disk. You stick it in, it plays a short film, then you insert disk 2 and the game actually begins. It was exciting! It felt like the future, like games becoming bigger and more artful, more able to express themselves using improving technology. And this list is a celebration of that; of game intros that are, well, just impressive in and of themselves, but also in how effective they are at setting up the game you’re gonna play. And I have made a distinction here between non-interactive intro “movies” – I think all of these are actual videos, so to speak, rather than in-engine, even Grim Fandango – so none of that Half-Life emergent stuff. That could be another list, I guess.

So what are we waiting for? Insert disk one.

Another World (1991): the grandaddy of all evocative intros, this was a masterpiece in subtle animation, world building, and suspense. With a limited colour palette, we see protagonist Lester Chaykin (a name I’ve somehow remembered perfectly over thirty years later) screech up in his Ferrari, descend an elevator, drink some Coke, and run an experiment that goes wrong and transports him to – you’ve guessed it – another world. Where you’re instantly dropped into the thick of it and have to start working out what to do and how to play immediately. The hard-edged polygonal look of the game makes the intro appear “in-game” just zoomed-in, from different angles; it’s a seamless and incredibly impressive feat. It serves perfectly to set everything up, and it just looks and sounds so damn cool.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (2008): FMV intros really came into prominence in the mid-nineties with the ascendency of CD-ROMs, and all of the Command and Conquer games excel in this area (remember Einstein killing Hitler in the first game?). Here we have some actual movie stars properly hamming it up in extraordinary fashion – Andrew Divoff as a general, Peter Stormare as a mad scientist, and chief among them, Tim Curry as the new Russian Premiere, having the time of his life. The cast also includes Jonathan Pryce, George Takei, and J.K. Simmons.

Premiere (1992): maybe a bit more obscure than the others, this Hollywood-set platform game from Core Design has a sumptuous and incredibly impressive animated intro (which had its own disk!). They clearly tried to evoke the look and feel of a genuine animated movie as much as possible – the loose, floppy, cartoonish style carries over into the game proper – and the results speak for themselves. Also speaking for themselves are the main character (whose name I forgot, sorry; look, this isn’t Another World), a rare instance of digitised speech in an Amiga game. Also of note: the bit where the phone rings off the hook. Loved that.

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (1997): another FMV affair at the height of the CD boom, this one had the added bonus of being about Star Wars. A bit of live-action Star Wars, including Jedi and lightsaber fights and all sorts, at a time when that hadn’t happened since 1983. It’s impossible to overstate, when a new Star War flops onto TV every other week, just how extraordinary that was, how exciting. Even putting aside that novelty, it’s still cracking, with some great cod-mythological dialogue, genuinely impressive action, and enough entertainment and intrigue to get you started. And, yes, it just feels so authentically Star Wars; this is probably the moment I became a die-hard fan of the franchise.

Cannon Fodder (1993)and Sensible World of Soccer (1994): when I first played these games on the Amiga they just had the songs – terrific songs though they were, hilarious and silly, with daft lyrics (“War, never been so much fun”). These intros, which I think first appeared on the Amiga CD32 and later PC releases, are basically daft music videos, and Cannon Fodder’s in particular is really funny. There’s a sense of a band larking about as the – young, male, white – developers shoot a video in a field where they get to drive a tank and dress up as soldiers. It's supremely silly and fantastic and so evocative of a time, a place, and Sensible Software in general.

Final Fight (1989): so far these have all been games I played at home, but here we have a great – possibly the greatest – example of a succinct arcade intro. These things had to be short – you don’t wanna put 20p in a machine and wait there all day to get started – but also had to set the tone and tell you why you were constantly pushing a joystick to the right while your dad waited patiently behind you with his hands in his pockets. The sheer eighties-action-movie directness of this – some mad gang threatening a city, kidnapping the mayor’s daughter, and the interaction of the identikit heroes, all in simple stills with hardly any animation – is a daft story simply told, and really sets the tone for what’s about to happen.

Syndicate Wars (1996): this one emerged when the concept of “fully-rendered” intros was all the rage; looking back now, the animation, modelling, and overall quality of the video itself (I imagine the resolution and bitrate was, ah, low) makes it feel like a product of another era. But this, again, is great at setting the tone and the place and also offering a more ground-level view of a world we see from above; the depiction of the violent battles of the agents is great, but especially evocative is how the “persuaded” citizens view the world, and what happens when the digital scales fall from their eyes.

Grim Fandango (1998): I feel like even way back when, most adventure games began in media res, almost; think of Guybrush walking up to the lookout on Melee Island. Fandango is a bit different, in that we see a whole animation play out – and this may have been souped-up engine footage, but it was definitely a rendered animation, not just playing out in-game – which explains the backstory of lead character Manny Calavera (remembered his name too!) and the mechanics of the game world. It’s a terrific overview of what could be a strange concept (the bureaucracy of the afterlife, filtered through Mexican traditions and culture, but also a film noir?) and anything that gives us more of Tony Plana’s performance is gold.

Theme Hospital (1997): another great example of one of Bullfrog’s rendered intros: it's very funny, with its depiction of a doctor as a sort of superhero rushing to the rescue, but also quite pointed (as the game is in general with its humour) in the way the poor victim is dumped down a chute if they can’t afford treatment. The rudimentary animation has a dated sort of charm, and I also love the various little gags and in-jokes they cram into such a short intro.

Shadow of the Beast II (1990): another superb and evocative Amiga intro – I actually thought I’d have a lot more from the Amiga era on here, but I guess the mid-nineties PC stuff has stuck in my head more. Anyway, this goes full-bore fantasy lore, coming across like one of Arnie’s Conan movies more than Lord of the Rings; but we get the return of a dark lord, a lonely cabin on the edge of civilisation, and – through some rather simple but incredibly effective animation, and the very evocative thunder and lightning effects – an evil attack and a baby being carried off by a giant predatory bird. Yes, it’s rudimentary, but it’s very effective. This was also one of the first Amiga 500 games I ever saw – it used to run in demo machines in computer shops, along with Days of Thunder – and I used to play it all the time with my cousin, so this dark fantasy opening is seared into my brain. I don’t remember what the main character was called, by the way, but I remember the cheat code for invulnerability was “ten pints”.

Insert disk two.

#top ten #games #gaming #videogames #amiga #pc #star wars #another world #bullfrog #sensible software #swos #jedi knight #game intros #retro gaming

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 71-76

Let the joy of love give you an answer

And I will hold you when you're lost Just walk on to the light 1938 Bizarre Summer Every road will lead us to a memory of

Great Days

When I started reading the Battle Tendency Manga, one of my goals was to find connections between Part 2 and the others, because I feel like Part 2 is sort of isolated from the rest. You never hear anyone talk about the Pillar Men in Part 3 or 4, and Joseph Joestar never appears again, save for an entry on a genealogy seen in JoJolion.

But thematically, there’s a lot of connective tissue here. I already pointed out the scene where Smokey steals Joseph’s wallet in his first appearance, echoing Joseph’s final appearance, where Josuke steals his wallet in Part 4. And I already mentioned the Italian connection. Hirohiko Araki’s love for Italy is pretty well-known in the fandom, but only two JoJo parts have the distinction of taking place on Italian soil: 2 and 5.

But there’s other, subtler connections. Joseph’s Clacker Volley relies on angular momentum, much like the “Spin” techniques used in Part 7. But then you also have this moment in Battle Tendency where Caesar explains Hamon to Joseph, and compares it to the way a discus thrower spins around to gain distance on his throw. In the same vein, the fictional Ripple techniques used by all the good guys is just an extension of something natural. Everyone gains energy from respiration and blood circulation, but Hamon users can amplify that many times over to do amazing things with that energy. It’s very similar to the lessons Johnny Joestar learns about “Spin” in Part 7. I never really thought “Spin” had much to do with Hamon, and conceptually they may not be related, but the way they’re presented to the audience is very similar.

More Part 5 connections, you ask? Well how about a trip from Rome to Venice? No assassins on the train this time, so Joseph doesn’t have to steal 100 cars to finish the journey.

And how about a meeting with a mysterious person wearing a strange disguise...

Who turns out to be a lady? What’s weird about this is that when I went through JoJo in order back in 2017, I never noticed the Lisa Lisa/Trish connection. There was just so much crazy stuff happening in Parts 3 and 4 that I forgot all about how Lisa Lisa debuted.

So yeah, let’s get back to the main plot. I mean, I was going to talk about some connections with Part 6, but I seem to be drawing a blank. Joseph’s parents died when he was very little, so there’s no way for him to have a contentious reunion with an absent parent. There’s no way for his mom or dad to reveal that they were looking out for him this whole time, but they couldn’t tell him how or why. I mean, Lisa Lisa kind of reminds me of Jotaro. They’re both stoic badasses who smoke cigarettes. But that’s kind of a stretch.

Anyway, Joseph convinced the Pillar Men to let him live for another month so that he could give them a better fight later on. To hold him to that promise, they implanted poison rings in his body, which will kill him in exactly 33 days, unless he defeats the Pillar Men and receives the antidote. Caesar realizes that they both need more training to face the Pillar Men again, so he takes Joseph to Venice to meet his Hamon Master, for more training. That’s Lisa Lisa.

I’m confused as to why Lisa Lisa wasn’t brought in a long time ago. The plot progression of Part 2 implies that she only heard about this crisis when Caesar contacted her for more training, but we’ll soon see that the Ripple Clan has known about the Pillar Men for thousands of years, just as the Pillar Men knew about them.

Actually, now that I think about it, why didn’t Straizo recognize the Pillar Man in Mexico then? You’d think he would have taken one look at the guy and said “Oh shit, these dudes are back,” and forgotten all about his dreams of becoming a vampire like Dio. Maybe Straizo had just lost all perspective by then. Well, we’ll see if that gets explained later.

Anyway, Lisa Lisa starts the training immediately, by putting a mask on Joseph to control his breathing, which is a vital component of Ripple/Hamon stuff. One thing Caesar explained to Joseph before they left for Venice is that their Hamon powers were about equal. The only reason Caesar’s seems stronger is because he’s learned to concentrate it into smaller points, like his fingertips. Joseph, on the other hand, has to express his Hamon power through his entire hand, which reduces its effectiveness. Caesar compares this to the spray of water from a water pistol. The smaller the nozzle, the more powerful the stream.

As for Speedwagon, well he just flew back to New York. Joseph forbade him from telling Erina about the bind he’s in, so Speedwagon simply tells her that he’s bumming around Italy for a month. Meanwhile, Lisa wants the boys to climb the Hell Climb Pillar.

So the Ripple Clan has this island castle off the coast of Venice, which they built in 39AD to train their students. This was after the Pillar Men wiped out most of their guys, so I guess they wanted to really ramp up their training for the future. Lisa opens the front gate and the first step inside takes you into this big pit full of oil, and she just kicks them inside without a word. Ha ha, Lisa Lisa is awesome!

So the object of the Hell Climb Pillar is just to climb out of the pit. Except the only way to do that is by clinging to a sheer pillar in the center and ascending 24 meters (about 79 feet). Oh, and there’s some sort of fountain built into the pillar that keeps it covered with oil at all times. The only way to make this work is by using Hamon power to cling to the oil and work your way up.

Caesar is familiar with this test, and he at least has a general idea of how to do it, but he’s never attempted it before, and he knows a lot of students have died in the attempt. The first thing he figures out is that it’s such an exhausting process that if you fall off part way, you won’t have enough stamina to start over, so you really only get one try at this.

He spends most of his climb, however, worrying about Joseph, because Joseph’s Hamon skills are so rudimentary that he doesn’t even know how to cling to the pillar in the first place. Fortunately...

Hermit Purple? In my Battle Tendency? It’s more likely than you think. Joseph tries ripping his shirt and fashioning a makeshift rope for himself, but Lisa cuts it with a dagger before he can even try to use it. I’m somewhat skeptical that this would have worked anyway. She may have only foiled his attempt for his own benefit. Joseph might have wasted a lot of precious energy trying to use this trick before giving up and doing it correctly.

So, after all other options are exhausted, Joseph finally follows directions. He watches Caesar for a while, then realizes that Caesar has been clinging to the oil with his fingertips, and not his palms. It looks precarious, but Joseph remembers what Caesar told him about the water pistol and figures out that this is an application of that concept. So he quickly catches up to Caesar, only to discover that the pillar gets harder to climb around the 18 meter mark.

Around that elevation, the Pillar “protrudes”. I think that means that it gently widens as you go up, something you can’t really see until you’re already climbing up there. So now you’re not climbing straight up any more at a 90-degree angle to the ground, you’re more like 95 or 100 degrees, making it that much more of a struggle to hold on.

But things get even worse when Joseph discovers a small crack in the pillar. It’s the only handhold on the entire pillar, so he figures he can get a firmer grip on that and rest a bit. Big mistake, because it’s booby-trapped, and when he touches the crack, it turns on this high-pressure stream of oil at the 20-meter level. Oil just spews out from all sides of the pillar, and the pressure is so intense that when Caesar sticks a pen into it the oil stream cuts it in half.

Joseph thinks Caesar is angry at him for his blunder, but Caesar’s actually worried for Joseph’s safety. He only knows one way to get past the oil stream, and he isn’t sure Joseph has the skill necessary to pull it off. See, you can use Hamon to cling to the oil, but you can also use it to repel the oil, and protect yourself from the high-pressure stream. But Caesar now has to use use both of those principles simultaneously. He has to cling to the pillar while moving through the stream. He ends up doing this mid-air jump thing, and it works, but now he has to haul ass to get to the top of the pillar. It’s not just for his own sake, but Caesar feels that he has to convince Lisa Lisa to call off the test to save Joseph’s life. He doesn’t know how to do the trick Caesar pulled off, and Joseph’s the kind of guy who might get desperate or frustrated enough to do something drastic and get himself killed. But when he reaches the top, there’s no one around.

But he needn’t have worried, because Joseph’s drastic idea actually works. He apparently can’t repel and cling at the same time like Caesar, so instead he just clings. Instead of passing through the oil stream, he clings to it, sliding across the flow of oil to the edge of the current, then flipping over it, where the pressure is low enough that it won’t hurt him. Then he bounces off the top side of the oil stream and clings to the outer wall of the pit.

Everyone is impressed, except the walls of the pit are even harder to climb than the pillar, and Joseph can’t quite make it to the top. Caesar saves him with just 10 cm to go.

Joseph is still sore at Lisa Lisa for putting him through all of that, but she tosses him an upside-down glass of water and Joseph is surprised to find that he can hold the water inside the glass with his Hamon, something he couldn’t do back in Rome, when Caesar told him they needed to train. So now Joseph’s finally on board with all of this, and Lisa introduces the boys to he assistants, Messina and Loggins. They put Caesar and Joseph through a grueling three weeks of training montage, until finally...

...They go shopping! Some guy with a pompodour tries to steal a necklace from Lisa, but she catches him and lets Joseph deal with the guy. Joseph covers the dude in mustard and then he complains about her carrying around a bright red stone like that for pickpockets to see. Wait... red stone? Yeah, it’s the Red Stone of Aja.

On their way back home, Lisa explains the backstory of the Pillar Men. They created the Stone Masks to improve themselves, and tested the technology on humans. No one knows how the Stone Masks work, but the “bones” that jut out of them somehow bring out “latent power” in the human brain and it turns them into vampires.

I never really considered that before, but I suppose the bony spikes in the masks are kind of analogous to the effect of being pierced by the arrows in Parts 4, 5, and 6. Part 5 offers a partial explanation for the Stand Arrows by saying the heads of the arrows were carved from a meteorite found in Greenland, and there was an alien virus in the meteorite. You get cut by this metal, and get sick from the virus, and you either recover with a Stand power or you die. There was a text piece in Part 7 that tried to connect the Stand concept with Hamon, the Stone Masks, and “Spin”, suggesting that the latter three were attempts to achieve what Stands can do, and I guess that makes sense. Maybe the Stone Masks were the Pillar Men attempting to invent whatever the alien meteor was supposed to do. Except it’s not as advanced, so it can only do vampires instead of Stands.

Eventually, Kars’ experiments led him to the discovery of a particular stone that amplifies and focuses light. He believed that if he could work that into his Stone Mask technology, then he could create a more powerful mask that would bring about greater improvements into his own body. The problem was that he needed a bigger, more flawless stone than the ones that were available to him. And that’s why they went to Rome to find one. The 1st Century B.C. Ripple Clan couldn’t stop the Pillar Men, but they did manage to secure the stone they were looking for, and it’s been in their possession ever since. Lisa Lisa holds it up to the sun and blows up part of her boat just to show off what it can do.

Joseph suggests that they just destroy the thing. After all, it does them no good, and it means everything to their enemies, so why keep it around? But there’s some legend that says it will be impossible to defeat the Pillar Men if the Red Stone of Aja is destroyed.

This seemed kind of hokey to me at first. Lisa Lisa even admits that she doesn’t understand what that legend means, but she’s convinced that she has to protect the stone anyway. But then I remembered Tonpetty, the leader of the Ripple Clan in Part 1. He taught Will A. Zeppeli how to use Hamon, but warned him that it would lead to Will’s gruesome death. Presumably, Tonpetty had some sort of gift of prophecy, and maybe it’s not far-fetched to think that others in the Ripple Clan had the same ability. So maybe someone, a long time ago, foretold the ultimate fate of the Red Stone of Aja, and the Ripple Clan has been following that vague counsel ever since.

This might explain how the Ripple Clan knows so much about the Pillar Men in the first place. It never made much sense to me how the Pillar Men would travel to Rome and this secret band of warriors would be there ready to oppose them. It’s also kind of convenient that the Ripple Clan knows so much about the Pillar Men’s Stone Mask research. I mean, the Pillar Men barely acknowledge humans as it is, so why would Kars deign to explain anything to them?

Now that I think about it, this might be why the Ripple Clan turned to divination in the first place. Their enemies were so mysterious and their motives so baffling that they may have had no choice but to consult fortune-tellers and psychics for insight. And, one way or another, they managed to get some solid intel this way. Kars really was doing R&D on Stone Masks. He really did go to Rome in search of a “Super Aja”. Will Zeppeli did die, as Tonpetti warned him. Kars really did return in 1938, as the Aztec’s predicted. And it really will be impossible to defeat the Pillar Men without the Red Stone of Aja. Lisa doesn’t know how that works yet, but she knows it’s true.

But that’s not important right now. For now, it’s time for Joseph and Caesar to complete their training by heading back to base for a final showdown with their instructors. Joseph’s final test will be a battle with Loggins, so I assume Caesar has to take on Messina. But when Joseph shows up for his test...

He finds two people on the battlefield. One is Loggins, and the other guy is killing him.

And yeah, it’s Esidisi. Who invited him? Well, Joseph was going to fight him in a week or so anyway, so why put off tomorrow what you can do today?

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #lisa lisa #caesar zeppeli #esidisi #robert e o speedwagon #erina joestar #loggins #messina

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summerstardust · 4 years

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Did You Miss Me? Part 6

Dhawan!Master x Reader - Previous Missy x Reader

Summary: The reader and The Master adjust to a normal human life together and ignore the negative possibilities of the future. Did You Miss Me? Masterlist

Warnings: alcohol consumption, leading up to smut but no actual smut

Word Count: 2786

You woke up smothered in The Master’s arms, your face was against his chest and his chest hair slightly tickled your nose. You breathed in his scent of burning firewood and mint and shifted closer to his body. You kept your eyes closed and blissfully relished in running your hands over his body.

“Good morning, love.” His morning voice was so beautiful, deep and dark but filled with so much love for you.

“Mornin’” You nuzzled even closer to The Master, trying to make this domestic moment last as much as possible.

“Sleepy aren’t we?” You could hear the smirk in his voice, but you didn’t care. You were going to enjoy this moment for as long as possible.

“Don’t judge my sleep schedule, Time boi!” He laughed at that, his laugh reverberating through his chest and into yours. The pair of you spent a few more minutes entangled around each other before The Master asked, “Are you hungry? I can make us something.”

You looked up at him who was staring down at you with warm chocolate eyes and you responded joyfully, “I would like that.” The Master burst into a sweet smile and kissed you on the nose. He was going to move away, but you reached up and kissed all around his face until he was giggling at your actions. You and The Master finally released each other from your tight grips, allowing the both of you to escape the warm confines of your bed. The Master walked straight to your small kitchen in his purple boxers, which you didn’t notice the night before. You waited back a bit, and looked for a top to put on before following your newly returned love. You finally found the top you threw out of tiredness and was about to put it on until you saw The Master’s shirt thrown in the corner of your room. You quickly dropped your own shirt and delicately gathered up his and wrapped it around your body.

When you entered the kitchen, The Master had already started cooking for the pair of you. You quickly moved to gather up some dishes and utensils to offer some help before he could complain that he wanted to do everything for you by himself. You ordered the dishes on your small kitchen table and prepared for the food The Master was cooking, but as you waited, you hugged him from behind as he had done the night before. Once he finished everything, the two of you moved to the table with the food and began eating.

You were halfway through your meal when The Master suddenly asked,“Wait! Don’t you have school?” You giggled at his worried face. You knew that he questioned the effectiveness of Human schooling, or at least he did as Missy, but you were happy to know that he continued to care about your interests.

“No, it's a Saturday. So we can spend more time together and I will be able to help you plan out your new Human persona.” You moved to refill your tea cup.

“You don’t have to help me, Y/N.” You could sense that The Master was going to continue and ramble about how he didn’t want to get you involved, and you interrupted him to not hear his self isolating rant.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Master. I’m going to help you. We already have one part of your persona, also known as my new boyfriend. Now, what were you previously?”

“MI6 agent and shopkeep, as you know. I was a caretaker at a hospital on a spaceship, prime minister, a professor at the end of the Universe.”

“Hold on! You were prime minister?!”

“Yes, my name was Harold Saxon. Don’t you remember?”

“I mean, kind of, but I was really young then, I wasn't really focused on politics. But didn’t you kill the president of the United States?”

“Of course that’s what you remember!”

“Of course! You know me and my gen z opinions on corrupt politics.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

“If we go to the store we can look at what people are advertising for on the bulletin or go online and look for available jobs.”

You had to go to the store anyway, because it would cause too large of an output to have the TARDIS gather food for you, so there you could look for what people were advertising for. The two of you walked because there was a shop close by and you thought that it would be nicer to spend as much time with your newly returned love for as long as possible. The two of you didn’t talk on the journey, but The Master would constantly look over to you longingly as you led him to the store, but the two of you didn’t talk until you reached the bulletin board just inside the shop.

“You could be a substitute teacher. You mentioned that you were a professor once.” Your eyes moved over the board again, but this occupation seemed like the most logical. There were the obvious options available, like dog walking, cat sitting, and babysitting, however those options would not be acceptable for The Master. The image of The Master babysitting would be a hilarious sight, though. The only other mostly suitable job offer was that of an assistant at a local bookstore.

“Yes, but I didn’t really teach. I just tried to reconstruct a primitive human spaceship. And why would I stoop so low as to be a substitute teacher?”

“Well, you didn’t hear this idea from me, but an accident could befall a teacher at the school. Then you and your history of being a great substitute would allow you to rise up the ranks of the school and become a regular teacher there. Then you would be able to influence the next generation.” You smirked at The Master, who stood shocked but impressed. You quickly turned back to the board, your face falling. “Actually, maybe you shouldn't be a substitute teacher.” You ripped the number of the bookshop off the flyer and handed it to The Master, but he swiped your hand away.

“No, no, no, I think you are right, my love, I should weave my way into this school.” His smirk grew as he planned for the future, grabbing hold of your hand once again.

“What have I done?” You spoke to yourself, disappointed in the ideas you put into The Master’s twisted mind. The Master responded to you anyway.

“Something brilliant, dearie!” He pecked your cheek with a kiss before hauling you off into the rest of the store to do the shopping.

After going through the shop once, your cart was already full, and The Master continually asked how the pair of you were going to take all of these groceries home. You would always explain that this store knew you well, and they are perfectly okay with you taking the store’s grocery cart home, then bring it back the next time you went to the store or immediately after packing all of your stuff away. This is one of the reasons you always went here instead of places on your university. It was just considerate that the store would offer all of the students some more help. The Master was sceptical, however, or he was judging Human food choices.

“Is all of this necessary?” The Master eventually spoke up again.

“For a couple weeks worth of food for the pair of us, yes.”

“Well, I don’t eat as much as you. How much do Humans eat?” His tone was confused as he picked up and looked at the nutrition facts and ingredients of some of the foods in your cart.

“A decent amount, my love.” As soon as The Master placed the current food he was focused on back down, you sped off to go through the store once more, just to check that you had everything. The Master quickly ran after you, glaring. You ignored his glare and told him that you had everything you needed, and if he wanted anything, he should get it now. The Master rolled his eyes, but left you to go find something. You waited near the self checkout section for him and whatever he was searching for. But you didn’t have to wait long because The Master came trudging up next to you holding a couple bottles of wine and several bars of mint flavoured chocolate. You smiled at his selections, but told him to put everything in the cart before getting in line to check out.When the pair of you were next in line, The Master moved to the chip and pin machine saying,“Let me.”

“I can pay for everything.” You were going through your items and were unaware of The Master’s facial expression.

“Please. Let me.” You looked up from what you were doing and saw his intense face. You didn’t know what he was thinking, but you didn’t want to cause a scene, so you nodded to him and finished checking out all of your items. The Master then pulled out his TCE and fiddled with the knobs and buttons before scanning the chip and pin machine which quickly registered that everything was paid for. He smiled at you, putting his TCE back in his pocket and pushing the cart out of the store for you.

“See. I can handle it.” He eventually spoke on your way back to your apartment.

“You didn’t have to do that.” You said solemnly. You didn’t know what he was thinking, but you thanked him even though you disagreed with his actions.

“I wanted to, though.” He didn’t know how to tell you that he did this because he wanted to take care of you. It was easy for him to demand and declare things of people he could use or people he didn’t like, but because he cared for you so much he was unable to explain himself. You were the one person that stayed with him through so many things, and The Master didn’t know how to handle it. He could only think of rudimentary servicelike actions to offer you, like cooking or buying items you needed. But words were too daunting right now.

You and The Master carted your groceries up to your room and you began to put everything away within your cabinets and refrigerator. The Master pulled his TCE out again and teleported the cart back to the store, then he joined you in putting everything away. Once everything was clean and in its place, The Master asked “So what do Humans do on a Saturday night?”

“Party and get drunk and try to hookup.”

“Are you serious?” The Master moved his arms to where they were folded across his chest in a skeptical act.

“Very. Saturday night is party night. How do you not know that from all of the times I would hang out with Bill?” You missed Bill and your friendship, but you also loved joking about said friendship because The Master was always jealous.

“Don’t mention her.” The Master uncrossed his arms and moved until he was standing face to face with you and looking you in the eye. You could only smirk because you knew that you would win this.

“Why? Jealous?” You leaned forward to where your noses touched.

“Obviously.” The Master shot back at you and you continued to smirk.

“Awww, poor jealous baby!” You moved to where you were holding The Master’s face in your hands and you covered his face in pecks and kisses. “Let’s have a nice wine night in and watch a cool show!” You walked to get the bottles then off to the living room so you could get comfortable. “Get the glasses will you.” The Master hated how you could still make him jealous, but he would let it pass because this was basically his first day fully back in your life. He quickly got two glasses and followed you. The two of you made your way through a bottle and a show The Master needed to catch up on. You were getting drunk faster than The Master, but he was trying to drink more to make it more equal, but he wanted to tell you something before the pair of you were too drunk.

“I have something to tell you, Y/N” You looked up at him, scared that this bliss was going to end. He looked very serious, but still happy. You thought that it was one of his tricks and he was going to tell you something serious.

“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”

“What! No!” He paused and regained his composure despite how much he hated how that was your first thought, “No, my love, I’m not leaving, I just need to tell you something that I should have long ago.” He paused again to hold your hands in his large ones.

“My real name is ---” The phone starting to ring interrupted his declaration.

“I should get that.” You began to move to answer it, but The Master pulled back down beside him, meaning you wouldn’t be able to answer the phone before the answering machine went off. You still hadn’t changed the message from the one Missy had recorded.

“Why hello, lovely Human! You seem to be calling at an inconvenient time, turns out the owner of this home is in the middle of a very private act” she audibly gasped before laughing and the younger version of you yelled at Missy to put the phone down. The recording of Missy continued to laugh at the younger you’s shocked attitude before saying, “Do whatever it is you Humans do on this primitive device.” The Master smiled at you as you hid your face in embarrassment.

“We should probably change that. Don’t you think?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” The Master rubbed the pad of his thumb across your cheek bone and leant into you, but the person calling began to leave their message, ruining your moment.

“Hi! Y/N, it's me Graham. Yaz and Ryan said that you haven’t been answering your calls or texts. We are all worried about you. We want to make sure that you are safe. But there’s also a problem with The Doctor. We know that you know her more than we do, so we were just wondering if you could help us. She’s really distracted, something about her home planet and The Master. Please just talk to us, Y/N, we need your help.” You looked away from The Master before stating, “I need another drink.”

“Or we can move on to the hookup part of this Human Saturday night ritual … I’m positive that that will also make you forget about that message. It will probably be even more effective than alcohol.” The Master was trying and that’s all that matters. You could see that he was trying to be good for you and to take care of you. You wanted him to reassure you, but you still enjoyed everything he was doing for you now. And you couldn’t imagine what he was going through,

“You should be happy that I love you because that was an awful chat up line.” The Master’s mouth fell open in shock at your uncomplimentary comment, but quickly turned into a smirk when it finally registered in his brain that you said those three little words.

“You love me?”

“Of course! Wanna go to bed?” The Master smiled again, he just wanted to be with you. He finished off the last of the wine bottle then got up from where he was seated on your couch and picked you up, carrying you with your legs wrapped around his waist. He threw you onto your bed, then kissed up your body until he reached your lips.

“Well, this is going to be a bit different…” The Master joked.

“I’m sure that we can learn and manage just fine.” You giggled at The Master but reached up and stroked his check affectionately and reasuredly. The Master smiled down upon your form beneath him. He could never understand what you found so appealing in him, but he would be damned if he ever let you leave his life. He wished that he could tell you how deeply he felt for you, but for the moment, he would have to settle for showing you. The Master leaped forward and recaptured your lips. The two of you then began a night of passion, your love for each other drowning out the sound of a soft beeping alarm emanating from the TARDIS console.

#doctor who #doctor who imagine #doctor who x reader #the master #the master imagine #the master x reader #dhawan!master #dhawan!master x reader #dhawan!master imagine #fanfiction #personal post #request #anon #series #sacha dhawan

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her0brine · 3 years

Text

Here’s the second part to my ‘Steve & Alex meeting for the first time’ fic! It immediately picks up where the first part ends, so please make sure to read the first part to understand what’s going on so far!

After a few more minutes of walking together in the silent dark, a small gasp of awe comes out of Alex when seeing Steve’s home.

“W-wow! It’s so..... cute!! You even have some little shacks, and I think I see a farm as well? It’s pretty dark out so I can’t really tell. I can kind of make out what colors you used for the facade though, and it looks so quaint!” they say, as they pick up their pace one last time, actually surpassing a surprised Steve and stopping at the house’s front door. It was illuminated by a lone lantern, hanging by the carved door.

“Well, are you going to invite me in?” Alex playfully says, while Steve briefly looks at them with mild shyness before focusing on opening the doorknob. The door swings open and Steve enters first, before gesturing towards Alex to enter the adjacent room to the right. Alex now enters the home, gasping in awe again when noticing the detailed interior. The first thing they saw was the impressively large living room, which suddenly grew to be much larger when Steve turned on another wall-mounted lantern. It revealed a heavily detailed floor, richly colored walls lined with numerous paintings, and dozens of various lounge furniture, all surrounding a interior fire pit, as a glass ceiling shone moonlight above it. Alex can only assume Steve breaks down the glass when it’s in use, if not then their entire home can easily go up in flames. As Alex diverts their gaze from the living room, Steve was in the adjacent room, turning the lights on there alongside rifling through a dyed pink shulker box. They soon pulled out a potion of healing, before timidly looking back at Alex. They shift their gaze to a singular chair next to a table, when Alex soon realized they were in their kitchen, as evidenced by the walls lined with numerous smokers and crafting tables, and even more color coded shulker boxes, although their contents are unknown to Alex.

They lean against the chair, trying to avoid pushing the broken arrow in lodged their back even more deeper into their flesh, while now fully looking at the whole arrow still sticking out of their bloodied shoulder.

“Hey, do you think you could uh...... c-cut this out of me? I can’t pull these out, as it’ll make the wounds worse, and I don’t want to be either infected through there or that heavily scared from the woun-“ they manage to say, before really talking a better look at Steve’s appearance in the illuminated room. Other than the obvious such as the color of their outfit and the mud and spider blood that splattered across their clothes, Alex did not notice the massive scars that littered Steve’s body when they were outside. The most prominent ones were around their hands, almost as if their fingers were chopped off and reattached, since the regrown rings of flesh around their digits was noticeably thick. A pronounced large scar makes their way down from Steve’s right eyebrow ride down to their cheek, going straight through their right eye. Not to mention the old bite-like scar around their neck, something that could only be done by a wolf or even a zombie possibly. Their disheveled hair and being covered in the soot from mining all day also adds to their ragged appearance.

It seems like being stared at in awkward silence as Alex combs them from head-to-toe has only made Steve more self-conscious than usual, as they begin to look at the yellow glazed terracotta flooring, slightly murmuring in discomfort as they gently shake the potion in their hands a little bit, hoping it would snap Alex out of staring so intently at them.

“I.... I uh...... so. Got a knife in this kitchen? W-wait uh these potions you mentioned earlier, they can just, PUSH stuff out of the body right? I’m sorry if I’m a bit naive about this, potions aren’t really my ‘thing’. I favor just doing things the more old school traditional way, you know, apples and milk and the sorts.” as Alex stifles out a small laugh, hoping to lighten up the mood after realizing what they have done.

“Y...yeee......... yeEEAAhh.....” Steve manages to croak out, before gently placing the potion of healing on the stripped birch wood table Alex is seated next to. Alex seems to stare quite uncomfortably at the potion, perturbed by the pulsating glow it has within its bottle.

“I guess I just drink it now right? I hope I don’t uh, bleed too much in your kitchen, it’s pretty clean, ha ah......” Alex says as they clasp their hands around the neck of the potion’s bottle, now pulling the cork off with their other hand. Before drinking however, Steve murmurs loudly and waves their hands to stop them, now realizing they forgot to tell them something. They run out of the room, their footsteps reverberating through the kitchen and the connected room, as they make their way up a staircase that Alex hasn’t seen, but can sort of make out how tall it is by Steve’s worried stomps along the many steps. They rush back into the room once again, this time with their hands full of paper and charcoal, and they got back to feverishly scribbling on them. Alex fiddles with their hands as Steve continues to write, but Alex’s suppressed small groans of pain during this seems to make them write even more rushed than before. They soon finish and placed the note on the table, as Alex picks it up to read aloud once more.

“Okay let me read this, thank you! Alrighty! ‘You should stand up when drinking, as yes, the potion will push out the arrows from your body. I cannot lie, it does feel quite unpleasant when it does happen. You can brace yourself against the chair, so you don’t tip over from the rush of sudden pain. I can leave the room now when you do drink, I don’t want to make this even more uncomfortable for you. You won’t bleed that much, as the potion immediately makes any lost or damaged flesh and bone grow back. The scars will fade quickly over time, especially since it’s a arrow entry wound, as it’ll likely be a small pale spot. When you’re done, just knock on the table and I’ll come in again. Just one thing though, what is your favorite color? I’m going to craft your bed now and it’ll be in a newer spare room on the first floor, since I don’t want you to force yourself to walk on the stairs to go up to a older finished spare room there. Apologies if the new spare room is not to your taste, as I didn’t expect to have visitor come over in a situation like this.’ ................ Green. Green is my favorite color. I’m more partial to lime green though, but any shade can work! You could’ve possibly guess my love for green from my top and my eye color though!”

Alex smiles towards Steve as they begin to stand up, and Steve hurriedly leaves the room, not wanting to witness what was going to occur. As they make their way to the spare room, which was actually a storage room for their ores and other construction based items, they can hear the sudden yelps of pain emanating from the kitchen. The chair squeaks across the floor, as Steve can assume Alex didn’t expect it to hurt that sudden after drinking it.

Potions of healing do indeed heal quite well, but the process in which it’s done is akin to having your insides suddenly singed all at once, not also including the areas in which the wounds are, as they become unbearably painful. Steve focuses on the task at hand, trying to ignore what was occurring nearby as they dig through a shulker box they filled with just dyed wool, each row in its inventory being dedicated to bundles filled with a single dyed color. It took them months to harvest such a absurd amount account of wool and the dye they procured to make such a ludicrous amount, but then again, considering the untracked years that Steve has spent alone, they needed something to motivate themselves to just function. Filling out dozens and dozens of chests, shulker boxes, and bundles with a singular item type in such a strictly clean and meticulous fashion seemed to be decent motivation.

They finish up the bed, placing it in the middle back wall of the room, and quickly looked for a redstone lamp to place next to it, along with any sort of block to make a rudimentary night stand. Before they could add anything else to the room to make it more cozy for a actual human being, the loud knocks of Alex hitting their knuckles against the table echoes through the entire house. Steve makes their way back to the kitchen, and sees a drained Alex still propped up against the chair they used to support their weight. Their shallow breaths, accompanied by the two arrows now lying near their feet, next to small puddles of blood fully explains to Steve that the potion was successful, but was physically exhausting on Alex.

Again, Steve’s thoughts gets the best out of them, as they are paralyzed in fear of what to do next. They barely built up the resolve to even touch Alex so far, as every time they try to, they either panicked internally or was told not to. They want to physically hold and comfort them, but are fearful of being rebuked in disgust. Instead they partially gulp down their fear, and shuffled their way to one of the dyed white shulker boxes in the room, pulling out a bucket of milk, still surreally cold even though it was stored for some time. As Alex is still trying to catch their bearings, they gently place the bucket on the table, hoping they would at least see that they’re trying to comfort them.

“T-thAT’S? F-FOR M-MEEee?” Alex barely squeaks out, still breathing heavily. “Oh YES I need this so damn bad you don’t even KNOW” they now blurt out, still clearly winded from the pain but they still proceed to scarf down the whole bucket, as Steve bashfully looks on. A small smile forms on their face though, as they’re glad to see that Alex is feeling a little bit better, but they’re still worried for them, as knowing that resting up well is a huge factor in helping them heal properly.

Alex makes their way to a sink, cleaning off where their wounds were, to see that the blood they bled has fully dried, alongside barely having any indication of having a wound in the first place. As they finish washing up, Steve tries to write down another note in telling them where their room is, but Alex immediately beats them to the punch when noticing them scribbling it down. Steve makes a small gasp at how sudden they seem to immediately recover from a relatively intense experience, but then again they were pretty nonchalant about having those two arrows lodged in their body for some time, so Steve shrugged it off as that’s how high Alex’s pain tolerance is.

Alex follows behind Steve as they cross through the main living room, as Steve soon opens up the room Alex will be resting in. Alex whistles when laying their eyes upon the room, seeing that it was actually a elongated storage room, filled to the brim with various storage blocks and some few stray items in a lone corner. Their vibrant lime green bed juts against the overall organized mood the room had, along with the two accompanying items that Steve hopes will breathe some more life into the room.

“Looks great! Then again I AM essentially crashing here for some time, so I couldn’t ask for more!”

“Eh eh?!”

“Aw don’t look so shocked! I would be sleeping under a tree right now or in a hole probably, this is some luxury class stuff!! Plus it’ll be just maybe like two or three days here, then I’ll leave since I don’t want to a burden...... Well I’ll see you in the morning bud, I’ll take off my clothes since they’re basically caked in shit and I don’t want to ruin a freshly crafted bed already.”

Alex laughs as they actually slap Steve‘s back in a good-natured manner, as Steve could only emit out a small yelp before Alex makes their way to their new bed. They stay glued to the ground for a few seconds, before realizing Alex wasn’t kidding about removing their clothes. They faintly yelp once more before leaving and gently closing the door behind them, as Alex waves goodbye to them.

Steve soon begins to walk down the large living room, heading towards the staircase before suddenly feeling discomfort in their stomach, before realizing that it was indeed their body trying to expel what they once ate earlier. Steve begins to fling themselves up the staircase, trying to make it to their room’s bathroom before throwing up chunks across their dark oak flooring. They barely make it, as bile spews across their shirt as they expel the rest into a sink, their entire body trembling as they continue to retch quite violently.

They didn’t expect this to happen, but they had a feeling it would happen eventually, as Steve was deeply distressed for essentially the entire time they were in proximity of Alex. As they continue to gag and whine as the vomiting fit seems to end, Steve slowly looks up to see their ragged appearance in the mirror, absolutely appalled at how they look. If the vomit wasn’t already disgusting, they were still caked with mud and spider blood, and they didn’t even know they were tracking all of that, alongside soot across their entire home. Still gripping into the sides of the sink, Steve finally breaks under the weight of their own diffidence, weeping at what they could’ve done ‘better’ to make themselves come off as not some terrifying, feral-looking individual but as just a normal person.......

.....Their weeping echoes through the house, as Alex lays awake in their bed, sweat beading down on the side of their face, as they also think to themselves of what they could’ve done ‘better’, as they’re now perturbed of what any of their actions has done to put Steve in such a horrible state............

#so yeah this is just Pain! They clearly want to avoid being a burden on each other but the psychological tension is too high during this....#minecraft #mineblr #steve #Alex #⬜️

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

Humans are Space Orcs, “For Peace.”

Some more stuff involving humanity and the Drev war.

WARNING: this may be graphic? It wasn’t meant to be that, but I just thought I should warn you there is blood involved.

She definitely had not intended come. She wasn’t a soldier, and the idea of the war made her sick to think about, she knew it needed to happen, but that didn’t mean she lied it. The Runi weren’t exactly known for their war practices. In fact, in their history war had only been talked about as a theoretical possibility based on the idea of outing a poor government structure, but since the rundi had never had a poor government structure, there was no need for war.

But this was different, the Drev had only recently managed space flight, and because of their nomadic clan-like life no one had assumed their planet was inhabited . There was no infrastructure, and with the volcanic activity…. Well.

They generally tried to avoid meeting new species when they were at this point in space travel development. However, the Drev were smarter than they first appeared. They had had the ability to go to space for a long time, but never bothered to test it because it just wasn’t important to their culture. When they finally had left their planet, they ended up running into a Tesraki ship, which was trying to requisition precious metals from one of their moons.

Contact had been made peacefully enough with linguistics experts from the GA appearing and easily figuring out the Drev language.

It was a simple thing, very straight forward.

But the Drev just couldn’t fight their baser instincts, and that was to make war. After a slight insult based on cultural misunderstanding, the Drev leaders had promised to turn their sights to the stars conquering and fighting where they went. The GA had made a decision to push to destroy the technology that would allow them to do such a thing, but based on atmospheric composition, and the way they had hidden their technology deposits, this was about more than carpet bombing their facilities.

They had to actually go in.

And that was determined to be harder than they intended. The Drev War practices may have appeared primitive, but their tactics were not. They had been losing the battle, and even with the augmentation to their army with human troops and technology, they were being pushed back every day.

Officers were threatening to pull back off planet and just wait for the Drev to leave before blasting them to bits, but Drev shield technology was actually rather advanced and would take more than a little work to destroy.

Now she was here, having landed in one of the desolate lava fields before being secretly transported by hovercraft towards the very back of the front line. They could have landed closer, but the amount of ash towards the front was unprecedented and there were warning against trying to fly in such conditions

Her arrival was kept quiet, as she was ushered into what they had dubbed the FOB (forward operating base). Humans in strange patterned uniforms marches past in groups carrying their strange explosive sticks their heads covered by helmets and their face by masks. Little flakes of ash were falling from the sky and coating the ground in a thick layer that covered her feet as she walked.

The soldiers themselves were smeared with the ash, and blended heavily into the background making it difficult for her to make them out.

Large tents had been set up, and she could hear the strange guttural chant of human voices from inside. A tent flap was pushed back, and she looked inwards to see ash stained humans sitting around fires talking and interacting with each other.

Guards stood on lone vigils at the corners of the camps.

They had made it some way onto the base before being met by a familiar face. The human admiral was looking somewhat worse for wear, his face was covered in a layer of stubble, and his skin was covered in a layer of grime. His eyes once so gleeful were cold and hard almost haunted.

“Chairwoman.”

“Admiral…. How goes the battle.”

He man turned motioning her further into the camp, “I’m afraid not very well. We had assumed based on their more primitive war practices, that this would be an easy fight, however with the thick clouds of ash visibility is drastically reduced, and our ranged weapons become…. Almost pointless. They are generally right on top of us before we know they are there, and in that case they have the advantage. Their tactics are swift and brutal, they don’t necessarily aim to kill for some strange reason, but to brutally incapacitate usually by taking off limbs.”

She felt herself grow uncomfortably sick, “They take of limbs?”

“Yes dismemberment seems to be their favorite war tactic if they can manage it, and because we can’t see through this damned ash, not even our drones can, they always seem to have the upper hand, we've been pushed back almost constantly over the past month, and our soldiers are in pretty bad shape.” he walked further into the camp explaining how things ran and how the battle was fairing.

From his accounts, though he did not say it.

Not well.

The line had pulled back, and there were only three bases in operation aside from this one. Communications were being stalled do the volcanic activity, and that included satellite communications. They had no GPS no radar, and the drones wouldn’t fly in such thick ash.

All together it was as the human had put it

‘a shit show.’

He motioned her to follow after him.

“There is something…. I think you need to see.” Nervously she followed after the human’s long powerful strides easily able to keep up on her own long legs, but finding she was nowhere near as graceful as the human.

She watched him quietly from behind noting the slight slump of his shoulders and the weary way in which he walked feet dragging through the ash leaving long trails behind him. Had the human been so droopy before?

She couldn’t remember.

She wasn’t aware that humans could wilt?

They made their way past a group of men heading back from patrol. They were covered in ash and conversing quietly amongst one another. Her translation software had only so far a range, but she thought she heard them speaking about dismemberment.

They walked past another set of tents before stopping by a more established building.

He motioned her to step inside with him, and together with her guards they walked inside. Greeting them was a troop of humans and a Tesraki wearing HAZMAT gear.

They were ordered to gear up in protective covering before stepping into a second room where they were hosed off from all the ash. Spinning tendrils of dark ash spun towards a drain in the floor until the outside of their suits were relatively clean.

He paused before the door turning to look back at her from behind the surgical mask he wore, “What you are about to see ...is the epitome of the cost of war.” With one hand, he pushed the curtain aside and they stepped into a long, dark room lined from beginning to end with dozens of mats spaced evenly over the floor, and on each one of the mats lay a body.

She froze in the tent staring suddenly caught by the sound.

Soft moaning.

Keening

And the horrific wheezing gasp for air.

Other humans wandered through the triage tent tending to their wounded with soft words.

The man’s face had twisted into an angry snarl, “Fo the past few months the ash has restricted our access to supplies. Our ships can’t land for fear of gumming up the engines. We have been unable to replace our lost equipment, and so have only rudimentary medicine in order to treat our wounded.” He stepped up a row of wounded shivering under emergency blankets faces covered in light layers of sweat.

“This will be the first supply run we have received in weeks and with it the ability to take some of our wounded back to where they can get proper medical attention. Infection has been rampant despite our best efforts. Without modern technology, it’s like we are living in the goddamned dark ages.”

“Did you not bring these supplies when you first started the campaign.”

The man sighed in frustration, “We did but we, ‘I’ was overconfident. Our first three outposts were overrun by those beetles and with it most of our medical supplies.” he motioned around the room, “Those you see here are the men and women who managed to survive despite proper medical attention.”

The Rundi chairwoman tried not to look, tried not to see the horror that was in front of her, but there was no use, there was no turning away from that which she did not want to see. She glanced down at the humans splayed on piles of blankets and shivering with fever. She didn’t know much about humans, but she was vaguely aware of their ability to fight off infection by heating their bodies to unusual heat in order to burn off the infection.

It was supposedly an unpleasant process.

The human paused kneeling down next to one of the bodies pulling a blanket over the chest of a shivering human, “We ran out of painkillers two days ago.”

She was unable to keep her eyes away falling on one of the humans to her side. What she saw nearly had her running form the tent in shock and horror. The human that lay before her…. Was missing both of its legs. She…. at least she thought it was a she, opened feverish eyes mouth opening and lips trembling before her eyes rolled back. Bandages dark with ash and stained with red were tied about the stumps of her legs.

She lay on the floor quiet and unaided by medical technology.

Technology they should have had

Her vision widened finally forcing her to take in the view around her to match a symphony of moaning agony, guttural animal sounds to signify their pain. Whimpers and groans and weeping that died away only to be replaced by more.

The pitiful wailing of the dying.

“We are losing men, and we are doing it fast. A good portion of what we originally sent to you have either died or are in states like this.” A moan from her side, and she looked down to find a young man missing an arm, a rag covering both of his eyes. A yellow liquid stained the cloth.

She felt sick.

“With the transport you brought us a lot of our people will be able to get off and get medical attention. We have people moving them now. If all goes well, most of them should live.”

“And…. what about these?” She asked trying to keep her mind of the scene. A human just to the side of her missing an arm and a leg lay moaning pitifully on the ground. One of the hazmat dressed humans sat next to him gently holding his remaining hand.

The human didn’t appear to be doing anything medically relevant, but gently using their thumb to rub slow circles on the palm of the man’s remaining hand. It seemed strange, but that simple motion seemed to calm the human.

She was greeted by the feeling of horrible sadness as she looked.

“These…. Well. They have graciously volunteered for something special.”

They had almost reached the end of the tent now when, looking down at the floor, something caught her eye. The rundi chairwoman pulled to a stop staring at one of the humans. He was laid in the shadow of the tent at a distance from the lights. A roll of blankets had been propped up under his head and the stump of one of his legs, or what used to be his leg.

It was the right leg, and it had been severed an inch or two above the knee. A rag wrapped around the stump of his leg was red with blood.

His breathing was ragged and labored coming in forced gasps against what must have been excruciating pain, his face screwed up in agony

But it wasn’t that which had caught her attention.

“I…. I know him.” She stammered, stepping forward, “I know this one.”

The agitation in her voice must have been enough to rouse the human, who opened his eyes bleary and out of focus.

Even in this dim lighting she knew those eyes, a shade of bright, emerald green.

The young man turned his head blinking as he tried to focus on her, on her voice. His lips quivered his hands twitched at his sides, “Chairwoman?” He croaked.

The admiral hurried forward kneeling next to the young man as he began to shiver breathing growing more ragged, “Shhh lieutenant, it’s alright.” With surprisingly gentle hands, the man adjusted the boy’s pillow laying one hand on his shoulder, again making that slow rubbing motion that had been demonstrated earlier, “Shh, just relax, don’t try to talk ok.”

She stared on in confusion, and the admiral looked up, “You know him?”

She nodded her head in horrified confusion, “He…. he piloted the jet that saved my planet from an asteroid. He was….. He was one of the first humans we met. I I could be wrong.” She stared onwards knowing she wasn’t wrong.

The man looked on sad, “Yes, he wasn’t supposed to be on the frontline. The atmosphere has too much ash, so all our pilots were thrown back into ground divisions at the rear of the line for administration. When the Drev pushed back they were all that was left, and were forced into combat.”

The admiral looked up at her hand still trying to comfort the young soldier, “We were-”

“Admiral.” The boy’s voice was thick, slurred straining. She didn’t know much about human language, but the way he said the word made the admiral respond, and he leaned forward quickly cutting off and turning his focus.

In those few moments his breathing had grown more ragged.

“Yes.”

“It ... hurts.” His voice came between bursts of air forced from his lungs, a hutch as the muscles in his abdomen contracted and released, “Please…. Make it…. Stop.” Beads of sweat erupted on his forehead and his head arched back. The rest of the body followed suit writhing in slow agony, the remaining foot kicking at the ground in a show of the most visceral agony she had ever seen.

She was sick.

The admiral leaned in using one hand to pin the boy to the ground to stop the writhing, the other hand to the side of his face, “Hey Hey, look at me…. Look at me. Shhh…. There we go.” the young man let go of the contraction on his neck and looked the admiral in the eye face still twisted in pain.

Little droplets of fluid rolled from the eyes and down both sides of his face.

The two humans sat on the floor together, one gently wiping moisture from the other one’s face. His remaining foot grew still and went limp against the ground tilting outward.

Speaking so softly she could barely hear the admiral continued, “You’re gonna be alright kid. The ash is clearing up, and we got a troop transport in. You can go back home, we will get you some painkillers, get some rest, and you can go home…..just a few more minutes.” He dropped one hand back to the kid’s shoulder patting it gently. He turned to look for one of the attendings when, A shaky, clammy hand reached upwards grabbing the admiral by the arm.

He turned to look down.

“I…. I said I would do it.”

His voice was forced, it seemed like every time he was asked to speak the pain only grew worse.

“You don’t have to lieutenant. No one will blame you.” “NO!.... I said…. I would… do it.” His hand quivered and then fell back to his side eyes squeezing shut.

The man kept a hand on his shoulder, turning to look at the chairwoman who had been forced to look away unable to keep eye contact with the scene. He motioned one of the other attendees over to him, and she took his place. With soft hands she slid next to the young man resting his head in her lap posing no more than a comfort to the human as he sunk back into his pained trance.

Murmuring softly and gently stroking a gloved hand through his hair.

Outside in the air though it was ashy and grim, she could finally breathe staggering to the side feeling as if she was about to fall over.

The admiral followed her.

“Why… why did we have to see that.”

The man’s face was stern and unyielding as he held a palm out to face the building, “Every last man and woman inside that tent was willing to DIE for you, for peace, and now….

Now they have volunteered to do it again.”

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strosmkai-rum · 4 years

Text

ALTERATION MAGIC HEADCANONS

alteration go brrr

tw: suffocation, general violence.

Basic Principles

so alteration magic actually alters reality. it's not like illusion in the sense that the target only thinks the world has changed. so a fair bit more complicated as well.

in order to learn alteration, you gotta first accept that reality's not your reality. forget it. the whole point of alteration is to change that reality. the book reality and other falsehoods explains this better.

which means, pretty much nothing is off limits here. after all, alteration is the manipulation of the world. who's to say you can't make your own? although that veers toward conjuration more, i assume.

your spell is only as powerful as much as you believe it is. it's also dependent on skill/magicka pool, but those are mostly secondary to understanding here.

dual casting is recommended at first. the more you can imagine your reality, and the more magic you use to make it happen, the smoother it'll go.

and of course, regardless of school, spells can and will go wrong. it's perfectly normal! alteration won't mess up things too bad (usually); the spell wears off eventually.

alteration isn't easy to do in combat. it's very useful, but the focus needed to cast a spell might distract you from the battle for too long.

but hey, if you can make it work, you’ll be one hell of an opponent in battle. being able to cast alteration means bending reality to your will, as little as it may be.

and what i mean by little is that small bit of magic might be super useful to you, but in the face of the rest of the world, you may as well have never changed.

and that's a huge part of alteration. to you, it's a big deal. but when you cast the spell, you can't make it seem that way. it has to be subtle and worth passing over. your magic is being used against nature, do so in a way that won't scream "hey i'm breaking your rules come and get me" because they will get you.

whether casting world-centric or caster-centric spells is easier depends on the mage. generally, caster centric spells are easier, but both have their own purposes.

Caster-centric Spells

spells like oakflesh, ebonyflesh, dragonhide are all used in game to increase your armor rating for a little while.

so when i say "increase armor rating" i mean your skin's a lot tougher and it'll be a lot more difficult to be harmed by weapons/magic.

they also increase your weight, the more powerful the spell, the more you'll be weighed down. can be countered by using feather (what? you can change the reality of spells too. maybe make your own spells. who knows.)

equilibrium (sacrificing health for magicka regen) is a very delicate spell. it's easy to cast, but can very easily kill you as well. it's only used in very dire situations, and is considered off limits by many colleges and mages.

feather would decrease the weight of you and the stuff you're holding. guess it'd be good for not being slowed down by heavy armor or if you're like me, running away from bandits while being overencumbered by all of their stolen shit.

maybe if you cast a strong enough feather spell, it'll decrease your weight enough where you'll just float to the ground if you're in the air.

oooh, waterwalking. does what it says. other people will still sink, so it's useful for putting distance between you and pursuers quick. unless, of course, they can use it too.

i'd imagine that the effects of burden would be feeling super weighed down, your limbs turn to lead sort of thing. on that note, you could probably focus the spell into a specific area, if you're pursuing someone you could target only their feet so they just. can't run anymore.

waterbreathing. this is, awfully complicated. the in game book breathing water is awesome to get a better idea of this. seriously, go read it.

telekinesis. want that wine over there? telekinesis.

it's kind of difficult to learn to control how fast you move an object and how to maintain its position (you don't want to overturn a cup of water).

plenty useful in battle. heave a bandit at another bandit. throw sand in their face. throw a boulder at their face. toggle a lever on the other side of the room.

so i hc that telekinesis doesn't rely on what you see. if you know something's there, you can still interact with it even if you don't see it. power of the mind i suppose?

here's levitate! so in-game, it lets you walk on air. which makes sense! but i raise you:

fly. you know how in skyrim, there’s an encounter with the bosmer mage that casts a spell to fly but actually launches himself into the air and dies? okay, levitate can be used as a rudimentary flight spell. careful that you don't get shot down or tossed about by the winds.

World Affecting Spells

detect life and detect dead. ah, yes. so, i personally see the use of these spells as revealing all signatures to everyone. however, you can ignore a signature if you don't want it to show, like your own, or your allies.

i'm trying to emphasize here that this shit is all in your head. what you want will happen, if you believe enough.

different life forms will appear differently. undead have a black/maroonish hue, people have a red hue, daedra have a purple hue, automatons have a bronze hue, animals have a white hue. you can control the colors too.

just...you can control a lot of the way the spells work. go wild. a lot of the times when making changes or improvements to a spell, it ends up being made into a whole new one. maybe someone will tweak a waterbreathing spell to not get your clothes wet, or they'll combine a feather spell with stoneflesh to get the best of both worlds. who knows!

open lock spells! god, i miss those.

magic resistant locks. no open lock spell here. nope, you'll have to pick it yourself.

there might be a metal in tes that's the equivalent of dimeritium in the witcher. maybe. that would be cool.

so transmute ore is very interesting, it's changing a less valuable unrefined ore into a more valuable, but still unrefined ore.

it can be used for a lot more than just iron or silver. pretty much any ore can be turned into something else, with the exceptions of stuff like aetherium.

i’d assume that in order to successfully cast this spell, you’d have to study at least a little bit on mineral properties and chemistry and stuff.

ahaha, paralysis. this, i like. this one's a more complicated and taxing spell because it involves controlling the movement of people (to some extent) so, here's two of my possibilities on the effects:

you lose control of all your muscles. but you can feel everything.

the feeling of paralysis is a numbing feeling. you can't feel anything, which i guess would be good if you were attacked right after. don't feel pain for the second before you die, that’s always good.

the whole rigid body thing skyrim has is hilarious imo

ash shell is...not pleasant. i mean, basically no offensive spell is pleasant. but this one is at the top because: you're encased in a shell of ash. and then you'll say, oh, it's just ash- it's HARD ASH. you have better luck breaking through rock. it's being entombed alive.

you can be saved. just there's a generous time window of a minute or so.

ash rune's pretty cool, too. they're... interesting?

okay, a bit on the process here. you summon the spell. a neat ball of swirling ash appears in your palm. don't sniff it. you'll sneeze.

you cast it. the ash flies out of your palm, onto the surface. a thin cloud of ash hovers over it. apart from that and the daedric scripts in the rune, nothing gives it away.

and then, someone walks into it. from having a small ash cloud surrounding the rune, it leaps up, and swallows the target whole, encasing them in ash. that's an ash rune, babey!

no this isn’t what happens in game, but i liked the thought.

Other Thoughts

making magic resistant wards (oh, the irony) is pretty difficult. i’d assume the most that can be done is magicka draining effects, or something to mess up concentration.

protecting something against the use of magic, especially against the use of alteration spells is something extremely difficult.

there's scholars and researchers constantly one-upping each other in terms of magic security. you can never stay on top for too long; magic contradicts itself like that. you can always be better, i suppose.

please note, i had a hell of a time making stuff up for games i haven’t played. this wasn’t easy, but, hope you enjoyed! always down to talk headcanons and lore, maybe leave a few of your own in the replies?

#tes #lore #headcanons #my headcanons #magic #alteration #morrowind #oblivion #skyrim #all the games

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purkinje-effect · 3 years

Text

The Anatomy of Melancholy, (20)77: Caught Up in the Moment

Table of Contents. Third Instar, Chapter 8. Go to Previous. Go to Next. TWs: Food/meat, implied digestive trouble, unapologetic medical fetishization, brief grievous memory association, smoking. Seventy-seven is a sentimental number for me.

“...[C]lothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them he is a cipher, a vacancy, a nobody, a nothing.” -- Mark Twain’s “Czar’s Soliloquy”

Likes, reblogs, comments, and follows all mean a great deal to me! You can do so here and/or on AO3, if you'd like.

_________________

‘Choly and Angel walked next door to rejoin Sticks in the junk vendor’s stall. He found it peculiar, that trash did not comprise a majority of the dealer’s wares, despite the store’s categorization as a junk vendor. Much of it had been restored or repaired in some capacity, if not marginally more presentable polished or cleaned up some. A distant, crooked smile tugged at him, delighted by his ability to identify the most mundane of ancient things which had not graced his sight in some time. Ceramic figurine egg timer. Cake breaker. Dusting bellows. Pewter powder box. No, perhaps the entire mall could be called a large scale antiques dealer of sorts--with a healthy mix of contemporary crafts for sale as well, of course.

While ‘Choly had taken Liam’s suggestion to try some local fashion choices for something more compatible with the cervical collar, Sticks had decided to test his suggestion this type of merchant might yield their hunt better results. Sticks hadn’t wanted to wait around while ‘Choly clothing shopped, no matter how brief the errand with their appointment at the Gate City Clinic at eleven. When he found him, Sticks had just given up digging in a bin of various sacks.

The ghoul eyed him with pleasant surprise, hands stiff in his pockets.

“Didn’t expect you to be done first. Take it from your good spirits you found stuff you’re happy with.” He squinted at the new garments ‘Choly wore. “...I know you wear it well, but Ant lace? I thought we were pinching caps here.”

‘Choly smiled. First the cervical collar and a genuine direction to procuring the rest, and now brand new clothing. He now wore a collarless mesh chemisette, over his corset but tucked under the edge of the cervical collar, with a ribbon tie in the back and to either side. The corset still peeked out under the cropped hem. Atop this he’d put his cardigan back on. Draped around his neck was the article with which Sticks had exception: a long Irish lace shawl, with its tails drawn into a loose knot in the front. Several hundred dollars lighter for it, his heart felt even lighter still. In his day went the phrase, the clothes make the man, but it persisted even now that new clothes could do wonders.

“Up until now,” he finally replied, “all my clothes have either been prewar salvage or military issue. But now, I own some clothes handmade this year. I need to stop feeling like the relic I am. To stop feeling like I’m still stuck in 2077. I’d imagine it’s well enough time to finally celebrate something.”

“I figured last night was a to-do, but I guess you’ve earned something fancy. Appearances sure matter a lot to you.”

“Have to make up for my personality somehow, don’t I?” He shrugged off his own glib self-deprecation. “Before we get going, did you want to try something new, too? The apparel clerk was incredibly helpful.”

Sticks’s attention fell elsewhere as they walked out of the junk vendor’s stall.

“Mm, no offense, but I prefer the way duds used to be made.”

“That’s fair. The display windows of the boutiques that specialize in prewar fashion have caught my attention every time we pass them. Right now, though, I feel more like trying to blend in a bit. To feel present.”

Something about yesterday’s conversation with Liam had ‘Choly’s mind abuzz with a confusion he nearly welcomed. His interaction with the apparel clerk repeated in his mind. With the utter unisex nature of garments, he couldn’t not ask her, with some trepidation, And how might a man go about wearing this one? And this? She’d let him into the fitting room stall so she could show him, making adjustments once he reemerged with the new clothes on his person. He smiled into himself as he mounted Angel.

“The clerk showed me how Laners wear things. I thought I could tell at a glance that wealth and status were demonstrated with wearing as many individual garments as possible, with wearing as much of a given fabric as possible, with the greatest intricacy to a fabric possible. But it’s more complicated than that? Really, it shocks me that you wouldn’t take a shine to this kind of place. She lamented that my orthotic corset has no detail work, and is made from such an uninteresting fabric. All function, with none of the form, she says. Clothing here is designed to show off the undergarments! Socks included, for example--hence all the golf trousers.” His eyes wilded, focused on nothing, as he reared up on his grip on Angel’s car-door handles. “I can’t imagine literally airing my unmentionables to the whole neighborhood, no matter what I paid for them.”

“...What’s that supposed to mean? Me not taking a shine to Ant.”

“Your... interest in corsets,” fumbled from him.

“Tch! Believe it or not, I don’t blow my top every time I see one.” He twisted taking exception to it into flirtation, and smirked up at ‘Choly. “Depends a lot on who’s wearing it.”

‘Choly crinkled his nose to hide his flustering.

“--Well! Hopefully we’ll find more to outfit me with. I know you didn’t find anything at the one merchant, but there’s dozens of vendors here with junk for sale. Which, speaking of leather scraps... You know, I’ve been noticing lots of leather and fur here, too. I know the Clark sisters dress the Laners’ kills, but I haven’t noticed anyplace that’s been permitted leather tools. It’s been driving my curiosity wild. Everyplace with clothes has had sturdy fur-lined leather overcoats for sale.” He waved a declaration through the air one-handed, before returning to an even grip. “A must-have for any body with business out-doors. Sufficient winterized rad-resistant gear and all that.”

“You really must be feeling better, to be so chatty. God bless that neck thing.” Sticks chuckled, warmed. “By curiosity, I’m assuming you’re asking where they get it all. You’re right, if you think the Furriers had anything to do with it. Well, had. No idea how Ant will react to the Unfolded. They used to caravan up here every so often, with the Riverhawk. They’d trade leather, fur, salvaged prewar fabric bolts, dressed meat. The Laners never much liked them, but the commerce was too good to turn ‘em shy. I traveled with them up here a few times, but even the times I’ve come up here on my own I’ve never really taken a shine to living here.”

“Fuck-me-in-the-mouth, I hope they don’t show up here.”

The last thing any of them needed was a continuation of what had transpired in Lowell. Surely, they hadn’t been followed.

“Gen’s got all their hands too full to bother with trade route upkeep, I imagine.”

“...You don’t suppose my coat lining came from here, do you?”

It took some time to grasp what ‘Choly was on about.

“That Franken-monster of a thing Bones gave you? I guess so, maybe. Both cities had a lot of textiles. There’s no telling where she got it.”

They entered the Gate City Clinic and sat in the mostly empty waiting area. One of the other medics noticed them and approached.

“Do you need help with something?”

“We’re waiting for Liam,” ‘Choly said.

“He’s about to take his lunch soon. You’ll be waiting at least an hour, if you’re intent to see him and not one of the other staff. What brings you in?”

“Just on time.” Sticks winked. “We’re waiting for his lunch hour. We’re here on business. Not doctor stuff.”

The medic shrugged and walked off to a desk to contend with some papers.

Liam walked up shortly after, this time in a velvet-trimmed sheer mesh shirt, and golf pants again. His deep eyes brightened in an otherwise indifferent face.

“You’re awfully stuffed up. You know that right?” His cigarette bobbed limply as he spoke. “But this, it’s an improvement. Really, I don’t get the preoccupation with salvaged prewar clothes. Most of it’s garbage these days. Deteriorating, stained, doesn’t breathe...”

“It only wears out if not properly cared for,” Angel said.

They couldn’t tell if Liam’s silence came more on account of his consideration of the Mister Handy’s comment, or more of their speechlessness that it had sassed a prospective business partner they’d only met the night before.

“Anyway.” Liam lipped at his smoke, then walked away. He wagged his head for them to follow him to the back. “I’m taking lunch now. Allow me to give you a tour of the place.”

The Gate City Clinic, the best ‘Choly could tell, utilized the original shop’s two offices for an office and storage space. He presumed the stock room at one end of the hall made up Liam and Orqueida’s living quarters, though Liam didn’t show them. He took them finally to the kitchen at the opposite end of the hall, once a break room. The makings of a rudimentary chemistry setup occupied a small kitchen hutch.

“Neither of us cooks,” Liam said, “but we also prefer to eat in privacy. Orqueida got us food before she headed to the Inn for the day. Have you eaten?”

“We haven’t!” Sticks eyed the sizable sack on the table. “You shouldn’t have. Thank you.”

“Orqueida insisted. You’re welcome, though.”

‘Choly’s mouth watered at the lingering aroma of hot pickled meat. He swallowed and did his best not to frown.

“...I appreciate it, but no thanks.”

“Oh,” Angel worried, “breakfast must be disagreeing with you already.”

“You’re out of your smoothies.” Sticks gave him an assertive glare. “Eat with us.”

Sooner than argue, ‘Choly took it upon himself to scrutinize the hot plate and various glassware Liam had collected.

Liam smushed his cigarette in the ashtray on the kitchen table, then produced from the oiled canvas sack beside it a series of lidded tins, ranging from bread box to tea tin, but mostly an average of them. Much like the sewing kits of yesteryear, ‘Choly knew better than to think Liam intended to serve them two hundred year old butter cookies.

“I thought the food court didn’t include the dishes,” ‘Choly said.

“They charge you for not having your own. But we can sell back the tins.” Liam shrugged. He opened the tin in his hand then, to demonstrate some shredded juicy pale stuff, only to glance down with a disappointed frown and replace the lid. “Ugh, sauerkraut. ...Breaks even if we clean it before returning it. You have tins, you find tins, you sell them to the food court.”

Sticks helped him remove the lids to reveal shaved corned brahmin, toasted bread slices, sauerkraut, thin fragments of a rindy cheese, a pepper tin of some sort of sauce, and what resembled pickled garlic cloves or mozzarella balls. The not-gold lighting blanched any visual appeal the foods may have had, but the savory piquant aromas more than made up for it. Liam produced utensils from a counter drawer and set them down on a clean dishrag.

“At least she didn’t forget the morsels.” Liam sighed as he popped one of the globules in his mouth, then one more. He held the tin out to the two of them. Sticks took two. ‘Choly picked up a fork to take just the one, almost uncertain they could be stabbed without breaking. “Digestive issues? Really, we should make time to sit and discuss all this. Maybe I could help.”

‘Choly watched the two men cobbling together sandwiches to either side of the table. He stuck the morsel in his mouth. Coated in a tart oil, its flesh had a firm bite but still a tenderness. Chewing on it for some time, it dawned on him these were some sort of mushroom.

“What would help... is more... Stimpaks.” As ‘Choly said it, his voice garbled into a self-conscious hush. “I’ve got everything else.”

Liam sat to dig in, his befuddlement on his sunken brow.

“I don’t figure you’ll be able to get started today. We’re just talking things over. Knowing the equipment you’ve got at your disposal should help draft what to send your ‘acquisition expert’ on errands for.” He unfolded a piece of paper from his shirt pocket one-handed and gave it to Sticks, who was much more nettled by the whole thing than he let on. “I’ve got a few things I’ll pay you for as well. Provided it wasn’t some fancy way of saying you’re a scavver, it should be a cakewalk.”

“The hell do you need so much-- You know what. Don’t worry about it, and I won’t, either.”

“You deal with him, so I don’t have to. I pay very well for it.”

Stress snagged up in ‘Choly’s throat.

“You mentioned last night that you’re looking for first aid basics. You traded a cervical brace for my handful of Addictol and Med-X.” His voice cracked. “What-- about Stimpaks?”

Liam sat up, and set down his hand on the table, still holding his sandwich in it. He scowled at his food instead of his guests.

“Stimpaks aren’t the end all for first aid. I really don’t have much use for them. A medic once had to know how to work without them, in the chance they ran out on the battlefield. I got my training in similar circumstances. I do rarely have them, but as far as I know, making them is a lost prewar science--”

“--But why not use advanced tools, where available?” ‘Choly reeled back the accidental sarcastic shock, clasping his chin. “Do you not see many severe injuries here?”

“We’re a cautious bunch. Most of what I oversee is illness, not injury. While I can handle injuries when they happen, I’m definitely grateful it’s not my job. It means the Lane’s safe.”

‘Choly steadied himself a bit by beginning to craft his own serving.

“What... if I told you that I knew how to make them?”

“I’d tell you not to bother.”

The chemist’s ears rang. He dropped it for now.

Over the next few days, ‘Choly got to work on chems, Sticks went on Liam and ‘Choly’s errands, and Angel assisted Liam in the clinic where he’d permit. He disliked that a majority of his trouble amounted to isolating the alkaloid salts from pounds of dried Hubflower petals, but he reminded himself that he was synthesizing Med-X with it. At least it came easily for him. He even got plucky and decided he’d throw something together with his stash of dried melon blossoms, to test his theory its compounds could steady one’s alertness. For the time being, he stifled the compulsion to up the level of difficulty and complexity, and did not propose anything off Liam’s work order more grandiose than an herbal remedy. They all had to prove their reliability to Liam, and sprawling out his efforts when his lab equipment was one step above kitchenware was the opposite of a sound idea. Besides, the man had requested medicine and nothing more.

One afternoon, Sticks burst into the kitchen. He flung down a mess of something in the tile floor with a semi-muffled clatter, only to dash back out with a huge grin. ‘Choly eyed the pile breathlessly from where he sat at work. Recognizing the same canvas and leather he had around his neck, he did his best to make sure the soaking pale purple-blue petals didn’t over-process.

Sticks stomped back in some time later, dragging along an exhausted Liam.

“These are the legs right?” He had the catalogue open, pointing at it eagerly. “Right???”

“It appears so. But I can’t tell from this jumbled mess, if it’s complete.”

“Then let’s see! ‘Choly! Stop messing with that smelly junk and let us at your legs.”

“You’re lucky the start you gave me didn’t make me break something. I was handling acid. ...I don’t have to remove my pants, do I?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Amending the snark, Liam added, “We can see how they fit over the trousers first.”

Sticks chuckled, wringing his hands.

With some effort, Liam pieced together the components, eyeing the catalogue for reference. Each segment was reinforced with metal boning and fastened shut on the outer parts with busks and fan lacing for ease. Sticks had the luck that the waistband which secured each hip hinge had come attached to one of the legs. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have known the piece was necessary.

“Aren’t you glad you turned me loose to go hunting on my own?” the ghoul delighted. “It’s funny. I remember fewer merchants being okay with anything less than cold hard cash. I’ve been getting run ragged obtaining the right stuff for the right people. But it’s all a drop in the bucket for you, Mindy.”

“Two pieces in one week. Three, if you count each separate leg. In tact. Yes, of course I’m amazed.“

Having followed Liam and Sticks back in, Angel entered to supervise.

Liam lowered himself into the floor and chewed at his cigarette filter while he worked at getting one of ‘Choly’s legs slipped into the thing. ‘Choly did his best to balance, and let out an anxious laugh when Sticks all to eagerly joined Liam in the floor to mirror the effort with ‘Choly’s other leg.

“Gotta practice,” Sticks insisted with a crooked grin, despite meeting no protest.

The two helped ‘Choly stand, so he could fasten the waistband. Liam gestured where the circular hinges needed to align, and the two steadied the leg pieces at the height needed to achieve this, so that the padded belt could be adjusted accordingly. Once they got him into the device, he took a few testing steps. His heart fluttered. Unsurprisingly, they gave a great deal of protest with each step.

“I brought a tool kit with me,” Sticks offered. “We can adjust how tight the hinges are, to stop all that squeaking and creaking. I’m sure I can find some oil, too.”

“Forget how they sound.” Liam put out his cigarette. “Do they help?”

‘Choly kept testing them out, pacing slowly and deliberately from one end of the kitchen to the other. He couldn’t help but snivel and smile with awe.

“I feel like a toy soldier... but that isn’t necessarily a negative. My hips are lined up to where I don’t have to think so hard about the steps I take. I do think they could stand a little tightening up, but the alignment’s still good despite being as old and beat up as I am.”

“The oldest thing in this room is probably the ghoul--” Liam elbowed Sticks beside him, “--but the braces come in a close second.”

‘Choly turned, deadpan.

“I’m older than he is.”

“By seven years or so, if memory serves,” Angel said. “Twenty-eighth of November, 2034.”

Liam’s humor didn’t falter, though he stood with a vague discerning squint. ‘Choly ambled over to the table to sit with a grunt.

“If I can bum a smoke and sit back down, I’ll explain why I might be one of your weirder patients.”

He himself sat backward in the metal diner chair wordlessly. He produced his pack of Clipper Ships from his rolled sleeve, tapped out two cigarettes to place in his lips, and lit them. And he offered one across the kitchen table between genteel thumb and forefinger, his eyes bright with eager skepticism.

____________

Fun facts: Russian dressing (often substituted with Thousand Island) is credited to have been created in Nashua, NH, by one James E. Colburn.

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#fallout #fallout 4 #fallout fanfic #fallout 4 fanfic #sole survivor #the anatomy of melancholy #melancholy #sticks #angel #liam bledsoe #trans sole survivor #transmasc sole survivor #disabled sole survivor #let's have fun in new hampshire

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sibyl-of-space · 3 years

Text

I’m on an adventure learning the basics of Nintendo DS ROM hacking/modding because there is a very stupid, very self-indulgent, very spoilery ROM hack/mod I want to implement for Ghost Trick. It has been a journey and I’m going to be recapping my adventures on here with the tag #leo-tries-modding-ghost-trick so it can be blocked as desired. Anything pertaining to the actual in-game spoilers down the line will be posted under a readmore.

Now.... for “progress” I’ve made so far, if you can call it that. The first thing I need to figure out is whether I can implement a talk sprite-swap. So I set out to try and isolate the talk sprites.

I started by checking out the Ultimate Nintendo DS ROM Hacking Guide, which seemed as good a starting place as any. I also downloaded the big zipped file with all the referenced programs, but as I found out later, some of the programs didn’t zip properly so I had to procure them elsewhere.

At any rate, I tried to open up the Ghost Trick .nds file in CrystalTile2, and that much was a success.... and just about that much only. Ghost Trick doesn’t use the file types referenced in the guide. There are .xml.lz files and .bin files. I didn’t know what to do with these yet, so I decided to just mess around in the tile viewer and see if I could find anything. After some aimless scrolling, I did find something that gave me hope that I was in fact looking at meaningful data:

(don’t mind the windows 7 and pesterchum and malwarebytes this is my old 2011 laptop from undergrad, it just so happens that a lot of tools for NDS hacking work great on windows 7 because shit’s old)

That right there is very unambiguously the Ghost Trick logo. It gave me a glimmer of hope. And CrystalTile lets you highlight a selection of tiles and export them as an image:

rearranged in mspaint to:

My rudimentary knowledge of How This Works tells me that it obviously needs to reference the right palette for the colors to be right, but whatever, this is CLEARLY IMAGE DATA so ALL IS NOT LOST.

...but, for a while, that was about as far as I got. Some googling brought me to this thread, where OP states that allegedly the “cpac_2d.bin” contains all of the sprite data in the game [this is Capcom standard, it seems?], but having trouble actually accessing said data. Viewed as-is it’s a jumbled mess, haven’t been able to make heads or tails of it in CrystalTile although this could certainly be because they’re out of order in a way that’s not obvious. It is really, really difficult to just parse like this.... it’s a massive portion of the ROM, too, so even figuring out what general area of this I should poke around in is quite an undertaking. [looking w/ tile form GBA 4bpp as that is the only tile form that gave me a visible image for the logo above]... although I found some things which look promisingly like visual patterns, and might help me figure out how to re-order these tiles so i can maybe see something approaching an image. I uh... haven’t figured out how to customize the tile ordering in CrystalTile (like column widths) very well, that’s next on my to-do list. This one in particular I may come back to later:

(^Viewed at offset 4AD9E0)

There are plenty of others but this is among the more promising as far as likely actually being uncompressed visual data. There’s so much besides just this one though that I would be here all day posting screenshots; At any rate, there are patterns that may be worth looking into, but the sheer volume of data corresponding to this “.bin” file is going to make that REALLY tedious to try and comb through with any sort of reasonable efficiency. This could also be a fool’s errand, as it could be the data is compressed or out of order somehow and it is necessary to extract the true files hidden within that “.bin” to actually make proper sense of them. I don’t know. If I haven't made it clear, I'm a newbie at this and don't really understand what I'm working with yet.

So I briefly tried another approach. I thought, heck, I have the dev version of DeSmuME on here, let’s boot that baby up.

(oh boy did it chug.)

I learned some neat stuff.

First, I learned that for most of the game, the “main screen” is the bottom screen as opposed to the top screen, which makes complete sense if you’ve played it. Just goes against convention which is interesting. Except for during the title screen, where it is the expected order, for... reasons?

Anyway, I first tried isolating what layer the talk sprites were on on the “main” screen, which was unsuccessful but interesting. This is with every other layer turned off on the bottom screen (tools -> view layers, toggled off all except for “Main BG 0″)...:

It looks like a lot of things are on that same layer. Now we know.

(Worth noting that if you isolate just the “Main BG 3″ layer you get a nice view of the backgrounds!)

My next task was fiddling around in the tile viewer in the *emulator* to see if that got me anywhere. And, well, it did... I think! I don’t know what it means just yet but launching the tile viewer (tools -> view tiles) and selecting “LCD - 0x6850000″, at the 0x140 tile there is a very clear image of the current talk sprite. And this image DOES update when the sprite changes, so whatever this tile is pulling from is where I want to be.

...Unfortunately, I’ve more or less hit a roadblock here and am calling it a night. I have absolutely no idea how to figure out where that tile is getting its information from, and I don’t understand enough about NDS files to know how to parse the information in CrystalTile any better at the moment. I tried using this tool by Luigi Auriemma to dive into the .bin file after exporting it but it spewed out a billion .dat files that are no easier to make heads or tails of than the original.

That's all I got for the time being. If anyone reading this happens to know any directions they can point me toward I am all ears, otherwise I will continue to just poke at this from various angles until it decides to succumb.

#leo tries modding ghost trick #long post

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stillness-in-green · 4 years

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Shigaraki Birthday Week, Day 7: free day

Learning control, and the lack of it. (Spoiler-free except for Shigaraki’s real name.)

Content Warning: No death or violence, but does contain calculated child neglect and All For One being supportive about exactly the kinds of things you’d expect him to be supportive about.

———– ———– ———– ———–

Sensei takes the gloves away in stages.

“Let’s try for an hour today,” he says as he gently pulls the bulky fabric off of Tenko’s hands. “I’ve brought you some toys to practice with.”

Tenko reflexively curls his fingers into fists and jams them up under his armpits when he feels the air pricking at his bared skin. Sensei chuckles, running one hand through his hair—it’s going pale now, black fading to white, like the longer he stays with Sensei the more he starts to look like him, a lizard changing its skin to take the color of its surroundings.

“You may be a bit old for these, but they’re a good size for your hands right now.” Setting the gloves to the side, Sensei next holds up a pail and tips it out onto the floor. Brightly colored blocks tumble into a loose pile, big clunky wooden things. “Come. We’ll try and build something.”

Tenko ends up decaying as many of the blocks as he’s able to stack on each other, his itch getting worse every time, until, weeping in frustration, he kicks over the rudimentary tower and destroys every block left within reach.

Sensei smiles through the whole thing.

———–

“Let’s try to do lunch with no gloves today. I brought finger food!”

It’s all Western-style things. Chicken nuggets are easy; so are french fries. The hamburger is messy, but it’s enough layers that, to his surprise, it doesn’t decay even when he accidentally touches it with all five fingers. As long as he keeps his thumb on the bottom bun and his fingers on the top, the whole thing stays together. Sensei hums thoughtfully at the discovery.

Tenko manages to keep his cup intact until almost the end, but the hamburger made him lazy, and they end up with soda all over the table.

———–

The first time Sensei has him try to sleep through the night with no gloves, he tries everything he can think of when he gets into bed. He curls his hands into fists, tucks them under his nightshirt, curls into as tight a ball under the blankets as he can.

He wakes up shivering—nightshirt gone, pillow gone, blankets gone. The bed is full of ash, and then throw-up, and Sensei finds him in the morning curled up in one corner of the room, wide awake and too tired to even tremble.

He doesn’t get new bed things until the end of the week, and he’s starting to figure out the pattern.

———–

The blocks turn into action figures; the finger food gives way to chopstick lessons; the blankets—well, Tomura just has to figure out about the blankets. He has nightmares, is the problem, and he tosses and turns in his sleep so much that it doesn’t matter what position he arranges himself in to start, somehow he always wakes up with less than he went to bed with.

Sensei tells him about lucid dreaming and brings him a journal. He writes about the bloody fragments of his dreams, and the longer he does it, the more he can remember of them, random strangers reaching out to him, buildings collapsing, animal sounds hounding him in dark alleys.

He’s standing in the middle of a supermarket, lights so bright he can’t see anyone above the waist. He spots Sensei’s shoes, polished black with short, neat laces, and follows them through the store, shading his eyes. After walking for a long time, turning down aisles and dodging shopping carts and the odd large dog, one of Sensei’s hands touches his back, the other gesturing him forward. He looks up and finds himself standing in front of a mirror. A scared little boy, hands still tucked at his sides, looks back at him.

“Go on,” Sensei urges. “Pick one.”

There’s a whole row of mirrors, he realizes, and he takes a few faltering steps, looking into them like windows. His reflections all look the same to him, though.

The realization comes quiet, simple words that arrive in his mind like snowflakes falling on the sidewalk and melting.

I’m dreaming.

The boys in the mirrors all swing around to look at him, but it’s too late; he wakes up with his hands still tucked at his sides, his breathing fallen still, a cold nausea sitting in his stomach.

Lucid dreaming works, but he doesn’t like remembering his dreams—and sometimes even knowing they are dreams, he doesn’t wake up, and the dreams turn ugly, violent and full of pain as he curls in on himself, thinking, Don’t reach out, don’t reach out, don’t reach out. It’s easier to just stay awake until he passes out.

Sensei says, “You’re your own master, Tomura, or you will be one day. It’s your choice to make.”

He keeps Tomura’s dream journal, though.

———–

Changing clothes is a pain, especially anything with buttons. He gravitates to simple black pullovers because they’re easier to get into and stains don’t show up. Wearing the same black shirt for days leaves him grimy and annoyed, but less grimy and annoyed than wearing a white shirt with a food stain on it or decaying a fresh shirt when he tries to pull it over his head.

He decays the clothes he doesn’t like. Sensei will buy him more. Eventually.

———–

“There’s going to be a typhoon coming in tomorrow,” Sensei announces casually, setting a huge stack of books and magazines down on the table. “It won’t be safe to go outside for a few days, so I’ve brought you some reading material.”

It’s a lot of stuff—a big dictionary, thin school workbooks, storybooks, manga, hardcover textbooks, glossy news magazines.

“Are you going to stay?” Tomura asks, fitfully pushing the gifts around the table.

“Why, are you afraid of thunder?” Sensei laughs at the look Tomura gives him and sits down on the couch. “No, I have some things to take care of. I’ll come back if they put out an evacuation order.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Evacuation means to remove all people from an area. Like if there’s a villain attack.”

Tomura absorbs that as he pulls a book out of the pile and climbs up onto the couch with it.

“Science, today?” Sensei shifts around, letting Tomura squirm over into his lap. “When I was your age, I liked the comic books.”

“I don’t like them,” Tomura says bluntly. “The heroes always win.”

Sensei chuckles, propping one arm up on the back of the couch and resting his cheek in his hand. “I’ll see if I can find you some stories for older people, then. Or you could start reading history books—in history, strong people win.”

Tomura makes a sound of vague agreement, flipping the science book open. It’s got a lot of pictures and big colorful text, but it’s about space and planets, things that feel so big he doesn’t have to worry about them one way or the other. Sensei reads over his shoulder, still smiling.

“…Do people have to evacuate for you?” Tomura asks eventually.

“I try not to be so showy, usually,” Sensei answers without hesitation. “But it’s happened before.”

Tomura curls up a little tighter. “…Will they have to evacuate for me?”

“Would that bother you?”

Tomura shakes his head. He squeezes his lips together tight; the old scar there throbs and he reaches up to rub at it with the back of his hand. He thinks about it, walking into a town and all the people in it running out the other side, police lights flashing and heroes waving them along. An empty city left behind, all his to explore and he can go anywhere he wants, with no one to shove him around and yell, or walk towards him and then back away as soon as they get too close.

“No,” he says at last. “I wish they’d do it now.”

Sensei hums fondly in his throat, ruffling Tomura’s hair.

“Keep working at it, Tomura, and one day they will.”

———– ———– ———– ———–

I understand the impulse to soften Shigaraki’s awful backstory via paternal Kurogiri as much as possible, but it is categorically not an impulse I share. I desperately want canon-compliant fic about AFO and Tomura in their earliest days together (given the timeframes involved and what we’ve seen on the page, I’m pretty certain it’s at least a year before Kurogiri comes into Tomura’s life, and it could be much more than that). I can never find much, though, so I figured for free day I’d be the change I want to see in the world and write it myself.

#shigarakibirthdayweek #shigaraki tomura #all for one #bnha afo #cw: child neglect #my writing #boku no hero academia #bnha #ficcing

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yawnjunie · 4 years

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monster hunting for dummies (1)

chapter one: so far, so bad

Description: Being a gruff, angsty teenager without a filter, you were not expecting to make any friends at your new school. After your first day of school, you decided to stop by the town carnival and have some fun for a bit. But five very annoying honeybees seem to follow you everywhere you go. If your fate hadn’t already been unfortunately entangled with these boys, then the mysterious object the bunch of you found at the fortune teller’s sealed the deal. Little did you know, this was the beginning of a long journey full of all sorts of absurd twists and turns. Word count: 3.4k Warnings: profanity, gore, lethal cuteness/diabetes-inducing fluff a/n: 💡 tip // if you’re on pc, ctrl + “+” to enlarge the screen for a comfy reading mode! we’ve spent a long time planning this story, so please let us know how you think of it so far :) without further ado, buckle in for a wild ride!

———

Wilson High. Probably the most dismal place on the planet. You stared straight ahead, lunch tray in hand.

The cafeteria of the second best high school in the country lay right before your eyes, filled to the brim with top-notch jocks and nerdy A-holes. Someone behind you bumped into you, dangerously shaking the items on your tray. Feeling the weight of your backpack swing towards the right, you stumbled a little. So far, so bad.

You weaved your way through the masses of students walking to their usual seats, already busily chatting about their day. Of course, you kept your distance from the girls with the expensive backpacks and the newest cell phones. Not today, you thought, carefully balancing the food on your tray. Spotting an empty table in the corner of the cafeteria, you sat yourself down and started devouring your food without a second thought.

At least the food here is much better than anything from—

“Hey, you’re that new transfer, right?” A voice interrupted you mid-bite through your cajun pepper-seasoned chicken drumstick.

“Mmmfh, yeah,” you replied, wiping your greasy fingers on a cheap napkin. You looked up, straining your neck to meet the eyes of a boy who just spoke. Squinting from the fluorescent lights, you were only able to make out the looming shadow of the human skyscraper. He had a black backpack slung over his shoulder, and a basketball in the other hand. Who—

As you were sizing him up, his friends were already setting down their backpacks. “‘Bin, we’re going to grab lunch. Watch over our stuff.”

“Alright,” the boy said, awkwardly, seating himself across from you.

“Oh, shoot, I didn’t mean to sit at your table.” You snatched up your napkin pile and picked up your tray. “Sorry.”

“Oh no it’s fine, you can sit here,” he replied, rubbing his ear sheepishly. “If you want.”

You sat back down, shoveling your food into your mouth as fast as you could without choking. This is so awkward. I might as well finish all this food and get out of here.

As you stuffed your face, you looked around at the noisy, yet dismal atmosphere of the room, filled with people you didn’t know and didn’t care about. New school, new air, yet nothing had changed.

No matter where, school just sucked. It was a prison—better described as a hellhole— where bullies and other dull people turned the rest of the barrel rotten. Mental illness was a pandemic; everyone contracted it eventually, either from the schoolwork or from inhaling all the smoke coming from inside the bathroom.

The stuffy confinement of the walls could drive anyone insane. You felt the cool, smooth wall behind you with the back of your hand. This school could seriously be made into a mental ward, if it wasn’t already one. No remodeling required.

Your gaze shifted to the boy in front of you. Of course, every place had its own share of the socially awkward. You, for one, had stopped caring. About nearly everything. In fact, you wouldn’t bat an eye if you failed all your classes; you’d probably end up being a farmer, either way. At best, you’d be a farmer with rudimentary knowledge of chemistry.

Sighing, you ripped another bite of your bread. Shit’s drier than Brandonbury’s humor, and that’s saying something. There was a long period of silence, which the boy in front of you filled by knocking his knees together and picking his fingernails.

Suddenly, you heard a slurred murmur coming from the space in front of you. “Um, wheredidyouusedtogo?”

“What?” Oh, right. There was a person there.

“Like, where did you go, before you came here.” He cleared his throat.

“Oh, yeah. I just went here and there.” You downed an entire carton of milk, wiping the milk mustache off your face with the back of your hand. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just… you know, we’re in the same English class.”

“Okay, and?” You were about to say, but you stopped yourself. Is that too cold? It was an astonishing act, for someone as insensitive as you to think about your words before you spoke. Not that you wanted to come off that way, you just, somehow, didn’t have a built-in thought filter like everyone else. But this time, you didn’t want to sound like a mean person to the first person to strike up a conversation with you in this shitty place.

“...Right. Your name is...” You studied his face. His friend just called him ‘Bin. Does he look more like a Woobin? Or a Yoobin? Changbin? Leebin? You furrowed your brow as you racked up more names. Trash bin, maybe? Haha.

“Soobin.” Close enough.

“Oh, yeah.” You chewed your food slowly, then swallowed. “Cool.”

The boy reached his hand out. “Nice to meet you.”

There was a moment of awkward silence when you didn’t shake his hand. Retracting it, he cleared his throat and looked away in embarrassment.

“Sorry. My hands are greasy,” you said with a shrug. You were wiping them on your last napkin when out of the corner of your eye, you saw his friends walking back with their first rate cafeteria food. Guess that’s my cue.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you announced as you gathered your trash, preparing to take your leave. “Bye.”

“W-wait,” Soobin cut, making you turn around.

“Here,” you said, wrapping your uneaten bread roll in a grease-spotted napkin and handing it to him, although it was quite non sequitur.

He looked like he wanted those bread rolls. He was staring at them, for like, the entire time I was eating. Kind of creepy, but he’s probably hungry.

“T-thanks. See you around… Wyann, was it?” the boy stuttered, head bowed in embarrassment as he accepted the bread.

Did he pick it up during roll call? People with good memory are creepy. You wondered why anyone would bother to remember your name. It wasn’t like you stood out or anything. Just another face in the crowd.

“What are you, an elephant?”

“What?” His cheeks flushed tomato red. “Are my ears too big for you?”

I didn’t say anything about your ears, but sure.

“Bye-bye.” You rolled your eyes a little. Weirdo.

You walked out the cafeteria and ambled aimlessly down the hallway, figuring that you’d find the bathroom eventually if you kept walking. How did the saying go again? Elephants don’t forget? It’d suck ass to be an elephant, then. Some things are better off forgotten, you thought, shaking off your awkward experience.

It took an eternity of walking, but you found the bathroom. After relieving your pea-sized bladder, you flushed the toilet with your heel and reached down to grab your backpack.

To your horror, there was no backpack to grab.

Being the health-conscious girl you were, you ran your hands under the water for half a second (without soap), then kicked the door open and rushed down in the direction you came. Back in the cafeteria, you scanned the place you’d been sitting at. Sure enough, your backpack was right where you left it, but it was now surrounded by 4 new faces.

I change my mind. I’d rather be an elephant than be in this situation. With a dreadful sigh, you walked up to the table.

“Didn’t you say she called you an elephant?” One of the boys snickered, before being elbowed in the stomach by a taller boy. Seeing you walking to the table, they all ceased their not-so-secretive giggling and cleared their throats, unnaturally leaning against the lunch table.

“Sorry to interrupt, just forgot my backpack.” Avoiding eye contact, you snatched your backpack and started to back away, but as always, the universe didn’t like making things easy.

“Your backpack? When’d that get there?” a boy with dark, curly hair remarked.

“We talked while you guys were getting lunch. This is Wyann, she’s new here. And Wyann, these are the 4 biggest idiots you’ll ever meet.” Soobin explained.

“Okay.” You silently looked the four idiots up and down and they just stared back, both sides at a loss for words. With your eyebrow raised and them frowning back at you, this scenario was straight out of some Disney Channel show. Guess this bread boy isn’t very good at introductions.

“So, Wyann, you’re a transfer? Where from?” Idiot #2 was a boy with wavy blue hair.

“Here and there.”

“Hmmm… do you–”

“Dude, don’t you think you should be the one doing the talking?” Soobin interjected, eyeing his friend awkwardly.

“Oh, right, my name is Yeonjun. I’m just a dude. A really handsome dude. So yeah, you gotta stick around to find out more~”

And if I don’t want to? You thought it’d be pretty funny to say that out loud, but from past experience, you’d found that people didn’t tend to share your sense of humor. Boy, were they missing out.

“Okay.” You simply said.

Just finish saying your names! You guys have one job! Soobin prompted his friends to his left with his eyes.

“Uh, hi! My name is Huening Kai, but you can call me Kai. Nice to meet you. Umm, yeah.” He finished his sentence with a small nod, his curly hair bouncing a little.

“Okay.”

“Well, uh, what is your name?” The boy asked after a moment of silence. He bottled his emotions up really well for someone who looked like he was going to burst from embarrassment the next moment.

“I think you should have your ears cleaned out,” you said matter-of-factly.

“Oh… sorry, I’ll shower when I get home.” It would’ve been a funny comeback if he hadn’t meant it so literally.

Soobin violently facepalmed himself, turning around in embarrassment. When the silence ensued, you answered his question with a heavy sigh.

“You can call me Wyann, but really, my name’s Jared, 19, and I never f*ckin’ learned how to read,” you replied sarcastically. “Between the lines, that is. So I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to get going before lunch ends so I can find my next class, not that you care anyway.”

Turning around to find your next class, you fetched your crumpled campus map from your skirt. Screw school uniforms. If I’m going to be suffering in this hellhole, I’m going to do it in a t-shirt and jeans, starting tomorrow.

You were about to turn a corner in the hallway when a hand stopped you.

“What is it.”

“The social science department’s that way.” A boy with scraggly blonde hair and round eyes flashed a friendly smile at you. Who is this again?

“And how do you know my next class is econ?”

“It’s ‘cuz I’m psychic. And also because all seniors take econ, which only has two classes, and since you weren’t in the first one, you must be in the second one. Here, I’ll help you find the classroom.”

“Cool.” People like this were the type that would get away with murder, and that was cool. But most people found your run-of-the-mill answers off-putting, even when you meant them. And so the rest of the walk took place in silence; for you, a peaceful one, but for him, an awkward one.

–––––––

Tick, tick, tick.

Seconds seemed to slow into minutes. Rather than listen to the monotonous drone of your trig teacher, which was about as interesting as watching sandpaper dry, you turned your attention to your classmates’ side conversations. Not much of an upgrade, but it beat trig.

“Did you catch the latest episode of TEOTFW?”

“Dude, I nearly shit my pants at the part where–”

You tuned the rest out to avoid potential spoilers, making a mental note to watch it later.

“Hey, doing anything this weekend?”

“Don’t tell me you’re throwing another party.”

“Haha, you already know.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of partying, Jackson?”

You didn’t think you and Jackson would get along very well. You had zero interest in parties.

“Wanna go to that carnival after school?”

“What? Since when was it in town?”

“They were setting it up yesterday, so it should be open today.”

“Oh my gosh, I’m gonna buy 50 corndogs.”

At the thought of 50 freshly-fried heavenly-smelling corn dogs, you started to salivate. Sounds like fun. I think I’ll go check it out. After a few minutes of fiddling with your phone under the desk, you pinpointed the location, conveniently just ten minutes away.

When the last bell rang after what felt like an eternity, you were the first one out the door. Your backpack had already been zipped and slung over your shoulder for the past 15 minutes now. Running across the asphalt of the school grounds, you bounded out the gates to sweet, sweet freedom.

On the bus, you took your usual seat: 7th row down, left side, aisle seat. Window seats weren’t your thing; no space to breathe. But then again, that was public transportation for you.

Ten minutes down the road from hell, you could practically smell the corn dogs. The venue was less than a block from the bus stop. It was impossible to miss the flashing lights, the bright colors, and the lighthearted carnival tunes. Instead of hopping off the bus at your usual stop, you jumped right off at the corner of the usually isolated street. And before your very eyes, what was usually a patch of empty grass was now bustling with people and fair booths.

Alright, let’s go get some corn dogs.

––––

Straight away, you ran into a dilemma. Right at the entrance of the place was a towering rocking Viking boat, your favorite type of ride. There was something strangely appealing about feeling your stomach was going to fly out of your body, almost as appealing as stuffing yourself to the brim with oily sausages. Now that you thought about it, you really like abusing your stomach.

Okay, maybe a quick ride wouldn’t hurt.

Being the first person in the queue was among the greatest privileges of mankind. Of course, you went straight to the end of the boat for the maximum thrill. You swung your feet aimlessly, patiently waiting for the ride to start. Most of the riders were parents with their small children, who filed into the middle rows. I’m never having kids. Still, you were grateful for them, because they gave you the whole back row to yourself.

The ride was about to start when a voice interrupted: “Wait, wait! Hold up, we’re coming– oh wow, I’m out of breath.” “Haha, you gotta get out more, ‘Bin.”

Oh dear lord, please no. Not here.

“Or maybe you should quit eating so much bread.”

“Say what you want about my physique, but you’ll never take away my bread rights.”

Please don’t come over here, please don’t come over here.

To your horror, you realized that there was only one empty row left and they were heading straight for it. In a frantic last-ditch attempt, you pulled your hood over your head and turned the other way in hopes that they wouldn’t recognize you. The wooden bench creaked under the weight of five new butts. And it was just your luck that Bread Boy happened to sit closest to you.

“Lucky there was enough room left,” the blue-haired idiot remarked. “Thought we weren’t gonna make it.”

“I’ll say. Maybe if you stopped eating so much bread–”

“Stop teasing me about my bread already. Who are you to talk, anyways? All your nicknames are about food!”

“Well, at least I–”

You rolled your eyes and filtered out the rest of their bickering. What are they, a married couple? Better dynamic than my parents, at least. God, I hope I never get mar–

The ship lurched, jolting you out of your thoughts, and nearly your seat too. For the first time in a long time, you felt a wide grin spreading across your cheeks. With the breeze gusting through your hair, the sensation of thrill in your stomach, and the view from the top of the boat, you felt alive for the first time in a while. At least, until the screams started.

They literally sounded like dying goats. They were hitting notes even you couldn’t hit, and you were a soprano. Not that you knew how to sing, but you could break glass when you stubbed your toe.

The rest of the ride was not a pleasant one. Between the screeching and the obnoxious hyena laughter that followed, you were about ready to jam your fist down their windpipes. Luckily for them, the ride ended and they were spared from your wrath.

“Haha, that was so fun! We should go again!”

Fun, you say? You might have laughed if you weren’t so angry.

“Actually, I think we should dip soon. I dunno why, but I’m getting the heebie jeebies.” Who was that again? Narrowing your eyes, you tried to pin a name on the boy. Oh, never mind. He’s one of the guys who didn’t introduce himself.

“Sure, Tae. You and your spidey sense have gotten us out of trouble too many times to count. But before we go, let’s grab some corn dogs.” The other four followed Tae’s suit and left the boat. It struck you as odd how they trusted his word so easily. What could he have sensed, anyways? Your bloodlust?

Whatever. Now that they’re gone, I’d like to actually enjoy the ride this time.

Finally, you had the back row to yourself again, and you savored every moment of it.

––––

“Hey guys, can we not go in?” Soobin clutched his queasy stomach at the sight of the waterpark installment, shuddering as he recalled his near-death encounter in deep water as a kid.

“Are you scared because you almost drowned in the kiddie pool when you were five because your safety float deflated?” Taehyun asked, a little too loudly. It earned him a few glances from other people in the queue.

“Shut up! That did not happen!”

“Okay, but aren’t you kinda too old to be scared of water? To be fair, you’re over 180cm and the water here is barely a meter high.”

“Still! I don’t like cold water.” He frowned. “Can we please go somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

“We-we could go watch the circus performances!”

“No thank you. Animals in cages make me sad, and I didn’t come here to be sad,” Tae replied. “We could go watch that magic show at 7 o’clock if you want.”

“But that’s at seven!”

“You can wait for us if you want, grab an ice cream while you wait.” Kai suggested, at a crossroads between going on the waterslide and keeping his friend company. Luckily for Soobin, Kai being the good kid he was, he chose friendship. “I could stay with you if you want to go somewhere else, we’ll have them give us a call when they’re done over here.”

“Okay!” the aquaphobic replied immediately, shooting dirty looks at the three boys that chose to stay in line. Linking arms, the two set off to find the ice cream stand.

After picking up their ice creams, they wandered through the fairground without any particular destination. After a while of “Oooh, let’s go into the Mirror Maze!” “No, that one has a shorter line!” and “Oh, look! A bread stand!”, the two boys had worn themselves out with their own antics. Or maybe it was just Kai who felt drained, because his counterpart seemed perky as ever, now munching on his fifth carbohydrate snack. The boy sighed wearily as he reclined in a rickety plastic chair, taking a sip of his overly sweet lemonade.

Staring off into the distance, he suddenly noticed a young boy sitting on a haystack staring him dead in the eyes. The child looked about seven years old, his curly brown hair parted in the middle. Slowly, the corners of his mouth turned upwards without the slightest twitch in the rest of his expression. His eyes didn’t match his smile. Kind of creepy, but then again, kids are weird. Yet something felt off.

“Bro, these nachos are so good! I’m too full to finish it, you want the rest?”

“Psst!” Huening Kai tapped his hyung’s arm quickly and nodded in the direction of the boy. “Look at that kid. Don’t you think he looks kinda cree—”

“Hmm?”

“Wait– where’d he go?” The haystack the boy had been sitting on appeared untouched; not even the slightest buttprint remained. It was as if he’d disapparated. “That’s weird.”

“Oh, right! Tae just texted me saying that they were done over there. We’re going back to meet with them. Let’s go!”

“Alright,” Kai responded, sparing a few last glances before leaving. Call it a gut feeling, but something told him that this wasn’t the last time he’d see this child.

———

chapter one finally out! the original chapter was supposed to be around 7.6k words, but we had to cut it because it was too long 😬😬😬 thank you for reading :)

hmm, i wonder who that mysterious child is?

25 notes · View notes

lucidpantone · 4 years

Text

Visitations Preview Chap 5: The Finale

**Go and grab your tissue box. You’ll really need to stop being so emosh. @cph-dreaming @fehmyn @hopetofantasy @cleocc @msmesasha. If I forgot to tag you am sorry. It’s only one memory and that's all you're getting.**

Disclaimer: Same rules apply.

Italics is the past. If not, it's August 15th at any point in the day I chose to drop you into.

“Just one?”

“Yeah” Robbe responded, acknowledging the cashier.

“To Amsterdam?”

Robbe nodded.

“1st or 2nd class?”

“1st please.”

“That will be €54”

Robbe shoots the cashier a nondescript smile as he sticks his credit card into the card reader and enters his pin to complete the transaction. The cashier hands him over the purchase receipt and signals for the next customer to proceed. Robbe begins to walk away and clumsily walks back a couple of steps and asks “In what direction is platform 3?”. The cashier signals towards the left hand side exit of the post office. Robbe sees the platform in the distance as he exits the store and runs towards it with a couple of minutes to spare before departure. He makes it in just the nick of time and settles into a window seat, anxious to reach his final destination.

The nostalgia of his final stop always caught Robbe off guard. Every time he came back here whether on his own, or with him, everything seemed to have stayed exactly the same since the first time. This place was a strange kinda of place wrapped up in its own personal deja-vu. Housing an unknown poltergeist where earthlingly oddities roamed and mother nature dared to roll around with the solar flares of the sun between her legs. A consequence of all the zygotes that got produced here seasonally. Robbe really didn’t care though, he loved it here, he always found himself here. There was something about this place; rudimentary in its makeup at best but possessing a sense of serenity, with a dose of mystery, even some romance, a portal to another universe. This place always felt like home. Robbe would visit old haunts, walk the dunes of time, revel in the taste of sodium in the air. He’d hit up familiar store stalls, check out the best vantage points but eventually he’d always find himself back at their old place.

It was restaurant style. Not the fancy type made out of linen.It was white with miniature clams embossed atop, 2ply, 15 inches across but folded down the middle, then folded into 4’s and then once more to emulate the size of a standard envelope. Robbe had seen them in different colors but most people in the world only saw them in that pearl white that the standard restaurant napkins were made of. He just stared into the pattern recalling the day when this senseless artifact became an urn that stored the ashes of his love story.

“This is so stupid, I mean it's basically a pipe dream. It’s never gonna happen.” Sander told Robbe as he pulled out a marker from his back pocket.

“Come on just do it for me.” Robbe begged. Sander chuckled because he knew once Robbe made a request he was going to appease it.

“Okay…. So my dream tattoo shop would look something like this.” Sander drew out three squares lined up horizontally next to each other like carriages on a train atop the restaurant napkin.

“So the whole concept would be based on the idea that it wouldn't even look like a tattoo shop but a gallery space. Operationally it would be a place of business but functionally it would double up as a tattoo shop/community art space. You know people always associate tattoo shops as these dark and dengy out posts but when you’d walk into mine you’d be flushed with a burst of light making the whole place feel airy. Like a sense of wholeness or something.”

Robbe found Sander’s light up smile endearing as he walked through his imaginary tattoo shop schematic. Robbe rubbed the top of Sander’s hand with his thumb encouraging Sander to continue explaining his future’s prospects.

“I love the way you think baby. You're always so thoughtful and creative.”

“Like I said it's never going to happen but you never know right….life is full of surprises.” Sander was downplaying how much he wanted this future to become a reality.

“No no no. Don’t say it’s never going to happen. We’ll find a way to make it happen.”

“Oh are you going to learn how to tattoo now?” Sander gave Robbe a cheeky grin because Robbe couldn’t even draw a rectangle correctly. Well at least not yet...

“No but I’ll find a way to chip in. I could run the reception or something.” Robbe knew that wouldn’t be much help but that's the best his nineteen year old self could come up with at the time.

“Promise we’ll find a way to make it happen?” Robbe always did this to Sander. Whenever Sander lacked belief in himself Robbe would make him promise on whatever desire he was discounting.

“Only if you promise we’ll do it together?”

“Deal, I mean that’s not a hard request. You know I always keep my promises.”

Robbe and Sander both giggled because both of them knew that Robbe’s promises never faltered. Robbe was the most reliable person Sander knew. Sander couldn’t help but indulge Robbe’s interest in their never gonna happen future.

“Anyways I’m thinking the color scheme would go something like white in the gallery, black in the tattoo shop and then maybe an entry to a garden or patio area.”

Sander rambled on and on about how eventually the gallery space could host events or have fun community sessions. He could teach art to youths since he knew how much art had helped him when he was younger. He had completely mapped out the potential of a place like this and the excitement in his voice was insatiable to say the least.

Robbe loved hearing the sound of Sander’s voice in this particular amped up pitch. It was so tranquil and soothing to him.

“Excuse me, do you need this? It was stuck in between the euros on top of your bill.”

Robbe looked up from the napkin and took inventory of his surroundings. He had got lost in his own memories again. It was becoming a frequent occurrence as of late. He looked up at the waitress who was attempting to hand him over a waxy piece of textured paper. He thanked her and took hold of it.

It was the post office receipt.

Robbe had almost totally forgotten about the dread of having to text Luc to let him know he had mailed back his stuff today. Specifically his GIRL brand skateboard that he adored so much. They hadn’t spoken since their break up but as Robbe went to grab his phone to text Luc he saw a text from Kes.

“Sorry, this is awkward but Luc asked me to ask you if you mailed back his stuff yet?”

- Kes

“I did it today. It should get to him in 3-5 days. I mailed it 1st class.”

“Umm how’s he doing? Has he said anything to you?”

- Robbe

“Look, That's my best friend.I don’t want to get involved. All he said to me was that you weren’t ready to invest in love….”

- Kes

Luc always had a way with words. Always knew how to make Robbe feel guiltier than he already felt. Luc was as blunt as a knife's edge so when he stabbed you he made sure it was torturous and never swift.

As the waitress laid down Robbe’s change from his paid bill he took one final glance over to the broken down booth that he and Sander used to call “their spot”. It stung seeing it empty but he still smiled at the memory of his younger self sneaking the diagram that Sander had penned atop the napkin into his brown jacket. Not knowing then that eventually he’d get to remind an older Sander that sometimes dreams do come true.

The walk back to the house on the beach was refreshing. A light zephyr surged around the pier’s promenade creating an idyllic breeze that seemed to galvanize the local pelican community into flight. The whole ambiance of this beachy hideaway gave Robbe a much needed reprieve from the conflict ensuing in his mind. A litany of doubtful thoughts with no real answers. Continued avoidance was working so far in his favor but Robbe knew that Sander’s patience would wear.

They hadn’t spoken much since the break up. Sander had stuck around for a few days after the initial night to keep Robbe company but the whole ordeal lacked morality. They'd lay in bed together watching TV while Sander just held Robbe tightly. Practically bruising Robbe’s arms. Every few hours Robbe would be stricken with a wave of guilt over what he had done to Luc and he’d need Sander to fuck it out of him. The situation was dire and the irrational had somehow become the rational. Robbe needed to get his shit together and stop his dopesick lifestyle. Sander could not become the dragon he needed to chase to stop the withdrawals. He didn’t deserve that. Robbe had done what he had done and he needed to learn to live with it.

He did eventually kick Sander out after 4 days of this delirium stating that he needed time and space and he just needed Sander to respect that for now. He also called his boss explaining the situation and begging him to forget his resignation. Robbe was lucky that the firm was understaffed and had just signed on new business because otherwise Thibaut would have never agreed to it. At least that was one crisis averted, his apartment on the other hand was in shambles. Everything was in packing boxes and everything needed to be rehoused which was a painstaking process but he did it. It took him a couple of weeks but he did eventually put the pieces of his life back together. Finally waking up one morning after a three week haze with an impulsive craving to head to the house on the beach. Robbe wasn’t sure why he needed to go there, he just knew that it was calling and thus why he now found himself wandering down the promenade on his lonesome. A sherbet sky as his backdrop.

Robbe welcomed the change of scenery of his beachy escape. A part of him loathed his apartment now it was covered in a slime of memories he could not scrub away. Though the house on the beach was nothing more than some worn down furniture he welcomed the opportunity to grab his guitar and lay out on the garden bench outside his room and just strum the night away. It was that time of the day anyways. Sander and Robbe barely spoke or texted during this reflective period but they did communicate in the best way they knew how. See these siloed lovers had their own traditions. Sander had established it but Robbe had developed it. When either one of them didn't feel like talking, usually Sander they communicate in their most comfortable non-verbal formats. For Sander this was his usual set of drawings and for Robbe it was always his guitar. So keeping in line with their usual pattern Sander would text Robbe pictures of his drawings daily and Robbe would return to sender a voice clip of whatever chorus he had strummed together for the day. So that was what he was in the middle of doing when he saw it.

Robbe looked out onto the rainbow sherbet sky; it was an apparition in the distance. He blinked to make sure it wasn't an illusion then a second time for confirmation but it wasn’t a trick of the mind. A figure began to materialize over the sand dunes in an all black attire sporting some laced up Doc Marten’s.

Robbe’s body tensed up. How could it even be possible that he was here too... but as soon as the affliction of concern took over him it quickly dematerialized as the apparition in the distance came into focus and took on corporeal form. Robbe definitely didn’t know her but he couldn't stop observing her. She had a juggernaut presence, he was in awe, curious too but more so because she felt so familiar. Her lavender pinkish locks stood out; they helped frame her face with a dose of softness which was in opposition with the rest of her appearance.

She made a b-line towards Robbe’s direction approaching him with haste. She passed the candy strip ballards and walked onto the wooden planked walkway that paved the entrance of the house on the beach. She stopped at the teal colored Kalise cooler. She opened it and evaluated whatever she found inside and walked right over to the wooden garden bench where Robbe sat legs up strumming his guitar. Robbe shifted his focus downward in an attempt to avoid her gaze.

“Are you the manager here?”

Robbe looked at her completely bewildered recalling the previous time he was asked that same question. Before he had time to think of a cheeky retort she interjected into his thoughts.

“I just wanted to pay for a beer from the cooler”

Robbe kicked his legs off the bench and sat up.

“Oh those are mine actually but feel free to grab one. Free of charge of course”

Robbe shot her a wink.

She was pretty, he thought. Robbe had to double check his senses for a moment. He had never been drawn to a woman like this before. He took a moment to evaluate his entire life choices but it definitely wasn’t that. It wasn’t that kind of connection but there was something about her. It's like his body was reacting to some strange paradox in the universe that had hashed out this otherworldly eidolon sitting in front of him.

“Ummm do I have something on my face or something?” She asked as she brought the rim of the bottle to her lips.

“No…” Robbe replied with a hint of embarrassment in his voice.

“Ok so what are you staring at?”

“Shit sorry, you just seem so familiar. Am just trying to put my finger on where I may have seen you before. Are you from around here?”

“Do I sound like I am from around here?” She slapped back with a hint of sarcasm.

Robbe felt like an idiot as soon as the sentence left his mouth. She clearly had a heavy accent and she definitely wasn’t from around here. Her dutch was terrible but conversational. Her whole vibe screamed from somewhere south.

“So whose heart did you break?”

“What?” Robbe scoffed in disbelief. The reminder of guilt sinking him back into his seat.

“Come on..a pretty boy like you strumming his guitar with this as his backdrop” She pointed out to the sherbet bleeding sky; currently highlighting a color mixture of tangerine and cadmium rouge.

“A bit cliche don’t you think?”

“How’d you know I broke someone’s heart and they didn’t break mine?”

“With a face like that. You’re definitely the culprit.” Robbe was blushing but he didn’t disagree; he just stretched out the bottom half of his jaw in a slight twitch.

“Come on I can smell the guilt coming off you? Trust me I should know, it’s my favourite scent.” The pretty girl shot him an eyebrow raise to check Robbe’s temperature. Making sure she hadn’t offended him.

“I don’t even know you….”

“That’s the best part. You can tell me everything and I’ll be honest with you”

At first this sounded ludicrous but then again Robbe hadn’t told anyone the events that had actually occurred that had caused his downward spiral. He was deeply ashamed of how he handled everything and couldn’t bear to see the judgement across Jens or Lia’s face.

“I am Robbe, perpetual dumpster fire of a person. What’s your name?”

The pixie doll apparition shot her focus downward and whispered out, “Whatever you want it to be Robbe?”

“Pick a name for me?”

Why all the mystery? Robbe thought to himself. A didactic approach, Robbe could recognize a fellow strategist when he encountered one.

“No no no, you don’t get to do that. I can’t be the only one telling my secrets.”

She scoffed.

“Fine fine. Call me C.J.”

Robbe pulled a face, “That is not your real name.”

“You said you wanted a name, you never said anything about it being my real name. Take it or leave it.”

God she really did remind him of someone.

“Ok Robbe, I kept my end of the bargain. So tell me your secrets.”

Robbe rolled his eyes at her. There was something about her that was positively unbearable but also highly comforting.

“I recently broke up with my boyfriend…..” Robbe murmured out. She waved her hand in a circular motion indicating to Robbe that she wanted more details and to keep going.

“Because I think i'm still in love with my ex….”

“You think? Or you know?” C.J. questioned.

Robbe put his guitar down on the side of the bench and buried his face in his hands as a display of his frustration.

“I gather that means you know.”

C.J. pivoted her entire body towards his and scooted over rubbing Robbe’s shoulder very lightly. A strangely intimate gesture to exchange between strangers.

“It’s okay, I mean it's not, but you know what I mean.” C.J. attempted to quell Robbe’s worries.

“Ok your gonna need another beer so you can tell me what happened.”

C.J. got up and scurried to the Kalise cooler and hurried back with a beer in hand.

Robbe took a large gulp as soon as she put it in his grip.

“I slept with my ex-boyfriend as soon as me and my new boyfriend broke up”

C.J. shocked her head back and forth as a sign of some weird understanding.

“How long after the break up?”

Robbe buried his face back into his hands. He didn’t want to look at her reaction.

“Like an hour…..”

Robbe clearly heard her shocked snort which was preceded by heavy coughing.

“Sorry, choked on my beer there for a second. An hour? How? Did you drive a ferrari to his house?” She was definitely mocking him now.

“No he was waiting on my doorstep?”

“You got him delivered? His not takeout Robbe.”

“But I gotta admit you Belgians are impressive. We don’t have those types of delivery services from where I'm from. At best you can get a lukewarm pizza to your doorstep.”

Robbe looked at C.J. who was clearly trying to ease the tension and crack a joke. Robbe felt a genuine smile come across his face. He’d been struggling to get one of those to appear as of late.

“Look, I am not gonna sugar coat it. You're a real life asshole.”

“Excuse me?” Robbe responded a bit offended.

“Yeah I mean who breaks up with their boyfriend and has their ex delivered to them within an hour? Kinda of an asshole thing to do.”

“You know what, I don’t need to explain myself to you.” Robbe’s tone had hardened.

“You don’t, but you want to, right? I know because I've been there. Am the biggest asshole I know.”

“So here we are two of the biggest assholes drinking a beer together. Cheers!”

C.J. tapped her beer onto Robbe’s.

Though his instinct was too feel offended by the words coming out of C.J.’s mouth his heart and his head felt a bit of relief finally letting it all out. No matter how ugly his truths sounded out loud.

“Have you ever done something like that yourself?” Robbe questioned C.J. hoping for a bit of camaraderie.

“Not something like that but I’ve put my girlfriend through some serious bullshit. Why do you think I'm in some foreign country driving towards home?”

C.J. pointed at herself, “Total asshole remember”.

“Look Robbe when you're young, a teenager even. You can make mistakes like that and people give you the benefit of the doubt but when you're older everything counts. It's harsh but true.If you keep messing up at our age you become a pariah, a write off, beyond repair, ready to be put out to pasture.”

“But at the same time life’s complicated. People are complicated. Your love story sounds complicated. So ask yourself this, would he really stick by you through the good times, the bad and the motherfucking worse? Because everyone swears they would but in reality that’s not really true. They have no idea how bad it can really get. How bad you can really get. So I’d ask yourself this, would he fight for you? No matter the outcome?”

Robbe just stared at her. He kept wanting to say something but he couldn't seem to construct a sentence. Then it clicked like osmosis.

“You remind me of him, you know. The way you talk. Your whole vibe.” Robbe did a wax on/wax off gestures in C.J.’s direction.

“Who knows..maybe we’re the same person. Do you believe in parallel universes?”

Robbe's head violently spun around. A tidal wave of deja-vu was submerging him. He just nodded in confirmation. Robbe was definitely a believer of parallel universes.

“Yeah I thought so. Kindred spirits and all. We tend to find each other.”

Robbe knew what she meant. It was weird but somehow he felt like they had been here before.

Robbe and C.J. just sat there in silence for a while watching the colors of tangerine and cadmium rouge disappear into midnight hues. Robbe occasionally strumming some chord changes into the air. C.J. humming out some impromptu melodies both go them going back and forth discussing guitar legends that one another should check out. Until it was time for their rendezvous to end.

“I should go. I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow.”

Robbe frowned a little disappointed. He didn’t want her to leave.

C.J. noticed and pouted in response. Both man and woman giggled into the breezy night. Before C.J. stood up she left Robbe with a nugget of truth as she drank the dregs of what was left of her last beer. Wiping her mouth down on her long sleeve shirt as she finished her drink.

“Robbe……” She sounded somber.

“The world never wanted people like you and I to be lovers. They bullied us into becoming fighters and we’ve been trying to get back to loving ever since. Just look at our past”

“My advice, look out for the small stuff. Signs. You can build a foundation off those. If you’re willing...”

C.J. began to get up from the bench.

“You’ll be fine either way Robbe but if you do have someone worth fighting for I try to protect that from the world. Remember through the good, the bad and the mother fucking worse. No matter the outcome.”

Her words struck a chord in Robbe.

“Promise me if you find that. That you’ll jump?”

C.J.’s dark brown eyes felt like they were pinning down Robbe’s soul down. Holding him to some unknown truth but he couldn’t say no to her.

“I promise” Robbe affirmed.

C.J. smiled and quickly broke the seriousness of the entire exchange.

“Right time to go. This was great. Best one night stand of my life. I didn’t even have to put out.”

“Are you ever just normal?” Robbe teased.

“What’s so great about being normal… am an enigma Robbe.” C.J. began to walk down the wooden sandy planks when Robbe shouted out to her.

“Hey, How do I find you again?”

“You don’t Robbe. This was just a random anomaly. We were never meant to meet in the first place.”

Though normally this would seem like a brush off. Robbe somehow understood the dyadic transaction that had just occurred.

“I guess we’ll meet again in another universe?” He let out.

C.J. stopped dead in her tracks.

She twirled back around, her entire self looking back at Robbe and said.

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

#wtfock #wtfam #sobbe #sander x robbe #robbe x sander

36 notes · View notes

metamorphicrocky · 5 years

Text

Neither is He

did the discord just start going off an angst earlier? yes. did I start thinking about s3 angst between Gary, Little Cato, and Avocato? yes. so did I write this? absolutely :)

Ever since the Crimson Light went into Final Space, Avocato has been very confused.

Which is to be expected, seeing as how he died and then was brought back to life only to be possessed right up until he was flung into a nightmare dimension with his friends and a bunch of strangers.

Was everything explained to him? Yes, Gary and Little Cato did an...enthusiastic retelling of the events. But is he still utterly lost? Oh, absolutely.

Avocato has never been someone who likes being in the dark, so their current situation has put him seriously on edge for the past few weeks. He doesn't know what to expect in this new environment with a new crew, and the new developments between a certain two have to be the most unexpected parts of this whole thing if he's being honest.

"Hey, Dad?" Little Cato asks, peering his head around the entrance way into the bridge.

"Yes?" Avocato says at the same time as Gary says, "Yeah, buddy?"

The two men look at each other, and Gary flicks his eyes away when he notices the slight annoyance in Avocato's expression.

The kid doesn't even bat an eye at the very slight tension in the room. "Do you wanna go do something in the arcade?"

Avocato watches as Gary smiles and jumps up, bounding over the kid to ruffle his hair and smirk. "Oh, you wanna get beat again, little man?"

Little Cato smirks back, crossing his arms, "Oh, you're wrong on that. I'm gonna beat you so good, Thunder Bandit!" Then, he turns towards Avocato. "Dad, you coming?"

The Ventrexian stays silent for a moment, staring at the way Gary's hand naturally sits on top of his son's head and how Little Cato's tail wraps around Gary's leg unconsciously. The two of them interact like they've known each other for years, not the few months that Avocato knows it's been.

"No thanks," he states plainly.

Little Cato's face falls slightly almost in tandem with Gary's doing the same. "Are you sure?" the human asks, raising an eyebrow. "We could fit a game of cards in?"

He shakes his head. "I'm good."

Gary and Little Cato glance at each other, then together, they walk out of the room. Almost instantly, Avocato can hear their distant excited chatter over what games to play and the two of them playfully egging each other on.

His best friend adopted his son. That's a reasonable thing to do when someone dies, but Avocato is more than alive now. Yes, he asked Gary to take care of him, and he's grateful that his friend took on that responsibility....

But now? There isn't any reason why Gary should still be in that role.

A blooming anger forces a low growl from Avocato as he ruminates on the bridge.

----

Avocato yawns as he walks out of the bridge after his shift, Tribore taking his place. He is so ready to sleep in his room and not think about the floating corpses that he sees every second of the day.

As he's marching tiredly to his room, he hears some quiet talking in the hallway up ahead. He stops in his tracks and sneaks towards the corner to see who's there. He leans out from his hiding spot, only for Gary and Little Cato to be in his sight.

He freezes in place, watching as Gary cards a hand through the boy's fur. His friend is holding the boy tight to his chest as Little Cato clings to Gary's shirt, trembling fiercely. The shine of tears glisten on the kid's cheeks under the dim light of the ship's hallway, and Avocato frowns.

Little Cato hiccups, burying his head into Gary's stomach miserably.

"It's okay, bud. Let it all out," Gary soothes. "You're on the Crimson Light with me. We're both alive, and you're not alone. You're safe, okay?"

"I'm–I'm safe," Little Cato tries to say in between sobs.

Gary nods, rubbing the Ventrexian's back. "Yeah, you're safe with me."

The kid takes a few more moments to calm down, then he loosens his grip on Gary's shirt and hugs him instead.

"Do you know how you got here?" Gary questions softly.

"I had a nightmare about...," his son mumbles too quietly, so Avocato misses what he says. "I woke up and went to get you, then you brought us out here in case I woke anyone up."

Little Cato specifically wanted Gary?

"Good job, can you tell me anything else?" his friend encourages softly.

"I'm fourteen. You're thirty-two. You're real. We're in Final Space."

"There you go!" Gary smiles fondly at the boy. "Feeling more grounded?"

The boy nods, and Gary plants a soft kiss to the top of Little Cato's head. He snuggles into his adoptive dad as Gary starts rambling about something random.

Avocato finally stops his spying, disgruntled that he feels like a stranger over checking into his own son's well being. He glares at the wall across from him and walks away.

The next morning, the only sign that Little Cato was ever upset is the way Gary is extra affectionate towards the kid. Neither of them talk about it.

The anger in Avocato's chest grows.

----

The more Gary and his son interact, the more annoyed Avocato is.

He needs to fix this. His relationship with his son was going to be rough to navigate through, and Avocato was well aware of that fact. But this is ridiculous, the kid is with his friend more than his biological father.

Right now, Little Cato is in his room according to the weird girl.

Avocato strides down the hallway, then knocks on the kid's door. Little Cato opens it after a few seconds, and his blank expression turns into excitement when he sees his dad.

"Hey, Dad! What's up?"

"Well, I was thinking that we could do a little father-son bonding," Avocato says, smiling at his son.

The boy lights up, pumping a fist in the air. "Yes! That is tight! I'll go grab Gary!"

Avocato's face scrunches up in confusion, and he grabs his son's shoulder before he can run off. He laughs awkwardly as the kid stops and tilts his head. "I was thinking just the two of us?"

"But...you said father-son bonding?"

Little Cato's confused expression shockingly resembles Gary's, and he tries to ignore it.

"Just us today. It'll be just like old times, right?"

His son still looks confused, and maybe even a little worried, but he puts on a smile anyways. "Um, okay. What are we doing?"

Avocato smiles, knowing that his son is going to love this. He leads him to the weapons room and spreads his arms out, gesturing towards the array of guns set out.

"We're gonna fix these babies up, just like we used to!"

Avocato's ecstatic smile drops when he sees the boredom already on his son's face, but Little Cato scrambles to appear excited when he notices his father looking at him.

"Well," Avocato says, at a loss for words for one of the first times in his life, "Let's, uh, get going!"

They both sit down and begin working in silence. Avocato is content enough with the calm quiet and rudimentary cleaning and replacing of parts. Little Cato, on the other hand, looks like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Hey, that's a GXV-76 over there. You always wanted one of those, so I'll let you deal with that one," Avocato says, knowing that his son will at least enjoy that.

Instead of the expected reaction, his son stiffens as he sees the gun, and he laughs nervously. "You can do that one. I'm kinda over those now, anyways."

"Well, what's your new favorite blaster, then?"

Little Cato shrugs. "Dunno, haven't really thought about it much."

Well, that's new to Avocato. His son not being obsessed with weapons of all kinds? Come to think of it, the gun he uses now is one that he had no interest in previously.

They fall into an awkward silence again.

"So, uh, what's some stuff you did before all of this?" Avocato tries to ask, hoping he doesn't come off as pushy.

"Other than trying not to die, a bunch of stuff. Ash taught me how to paint nails. Gary's been giving me homework and stuff since there isn't a school in this area." Little Cato laughs at his own joke. "Oh! Gary and I play this game called—!"

"How about something that doesn't involve Gary?" Avocato cuts in, a little too forcefully. "Something that's just Little Cato."

The young Ventrexian's face falls, the excitement draining from his eyes. He shrugs. "I don't know? Everything's been so hectic lately, and when we were first on the ship, I was with Gary most of the time."

The conversation falls as Avocato's increasing frustration with this bonding activity makes its presence known. This is not going according to plan.

Does Gary really have that much of an influence over his son?

As if the universe just wants to make Avocato's life as difficult as possible, Gary happens to walk by the room. The blond stops as he notices them, bounding into the room with a bright smile on his face.

"There you two are! I've been looking all over for you!" Avocato doesn't miss how Little Cato brightens like the rising sun when Gary comes. "You two wanna get in on a team squad BS game?"

His son leaps out of his seat, running up and doing a weird handshake with Gary. The two of them laugh when they finish, and Avocato's chest tightens.

Gary's smile turns towards his best friend, the signature Gary Goodspeed smile that Avocato knows from back when everything made sense.

"What d'you say, buddy? Ready to get beat by me yet again?"

He smiles tightly. "Oh, just you wait, baby. I'll finish this up and be there in a few."

His son nods and bounces out of the room, trailing on Gary's heels to go be with the rest of the crew.

The anger morphs into rage.

----

Another night of Little Cato going to Gary for comfort over him, even though they were in the same room at the time.

Little Cato has a panic attack one day, and Gary is the one to calm him down.

They dance to some music called Loggins.

Little Cato wrestles and spars with Gary.

Gary ruffles his son's hair.

Gary plays games around the ship with his son.

Gary is the first to praise his son when he does something impressive.

Gary and Little Cato.

Gary and his son.

The rage consumes him.

----

"Gary, we need to talk about something."

The blond turns around, an open expression on his face. "Yeah? What's up, man?"

Avocato doesn't sit down across from Gary. He stands over him, a deep frown on his face.

"You can stop fathering Little Cato, you know."

Gary's face scrunches in confusion—just like Little Cato—as his mouth opens and closes as he tries to process his friend's words. He moves his hands around aimlessly, not knowing how to react.

Finally, he speaks, "What?" Confusion laces his voice.

"I know that you had to do it while I was gone, but now that I'm back, you can step back now, Gary. You don't have to do everything for him anymore," Avocato states.

Gary laughs incredulously. "Avocato, I don't think I can just stop being his dad."

"Yes, you can! It's simple!" he growls in frustration.

Gary stands and stares into Avocato's eyes, searching for something within them. He looks for a solid few seconds, and he steps back when he doesn't find what he's looking for, his face portraying the definition of devastation.

"You're serious?"

"Yes, why would I joke about this?"

Gary splutters. "Because you sound ridiculous! Do you even know what you're saying?!"

"Gary! Yes! I can parent him on my own, just like it was supposed to be before everything!" Avocato shouts.

"I can't just stop," his friend says sadly. "It'll crush the kid to lose another person."

The Ventrexian waves off his concerns, rolling his eyes. "He's a tough kid, he'll get over it."

Gary crosses his arms, lifting an eyebrow as a challenge. Avocato glares at him in response, not appreciating how Gary has been way too eager to keep his son so far.

"Do you really know that, Avocato? You haven't been around the kid in over three years; he's not the son you knew anymore," he states calmly. "He–he won't react the way you think he will, trust me, buddy."

Avocato scoffs. "Yeah, the reason why I don't know my own son anymore is because you changed him! He doesn't even care about GXV-76's anymore, and he loves them!"

Gary stops at that. "Is that the yellow gun? With the curved handle?"

He huffs in response, nodding his head as his rage continues to grow.

His friend groans, burying his bead into his hands and then throwing them out with frustration. "He tried to kill himself with that gun! This is why I'm trying to tell you that you don't know anything about him anymore!"

"He what?" Avocato whispers, glaring at Gary in shock. Fury overcomes him as he shouts, "No wonder the boy is so fucked up. The only reason I don't know my son anymore is because of you!"

"Avocato—"

"No!" He's seething, his chest rising erratically. "Gary, this is my job, and I don't want you to keep taking my kid away from me!"

Gary's face is white as a ghost, his hands shaking. "I just want to help you guys, that's all. Isn't it better to have more people in the kid's corner? Helping out?"

"Help is fine, but you're not doing that," he growls. "You can't take my son away from me!"

"...Dad?"

Gary and Avocato whip their heads towards the doorway, and there stands Little Cato, Mooncake trailing behind him. The boy's eyes are dilated, fear reflecting across his face.

"What's going on?" Little Cato whispers, his voice shaking.

"Don't worry about it, buddy. It's just a dad to dad conversation," Gary says, somehow managing to sound calm.

"But—"

Gary smiles encouragingly at the boy, but the kid just keeps looking between Avocato's angry and surprised face and the other man. "It's okay, Spidercat."

Avocato groans, "This is what I'm talking about, you need to stop!"

"Okay, Avocato, this is clearly not the time," Gary tries to reason, and for some reason, he's still so fucking calm.

"Tell me what's going on," Little Cato pleads, walking up to his dads.

"Buddy, it's fine—"

"No, you two are upset—"

"And I said it's—"

"Tell me, please!"

"Spidercat, not now—"

"Yes, now—"

"Enough!" Avocato roars, silencing them both instantly. Both of their shocked faces—they look so alike—turn towards him. "Boy, get the hell out of here!"

Little Cato flinches back at his dad's tone, full of rage and hatred and weeks of pent up emotions, and tears pool in his eyes. Avocato hears gasps from the hallway, and he turns towards the other members of the ship all crowded around the doorway.

His attention is brought back to Gary when the man grabs him by the shoulder, heatedly forcing him to turn around. Avocato's glower drops from his face when he sees one on Gary's, the emotion of pure fury looking wrong and foreign on the generally happy guy's face.

"Don't you ever yell at him like that again," Gary says, quiet and strong like an incoming storm. Avocato notices that Little Cato has moved to stand next to Gary. "This kid is the best thing that will ever happen to either of us, okay? He's my son as much as he is yours, whether you like it or not. If he gets the chance to have more than one parent, I will never take that opportunity away from him."

Little Cato's head whips up to stare at Gary in what looks to be fright, then he stares at Avocato in shock. "You don't want him to be my dad anymore?"

The raw hurt in his son's voice causes Avocato to falter in his rage, pausing momentarily before continuing on his rampage. "You have me now! And all you've been doing is spending time with him over me! I barely know you anymore!"

Little Cato shakes his head, his face absolutely distraught.

Gary moves to stand slightly in front of his son, something that Avocato cannot let slip from his notice. "Avocato," Gary says calmly. "Come on, man! Let's not fight, you're obviously upset and not thinking straight."

"You stole my son away from me!"

"He didn't steal me," Little Cato says firmly, his voice cracking. It slows his anger. "I want both of you to be my dads!"

Something inside of Avocato—something fierce and powerful and conflicting, that feels almost familiar—sparks. His glare sharpens as he growls, throwing his arms out furiously. A culmination of everything, especially the way his own son is cowering behind the man that stole him away, lights that spark.

"You would choose him over your own father?!" Avocato screams, guttural and full of rage like the force of a typhoon.

The sound almost echoes, fading into a dead silence. Little Cato and Gary have blank expressions on their faces, but his son's quickly turns into one of horror as he steps out from behind Gary and—

click

Avocato is frozen in place, staring down the barrel of a gun that must not have been one that Little Cato tried to commit suicide with, because his son has a gun pointed directly at his chest. Little Cato's face is a mix between terrified and determined, his eyes sharp, yet they almost have the appearance of being empty. The tears shine against his fur where they fall. No one is making a sound or moving, the tension almost tangible.

"Little Cato," Avocato breathes, shocked beyond belief.

"I'm not letting you shoot him again!" his boy screams, his arms shaking from holding his gun so tight.

Avocato glances to Gary, who also looks horrified at the kid in front of him. The blond slowly moves to be in front of Avocato, and Little Cato's facial expression stays the same. Gary gently kneels down in front of his son and whispers, "Buddy, it's Gary. Everything's okay, no one is trying to kill anyone."

The boy shakes his head. His eyes remain glossed over. "No no no, he's gonna kill you! He's mad at you and me and he's gonna try to kill us," the kid cries.

"We're on the Crimson Light. Avocato and I just got into a bit of an argument—," Gary takes this pause to glare at the Ventrexian who's still frozen in spot. "—that got pretty heated. Something upset you, but everything is fine right now."

Little Cato sobs. "No, he's gonna kill you! He thinks you stole me from him!"

Gary takes in a shaky breath. "No, he doesn't, Spidercat. You can put down the gun."

"But—"

Gary gently places his hands on top of Little Cato's, pushing it down to face the floor when the boy offers no resistance to the motion. The gun clatters to the floor as Little Cato's grip slackens. His eyes focus again, and he starts blinking rapidly through the tears. He glances at the two men in front of him, his eyes widen, then he bursts into sobbing as he falls to the ground. Gary catches him and holds him protectively in his arms, quickly whispering reassurances and comforting words to him.

Avocato steps back, his eyes wide and breath coming fast as everything that has happened comes crashing into clarity. He did this to his son.

"Gary, I—," Avocato starts, but Gary's heated glare shuts him up.

"Don't say a single word right now," he orders, his voice staying scarily calm.

He stands, picking up Little Cato into his arms and holding the boy's head to his shoulder. He tosses a sideways glance towards Avocato, making the Ventrexian back away from them. As Gary enters the hallway, the crew parting to let him through, a sobbing boy in his arms, he stops.

Everything is silent for several moments other than the sound of crying, then Gary says in a frigid voice, "None of you let him out of here."

He walks away with Little Cato, and Avocato falls to his knees, punching the ground with a shaking fist.

The rage dies.

----

"I don't even think I could possibly tell you how mad I am right now," Gary says, the rage buried within the usually easygoing man making itself clear.

Avocato doesn't lift his gaze from his hands in his laps as he sits hunched over on a bench.

Gary sighs and slams down in the spot next to him. "If you ever try to do that to Little Cato again, I will not hesitate to snap on you."

"Noted," Avocato says.

The two stay silent as Gary leans back and crosses his arms. Avocato doesn't want to see the anger on Gary's expression because of the guilt swirling viciously inside of him, and his friend's reaction will only make it worse.

Would Gary even want to be his friend after this?

"I'm sorry."

"You should be."

Avocato wants to voice his need to apologize to his son, but Gary probably knows that and won't let him even near the kid. Honestly, Avocato agrees. He hurt his son badly and his best friend, too.

A sniffle makes him finally look at Gary, only to see the blond wiping tears away.

He reaches a hand out, maybe for comfort, but retracts it almost immediately. "Gary—"

"I had Ash and Fox hide all of the guns on the ship while Little Cato cried himself to sleep again. I had to tell him that it wasn't his fault that he pulled a gun on his father again," Gary whispers, his voice cracking again. He finally looks at Avocato, and the stress on his face makes Avocato's heart clench. "That it wasn't his fault that you didn't want me to be his dad anymore.

"It doesn't matter if we don't agree on parenting decisions or whatever, Avocato. The kid isn't gonna see it like that. He's been through so much, he can't lose a dad again. I don't care if you don't want me to do it, and I can't blame you for it...but he isn't the son you knew. You have to accept that."

Gary sighs, scrubbing his face tiredly and blinking away stray tears. "What you did to him just now, and in the past, you're gonna have to work hard to earn that trust back."

"What if he doesn't want me back?" Avocato chokes out.

Gary looks him dead in the eyes, complete exhaustion radiating from his body. "You're just going to have to live with it." The human squeezes his shoulder as he stands up, walking towards the entryway. He stalls, his hand holding the wall and his back towards Avocato. "I'll tell you when our son can handle looking at you without feeling immense guilt."

Then he walks away, almost stumbling from how mentally exhausted he has to be.

A large part of his brain knows that Gary will never forgive him for the way he has treated Little Cato, and he deserves that. He may not've had a strong relationship with his boy, but now they're starting from square one.

A tear slips down his cheek, and he wipes it away with his thumb.

In the void where rage once burned, regret floods over the ashes.

#y'all are gonna kill me #I'm ready for the pitchforks #final space #gary goodspeed #avocato #little cato #dadspeed #avodad #fs fics

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peteywillproceed · 4 years

Text

The Devil In Disguise - Part 1

A/N: Hi guys, wow this has been a long time coming! I’ve been writing this whilst being sick in bed, so I hope it’s not that terrible! As always, I hope you like it, constructive feedback is appreciated, and if you wanna be added to the taglist just send me an ask! x

Summary: Y/n belongs to The Circle, a criminal gang known for its ruthlessness and brutality. Given a mission to kill Spiderman, Y/n attends Midtown High undercover to seek him out, not intending to feel more for one of her new friends than she should. Meanwhile, Spiderman must deal with the increasingly dangerous Huntress, never suspecting her true identity might hit closer to home than he could ever believe…

Word Count: 4,150 (the very defintion of getting carried away!)

Prologue

The New York skyline glittered in front of you as you stepped into the street and the sun began to rise. Ribbons of orange and yellow light were scattered through panels of glass lining the roads, buildings stretching so far into the sky you had to squint to see the tops. The acrid smell of smoke from exhaust pipes burnt the insides of your nostrils, but the feeling was so new, so exciting, that you barely thought about it, choosing instead to glide along the pavements as horns honked and the city came alive.

All it had taken was a three-hour flight from Minnesota and awkward introductions to your cover family for you to get here; now it was Monday, the first day back for the kids at Midtown Tech, and your first day period. Your school bag felt foreign on your shoulders, the weight of textbooks and assigned reading an alien feeling. You’d almost ignored the homework, like you’d always done when your dad tried to assign you extra reading for your training.

But you knew if you wanted to fit in, the bad girl image you’d worked so hard to create over the years wasn’t going to work, so instead you’d stuffed the suit Brenton had given you into the dark depths of the bag and buried it with chemistry. Begrudgingly, you’d cast an eye over the pages in an attempt to figure out what you’d be expected to do at this school, and you hadn’t understood a word. How Brenton had wangled your entrance to the best science school in the country was truly a mystery.

You swung through the gates and pushed your sunglasses up on your head, ignoring the surprised looks from students who weren’t used to newbies. You winked at one of the boys staring with his mouth open and spat the gum you’d been chewing into the nearest bin, catching yourself before you let yourself go too much. You were Brooke Loader, chemistry nerd and all around good girl, whose wardrobe consisted solely of grey cardigans and granny skirts. You weren’t Y/n L/n anymore, and you had to be careful.

“Excuse me?” you caught a guy’s shoulder as he rushed past you and looked up at him through your lashes. “Can you tell me where B27 is?”

“You’re new?” the guy ran his eye over you questioningly “I’m Flash.”

“Err, nice to meet you. But I’m really just looking for homeroom.”

Flash nodded, a smirk appearing on his face. “That’s round the corner, good luck with Harrington.”

Without another word he spun on his feet and disappeared into the throng of students that had appeared in the corridor. You glanced down the hallway he’d pointed to and noticed a bunch of kids streaming into a classroom, figuring that was where you needed to be. You glanced at your watch, noting you were perfectly late, and strode towards the door.

“Ahh, Miss Loader, I was wondering when you were going to show up,” a voice dripping with sarcasm drawled as you poked your head through. You glanced up at the male voice and saw the guy you guessed was Mr Harrington, giving him a small wave as you stood awkwardly in the door. You’d never played the quiet, unsure girl, and it was taking all your energy to bite back your retort.

“Well, please take a seat. There’s one next to MJ,” he pointed towards a girl with long, brown hair, whose head was buried in a book. As you swung into the seat, you clocked the title and leaned over to whisper to her.

“To Kill A Mockingbird? That’s my favourite.” Of course it wasn’t, you’d never read the stupid thing. But it was Brooke’s favourite.

MJ raised her eyebrows, squinting as she tried to make you out. Her gaze was so penetrating that for one, awful minute you thought she’d figured you out and your cover was already blown. But a smile soon spread across her face and she closed the book.

“Mine too,” she nodded, reaching her hand out “MJ.”

“Brooke,” you grinned, glad you’d got through to her. You glanced nervously towards the front of the class, but Mr Harrington was busy at his computer and you reckoned it was probably safe to talk.

“So, you’re new then, how’d that happen? It’s senior year.”

“Parents moved,” you shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear “guess they just couldn’t leave me behind.”

It was a simple cover, but MJ burst into laughter and your joke, earning herself an annoyed look from Harrington. “What’s your specialty?”

“Chemistry. But I gotta be honest, I didn’t really think I’d get in here.”

“Really?” MJ raised an eyebrow “why’s that?”

“I bombed the entrance tests,” you pretended to look ashamed, glancing back down at your desk “I kind of feel like I don’t belong.”

“Don’t be stupid, what have you got next? The bell goes soon and I can walk you there.”

“Wow, thanks. Err, I think I have History,” you pointed at the print out of the timetable you’d grabbed from reception and MJ smiled.

“Me too. You’ve got lunch the same period as me and my friends, I’ll introduce you guys. You’ll meet more friendly faces like that.”

You didn’t know why you felt so relieved, you hadn’t been worried about making friends, but there was something about MJ that made you want to impress her, even if you were lying through your teeth to do it.

The bell rang, a screeching sound you definitely had not been prepared for, and MJ laughed as your hands flew over your ears. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

“It’s like a fucking banshee,” you muttered, eyes widening as you realised what you’d just said. Brooke Loader definitely didn’t swear. “I..I mean…”

“Brooke, chill, you can swear, I don’t care!”

“Oh okay,” you took a breath, bracing yourself for anymore slip ups. You’d been here less than half an hour, and already you were royally screwing up the only job Brenton had ever entrusted you with.

As MJ walked with you to your next class, you chatted animatedly about the city and everything there was to do. You kept trying to slip in Spiderman, but she brushed off any mention of the superhero, and changed the conversation back to what you’d been talking about originally. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d be interested in what celebrities got up to anyway, and you made a mental note to try and bring him up in a different way.

At last, the class started and you could lose yourself in rudimentary history you’d never cared about. There was way too much bias in the subject, you remembered one of your tutors telling you, and the only thing you could learn from a class like that was just how dedicated they were to the government. You scribbled notes like your hand was on fire, staying as quiet as you could, but none of what you wrote down was what the teacher was lecturing. Instead, you made a plan of attack for finding more about the webslinger you’d been assigned to take out.

You seriously doubted that any of the students knew his identity, and even if they did they weren’t just going to outright tell you. No, you had to be sneaky here, and you had to bring it up subtly. You decided that, every chance you got, you’d slip in a question relating to Spiderman that would be innocuous enough. After all, why wouldn’t you be curious? You’d just moved to the city that was home to an Avenger!

When the final bell rang, you knew exactly what you had to do. A buzz in your pocket let you know you had a text, the only possible source the burner phone Brenton had given you before you’d left.

‘Status report’

You rolled your eyes. Jesus, you’d been here less than twenty four hours, what did the man expect? Full details of identity and credit card info?

‘Give me a chance. My bed’s barely gone cold.’

Hoping the response was snappy enough to get him off your case, all you had to do now was pray your plan of action worked - if it didn’t, you didn’t want to think about what the consequences might be.

***

“Guys, this is Brooke,” MJ introduced you to the circle of people crowded round one of the cafeteria tables who stared at you like you were the last sandwich at the picnic.

“Hi,” you smiled, casting your eye over them. They were all the same age, and at least you recognised one. Flash was leaning back in his chair, his feet kicked up on the table with a wicked glint in his eye.

“Hey sweetheart, find homeroom alright then?”

“You’re friends with him?” you raised an eyebrow in MJ’s direction and she stifled a laugh.

“Not really, he just hangs around because he can’t convince anyone else to put up with him.”

“Now that makes sense.” Flash rolled his eyes at your comment, but you simply took a seat in front of a brown, curly haired boy who hadn’t taken his eyes off you. “Brooke,” you introduced yourself “nice to meet you.”

“Pe…Peter,” he stumbled, and you bit back a smile. Somebody wasn’t used to talking to girls, you thought, spying the awkward rub of sweaty palms against jeans. He was kind of cute, in a nerdy, never had sex kind of way – his jumper was ruffled and his hair was a mess, none of that nasty gel stuff you’d seen in the movies. He didn’t seem that sure of himself, too busy clutching a pen between his fingers as he scribbled what looked like equations into a book.

“And I’m Ned,” the other guy interrupted, and you mentally shook yourself. You were here for one thing and one thing only, and it wasn’t to be going after guys.

“Nice to meet you, Ned,” you nodded, scooping up some of the brown sludge you’d had slopped on your plate by a slightly grumpy cafeteria lady. “God, the food really isn’t good anywhere is it?”

“Just wait until you try the lasagne,” Peter laughed, suddenly animated. “I’m pretty sure they use cardboard instead of pasta.”

“Good to know,” you smiled, itching to change this conversation into something more interesting. Luckily, MJ swooped in with the perfect question, and you knew exactly how to work that to your advantage.

��So Brooke, what do you like about New York so far?” she asked, and you pretended to think.

“Well, I’ve not seen that much, but I hear Spiderman lives here,” you shot a conspiring look at MJ who shifted uncomfortably in her suit “he’s pretty cool.”

“Uh, yeah,” Ned coughed, and suddenly the atmosphere grew a lot tenser than it had been twenty seconds ago. That was odd, you thought – for a city so hung up on having its own Avenger, these people seemed…awkward. Why? What did they have to hide?

“Do you see him on the streets?” You asked breezily, happily tucking into your food as you felt eyes burning your skin.

“Err, well, he’s pretty busy I guess,” MJ coughed, and you glanced over at Peter who’d remained suspiciously quiet throughout the whole conversation.

“Pete?”

“Wha- oh, uh, Spiderman? Yeah, uh, he’s cool, he’s a cool dude,” Peter stuttered, turning bright red. You were feeling the second hand embarrassment here, and you wanted to scream.

“Do you guys just not like him or something?” you tried to play your comment off, laughing and flipping your hair, but the tension was still thick in the air and you cursed yourself for alienating them already. It was pretty clear they knew more than they let on.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Flash grinned “it’s just he’s only usually about at night so none of us really know that much about him. People make out that he’s Queens’ little superhero but he’s an Avenger, he’s not really hanging about on the streets.”

You nodded, stuffing your face with the disgusting mash before you could say anything else. Another beep in your pocket and you turned away from the group, letting them dive back into their own conversations whilst you slid the burner phone out of your pocket.

Need you to go to Warehouse tonight. Pick up a package and keep it safe. Address to follow.

You let the words wash over you, processing what they meant, and bit back the squeal that threatened to erupt. Finally, you got to go and do something – these people might not be giving you anything, but at least the mission wasn’t completely boring.

“What ya doing?” a voice interrupted your thoughts, and on instinct you slammed the phone into your pocket. Peter cocked at eyebrow in surprise and you let out a little gasp.

“Err, nothing, just, uh, texting my mum.”

“Oh yeah? About what? Plans for world domination?” He smiled at you, and it was so endearing that you couldn’t stop yourself from smiling back. Brown hair curled around his ears and he pushed his glasses further up his nose as he stared at you, making you laugh as he crossed his eyes and pulled a stupid face.

“Something like that,” you finally replied as the bell signalling the end of lunch rang through the cafeteria.

“Hey, what have you got next? Let me walk you to class.”

You were taken aback by Peter’s offer, and were half tempted to refuse him before you remembered how flustered he’d become over the mere mention of Spiderman. Maybe there was something there…

“Sure,” you said, dumping the remainder of your food in the bin. “Spanish, but I can’t speak a single word of it.”

“Ahh, it’s not that hard, sneak Google Translate in if you have to.”

“Didn’t peg you for a cheater, Parker.”

“Didn’t peg you for a Chemistry specialty, but here we are.”

You placed a hand over your heart, mock offended, and rolled your eyes. “You wound me. Only Spiderman can save me now.”

“I’m sure Spiderman would love to,” Peter replied, exaggerating the ‘love’ a little more than you liked.

“I hear he’s rumoured to be a high school student,” you wiggled your eyebrows, spotting your opportunity. Your little risk had been worth it though, because suddenly Peter looked like he’d been caught in headlights, and his entire body went rigid in shock.

“What?” he asked, panic lacing his voice.

“Oh you haven’t heard?” the faux innocence in your voice was annoying even you, but you bit your lip and got on with it, knowing this was the only way to get the information you needed. Stumbling upon these guys was a stroke of luck in your eyes, they seemed to know a hell of a lot about the webslinger. “Yeah, he’s rumoured to be a student here.”

“Yeah, no no, I heard that,” Peter shook himself a little, but started chewing on his lip. Your eyes were drawn to the way his teeth nibbled the skin, but you snapped out of your reverie as he waved a hand in your face. “Y/n?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” you smiled, hoping that would make you look less like an idiot. Jesus, you just needed to get on with the job.

“I just said, do you think you’ll be able to find your way to your class? I’ve just remembered I’ve gotta go…sort something out.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, of course,” you nodded, confused as to why Peter was suddenly running off. You hadn’t said anything that crazy, and you hoped you hadn’t offended him. But then again, so what if you had? It wasn’t like you were going to be here much longer anyway.

“Awesome, thanks!” Peter called over his shoulder, but it was pointless because he was already tearing off down the hallway.

You were smart enough to figure out wherever he was going was probably related to the person you were trying to kill, but following him felt…creepy. You’d just met this guy, and even though he may very well have been your best lead, it still felt wrong to tail him round the whole of New York. Instead, you made a mental note to run a background check as soon as you got in that evening, and tried to pretend yourself that you weren’t in the least bit interested in the results for anything other than work reasons.

***

It was late when you finally got to the warehouse Brenton had sent you to that night. You’d been meaning to leave well before eight, but your host family had insisted upon dinner, and it wasn’t like you could tell them you had to run an errand. You ended up getting there just past midnight, and you cursed yourself for not texting Brenton – what if the person delivering the package had gone home? What if they just hadn’t bothered?

You were dressed head to toe in the stealth suit that had been specially made for you, and you had to admit you absolutely loved it. You’d been expecting it to fit baggy in all the places it should’ve been tight, but whoever had made it clearly knew what they were doing – the carbon fibre fit snuggly and the vibranium swords strapped to your back were as light as they were deadly.

Sneaking into the warehouse, you shone your torch around the building, quickly realising it was abandoned. Whatever company used to operate here had long since packed up and left, but small traces of the operation still lingered with pieces of alien tech scattered around the floor.

“You’re late,” a gravelly voice said, and you spun to find the source. The beam from your torch landed on a figure hovering in the shadows, and you rolled your eyes at the theatre.

“Oh cut the dramatics. Code word.”

“Heretic,” the gravelly voice replied, confirming the code name you’d been told to expect “And you?”

“Huntress.”

The figure moved out of the shadows and clicked his fingers. Immediately, white light filled the echoing warehouse, lights flicking on everywhere, so bright you could see every cobweb. You covered your eyes on reflex, forgetting how vulnerable it made you, and blinked hard at the sudden change.

“I have some information for you,” Heretic said, and you crossed your arms in annoyance.

“I thought it was a package.”

“That too. But first: Spiderman knows you’re after him. Our sources say he found a hitman had been dispatched once he took down the Manhattan Chapter.”

“He’s probably expecting an old, white man. Doesn’t put me in any danger, he can’t see my face in this,” you shrugged, grateful for the inclusion of a mask in your suit.

“Do they train all the young recruits to be this cocky?” The man sighed, and you let out a hollow laughed.

“Only the bosses’ daughters.” You had plenty of this, the assumption that because you were a young lady you paled in comparison to what older men could accomplish. It was just the way The Circle was, but you were sick of constantly being underestimated. “Just give me the package.”

The man started digging around in his pockets and produced a small, crumpled packet of wrinkled brown paper. An ethereal, purple glow seeped out from the corners he’d failed to wrap, and you knew instantly what it was. You reached out to take it, but before you could, a line of sticky rope shot down from above you and snatched it from the man’s palm.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” a voice said.

Your head snapped upward, your hand flying to your sword as recognition switched on in your mind. Didn’t you know that voice from somewhere? Red and blue spandex swung from one of the lights, and the masked man was waving cheerily from his perch. Heretic started to run, not getting far before he was pinned against a wall in a fresh web, and you rolled your eyes – and he thought you’d been cocky.

“Actually, it does belong to me, and I’d like it back.” You turned your attention back to Spiderman, who let go of the light he swung from and dropped down to the floor, landing almost silently. He tossed the package lazily in his hand, his head cocked as though he had no idea of the power that tiny object held.

“I think you’ll find it belongs to the United States Government, but I’m sure they’d be willing to lend it to you if you ask nicely,” he shrugged, and you bared your teeth, thankful that you’d switched your voice modifier on well before you’d arrived. He, however, hadn’t, if he even had one, and the familiarity of the voice was starting to get on your nerves.

“I really don’t give a shit about semantics, give me back my package.”

“Why don’t you come and get it?” He dangled the challenge in front of you, waiting for you to take the bait, and even though every fibre in your body told you not to, pure instinct won over.

You started running towards him, leaping into the air and flipping yourself high over his head. As you arced over his body, your hand shot out to grab his mask, but he ducked at the last second and your fingers just grazed with the material. You hit the ground and slid along the concrete, looking up just in time to roll away from a web grenade.

“Come on, Spidey, you can do better than that,” you panted, wanting to hear him talk more. If he did, maybe you’d have a better chance at placing him.

He seemed frustrated by your comment, suddenly becoming a lot more energetic, and threw himself towards you. It was a mistake you’d been expecting, and within half a second you’d brought your knife out and thrown it towards his lunging body. The aim was crap, but it caught his side, and he hit the ground with a thud.

You started toward him, sword in hand to finish the job, a smirk on your face as you ran through everybody you’d met so far and their voices, desperate to figure out which one matched, when all of a sudden Spidey’s hand shot out from underneath him, and you were caught by a flying web that threw you back against the wall. Your head cracked against the concrete, and stars swam before your eyes, threatening to make you pass out as black tinged the edges of your vision.

“Is that good enough for you?” he asked, walking slowly towards you. He was clutching his side and you could just make out a river of blood dribbling from a wound you’d caused. “What’s your name?”

“Huntress,” you bit out, regaining your senses and starting to kick against the web fluid.

“I wouldn’t bother, that stuff won’t dissolve for another two hours,” he shrugged, collapsing to the floor. “Plenty of time to chit chat.”

“I don’t really want to engage in conversation thanks,” you hoped the acid was enough to throw him off guard, and he threw his hands up in defence.

“Hey, lady, you’re the one that tried to kill me, not the other way around.” When you didn’t respond, he continued. “I’d really like to know who’s under that mask.”

“Never gonna happen, this suit’s coded to only come apart when I voice activate it to.”

“Oh, I know, I figured that out as soon as I saw it. I was just musing.”

You stopped, mouth falling open in shock. This guy had just…seen your suit, and figured out how a multi million dollar piece of tech worked? Just like that? So he was smart. No wonder he went to Mid Town Tech.

“Look, I don’t have much longer, if I don’t get home I’ll get in soooooooo much trouble. But have a nice evening!” Spiderman started to get to his feet, the whole conversation feeling surreal to you, and you called out to him.

“Wait! Don’t think this will be the last you’ve heard of me!”

He shrugged in response, pulling the package out of a hidden pocket and turning it over in his hand. “Now that I believe.”

All at once, he was gone, swinging out of the warehouse and leaving you trapped in his web. You tried to wrestle one of your swords from your back, but it was impossible to even move your wrist. Grumbling in defeat, you let your head fall back against the wall and grimaced at the pain. This was all so ridiculous, he shouldn’t have even been able to touch you, let alone pin you up against a bloody wall. You’d let your guard slip because you thought his voice had sounded familiar, and you’d got excited that maybe you’d already run into him.

Next time, you wouldn’t be so stupid.

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