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spruceplank · 4 years

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Here is Home

Impulse isn't anything special. He does his job in simple but effective ways just like the machines he builds. He can't do anything special. He isn't anything special. So he keeps working until he breaks. And when he breaks, it's not a simple fix. When he breaks, he breaks beyond repair.

Warnings for: Temporary character death, starvation, and overworking to death

Fic below read more and ao3 link in the replies! (8955 words)

Tango is like fire. He's warm and bright. Strength visible even when the embers smolder down under the weight of the world. A comfortable warmth and the crackle of burning logs of a fire in the winter. He should burn with every touch he gives but instead there's only warmth seeping through his fingertips like lava flowing down a mountain side at every passing touch.

Zedaph is like the wind. Soft and gentle summer breezes yet also fierce and howling storms. Ever changing and shifting through anything to reach his goals. Pushing anything and anyone forward with ease, his strength unwavering just as his faith. At his softest he eases calmness into weary souls and at his most energetic he's a whirlwind dragging the world with him.

Impulse isn't anything special. He can't provide strength through words alone. He can't do fancy tricks with his creations or build amazing things that make people stare in awe. His machines simply do their job just as he does. Working until soreness is so deep in his bones he would feel off without the constant background aching. He works and works to even measure up to being a fraction of what the others can be. Toiling away at perfect farms with exactly just the right amount of productivity to be simple but still effective. He builds farms as easily as he could build a crafting table at this point. The repetitive labor and click of redstone signals make him feel as if maybe he's doing something good enough to measure up to the others. Maybe this will be enough.

But it's never enough. Not when he looks at the desert he helped Bdubs and Tango to level out for Cub. Where there's now a massive pyramid full of mini games that only seems to grow by the day. Not when he enters the shopping district and sees grass where mycelium used to be. Where there's mini diamonds hanging from the trees and the diamond throne looming over him from town hall. Not when he sees the other's builds, with their massive scale and detailed nature.

He shifts his entire base one block and even though it takes hours and hours of work it feels like nothing compared to what he's seen the others make. He builds more and more farms so he doesn't have to think about that. He only works and works until he runs out of blocks. Then he gathers more resources then he'll ever reasonably need and works until those are gone too.

Tango and Zedaph come over and force him to sleep occasionally but he usually doesn't sleep long to begin with. There's too much work he has to do. Sometimes he doesn't even know what he's working on anymore. What's even the point? But he doesn't stop and think about it. He only works harder. He's nothing special, just like the machines he builds. He does his job in simple but effective ways. He works and works and works some more. His bed remains untouched and his food supply runs dangerously low but he doesn't pay any mind to those. He still has more work he needs to do. He always has work he needs to do.

He isn't anything special. He can't fly as if it's second nature like Grian can. He can't build castles on cliff tops that look as if they're paintings like Bdubs can. He can't tune note blocks so they play songs in a constant flow of melodies like Etho can. He can't craft art from blank sheets like Beef can. He can't make armor stands into scenes of life like Cleo can. He can't spin words and wisdom into poetry like Joe can. He can't wield a sword as easily as breathing like False and Wels can. He can't do anything special. So he keeps working.

He doesn't realize he isn't like his machines until it's too late. His machines aren't alive, they don't need to do anything other than work. He isn't like his machines at all. His machines run and could run forever if he needed them to. He had forgotten he can't do the same. He can break. And when he breaks, it's not a simple fix. When he breaks, he breaks beyond repair.

ImpulseSV died of starvation

TangoTek: Impulse buddy? You good?

Renthedog: Did you forget to grab more food when you grabbed more supplies or something dude?

FalseSymmetry: Should someone go check on him?

Iskall85: Probably should, it's not like any of us should starve to death.

StressMonster101: Iskall's right, there's never a shortage of food on this server why would he have died from starvation?

Zedaph: Impulse? You there?

iJevin: Would he have dropped his communicator before respawning?

Cubfan135: He would've respawned with it if that were the case.

Grian: Impulse? Can you tell us you're at least reading these?

GoodtimeswithScar: Who's the closest to his base?

Whisper from TangoTek: Imp? Buddy? You okay? You're kind of freakin me out with the silence act.

Whisper from Zedaph: Impy please respond you're worrying me.

XisumaVoid: I'll teleport over to him since he seems to not be answering give me a moment.

MumboJumbo: What are the odds he just has his communicator on silent?

Docm77: When you respawn it automatically shuts that off, it can't be on silent.

Teleport XisumaVoid to ImpulseSV

Teleport failed

Teleport ImpulseSV to XisumaVoid

Teleport failed

XisumaVoid: Whoever is near Impulse's base head there now I can't teleport

iJevin: On my way

Keralis: Shishwammy can't teleport?

XisumaVoid: Something in the code is glitched, but for the life of me I can't see anything wrong with it

iJevin: Uh X I need you here now

Teleport XisumaVoid to iJevin

TangoTek: X? Is Imp okay?

Zedaph: Jevin? What's going on?

iJevin: He isn't here

Bdouble0: I'm in the shopping district should I go look for him?

iJevin: No, his stuff is here, but he isn't

ZombieCleo: What does that mean?

XisumaVoid: It means he didn't respawn

There's nothing. He's aware of nothing and knows of nothing. He merely exists. He thinks he should be somewhere but he doesn't know where. He doesn't have the energy to figure it out. He should just go back to sleep. That's what he'd been doing right? That's what he should do. He should sleep. There isn't anything else he needs to do. He isn't anyone who needs to be anywhere. He can simply sleep.

"What in the… What are you doing here?"

There's a voice. It's familiar but different. Rougher, sadder, more tired than it should be. He thinks he knows the voice. But he doesn't know who. He doesn't have the energy to place the voice to a name. He doesn't even have a name.

"Hey, Hey…… Wake up…… Hey…….. Wake up……"

He can't wake up. There's no need for him to be awake. He doesn't need to wake up. There's no reason for him to keep going. He doesn't serve any purpose. He doesn't do anything necessary. He isn't anyone special.

"Dammit you're really going to make me take you back myself aren't you?"

He doesn't have anywhere he needs to be. He doesn't belong anywhere. He isn't anyone special.

"When X bans me again, I will find a way around it to come make your life miserable."

Someone grabs him. He didn't realize he was simply floating until now. There's something hard yet slightly warm beneath him. Arms under him that hold him up. He feels weightless as he did before. He doesn't have any reason to fight. He simply doesn't care enough to move.

"You're lucky my brother is too much of a derp to realize he needs to ban me again to keep me out of the new world."

Brother? He doesn't know anyone with a brother. Actually he doesn't know anyone at all. He doesn't know anyone or anything. He simply is and that's all there is to know. It's easiest this way. Simple yet effective.

"I don't know what you managed to do that's caused you to wind up like this but if I have to deal with my brother and your friends asking me thirty thousand questions you owe me another one on top of this for bringing you back."

His friends? What is a friend? Does he have those? And bring him back where? He's already where he needs to be. He doesn't need to do anything or be anyone. He is simply here. He can just sleep.

"You really are all perfect for each other huh? Just a bunch of derps. I'm taking your things for the headache dealing with the rest of your derp family is going to give me when I had no part in this."

His family? He didn't have a family. He was alone.

"Forget it, clearly your code is more messed up than even I thought it was finding you in the void."

His code? The void? Nothing made sense. The arms under him gripped him tighter against a hard surface. It should hurt shouldn't it? Yet it was familiar in a comforting way. He could hear a steady beat echoing in his mind. He should go back to sleep. The arms around him tightened but only silence answered him as he finally drifted away.

"Exy!" Zedaph calls delighted at the man's sudden appearance. His delight crumbles into fear as he notices the sleeping figure in Ex's arms.

Though he momentarily hesitates, Ex simply forces his nerves away with an eye roll and snaps at the blonde, "How many times have I told you not to call me that?"

"Ex, how, how are you here?" Xisuma stares at his brother in bewildered confusion. He had banned Ex hasn't he? But seeing his brother walk in with the very person he's been unable to find any trace of is a weight off his shoulders he didn't know was settling there.

"You didn't ban me from this world." Ex states as if it was that simple.

Tango ignores X's gaping, Zedaph's silent fear and pushes forward towards Ex. He glances at the still form of his best friend asleep and dead to the world before looking up at Ex. Tango's voice wavers between disbelief and hope as he asks, "How did you find him?"

"You said he wasn't where he should be so I looked in the place where things wind up when they don't know where else to go." Ex explains. He stands awkwardly in the doorway. Not quite moving forward into the room but not running away.

"You can read chat?" Xisuma questions.

"The place where things wind up when they don't know where else to go?" Zedaph asks right after. Both of them turn to look at each other before facing back to Ex with unreadable expressions.

"I can do all the things you can do Xisuma, don't tell me you've forgotten." Ex explains without actually answering. He sighs like it's enough to hide his feelings on the situation when he begrudgingly answers Zedaph, "Yes when things don't know where else to go they all end up in the same place."

"But you haven't done anything -" Xisuma starts but Ex is tired of this already.

"Because I don't want to do anything. I wouldn't even be here if I hadn't found one of your derpy friends lost in the void." Ex pushed back, voice raised over his brother’s. The two stare at each other as if having a silent conversation when Tango speaks up.

"The void? Why was Imp there?" Tango pushes looking between the two brothers.

"It's where things that have nowhere else to go wind up." Ex explains as if the answer is as simple as he puts it.

Zedaph stutters before anxiously speaking, "But he has a place, he has a home here. How did-"

"Ask him not me. I simply found him and brought him back." Ex states calmly over where Zedaph nervously trails off.

"Why though?" Xisuma questions like he's unsure if the person before him is actually Ex.

Ex rolls his eyes but answers his brother all the same, "Because he's just as much of a derp as you are and the void isn't a place for any human."

"But you were in the void." Zedaph counters, voice laced with worry.

"And I'm not human, don't lump me in with the rest of you derps." Ex complains.

Tango looks between the man in the entryway and his friend dead asleep to the world with worry, "Why didn't he respawn? Why won't he wake up?"

"His code's all glitched. Something went wrong somewhere. That or he didn't want to respawn." Ex answers Tango's questions though he faces Xisuma as he speaks.

"Can you fix the code?" Zedaph asks, voice hopeful.

Ex rolls his eyes at the blonde, "Not my job besides I don't have the right things I'd need to do it anyways. That's all on Xisuma."

Xisuma seems to relax for the first time since Ex appeared. He looks between his hermits and his brother who carries the sleeping form of another hermit gently yet protectively and makes his decision, "It would go loads faster if you stayed and helped me Ex."

"Like I said not my job." Ex pushes, eyes wary.

"Please help fix Impulse Exy." Zedaph pleads with hopeful eyes.

"I told you not to call me that!" Ex yells sharply but there's no threat behind his words.

"Just give it a rest Exy, it's not changing." Tango chimes in with a smile.

"You're both insufferable." Ex groans but doesn't move even as the other two surge forward to his side.

"And yet you still hang out with us." Zedaph comments cheerfully as he flutters to Ex's side and looks sadly at his friend who sleeps undisturbed by their conversation.

"Come on you three, let's move over towards the bed to work so we can let Impulse sleep while me and Ex work." Xisuma says, already walking the other way. Despite all of the hesitation before, Ex moves to follow without thinking.

"Wait, why are we coming there?" Tango questions looking between the two brothers confused.

"Because you two are going to tell me when and how you managed to get Ex to be your friend. I certainly don't remember this in the past." Xisuma informs his hermits with gentle warmth in his voice. He crosses the room without hesitation but rather new found confidence with the others not far behind.

"Wait why isn't Exy telling you?" Zedaph argues half heartedly. Fluttering along next to Ex with occasional glances at Impulse.

"He wouldn't tell me even if I threatened him." Xisuma says as if the answer is that simple. He stops on the other side of the bed they crossed the room towards, not paying attention to the others as the approach but rather pulling up screens of code at his fingertips.

With the same care he used carrying the man, Ex bends over to rest Impulse on the bed. At Xisuma's comment, Ex snorts, "What do you know, you can learn."

"Not even back five minutes and I already regret ever missing you." Xisuma fires back. His fingers dancing over holographic screens as numbers and letters blink in and out of sight.

"You missed me?" Ex asks warily, voice betraying him as it wavers. Vulnerable for a moment before it's gone again behind false bravado.

"Come on let's begin." Xisuma states, dodging the question. Fingers flick screens over the bed to his brother without hesitation.

"Just going to ignore the question? Rude, I can't believe I missed you too." Ex retorts, fingers already moving across the screens before he’s even finished talking.

"I didn't think you were capable of such." Xisuma fires back though there’s no heat to his words. There’s screens appearing and reappearing beneath his fingertips as he bickers with his brother. Occasionally he’ll swipe a few over to Ex who merely catches them with practiced ease.

Ex sighs, "You are just as insufferable as they are. Now are we fixing this or not?"

"Careful brother, someone might think you care." Xisuma comments, though his face is hidden by his helmet, it's easy to hear the smile in his voice.

"I hate all of you." Ex grumbles as he works.

"We love you too." Zedaph interjects smiling as he and Tango watch the scene in front of them with awe.

The two continue to work in the silence that comes to rest over the room. To Xisuma’s side another window pops up as Tango pulls out his communicator to update the others.

TangoTek: Good news Impulse will hopefully be okay

WelsKnight: Why does it feel like there’s a catch?

TangoTek: Well the bad news is I can’t say for certain yet

FalseSymmetry: But you guys found him?

TangoTek: Yeah he’s here

GoodtimeswithScar: How did you find him?

TangoTek: We didn’t, Ex did

Cubfan135: Ex? He’s here?

Zedaph: Yeah Exy’s here helping Xisuma

Iskall85: Exy? And you lived?

Renthedog: Only you Zedaph, only you

Docm77: X is okay with this?

Grian: Wait who’s Exy?

TangoTek: Exy or Ex is X’s brother

Joehills: Oh its brother now?

Bdouble0: But Impulse will be okay?

Zedaph: Hopefully!

Keralis: :D

Zedaph: :D

“If all of your hermits start calling me Exy I’m going to smite you all to the void.” Ex pipes up despite having not looked away from the screens in front of him.

“Your threats would hold a lot more weight if I couldn’t tell you were lying.” Xisuma points out, barely hiding his amusement.

Ex merely sighs deeper before grumbling, “Your ban would’ve been a lot more effective if you had kept me in the void rather than simply keeping me out of that world.”

For once Xisuma actually stops working. His fingers pause mid motion as the screens all slightly lower with his hands and he looks at Ex. He looks at his brother and carefully says, “That was never the reason for banning you and you know it.”

Ex however doesn’t stop working as he talks, “So you knew it was there.”

“Not until it was too late.” Xisuma slowly moves the screens back up and begins to work again. There’s a hesitation in his movements though and many unsaid things hang heavy in the air between the two brothers. Xisuma’s own regrets and sorrows smack dab in the middle as his voice nearly wavers.

“And when it mistook me for you?” Ex questions, still not looking up from where his fingers fly across screens.

Xisuma pauses again. He pauses and looks down at the ground, voice tight with remorse as he says, “I didn’t have any other solution.”

“You are the worst at dealing with your emotions, you know that?” Ex pushes several screens over to Xisuma but he pauses to look at his brother before going back to work for just a moment.

“You’re one to talk.” Xisuma fires back, fingers already zipping across the screens once more.

Ex pauses now. In a true mirror of his brother he looks anywhere but Xisuma before finally facing forward and questioning, “Did it ever-”

“Find? No, no it didn’t thankfully.” Xisuma cuts off with a short nod. Ex’s shoulders sag a little like he’s lost some of the tension he - no doubtly holds on his shoulders just as Xisuma does.

“Well at least that's one less thing to worry about.” Ex admits sounding almost relieved. The two work in silence for another minute or so longer until Ex stops suddenly with a whispered curse under his breath.

Xisuma’s eyes snap up to his brother, “Did you find what’s causing this?”

“Yes and you’re not going to like it.” Ex admits hesitantly, his fingers hovering over screens but not pushing them over.

“Let me see…” Xisuma trails off as he waves the screens over to himself, dismissing the others to the side. He reads whatever is on the screen quickly before sucking in a large breath and stuttering out, “...Oh my goodness me… how did you?”

“You got the same thing before you know.” Ex informs Xisuma like the knowledge they’re sharing is somehow dangerous.

“I did?” Xisuma questions.

Ex sighs, “Ages ago, but yes, you did.”

“But you fixed it, can you do it again?” Xisuma pushes, voice wavering slightly as he nearly pleads out right.

Ex shakes his head, “No I can’t, but you and your little hermits can.”

For the first time in several days, Xisuma breathes a sigh of relief, “Well I certainly don’t know enough about that to lead it well, you’ll just have to stay here and help me.”

Tango groans loudly. Interrupting whatever the two brothers would have continued to dance around with his dramatic gestures and loud accusations, “You two are the worst brothers ever! Can you not just say what you mean to one another and get it over with?! Or do you always have to speak in riddles around each other? Just tell him you want him to stay X!”

Xisuma recoils slightly at Tango’s accusations but attempts to stand his ground, "Tango you-"

Zedaph however is having none of it as well, "Exy would stay if you asked him to stay sincerely Xisuma. I know he missed you as much as you missed him."

They’re all interrupted when Ex barks out a laugh, "Your little hermits will never cease to amaze me with just how nosy they can be 'Suma."

"Well someone has to keep X from getting too lonely! We all know he'd never say anything on his own!" Tango grins widely at the brothers like he’s proud of this knowledge. As if it's something he will personally fix.

"Yeah! Just like you Exy!" Zedaph agrees with his own grin to the two brothers.

Ex glares at the two hermits and deadpan says, I'm going to smite you both."

Tango just laughs at that, "Cool, another threat of smiting for my tally board, now how do we fix Impulse?"

"We wake him up." Xisuma states.

"That's it? We just wake him up?" Zedaph asks in disbelief.

"It's not that simple." Ex pipes up looking pointedly at his brother.

Xisuma merely ignores Ex as he continues speaking to Tango and Zedaph, "He has to feel safe enough to wake up."

"Feel safe enough?" Tango questions slowly, sounding out each word as if they’re a foreign concept to him.

"But he is safe! This is his home!" Zedaph cries looking rapidly between the two brothers.

Ex merely nods down to where Impulse hasn’t moved, "And he has yet to even budge. It's not home enough for him."

"We have to help him feel safe." Xisuma informs his hermits, voice gentle yet unwavering as he says, "That's why I need your help."

Tango and Zedaph share a look before Tango turns back to the brothers with a wide grin, "Well what are we waiting for then? We have work to do, chop chop people!"

It's warm. A comfortable warmth like a fire in the dead of winter. There's the sound of half concealed laughter and hushed whispers swaying around him like a gentle breeze. He feels calm. He feels safe. He thinks of resting but something tells him he is needed awake. He's tired in a way he doesn't remember being tired before but if he's needed awake then he guesses he should wake up. How does he do that again?

There's movement at his side. Where is he again? He actually isn't sure this time. He doesn't remember the others insisting on a sleepover. Someone laughs nearby and it takes a moment but he manages to put a name to the laugh, that's Tango who's laughing.

"And he laughed at you? You sold the man some bones, accepted his sad payment of 12 bamboo, and he laughed at you?" Tango's voice is bright. Laughter caught between words as he speaks.

"Yeah he did, even showered himself with diamonds as I left. Mega annoying that hobbit was, glad to see him gone though his replacement isn't much better." Another voice loud and bright with laughter. He knows this voice as well but he can't think of a name for it. He remembers green and a solid presence. But a name escapes him. It bothers him that he can't seem to put a name to the voice.

"I do keep seeing it come up in chat, what even is hermit challenges?" A new voice asks and he knows this one too. Zedaph sits somewhere nearby, conversing with Tango and the other person.

There's a noise of uncertainty, "Your guess is as good as mine. I swear he just makes this stuff up on the spot."

"How does he say it again?" Someone asks but he doesn't hear well enough to know who.

"He-yer-metee-chall-eng-ges" The other person sounds out and he mentally yells at himself for not remembering who's voice that is.

"Hener-matey-chall-geng-ges?" Someone - Zedaph, attempts to a chorus of laughter.

"No, no start low and then go up" Someone encourages cheerfully.

"He-yer-metee chall-eng-ges?" The second attempt seems to work it as the others cheer.

"There you go!" Iskall exclaims loudly, hi-fiving whomever guessed right. Iskall, he knows Iskall, he knows these people. The other hermits. They're all trusted friends. This, wherever this is, as long as he's with the hermits, then that's home. This is his home. He is safe here.

As he blinks his eyes open, he feels like he hasn't seen light for years at the way it burns. Hissing he screws his eyes shut and groans at the sudden amount of pain he finds himself in. There’s the sounds of murmuring and shuffling as a hand comes to rest over his eyes, blocking out any light. A familiar voice not unlike one he remembers hearing before, speaks, “Easy there my friend give yourself some time to adjust.”

The voice is familiar but not quite the same as before; lighter and happier though still tired underneath. It's one of the voices he’d be able to recognize anywhere. His throat is sore but he still needs to be certain so he ignores the scratchy feeling in his throat and how horrible he sounds when he asks, “....X?”

“Yes, you gave us all quite the scare Impulse.” Xisuma informs him.

He can't remember what he did at all, “I… what happened?”

There's more shuffling and he thinks he hears a door but everything is already too loud as it is. He barely even gets his bearings well enough from a sudden spike of dizziness to hear someone say, “Well, we were hoping you could tell us that actually.”

“Zed?” He asks hesitantly. He can't be wrong about that being Zedaph's voice. He wouldn't forget one of his best friend's voices.

There's a relieved exhale before a warm voice speaks up as well, “Yeah and I’m here too buddy.”

“Tango? What’s, where am I?” He pushes verbally for answers as Xisuma still holds his hand over Impulse's eyes, not letting him even try to attempt sitting up.

“We’re at Bdubs’ little village.” Tango tells him. That makes sense, something about the air here felt familiar in a way. But he still has questions.

“Who else is here?” He questions as he tries to push against Xisuma who doesn't even move. He is so disoriented and confused. Why wouldn't anyone tell him more? Why did he have to push for answers? What happened?

“Everyone.” Xisuma tells him. Everyone is here? What happened? What weren't they telling him?

He's near panic when no one says anything else and he has to push for answers again, “Everyone? Why? What happened?”

“You died of starvation and I found you in the void.” A familiar voice states with no tone for doubt about the facts just shared. He stops struggling against Xisuma who holds him down merely by force of presence alone when he processes what he's heard. Actually for a moment, he nearly thinks it's Xisuma speaking but he knows it can't be. Aside from the clear change in tone and attitude, the voice sounds rougher, sadder, more tired than it should be.

“Wait… Exy?” He guesses though it's less of a guess and more of a reassurance he isn't completely delusional. Exy was here? What had happened that got Exy to show up? Wait he died of starvation? Wait Ex found him in the void?

Ex snorts and yep that's clearly Exy who hides his relief with annoyance, “If you wanted to thank me you wouldn’t use that terrible nickname anymore.”

He doesn't know how to process this information. He doesn't even know where to start, “I, how was I in the void?”

“Wait X,” Zedaph cuts in and Impulse can only assume he's the one who makes Xisuma let up. He is unsure what exactly he's slightly afraid of in the fact that X won't remove his hand from over Impulse's eyes but he is glad to be able to actually sit up, even if it's against a wall. Zedaph reaches out and grabs one of Impulse's hands, guiding it up to hold in front of him as something is pushed into his hold. Zedaph doesn't let go with the hand holding the outside of his own but uses his other now free hand to drag Impulse's other hand to help stabilize the glass bottle in his hold. He doesn't know what he's holding but Zedaph chuckles quietly and he feels himself relax a little at the familiarity. Warm hands pull away from his own as Zed speaks with soft reassurance, “Here Impy, drink this and eat something, you’ve been out for quite a while.”

“But-” He starts to argue though he's shot down immediately

“No buts mister!” Zed insists and Impulse knows if he doesn't listen with that tone he's not going to like it later.

Accepting his current fate of sitting in complete darkness and drinking some sort of potion (probably?), he still tries to get any answers he can, “Fine can someone at least tell me what's going on though? Why is everyone here? Why was I in the void?”

"We'll tell you after you drink that and eat something." Zed informs him with that same tone of voice that is very un-Zed like and concerning to hear.

"Can I at least get my sight back?" He tries, but it ends up sounding a lot more uncertain and afraid than he wanted it to.

"Impulse do you trust me?" Xisuma asks and that is unfair.

"Of course I trust you, I trust you with my life!" He insists not at all liking how this is playing out.

"Then trust me when I do this okay?" X continues and he does trust Xisuma with his life, that's not a lie but he can't help wanting to fight a little because there's something big that's happening or happened and no one is telling him anything! He wants to push and push but he loses all will to fight it anymore when he can hear X sigh in that same tired way he does when he thinks no one is around to hear and speaks in a quieter voice that's so unlike Xisuma he doesn't know what to do, "Please."

"Okay." He answers and that's really all he can do. Is answer and go along with it because he's downright terrified now. Did he kill someone? Did he hurt someone? Are they going to kick him out or Hermitcraft?

His mind's racing faster than his heart and he's sure his hands nearly grip the bottle in his hold so tight it'll shatter when there's a deep, aggravated sigh that can only come from Ex. There's a pause before he hears the floorboards creak and feels someone grab his hands and removes the bottle from them. There's a string of mumbled words he can't hear but knows that because it's Exy they're probably curses, when the bottle is shoved against his lips with a command, "Drink."

He really can't do anything but drink what he can now identify as a regen potion. He finally realizes just how awful he feels when it's effects start to kick in. Everything hurts. It hurts worse than any other pain he's known before and all the energy he thought he had falls away like sand beneath his feet by the time the bottles empty and he feels the potion take effect. He slumps backwards against what he previously thought to be the wall but now can tell is Xisuma's armor. His mind is still trying to go 3000 ticks per second but his body can't keep up and any panic he might've had fades into the background.

There's something warm and soft pushed at his hands again with another order he can't really refuse, "Eat."

Slowly he brings what he can tell, from touch and smell alone, is bread up to his face and eats. By the time he's handed several pieces and eaten them he feels exhausted. The hand on his eyes is long gone now, combing cold fingers through his hair instead and it feels nice. His eyes are long closed and would refuse to open even if he tried to do so. He is so tired. Maybe he should just sleep? He feels like he needs to ask the others something but it wouldn't feel so warm and safe if anything urgent was going on. Yeah, a little nap wouldn't hurt would it? He's out cold he even notices.

He actually sleeps this time. When he drifts in and out of awareness it's to shushing and soft reassurances he can go back to sleep. Sometimes the hand over his eyes is back and he's given something to drink or eat but for the most part he simply drifts in and out of various stages of awareness to the other hermits telling stories and talking.

"He's decided that instead of it being a proper punishment, it's now a problem I'm going to have to deal with and continues to make a mess in my base to store all these armor stands!" Someone, Cleo, complains with annoyance.

There’s a chuckle, from Cub, who then responds sounding smug, "Sounds like you might end up with a bit of a standoff there."

"I am going to turn your base into an underwater aquarium." Cleo threatens.

He fades back out of awareness. He wonders what the rest of the story is. He wonders if the others know he can hear them sometimes. He wonders if the others miss him.

He hears a laugh, that’s Mumbo’s laugh, and then he hears Mumbo ask, "How did you think to add mini mushrooms? What stroke of genius inspired you that much?"

"The mini mushrooms? Oh you mean the end rods and small block combo? They weren't really planned, I just happened to come up with it on the spot. They do look absolutely amazin' though I agree!" Scar says with excitement. He thinks he can hear Jellie purring but he isn’t sure.

“I- What? On the spot! Really?" Mumbo sputters in disbelief, sounding absolutely chuffed to bits as the man liked to say.

He wants to wake up. He wants to pay attention to these stories and conversations but even still, he's so tired. He can't even try to fight as sleep pulls him back under into nothingness.

There's a loud and exaggerated voice that only can belong to bdubs as he's telling a story, "So he gives me a bed, you know I love beds, and then later he asks me to sleep and of course I can't say no to that! Who would I even be?!"

"You didn't know about beds blowing up in the Nether?" Doc questions and he doesn't need to see to know Bdubs' annoyed reaction.

"NO! I DIDN'T! Why would it blow up? Of all things! Blow up? WHY!" Bdubs cries angrily only to be shushed by many people.

He wants to talk back. Wants to input his own thoughts and laughter into these exchanges. He misses the others. He hopes they miss him too. But, they all sound fine without him there. They all continue life as normal.

"So you like smooth jazz?" Etho asks.

Grian laughs and he can just imagine the look on the prankster's face when he answers, "If you can actually make note blocks sound like jazz music I'll let you put an automatic free glass sample under the entryway to the barge."

Etho chuckles quietly, "Now we're talking."

At some point he thinks they all seem to be enjoying themselves. They're all happy talking and chatting. They're all okay without him. He doesn't need to be here.

There's the slamming of a door against the wall that wakes him from his half asleep state with a startle. Loud footsteps echo as someone crosses the floor to yell, "Oh no you don't, not again!"

"Ex wait, he needs rest, don't-" Xisuma starts to interrupt but he misses what X says when Ex cuts over his brother's words.

Ex holds him up by his shirt and snarls, "Impulse if you even fucking dare think of leaving one more time I'm going to make you regret ever winding up like this in the first place!"

"Ex stop!" Xisuma orders but Ex turns his anger around on his brother.

With gritted teeth and a sharp edge, Ex pointedly tells Xisuma, "Stop me and you'll be following not long after him 'Suma. I will not stand here and watch it happen!"

Xisuma sputters, "But I-"

"Do me a favor and don't argue, we both know you'd be lying." Ex retorts.

"I…." X struggles to find the words to say as Ex simply huffs.

"That's what I thought." Ex says before he turns and grabs Impulse up by the shirt again and growls, "Impulse wake the fuck up or I'll flood Decked Out with lava."

"You wouldn't." He gasps, only half aware though his heart is racing.

"You know I would." Ex states as a fact and it's true, Impulse knows Ex would.

He struggles to find an answer as his mind can't seem to calm down from his abrupt awakening, "... Please don't, he's spent so long working on that."

"Always for others but never for yourselves. Why am I surrounded by fools?" Ex complains. He turns away, loosening his grip on Impulse as he yells over his shoulder, "Xisuma go get idiots one and three."

"Idiots one and three?" X questions.

"One, two," Ex says and Impulse can feel the finger Ex jabs at his chest on two before Ex finishes saying, "Three."

Xisuma sighs at Ex's nicknames before telling his brother, "Make sure he doesn't actually get up then."

"No I'll just let him up and about, of course I wouldn't! Now get!" Ex orders.

"Alright alright I'm going, goodness me." Xisuma's voice travels as he walks from the room, the door creaking slightly shut behind him but not closing all the way.

There's silence as Xisuma's light footsteps fade away before Ex turns back to Impulse, "So you figure out what happened to you yet?"

"I? What?" He asks, caught off guard by the question.

Ex helps him sit up right against the wall but doesn't let up the force behind his words, "You heard me."

He doesn't understand the question at all. He still can't see and now there's something noticeable over his eyes yet it feels more secure than a normal blindfold. Nothing about this is making any sense. Ex clears his throat and he rushes to at least answer with something, "No? Did I do something wrong? Why can't I see still?"

"Hardcoded blindfold, couldn't risk you hurting yourself trying to open your eyes." Ex explains quickly, sounding annoyed.

"Is this because I was in the void for a bit somehow?" He asks because he doesn't understand why Ex is so on edge suddenly. He doesn't know why he was dragged awake. He doesn't know what's even going on.

"A bit? You were there a week before I finally managed to find you." Ex informs him and he is immediately even more confused.

"A week? What-" He tries but Ex talks over him.

"Shut up and listen or I'll tell Xisuma I lied to him about what happened and you'll never find out the truth." Ex says on edge, words coming out as a hiss.

He gapes like a fish at where he assumes Ex before he connects enough of the situation to say, "Then start talking."

"It's called I.S. and I voided the original entry I dug up for 'Suma because I know he wouldn't be able to handle it so I lied to him about it. It's a glitch in the code of the world when an update comes through and invalidates part of a person's code, sending them to the void in a false ban." Ex explains so quickly that he fears he almost missed his inside as to what's going on.

"That's the lie?" He prompts, hopeful he didn't just miss his answers.

Ex groans but slows down his explanation to an understandable speed, "Yes, it's not an update glitch. It's an internally inflicted error glitch called Imposter Sequence. A player who meets a specific list of requirements and a certain percentage of difference in behavior is deemed by the internal protection of a whitelisted world as an imposter and banned from the world. Except due to how a whitelist works in the first place, it's a glitch. It's a glitch where someone who expresses extreme self doubt or self hatred who dies by working themselves to death through neglect to themselves winds up being soft banned from the world. You cannot return to the world or go to any other world. You do not respawn and you are not even aware of what's going on. You're lucky your admin happens to be a voidwalker or you would be dead by now."

None of that sounds real. It sounds way too extreme. Part of him admits to it being true but the other half still doesn't believe Ex. Not all the dots match up, "But you're the one who found me."

Ex curses under his breath before continuing his explanation, voice getting louder and louder, "Because my brother is just as much of an idiot as you are and has gotten himself in your exact situation before so I already knew what was going on. Furthermore, if you were in the void just a day longer before I found you, you would not have survived. The entry for Imposter Sequence in the admin code does not account for the admin being a voidwalker. The entry for Imposter Sequence ends by saying the player who is missing and believed to have become or been afflicted with Imposter Sequence is void banned. It's marked as a permadeath. Were you anyone else in the universe but a hermit who has two voidwalkers tied to their world you would be gone. You do not understand how close you were to being gone forever. You would've left everything and everyone behind. For what? For your own stupidity? You would have to be the biggest idiot in the universe to think that you weren't loved here, that you weren't wanted. You have one of the best possible lives and ways of living in this entire universe, do not throw that away as if it were nothing."

They wait in the silence. Only cut through by the sounds of their harsh breathing. His mind is racing and his head is spinning. Ex takes a few shaky breaths as he waits for Impulse to process what was just said. They're not alone anymore though as a sharp inhale echoes in the silence, "Ex…"

"Oh for fucks sake." Ex curses, rushed footsteps echo from across beyond room as Ex commands, "You two pull your heads out of your asses and make him believe, even a little, how wrong he was. I have a derp to find."

Ex leaves to go after Xisuma. Meaning he's now left alone with Tango and Zedaph who, based on X's reaction, have heard the whole explanation of what happened to him. He doesn't even know what to do other than wait for them to start yelling. Instead of yelling though, there's merely footfalls that come closer until they're at the side of the bed. He knows they won't hurt him but he's shaking because he's so afraid of what they'll think of him now. He screws his eyes shut tight and braces for something when there's a quiet whisper, “Imp…”

“You, you…” Zedaph starts to say. And he's so scared of whatever judgement he's about to face that his heart nearly jumps out of his chest when he's tackled backwards as Zed cries, “Absolute idiot! Impulse you big dummy!”

He barely manages to not smack his head unto the wall as Zedaph sobs into his shoulder, shaking like he's just as scared as Impulse is. “Oof, Zed, what-”

A hand on his shoulder makes him pause as Tango asks, “Imp, you don't really think that we don’t want you here do you?”

He feels like he's floating over the void after being blindsided by shulker bullets. He struggles to find the words to say, an explanation for his behavior, some sort of defense for his actions. But even to his own ears it all sounds like lies, “No of course not! We’re the hermits, we’re team zit, I just, I…”

“Tell us Impy, please, we’re a team remember. We face things together.” Zed pleads, his breath hitching as he hugs Impulse harder. He can feel the wet patch Zed’s tears have left on his shoulder and he feels horrible. He feels like the worst person in the universe because he made his friends worry and cry and suffer all for what? For his insecurity? He doesn't, he didn't think he deserved their support and friendship before all this. Now, now he finds it even hard to believe he deserves it.

“I just, I…” He struggles to say it. He can't admit this. Not to them, not to his two best friends. Two thirds of the whole they make, he can't do that to them. A part of his mind tells him that it's too late, that he's already done the damage and he thinks he's crying but he can't tell. He feels Zed hug him harder and Tango’s hand on his shoulder and he can't lie to them. He can't lie to these two. So he tells them the truth, “I just, I just don’t think I’m anything special that's all.”

He hears Zed’s breath hitch and can feel the way Tango seems to recoil as the hand on his shoulder grips tighter. Tango inhales sharply but he can't seem to find the words to say as he hesitates to say, " Impulse, buddy-"

He can't help but blurt out, "It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud but that's…"

That's why he's in this mess. Because he's nothing special. Because he's not like the others. Because he's not good enough. He's not good enough to be here. Not good enough to be a hermit. Not good enough to be their friend. Not good enough to be anything.

"Impulse what does the I in team zit stand for?" Tango asks suddenly.

"Me?" He hesitantly answers. Was it a trick question or something?

"Yeah, team zit can't exist without you. We'd just be ZT and that just sounds lame. You're irreplaceable to us. Not even just us but to hermitcraft as a whole." Tango says and he wants to believe it. He wants to believe it so badly.

"But…" But he doesn't believe it. He can't bring himself to believe it at all. He's not special. He's nothing special. Everyone else is so amazing and he's just, he's just here too.

The room is quiet and he prepares for the inevitable but it doesn't come. Zedaph lets go of him only to shuffle over to his side as Tango sits on the bed too. Both of them trap him in a side hug and he can't do anything but surrender his arms as the other two hug an arm each close to their chests. Both Zedaph and Tango take a hand into their own and hold it tight. He can't help the sharp inhale he takes as he's kept there in the moment by the hands holding his own.

It's Zedaph who starts talking first as he explains what happened after Impulse vanished, "There were set groups to explore different parts of the entire server all week. You died, never responded to chat, X couldn't teleport to you and then said you just hadn't respawned. We searched everywhere we could think of. Bdubs didn't even sleep until the third day when Etho more or less blocked him in and watched him so he couldn't escape. Ren and Grian didn't sleep at all and Xisuma had to teleport them back from tens of thousands of blocks away because they had gone so far X got a warning of how far away they were."

He's barely given time to process Zed’s words as Tango continues where Zedaph left off, "You're the one who's built so many innovations that so many of us use. The villager breeding system most of us use? You built it. The item filters most of us use? You built that? Your base itself is colossal and is full of so many different farms you had Doc and Mumbo looking like kids on Christmas when we all first got together to split into search parties. You can break bedrock without any fancy magic other than redstone and your own two hands. You owned the shop basically every hermit used in season six not to mention the gold farm. There are things you've contributed and things you've done no one else could do or has thought to do."

He feels overwhelmed. There's no way this is the truth but he can't even formulate why these two, his best friends, would ever lie to him as Zed keeps going, "The entire server stopped working for an entire week trying to find you. You vanishing had Xisuma more frazzled than either of us had ever seen and definitely more than the 1.14 update. Joe and Cleo had to knock X unconscious to get him to stop working. Cub and Iskall combed through the code for so long they started to talk in code too. We contacted other worlds and people and no one could find you."

“All of that, for me?” He wonders out loud in disbelief. Because he really can't believe it. Logically he knows they would have done that but emotionally he can't process that they would do that for him. They did that all for him.

Zedaph hums a noise of confirmation and says, “Had Exy not showed up when he did, Cub and Wels were set to go check the season six world so Grian and Doc could use the infinity portal or time machine to figure out what happened to you. No one was going to give up on you. So please don’t give up on yourself.”

He sits there struggling under the weight of their words. Under the actions of the others who had tried just about everything they could to get him back. He thinks he's going to be crushed under the realization of the impact his disappearance had on the others. But two hands squeeze his own in near perfect unison, and he barely manages to remember to breathe once more as all that weight vanishes. His face is wet from the tears he can't really even process as his own as everything comes back to him all at once. He chokes on all the things he wants to say, gasps for air like he's nearly drowned, and sobs out words he can only half understand himself, "I, I'm sorry. I, I didn't real- realize. Every, everyone suff- suffered because, because of me!"

"Oh Imp, buddy," Tango murmurs sadly. His friend inhales shakily before saying, "You don't have anything to apologize for."

"But, but I-" He tries to say but he can't speak through hiccuping breaths of air between his sobs.

"Impy you're not allowed to apologize for any of this. We're friends, we're family, any of us would do it again in a heartbeat no questions asked for you." Zedaph states so soundly he can't even begin to convince himself it's not true.

So he doesn't apologize. He merely sits between his two best friends and sobs his heart out. When he finally manages to stop crying there's a heaviness that comes over him as he thinks about how tired he is now. There's quiet whispers he doesn't have the energy to listen to as he's guided away from the wall to lay back down. He doesn't want to let go this time. Thankfully he doesn't have to as both his hands are squeezed hard and he's surrounded by warmth and the sounds of steady heartbeats. Here, he is safe.

There's a heavy blanket draped over them as hushed voices exchange words once more. Someone runs a hand through his hair and he feels himself relax even further into the bed. Here, he is loved.

In a flash of memories he can see so many scenes just like this one. Of being surrounded by his friends in comfortable quiet. He knows he can sleep safe and sound here. He knows he doesn't have to worry about anything right now. Here, is home.

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft fanfiction #hermitcraft season 7 #hermitcraft s7 #impulseSV #tangotek #zedaph #xisumavoid #evil xisuma #the rest of the hermits are more or less mentioned those are just the ones with a larger role #its all about the found family babey!#its also about that sweet sweet hurt/comfort dynamic #funfact i wrote this all mostly between the hours of 3 and 5 am over like a week #validate me please i crave acceptance of my creations by strangers on the internet #also a repost bc nev swore in the tags when he reblogged it from me and tumblr snapped it #smh gotta reply with my main smh smh

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duhragonball · 3 years

Note

Krillin for the character ask :)

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: It’d be easy for me to say “he’s just a good dude” and leave it at that. I think people would agree with that statement, but I think it runs deeper than that. The thing that stuck with me about Krillin was when I was checking out the bonus features on the Movie 6 DVD I bought in 2002 or whenever, and they had an interview with Sonny Strait where he explained that Krillin only got into martial arts to impress girls, and that was the same reason Sonny got into voice acting. Maybe I’m misremembering that, but it always stuck with me.

Krillin wants things out of life, and unlike a lot of the other characters, he’s not looking to get them by wishing on a magic dragon. He wants to become worthy of the things he wants, and he may not always be sure of how to get there, he knows that he has to become more than he is.

Recently, I’ve been seeing excerpts from Barack Obama’s book, where he talks about reading up on subjects to try, unsuccessfully, to get girls to like him in college. I think the idea was that he was trying to be self-effacing, but it hasn’t gone over very well. I’m not sure if the problem was that he wasn’t being self-effacing enough, or if there’s something more sinister about reading Karl Marx just in case it helps your odds of getting noticed. I’m not going to wade into that controversy, except to say that it reminded me of Krillin.

Is it shallow to have self-serving reasons to improve yourself? Did I just answer my own question? The point I’m making here is that it’s a useful motivator. Krillin has self-esteem issues, and he joined the Orin Temple and then Kame House to try to overcome them. He thought “If I just get really good at this one thing, then people will like me.” And we can say “Oh, no, it doesn’t work that way, Krillin, people like you because you’re a such a good person, and besides, it doesn’t matter how good you are at martial arts.”

Okay, fine, let’s assume that’s true, and Krillin deceived himself by training in martial arts. Oh no! He put in all that work, and all he got out of it was... being the strongest human on Earth. Shoot. He made himself a better person for nothing.

The reality is that I don’t think he would be as well-liked if he hadn’t gone down this road, simply because people wouldn’t have gotten to know him. That’s really what it’s about. It’s easy to say that you’re liked for “who you are on the inside”, but what people really want is to be noticed long enough to be liked for who they are. And sometimes you gotta take a long look at yourself and say “I need to do something to grab people’s attention.”

And sometimes, in order to motivate yourself into that kind of work, you have to play that trick on yourself. “Just think, if I put in those extra reps in the gym, the ladies’ll be all over me!” And it never actually happens, but it gets you through that workout, and the next, and the next, and the next.

I think we can all relate to that. I’m writing this because three people asked me to, and I’m sort of hoping a few more will see it and like what I wrote. I try to get better, because I like the rush of validation that comes with it. And if I don’t get it, well, boo-hoo, I wrote a few hundred words about Krillin, a subject I enjoy writing about. It’s a no-lose situation, and there’s some non-zero chance that attractive single women might see this and decide to slide into my DMs. It’s a tiny chance, hardly worth mentioning, but it’s a lot higher than if I just sit in my apartment and stare at the wall.

Why I don’t: Ocean Dub Krillin really rubbed me the wrong way, because they wrote and voice directed the character to be really nebbishy. That wouldn’t necessarily make him a bad character, but it definitely conflicted with what you see on the screen, where he’s stepping to Nappa, Vegeta, Dodoria, and everything else he has to deal with. Once Sonny got the role, everything turned out cool. Mondo cool, if you will.

I suppose I should point out the flip side of what I wrote above. Krillin’s so focused on being worthy that he fails to recognize his achievements. That’s admirable in its way, but it also makes you worry about the guy. Like, he knows 18 is crazy about him, right? Wait, does Obama know people like him? Do I? Oh I might have made myself sad there for a minute, excuse me.

Favorite episode (scene if movie):

Probably the moment he tries to take on Super Buu all by himself. One of the cool things about Krillin is that he’s taken on every major villain from Piccolo Junior to Buu, despite being outclassed. I think the Super Buu thing is the best one, though, because in that situation there’s literally no chance of anyone jumping in to save him. His entire plan is to hold off Buu for a few seconds and maybe buy a few minutes for the others. He’s doomed and he knows it won’t even work as a diversion, but he still jumps in anyway. It proves that this is who he is. When there’s literally no one left to impress, and nothing left to gain, he’ll still play things out the same way.

Favorite season/movie: The Androids/Cell Saga is probably his best material overall, just because of his conflicted feelings regarding 18, and the difficult choices he makes because of that. You can make a strong case for the Namek Saga, where it’s literally just Krillin and Bulma and Gohan, so he has to take the lead by default, but I’m just not that into the Namek Saga.

Favorite line:

This is really more from one of the video games. I think Budokai 3, but I’m not sure. Piccolo demands custody of Gohan and Krillin’s like “No way, you’re probably gonna eat him or something!” and I’m pretty sure this wasn’t in the Ocean Dub, so it completely caught me off-guard, like it was the last thing I expected Krillin to say. And then Piccolo comes back with “I’m not going to eat him!” like he’s offended at the very suggestion. As a runner-up, I dig that part in DBZA 54, where Trunks and Vegeta are both reeling from their losses to Perfect Cell, and Krillin reminds them that they don’t have to posture around him, because it’s just him... “Krillin. Everyone’s friend.”

Favorite outfit: That’s easy.

Yeah, the Frieza Soldier armor looked mighty good on this dude, and the cop uniform does too, and the classic Turtle Hermit outfit is a signature look, but this, right here, is the Krillin for me. My man’s got the blue shirt under his orange shirt. No more of the Yamcha slipppers. Those look great on Yamcha, don’t get me wrong, but Krillin needs those big chunky Goku boots, because they’re perfect for stomping those pesky girlfriend-exploding remotes. Fellas, this is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

OTP: Maron HAHAHAHAHAHA oh wow. No. It’s 18, obviously.

Brotp: Clearly Goku is his bro, but it’s not surprising at all how effortlessly he gets along with just about everyone else. He’s bros with the entire world.

Head Canon: I’m pretty sure the Maron/Marron thing was just a coincidence in real life. Maron the girlfriend was a filler character, and Marron the daughter was introduced in the manga some time later, and both used the same naming convention to end up in the same place. However, I choose to believe that Krillin actually named his kid after his ex, and he somehow convinced 18 to go along with that idea.

By that, I don’t mean he had to sweet talk her into it or promise a bunch of stuff in exchange. I mean he must have discussed what to name their kid, and 18 was like “Your ex-girlfriend? Seriously?” and he was like “Yeah, I know she’s a ditz, but you gotta understand I was in a really low place and she helped me through it.” Or something like that, where once he lays out the whole reason 18′s like “Yeah, you know what? Okay.”

Or maybe Maron helped deliver the baby or something. Or she was the surrogate mother? Holy shit I might be onto something.

Unpopular opinion: Krillin clanks when he walks, due to the solid brass balls he’s got.

youtube

A wish: They should do a movie where Krillin just fights Frieza and wins. Decisively, undisputably, irrevocably. Krillin is stronger than Frieza from that point forward. I don’t care if that means nerfing Frieza or godmodding Krillin, but I just want it made plain that if they use Frieza from here on, it has to be with the understanding that Krillin can whip his ass at any time.

That might sound silly, and I guess it is, but you see what this accomplishes, right? It forces Frieza into a new character dynamic, so it’s not just the same old shit with him. Or Toei collectively admits that they can’t use him anymore, which was what they should have decided in 1995. I’m fine either way.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: Don’t grow his hair back, okay?

5 words to best describe them: Qualified to sell real estate.

My nickname for them: The Kriller.

#ask duhragonball #dragon ball #krillin #heavydbz

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slightlyrebelliouswriter23 · 4 years

Text

We’re All Mad Here | Jurdan College AU

Summary: It’s all for show, I tell myself. To see if I can make him flinch. It’s just a game of Russian Roulette, after all. Harmless, as long as I am the one with the gun.

Rating: T/M

CW: Very mild cursing. Zero explicit content but there is a fun little tease. It’s all very soft focus, though. Also, at the end, a brief flashback of Jude’s backstory in this fic which might be triggering for some. I’ve marked the start of her trigger with a ~~~ in case you want to avoid.

Part I | Part III | WAMH Masterlist | AO3 | Fic Masterlist

Part II- Simmer

Unfortunately Attractive Dude leads me around the counter like he owns the place. If a stranger leading me into a back room is not alarming enough, the mirthful bound in his step makes me all the more suspicious.

I glare very hard at the back of his head and hope he feels it.

“Liliver,” the man says to the white-haired barista as we pass behind her, “Another hot chocolate and one large caramel cappuccino, extra shot, to-go. And make it snappy, we’ve got places to be.”

Liliver throws a sneer over her shoulder. “I’d make it much snappier if you said the magic words.”

“Oh, Liliver. Magic isn’t real,” he croons, “And we both know I’m above begging.”

Liliver looks like she’s considering punching him in the face. If it came down to it, I know I’m not above begging for that. Or cheering. Or joining in.

“Whip?” the man says.

I blink. It takes me a second to realise he’s speaking to me. “Huh?”

A wicked smirk settles on his mouth. “Do you want whip?”

I scrunch my nose.

“No whip,” he says to Liliver, backing toward a set of silver doors in the corner.

“Who puts whipped cream on their cappuccino?” I mutter.

“Weirdos, that’s who,” Liliver tells me. “Off his rocker, this one. Be careful around him.” I give her a conspiratorial smile. I decide I like Liliver.

I decide I hate Unfortunately Attractive Dude when, for reasons entirely uncertain to me, he gives me a shit-eating grin and ducks through the swinging silver doors. Against my better judgement, I follow.

Suddenly, I’m in a small kitchen where everything from the countertops to the large fridge in the corner is made of stainless steel. The air is cold and damp, like a clammy hand. An unsettling combination of wet rags and baking bread permeates the air.

The man busies himself, pulling various items down from shelves and out of cabinets.

“Are we… allowed to be back here?” I ask. He knows the barista, that much is apparent. But surely that doesn’t excuse customers from wandering back on a whim to use the kitchens as their own personal laundromat.

“One never needs permission to be anywhere if one never asks and is never perceived,” he muses. I shoot him an incredulous look and he laughs. “I work here.”

“In that?” I jut my chin at the man’s outfit. His jacket alone is garish. Paired with all the prim and tailored rest, it seems more like something strutting down a high-end runway than any work attire I’ve ever seen.

“No, of course not in this,” he scoffs. “Come sit.” He pats the metal countertop next to the sink before continuing his search, a flurry of black and red.

“Why?” I don’t try to hide my scepticism. Better he knows I am wary of him still than try to be accommodating and find myself axe-murdered.

“Because after I’m done with your shirt,” he says, pausing to look at me, “I need to make sure you’re not hurt.”

How poetic, I think, then narrow my eyes. I mislike the idea of this strange man inspecting an injury conveniently located on my cleavage.

“I told you,” I say, sliding my backpack off my shoulders and setting it on the floor, “I’m fine.” But when I peel out of my coat, a sharp pang shoots across my chest. I cannot help the wince that escapes.

Clearly not fine.

An arch of one dark brow tells me the man agrees with my unspoken thought. His oil-slick eyes rake over me once more, assessing. My traitorous heart does a little leap.

He pulls one shoulder into a half-shrug. “Company policy. Sorry.” His rings clang against the metal as he pats the counter again.

My teeth grit against the sound. “A likely story,” I grumble, though I am not sure he hears me. Already continuing his disassembly of the kitchen cabinets, the man does not respond.

I clamber up onto the counter with no amount of haste and sit begrudgingly amongst his collection of searched-for items: Dish soap, white wine vinegar, rubbing alcohol, a sponge, a large metal mixing bowl. He adds a first-aid kit to the growing horde.

I watch as he removes his many rings from moon pale fingers. They’re long and nimble, and I find myself wondering if he sews, as well. Or perhaps he’s a skilled pianist.

Warmth spreads across my cheeks. Then again, it’s probably a bad idea to think too much on his hands.

He flicks a handle of the faucet and tests the steady stream rushing out. Satisfied, he holds the mixing bowl under the tap.

“It’s my day off,” he tells me while the bowl fills.

“Fascinating.”

“It’s why I’m not in uniform.”

“You’re telling me you chose to wear this?” I wave a hand at his ensemble.

The man turns the faucet off, frowning. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” He places the bowl of warm water on the counter next to me.

“Your coat looks like a bathrobe.”

“I beg your pardon?” He presses a hand to his chest in mock offence. “This jacket happens to be a masterful work of art by a very coveted designer.”

I roll my eyes. He sounds like the most pretentious kind of asshole. If I hadn’t already decided whether to like him or hate him, this would’ve given substantial weight to the latter.

“Yeah, well, it looks like something an old rich dude would wear,” I say. “Probably while having a post-bath cigar and reading the obituary section of the newspaper.”

“Personally, I much prefer the comic section, post-bath,” he mutters, squeezing a dollop of dish soap into the bowl.

Somehow, I can imagine that. This odd man in a bath full of bubbles and oils that smell like the forest, getting out only when his hands go pruny to read the Sunday comics. Then I very much want to un-imagine that.

I shake my head. I need coffee. Now.

“Lucky for you,” the man says, ripping me from my internal spiral into damnation, “You get the privilege of wearing the old dude bathrobe. Give me your shirt.”

He shrugs out of the jacket and holds it out for me, his free hand waiting expectantly for a swap. Those coal-black eyes sparkle with a dare. It’s then that I realise: They are waiting expectantly, too.

As if he anticipates I will blush and ask him to turn around so I can change in some modicum of privacy. Like a good girl. As if he expects I’m the type of woman who is accustomed to gentlemanly behaviour from men.

Little does he know, I don’t much care for chivalry—and I am most certainly not good. If he does not want to give me the courtesy of privacy, then I will not ask it of him.

It is an effort to swallow my pride. With slow hands, I pull my blouse from the waistband of my skirt. I hold his gaze steady, out of spite.

Surprise steals across his face. It is there and then gone, brief as a breeze, and the only thing he yields.

As my fingers graze the top button, a little thrill runs through me. I must be mad for doing this. Between the interview jitters, my state of panic, and a desperate lack of caffeine, I must have completely lost my mind.

Or more likely, there was already something very wrong with me, to begin with.

Sensing my hesitation, the man’s mouth furls at the corners like unrolled parchment that reads: You won’t do it, in the looping, self-important scrawl I imagine someone like him must possess. That small smirk, the second dare.

I glare at his mouth. The first button is the hardest, but I clench my jaw and undo it; then the next.

He tracks my every move from beneath the eaves of his thick lashes. The sight of him so suspended by the strings of my fingers makes my heart rush, and I am struck by a mix of irritation and dizzying lust.

Cool air pebbles the skin on my chest as I work. I take my sweet time about it. This prick wanted a show, so it’s a show I will give him.

My fingers move carefully down the line. Pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, I knit my brows in feigned concentration and pretend that this is nothing.

Even though my heartbeat is a war drum in my chest.

Even though his gaze is heady and my head is spinning with it.

Even though I am very glad this task does not require me to speak.

This is nothing. This is nothing but three more buttons. His breath hitches as my shirt falls open further. I am a matchstick under his flint-like gaze.

My cheeks blaze. I think about how every bit of this is his fault. I think about how I hate him and his annoying charm for tricking me into coming back here. About his paramour eyes, his satyr’s smile—I think I hate those things most.

Such ire grounds me.

I pop the final button, slip my shirt off one shoulder, then the other. The pale blue fabric pools at my waist, draping over the crooks of my elbows. A subtle shift and I’m pushing my arms flush against my ribcage, giving him the best view.

It’s all for show, I tell myself, over and over. To see if I can make him flinch. It’s just a game of Russian Roulette, after all. Harmless, as long as I am the one with the gun.

When I meet his eyes again, at last, every second of this humiliation is worth it. The man’s arms have fallen slack at his sides. His precious designer jacket all but forgotten, nearly grazing the floor.

Gone is the taunting smirk. Every sharp edge of him smoothed over by wonderment. Or maybe it is consternation.

Either way, I am plagued by the thought that I should very much like to see him dishevelled.

I should like to see him come undone.

I give a coy smile and bat my lashes mockingly. “Did you get a good enough inspection, doctor?”

To my delight, he swallows audibly. Opens his mouth as if to speak, then snaps it shut.

Maybe he needs a doctor, I think and give a little snort. With a roll of my eyes, I try to beat back the tide of my own desire.

I shove my wadded up shirt into his chest, unceremonious. “You’re drooling,” I tell him, my voice miraculously even. That seems to snap him out of it.

He blinks twice, clearing his throat. “Shouldn’t need more than ice and a bit of aloe,” he says, then takes my shirt in his free hand.

I snatch the jacket from his other and shrug it on. My arms slide easily into the satin-lined sleeves. It’s still warm and smells like him. A forest and something burning. I hate that I notice at all—that whatever odious perfume he’s wearing is something I’ve committed to memory. Most of all, I hate the shiver that roils up my spine because of it.

I fold my arms across my chest and risk a glance at the man.

He’s frowning at the bottle of white wine vinegar in his hands. The way he glares at it, you’d think it had committed some heinous crime. There is a slight tinge of pink on his moon-pale cheeks.

A trifle smile tugs at my lips. It’s good to know I get under his skin as much as he gets under mine.

“So,” I say, flipping my hair out from under the jacket, “How do I look?”

He glances in my direction, face unreadable. An unbothered sweep of his gaze. “Not at all like an old man in a bathrobe,” he says, opening the bottle.

With a flourish, he adds a splash of vinegar to the bowl.

“I should hope not,” I say, raising my arms slightly to examine the jacket. “I think I look like the finest baroque rug Insmire has to offer.”

The laugh that barrels from Unfortunately Attractive Dude is genuine. “I’ll pass your compliments along to the artist.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Nonetheless,” he says, “I suspect it’s as close to one as anything you usually give.” He reaches for my shirt and dunks it in the water. Immediately, a bit of the stain lifts away, turning the water a cloudy colour.

He’s not wrong, and it irks me. I shift my gaze back to the jacket.

All things considered, I’m shocked at how well it fits. It’s a little long, and the sleeves swallow my hands in a river of red and black fabric. But what I lack in height, I make up for in other things. The man is lean enough to where the rest of his jacket is filled easily by the swell of my breasts, the sweep of my hips.

“I’ll admit,” he says, swishing the contents of the bowl around with his hands, “It suits you. Might even look better on you than it does on me.”

“Really?” I gasp, a teasing thing.

“I said might,” he mumbles, stirring and pointedly not meeting my eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Oh, I most certainly will.”

A small smile plays at the corners of his mouth, but he says nothing and adds dish soap to the bowl.

“You never told me your name,” I blurt. Mostly to fill the silence, but also because my not knowing is starting to get a bit weird.

He furrows his brows as if he’s never been asked the question before. Or he is surprised I even have to ask. Like I said. Self-important.

“I didn’t,” he says, smirking down at the bowl.

I wait. When he does not oblige me, I give him a stern look. “Is that information classified or something?” I ask. “Too personal? Because let me tell you, pal, you’ve seen me in my bra.”

“Yes. And?”

I almost cringe at the reminder. He has probably seen many people in various states of undress. I am no one special.

“And,” I say, pasting a sickly sweet smile on my lips, “I usually like to know the names of people who’ve seen me in my bra.”

“You say that as if it happens often.”

I narrow my eyes, ignoring the blush rising in my cheeks. “And you say that as if you mean to distract me.” He continues to work my shirt around with his hands, dutifully ignoring my glare. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

“Because,” he says, voice contemplative, “I thought you already knew it.”

“Should I know it?”

He shrugs. “We’re in the same politics lecture. With Dulcamara. You sit in the back row every week.”

“So you’re stalking me.” I’m only half-joking. The other half is starting to get worried that maybe I will end up in tiny little pieces out back if I’m not careful. My eyes flit to the bouquet of knives at the end of the counter.

“No,” he says, adding a squeeze of rubbing alcohol to the mix. “I’m just good with people. And faces.”

While he stirs, I cock my head to the side, trying to dredge up his likeness from the faces in my memory. I’m quite certain if I had ever seen a face like his, I would’ve remembered it.

Though truth be told, Dulcamara’s lectures are the most interesting my department has to offer. I often do not notice the people around me.

“You really don’t know who I am?” He looks at me, brows arched in amusement.

I grit my teeth. “That lecture is one of the busiest ones. And why should I pay attention to the people when the lecture is far more—”

“Gripping?” His grin is a slash of white. “You’d certainly be the first to think so.”

“At least I think for myself,” I snap.

“A good quality to be sure,” he says. “But as driven a person as you are, Jude, I’d have thought you’d be more observant.”

My heart skitters to a halt. It’s one thing to know my face but…

“How do you know my name,” I demand, boring a glare into his skull. “You are stalking me.”

“It’s hardly stalking, darling, if neither of us has any choice in the matter of attending,” he points out. “Besides, it’s really hard to not know your name. Since you answer all of Dulcamara’s questions with such… thoroughness.” Some emotion I can’t quite read, settled so perplexingly between admiration and disdain, feeds his expression as he says this.

I am not entirely sure what to make of it.

But I do know what he’s said is true. I am usually the only voluntary participant in Dulcamara’s lectures. And I suppose if he knows enough about my track record for participation, he probably does go to Royal Greenbriar.

I’m weighing my options when Liliver careens through the door.

“Sorry ‘bout the wait,” she says, making for our counter in the back of the kitchen. She has two steaming cups in her hands, and had I not been sitting so high up, I might’ve dropped to my knees to kiss the ground she walks on.

“Busy out there?” the man-who-has-annoyingly-not-been-named mutters.

“You were at the tail end of the rush,” Liliver says, then frowns. “Though it doesn’t seem like you’re in much of a hurry here.”

She eyes the array of supplies, my shirt in the bowl of now-dirty water, her co-worker’s jacket on my shoulders. She says nothing. Only hands me one of the cups.

“One large caramel cappuccino, extra shot, to-go,” she says, giving me a wink.

I thank her and take a much-needed sip.

Liliver turns to the man. “And one hot chocolate for you, Your Highness.” She makes a mockery of a bow as she hands him his drink.

He scowls but grunts his appreciation, placing the to-go cup on the counter next to him. When he turns back to the bowl, the barista grins wickedly at me. I return it in kind. Yes, I very much like Liliver.

“Any luck with the stain?” she asks the man.

He fishes my blouse out of the bowl. “Don’t see how that’s any of your business, Lil,” he says, then shuffles over a few steps before wringing the fabric over the sink.

“As star employee, anything that happens in my kitchen is my business.” She offers a lewd waggle of her brows.

I take a sip of coffee to hide the blooming heat on my face. I was sure the door had been closed… Then, a small, dreadful thought bubbles to the surface.

Perhaps her coworker has a reputation for luring potential conquests back here. Perhaps he’s done this one-hundred times before, and Liliver has learned the basic machinations of it.

Though it’s doubtful anyone gave a show quite so revealing as mine. Also doubtful he’s had quite that many conquests, even with his considerable beauty. One-hundred is a very high number. Isn’t it?

Still, if I am correct in guessing his design, I vow to make the man pay in more than just coffee and laundering expertise.

“Need I remind you,” Unfortunately Attractive Dude drawls, “It is technically my kitchen always. So I am under no obligation to tell you.”

His kitchen? He’d been modest before, I realise, when he told me he works here.

“Not like you to pull rank,” Liliver huffs, affronted. “What’s got your panties in a knot, Greenbriar? Is it girl troubles? Because if it is—”

But I don’t hear the rest of what she says.

~~~A single word and everything becomes slow, slanting. I stare down at the tile floor. The world warps around me, as if held on the end of a bungee cord stretched taut, and I am about to be flung helpless back into the air.

Something in my stomach curdles. It has nothing to do with the coffee.

“Anyway,” Liliver is saying, her voice very far away, “You asked me to remind you if you’re still here that you have a meeting in ten minutes.”

I am still staring at the grout between tiles. At the grit there. The grime. My skin is awash with the slick feeling of it.

“Yes,” the man says in my periphery. “Thank you, Liliver.”

“For the record, I don’t get paid enough for this,” she says, and I have the vague sense she is heading for the door. “The personal assisting. The moods. The general… weirdness.”

His laugh is muffled, awful. Like the thud of marbles on carpet. “I’ll give you a raise, then.”

“It’s the least you could do,” she sings over her shoulder, and she’s out the door again.

Then, we are alone. But I am not here. I am sometime else.

I feel all that black water clapping at my ears as I swam that day. My lungs burning raw with panic and bile and sea salt. The boat, a little orange firefly flickering in the distance, appearing and disappearing with the rise and fall of waves.

The sea is a lady. When she swallows you whole, she does so without a sound. Drowning is always quiet. So is rage, which is an awful lot like drowning. Everything happens beneath, simmering to the surface like so many bubbles. They were certainly one and the same that day.

I think they are one and the same now.

Flame licks my face, static pricks my tongue. My heart thrashes slow in my chest, a kind of silent drowning. My head is swimming just as poorly. ~~~

When I resurface, I am met with only silence and that one word ringing in my ears.

Greenbriar. Greenbriar. Greenbriar.

☽☽☽☽☽

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AN: Sorry for the major cliffhanger but the evil author in me had to *cue villainous laughter* 😈 so it’s been an age and a half since I last updated this fic, but here it is! Thank you so much for reading!! Hope you enjoyed :) If you did, please let me know in the comments, reblogs, my ask box/inbox. Even if it’s just a keyboard smash, it genuinely brightens my day to read.

I’ve been busy developing the plot for this one and let me tell you, there is SO MUCH to be revealed, I can hardly contain myself. No promises, but I’m about halfway through writing the next chapter so hopefully it will only take me one single age to post that.

If you’d like to be added to the tag list for all future updates of We’re All Mad Here (or any other Jurdan content I post), let me know via comment/ask/message!! Thanks again for reading! Back to the forest now.

-em 🖤💫

Title Inspo: Simmer by Hayley Williams

Tag List: @the-mithridatism-of-jude-duarte @velarhysismine @knifewifejude @danieldesario @annihliation @wickedqueenoffantasy @not-tess @clockworkgraystairs

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rwmhunt · 3 years

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Leviticus, Chapter 23

1. Substitute day, and a return unto A sender of something, as to another place, That hasn't the wherewithal to get there either; I will open it again and learn That which is already known to be such As isn't so much.

2. And it's not mine, but a, And is the right way round. For as I set the seasons, I reprise, reply, replay; It's substitution day.

3. And Sabbath is the seventh, Whence the lord, in all thy dwellings, Is up for doing nothing; Or Sabbath is the sixth; I don't care.

4. And welcome to my channel, It's great to have each of you still with me- A man who speaks of people By their purpose, Himself as his own singer, With- such are the seasons, Even, holy convocations, For want to be sure of a constant, It's Senhal, An obscure term For an old friend.

5. Love, love, lo, this is not Of a cloven love, Leviticus, I will speak of it Unto sundry strangers and neighbours, As just one more month's dusk Then it'll be passover, Not once. Not twice, Not once. Love. So we can still imagine a time When all of this will go again;

6. But a day will approach When, if there is something That can look back, Could think that 'here' and 'then' Are really very close;- And I wonder if they saw The strings of direct attachment, Lining their behaviours; Just flour and water, But I don't think so; Still, anytime was closer to history than this one, So what do I know?

7. If I were to put the onus On to the impossible, Then what was light-hearted and playful, Would be wont to become ridden and surly; Lord, being an influencer is a serious endeavour, For how many unsuccessful oblations are there That are out there? Lo, state your appreciation; Don’t just wing it. Plan it out in kalends, Of which are reckon'd to be backwards; so, To start, do nothing.

8. After a week, Let's go- Gift your influencers' grift, For, when you so do this, It strokes the ego of the flames, Who then add unto the savour of sacrifice, Thus, get me it up; Make it smolder, Then, use its fatal nature To activate the future.

9. And simple: These are nacks, To muster control Over gods; Are junk and have been; That we all have interest vested- Let ignorance of it control Hereafter, same, so anon and amen.

10. Crowdsplain- First fruit the priest Hard and long, Find the tunnels, Writing what's impossible For the brain to conceive, That it may then be read back of, To supplant and supersede; So become possible.

11. And thither, the Wheatchief Will wave the sheaf Tomorrow- See how it goes? Ol' Cathode Ray, and Non-mathmatical aesthetic identities, The spirit of the radio take her.

12. That once the sheaf And all the while Be specific unto thy niche- Nativize unto thy platform, For, the experience shall follow The rhyzome's swerve and function, So that the user-expectation be wrought From whence the contents be placed- In this case, Add in a lamb shank ponzi scheme to my platform; Smells wonderful.

13. So unto the titular character, Exerting such low level leverage as Begetteth me of an ephah cake, And a quarter hin of wine; I don't need the free stuff, I am a successful influencer, But shouldst you want me to advertise for suckers On my platform that I have built myself for free; Well, we're all getting along so good.

14. Then it's me first, And simple: see- That our boldest endeavours, And most exciting adventures- They have not yet even begun; That, in spite of all the detritus, In the teeth of all that we've done, my boys, I tell you: The best Is yet To come.

15. Then, 49 days later, Seek whence Thought might come in sequence, And I'm really so blessed and thankful to you all for being here; So, as thought comes in sequence And thus, it wasn't known where We are going here as we begun. O tensions, retensions- I use to used to run.

16. Know, influencers, I am the hype; So on-brand that I can give unto you, And through you, the trick- Pyramid that still stands For the thousands- Round it up; So nice.

17. And, super relevant- Optimize continuously, also, Compensate me handsomely; while Sacrifice may seem like a quick-success marketing strategy, It isn’t so. Such are the things that keep not happening; More food please.

18. Lots more, This is why the burden of proof for rhetorical claim Shall falleth shortly As among the Open Wounde who should maketh of such a claim; It is not upon the world to provide him a fallacy, But he, who's to prove the world its truth; which, Across all channels, He, rerewise, hath been completely unable to do.

19. So suffer him his own precarity; And then some; Think back to when, Twirrup twipip,-pwiwip, Suwee, psu, swoo swsoo, So sweepeth they in song, As we, quiet, Through our blossom comedown, That hideth our tiny singers, And the bulgence behind the wiltage, In the verges, Be of burgeoning seed.

20. And everyone wave; All this- so good as is it to be; And though under a hail Of black tormentors, Our torment, And through its over-drone, With no one remembering it happening, But, who'll remember the photograph?

21. Sit back; You've lost everything, So lo, olah, you remember how mother died- Bringing cow parsley into the tent of meaning; For she went by the umbels as we'd walked on the plain, And they had reminded her of those lace cushions That her ladies-in-waiting had carried, And so gave them the name.

22. Embassadors, Leave thy corners to disillusion; A true influencer ideally keeps doing What they genuinely gain of a passion for. They know their value and their need is not to shew it, So spend a lot of time reading news and sharing opinions with others online. By buying-up dozens of potential plots, They help to plot the exodus to less, And stake an astronaut over the shape of a woman. But politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude, So his words became their actions.

23. Is it worth your time To try and ignore that, if, What you are listening to Is the most effective form of advertising- A babbling of a technique That hath impostulated language, Then, should things go well, We may even be able to rend a cross-paracleation With phantom trust-collaborators, Interested in guest-posting for backlinks and exposure, Thus, marrying into micro-influencers, And so tap into our y.

24. But be consistent: For my favourite casts come out the same- Here, crowdplain how a seventh month is a Sound the trumpet month; See how it goes? Lo, but half of me struggles with the whimsy Of the other side that's yet so entranced; No, I'm not sure why, it's just the way I feel.

25. Down tools, more please. Gnaw your own head off. All things positivity- and It is always negotiation; Not: You bring it to the tabernacle, I sing- There is no shortness of spirit In opinion To be cut down. Equal positives, so unto Those things that keep not happening.

26. There are voices you hear of, As quoted as begetters of insightful opinion, Who art themselves never made extant, Being only reported hereto as sources, And lo, that they are the influencers. And I'm super curious as to know what you guys think; Please be sure to leave your comments amid the margins.

27. Thence, afflict thy souls, For, tis atonement day- We're ten into the seventh, And the snap's back when I was An offensive lineman, And the pass sent over- The big lie, long, long to the long deceiver, Ah, burnt offerings- How original, Best look unto the analytics, And if they give you not access there unto , Verily, you are going to have to fight, Fight as peaceful as Sheol, Down, deep down and dirty- I'm not going to call it off.

28. Down tools; Atone to the dial tone, No one calls; Let Ladder Capital Createth of the sponsored post- Like many on the medium, To use an ode- I used to play the role; To laugh and laugh; Laugh til I despised all there was to laugh at, And then I stopped, And in the silence, saw what I had done.

29. But laughing is not so bad.

We've been a good wee band. Yes we have. No one is coming after us. And if you're alright, mack, You'll get cut off.

30. So workers got destroyed That day, And Aaron was frustrated, And livid. Reach round; Feel thy spine. The way people stop you From being helpful When you are helpful, So that you cannot be helpful, So that they can cut you From your people.

31. Tardiness in perpetuity, Aye, today, it is Yplangenday- Well, I'll have to put myself Through some more adamantine Paces than god allows, else I'll never get enough done.

32. And be bold, For, you'll need to deracinate; Chancers are toxic vocations Within the tent of meaning; It's content; it's all content- Divide and game, so- Focus and grow. I mean to make sure That you are a consistent- Start of the ninth evening , End of the next.

33. God doesn't eat though, That I can see- For all that we give him, God doesn't eat.

34. Crowd, 15/7, and tabernacle feast week; Still his words became their actions, Shrill, until the doctrine of laches, When the searched-after Faithless elector went libertarian, Like many on the medium, Clade unto such bolled and novel obstacles What stretched where chance was slim, And slim was still in quarantine.

35. To start again, down tools, For, lo, if you want to be in a prison camp, You needst allow yourself the luxury Of being stupid enough to get captured.

36. Sacrifice? Spluttereth the LORD: But I'm fed up with so much burnt rubbish, I wish for forced fresh rhubarb, So shunt and jive; I've Optimized, and optimize continuously.

37. Drinks break; take life indicting, Gratify all at a local craven hire scheme, Go abroad singing, so merrylike, To slough off the whole As one enormous rhyzome. Deus Hic! God is drunk! I heard that, Brian Leg-Coverall.

38. O well done Jehus, And good to be with you, Yes you, Who are good in a crisis; A reminder- I'm working with mischief.

39. Wait, rest again, To live is to live through An embarrassment of times, Damarkated as meaningful riches, That will not be well remembered. Really, I am so blessed.

40. But try to ask of a question; So that thy congregation Might make communion in answer, See how it goes? Say, But why, isn't it A bit like palm sunday? The stream changeth its name As it passeth through each neighbourhood. I knew it as; Well it doesn't matter- You're not reposting, nor liking my banal repartee, So, unfollow.

41. And it goes; for I have giv'n unto them a scapegoat, But they cast it not out; So shall there be a reaving that will follow, and Themselves, they shall be cut off from.

42. Then all ye home-born booth dwellers In dwelling booths, Shall dwell in booths seven days and know That you are living in the rhyzome..

43. And everyone will know that I made you do this- The old booth dwellers, needing my rescue out of Egypt, So weakened, the Open Wounde stayeth open; And remember to tell us what you think, Way down, deep down, down in the margins.

44. And Mose went about with the crowdsplaining Old loud-haler; A simple fellow out of storybook glen, From the tent of meaning, From the twilight men, He ran and told- And the thing is, They were too clever To not know what they were doing- So the target becomes bios; Is the common psychle, The answer- How would you like it? Is - 'I didn't'. And that therein has a hold and salience, As before tends to be the best time to regret- It is a kind of nonsense. I'm so merry

I'm so merry and sad.

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movienotesbyzawmer · 4 years

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October 23: Friday The 13th - A New Beginning

(previous notes: Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter)

In case you're just joining us, I have committed myself to the task of watching each of the eight Friday the 13th movies that came out in the 80s, taking notes as I watch them, then posting those notes. I'm about to watch the fifth movie.

And hey, is it time to just recap the "story" so far? I mean… sure, I guess. It all started in 1958, when a little boy named Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake. Supposedly the camp counselors responsible for keeping an eye on him were distracted with their recreational boinking. That's how the story goes… however, what we see in 1958 is two camp counselors boinking and then getting murdered by someone with ostensibly no related drowning event. Anyway, Twenty years later Jason's mom stalks some camp counselors that are at that camp and kills them very violently. She gets beheaded before she can kill the last counselor, but then that counselor gets pulled into the water by ghoulboy Jason; she survives this only to be murdered by him in her house at a later date.

Meanwhile another facility down the shore from Camp Crystal Lake (and I might add that the actual eponymous lake doesn't appear to be any bigger than the apparel section of a Target) has some new counselor trainees on a retreat of some kind. Jason has quickly matured from a swampy child-monster to a hooded, but otherwise sharply-dressed psychopath who doesn't say anything. He kills everyone at this retreat except for one girl who seems to kind of get him. Also maybe her boyfriend survives, we never really get an answer on that, but she is familiarly hauled away by an ambulance and forgotten about. Jason keeps his killing spree going quite indiscriminately, but focusing on another group of young people that are hanging out at a nearby ranch. He kills everyone there, plus some other people he found, except for one girl who survives long enough to get pulled into the water by a ghoul that is probably a Jason's Mom Thing. We don't know what happens to her, but she definitely did not stay dry.

The hospital where that last batch of victims ended up got a little bit murdered up. Jason was in there because he was thought of as one of the victims somehow, maybe a deliberate playing-dead trick because he does like to do stuff like that. He heads back to the woodsy area around Crystal Lake and decides to pick on the residents of two area houses. He does lots of killings but a brother and sister from one of those houses stab him so many times that he just can't get up an murder them. But in the process of that, the brother might have caught some evil. Is this the final chapter. Will there be a new beginning. Soon the contents of Disc 5 will reveal all.

(I have not seen this movie btw)

It opens very differently from the others… someone on a raincoat is walking urgently through the woods during a nighttime storm. It's Corey Feldman! He approaches Jason's grave in the woods! Like totally a grave with a headstone that says Jason Voorhees. But also two hooligans were on their way to that grave; they want to dig Jason up! CF is hiding and watching that; the hooligans don't know about him. They want to see Jason's body, and when they succeed with that, it stabs them to death because Jason was buried with a bunch of his favorite weapons. Plus also wearing the hockey mask. He's about to kill CF when whoever was dreaming this dream wakes up in a van that appears to be for crazy people of some kind. I don't recognize anyone, but maybe the dreaming person is grown-up CF? Probably that. Not played by CF, though.

His name is Tommy. I think that was CF's character's name so yeah it's him. I wonder if he's still into video games. He's being delivered to an institute of mental health. A nice couple is in charge, a Nice Woman and a Nice Man who make it sound like it will be Nice there.

Tommy looks wistfully at a picture of his mom and sister. The sister survived the last movie ostensibly so what is the deal with her.

Reggie the Reckless is a character that introduces himself to Tommy quite confrontationally. He is only about 11 and he likes to scare people; he clearly thinks he's going to totally pwn Tommy with pranks, but Tommy is apparently still into monster masks so he responds in a horror-mask way that earns some cred with Reggie the Reckless.

We get a glimpse at the motley cast of teens and young adults that populates this youth mental facility slash work farm place… and then two old killjoys show up to scold everyone for being crazy. These two killjoy characters are the most broadly performed caricatures we've seen since the "you're all doomed" old guy. Their acting is the kind of acting you see at the Renaissance festival, except without the half-assed English accents.

One of the kids at the institute is just a well-meaning dork with chocolate smears on his face that everyone hates… one guy hates him so much that he murders him! With an axe! Chocolate Smear was trying to strike up a conversation with a man who was angrily chopping wood, and bothered him so much that he axes him right there in front of others and in broad daylight! This story I tell you, it is a veritable New Beginning.

New characters. Leather Jacket Assholes, are talking about the murder at the nuthouse. They are in the woods nearby and one of them goes to take a leak while the other tries to fix something wrong with the car. They both get some kind of killed! The first one, the killer shoves a lit flare in his mouth, and the other one gets his throat slashed while he's acting very cocky and charismatic in the front seat of the car. Lit flare death is better even though it looks very fake.

But now we're back at the workhouse institute place and they're all mournful because of that odd and traumatic axe murder. Someone tries to be playfully scary with a monster mask and Tommy flips out and beats him up! This is a drama about the dysfunctional relationships between the involuntary residents of a workhouse.

Ugh, now we're back on the Killjoy characters. They are extremely unpleasant to behold. I hope Jason really is still killing people and that he takes care of those two irritants.

New characters, a waitress at a café and a hot doggin' yuppie in a muscle car trying to impress her, It seems like it's always important in these movies to have loud asshole characters, but there are really a lot of them in this one. If it's because they think we want to see assholes get killed… they have a point.

Hot Dog was doing some coke lines in his car waiting for the waitress when he very abruptly, but not unpredictably got axed right in his bald spot! Then the waitress comes out to find him and gets axed in the sternum. Those two, and the leather jacket dudes, don't have any ostensible relationship to the workhouse kids, although the leather dudes mentioned hearing about the murder there. Are we supposed to suspect that Jason is following Tommy and killing randos in the area surrounding where he is?

So there's this couple, a frisky, playful couple that are, I think, residents at the mental health facility, but they smolder with the carefree lust of what can only be described as camp counselors. They sneak off into the woods to get naked and fool around! An old man is watching them! The old man gets knifed in the gut! Then the girl of the couple gets sheared to death while the guy is taking a break somewhere. But he returns to find what happened to her - we see that he sheared her right in the eyes, it's gross! Then he gets a very good death; the killer secures him to a tree with a leather strap, which he tightens and tightens and tightens with his makeshift branch-crank until his skull is crushed! This consistent ingenuity of homicide methodology can only come from the one, the only, the master, Jason Voorhees.

New character alert… I kind of like this part! So Reggie the Reckless is given a ride to visit his big brother at the trailer park where he lives. Reggie and Big Brother are really happy to see each other! They get along very, very well! Big Brother even offers Reggie an enchilada! We don't see the enchilada! They're in a van, not even a trailer, and the dialogue plainly tells us that Big Brother has an enchilada next to him that he makes available to Reggie! Reggie does not accept the proffered enchilada! It is funny that we do not see what the enchilada looks like! What does an enchilada in a van look like!

Meanwhile Tommy gets into big trouble because someone nearby with this movie's requisite asshole level notices him waiting around near the trailer park, and correctly surmises that he is from the nearby mental health facility. This asshole starts a fight and Tommy has incredible martial arts skills so he beats up the asshole. Why does he have those skills.

Big Brother had to go to the outhouse immediately for enchilada-related reasons after Reggie left. He and his girlfriend have a cute exchange while he's in there, and just when I think that I like it when this movie's assholes die and plus I also like Big Brother, he and the girlfriend get killed. Big Brother gets perforated with metal spikes that are shoved at him through the walls of the outhouse. I am disappoint. This is probably this series' version of the first ten minutes of Up.

Oh, so the Killjoy characters… one of them was the guy that Tommy beat up, and the other one is his mom. Yeah, they hate the mental health facility, so it make some sense that he would pick a fight with Tommy so rashly. He returns home on his motorcycle but he's so mad about getting beat up that he just rides around outside his house, raging loudly about getting thumped and demanding that his mom do something about it! But he gets beheaded by a knife that takes advantage of his perpetual motorcycle operation. Then a butcher knife comes through the window at his mom and she's dead, face down in some soup cauldron she'd been obsessing over.

A word about the character with the speech impediment. One of the workhouse kids stutters. Inclusion! He just had some awkward interactions with the couple of ladies in the house and then turned around and saw a raised butcher knife. No more stuttering guy.

I should mention, the glimpses we've gotten of the killer are very, very unrevealing. The movie is making sure we don't have enough information to conclude for sure that it is Jason, although sometimes Tommy has visions of Jason standing somewhere and looking at him.

Another character died that's in that house. A girl gets naked and goes to bed, sees the body of the stuttering guy that has been placed there to frighten her, and then gets macheted through the mattress.

Then another killing. This character who has been vividly characterized throughout as "girl who is only always ever listening to music that she is clearly super into so much that no one is able to talk to her", she's being like that in her room and the killer just goes in and stabs her in the gut.

Reggie and the Nice Woman find those last three bodies stacked on a bed, and they run away, but on their way out of the house, Jason, total actual Jason, bursts through a door at them! He has great posture and wears a clean jumpsuit. They run away into the nearby woods and see an old-fashioned station-wagon ambulance. They open a door of it and a body is in it! I don't recognize the victim but there have been a lot lately. But also look.. Jason! Nearby! They run away.

The two get separated and Nice Woman comes upon Nice Man spiked through the head into a tree, so very dead! I don't remember what we last saw of him.

She runs back to the main house, and the cook, who is Reggie's grandfather, is thrown through the window at her! He has been murdered! Murdered I tell you! She runs away.

Jason is slowly chasing her with his machete as she stumbles through the mud. He is about to kill her but then he is distracted by a tractor coming at him, operated by Reggie! Reggie actually runs him down with the tractor! It's actually a bulldozer. He bulldozed Jason!

He looks dead but then he grabs her leg. And then they run away.

A very exciting confrontation ensues in the nearby barn where they run. Jason slowly pursues them in there, and the woman comes at him with a chainsaw. They sort of swordfight but with chainsaw and machete.

Tommy, who has been we-don't-know-where, arrives and the dynamic changes because of the strange connection Jason and Tommy have. Or at least Tommy thinks they have a connection… Jason just walks up to him and slashes him with the machete.

Everyone moves up to the loft of the barn. Tommy looks very badly laid out, so between Reggie and the woman a big struggle happens. But it ends with Jason getting his hand chopped off by Tommy, and Jason falling onto the ground which has this odd grid of metal spikes that kill him just fine.

But! The mask comes off, and it isn't Jason! Isn't Jason at all! It's one of the men we've seen around, I forget who.

Oh, the next scene explains it all. It was "Roy". Roy was one of the cops, or paramedics (?), who responded to the weird axe murder of the Chocolate Smear kid. It turns out that he is the father of Chocolate Smear, and he did all the murders as a very unstable response to that. And The news clippings he was carrying out explain that he decided to make it look like a Jason murder spree.

The movie ends with Tommy having a dream about murdering the woman, waking up in a hospital room and having a Jason phantom vision, then looking at a hockey mask that is in a drawer of his hospital room's dresser! Then there is a quick final couple of shots that suggest that he has insanely put the hockey mask on and is gonna knife the woman when she enters the room to visit him. The credits roll as he's about to probably stab her.

So this was kind of hard to get through. I mean, they are all bad movies, and objectively it seems like number 4 was worse than this one. But I was less inclined than normal to fight through the disinterest. It's worth noting that they were clearly trying for some semblance of a "new beginning", and they even managed to make it that while also explaining how this is a continuation of the Jason story. And there was all the grisly death you could want, which is what we're here for in the first place. But none of the scares were good or memorable, and they're making no effort to one-up the earlier movies in terms of gore effects. And I really lost track of the characters. Except for the ones I hated.

(next: Friday the 13th Part VI - Jason Lives)

#friday the 13th

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laughingpinecone · 4 years

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Yuletide letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic (when in doubt, tell me what’s happening to them five, ten, twenty years in the future!), hurt/comfort, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, tropey plots that are already close enough to characters/canon, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploring the ~deep lore, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played entirely straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues, actual covid (fantasy plagues are okay)

Les Cités Obscures: any

This is a very general “please, anything in the style of canon, just maybe with less thoughtless sexism” request. I want to lose myself in these cities again, and in the strange lands that connect them. I’d be happy to follow any of the known characters and/or OCs, or eschew characters altogether and write about the cities themselves. What caught your imagination in Brüsel, Xhystos, Taxandria, Alaxis...? The history of some cool building that was only marginally featured in one of the stories? Or an OC city! If you’ve got a favourite European city that doesn’t already have its obscure counterpart, please tell me all about it! Go big, go wild! What strange and classically surrealist happenings take place within its walls? Or even... outside Europe... Nerding out about architecture is of course very welcome. I would also love to read a story based on any Schuiten illustration, contextualizing it as if it were part of this ‘verse. Here’s a bunch of them, for example!

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down… him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles… I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back.

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs also if it’s not infidelity and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always. Like, just saying, but assume he’s pining big time and Jowd and Alma figure it out - they’d make a national sport out of excruciatingly protracted teasing.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right… I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being super into Cabanela being roughed up is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business. ...incompatible kinks, truly tragic. they’ll have to find some other common ground. they’re smart, resourceful, playful fellows, I’m sure they’ll manage)

Kentucky Route Zero: Donald kentuckyroutezero

I love everyone in the cast, all acts and interludes, and I am extremely into all the themes this incredible work of art ended up exploring. Agreeing with the overall doom and gloom up to Act IV, I was blown away by Act V’s strong affirmation of the importance of the arts and of the bonds we make and of carving up spaces for ourselves in capitalism’s wake. Donald was, indeed, not a part of any of that. Even the final interlude updates us on Lula and mentions Joseph, but the big guy is nowhere to be seen. So, you know, there’s fanfiction! He’s so static, defeated. I am fascinated by the chain of metaphysical spaces that goes surface -> Zero -> Echo -> Dogwood and even within that framework, the hall of the mountain king is like a hopeless dead end. Dude’s terminally stuck. So - once again, in the spirit of transformative works, how could he get... you know... unstuck? Did Lula’s momentous appearance in Act III shake him? Having a functioning Xanadu again, perhaps? How could he interrogate that oracle, what recursive wonders would it show him? If he decides to leave, what does it feel to be on the surface again after so long, or on the river perhaps? Maybe he is forced to leave by the flood, if not this one, the next... Having him meet any other character would be amazing. Past or future time spent with Weaver... seeing Conway again, changed... programmer guy chatting up musician androids... did he know Carrington from his college days or was Carrington only a friend of Lula’s?

As for Lula herself and Joseph too: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it’s a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It’s something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😔 I ship them as a full triad, if you can nudge them in that direction, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. Or... a start. idk.

I’d be interested in fic that leans on the game’s adjacent genres: wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I’m also open to AUs, real or through Xanadu. This also feels like a good place to stress that I really, really like caves.

And now for something completely different: FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense is in the tagset this year. I’d say that the crossover with the snake portion of Here and there along the Echo writes itself, but it would not be correct, as in fact I would like you to write it for me. Feel free to not feature Donald if you focus on this crossover instead!

Uru would be a fun crossover too, for Donald specifically. He’s very DRC-shaped in how he tilts at doomed projects which just so happen to be deep underground.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure, while out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. I really really love everything he stands for, even if he’s overbearingly smug in standing for it. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? What daring act of resistance did he and Bertrude pull off at some point in their past? It’d be cool if one of his old pamphlets came up at some point. Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?“/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue”? Dude could easily be voted sexiest voice in the Downside - how much is he aware of it? Does he sing? I love how he bears his ‘reader’ brand proudly. And speaking of scars, I have to wonder, looking at Manley for comparison, if the shape of his head, with that massive crack, isn’t also due to injuries.

As a refrain from my general likes: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like… I’d love to read all your headcanons.

Ship-wise, I enjoy him with Tariq as this kind of esoteric connection of minds, guarded words full of secret meanings, long contemplative walks together (is any external pov watching...?), Volfred’s Reader powers brushing against Tariq’s mind and getting weak in the knees at the starlit expanse he finds there, so unlike mortal thoughts. Tariq finds his individuality learning from him; Volfred presumably gets a transcendent glimpse of the Scribes. And I enjoy him with Oralech as pretty much the opposite of that, Oralech is so very mortal compared to him, such a precious, fleeting, burning life especially after his fall. Oralech’s idealism is very dear to me, it was their plan, their shared revolutionary spirit, I find it deeply moving. And I am very interested in seeing them rebuild their connection now that Oralech is back, changed, and in some ways he can learn to let go of his misconceptions and slowly open himself to Volfred’s love again, but in other ways that’s who he is now, with this deep-set anger, and what does it even feel to realize that you’re the symbol of the end of an era (the end of the Rites, the fading of the Scribes). I’m interested in both topside and downside endings for all of them, as long as they end up on the same side, the revolution was peaceful and they don’t angst too much about the side they ended in. Tariq can ‘find his way home’ in the near post-canon somehow or even be summoned again, as a different aspect of the same ‘moonlit vision’ that once inspired Soliam Murr.

Strandbeest: any

https://www.strandbeest.com/

I would just like words to go with these, please and thank you so very much. Worldbuild to your heart’s content! Specifically: I’m fascinated by the premise that the strandbeest are living creatures that evolve and adapt to their ecosystem. A world where life is just wind stomachs and sandy joints, and the tide that can catch you unaware. I would like a story that feels distinctly inorganic. The wonder that is the existence of these creatures. Their unique struggles. Weird and experimental if you like. With a mechanical focus, maybe?

I nominated four critters as a selection of the different cool things they can do - Percipiere Excelsus is huge and has the hammer mechanism, Suspendisse’s tail senses the hardness of the sand, Uminami is my fave caterpillar and the caterpillars overall feel like a new paradigm after a mass extinction event, Ader straight-up flies... but they’re all wonderful. If you want to focus on different strandbeest, please do!

Twin Peaks: Lucy Moran

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Whatever goes on on Blue Pine mountain or the even more mysterious things that go on on White Tail mountain where exactly zero canon locations are found. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing! But I also love the human warmth at the heart of it all, and sometimes it’s enough to anchor these characters and let them have a nice day. A fic entirely focused on some instance of coziness against the cold chaotic background of canon would be great too.

For Lucy specifically, a big draw for me is how canon (...s2 need not apply) empathizes with her way of processing the world. Not just Peaks, but On the Air’s protag who is basically a Lucy expy also gets the narrative completely on her side and that’s great. And I love how in s3, her focus on the small things around her is always echoed by bigger, climactic events beyond her horizon (bunnies / Jack Rabbit’s palace, chair order / Garland’s chair, her first scene talking about the two sheriffs / doubles everywhere...). It feels to me like some kind of off-kilter mindfulness and I love it. She’s also got a loving husband and an amazing son, which, in this economy and also this canon? Damn. The one functional family, imagine that. I am not interested in focus on family dynamics, but singularly, either Lucy/Andy or Lucy&Wally are great - in particular, I’m interested in how strange they are and yet they make it work. With the ruthless critique of traditional family structure that’s all over canon, maybe they make it work specifically because they’re not doing any of that. A bit like the Addams family... but... not goth...? Anyway. I’d love to see Lucy interact with and maybe strike a friendship with any character she’s never shared a scene with in canon! In the tagset, there’s Diane for some secretaries bonding, Audrey because??? why not?, Albert because it’d be an epic enemies to friends slowburn, some version of Laura in the future, if we’re feeling really daring maybe even some version of Coop in the future, still fragmented... or anyone you want! Outside the tagset I’d be curious about Hawk, Margaret and maybe Doris in particular, I think, and Phil, and Nadine and the Invitation to Love fandom in general (Frost says it still airs - did it get as weird as TP s3 did?), but if you have an idea with someone else, absolutely go for it!

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, whatever Twin Perfect’s on about, Cooper/Audrey, Cooper/Laura

#letter

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bluejaytaco · 4 years

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More DND with Jay

(long post is long)

(A session where Ticket Master; our chaotic god friend(?) transported us into another world where shit ain’t so bad. And our team actually works for BBEG. Also, he transported us while he himself fought BBEG. We’re trying to retrieve a sword for him.)

Alternate selves: (See us) who are you guys?

Art(panicking): We’re the improv group!

DM: Is that really what you’re going with?

Me: guess so....

Everyone else: (agreeing that Art’s panic induced call is the way to go)

Me: You know what? Imma try to seduce myself.

Koejin’s player: (gasp) yessss!

(low roll)

DM:.... Alright. So, Art goes up to himself and feels like they just had a moment, leans in to kiss himself and the other Art backs up and says “whoa whoa whoa. What the fuck are you doing? I mean, I’m pretty sure I can do better than me.”

Art: I mean.... fair...?

Koejin: Holy Shit, their Art’s an asshole!

DM: No, this is completely in character for both. Art hates himself.

Me, nodding: hardcore.

DM: So, after asking you guys all your jobs, the coordinator leads you all down the hall. He stops, turns to Art, and... kisses him on the cheek. It’s Ticket Master.

Art, exasperated: For fuck’s sake....

Ticket Master, grinning: Did I trick you?

Art: Yeah, you did.

Ticket Master: Well, now you guys have to put on that performance. Good luck! (vanishes)

Theodora, sick of his shit: So, how’s that fight going with Mrs. Red?!

DM: A piece of the ceiling breaks off and hits Theodora right in the head.

Theodora, unfazed: Oh, not good, eh?!

Art: ....fuck just... please don’t die...

(We ended up corrupting that world’s Hennessy, who then turned and attacked Ticket Master with the sword. That only opened the portal to our home on Ticket Master himself. Art gets thrown through when he tries to stop Eltbalm from attacking Red. Eltbalm then gets put in a “cube of holding” Alabaster’s been carrying and everyone else jumps through the portal after shouting for Good Mrs. Red to follow us to get Eltbalm back.

Before she can jump through the portal too, Mrs. Red gets her head cut off by a force we didn’t see and the portal closes. Our Mrs. Red is still pissed and still ready to kill us all.)

Ticket Master, freezing time to reappear right before Art gets fucked up: Alright, now if you want me to reverse time so you can save that clearly dead girl (gestures to Art’s sister laying on the ground) you need to give me my sword. After that, you never have to see me again.

Alabaster: (Standing tall and defiant)

Art: givehimtheswordgivehimtheswordgivehimtheswordgivehimthefuckingsword.

Theodora: Don’t do it, Alabaster...

Ticket Master: Look, I just want my damn sword. Give it to me and I’ll be on my way.

Art:.... Alabaster, please....

Alabaster: (Deep sigh and a pained look to Art) Here... (tosses the cube to Ticket Master.)

DM: Ticket Master pops the sword out of the cube and straps it to his back. With a quick snap of his fingers, everything is back to the way it was right before Mrs. Red burst into the cabin. Everything’s still frozen but Rieta is still alive and in one piece. He looks at all of you, tips his hat, and disappears.

(This is definitely something we won’t regret.... And I highly doubt the relationship between Art and Alabaster will be exploited in any way shape or form.)

Art, to General Green once he’s back: So.... sorry about my memories and all...

Green, possibly remembering the whole Ticket Master thing: (grunts)

(Later, he makes it verrrrry clear he has no faith or trust in Art. He blatantly states this to Alabaster.)

Me, singing: Nobody trusts Art, nobody trusts Art.

Alabaster’s Player: Except Alabaster, who met Art before anyone else and immediately imprinted on him like a baby duck.

Me: lol true.

(Art gets into a little fight with Ticket Master and pretty much sleeps with the first woman who shows interest; a bartender in the tavern owned by our leader.)

DM: So, Art; as you’re having sex with Shia, her eyes go pitch black and start oozing. She then starts to attack you. What do you do?

Me: ....uhhh, scream. Loudly and a lot.

Everyone else: (rolls to see if they can hear Art.)

Theodora: Did you hear that? Sounded like Art.

Koejin: How do you know it’s him just by a scream?

Theodora: How do you not? All Art does is scream.

Me: Hah, yeah....

DM: Everyone bursts into the room to see Art in a corner just screaming “dude, dude, dude, dude!” Shia is pissed off and points at him, then yells out “You will never get answers out of me!” Just before she attacks him, the wall breaks down and Rieta comes bursting through. The two of them starts to fight and break through to the outside. They make their way down the hole where the giant worm popped out before.

Everyone:.....

Theodora:.... What just happened?

Art:.... I am never having sex ever again...

(Hennessy runs downstairs in a faux panic to get everyone out of the bar.)

Thia: What’s going on?! What do you mean we’re under attack?!

Hennessy: Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just your employee turned out to be evil. You really should do a proper background check!

Art, coming down the stairs: Yeah, sorry. I think I turned your bartender evil...

Thia, eyeing Art: It’s okay. Would you mind putting on some pants?

Art, forgetting he was naked: Shit, right. (runs back upstairs)

DM: Did no one check on the tiefling boy? (His name is also Art.)

Me: Yeah, I’m gonna check on Little Art after I put on pants.

DM: Okay, so Art gets dressed and sees the boy sitting on the bed in the other room. He looks at Art and says “What happened? Where’d Mom go?”

Art:... Um, your mom went to take care of something. I’m also gonna go take care of something. We’ll be back soon, okay? You stay here and stay safe.

DM: The boy nods and settles back into the bed as you leave.

Alabaster’s player: so wait, this is Art’s...?

Me: Nephew, yeah.

Alabaster’s Player: Awww, Uncle A!

(Running gag in our campaign: If we roll really high on analyzing something that doesn’t need that much detail, the DM will overdo it. By like a lot. It’s most common when rolling on a door to make sure we’re not stepping into a trap.)

DM: So, you analyze the door and notice the knob is made of a beautiful brass. (goes on and on and on about the doorknob.) oh, also, the rest of the door is made up of gnome skulls...

Me: Feel like the gnome skulls were more important than the doorknob.

DM: fuck you.

In game:

Art, the one who checked this door:....um (looks at Wreybar; the gnome barbarian).... maybe they’re human... baby skulls? (DM: Roll deception on...yourself??)

Koejin: How is that any better?!

(Party is in the dungeon. Alabaster could not join us for this particular session. We find a gnome who is a part of Wreybar’s backstory. His name is Hector. He is being pulled around by air elementals.)

Me: Can I try to grab Hector before they can drag him back to the barrels?

DM: Roll for it (Cue shitty roll) So, Art tries to grab Hector but then trips over a rock and falls flat on his face.

Hennessy: Air elementals are always trying to get something and don’t stop until they have it.

Wreybar and Art(In unison): Looks like they’re trying to get a Hector (Both gasp and look at each other) Eyyyyyyyy! (finger guns)

Me: Wreybar and Art are having a moment

Wreybar’s player: (laughs)

Koejin:(Having dealt with air elementals before) So, we need to get all the oxygen out of the room.

Hennessy: (eyes the barrels of gun powder in the corner) I have an idea. (makes a copy of Hector for the elementals as Theodora grabs the real Hector. Everyone runs for the door we came through and Hennessy throws a fireball at the door then slams it shut.)

DM: Remember, the door is made of brittle bones.

Theodora: I put up my shield for everyone to hide behind.

DM: So, the flames bellow around the shield. Art, you stick your head up and come back down a second later.

Art: (the only one who’s fireproof) Yep, that’s fire!

DM: (going on and on about the next door and the history of its wood and the doorknob, which had a dent in it from a kid who was then verbally abused by his mother and grew up to be an accountant. It took five minutes to explain.)

Koejin, fascinated by the door she checked: wow... this door has some history...

Art: Huh, there’s a dent in the knob. Wonder where that came from...

Koejin: Well, let me tell you! (retells the story to an awestruck Art)

DM: So, at the end of one hall, you all see a body slumped against the wall wearing armor and holding a sword.

Theodora: I call out to the person.

DM: There’s no response.

Me: Okay, I want to investigate the body.

DM: How close are you getting?

Me: Uhhh.... like... ten feet? I don’t want to get too close.

DM: Okay, so you move closer and check it out to see that he is very dead.

Me: Okay, I’m going for the sword and armor. (Rolls a decent Slight of Hand)

DM: So, you go to pry the sword out of the hand and it just opens for you. Then, you go for the armor and his head pops up. His eye sockets look into your eyes and he says “oi! What you think you’re doing?!” He’s undead.

Art: (Still holding the guy by the armor) Oh.... uhhhh. Just... taking your stuff...

Undead guy: Like Hell you are! (DM: He goes to headbutt you and (Rolls)...dammit! His head falls off!)

Art: (watches the head roll away) Yeah, I’m taking it.

Undead guy: Oi! Stop it! (DM: He prepares to punch you in the face and (rolls) Fuck! His arm falls off!!)

(A series of failures later)

Koejin: (to Theodora) Can we keep him?

(His name is Skelly and he wants to kill gnomes. Hector in particular. But it’s okay; Hector’s a douche who’s trying to kill Wreybar. We promised him Hector and a world of adventure if he helps us... Our DM gave us actual NPC children and our party adopted a skeleton named Skelly who wants to go on adventures because he’s never seen anything other than that hallway.)

DM: It’s getting late. Do you guys wanna keep playing? I could wrap it up here with a cliffhanger.

Koejin’s player: Yeah, might as well. If we keep going, Alabaster might end up a little too lost. We’ve already got a lot to explain.

DM: Okay so, Theodora. You open the door to the room with the void. Inside, you see a floating map and a key. But you also see something else. A portal you’ve seen many times before. You know by sight, it’s a Ticket Master portal. But the person who steps through is wearing a wizard hat. You see it’s Hennessy from the alternate universe. His eyes are blacked over.

Hennessy B: (smile) Hello... friends.

DM: From the portal, you can see hands. It’s all of your hands and they are pulling themselves through.

Theodora: uuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... (roll credits)

Hennessy’s player: seems like things are coming back to bite us.

Koejin’s player: huh.... it’s almost like our actions have consequences...

#adventures of art the bard #dnd #bard #ranger #cleric #wizard #paladin #barbarian #homebrew #homebrew characters #long post #adopting npcs #Art's dex rolls are either spectacular performances or falling flat on his face there is no in between #there's so much more that I wanna post but these are some of the highlights #the explosion was the night's play of the game #shut up jay

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snicksnack90 · 4 years

Text

Nuclear

Smut (Shameless) - Loki x OC

Summary : Who needs Audible when you have a Loki to read to you? It’s truly an “Earth shattering” experience ;)

One of the finer parts of living at the Avengers tower is the more private balconies. It boasts a brick fire pit, surrounded by those expensive anti gravity chairs that you wouldn’t dare spend a dime on. There’s a few exotic looking plants, and a flat screen mounted above the sliding patio door. The best part, is no one comes out here. You’ve spent the last couple weeks lounging, engrossed in reading (and fairly new hobby). Mainly napping, if you’re being honest.

That changes one day, when The Pouty Prince joins you. He seems surprised to see you, one leg dangling towards the ground, a book splayed across the pavers at your ankle.

It’s late afternoon, and you’ve managed to skip out on “Team Dinner.” It’s not like you’re not social or anything, you just can’t stand to watch the group constantly argue amongst each other over the most simplistic things. The quiet here helps you keep your powers in check too, which is a bonus.

“Say, girl, do you lack such respect that you would split the spine of a book that doesn’t belong to you?”

You roll your eyes. “Oh hush, Princess. S’not like Stark doesn’t have 10 more copies laying around.” You shrug half- heartily. “I guess I just couldn’t get into it.”

Loki’s scowl depens, the skin of his forehead wrinkling almost comically while he stares you down. “So you would leave this fine piece of literature on the ground, like trash, because you simply lack imagination?”

You toss him a look, mouth tugging down at he edges. “What’re you, the library police?”

If Loki was created to be the God of Mischeif, then you were created to be the one absolutely Drive him insane. He was simply fascinated with watching you and he couldn’t figure out why.

You had gotten in the easy way (distant cousin to Pepper Potts) but had proved your worth time and time again. Your small stature and youthful looks made you the perfect, unexpected, and downright dangerous - spy. Being enhanced had its benefits too.

Loki saw right through your mask of dry wit and sarcasm, though. He could see the insecurity bubble at the surface every time the Group came together. There was a limited hold on the powers you possessed and the stress sometimes could be too much. Just recently you had passed out in the middle of training with Steve and had nearly destroyed the tower. Stark called you the little Nuclear Reactor, not that you minded, but it reminded you just how dangerous it all could really be.

When Loki eased into the chair opposite you, you resumed your laid back position, arm supporting your head. The last rays of light where filtering past the Gods head, shining through the dark coils of his hair. It cast shadows on his sharp cheeks and the shine of his eyes seemed greater than before. This man — no, god, was to beautiful for words. You watched him stretch back, and prop the book up before he began to read where you left off.

The sight of his mouth moving, the sound of his clipped accent and soft tenor while he read suddenly was like an aphrodisiac. The fact that he was reading a downright smutty part of a book could have helped but you were shocked when the slow heat of desire pooled in your belly. You could feel the heat rise in your cheeks while he read through the detail, eyes sparkling with mischief and one eye brow raised. When you squeezed your eyes shut all you could see in the darkness was the outline of his face, and his soft looking mouth moving in time with the recited words.

Did you seriously have a hard on for the most hated man on the planet right now? So sue you, you couldn’t help that he was probably the most attractive man you had ever seen in person.

You allowed yourself to slip into a meditative state ( a little trick from Nat). The sounds of outside faded away, and the soft sound of Loki’s voice lulled you into a near sleep.

You were awakened by the feel of weight on your chair, and when you opened your eyes, Loki was perched on the edge by your hip. Book held firmly in his lap, he smirked while peering down on you. “Did I bore you sweetling? Or are you too hot in the sun? Your face is quite flushed.”

You smiled up at him, while stretching, arms over your head and shirt riding up. You didn’t miss the sharp gaze he threw over your frame before returning to your face when you began to speak. “Told ya, just couldn’t really get into it didn’t I?”

“Is this because you lack personal experience? Or again, lack of imagination? Pity, really. ”

You are awake enough to give him an annoyed glare and start trying to talk over him when he suddenly begins to describe in great detail, the sex scene in the first chapter. “Loki, what the fu—“

“The fire burns low in his gut when she removes her shift. Never before has he seen a woman, nay...a goodness, so beautiful be cast to Earth. Especially for a man such as himself. She straddles his lap, careful of his injured shoulder and wraps one hand into his hair. - Kiss me, you fool she breathes. He tangles a great hand in her hair and does so, taking over her mouth and her senses. He reaches with his free hand to grab a hardening nipple and trap between his fingers, earning himself a low moan. She is sweet, like candy, like a breeze in the lighter seasons and he feels drunk with emotion. She begins to rock her hips over his heavy erect-“

You dig your knee into Loki’s back. “Dude, enough, sorry that I’m not creative enough to immerse myself into some stupid fairy-“

“Immerse?”

“Oh and further more, trying to embarrass me by reading porn is not -“

Your caught off guard when Loki suddenly reaches back to catch hold onto your knee, his other hand sliding into your hair and lifting your head so that he can press his mouth to yours. At first, you try to sit still, not reciprocating. His lips are soft, and you feel them part against your own and he breathes softly against your mouth. “Kiss me, you fool.”

You reach up and tangle your fingers into his collar, pressing up hard against him with a grunt and slip your tongue into his mouth. He seems surprised before he moves into action, rolling his tongue against yours, and crushing you into the chair. Loki pushes your knee up close to your chest and slips your leg over his lap, pressing his side into you as he deepens the kiss.

You sigh into his mouth when he puts his hand on your thigh, his fingers slipping under the gaping leg band of your shorts. You break away from him with a gasp and are caught like a deer in headlights watching his hand slip up your thigh.

When his pointer finger brushes the edge of your underwear, you can’t help but cant your hips up in his direction. A soft sound draws your gaze and you find him watching you, chest heaving and mouth red. He looks positively wrecked, eyes dark and like a snake coiled for its prey.

“Loki, please..” you breathe and let loose a cry when he presses his fingers up and over your mound, pressing hard onto your cloth covered clit. This is spiraling out of control but you cannot stop, won’t stop.

“What is it that you desire pet? Tell me.”

“You, I want you to touch me.” His clever fingers slip past the barrier of your panties and with a cry, your head falls back into the chair, back arching hard.

“My, My, are you so wet already for me?” He hmms softly and works the pad of his thumb against the hard nub of your clit, and teases at your entrance.

“God, you’re such a tease!” You huff, drawing him back down to your waiting mouth. He kisses like he’s had plenty of years to learn it, he kisses like it’s an art form and you’re lost to the smooth motion of his tongue when he curls two fingers into your cunt like he has all the time in the world.

You whine against his mouth and roll your hips. “Faster!” If anything he slows, withdrawing his hand completely and holds it up between your faces. You dart forward and suck them into your mouth with a moan, blinking up innocently at his stunned features.

Biting the pads of his fingers, you slyly brush your hand over the bulge in his trousers and he harshly smacks you away. “No, love, save that for another time.” And he slips his saliva coated fingers back into you, easier this time and uses his free hand to curl around your throat.

Oh, this is so hot.

He’s pumping his fingers lazily, but it’s the look on his face that makes the arousal swirl in your lower belly. The way his gaze bounces over your features makes you feel, cherished almost. Adored. Then his mouth starts going and that’s a hot combination.

Glittering dark eyes, full of emotion hold you hostage while he rocks his hand against you, choking you just enough to make you a bit lightheaded, whispering furiously to you.

Sweet, wet little girl

Going to get my cock in you next time

Tight, perfect little cunt of yours going to kill me

I’m going to ruin you, love

You hmmm deliriously, on the edge of orgasm and he must see it in your face because he suddenly picks up the pace, dragging a battle cry from your throat.

The place between your thighs is slippery and over the sound of your harsh breathing you can hear the sloppy sounds of your wet cunt giving around Loki’s slender digits.

Pleasepleaseplease

You don’t even realize that you’re blubbering until Loki groans in response about how pretty you are while begging and takes your ear lobe between his teeth.

Come for me, girl. Give it to me. Your cunt belongs to me.

Loki’s word bring about the end for you, and your climax sweeps through you like a raging tide. It sweeps you under and drags you down, and lights erupt behind your closed eyes. You can hear yourself crying out, and Loki’s rich voice reasoning to you from the darkness.

There’s a sound like rushing water and a static crackle bouncing around in your head that bursts with the note of screeching metal and shattering glass. Loki’s body drapes over you and you’re brought back down to Earth at the sound of the blaring alarm.

You blink wildly, trying to determine what the - Loki sits up and you realize that he’s withdrawn his fingers from you and- was he shielding you?

Glass tumbled down from Loki’s shoulders and hair, bouncing off your chest and scattering across the ground. It suddenly hits you that the sliding glass doors, and framing leading into the tower are a mangled mess. Your face heats when you comprehend that YOUVE done this.

Loki stands from the chair and helps you up. Brushing bits of glass from you both. You can hear the teams questioning voices echo across the way. Yelling and gasping following shortly after.

“Princess!” Tony barks. “No riling up the rookie!”

You blush furiously when Loki tosses you a wink. “Is that what they call it now, tin can?”

Just great, How do you explain this?

#loki smut #loki (marvel)#loki x reader #lemon #marvelsmut #oneshot #loki #hotboyloki #choking #smut #metahuman #reader x loki #loki x y/n #loki odinson #loki fanfic

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magiciaa · 4 years

Text

Welcome to Magicia chapter 8: A Losing Battle

((I’ve been having a bit of art block recently, but at least I’m finally on the chapter I’ve been waiting to write for a while))

“Alright, Lu, we’re going to have to figure out a disguise for you” Kat shuffled through her closet “since you don’t exactly look like a magical girl”

“Is this really necessary?” Lu asked

“Yup, ah, found it, try this on” Kat took a purple and black outfit from her closet and handing it to Lu before leaving the room

Lu looked at himself in the mirror, and he immediately hated it. Although, the outfit fit him almost perfectly, except for the sleeves on the jacket being slightly too long

“Thanks, I hate it.” Lu slammed open the door

“Looks great, now let’s go, the others are waiting for us” Kat transformed and grabbed Lu by the wrist and dragged him out the door “see you losers later, we’re going to go defeat the mafia”

“Just don’t die” Cleo didn’t look up from her book “that would be inconvenient to explain to your teachers”

“Have fun” Zapp shouted out the door

Ace sprinted out the door towards the park, with Lu and King following not far behind. When they arrived, there were so many magical girls walking around that it was hard to find her friends.

“Hey! Ace! Lu! Over here!” Fern yelled, startling several nearby magical girls

“Sup, dudes, you guys ready?” Ace asked

“Ready as we’re going to be” Nightmare got up and brushed some dirt off her dress “hope this plan works”

A short, orange and yellow magical girl with white cat ears stepped onstage and adjusted the microphone before speaking in the fakest customer service voice ever “Welcome to the MG348 audition, please line up at the stairs if you think you have what it takes to join us”

The magical girls all stopped chatting amongst themselves and lined up, Lu and Nightmare nervously joining them. The rest of the group sat in the audience a couple rows behind four magical girls, a wolf dressed all in black, some kind of elf dressed in blue with a large pink bow in her hair, a bug with white hair in a long green cloak, and a cat wearing a lot of pink and rainbows.

“We just wait for the audition to be over, and then we follow them back to the base” Doc whispered, sitting down on the bleachers with the rest of the group

“You, fish, state your name and power, and give an example of your performance” Bronze commanded

A blue fish magical girl stepped onstage and spoke extremely quietly into the microphone “Aquamarine, water manipulation”

One of MG348’s songs played on the speakers, and Aquamarine perfectly mimicked Bronze’s dance from the performances

“Impressive, Next!” Bronze shouted.

Aquamarine sat down in the audience next to Doc as the audition continued “There’s something suspicious about Bronze, I just have to figure out what it is” she whispered to herself

“I happen to know what’s up with her” Doc whispered “MG348 isn’t what it seems to be, do you want to join us in taking them down?”

Aquamarine nodded and scribbled something in a notepad. It read “I’m in. I’m not the biggest fan of talking, so I hope this is fine”

Doc nodded and gave Aquamarine a thumbs up “welcome to the Idiot Squad, name not final”

Lu was next in line, he was unreasonably nervous, considering that he didn’t even want to be there. King was floating around Lu’s shoulders, causing a couple magical girls to stare

“alright, bat, your turn” Bronze commanded

Lu stepped up to the microphone “Lu, shadow manipulation” and began to sing some anime song that Ace showed him a couple days back, which was the only thing he could think to do on the spot

“Unorthodox song choice, but not terrible. Next!” Bronze announced, as Nightmare stepped onstage and Lu joined the rest of the Idiot Squad in the audience.

Nightmare stood in front of the microphone “Nightmare Wonderland, sleep arrows and stopping time” and began to sing and dance to the cutesiest j-pop song that you would never expect someone like her knowing

Bronze stood there shocked for a second before continuing “unexpected, I like it. Next!”

Nightmare sat down with the rest of the idiot squad to watch the rest of the performances. The magical girl in the green cape kept turning around to look at the Idiot Squad in between watching the performances.

The sun was beginning to set, as the last magical girl completed her performance. Bronze stepped up to the microphone to announce who was going to join the idol group. She announced a long list of names, but towards the end of the list, announced that Lu, Aquamarine and Nightmare were selected to join the idol group.

“If you have been selected, please follow me” Bronze announced, summoning a glowing wand and holding it in the air while she walked off of the stage.

A crowd of magical girls excitedly followed behind Bronze, with Lu, Nightmare and Aquamarine near the back. The Idiot Squad followed stealthily behind, mostly by hiding in bushes and on top of trees and buildings, until Bronze stopped in front of the large abandoned school building across the street from the park, and on the same street as Ace’s house.

“You’re telling me that we could’ve just busted into the old school building” Ace whisper-shouted to Doc.

“Never mind that, look” Doc replied.

Bronze went inside the building, and the crowd of magical girls followed.

“Perfect” Doc whispered to herself and ran toward the door with the Idiot Squad not far behind.

Doc kicked down the doors, sending one flying and hitting Bronze in the face mid-sentence “Bronze” she pointed dramatically

“Kitten,” Bronze grinned madly “let’s show these newbies what we’re really about, kill them”

“Aye Aye, Nya~” the cat magical girl unsheathed her claws and charged towards the Idiot Squad

“NO!” Nightmare yelled, instantly appearing in front of Kitten “You’re not hurting Sprinkles”

“Mewve out of the way before I murder you too nya~” Kitten’s voice instantly changed “ugh, I can’t stand doing that neko girl voice, it just pisses me off to no end, now scram before I slice you into little pieces”

“I don’t care if you have to kill me, but just don’t hurt Sprinkles” Nightmare declared

Kitten thrust her paw forward, impaling Nightmare in the chest, and shattering the black gem on her bow. Nightmare went limp and fell to the ground, black blood spreading onto the floor

“You BITCH” Sprinkles cried, running to Nightmare’s side as her body dissolved into gray sparkles “Lynn… she’s dead… no… she can’t be…” Sprinkles grabbed the shards of Nightmare’s transformation device off of the ground

“So what, she got in my way, and you’re next” Kitten was inspecting her paw, stained black from Nightmare’s blood

“I’m not going down that easily” Sprinkles dried her tears and summoned her axe, dashing behind Sprinkles and snapping her neck with the handle, knocking her out “she’s not dead, I just bought us some time while she regenerates”

“GUARDS!” Bronze screamed.

The tall wolf magical girl in all black came to Bronze’s side “what do you need, boss”

“Treble Wolf, kill the spider and her troublesome friends” Bronze commanded

“As you wish” Treble bowed slightly and summoned a battle axe fashioned after an electric guitar before charging forward

Ace blocked the strike with her scythe, but Treble’s axe was too strong and snapped the scythe in half, dissolving it into red sparkles

Lu wandered to the elevator at the back of the room, and went to the basement. When he arrived, the atmosphere was far different than what was upstairs, the metal walls were rusted, and there were stains of magical girl blood splattered everywhere.

“Is someone there?” a timid voice rang out among the empty room “can you help me?”

“Who’s there” Lu answered “this place is seriously creepy”

“Go to the door on the left of the main room” the voice instructed

“Alright, what do you need help with- JESUS PE- FUCK” Lu phased through the door and got a sight of a ton of magical girl corpses, with a half corrupted ghost floating above them

“Welcome to the Rainbow Room, help me get out of here, and I’ll help you” the ghost said “I’m Reaper, by the way, even though we’ve met before, I never actually introduced myself”

“Lu” Lu replied “you can get these off?”

“yup” Reaper removed the power limiters off of Lu’s wrists “there you go, sorry about that, by the way, you scared me”

Lu grabbed Reaper’s hand and pulled her back through the wall “now watch this, King! Now!”

Lu changed into a giant monster, a Soul Beast known as The Prince, and went onto all fours. “get… on…” the Soul Beast struggled to speak

Reaper got on, and held on tightly as The Prince flew through the ceiling and landed in the main room.

Ace was clutching her right eye, which was bleeding profusely as Doc fought Treble Wolf

Doc was trying to dodge Treble’s attacks, although the tank of goo on her back was almost empty, she continued shooting. Doc narrowly avoided a swing from Treble’s axe, but when she tried to attack, her guns just clicked, she was out of ammo. She switched to her melee weapons, two Wolverine-like claws on each hand, originally designed as lightning rods, but makes a good emergency weapon if needed.

Treble Wolf swung downward with her axe, and Doc raised her left arm to block it with her claws, but she overextended her arm, and Treble’s axe went straight through. Neon green blood was spilling everywhere, and Treble Wolf was completely unfazed, so she couldn’t use Sora’s trick from the night before. Suddenly, Televii jumped in to restrain Treble wolf, with his arms wrapped several times around her neck and Sora pointing a gun at her

“You’re not hurting anyone anymore” Sora threatened “these are kids. they don’t deserve to be killed by the likes of you”

“I didn’t think I’d have to do this, but firefly, get rid of them” Bronze yelled to the green caped magical girl

“No.” the magical girl grabbed Bronze by the neck with giant thorny plant arms “I don’t think I will, and the name is Sock”

“Well you’re all so annoying, I might as well get you out of my hair forever!” Bronze cackled crazily and summoned her wand “ERASE!”

“RUN!” Doc shouted “QUICKLY!”

Sock threw Bronze aside, Televii headbutted Treble Wolf and knocked her out, and the Idiot Squad plus Sock ran for the door, slamming it behind them

“Wait- we forgot PJ!” Doc remembered what they were originally there for

The Prince busted through the wall, carrying Reaper and a red chef magical girl on his back

“Doc?” the red magical girl jumped off of The Prince and tackle-hugged Doc

“PJ!” Doc hugged PJ to the best of her ability

“My lab! Now!” Sora announced, pointing in the direction of her house

The Idiot Squad ran to Sora’s lab and immediately collapsed inside.

#my writing #welcome to magicia #long post #tw: swearing

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srnokedmirrors · 4 years

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* . day to night , dark to light fall the s a n d s o f t i m e .

{ ross lynch, twenty-one, trans male, he/him } Have you seen ZELD CYELN “CIEL” NOHANSEN walking around? Little do they know, they’re the child of LINK & PRINCESS ZELDA from THE LEGEND OF ZELDA, and they HAVE TWO SIBLINGS ( one older, one younger ) . I guess that explains why they’re so CHARMING & ARTISTIC and GUARDED & INSECURE. They are a STREAMER. — penned by eve.

FIRST THINGS FIRST.

Hello hello again , folks !! It’s EVE and if you thought I went completely feral about Resident Evil earlier you are . . . sorely mistaken because now we are in Zelda territory and Zelda encompasses literally every fiber of my being. This OC is my most beloved ( despite the fact he’s an absolute prick ) and I have been itching to write him as a next-gen of Zelink , so VOILA , but just a few things !!

I love The Legend of Zelda . . . a lot. That’s the first thing. And my friends call me the Zelda lorekeeper since I know pretty much everything about the games like that back of my hand.

Another - as it’s always been a fact about his character , Ciel here is diagnosed with Type II Bipolar. Now , I want to clarify that I also am the same , and he was originally written as a comfort character to sorta see myself in a character I wrote ( and he became his own dude over the years. ) It’s not something that’ll pop up often , but I just wanted to let y’all know since I’m not gonna erase my own rep , I write from experience since I’m the same.

TWS AHEAD : Manipulation , mental illness

I. THE PAST - DO YOU REMEMBER ??

The second of The Hero & The Princess - Prince Zeld Cyeln Nohansen , carrying on the traditional naming conventions to keep the name Zelda in the family with obvious corruptions. Your older brother could not - and AS WELL , you are the only child in the family that possesses the holy powers of the royal bloodline that your mother carries , as shown by the brand of the Triforce on the back of your right hand. And immediately , expectations are thrust upon your shoulders before you can even walk.

It’s because of your power that you , instead of the eldest , are to succeed the throne as the next king of Hyrule once you become of age , and although your mother vows to not treat you the same as your father treat her , she often reminds you that the beautiful , sunlight-bathed kingdom will be yours.

So you grow. You grow & you adapt to the life of royalty , the CROWN PRINCE , and your relationship with your parents is better than most. While you’re significantly closer to your mother than your father , spending your days in the library with her & learning how to paint her visage , you also follow your father out to scope the kingdom on horseback. You grow up kind & gentle , the intelligence of your mother but the softness of your father , and it is well-known throughout the kingdom that you are DESTINED for good things.

It’s when you’re fourteen years old that you meet a boy.

A boy your age , a boy who smiles at you and you get fairies fluttering in your stomach. A boy who tells you that you’re pretty and by Nayru are you getting your first crush ??

Hm.

But you can’t see through the lies - that even though you’re young , manipulation knows no age and you are heartbroken to find that this boy leads you to a group of bandits that go on the attack and aim to STEAL the raw power you carry. After you’re tricked into bringing magical artifacts to their clutches , that is , that your family has gathered over the years - the goddess harp , the ocarina of time , and the cursed , wicked Majora’s Mask.

Your father sweeps into rescue you , and although you feel guilty , you aren’t berated for your mistakes. He only wants to know what happened , and if you’re alright , and you’re a sobbing mess but you tell your parents everything and they recognize that the evil forces that plagued them are NOW targeting their offspring.

You are only fourteen. But the betrayal turns you cold , and you close yourself off , now hesitant to trust. And you learn that there are DANGEROUS forces out there who want to hurt & use you in the same way , hence why you use your mother’s old study connected to her old bedroom ( now currently yours ) and you begin to research , research , research. You look back on the legends of old , and start practicing the magic of not only your bloodline , but the taboo power of shadow - such as that of the TWILI , a project aiming to recreate the mirror. You also use the mask , hoping to tap into the wicked power it carries to turn it around. You train with the Sheikah , as Sheikah blood runs in your veins as well , to master the art of using the shadows & the unseen to your advantage. You become a teenager devoted to your work - a mad scientist & magician , and the whispers of a ‘ mad alchemist prince ’ sweep throughout the kingdom due to the rumors you can stay awake for DAYS working on one thing , before crashing and moving onto the next.

But there is still pain - a loneliness & a hurt which you try to bury deep down , but it’ll still consume you to the point where you don’t know how to think clearly. You try and mask yourself best you can , but there is still a little boy , deep down , who only wishes to be loved and cared for and cherished by people his own age. Your work is your comfort but you are also learning to sink yourself in it to the point where it’s becoming a hindrance.

One day , maybe , you’ll get what you want - and everything will be okay. But the world is currently at your throat , so . . . how long will that be ??

Your sixteenth year changes everything. The Crown Prince goes missing , and he is lost without the comfort of his parents.

And he awakens in another day , as a new being , with only his wit & his charm to carry on.

II. PRESENT - WHO ARE YOU , YOURSELF ??

Okay so IN A NUTSHELL Ciel is the crown prince of Hyrule due to the fact he’s essentially the ‘Zelda’ of his generation - the only child that carries the sacred power of the goddess Hylia , and this kid is incredibly smart and artistic but due to being manipulated by dark forces when he was young , he’s EXTREMELY insecure and lacks trust , instead trying to become as powerful as possible by any means possible so he isn’t hurt again since now he’s a target like his parents were.

HIS CHARACTER . . . is incredibly complex. It doesn’t change much with or without memories because even though he hasn’t experienced that same shit , those trust issues & insecurities are still well-embedded into him. The main difference is that he’s still smart , but not because of excessive research on Hyrulean magic & history & technology.

ON THE SURFACE , Ciel appears to be honestly very exuberant , quick-talking , and , to some , annoying. He’s a bit of a loudmouth , he seems harmless in the aspect that he isn’t downright mean or anything , he’s just . . . a nuisance. Charming in the aspect that he knows how to talk his way out of any situation since he has a MOUTH on him , but he knows how to use it. He overshares , it seems , but in turn , he’s actually not revealing anything about himself of any importance. He’s just keeping his cards to his chest but he doesn’t anyone to see so , so he places counterfeit cards on the table.

Ciel is always one step ahead , and the best way to be is to convince everyone else that you’re far behind.

NOW ON THE INSIDE . . . Ciel is extremely caring & gentle. He cares a lot about the people he loves , but he’s hesitant to open up or trust other people given the fact he doesn’t want to be hurt , and he doesn’t want to make mistakes. He’s very observant & again , incredibly intelligent , knowing well how to read the atmosphere and pick out things that most don’t notice. He is insecure in the fact that he constantly thinks horribly of himself , and although he’s great at hiding it , it’s easy to get his feelings hurt. He hates that he has to keep on a mask since it makes him easily unlikable , but he thinks it’s the only way to stave off the most damage. But he’s a good kid & has a heart of gold , it’s just that . . . his heart has a few booboos on it. He CRAVES love & validation & affection but he’s afraid to ask for it or to take it since he’s gone down worse roads before by opening up to the wrong people.

He’s an artist - very talented in drawing & painting !! His apartment is littered with sketches & drawings and supplies and he would’ve gone to art school but money is tight and he doesn’t know he’s a prince in his actual reality so . . . yeah.

But his day job is that he’s a VERY popular video game streamer named Alchemyst , mainly doing let’s plays of adventure games & stuff with friends to get a good laugh. He also has a tendency to go on hilarious rants in a lot of his videos , resulting in MANY fanmade compilations & memes. He’s got a dedicated fanbase that he openly adores , and streaming also sorta helps him since he is a bit afraid of going into the outside world slightly.

It’s funny , because as a streamer , he isn’t at all obnoxious or annoying - it’s the closest he gets to acting like himself , even if he has to act a little more EXTROVERTED than he actually is.

THAT’S THE BASIS again , much more of a show than tell character but . . . Love him. I love him.

I DON’T have much ideas for wanted connections at this point aside from like . . . friends , exes , crushes , enemies , fans of his stream , etc. When I get more of a braincell I’ll put specific stuff down , but if it HELPS his fake life is shrouded in mystery bc Ciel doesn’t like talking about it ( aka , his fake past was p bad so he just prefers to act like he came out of fucking nowhere. )

But that’s it !! I’ll b responding to starters & calls soooon ~ ! I am ALL for plotting if u guys want , so just hit me up on here or Discord n I’ll respond as soon as I can !!

#awakenings:intro #* . abt : ciel #manipulation tw #mental illness tw

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khadij-al-kubra · 6 years

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Persephone & Hades AU...

For your consideration, and bearing in mind that the original myth is not really all that toxic at all and is not a show of Stockholm syndrome...

The “””Kidnapping””” of Persephone:

Logan as Hades-

Bespectacled Ruler of the Underworld

Takes his job very seriously (wears a black and blue necktie with his long silky black robes)

Cold pale skin and intelligent grey eyes with slicked back black hair. Looks scarier and meaner than he actually is. (although he can have a bit of a temper if pushed and will have loud sharp outbursts of “FALSEHOOD!”)

Very logical and methodical in how he rules the underworld and keeps the souls passing through organized. Like he’s got the judgement thing down to a T! But despite his cold demeanor he’s actually very generous and kind at heart. He just recognizes the importance of his work and in remaining just yet impartial

Sucker for dogs, hence why he has a three headed one. He just wishes he had more time to play with Cerberus, but alas ruling the dead alone takes up a lot of ones time.

Has a sweet tooth and often indulges in jams made from the pomegranates that grow in his realm.

Is on decent enough relations with his brothers (Emile as Poseidon and Deceit as Zeus), although he STILL thinks that Deceit cheated in their straw draws, but let it go because he’s actually best suited as the more organized brother for ruling the dead.

Is secretly very lonely. Once in a blue moon he’ll sneak up to the surface for fresh air and sunlight. One day he spots a certain someone in a flower field who takes his breath away. (can you blame him, i mean that smile! )

Patton as Persephone-

Supreme flower child! (flowy sky blue clothes, grass green eyes, sun-kissed freckly skin and wheat colored curls, barefoot, flower crown)

Loves gardening, animals, and helping his father Demeter (Roman) with the changing seasons. Loves Roman to bits....He just wishes he wasn’t so overprotective. Like come ON dad, i’m a grown god, i can look after myself. I don’t run off on my own THAT much!

Is protective and loving towards most all forms of life and tries to see the good in each and every soul, both mortal and god/goddess #momfriendtothemax

Unless given reason to feel otherwise. Then...weeeell at the least he’ll give you a stern talking to but at worst...lets just say you DONT want to get on the bad side of someone who can grow massive and sharp thorn bushes and effect earthquakes when pushed too far. XO

Sometimes gets bored with the same old routine with Roman and wishes to get away and see something new from time to time. Maybe have some quiet time to make his own floral crafts and garden peacefully for fun and not work.

Often sneaks off when Roman is busy and goes wandering along dirt paths, sit under or climb a tree, or frolic in the flowers.

Roman as Demeter -

God of the Harvest, but like, EXTRA in all ways shape or form. (”we can top last years crop no problem, MORE WHEAT STALKS!” “No dad, we can’t, then there’ll be too much in this region and not enough for the next.” “LONGER SUMMER!!” “No! Bad idea dad! That’ll throw the seasons off”)

Often dresses in flowing gold threaded and sunset colored robes, but will change ensemble to match the seasons.

Enjoys watching the goings ons of the mortals, they’re just so entertaining! Especially is fond of traveling thespians and will bless the harvest of wherever they perform in.

Loves his son more than anything and has him help in godly duties because it keeps him close so he can keep an eye on Patton MUST KEEP PRECIOUS BAB SAFE!!!

Stubborn (but will never own up to it)

Virgil as Charon-

In charge of Ferrying souls across the River Styx

Doesn’t mind his job all that much but is #done with soooo many of these complaining, noisy and often rude or entitled souls. (like, NO dude, i don’t care who you were ruler of in the living world. Its two coins for passage like everyone else buddy!)

Really just wants a nap (often tries to hit up Remy a.k.a. Morpheus but he shows up late ALL the time)

Is actually very compassionate and gentle. He tries to ease the fears of souls who he sees are younger or were genuinely good in life or died in unfair ways.

Lives for the dark skull & bones aesthetic

Master of snark

Plays chess with Logan when either of them have some rare down time

Click the cut for full story

One day Roman and Patton are off doing their nature godly duties, and Roman is nagging his son about the proper way to harvest corn. (”Yes father, i know how to do it. you’ve only told me like a hundred times” “well i just want to make sure to remind you and that you don’t cut yourself on the sickle”)

Patton sneaks off one day to pick flowers since it’ll probably be the last bloom before autumn sets. Suddenly he sees a curious crack in the ground and ambles over to it to take a look. (”what sort of creature could’ve made this deep thing?”) He leans in too far however and pulls an Alice in Wonderland.

Turns out that crack was made by Logan. Apparently he’d become so deeply smitten by Patton that he went to his older brother Deceit/Zeus for advice. (Yes he was a dick and a little shit at times-although took his duties seriously when need be-and tricked many of his lovers into bed, but Emile didn’t have nearly as much love experience as their elder brother & Logan was desperate)

Deceit had actually been pleased when his too serious brother told him that he’d fallen for the spring god. His advice to Logan had been to simply kidnap Patton and either bed him then woo him or woo him and then bed him. Logan, of course, didn’t listen because that was the stupidest idea ever! (”what under earth was i thinking? This is the guy who turned himself into a cygnini in order to copulate with a woman behind his wife’s back.”) Besides, he was too painfully shy and socially awkward to try wooing. (He worked with the dead for crying out loud, not the best circumstances for practicing social skills)

He did however create a crack in the ground so he could sneak peeks at Patton from below the earth and admire him from afar. However, he’d been called back on an emergency and forgot to close one particular crack up before leaving again.

So sufficed to say, he was fairly shocked when he suddenly heard screaming above him one day. He looked up to find one Patton falling towards him and just caught him in his arms in time. (BLUSH CITY ON BOTH PARTS)

Patton thanks Logan but is admittedly miffed at him when he learns Logan was the one who’d made that crack in the ground. “What were you thinking leaving a big hole in the earth like that? Some poor oblivious mortal or animal could’ve fallen into it and gotten hurt!” “Apologies I-it was a foolish oversight on my part. i-I certainly hope you are uninjured?”

After a while Patton forgives him when he sees how truly sorry this (admittedly) scary and stern looking god is. (lest we forget he’s one of the big three) And Logan is honestly just trying not to show how flustered he is. i mean Patton is there in his realm! They both realize the crack is far too high up for Patton to get back out through right away. So Logan offers to have Patton stay in his palace until he can fetch his assistant Virgil/Charon to help Patton back up the next day. IN HIS OWN QUARTERS, OF COURSE! Logan says blushing, trying to be a gentleman. Patton agrees, promising upon Logan’s request to only follow one rule: “You must NOT eat anything”. Strange, but okay. Besides, it’ll be nice getting a break from his father. And it’s just for one night, right? (WRONG!)

Patton ends up having to wait longer than he realized because both Logan and Virgil are super busy with ferrying and judging souls. So he wanders around the Underworld. (of course he is marked with untouchable safety from almost everything as a guest of Logan)

One night however Patton finds himself stumbling upon a sparse garden. He’s surprised that anything is capable of growing down there in the realm of the dead, but even more shocked by the poor state of it. “Really, just look at the se rose bushes. They’re so brittle!” (it’s not Logan’s fault. He’s a busy boi. plus the god of the dead doesn’t exactly have a green thumb) Really the only thing flourishing down there is a single Pomegranate tree. The fruits on it look so red and shiny and juicy and...well...whats the worst that could happen if he eats just a few seeds?

Of course if you know the myth, it means now Patton cant leave. Because, well, greek god realm rules. Sufficed to say, Patton is pretty miffed that Logan hadn’t thought to tell him why he shouldn’t eat the darn fruit in the first place. Logan is greatly frustrated at Patton because a) he didn’t listen, and b) he actually has a point there and he does NOT like being wrong. Still, nothing to be done about it now.

Over time they cool off and apologize to each other. Patton’s still kind of mad though because now he can’t go home at all if he wanted too, but he recognizes that Logan wasn’t forcing him to stay on purpose. So he get’s over it and tries to make the best out of the situation. At least he can finally get away from Roman’s nagging for a while.

* Meanwhile in the living world, a frantic and angry Roman raises hell. “WHERE IS MY BOOOOYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?” (Thebes did not have a good crop that year)

While in the Underworld Patton starts talking to some souls, listening to their stories and offering kind and comforting words. Which as it turns out makes them more at ease and willing to go for judgement as they pass on. Logan’s fondness for Patton grows as he witnesses these acts of compassion and kindness. He also comes to respect Patton when he sees just how fierce he can be in the face of those who’d been cruel or unjust in life. ”I’m sorry, you did what to how many people!? and NOW you’ve got the nerve to demand entrance into Elysium young man!? Logan, hold my flower.” “Fret not Patton. I have your bougainvillea.” (art link for this scene)

Meanwhile Patton cant help but notice that, although he’s stern and serious on the outside, Logan is actually a very gentle god deep down. (he picks up on this from the soft tone of Logan’s voice as he speaks to souls being judged who’d suffered in life, or the way he reassures the more anxious ones with facts and logic about the afterlife that set them at eases “it’s not all punishment and Tartarus you know. Statistically few souls on the grand scale are malign enough to enter there. The Asphodel Meadows are quite pleasant, I assure you.”)

Logan works so hard and tirelessly at his often depressing job, but never acts mean or harsh unless a soul is nasty or rude or was truly evil, and Patton gains an admiration of him for that. (besides, he is actually quite handsome and beautiful in a cold distant way, like the stars and moonlight on a midsummers night) Patton also sees what a softie Logan can be when he’s playing with Cerberus. (”Who’s my excellent tri-headed canine? Who is a good demon dog?”) Patton gushes and of course Cerberus and Patton LOVE each other. Watching Patton play with the big dog becomes Logan’s newest favorite thing. (”By the gods Virgil, it is too precious to process!”)

Sometimes Patton will keep Logan company when there’s a lull in souls. He’ll tell Logan about all the different places he’s seen and what mortals are like when still alive. Logan meanwhile will often go into rants about the fascinating bits of knowledge he’s accumulated over the years from souls who’ve lived full lives. Logan enjoys having someone who enjoys listening to him (not that Virgil isn’t a respectful listener, but Logan sometimes wonders if he only does is because he’s his boss) And Patton really likes being able to share his own opinions and ideas without condescendingly albeit gently being told, (“no, no, my silly sweet boy. This is the right way to do it. Now eat your cereal, you need the fiber sweet pea”) Having picked up some of the mortal’s sense of humor, Patton is very much a fan of word play and LOVES making puns. Logan is...less than amused by them. However, the first time he makes Patton laugh with a clever quip (about Virgil or one of the more disgruntled souls) he swore the whole Underworld actually lit up. He treasures every time he can make that precious god laugh and smile.

Heck, even Virgil warms up to Patton and actually becomes VERY protective of the spring god. Patton sees through to his anxious softie center and enjoys talking to Virgil who is a very good listener. Meanwhile Virgil finds Patton’s sunny disposition refreshing and his warm presence calming. Patton will often keep Virgil company, but can’t always bring himself to follow when he has to ride across the River Styx. The memories and voices coming off the water just make him too sad.

Virgil ends up playing wingman for Logan. He tells Logan how Patton’s been a bit down in the dumps and recommends Logan cheer him up with a present. “That is an excellent idea Virgil, but what? What could possibly be good enough for that sweet honeysuckle?” “Well you’ve spied on him enough times- and don’t try to deny it boss- what does he like?”

Sufficed to say, Patton LOVES his surprise underworld garden that Logan had worker rigorously on creating for him. He knows it couldn’t have been easy. Of course, being the god of the dead, Logan cannot maintain the garden and Patton is more than happy to have free creative reign over it. He giddily catches Logan in a big hug, and is pleased when a blushing Logan returns the heartfelt embrace, pressing a tender kiss to Patton’s forehead. Then he takes a blushing Patton’s hands in his.

”Patton, my honeysuckle, sunshine of my heart...I cannot contain it any longer. For so long you’ve been the object of my affection, but over the course of our time together down here, although the circumstances had been less than idea, my love for you has only deepened. Would you perhaps...although I am not worthy of you...would you consider marrying me, and ruling the Underworld by my side?” By now Patton is blushing like crazy and in tears because, although he’d been mad at Logan for getting him stuck down there at first, he realizes that he’s come to deeply love the dark god too. Logan worries that he’s crossed a line but then Patton beams and looks up at him with tears in his eyes. “Oh Lo-lo, my brilliant beautiful lobelia blossom, I-” BAM!

Cue a properly pissed off Roman crashing down to the Underworld. He’s also got Deceit/Zeus with him by the ear. “AHA! So THIS is where you’ve been keeping my precious boy!” “Deceit, you told him!?” “He got it out of me. Sorry, not Sorry. I may be the ruler of the gods, but Roman is quite -ow- convincing when angry.”

Roman rushes over to Patton and they embrace, because although it was nice having time to himself Patton did miss his beloved father. After Roman fusses over Patton-“Are you alright? Are you hurt? have you been eating properly?” “yes, yes, i’m fine father. I promise!”- Roman unleashes verbal hell on, well, the god of hell. He reprimands Logan for kidnapping his son, but Patton quickly comes to Logan’s defense saying that it wasn’t his fault and the whole thing had been an accident, not a kidnapping. When he hears the whole story Roman does calm down a bit, and is admittedly happy to see Patton so happily in love as well. (he may be a helicopter parent, but the god of the harvest is quite the romantic at heart and loves seeing Patton so happy. Even if he doesn’t think the doom and gloom Logan is good enough for his precious little sunflower)

But upon finding out about the pomegranate sees he practically begs Logan to release him so that Patton can come back to the land of the living with him. (besides, he does still need him to help with the seasons and crops) Logan apologizes, saying it’s impossible and there’s nothing he can do. He just doesn’t have that kind of power. Then all three hear Deceit clear his throat.

“Ahem. God of gods speaking, and if you’re all done blubbering, i may have a solution.” So he tells them that there may be a loophole he can work around. He’ll give Logan his blessing to marry Patton, who will also be allowed to go back upworld with Roman, but on the condition that Patton spends part of the year co-ruling the Underworld. He tells them that for the number of pomegranate seeds that Patton ate, he’ll be obligated to spend a month with Logan. “Well darling, how many seeds did you eat?” They all look at Patton expectantly. Technically Patton only at 3 seeds, but heckitty heck, he really wants more time with Logan than three months. And frankly, he enjoyed the idea of getting some time away from Roman too, bless him but he cannot face so much nagging again!

He lies and says six. Only six seeds. Because it’s not like anyone was there to see him or could know. Weeeell maybe the all seeing god of gods, but Deceit just winks and smirks at Patton, pressing a finger in secrecy to his lips behind Logan and Roman’s backs. So it’s agreed that Patton will spend the summer and spring half of the year in the Living world with Roman and the fall and winter half ruling the Underworld with Logan.

Before he goes back up with Roman though, Patton and Logan are wed. It’s Logan’s first and only time back to Olympus (he forgot how bright and noisy it was up there!) and all the greek gods and goddesses bear witness to their union. Even Virgil is granted a short vacation to be the witness of honor for his two favorite immortals. As it turns out the months apart end up being good for Roman as well as Patton. He gets a lot more work done now that he isn’t constantly fretting (actively anyways) over Patton or keeping him out of trouble or from wandering.

When they consummate their marriage for the first time, hoooboi! Logan’s so bashful but respectful (never having been with any other being before, mortal or immortal) and Patton thinks its adorably sweet. Having been topside, well, lets just say Patton snuck off every now and then when he could to “frolic” with a few naiads and mortals he found sweet or lovely. So he ends up being a thorough teacher to Logan. Turns out they’re quite compatible in more ways than one ;)

Patton ends up being a fantastic co-king of the underworld. Heck, he’s even incorporated the new job into his aesthetic (he always wears a crown of flowers and bird skulls in the Underworld) and, as it turns out, can be even scarier than Logan! Only when some foolish soul makes him mad or gets on his bad side. So none do. And with the souls being more behaved it takes the pressure off of Virgil and Logan a LOT. But for the most part Patton remains a sweet, kind and benevolent co-ruler to the dead souls, and balances out Logan’s stricter judgements quite well. Logan now has a bit more breather time to read and play with Cerberus since he’s not the only one in charge of the whole Underworld anymore. And he and Patton LOVE spending time together in Patton’s dark yet flourishing underworld garden!

Patton is always so happy to go back to the Living world with Roman when winter’s over. Of course he hates leaving Logan and misses him. Logan doesn’t do a very good job of hiding his sadness and tears, but understands. He does get a bit clingy their last nights though. (he becomes a kissy snuggly fiend) Virgil always promises Patton that he’ll take care of Logan while he’s gone. But Patton is a child of the earth and he does tend to miss the sunshine and his father. So he get’s back to work with a newfound exuberance, making the flowers grow, spending time with Roman and frolicking about the world. He always does his best to bring back a new scroll or star map for Logan, who treasures every gift and is slowly building a library for himself.

Sufficed to say, the decades pass by, Logan and Patton attentively fulfill their godly duties, and remain happily and devotedly in love with one another.

Tag List: @altruistic-skittles @thekeytohappiness-is-you @canadian-crofters@icecoldparadise @the-pastel-peach @justisaisfine @bluebloodstains@purpleshipper @patchworkofstars @axyzel @hissesssss @beautifully-terribly@pink-and-purple-flowers @jynxlovesluck @thatsanswitch @6tick6tock6@hanramz-the-fander @azlinne @helplesscreator @thestoryofme13 @bibbidi-bobbity-booyah @accidental-sanders @moonstone-fox @smokeyrutilequartz@phlying-squirrel @madly-handsome @puns-and-patton @notveryglittery@eequalsmcscared @safesandersides @lizziepopanime @anxiously-unsatisfied-world @ab-artist @unikornavenger @queer-human-being @grey-lysander @asofterfan @fangirltothefullest @tinkslittlebelle @allsortsofgeekery @fuck-my-life-i-want-food @ironwoman359

#KDsWriting #Persophone&Hades AU #logicality #sanders sides #sanders sides au #Logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #deceit sanders #persephone #Hades #sanders sides fandom #famders #greek gods au

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shyshysmind · 5 years

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the beginning of a thing

This is the beginning of a thing. It is also published here >>>>> https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/178504141/write/705655879

enjoy :) Who am I? Your guess is as good as mine, really.Am I simply the young hardware store cashier with blue hair and long roots who sometimes wears bright red lipstick (which, by French fashion standards, is more of a warm red than a cool tone red and doesn’t match my skin tone)? Maybe I’m not all that complex; it’s possible that my life really isn’t much more intricate than what customers see when I scan the barcodes on their oak two-by-fours in their carts and take their dirty coupons in my thin white hand with a smile. For the most part, I don’t speak to my coworkers unless spoken to, and as far as customers go, I am on autopilot: “Hello, you find everything okay?” If the customer only sets one or two items on my counter (usually a soap-box-sized carton of screws or some small random piece of plumbing piping): “Would you like a bag for that?” (It makes me happy when they say no; plastic bags are horrible for the environment.) The customers usually insert their cards into the card reader on my counter and then stare at me in their idle, waiting for me to perform some magical cashier trick on the computer, unaware until I peep up and tell them so that the card reader machine is waiting on them to push a button or enter a credit pin number. Maybe I’m just as dull and reticent when I go home after nine hours of, “Hello, you find everything okay? Would you like a bag for that? It’s gonna have you select debit or credit--here’s your receipt, and here is a coupon for five dollars off a purchase of twenty-five or more,” as I am when I take my lunch breaks alone in the quiet of the training room, reading some overdue library book and pinching small bite-sized pieces off of a gas station brownie to nibble at instead of taking direct bites out of the suspiciously oily pastry.Maybe I’m actually the notions inside my head. Maybe I am just a tool that they use to be heard and make their dreams a reality; maybe I’m not my body or job. Maybe I am a successful, peaceful, light-hearted artist and author--I just haven’t published my novels or hosted any successful art shows yet. Or any art shows, for that matter.Perhaps I’m my mother’s daughter; stubborn and crazy, with an invariably rotten attitude and enough financial issues for myself and all of my fellow cashiers to build a boat out of and sail away from civilization and debt.Maybe I’m always so quiet because I’m holding my tongue, like my mother, and thinking about slashing tires and throwing ceramic dishes at skulls and sinking screwdrivers into flesh, all in the name or petty revenge or an intense burst of anger. Except, come to think of it, my mother doesn’t actually ever hold her tongue, so I suppose I might just be quiet for reasons entirely my own.Maybe I’m just like my mother’s mother, like my mother is so committed to convincing me I am, except fifty years younger; nasally voice, although mine is less whiny and severe; sitting in front of a computer for hours a day, except she uses the computer her husband bought for her to do lazy transcription work so she can have money for cigarettes, the only thing in life her husband won’t buy for her, and I saved up my paychecks in high school to buy my laptop so that I could leave Mudcap High School and graduate early through online classes; we both sleep a lot, and, as my mother said when I was in high school, I “spent a lot of time on my ass” just like Grammy does--although my time in bed was always induced by an inability to find the motivation to get up, and Grammy’s bedridden state came from staying up too late playing online solitaire. Maybe I’m just that girl from Mudcap High School whose hair displayed a new fresh (done at home) short cut and color of the rainbow at the beginning and end of every month whose clothes all came from Salvation Army and whose stomach was always making obnoxious attention-seeking noises in Spanish--wait, you thought all that time that I was a boy? Well, yeah, I guess that’s reasonable. I wore a lot of huge baggy sweaters.Maybe you just know me because you know somebody who knew me. In that case, maybe I only exist in your world and consciousness as the girl who broke Jo-Ellan’s heart, or the girl who tried to look like a boy but then dropped out and grew boobs and is now hot (in the online pictures, at least). Maybe your friend has a friend who knew my twin brother, and so you heard from your friend’s friend who knows my twin brother that my twin brother’s friend saw me on a dating app, and my brother told him, “Don’t worry dude, she doesn’t like dudes. She’s just looking for a sugar daddy.” And so my twin brother, whom we will call “Z”, laughed about it with his friend once the shocking sighting of Z’s twin sister on a dating app had passed, and all was well, but now people know that Z’s twin sister is a sugar baby and not as quiet and sweet as she seems.Maybe you heard about me from Dan or Katherine; maybe you hope to meet me someday, because I sound like a very sweet person and you like the artwork of mine which they showed you. Maybe you heard about me from Tyler, the guy I made sandwiches with when I worked at Subway in high school--in which case you probably believe him when he says that I did drugs in the back room of the restaurant. Maybe you don’t even know my name--maybe you know me because you’ve seen the art I post online. Maybe you feel very connected to me, and feel pleased to see me when you see that I’ve posted a picture of a sketchbook page I’ve completed. Maybe You don’t know my name at all, but the way I layer paint and colored pencils and vary the thickness of my lineart is enough. Maybe the portraits and paintings I share are enough for you to care about me.Maybe you’re one of Sage’s friends. Maybe you hung out with us the October night when it was warm and I was seventeen and he was eighteen and he put acid under my tongue with his goofy smile and then left my house because he was high and felt like God and my bathroom-sized bedroom was like a birdcage for him at that moment in time. Maybe you were there when he skateboarded from my house to Sebastian’s with more acid and weed in his backpack and the intention to share. Maybe you’re one of the three other guys who were at Sebastian’s house, already under the magical intoxication of Sage’s acid when he called a cab to pick me up from my house and bring me there to drink canned beer and smoke mediocre blunts until the sun came up and I noticed how swollen my lips felt, because acid always makes my lips feel all swollen and purple. So maybe you know me as Sage’s girlfriend who he didn’t call his girlfriend until I finally dumped him months later and he begged for me to stay and apologized for never giving me attention or being a good boyfriend. And that was the first time he had called himself my boyfriend.I don’t want to think about nights like those anymore. The boy I’m dating now regards LSD with as much hissing ostracism as if it were all cocaine sold from the alley behind a gas station dumpster. Just thinking about that night makes me feel high, though--my anemia leads me to shiver even in sixty-degree weather, which Midwesterners consider quite warm, but I didn’t mind the wind blowing through my maroon flannel and thin anemic skin that night. As I sat on the cold chipped concrete steps in front of my house waiting for the cab Sage had called for me, the cold was refreshing and good-hearted instead of a brittle cruel punishment from Mother Nature. I didn’t feel insecure about my dingy old black high top Converse; my high-waisted jeans and black T-shirt didn’t make me feel like I looked like a twelve-year-old boy; and the dead-ends in my chin-length purple hair were not worth my concern. The sky all up above and around me and the globe, hugging the horizon of the sleepy little dangerous city, cradling the most dangerous place in all of Indiana in its arm like a tired baby, was stark black, and I could basically smell it; it was a nice undiluted solid black, and there was no pollution hiding the stars. The stars had had a grand day, and were ready to make sure that I was going to have a grand night.The neighbors on all sides of our house were drug dealers, and those were just the neighbors we actually talked to and knew anything about. The National Guard Armory to the right of my mother’s house, right across the narrow one-way street, was comical considering the neighborhood it was in. But none of that mattered; for once I didn’t hate it all. The sky was a rich fragrant black, thick enough to choke you if it had such bad intentions; but its intention were only good. The black was the many yards of high-quality fabric of a fine lady’s skirt flowing endlessly down from a well-tailored strapless bodice with a lovely fit and comely sweetheart neckline. The stars were bright and small enough to be all the jewels and shiny beads which her personal tailor had surely spent weeks or months or even a lifetime hand stitching onto the top layer of her many layers of skirts.It was such a good night to wait outside for a cab.I will never have nights like that again; life is constantly changing. I can try to recreate that, but I will never get it right. Recreating such good things is a privilege entirely out of my pale mortal hands.Maybe you know me as the girl who drew really nice insects at Emmons Elementary when we were nine years old who has since moved to and from at least three public schools in the next city over, and then left public schools entirely right smack in the middle of junior year. Maybe that’s how you know me.You could know me as Andy. If you still know me as Andy, you probably either haven’t spoken to me since sophomore or freshman year, or you knew me in eighth grade when “Andy” was still a thing, and calling me by my real name now just wouldn’t feel right after all that time. I told people to stop calling me Andy junior year, and people obeyed--well, really I just stopped talking to anybody, so nobody called me anything. But the man I am dating now called me my real name yesterday, and it just sounded strange. He never knew me when I was Andy, and Andy only lasted a few years, and I don’t introduce myself as Andy anymore. I don’t care to be called Andy anymore. Yet it feels so strange, hearing somebody casually call me by my real name. Not knowing that I ever had another name. I don’t think I’ve really spoken to people since high school, so that was one of the first times I’ve heard somebody say it. My mother doesn’t even use my name--she’s never really called me my name, or anything nice.I’m rambling. My name just sounds weird. I don’t like it when boys say it passionately.There are so many people that I may be--I can’t even begin to guess which one you may know me as. Even if I were to know exactly what experiences we’ve had together or who told you about me, maybe you don’t even see me as what we’ve done together or what you’ve heard--maybe your own personal thoughts and emotions warped what you know about me. Maybe for the better, probably for the worse. Maybe jealousy came into play somewhere along the road, and no matter what good things you’ve heard, you refuse to accept that somebody who dated somebody who you wanted to date can be genuinely kind and good. Maybe you don’t even remember anymore why you don’t like me. You just don’t.Maybe you’ve loved me since freshman year, before you even knew my name, before you cut your hair short and before I grew mine out, so no bad things you hear about me sound right or can scathe your love. Maybe you don’t want to know me. Maybe you wish you did. Maybe you’re thinking about checking the back cover of this book and scavaging the pages of tiny nonsense text that comes before the first chapter and prologue just so that you can find some email or way to contact me because you think I sound interesting.However you see me now, though, that will change. The way I see myself changes at least three times per hour.

#writing #writer #author #young author #romance #short story #chapter 1 #book #novel #unpublished #editor #please give me feedback #gay #lesbian #high school #shyshyswords

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broken-clover · 5 years

Text

Dust Strikers Story Mode 1/4

I haven’t seen too many resources available when it comes to Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers, a DS-only sidegame released in 2006. While I will agree that the gameplay and story did leave a bit to be desired, I still get a decent bit of fun out of it as the only GG game I own that I can play at college. I wound up going through all 20 story modes for the purpose of jotting down all the game dialogue, in case anybody needed it for reference for whatever reason and didn’t have a copy of the game. I’m gonna upload this in chunks for the sake of space.

Part 1 (Sol, Ky, May, Millia, Axl), Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Dialogue for some scenes is repeated. I tried my best to keep this more or less lifted right from the game, though I did make a few edits just for grammar’s sake because this game isn’t very well edited. I did not try to change any conversations just for the sake of it.

Sol:...Whew... Jam: How rude. What's your problem? Faust: Is there something wrong? Sol: A doctor and a chef? This is a big joke. Quit following me wherever I go. Go back to your real jobs, man! Faust: This is what it takes to master the tricks of the trade. It's necessary to learn to see things from the patient's perspective. Jame: The art of cooking is also a quest. You're not gonna find anything new just by sitting around. Venom: Then I should get to know a wider variety of opponents. Let's roll! Sol: Move it. Just go to bed!

Bridget: Whoah, everybody looks tough Chipp: Hey! what's a kid doing here? Eddie: A child. Attractive in terms of her youthfulness but too immature to become my host Bridget: You're not taking me seriously? Then let me show you my moves Sol:...back off. Don't be wasting my time Eddie: Interesting. I shall keep a record of the battle results for future reference Bridget: Don't be surprised! Here I come! Sol: What am I, a babysitter? I can't deal with this...

Slayer: This is quite an unusual combination Sol: I'm starting to get tired of your face Testament: Different being. What do you want? Slayer: Nope. Nothing in particular. Just happened to pass by. Testament: Then please go away Dizzy: Oh, you're Mr. Slayer, aren't you? Please excuse Testament's words. He doesn't mean any harm. Slayer: I'm not bothered by it. Don't worry. But this is quite interesting. Sol: So what the hell is your point? Slayer: Those who have veered off the path. I guess the same must be said of me. Testament: What are you insinuating? You better have a good explanation Slayer: My apologies if I offended you. I'm just genuinely interested in your powers Sol: You using us to kill your boredom? I think it's time you hung em up.

Anji: Finally found you. Sol:...It's you again. Anji: Let me ask you straight out. Do you have any idea where 'he' is? Sol: So what if I know? Anji: Can you tell me where he is? Of course I'm willing to work for it. You and I have a bout, and if I win, you tell me. Sounds fair? Baiken: Wait! Let me in on the festivities Sol: Sorry, not interested. You guys enjoy each other's company Anji: Even Justice feared my powers...Still not interested? Sol:...! Baiken: Shut your trap! You're starting to get on my nerves. I'll kick all of your butts right now! Axl: Whoa!...Damn it...is this a bad time? Baiken: Eavesdropping, are we? I'm not impressed! Axl: I just wanted to ask chief something Sol: And even you. Why does everyone want to stick their noses in other people's business! Axl: No worries, chief! Just a quick bout, no hard feelings! Sol: I'm not responsible for what happens.

I-no: You're late. You shouldn't make ladies wait like that. Sol: shut up. What are you wandering around for? Johnny: Hey, what a coincidence. Didn't expect to run into you here....guess yu're busy with a woman Sol: You stay out of it I-no: Ooh, another cute guy Ky: All of you! Freeze right there! I-no: and now a cute boy, too. Ky: Sol..! And Johnny the pirate, and you're..! I-no: I'd stay out of it if I were you. Why don't you just go home to mommy? Sol: That's enough chit chatting. Let's let the fists do the talking! Ky: ...Sol! I-no: The violent guy as always. Sure, why not...I'll cut you all up into pieces! Ky: I guess there's no alternative. Holy Knight combat was initially meant for handling multiple enemies. I'll show you what it's all about!

Sol: Finally we meet... Gig: Grrr... Sol: I'm here to figure you out. Gig: Grrrgh! Sol:...Too late, I guess. Then die.

Gig: Grr...grr... Sol: Don't bother. It's over Gig: Grr.... Sol:...I'll make sure we get even for your sake. I guarantee you we'll find the dirt bag...

Jam: Ayah! Who's this cute guy? Ky: You must be...that chef, Ms. Jam Kuradoberi. Jam: That's right! You remembered me! I'm so happy! Ky: I'm glad to see you're doing well. May: Wahts...oops! Oh no! Ky: You must be May, the pirate May: Are you going after Johnny? You'll have to get by me first. Ky: Please, put your guard down. I'm not after pirates right now. Testament: So you're out bounty-hunting then. Probably after me then, aren't you? Jam: Ooh, you're quite the hottie too. Wanna work at my restaurant? Testament: Stop talking nonsense... May: It's two hot guys...but Johnny's way hotter than both of you!

Zappa: Hey! Miss! Millia:...Yes? Zappa: If it's possible, can you be my wi... Millia:... Zappa: Actually, never mind... Axl: Dude, let me show you how it's done. Hey, you in the beautiful blond hair! Let me buy you a cup of coffee so I can see which glows brighter, your hair or your eyes. Millia:...Um, I'm in a hurry. Ky: You're Millia, the former assassin. If you're not with the guild anymore, leave the rest to the police force. No need to put yourself in danger. Millia: I'll take care of him. It's none of your business. Ky: But no, we have to... Zappa: What's all this talk about? Even the police are here. Maybe I should get outta...NO!...Happiness. Hatred! Hatred! Millia: Why don't I ever have luck with men?

Faust: Traveling lady with the scent of blood. Where are you headed? Baiken: Get lost, you lame doc. It's none of your business. I can kill whoever I want. Chipp: Woman enduring countless bloodshed. So you're that Japanese beauty? Ky: There's nothing but anger inside you. As a protector of public safety, I can't let such hateful words pass Baiken: Kid, if you don't wanna get hurt, you should just keep your mouth shut Ky: I have confidence in my sword. Not exactly my favorite option, but in this case I have no choice Faust: What you need is some time off in total peaceful serenity. As a physician, it is my obligation to make sure that you are cured.

Anji: You must be Ky Kiske, former leader of the Sacred Order of Holy Knights Ky: Yes, that would be me. And who are you? Anji: Last name is Mito, first name is Anji. I'm just a journeyman Ky: So what can I help you with? Anji: I'd like to challenge you to a match. I wanted to see firsthand the skills of a top-class warrior like yourself. Ky: I can tell from your presence that you're not an ordinary foe. Asian martial arts? Interesting. I accept your challenge. Slayer: In that case, count me in too. Fighting for the sake of fighting. To me fighting is life's best form of entertainment. Don't you think? Potemkin: I myself haven’t had any worthy opponents recently. Sure, I'll take you on. Ky: This is getting interesting. It's been a while for me too. Bring it on!

I-no: You're late. You shouldn't make ladies wait like that. Sol: shut up. What are you wandering around for? Johnny: Hey, what a coincidence. Didn't expect to run into you here....guess you're busy with a woman. Sol: You stay out of it. I-no: Ooh, another cute guy. Ky: All of you! Freeze right there! I-no: and now a cute boy, too. Ky: Sol..! And Johnny the pirate, and you're..! I-no: I'd stay out of it if I were you. Why don't you just go home to mommy? Sol: That's enough chit chatting. Let's let the fists do the talking! Ky: ...Sol! I-no: The violent guy as always. Sure, why not...I'll cut you all up into pieces! Ky: I guess there's no alternative. Holy Knight combat was initially meant for handling multiple enemies. I'll show you what it's all about!

Ky: What overpowering energy! Gig: Grr... Ky: You telling me this used to be a man? Gig: Grrrgh! Ky: Damn! I have no other choice...

Gig: Grr...grr... Ky: Barely managed to hang on... Gig: Ghhh... Ky: It looks like his losing control of reason has maximized his powers to infinite levels... Gig: Grr.... Ky: ...Pease, rest in peace I-no: Good job for a young boy like you. Ky:! I-no: I can probably kill you easily now...but that wouldn't be fun. So I'll let you go. Ky: You tell the man who created Gears, that he will pay for his crimes! I-no: You don't stand a chance! Why don't you look at yourself in the mirror before you speak? But I'll let him know anyway. Seeya! Ky: ...hate to admit it, but I'm not strong enough yet...but I will eventually rise over the true Gear powers.

May

May: I've got the chills. Faust: Perhaps you have a cold. Here, let me take a look. May: Don't come near me! Faust: What's the problem? May: These vibes...I'm positive! You're...you're bald, aren't you! Venom: You must be Faust, the Dark Doctor. Or should I call you doctor- Faust: Stop it. I don't use that name anymore. Venom:...Excuse me for being disrespectful. Doctor, I'd like you to accompany me. Faust: I'm sorry, my job is to save lives. I don't know if I can be of much help to you and your comrades. May: Look at all that hair...I guess it's not as bad as being bald...doesn't it get in the way? Venom: Let's put your limitations into perspective, then. You'll realize there are only so many lives you can save! May: Who, me? Zappa: KILL! KILL! Let me kill! May: What's with all these weirdos? I'm fighting for real, then!

Chipp: Please, I'm begging you! Baiken: Geez, what is your problem? Chipp: Make me Japanese! Even samurai give mercy, don't they? Baiken: No samurai here. Not a chance, buddy. Be a big boy and get over it, willya? Anji: Hey, what are you doing here? Chipp: You'll do! Please, tell me how to become Japanese! Anji: There's no way in hell, man. Be content being the 'president' Chipp: NO! I wanna become the president, become a Japanese, surpass master's ninjutsu abilities and take revenge! May: You guys arguing over something? Chipp: Damn...what are you doing here? Anji: Yup. A 'Japanese' May: Japa...what? Why're you crying sir? Something wrong? Did I do something wrong? Chipp: I will reach the top! You watch me, master! May: Wow, you scared me! You know I'm tough when I'm mad!

Jam: Ayah! Who's this cute guy? Ky: You must be...that chef, Ms. Jam Kuradoberi. Jam: That's right! You remembered me! I'm so happy! Ky: I'm glad to see you're doing well. May: Whats...oops! Oh no! Ky: You must be May, the pirate May: Are you going after Johnny? You'll have to get by me first. Ky: Please, put your guard down. I'm not after pirates right now. Testament: So you're out bounty-hunting then. Probably after me then, aren't you? Jam: Ooh, you're quite the hottie too. Wanna work at my restaurant? Testament: Stop talking nonsense... May: It's two hot guys...but Johnny's way hotter than both of you!

May: Wow! Look how big you are! Potemkin: And so are you. May: Hey! That's not very nice! Potemkin: No, I just thought you grew a little compared to the last time I saw you May: Well thanks fr the compliment. Think I'm good enough for Johnny now? Eddie: Having a host in her growth spurt...might not be a bad idea. Johnny: Out of the way, May! Potemkin: Humph! May:...Thanks Johnny: Thanks. I owe you one. Eddie: How dare you... May: Now it's my turn! I'll prove it to you that a girl in love is unbeatable!

Millia: Long time no see...Honey, you look very different. Dizzy: It's all thanks to May, and all of my great friends. May: Hee hee. Stop, you're embarrassing me Dizzy...everyone loves you only because you're a good person, that's all. Bridget: Yes, I think so too. To think that there used to be a bounty on her is weird when you think about it now. Millia: Treasure that happiness you have. And don't turn out like me. May: Why don't you join Jellyfish too? I'm sure Johnny will welcome you. Not to mention you're beautiful. I'm a bit jealous...don'f forget though, Johnny is mine! Millia:...thanks. But I think I'll take a pass. I have some unfinished business. Plus...actually, never mind. I think I better go now. Okay, let me through.

May: Phew. Finally here. Gig: Grr.... May: Wow!...No worries. I'm not freaked out. Johnny always tells me I should lend a helping hand to those in need. Come with me, my friend. Gig: Grrrgh! May: What! Whoa!

Gig: Grr...grr... May:...Why? I didn't want to do this to you. Gig: Grr... May: I'm so sorry...

Dizzy: May! May: Dizzy...I couldn't do it...Couldn't help him like Johnny would. I just wish we could've been friends. Dizzy:...I think you did the right thing... May: Whatdya mean? Dizzy: Look at that peaceful face. Thanks to you, he's finally free from long suffering. May:... Dizzy: Let's go back. Everyone's waiting. May:...uh, all right (...rest in peace, my friend...and good night)

Millia

I-no: What do we have here, the desperate bachelorettes council? Baiken: What kind of greeting is that? That's not a very nice thing to say Jam: That's right! You're rude! And what about you? I-no: Oh dear, don't be so uptight. It's just a joke, honey. Or were you offended 'cause I was right on the mark? Millia: You're a joke. Why don't you get outta here. I-no: Oh no. I'm scared. I guess this is how women become as they get older. Baiken: You crazy! I'll cut you up into pieces! Jam: I'm not showing you any mercy either! Millia: If you're not gonna get outta here, we'll have to get rid of you. It's as simple as that. I-no: You're such sweethearts. Very well, I make you cry lots. We'll find out how loud you can cry.

Testament:...Long time no see. Millia: That's a first. You coming up to me to say hi. Things have changed, haven't they? Testament: You're still caught up in the past and changing the thorny path. Millia:...it's none of your business. Move out of the way, will you? Testament: I don't have a problem, but... Millia:... Testament: You seem hesitant. With such mixed feelings, it may cost you your life. Millia:!!! I must have lost my edge, to be getting advice from you. Potemkin: What he's saying is on the money. Those with swaying motivation never fight to their full potential. Please excuse my eavesdropping. Anji: Just happened to pass by. Millia: Then I guess I'll have to eliminate all doubts before I get to him. I'll need your cooperation for that.

Millia: So...we meet again...Zato. Eddie: So you still haven't gotten over him? Millia: Shut up, you damn beast...I'm talking to him, not you! Eddie: What do you want to talk to ME about? Millia: I'm taking you down. I'm sick and tired of looking at your pathetic, bony remains. Venom: Not so fast...! Master Zato is regarded as the crown-jewel of the guild. You'll have to hand him over to me...! Slayer: I've told you the Guild is no more. No raison d'etre and no purpose. Continued existence will only bring further regret and despair. Venom: Oldtimers can keep their mouth shut. The guild no longer belongs to you. Millia: It has nothing to do with me anymore, I don't care what happens to it. I just want to take care of this guy with my very own hands. Eddie: Do you think it will be that easy? What do "I" think?"...Not so easy, "I" say. Venom: I sense you...Master Zato. I am going to free you, Master, from the evil spell of death! Eddie: Ha ha...this is great! Lowly humans who cannot accept death. That's the right evil spirit to have! Slayer: I'm the one who started all of this. I must atone for my past deeds. Fine, let us put an end to it all.

Millia: You look very much like him. Gig: Grr... Millia:You resemble him...and you resemble me. Gig: Grrrgh! Millia:...All right. I'll let you rest.

Gig: Grr...grr... Millia:...good night. It's all over now. For you, and for me. Gig: Grr... Millia:...may your soul rest in peace

Millia: (Have I been watching my own future? Is this what you wanted to tell me? Zato...)

Axl

Axl: Hey, what's that you're holding? I didn't know you had those toys, even in this day and age. Bridget: This is not a toy! It's a tool of my trade! Axl: Ouch! I'm sorry! What have we here? Playing pool at a place like this? Venom: How dare you insult my combat style. I say you deserve a beating. Axl: Hang on a sec! Something wrong with this era. Every toy's being used as a weapon. So what do people actually play with? Johnny: The best for of entertainment, I'd say is the thrill and romance of playing with fireworks at night. I'm pretty sure that's the consensus. Axl: You know what you're talking about! I'm actually great with fire myself...here we go!

Chipp: Hey! I have a question. Axl: Hi there, you look very hot. I-no: You talking about me? Axl: Of course! Who else would it be? Great body, silky smooth hair, you're electrifying! I-no: You're very good with words. Let me ask you then. Who's hotter? That woman or me? Chipp: Hey, listen up! Millia:...don't bother me. Chipp: !...you used to be in the guild! Millia: Yes, but that was a long while ago. Now I'm in the same boat as you. Axl: Ah man, this is a tough one. They're both really hot. Chipp: I'm taking down the guild! You women stay out of it! Millia: That I cannot do. Just like you, I can't pull out. Axl: This is a tough decision... Millia: And...quit staring at me with that perverted look on your face! Axl: Oops, I think I got her mad at me.

Potemkin: You youngster there. I see you have some talent. How about testing some of that talent on my fists? Axl: Man, you've got a nice build. But what do you have to gain? Plus, are you sure you can handle me? Potemkin: I wouldn't underestimate me. My drive for freedom locked inside my heart is my greatest weapon. Axl: Cool. I love peace and freedom too. But you might get out of breath when you're so stiff all the time. Ky: So you're fighting in the name of peace and freedom. Perhaps I might come up with answers for myself too. Excuse me, I'd like in as well. Jam: Just drive won't take you anywhere. There's no victory for those who can't face reality. I'll prove it to you right now!

Faust: This is an interesting symptom. I see, it's a cause and effect cycle. Axl: You, I never asked you to check up on me! Even though it's true that I've been through a lot, I've never had any doubts about my body. Faust: Oh, is that right? If there aren't any cures, that may very well be the best treatment. Axl: I'm more concerned about your body. Looks a little mysterious. Faust: Not to worry. It's all functional Slayer: Irregulars with an added spice that changes the world of men. Axl: You talking about us? Slayer: It's because of people like you that makes humans interesting. Even though you're blessed with great powers, it's normal to you. Very typical of how humans behave. Axl: It'll stress you out if you think so deeply. Zappa: Hahahahaha! Slayer: Look. Yet another fellow favored by the goddess of fortune. Axl: I do like women but I'm not sure about the goddess. Slayer: It must be the uncertainty factor that led you into running into me Axl: C'mon, let's just have fun...I thought this was supposed to be a party!

Axl: Huh? You can still speak? Gig: Grr... Axl: Man, what am I gonna do? Gig: Grrgh! Axl: Sorry dude, it's not my time yet.

Gig: Grr....grr... Axl: Phew! Hey, man. Haven't you had enough? Gig: Grr... Axl: I think that should be enough....what? This sensation!!! That Man: It is not yet the time for you to find out the truth. When the time comes you will find out. Whether you like it or not! Axl: Who are you? That Man: We shall part for a short time. Time traveler. Axl:...Ahhhgh!

Axl: What period is this? Looks like a messy period in time. Oh well, things will work out. Since getting rattled isn't my style!

#guilty gear #Guilty Gear Dust Strikers #resources #dialogue #sol badguy #ky kiske #guilty gear may #millia rage #Axl Low

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