#we do experience time sadly and i guess the smaller you get the more you experience time and the more importance it has

[basslinegrave]

been watching space vids for the past.. hour or so probably more, feeling weird again

[exploring8709]

Swiping through Tinder tonight, I started wondering if I'm REALLY ready to be out there. I guess this was the point of leaving The Ex (and The Twit for that matter). It's been a year and a bit since, though, and I don't have much to show for this newfound freedom.

It wasn't more commitment that I was looking for. The Ex and I had commitment down to a T. Planning a wedding (and a future) together will pretty much hit that nail on the head. I just felt like I was getting consumed by momentum. Everything felt like I was auto-pilot, ignoring my own yearning to break free and discover more of myself.

And now, commitment is the LAST thing that I'm looking for, as The Twit has proven. The same thing, just a different face, still leaves me triggered.

So I don't think I want to get married (yet), but am I really ready to explore something more . . . casual? The thought excites me as my "experience level" feels lacking for a girl my age. Thinking about my body count, I guess each experience can be thought of as progress, but the distance traveled does not feel rich enough, vivid enough. I've learned something from each of them, but like the related relationship, it was time to move on.

Josh

I lost my virginity to Josh. He was a pretty soccer player that said all of the right things to get me into his bed. He had obviously done this before. It was painful. It was awkward. I cried when it was happening because I was so scared I would do it wrong and he would dump me. It was in his room. I still remember focusing on the Tie Domi poster on his wall as he pushed himself into me. It was hot under his duvet and we were both sweaty. I thought we were in love until 2 weeks later we weren't. It was something I needed to get out of the way, but I was lost for a bit afterwards, feeling a bit used and ashamed.

The Ex

Sex with The Ex was exciting at the outset. We were seniors in high school. And I was in love, for real this time. I'm not going to deny it. We were in love. But High School me was a very different girl from today me. Him being more experienced than me, again made me feel special. Complete. And he was so different from Josh. More of a real person. More of a real relationship. It was like he was walking me through a beautiful garden for the first time, showing me all the things I ever needed to know. He showed me all the positions he knew, and I was wonderstruck. His was the first cock I sucked. The first one I jacked off. I was an eager learner . . . so wanting to please. So hungry to find ways to please him. It was a revelation. But we reached the limit of his knowledge as the years wore on. Our lovemaking, like our relationship, never evolved even as I did. What was once super exotic as a young adult, quickly became rote and obligatory. Like our relationship, sadly.

The Twit

Unfortunately, the story doesn't get any better from here. Although the prize is dubious, The Twit was the only other person I've slept with since high school. It feels so ridiculous typing this. The first after having passed through my lowest point after calling the wedding off. If you don't count Josh, as honestly, that one didn't count, The Twit's was only the second penis I've ever touched. Had in my mouth. Had INSIDE me. It was more of the same. I won't go low and make any size comparisons. He was fine, just the same, which was bad. I long to try something different. Bigger. Smaller. Girthier. Fuck, what does it mean, that as I'm trying to summarize my time with The Twit, I can only think of other cocks I haven't tried? The Twit was more handsy and grabby . . . more aggressive than The Ex, but pretty much of the same ilk. I don't think either of them met an orgasm of their own they didn't like.

That's it. I've slept with three boys in my life. I'm not bothered by this number. If I was stronger, it might have just ended at The Ex. But, if I'm not ready to be married, then what am I ready for? I've never been the chaotic spirit type, although I've always wondered what that would be like.

I'm sure there's more to discover out there, but am I ready to? I must be ovulating because I've been thinking about what it would be like to sleep with different men, but I don't have the energy or the emotional need to try and create something special with each and everyone one of them. I feel like I know what I want in a partner, but I don't yet know what I want in a PARTNER. A sexual partner. A lover. I've spent so much time with boys that I've, for lack of a better term, outgrown, that I've created a gap in my experience that I'm yearning to fill. I've been yearning for physicality.

I remember Amanda quoting this to me:

" I was not a good woman. I had too many other things to do. "

Too many other things to do.

Tinder, what treasures will you yield to me?

[bylightofdawn]

Did not get a lot of resting done today. Ended up driving into the outskirts of San Antonio (and that was far enough, thank you very much. What the ever living FUCK did they do to 35/1604. I know, they're improving and adding what looks to be a huge overpass junction but fuck that hellscape for the next 4+ years). It was the closest place the Boy and the Heron was playing sadly and I wanted to see it.

I TRY and see Miyazaki films in theaters if I can because the experience is definitely the best viewing wise. I can still recall the way goosebumps broke out on my arms when I watched Princess Mononoke in theaters the first time around. A bunch of my high school buddies and I convinced my grandma to drive us to the ONE THEATER in the entirety of Houston that was playing it for like...one day or something stupidly short run like that. We were all in our baby weeb stages and it was a huge deal because we'd never seen an anime brought over and aired in the US like that. And holy shit the score of that movie? Amazing. It was a mindblowing experience suffice it to say.

Sadly, this movie did not give me the same sort of emotional payoff. It was fine, I enjoyed it and no one tells a tale quite like Miyazaki. It was prolly more of a mindfuck than some of his other movies and lawl there were kids like...6 years old there and I can only imagine how that's going to stick with them for years like a confusing fever dream of a memory, I'm sure. LOL

I certainly don't regret going to see it but I feel like my finally going to Hawaiian Bro's Island Grill afterwards might have been a bigger highlight for me. Oh mah gawd I just inhaled a Kahlua pork plate which I'd picked up for lunch tomorrow so I'd opted for the smaller size and I was going to eat their Molokai chicken tonight. But lemme tell you, driving home for 30 minutes in the dark smelling that damned pork the whole way? Pfffft guess which one I opted for and I regret absolutely nothing.

Now I am going to try and get some writing done so wish me luck as I battle the ending of Seeds once again.

EDIT: Oooooooor I could get summoned over to my mom's YET AGAIN to deal with her bullshit. Which I'm glad I did because apparently when her soon to be ex husband 'canceled' the insurance they just moved him off of her policy and left hers in place and she was going to be charge 100 bucks on January 1st. Which the only reason I caught it was because mom was mentioning some other random email she got. -drags hands down face- I've seen way too much of my mother in the past week. I am at my limit of mother facetime.

[oligbia]

Hi hii~

Could you do a truth or dare (or 7 minutes in heaven) Eijiro Kirishima short story (maybe nsfw if possible heh), please? 🥺

Keep up the great work!! 💕

Of course you can darling! Im super excited to get any and all requests and im really excited to do this one! Thank you so much for your support, it means the absolute world to me. I haven't written a lot of smut with guys recently, ive been on more of a wlw thing, so im a little rusty hehe. . .

I honestly didn't do a lot of editing on this once it was done, I had it going like "all the way" then realized Kiri wouldn't do that on the first day- anyways it'll make sense. If you want more Kiri stuff I can totally give you more, just let me know :)

7 Minutes In Heaven

Pro Hero!Eijiro KirishimaXReader

NSFW, Minors do not interact

Warnings: Sexual behavior, giving and receiving oral, making out in a closet, mild swearing

A hero gala was an event like none other.  It was a night were all Japan's hero's and their dotting staff would all assemble to accept awards and receive rankings. It was a night for citizens to see their favorite hero's dressed to the nines and hash out who was truly the best hero on social media.

And, for starter hero's, it's was night to get shit faced, since the likelyhood of them reciving any award was slim anyways.

Pro heroes Red Riot, Pinky, Cellophane, and Chargebolt where no exception to this. They were all still pretty low in the ranks of heroes, especially considering they were all fresh out of UA only a few years ago. The only two UA graduates to jump into the hero world right were no surprise Deku and Dynamite. Deku practically left UA the top hero, entering in at the 5th rank overall. Dynamite took a little work, he still wasn't a fan favorite, but his work was undeniable, he was easily starting in at rank 10.

The formerly-known bakusquad sat comfortably at the back of the gala room, all a little tipsy. They watched as Bakugou was being practically held on a child leash by Best Jeanist, forced to be on best behavior.

Denki watched the room quickly, his shifting glances moving quickly. His eyes landed on your figure somewhere across the way.

"Oh my god, is that Y/N? We haven't seen her since UA!" His voice wasn't at all hushed, people around the table glancing at him with slight disgust.

"Woah, that totally is!" Sero joined in on the ogling. "She's like, totally hot now!"

Kirishima looked your way, practically chocking on his champagne. He let out a few strangled coughs when his eyes landed on your form. The dress you were wearing was long and elegant, showing off your curves and hugging your waist. He was able to see your toned arms and watch as they elegantly moved as you spoke.

Mina poked Kiri's now flushed cheek. "You always had quite the hots for Y/N in UA, huh? And she wasn't even in our class."

Kirishima rolled his eyes. "I didn't 'have the hots for her.' I just thought she was...manly."

Denki and Sero puckered their faces, making kissing sounds, their drunken state throwing them back to a bunch of 14 year olds, rather than the 24 year olds they were now.

Kirishima waved them off, shaking his head. Mina abruptly stood up, waving you over. It was no time before you turned around, your gaze meeting her as you flashed your smile at her.

Kirishima swatted at Mina, trying to pull her back into her seat. "Mina, sit down, you're embarrassing us."

"Oh please, those two are embarrassing. I'm helping."

Kirishima watched as you moved your way to his table smiling softly. "It's great to see you all. I haven't seen you guys since we graduated."

Kirishima wanted to say something, but his tongue was sadly caught in his own mouth.

"Crazy, I know! I see you're doing well as a support gear engineer, that's exciting!" Mina made easy small talk, her foot kicking Kirishima's calf under the table. "You know, Kirishima here has been needing some new support gear!"

You smiled at Kiri, your own face going a little red. He was much older now. His jawline was more defined, his build larger. You couldn't tell from his suit how much stronger he was, but you could tell he was clearly built and taller. His hair had grown out a bit, it neatly tied back into a manbun.

"Oh? Does Fatgum not have someone who can make it for you?"

Kirishima smiled, laughing awkwardly. "He does, or, we do. They just, aren't as good at you."

"You haven't seen my work since UA, it's not l that improved. I still have a lot to learn before I'm good…"

Kirishima shook his head. "Don't say that, you were always super smart and made us amazing gear!" Kirishima blushed at his sudden enthusiasm.

Mina stood up, offering you her seat. "Y/N, would you mind staying here with Kiri for a moment, I think Denki and Sero needed to excuse themselves but are a little, ya'know." Mina made a drinking motion with her hand, elbowing Sero and Denki to follow her lead. The two had been snickering the entire time while simultaneously drooling over you.  

The trio walked off, leaving you alone with Kirishima. Kirishima chuckled softly, lost for words again.

"So, how's the side-kick life?"

Kirishima looked up at you. "It's alright. Fatgum is an amazing hero. He's super manly! And working for him is great too! Especially when he feeds me during patrols!"

You smiled at him, that smile that drives him crazy. "Well, you're definitely in the favor of girls everywhere. Your girlfriend is probably thrilled to have such a stong-"

"I don't have a girlfriend!" Kirishima practically leaped from his seat to assure you that he was indeed single. He cleared his throat, attempting to regain some composure. "I don't have a girlfriend. I am, completely single."

"Oh. I just figured someone as amazing and pretty as yourself would have a girlfriend." You looked down at your fingers, fidgeting with them as a soft blush spread across your face.

"You think I’m pretty?" Kirishima looks over at you, flashing you a small, toothy, grin.

"Is that weird?"

"Not at all! I think it's manly!"

You both laughed awkwardly. You both sit in silence for a moment, an incredibly awkward silence.

Kirishima spoke up first. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

You shook your head no. Kirishima nodded. Muttering a “cool, cool” under his breath.

Shortly thereafter, much to Kirishima’s relief, Mina returned with Denki and Sero. She smiled at you, her gaze warm. “These two are a bit over the edge and about to make a fool of themselves. I think we should go to Kirishima’s place and continue this party there, yea?”

Kirishima groaned. “Why my place? You have your own house, Mina.”

“I know, but yours is so much bigger and it’s closer to the venue.” She winked at Kirishima and glanced at youquickly, dropping hints. Kirishima, a little confused, gave up any sort of bickering he had.

“Fine.” He scratched the back of his neck, smiling at you. “Did you want to come, Y/N?”

You nodded, thanking him for the invitation. Mina threw her hands up excitedly, grabbing Denki and Sero, pulling them out behind her. Kirishima stood up, offering you his arm. You rested your hands on it, allowing him to lead you out of the venue.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Let’s play truth or dare!” Denki called out, laying sprawled out on Kirishima’s living room floor. Sero was laying near him, half asleep. Mina was cast over a chair, her legs dangling over one of the armrests. You were seated comfortably on Kirishima’s couch, wearing a pair of his sweats and hoodies. He had offered you the change of clothes when you came over with the group, wanting to keep you comfortable. To him, seeing you in his clothes was some fantasy of his. The way his clothes hung off your smaller body was adorable and was doing something to him he wasn’t sure he could explain.  

Sero shoots Denki a look. “Isn’t that game for middle schoolers? People our age play, I don’t know, checkers?”

Mina perked up at the mention of the game. She was, of course, the matchmaker of the night, determined to land Kiri a girlfriend out of the girl he spent his entire high school experience crushing on, or, at least, give him a solid one-night stand if you both were willing. “Don’t be such a drag, Sero! It can be fun. We’re 24, not 64.”

Mina spun herself around in the chair, sitting cross legged and facing the group. She looked over at you and Kiri, who was sitting a considerable distance from each other on the couch. “What about it, you two. Are you both down?”

Kirishima shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat, unsure of Mina and her antics.

“Why not?”

Kirishima’s face shot to face yours, his eyes wide in surprise. “I’m in too, I guess.”

Mina clapped her hands together. “Okie dokie, zappy, you get us started.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

After being a few hours into the game, Denki was officially dumbed out and Sero was asleep on the couch. Mina giggled, looking over at you. “Okay okay Y/N, truth or dare?”

You hummed, thinking. “Truth.”

Mina groaned. “C’mon, pick dare for once!”

You shook your head. “Please, last time I did, you had me eat a spoonful of that random shit Kirishima had in his fridge.”

Kirishima chuckled, “I swear to you, it’s Bakugou’s.”

Mina sighed. “Fine. Back in your UA days, was there ever someone you had a crush on?”

Your face grew red as a blush laid across your cheeks. “What?”

Mina teased you, “A crush! You got to build hero gear for all those classmates and see them in their trained glory. . .you had to have liked someone.”

“I mean, there was someone. But it’s long done, they wouldn’t have liked me anyway and we’re grown up now.”

Mina pouted. “C’mon, Y/N, that isn’t true. You’re so pretty, any guy would have liked you! Who was it?”

You inhaled a deep breath, looking at the ground, Kirishima and Mina’s eyes both peering daggers into you.

Denki, finally coming back to reality, slurred his words together. “It was definitely me, wasn’t it?”

You shook your head. “In your dreams.”

Denki pouted, but Kirishima let out a breath of relief. His chances of knowing you maybe had liked him back at one point was the right amount of reassurance he needed.

You looked at Mina. “If I tell you, you have to swear to me you’ll keep quiet.”

Mina motioned a zipper over her lips. “Sister’s honor.”

You lean over your end of the couch, pressing your face against Mina's ear. You cup your hands, whispering into her ear the name she was waiting for.

And like gears working in clockwork, Mina was working on the ultimate plan to get the two of you alone.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Kirishima, truth or dare?”

“Dare. Hit me with the best you got.” It was well into the early hours of the morning now, the hero gala long over. You still were at Kirishima’s house, playing truth or dare. You were sitting closer to Kirishima now, sharing a blanket over the two of you, legs brushing softly. His hand was constantly inches from yours, the idea of holding it constantly toying in the back of his mind.

“7 Minutes in Heaven with Y/N.”

Both of your jaws practically hit the floor, a deep crimson spreading over both of your cheeks. You looked away from Kirishima, trying to hide your fluster. He placed a gentle hand on your knee, speaking to you softly. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. I can take you home right now if you want.”

Thoughts spread through your mind, deciding what to do. You liked Kirishima, you had for years now. You did at UA when you worked to design his hero gear, and your affections never wore off, watching him do his job as a hero sidekick only fueling the admiration you had for him.

“I’m okay with it.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The closet in Kirishima’s room smelled like fresh laundry, his calonge, and teen-turned-young-adult pheromones. It was dark, you were hardly able to make out the tall and well-built man in front of you, his muscles and long mane outlined softly. He went to scratch the back of his neck awkwardly, accidentally bumping your smaller form. He rushed out a frantic apology, the blush growing on both of your faces.

“Hey, Y/N, who was it you liked at UA?”

You looked away from him, trying to hide your face. You mumbled softly to yourself some answer he wasn’t able to hear.

“What was that?”

You remained quiet, not budging. Kirishima gulped, swallowing the massive lump of pride that was making his mouth dry. “I guess a closet during a game of truth or dare is a pretty good time to tell you,” Kirishima fumbled over his words a little, grabbing for your free hand. “I always sort of liked you. I mean, I liked you when we were kids at UA. But then we graduated, but, I guess I never really stopped. I’m not sure how manly that is-”

“I like you too.”

“...but you probably like heroes like Midoriya or Bakugou- wait what?” Kirishima stopped his rambling, trying to find your eyes in the dark. He locked onto the faint glimmer of your eyes in the dark. He was always one to think that being manly meant taking a risk from time to time, and he was everything that was manly.

Kirishima pulled you closer to him, pressing his lips to yours. The hand that wasn’t holding yours wandered to cup your face, holding it close to him. You gasped into the kiss, his sudden embrace taking you for a surprise. His lips were surprisingly soft, tasting faintly of cherries and champagne. The kiss was initially gentle, but, feeling your body press flesh against his, Kirishima dipped your head, deepening the kiss.

The hand that was grabbing yours found its way to your waist, tugging you closer to him. You sighed into the kiss, Kirishima’s breath warm against your skin. His tongue gently brushed across your bottom lip, his teeth accidentally grazing yours in his rushed attempt to draw you both even closer.

You pulled away first, looking up at Kirishima with half-lidded eyes, painting slightly. You licked your lips, taking in the remaining taste of his cherry taste. Kirishima let out a husky and shaky breath, still holding your waist. He blinked a few times, realization hitting him over what he had done.

"Oh my God, Y/N, I am so sorry, it isn't manly to not ask for consent first and-"

"Kirishima, it's okay. I agreed to come into this closet with you like we were kids or something."

Kirishima pulled you against him again, hovering his face against your ear. His voice was soft, growing husky with his hushed volume.

"Then, can I kiss you again?"

You nodded softly, anticipation growing.

"Perfect." Kirishima grabbed your face, smashing his lips into yours. Your hands traveled to hang off his neck, gently toying with his long locks. Kirishima gently moved his hand from your waist, letting it rest on your lower back as he pulled you even closer to him. His tongue licked your bottom lip, gently pulling it with his bottom lip. You mewled softly into the kiss, letting his tongue meet yours as it lapped up your mouth.

Needing air, Kirishima pulled off from your kiss, going to press kisses along your jawline and neck. He pressed fast and quick butterfly kisses to your neck, your hands tugging at his hair. He grunted, frustrated with the restraints of his hoodie you were wearing. You gently pushed him off, pulling his hoodie over your head, landing somewhere amongst his closet. Kirishima smiled at your now exposed top, your breasts filling out the bra you were wearing.

"You are absolutely stunning." He caressed your cheek with his thumb. "Can we keep going?"

You nodded, and Kirishima took no time going back to kissing your neck, this time leaving sloppy open kisses, his tongue leaving wet and sloppy marks along your skin. His teeth grazed at your skin ever so slightly, sending shivers up your spine. His teeth grazed over your sensitive spot as you moaned out involuntarily. Your hand quickly shot up to cover your mouth, aware of the fact that people were sitting in Kirishima's living room, possibly hearing you.

Kirishima pulled away, looking at you confused. He gently moved your hand from your mouth. "Why would you want to be quiet? You sounded so pretty?"

Kirishima, without hesitation, nipped at the sensitive part of your neck, desperate to hear you moan again. He kept nipping at your neck, sucking at the skin softly to sooth it. Your little mewls and moans nagging him on and on.

**************

Kaminari looked up from his watch. "Mina it's been forever, go let them out."

Mina, pressed against the door, giggled as she returned back to Kaminari and Sero, who was now awake again.

"No way! Those two are totally going at it. I successfully am the new cupid boys!"

Sero groaned. "Are we going to stay here all night then? I don't want to hear that all night."

Mina shook her head. "No, we'll leave then be."

The trio showed themselves out, but not before Mina could slip a couple pain killers and condoms into your belongings on the way out.

******

Kirishima's hands dipped to your ass, lifting you up. He held you one handed, his strong arms and large hands being bigger than your small form. You pressed lazy kisses to his neck as he fumbled for the doorknob behind him, trying to open the door to his bedroom.  

After you had kissed up and down his jaw and neck, leaving smears of lipstick from the hero gala, Kirishima was able to get the door open. He threw you gently onto the bed, crawling on top of you. If you hadn’t already realized how massive this man’s form was now, you definitely made the connection when he was looming over you. His chest heaved heavily, the muscles in his arms and under his shirt contracting and rippling. His hair was long, falling into his face.

“Kirishima, what if they’re still here…”

Through heavy breaths, he kissed on your neck again, using the same butterfly kisses as before. “Don’t care.”

You hummed at the pleasant feeling of his soft kisses on your skin and the light tickling of his hair grazing your cheeks. “We should check though… they may be worried.”

Kirishima pulled his head back, looking behind him at the door. “Mina?” He yelled out, waiting for a response. “Nothing. It’s just us baby. Are you okay with that?”

You nodded, giving him permission to keep going. His hands traveled up your waist and sides, landing next to your breasts. His locked his lips to yours, his tongue wasting no time dipping into your mouth. Kirishima moved his hands to gently cup your chest over your bra, squeezing softly. A small moan escaped through your mouth, your breasts becoming sensitive under his touch. Your hands traced over his chest and arms, fingertips taking their time to feel each of his muscles. They found themselves in his hair again, pulling at it gently as you raked your hands through it. A shallow moan left Kirishima's lips as he pulled away from you, gently tugging at your bottom lip with his teeth as he pulled away. He looked at you with lidded eyes, a hunger glistening over his face. He looked at you with that same charming smile he always had, pulling his shirt over his chest. Your eyes widened at the sight of him. He had definitely grown since he was in high school all those years ago. He was built like a greek god, his pecks large and his muscles toned. Your fingertips gently felt up his chest and abdomen, shivers traveling up Kirishima’s spine.

“You’re beautiful, Eijiro.”

“Eijiro? We’re that close already?”

You giggled. “I mean, by the way you grabbed my chest, I would think so.”

Kirishima shook his head, lowering his body back down to yours. He kept himself propped up on his arms, leaving soft kisses along your face and jaw before hovering over your ear. “Well, I would love to do more if you let me.” His teeth nipped at the bottom of your ear.

“Please.”

Kirishima’s hands fumbled with the back of your bra, unhooking it and pulling it off you. His hands held your tender breasts. He placed gentle kisses along your chest, fingers toying softly with your nipples. His thumbs brushed over the sensitive buds, pulling them ever so gently. Soft moans sounded from you, only pushing Kirishima further with his teasing.

He looked at you with a wink and a smirk, before placing a gentle kiss over one of your breasts, sucking on it gently. His tongue worked circles around your nipple, your body squirming slightly under his touch. He tugged at it gently with his teeth, pulling away and giving the other breast the same attention. Your hands pulled at his hair, a grunt sounding out over your breast when you found a sensitive spot on his head.

He pulled up, admiring your form under him. Your face was pink with blush, your hair falling in a mess over his face, your lipstick smudged around your lips. Small bruises were adorning your neck and chest, breasts slick with his spit.

“You are absolutely perfect, sweetheart. The best thing I have ever seen.”

Eijiro moved his hands around the sweatpants you had borrowed, pulling them off your legs. His hands grazed the side of your leg, following up from your ankle to you hips. “So, so beautiful.”

He placed gentle kisses along your inner thighs, gently massaging them with his hands. His face was ever so close to your clothed folds, the teasing leaving you a mess. Kirishima took you by surprise, biting down on your thighs. Your moan was louder than any had been so far, the pain being laced with pleasure. You would definitely be able to see his bite marks and a bruise in the morning.

“You like that, huh? You like when I mark you up, make you all mine?”

You nodded, eyes closing as Kirishima bit down on your other thigh as you moaned out in pleasure. He placed gentle kisses over the new bitemark, lapping at it gently with his tongue.

His fingers hooked over the band of your underwear. “Is it okay if I keep going, sweetheart? Only if you want me to.”

You nodded your head, trying to rub your thighs together to get any sort of friction to aid your growing needs.

“Let me hear you, baby. Can I keep going?”

“God, yes Eijiro, please keep going.”

Kirishima smiled and pulled off your underwear, throwing it aside somewhere. His thumb gently felt along your folds, grazing across your clit. “God, every inch of you is absolute perfection. You're so pretty, baby.

You mewled at his touch, your folds already wet in anticipation. Kirishima dragged his tongue across your folds, lapping gently, teasing you. He was practically purring against you, losing his mind. He had never, ever, thought the girl he liked the most would be so completely unraveled under him. He sucked against your clit, moans and strings of babbled phrases leaving your mouth.

“Stop teasing me, Eijiro. Please, give me more.”

He pulled away, blowing softly against you, the cold air sending you squirming again. “So greedy, sweetheart. I promise I’ll make you feel so good.”

He rolled your clit with the pad of his thumb, moving it in soft circles. Your waist bucked forward under his touch, a growing tension in your stomach. Kirishima gently placed two fingers in you, pumping them out gently. You moaned, the stretch of his large fingers was absolutely unraveling. He pumped them in and out slowly, wanting you to get adjusted the best you could. He watched as you clenched around his digits. His thrusts turned to a scissoring motion as he added a third finger. The new stretch was absolutely mind numbing. He pumped the three fingers in and out of you, barely grazing the spot that needed him most. You bucked forward to him, trying to lower yourself further onto your fingers. Kirishima watched with intention, thrusting his fingers in deeper and faster. He hit the spot you needed, the moan leaving your lips was sinful and the best thing he had ever heard.

“Right there, Eijiro. Please, right there.”

“Is that good, baby? Do you feel good?” Kirishima’s voice was low, a practical growl. You mewled, legs shaking.

“I, I think I’m close.”

"That's okay, you can come when you're ready. I want you to feel good."

Kirishima thrusted his fingers in and out of you, curling them against your g-spot. You felt a knot grow in your stomach, snapping as Kirishima rubbed against your clit. Your body shook as you came, moaning his name.

Kirishima pulled his fingers out gently, locking eyes with you as he licked your juices off his fingers, sucking them slowly and licking them clean. He licked a clean stripe against your folds, sucking any remaining juices from you. You mewled and moaned, sensitive to his touch.

"You taste so good, so perfect, Y/N." Kirishima's face was covered in your slick and sweat, your lipstick still smeared on his neck. His hair was a mess, tangled from where your hands had been tugging at it.

You sat up a little, "Can I take care of that?" You glanced down at the tent that was straining against his pants.

"Only if you want." Kirishima pulled you closer to him, sitting you on his lap at the end of the bed, moving you around with ease. His head rested against your ear, voice low. "I want you to feel good, sweetheart."

You pressed a gentle kiss to his temple, sliding off his lap and sitting on your knees on the ground. You felt the fabriced bulge, watching as Kirishima shivered, eyes never leaving you. You slowly undid his belt, pulling his pants off him, letting them rest at his feet. His erection sprang through his boxers, precum peaking through. You licked a strip over, the fabric growing damp under your touch. Kirishima's grip tightened on the sheets of the bed. You palmed the length, trying to rub it, but it was honestly much to large for one hand to manage. Your mind was putty imagining how much he was packing.

You hooked the band of his boxers around your fingers, pulling them off his legs. Your eyes widened, gawking at the sight of him. He was, large, to say the least. You honestly weren't sure if you could manage him.

"Like what you see, baby?" Kirishima smirked down at you, eyebrows raised.

You nodded, rubbing a circle around his tip with your thumb. Kirishima let out a shaky breath, his composer slowly breaking.

You tried to stroke him up and down, your hand unable to fully wrap around his shaft. You pumped up and down gently, picking up speed slowly. Kirishima threw his head back, mumbling your name under his breath.

You took him into your mouth slowly, tounge swirling around his tip.

"Fuck, Y/N" Kirishima's voice was breathy and full of need.

You bobbed your head up and down his length slowly, trying to take in as much as you could. When you hollowed out your cheeks, taking in enough of him that you hit the back of your throat, Kiri let out one of the most sinful moans you had heard. He was one of the last people you would expect to be so vocal, but if you said it wasn't the hottest thing you've heard, you would be lying.

Kirishima grabbed onto a bunch of your hair, his hand massive against your hair. He pulled you gently up and down his length, guiding you through what felt good.

"Just like that, baby. Good girl."  

You grew faster, stroking the lengths you couldn't reach with your mouth. You felt him twitch in your mouth, his grip on on your head tighter.

"I'm so close, Y/N. Fuck, you're so good. Take me like the pretty girl you are."

You stroked him faster, licking against him as he moved in and out of your face. You watched his face contort as he came in your mouth. You liked your lips, swallowing his load the best you could. You coughed a little, not anticipating so much. Kirishima panted, relieved. His eyes widened, realizing what happened. He looked at you, leftovers come sitting on your face.

"Oh my God, i'm so sorry. Hold on-"

Kirishima pulled a towel out of the closet, cleaning your face off.

"You don't have to apologize. I just hope I did okay?"

He smiled, pressing a kiss to your hairline. "You were perfect. Thank you."

He helped you stand, holding your waist. "If it isn't too much too soon, we can shower and you can maybe sleep over?"

"I would like that, Eijiro."

[themaribatpit]

Jasonette July Day 12: Dare

Written by: The Maribat Pit  @jasonette-july-event Prompt: Dare Rated: T (Drink responsibly my friends) A/N: Maribat fangirl went to Uni in the UK. Most people thought they could outdrink the Americans, and that American beer tasted horrible.  DC fanboy isn’t much of a drinker. Also we planned this earlier, but I saw this blog post from @ritacrow-blogrequesting something similar a few days ago, so here you go.  I don’t know if you’re a fan of the in vino veritas/drunken confession trope, so feel free to skip it if you aren’t.

“So, why are we doing this again?” Tim asked hesitantly, as they gathered in the Wayne Manor lounge. “Because Pixie Pop here issued a challenge, and I don’t plan on letting her win”, Jason explained with a smirk. “All she said was ‘American drinking laws are bullshit’, and it’s not like you don’t know the name of every single bar in Gotham that doesn’t card.” Tim retorted.  “She also said American beer tastes gross, so I don’t know why you brought Budweiser of all things”.

“She dared us to try and drink her under the table, and I’m sure as hell not backing down.” Jason hissed, and Tim decided that it was pointless trying to argue.  The whole reason Tim and Steph were even involved was because they had just turned 18, which meant they were allowed to take part in this little drinking competition.  Alfred was in the corner of the room keeping score, someone had to, considering the night they were about to have.

After they all gathered in the lounge, it was time for the challenge to begin.  Barbara quietly sipped her glass of wine, curling into Dick’s side as she watched the movie playing on the TV.  Jason and Dick had downed a bottle of beer each, waiting for Marinette to finish her first glass of wine.  Marinette rested her back against Jason’s arm as she watched the movie play out, the night had just begun and she wasn’t about to let them win.  She wouldn’t be able to look any non-American person in the eye if they knew she got out drunk by them. Marinette took in the soft glow of the lounge, alternating between leaning on the sofa or Jason’s leather-clad shoulder.  It almost reminded her of her home city at night. She looked around at the people she had come to know, fairly certain she had the dopiest smile on her face at that moment.  

She had arrived in Gotham City not long ago, and she was surprised to find that some of them welcomed her with open arms.  Not all of them, obviously, some were a bit more welcoming than others.  Bruce didn’t really trust her as a magic user, and Damian usually kept to himself.  Preferring to be alone with his pets, Titus and Alfred (the cat). The others assured her not to take it too personally, that they are like that with everyone.  With Jason, it was hard to tell what he thought about her.  Dick was like an older brother to everyone, and in some ways reminded Marinette of Chat Noir, alot.  While Barbara, Steph and Cass were like the sisters Marinette didn’t have.  Tim was at least somewhat curious about her powers and how they worked, hard as he tried to fight it in the beginning.

With Jason, it was much harder to tell at times.  He wasn’t quite as closed off as Damian, though sometimes she found him in the Wayne Manor library reading by the window.  They had each other’s backs in a fight, and the fact that she was much smaller compared to him earned her the nickname “Pixie Pop”.   They worked well together on missions, and there was plenty of friendly banter between them.  There was almost a veneer of sarcasm and bravado.  

The only time it showed any sign of falling was when his pit madness took over.  Even then she was more focused on asking Plagg and Tikki for help, seeing as it was their magic causing this.  There was no fixing it, but they had managed to help get it under control.  Marinette was almost frustrated when he woke up to find her waiting at his bedside, after working around the clock to keep the madness at bay.  The sounds of him screaming and thrashing around were still ringing in her ear, and the most that he could muster was “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you there, Pixie.” he drawled.  

“Pixie, you there?” Jason gently poked her on the shoulder and she realised that she had been staring into her wine glass for a moment.  She took a large gulp before setting the glass down on the table, the night had just begun.  

As the night went on, Tim was not impressed with how beer tasted. “People actually drink this stuff for fun?” he muttered. He was starting to think Marinette might have a point about how American beer tasted. Sadly the old adage of “liquor before beer, you’re in the clear” meant that it was too late to try Steph’s approach.  Steph was nursing a Jack Daniels and coke as she watched the film, letting that light of the TV screen dance in front of them.

Later into the night, Tim was getting tipsy at that point. Considering this was his first time drinking, Marinette gave him a smile that said “you get points for trying”.  If Steph wasn’t drunk now, she was going to be feeling the effects very soon.  She mostly drank spirits chased down with soda and juice.  Barbara had already left after a couple of glasses of wine, deciding to leave the rest of them to this game.  Jason and Dick had beer bottles lined up in front of them, almost as if they were competing with each other first. Marinette continued to leisurely sipped her wine, knowing that she was their final boss at that moment.

In the end, only Marinette and Jason were left in the lounge.  Steph left had already left, and Tim followed not long after,  Alfred helped get Dick into bed after he nearly passed out on the coffee table.  “It’s you and me, Poxie Pip” Jason slurred, Alfred occasionally came in to check on them.  

Marinette, who at this point was slightly tipsy, leaned in close and whispered in his ear “What’s the matter? Afraid you’ll lose?”

“There’s worse ways to go, Pixie, trust me.” he laughed, Marinette gave him a very sad smile.  He finished the last of his beer bottle before laying down on the sofa, resting his head on Marinette’s lap. Marinette was certain she could feel her face heating up, she could hear her heart pounding in her chest as she looked down at him.  

“Are you sure my teeny tiny legs can support your big head?” she joked. Great, now she was doing it too. she looked away in hopes that he couldn’t see the blush on her face.  She didn’t get Asian glow, but now she was really hoping she had that as an excuse.    

“I’ve seen you lift goons twice your size and throw them across rooms,” he laughed “besides, this feels kinda nice.” he mumbled.

“Yeah but that was me as Ladybug, it’s also what keeps me from tripping over air and landing on my face.” she explained.  She didn’t think her heart would be able to handle looking down to see one of the few times she saw him completely at peace.  She was used to people who preferred her as her alter ego anyhow.

“I guess you win this round,” he slurred, Marinette still hadn’t moved his head from her lap.  If anything, her free hand was working its way through his dark locks of hair.  He smiled, letting himself be lulled to sleep by the simple yet kind gesture.  “Serves me right,” he yawned, “getting drunk with a fairy princess.”

Marinette turned her attention back to the last of her wine, “there he goes again, making silly jokes like that.” she thought.  “Especially with one as pretty as you,” he laughed. Marinette was about to get up at that moment, now he was just being ridiculous.  “I like you...” were the last words he said before letting sleep take him.  

It was everything Marinette could do not to drop her wine class on the floor in shock.  Marinette thought she heard wrong.  She shook her head, what did it matter? I mean, she had called her friends pretty loads of times before, it’s not like he said he loved her or anything.  These were things that you said to friends all the time, right? At that moment, there was a knock on the door, Alfred came in and saw Jason asleep in Marinette’s lap.  “I was just about to leave could you maybe help Jason get back to his room? That would be great thanks Alfred.” she quickly spluttered before dashing out of the lounge and down the hallway in search of an empty guest room to sleep in.  

Jason tragically awoke the next morning with a hangover and a vague memory of what had happened the night before.  He thought this was probably the very reason why Bruce did not drink.  Alfred came in with a tray of chilli dogs and water, to nurse the hangover.  “Thanks Alfred,” Jason groaned, “do I even wanna know what happened last night?”

“If you must know Master Todd, you won second place in last night’s drinking competition.” He explained, Jason sighed, Marinette wasn’t going to let him live that down.  He still had to admit he was impressed with her. “Miss Dupain-Cheng seemed rather flustered after you compared the experience to  ‘getting drunk with a fairy princess’ and confessed your admiration and affection for her.”   It was all coming back to him now, and he was about to be sick.  He told her that he thought she was pretty and that he liked her. He wasn’t wrong, but it probably didn’t sound as romantic coming from someone who was probably very drunk.   He reached for the chilli dog, hoping that he would be able to keep it down.   “In vino veritas indeed, or in birro veritas in your case”, Alfred quoted.  Jason took a sip of water, still too stunned to speak.  “If you still hold such affection for Miss Dupain-Cheng, might I suggest telling her when you’ve sobered up?” he suggested, giving Jason a slight sympathetic smile.

“I’ll try, thanks Alfred” he replied as Alfred left the room, leaving him to his thoughts.  

A couple of days later, Marinette was sitting in her studio, drinking a warm mug of hot chocolate.  Jason hadn’t called her or spoken to her since the party, and she had hoped that he had just drunkenly forgotten his little drunken confession.  It wasn’t that Marinette didn’t reciprocate his feelings, it just felt like there was no point in putting stock in something he said while he was so very drunk.  It almost made Marinette laugh a little at the thought.  Her phone buzzed, it was a message from Jason:  “Hey, you busy today? I’ve got something to tell you.  Sober, this time”.  Marinette smiled, maybe this time there was truth in the foul tasting American beer.

 BONUS: The next morning in the Batcave... Tim: That tasted like actual vomit.  Dick: It's an acquired taste, Baby Bird. Tim: Which is to say you were peer pressured into liking it.

[honey-hippie-harper]

In-Laws Being In-Laws (Re-upload)

 Hiii!

So, this is basically an old fic, which I deleted from my other account ( @dawniebb ) and was requested to be uploaded again.

This feels like a lifetime ago afgshjka, but I remember it was written for a Renegades content swap event, and it was for @healing-winston-pratt (hello, wifey!). The prompt was, basically, Nova and one of the Renegays being in-laws, and it was super fun to write! <3

If anyone’s reading this: Hi, you’re a beautiful human being, and I love you <3

In-Laws Being In-Laws

Dear Dread Warden,

I am not quite sure you will get this message because it is been a while since I last used my communicator but, in case you do: I  hope you are having a nice morning. 

The reason I am writing you this is that, as you must already be aware, right now Sketch and his teammates are taking part in the Annual Renegade Convention as special guests to be awarded for their heroic participation in the Second Battle for Gatlon. Hence, they are out of town. Due to my temporary resignation from the team, I declined the offer to attend the event and, for instance, to receive an award. This means that, unlike theirs, my routine remains the same as usual.

Unfortunately, I must see my therapist for my weekly appointment in two hours, and after that I will have to go to the supermarket to pick up some groceries and essential items. Under normal circumstances, given the nature of my relationship with Sketch, he would have driven me to the supermarket and then back to my apartment, as it happens to be located sort of far from the store and it could be pretty difficult for me to walk while carrying all those bags. However, as mentioned before, these are not normal circumstances and Sketch is not currently available.

I reach out to you with no intention to cause trouble; for instance, if I happen to be asking too much or disrupting your schedule (As I am conscious you are a busy person) and you consider you will not be able to help me, I assure you I completely understand. But: Could you pick me up from my therapist's office and take me to the supermarket afterwards?

I apologize for the inconvenience and I promise I will make sure this does not happen again. In addition, I also apologize for the alliteration in the greeting at the beginning of this message. I did not know whether you wanted to be acknowledged by your real name or your alias.

Sincerely,

Insomnia.

-.-

Hi, Insomnia!!!

So nice to see you!... Or should I say read you! Ha! It's been so long, it almost feels like an eternity! I hope therapy is going great! (We're all really proud of you!)

It doesn't bother me at all, sweetheart; of course I'll help you with that. Could you share the location of your therapist's office, please?

Oh, and also: What time do you want me to be there? (Not that I have anything to do today, I just want to be on time).  

I'm excited to see you! Can I take you to eat something afterwards? How does that sound?

Take care!

(Agh. I forgot these things don't actually allow you to write your real  name).

-S i m o n.

(Better).

-.-

He spotted Nova way before parking. She was sitting on a bench outside the building, staring anxiously at her phone. The body language of a nervous person.

Simon stopped the car right in front of where she was, and when she realized he was already here, Nova jumped out of her seat as if it had burned her skin, before jogging in an awkward manner towards the car.

Once she was inside, Simon couldn't help but feel a twinge in his stomach. He wasn't lying when he told her he was excited to see her. In fact, he was more than excited, and he had to hold himself back pretty hard to avoid hugging her, because it was evident she didn't want to be hugged right now, for she just directed a tiny smile at him and said:

"Hi."

She was the same Nova he had met some time ago, but at the same time she was different; she was wearing sneakers, skinny jeans and a basic white v-neck shirt; her hair was a little longer, too, to the point she could tie it in a cute little ponytail; Simon could tell she wasn’t wearing any makeup, but still her face looked healthier than before; less tired, with smaller under-eye dark circles and lips covered in chapstick. Finally.

She looked alive. More than before.

“Hi.” He finally responded.

Watching people get better was always satisfactory, but watching Nova get better was different. He had grown to appreciate her, since the very first moment he saw her with Adrian; since the very first moment he spoke to her and saw nothing but utter heartbreak in her eyes. Nova was hurting, and any sensitive person would’ve noticed that. So, watching her get better was a touching experience for him.

“You look so…”

Nova interrupted him almost immediately.

“I know. I...I barely had time to fix my hair. Gosh. It’s so uncomfortable and I want to cut it but I haven’t had time. I…”

“Oh, no, no, no! Your hair looks gorgeous! “ He chuckled, although he was confused by her reaction. “I was gonna say you look really good. Really, really good. The ponytail looks great on you.”

Nova gulped as she adjusted said ponytail.

“Oh.” She muttered in a hoarse voice. “...Well...Thank you. I thought…”

“No, no.” Simon waved his hand. “You look great. How.... how are you?”

She seemed to be processing the question, even though it was not that difficult.

“I’m…” Nova cleared her throat. “I’m doing great. How are you? How’s ...life going?”

“Absolutely great!” Simon smiled, clapping his hands together. “Things at home are great. You know, Hugh’s not currently here due to the Annual Renegade Convention. Adrian’s not here either (for sure, you already know about that) and Max…”

“Max went too, yeah.” Nova smiled. Her eyes seemed to brighten to the mention of Max’s name. Adrian had mentioned this fact about her a couple of times: Nova was fond of children. And even if she wasn’t, she had a tendency to protect and care about them. Since she had this type of strong personality, Hugh refused to recognize that as a truth, but Simon had no trouble believing it.

It was adorable.

“He called me when he got the invitation. He was eager to go.” She continued. “Which doesn’t surprise me. I...It’s his first time travelling, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Responded Simon. “We’re planning to go on vacation this year. Because, you know, the convention’s being held not too far away from Gatlon and sadly he’s probably gonna get bored.”

“Bored?” Nova shifted herself in the seat, awkwardly. “Why?”

“Well...those conventions are...well, conventions.” Simon shrugged, smiling at her. “There are a lot of speeches, one after the other and, sure, the guests that represent Gatlon can skip some of them, but others are mandatory and they’re like 2 hours long and it’s so boring and…”

Nova hissed, grimacing, to which Simon nodded in agreement.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to go.” He admitted. “Though I do wanted to be there when Adrian and Max received their award. Too sad.”

Nova tried to speak a couple of times, until she finally had found the correct words to said her thoughts out loud.

“Why...why didn’t you go, then?”

“About that.” Simon chuckled. “Tamaya is going to be there too, as a speaker. And she’s also receiving an award. So...somebody had to take care of the Headquarters and Kasumi and I were left with that responsibility. However, it’s been pretty peaceful, as you may have noticed.”

“I have.” Nova nodded. “Not that I...go out very much, but yeah. Things have been calm.”

“People are behaving for once. And it’s awesome.” he sighed.

Then they stayed in silence. For a while.

Nova stared out the window, avoiding eye contact, while Simon whistled as he tapped his fingers on the wheel.

Not a word. No small talk.

Nothing.

“Sooooo…” Said Simon. “Shall we go?”

“Perhaps we should.” Nova said, immediately, as a flash of relief crossed her face.

So Simon smiled at her once again as he turned on the engine, while Nova put on her seatbelt next to him.

-.-

It took her so little time to come back Simon confirmed she was one of those people who would strategically write their shopping list so they wouldn’t be going back and forth through the aisles. It also surprised him that, being a person so young, she was so...focused on everything.

She really had only bought groceries and essential items. No junk food. No silly things she swore she would need and then she didn’t. Not even candy from the checkout area.

Simon hurried himself out of the car to help her put the bags in the trunk, but once she saw him and guessed his intentions, she quickly said:

“It’s okay. I can do it.”

“I know you can.” He clarified. Because, well, she indeed was a strong person. “But maybe you could use some help. That’s...a couple of bags.”

“Yeah. I know.” Nova nodded, already carrying the first two of the bags. “But I can do it. Please. I’m already causing you too much trouble.”

Simon was yet again confused by her reaction, and he tried to talk to her about it. But just like Nova looked like she didn’t want to be hugged right now, she also looked like she didn’t want to talk about it right now.

So he just opened the trunk for her and held it in case it would go down by its own. It had never happened, but just to be sure. Sometimes Simon’s anxiety made him overanalyze some situations.

Less than 10 minutes had passed by the time Nova finished putting all her stuff in the car, Simon figured she was still training, since she was as agile and fast as she was the day she notified them she would be taking some time off from the team and the Renegades in general.

They got in the car again, and before the silence could get as uncomfortable as the previous one, Simon took the initiative to speak.

“I think...you forgot to answer a part of my message.” He said, carefully. “You know...the part where I told you that maybe we could...go to a restaurant or something?”

Nova’s face, ears and neck turned so red she became a human-shaped cherry, and although in other circumstances he would’ve considered it adorable, this time he couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her. He had been there and done that many times; the messages Nova had sent were peak odd. The type of messages one would overthink over and over again because they had to be perfect. And if something, anything sounded off after you sent it, your world would be in shambles.

So he just smiled to assure it was okay. That he didn’t mind. That those messages didn’t have to be so formal in the first place.

And that, obviously, didn’t work.

For his experience, it never did.

“I...I...Yeah.” Nova scratched her brow. “Pretty much I...I...can recall not knowing how to word that so I just left it blank and I...must’ve forgotten to…”

“Nova.” Simon said, softly. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“Did I...offend you or something?”

“Absolutely no!” He said. “Why would you think that? It’s just a slip. I know it wasn’t your intention and to be honest I still want to take you to eat something so...yeah, there’s no reason to get weird about this. There’s no need to worry.”

Nova took a deep, hasty breath. She was flustered, son Simon tried to keep her calm; to make her feel like she was in a safe environment.

Why wouldn’t she be, in the first place?

She was his son’s girlfriend.

Why would he want to hurt her or make her feel bad?

“Nova, darling.” He said again. “Do you have something on your mind?”

“I do.” Nova cleared her throat, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t really...can eat out right now. I barely manage to afford my groceries, you know? It’s been…”

“But you’re not gonna pay your own bill. I mean, why would you do that?” Simon raised an eyebrow at her, genuinely confused, but still laughing nervously. Sweet rot, who had hurt this child so much? “ I’m the one who’s taking you to eat. You wouldn’t have to…”

“You don’t have to either!” She snapped. Not mad, but rather distressed, while breathing heavily.

Simon went still, afraid he would make it worse. Still, he couldn’t leave it like that, so he gulped and, once he reunited enough courage, he dared to speak again.

“What’s really on your mind, Nova?” He asked, this time in a more soothing voice. Nova’s whole being went red again, but the shadow of confusion in her expression was noticeable and hard to ignore. For this reason, Simon decided to provide some kind of scaffolding.

“For example: Why would you write a message that is directed to me in such a formal way?” He asked, patiently. “Why would you ask me to pick you up as if you were asking me to help you commit a crime? Why would you act so uncomfortable around me when it’s not the first time that we’ve met? Why would you…?”

“Because it’s you.” Nova answered, avoiding eye contact.

And he expected that answer, yes. But, at the same time, he expected to understand the statement once it slipped out of her mouth.

However, he didn’t.

“Can you elaborate?” He requested.

Nova clicked her tongue as she rubbed her neck, staring at the dash right in front of her.

“...I can disappear if you want me to. Would that make you feel more comfortable?”

“No. No, no.” Nova nodded, waving her hands, finally looking at him. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Then...would you tell me what’s wrong?”

Nova thought about it. She squirmed in her seat. Gulped. Coughed. Squirmed again.

Then, playing with her own hands, she spoke.

“...I’m ashamed.”

“Ashamed of what…?” Simon tilted his head to the side. “Ashamed of who…? What exactly are you ashamed of? ...Dating Adrian?”

Nova flinched.

“I would never.”

A spark of pride illuminated his thoughts and his insides in general, but Simon tried to pay little attention to it.

“I’m just...ashamed. Of everything.” Nova said, sighing. “I…”

And she cut herself in the middle of the phrase, realizing that once again she wouldn’t be able to finish it.

Simon didn’t realize he was frowning until he felt the muscles of his face slowly giving in. He understood.

And he knew that anything that had happened during the Second Battle for Gatlon had been her fault. She might have contributed in some way but, at the end of the day, she was just a child.

A very confused and manipulated child who just needed someone to listen without twisting her words as they pleased.

“...I just think that...if I were you I wouldn’t like me either.” She wasn’t crying, nor did she sound like she was about to any time soon. There was so much resignation in her voice that her words weighted as much as a giant rock. “Hugh gave me his blessing to...you know, date Adrian…”

“I can recall giving you my blessing too.”

Nova tripped on her own words.

“I mean, you did. You both did.” She said. “But still… It’s because… because you want him to be happy. And I get it. I really do. And I understand because, like I said, I wouldn’t like me either...I know I am loved. I know I matter for some people...but I also know I did...bad things, and I carry this sort of cursed last name…”

She stopped and breathed for a second before continuing.

“And I…” She finally looked at him. “I get it. You don’t have to pretend you like me, after all that happened. After I stole stuff from your house; infiltrated into your system; caused a terrorist attack...You really don’t have to pretend.”

Simon blinked, and if it wasn’t for her specific and controlled body language, he would’ve thought she was making excuses or even joking.

But Nova was telling the truth.

And it was heartbreaking.

“Perhaps you should think outside the box and picture a scenario in which you realize we’re not pretending.” That’s the only thing he said.

“Perhaps you should realize that we love you and you matter to us.” He reached for her hand and softly touched her knuckles. Her hands were shaking. “And that, yes, we want Adrian to be happy, but we also want you to be happy.”

Nova’s eyes seemed to be covered in crystals, but she remained in silence.

“You’re part of this family now, Nova.” He smiled. “And I’m sorry, but you’ll have to deal with that.”

Nova sniffed, swallowing, while lacing her hand into Simon’s.

“Artino and everything?” She muttered.

“Artino it’s not what defines you.” Simon chuckled. “You’re Nova. Just Nova... And we’re really proud of you. Not ashamed.”

She smiled back at him, wordless, and Simon gave her a quick handshake before putting his hands around the wheel.

Because even now, that her walls were crumbling right before her eyes, she didn’t look like someone who wanted to be hugged at the moment, and he accepted and respected that.

“I was planning to take you to my favorite restaurant, but maybe we can prepare a homemade meal instead?” He suggested. “You know? In-laws being in-laws? … Not to brag, but I make the best lemon pie in the world.”

Nova chuckled. Relaxed.

Happy.

“Sounds great.” She said, nodding.

“Excellent.” Simon turned on the engine.

“Let’s go home.”

[mrs-nara-shikamaru]

Soulmate AU- Dreams Shikamaru Nara X Reader

Here is another monthly collab for @konoblog-simps I sadly couldn’t make the 1.5K this time. Enjoy!

WC: 1.3K

Soulmates were a drag. The concept of it was a drag. Shikamaru never could understand how his parents were soulmates when all his mom did was nag at his dad. The first dream of his soulmate was troublesome. It was when he started attending the academy, he was the few people who had their dreams already. He remembered a tiny person picking flowers by a riverside, a bright smile shining on their face but couldn't remember what they looked like. It made Shikamaru curious when he was younger. Would he meet this destined person soon? As the years passed by, he pushed that dream to the back of his mind. If there were any other dreams he had of them, Shikamaru didn't remember. It wasn't till Choji had his first dream that Shikamaru bothered to remember his. In exchange for hearing his best friend's, Shikamaru told him his. The first person he told. He never bothered telling his parents till much later but he had a feeling his dad knew. His mom of course was over the moon about it and tried to pry but he didn't have anything else to tell her other than the flowers by the river. After that, he figured soulmates were a drag, it took too much energy to be curious about them all the time. Ino disagreed greatly with that view when he brought it up during a dinner after training. "You continuously give yourself hope, even after 8 years of your dreams but have you met your soulmate yet? Do you even know what he looks like?"

"Well obviously not, but you know your soulmate when you see them!" Ino argues. "Shouldn't you be excited that there is someone out there for you?"

"But there is a chance you'll never meet them or maybe they are dead. What a drag." That was the biggest fear. When a soulmate dies all dreams of them cease to exist. You begin to forget everything about them. Some people never got to meet their soulmate either. Perhaps that's why he never could remember any other dreams. What if they were already dead? The years continued from there, even when the great war happened many people met their soulmates for the first time as Choji did. Shikamaru would have never guessed that would be his best friend's significant other. Such a fiery personality. And in the end, Shikamaru never met anyone he recognized from his lucid dreams. It was as though they never existed or rather, might have died. The thought in the end didn't bother him too much. Shikamaru never met his soulmate, didn't know their personality. It would have been a stranger to him that passes away if that was the case. Ino had kept poking at the situation, going around introducing people that she thought might have been his significant other. She didn't want to give up hope for him. Shikamaru was thankful for her. However, after noticing how annoyed he started getting, she lightly starts leaving it alone, saying something among the lines of, "It'll happen in due time and I'll make sure to tell them how uninterested you were." He knew she was teasing and for the first time in awhile the thoughts of his soulmate drifted away.

Moonlight had been streaming into his room as Shikamaru gazes upon the ceiling, going over every corner and crack that he had memorized years ago. It was cloudy, he figured as the beams of light disappeared, leaving him in darkness, until a second later it would reappear like they never were blocked. It couldn't have been long before his mind finally settled and he fell asleep. A slumber he thought would be familiar. A quiet, peaceful night. Darkened eyes flew open, the morning light announcing its arrival. Shikamaru held himself up, trying to process the details he had just encountered. A familiar bright smile resting on a much older face, right next to a riverbank. Yet again his soulmate reminded him of themselves. What a drag. He fell back onto his bed, a small tingle in his chest. Relief?

Shikamaru wasn't sure how to even bring it up to Ino or Choji at dinner, it was something they all dismissed and Ino would make a big deal out of it. He wondered what kind of dreams his soulmate might have gotten, did they experience a similar kind of dream last night? We're they as curious once again as he was? "Maru......SHIKAMARU!" Startled, he jumps. "Are you okay? You look like your 1000 miles away." Ino asks with a worried tone. She knew he started new responsibilities with the Hokage but didn't think they would cause him to be this worried about them.

"Is everything going okay at the Hokage's office?" Choji inputs, sharing Ino's sense of worry. The Nara sighs, what a troublesome situation.

"You know how I haven't had a soulmate dream in awhile."

"I think awhile is an understatement," Ino mutters.

"I had one last night." Everything went quiet. Ino slams her hands on the wooden table.

"and?"

"That's it, it was the same dream but with a much older person." As he knew, Ino started poking as Choji laughs, relief for his friend. And on that night, Shikamaru had another dream with a different setting and the night after that. The dreams began happening way more often like they were fitting everything he had to know before he met them. Each time he had one, Shikamaru would confide in Choji, who in turn was getting excited to meet his best friend's significant other. "Wow, it really can't be long now before you meet them."

"It's kind of a drag. I know what they look like but I can't put it together in my mind." Choji laughs.

"Mine was like that too. It was like solving one of the mysteries of the world when I met Karui. Oh, one a side note, I heard that we're having ninjas transfer here." Shikamaru had forgotten about the current events playing around the village.

"We're having three Jonin move here to tighten up relations with the smaller villages. It has been a drag."

"Huh, when will they be arriving?"

"In the next couple of days." Within those few days, the dreams had ceased happening once again or he was just alittle stressed out to remember them.

As the morning dawned, the village was already bustling as the new Jonins arrived. The villagers gave a slight glance at the incoming ninjas before going on with their business. Shikamaru wasn't thinking anything of their arrival as he walks through the halls with Choji. Another day passing by. He could hear chatting in the Hokage office, a voice that seemed familiar but new at the same time. "Those flowers are native to our village, they grew along the riverbank, definitely a sight to see when they bloom."

"That's all [Y/n] does back home! Tending to those damn flowers." A knock emerges.

"That was perfect timing." The Hokage says. "Come in." You glance over your shoulder, eyes widen for a moment when you connect with dark eyes. Shikamaru shares the same reaction. A smile that he was very familiar with blooms on your face. "Let me introduce you to your guides. Shikamaru was in charge of preparing for your stay here." You couldn't help but giggle at the shocked look on your guide's face.

"Who wouldn't have thought we would meet in this way, soulmate!" Moving from your village was the right choice.

[chibinekochan]

The dragon prince - Ft Diavolo part 3

part : 1 I 2 I

Obey me! Monster tales masterlist

"Now I believe that you're not the culprit." I put my sword away as a sign of goodwill but still keep distance between us.

"That's all you are going to say?" He seems surprised.

"What were you expecting?" I have no idea what he wants.

"Well panic? Screaming? No idea to be honest." These are at least normal reactions to dragons.

"I have seen earth dragons before, even when they were smaller. I mean I have never seen one turning into a human before. That changes quite a bit for me personally, but it has nothing to do with my current assignment." I give my words some thought. It's honestly something that will require me to rethink a few things.

"I see that you are indeed quite an interesting human. With someone like you I might be able to figure out how to solve the issues for both of our people." Diavolo suddenly smiles.

"What are you talking about?" I'm clueless.

"You see the fact that you are willing to listen to a dragon and aren't scared, even after seeing my true form, means that humans and dragons might be able to get along after all." Diavolo sounds like he has been looking for something like that for quite some time.

"If a dragon talked before we might have prevented unnecessary deaths on both sides." It certainly would be a start.

"I agree on that, sadly dragons can be very stubborn and stuck in their ways. They refuse to listen or learn." He sighs deeply.

"There are humans like that too." I have seen plenty myself.

Diavolo nods knowingly. "I went through a long and hard process to change my form and to learn what I can about humans. Many of my fellow dragons laughed at the idea of a conversation with a human. But look at us now."

"I'm certain no dragon would listen to me anyway and I honestly doubt that many humans would trust you. I'm not even sure if I can." The blood of dragons is on your hands, regardless of their guilt to them you must be a monster. Especially now that you know that at least some of them have human intelligence.

"I guess we have to prove to everyone that it's indeed possible for us to work together. For that purpose I'd like to accompany you to the fire dragon and bring it to justice." He seems so calm when he says these words.

I can't believe what I'm hearing. "You would kill a fellow dragon?"

"If I have to, I will." His conviction is clear to me. "I'd like to try it my way first. I want to talk to the dragon and the villagers to find a different way."

"I won't stop you, but if it's attacking the villagers or me, I won't hold back." I carefully observe him. His words move me, his eyes seem so honest. Not a single lie is found.

"That is fair. I want to fully disclose to you that I have killed humans in self-defense before." Diavolo didn't need to add that bit but yet he does.

"If what you say is true I won't fault you. I killed dragons for work when I was hired, but every last one killed humans." We both have sinned in each other's species and yet morally we both were right.

Diavolo nods. "I believe that you had no choice at that moment."

"I still wonder why you chose to reveal yourself to me. A dragon knight seems to be a rather silly choice." I can't help but ponder about this question.

"Haha, I think it was that look in your eyes. So full of fire. I'm glad I was right." Diavolo laughs.

"Seems to be a rather silly reason." I shake my head but smile despite everything.

"Ohhh, what a lovely smile you have." He smiles at me, now I notice that he is standing rather close now.

"T-thank you." I'm rather startled by the compliment. Usually, people are intimidated by me. I guess I had similar experiences to Diavolo in that regard.

"I think we should drink to our partnership. Are you up for it?" Diavolo stretches and smiles at me.

"I definitely need some alcohol after today." A lot of news was just tossed at me for sure.

Diavolo nods. "In that case let's celebrate."

We then head back to his cooking room, where he fills our cups once more to the brim with alcohol.

We both drink some and the mood relaxes.

"Ah, I almost forgot but if you want to bathe I have my own hot springs. I'd ask to go in together, but I already feel like I know your answer." Diavolo chuckles.

"That be a definite no, and I might go after you are asleep." I sigh.

"Too bad. I was kinda curious about what you have under your armor." Diavolo leaves this offhand remark, like it means nothing.

"I wear clothes under my armor." I blush at his obvious trouble meaning. "I could say the same about your armor."

"So you are curious about it? It's all part of my body. Humans seem to be worked up about clothes for whatever reason. I can show you if you want, though." Diavolo is absolutely serious.

"Please don't. Keep that armor on!" My cheeks are on fire by the mere suggestion.

"Hahaha, you have quite the cute side, did you know that?" Diavolo has too much fun with this.

"I will kill you." I playfully reach for my sword.

"Oho, feisty. I was just joking, but tell me when you change your mind." Diavolo takes another long sip of his alcohol and fills his cup right back up.

I'm unsure if he means him or me undressing, but I can't stop myself from getting hotter by the minute.

I need a cold shower at this rate.

We continue to drink and have a bit of playful banter.

Before we both somehow pass out by the time we reach the 3rd bottle.

[papier-ciseaux]

heya, i hav question for the aromantic spectrum week :)

how do you know you’re aroace oriented? And not just, confused

cause i think people are hella pretty, and i get confused, and feel like entering a relationship, when i dont think im romantically attracted?

ive never been romantically or sexually attracted, just confused, because people are pretty, shouldn’t that mean i have to date them?

It’s not aro week anymore but anytime is a good time to learn some things!

This post by the Ace and Aro Advocacy Project covers the basics of what amatonormativity is. 

It’s hard for me to make any calls about your situation and experiences based on so little information, so you’re gonna have to figure things out yourself. I just thought I should mention that stuff just in case, because feeling like “you should have to date someone” sounds like amatonormativity to me? :v

Anyway, you don’t need to date anyone just because you think they’re pretty, I’m sure a lot of people would agree that finding someone beautiful doesn’t necessarily mean you want to date them. Gay men can find women pretty and still not want to date them! Appreciating beauty is something that doesn’t have to mean anything more.

Image descriptions under the cut!

[Image ID: Four digitally drawn pictures.

Image 1: A simple cartoon character with short brown hair, white skin, and cyan blush on their cheek is shrugging with the words “idk it just felt right” above their head. They are wearing a striped blue shirt and cyan pants. On the right, a text reads “It's a way for me to label a 'something' that's not romantic or sexual attraction. idk what it is, but it's there”. A smaller version of the same character is sitting on the ground with the words “people do be pretty” handwritten over their head.

Image 2: A text at the top reads “If you feel like oriented is the label for you, then welcome to the club!” The cartoon character is standing on the side with their arms up in celebration and a smile, saying “YAY!”. A text written in grey, lavender, white and pink (the colors of the cupioromantic flag) reads: “Also, cupioromantics are people who desire a romantic relationship despite not really experiencing any romantic attraction. you might want to look into it?” A text at the bottom reads “However, I wouldn't recommend dating someone out of a sentiment of obligation or expectation.”

Image 3: The character appears to be talking directly to the audience, head resting in one of their hand. They say “you're gonna have to ask yourself if that's what YOU want personally or what you think you SHOULD want”. The text continues with “sadly we all have to deal with this thing called”. The word “Amatonormativity” is written in all caps and in bold. Below is written its definition: “it's the assumption that a longterm monogamous romantic relationship is the end goal we should all prioritize over other kind of relationship” A second drawing of the character is posing as if to present the word and the definition. They have a displeased face and the words “It sucks” are written over their head. Image 4: The character looks unhappy and is pointing at the following text “you guessed it, amatonormativity is a load of lies and can be very unhealthy. so don't force yourself into a relationship just because that's what you feel you "have to"”. A second drawing of the character is saying “im not an expert but that doesnt sound good…”.

The background of all four images is a two tone gradient that starts with the color of the bottom of the previous image. It goes white, blue, dark blue, cyan, white.

/End ID] 


[cinnamn-bun]

The sansfulpuns cinematic (or I guess audio??) universe

So, I think I managed to piece together the timeline of the plot sansfulpuns's audios (The main ones/major releases, not smaller audios. Maybe they might be included [if they're ever found], but for now, not atm). Sadly, no new audios have been released as of 2019/2020 (date isn't exactly clear, based on what I managed to find), so we don't know anything about how Sans and Doll met. Earliest audios (as per the timeline) is when we assume they have been friends from a few months, to even a few years.

(And yes, I'm referring the listener as 'Doll', because I don't want to keep typing out 'the listener' and 'Doll' is iconic. And don't take this too seriously; I did this at 1am for fun.)

Some of these audios were easy to arrange chronologically ('More Than Words' is canonically a sequel to 'Things Left Unsaid'), other's were... a little tricky, but I've managed to do some writing to try and work around it.

Anyway, here's my thoughts on how the timeline works. Feel free to share your ideas on how it works. (And yes, this includes the NSFW audios.) Check under the cut.

First up is 'Sickly Movie Night'. Based on this script, this is before Sans and Doll starting officially dating, although I'm going to assume that they have known each other and have been friends for maybe 2+ years before this takes place. Sans is confused and caught off-guard by Doll's romantic gestures. After this, I believe Sans would most likely brush it off as Doll's dazed confusion due to the fever.

After this, we get straight into 'Things Left Unsaid'. Here, we have confirmation that Sans and Doll have known each other for a while (we don't have an exact amount of years). I'm going to say the this happens nearly a year after 'Sickly Movie Night', just to give enough time to allow Sans and Doll's relationship to develop, and also let Doll go to college/univeristy for a few months and evetually lose touch a bit. As we all know they have their fight, and Doll eventually leaves.

8 months later (Yes! An actual canon time frame between audios) comes 'More Than Words'. Doll comes back in town to visit (possibly on break from college/univeristy). There, Doll and Sans reunite, talk things out, (have a near death experience), and finally get together.

After this is 'The Usual Spot'. To be entirely honest, I debated where it fits in the timeline. I initally had it put after 'Sickly Movie Night', but 'Things Left Unsaid' made it complicated. Then came 'More Than Words' which made things messier, since to me both 'MTW' and 'TUS' are written as "Sans and Doll get together". So I was considering having 'The Usual Spot' be in it's seperate universe; taking place after 'SMN' and happening instead of 'TLU+MTW'. But that's just the easy way out, and I found a way to make it work. After reading both 'MTW' and 'TUS' I decided that 'The Usual Spot' takes place up to a month after Sans and Doll start dating; they're taking it easy and slow and trying to figure out how their romantic relationship is going to work.

Then comes 'Skele's First Time'. I'm not going into to details. If you're bothering to read a timeline of the sansfulpuns audios, then I'm sure you know what happens in this one.

I’m going to slip in ‘Bone Tired’ here. Canonically, Doll learnt about Sans’s teleport ability in ‘MTW’, and Sans straight up shows it off here, and it’s heavily shown that they are currently romantically evolved. Also, towards the end of the audio, things get somewhat steamy before the brakes are hit, so it’s safe to assume that they definitely had sex before.

Now, we get into a sort of 'choose your own adventure' thing with 'Spontaneously Sweet' and 'Soul Soakin''. Personally, these two can go either way. Depends on what you think works. Personally, I feel 'SpSw' comes before 'SoSo', but the other way works too. Again, not going into details about these two. No matter what, they’ll probably happen while Doll is still doing their studies and they’re visiting Sans, or Sans is visting them. That, or they have completed their studies (again, you decide).

And that's it. Unless sansfulpuns returns as the 2nd coming of Chirst, that completes the sansfulpuns audio timeline. At least my take on it lol.

[wrenhyperfixates]

The Gift

Pairing: Loki x reader Summary: Tony says no pets in the Tower, but since when has Loki ever listened to him? Warnings: like one curse word A/N: Any Tom Hiddleston stans out there should get the Easter egg in this one :)

Disclaimer: Picture not mine

“Oh, come on, Tony! Please,” you whined for the fifth time that week. “Not even just a little one?”

“Absolutely not. It’d make a mess of the place. Not to mention that this isn’t exactly the safest place for a pet.”

“So it gets into a lab accident and we have a super dog. Not the worst thing ever,” you said, half joking, though Tony actually seemed kind of intrigued now. You changed your tactic before he got any ideas. “Besides, it won’t make a mess. I’ll train it. And not all dogs shed.”

“I guess, but someone might be allergic,” Tony countered, thinking he delivered a winning argument.

“We can get a hypoallergenic dog,” you shot back, though you’d already checked with almost everyone and no one said they were.

Tony grumbled, running out of excuses to give as to why you couldn’t get the pet you’ve been pleading for the past few months. Tony had become somewhat of a father figure to you during your time in the Tower, and you’d been pretty sure you could use that to your advantage. Sadly, though, nothing had been working. In fact, that relationship had been more of a detriment to you than anything else as you didn’t want to make him upset with you. Otherwise, you might just go out and buy the pet of your choosing. Maybe even more than one. Although, to be fair, it was Tony’s building, and he was allowing you to live here rent free, so you should probably just drop it. But you really wanted a pet, and you knew you weren’t the only one.

“Sorry, but still no.”

“Fine,” you relented with an overdramatic sigh. “For now, anyway.”

“Thank you,” he said, going back to whatever he was tinkering with before you came in.

You pouted in the lab for a bit, hoping he might change his mind, but to no avail. Eventually you slinked out and went into one of the common rooms, plopping on the couch between Peter and Bucky.

“So, how’d it go?” Peter asked after popping a handful of Skittles into his mouth.

“No luck," you responded sourly, stealing some of the colorful candy from him. “None of my strategies are working.”

“What if we tried for something smaller?” Bucky offered. “Like a gerbil.”

“I guess,” you grumbled as you flopped back in exasperation. “But we’ve had our eye on that Cocker Spaniel for a while. A gerbil just wouldn’t be the same.”

“Yeah, I know.”

You all sat in silence for a bit and watched as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck argued about what hunting season it is, mulling over the situation. Admitting defeat seemed to be the most likely option at the moment, but you hated to just give up when you were sure there was a way to get what you wanted and not have Tony be upset with you.

“I’ve got it!” Peter suddenly shouted, bubbling with excitement. “We go and adopt it and then tell Mr. Stark that it just followed us home!”

“Except he wouldn’t let us keep it even then,” you stated, having already thought of that yourself.

“So we hide it. Simple,” Bucky chimed in. “By the time he notices, Peter will be so emotionally bonded to it, Tony wouldn’t dare take it away.”

“Great idea, Mr. Bucky,” Peter said, high-fiving him.

“Yeah, if only there weren’t cameras everywhere. Not to mention a home system that tells him everything,” you added, growing more upset at the lack of options by the minute.

You pushed up from the couch as the episode’s end was heralded by Porky Pig’s “Th-th-that’s all folks.” After waving bye to your friends, you headed to your room to brainstorm in silence. The figure lurking in the shadows didn’t even register in your mind, so you had no idea that a certain god heard your whole conversation. Not only that, he was about to fix all your problems.

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

“Mr. Loki, where are we going?” Peter inquired as he and Bucky were led into the city by the trickster god.

“All will be revealed, spiderling. I assure you.”

Bucky just shrugged when Peter looked at him, and so they continued following Loki through the busy New York streets. After hearing about your plight, he had hatched a plan to get you what you wanted. All it took was a bit of research on that infernal computer device, and he was pretty sure he’d found the right shelter. It was a far walk from the Tower, and since neither he nor his travel companions could drive, he resorted to taking the subway, an experience he’d rather not have again. Finally, they arrived at the destination, and Peter was about to burst with excitement.

“Mr. Loki!” he gasped. “This is exactly where we were looking for dogs!”

“But I have a feeling you knew that already,” Bucky said.

“Indeed,” Loki replied. “I must confess that I overheard your conversation in the common room yesterday.”

“Oh I get it now. You’re doing this for-”

“No time for speculation, we are here to get me a pet,” Loki interrupted, “Go on. After you, spiderling.”

Peter, still blissfully unaware of Loki’s true intentions, led the way into the shelter. They were greeted with the sound of happy barking and the distinct smell of dog treats. Loki had to admit, he wasn’t the biggest fan of animals. He found some to be more agreeable than others, such as a good steed, but overall he thought them to be more of a nuisance than anything else. Thor had bought a cat for Jane once, and it tore up half of his capes before he presented it to her. Loki was glad his brother kept it away from him and his belongings. Not to mention he didn’t appreciate the sheer number of similarities people said he had with felines. Dogs, however, he was fine with, so long as they were trained properly.

“Hello, how may I help...” the girl behind the front desk trailed off, her eyes going wide with excitement upon realizing who the trio was. “Y-you’re... Oh my gosh. My friends are never going to believe this! But, uh, how may I help you?”

None of the heroes were particularly comfortable with the attention and star struck gaze of the girl, so it took them a minute to get over their sheepishness. Loki looked at both his companions before realizing he would have to do the talking. He sighed but knew the look on your face would be worth it. You’d look at him the same way you had so many times before, whenever he did little things for you, whether it be rubbing your shoulders after a stressful day or brewing you a cup of tea on a chilly morning. The two of you weren’t dating, exactly, but you weren’t exactly not dating, either. Loki found himself incapable of asking you to make it official, lest it ruin what you currently had. He didn’t know what he’d do if you no longer casually held his hand or rested your head on his lap while reading in the evenings. Even though he was fairly certain you felt the same way, that last bit of doubt wouldn’t leave him alone. Besides, despite usually being quite a great thinker, he couldn’t come up with a good way to confess. He supposed that kissing you would do the trick, but he wasn’t brave enough for that, so getting you a dog would have to suffice for now.

“My friends here were looking at some of your dogs recently, and there is one that they are quite smitten with. We are here to adopt it.”

“That’s right! A Cocker Spaniel named Bobby,” Peter offered. “He hasn’t already been adopted, has he?”

“Nope!” the girl responded in a perky voice. “He’s all yours as soon as you fill out the proper paperwork.”

“Mr. Loki, are you sure about this. Mr. Stark told me I couldn’t get a dog.”

“Exactly. He told you, not me,” Loki replied, picking up a pen.

“Well, yeah, but I don’t really think he meant it just for me. I think it was more of a general kind of thing.” Loki and Bucky looked at him in exasperation for a second, wondering how he could still be so innocent, before he caught on. “Oh, ok. I get it now. Carry on.”

The three boys huddled around the page as Loki filled it out, providing Tony’s credit card as payment when the time came. It seemed appropriate, Loki thought, that Stark should have to pay for making you upset, and taking that in the most literal sense was the only somewhat acceptable way, it seemed. No longer could The God of Mischief go around stabbing those who hurt the ones he cared about. In a way, he missed the good old days, as he referred to them, but his new life led him to you, which made the rest of it fine with him, he decided, as he finished his signature with a flourish.

“There,” he declared, admiring the loop of his fancy, cursive L. “Finished.”

The girl disappeared into the back, only to return with Bobby a moment later. After giving the paperwork a quick once over, she handed the leash over to Bucky, who couldn’t stop the smile from growing on his face. Peter immediately bent down to scratch the dark brown dog behind his ears.

“Who’s a good boy? You are! You’re a good boy!” he cooed.

“Spiderling, he hasn’t even done anything yet,” Loki said, somewhat perplexed, as Bobby rolled over onto his back, stopping at the god’s feet. “Though, I do suppose he is a rather good boy,” he added, an inexplicable smile tugging at his lips.

One stop at the pet store and a taxi ride later, both unknowingly paid for by Tony, they arrived back at the Tower with the newest member of their family. It wasn’t even ten minutes later that Tony strolled into the room where they were playing with Bobby. He stopped dead in his tracks as he noticed the dog, happily playing tug of war with Bucky.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing at the Cocker Spaniel.

“A dog,” Loki deadpanned.

“Yeah, no shit. I mean what is it doing here?”

“I adopted it. Really Stark, for a supposed genius you ask a lot of obvious questions.”

“Don’t get snippy with me, Rock of Ages,” Tony quipped back, gritting his teeth a little. “This is my Tower and I say no pets, except for maybe a goldfish.”

“Yes, this is your Tower, but it is our home, is it not? As thus, we should be allowed the simple pleasures of life, such as having a pet. After all, studies show that having a dog can reduce stress, something I’d say is rather important for people in our position.”

Tony glared for a minute, not really having a good response to that. Then he called your name, certain you were behind this.

“No, Mr. Stark,” Peter said. “They had nothing to do with this. Don’t blame them.”

“That’s right,” Bucky also defended you. “It was all us.”

It was already too late, though, and you appeared in the doorway. Loki had been planning on presenting your gift to you in some cute or clever way, but all he had time to do was a magic up a bow on the pup’s head, a green one, of course. Bobby started happily yapping at your arrival and trotted over to you, looking for a scratch behind the ear.

“Oh. My. Gosh. He’s adorable!” you exclaimed as he rolled over for belly rubs. “You finally got a dog for me, Tony? Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Sorry, but I can’t take credit for this,” he said, turning down the hug you were offering him by putting a hand up. Then he pointed at the mischievous trio whose doing it was.

“Well actually, it was mainly Loki,” Bucky said, nudging the god in the ribs.

“But Mr. Bucky, we all- Oh wait. Awwww,” Peter gushed as he realized what Loki was feeling.

“Oh. In that case, thank you Loki!” you shouted, throwing your arms around him in a hug.

Without a second’s hesitation, he wrapped his arms around you, too, returning the embrace. “You are quite welcome, my darling.”

You nuzzled into the spot where his shoulder met his neck. In turn, he put his head on your own and breathed in your scent, forgetting the others in the room for a minute. It seemed you had, too, because you looked equally startled when Tony cleared his throat.

“Ok, fine. He can stay,” Tony conceded, “but only if he doesn’t wreck the place. And keep him out of the lab.”

You all chorused your thanks and, despite his harsh tone, could tell that Tony had already taken to Bobby, who was now the center of attention again. After playing with him for a bit, Bucky made some excuse about having to leave and took Peter with him, both of them wanting to give you some alone time with Loki.

“This really is very sweet, Loki,” you told him after a few minutes.

“Think nothing of it. It is my gift to you.”

“I feel bad, though. I don’t have anything for you,” you said, biting your lip. “Well, actually, I do have one thing that I can give you.”

“Oh? What would that be, my darling?”

The end of his sentence was nearly cut off by your lips crashing into his. The kiss was a little sloppy, but filled with so much love and desire that neither one of you cared. After gathering his wits, Loki kissed you back, cupping your cheeks as you grabbed his shoulders, still a little unsteady from surging forward.

“That,” you breathlessly whispered, pulling away as Bobby began barking again.

Later that night, Tony found you and Loki passed out on the couch, Bobby sprawled out across both your laps.

“Huh,” he mumbled, draping a blanket over your shoulders. “I guess it’s a good thing they got that dog, after all.”

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #169

Two builds in one day? That’s right! Today’s my birthday, and that means I get to pick the servants! As a birthday gift to myself, we’re making Caster of the Nightless City! As usual, expect spoilers in the build breakdown below the cut and in their character sheet here!

Scheherazade is a Creation Bard to truly bring her stories to life, and a Genie Warlock to create her own Bedchamber of Survival.

Race and Background

Wildly, Scheherazade is a Human, giving her +1 to all abilities. She’s also a Guild Artisan with one of the most demanding patrons in the world, giving her proficiency with Insight and Persuasion. 

Ability Scores

Your Charisma better be as high as possible, you’re literally famous for your storytelling skills. After that is Wisdom. Anyone can read a story, but to tell a story you’ve got to be able to read the audience. Your Intelligence is also pretty good, because let’s be honest, remembering over 1,000 stories is pretty goddamn impressive. Your Dexterity isn’t awful, because we need to be able to go from standing to dogeza in seconds. This means your Constitution and Strength are rather low. Sadly, telling stories doesn’t make you all that battle hardened.

Class Levels

1. Bard 1: Being a bard gives you proficiency with Dexterity and Charisma saves to avoid fireballs and being banished to other dimensions. (Though I guess banishment is better than death?) You also get proficiency in three bard skills, that is to say, three of any skill. Performance for storytelling, Acrobatics for faster dogezas, and History for more story material.

You can use Bardic Inspiration to give a d6 to an ally Charisma Mod times per long rest, and these dice can be added to pretty much any d20 roll to make it a bit better. (Not yours though, heaven forbid you have to get out there and... attack things.)

Speaking of not attacking things, let’s talk Spells. You cast em with Charisma, and get stuff like Blade Ward for taking less damage and Friends for convincing people to let you live in the first place. You also get Charm Person for a similar reason, Bane to weaken their offense if they still want to try anything, Feather Fall to avoid death by heights, and Silent Image for the first of your storied illusions.

2. Bard 2: Second level bards become Jacks of All Trades, adding half their proficiency to ability checks they’re not proficient in. By becoming more useful, you’re less likely to get killed! Probably. You also get a Song of Rest to boost healing during short rests. Healing is good, healing helps people not die. Finally, your Magical Inspiration lets allies add your inspiration dice to damage or healing caused by spells. Again, healing is good, and I guess doing more damage can be nice sometimes.

Speaking of doing damage, we’re not doing that. Instead, grab Sleep for a bedtime story.

3. Bard 3: Graduating from the college of Creation will help you bring your stories to life thanks to your Performance of Creation. As an action you can create a nonmagical object once per long rest or by spending a 2nd level spell slot. The item must be medium or smaller, and can only be worth at most 20 times your bard level in GP.

You can also help your allies star in legends of their own with Stories of Potential that add extra effects to your bardic inspiration depending on how they’re used. Ability checks get advantage on rolling the inspiration, attack rolls deal thunder damage to nearby creatures if they fail a constitution save, and saving throws add temporary HP to their users.

You can also cast Calm Emotions to keep the king from beheading you in the morning.

4. Warlock 1: Now that that’s taken care of, let’s get some help from a Genie. Picking this patron gives you a Genie’s Vessel, a tiny object like, say, a scroll case, within which you can find a Bottled Respite that you can hang out in for up to 2x your proficiency bonus hours per long rest, but you can only enter once per long rest. Any items you leave behind stay in the respite until the vessel is destroyed or you take them out again. Also, I gotta remember to point out the inside is bigger than the outside, space isn’t an issue for you.

You also learn to imbue your attacks with a Genie’s Wrath, adding thunder damage equal to your proficiency bonus to one attack per turn. You don’t really attack that much, but it’s nice to make every bit count.

Speaking of attacking, you can actually do that with your new Spells! You still use Charisma, but you have Pact Magic, so these slots don’t mix with your old ones. The plus side is they recharge on short rests instead of long ones, and you can still cast bard spells with warlock slots and vice versa.

You get Minor Illusion for cheap lifelike stories, as well as Eldritch Blast for the ever-present caster balls. For first level spells, you get Detect Evil and Good and Thunderwave for free, as well as Comprehend Languages because copyright doesn’t exist in D&D, and Protection from Evil and Good. Some kings are evil, some are good, but very few are neutral. (WARNING: does not actually protect against good or evil aligned humanoids)

5. Warlock 2: Second level warlocks get Eldritch Invocations, ways to customize the selling your soul experience. Armor of Shaodws gives you free mage armor to avoid dying, and Eldritch Mind makes it easier to concentrate on your spells, which are keeping you from getting killed.

Speaking of spells, Sense Emotion lets you read the prevailing emotion of a nearby creature as an action, and you can repeat the action each turn. Good storytelling requires you know what your audience wants.

6. Warlock 3: Third level warlocks get a Pact Boon, and Pact of the Tome gives you a super cool magic scroll that gives you three cantrips from any spell list. You get Guidance and Resistance for added protection, and Mage Hand. Handling hot objects can be dangerous! Now you don’t have to do that.

Besides that, you get second level spells here, like Enthrall. Being the center of attention is dangerous, but you’re the most personable member of the party, so this might be less dangerous than letting them talk. You also get Phantasmal Force and Gust of Wind for free, letting you attack with fictional characters and just make things a bit more dramatic.

7. Warlock 4: At fourth level you finally get your first Ability Score Improvement, which will be used to round up your Dexterity and Constitution for a higher AC and higher HP. Not dying’s good, you should try it out.

You also get Prestidigitation to add minor effects to your stories, and Flock of Familiars to summon background characters.

8. Warlock 5: Fifth level warlocks get third level spells, like Major Image to make larger effects for your stories. You also get Create Food and Water and Wind Wall for free.

On top of that, the invocation One with Shadows lets you turn invisible as an action in dim light or darker, and lasts until you move or take an action. When a truly good storyteller gets going, the story takes on a life of its own, and they just sort of... fade into the background.

9. Warlock 6: Sixth level genilocks get an Elemental Gift, giving you resistance to thunder damage. Like Cursed Arm always says, you can’t travel the desert without protection from wind. As a bonus action, you can now fly for 10 minutes Proficiency times per long rest. Admittedly you don’t really do that too often, but I’m sure you can illusion up a big genie hand or something to lift you up.

You can also summon a main character now thanks to Summon Fey. You can create a small fey creature in one of three moods that can teleport around and fight for you. Fuming fey get advantage on attacks after teleporting, mirthful fey can charm creatures, and tricksy fey create magical darkness which you can use to turn invisible.

10. Warlock 7: Congrats on your fourth level spell slots! Your freebie spells are Phantasmal Killer and Greater Invisibility to put less focus on yourself and more focus on the terrifying monsters you can summon. You can also use Hallucinatory Terrain to reshape the world into the world of your story. You can also use Trickster’s Escape once per long rest to cast Freedom of Movement on yourself to get the hell out of dangerous situations.

11. Warlock 8: Use this ASI to bump up your Charisma for better spells and better stories. You also learn how to Charm Monsters to avoid even more danger by just... getting along with everything.

12. Warlock 9: Ninth level warlocks get fifth level spells, like the freebies Creation to make even more nonsense out of nothing and Seeming to again, avoid danger. On top of those, you can use Modify Memory to retcon your stories to prevent your audience from getting too upset. You also gain the Gift of the Protectors, allowing you or another creature to write its name on part of your scroll. The scroll can hold the names of Proficiency people, and once per long rest the first creature to drop to 0 hp sticks around at 1 hp instead. You can also erase names if you have a falling out, but since it’s first come first served you might just want to keep this to yourself.

13. Warlock 10: Tenth level genielocks get a Sanctuary Vessel, allowing you to take up to 5 willing creatures into your Genie’s Vessel with you. You can eject creatures as a bonus action, by leaving yourself, dying (don’t do that one), or by destroying the vessel.

On top of all of that, creatures that stay in the vessel for at least 10 minutes get all the benefits of a short rest, plus they add your proficiency to any healing they get from hit dice. That’s on top of the d6 they were already getting from your song of rest.

Oh right, you get another cantrip too. Grab Blade Ward again. You can never be too careful.

14. Bard 4: Yeah, did you think we were done with bards? Nope! This level of bard gives us another ASI that’ll max out your Charisma for the best spells possible!

You also learn Message, because miscommunication can be deadly, and Lesser Restoration. You never know what kind of status effects might doom your party, after all...

15. Bard 5: Fifth level bards get their inspiration bumped up to d8s, and they finally become a Font of Inspiration to recharge their inspiration on short rests. I wanted to get sanctuary vessel as quickly as possible for the sake of getting your bedchamber of survival, but it’s awfully tempting to put these two levels earlier, ngl.

You also learn how to Feign Death, because nobody’s going to bother killing you if you’re already dead, right? This spell makes you or the targeted creature effectively dead by the reckoning of anyone around them. They can’t take actions, are blinded, and can’t move. They get resistance to all damage except psychic, and any diseases or poisons they’re affected by are frozen until the spell ends an hour later.

16. Bard 6: Sixth level bards can use Countercharm to protect their party from effects that would charm or frighten them, giving them advantage on those saves for a round.

You can also put on an Animating Performance to turn a large or smaller object into a Dancing Item, which follows your orders, given by your bonus action. You can do this once per long rest, or by spending a third level spell slot.

Your last bard spell is Catnap, putting up to three creatures to sleep for 10 minutes. If they stay asleep the entire time, they get the benefits of a short rest. Dying of overwork... what a horrifying concept.

17. Warlock 11: At eleventh level, instead of getting your spell slots made bigger you get a Mystic Arcanum, allowing you to cast a sixth level spell once per long rest. Guards and Wards is very useful if you’re paranoid, creating wards to protect up to 2,500 square feet of space (a.k.a. 100 5′ squares). You can specify creatures that are immune to effects, or a password that does the same thing.

In corridors, fog fills the area, and forks in the road have a 50% chance of forcing creatures down the wrong way.

Doors are magically locked, and up to 10 doors in the area can be covered by illusions.

Stairs are covered in Webs that regrow when destroyed.

You can also place: Dancing Lights in four corridors, Magic Mouth in two places, Stinking Cloud in two places, Gust of Wind in one corridor or room, and Suggestion in one five foot square.

Casting Guards and Wards in the same place every day for a year makes it permanent.

18. Warlock 12: Use your last ASI to bump up your Constitution for better concentration and health. You also learn your last Invocation, Minions of Chaos! Once per long rest you can cast Conjure Elemental using a warlock spell slot. It is a little bit risky, but even you have to be willing to stick your neck out at some point. Might as well be level 18.

19. Warlock 13: Your seventh level Mystic Arcanum is Mirage Arcane, allowing you to reshape reality in a square mile, altering the entire terrain to your story and even making entire structures out of nothing. Even creatures with true sight will still feel the illusion, so feel free to recreate the tower of babel and hide out on the top of it.

20. Warlock 14: Your capstone level gives you a Limited Wish from your patron, recreating any spell of fifth level or lower once per 1d4 long rests. Sometimes your story just needs a Maelstrom, and nobody’s going to wait for you to take 9 levels of druid just to finish a story.

Pros:

If your DM rewards creativity and you’ve got the mind thoughts to power this build, this build will treat you very nicely. This whole thing is basically an excuse for the roleplayer inside of you to ham up your acting, chew the scenery, and distract everyone from the rogue rifling through their pockets.

Speaking of distractions you can make some really good ones. Show up to the BBEG’s lair, butter them up with some stories, then trick them into entering your vessel, and then they’re trapped in there for up to 12 hours. If you can trick them into allowing you to catnap them, that gives the rest of your party a full 10 minutes to ransack the place before they even know what’s happening. You can always kick them out if they’re being unwelcome guests, but there’s no way for them to leave on their own outside of killing you. And that’s easier said than done, because...

You’re really hard to fight. Between all the illusions, summoning creatures to fight on your behalf, the invisibility, and the altering reality in a mile radius, landing a blow on you is an ordeal, especially if you know they’re coming.

Cons:

If you’re actually stuck in a cage match with an enemy it’s gonna take a while, because you really aren’t built for damage. You have a negative strength stat, and your first damaging spell doesn’t show up until level four. Just bring them into the vessel, help them relax, and put them to sleep with catnap, that’s way less work than actually fighting them.

On a similar note, anything that can see through your illusions is going to cut through you like butter, because you’re pretty squishy. Only 15 AC and just shy of 150 HP means you should avoid fights like... well, you do in canon.

Another side effect of your squishiness is that your concentration saves aren’t that great, which is really bad for an illusionist/summoner. Neither your animated item nor your invisibility use concentration though, so you can actually get away with more than you’d think, it’s just a complicated juggling act. And trust me, you do not want to drop them in the middle of combat.

[razieltwelve]

Late (Final Rose)

Yang said nothing as Ruby stumbled off to the side and emptied her stomach. Weiss staggered off to do the same, and Yang glanced at Blake. The Faunus nodded back and went off to hold the heiress’s hair, so she wouldn’t make too big a mess of herself. Yang, meanwhile, went to Ruby.

“Ruby...” Yang murmured. “Get up. We have to secure the area.”

Ruby shuddered, and Yang tried not to wince as her sister’s stomach convulsed again despite already being empty. Finally, Ruby got to her feet. Wordlessly, Yang handed her a bottle of water to wash her mouth out. Scrubbing furiously at her cheeks, Ruby pointedly looked at the ground.

“Yeah... yeah, I guess we do.”

“We also need to search for survivors.” Yang kept her voice gentle. Ruby was... well, not as experienced as her when it came to things like this. Before attending the Senior Academy, Yang had gone on quite a few missions with Averia, Claire, and some of the others in their age group. They weren’t always in the right place at the right time. “As well as secure a perimeter.”

Ruby swallowed thickly. “Yeah. You’re right.” She finally looked up, silver gaze wandering over the utter devastation around them. “What happened? This was supposed to be a weeding mission. There weren’t supposed to be any strong Grimm here.”

“Some Grimm are smarter than others,” Yang said. Bodies littered the area around them. They’d bury them if it was safe. Otherwise, they’d just have to retreat and wait until reinforcements arrived before seeing to the bodies. “Sometimes, what look like attacks by small groups of random Grimm are actually just probing moves by something stronger.” She nodded at the massive hole in the settlement’s walls. “I’m guessing that’s what happened here.”

Ruby sniffled. “Can... can you call it in? And... maybe... maybe we can have Blake use some of her clones to look around and stuff. I don’t think we should separate until we know what’s going on.”

“That’s a good plan.” Yang squeezed Ruby’s shoulder. “Chin up, sis. This is horrible, but we’ve got to stay sharp.”

“Right.” Ruby looked around. “I... I guess I can set up in that burnt out building over there. It still looks pretty sturdy, and it’s got a good view of everything. If anything tries to sneak up on us, I should be able to spot it.”

X     X     X

“First time seeing a ruined settlement?” Blake asked as she helped Weiss sit on the edge of the ruined fountain in the middle of the settlement. She’d seen far too many such settlements in her time with the White Fang. Life on the frontier was harsh, especially in the most recently settled areas where battles with Grimm were a constant fixture of life. 

Weiss shivered. “Yes. Well, I mean, I’ve seen pictures and footage, but...”

“Seeing it... smelling it... yourself is different.” Blake shook her head. “I still remember the first time I saw one.”

“Oh?”

Blake’s lips twitched. “It was a little smaller than this, maybe forty or fifty people. We got there, and... well... there wasn’t anyone left alive. There might have been if we’d gotten there half an hour earlier, though.” It had been a Faunus settlement, just people trying to make a living away from the people who’d persecuted them. It was one of the only times she’d ever seen Adam cry. He might have been a bastard in many ways, but she’d cried right there next to him. Seeing the bodies all laid out like that - the children, especially - would have made anyone with a heart cry. “I still wonder if maybe we could have gotten there fast enough if we hadn’t stopped to deal with Grimm along the way.”

It was a logical move. Leaving Grimm at their rear was just begging to be ambushed. Besides, they hadn’t known anything was wrong. They’d simply been dropping by to see how the Faunus were doing. It was likely they’d been overrun before they could even call for help.

“What... what did you do after that?” Weiss asked.

“Killed every last Grimm I could find,” Blake said bluntly. “It didn’t make me feel any better, though.”

“Oh.”

Blake helped Weiss stand. “Come on. Ruby wants me to use clones to scout around, see if there are any survivors or Grimm.” She pointed. “She’ll be setting up in the building over there, so it would be good if you could use your Glyphs and lay down some traps, just in case we’re not alone here.”

X     X     X

“Well, shit.” Fang pursed her lips. Yang had called in bad news. “Scout the area, make sure that it’s safe and then sit tight. If whatever led the attack is out there, I don’t want you guys picking a fight on its turf. I know it’s going to be rough, but the settlement should still be safer than the forest.”

“Understood.” Yang took a deep breath. “Any idea of what we’re up against?”

Fang studied the footage Yang had sent her. “I’m going to guess it’s probably a hydra-type. See the damage on the walls? The edges of the hole are mostly smooth. That suggests something corroded the wall rather than just breaking through it. There are similar marks on some of the remaining buildings too, not to mention the damaged weapons Blake found.”

Blake had sent through images of weapons that appeared to be half-melted. Fang had fought enough hydra-types to distinguish between fire damage and the effect their acid, venom, or blood could have.

“How big?” Yang was calm, which was good. She was the most experienced member of the team when it came to fighting Grimm. 

“Based on the footage...? I’d say maybe thirty feet.”

“Thirty feet?” Yang grimaced. “That’ll be tough, especially if it’s got friends.”

“Which is why you four are going to hole up in the settlement until reinforcements arrive. I’ve already contact a profession team. They’re about half a day out from your position. Do not engage unless you have to. Wait for them to get there. In the meantime, fortify your location.”

“Already doing it,” Yang said. “Weiss has laid down multiple traps, and we’ve rigged up some more traps using more Dust and the munitions we were able to salvage from the settlement. If the Grimm come back, we’ll be ready.”

“Remember, hydra-types are regenerators. Don’t waste your time with little stuff. You’re going to have to hit it hard enough to either keep it occupied with regeneration, or so hard that it stays down.”

“Yeah. I know.” Yang ran one hand through her hair. “Ruby and Weiss have been working on their combination attacks. Do you think a fire Dust augmented round amplified by some of Weiss’s Glyphs could do enough damage?”

“What sort of augmentation?” Fang asked.

“Multiple augmentations. Basically, Weiss triples the speed of the round and magnifies the effect of the Dust about three times over too. Ruby put together some special rounds too, armour piercing but with a impact-triggered detonation function, so they explode inside the target after piercing through the outside of it.”

“Payload?”

“Fire Dust, enough to slag a tank before you factor in what Weiss does.” Yang smiled faintly. “Ruby was so proud about getting the rounds to work since they were really finicky to make. She’s only got half dozen, but they pack a punch.”

“Hmm...” Fang did a quick mental calculation in her head. “Tell Ruby to put those rounds centre mass, and it will probably work. I doubt the first shot will kill it, but it should slow it down enough for Ruby to hit it with a few more. Put the rest of the shots in the same place. If you can burn out the torso badly enough, it won’t matter if it’s still got its heads. It’ll be so focused on regeneration that it won’t be able to fight back. Once you’ve got it slowed down, burn it or crush it. That’s the easiest way.”

“Will do.” Yang bit her lip. “Can you maybe talk to Ruby when we get back?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to her, and I’ll let your parents know too, so they can call her later.”

“Thanks.”

X     X     X

Author’s Notes

Unfortunately, hunters don’t always get there in time. One of the other reasons that Yang suspects it’s a big Grimm is because the Grimm aren’t still there. The weaker, lesser Grimm tend to be a bit stupider than the older and stronger ones. The smarter ones have learned that hanging around afterward is pointless unless you’ve got something else in mind. Instead, it’s better to obliterate a settlement and then retreat. It makes it easier to ambush potential rescuers, and it makes it harder for the military or hunters to retaliate. Sadly, though, this is an experience that most students will go through. 

Fortifying is also Team RWBY’s best bet. It is entirely possible that they will be ambushed if they try to leave. It’s better to secure their position and wait for reinforcements than to go wandering around in an area than Grimm know better than they do.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes! 

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins. 

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime. 

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong. 

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good. 

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one. 

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun. 

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them. 

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff. 

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series. 

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this. 

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut. 

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson. 

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character..  but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point. 

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani. 

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode. 

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard.  This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy. 

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear. 

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs. 

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home. 

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is  a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation. 

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot. 

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns. 

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them.  With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are. 

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in  the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually. 

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it. 

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa. 

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out. 

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow.  And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it. 

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down.  He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover. 

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter. 

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch. 

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of. 

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew. 

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words. 

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping.  Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ. 

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out. 

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow. 

[bubonickitten]

Fic summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Chapter summary: An examination of endings and how to realize them.

Previous chapter: AO3 // tumblr

Full chapter text & content warnings below the cut.

Content warnings for Chapter 24: brief claustrophobia; some RSD/fear of abandonment stuff; extensive discussion of death (this chapter’s all about Terminus, babey); allusions to past suicidal ideation on Jon’s part; mentions of eye gouging/blinding (not graphic); some internalized victim blaming; anxiety symptoms; spider mentions; swears. Let me know if I missed anything!

Chronic fear has been Jon’s baseline for so long, it’s difficult for him to conceptualize what he would be were it to abandon him. In some ways, he’s become acclimated to it. On the other hand, fear is a volatile, prolific thing, its many shades relentlessly coalescing and mutating to form new strains. It all but guarantees that the Eye will never truly be sated: there will always be some heretofore unknown species of terror to discover, experience, and add to its collection.

Sprinkled in amongst the more noteworthy moments of abject terror and the constant background pressure of existential dread, there are smaller fears: everyday anxieties; pervasive insecurities; acute spikes of panic and adrenaline. Each discrete instance may pale in comparison to life-threatening peril, but muddled together and given time to ferment, they compound. They feed into one another. Sometimes, they come to attract the attention of larger, far more forbidding monsters.

In this way, Jon is no different from the average person – and one of the oldest, most deep-rooted of those comparatively banal fears is his fear of rejection, of disappointing, of being seen and found lacking. It guided his path long before his first supernatural encounter, and in many ways, it still does. His self-awareness of that fact does little to dampen its influence.

So it’s vexing, but not surprising, that the foremost concern vying for his attention right now is whether this might be that final straw that chases Georgie away for good. She sits with her hands clasped in front of her mouth, eyes closed and brow furrowed as she gathers her thoughts. The longer she remains silent, the more time Jon has to run through all the worst-case scenarios.

It’s already difficult for him to capture a full breath under the crushing weight of anticipation. It doesn’t help that his intermittent claustrophobia has decided that right now is the perfect time to manifest. A tunnel collapse would probably damage the Archives above it, though, and there’s no way Jon would be so lucky. He isn’t sure whether to consider that a consolation or not.

Finally, Georgie takes a breath, opens her eyes, and leans forward.

“Okay.” She tilts her folded hands towards him in an indicative gesture. “Explain, please.”

“Right,” Jon says, rubbing one arm nervously. “S-so, Oliver –”

“I knew his name wasn’t Antonio,” Georgie mutters.

“No. That was an alias he used when he first came to the Institute to give a statement, back in 2015.”

“The prediction about Gertrude’s death?” Martin asks.

“The same.”

“And what was a harbinger of death doing looming over you while you were in a coma?” Georgie presses.

“I don’t know that I’d call him a harbinger –” Jon’s mouth snaps shut immediately when Georgie shoots him an impatient glare. “He wasn’t – he wasn’t trying to – to reap my soul or anything like that, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Then why was he there?”

“He was called there,” Jon says. “By the Web, according to him.”

“Oh, and you don’t think that makes him dangerous?” Martin says, throwing one arm out in a surge of exasperation.

“He isn’t allied with the Web,” Jon replies, fiddling with the hem of his jumper. “It just… got into his head, and it was easier for him to go along with it, rather than fight it indefinitely. Oliver tends to have a fatalistic outlook. If he sees something as inevitable, he’s not inclined to try to stop it.”

“So, what – he’s serving an evil power not because he’s sadistic but because he’s just apathetic?” Georgie couldn’t sound any more unimpressed if she tried. “How is that any better?”

“It’s, ah… it’s really not that simplistic,” Jon says, adopting a delicate tone. “And I don’t think I’d call it apathy so much as…”

“Acceptance,” Georgie says stiffly. “Everything has an ending.”

“Yes. Oliver is an Avatar of the End, and the End is characterized by its certainty–” Jon pauses when he catches a glimpse of Georgie’s hands, fastened to her knees and trembling with tension. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“No, I –” Georgie sighs, relaxes her grip, and flexes her fingers. “Just – tell me why you invited him here.”

“It’s like I said upstairs – there were things I couldn’t tell him about outside of here.”

“Why do you feel the need to tell him anything?” Martin asks.

“I just thought… he might be able to help us.”

“Why would he,” Georgie asks, “if he’s so fatalistic?”

“Because, he…” Jon hesitates, biting his lip. “I suppose I thought that maybe – maybe he’s like me.”

“He’s nothing like you,” Martin says vehemently.

A flicker of a smile crosses Jon’s face. “You don’t even know him.”

“What, and you do?”

“Not well,” Jon admits. “But I do think I understand him.”

Martin crosses his arms, transparently miffed. In an attempt to suppress his amusement, Jon presses his lips tightly together. It doesn’t work, evidently.

“What?” There’s a flat, defensive edge to the demand, highlighted by a suspicious scowl. “What’s with the smirk?”

Jon already knows the answer to the question he wants to ask, but he can’t help himself: “Are you jealous?”

“No!” Martin yelps. “Why would I be jealous?”

Jon shakes his head, chuckling softly. “Well, you don’t need to be.”

“I’m not!”

“If you say so,” Jon says with a shrug and a sly grin.

“I am not jealous,” Martin insists – and now Georgie is snickering, one hand clamped over her mouth to (unsuccessfully) stifle the sound. Martin glowers at her, betrayed.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says. “Just – didn’t realize you were quite so jealous.”

“I’m not,” Martin says for a third time. “But – but even if I was, I would be completely justified.”

“Because he woke me up,” Jon says, toning down the smugness now.

There is an uneasy boundary between affectionate teasing and perceived mockery, and here in the past, he hasn’t quite mapped the shape of that line. Between seeing one another in the Lonely and anchoring each other through the apocalypse, he and Martin had been forced to confront long-held insecurities about themselves, both as individuals and as a unit. That shared history no longer applies. While Jon has no desire to repeat that chain of events – there are happier, healthier pathways to a relationship than bonding via trauma, or so he’s heard – it does mean that this version of Martin hasn’t yet had the same epiphanies.

Much like Jon, Martin struggles to take a declaration of love at its word. People lie; they mislead; they say what they think others want to hear – whether out of self-interest, sympathy, or simple social ineptitude, the results are the same. Sometimes they start out sincere, but little by little, their tolerance dwindles and they recognize their mistake: what they thought was genuine affection was at best a passing fancy for someone who turned out to be far more trouble than they were ever worth. Or worse: a caring façade born of pity or guilt or obligation, only to turn rotten and toxic when the burden grows too tiresome.

Add all of those deep-seated convictions to the lasting influence of the Lonely, and Martin needed proof before he could entertain the possibility of being loved. Following him into and then leading him out of the Lonely was a fairly convincing statement. Absent another life-or-death gesture to act as a catalyst, Jon suspects that this time around, building that confidence will come down to time, practice, and repetition.

“Okay, yeah, about that – what does that – what does that mean, he woke you up?” Before Jon can get a word out, Martin barrels on: “I mean, what makes him so special? I spent weeks – weeks – begging you to come back, and nothing. He visits you once and suddenly you’re fine?”

“I really did try to come back on my own,” Jon says – not accusing, not pleading, not even self-flagellating. Just plain, sincere assuredness. “I heard you calling me. Not at first, but – the last time you visited. It was the first time I’d heard your voice in… in so long, I – I never thought I’d hear it again, and then you were there, and I was – I was so relieved, so… so elated.”

Martin sulks quietly, glaring at the floor, but there’s a noticeable flush staining his cheeks now.

“And then – and then I heard you on the phone with Peter, and…” Jon swallows hard, the despair he felt in that moment still stark in his mind. “I tried to call out to you, but you couldn’t hear me. The Lonely was drawing you in, just like before, and there was nothing I could do. I wanted to wake up more than anything, but I just… couldn’t figure out how. I still don’t know why – I don’t know the exact mechanics of it all – but for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to wake up until Oliver’s visit. Same as the first time.”

At that, Martin seems to deflate somewhat, finally looking up to meet Jon’s eyes.

“If I could have come back sooner,” Jon continues, smiling sadly, “I would have. In a heartbeat.”

Martin pouts for a moment longer before surrendering, his rigid posture slackening as the rancor drains out of him.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

“So you think you owe him,” Georgie guesses. “For waking you up.”

“Partially,” Jon admits. “But that’s not why I invited him, really. He just seems… I don’t know. Lonely, I guess?” Georgie rolls her eyes. “He never – he never asked to be a death prophet. No more than I wanted to be a – a trauma leech. And arguably – arguably he was even less to blame for what happened to him than I am for what I’ve become –”

“Jon,” Martin says warningly.

“No, just – just listen.” Jon takes a measured breath as he puts his thoughts in order. “Oliver started having prophetic dreams several years ago. Just – out of the blue. As far as I know, he did nothing to tempt fate. Eventually, those dreams carried over into the waking world. Everywhere he went, every single day, he could see the evidence of imminent death. There was no escaping it.

“In the beginning, he tried to help people. But it never worked. When he was unable to save his own father, he stopped trying to change fate, for the most part. I think the last time he tried was when he dreamed of Gertrude. He saw how far-reaching her death would ultimately be, and he tried to warn her, even though he didn’t have much hope that it would make a difference. And he was right, in the end. He couldn’t save her, and he couldn’t prevent what came after.”

“So he just… gave up,” Martin says flatly.

“When you fail over and over again to do good in the world, when you witness horror after horror with no recourse to stop it, when you try again and again and again to escape and never even come close… at some point, you burn out,” Jon murmurs. “Lose all hope. It becomes your new normal. Exist like that long enough and you start to become numb to it all.”

“You lived through an apocalypse and you didn’t give up,” Martin counters.

“I did, though,” Jon says quietly.

Martin frowns. “What?”

“After I lost you.” Jon averts his eyes and folds his arms tight against his middle, holding his elbows. “I was lost. I couldn’t save anyone, I couldn’t change anything, I couldn’t even look away. I wasn’t allowed to sleep. I wasn’t allowed to die. So I just… survived, even though I wanted anything but.” When he glances up, he sees that Martin’s expression has softened. “You were my reason. Then you were gone, and I was alone.”

Jon hadn’t known that the world could end a second time, but there it was. With Martin gone, what little that remained of Jon’s own microcosm shattered. Yet the Ceaseless Watcher’s world dared to continue turning, to go on churning out horror after horror as if nothing at all had changed. And Jon was just another cog in that machine, going through the motions and fulfilling the purpose for which he was cultivated.

It wasn’t truly ceaseless, of course. Everything has an ending. But it felt like an eternity – and for Jon, indefinite waiting has always been a special kind of torture.

“So what changed?” Georgie asks, her tone gentler than before.

“For a while, nothing,” Jon says. “I sort of… drifted. Wandered aimlessly through the domains for… I don’t really know. When nothing ever changes, keeping track of time becomes pointless. The Panopticon kept trying to draw me in, of course, but I – I suppose there was still enough spite left in me to make a show of ignoring it.

“At some point, I got lost in a Lonely domain. Which was fine, really. Or – it would have been fine, had I been allowed to succumb to it. I wanted to just – fade into it, let it in, but” – Jon breathes a bitter laugh – “it wouldn’t take me. Wouldn’t let me go numb, wouldn’t let me forget – didn’t have the decency to let me disappear, no matter how long I stayed.”

No one got what they deserved in that future, but this was a rare exception to that rule: to be allowed to simply forget his role in creating that nightmare world, to sink into blissful ignorance, would have been a miscarriage of justice. Not that the Eye cared about what was just or fair, of course. No, it simply would not – perhaps could not – deign to relinquish its hold on its Archive.

“But the longer I stayed,” he continues, looking at Martin now, “the more I thought about you. In retrospect, maybe that’s why I didn’t want to leave. And maybe that’s part of why it wouldn’t have me – I couldn’t let you go. But being there, it kept reminding me of the first Lonely domain we came across after the change. We were separated, and I was – I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back to me. But you did.” Jon smiles to himself, remembering the relief and gratitude and awe he felt in that moment. “You rejected the Lonely all on your own. Found your own way out – found me, and… every time I thought about that, I imagined your voice in my head. Telling me off for wallowing. For giving up.”

“Sounds like I would have been justified,” Martin says delicately.

“You would have,” Jon confesses with a contrite half-smile. “I was in peak brooding condition. Eventually I wore myself out wallowing there, though, so I left to go wallow somewhere else. I needed a change of scenery, and – well, I got one. Stumbled into a Spiral domain. Ran into Helen, and… funny enough, that was the last straw.”

Jon can still recall the encounter down to the smallest detail.

‘Still drifting aimless, are we?’ Helen bared an unsettling number of teeth as her grin stretched – literally – from ear to ear. ‘Exactly how long do you plan on moping about, Archivist?’

Jon did not answer; did not even meet her eyes, instead staring vacantly over her shoulder. The incessant reel of horror scenes playing in the back of his mind made it difficult to focus on any one thing at a time, and there was nothing he cared to see so much that it was worth the effort it would take to grant it his undivided attention.

‘You know,’ Helen said, tapping an elongated, crooked finger against her lips, ‘I wonder what he would say, if he could see you now.’

It didn’t matter. Martin was gone. Those parts of the world that hadn’t already been thoroughly razed were slowly but surely withering. There was nothing left to salvage.

‘Disappointed, I imagine,’ Helen continued, distant and muffled by the din of a splintering world. (Somewhere deep below their feet, a man was screaming himself hoarse in a labyrinth made of mirrors and fog.) ‘But not surprised. It’s not the first time you’ve let him down, is it?’

Jon gave a listless shrug. Her words stung, certainly, but they were a far cry from some of her more artful jabs. A pointed insinuation to send him spiraling into his own self-destructive conclusions would always be more corrosive than outright disparagement.

(The man in the maze gazed into mirror after mirror, hoping to find himself within. In every one, his reflection had no face.)

That said, Helen wasn’t wrong. Even as a child, Jon had always been a burden. He never did manage to prove himself worthy of all the many unwilling sacrifices made on his behalf. Never measured up; never put nearly enough good into the world to balance out the cost of having him in it.

(The man in the maze had misplaced his name. Did he drop it somewhere? He checked his pockets only to find holes. Yet another eyeless reflection stared back at him from beneath his feet.)

‘You were always headed here, weren’t you?’

Yes.

(The man in the maze tried to retrace his steps, but everything looked the same: an endless, recursive corridor of mirror images. He asked one of the doppelgängers for directions, only to realize that the man in the mirror had no mouth with which to answer.)

‘To think – all that time he spent coaxing you along, and you crumble the moment you don’t have a prop to coddle you.’ Helen cackles, high and cruel. ‘What a waste.’

She wasn’t telling him anything that he didn’t already know.

(The man in the maze was scouring the mirrored ground, searching for… something he’d lost; he couldn’t quite remember, but he knew that it was important. He checked his pockets, only to discover that he had no pockets.)

‘Although, I guess the blame doesn’t fall squarely on your shoulders. He was naïve. It isn’t your fault he was foolish enough to hope for–’

The words jolted Jon back to the present like an electric shock. Whatever else Helen had to say, he’d never know. He tuned her out, and he started walking.

“She was having a go at me – nothing new there – but then she brought you into it, and…” Jon shrugs. “I don’t think it was her intention, but it nudged me back on track. You and I had a plan, before, and… honestly, I didn’t have much hope that it would work, but you had. That made it worth trying.”

It wasn’t like Jon could break the world more by parleying with the Eye. At worst, it made no difference, but at least Jon did something to honor Martin’s memory; at best, it put Jon out of his misery, one way or another.

“I’m glad I did, because… well, it changed things, obviously. You were right.”

“Sorry,” Martin says with unmistakable self-satisfaction, “could you say that again?”

“You were right, Martin.” Jon rolls his eyes, but the effect is undercut by an indulgent smile he can’t quite repress. “You often are. All of this is to say – I’m only here because you gave me a reason to be. If not for that, then… well, I meant what I’ve said before, about needing a lifeline in order to stand any chance against the Fears. I was – I am lucky enough to have one.”

More than one, he thinks with a sense of wonder. The support he has now is such a far cry from the ostracism he experienced the first time he was here. It still gives him pause every time he dwells on the contrast. Sometimes, it almost seems too good to be true.

“Oliver didn’t,” Jon continues. “It’s hard to begrudge him for resigning himself to fate, especially considering how the power that claimed him is defined by fatalism. He never asked to be chosen, he was given no hope of escape, and he had no one to reach out to, let alone anyone to reach back. It’s unsurprising that he would come to accept the inescapable when the only anchor he had was the certainty of oblivion.”

“‘The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one,’” Georgie says quietly.

Jon nods. “And without a dependable reason to see the moments in between as significant, it’s… well, it’s hard to see the point in anything. I’ve been there.”

As has Georgie, Jon knows. She exhales heavily, massaging her temples, visibly conflicted.

“I still don’t think you should trust him,” Martin says.

“I’m not suggesting we trust him wholesale,” Jon says, “but I’m certain that he isn’t an enemy. He might not resist the End, but he doesn’t work to end the world in its name, either. He’s… thoroughly neutral.”

“Then what makes you think he’ll lift a finger to help?” Martin asks.

“I doubt he’ll go out of his way to help,” Jon admits. “He might be willing to trade information, though. I just thought… Avatar of the End – he would have more insight into the limits of Jonah’s supposed ‘immortality’ than I do.”

“You think he can tell you something about the dead man’s switch,” Georgie guesses, rubbing at her forehead.

“That’s my hope, yes. He can see the route that a person will take to their end. Or, he can when their death is imminent, at least – I’m not sure how far into the future his foresight stretches these days.”

In the hospital, Oliver implied that he could see something in Jon’s vicinity. Whether that suggests Jon’s own end is near enough for Oliver to foresee it, Jon does not Know. Given his proven resilience, he suspects it’s just as likely to be a quirk of his strange existence. There’s no shortage of idiosyncrasies that may mark Jon as an outlier: he’s the Archivist; he’s traveled through a rift in time; he’s the primed and practiced focal point of the Watcher’s Crown, and the fate of the world hinges on his ability to keep that potential in check.

And if his situation is an exception to the rule, perhaps Jonah’s is as well.

“Maybe he’ll be able to see whether our routes flow into Jonah’s, so to speak,” Jon says. “When Oliver dreamed of Gertrude’s impending death, he saw how much of the world’s fate was intertwined with hers –”

“– the veins, whose domination of the dreamscape had only ever been partial before, had thickened and now seemed to cover almost the whole space of every street – the destination – into which all the veins flowed – The Magnus Institute – choked with that shadowed flesh – following that red light that would now pulse so bright that I knew were I to see it awake it would have blinded me – and every one of those veins – where they ended – a person sitting at that desk and it was them that all of this scarlet light was flowing into.”

“Gertrude,” Martin says.

Jon nods, then holds up one finger: Wait. The Archive has more to say; Jon can practically feel the words bubbling up his throat and crowding behind his teeth. As discomfiting as it is to have it hijack his voice, sometimes it’s easier to ride out that compulsion than to tamp it down.

“I have no responsibility to try and prevent whatever fate is coming for you – such a thing is likely impossible – but after what I saw I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try – there is something coming for you and I don’t know what it is, but it is so much worse than anything I can imagine. At the very least, you should look into appointing a successor.”

Statement ends, Jon thinks, working his jaw to soothe the unnatural tension that has taken root there. Happy now? Anything else to add?

As expected, it doesn’t answer. He’s well aware that addressing the Archive essentially amounts to talking to himself, but carrying on an internal dialogue with the more frustrating aspects of himself was a habit long before he took on the mantle of Archivist.

After a few seconds, he feels the Archive’s imposing presence start to recede, releasing him from the compulsion. It’s still there, of course – it’s always there, looming over him like a vulture, as impossible to ignore as a knife to the throat – but for now it seems content to fall back and observe once more.

Georgie sighs. “That’s why you’re sympathetic to him.”

“He tried.” Jon shrugs. “He didn’t have to, but he did.”

“That still doesn’t mean he’s going to help this time,” Martin says.

“No, but he has no incentive to hurt us, either. There’s no harm in asking him questions. He’s not going to run to Jonah to inform on us. The worst that happens is he says ‘no’ and goes back to minding his own business. But if he agrees to talk… well, it might be our best chance to determine how much of what Jonah says is true.”

Georgie chews on her thumbnail for a few seconds before looking back up at Jon, a pensive frown on her face. “Why’d he go out of his way to come here at all, if he has no motivation one way or the other?”

“Honestly? Curiosity, I think. But… I suppose I’m also hoping that there’s a part of him that might sympathize.”

“Do you really think there is?” Martin asks.

“I don’t know. In my future, probably not. He wasn’t enjoying himself like some of the other Avatars – I mean, he was feeding on the fear produced by his domain, but even then, he didn’t strike me as cruel. It was just… acceptance in the face of a conclusion at ultimately stayed the same regardless of the path leading up to it, and…”

And maybe it speaks to Jon’s mental state at the time, but there were a few points in Oliver’s statement that struck him as almost merciful. After all, in the face of seemingly endless torment, death was a covetable escape.

“I have no power to stop it,” the Archive recites, “and even if I did, I would not do so. For to rob a soul of death is as torturous as its inevitable coming – I fear the annihilation you would gift me as little as I desire it – perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned – I am now, as the thing I feed, a fixed point, that has neither the longing nor ability to change its state of existence – even you, with all your power, cannot keep the world alive forever. All things end, and every step you take, whatever direction you may choose, only brings you closer to it.”

“That Oliver again?” Martin mutters tetchily. “Doesn’t sound to me like he’ll be particularly inclined to help.”

“Well–” The word comes out as a rasp, and Jon has to pause to clear his throat before continuing. “That was – that was the Oliver of the future. After the change, he was too much of the End not to live its truth, just as I was too much of the Eye not to walk its path and archive its world. We were both conduits, inseparable from the powers that laid claim to us. Here and now, though, I’m hoping he might still be…”

“What, benevolent?” Martin says incredulously.

Jon is quiet for a long moment, trying to find the right words to explain.

“At my most hopeless,” he says slowly, “I still cared, even though there was no meaningful way for me to put it into practice. I don’t think I ever managed to reach the level of acceptance that Oliver did – and sometimes I envied him for that. But embracing the End as a foregone conclusion doesn’t necessarily mean he’s completely unmoved by what happens in the interim. Not yet, anyway. And as of right now, whether it’s out of curiosity or compassion, obviously he still interacts with the world from time to time, even if he prefers to exist in the background for the most part.”

Martin and Georgie both look unconvinced.

“I’m not asking him to help us change fate,” Jon goes on. “In his view, there is no obstructing fate – not in any way that genuinely matters to his patron. Oliver isn’t particularly concerned about when the End will come – he’s just secure in the knowledge that it will happen eventually, with or without the interference of any mortal actor. Passive or active, nothing he does or doesn’t do will change that. But I’m thinking it’s been a long time since someone has asked him for help that he actually has the power to provide, and… I know what that’s like.”

Despite the immense power that Jon could exercise after the culmination of the Watcher’s Crown, he was ultimately powerless to change things for the better. It’s why he leapt at the chance to help Naomi in her nightmare: even a small, low-effort act of kindness after so long without the opportunity was overwhelmingly liberating.

It was insignificant against the vast backdrop of the universe, perhaps, but it still left a mark. It prompted a cascade of little changes that completely rewrote their dynamic; it curtailed some of the suffering in which Jon had previously been so unwillingly complicit; it's even acted as an inoculation against the loneliness that had permeated both of their lives during this stretch of time when Jon was last here. Those little changes mattered to him, and they mattered to Naomi – not only in that first moment, but in all the time since.

All of that had to count for something, right? It took fourteen ill-fated marks to end the world, after all. With any one of them missing, the Ritual wouldn’t have worked and the world at large would never have noticed. But that didn’t make any one of those marks wholly insignificant on its own. They scarred him and the people around him; every encounter changed him, whittled away at his sense of self, left him progressively vulnerable and set him up for successive marks.

The repercussions still linger. They probably always will.

In his sporadic moments of cautious optimism, Jon cannot help but wonder: If a series of little cruelties can create such a perfect and terrible storm, is it really inconceivable that a pattern of little rebellions could keep it at bay? And Jon has long since come to the conclusion that compassion in the face of unimaginable cruelty is its own form of rebellion.

“As much as Oliver talks about fate and inevitability,” Jon says, “he still seems to believe in free will to an extent. That we all make choices. When he last spoke to me, he offered me a choice. Now I’m offering one to him.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…” Georgie releases a weary exhale and tosses her head back to stare at the ceiling. “You’re sure this won’t come back to bite you?”

“We have nothing to lose by asking,” Jon says. “And he has nothing to lose regardless of what choice he makes, but… it feels right to at least give him the option. Whatever he decides, I won’t begrudge him for it.”

“Fine,” she says tersely. “Do what you want.”

Jon just barely suppresses a wince. “Georgie?”

“Sorry, that came off as –” Georgie heaves another sigh. “I’m not angry with you. I get it. It makes sense. I just don’t like it.”

“I know.”

“Just… be mindful, alright? You don’t owe him any answers you don’t want to give. And he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt just because you relate to him.”

“I know,” Jon says again.

“I mean it, Jon,” she says sharply. She takes a steadying breath before continuing, more diplomatically this time. “It’s… sweet, I guess, that you want to empathize with him, but you have a tendency to…” Georgie pauses, weighing her words. “I mean, I’ve seen you compare yourself to Helen, too. And Jonah.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone would deny that there are certain… similarities,” Jon says, not quite under his breath.

“Yeah, you’re always going to have something in common with other people if you look hard enough. But sometimes you see the worst in people and you fold it into how you see yourself. Like you’re looking into a funhouse mirror, but you can’t see how the reflection is distorted.” Jon avoids meeting her eyes, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Look, I know you don’t want to hear it, but you have a history of comparing yourself to your abusers. Sorry,” she adds when he flinches, “but it’s the truth, and you need to hear it. Just… think about it, okay? Ask yourself whether this is compassion or if it’s just another way to dehumanize yourself.”

“I –” Jon swallows around the lump in his throat, his mouth gone dry. “Okay, I – I get your point, but – I swear that’s not what this is. With Helen, and – and – and Jonah, it’s – they’ve actually gone out of their way to – to manipulate, to cause real harm. Oliver is different.”

“You were marked by the End,” Georgie says pointedly.

“Yes, but that wasn’t Oliver’s fault. He didn’t hurt me, never tried to trap me or trick me – never pressured me into making one choice over another, even at the end of the world. I really don’t think he’s evil, or sadistic, or – or scheming, weaving some grand web. He’s just watching things unfold, because he had a crash course in the stages of grief forced onto him and the end result was… well, acceptance. He doesn’t fear the End, but he doesn’t worship it, either. He just embodies it, openly and authentically.”

Georgie is silent for nearly a full minute, scrutinizing Jon intently, before she capitulates.

“Alright. I’ll… trust your judgment, I guess,” she says, but she shares a knowing glance with Martin – who looks just as leery as she does – when she says it. “Still, be careful.”

“I, uh… I imagine you don’t want to be here when I talk to him?” Jon ventures, though he’s certain he already knows the answer.

“No,” Georgie says summarily.

Jon releases a breathless chuckle. “Fair enough.”

“I really should be getting home to Melanie, anyway. It’s stay-home date night. Pizza and a movie.” Georgie offers a tentative grin, her shoulders relaxing minutely. “She hasn’t seen the new Ghostbusters yet, somehow – something about having been preoccupied with real paranormal bullshit for the last few years – but I checked and the DVD version has audio description, so I bought a copy. She’d be cross with me if I stood her up for the grim reaper.”

“I imagine so.” Jon tilts his head. “Although, Oliver isn’t actually the–”

“Jon,” Georgie sighs, “I was being facetious.”

When the three of them leave the tunnels, they find Oliver still waiting awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs out of the Archives, Basira standing sentinel nearby. Daisy leans against a far wall, eyeing him from a distance.

Georgie gives a long, doubtful look at Oliver before turning to Jon and offering a hug that he gladly accepts.

“Text me later tonight?” Georgie says. “And keep me updated on your travel plans.”

“Will do. Tell Melanie I said hello. And tell the Admiral he’s a national treasure.”

Georgie snorts at that, shaking her head in amusement before turning towards the stairs. Oliver nearly jumps out of the way as she strides in his direction, but she doesn’t stop to confront him beyond a glare as she passes. A prolonged, awkward minute of silence passes after she leaves, charged with suspicion and tension.

“Tunnels,” Basira says eventually, her tone and expression giving nothing away. She doesn’t wait for a response before stalking off down the hall, Daisy falling in line behind her.

Basira barely waits for the others to take their seats before she launches into her interrogation. Although her eyes remain fixed on Oliver, her first question isn’t directed at him.

“Why is he here, Jon?”

“Like I said, I invited him.” Jon glances at Oliver, apologetic. It feels odd to talk about him as if he isn’t present.

“Why?”

“Mutual curiosity, I expect,” Oliver cuts in, inclining his head towards Jon. “You have questions for me.”

Jon returns a nod. He has ulterior motives, and Oliver knows it. To pretend otherwise would be pointless, not to mention insulting.

“Oliver is an Avatar of the End,” Jon tells the others. “There might be a chance he could tell us how much of what Elias says is true.”

“And what’s the price tag?” Basira asks.

“He has questions of his own. He could tell in the hospital that there’s something… wrong about me. Obviously, I couldn’t talk about it where Elias could hear.”

“You shouldn’t disclose it at all,” Basira says. “If any of it gets back to him –”

“Oliver has no reason to betray our confidence.” Jon’s gaze flicks to Oliver. “Right?”

“Consider me a neutral party,” Oliver replies.

“You’re going to just… take him at his word,” Basira scoffs.

“The End has no Ritual,” Jon says, “and it has no reason to prevent any of the other Entities from successfully pulling off their own Rituals. No matter what happens to this world, the End will claim everything eventually. The when and how are irrelevant to it. In the meantime, the world as-is suits it just fine. It has no desire to postpone or hasten the end of all things.”

“Terminus is what it is,” Oliver agrees. “I have neither the power nor the desire to contradict it.”

“Then why would you help us?” Basira asks.

“I never said that I would.”

“I’m not asking you to actively intervene,” Jon says before Basira can offer a retort. “I just want to talk. That… is why you came here, isn’t it?”

Oliver hesitates for a moment before answering. “Your curiosity must have rubbed off on me.”

Unbidden, Oliver’s statement rushes to the forefront of Jon’s mind: I still remember the first time I tried to touch one…. I don’t know why I did it; I knew it was a stupid thing to do. But I just… maybe I wanted it this way.

“Don’t know about that,” Jon says quietly. “Curiosity is only human.”

And the worst part was that, somewhere in me, I – I liked it, the statement plays on. Underneath all that awful fear, it felt like… home.

“Perhaps,” Oliver says, noncommittal.

“So you’ll tell us what we want to know,” Daisy finally speaks up. Despite her veneer of calm – leaning back in her chair, arms crossed – her bouncing leg belies her agitation.

“It makes no difference to me.” Oliver shrugs. “Though I can’t promise my answers will be satisfying.”

“I still don’t like this,” Basira says, glaring askance at Oliver.

“Look,” Jon says, “this is the only way I can think of to figure out what stakes we’re working with. Jonah has been cheating death for centuries–”

“Jon!” Basira hisses.

“It’s important context,” Jon argues back. “And anyway, it’s going to come up when I tell him my story. It’s not exactly a detail I can gloss over; it’s central to the plot.” He sighs and looks at Oliver. “Elias is Jonah Magnus, the original founder of the Institute.”

Basira throws her hands up with a frustrated snarl. She turns to Daisy for support, but Daisy only offers a sympathetic grimace and a half-shrug.

“I thought there was something odd about him,” Oliver says blandly. “He’s long past his expiration date.”

Daisy snorts at that. Judging from the bemused, almost startled expression on Oliver’s face, he hadn’t expected to garner anything other than aggression from her.

“Whenever one of his vessels is… compromised,” Jon elaborates, “or nearing the end of its usefulness, he takes a new one.”

Recovering from his fleeting bewilderment, Oliver turns his attention back to Jon. “He wouldn’t be the first.”

“Maxwell Rayner and Simon Fairchild,” Basira says.

Oliver nods. “Among others.”

“Does that… I don’t know – offend the End?” Martin asks.

“No,” Oliver says. “They can’t outrun it forever, as so many have discovered firsthand.”

“Like Rayner,” Daisy says.

Once again, Oliver looks thrown off-kilter by Daisy’s diminishing hostility, but he does offer a wary nod in response to her contribution to the conversation. “And in the meantime, their fear of their own mortality ages like a fine wine.”

“Is an unnaturally long life somehow tastier for the End, then?” Martin asks. “I think most of the statements I’ve read about it involved somehow cheating death.”

“Perhaps. If my patron has a conscious mind, it has never spoken to me directly. Everything I know to be true is just… feeling.”

“So it’s as cagey as the other Powers, then,” Daisy says with a derisive chuckle. “Good to know.”

Oliver smooths his hands across his coat, draped across his lap, before glancing at Jon for guidance.

“I gave you a story,” he says reticently. “I would like to hear yours. Then I will answer your questions.”

“Fair enough,” Jon says – and abruptly realizes that he has no idea where to start. “You, uh… you don’t need to hear my whole life story, do you?”

“I did give you an outline of mine,” Oliver says with just a hint of amusement. “I admit I’m curious as to what led you here, but I imagine if you went into detail, we would be here for hours.”

“Much of it doesn’t bear repeating, anyway,” Jon says. “Just the highlights, then?”

“If you please.”

“Right,” Jon mumbles. He takes a deep breath. “Had my first supernatural encounter when I was eight, never got over it, and a combination of lifelong obsession and unchecked curiosity brought me to the Institute. After Gertrude died, Jonah chose me as her replacement because he knew I would be easily molded into the catalyst for his Ritual, and I was.” He looks up. “Is that enough?”

“Which of the Powers marked you first? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“The Web.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you seemed… entangled.”

There’s something… off about you, Oliver had told him when they last spoke. The roots, they look… sick. Wrong. And the threads are – tangled.

It’s possible that Oliver was speaking in metaphor – alluding to the threads of fate, so to speak – but the question has been simmering in the back of Jon’s mind for months…

“When you visited me before,” he blurts out. “You said the Web sent you.”

“Yes,” Oliver says candidly. “Not an explicit command, of course. It was more a… well, a feeling. A tug. The Web usually prefers subtlety, but there are times when it wants its marks to know the hand that moves them.”

“S-so, when you said the threads around me were tangled, was that figurative, or could you… see the Web’s influence?”

“The Spider might make its presence known sometimes, but Terminus doesn’t give me the ability to see the shape of its web any more than the Eye does you.”

“Not unless the Web allows itself to be Seen,” Jon says absently.

Despite how much he could See in his future, the Web always remained something of an enigma. It wasn’t until after his standoff with the Eye that he was able to follow the Spider’s threads.

But then, the Eye hadn’t been the only watcher lurking in the Panopticon. The Web had woven itself into the foundation of that place from its conception, and the Spider made no effort to hide. More than once, it stationed itself where he was sure to notice it. The more he thinks on it, the more he suspects that the ensuing ability to See its threads, to Know where they converged, was as much an allowance by the Web as it was due to his communion with the Ceaseless Watcher.

“When I spoke of threads, I meant more…” Oliver opens and closes his mouth a few times as he struggles with his phrasing. “Well, I’ve not yet found a perfect description for it. Think of a life and fate as… a jumble of intersections. Some people feel like thread-and-nail art. Others feel like a snarled ball of yarn. You,” he adds, looking at Jon appraisingly, “are something of a Gordian knot.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Martin demands, a protective edge in his voice.

“It’s not a compliment or an insult,” Oliver says mildly. “Only an observation. Come to think of it, Gertrude was much the same way. The fates of many hinged on the routes she took. Less of a butterfly effect and more of a hurricane.”

“So you can see fate?” Basira asks. A genuine question, but the flat skepticism in her tone makes it sound rhetorical.

“To a limited extent,” Oliver says haltingly. “I see the near-future as it relates to death specifically. When people near the ends of their routes, I can make out the details of their–”

“Seeing those awful veins crawling into them, into wounds not yet open, or skulls not yet split – they sneak up and into throats about to choke on blood, or lurch into hearts about to convulse – webbed over the face of a drunk old man stumbling into his car – one snaking along the road, over towards the railing – I’ll never forget seeing a field of cows the week before they were sent to the abattoir…”

Jon trails off with a tired groan, rubbing his eyes furiously.

“You have a good memory,” Oliver says.

“Sorry,” Jon mumbles. “Archivist thing. Can’t always control it.”

“S-so,” Martin redirects, “if any of us were about to die, you would be able to see it, right?”

“Yes. But I don’t make a habit of telling fortunes,” Oliver clarifies before Martin can ask. “Knowing your end is coming does nothing to prevent it. It only ensures that you will live your final days in fear.”

“Wouldn’t your patron like that?” Daisy asks.

Basira immediately latches onto that thought. “We have a statement here about a book that tells you how and when you’ll die.”

“Case number 0030912,” Jon cites. “Statement of Masato Murray, regarding his inheritance of an untitled book with supernatural properties. Each time the reader rereads their entry, they’ll find that the recorded date of their future death draws closer and the cause more gruesome.”

“Thanks, spooky Google,” Basira says sardonically. “Who needs an indexing system when we have a walking, talking card catalogue on staff?”

“One of my predecessors in ancient times once filed a complaint with the Eye, aggrieved by all the terrible powers it foisted upon him,” Jon says matter-of-factly, not missing a beat. “Being a benevolent patron, it granted him and all future generations of Archivists a convenience feature as compensation.”

“Smartass,” Basira says, but it sounds almost amiable, and Jon allows himself a tentative smile.

His tolerance for making light of this part of himself tends to be variable. Unpredictable, even. On good days, shared gallows humor is a balm, bringing with it a sense of solidarity and camaraderie; on bad days, even the gentlest dig feels like a barb.

He also tends to be selective about whose teasing he can weather. Martin and Georgie are safe more often than not. Daisy can usually get away with it; she’s prompt to let him in on the joke whenever he doesn’t pick up on her sarcasm. Given how blunt Melanie can be, it at least tends to be obvious when her pointed comments are meant in jest or in umbrage; and anyway, he hasn’t yet spoken to her directly since she quit.

Basira, though – she’s always been difficult to read. They have a similar sense of humor, but part of his brain is still living in a time when she saw the worst in him. No matter how many times he tells himself that things are different now, he can’t quite shake that feeling of being on indefinite probation. Hostile attribution bias, he recognizes, but having a label for it doesn’t make it any easier to silence those perennial fears. It’s only recently that he’s been able to take such joking from her in stride. Not always, but sometimes.

“Anyway,” Basira says, looking back to Oliver, “I take it that book is affiliated with the End. It feeds on the reader’s fear of knowing the details of their death.”

“Almost everyone has some degree of fear regarding mortality – their own or that of others,” Oliver says. “For some, that primal fear permeates their entire lives. Others only spare it any thought when it closes in on them. Terminus feeds on all of it equally. I suspect that active encounters with it are more about…”

“Flavor?” Basira suggests.

“So to speak,” Oliver says. “Welcome variety in its diet, but not necessary to sate it.”

“Which is why its Avatars have such wildly different methodologies,” Jon says, nodding to himself. “Justin Gough was allowed to survive a near-death experience, but acquired a debt that had to be paid in the lives of others, killing them in their dreams. Tova McHugh was granted the ability to prolong her own life by passing each of her intended deaths onto others, adding their remaining lifespans to her own. Nathaniel Thorpe was cursed with immortality after trying to cheat his way out of death. He was only one of many gamblers who played such games of chance–”

“Jon,” Basira sighs, “you don’t have to go through the whole roster of personified death omens.”

“Sorry.”

“So what kind of Avatar are you?” Basira asks, looking Oliver up and down. “How do you feed your patron?”

“For me, Terminus has not been particularly demanding. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I never attempted to cheat my way out of death. It simply… chose me – or I wandered across its path – and it never left. Thus far, it seems content to have me play the observer.” He glances at Jon. “You can probably understand that.”

“The Beholding isn’t satisfied to have its Archivist simply observe. It wants its knowledge actively harvested, recorded, curated.” Jon huffs, not bothering to contain his disgust. “Processed.”

The conversation lapses into a tense silence for several seconds before Basira changes tack.

“About Gertrude,” she says. “You tried to warn her about her death.”

“Yes,” Oliver replies.

“Why?”

“The evidence of her death snaked its roots all across London – as far as I could see, and perhaps further. At the time, I’d never seen anything like it. Such a sprawling web of repercussions stemming from a single death – I felt like I had to say something. As I expected, it made no difference in the end.”

Jon worries his lower lip between his teeth. “You said the roots surrounding me seemed sick.”

“You saw roots around Jon?” Martin says urgently, jolting up ramrod-straight in his seat.

“They’re… different from the ones I’ve grown accustomed to,” Oliver says slowly. “There’s no light pulsing within them, no life flowing to or from them. And looking at them, it’s almost like…” He frowns, squinting down at the floor as if it might offer up the words he needs. “It’s like they’re there and not there simultaneously. Faded, like an afterimage – one that can only be seen from a certain angle.”

“Okay, and what does that – what does that mean?” Martin asks.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I was hoping Jon could shed some light on it,” Oliver says, raising his head to meet Jon’s eyes. “I may not have the same drive to know that you and yours do, but I find myself returning to the question frequently over the past few months.”

“R-right,” Jon says. “Let me just, uh… where to start…”

Jon rubs at this throat with one hand, the other clenching into a fist where it rests on his knee.

“Jon,” Daisy says, “are you sure about this?”

“Yes, I just, uh –” Jon breathes a nervous laugh. “This never gets any easier.”

“Do you want me to say it?” Martin offers, schooling his tone into something approaching calm. His posture remains rigid, though, hands balled into white-knuckled fists in his lap.

“No, it’s fine.” Jon takes a few deep breaths and then looks Oliver in the eye. “In the future, I ended the world.”

Oliver raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think the Beholding gave you any precognitive abilities.”

“It, uh – it doesn’t. I didn’t foresee the future, I lived it. For… for a long time, actually, so I –” Jon exhales a humorless chuckle. “I probably meet your definition of past my expiration date.”

Oliver tilts his head, considering.

“Hard to say,” he settles on. “You’re… a bit of a paradox. Feels as if you exist in multiple states at once, and it’s difficult for me to tell which one is true.”

“Maybe all of them are,” Jon says distractedly. “But, I, uh – I eventually found a way to come back to before the change – or, to send my consciousness back, anyway. But only as far back as the coma. I… I wish it had taken me back further – back to the very beginning, though I” – Jon huffs – “I suppose it’s hard to say what counts as the beginning.”

“It depends on how you want to define a beginning,” Oliver says. “In a way, the advent of existence marked the beginning of the end. Everything since then has been just another domino.”

“Well,” Jon begins, but Daisy cuts him off.

“Nope,” she says bluntly. “You go down that semantic rabbit hole and we’ll be here forever.”

“Fine,” Jon says with a petulant sigh. “Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to wake up on my own, so just like the first time I was here, I had to wait for you to come along and help.”

“I still don’t understand why,” Oliver says.

“Neither do I, I’m afraid.”

“Not to encroach on your sphere of influence, but I think in this case, not knowing the answer might bother me even more than it does you.” Oliver releases a quiet sigh. “So you came back to stop yourself from starting the apocalypse.”

“It’s not like he chose to end the world,” Martin says, immediately leaping to Jon’s defense once more.

“Apologies,” Oliver says with an earnest nod in Martin’s direction. “I didn’t intend to imply otherwise.” He glances at Jon. “I’ve known of many who seek to bring on the end in the hopes that they will be able to choose what shape it takes. You don’t strike me as the sort.”

“No. But Jonah is.” Jon ducks his head as he speaks, fingers twisting in his jumper. “He wanted – wants to rule over a world reshaped in the Beholding’s image. He needed an Archivist with particular qualities to serve as the linchpin of his Ritual. So he created one. By the time he showed his hand, it was too late. I was the key, and Jonah didn’t need my consent in order to open the door.”

“I imagine it didn’t go as he planned,” Oliver says.

“No,” Jon says with a grim laugh. “No, it didn’t. He suffered as much as anyone else did in that reality. It all started because he was afraid of his own mortality, and yet – in the end, he met a fate worse than death.”

“Whatever it was, he deserved it,” Martin mutters.

“Maybe so,” Jon says. “But it was never about deserving. There was some poetic justice there, seeing him brought down by his own hubris, but… at the end of the day, he got the same treatment as anyone else. Just – pointless suffering, utterly divorced from the concept of consequences. Had a way of… diluting the schadenfreude, honestly.”

Martin’s spark of vindication appears to fizzle out as Jon speaks, his shoulders slumping and his eyes softening.

“Regardless,” Jon continues, “Jonah wanted to be a god, but at his core, he was no different from any other human. Fodder for the Fears. And the one he feared the most – it was in no hurry to finish the meal. I imagine by the time Terminus finally came for him in earnest, he would have welcomed it.”

“Those who seek immortality always come to see it as a curse in time,” Oliver says sagely. “When they come to terms with the fact that there is no such thing as a truly immortal existence, it comes as a relief.”

“I walked through your domain once,” Jon says after a pause. “You gave me a statement about the End’s place in that world. The domains were reluctant to let their victims die – they’d bring them to the brink, then revive them and repeat the process – but the Fears are greedy. Eventually, they would suck their victims dry –”

“– bones – every one of them – picked clean and cracked open – desperately gnawing – trying to reach whatever scant marrow might have remained inside – sucked from them to leave nothing but dry, white fragments – the hunger he saw in their eyes–”

Jon bites down on his tongue. That’s quite enough of that.

“You alright?” Martin says, leaning over and putting a hand on Jon’s knee.

“Sorry,” Jon says gruffly. “That one was…”

“Grisly?” Daisy says.

“Yeah,” Jon huffs. “But – not necessarily inapt? That reality was a closed economy. No new people were being born. The ones who already existed were destined to die, no matter how unwilling the other Fears were to grant that release.”

“As has always been the order of things,” Oliver says.

“You predicted that eventually the Fears would start poaching victims from one another’s domains – and they did. There were…” Jon grimaces. “There were a lot of territorial disputes, towards the end there. Domains encroaching on one another, monsters fighting over scraps. The Eye got its fill Watching it all play out, of course, but given enough time, it would have starved, same as all the rest.”

“And once the world was rendered barren,” Oliver says, understanding, “Terminus itself would die.”

Jon nods. “And until that happened, both you and your patron were content to let things play out.”

“Terminus is patient.”

Too patient, Jon thought at the time.

“I don’t think it was your intention,” he says, “but your statement did come as a relief. I already expected as much – that eventually it would all end – but having it corroborated by an authority on the matter was… very welcome.”

“People may fear death,” Oliver says, “but anyone who outruns it long enough finds that there is a much deeper fear hiding underneath – that of having the release of death withheld from them.”

“We have a lot of statements to that tune,” Basira says.

“I imagine so.”

“So,” Daisy says brusquely, “is that enough of a story for you?”

“I suppose,” Oliver says. “Although it raises more questions than it grants answers.”

“Our turn for questions, then?” Basira asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer. “The… veins, or… roots you saw around Gertrude. You’re saying they didn’t just foretell her death, but showed how it would impact everything else. So, what about the ones you saw around Jon?”

“It’s difficult to observe them for any length of time, but they do seem… more sprawling.” Oliver studies Jon for a moment, considering. “Like you are the heart of a watershed moment destined to happen.”

“So that’s it, then,” Jon says dully. “I’m still the spark for it all.”

Pandora’s box with a ‘use by’ date, he thinks to himself, somewhat hysterically.

He already knew it to be true, but that doesn’t make the confirmation any less harrowing. Everything hinges on his ability to keep his head above water, but the fate of the world weighs ever more heavily on his shoulders, pressing down, down, down –

“Does that mean…” Jon hugs his middle, slowly curling in on himself. “Does that mean it’s going to happen again?”

“I cannot say.” If Jon’s not mistaken, Oliver sounds… almost sympathetic. “This is unprecedented. I can only theorize. It’s possible that you’re like Gertrude, and what I see is a premonition. Or maybe the reality you came from still exists, parallel to this one, and it still clings to you. Perhaps it’s a Schrödinger’s cat, and it both does and does not exist, right up until the point where you do or do not bring it into being. Or maybe it doesn't exist, and the roots I see are only… imprints, so to speak. Echoes of a time and place that this world will never overlap.”

“Like trace fossils,” Jon murmurs. “Ghosts.”

“If you like.”

“Could you – could you follow them?” Jon can feel his pulse quicken, his heart thrumming in his throat. “See where they originate?”

“They originate from you.”

“O-oh.” Jon’s gaze darts uncertainly around the area before fixing on Oliver again. “Then, uh – can you see where they end?”

“You have a suspicion,” Basira says, watching Jon carefully.

Jon swallows around the breath caught in his throat. “What if they go back to Hill Top Road?”

“As far as I can tell, they reach out in all directions,” Oliver says. “There may not be a single end point. Regardless, I have no desire to visit Hill Top Road.”

“Oh,” Jon says despondently. It’s not like he expected Oliver to go out of his way to help, but…

“Would it really tell you anything of value anyway?” Martin asks.

“I don’t know,” Jon says, running a hand through his hair, one finger getting caught in a knot and pulling hard at his scalp. “But – but it feels like something I should at least check –”

“To what end?” Daisy asks. Jon looks at her blankly. “No offense, Sims, but the most likely outcome is you get no real answers, you lose yourself obsessing over theories, each more catastrophic than the last, and you spend the next few weeks compulsively checking yourself for spiders. Some things aren’t worth chasing after.”

“I just – I feel like I should know one way or the other –”

“Is that you or the Eye talking?” Martin asks.

“What’s the difference?” Jon says flatly. He immediately regrets it when he glimpses the expression on Martin’s face – a very familiar mixture of concern and frustration. “I’m sorry. Just… I don’t know. I don’t Know.”

Jon tugs on his hair once more, focusing on the dull ache it produces. He’s always had trouble letting things go. Letting questions go unanswered; letting mysteries go unsolved. The Beholding just nurtured that obsessiveness, encouraged that impulse to proliferate in his head like a weed and choke out his inhibitions.

“You’re here now,” Martin says firmly. “You can’t go back, so you may as well go forward.”

“Yeah,” Jon says, guilt heavy and searing in his chest.

“Like I said,” Oliver says, rubbing the back of his neck, “my knowledge of the future is narrow. I can’t tell you anything about parallel universes, or branching timelines, or the ability to alter history. The only certainty is that anything that begins will have an end, one way or another. All the rest is just… details.”

Martin folds his arms across his chest, examining Oliver with narrowed eyes. “You say that like the details are irrelevant.”

“I wonder about that,” Oliver says softly.

“Well, I think our experiences matter,” Martin says. “The fact that we were here at all, it’s… it’s not nothing.”

“Even those who make the greatest impact are forgotten in time.”

“So what? It will always have happened, even if no one is alive to remember it. And – and you never know when something little will have an impact on someone, which contributes to them doing something that makes a greater impact – that changes history.”

“Even time itself will end eventually. History will be forgotten, and nothing will remain to register its loss.”

“And?” Martin persists. “We won’t be around to see it. In the meantime, we’re here. We’re alive. If we’re going to end no matter what, why not make it worthwhile? Sure, there are no equivalent powers of hope and love to counter the Fears, but – but who cares? That just means that we have to make up for that absence.” Jon smiles to himself as Martin builds momentum – shoulders pushed back, chest thrust out, head held higher, speech growing more impassioned as he argues his point. “If a few mistakes and some asshole with a god complex can end the world, who’s to say a few deliberate kindnesses can’t save it?”

“Am I the asshole with the god complex?” Jon says drily. Judging from Martin’s disapproving scowl, he is not in the mood for self-deprecating humor. “Sorry, sorry. But, uh – in all seriousness, I think it was more than a few mistakes on my part–”

“You know what I meant, Jon,” Martin snaps. “And – and fine, maybe a few kindnesses can’t save the whole world, but – but they can save someone’s world. They can save a person. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Yes,” Jon says with a small smile. “Yes, it does.”

“R-right.” Martin blinks several times, momentarily stunned by the lack of resistance. “It doesn’t change the world – except for how it does. Just – the universe might not care, but we can, and that’s exactly why we should. It’s… it’s what we owe to each other. That’s what I think, at least.”

Martin goes quiet then, arms still folded with a mixture of self-consciousness and sullen defiance.

“How long have you had that rant queued up?” Daisy teases.

“A while,” Martin says, rubbing his arm sheepishly.

“You’re quite the romantic,” Oliver says. He says it like a compliment, albeit somewhat wistful.

“Yeah, well.” Martin blushes at the praise in spite of himself. “Someone has to counter the fatalism around here.”

If you ask Jon, there are many reasons to love Martin Blackwood. This is doubtless one of them.

“Besides,” Martin recovers, apparently on a roll now, “it seems to me there’s as much evidence for fate being changeable as not. Yeah, sure, eventually everything dies, but who’s to say that the details are set in stone? Like – like that book, the one where the details of a person’s death change every time they read it.”

“But does their fate actually change, or is it just the book messing with their heads?” Basira says, tapping her fingers against her lips and looking down at the floor pensively. “If the End has foreknowledge of a person’s death, maybe the last entry a person reads before dying was always their fate, and all the previous accounts were just lies intended to seed fear.”

When Jon opens his mouth to chime in, the Archive seizes the initiative, unceremonious as ever.

"When did it change?” comes the cadence of Masato Murray. “Was it when I turned back to read it again? Or perhaps when I had made the decision to never visit Lancashire? If the book knew the future, then how much did it know me? My decisions and choices were my own, so was it responding to them or simply to the fact that I opened the book again? Perhaps it changed every time I opened it, even if I didn’t read the page, every interaction changing my fate…. When I close the book I wonder: are those same words still there, squatting and biding their time, or have they already changed into some new unknown terror that I can neither know nor avoid, waiting to spring on me.”

Jon holds his breath in anticipation. After a few seconds of suspense, the pressure recedes, the Archive having spoken its peace.

“Archive’s talkative today,” Basira observes.

“Apparently,” Jon grumbles. “What I originally meant to say was that I’ve wondered the same thing – whether the book was really telling the future or simply playing on the fears of the reader.”

“Maybe offering textual support is another convenience feature?” Daisy keeps her tone carefully neutral, gauging his mood.

“The Beholding is known for being exceedingly generous,” he retorts.

Basira ignores the banter and speaks directly to Oliver. “Do you know?”

“I’m unfamiliar with the book in question,” he replies. “All the deaths I’ve personally foreseen have come to pass so far. That says nothing about whether or not the End always reveals the truth to all who cross its path.”

“Right.” Basira shakes her head. “Not sure why I expected a straightforward answer.”

“Maybe there isn’t one,” Martin says. For a fraction of a second, Basira tenses. Jon suspects she’s just as repulsed by such a prospect as he is.

“Whatever,” she says curtly. “It isn’t important right now. What I want to know is how to deal with Jonah Magnus. So” – she pins Oliver in place with sharp, unblinking eyes – “what can you tell us about his mortality?”

“In short? He won’t live forever, regardless of how much he wants to deny that reality.”

“Yeah, you’ve said,” Daisy says, tossing her head back with an impatient groan. “Him dying eventually doesn’t help us now.”

“I’m not a mind-reader,” Oliver says. “If there’s more to your question, you’ll need to elaborate. What are you actually asking? How to kill him? For me to tell you whether his death is on the horizon?”

“Jonah claims that he’s the ‘beating heart of the Institute,’” Jon explains. “He says that if he dies, everyone else who works here dies as well. You were able to see the ripples created by Gertrude’s death. I suppose I thought – maybe you could tell us if there’s something similar with Jonah.”

“If his death was imminent, perhaps.” Oliver averts his eyes as he twists a ring around his finger, growing increasingly tense under such concentrated scrutiny. “But as I said before, I don’t make a habit of telling fortunes.”

“So you won’t tell us,” Martin says.

“To be frank, this place is rife with potential.” Oliver casts his gaze around the area, as if seeing something the others cannot. “It would be… difficult to untangle it all.”

“Fine,” Basira says tartly. “Then can you tell us whether it’s possible for him to set up a dead man’s switch in the first place? Seems to me something like that would be the End’s domain, wouldn’t it?”

“It would.”

“Then would he be able to exercise any real power over it?” Basira persists. “There’s nothing inherent to the Eye that suggests its Avatars should be able to bind others’ lives to them. Even the Archivist doesn’t work like that – we’re linked to Jon as far as being unable to quit goes, but we won’t die if he does. I think it’s more likely that Jonah did something extra to bind the Institute to himself.”

“Assuming he’s even telling the truth,” Daisy says.

“So, is there an artefact that could let him do it?” Basira asks, still staring Oliver down. “A ritual? A favor from an affiliate of the End, maybe?”

“Terminus has a variety of ways in which it operates,” Oliver says cagily, “same as all the other Powers. I don’t seek out instances of those manifestations. Given the sheer number of statements collected here, it's likely you’re all more familiar with the breadth of its influence than I am.”

“You’re very helpful,” Daisy scoffs.

Oliver hunches his shoulders, chastised. It’s an odd sight – Jon wouldn’t have expected him to be particularly affected by such an accusation. Oliver never promised to be helpful; does not owe them his cooperation. Before Jon can pursue that thought any further, though, Oliver continues.

“I will say that Terminus is its own master. Those who believe they have tamed it are only fooling themselves. Orchestrating their own misery. The moment in which they finally realize that fact – that they have never had the upper hand, that the entire time they have never strayed from the route to which Terminus binds them…” Oliver chews the inside of his cheek, considering. “The existential terror that moment creates – I wonder sometimes whether it’s a delicacy to my patron.”

“Sounds a lot like the Web,” Basira says. The suggestion must pique his interest, because Oliver sits up straighter and leans forward ever so slightly.

“Except the Web reviles its extinction as much as the other powers, and as much as any mortal mind,” he says – not quite excited, but more engaged than before. “Terminus, on the other hand – its eventual oblivion is part and parcel of its existence. It does not fear the conclusion of its story. The Web will never surrender to such a fate. It will always seek an escape route, some way to appoint itself the weaver of its own ends. Its threads can never stray from the confines of the routes dictated by Terminus, but the concept that it may itself be under the guidance of another… such a thing is incompatible with its definition. Still, the shape of the Spider’s web will always mirror the blueprints of a greater architect.”

“And you think the same is true for Jonah,” Jon says.

“I know it is.”

“Okay, but – but Jon changed fate,” Martin protests. “In a million little ways – some we probably don’t even know about – and some big ones, too. So who’s to say that every step of the route is part of the End’s blueprints? What if – hold on.”

Martin stands and moves to Jon’s makeshift desk, rummaging around for a few seconds before coming up with a pen. He snatches one of Melanie’s therapy worksheets from the top of the pile and turns it over to the blank side.

“What if the only things set in stone are – are certain points along the route,” he says, scribbling a scattering of dots across the page, “but all that matters is that the route eventually intersects with those points?” Martin connects two points with a wavy, sine-like line. “Maybe it doesn’t even matter how convoluted” – he draws another line, this time with several loop-de-loops – “or long” – yet another line, this one traveling all the way up to the top of the page and making several winding turns before plunging back down to connect with the next dot – “the path is.” He holds up the finished product for everyone to see. “As long as the dots connect, the rest is free reign.”

“I like to think that choice plays a role,” Oliver says. “That fate is less of a track and more of a guideline. But honestly, there’s no way to know for certain. I only know the end point. The rest is speculation.”

“It’s also possible that the rift brought me to an alternate reality,” Jon says, eyes downcast. “If the reality of my original timeline still exists, I haven’t changed fate at all. I’ve just jumped to a different track.”

“Okay, and if that’s the case, and this is a different dimension,” Martin says heatedly, “then that means it has its own timeline and its own future, and whatever happened in your future has no bearing on ours.” Martin glares, daring Jon to argue. He doesn’t. “So it’s a moot point. If we can’t know one way or the other whether the future is already written, then let’s just act as if it isn’t. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. At least then it will feel meaningful.”

“The worst isn’t something you can prepare for,” Jon says darkly. “Trust me, I know.”

“If I want ominous proverbs, I’ll let you know,” Martin immediately counters – and Jon loves him for it. Daisy chokes on a startled laugh; Martin ignores her, instead pivoting to face Oliver. “We want to kill Jonah Magnus. Or, at least make it so he can’t perform his Ritual. But preferably kill.”

“Never realized you were so bloodthirsty, Blackwood,” Daisy says approvingly.

“The world will be a better place without him in it,” Martin says without a hint of indecision, not looking away from Oliver. “Jonah’s original body is in the center of the Panopticon. Except his eyes, because apparently transplanting them into innocent people is how he cheats death, because of course it is, why wouldn’t it be some messed up–”

“Martin,” Basira sighs.

“Okay, fine, moving on,” Martin sasses back. “It makes me wonder, would destroying his original body hurt him, or do we need to destroy his original eyes as well, or would destroying just his eyes be enough? And – and would it kill him, or just – blind him, disconnect him from the Beholding? Or – or would that kill him, because the Beholding is what’s keeping him alive?”

“Your guesses are as good as mine,” Oliver says. “Much of this really does come down to speculation and thought experiment, and it seems you’ve done plenty of that amongst yourselves already. I’m afraid that the only certainty I can offer is the certainty of an ending, and I don’t think that’s as much of a consolation to you as it is to me.”

“No, it’s not,” Martin says.

“But, uh – thank you for your honesty,” Jon jumps in. “For trying.”

“I really do wish I had better answers for you,” Oliver says, not quite meeting his eyes. “The End is… somewhat of an echo chamber at times. When you’re already on the inside looking out, it can be… difficult, to shift perspective.”

“I wouldn’t be able to offer many straightforward answers about my patron, either,” Jon admits.

“Wait,” Martin says. “Could you… could you at least tell us whether you can see anything about our deaths?”

Oliver draws in a deep breath and releases it slowly. “In my experience, there’s nothing to be gained from such knowledge.”

“Tell us anyway,” Basira says.

“Why?” Oliver says tiredly, his hands curling into loose fists. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because if you can see something, it could help us narrow down possibilities,” Basira replies. “If you see all of us dying in the same way, maybe it means we all die when Magnus does.”

“Or it just means you all die in the same freak accident.”

“Wait, do we?” Martin asks, his voice pitching higher in alarm.

“It was just an example,” Oliver says, scrubbing one hand down his face. “I’m just saying that this kind of knowledge doesn’t tend to give people the answers that they want.” Met with nothing but four determined stares, his shoulders sag in defeat. “Are you all certain you want to know?”

Everyone nods. Oliver equivocates for a full minute, rubbing at his forehead in complete silence. Eventually, he releases a long, low sigh.

“Right now,” he says, “I don’t see death closing in on any one of you.”

“Shit,” Martin says on a heavy exhale. “The way you were putting it off, I was sure you were going to predict a massacre.”

“Honestly,” Daisy mutters. “Bury the lead much?”

Jon ignores them, preoccupied with the implications of Oliver's revelation. If they were planning on killing Jonah tomorrow, it would say nothing about whether they were to succeed, but it would suggest they don’t die in the process, which would at least offer some reassurance going in. But Jon has no idea when they’ll be able to execute any sort of plan. This only confirms that none of them are likely to die in the next few weeks – and that’s assuming that Oliver’s premonition is accurate. Up until now, his predictions have come true, but there’s a first time for everything.

Judging from the contemplative frown on Basira’s face, she’s running through the same calculations.

“How far out can you see?” she asks.

“It varies,” Oliver says. “Weeks, usually. Sometimes months.”

“And it could change in a few weeks,” Daisy says.

“It could change tomorrow. It could change an hour from now.” Oliver looks between the four of them with a faint, melancholy smile. “I did warn you that it wouldn’t offer much sense of security. It only makes you want to know more.”

“Look where you are,” Basira scoffs.

“Point taken,” Oliver says with a startled laugh. “But honestly, ask yourself whether it’s all that different from Masato Murray and his book. If it’s worth living your life around the question of when and how – especially when the answer, should you receive one, will never put your mind at ease.”

“Just to be clear, ah – was I included in that prophecy? Or do you still see the veins around me?” Jon asks. Oliver raises his eyebrows. “I know, I know – the answer won’t satisfy me. Just – humor me?”

“Yes,” Oliver sighs, “I can still see them, if I look for them, but as we covered quite exhaustively, they look atypical and wrong and I don’t know what to make of them.” A tinge of indignation breaks through Oliver's characterisic mild manner – and then the moment passes. “I don’t think they indicate an imminent demise, but much about you is an enigma.”

“And there’s nothing else you can tell us about Jonah Magnus?” Basira asks.

“It isn’t a matter of if he can be killed, but how. Unfortunately, you’ll have to figure that part out for yourselves. As for whether or to what extent he could bind his fate to the rest of the Institute… there are any number of strange phenomena and improbable feats in this world. I would never claim to be an authority on the scope of it all.” Oliver offers another wistful ghost of a smile. “I’m afraid you might just have to take a leap of faith.”

Again, Jon thinks with an inward sigh.

But at least he can say he’s had practice.

End Notes:

Citations for Jon’s Archive-speak are as follows: MAG 011; 011; 168; 121; 156; 070. The “I still remember the first time…” & “And the worst part was that…” Oliver quotes are from MAG 121.  

Yes, “what we owe to each other” is a nod to The Good Place.  

So. This… was a beast of a chapter, and the last half of it really kicked my ass, which is why it’s taken so long to finally finish it. Still not sure how I feel about it – it’s a bit of a digression, but I’m hoping it still fits in thematically. Either way, next chapter we’re moving on to Ny-Ålesund.

Hopefully it won’t take me an entire month this time to write the next chapter, but… we’re down to two episodes left, folks. Chances are, next time I update, we’ll have heard the series finale. Are you all ready? Because I categorically am NOT. aaaaaaaaa

(That said, I already have a handful of epilogue standalone fics planned for this AU once the main story is done. Because hurt/comfort and recovery fics are going to be at the top of my hierarchy of needs once Jonny Sims destroys me in two weeks, I s2g.)

Thanks for reading!

[c-aureus]

Checks watch: Ooh, look at that. It’s time for another rant. So. Wall of text incoming. So, has it occurred to anyone else that, of the 6 Zelda fighters that are in Smash Bros. Ultimate, 3 of them are Link, 2 of them are Zelda, and one is Definitely Not Captain Falcon? Here’s another fun thing to think about: Technically, we haven’t had an entirely new Zelda character introduced to the game since Melee was released in 2001.

TWENTY YEARS AGO. Yes, I’m aware that Toon Link came with Brawl in 2008 (which is still 13 years and 2 entire games), but even so. Toon Link was a direct replacement for Young Link in that he is a smaller, faster Link. Besides, they’re still the same character, with the same moveset. What I’m getting at here is that... I honestly think that the Zelda series has been kinda neglected for fighters in recent years/DECADES. Especially considering the saturation of certain franchises that shall not be named. And, it’s not as if the series is lacking characters. I honestly think that Midna deserved to be playable in Brawl, and Ghirahim deserved to be in 4. Sadly, at this point, I think that their moment has kinda passed, and they would never get in now. Especially since both are assist trophies. I’ve heard that apparently Toon Zelda was intended for Brawl, but even so... this is just worsening the problem of having not enough diversity. Like, the Zelda series has some amazing characters, that have definitely deserved spots. But, they’ve been passed over for some... underwhelming picks, let’s say. (Yes, I’m salty.) In case it’s not obvious, what I’m getting at is that I want more Zelda reps. Specifically, ones from a somewhat recently released Zelda game that, uh... was pretty good, y’know? Obviously, I’m talking about Triforce Heroes. Jokes aside, I’ve wanted a BotW rep in Ultimate since it was announced. I do not consider Link to be a specific BotW rep, since I think that he more represents the Zelda series as a whole, since his moveset, appearance, etc. are the same between incarnations. Aside from his clothes, and the remote bomb, he could be literally any other Link. And, if/when the next big Zelda game and Smash Bros. game come out, he WILL be any other Link. I honestly think that BotW was momentous enough of a game to warrant its own dedicated rep (or 4, in a Pokemon Trainer style format). This feeling is given infuriating hope by the fact that the Champions are not assist trophies, nor background cameos in the Great Plateau Tower stage. In fact, the only manner in which they feature is as 2* support spirits. I mean... I can’t be the only one who thinks that they’re better than that, can I? So, yeah. Champions for Smash. It makes sense in so many ways, which is why it’s going to be so crushing when they inevitably are not announced. I mean, I’d even accept a Mii costume, but I’d wager we’re not getting that either. Lol. Fuck me, I guess. To elaborate, between the 20 (or 13) year drought of Zelda reps, the significance of BotW, plus the design and nature of the Champions, as well as the fact that they have not been deconfirmed, or have barely any presence at all in Ultimate, I genuinely believe that this is a fitting, and awesome, character to have in the game. Alas, I don’t think it’s ever gonna happen. Although, if, by some unfathomable luck, it did, then I would never complain about Byleth, Corrin, Roy, Chrom or Min-Min ever again. Either way. Praise Sakurai. He has done such an incredible job with Ultimate, and that will always deserve recognition and praise. It sounds entitled as fuck to think that you can demand your favourite/preferred character(s) to be in a game that you love, however after seeing other people being genuinely ecstatic to get their favourite/preferred character in the game, there is no harm in wanting to experience that same kind of joy for yourself.

(Provided that you don’t start sending death threats about it. That’s trashy as fuck.) None of the (new) characters announced for Ultimate (or even Sm4sh) have really been ‘for me’ in the sense that I was hyped beyond words at their announcement, so I’m kinda just really holding out for a miracle, here. Alas, not everyone can be pleased, so there will always be those who will be disappointed. And, alas, it’s the hope that really kills ya. Can’t wait for the final DLC character to be a Gen 8 Pokemon. Sigh.