#would implement all of her evil schemes | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

burnedbyshoto · 4 years ago

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go the distance

(will you) go the distance

— You’re perfectly content in life except for the fact that you are not dating Deku. When his best friend won’t help you out, you turn to the dark side to get what you want.

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pairing: pro hero!midoriya izuku x bad villain!reader

warnings: 18+, nsfw, smut, manga spoilers, pro hero!au, villain!reader, ofa usage for sex lol, size difference, manhandling, public sex, slight degradation and praise, deku eats his cum outta ya pussy, big dick deku, corruption but make it opposite, deku is a pervert change my mind

word count: 12,715

a/n: well, yall already knew I wanted to make this fic a reality, so here it is for bnharems villain collab!! check out all the already amazing stories if you haven’t already. thank you to kara, sky, and jo for reading this for me because lmao im ass rn. I’m gonna go to bed because I partied a bit too hard last night.

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your quirk: distortion – can make afflicted persons vision shift 6 cm to the left or right at the cost of having their own vision shift the same way

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“Breaking news: We have yet another report to add to the slew of attacks this month, this comes just days after we broadcasted rumors of a villain running rampant over the city. This spate of attacks has put the entire metropolitan area at a standstill, road closures, and damaged property making it difficult for commuters to get to work in the morning.

“Road maintenance endeavors to do its best to keep the city running, but it seems futile when these attacks continue to increase. The entire city was brought to a standstill by the mysterious villain who has still not been named, but reports show they are nothing like we have ever experienced before.

“Where are the heroes now? Who will save us from the terror overwhelming our city?

“Every day the crime toll continues to rise and we have no one here to protect us. The Hero Public Safety Commission assured us earlier in the week that the crime rate would go down, that the top Heroes are out there protecting our city, but if so, where are they? Is it really safe to go out anymore, who can we trust? Would you put your life in the hands of a Hero today? When they have proved our streets are no longer safe. We still have no information on what is going on, or who is involved, but we must remain observant. We will continue to report the latest news as we receive it, but for now, we must implore you to heed the warnings of the city-wide curfew that is soon to be implemented. If anyone has any information on these occurrences in the city, please send them to us or contact the police, you can remain anonymous. The safety of our citizens is what is most important, stay vigilant and don’t go out unless it is absolutely necessary. One thing we know for sure: we can no longer rely on Heroes to protect us. The streets of our once-great city are no longer safe, we are no longer safe.”

The female reporter closes her eyes, despite still being on the air, her eyebrows furrowed as she exasperatedly sighs.

“Was that good enough, Mirage?”

You look at her with a pout, your eyes then clenching shut as your lips move with unsaid words as you motion for the cameras to stop rolling. You tilt your head right and left, muttering a bit.

“Did that seem better to you this time? I don’t know, I don’t think it was scary enough...”

You open your eyes to see the exasperated reporter looking at you as if she personally sought to end you right where you were sitting.

“You are the worst villain I’ve ever encountered,” she deadpans, and you laugh in agreement.

You weren’t really a villain.

If you must put a label on what you were, you would say that you were the best PR head any hero agency could ask for. You were, after all, the top student graduate from UA’s Business Course and had been ushered into a condensed agency the moment you were finished taking your graduation pictures.

And well, if you are actually curious about the… villainy, you would like to uphold and continue to stress that you weren’t a villain! You were just a public nuisance – like those stupid YouTubers – with the ability to garner Pro Heroes’ attention! People had no reason to scoff at what you did on the daily.

You took both of these jobs very seriously!

It was like being straight out of a comic for you!

A simple – hopefully should the heroes you’re in charge of not be stupid – nine to five job by day, and a badass, crime-committing, sexy as shit villain by night! How could anyone ever hate you for your lifestyle! How could anyone ever hate you?!

But we are all noisy people, and everyone wondered just why you became a villain because you had a beautifully stable job with an impressive salary! Why would such an amazing woman such as yourself dabble in the evilness of humanity?

Well, you did have an answer for the public.

“Why do you engage in evil, villainous schemes?” the reporter deadpans, absolutely and utterly not being paid enough to humor you in this forced interview.

The public loved drama, pizazz, a little showmanship even from what they deemed humanities worst! So, you told the world why you chose to be evil instead of good:

“Because I want to be!” you grin, flashing a pose as you make your away from the interviewer you had very much illegally forced to interview you. “And because a hero killed my cat!’

Of course, that was a lie! Why would you ever hand over the real reason as to why you decided to become a villain! You’d be laughed right out of Japan, possibly be murdered by a horde of fangirls!

For you see, there was one reason and one reason alone as to why you decided to take your place within the villainy hall of fame. Why you chose to do more in your day outside of your already demanding job.

And that one reason was: Pro Hero Deku, civilian name Midoriya Izuku.

Now, trying not to come off as some creepy, weirdo, stalker fangirl, you could fully admit that you were in love with the stupidly large hunk of a man that debuted as an official pro a year before you graduated from high school.

You remember how the world was finally recovering from the year-long nightmare that had ensued. To be honest, you were stupidly surprised you had even managed to graduate, given that most of schooling had become somewhat of a joke.

FIVE YEARS AGO, MARCH, 2XXX:

It had been in the evening, the clear blue sky becoming ruby red and blood orange as you made your way out of campus. The air somehow smelled of sweet hay and gasoline, but you didn’t mind. There was hardly anyone out at this time, most students had made their way home already, and the only sounds were the moving cars of businessmen just trying to get back home.

There really wasn’t any reason to suspect anything to go wrong, this was a simple daily walk back home after school that wasn’t like any other. But then there had been a loud pop, an ever louder screech, and finally, you managed to whip your head in time to see a car tumbling through the air straight at you.

There was hardly any time to think, even less to react, and the only thing you knew was that you were not going to survive.

You braced yourself, eyes clenching and body curling, your mind screaming because this was not going to be the way things ended. But before it could happen, before the car could come down upon you and squish you like a bug under a shoe, something picked you up and you were weightless.

Waiting for an impact that never came, the tears that were endlessly streaming down your face were suddenly stopped by rough, warm fingers smoothly wiping them away.

“Hey, it’s okay! You’re safe now!” a voice says softly to you, endearingly warm and comforting. “I’m here, don’t worry.”

“Am I… did I die?” you whisper, unsure if you even want the answer, your eyes remaining closed because you refused to open them up to some angel that could confirm your death. “God, what an embarrassing way to die!”

“Oh – um, no! You’re not dead! I promise!” the voice laughs brightly, just softly enough that you believe him and not be entirely horrified by the amused reaction. Your eyes crack open slowly, just barely peering back into the world, still half praying you weren’t dead. But all you saw was green.

Green eyes, green hair, green clothes.

You blink, once, twice, realizing only then you were staring into the eyes of a boy about your age.

He had curly hair, freckles littering his face, and eyes that easily pierced through your very soul.

Without meaning to, your breath stopped, frozen in your lungs as you were captivated by a handsome man with a curving, beautiful smile.

“See, I told you it was okay!” he teased you, head cocking to the side as he grinned largely.

The action itself seemed to strangle the strangest noise out of your mouth as you realized suddenly and immediately that your face was burning and all you could think was:

A cute hero rescued me, a cute hero rescued me, a cute hero rescued me, acuteherorescuedme!

“Sorry about that scare! I would’ve caught that car sooner, but I wasn’t paying attention to who was around!” the green boy apologized, bowing deeply in front of you in his apology. “There’s a commotion just up ahead, so I recommend you take the next road over.”

You nod numbly, unable to conjure even the slightest hint of your voice again as he stood up to his full length. He was average in height it seemed, taller than you, but still not towering. The hero looked behind his shoulder, those big green eyes focusing onto the distance, onto something you couldn’t even begin to imagine – or see, really. He blinked and turned back to you, smile gone but the gentle aura to him remained, but now his face, his mouth, was underlined with a sense of urgency and engagement to whatever sent a vehicle tumbling your way.

“Which train do you take home?” he asked, eyebrows relaxing from his stern position, as his smile picked up again. “I’ll take you closer to your station!”

“B train,” you manage to wheeze out – unable to be the reason why he was held up but also confused as to just what he could do to get you closer to the station that was at least a mile away from here.

“Perfect! I know where that is!” he laughs for just a moment, and before you could even ask if this was going to be some escorted thing – because you definitely did not need it – his arms were fastly secured around you, and suddenly you were weightless.

A cold wind rushed against your face, nipping at your nose, cheeks, and ears, sending your hair flying around – into your mouth! Oh, you were screaming! You were soaring through the skyline, being held by some hero you couldn’t name, and you were screeching at the top of your lungs.

Making the mistake of looking down, your arms were suddenly around his shoulders, your voice growing even sharper and louder as you squeezed against his body and refused to let go. His hands, despite the gloves, were warm on your back, and his soft chuckle warming you from nose to toes as he secured his grip on you.

“I got you,” he spoke, “I won’t let you go, I promise.”

Those words don’t exactly ease you, but there’s a comfort to the genuinity to his words. You nod nonetheless, your face buried deep into his neck. The cold wind continues to whip around you, the only thing sounding in your ears is the cruel whipping wind and quiet city below.

“I’m landing now,” he informed you, body shifting in the wind, and reflexively, you clung even tighter to him, expecting the similar stomach dropping motion of a roller coaster going straight down. “You’re – ack – c-choking me!”

The knowledge of that, hearing the strain and entirely unhidden sound of him choking against the current chokehold you had on him, you released him entirely with a shriek of your own. Was it a smart move? No, definitely not because you were how many hundreds – if not thousands – of feet in the air with a quirk that could not, and would not save you.

“It’s okay! I’m fine!” he quickly said, his arms shifting around your waist as you felt your body weight drop just the smallest bit. To which your focus landed to the concrete floor so far down, and you began screaming again. He panicked just a bit too. “Y-You’re okay too! We’re landing! We’re landing!”

Soon, but not soon enough, the concrete floor came underneath your feet, and you practically felt your knees buckle underneath you. The train station behind you was practically invisible, and you felt the floor come in contact with your knees, and you collapsed onto your hands and knees. You could feel the tears streaming down your face as you wheezed and panted, unable to move from your position.

“Hey, look, we made it!” he laughed gently, probably being said in hopes that you would feel better. (It did make you feel slightly better, his laugh was light and pretty to listen to.) You could feel him approaching you, iron covered red shoes appearing before your vision. Looking up, you saw that the young hero was crouching, his face holding a wobbly smile that was earnest, worried, and full of unspoken hope. “I do need to get back, but before I do, are you good enough to be left alone?”

You blinked your soaked eyelashes at him, still largely unable to say anything at the cute hero in front of you who had a few scratches on his cheek, right below his freckles.

“Y-Yeah, um,” you say, your tongue cotten and lead in your dry mouth. “I-I’ll be fine, I think.”

The green eyed hero nods, offering you a hand and assisting you to your trembling legs, “That’s good to hear!” he chirped, his wobbly smile becoming a grand, bright grin. “You were really brave! I was impressed!”

Now, you were an idiot at times, but even you could spot a stupid lie. Still, hearing it said with such honesty, as if this hero who was no taller than five foot eight truly believed it, made something bubble in your chest, and soon you found yourself laughing.

“No need to lie to me, h-hero,” you manage to speak between stammering breaths, “thank you for saving me, though. I appreciate it.”

You grin crookedly at him, and to your utter delight, he reciprocates it.

“It’s the least I can do. I’d offer to take you home but… I’m not quite finished yet,” he says, and you can only nod, the conversation obviously reaching its last strides. You watch as he floats up, his eyes looking at you, but somehow focused how many miles away from where he had brought you from. “Stay safe?”

“I’ll try my best,” you agree to his question, hands clasping before your lap. “Finish the job quick, hero?”

He grins, “I’ll try my best.”

You feel a breathless sort of laugh escape you as you watch him beginning to shoot back up, but a sort of horror shoots through you as you rush forward, running right after him, hands cupping around your mouth as you scream:

“What’s your name?!”

The blur of green in the air freezes, and you stop running as you see green eyes and freckles focusing back onto you.

“Deku! My hero name is Deku!”

You stop at the curb of the street, eyes focused on the sky as the green eyed hero named Deku grins one last time before shooting off at a speed probably much faster than when he held onto you. The wind blows around you, and you can only feel the heat sitting on your cheeks and the way you’re smiling as you stare after his figure that's long, long gone.

“Deku...” you whisper to yourself, ignorant to the world of commuters beginning to appear at the station. “Thank you.”

And thus came the very apparent and obvious day in which you fell head over heels for Pro Hero Deku.

Now some people called you a stupid fangirl, obsessive stalker, and sometimes, yeah, you were obsessive and weird about your slight infatuation with a stranger. It was strange, you knew that! But you also knew that you had practically no chances of ever being able to woe the man behind the image of Deku because Midoriya Izuku practically existed as Deku 24/7.

After you graduated from high school, you were put into the same agency that was currently holding Deku. Without tooting your own rom-com obsessed horn too much, you fully expected to walk in and be handed Deku’s file as his PR manager and be able to thank him for not only saving you all that time ago, but also eventually sweep him off his feet.

But your reputation preceded you well, probably too well, because the first day you entered the office and was handed your list of three clients to work with, neither one was for Deku. Being a PR manager for heroes was hard, a job that practically held no set hours because, unlike your typical celebrities, heroes had no type of privacy or protection. They were constantly under the spotlight, being viewed by adoring fans and scornful critics. Your job served as the first line of defense for heroes against the public, and there were some heroes that were quite hilariously easy to work for because they were genuinely good.

The older PR managers typically held the quieter, easy tempered, or less combat heavy heroes. These heroes typically never had a bad thing said about them, their job was a glorified PA job but even less because there was no expected demands from the heroes they had to take in. Unless, of course, a hero wanted to do some sort of public event they hadn’t considered.

But there were the louder, quick to temper, or the heavy combat heroes that while made you an insane amount of money, also brought you a near 120 hour work week because there was so much to do, so much to consider, so much to keep your eyes on. There was the constant slander, the people who hated the louder, quick to temper heroes because they didn’t like their attitude, completely disregarding that they had been unsafe and a liability the entire time the hero was dealing with them. The talk shows that took months to convince to allow for an interview because they heard false rumors, and so you have to practically wrestle a boa constrictor to get a measly five minute interview done. And then the combat-heavy heroes… no one would ever shut up about building damages and how this hero broke his nose while he was stealing a store!

Not to mention having to have every single piece of social media on your phone, set to notify you whenever your clients names were brought up so that you could look at it. You’ve seen more than enough lewd drawings of your clients to last you a lifetime, enough fanfiction, and fan edits that left you with blazing cheeks and the need to never look at your client ever again. But mostly you checked each and every update because you were their first and only line of legal defense on these sorts of things.

You’ve taken down leaked nudes, fake news, and qualmed rumors and speculations.

It was hard.

So when you were shown to your desk on your first day and three files were handed to you, you were shocked to see the hero names you would be working with.

Dynamight

Phantom Thief

Shouto

Somehow, without having yet to speak with a single one of your now current clients, you knew that you were going to have your work cut out for you.

“Good luck newbie!” the woman who gave you the initial tour chirped, clapping you on the back. “You got this!”

Good lord.

Without much to do other than reading through the three’s files, you realized that you already knew a bunch about two of three of your clients. DynaMight and Shouto were two heroes that you knew teamed up with and hung out with Deku a lot, both on-field and off-field if any of the out of costume pictures said anything. Because of their connection with Deku, you had at one point learned a bit about them.

You knew that Shouto was a crowd favorite. He was tall and sweet and a complete airhead at the best moments despite him being smart. Controversy still surrounded his character, despite all the good he did, because of the past history that was brought out about his father Endeavor and his brother Dabi. The country couldn’t figure out where they stood in terms of that reveal. Endeavor did a lot before the reveal, and continued to rise up to everything in his path despite the skeletons in his closet being thrown out for the world to see. They neither forgave him, nor hated him, they only watched and waited. Then Dabi, of course, was seen as a could-have-been version of Shouto, and many tried to ask if he was really a hero and not actually siding with the League. After all, why on Earth would he be defensive of his father too?

The public had an unmoving image of Shouto based on anything but who he was as an individual, and you decided immediately that it would be your job to fix that. He was also, after all, a dear friend of Deku, so you’d do anything.

Phantom Thief was your easiest of the three clients. A relatively well mannered man who was kind and a bit weird in a fun way. He had a great sense of self and was a reliable person on the field. He made a great hero, but you could see the way his spirit blazed with an unspoken rivalry between him and the other two of your clients. Well, it seemed like he was the best until his former self appointed rivals came into the picture, but that was hardly ever, and according to Shouto, he was way worse back in their first year.

The greatest scandal he’s had so far in your three years of working at their agency was the one time he was lied to about a quirk and accidentally copied a woman's quirk that gave her the ability to change her cup size. Safe to say that Phantom Thief accidentally broke a few buttons on his shirt and was unable to stop civilians from snapping pictures.

But of course, the one that had you practically crying yourself to sleep nightly for more than one reason was Dynamight.

You’d known about him the moment you looked up Deku on your phone.

They were practically a hero duo in everything but name. They were always seen doing the same things together, whether that be on patrol together or maybe getting dinner, most of their top recorded fights were done with each other by their sides. You had also learned that they were childhood friends, and you practically vibrated at the thought that even though Deku was not your client, the chances of meeting him were still astronomically high.

There was no way you wouldn’t not meet Deku!

But you were wrong, so very, very wrong.

Turns out the hero duo in everything but name meant that Dynamight refused to let Deku be anywhere near him in the agency – the very small amount of time they spent in here. The few times they were in the same room, Dynamight absolutely refused to be interrupted because that was their paperwork hour. You had only ever been blessed with seeing green curls turning the corner as Dynamight gripped your forearm, refusing to let you follow.

“Like hell I’ll let you distract the shitnerd,” he stated simply, his red eyes narrowed as he stared down his nose at you. You opened your mouth, ready to defend your not so innocent intentions. “I’m not stupid, so don’t pretend like you won’t try anything.”

Your jaw snapped shut.

Safe to say that you couldn’t do anything about Deku so long as Dynamight was around.

But Dynamight as a client was exhausting to put it kindly.

There were so many opinions and thoughts and issues and praises coming from everywhere. Hell, even the fucking Americans and westerners had caught wind of the Wonder Duo at one point and while you were well knowledgable on their opinions on Deku, the ones on Dynamight were the ones that you had to focus on now.

People still called him a villain, so many unhappy with the fact that he still screamed and cursed and threatened. There were many conspiracy theories that he was working with the long dead League of Villains. They turned their nose up at the fact that he was childhood friends with Deku, claiming that no way an asshole like him could have ever been friends with him. And of course the bullying revelation that had come out shortly after your debut.

That had been a trip, one that had you even shocked as Dynamight approached the table in front of the media, his body calm and composed. You had watched as he simply said he owed nothing to the media, that he had already done all that he could to deserve his atonement and deserve Deku’s forgiveness. He had spoken clearly, concisely that it wasn’t any of their damn business as to what he did, and if he apologized to them, the unaffected, the ones that had nothing to do with his early years of bullying Deku, of his previous weakness and insecurity, it would be a waste of his breath.

It isn’t to them he should ever be apologizing to anyways.

You had watched as he stood up, face calm, and hands shoved into his pockets as he stood and walked away despite the screaming reporters. You had wanted to stay longer, have your own hand in damage control, but a swoop of green came in and Deku was at the microphone eyebrows furrowed as he pointed a finger at them all and said that his past with Kacchan was between him and Kacchan only, and his decision to forgive Kacchan were his and only his.

You didn’t hear the rest, didn’t even get the option to hear the way the hero you loved defended the hero you worked for – his childhood friend.

No.

Dynamight had grabbed your elbow and dragged you out of the room with him, the metal doors clanging closed the moment fierce green eyes met yours.

You watched in the company car as Dynamight looked outside the window, one elbow on the doorframe holding his chin; his gaze focused sharply on nothing but the passing sidewalk. Had it not been for the way the hand on top of his lap trembled, you would have thought he was perfectly okay.

Neither one of you talked about that again.

But just because you didn’t talk about it again, didn’t mean the world was the same. People claimed he brainwashed Deku, others demanded that Deku beat the shit out of Dynamight. You knew that Dynamight would want nothing to do with this, but you would stay in the office (an almost useless, empty office as most PR managers did their business at home) for hours long after you were supposed to be gone, practically arguing with someone who only existed behind a screen and didn’t even care that much – but you couldn’t stop.

Seeing Dynamight’s shaking hand had really done a number on you.

“The hell are you still doing here, eyelashes,” Dynamite asked from the dark entrance of the floor. “Go home already, don’t waste your time.”

You had startled at the initial intrusion, but you immediately relaxed seeing the smudged paint around red eyes and blond hair. You barely kept your gaze on him before turning back to your computer and continuing your argument.

“I’m not wasting my time, I’m doing my job,” you remark, eyes squinting at your keyboard because your vision is definitely blurry. “I’ll be heading out soon anyways.”

“God you’re fucking annoying and stubborn!” Dynamight barked, the heel of his hand slamming into his forehead. “This is exactly why I won’t introduce you to the fucking nerd!”

“What?!” you shriek, suddenly looking at your client as if he had personally attacked you – and in a way he did. “What do you mean you won’t introduce me to Deku because of that?! I’ve already met Red Riot, Chargebolt, Cellophane, and Pinky through you!”

“Yeah, because they’re not stubborn idiots too!” Dynamight accuses, jamming a gloved finger at you as he begins stomping your way. You startle, your chair shooting backward as the explosion hero makes his way towards you at alarming speed.

“What are you—?!” you shriek, hands flailing about as he grabs you by the collar of your distressed shirt.

Dynamight lifts you up to your feet as if you were a sack of flour and you grasp onto his forearm.

“I might tell you that you’re the most annoying and stubborn bitch in the world, but you’re not worse than fucking Deku,” Dynamight sneers, his red eyes narrowed and stern. “I’m not going to let you meet him until you learn how to give or you’ll hurt him, and I’m not going to be part of any reason as to why he gets hurt again.”

Your jaw dropped, clearly offended, but you closed it just as fast; the weight of his words made you a bit sad, even for just a bit.

“You’re kinda cute when you care for Deku, you sure I’m his biggest fan?” you tease, grinning at the hero to which he rolls his eyes.

“Shut the hell up and go home already; it’s annoying seeing you fight a losing battle that’s none of your damn business,” Dynamight simply said, putting you back onto your feet and blocking out your desk.

“I’ll go home on the condition that for my birthday you at least consider introducing us!” you say, unwilling to move from your spot. “I’ve been working for you for three years! You’ve kept me away for three years!”

Dynamight’s stare didn’t even shift the slightest millimeter, his red eyes unamused as you groaned in grief and annoyance.

“I’m stubborn? Have you met yourself?!” you grumble snatching your jacket and purse from the hook on your cubicle and shoving them on. “My names God of Explosion Murder: Dynamight and I am Stubborn™ but will never admit it.”

You continued mocking your long time client and most definitely friend if you dared to say so, and dragged the heel of your foot all the way to the elevator to which you were joined by Dynamight. The trip down the elevator is silent, and you keep your gaze locked on the closed doors, unwilling to even look at the hero next to you.

Soon enough, the elevator reached the ground floor, and you got ready to walk out.

“I’ll consider it,” Dynamight said as the elevator doors opened. “Also, fucking stop calling me Dynamight, Bakugou’s fine.”

He walked off the elevator with his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.

“Thank you, Bakugou!” you shriek, your lungs failing you at the thought of finally being introduced to Deku! You hadn’t moved from your spot from the elevator, your chest hammering with the thought of getting to meet Deku.

“Don’t get your hopes up, you’re still irritatingly stubborn,” Bakugou merely calls over his shoulder before lifting his hand in a halfhearted wave before stepping out of the glass door.

That brought you back to reality just a bit and you scowled, knowing you would have to go beyond and above to prove that.

But you see, there were many reasons to cry about having Bakugou as your client. Besides the stinkhole of his previous bullying, people just were not understanding his typically prickly exterior. You had to go head to head with reputation tarnished, had to slap fangirls away who demanded that Bakugou degrade them where they stood. It was hard to not be stubborn as not only his PR manager but his friend, and in less than a month, still plenty of time before your birthday, you had already grown irritated of the meeting-Deku-card he waved over your head.

“Mei, if I have to go any longer than this, I will die and hope I am reborn as Deku’s new guardian angel,” you pouted, chin pressed against a cold metal tabletop. Your hands being used as glove models for one of your best friends Hatsume Mei. “It’s first of all impossible getting anywhere near him with his guard dog Bakugou literally stopping me whenever I’m within a ten foot radius! And then I’m not even sure what will happen when we do meet again! Would I even be able to talk to him?!”

“Why wouldn’t you? You talk to all my babies with me! There’s practically nothing you can’t do,” Mei laughs, smacking you against your back before returning her intense gaze back to the gloves. “Deku’s uh… I actually can’t remember him but I’m sure he’s a great conversationalist! I think he helped me with the Sports Festival my first year.”

“That was Iida,” you laugh, wiggling your fingers as Mei demanded. “You’re so bad with names and faces, I’m impressed you know mine.”

“You saved my baby, of course I remember you,” Mei turned her grin towards you, “but come on, why can’t you get with him besides this Bakugou guy?”

“Well, he’s just like Bakugou! He’s practically married to his job! Their schedules basically match together perfectly! There’s literally only three hours a day while they’re on the job that they’re not together! And that’s when they patrol their own parts of town because there’s hardly any activity they don’t need to be attached by the neck.” You explain and rant, your cheeks puffing as you stand up and allow Mei to run further tests on the glove.

“Sounds like you gotta become a villain to woo this hero guy, huh,” Mei spoke, eyes focused on the glove as you pointed a finger at the far wall and watched as a beam exploded from the fingertip and pierced through the steel wall like butter. “Too bad you’re a goody two-shoes or else I could make you some serious villain gear and make you a fearsome villain to then prove that Hatusme Mei’s babies and creations are untouchable and the best in the world! Muah-ha-ha-ha!”

You know her words are more joking than serious, but that doesn’t stop your eyes from widening. Your body shifts over to where she was standing and you screech pointing at her and just narrowly missing setting off the laser again.

“THAT'S IT!”

“What’s it?” she asked, completely confused.

“You have to make me a villain!” you exclaim, rushing over to Mei, who is eagerly waiting for her babies returnal especially since it ran perfectly. “You have to make me near-invisible gear that can keep me going toe to toe with Deku until I can seduce him!”

“You want to turn evil?” Mei questions, finger pressing quizzically to her chin. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“I am definitely not villainous to pull that off, but like I pretend to be a villain so that he talks to me and we can like get to know each other!” you exclaim, you’re unable to keep from hopping up and down on your feet, your grin unfathomably bright. “It's practically a romcom in the making!”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Mei laughs, altering the band of fabric around your waist. “You do know heroes and villains hardly speak? It’s more like… ‘I’m more powerful,’ ‘No me!,’ ‘No, ME!’”

“Um, I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but whatever! I’ll figure out a way!” you continue on unaffected because this plan was genius! Especially if you had Mei in your corner?! Her recent development of not using such… steampunk designs made her creations elusive and dangerous to own. Hence why she was an extremely sought out manufacturer, by villains and heroes alike. “And if I can go toe to toe with Deku of all people, you’ll know that you and your babies are the undeniable best!”

“Hm, that is promising,” Mei agrees with a nod as she forces you around. “Is this Deku guy all that good?”

“He’s the one you made the iron soles for!” you chirp and watch as the recognition and challenge spark immediately in Mei’s yellow eyes.

“Oh,” Mei chuckles, turning away from you and looking at her pile of made babies. “This would be good.”

“So we have an agreement?” you grin excitedly.

“Give me a month, and we’ll have your debut!”

Fuck Bakugou for thinking you weren’t good enough!

You hadn’t expected the initial phases of villainy to be quite as hard as it was, if you were being honest. The late nights at Mei’s personal lab made sure to keep your plans a solid secret, but you had to prepare for the wild range of what Deku’s quirk entailed.

There was smoke, something you were already used to working in because of Bakugou and his quirk. You’ve navigated quite a bit in his smog, and as long as you knew where you were, you would be fine.

There was also that danger sense, which allowed him to know when things were coming – something that shouldn’t be too big an issue considering you weren’t actually attempting to extract danger onto him.

Blackwhip was a big issue. How far or how much could you do if he even grabbed a hold of you. With sleuthing and the help of Mei having files on everyone's quirks, you were able to find information that blackwhip was a creation made of energy. Meaning that Mei was now making some type of destructing material to lessen the energy of the quirk, allowing for you to escape should he attempt to capture you this way.

Float was stopped by having most of your fights occur within a confined area, which was needed for you anyways! You didn’t need to be caught by anyone else but him! You didn’t actually need to land in jail – you would prefer to not be handled by anyone but Deku, actually.

Then of course the stupid superstrength and superspeed, both of which you knew you could handle with your quirk. You’ve been head to head with people with quirks similar to that before, and you knew your quirk was tricky enough that you’d manage to slip right past his fingers just fine. After all, you knew full and well that the Deku who took down S class villains was worlds quicker than F class villains – aka you.

You would be fine.

But today was day one, first of how many days it would take to get Pro Hero Deku, aka Midoriya Izuku to fall in love with you.

You were dressed in a black and purple bodysuit that was definitely not inspired by Shego from Kim Possible’s costume. Your hair was dyed purple by a special spray Mei created that would be washed out by the end of the day, but wouldn’t ever give away that it was fake. You wore a mask over your eyes, and grinned seeing that you couldn’t see a fleck of color on your irises.

Perfect.

And with far too much confidence, nauseating excitement, and unjustified attitude, you marched down towards your first spot, ready and adopting the identity of who you were about to become.

Mirage.

It was time to act. Deku and Dynamight were on different patrol routes right now, and you sent your threat, readying for the moment for the man in green to come in with the desire to stop you. With the very real threat of stealing every puppy within the tristate area being broadcasted within the area unless and hero bests you, you waited for your savior to come and stop you.

“I am here to stop your villainous acts, you villain!” a voice shattered the silence just as it shattered your heart. You looked over your shoulder to see some hero you couldn’t name standing at the other stairwell entrance with his fists clenched and ready to fight.

You groaned, shoulders crumbling with your well hidden disappointment.

“I wasn’t looking for you!” you exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger at the flabbergasted hero who was just trying to figure out what was happening. “Where’s Deku?!”

“He’s – he’s not here yet,” he stammers, eyes wide. “It’s not his day anymore to patrol this area?”

“Aw fuck!” you complain, pouting at the realization that you had messed up. “Okay, I’ll be back later, please don’t come back. Bye!”

With a small wave, you easily stepped through the door to the stairwell next to you and left, your threat empty and the hero victorious despite not actually stopping you. And unfortunately, although you had wished and prayed even, this was not the last time a screw up like this would happen.

At the threat of destroying all the cats in the area, you had another hero show up, not Deku, and you groaned and left before they could even finish their call of stopping you.

You then threatened to poison the watering system, to which you found out that Deku was held up at another major villain threat in a different city. You groaned and stomped off after that.

Then there was the time you swore you would increase the overall temperature of the city per one degree celsius should your demands not be made. Shouto answered that one and you immediately walked away the moment you saw the familiar head of red and white coming your way.

Time and time again you kept being caught by heroes you could not care about, being confronted by no names and nobodies. It was tiring, and Mei was beginning to sigh just the smallest bit whenever you showed up to try yet again.

But you weren’t a quitter!

You would win!

This was your last attempt at getting Deku to notice you.

After threatening to wrap all the citizens in the area with a giant froot by the foot, you were almost sad to say that the heroes ignored your cry for chaos and no one had come to check on you.

You sat outside the building you used as your trap for Deku, pouting into a hot dog that the neighborhood's grandma gave you because you looked like you needed something to eat. It’s a good thing you weren’t actually a villain or else they’d be fucked, you bitterly thought as you took another bite of your food.

It had been a month of empty, no Deku appearances, and you were going to bite the bullet and pretend to be not stubborn just so stupid Bakugou of all people could introduce you.

You kicked your feet as you sat on the staircase, humming as you watched the empty streets bend with the wind. It was quiet, beautiful, peaceful.

“YOU!” a voice shrieked to your left, and you watched a pudgy, red nosed man racing over towards you, a flash drive clenched in his hands. “TAKE THIS! RUN! DON’T LET THE HEROES TAKE IT!”

You gawked at him, feeling the small plastic device being shoved into your hands as the man collapsed at your feet. You squeaked when you heard a voice yelling stop and you bounced to your feet, turned into the building and raced in.

Your breathing was erratic, heart in your throat as you raced up the stairwell, unable to begin to imagine what the hell the information on the flash drive held. You were practically hyperventilating as you reached the floor you had come to know extremely well, and you stood near the window with shaky hands and legs.

What did you take?!

“I’m going to need that back, I’m afraid,” a low smooth voice said from behind you, and you froze immediately. Old anxiety overcome by a new anxiety, one that made your stomach flip and blood burn.

Turning around, you felt awestruck to see the one man you’ve been waiting for… for fucking years now, really, to appear before you, finally be there. In the flesh, completely, entirely. Your jaw dropped, your gaze looking down from your clenched hand that held the USB to the way that Deku looked at you with warm eyes that were underlined with steel that made you want to drop to your knees, confess everything, and beg to be his. God, he was so fucking tall. He had only been about five foot eight the last time you had actually talked, and now he was at least a foot taller. His teenager haircut was long gone, now replaced with his curls trimmed at the nape of his neck before filling out on top – not quite an undercut. He had more freckles now, surely. His skin just a bit tanner, a scar trailing from his cheek to his jaw. You knew there were more scars, just as you knew that there were dimples when he smiled.

You wanted to have him between your legs while you begged for mercy, holy shit.

Tucking the USB into your pocket, you tilted your head as you will yourself to relax.

“I went through all the trouble of getting it... I think if I’m going to hand it over quickly, I deserve to know what’s on it, no?” you tease, your confidence coming out of nowhere while a smile spreads ever so largely over your features. Deku’s eyes widened just a bit, shock overcoming his green eyes.

“I’m sorry, but that’s confidential,” Deku stresses, taking a step forward toward you. You click your tongue, taking a step backward while grinning.

“I don’t think that’s what I asked for,” you giggle as you watch Deku’s face go through an array of emotions before settling onto one – curiosity.

“What do you want?” he asked, apparently entirely ready to discuss any and all terms and conditions with you.

“Honestly?” you reply, tapping a gloved finger to your chin as you ‘think.’ Deku, however, nods. His stance relaxing, becoming one of preparedness but not the takedown he had previously entered with.

“A date with you.”

You watch as Deku’s eyes slam wide open, his jaw dropping immediately and he stammered. Oh, how your heart soared and how you felt giddy and wonderful as he seemed to slip and slide on his own tongue!

“A-A date?!” he ends up almost shrieking, his head shaking left and right. “T-That��s a total lie! You can’t possibly – well, no! Please tell me the truth!”

But you were giddy, practically drunk off the fact that you were making the most powerful hero in the world blush like a little schoolboy. You suddenly were on the offensive, stepping towards your hero who was much larger than you with power and drive behind each step. And it must have been the way you stared him down, the way you walked towards him at blank range with such brimming confidence that Deku takes a step back. But it’s something that makes you want to laugh as the heel of his foot gets caught on a raised tile, and you watch the mountain of a man tumble to the floor.

You’re on top of him immediately, hands pressed to his shoulders, knee settling near his crotch with most of your weight so he got the idea to not do anything funny. The USB sits between your fingers, and you lean over his flushed face that looks up at you with wide eyes.

“Actually, I changed my mind, I know what I want,” you say instead, nose ghosting over his. “Everytime I decide to do something… naughty… I want you to be the hero on the case to stop me. You and just you.”

You lean in closer, so close that you could see the specks of gold in his green, green eyes.

Deku hasn’t spoken, and you’re pretty sure his chest isn’t moving as you press your breasts against his.

“Understood, De-ku?”

Your teeth tug at his bottom lip and let go as he nods.

“Good, good,” you grin, sitting up on his chest and taking the USB in your fingers and slipping it into his utility belt. “Take good care of that for me, I’ll see you next time, hero…”

You had only managed to flash a quick wave before disappearing through your usual door, hoping and praying to god that whatever the hell possessed you would continue until you reached Mei’s. It wouldn’t hit you until much, much later than you had stunned Pro Hero Deku speechless within the first meeting.

Hell, you thought giddily as you answered Bakugou’s call about how he probably just got into a bit of a messy situation, maybe you do have the potential to woo him like this.

Thus truly began your descent as the villain Mirage.

It was quickly accepted and discovered that the moment you stepped into that costume and colored hair that you were the prey for Deku and Deku only. Most of your interactions with Deku occurred within buildings, and you used Mei’s gear to gain the final laugh each and every time to allow for you to escape. There were times, however, where you could be seen racing through the sky. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop as Deku followed after you, leaping, tumbling, and even catching you at times.

You flirted with him heavily, allowing yourself to be caught so that you could bat your pretty lashes and press your chest against his. It didn’t matter how professional he was, how good at his job he was, Deku was a pervert – so obviously a pervert it made slipping away almost too easy.

But because you had the world-renowned, world known Pro Hero Deku as the only hero on your case, soon the small block who had to play victims to your horrendous crimes became only a small percentage of people who were watching your crimes. These near daily crimes (or inconveniences/botherings as the people on the internet say to defend you and your actions) are becoming both a worldwide sensation, and so, it took nothing for you to continue having Deku at your feet and the world chipped in. So you agreed to do interviews, forcing uneager reporters to do segments on you so that the hype behind you and Deku’s relationship grew.

You didn’t want him to leave you, not until you got what you wanted, and unless you were an idiot, you were nearly positive you were almost there.

Why would you say that?

Well, a few reasons.

The first came about a week after you had first met Deku again.

You had joyously gathered the means to create a machine to shave down an eighth of an inch of everyone's shoes in the entire country of Japan without their knowledge. You had ever so evilly explained that the point of this was to ensure that for a full day, everyone would feel off and unbalanced but would not know why.

You had said this, grinning widely as you turned around to see Deku standing there attempting to fight off a very amused smile.

“I don’t think that would be all too evil, Mirage,” he called out to you, arms folding across his chest as he watched you set up the machine to do exactly what you said you would do.

“Mm, that’s what you say now, but just wait until you’re one of the losers stumbling around,” you say back, grinning as you turn around for just a second, wagging the knife at Deku from the distance.

“Well, regardless, you know I can’t let you do that,” Deku laughs just slightly, and you grin, standing up.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes, so I’m going to have to ask you to stop right there.”

You giggle.

“Make me.”

You’re not sure what happens, but there’s dodging and weaving, spinning and sliding. You’re practically wheezing from how hard you’re laughing as Deku can not manage to land a finger on you with the help of Mei’s items and your quirk. It all comes to an end when instead of dodging, you throw yourself right at him, and Deku has not anticipated that.

His eyes are wide open and you fiercely grin as he falls back onto the floor, unbalanced and only slightly frantic. You have the knife pointed at his neck, the dull blade sitting gently on his skin.

“So, Deku,” you taunt teasingly, your teeth burying into your bottom lip for just a moment at the sight of the dark flash in his green, beautiful eyes. “Tell me one thing, or I’ll continue on with my vile plans.”

“O-Okay?”

“Are you single?”

The second attempt came a few many weeks later.

You had gathered about 75 tons of glitter bombs and were in the current process of making them one. You had plans of setting it off over Tokyo so that for practically the rest of eternity, the entire city would have glitter everywhere. The only thing is that you did have to glue the glitter bombs together because, well, no one made super giant ones.

“This is so annoying, there’s glitter everywhere, and I’m only ten glitter bombs in!” you complain to the ‘empty’ room but knowing full and well that Deku had appeared through the broken window at least five minutes ago.

“If it’s annoying to you, then shouldn’t you stop?” Deku replied and you grinned.

He really couldn’t stay quiet, huh?

“Well, if it’s annoying to me, then that means every one of my victims will also find it annoying. Win-win situation.” you say, turning around towards him and winking. Facing back towards the glitter bombs you scowl, “stupid fucking glue gets everywhere, too!”

“Regardless, you know I can’t let you do that,” Deku said as leveled as he could although you swore you heard a laugh in his voice.

“Just try and stop me,” you reply back stone cold.

You stand up and watch as Deku stands up from the windowsill and sighs just a bit too heavily.

“Guess I have to,” he says and shoots out before you’re well prepared.

Typically, and probably in any other situation, this would have been the end. Pro Hero Deku had come at you with the speed and power as he took out any other Class F criminals, but unfortunately for him, and definitely fortunately for you that glue was EVERYWHERE.

Deku’s hand was stuck onto your arm, and your chest was glued to his stomach, and you swear you never quite got the strawberry Deku references until right now.

The perverted hero burned scarlet, his face practically simmering with heat as your body became undeniably stuck to his. You had to fight off the vindictive smirk, the practically snarling grin as you could feel something hot and heavy twitch at your hip.

“Fuck,” Deku wheezed.

“Fuck, yeah,” you grinned.

“WHAT?!”

Deku could not look you in the eyes for about 10 more interactions following that, but you counted that as a win. But undoubtedly, your starred and favorite memory of it all was something that occurred just last week of the current present events.

You had stood on top of a building, threatening the entire government of stealing (i.e., cutting off) the aglet of their shoes and sweaters and then removing all the laces so that it would result in their wasted time and entire humiliation!

“I don’t think most people even know what aglets are, to be honest,” Deku said from behind you. You turned around to see that he was standing there with an unsuppressed grin. “It’s not a good enough threat.”

You go unfazed by his judgement, choosing to instead bat your eyelashes and push your hair behind your ear.

“Not a good enough threat, and yet, you’re still here?” you tease, enjoying the way pink flushes to his cheeks.

“Where else would I be?” he says, and you have to ignore the way your stomach fills with butterflies.

“You’re not cute when you flirt back,” you deadpan, biting your tongue harshly when he says ‘hey!’ “Enough chit chat, let me kick your ass now and then do what I need to do.”

Unlike probably what is 95% of the time, you made the first move today.

You were on the offensive, jabbing and weaving, sweeping and punching. Deku’s green eyes were nearly black as he watched you, analyzing and taking in your movements, countering them all without so much of an issue.

“I still don’t get your quirk,” Deku grunted as his hand swiped at the empty air. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“So then you can turn me in to the government who are still salty about their aglets? I don’t think so!” you say with a laugh, rolling out of the way as Deku lunges forward. “Try again, baby, I have full faith that you’ll get it.”

Deku puffed out a chuckle and lunged again, his huge gloved hand swiping at you, with nearly accuracy despite your quirk being on. But… he wasn’t exactly perfect.

RIIIIIIIIIP!

Cold air hit your breast and your jaw dropped as your very exposed breast appeared before you and Deku. Pro Hero Deku had torn the breast of your costume, the costume that you purposefully did not wear a bra for because you had wanted this exact scenario to play out.

“DEKU!” you screech, pretending to be modest and covering your tit as Deku finally yanked himself out of staring at your breast and whipped around.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry! I didn’t think that was going to happen! I didn’t even mean to look at your boob! It just sort of all happened too fast and it was very shocking! N-Not that you have an ugly boob or anything because actually I think you have a very great boob! But oh my god, I need to shut up please ignore me!” Deku spoke so fast in a matter of five seconds, and you couldn’t even tell him to come back as he sprinted away.

His ears burned red and you swore even as he was gone, you could still see the red of his ears illuminating the sky.

You laugh.

“What a perv.”

And so, we are back to the beginning.

Back to how you forced a local news channel to read your demands so that you could hopefully take your final bow as Mirage forever.

With the threat of having a machine that would make dogs bark at a frequency for hours on end until humans eardrums broke then bleed. You made your way to your typical building and hummed as you waited.

The world outside was the same as always.

There were a few people out, a few cars driving through the street, and a few birds chirping here and there.

It was peaceful.

“Don’t you think the new reporter thing was a bit dramatic?” Deku chuckled from behind you.

You were used to him approaching like that, used to him trying to portray being elusive and cool. In your opinion, it just made him dorky.

“No such thing as being dramatic when I’m trying to go head to head with the greatest hero ever,” you respond back effortlessly. You spin on your heel and look back at Deku, who is leaning against a doorframe that he most definitely is slouching on so that the top of his head doesn’t hit the frame. “Hi, Deku.”

“Hi, y/l/n,” he says with a soft smile, one that's slightly victorious, one that makes your stomach knot in a pleasant way.

“Ah, you discovered my secret identity,” you observe, grinning as you begin approaching Deku. “Should I be scared?”

“Probably not, I don’t think I could do anything to you,” Deku sighs, pushing off the door frame and walking towards you too. “You’re pretty amazing, y/l/n.”

“Let’s prove that then,” you grin while zipping forward.

As if the both of you knew that this was the end of the line, the final confrontation, the battle this time was different. It was showy, flirty, full of spins and side steps, playing a game of cat and mouse while dodging and weaving. You laughed as blackwhip dissolved around your costume, and you frowned as he began using more of his power to get from point A to point B much quicker.

You’re not quite sure how it happened, what exactly you did wrong, or maybe Deku just finally figured out the pattern you used for your quirk because suddenly you were being tackled from behind. You shrieked as the two of you went down, his body flushed on top of you, his chest pressing to your shoulders.

The both of you were heaving, panting, completely out of breath from the five minutes you took playing around. He holds your wrists in one hand, pinned above your head, and the other one is on your waist. You were trapped beneath him, unable to move the absolute unit of a man above you, arms and hips weak to his weight. You shoved your hips up, attempting to shift some of his weight off you, but you froze as he choked on a breath by your ear.

Your ass was pressed against something hard, thick, and hot.

Oh.

Ohhh fuck.

It was happening.

Holy fucking shit.

Your breathing hitches as you thrusted your ass up again, confirming you were grinding on what was definitely Deku’s hardening cock. And once again, Deku makes the prettiest, most embarrassed gravelly grunt at the back of his throat and you feel like every strand of resistance and strength snaps.

The hand on your waist pulls you even closer against his crotch, and there's lips pressing against your neck, and you absolutely lose it.

He kisses your neck sloppily, teeth nipping at your exposed flesh, and you grind against him, moaning and thrusting back as your body feels like it's on fire. He wanted you! He wanted you and your plan to woo him worked!

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” you keen breathlessly. “Wanted you so badly, Deku.”

“Fuck,” Deku curses, his hips thrusting back against your clothed ass with power you couldn’t fucking wait to feel. “I wanted you too. Wanted you so badly, but didn’t think – holy shit.”

His hand that pins your wrists lets go of you, and moves to grab your jaw. You nearly fucking melt as his full lips slam against yours, and you moan as his lips move against yours. There’s something indescribable about how he’s kissing you, the want, the need, the months of suppressed tension bursting through every move and curve of his mouth. It doesn’t matter to you that you’re pressed up against the concrete floor, you feel like you’ve been placed into another world, an area where you can never come back.

Your arm reaches behind you and buries into his soft curls, you tug at them as your ass circles against his thrusting hips. His tongue slips into your mouth, and you whine at the hot, wet muscle in your mouth, and it sends your head spinning. You can’t take it anymore, you need him, want him flushed against your front.

“Can I fuck you?” Deku asks swollen lips pulling away from yours, his mouth frantic and trailing kisses up your cheeks and down your jaw. “Please, I wanna fuck you so bad. Wanna fuck you on the floor and against the wall. Can I make you mine?”

You nod your head frantically, unable to come up with the words to say in order to tell him yes.

Deku laughs breathlessly and flips you over so that it’s your back against the floor now.

And just like you want him to, Deku comes down to reclaim your mouth. Hot, open mouthed kisses, teeth tugging at your lips and hands grabbing your waist. His hands are huge against you filling up the space between your hip and your waist without an issue. Your legs wrap around his waist, feeling entirely small underneath him, but entirely ready to be fucked by him.

His lips move expertly against yours, teeth nibbling at your lips, mouth then sucking on your tongue. You can’t keep the continuous moans from leaking out, can’t keep yourself from staying quiet as your eyes flutter open and see green eyes so dark they look black, staring down at you with the intensity of a predator.

You were his prey, and you would present to him at the drop of a hat.

His body is hot, heat rolling off of his hero costume in waves, making you feel like you were near burning against him. And the heat between his thighs sits at the bottom of your ass, thrusting up and grinding against you so that you don’t forget even for a moment that you are making him this way.

“I always knew you’d have such a pretty moan,” Deku mumbles as his fingers find the zipper to your costume and begin to tug it down. His lips trail down your neck, biting and nipping at the newly exposed flesh. “Knew you’d look so pretty under me, waiting to be fucked into submission.”

The words spark something within you, your eyes fluttering as your hips grind just a tad bit faster and you whine.

“Aw, is that what you wanted this entire time, y/l/n?” Deku asks, his grin pressed against your collarbone. “Wanted to be stretched out and fucked until you can’t anymore?”

“I want it,” you gasp, your fingers burying deep into his curls. “I want you, I want it, I want your dick in me already!”

“Not into foreplay?” Deku chuckles just a bit, tongue then tracing up your neck.

“Oh I am,” you snap, fingers finding the zipper of his own costume. “You can find out later how much I’m into it, but right now, I have been wanting you for years, and you will not make me wait any longer!”

Deku only nods frantically, and it's a mess of limbs, sloppy kisses, and clothes as the both of you strip to nothing.

Deku’s in between your legs, one hand pressed to the back of your knee, the other gripping what you believe is his dick because it makes everything in the world freeze as you see it. It’s huge, so thick that his hand wraps around it in a nice grip, and it long, curling up to his abs, curved and veiny.

“Holy shit,” you squeak, your cunt already clenching at the thought of taking that in.

“Are you ready?” Deku asks, the hand on your leg moving away for a moment as he cards his fingers back through his hair. “I don’t have a condom, though.”

“That’s fine, I don't care,” you dismiss his words, eyes too focused on the flush cock in his hand. “I don’t think I’ll live after you kill me with that anyways.”

Deku laughs just a bit, his dimples flashing as he leans in and kisses you deeply. You tremble underneath him, feeling so small pressed up against him, and you mewl when you feel the head of his cock pressing between your folds.

“Put it in,” you gasp, leg lifting and wrapping around his waist, “put it in! I want you to fuck me until I can’t walk, do you understand?!”

Deku nods, and with a sense of frantic need, his hand guides his cock into you.

It feels like you’re splitting in half. The girth of his cock stretching your walls out to the max, and he’s only going in. You scream loudly, both in pain and pleasure because it hurts so good.

“Take it, baby, take me all in,” Deku pants, his hips pushing out small, tiny thrusts to ram his cock further and further into your twitching cunt. “That’s i-it, holy fuck, that’s it! You’re taking me all the way in. F-Fuck… you’re so amazing! So fucking perfect!”

Tears are pouring out of your eyes, and your nails are tearing into his back, you sob slightly overwhelmed with his cock and the absolute pleasure of finally getting what you want and it being so much better than you thought. Your cunt throbs almost violently as Deku’s cock finally hits your cervix and your eyes roll to the back of your head as he thrusts in further, lips attempting to claim yours.

“Fuck me, Deku,” you beg, hips beginning to slam and fuck up onto his cock. “Please! I need you!”

“Such a desperate little villain though,” Deku sighs, teasingly, giving you one strong thrust for good measure. It goes a long way though, the power behind his thrust and thighs promising you a bruised ass, thighs, and cunt makes your mouth water for more. “I need you to promise to never do anything like that again and be a good little manager for Kacchan.”

“W-Wha–”

“Be good and stop being Mirage, or else you won’t be fucked.”

There was no hesitation.

“Okay.”

And just like that, Deku’s soft smile curves into a knowing, fierce smirk, and you can do nothing as his hands press to the back of your knees and he begins thrusting his hips into you. And it takes you completely out of control.

It’s a messy, frantic dance, your body holding onto his, your lips pressing against his, desperate and needy for his, and he is basically trying to imprint his body onto yours, the concrete, and the walls. Your bodies are so foreign to each other, and yet, when he fucks into you just a bit hard, just a bit faster, you come undone, back arching and toes curling as you sob his name.

It’s overwhelming to know that he can read you this well and for you to have never fucked him before. It’s empowering to see that he likes every forced and involuntary squeeze and clench of your cunt. He loved when your nails dug into his skin, raking their existence against the plane of broad muscles and scars.

Deku curses your name as you clench around him, his hands moving to your jaw so that he can lift your face to kiss him just so. He kisses you with a heated passion, a need that strips your entire being bare, and his hips slam so loudly against you, the slicked wetness is squelching and slapping with every grunt and moan.

In and out his cock goes, and you praise him and his cock.

You praise him for making you feel so good, for stretching out your pussy with that fat cock of his. You beg for more, and more, and more. You want every snap of his hips to send new colors to your vision, and every echoing squelch of your meeting, sloppy sexes only adds to the blabbering, unmanaged sentences from your lips.

“Harder, faster, more!” you beg, practically wailing against his shoulders, needing him more and more. The concrete hurts against your back, but you don’t care. You don’t care if he breaks your back, it’s a fall you’ll take. “Don’t hold back! Don’t you dare hold back!”

“Fuck, you’re crazy,” Deku gasps, his sweaty brow burying into your cheek. “I won’t though, I won't. Be ready, I’m not sure if you can take it.”

Before you can snap back that you can in fact take it, Deku’s weight falls heavier onto you and the angle shifts just slightly, and your words are ripped right out of your throat for a pitched, window shattering screech. Deku fucks into you with a new power, some untapped strength as greenspark falls from his skin as he ruins you for anyone ever again.

Your voice begins to scream out, the feeling of his vicious, thick cock snapping into you, shoving your shoulders further and further into the concrete was sending your head spinning. Your body is convulsing as he fucks you with new vulgar need and strength. But before you could scream your praises, Deku’s fingers shove into your mouth, and his other hand wraps around your neck, silencing your words and noises as he fucks up into you again and again and again.

“So loud, angel,” Deku smirks, fingers stroking and pinching your tongue as saliva pours endlessly from your mouth. His voice isn’t strained however, doesn’t have any indication that he’s out of breath or ready to tap out and that nearly makes you go insane. “I can’t wait to see everything that makes you look like this… you’re so pretty when you’re getting fucked.”

Your head is spinning, the heated tightness in your core clenching and throbbing as his conquesting cock never once stops or lessens. It just grows and grows and grows. His cock twitches in you, and your eyes roll to the back of your head as he lets out a deep moan.

“Such a good and wet cunt you are,” Deku gasps as you gag against his fingers that press roughly against the back of your tongue. Your vision feels hazy, but you feel like you’re on cloud nine as his hand on your throat opens and closes, demonstrating his power over you. “I’m so glad you went through all this hard work to get me to fuck you.”

You can’t speak, so you nod desperately, you were so happy you did this too.

Your hips buck up into him with sheer stubborn drive to get him to toss his head back and moan, you wanted to see him unhinged too. Your eyelashes flutter, as his hands remove themselves from your face, and they move to your hips to help you out. But the building tightness and demanding need in your cunt was growing louder, hotter, completely undeniable. Your teeth sinking against his skin as you whimpered loudly, absolutely pathetically as you shifted faster, fucking against him harder.

“I-I’m so close,” you manage to moan out, and a sharp escape of air comes from his nose at that revelation.

Deku nods, his head moving so that his forehead rests against yours as he looks deep into your eyes. “I need you to look at the way your belly bulges while I fuck you before you cum, I want you to watch it bulge as you cum.”

You whimper, the strain in your neck almost insufferable as you peer down at your hastily exposed stomach, and you nearly faint at the pornographic, near-insane image of your stomach bulging with his hammering monster of a cock. And just like that, the tight heat in you snaps without a hitch, and you come tumbling down from the heights of your building orgasm. White heat and light spread through your body, your jaw slacking as you moan loudly, screaming his name as you convulse against him, body entirely limp. Deku, who was barely hanging by a strand, completely loses it when your core clenches like a vice against him.

Hot, thick ropes of cum spurt from his cock, his heavy, shaking gasps the only thing you can hear as he fucks into you once, twice more for good measure he collapses onto his forearms above you. It’s hot, almost too hot as he lays on top of you, the sticky fluid of his cum radiating against your already blazing walls, and for a bit, there’s silence.

Deku is the first to move afterward, and you whine as he pulls his cock out of your sore, abused pussy. You make a noise of curiosity then fear as Deku spreads your legs even more open and moves so that his head is face to face with your cum filled pussy.

“What are you–?!” you screech as Deku takes a lick out of your dripping cunt.

“Fuck, this does taste good,” Deku smirks as he once again licks your overstimulated pussy and you sob. “Besides, who said we were done?”

bonus!

“Everyone, this is my girlfriend y/l/n y/n!” Izuku happily introduced you to his group of friends.

“What the hell?!” Bakugou screamed, thrusting a finger at you and all you did was laugh.

So much for not being stubborn, huh.

#midoriya izuku x reader #midoriya x reader #midoriya smut #bnha #bnha x reader

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9w1ft · 3 years ago

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Aren't the same people who think that Karlie's some sort of evil mastermind who practically knows what Taylor's going to do before even Taylor herself knows also convinced that Karlie has like dozens of girlfriends?

They never explain how they think Karlie's supposed to have the time to come up with and implement her ~evil genius~ schemes and have the time to seduce every pretty woman she sees while also working full time and coordinating everything for the next round of KwK, I mean there's only 24 hours in a day, Karlie is a very capable woman but even she couldn't juggle everything everyday some people claim she does 😆

its funny because i lose track of what each subset of people believes about karlie but yes its always giving and-in-a-feud-with-her-neighbor-she-stole-his-dog-and-dyed-it-key-lime-green.

i have to point out that kwk has become so successful and has grown to the point that they have hired a dedicated ceo, coo, etc... still, your overarching point stands. it would take more than 24 hours in a day. she is a demonstrably busy public person who continues to expand her portfolio in addition to developing and connecting her current ventures. and shes never just working behind the scenes, shes the face of it all! plus she’s got that family setup, right? so *in particular* i simply do not understand that specific strain of gaylor that insists shes is traipsing around the tropics with an entourage of women like its some open secret, while at the same time bearding for someone who would have to want to keep it all covered to the point of presenting as parents. the math is not mathing.

#and somehow my baby boy shawn gets thrown in to this worldview lmfao

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infinitewarden · 4 years ago

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Osiris isn’t Savathun.

Great! Now that I have your attention:

Man you guys tire me out about Osiris. If you truly believe this is Osiris I don’t mean to sound like That Guy that’s like “you don’t know what you’re talking about” but... You don’t know what you’re talking about.

So.

Let’s talk about how much Osiris cares about the City and humanity and why the Osiris in Epilogue is not actually Osiris.

Alright. Let’s start off with context. I think it’s super important to see what we do know as Osiris’s views. From my heavy analyses of him since 2020 I can confidently say these are what he views as the most important things a person can do:

Keep promises

Speak their truths

Protect the City & Humanity

Know that the Vex are true Evil.

Now, I won’t be doing a breakdown of each one individually but I will be talking a great deal of how important honesty is to Osiris, the City, and his views of the Vex.

Speaking honestly and bluntly.

I don’t know how many of you were into Destiny before Beyond Light, so if you were unaware of this it’s not your fault. However I’ve seen a very strange change in tone when it comes to how people view Osiris. Before Season of Hunt people hated - and I mean hated - Osiris. Why? Because he was blunt. They viewed his bluntness as rudeness.

To see a sudden switch to him being secretive and scheming is... alarming, to say the least. (And to see people think that this is the norm is also alarming but in other ways.)

The Osiris before Hunt was not secretive and scheming. He sought knowledge openly. He sought, specifically, the truth. I must stress just how open he was about his plans. First I’ll give you a few in lore examples:

I admit, I found your questions divisive and disloyal, and I feared you might be capable of breaking our unity when the City's position had grown so tenuous. Why divert attention away from the Traveler, our only hope? And then it got worse, dabbling in thanatonautics, Ahamkara-lore, chasing after Xur and the tricks of the Nine. Launching expeditions into the Reef and beyond at a time when ships were irreplaceable. Your quest split Guardians along ideological lines. This was your greatest crime: Hunters chose to pursue your visions instead of protecting refugees, Titans assembled teams to chase the legendary Vault of Glass instead of striking the Fallen, and Warlocks turned away from the study of the Traveler in favor of your ultimate obsession... learning the exact nature of the Darkness. ... Perhaps what drives a Warlock to madness is truth.

Osiris.

"Do not romanticize this burden. We wield a weapon." The Speaker shakes his head. "The Light wields you, Osiris. You are what you make of it. A glorious extension of its majesty, in many directions." Osiris paces at cadence with his words. "Then it would do well to speak clearly. To better direct me." The Speaker cocks his head. "Without will? Then it would be no better than the Darkness." "I am asking only for guidance; it is a delicate game we are playing." Osiris's voice, distressed. Regal again, the Speaker motions to the stone garden. "Will you sit with me?"

13: Margins Part II.

And, while I don’t particularly like using the Fall of Osiris comic as a source, it does have very important lines on his viewpoints that I find relevant yet.

Fall of Osiris #1.

Hell he was open about his plans to fuck with time itself to bring Saint back.

Sagira narrowed her eye at the rogue Lightbearer and lowered herself to Osiris’s shoulder. “Why’s he here?” she asked quietly. “I asked him to consult on the engineering work,” Osiris replied, crossing his arms. “You sicko,” the other man declared, walking a circle around the Warlock, his eyes darting along every surface of the Sundial around them. ... “Just one more question, then. Why all the fuss?” “I owe him.” “I owe a lotta people, Warlock. You’re opening the gates of hell with a Vex key.” “When the Traveler brought me back, I had no friends. No family—” “No one had anything in the Dark Age.” “But Saint was always there. And I saw him grow from neophyte to demigod.”

The Sundial.

"You haven't left the Forest in years," Ikora said to Osiris, the only one to address him directly. "I need help," Osiris replied. "I know," Ikora responded, hands clasped behind her back. She stared intently at her former mentor. Back in her Crucible days, that uncompromising gaze was often the last thing her opponents saw. Aunor glanced sidelong at her superior. Harper coughed and looked down at his datapad. "Two years ago, Guardians entered the Infinite Forest," Osiris continued. "They aided me in defeating the Axis Mind Panoptes, preventing a Vex apocalypse from befalling this system. "In the process," he looked between each of them in turn, "Some Guardians reported a body they found in the Forest depths." Ikora sighed. "Saint-14 never came back from that last mission to Mercury. We finally knew why. I reacted to it the only way I knew how."

Desperate Times.

“I do not understand all of this code. This is Geppetto’s specialty,” Saint-14 says while standing bent over a wide desk covered in data tablets. Holographic images of the Lighthouse shimmer in the Hangar lights. “We could use the Crucible right now. Your trials. This will be very helpful. You mean to stay, yes?” “I will. Long enough to show you how to implement the simulation; but tonight, I must disembark,” Osiris says. “So soon?” Osiris tenses his jaw in forced silence. He twiddles with code. “I’m worried about what Vance found.” Saint places a heavy hand on Osiris’s chest. “Let go of your obsession. Do not leave chasing phantoms again.” “Phantoms… You think the Darkness is satisfied? This is just the first move. I need to know the next before it’s made.” “If there is something you fear, let me help you. We face this together.” Osiris’s mind drifts to the Dark anomalies. Saint doesn’t need another burden. “The safest place for you is the Tower, Saint. Time... tends to renege on its gifts.” “So, your mission is dangerous?” Osiris considers lying. “Potentially.”

Immolant I.

There are many more sources I could list on his bluntness and honesty but there’s honestly too much. What is important to extrapolate from all of it is this:

OSIRIS SPOKE THE TRUTH NO MATTER IF IT GOT HIM IN TROUBLE. IT IS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS HE GOT EXILED.

Protecting the City & Humanity

Idk where people get the idea that he’s abandoned the City and humanity. And I don’t understand where people think it’s “typical Osiris behavior” to choose to put the City in danger.

I want to make something very clear here:

Osiris was exiled. He did not abandon the City. And though others view him as abandoning it, that wasn’t his intention. He never intentionally abandoned it. Everything he did was in pursuit of a brighter future for humanity. Let’s look at one of his lines from the Sundial activity during Dawn.

“By the time I left the City, many believed my practices to be sacrilege. But my methods have prevented countless futures not unlike the one you walk now. When it is laid out before you, would you not sacrifice anything to see this future shut?”

The Sundial.

He left because he weighed his options and he saw that humanity would have better use of him if he left. He cares A great deal about the City. He cares almost too much about it. He would never give Lakshmi the technology to cause it harm, especially knowing that she’s unstable. And I’ve seen some people think he’s playing 5D chess? In what world would he ever choose to bring harm upon humanity for some sort of... agenda; which I’ve already cleared up earlier, he’s open about his plans.

Let’s look at more known lore about Osiris’s feelings of the City & humanity.

"You've wrapped your mind around an idea of your own making. I have always tolerated this fawning 'movement' of yours, but this is a step too far." Osiris seethed. Brother Vance was awestruck. He stared blankly at Osiris, unsure of what he could say to quell his anger and dissolve his frustration. "What I have discovered…" "…is dangerous enough to destroy every man, woman, and child in existence. You're meddling with forces outside your grasp," Osiris reprimanded. "I warn you here and now, remove yourself from this Lighthouse. Find a simple life. Start a family. Write music. Leave Mercury and this fool's errand behind."

Chapter 8: Idolatry.

Osiris was furious to find out Vance was experimenting in his name by endangering people for his goals. And he was especially mad that he would dive into such dangerous areas so much so that it had the potential to destroy humanity.

"It's truth." Osiris considers this. "Truth seems subjective these days," Osiris says, finally observing his entourage for the first time. Among them, a small group of men and women, stand two wayward Guardians—Warlocks, it appears—and a child. Their forlorn faces resonate with him. Castaways and believers. The weeks since his departure from the Last City have worn on him. He was used to working alone, knowing he could fall back to the City's resources should he need them. Now, adrift in the expanse of purpose, he finds himself longing for a place he could return to. A sanctuary.

Chapter 2: Postexilic.

Here’s a few lines from Season of Dawn:

“The Traveler, mutilated. Mercury, a desolate warzone. This is the bleak future the Cabal wants for us all. We do not know what has become of humanity here. I hope we will not find out.”

“There are many terrible futures, but I have not grown numb to seeing them. The future the Cabal wish for is a nightmare for humanity.”

“If the Traveler fled the system, there is a chance that the Darkness would ignore our region of the galaxy entirely. It would sacrifice our second awakening, our ability to wield the Light, but potentially continue our Golden Age. There are too many variables at risk, but it's a variant path worth investigating in the Infinite Forest.”

“This battered Mercury is a blueprint for our system. Lightless, bowed, and nothing more than fuel for an endless war. It must never come to pass.”

The Sundial.

There are many. Many. More lines I could put here about how much Osiris doesn’t want to see humanity suffering. And especially how he doesn’t want the City to be at risk. But I think you get the picture.

Know that the Vex are true Evil.

So. We all know Osiris as “the Vex guy.” His whole thing is on fighting the Vex. However it seems people think that he’d be okay with using them for grounds of a higher purpose? Or something? I don’t know, everyone I see rebuffing Osiris’s actions with Lakshmi don’t seem to be interested in explaining this one.

So anyways. Let’s talk about how Osiris views the Vex as true evil compared to other species.

“The Fallen are not so different from us. How hard would you fight if the Light were taken from you?” “Those stories ring false to me,” said Saint. “They are not a noble people. I’ve fought them, and so have you.” “I have not fought them all,” the Warlock replied, pulling his hands apart to create an intricate web of hovering cubes and points of light. “They are nothing, no threat—not like the Vex. Not like the Darkness.”

Vanguard Commander.

[u.2:06] Have you spoken to the House of Light, like I asked? [u.1:07] I would rather not speak with Fallen. [u.2:07] They may need our help. Their cause is just. [u.1:08] What happened to “trust no one?” [u.2:08] What happened to your sense of right and wrong, hero?

Maintenance Operations Log 30037.

The unenlightened wonder at my so-called "fixation" upon the Vex. They believe our gravest existential threat is the Hive, for those beings have made a pact with the Darkness itself via the medium of the Worm Gods (according to Toland, at least, and I see no reason to doubt him in this). But Darkness is not merely absence of Light. Darkness is an entity unto itself. Put simply, Darkness is not Nothing. But the Vex? The Vex seek neither Light nor Darkness. They seek Convergence, the reduction of all life to its simplest, most meaningless form. An entelechy of zeros and ones. "Evil" is a word for sentimentalists and fools. But, in the ontology of the sentimental, the Vex are more deserving of the term than the Hive. Given a choice between Darkness and Convergence, I would choose Darkness. It is a logical choice. Yet for this they banish me.

Kairos Function (Hunter).

This one is important because Osiris doesn’t subscribe to the idea of “good” and “evil”, and that he would go so far to say that the Vex are Evil shows just how much of a threat he views them as.

It’s just. Mind boggling to me that people think that Osiris would be okay with a Vex invasion. That Osiris would encourage Lakshmi to open up a rift to “send the Fallen away” (Despite being one of the earliest sympathizers!) Osiris isn’t ineffable, he’s just a man trying to do his best to help humanity. His actions aren’t difficult to understand, they have been written to be very clear and with understanding his motives.

Saying that it’s natural for him to be secretive and have contradicting opinions and actions is just. Wrong. It’s not him. It’s not how he’s supposed to be understood. Even in Curse of Osiris I don’t think his actions didn’t make any sense.

This is going to sound very mean but I want to be 100% clear: If you think that Osiris would actively choose to put the City in danger of the Vex, if you think that he would actively choose to stand calmly and watch as his lover was about to die to the very things he spent millions of lives to save... You don’t understand Osiris. Go back and reread his lore.

I leave you with this:

The Vanguard is dubious of our intent and ability, fearing corruption and displacement. They do not trust me. You were held in similar contempt for speaking your truth and empowering free thought. You know what it feels like to be chastised and labeled a traitor. We are mere steps away from a disintegration of our institutions, and they cannot see destruction staring them in the face. ... For so long, we have clung to the Light, denying the strength offered by the Dark. By using Stasis, we will end this war. We see this contest for what it truly is: a game, played by our adversaries. And we have been the pawns. We are pawns no more. This is not a battle I want to wage without you, although we may not have a choice in the matter. Wherever you may be, please come back to us.

To Osiris.

#theus.exe #lore.exe #osiris #destiny osiris #osiris destiny #destiny spoilers #long post

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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V8’s loss is so baffling to me. V3’s loss was disheartening because the heroes did all that they could, but the atmosphere spoke that this wasn’t going to end well. V8 had “Everything is going great!” then Salem and Cinder won…just because!

Pairing these two asks up!

Okay, so we all understand on a plot level why the group lost: Cinder arrived unexpectedly, Neo "kills" Yang, Penny takes a critical hit, the lost Staff obliterates the walkways, etc. There are a ton of reasons why the execution of that plot is stupid imo–How did the group just forget about two of their longest running enemies? How did Neo's single sword hit break Yang's aura and knock her across the walkway and put her into a semi-unconscious state so she couldn't save herself? Why is Jaune, the healer, so easily swayed into killing Penny?–but if we're willing to just go with it, fine. Makes sense. The final two episodes do, in some ways, reflect the tone of Volume 3. Both started on incredibly hopeful notes, only to end in failure. "It's the Vytal festival! We've always fought and come out on top, we can do this! ... omg wait, Pyrrha is dead, Beacon is gone, and Yang has lost an arm." From "We have a plan now! We're implementing it! We always manage to save people in the end! ... omg wait, Team RWBY is dead, Jaune is dead, Penny is dead, two Relics are gone, and our civilians are getting picked off by desert grimm." If we're willing to be very generous in regards to that execution... I buy it. The group nearly succeeded in keeping everyone safe, but the villains screwed things up. We've seen it happen before.

What doesn't work for me–where I think the real problem lies–is in why the heroes were fighting this fight in the first place. I don't mean that in the grand scheme of things (like, why fight Salem) but in the literal, immediate battle that they wound up losing. This isn't a Volume 3 situation where the villains attacked the heroes, they defended themselves, they lost. This situation came about because the heroes were trying to transport an entire Kingdom's worth of people across a deadly walkway. So why were they doing that?

...and that's where we run into the snags.

See, none of the motivations across Volume 8 add up. Yeah, we've discussed Ironwood to death, but it's the same with everyone else too. Ruby initially told Yang that she wanted to use Amity not just to warn other people about Salem, but to call for help. She reiterates this during the staircase talk: I'm childish and I wasted everyone's time because I thought people would come and then they didn't (which, frankly, is not what Ruby should be criticizing about her own leadership, but I digress). So my question is, what was Ruby planning to do with that help? Let's say the other Kingdoms broke all internal logic and did manage to get there to help Atlas. What in the world does "help" mean in this instance? What was her plan once they got there? Ruby acts as if she's just very, very broadly planning to fight Salem with this desired assistance, but then she doesn't fight her. Not just in terms of staying inside when Salem's army attacks, but also in terms of remembering that she has access to a Relic that can create anything... but then using that to run, not try and face Salem down.

Ruby's entire stance isn't just that Ironwood is evil for leaving others behind, but that he's wrong to run at all. She emphasizes that Atlas is just Salem's first target, implying that it's foolish to Kingdom hop when she'll just turn around and attack them somewhere else instead. There were a number of compelling reasons for why they should have left when Ironwood suggested it. We can continue to debate the ethics of that until the end of time. But for the purposes of this conversation, the important takeaway is that by the time Ruby decides to leave, there are even more compelling reasons not to go. By this point they have learned that Salem isn't interested in Mantle at all, only the Relics/Maiden housed in Atlas. By this point they have destroyed her whale, cutting her off from a huge portion of her army. By this point they have turned two of her subordinates against her, as well as obliterating her for a time. By this point they know that Oscar still has some amount of energy left in the cane, giving them another weapon to use against her. By this point everyone has been evacuated to the crater, meaning the heat is no longer a threat. By this point the Hound is dead. By this point they're about a half hour away from capturing Ironwood and saving Penny.

To top it all off, yeah, they don't juDst move everyone from the Kingdom of Atlas, they d is anywhere nearby... the threat is gone. It makes absolutely no sense to me why, at this point in time, after everything else they've succeeded in, after Ruby was waiting on an army of her own, after she reminded everyone that nowhere is safe, they would just up and move an entire Kingdom's worth of people. What's the point of this goal? Based on what we see–based on what the characters know–everyone in Mantle would be safer at home with some hacking assistance to get the heat back on. The people of Atlas would be safer provided the group takes those magical Relics, their Maiden, their Silver Eyes and skedaddles. Why the group decided to move the entire Kingdom when they could have just gone to Vacuo themselves, taking everything Salem wants with them, makes no sense to me. It could have very easily made sense if they'd evacuated at the beginning of Volume 8, or if we established something like Salem's intention to murder everyone if the heroes run... but we didn't get anything like that. So we just have the heroes putting civilians through increasingly dangerous situations (deadly walkway, Cinder's attack, dangerous desert, overpopulation in a hostile city) for seemingly no reason. All while bringing the Staff with them so it can get captured too. The group's decisions of who/what should be where all come across as backwards to me.

To top it all off, yeah, they don't jut move everyone from the Kingdom of Atlas to Vacuo, they sacrifice the Kingdom in order to move them. I've said before that I stand by Robyn's observation that the people are more important than the place, but as established, the point is that this sacrifice never needed to happen. We desperately needed the show to establish not just why the group feels like evacuation is still the best option after so much has changed, but why that reasoning is powerful enough to justify the entire Kingdom's destruction. Because–finally getting around to your point, Anon #2–it's not just about losing a place you're used to living in. It's about the loss of everything Atlas provided for the world: the Dust, the tech, and yes, even the army. It's easy to reduce Atlas to that racist Kindgom wooo glad it's gone... but canonically we have so many characters with positive connections to it. The disability angle is just one, particularly disheartening example. I have no doubt that the show will ignore the logical consequence of the Kingdom's destruction... just like it ignored Yang receiving the arm as a gift, just like Maria's eyes were turned into a joke, just like Penny had to be given a flesh body in order to understand how nice hugs are. Yes, the people and their knowledge live on (if Pietro survived), but they no longer have the resources to provide that work. If helping the rest of the world even makes their top ten priority list when trying to survive homelessness.

The point isn't that the group can't go through with that act, the point is to justify the act for us through their perspectives and have them grapple with what a huge, world-changing decision it is. The fact that no one, but especially Weiss, so much as blinked at this decision, especially when the decision comes across as in many respects unnecessary, is crazy to me. I'd be so much more on board with this choice (even with the "Why are we still evacuating?" question) if the group had a solid plan in place to finish before Atlas touched down on Mantle, they were shown ensuring everyone actually had a portal to use, they demonstrated basic intelligence in remembering the two villains they fought in the last 48 hours (Penny fought Cinder, all of JNOR fought Neo), and were allowed to fight with their canonical strength and skill. Then it really would be a case of the group doing everything right... but still losing, simply because the villains were better. AKA, a Volume 3. As it stands, their reasons for doing this are shaky, thus they don't justify this incredible sacrifice, the group comes across as incompetent for much of the battle, and their total disinterest in what this will do to the rest of Remnant doesn't come across as particularly heroic. That kind of sacrifice needs to be attached to a "We had no other choice" situation. Problem is, they bypassed that moment at the end of Volume 7. By the end of 8, they absolutely had other choices.

Disability has no meaning in RWBY anymore. I think it did–back in Volume 4, Volume 6 when Maria was first introduced–but now the story has reduced disability to something "extra," something to fix, or something to outright ignore. Yeah, we can think about the long-term consequences for disability across Remnant, but at the end of the day, the story entirely forgot about the blind and paraplegic characters trapped on a broken tower. These problems, sadly, run a whole lot deeper than RWBY potentially not capitalizing on the impact of destroying 1/5th of the world.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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robininthelabyrinth · 5 years ago

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Fire and Light (ao3) - on tumblr: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8

- Chapter 9 -

Wen Ruohan presided over dinner in what was now a monthly occurrence.

He liked habit more, now that he was getting older; liked to have everything in its proper place.

Liked to indulge himself more.

Nie Mingjue mechanically forced down his food, drinking his soup first to fill his belly as quickly as possible. If he was very lucky, he might get a case of food poisoning, same as the one that had struck down the younger children that one time; if he did, he’d do his utmost to throw up all over Wen Ruohan’s shoes.

As always, they answered his questions. Wen Ruohan was just in the middle of an especially complicated hypothetical when one of his deputies rushed in with an urgent letter, falling to his knees before him. Wen Ruohan took the letter and read it; he scowled and dismissed them, rising to his feet to return to the throne room.

The reprieve felt like a brush of cool wind on a hot day.

Nie Mingjue caught Wen Xu’s eye.

Wen Xu winked.

It wasn’t really a surprise when the war started.

There were only so many hypothetical battle plans Nie Mingjue could be asked about, whether by Wen Ruohan or by Nie Huaisang and the younger generation of Wens, without him putting two and two together. He was put in the awkward situation of having to answer both sides to the best of his ability, and the whole thing started to feel a little like playing a game of go against himself.

“That’s what you get for being irritatingly good at tactics and with a knack for strategy, and having proven for years and years that you could find weaknesses in all of Sect Leader Wen’s hypothetical battleplans,” Nie Huaisang told him. “Talent brings with it its own punishment.”

“What’s your punishment for all your scheming, then?” Nie Mingjue asked, amused despite himself. “Becoming emperor and ruling the world?”

“I,” Nie Huaisang said, putting his hand to his chest, “am going to grow up to be absolutely useless.”

“Nice try.”

To Nie Mingjue’s relief, Wen Ruohan did not send him to the front line, perhaps afraid that Nie Mingjue would attempt some sabotage or maybe merely run away, and that made it more difficult for him to implement the plans Nie Mingjue suggested to him. They were good, solid plans, each and every one of them, Nie Mingjue implementing everything he learned about the rules of war and adding in a touch of his own knack for forecasting how people would react in a fight, but living so long in Qishan meant that he knew a little bit about how people behaved the rest of the time, too.

He couldn’t make bad suggestions in the plans he recommended or Wen Ruohan would know, but he could propose a plan that required a will of iron and nerves of steel when he knew that the general in charge of that particular division was crafty but cautious, could suggest a complex maneuver requiring cooperation for a general who hated his underlings, could apply just a bit of the brattiness he’d picked up from Wen Chao and Nie Huaisang alike to make his plans just that little bit more annoying to implement.

He could murmur counterplans in the dark of the night when they were all supposed to be asleep, casually sharing a single bed because it was cold, the strange chill of the Nightless City’s interior despite the warmer climate. He could stare at the ceiling, reciting weakness after weakness of the plans he had proposed as if he was merely anxious about them, and this time he tailored those weaknesses to specific strengths: how the pincer maneuver wouldn’t work if it was used against the Jiang, especially if they relied on their watercraft to escape, turning strength to weakness by retaliating in the aftermath; how the advantageous high ground of the mountain would backfire if their enemy were the Lan, their battle-songs’ effectiveness multiplied by the clear mountain air and the resonance of the echoes; how the effect of the ambush would be halved if it was used against the Jin, who were so rich and so lazy that their baggage train would never move fast enough to spring the trap in full.

He still didn’t know how Nie Huaisang and Wen Chao exchanged letters with Lan Wangji, or what Wen Ning was doing over in the Lotus Pier with the full support of Jiang Fengmian’s mother-in-law, or even what scheme Wen Xu and Wen Qing had concocted between them to lure in the normally reluctant Jin sect and force them to take a side. He didn’t need to know, didn’t want to know; he wanted to put his body between them and Wen Ruohan, distract the man with his ‘walks’ and his punishments and the influence that Wen Ruohan thought meant he knew everything there was to know, and to give them as much time as he could manage before disaster struck.

“Isn’t it time for Nie Huaisang to go to the Cloud Recesses?” he asked, playing ignorant, in the middle of a dinner when Wen Ruohan was already stewing over some unfortunate reversals, more than a few caused by the reemerged Qingheng-jun, who had taken on the mantle of leading the war as its general.

Wen Ruohan turned to him with lightning in his eyes, and Nie Mingjue didn’t have to opine on the war for an entire week, confined as he was to his sickbed.

But good things could not last, and he closed his eyes in anticipation of pain when Wen Xu came to sit by his bed in the middle of the night.

“Where is he sending you?” he asked. The two of them were the only ones old enough to be used in war, the others too young to go even for someone as disdainful of social norms as Wen Ruohan, and if Nie Mingjue could not be trusted on a battlefield then it had to be Wen Xu.

“I’m sorry,” Wen Xu said.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault – are you supposed to tell him no? I know you will do everything you can to stop the worst of the war, to fight honorably and with fairness, avoiding harm to the common people.”

Wen Xu swallowed audibly. “You’ve always thought so well of me,” he murmured. “Always assumed such things…to continue to do badly even after I knew what you thought of me was to fail to live up to your expectations, and even if it made things harder sometimes, the alternative of letting you down was always worse. I hate to disappoint you now.”

“You won’t.”

There was a pause, a long silence. Wen Xu gathering his thoughts, steeling his spine.

“He wants me to burn the Unclean Realm.”

Nie Mingjue had expected a blow. He had not expected –

He exhaled, hard, and found Wen Xu’s hand with his own, squeezing it lightly.

I cannot forgive this, he meant. But I will hate him for it instead of you.

When the news came, Nie Mingjue allowed himself to feel for the first time the rage he had been swallowing down for nearly five years – his father’s rage, his family’s rage, Baxia’s rage, his own.

Training the saber was a style that promoted aggression, both in fighting and in the soul, and yet Nie Mingjue had restrained himself to the point of agony, oppressing himself internally as thoroughly as Wen Ruohan did externally, and all because he knew that the consequences of his actions would not be felt by him alone.

Because he was still his sect’s heir, still the rightful leader of Qinghe Nie, and if he could by his submission and humiliation earn them even a little more consideration, he would do it, however anathema it was to him.

He would be his sect’s heir before he was his father’s son, forgetting injustice and bending knee to his father’s killer – he would keep silent, no matter what he endured.

Wen Xu burned the Unclean Realm, and for the first time, Nie Mingjue put aside his silence.

He howled.

At first, Wen Ruohan laughed at him – the rage of the impotent was merely attractive coloring to him – but Nie Mingjue was not so foolish as to waste the gift of anger so easily. He did not do what Wen Ruohan had undoubtedly expected him to do: savage some training dummies, beat up a few pointless guards, beat himself even if only to vent the pain in his heart.

He did what Wen Ruohan did not expect.

Nie Mingjue, who loved only his family more than his sect –

He lashed out at them.

Nie Mingjue rampaged through the familial quarters at the Nightless City: he burned a sobbing Nie Huaisang’s fans, calling him worthless and a disappointment on their family name; he destroyed a cauldron in Wen Qing’s room in the midst of a batch of medicine she was making, unable to find her but naming her complicit, shouting that she supported evil from behind a façade of righteousness; he attacked Wen Chao’s room, searching for the son of his enemy and calling for his head, demanding blood for blood, red-eyed with fury, searching for a target.

He found one.

Not Wen Chao himself, of course – Nie Mingjue was not, as he was pretending to be, truly maddened beyond all reason, for all that the sorrow and anger he felt were real – but rather his bodyguard, who was nominally there to protect him.

Wen Zhuliu, the Core-Melting Hand. A technique that could only be used for two things, for scaring people – or turning the course of a single battle.

For destroying good people on the other side of the war, turning them into regular people that could not fight, and destroying morale at the same time – Wen Zhuliu was a plague-carrier, a danger that needed to be avoided, as much as weapon simply in the threat of him as he was in actual reality.

Wen Zhuliu was a fierce fighter, more powerful than a person with that sort of technique usually was, and Nie Mingjue was not in as good a shape as he could be, still recovering both emotionally and physically from his last walk with Wen Ruohan and the consequences of his insolent tongue, but he had the advantage of surprise on his side and his saber was unmatched in close combat, the melee his specialty.

By the time Wen Ruohan realized that Nie Mingjue had turned against his own in a way he’d been refusing to do for years and came to stop him, Nie Mingjue had already claimed Wen Zhuliu’s head, sticking it on a makeshift pike before burning the body as an offering in his father’s name.

He turned, red-eyed, to look upon the man he would much rather have killed but knew in his weakness that he couldn’t, and in the strength and safety of his rage decided to give it his best shot anyway.

It didn’t work, of course.

This time he was bedridden for more than a week.

Nie Mingjue found himself missing the others more than he thought he would.

He’d anticipated it, of course. The instant Wen Xu had told him his mission, the plan had leapt fully-formed into his mind, the only way he could think of to keep the younger children safe since there was no way to keep them beneath Wen Ruohan’s notice. In Wen Ruohan’s eyes they were tools, not yet old enough to be properly useful but still sharp enough to use where it counted – he knew how much Nie Mingjue loved them, and if the war went badly he would undoubtedly threaten their lives to get Nie Mingjue’s compliance, would use them as leverage to send him to the front line as a general for the wrong side. Any failure would be punished, and Nie Mingjue didn’t need personal experience to know that war was nothing but failures, one right after the other, interspersed with occasional victories snatched from the jaws of defeat.

Wen Ruohan would not accept that. He would hurt the children, again and again, just to hurt him.

He would put his attention on them, and when he did, he would figure out what they were doing. All their little schemes would become clear to his eyes, and then –

There was no and then. It was unthinkable.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t strong enough to stop Wen Ruohan, no more than he could stop the full weight of a rushing river, but like the river even Wen Ruohan could be diverted if you were clever enough about it.

Nie Mingjue was not especially clever, he didn’t think, not the way Nie Huaisang or Wen Xu or even Wen Qing were, but that was why he thought his plan would work – Wen Ruohan wouldn’t expect it from him.

He would accept the surface reading of what happened: he would think that Nie Mingjue had succumbed to his family’s curse and lashed out blindly in his rage, burning bridges it had taken him years to build, and his cruel mind would immediately leap to how he could use this to hurt and torment him. He would know that Nie Mingjue would be all the more pained if he knew that Wen Ruohan was using his gross violation of trust to replace his influence on the children, which Wen Ruohan hated, with his own.

Under the circumstances, it would hurt him more for Wen Ruohan to treat them well, seeking to seduce them into dependence, than it would hurt him to see them in pain. Nie Mingjue could only count on Wen Ruohan’s sadism to do the rest.

(And since he had no choice but to break with his family in such a horrible way, there was no reason not to take advantage of the situation to get rid of Wen Zhuliu. The benefits outweighed the costs – or at least, the benefits went to everyone, while the costs fell only on him, and he could accept that.)

Nie Mingjue had already seen the fruits of his efforts. At the very beginning, when Nie Mingjue was still bedridden, Wen Ruohan had brought Nie Huaisang with him to the room in the Fire Palace where Nie Mingjue had been imprisoned, and Nie Huaisang had quailed away from him, rocking backwards a little, almost even leaning behind Wen Ruohan as if Nie Mingjue was the scarier of the two.

(Nie Mingjue knew that Nie Huaisang was the finest actor of their group, but oh – it hurt, it hurt!)

Wen Ruohan smiled at the spasm of pain that crossed Nie Mingjue’s face and put his hand on Nie Huaisang’s shoulder as he drew him away.

Nie Mingjue wanted to cut off that hand and burn it to ashes.

He wanted –

He wanted many things.

A different life, for the most part. To live somewhere where he didn’t have to make these sorts of dirty calculations, to hurt the people he loved in order to save them from worse pain. Where he would be able to take Nie Huaisang into his arms and whisper promises that he wasn’t going to succumb to a qi deviation the way their father had, at least not any time soon; where he could buy Wen Qing a half-dozen new cauldrons in apology; where he could tell Wen Chao that he didn’t mean any of the things he’d forced himself to say…

He’d warned them, of course. But there was knowing, and then there was experiencing, and he – he hated to disappoint them, even a little.

And in all his plans he hadn’t realized how terribly he’d miss them, all of them, now that he couldn’t see them.

There was nothing to do but miss them now that he was here, trapped in a small little bed in a small little room with barely any light but that which came in through the door when someone walked by, all alone and waiting for Wen Ruohan to decide his fate.

A fate that was a lot less certain than it had once been, Nie Mingjue reflected. Wen Ruohan had once been bound by etiquette to keep him alive, to pretend to the cultivation world that his forced adoption was an act of generosity rather than an outright act of conquering, but all of those reasons went away now that the cultivation world had declared war on him.

He’d already sent Wen Xu to burn the Unclean Realm. Why bother with hiding behind a puppet?

At least it didn’t seem like Wen Ruohan had realized it yet.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #wen xu #wen chao #wen ning #wen qing #my fic #my fics #fire and light #reminder for those that need it that this fic will not show on screen torture

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 5 years ago

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Raven-san, I know this will sound controversial but do you think it’s possible that Yuu telling Malleus their name would bite them back in Diasomnia’s episode? Since he’s a fae & giving your name to one would mean giving them control over you, do you think he might use it to his advantage to stop Yuu from interfering with his schemes like how they’ve done with the other dorm leaders? I just had this thought since Malleus so far seems a bit too nice to be true & that he’s hiding something shady.

Hello, Anon! Thank you for submitting this interesting theory.

My response is super long, so check it out under the cut!

***Warning: Spoilers for the main story campaign and Malleus’s SR personal stories!***

I am unsure of what the fairy lore that Disney follows in regards to Maleficient and Sleeping Beauty in general. However, knowing Toboso-sensei, the whole “name thing coming back to bite you” idea may be plausible, but I think it is unlikely and fairly difficult to implement, given the context.

In a school setting, you need to know the names of your professors, and (most likely) also the names of many of your peers. We can assume that Malleus knows his teachers’ names, and the names of several students. His SR Lab Coat personal story implies he knows Deuce’s name--and presumably, Malleus is aware of his own Diasomnia members’ names, and that of his fellow dorm leaders.

If the “knowing your name grants fairies control over you” theory were to become a reality, that essentially means an angry Malleus could tear up the school and almost no one would be able to stop him. No staff, no headmaster, no dorm leaders, no Diasomnia--not even ADeuce or the MC. That makes for a boring final showdown.

If Toboso-sensei were to incorporate this theory, they would need to put a creative twist on it to execute it well.

On a side note, I don’t think that all of the dorm leaders are evil or scheming. Riddle, for example, was blinded by his own rage rather than following a clear plan. Kalim didn’t even plot; that was all Jamil. Leona and Azul certainly did, though. My point here is that not all dorm leaders scheme--whether they do or not is moreso rooted in the character themselves, rather than their position or status as a dorm leader.

I think that Malleus does not seem like the type to be involved in something shady, despite what all of the promotional materials may lead us to believe (the raising from the coffin art work comes to mind). This could, however, be a red herring to lead us into a false sense of security when chapter 7 does drop.

In all of his personal stories, however, Malleus just seems like a lonely fellow, but one with strong conviction. We get to see glimpses of his darker personality (see: SR Ceremonial Robes personal story, part 2), but they are typically framed to make it look like another party (aka Leona, Rook, etc.) provoked them. Malleus is always the “innocent” one, but I think this has less to do with “scheming” anything and more to do with “let’s build up the audience’s emotional attachment to this character and then shatter their hearts when they have to fight him”.

It is very possible that Malleus has a tragic backstory which has shaped him into being the type of person he is today--I venture that this is most likely where the “shadiness” will be. Perhaps he was cruel in the past, which led to others shunning him and the development of his softer personality and remorse for what he has done. Perhaps he was always soft and lonely.

Only time will tell.

#Malleus Draconia #twst #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #mini game theory #MC #Yuu #notes from the writing raven #spoilers

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omnicat · 4 years ago

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A Brief Summary of More Seasons of “Timeless” (Inevitably Leading Up to Gladiator!Flynn)

Hey @ununpredictableme, here’s that thing I promised to show you! :D (Again with a delay, but better late than never, right? /o\ )

The thing about time travel was, it was just too damn tempting for its own good. The whole “doubling back over your own lifetime will kill you” thing was an effective deterrent to whims like “that date was a disaster, let’s go give my past self some tips to improve the experience” and “we’re going to try this specific evil plan over and over until it succeeds, dammit!”, but as it turned out, that still left plenty of bigger ambitions.

First, of course, there was Rittenhouse and its covert world domination schemes: the very reason time travel managed to be invented in the first place. Briefly interrupted by Garcia Flynn’s roaring rampage of burning Rittenhouse to the ground and/or saving the wife and daughter they’d murdered. (Preferably both at the same time, but when push came to shove he would’ve settled for going down in a blaze of martyrdom, survivor’s guilt soothed by the knowledge that he’d at least tried.)

/S1; Flynn

Then back to Rittenhouse, their plans by that point out of the development phase and being implemented by a visionary with more flair and philosophy than common sense, but plenty of dangerous ideas either way. Though it didn’t take long for Rittenhouse’s deplorable recruitment practices to come back and bite them in the ass, resulting in a coup by one of its lowest-esteemed members.

/S2; Rittenhouse

Emma Whitmore, driven by nothing but a bitter desire to thrive over the backs of anyone who had ever harmed or held her back with even so much as their mere existence, but no longer knowing what thriving meant after the decades of pressure and manipulation and isolation Rittenhouse had subjected her to, turned the time machine into her personal pirate ship. She looted and pillaged her way through history, taking treasures and torching everything that pissed her off. And there wasn’t much that didn’t piss her off. If Flynn’s strategy had been to blow up especially fishy-smelling rocks and see what Rittenhouse filth came scurrying out from underneath, and Nicholas Keynes’ had been to repaint history in his own image in intricate and meticulously crafted brush strokes, Emma’s was to punish those in history who disadvantaged her and twist the arms of those who could elevate her in the cruelest ways she could think of. It was no wonder Jessica Logan had turned on her, in the end. It had only been a matter of time before Emma would have turned on her – and her baby.

/S3; Emma

For a short while, they thought Jessica’s change of heart was the end of it; Rittenhouse was in ruins, Emma dead, and Flynn mostly well-behaved as part of the Lifeboat crew. The antagonist bench was empty, the heroes no longer constantly preoccupied with defending themselves. The team finally had the time and opportunity to piece their timetravel-mangled lives and families back together. Lucy un-erased Amy, and their parents along with her; Flynn found a way to save Iris and Lorena without erasing all the victories their deaths had led to. Wyatt and Jessica took the Lifeboat to the 1400’s to raise their little family and clear their heads for a while. That while turned into forever. In the end, instead of disposing of the Lifeboat somewhere no modern villain would ever find it, as the initial plan had been, their grandson returned the ship to the 21st century, to a date mere weeks from the day they’d departed from. Sherwin was a bright, eager young man with Jessica’s eyes, Wyatt’s smile, an insatiable desire to see everything the past and future had to show him – and his best friend, Willard, in tow... who proved startlingly quick to be corrupted by the power of time travel.

Willard stole the ApocaLifeboat (thanks, Lucy Croft and Bearded Wyatt, that autopilot was just what they’d needed to make time travel even more of a crapshoot) and jumped from time period to time period, looking for a place and moment where he could install himself as the next best coming since Jesus, and revealing future technology and knowledge everywhere he went. He altered history with reckless abandon and relocated dozens upon dozens of bamboozled followers to eras they had no business being in.

While the team struggled to deal with Willard, Sherwin got attached to the 21th century, Lucy figured out how to deal with her restored family now that she’d uncovered the sordid truth of their ancestry, and Flynn wrestled with the self-hatred and guilt that threatened to tear his own newly-reunited family apart. And after the team returned from a jump with a damaged ship to a timeline where Connor was dead of a disease that didn’t exist before they left, taking his vital expertise and resources to the grave with him, Jiya and Rufus had to A: figure out how to undo his death, and B: develop a way to keep anybody else they cared about but who couldn’t come on a jump from being lost or critically changed by random divergences to their personal history, poofing out of existence because of family tree disruptions like Amy, or being hijacked by the enemy like Jessica. Objective A was accomplished with another jump, and objective B with what Rufus, who had the crucial eureka moment, got to dub the Wellsaday Cage (a portmanteau of Faraday Cage and H.G. Wells, the author of the first ever time machine story). The Cage ensured that everybody inside it shared in the temporal bubble that made it so the team didn’t get swept up by the effects of their actions while they were on a jump and always came back to the altered present as their old selves. BOOM. So many problems and four-dimensional puzzle induced-headaches solved.

/S4; Willard from the 14th Century

No sooner did the team stop Willard and start bickering among themselves about how – if at all – to fix the mess he’d made of history, than the remnants of Rittenhouse (their cult annoyingly unscathed by what Willard’s had wrought) reared its ugly head again. The remaining followers, a motley bunch who had rearranged the once unassailable hierarchy with blood and backstabbing in the wake of the purge of all Rittenhouse’s biggest and most actually influential figures, fought with a zeal only found in true believers who had seen their cult’s long-awaited judgement day pass by without so much as a lightning strike and doubled down on their faith regardless. Nothing the Time Team did could stop them – until finally, after an inexplicable delay of four seasons, they returned to David Rittenhouse and smothered the entire organization in the bud by killing him before he could start spreading his ideology in the first place.

/S5; Rittenhouse Redux

Preventing the birth of the Rittenhouse cult altered the history of the USA beyond recognition and, since it was Rittenhouse’s relentless urging and unlimited funds that made time travel possible, erased everything that had occurred because of it in the previous seasons. The team made a number of jumps to win some lotteries and make some jackpot investments to help themselves and the loved ones they’d saved with the Wellsaday Cage start over, and everybody set themselves to the task of adjusting to their new reality and dealing with the scars left by erased timelines only they now remembered.

Then time-travelers from centuries into the future started showed up. The team hadn’t had to wonder who the good guys and the bad guys were or what side they should be on since they cottoned on to the truth of what Flynn kept saying in S1. Now they were left questioning everything again. Who were these people from the future? What did they want, and could they be trusted to tell the truth about that? When they started contradicting each other and the cracks in their initially united front started to show, who could the team believe? And what would happen when the team fractured along long-dormant fault lines of trust (among themselves, and toward the future travelers) and philosophical disagreements over what time travel should or shouldn’t be used for and allowed to cause??

Much tension, very suspense. Wow. They figured it out eventually, though. And hey, guess what? Flynn’s inexplicable inability to come up with a sensible Plan B to kill David Rittenhouse all the way back in S1 wasn’t so inexplicable after all! Turns out it was a remote intervention by a distant-future scumbag – let’s call him Gabmucs – who read about the dude’s many different deaths in a history book about the Time War Era and the development of the tech that would come to shield The Future He Comes From from being affected by all that temporal chaos from the past. (Based on Jiya & Rufus’s Wellsaday Cage, but applied to the whole solar system past a certain point in time.)

Gabmucs thought all those ideas about oppression and suppression and world domination sounded right up his alley, and set up some kind of outcome enforcer tech (derivative from the Temporal Shield just like the Temporal Shield was a derivative of the Wellsaday Cage) around David R’s life to ensure only one specific fate from the many timelines centered around him would come to pass, and so his ideas would come to fruition no matter what. When the team first discovered David’s existence, Gabmucs’s technology had detected Flynn’s intentions and befuddled his senses until he just couldn’t think straight enough to kill the guy anymore. The eventual failure of this tech was what prompted Gabmucs to manipulate a team from his own time to go back and help him intervene in person. And while he was there, he might as well take some crucial steps toward disabling the Temporal Shield, so he could go home afterwards to a world steeped in glorious Rittenhouse-flavored evil tailor-made to his tastes.

He just wasn’t very honest to most of his team about the motives or objectives of their mission, and they didn’t take kindly to finding out the truth. Especially when one of them (let’s call her... uh... Niwrehs? /o\ I hate character names almost as much as fic titles) had fallen in love with Sherwin. (In the end, Niwhrehs stayed in the 21st century. And my wish of having both a distant past and a far future member on the team was fulfilled! Also, this season definitely has the modern team visiting the future AT LEAST once!!)

/S6; The Future

And just when they thought that was finally the end of it, Stanley Fisher arose from his ever-worsening stupor of visions and turned out to have become a temporal eldritch demi-god. A bored temporal eldritch demigod. Having seen literally everything there ever was to see, in every timeline that had ever been, he started changing things with the biggest impact possible, purely so he could experience something truly new again. And he didn’t need a time machine to transport himself to the past.

Which is what finally brings us to antiquity, and the massive, unimaginable changes he could cause by knocking history off course that far back... AND GLADIATOR FLYNN! :D The special effects budget goes through the roof! Old Rome! Ancient Egypt! The Aztecs! Atilla the Hun! Cavemen and Medieval knights and pirates and samurai and and and... WOOLY MAMMOTHS!! Good thing the far future guys left universal translator tech behind!

Wait, wait, back up, whaaaat?? WELL, you see, because of the accident that gave him his visions, Stanley was never affected by the timeline changing the way the rest of reality around him was. Even though it seemed like he was at first. But actually, every time the timeline changed, he instead absorbed the quantum imprint of the new version of himself and all the memories, visions, viability, and temporal capability that came with it. This slowly drove him crazier and crazier with every edit to the timeline, the human brain utterly unequipped to handle so many realities crammed into one mind – until the last jump of S6. That one tipped him over a critical mass of timelines into near-omniscience, and rearranged his physical and psychic being to finally accommodate it all.

(Look, no time-travel story can be called a real time-travel story unless everything goes batshit insane at some point, okay?)

Jiya had been experiencing the same thing, just on a much, much smaller scale, since she was shielded from most of the timeline changes by either being part of the jump team or being safely ensconced inside a Wellsaday Cage. But when it became clear that the team didn’t stand a chance against Stanley, she made a desperate gamble and told her past self what happened to Stanley... and how she could replicate it in herself. Jiya expected to die when she returned from this jump, but instead of being absorbed by the new timeline’s eldritch Jiya, that Jiya made sure they remained two separate entities. Girl Jiya rejoined her team, Eldritch Jiya transcended into Demi-Goddess Jiya, and between two time machines and a walking force of quantum nature, they kicked Stanley’s ass. Demi-Goddess Jiya absorbed his temporal whatever and became full-blown Time Goddess Jiya, who then merged with the timestream itself and ensured that all the time travel fuckery was finally, FINALLY, fucking over, and this season finale would be the definitive show finale. And everybody lived happily ever after.

EVERYBODY.

Yes, even if they were erased three hundred timelines ago. Yes, even if nobody was supposed to remember them anymore; she’s god now, she can fix that. That and so much more. And she does! Because she’s nice like that. Fuck ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’, the Goddess Jiya’s in charge now, and she makes sure time travel will not continue to or ever newly hurt her friends and family again.

/S7; Temporal Eldritch Demi-God Stanley Fisher

THE END

(Sorry Paulina, your scribbles will never come to anything. Or maybe they will, but your results will be relentlessly trolled by time!Jiya.)

#my creations #thoughts of mine #Timeless

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docholligay · 4 years ago

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Freeform “Hope—cruelest of the evils that escaped Pandora’s box “ –Doc

Angela typed and retyped a patient's information into the computer, cognizant of the time. A glance up at the wall told her it was nearly 10:00 A.M. In a few minutes, Lena Oxton would come into the exam room followed by her wife, Emily Macnair. Angela gave up on her half-hearted efforts to fill in a patient's medical history and focused on keeping a pleasant smile on her face. She didn't want either of those two to see how difficult this was for her.

The door opened slowly, the magnetic strip having been activated by someone pushing the button outside. Emily, no doubt. Lena came in a moment later, the faint whir of her motorized wheelchair accompanying her. Emily walked in after, shutting the door behind her.

"Hello, Lena. It's good to see you again. It's good to see you too, Emily." Angela said warmly in greeting.

Lena's lips twitched in what was clearly an attempt at a smile, though she lacked the full range of motion in her facial muscles to accomplish that. Angela looked down at her friend's hands. Lena had retained a measure of control over her fingers, which she used to manipulate her wheelchair. She could do other things with them as well, which Lena demonstrated by putting two fingers together and moving them side to side in a semblance of a good-natured wave.

"Thanks again for meeting us down here. The hospital is very handicap-friendly, but it's a lot easier to stay on the ground floor." Emily replied, clear gratitude in her voice.

Emily was wearing a forest green sweater paired with tight black pants. The color scheme went well with the woman's long red hair. Angela glanced downward and saw that she was wearing sensible boots, in contrast to the heels she knew Emily loved to wear. But Angela supposed that high heels were an extravagance Emily had a tough time indulging in these days, acting as Lena's caretaker as she was.

Since Emily was the one who had dressed her wife, Angela might have assumed that aspects of Emily's style might have slipped in. But Emily seemed to be determined to preserve her wife's unique sense of style. Beneath her chronal accelerator, and over her white collared shirt, Lena had on her favorite bomber jacket. Seeing it, a real smile appeared on Angela's face for the first time.

"Oh, it's no problem at all. Shall we get started?" Angela asked lightly, trying not to betray how reluctant she was.

Lena blinked once, the universal sign for "yes". Emily, meanwhile, sat down in one of the empty chairs beside her wife. The woman tried to affect a relaxed air, but Angela did not miss how tightly she was gripping the armrests. Emily was aware, as they all were, that Lena wasn't quite keeping pace with the expected timeline for a full recovery.

Angela stood up and took out her ophthalmoscope. She switched the tiny light on and bent over to examine Lena's eye control once more. Her friend was able to follow the light from side to side, and she was clearly able to blink as she wished. That had been one of the first things Lena had managed to do after the surgery.

Glioblastoma Multiforme. A tongue-twisting term for an aggressive form of brain cancer. Six months ago, Angela had diagnosed her friend with it after Lena had complained about experiencing frequent, severe headaches. Angela had ordered an MRI for her just to be safe and had been shocked to find a cancerous growth in the deeper white matter of Lena's brain.

Lena's options had been limited. Left untreated, she would very likely be dead within six months. Brain surgery was necessary, but Lena had been against it. Angela couldn't blame her: she had been straightforward with how risky the surgery to remove the tumor was, and how, even then, it would only be the first step toward beating the cancer.

What had changed her friend's mind was Emily. The two had recently married, and Lena's sometimes self-centered and fatalistic streak had been tempered by the love she had for Emily. Her wife, unsurprisingly, wanted Lena to live and had been quite vociferous in arguing that she do the surgery. Angela had been rather surprised when Lena had ended up agreeing. The Lena Oxton she had known for almost 15 years would have never come to that decision on her own.

Surprised, but pleased. Angela would have respected her friend's wishes had she chosen otherwise, but the opportunity to possibly save her life was a gift Angela was grateful to receive.

Medical ethics dictated that Angela refrain from performing the surgery on such a close friend, barring any extenuating factors. Angela had indeed tried to conform to them and had called the one neurosurgeon (besides herself) in southern England whom she believed had the skill and experience to perform the surgery. Her fellow doctor had declined, saying he felt the chance of success was too low.

So Angela had done it herself. It was a decision that put in question her ability to continue to practice medicine in the UK (the hospital's institutional review board had been convened to discuss the situation, though a final ruling had yet to be made), but Angela didn't care. Lena's life was all that mattered.

The surgery seemed to have flown by to Angela, despite the six-hour length. If ever there had been a time for Angela to make use of the full depth of her skill, it had been while her friend's life was in the balance. Angela had achieved a level of focus she had never felt before or since.

The steadiness of her hands had been nearly that of a machine. But no machine could have anticipated and reacted to complications in the surgery the way Angela had. By the time she was finished, 96% of the tumor had been excised. Targeted radiation would take care of the rest. It had been a remarkable result, and Angela had been told that the recording of the surgery would be used in teaching hospitals all over the world.

Even so, Lena hadn't come out of the ordeal unscathed. Her friend had awoken to find that she was nearly paralyzed. An expected result, as her brain would need to find new neural pathways for a variety of functions.

"Let's begin with your arms." Angela said quietly, sliding her chair closer to Lena.

Angela began sensation testing (an unfurled paperclip was her preferred implement) by lightly scratching the top of Lena's hands. Lena tapped a finger to her chair rhythmically as Angela slowly moved the paperclip upward, indicating that she could feel it. But as Angela got closer to Lena's wrist, her tapping slowed, then stopped. No sensation at the wrist upward.

Just to be certain, Angela continued to poke and prod at various areas of Lena's arms, but with no result. She didn't dare to look over at Emily, who was staying quiet. The hope in the woman's face, always dashed at the end, was too difficult for Angela to see again and again. A small part of her wanted to tell Emily to keep her expectations low, but Angela could never bring herself to say something like that to her.

Angela moved on to Lena's feet. She took off her friend's flat top sneakers and socks to find Lena was wiggling her toes at her. Angela smiled momentarily and brought the paperclip down to test there. Just as before, the sensation stopped at Lena's ankles.

This wasn't good. Her friend's rate of neural recovery had slowed considerably in the last couple of months. A more or less steady gain of sensation was expected in patients on their way to a full recovery. But when progress stalled like this, it was an ominous sign that the patient may never fully regain control of their body.

"Any progress?" Emily asked brightly, valiantly attempting to keep any other emotions she might be feeling out of her voice.

"Not this time. I'm sorry." Angela answered without looking at her directly, after putting the paperclip back on the desk.

Angela steadfastly refused to look at Emily's face. She wanted to offer the woman words of comfort, of course, but at this point, she didn't know what to say. Telling the woman to keep her spirits up seemed like it would be setting Emily up for more pain in the future. And doing the opposite was too cruel in its own way. So Angela said nothing.

Lena raised her hand an inch or two off of her armrest. Emily reacted quickly, clasping her wife's hand tightly. Not for the first time, Angela couldn't help but think about how hard this had to be for Lena. Her ADHD-diagnosed friend had always been bouncing around, sometimes literally. Being stuck in a largely uncooperative body had to be maddening for her. Even offering her wife comfort in such a small way was stretching the limits of her capability.

Angela's vision blurred with momentary tears, and she swiftly turned her chair around to the computer. Updating Lena's patient information with this week's results provided her with the chance to blink away any tears she might have. Angela would not make this any harder for the two of them, no matter what. At least, that's what she told herself. A small voice that was getting subtly louder as time went on told her that she was just as loath to make things harder for herself. As soon as her vision was clear, Angela turned back around to them both.

"Ahem. Same time next week, then?" Angela asked in her practiced, professional tone as soon as she had gotten control of herself.

It wasn't that Angela wanted them to leave, exactly. It was that having a conversation between the three of them was a puzzle Angela hadn't managed to work out. Aside from not knowing what words of comfort to offer Emily, Angela couldn't act as if Lena wasn't there, yet she also couldn't expect her to meaningfully contribute to the conversation.

"Sure. We'll be here. Thanks again, Angela." Emily said after a moment, her voice subdued.

Lena was gazing at Angela steadily. Angela blinked, aware that her friend was trying to communicate something. She glanced down at Lena's hands and saw that her friend had raised her other hand a couple of inches from the armrest of her wheelchair.

For the first time since she had begun the examination, Angela chanced a look at Emily's face. Instead of the crushed hope she had expected to see, compassion and understanding showed in the way the woman was smiling at her. She gave a quick, encouraging nod to Angela.

With her hand shaking ever so slightly, Angela reached down to clasp Lena's free hand. Her friend's grip was not strong, but the concentration in her eyes indicated how hard Lena was working just to hold Angela's hand. Only the fact that Angela was working just as hard to keep a hold of herself prevented her from letting loose the tears that had nearly spilled a few minutes earlier.

Lena's lips twitched once more. Was it Angela's imagination, or was Lena getting closer to managing to smile? At that moment, Angela realized that however painful this process might be for her, the hope of seeing a grin spread across Lena Oxton's face again made it all worthwhile.

"I'm here for you, Lena. For as long as it takes." Angela whispered, her voice wavering despite her very best efforts.

This was fantastically terrible and made me cringe in all the best ways. Exactly some of the shit I am here for, and terrible, and also interestingly I realized I rather enjoy seeing other people's tackle on a problem, I guess is how I'd put it. I have a very specific outlay for how I approach Lena's decline based on the fun of cobbling together different illnesses/injuries and it was incredibly interesting to read a different and yet no less horrible approach. Thank you so much!

#Doc's Birthday Angst

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brazenautomaton · 4 years ago

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Fixing Afterlives: Bastion, Pt. 1

As it is, Bastion doesn’t work. The Forsworn don’t just have a point, they are obviously, objectively correct. Kyrian discard all their memories and attachments in a way that is horrifying, in order to perform a job that a robot could do, in order to aspire to be something lame and boring. There is nothing cool about what they do and nothing good either; every single time they tell you about what they do it’s supposed to make you sad, not proud. A little of that is fine, it’s Death. But come on. The anima diverter daily for Bastion is a test where you judge if souls should pass on or not, and on WoWHead, the adequate summary of the right answers is “If one of the answers seems more evil or horrible, that’s the one you pick.”

In fact, Bastion can’t work as it is right now, because of Maldraxxus. The Maldraxxi are the defenders of the Shadowlands, right? So all the courage and martial prowess and avenging angel-ness Bastion wants to have cannot be what they are About, the presentation wants them to be glorious and valorous warriors but they don’t have to fight anyone. And the presentation wants them to be wise and impartial but their job requires no discretion, they’re ghost UPS. They can’t be About anything cool, and to be wise and impartial, they can’t be DOING anything at all!

So here’s the fix to their concept: Maldraxxus is the afterlife of warriors, the endless skeleton war, the unending conflict where there are always an infinite supply of fighters willing to leap to the defense of the Shadowlands. Maldraxxus is the Shadowlands’ defensive team. Bastion is the offense.

Bastion does not engage in army-against-army conflict, they have individual heroes. And they are out there in the mortal world, invisibly, serving as guardian angels, inspiring as muses, fighting invisible forces, tipping the scales of Fate to have the right outcomes. Fighting extra-dimensional beasts who prey on the mortal realm to invisibly protect them, fighting down incarnate ideas of malice and ruin, but also influencing things directly or by subconscious example. Every Spirit Healer is from Bastion and they are the ones who decided “your time is not yet up”. When we get really lucky to allow ourselves to triumph over the Legion or the Scourge, it’s because Bastion was ensuring it happened, fighting for us. Bastion is supposed to be affecting things out there, making things turn out Right, instead of being powerless observers. They are the muses of artists and the muses of battle. They inspire. They lead, invisibly.

That’s why they need to be wise and free of bias -- you cannot favor one side of mortals over the other. Mortal beings need to beat the Scourge, but the Horde does not need to triumph over the Alliance and vice versa. Your job is not to punish mortals for being bad, you damn well need to be boosting both sides when there are champions and the valorous in both. You cannot go out there and say “these Orcs up here in Redridge are all evil and shit and the Alliance deserves the win so I’m just gonna go all in on defending them,” that’s not how it works, you reward individual valorous efforts on both sides. How Fate Should Go does not include taking sides in purely mortal conflicts.

So obviously you cannot be biased. You are something Beyond the mortal realm which means you can’t take sides. You actually do have to discard these attachments, and while we’re here, we need to actually make that process empowering. Right now all it does is show you “hey, happy memories, well, fuck you, gotta get rid of them.” Make more than zero effort to make this make sense. Show the aspirant in pain and yearning because of those memories and the fact they can’t come back. Don’t make them forget who they were, make them become at peace and move on.

Now obviously that won’t be convincing to everyone. And that’s fine. It just means there’s some ambiguity instead of the Forsworn being obviously right about everything.

There are four races/types in Bastion: Kyrian, Forsworn Kyrian, Stewards, and Constructs. Only two are represented in Soulbinds: you have two Kyrian and a Steward.

Kyrian are the expression of what Bastion IS, so we already covered their changes.

Constructs are anima robots. Why are there anima robots here? It’s really bad in the current version because the Kyrian job can be done by a robot so why not just make them do it? Instead, we take that idea and we make it About something: these machines aren’t Constructs, they are Principles. A Principle is a robot made of rules and ideals, the things that are thought by mortals but bigger than any mortal. Codes of honor and ideas that work beyond any of us as individuals. There, that’s it, that change of presentation is all you need to do to justify why robots are there. The changes to Bastion’s fundamentals are what makes them fit in.

Stewards are creepy. Really creepy. They serve the same role as dredgers, but the fact that dredgers bitch and moan and complain all the time lets us see them as individuals with goals and not creepy brainwashed victims. A dredger isn’t a slave, they are a worker; but work sucks and they wanna be at the pub. A steward, with one exception (Forgelite Prime Mikanikos who is busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest and also by far the best Bastion character) appears to have no personality and is a brainwashed slave.

So, first off, make it clearer that they are helpful because they are The Desire To Aid, that’s the thing they’re About. With the way they speak and act, I think what they are supposed to be in story terms is lightly comic relief, also similar in role to Dredgers but with opposite implementation. The creepiness and one-dimensionality make this fail, all their hoots and hoos and silly talk isn’t funny. They need to be cheesier. They need to be 90’s Saturday morning cartoon sidekicks. They need to be a (much) less obnoxious version of Snarf.

They need to tell awful, awful dad jokes. Just the worst. The kind that are so bad they loop back around to funny again but you’re still groaning and they’re just there like “Eh? Eh? Geddit? Geddit?” By doing something that is helpful, that we recognize as an attempt to help and that some Steward characters can explicate to us really does help (it dampens anger and fear because all of your negative emotions are refocused to that HORRIBLE pun), but that clearly NOBODY would brainwash them into doing, now we can trust their helpful efforts are borne of sincere desire and carried out to the best of their ability by their own personal interpretation.

Forsworn Kyrian, right now, are only antagonists. The ideological change of giving up on the law of Bastion makes you turn a darker indigo color scheme (which is actually really good because these are creatures of Beyond, creatures who are on a fundamental physical level About something, their beliefs changing their physical makeup makes sense!) and then become a bad guy. Forsworn are all only antagonists. We’re going to change that. Kleia is going to become Forsworn. And still be a heroic character and your Soulbind, even though this isn’t a game balance thing and so Pelagos will still probably outclass her in every way seriously that Mastery buff is fucking bananas for anyone who cares about Mastery.

Not when you meet her, though. The existing storyline of Bastion is you go there because “hey what the fuck are these Kyrian doing in the Maw serving the Jailer” but in Bastion itself nothing much is happening other than kicking pebbles down the street. You get the intro from Kleia, you go see some very low-importance things, then the Forsworn attack for the first time, and you spend the rest of the zone quest on hold with the Archon’s hotline to tell her “hey there are Forsworn this is a problem”.

Now, when you get there to ask “hey what the fuck”, Kleia is still not doing much more than kicking pebbles down the street, bored off her ass, extremely enthusiastic about someone new so she can DO something. But the Forsworn conflict already exists: it’s just not relevant to her because she stays out of it, figures that it’s above her pay grade, and she hangs out at the Welcome Center which nobody gives a shit about because there’s nobody to get welcomed so it isn’t relevant. She just knows there’s been some discussions.

We get the anima drought reinforced the first time we enter Bastion because we have to power down the other cores to get enough juice for the greeting machine, but then it isn’t really a good way to sell it because that’s the kind of thing we do all the time even when there’s no shortages of anything, that’s how WoW PCs interact with machines. So we have the player scrounge up anima from the other Principles to power up the greeting machine, and it’s not enough, it runs out of juice halfway through, and Kleia gets embarrassed and tries to finish the rest of the process by reciting it from memory (and not getting it all quite right, which is another chance to show us things about her).

Kleia is excited to have someone to run through the orientation process, and she explains that FIRST there was an anima drought, and then as if that wasn’t bad enough, THEN the Arbiter got conked out and the flow of souls to Bastion stopped. This is important, because in the story as is, the anima drought appears to be completely explained by the flow of souls all going to the Maw, since they are presented at the same time and the flow of souls is the flow of anima. When you find out the drought is because of ol’ Denny hoarding it, you go “wait how does he have any to hoard when it all goes to the Maw?”

So for right now you need to walk the Aspirant’s path to get an audience with the Archon because right now things don’t seem desperate and urgent. You go to Aspirant’s Rest and get the flight point, and you go to meet Kleia’s soulbind, Pelagos. Two things need to change right here.

One: something more needs to be happening here than “Pelagos was a dipshit and tried ascending alone despite that being not how it works at all, go in there and fight the monsters,” so do something instead of almost-nothing.

Two: Loath as I am to say something actually needs less representation compared to its original, Pelagos can’t be transgender. You find out later on, in the Kyrian covenant quest line maybe? That Pelagos’s mortal body was a woman, but his true spirit is a man. That’s great, that’s something that should come up. The problem is, Pelagos is also the fuck-up, the one we see fail all the time so he can (ostensibly) show resolve and get back up again. But Blizz didn’t show barely any details about Pelagos’s life for fear of backlash -- we don’t even know who played him -- and whether or not it is valid or invalid or that was a cover to avoid admitting this was to not offend China, Blizzard still won’t DO it. So we have this character who is battling this doubt and failure in his past but we’re not allowed to know what they are. Pelagos is cisgender so we can go into detail about what he fucked up. Kleia might be trans instead (why she is so gung-ho about Ascension), or we can have Kleia sell the Ascension process as good by mentioning that the Paragon of Wisdom, Thenios, was born a woman in life but Ascension made him into a true ideal. This can also justify a bit more screen time for Thenios and then something for Tim Russ to do. He was already Tuvok, he doesn’t need more humiliation. But whoever it is, their gender only comes up once and never again because now they’re the right way around and the former body doesn’t matter.

So what’s happening at Aspirant’s Rest? It’s a holding pen for souls. See, as it is now, you find out about the flow of souls into the Maw right away, but then all the way through the main quest and into the Kyrian campaign quest they apparently don’t know, and you don’t tell them, and then it’s a surprise when you finish the quest where you follow the guy in Redridge and have to take him to the Maw, and that’s dumb, they should know, you should have told them.

So now the Kyrian know that everyone is default-judged to the Maw. And they know this is what has to happen, this is the machinery of fate that drives the universe, but they are compassionate and know these souls do not deserve it. So they’re scamming as much as they can. Whenever possible (which they lament is not often enough, not nearly often enough), they find some loophole or corner case to count someone as not ready to be judged, and stick them somewhere in Bastion so they can wait until the Arbiter’s awake again to judge them. They can’t do much, but they can do a little, so they do that.

This guy, okay, you died, BUT, there’s a necromancer just two zones over, and your body is still intact since I dragged it to safety, and, I mean, he’s PROBABLY going to call back your soul and bind it to your body in service, so there’s no point in having you judged, you’re just coming back, right? And you, Night Elf! Okay, you got your head blown off, but, remember that angelic voice shouting “NIGHTELVESEVOLVEDFROMTROLLS!” a moment before your demise? And you know, Trolls who worship Bwonsamdi go straight to De Otha Side without being judged. Maybe you would have wanted to pledge yourself to older gods, but you never got the chance to make that decision, so, hey, you know, it would only be right to let you make that choice before you are given your judgment! And you, guy, did you know that all those patrons from the Slaughtered Lamb across the street who came into your business were warlocks? Yup, all of them, and they didn’t wash their hands either. Fel contamination. Can’t, ooh, you know, hey, might be a demonic stain on your soul, demons don’t have an afterlife like us, gotta be reborn in the Twisting Nether! Going to have to consult some demons to figure out where you go. Better wait here.

Aspirant’s Rest and the temple beneath are a soul refugee camp, and the souls within are scared and angry and don’t know what is going on and the Kyrian can’t explain it or they will all completely flip out. The Kyrian are trying as hard as they can in the limitations they have and this sells it.

Pelagos is down there. The risk is not that he will be killed -- he is not mortal, he does not die -- the risk is that his well-meaning attempts to keep things calm might ignite the powder keg down there. And those souls can’t die but they WILL go directly to the Maw if fatally injured, which is why they have to be kept penned where Larion won’t eat them and Principles won’t drag them off. Pelagos fucks up here and you have to fix it but it’s not a suicidally stupid error while doing something that has no relevance to the player, it’s an understandable mistake biting off more than he can chew while doing something the player understands. Player, Kleia, and Pelagos go down to Aspirant’s Crucible to get certified as an Aspirant and get in line to talk to the Archon.

In the existing story, you go and peer into a memory flame thing and have echoes of your heroic battles drawn forth, and you fight them while a character narrates your heroic deeds. They might be based on what expansions you played in, or might be random? Anyway, in this case, you gaze into the flame of memory, she starts to narrate your heroism, and… nothing. “Ah, there are supposed to be visions conjured here, so you can display your valor against them once again. It… it doesn’t… hang on, I might know what the problem is…”

A voice comes. “Then how about you display your valor against me, champion? A little sparring wouldn’t hurt, and I’m eager to see what you can do.”

It’s Uther, hell yes it’s Uther.

#World of Warcraft #my fiction #fixing stories #wow

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fly-pow-bye · 4 years ago

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DuckTales 2017 - The Least Best!

Well, here it is, the second to last article of this project, and it's one that's going to be controversial. I'm sorry, I have to do a worst list along with the best list, but I decided against actually calling it the worst list. Simply put: calling it a worst list implies these episodes were bad. Do not get me wrong, there are episodes I feel qualify for that, but not more than 10 of them. Alas, it has to be done.

I must have some rules for this list, and here they are:

It has to be an episode of DuckTales 2017. No shorts, even if the shorts combined can make up a full episode. I am also not putting in anything from This Duckburg Life, either.

I have to say something good about each of these episodes. Does not have to be the best thing about the episode, but a good thing nonetheless.

This is my opinion and my opinion alone. I am sure there are fans of these episodes, I just disagree with them.

Let's begin with #10, and I can already tell I'm going to lose some people over this, but I am not sorry.

10. Beaks In The Shell!

I did get some flack for giving this a 2 initially, and I did walk back on it simply because there are worse episodes I have given 3s or would have given 3s, but I just did not think of this one as highly as everything else in the third season. I do not hate it, as it has some clever moments here and there, like Louie's shock about GizmoDuck's identity.

She has a great design, and I do like how she's the hacker girl as a counterpart to Fenton. She just seems to do a complete 180. In the last episode she was in, she was not above blinding children in order to keep her job, and now she just wants to leave F.O.W.L. just like that? I do not really buy it, and I never really found her that interesting in execution, at least in the show itself.

Good thing: Out of all the flack I've given this episode, the ending with the character's individual Gizmo suits is top notch. I like how everyone has an ability that either fits them or is a reference to a previous episode.

9. New Gods on the Block!

This is another "not really one of the good ones, but not really one of the bad ones" episode to me. My decision to put this one below "Beaks In The Shell" goes more with me thinking the Gizmo suits were a little more creative, and how I think this episode could have done better with this idea. Plenty of scenes with Storkules and Donald being a little too close, much to the chagrin of the latter.

There is also this plot where Scrooge wants to make a different team, implying that the kids are not good enough. This may have been a misinterpretation on the part of the kids, making this one of those "misunderstanding" episodes, but it is really vague here. It seemed to me that Scrooge really was trying to get a different team that did not involve his family for the most part. I am not going to say him being called out by Della when he's climbing the Titan is not a powerful scene, but I feel like it goes against the series entire arc of family being the best adventure of all. This isn't a Season 1 episode where Scrooge had to learn that, this is in Season 3!

Good thing: It was cool to see this plot expand the pantheon of Greek gods in this series. The DuckTales 2017 version of Hades, their reaction to Zeus being depowered, it’s all good.

8. The Split Sword of Swanstantine!

Unlike Gandra Dee, or any of the Olympians, the Sword of Swanstentine ended up being a major part of the finale. It is a shame that the hunt for that sword is the least best of the three shorts episodes. The first part with Dewey and Webby features the aforementioned child blinding plot that leads to a couple of cool survival scenes and a clever use of the big fight between Black Heron and Scrooge that happens throughout the episode, but is mostly just okay. The second part with Louie and Violet is a little weak, it's a one-idea premise with a character that I felt needed more development, period.

Huey and Lena's part may have been the highlight of the episode, but it only leads to an ending that is a bit predictable as soon as it comes up. Oh no, the villains have the sword! Nah, just kidding, the heroes have it because of a technicality that they certainly did not remember in the finale. I am a little glad they did not remember the sword's ability to not be used by people who have not earned it, actually, but that's not something that pertains to this episode specifically.

Good thing: As mentioned before, Huey and Lena's part is good. It's mitigated by The Duke of Making A Mess never really appearing again, but that is also not something that pertains to this episode specifically.

7. Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!

The crew of the show have shown their disdain for the original Doofus. They could have just said that Doofus wasn't indicative of the kind of messaging they wanted to show, much like the original Burger Beagle, or the witch doctor stereotype who first summoned the Bombie, but no, their response to a character that was hated in the original was to make an even less likeable villain out of him! He was alright in "Day of the Only Child!", his debut, and I think that might be because he only had a third of the episode rather than more than half. While the ending is good, and there are some funny scenes with some of his other party guests, there's a lot of awkward scenes to work through here.

There is a plot that does not involve Doofus, but it does not do much good. The B-plot is pretty much shoe-horned in here, with no real connection besides involving characters that are not trying to crash the party. It is about Huey learning to step out of his comfort zone, and we know this because he goes into a video game world and having to learn how to step out of something that is outright called a "comfort zone". There just is not a lot to this plot other than some really cheap references. There's certainly nothing on the same level as Dewey Dew-Night, which is what "Day of the Only Child!" gave us. I guess I decided to put this episode in the Honey Bin after all.

Good thing: Glomgold's scheme involving his puppet son is a good Glomgold scene, and this is the episode that gave us Boyd, so I can't hate on it too much.

6. The Rumble for Ragnarok!

When I decided to re-rate Beaks in the Shell to a three, I was also specifically thinking of this episode as one of the worse episodes that I gave a three. This is a problem with having a series as consistently good as DuckTales 2017 is; there's a little to like in almost every episode, and this episode really knows how to handle pro wrestling as a setting while also making it fit in with the universe. I could see something like this happening in the old comics.

However, lots of neat references to pro wrestling can't hide that the way they implemented this plot is just flawed to me. The plot to me seemed to go with the moral that one should follow with what is right even if it does not lead to popularity. It does start well with Scrooge, as the villainous Millionaire Miser, telling Dewey to "embrace the boos" of the people that want the world to end. Then they decide that the crowd doesn't like Jörmungandr anymore because...he was being too harsh on a kid? They did not have a problem with Hecka beating up two kids, but when Jörmungandr ties him up with his tail, that's a heel turn? Conveniently, Dewey did not have to learn anything! I can appreciate that they didn't go with what any other cartoon would do and make a farce out of the form of entertainment, but I can not shake that off.

Good thing: Not only does this episode do a great job with wrestling jokes, it manages to throw in a reference to the original that seamlessly fits in with the wrestling jokes. It's too bad the Shield Maiden didn't get to do much, but it's still a positive.

5. The Richest Duck in the World!

I did say I wanted to only rate episodes, but if I was rating DuckTales 2017's arcs, the Louie one from Season 2 is definitely the lowest. Do not get me wrong, the Louie Inc. arc did have some good episodes, Storkules in Duckburg being a highlight, but it is definitely the least memorable arc in the series, and its finale is the worst of that arc. Sure, it was a big shocking moment in "GlomTales!" that he was able to swindle his own uncle's fortune, especially an uncle as sharp and smart as Scrooge McDuck, but the way this episode follows up on that is to make a hundred jokes about Louie being a lazy billionaire until he learns his lesson in a way that returns everything back to the status quo as soon as the real arc of the season comes back in the last minute of the episode. The finale of the entire show made this even more worthless, and I would rather not get into any more detail than I already had in that review.

I think what really gets me about this is how well Scrooge takes this plot, especially when compared to an episode that is coming up in this very list. I know a part of this is because of the villain of the episode, but there was also a feeling that Scrooge just knew that the status quo was going to come back. That just made this episode's conclusion just that much more foregone. The fact that the Tenderfeet had to show up to remind us that he exists does not make this any better. There is another plot about Della trying to call Penumbra, who is not answering her phone calls for reasons she could not have known. Revealing why she can't before kind of made the conclusion of that plot just that much more foregone. For an episode that comes before a major, major finale, it is so unmemorable to me.

Good thing: When Bradford was talking about "magical defense" in the first episode, I was thinking it was a reference to Magica, but this episode does a great job of retconning that into something less predictable. Retooling the Bombie, a villain with origins that are not necessarily acceptable by today's standards, into something more akin to a force of nature is great.

4. The Depths of Cousin Fethry!

The very first Disgusted Donald I have ever given, and, to be honest, it's because I have learned to raise my standards for this show. Don't get me wrong, this show's version of Fethry Duck had a bit of potential, especially as a sort of mentor to Huey, and the idea of the episode could have went to places, but I just found this episode boring at best. At worst, it just exaggerates Huey to an unimaginably nerdy level, up to licking trees to find out what their resin level is and kissing giant plant monsters. Outside of one particular monster near the end of the episode, that is all this episode has: grossout humor and boredom. As much as I get the joke that Launchpad's journey was just so awesome that it could not have been animated, I still stand by the running gag I made in that review.

Good thing: One good thing about the payoff is the camerawork. The viewer never sees that giant krill "monster" in full. They forgot about that in Moonvasion, though I can see the argument that the Moonvasion would make anything look small.

3. The 87 Cent Solution!

The second Disgusted Donald I have ever given, and also the last. Was I afraid to get the wrath? Well, I am certainly not afraid now, as I rate the episode where Scrooge gets "gold fever" over 87 cents getting stolen from him as the third least best episode. I mean, I get it. Scrooge did not get "gold fever" because he lost money. He lost plenty of money trying to fix his own mistakes. He got "gold fever" because someone outwitted the smartest of the smarties and the sharpest of the sharpies. However, I just couldn't find Scrooge's descent into that madness funny. It's not like the "sea monster ate my ice cream" scene from the original that the reboot decided to mock in a different episode, I just feel sorry for him in a way that just does not fit with the rest of the series.

Having the ending be Mrs. Beakley saying "oh, I would have dealt with those silly manchildren by myself" just felt bizarre compared to the rest of DuckTales 2017's endings. It felt more like an ending to that other reboot. It certainly had that "ugh, men" vibe.

Good thing: One scene that one might think I hated was the dance scene with Glomgold set to DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win." Not only is Glomgold the best part about this episode, that scene is among the best Glomgold scenes ever.

2. Terror of the Terra-firmians!

This was the episode I considered giving the first Disgusted Donald to, or in the new ratings terms, a 1 Scrooge, but I decided against it because it just was not as bad as the worst that I have seen before I took on this project. I was sure there was going to be an episode worse than this one, because every cartoon is going to have that one episode that does not measure up. Turns out, this was the one episode. The major plot of this episode is Huey and Webby just bickering over the existence of magical creatures who are clearly causing all of the problems of the episode. All this really leads to is the same ending one gets with the M&Ms Santa commercial, except the build up is not as funny. That's not a good sign when this episode is much longer than a commercial.

They throw in a part with Lena and Mrs. Beakley that ends up becoming a major piece of development for Lena. I'll admit: this was the part that made me not want to give it a Disgusted, but now I realize what happened. Lena's plot does not really interact with the Terra-firmian plot, with only the train crash being the only real interaction. It's like they knew this episode would not amount to much in the overall arc nor would it be particularly funny, so they put in this awesome Lena part. I will not get fooled again.

Good thing: As mentioned before, Lena saving Mrs. Beakley is better than the rest of the episode combined.

I was really hard pressed to consider putting in dishonorable mentions. It was hard enough picking 10 episodes for the actual list.

The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks! - I just never really liked Mark Beaks as a villain. Smartphones may be around for a long time, but YOLO certainly will not.

Raiders of the Doomsday Vault! - The worst of Season 2 is already on this list, so I really stretched to find another episode that was any worse. This is just a case of Della Duck having better episodes than this.

Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks! - In a series that had good season openers, this was decidedly not one of them. Other than introducing Webby 2, er, Violet, it was only good for starting the "Missing Mysteries of Finch" arc.

And now, the absolute least best episode of DuckTales 2017. It's plot important, very much so. It's an episode with Lena in it, usually a bright point of any DuckTales 2017 episode and a very beloved character. It's an episode I felt that was not good at all by DuckTales 2017 standards. That episode is...

1. The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck!

I know this is the one with that hugely emotional scene of Lena seeing her best friend die in front of her eyes. Of course, neither Disney nor the overall arc of the series would ever allow that, as this is merely a dream sequence that shows that Lena is afraid of her aunt and what she will do to her new best friend, which clearly hasn't been shown in every one of her last appearances. Clearly, we needed this over-the-top dream sequence to really show the kids that Magica is the bad lady and Lena is the good girl. Everything good this A-plot did was done better in "Jaw$!"; they could have just tacked on this episode's ending to that episode, and it would have worked.

Oh, and the B-plot is the dreaded devil in plain sight plot. Huey, Dewey, and Louie befriend a Tenderfeet, the Tenderfeet turns out to be a jerk who tries to sabotage Louie, Louie gets blamed for it to the point where Huey, the usually sensible one, punches Louie in the arm as apparently bullying the Tenderfeet is the worst action he has ever done, and the cycle repeats. After reviewing a reboot that, despite all of its flaws, never managed to fall into it, I was shocked that DuckTales 2017, the reboot that really could, toyed with the worst plot in any cartoon ever and played it straight. I could see the argument that this is one of the better implementations of the forsaken plot, as Louie is already an untrustworthy person even among his brothers and he does manage to solve the problem in a way that fits with his scheming character, but, I am not sorry, it's still a devil in plain sight. Next. Oh wait, there is no next!

Good thing: At least I can admit that this show doesn't pull any punches. Oh no, I'm not talking about the dream sequence, I'm talking about the ending. At first, I did not really like it, as I thought it was another way for the villain to just snatch everything away at the last minute. However, once we learn more about Lena in the next episode, it makes a lot more sense.

And that's the least best! I really did not want to leave this negativity up for too long without its opposite, so the best list will be up on Wednesday rather than next week. Stay tuned!

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