#you accelerate its destruction if only to see more blood | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

skvaderarts · 2 years

Text

Petrichor Chapter 37: Gone

Chapter 37: Gone

Note: Happy first chapter of the year, everyone! Sorry for all the delays and thank you for bearing with me during my difficulties. I’m still recovering, so it’s just one chapter every Friday for the time being, but my fingers are feeling much better. Just a bit sore now. Anyway, enjoy the chapter! And thank you for all your well wishes. I haven’t responded to them just yet, but I do see them and they make me smile. I’m working on getting to them soon! Enjoy this slightly longer chapter to kick off the new year!

(-~-)

He had returned home on time, just like he’d promised. And what awaited him was hell itself.

A sinking, empty feeling overtook him as he stood in the doorway to what had once been their living room, his eyes lingering on the furniture that had been overturned and the broken items thrown about the place, subconsciously acknowledging them but not paying much attention to them. He was unable to process or feel anything about the destruction of the space he was so used to seeing in otherwise pristine condition, his mind lingering on the only thing of consequence at the moment.

Where was she?

He walked through the room, scanning his surroundings for any trace of her. And although he did this at a relatively standard speed, the racing of his heart that his face did not portray and the unmitigable dread that he felt overtaking him both slowed his perception of time and accelerated his fear until it became all-encompassing. Suffocating. Crushing.

He made his way into the kitchen where he saw it: blood. A trail of it on the floor as though something had been dragged from the carpet through the doorway and into the kitchen. It wasn’t enough to soak the carpet, but it was enough to warrant replacing it altogether in lieu of trying to clean it. Far too great of a quantity for his liking. He passed the threshold of the doorway and stepped into the kitchen where he found something that he did not entirely expect. A humanoid demon, laying face down on the floor dead with a long metal object stuck through its chest that now protruded through its back. He peeped back into the living room, his pulse racing faster now than ever. It appeared that his observation that one of the fire pokers was missing had not missed the mark.

She had not gone down without a fight. The important question now was… where had she disappeared to? The blood in the kitchen could largely be attributed to the dead demon, but he smelled more than one source, and to his utter dismay, a portion of that was hers. He just couldn’t be certain how large of a portion thanks to the sheer quantity involved and the overwhelmingly pungent aroma of decaying demon blood. It didn’t have the coppery scent of human blood. No, it reeked of decay. Rot. inhumanity. An indication if not a dead giveaway to its composition. A contrast to its normally inoffensive scent.

A glance out of the back door into the small backyard revealed nothing in much the same way as his trip of the stairs to check each of the bedrooms yielded much the same result. It seemed that aside from some blood smeared down the walls and floors and another dead demon nearest to the door to the master bedroom, there was simply no trace of her. A thorough inspection revealed that the only untouched room in the entire house was the nursery, something that he might have recognized as morbidly ironic, if not even darkly amusing if not for the circumstances and the personal stakes involved.

But after a thorough search of the premises revealed nothing, he found himself walking slowly and silently back down the stairs, paying no mind to the broken banister as he slumped down onto the stairs at the bottom, the entire weight of the world nearly crushing him as he found himself sitting there, his neck and chin cupped in his hands and he allowed Yamato to slide out of his grip and onto the steps beside him, the bottom of the sheath actually touching the floor. A rare occurrence that he registered but made no move to remedy. He couldn’t muster the mental energy to prioritize his beloved blade at the moment. Not while this was going on.

“Vivienne… Where are you?”

He knew not who he spoke to, he didn’t know how to answer that question, and he was certain that he wouldn’t like the answer, but his heart suddenly ached for the company of the young woman that he held so dear to his heart. He’d been stabbed before. He’d been brutally assaulted and nearly shredded to pieces. He’d lost those dear to him before. But as he sat there on the steps with the realization that she might be gone forever and that he could sense no traces of her anywhere in at all, even on the outer fringes of his senses no matter how far he expanded his range, he knew true emptiness. He knew loss. He knew agony.

He would search for them. He had to. It was all that he could do. But a part of them already knew that they were lost to him. He was simply going through the motions like he always did, unable to face the truth of the cards he’d been dealt. He always drew the worst hand. He should have known better than to get her involved. What horrors she must have endured during her last moments. What brutality she might still be enduring elsewhere. What if this had been the devil king’s work? Those demons were not your average run-of-the-mill henchmen. They were humanoid. Advanced. Had Mundus ordered that they take her to the underworld? Did he know about the little one? Had he…

“No… anything but that… “ He thought to himself as his now empty mind spiraled. He could not think of a worse fate for her to endure. A worse end to her vibrant and beautiful life. Vergil could hardly fathom the depths of her suffering or the things that his hated enemy would do to the woman who dared bear his child. For the first time in recent memory, he felt visceral anger, hate, disgust, and misery mix into one potent cocktail of apathetic sickness. They were lost to him. It was a fact that he somehow knew deep in his soul.

How… how was he supposed to go on without them? He would think about this as he searched. And he would search everywhere. He had to. It was the very least that he owed her. Wherever that path lead him. Even if he had to open the gates of hell themselves, he would. And if he could not find them he would upturn the Earth itself in vengeance. How foolish these human emotions were to lead him down such a foolish path. To let him think that he could be happy. To convince him that he was strong enough to protect anything and that he was worthy of love. Where love had once been there was only emptiness. A void. And he did not know how to fill it. But he would spill the blood of those who had dared cross him. Who had dared hurt her. Who had thought foolishly that they could take from him the only ones he loved.

He would have his answers. He would know revenge. And as he stood up from his place on the stairs and grasped Yamato, throwing open the door to what had once been their home and slamming it behind him as he left it forever, he felt the setting sun sting in his waterlogged eyes. His was a divine hate for whatever force had taken her from him. He had nothing left. Nothing but his task. Nothing but his vengeance. And he would know satisfaction. She would know justice.

Vergil would become strong enough to make sure that this would never happen again. He would never dare love again. And he would never again be made a victim of his human heart. He would become strong enough to protect himself. To defeat anything. He would internalize his hatred and allow it to become the barrier that blocked out all else. To become the icy barrier that held back the storm. He had a single-minded focus now, and if he could not find them, then hell protect those who had stolen from him the only thing he had left to fight for. The only thing he’d ever wanted to protect. The only one he’d ever loved in that way.

He felt an icy tingle flow through his body as he triggered and, in a flash, disappeared through a portal cut through the fabric for reality itself with his blade, the ruins of what had once been behind him. Whatever the outcome, this would be the end of his weakness. The end of his humanity. The end of hope. The end of love.

(-~-)

Dante looked at his twin brother as he simply sat there on the other side of the table, his mind a thousand miles away. So much more made sense about him now than never had. He… he felt like he’d come to understand Vergil more during the conversation they’d shared that day than he ever had up until then, at least all at once.

Over the years and through a lot of introspection as he’d grown out of his teen years he’d been able to sympathize more with his older twin than he’d had the capacity for when he’d been younger, but it was these moments when Vergil opened up to him… when they allowed themselves even the slightest vulnerability with one another that he felt them truly connect. And even if it felt like a knife slowly being plunged into their hearts the majority of the time, he wouldn’t back down from the challenge or wish for an easier way out. It wasn’t like the silence between them and their previous feelings towards one another for the majority of their lives had been painless, anyway. At least this way they were making progress. Or, at least Dante thought so. He liked to imagine they were, at least.

“So you came back and she was just… gone?” There was an emotion in Dante’s tone that was hard to distinguish, but he seemed to truly be trying to put himself in his older twin’s shoes in an attempt to comprehend the sorrow that his brother had felt that day. The very thought of imagining what he’d lost and how sudden it had been. And the not knowing. Not knowing what had happened to her. And V… thinking that he’d forever lost the opportunity to know his child… And they’d been so close. So very close to the actualization of everything they wanted. No wonder he’d been so unreachable during their clash atop the tower. Not that he’d exactly tried to talk things out and really reach him until the very end, anyway. One of his own life’s biggest regrets. They’d both had something profound to keep them awake at night.

“Yes. And the quantity of blood did not leave me with an abundance of confidence. Nor did the broken furniture. Or the claw marks.” He spoke quietly as though raising his voice would invoke some otherworldly force. “... It was clear that there had been more demons there at one point than what I found. I can only imagine with the gift of hindsight that they must have pursued her. I still do not know how she managed to escape her fate but… I am grateful that she did.”

Dante didn’t doubt that for a second. He had to admit that he himself shared that sentiment. Not just for his brother’s sake, but for hers and for V. He would have never been granted the chance to meet him and to know him as he did now if she’d died that day. And would his brother even be here now to have this conversation with, if not for the actions that V had taken decades later? Would he have ever known Trish and Lady? How much would be different if they had ventured down different paths and never known it? The possibilities were staggering and admittedly somewhat existentially horrifying.

“Any idea who they were or how they got in? I mean, besides obviously being demons”

“That much was clear from the offset, yes. I could tell just from the smell of the blood alone. Some of it was her’s, but I couldn’t determine what percentage due to the sheer volume. I can only assume they were tracking me on behalf of Mundus and happened upon her since she was more or less the nexus of all of my activity at the time.” A look of displeasure crossed the Darkslayer’s face. He was no doubt considering the folly of his past again. Perhaps thinking about what he could have done differently to change that outcome. Dante wondered to himself if that was a fatal flaw that his brother possessed that he would ever outgrow: his inability to not blame himself for every negative outcome and to see that there were simply some things that he could not fix. That he could not account for. That were uncontrollable. He didn’t expect him to enjoy that fact, but he wondered if he would ever come to accept that.

Something told him that he wouldn’t.

“You figured that they took her. I gathered that much.” Dante added to his brother’s conclusion. Everything else he’d said made perfect sense. It seemed that they were on the same page for once, in this regard. They had probably been looking for Vergil and she’s simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Poor Vivienne…

Vergil fell silent for a long while, closing his eyes as he exhaled a long breath. He almost seemed to tremble as he did so, Dante understanding that hearing those words spoken out loud still brought with them immense sorrow. And the way that Vergil swallowed and opened his mouth to speak only to close it again before shifting uncomfortably in his seat spoke volumes. “I did not wish to come to that conclusion, but after searching for the better part of a week with no trace of her for hundreds of miles around, that was the only answer. But it seems I was incorrect.”

“What… what did you do after that?” Dante asked carefully, fully aware of the fact that he was treading on cracked ice. Probing for details when it came to something like this was a good way to get Vergil to stop talking altogether. He only hoped that he wasn’t pushing him too far.

“Come again?” The Darkslayer asked, his mind elsewhere for a moment. He’d heard what Dante had just said, but he hadn’t really comprehended it.

“When you stopped looking. I’m sure that was a hard decision to make but… What did you do after that?” Dante wasn’t sure if he’d struck, a nerve or his brother had simply checked out during their conversation, but understandable his mind seemed to be elsewhere. He hoped that he wasn’t lingering on his past. There didn’t seem to be any peace there. Only pain.

“I needed to distract myself from my grief. It… consumed me. Utterly and completely. My decision to stop looking for them was perhaps the hardest thing ever done. No amount of time felt like enough, and nothing short of that felt like too little. It would never have been sufficient. I was fighting a losing battle in every aspect possible and I was utterly and completely lost.” Vergil admitted, looking down as a heavy sadness washed over him. He was lingering in it; living in it again fully for the first time in a very long while. And it was just as utterly saturating as it had always been. And for so long he’d felt that he deserved to feel this forever. His personal penance for his failure. He did not deserve happiness, so it was unavailable to him. He did not deserve love so it was forever lost to him. “So I left and followed the lead that had cost me so dearly. That I had pursued despite everything telling me it was foolish. It was the only thing that I could do. And that led me to Fortuna. And eventually to our first encounter sometime after that.”

“Guess that explains… well, a lot, actually. Now the cold silence makes more sense. You weren’t in a talking mood, and now I know why.” Dante said with a nod, more to himself than to his older twin. Neither of them had been, but for entirely different reasons. So many of his brother’s words made so much more sense to him now. He’d been grieving everyone he’d ever loved, and the only person who had survived, the only person he’d had left, had been his younger twin. The younger twin who had told him to his face that he didn’t like him. He… he wished he could take that back. He was willing to bet that he’d already assumed that, but hearing it had probably forced him to internalize it. And why had he said it in the first place? Just to hurt him? Had they both just been that petty back then?

He… He loved Vergil. They were brothers. He might not speak the words, but it was true.

“Among other reasons, yes. You have arrived at the general vicinity of the answer to your lingering question.” Vergil said almost too offhandedly. Perhaps this was a road he didn’t want to go down, either. And then something occurred to Dante that hadn’t previously.

“You said you went to Fortuna. That end how I think it does?” Dante asked, genuinely curious. To say that he knew nothing of what had happened in that place would be a vast understatement. He genuinely wondered what all had occurred there. After all, Nero was proof enough that something of note had transpired there. “Anything noteworthy happen while you were there?”

“If you’re insinuating anything with regards to Nero’s conception, then yes. I assume.”

“That another bad story?” Dante said before registering the last two words that his brother had said. And then he remembered his offhand joke about Vergil’s awful memory atop the Qliphoth. Had he actually been onto something? “Wait, you assume? You… you really don’t remember. I thought that you were being sarcastic.”

“Surprisingly, no. That isn’t a negative experience. Although I must admit that it started as one. I was looking for a distraction. It… It was his predicted due date and I desperately wanted to not think about that.” Vergil looked up at the clock on the wall of the diner and Dante’s eyes followed his gaze to it. They’d been here for about two hours now. This had to be the longest single sitting of conversation between them in perhaps their entire lives. It was a good thing that they’d started the day out so early. But he didn’t regret that. “And as for remembering… much of what I do and do not have the capacity to recall is dictated by my time as that… thing. Everything is hazy and fragmented. I recall pieces of many things, but not their order. Mundus made sure of that.”

“I see.” Dante lingered on the clock for a moment, his eyes drifting back to Vergil after he realized how late it was getting. They weren’t exactly in a hurry, but he wondered if his older brother had noticed that. He’d looked at the clock a few minutes ago, after all. “Getting late, hu? Don’t have time for that one?”

Vergil looked over at him, an almost amused smirk threatening to make itself known as his eyebrow crooked slightly in spite of it all. “I distinctly remember you indicating back in Redgrave City that you were uninterested in that story. But I suppose we do have time. If you’ve since reconsidered.”

Dante chuckled to himself as he shook his head. He had said that, hadn’t he? Vergil had him dead to rights in that regard. “Eh, I was just being difficult. Lay it on me.”

“Very well. It was a short affair, but I can only imagine that the details will prove to be… entertaining to you, at the very least.” Vergil leaned back in his seat and gave Dante a serious look. It was clear that whatever he was about to say was no laughing matter. “But.. you will not speak of this to Nero. To anyone or either of them. Not until I have. I owe them that much.”

Dante nodded. His older twin hadn’t needed to tell him that in the first place. He didn’t think that it was right to do something like that, and he was quite certain that Vergil probably knew that, but he clearly still felt the need to say as much. It was simply that important to him. “Deal. Not that I needed telling in the first place, but fine. So what’s the story.”

Vergil chuckled to himself, shaking his head. Now that they were on the same page… “It’s pathetic. Given the circumstances, I fully understand why I let it slip from my memory. But I shall tell you what I remember.”

(-~-)

Well, this conversation was one heck of a roller coaster! I hope you liked it! I’m typing this as the guy from the internet company is pulling into the parking lot to see whats going on with my wifi. Fingers crossed it’s not the wiring! See you in the comments and next week on Friday! I hope you liked it! Bye bye!

3 notes · View notes

changkkk · 4 months

Text

Believe in yourself

When I was very young, I had a strong interest in English and often brought in some English materials to translate with the help of a dictionary. What left a deep impression now is an article written by a British medical expert about skin care. He said that the best skincare method is not to use any skincare products, because all skincare products contain some ingredients that are irritating or so-called protective to the skin. If skincare products are used for a long time, these ingredients will enter the skin's microcirculation system, causing the skin to lose its original self-protection ability, and can only rely on these external things for essential circulation. Once stopped, the skin will accelerate aging, and the result will be counterproductive. The expert concludes the article with advice: trust your own skin.

We can provide many examples to illustrate this issue. For example, drug use, such as alcoholism, such as overeating, materialistic desires, greed, expressive desires, success desires, prying desires, aggressive desires, scheming desires, and falling into a pit and falling into a stone desire. Once something external intervenes in the internal circulation, whether it is benign or negative, it becomes a component of your life and it is difficult to leave it.

Upon careful consideration, so-called hobbies, quirks, addictions, habits, norms, concepts, and culture are all related to the internal circulation, which I refer to in a broad sense.

Human beings are actually a very big concept, not just referring to individuals or groups of life, but more importantly, to an existence, a system, a world. The concept of the human body is not only referring to the human body, but in a sense, it is on par with celestial bodies. The various events and phenomena that occur in the world we see today, such as wars, mutinies, terrorism, certain surface natural disasters, as well as the actions and destruction of political systems, frequent development and decline, changes and conservatism of ideas, cultural integration and interconnection, cannot be separated from the specific operations of humans. From a global perspective, humans are a factor in this large circular system of the world; From the perspective of a group, culture, concepts, norms, and laws are the factors of this group's circular system; From an individual perspective, your flesh and blood, hobbies, habits, and thoughts become factors in your own circulatory system.

In this way, the essence of the world is natural, because the essence of the human body is also natural.

Once a vicious cycle occurs in the human body, its consequences not only ultimately destroy oneself, but also inevitably affect society, and its harmfulness is related to the person's influence. For example, from Hitler style heads of state to social scum that harms families, neighbors, and organizations. If a vicious cycle occurs in the operation of a group or society, the consequences are unimaginable.

People must have a sense of self rescue. Morals, norms, and laws can constrain you, but ultimately saving you also has to be done through yourself. For example, try to eliminate some toxins from the body on your own.

I would like to borrow the words of that medical expert: believe in yourself

0 notes

lily-drake · 3 years

Text

Fantasy/Twin AU

Sorry for being late and not posting for a bit. Was a bit burnt out and had writer block. I will go back to write the other days soon though. Also, sorry, I suck at writing wing aus, this is my first time doing it.

Earth J-236, an earth full of mystical life. An earth where everyone is born with wings. Your wings represented who you are; well not really, but that’s what people believed. If your wings were bright and colorful then you were obviously an amazing person, but if your wings were darker or had little color, then you have great evil in your soul. Marinette was born seconds after her twin, Damian. It takes a few years before your wings fully grow in, usually to about 6. But with the accelerated growth serums used in their artificial wombs, it took them till they were three for their feathers to sprout. Damian’s were black like their father’s with subtle hints of red like their mothers. Marinette’s were pure black, devoid of any color, and her mother was so proud of that. She was the League’s charm, for it’s believed that anyone with pure black wings was pure evil. Her only purpose being to protect her brother, nothing else was more important than her brother’s safety. She would die for him, because if he died she might as well have died as well as her only purpose for living would be gone.

Damian glared at his sister, his wings ruffling in annoyance. She was hovering close to him again, and she never said anything to him ever unless she was completely sure they were alone. He did not believe that his sister was or could ever be, “pure evil” just because of her wings. In fact, her mannerisms are the exact opposite of what people believed. She, in her own ways, is caring, sweet, and protective. He had seen, and helped, her nurse a baby bird that had fallen from its nest back to health. She would often place little things around the base for only him to find such as some extra baklava, a throwing knife, a drawing of someone, beads, or other random objects. Grandfather had always been extra hard on her, making sure she wouldn’t betray them, she wouldn’t become “evil enough to lose herself”. Sometimes she would sneak into his room at night, and it tore him apart to see silent tears run down his little sister's face as small black raven feathers fell onto the floor from her days worth of training. He had been learning how to fly, her wings had been clipped every two or three months so she could not leave the base. She had learned long ago to control her facial and wing expressions, but he could always see the droop in them and the sad shine in her eyes as she stood on the ground while he was in the air.

________

Marinette looked up and watched as the fiery Phoenix flew through the air setting Nada Parabat aflame. She didn’t feel much as she watched her grandfather get blown up. She only felt great anxiety and fear as she could not find her brother. She loved her brother, and if her job was to cause chaos, she would make sure she could prevent it from hurting him. Grandfather had told her about how cursed she was, it’s why they had to be extra tough on her, and she understood that. They couldn’t have her hurting anyone they needed, only the people they wanted gone. She was angry at grandfather yesterday for taking some of her feathers for failing a task, this must have been her fault. She didn’t want to hurt her brother, her wings had only proven nothing but destruction. She had to leave now, then she could go where no one else was, and she wouldn’t have to hurt anyone else. So like a coward, like the disgrace she was, she ran. She kept her wings tight against her back making sure that no one could grab them as she ran. An arrow hit one of them, but she didn’t have time to think about the burning pain as she ran and ran and ran farther and farther and farther away. Tears ran down her cheeks as she silently prayed that her brother would be okay.

She didn’t know how long she ran, but she knew it must have been a really long time as she had just collapsed from exhaustion in the woods. She looked back at her wings and slowly and carefully spread them out and hissed in pain from where the arrow had pierced her left wing. Drops of red slowly dripped down her feathers and dropped on the ground. She quickly closed them and made sure they were as small and put away as possible. She looked up at the trees made of brass with different colored jade leaves. Pearl-like apples growing on a few. She watched a baby griffon follow it’s mother in the distance, turtle ducks waddling to a pond somewhere nearby, deer nibbling on plants, she could hear the rustling of leaves and branches from unseen creatures and everything was getting more blurry and dark. She was cold, it felt very cold. She slowly unwound her wings from around herself and closed them tightly around her, but that didn’t stop the chill that went deep down to her bones. She was a failure, a mistake, she would only cause harm. Here she wouldn’t be able to do that, and if she died here, then no one would be hurt by her again, and wasn’t that such a nice thought.

________

Tom and Sabine had finally been able to hire some trusted employees and explore places in Tibet. They had made lots of money over the years with their successful bakery, and they thought now was a better time than ever to go on a real honeymoon as they hadn’t been able to afford it before when the bakery had first started. It was during one of these forest explorations when they saw a trail of little drops of blood and felt they needed to follow it. What they discovered broke their hearts. There lying on the cold forest floor was what appeared to be a child hugging their very black wings around them. They knew of the rumors and myths of black winged people, but they did not care. They believed that their wings were not what made them evil, but rather situations put into their lives. Sabine quickly checked for a pulse, and though it was slow she sighed in relief when she felt it. She quickly handed the small unconscious girl to Tom and they both quickly went to the nearest hospital. How could someone leave such a small child all alone to die like that? It looked as if she had been injured if the dried blood on the small fragile wings said anything. And worst of all, upon closer examination, they had been clipped, recently too.

As soon as they arrived they carried the small girl to the front and demanded that they take her in. They waited until the doctors were done and gave them permission to visit claiming to be the girl’s adopted parents. It wasn’t technically a lie, they would be soon even if Sabine had to force it to happen.

When Marinette woke up she knew something was off. She was under a blanket, she’s never been given a blanket before. The sent of bleach and chemicals were everywhere and it hurt her nose. There was a beeping noise next to her that was giving her a headache. She didn’t know where she was, and that was bad. She opened her eyes a small fraction so nobody could see she was awake and looked around as much as she could. The entire room was white and there were bright lights. There were two strange people waiting in chairs near where she was laying. She wondered if they were the ones who brought her here. Slowly she opened them up all the way and silently sat up. It’s best to make no noise, then she wouldn’t disturb anyone.

“Oh sweety, I’m so glad you’re awake.”

The woman said in a cheery and relieved manner, but she just continued to watch and study them silently. Her wings felt stiff against her back, though she made sure they didn’t move or give anything away.

“How are you feeling dear?”

Silence greeted them, and her face remained as impassive as ever. They wanted something, why else would they save a freak like her? What were they aiming for here?

“Did your parents hurt you? If so, we can take you away from them.”

Marinette’s eyes widened only a fraction. These were randoms, innocents if you will. They obviously had no idea who she was, and they seemed unafraid of her and her wings. Did they not know how dangerous she was, didn’t they know that black wings meant she was cursed? The man and the woman looked at eachother and spread their wings. Marinette was shocked, but she wouldn’t show it.

The large man had light brown eagle wings while the small woman had white and black woodpecker wings. She wanted to reach out and touch the feathers, but then something bad would happen to them, so she held her hands together.

“We don’t care what your wing color is. Your wings don’t define who you are, it’s what you do with your life that does. Can we please help you?”

The woman said sincerely as she gripped the man’s hand in hers. She felt a pull to them, something telling her to accept. She didn’t want to hurt them though. But maybe she could protect them? Maybe she could find a way around her curse and make sure they don’t get hurt? Slowly she nodded and they both looked so happy when she did. She hoped that she wouldn’t hurt them, they didn’t deserve to be cursed. Maybe if she didn’t touch them things would be ok. If she didn’t let them touch her then it wouldn’t spread. She could do this!

________

Apparently she couldn’t do it because this is a very affectionate family, and the first thing that happened before they let her sleep on their —super fluffy, pure Heaven— bed was give her a hug. She had made sure that her wings were tucked under her clothes and tight against her back the entire time though. So they didn’t touch her wings, so maybe that meant they wouldn’t be cursed.

It was strange, because the next morning they went to a courthouse, and she was adopted. She hadn’t said anything throughout the entire event, she just watched and observed what people did. They stayed in Tibet for another few days before they flew to Paris, France. This was supposed to be her new home. The city of light and love. Maybe here, it would stop her curse. It was so bright that it had to block out her darkness. She still always carried one of her knives with her, she felt naked without one. Tom and Sabine seemed to understand somehow, and said that it was her business and that was enough for them till she was ready to talk about it. It was strange not to be interrogated for now wanting to tell someone something.

Marinette had lived with the Dupain-Chengs for about a year now. It was strange really, they were honest business people and their joy was always sincere. They didn’t question much of what she did even though it was probably weird to them. They didn’t punish her for messing up like the league did, and they never went near her wings without permission. They never plucked her feathers, and they would often ask if they could preen her wings. She would refuse every time, but she would often wonder what it would be like to have someone else touch them. Think of what it would be like if she weren’t cursed. When it was time for school she would always wrap them around herself then tape them so no one would see or be able to touch them. Things were finally going well, she couldn’t risk it now!

There was a blonde brat that liked to act like she was above her, and because her wings were always hidden with no explanation she made sure everyone knew that she was “wingless”. She didn’t care though, being wingless was better than being evil winged. She never really said anything in class or to other students, she never gave much reaction keeping her stoic face up. The brat left her alone soon after for being a, “ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous freak.” And nobody was the wiser.

Being Lady Chaos was….the best thing that ever happened to her if she was being honest. Even with pure black wings, people still thought she was a hero. She never flew, she was scared she’d fall and die. She was never allowed to fly before, and even if she technically can do so now, it’s not worth the risk. Her partner though, Mr. Bug has gold, red, and black wings. He can fly through the air with ease she wished she desperately had. Sometimes after patrol she would go to the very top of the Eiffel Tower and just stretch her wings out as far out as she could. She would close her eyes as the wind blew past her and ruffled her feathers and pretend that she was soaring through the air.

________

Year three of living with Tom and Sabine she was comfortable talking to them more, and with Plagg there to control her chaos she finally let them touch her wings. It was strange really, she never took care of her wings, never cared enough to. When she first felt the hands on her feathers she had to will herself not to draw them back for fear of them plucking or ripped out. But Sabine’s hands were so gentle and smooth that they seemed to move on their own and go closer to her touch. Sabine would smile and hum as she gently preened the dark raven feathers that were soft and smooth. Maybe she could finally tell the class that she wasn’t wingless soon, and maybe they would be okay with it.

No, they would not as she learned from listening to her classmates talk to the new student, Lila Rossi. To them Lady Chaos was the only good black winged person because she was chasing after Mr. Bug to earn his affections. Lady Chaos was obviously evil before she met Mr. Bug and she would always be evil no matter what she did. Marinette felt nauseous that she ever thought about telling them the truth. She had never felt more betrayed than she felt now, because she had given them her trust, and they broke it without even knowing it. After that day, she made extra sure that her wings were hidden and wore a bit thicker clothing just in case. Tom and Sabine are a little worried about it, but she calmed them pretty quickly. She was fine, it wasn’t like they were all great friends to begin with. That’s probably why everyone sides with Lila and decides that she’s a terrible person.

She had tried leaving her past behind, pretending that she didn’t hurt and kill people. Pretend that she wasn’t a weapon. She tried to push it far away, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. She had abandoned her brother. She betrayed the league. She did unspeakable things to please someone who would never care about her, just her use. The city of lights seems duller than usual, it was probably her fault Hawkmoth came to be in the first place, afterall she was cursed to bring ruin everywhere she went.

________

Lila and Chloe thought it would be a great idea to bring everybody to the Crime Capital of the World for their senior trip. Probably to watch people flounder and worry when things go wrong, which they definitely would. She had stopped Hawkmoth a month before the trip, but Mr. Bug took all the credit for it. The arrogant self centered bas*. Adrien kept giving her side glances that always made her feel uncomfortable and slightly disgusted. During school he would try to touch her with every chance he’d get. He almost discovered her wings at one point. She couldn’t do anything about it before because of the stupid your-rich-so-do-whatever-the-heck-you-want treatment. Now that Adrien’s family fortune is gone, and people don’t trust him because of what his dad did, so he has to be more careful. He now kept some distance, which she was extremely grateful for.

She would have broken his hand, she had imagined it plus other things more than once. But then Tom and Sabine would get in trouble by Gabriel for her actions. They didn’t deserve that, they had been nothing but good to her since they found her abandoned in that forest.

She would be fine though, as long as Lila had a grip on his arm and she was in the back, away from him. She listened to their tour guide, Richard Grayson, talk about the history and importance of WE. The architecture was brilliant really, and you couldn’t blame her for having to draw and sketch it. She often thought of Damian when she sketched. She used to leave drawings for him around the base, little things that expressed her adoration for him without getting too close. She wondered if he was still with the league, had he escaped, did he die? She hoped that wasn’t the case, she hoped that he would be alive and well. Bright orange and white wings nearly slapped her in the face if she hadn’t stopped right before the movement had occurred.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry Marinette! Sometimes my wings just spasm out of control like that! I didn’t hurt you did I?”

Marinette just silently rolled her eyes and took a few steps backward and watched the class glare at her waiting for her to comfort the liar. She would never lower herself to do that. She was still an Al Ghul afterall, even if she did leave it behind when she fled. She was thankful when lunch came, she waited far away from the line and watched silently from a dark corner to make sure no one would hurt her. Then she felt it, a hand touching her back feeling for something. She quickly and instinctively grabbed the arm and twisted it behind them pinning it behind their back at a painful angle.

“Ukhti, let go.”

Marinette knew that voice. She remembered that name and she could feel her heart stop. The lunchroom was silent as they watched the small bluenette silently and quickly release the “Ice Prince”. Everyone watched with bated breaths to see what would happen next. The boy’s wings were ruffled in agitation and fear.

“Where are they?”

He demanded. Marinette knew what he was talking about, she simply wrapped her arms around herself and turned her head away definitely.

“Why are you hiding them, Malak? Please.”

Marinette could feel her wings moving in defiance to what her brain was saying. They wanted to be shown, they wanted to be touched by her brother again. She looked down and slowly uncrossed her arms from her body. Damian gently took her hands in his and looked directly into her eyes.

“Everything will be ok, Taw'ami.”

She slowly nodded and with shaky fingers reached under her hoodie and began to slowly unwrap the tape that kept her wings confined. When all the tape was in her hands she hesitantly removed her hoodie and let her wings unfold from around herself and into the open. She had made shirts that let her wings slip through slits in the back that were tailored to her wings specifically and were most comfortable. Damian marveled at how big her raven wings had grown and how shiny they were. He reached out a hand slowly and gently ran his fingers down the inky black that was her wings.

Shouts of fear and accusations were thrown at her, mostly from her class. She didn’t listen though, she just observed. The tour guide was coming over now, probably to kick her out. He had such lovely wings though, they were a deep navy blue that looked similar to black with dark red and light blue running through them. They looked so well kept and soft.

“Damian, what’s happening? Who is this?”

“Grayson, meet my twin sister, Marinette.”

“You have a twin?!”

Richard exclaimed loudly, drawing even more attention. The insults and jeers stopped after that. She looked over at the class and smirked when she saw their shock and confusion.

“Yes, keep up.”

Damian said brusquely. They must know each other well then.

“Come, we must take her away from these imbeciles and take her to father.”

Damian grabbed her wrist and tugged, her quickly falling into line like she used to when he did this.

“Now tell me Ukhti, have you been taking care of yourself?”

She nodded as they came to an elevator and walked into it with Richard right behind them. Marinette felt her feathers fluff up nervously. She wasn’t in control of them right now, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Damian ran a hand gently down her right wing trying to smooth it down.

“Things will be fine Marinette. Just watch, father will be glad to meet you.”

She looked him in the eyes and squeezed her hands together.

“No, I have not told him about you. Things will be fine though.”

He seemed to understand her weird way of communicating, she still didn’t understand how he did. Richard cleared his throat and both turned to look at him.

“Sorry to interrupt, but um…I’m Dick, I’m Damian’s, and yours I guess, oldest brother. It’s nice to meet you.”

He spread his wings in a welcoming way that meant and showed safety and peace. Her wings involuntarily rose up as well to reciprocate his greeting. When the door to the elevator opened again she quickly forced her wings to hide on her back trying desperately to keep them from sight. Damian didn’t seem to like it, but he just grabbed her wrist and dragged her to a large office room. The plaque on the door read “CEO Bruce Wayne”. Their father was Bruce Wayne?! She couldn’t go in there, she couldn’t curse him and ruin his life. No, she had already messed up at the league, and she was just barely not messing up with Tom and Sabine, she would definitely ruin Bruce Wayne’s life, and she would not allow that to happen. She tugged at his grip desperately trying to get away.

“Marinette, stop. Your wings are not cursed, that was a lie.”

Marinette shook her head and kept trying to escape the iron-like grip.

“Do you not trust me anymore?”

She froze at that and quickly shook her head. Of course she trusted him, it was her that shouldn’t be trusted.

“Good, because we’re going in now.”

And that was that, because the door was now open and she was being dragged into the office room where their father and another boy with large bags under his eyes stared at them. Damian puffed up his chest and feathers letting his strong, big, and brilliant wings rise into the air.

“Father, this is your daughter, my twin, Marinette Erebus Al Ghul-Wayne.”

They both stared at her in shock and Marinette slowly and cautiously raised her despicable black wings into the air. Both stared at them in awe before looking back at her, but she didn’t meet their eyes. She didn’t want to see the disgust and hatred in their eyes.

After a few moments she looked up and saw their wings greeting hers like Dick’s had. Their father’s wings were a mix of black and dark grey alternating the color in each row of feathers. The other boy’s were black at the top and slowly turned to red at the bottom. But they were welcoming her openly, so that must mean something! Well, it was time to get to know her father, she guessed.

299 notes · View notes

pa-panda-heroes · 4 years

Note

heya! how about a scenario where shiggy accidentally hurts the reader with his quirk and like, freak tf out? angsts with lots and lots of fluff, please! ty! ♥︎

Okokok imma do my best for my first angst!! Also I added Dabi because I got a request for him a while back and I’ve wanted to write him for a bit, now <3 hope that’s okay!

I think this was a bit longer for a scenario but... I enjoyed writing it so :>

Warnings: language, mentions of violence(? Eh...)

Tomura/Dabi accidentally hurt reader with their quirks!

Tomura:

It happened accidentally. You knew that. Right? It wasn’t his fault, but his damn quirk’s fault, the one that he never asked for and the one that never allowed anyone to get close. Rather, he never let anyone get close because of it. He’ll admit he was always proud of its destructive capability as a villain, but now that it had hurt you, he wish he’d never boasted to a soul.

Twenty-three times. He had called you twenty-three times. And twenty-three times you didn’t answer. What was he to do, now? There was no stopping the decay borne from his fingertips once it had set in, and considering you wouldn’t answer your phone... it didn’t look good. Kurogiri had whisked you away before Tomura could even utter an apology, which looked to him as though Kurogiri did so in order for him not to witness your death. Kurogiri told him something about a doctor, but Tomura figured him a liar.

He couldn’t breathe. You shouldn’t have been hurt. Literally. Tomura hadn’t so much as touched you with a single finger; if anything, he was trying to protect you from the stranger grabbing you. It happened so fast, all he remembered was his quirk activating and the stranger vanishing before he heard your cry of pain and saw the skin of your arm drying out, much like he had done to that hero at U.S.J. He couldn’t tell, but it somewhat looked as though the decay was limited to just your bicep. That could’ve been hopeful thinking, of course, and he knew it.

So he sat there, all alone and hunched over on the couch in the bar, with misery and dread coursing his veins, accelerating his blood pressure to concerning levels. He had nothing to look at but his shaking palms and red shoes as he tried to even out his breathing - to no avail. Then, he felt the weight of someone sitting next to him, and instantly recognized how far the cushion next to him sunk in. And yet, he couldn’t look at you.

“Thanks for that back there,” you say quietly, afraid to startle him, but you recieve no response. “Y’know, I’m not sure what would’ve happened if my knight in shining armor hadn’t showed up!” You knew he felt guilty. Why wouldn’t he? But he shouldn’t. You wanted to convince him of that.

“Didn’t go far, huh,” you hear him mumble, nodding his head to your bandaged left arm next to him. There was no life to his voice and before you can say anything, he speaks again. “It won’t happen again. You’re not coming around anymore.”

“Hey, wait! That’s not your-“

“I’m the leader, and I say so! You can stay in the League, but you can’t... be close to me. You’ll get hurt.”

You stand up in defiance and put your hands on your hips in defense. “I’m not leaving you! First of all, I can take care of myself. Second, look at the League. We have a bloodthirsty serial killer and a cynical pyromaniac constantly lounging about, and you’re worried about some one-in-a-million freak accident happening again?” Patience was key with Tomura, and you knew that, but he could be stubborn and unreasonable, and when it came to you, stubbornly, unreasonably protective. “Besides, with the world as it is, I could get hurt doing something as mundane as taking out the trash, like I was when I was attacked!”

He finally looked at you, the look of a whipped pup on his face and while you knew he wasn’t doing it on purpose, you felt guilty for raising your voice at him. You sigh quietly and sit back down next to him, reaching for his hand and settling for his knee when he yanked it away. You snuck your arm around his shoulders and plopped your cheek on his shoulder, knowing all too well he would welcome it despite his standoffishness - and he did. Tomura didn’t pull away or push you off. But he hid his face. Your fingers on his left shoulder rubbed at it, his clavicle prominent enough you almost cringed at how thin he was. Your other hand on his leg idly toyed with the seam of his jeans, not having anything better to do.

“I’m sorry.” It was unclear as to whether he was apologizing for hurting you, or for demanding you keep your distance from him. Either way, it was undoubtedly genuine and soft.

You sat up straight and hugged your leader and lover from the side, gliding your fingers through his hair as you gently guided it to you. He hesitated slightly before burying his head into your chest and latching onto your ribcage for dear life, muttering the weakest “Don’t go, please,” anyone has ever heard. The desperation and vulnerability in his voice elicited your arms to wrap around him in a tight, warm embrace, your chin digging into his hair when you peck it, again and again and again. You stifled a giggle at how soft and ticklish his hair felt, electing to gently shush him.

“I just told you, didn’t I? I’m not going anywhere, even if you tell me to. I love you, silly.”

Dabi:

Dabi let out every curse known to mankind - and then some - as he rushed over to you, the bastard thugs the two of you had been after now burning alive and falling to the street. He would have sworn on his life you were not within range of his flames, and yet here you were, on the ground clutching your burnt leg and cringing away the searing tears of pain. Maybe you didn’t see him readying the attack and charged in? Maybe one of those thugs diverted his attack? He wasn’t sure.

“Y/n-“

What little color he had in his face drains completely, and his fingertips are already trembling.

“Dabi, I’m fine,” you tried to assure him. “It’s not that bad! I’ll just need a little first aid.” It hurt like hell, a white-hot, pulsating pain, you couldn’t lie. You just weren’t going to tell him that. It stretched from just below your knee to a hand’s length above your ankle and covered only the side of your leg, thankfully. The affected area was an awfully dark pink and honestly, it was hard to look at.

He practically scoffed at you. “Y/n, you’re fucking burnt. Don’t tell me that shit.” From the look on his face, it seemed bad.

That was the most cross he’d ever been with you, despite his brash and vulgar nature, and you couldn’t help but retreat a little as he knelt down to you and pulled his phone out of his pocket to make a call. “Y/n’s hurt, get us to the bar or something.” He grabbed your leg - surprisingly gently - and seemed to examine it. He paused as if to listen to the other end. “She’s burnt, does it matter? Just get us the hell out of here.” He must’ve called Kurogiri, as the next thing you know there’s a warp tunnel summoned next to you.

You tried standing on your own to leave, but the burn decided it didn’t want you to do so, and so you dropped back to the ground and bit your lip at the shockwaves of pain crawling up your leg. Dabi said nothing and helped you up himself, grabbing your arm and side to help you walk through the warp. Once through, he set you down on the couch, still eerily quiet, and left you there. The pain was so bad at this point, you began to think you’d faint, your head feeling fuzzy as tears run down your cheeks.

The stapeled villain returns with a bucket of ice water, towels, and what looks to be a first aid kit. But he stops for a second when he sees you hunched over with a death grip on your knee and the seat beneath you, and it takes all he has to hold it the fuck together. He’s unreasonably angry, and he’s not sure why. He wants to tell and scream, maybe at you, maybe not, he’s not sure. His quirk’s only quality was destructiveness. It was damaging not only to his enemies but also to his own body - and now, you.

He hurt you. Accident or not, he hurt you. The lump in his throat was suffocating.

Dabi knelt down and soaked a towel in the cold water before wringing it wordlessly, then gently tapping it to your leg and pulling back when you hiss. He seemed to notice it but didn’t outwardly acknowledge it and contintued to use the cold towel on your burn. As more time passed, the more convinced he became that it was a second-degree burn, meaning the second layer of your skin, the dermis, was badly burnt. He had no doubt it would scar, and at the thought the breath was pulled from his lungs. Dabi muttered a curse and suddenly rested his forehead against your knee, his right hand holding the cool towel to your leg.

“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault, fuck.” His voice was low, and if you looked hard enough, you could hear that it was forced out through a tense throat. He was nearly in tears, wasn’t he? He wasn’t an overly emotional person by any means, but the fact that his quirk hurt you, with its history, it hurt worse than if you would’ve left him for a hero. He hated himself. His quirk didn’t have a single redeeming quality, and he began to think the same of himself.

“Dabi, don’t, okay? I’ll be fine, really.” You can’t help how weak your voice sounds, being in so much pain, but you nonetheless plant a hand in his hair and rub his scalp.

Dabi lifts his head to look at you, and the look in his eyes isn’t something you’ve seen before. His free hand comes up to rest on your thigh, and you can feel it shaking. “It might scar, y/n. Don’t you get that?”

You huff. “So? If it does, I’d be pretty cool with that, all puns intended,” you try to giggle at your own pun and can practically feel him rolling his eyes, “Besides, I’d kinda match you, wouldn’t I? It’ll be like a couple’s tattoo sort of thing!”

He rests his chin atop your knee and a look that only be described as a pout crosses his features, but he says nothing and you can only smile. Dabi deadpans when you say nothing, forcing yourself to beam at him with bright eyes and a smile. “You’re a weird one, ya know that?” he muttered.

“You’re even weird for falling in love with me,” you teased after he began to work on your leg again.

“Pfft.”

#mha #mha scenarios #mha x reader #shigaraki x reader #dabi x reader #shigaraki tomura #dabi #scenarios #angst #comfort / fluff #at the end!#hope you enjoy <3 #i did my best!#edited because tumblr desktop is a silly bean and wont do color text for me

2K notes · View notes

nejibaby · 3 years

Text

The Sun

Pairing: Portgas D. Ace x Reader

Summary: If there’s two things common between you and Icarus, they’re 1) you both tried to get too close to the sun, and 2) you’re both mortal — vulnerable and susceptible to the pain that comes with it.

This is initially intended to be the second part of Burn, but this can also be considered a standalone fic. 😊

[I also tweaked the story of Icarus and Daedalus a little bit so they can fit the One Piece universe. Hope you don’t mind.]

Word Count: 1.6k

A/N: So you see I’m trying out this new writing style, but I’m not sure if it turned out how I wanted it to be. But please let me know your thoughts about it~

Icarus.

Back when you still lived in your hometown, as a child, you have grown to like the tales of sailors who docked at your island. There’s this story about one of the first ever heard of uses of devil fruit powers.

It’s about a master craftsman named Daedalus imprisoned in some far away kingdom with his son, Icarus. With their cell up high in the castle and the ground filled with guards, there was no means to escape for an average person. But Daedalus was all sorts of things other than average; he’s a father, a genius, and a devil fruit user of the Doru Doru no Mi. And because of those, he has found a way to get out of the kingdom through something that only he can make: wings made out of candle wax.

“Don’t fly too close to the sun or else the heat will melt the wax and you’ll fall into the sea.” A fair warning from Daedalus to Icarus as he handed a pair of wings to his son, who only nodded in response.

Their escape went on without a hitch with the help of the wings. However, because of the delectable taste of freedom, the further away they had gone from the kingdom that constricted them, the more precarious Icarus got. He flew higher and higher and higher, until his wings started melting. And only when he was falling to the sea did he notice that the wings had melted off completely. Even Daedalus had noticed it too late, and all he could’ve done was lament for his son who didn’t heed his words.

“It was tragic,” the sailor once told you. But all you could ever think about back then was that Icarus was dumb. Foolish. Idiotic. Stupid. Moronic.

Why would he fly higher when he knew the risks? It just didn’t make sense. There was no rational explanation, no sensible justification for it.

But now that you’re older, you might have found a possible reason why he did what he did.

Maybe, just like you, he fell in love with the sun.

The Sun.

Icarus might have fallen in love with the sun. But who are you to judge him? The sun is bright, brilliant, warm, and enticing. You couldn’t blame him for wanting to be guided by its light, to bask in its warmth, to ever so gently be caressed by its flames. You couldn’t blame him for wanting to be nearer, despite the repercussions.

You can’t call him out because you did just the same. Ace was — no — is your sun.

With his charming and boyish smile that’s always capable of cheering you up, you can mistake him as the light. He’s like the sun peeking from the clouds after a stormy day, or the sun rising after the darkest night.

In his embrace, no matter how momentary, anyone would be able to feel his care. Hell, even with his arm slung over your shoulder or his mere presence beside you, you would feel a sense of security. Because Ace is also the warmth and the comfort. Pretty much like the gentle rays of the sun enveloping you with a blanket after a cold breeze.

But you also know that like the sun, he too is dangerous. The least he can do is to burn you. And at the very worst, he could be destructive.

The Fall.

When Icarus got too close to the sun, his wings melted and naturally, he fell into the sea. There were no stories about how he felt or what was in his mind when it happened, but recently you’d like to imagine that he was content.

Falling is scary, that much is true. But falling can also be exhilarating and thrilling — it’s feeling only your weightlessness, the breathlessness, the adrenaline flowing through your blood.

You’d like to think that as Icarus fell, his thoughts were about how he did not regret what he did. In the end, he got his freedom and then he made a brave choice of going after his love. Isn’t it better to have felt the burning light than never at all? Isn’t it better to have a taste of love albeit briefly?

You’re no Icarus. You’re not a child of a genius, and you have no wings that’ll melt once you get close to your sun. But for you, the answer to these questions is yes.

You’re grateful to have experienced being by Ace’s side. You’re happy to have seen his smiles and to have heard his laughs. You’re content to have been the recipient of his sparing touches.

And as you ran with bloodied hands and injured parts after escaping from the Blackbeard Pirates, you’re pleased that it was you in this predicament and not Ace. He’s safe and it’s because of you. And despite standing face to face with death just moments ago, you’re delighted because you accomplished your mission to get information about their plans.

If there’s one thing you and Icarus should regret though, it’s being vulnerable and susceptible to pain.

The Reunion.

Icarus did not live long enough to be reunited with the sun. But you did. Your body might have been littered with scars now, but the important thing is that you survived. You’re alive, you’re healed, and you’re at peace.

And you’re back with the Whitebeard Pirates.

Whitebeard, the Division Commanders, and the former members of the Spade pirates are quick to reprimand you for your rash actions once you board the ship. You listen to their sentiments quietly, understanding the severity of your decision, but you stand by your ground, telling them you didn’t regret doing it, especially since you’ve gotten valuable information about Blackbeard. And once you’ve relayed everything to them, they all quickly let you off the hook.

All except one, of course.

You’re just about to retire to your room when Ace softly asks, “Yo, can we talk?” once you pass him by.

The sun is always so inviting. It’s capable of luring you out of whatever cave you’re hiding in. That’s the aura Ace gives off when you turn to look at him. So you nod your head and follow him to a more private area on the ship.

At this moment, you can’t help but think that the sun and the planets are bound by the laws of science. Science tells us that planets orbit around the sun because of attraction, however, they must never cross the line. This has been your mistake in the past, but now you know better. And so now you try to physically distance yourself from him.

Ace doesn’t comment on the distance. You aren’t sure if he even noticed. Instead he asks, “Why did you do it?”

You raise your brow, “We wanted information, right?”

“I was the one who should’ve been doing that. I’m his Commander. I’m the one who’s supposed to be responsible for that.”

You scoff. “It’s done now, let’s not dwell on it anymore—”

“But you could’ve died!”

“So what? Would you rather it was you? Because I don’t! If you died… if you died…” you choked back a sob. You didn’t want to think about him dying. Just the thought of it is enough to tug your heartstrings.

The sight of you softens him up right away. “Hey, hey, hey,” he tries soothing you. “I’m not gonna die.”

“You say that, but even the sun will die eventually. And I don’t want to witness that tragedy.”

This shuts Ace up. He didn’t really understand how much he matters to you until now. Seeing you crumble with just the thought of him dying makes him realize that your confession to him before the two of you parted was indeed the truth. “You’re right. I’m sorry…”

You could only bite your lip to calm yourself down.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking when you were away…” Ace murmurs. “And my thoughts were always about you.”

You gulp as your heart rate accelerates. Will he be turning you down properly this time? Give you the confirmation and closure that you need?

If you focus on your thoughts, you can hear a chant in your head: The sun will prioritize light over love. The sun will prioritize light over love. The sun will prioritize light over love.

But you reason, that’s okay. The sun is bound by the laws of science and one of its main purposes for its existence is to provide light. And you will not hold Ace back from doing that. If he doesn’t love you, it’s fine, you’ll be fine.

“I thought… you didn’t like me,” Ace says.

This statement catches your attention immediately. You’re about to object but he continues, “Because you always called me ‘Captain’ and then ‘Commander,’ and never by my name. And I thought that that was you drawing the line between us.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not good at these things,” he chuckles, trying to lighten the mood.

But you remain tense, trying to comprehend what’s happening.

Ace takes a small step toward you.

And you couldn’t help but think that if Ace gets closer, you’ll burn once again.

Yet you watch with wide eyes, not stopping him as he gets closer and closer and closer.

At this point you can only hear how wildly your heart is beating across your chest.

And when Ace raises his hand to tenderly touch your cheek, you realize: The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Which could only mean one thing: his focus has always been on you.

“I love you, my angel,” Ace whispers as he presses his forehead against yours. “I’m in love with you,” and he seals his admission with a kiss.

177 notes · View notes

thesunshinebunny · 4 years

Text

When the world falls apart, the only thing we can hold onto is ourselves (Part I)

Series Master list

Pairing: Canon Eren Jaeger x reader

Content: Angst, unstable relationship, breakup, smut/nswf+18, major character death, violence, blood (obviously), war (pretty obvious)

Summary: War and hate. It’s what defined the world at this exact moment. You failed your comrades, and by failing them, you failed yourself. Your relationship is hanging by a thread and your enemies will not only be found on the other side of the sea, but also in the mind of the person you love the most. How will you take the reins in the face of so much destruction?

Chapter Summary: After watching their teammates die in battle, reader begins to question their sanity and of their so-called partner.

AN: let me say goodbye to my favorite girl, who got me the best laughs and relieved my anxiety while reading manga chapters. At the same time, let me succumb to the misery and enlarge the wound with an canon Eren. I won’t be against following this fic if I see that a lot of people like it, but my list of fandoms isn’t going to change, this will be a unique exception.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The chill in the air from the airship rushed through my veins. Less than two hours ago, I had seen countless comrades die, each one of them struck by bullets in different parts of their bodys or eaten by a Titan. I had seen countless lives fall and had been unable to save any. I knew we were going on a suicide mission, but deep down inside of me, I hoped we would all come home alive.

I was very naïve to think of a happy ending in this rotten and violent world.

Inside the room I was in, my mind wandered looking through one of the few windows this war machine gave us. I wasn't paying attention to what Levi or Eren were saying, I didn't even have the slightest intention of asking why Zeke was with us. Although being a member of the Survey Corps and a direct and in training medic, I was not fully informed of the missions. Eren’s courtesy.

Bored and mentally tired, I left the room where my leaders were having a heated discussion with "humanity's last hope." I didn't have the strength to add more charcoal to the fire, but trust me when I tell you I wasn’t at all happy with Eren's plan, simply and exclusively because I was completely unaware.

I walked down the hall making a mental note to kick the brunette in the face like Levi did when we got back. If my so-called partner, who had the decency to slowly push me away over the last year without explanation, wasn’t confident enough to tell me whatever was going on in his mind, then we would be in front of the doors of a serious conversation back home.

I opened the door where the scouts were when I heard a rifle go off. My eyes went wide and fear washed over me. I instantly scanned my body for wounds, completely ignoring the situation happening in front of me. Finding no sign of impact, I looked up only to find Sasha falling on her back, with a bullet impact on her chest.

The world seemed to have frozen as did my body. No one was able to move. Blood was spreading around Sasha's body, staining the floor, and that's when I reacted. My body moved on its own, pulling the cloak off my shoulders and folding it to make a small pillow. My ears didn’t catch any screams or cries from my teammates, as if I was underwater and the only thing I could hear was my heartbeat accelerating, threatening to come out of my ears.

"I need a syringe with anesthesia, a pair of tweezers, a needle, a lighter, bandages and hot water, NOW !!"

No one was moving, everyone was in shock, including me, but I was layered enough to know that if we didn't do something, Sasha wasn't going to survive.

"Jean, Connie, I need surgical elementes! NOW!!"

The two boys came out of it, running around the room, even going to the continuous, looking for something that might serve, while I tore Sasha's shirt and took her equipment. Mikasa was next to me grabbing the pieces that were in the way.

"Mikasa, I need you to put pressure on the wound and don’t move your hands"

Connie came running back with the anesthesia in hand, trying to give it to me, but me failing. The syringe fell to the floor, but thanks to whatever deity was watching us it didn't break. My hands were shaking with adrenaline, making it impossible for me to inject the needle into the glass vial.

“Sasha… I need you to stay awake, ok? I need you to keep your eyes open at all time"

The dying girl in front of me didn't give me an answer, but I knew she heard me. In the background, I could hear the desperate cries of the others, apart from the fact that someone had hit the culprit in the face. I injected the anesthesia and proceeded to remove the bullet from the lung. Mikasa reapplied pressure with wet cloths.

"Sasha everything will be fine, I assure you, everything will be fine, so don't you dare die on me, okay?"

I couldn't tell who I was addressing those words to, the girl who gave us the best laughs in our training days, or me.

Lighter in hand I proceeded to cauterize the wound, but my eyes fell on Sasha's, noticing how the life had left her eyes. The light that was so bright in her pupils had faded, leaving nothing more than an empty countenance.

"Sasha?...Sasha? hey, this isn’t funny, Sasha wake up…Sasha?? SASHA?!!?!" ...

"SASHA!!!"

Again.

Again I’d been unable to do anything.

Again I’d to see how I was unable to save someone.

Again.

I had seen a mate die. Again.

My chest contracted, the air was impossible to get in or out and my lungs cried out to explode. My stomach wanted to regurgitate, but there was nothing in it, causing me to spasm. My vocal cords were damaged from screaming and my head was about to collapse.

My whole body was about to collapse.

"How dare you!? You son of a bitch, how dare you to shoot the person who forgave your life?"

My anger was now directed at the child they had wanted to bring with us. It was impossible for me to look at her without having the desire to break her face, to make her suffer ... to kill her. To take revenge for Sasha.

“SHE FORGAVE YOUR LIFE BY NOT GIVING YOU A SHOT IN THE HEAD AND IS THAT HOW YOU PAY HER? YOU HATE US SO MUCH? HOW MANY MORE LIVES DO YOU WANT TO TAKE FOR US TO BE SATISFIED?"

My legs got up, leading me towards the girl, but arms held me from behind, preventing me from continue walking, preventing me from taking revenge.

"HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU? YOU ARE THE REAL DEVILS"

In the end, my body collapsed, completely loosening and causing me to almost slide down Connie's arms. I fell to my knees when he released me, snuggling up and hiding my head in my arms. Tears flowed like waterfalls with no intention of stopping and my screams reverberated across the metal in the room.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connie opened the door where our commanders were still arguing. Both with tears in our eyes gave the worst news of the night.

"Sasha died"

Jean and Hange's faces were disfigured and Levi hid his grim outline from us. The room was silent, but all that could be heard were my sobs, spasm after spasm.

"She had a ... a bullet impact ... in ... in the chest ..."

It was difficult, almost impossible, for me to relate the precarious medical report of our friend's death, trying to help me with the movement of my hands ... but even so the spasms won me over. I fell back to the floor, tears invaded my face once more and my ability to articulate words was gone down the drain.

Hange approached with a slow step and placed their hands on my shoulders, giving me the help I needed to give the report. I took several minutes of deep breaths and when my lungs returned to normal, I spoke again.

"Sasha had a bullet impact on the chest, on the left lung ... There was no exit, so the bullet was stuck in there...it pierced two ribs, tearing the skin of the lung and causing internal bleeding... I managd to remove the bullet, but I didn't have time to cauterize and sew the wound ... she bled to death"

Every pause I took to breathe made it so much worse for me to speak back. If it weren't for the fact I was undoubtedly taking deep breaths, I would have passed out from distress and hyperventilation.

"I could have saved her ... I know I could have saved her"

Silence reigned over the room, sobs from Hange and Connie could be heard if we were paying close attention. Jean and Levi glared at Eren, who had not deigned to lift his head at any time.

I got up as best I could, running Hange's hands gently, and left the room once again. I needed to be alone for a while, I needed to let go of these horrible feelings, I needed some air, otherwise I doubted I’d do anything rational in the state I was in.

My legs led me to a room away from all the common ones. It was empty, but it had a couple of windows that chilled the already cold metal walls. Some windows were at my height, allowing me to appreciate the view from the air, but let's face it, it was impossible to appreciate the landscape when your mind and heart were breaking to pieces. The only thing that kept my mind intact from any collapse was the path of smoke and fire that could be seen in the distance... signs that Marley was still on fire.

"Are you ok?"

That familiar voice, all too familiar, echoed in my ears pulling me out of my entrance. Eren had entered the room quietly with the aim of… what? See if it was okay? Because I really wasn't, it showed on my face and that's what made me even more angry than I was.

"Oh, I don't know? Am I ok? Do I FUCKING LOOK OK TO YOU?"

I turned from the window too quickly causing me to stagger and fall to the floor. My head was spinning and starting to ache as was every muscle in my body. I put my hands to my head, hoping the pain would dissipate a bit, but the only thing I managed was to sink further into misery.

"I could have saved her ... if I’d been faster ... I know I could have saved her"

He hadn't moved from where he was, he just stayed there, looking at me. My blood-soaked eyes looked him up and down searching for something, whatever, to speak of, but all I found were non-glare eyes and a neutral gaze, as if he hadn't cared how many lives this mission had claimed.

"Do you want to know how I feel? Fine, I’ll tell you"

I stood up heavily, my muscles begging for a break. I turned my head to see the black smoke rising on the horizon, still clearly noticing an orange and red flare.

“I am tired…I am full of rage and hate. I saw our comrades die and I couldn't do anything, I was unable to save them ... to save Sasha...and all because of not having been informed like everyone else"

My eyes hadn't left the window because I knew, if I looked into those dull turquoise eyes, those same eyes that once shone with all the innocence and life that a young man could have, I would end up punching him.

"Are you happy? Did you accomplished your mission now that you have the power of the warhammer titan? What will be the next step? Go back to Marley in a few months, finish what you started and devour the jaw titan and Reiner? Assassinate the cart titan?”

Again, I got no response. My patience had already reached it’s limit and I looked back at the man who was now standing in the middle of the room.

"You're not going to tell me, are you? No, you never say anything to me, it's like I'm a burden to you" I shuffled on the metal, standing right in front of him "I'm with so much anger in my veins that I want to kill a child, a child Eren! ... A child who had her head washed all her life, a child who doesn’t know the whole truth and who only knows that by killing she can be free"

Unconsciously, my body moved everywhere, as if it wanted to release all the pressure by tiring the muscles. I stood back in front of the window and with all the accumulated anger I gave it a strong blow, slightly scratching the glass and probably breaking some knuckles.

"Sasha died because of my incompetence and the violence of this world...I want to save lives Eren, that's why I'm practicing medicine...I want to dedicate myself to saving souls, not killing them...and we have the culprit stuck in one of our rooms...why?" ...

“WHY DO WE HAVE TWO CHILDS ON OUR AIRPLANE? WHY IS YOUR BROTHER WITH US? WHY DON'T YOU LET ME KNOW WHAT IS GOING THROUGH YOUR HEAD?"

I was sure that my screams could be heard by our entire war machine. I was impatient for answers, but knew I wasn't going to get any, at least not now. My hands didn’t remain calm, they moved everywhere, a sign of my anxiety and my eyes turned around the entire room, looking at each screw, each metal beam... everything except the eyes of my supposed lover.

I was giving up, now I just wanted to rest and have a trip home in peace, even knowing that home was not going to sound the same or feel the same.

"If you have nothing to say Eren, you better leave"

I turned my back on him but didn't proceed to walk away from him. I needed to find an anchor point so as not to give up and throw myself into the arms that one day gave me warmth, the arms that wrapped me in the dark, the arms that reflected their love and affection ... into the arms that now wouldn't hold me from the waist or draw me to his chest. I wasn't going to throw me into some arms that weren't going to contain me.

I heard him take a few small steps towards me and his hand rested lightly on my shoulder. I put it aside abruptly and I distanced myself towards the remote window, seeing how little by little the smoke was getting smaller and I could no longer see the orange flame clearly; now I could only see a thin yellow line fading.

"Leave Eren"

His footsteps rumbled on the metal floor, leaving me alone once and for all.

The trip back was going to be a long one and, to be honest, I wasn't sure if there was anything for me in our home. Nothing was going to be the same anymore. Without Sasha, without Eren and with a war on our feet I doubted to even call “home” a piece of wet land in the middle of an ocean which is still the target of a world full of hate.

#aot #snk #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #snk x reader #aot x reader #shingeki no kyojin x reader #attack on titan x reader #eren jaeger #eren jaeger x reader #eren x reader #sasha blouse #angst #eren smut

303 notes · View notes

thatonetimetraveller · 3 years

Text

Chapter 1 - Cin Vhetin - Sol

22BBY - 7955

It started out like many of his nightmares. The shriek of blaster fire and explosions deafening, his father holding him tightly to his chest. Shielding his eyes from the hulking black droid and the ever-present red glow of blaster bolts zooming past their heads. The smell of soot, blood, and fear blended into a soup of sickening stench. His heart beating almost loud enough to drown out the cries of agony of the dying and the panic of the still living. His parents ushered him into a cellar, he was shaking with fear as his mother hugged him the last time and his father placed a gentle tear-filled kiss on his temple. Then they shut the heavy metal door, he reached out but he was left in complete darkness. The sounds of the raging battle muted in his dark corner. His breathing was heavy and uncontrolled, his sobs were barely held in. He sat in silence, his red robe a comforting weight on his shoulders.

The door jerked open with a thud. Light flooded in. The shadow of the droid appeared above him, raising his arm. He held his breath for his inevitable death. A blue blaster bolt hit the droid right in its head. It fell with a thud. He glanced up expecting to see the now comfortable armor of his saviors.

The helmet that stared back was white and definitely not Mandalorian.

His savior held out a hand, arm covered in white and orange plastoid instead of beskar’gam and he flinched.

“Ibic cuyir dush” This is wrong. Din mumbled in confusion mostly to himself, but his savior tilted his head and let out a huff barely audible through the voice modulator of his helmet. Din stood and slowly climbed out of the cellar, pulling his robe tighter around himself. It was quiet now. And he glanced around his ruined home, everything was exactly how he remembered yet white troopers swarmed the streets putting down stray droids instead of Mandalorians. The troopers’ armor was painted gold, all of them with differing patterns. He cast an eye back to the cellar then to his savior. His armor was also painted gold, three lines bursting out of his cuirass in a starburst pattern both his pauldrons were completely gold as well, his helmet had extra plastoid around the visor, and an antenna attached to the comm center of the bucket.

“Su’cuy” The man spoke also in Mando’a, Din gaped in shock, his mind reeling as he suddenly noticed the design of the armor was similar to beskar’gam on a closer inspection that one might think he was Mandalorian. Din could sense the man’s gaze behind his visor as he studied him. A familiar feeling of nakedness overwhelmed him as he hid his face behind his red hood and away from the prying eyes of the soldiers nearby. He longed for his buy’ce and beskar’gam.

“Tion gar gai?” What’s your name? The man asked tenderly as he stepped closer to Din and knelt next to him, shielding him from the others. Din blinked at him, still distracted by the dream. He eyed everything with great scrutiny, trying to find a flaw in the dreamscape; blurry edges on the horizon, things that shouldn’t be there or were just missing in general, or anything that wasn’t behaving as it should. He almost groaned when he found nothing, everything seemed real. It took him a moment too long to register the question.

“Din” he answered absentmindedly, his thoughts still distracted by his search, and after this was a dream even if he couldn’t find a flaw or wake. The man seemed to think about something before he introduced himself, Din’s attention snapped back to him.

“Kote” he whispered like a secret. The anxiety that rolled off of Kote made him cringe internally.

Kote took a breath to say something when his wrist comm beeped, he sighed in fondness as he answered

“General”

“Cody, where are you?” A man’s voice came through the comm, it was heavily accented probably from the Core. Why would he dream up people from the Core? He hasn’t been there in over a decade. In a daze, Din returned to his examination of his surroundings, he touched the walls of a nearby building, kicked up some dirt, pointedly didn’t look at the dead that lay only a few feet from him, the ground stained crimson by their blood. Everything was real. He pinched himself in a vain attempt to wake up

“Meg cuyir gar vaabir?” What are you doing? Kote suddenly asked from behind him after he kicked a downed droid particularly hard making it rattle loudly. He grinned at the dark deactivated eyes of the droid in satisfaction.

“Dayn’viinir” Escape he said and picked himself again, his skin turning angry red at the repeated pinches. Kote made a noise behind his bucket.

“Cody, why are you speaking Mando’a?” The General asked through the comm, Kote jolted in surprise and the agitation in the air was prevalent.

“Hojir!” Wake up He cried out in frustration, his dream was really starting to annoy him. Anger coursed through his veins as he kicked the droid so hard that it caved in slightly. The metal crunched under his feet. Pain exploded in his unprotected shins.

“Haar’chak!” he cursed and kicked another droid, the crunching metal and wire only dulled his violent anger. Kote was next to him suddenly as Din seethed, the whispers to destroy them all was all-encompassing and alluring

“Udesii!” Kote shouted through the ringing of rage in his ears. He placed a cautious hand on Din’s shoulder and pulled him closer grounding him. The sudden shaking that seemed to crush him stopped, his breathing leveled out and the anger slowly dissipated. He did not look at Kote for he knew he would find nothing but concern there. The hair on the back of his neck stood as he felt another presence behind him just as Kote called out.

“General!” Din tensed and scrambled away from Kote embarrassment burning through him. He pulled his hood down, so it obscured most of his face and glanced at the approaching General. Kote stood and observed the man. The man was shorter than Kote, he had neatly styled ginger hair and beard. He wore no armor besides the battle-worn vambrace, and a shoulder plate painted with a symbol. Besides that, he was wearing loose cream-colored robes that swayed in the gentle wind. A jetii-kad hung loosely from his belt. The jetii surveyed the destruction around the pair of them - mostly Din’s work in his blind rage - and quirked an eyebrow at Kote then glanced at Din curiously. The ka’ra sang around the General and Din had to avert his eyes from the brightness of it.

“Hello, there” The General greeted with that posh accent of his, as he approached Din and knelt in front of him. Kote made an aborted motion with his hands but didn’t say anything, still, the apprehension and tension were clear to Din. He glanced between the two in confusion unsure why he dreamed up the pair, he never met anyone like them from his subconscious to draw on. The General’s grey eyes seemed to be searching for something, then he felt the General’s mind poking at his. It was a gentle prod barely invasive but Din still sucked in a sharp breath and fought with the disgust rolling in his stomach as the wrongness of another mind settled over him. He grit his teeth and clamped down on his feeble shields trying to keep the invading mind out. The General’s presence gently retreated and Din almost sagged in relief.

“Interesting,” the jetii murmured. Kote glanced at his General in confusion then back to the exhausted Din. He shut his eyes tightly, he really wanted to wake up now.

“Are there any other survivors?” Kote asked in a low voice, concern emanating from him. The jetii sagged in defeat

“No” was barely a whisper but still cut deep into Din’s heart even after all these decades. He took a shaky breath, closed his eyes in pain their memory still fresh on his mind

“Nu kyr’adyc, shi taab’echaaj’la” Not gone, merely marching away Kote and the jetii stood in silence seeming to honor Din’s remembrance. When Din opened his eyes he found that the jetii was regarding him with great interest. He squirmed under his gaze, missing the comforting weight of his beskar’gam. Instead, he hid in his robe which brought him some comfort, the smell remaining him of his first parents.

“We’ll be leaving soon, young one. You’re welcome to come with us and we’ll take you back to your people or wherever you prefer” The jetii offered kindly and Din knew he wasn’t lying. Kote sucked in a breath of surprise.

“General Kenobi, the kid doesn’t speak Basic” he interjected while Din blinked at the jetii in confusion once he understood what he meant

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

Kenobi only quirked his lips at Kote and finally, Din found his voice among the thousands of questions that flooded his mind

“Me’ven?” He blurted out in his bewilderment. His eyes darting between the two of them in rising panic. Where were the Mandalorians? He isn’t supposed to go with Kote and Kenobi. He’s supposed to be at the Fighting Corps being trained to be a Mando’ad. His breathing accelerated as he blindly lashed out at the forgotten droid at his feet, kicking it as hard as he could. It crumbled into pieces. He couldn’t breathe, his limbs were shaking as he lost the feeling of them entirely. He could only stare at the droid’s black mass as the image of it leveling him with a blaster flashed across his eyes more vivid than it had been in years. He kicked the slowly unrecognizable droid again in panic. He still couldn’t breathe.

“Calm down kid!” Kote was speaking to him in Basic and Din in his panicked haze didn’t understand a word. His mind hyper focused on his goal to escape from the dream or the droid? Din didn’t know. Escape, run away, not again! his mind screamed at him. Someone outside his head was also screaming in a language he once recognized. His heartbeat was loud in his ears as black spots appeared in his vision. He had to get out of here. Hands were placed on his shoulder boxing him in. He struggled. A helmet’s T-visor was leveled with his eyes. The armored man held strong against Din’s increasingly desperate and weak struggles.

“Udesii!” he ordered. The Mando’a cut through the haze of confusion and fear. Din stopped struggling, going completely limp in Kote’s hold besides his still labored breathing. Kote’s presence was like a rock grounding him in his panic.

“Dayn’viinir” He spat out between ragged breaths. His mind still buzzing with lingering fear. Kote’s presence grew concerned as his grip tightened on his shoulders.

“Tion’jor?” Why? Kote asked sorrowfully

“Ne’veman” Not real His breathing was finally under control somewhat, though he was still weak, his limbs felt like jelly and he was lightheaded. His thoughts were in a haze. Din hadn’t lost control like that since he was 12, and he can’t do it again. Shame bubbled from inside him as he worked to even out his breathing and think clearly. The Mandalorians were not coming and he couldn’t stay with the dead so he firmly looked at Kenobi hoping he’ll understand

“Elek” he breathed out and then the world turned black.

oOo

Din woke to a blinding light behind his eyelids and a pounding headache. He blinked his eyes open and had to resist the urge to groan from the sharp pain that erupted in his skull. The subtle beeping of medical equipment filtered through his hazy awareness. Why was he in a medbay? Din’s eyes snapped open to mechanical shuffling next to his bed. A medical droid was standing above him. His heart racing with unrestrained panic, Din shot up from the bed and punched the droid. Metal scrunched under his fist and the droid staggered back in surprise. Dean lunged for the droid, snatching its long arm and tearing it out with a violent tug, the sparks flew everywhere and the droid was saying something in alarm. Din rushed off his bed ripping the IV out of his arm in the process and without a second thought dashed out of the medbay, as shouts of alarm echoed behind him.

The hallway was empty and clean, the metal under his bare feet was cold and biting. The shape and design of the hallway reminded him distinctively of the Imperial Light Cruiser he’d been on and he shivered at the thought. He turned the corner and came face to face with a pair of Stormtroopers. His breath hitched as he confirmed that he’d been captured by the Imps. He ran in the opposite direction trusting his instincts, the Troopers didn’t fire on him which while strange was a blessing at least. He cursed at himself for not having a rifle, blaster, or at least a vibro-knife with him any weapon would do. He slowed to a screeching halt as the missing weight of his beskar’gam registered and new panic took hold of him. How many had seen him? These hut’uun demagolka took his runi away from him. The anger and humiliation of being stripped of his armor were all-encompassing. He wouldn’t be able to call himself a Mando’ad anymore if he was still at the Covert. He’ll have to find his armor, then kill every single one of these cowards. No one will know of his failure.

He turned down a corner and spotted a trooper standing guard. Without his usual set of weapons Din approached the guard from the blindspot he knew all buckets had and kicked him in the back of the knee just as the guard noticed him. The guard grunted in surprise but didn’t buckle like Din expected. Instead, he swung for his head, Din ducked and punched which the guard blocked effortlessly with his arm and he did not punch back. Din backed away, assessing the situation. The guard was bigger than Din so it took some effort for him to build up the momentum to slam into the guard with his whole body. A grunt escaped the armored man as they tumbled down into the ground and Din punched him on the helmet with enough force to knock him out. Din rose to his feet, legs wobbling underneath him for a moment as he keyed open the door the guard was standing in front of. It was an armory filled with blasters of varying kinds, thermal and electrical charges, and vibroblades all stacked neatly on the rows of racks. There was even a set of Z-6 Rotary Blaster Canons which he hadn’t seen in almost a decade. Din pulled on the red hood that was covering his face and ransacked the room, grabbing two smaller pistols which he strapped to his things, a larger DC-15 blaster along with a few vibroknives which he stashed up his long sleeves. He checked around looking for any armor but found nothing so he opened the door with a whoosh and stepped outside more confident with weapons in his hand. The downed trooper was still sprawled out on the floor, his chest rising faintly under the plastoid armor. Din considered finishing him off but he decided against it, his instincts screaming at him not to. So he turned down the hall avoiding the troopers the best he could.

His heart was still beating rapidly in his panic as the absence of his adi’ka settled over his chest. Even the faint feeling of their connection that he chalked up magic osik was missing, leaving Din empty. He reached out to his ad again hoping to feel him, the emptiness almost made him lose his footing and his breaths were coming out rapidly. Still, he poured as much hope and reassurance to them as he could, heart aching at the missing warmth.

“Hold on adi’ka I’ll find you” he promised as he rounded the corner and came face to face with a squad of troopers.

He shot into the group hitting one of the troopers’ squarely in the chest, downing him instantly, the stun dissipating with sizzle. The others scrambled to shoot back, similarly with stun shots. He dodged almost too late behind a supporting pillar, the habit of tanking shots with his beskar’gam was strong in him. He fired back blindly, the wall behind him lit blue by the circular stun shots. He ducked his head out to aim better and fired off a volley of shots - all still circular it hit another trooper. He glanced down at his defective blaster, he was sure he switched off of stun. He made sure to press the switch firmly but the light indicating the stun setting wouldn’t turn off, with a growl he threw the DC-15 away clattering loudly on the floor. He grabbed both of the pistols then dashed out of cover while firing downing the last two troopers, their last shots were too close for comfort. On a whim, he glanced at the squad of troopers and drew to a stop. They were not Stormtrooper armor, a bit bulkier and similar to beskar’gam. Their armor was customized painted with orange in varying designs each similar yet unique in their own way, they couldn’t have done that in the Empire. The color reminded him of Kote’s armor in his dream. Something wasn’t right. He sighed and shook his head clearing his foggy mind. He had to find Grogu - that was the only goal he focused on, the missing feeling of his presence was unsettling. A trooper with familiar armor turned down the corner. Din stared at him in shock. What was Kote doing on an Imperial Cruiser? The haze in his mind was overwhelming, he didn’t know where he was and he couldn’t think.

“Kote?” he blurted out in confusion. Kote raised his blaster and stunned him before he could react or move. He collapsed bonelessly.

oOo

Obi-Wan stared at the boy they picked up on Aq-Vetina through the observation glass. He was sleeping on the bed thrashing and turning in his sleep, Helix was there monitoring and tending to his condition and to make sure the boy didn't attempt another escape since the first thing he did was rip the med-droid’s arm out. The boy was young 12 standard, with soft brown hair and eyes, dressed in the traditional red robes of his home planet, and clearly traumatized by the Separatist attack. He looked like an unassuming child, except for the Force swirled around him strangely and he took down some of the best in the 212th effortlessly like a seasoned warrior far beyond his age, in an attempt to escape. Thankfully none of the troopers were badly injured besides their bruised egos. This child was a mystery Obi-Wan was eager to solve. Cody walked up to him and glanced at the still sleeping boy.

“Do you think this was a Separatist ploy, sir?” Obi-Wan stroked his beard thoughtfully

“No. There is something off about him, but it doesn’t appear to be dangerous” He hadn’t got any warnings from the Force relating to the boy since the weird ripple he felt just before they diverted course to Aq-Vetina. The Force wanted him to find the boy. That Obi-Wan was sure of. But why? Obi-Wan sighed

“Still, I posted Waxer and Crys outside just in case he tries to run again” Obi-Wan gave a small smile of amusement at that. Waxer was just a shiny but he was the one guarding the armory and whom the boy took down with the grace of a seasoned fighter.

“You said he spoke Mando’a?” Obi-Wan turned to face Cody, he nodded but he kept his eyes on the boy

“Yes. More fluent than any vode and with a strange accent. I barely understood him” Cody paused mulling over his thoughts “He said some karking strange things, like he was half mad” Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow at that prompting his Commander to continue “He was confused, blabbering about escaping as he examined everything in a daze like he was dreaming and expecting to wake up but couldn’t”

“You don’t think it was trauma?” Obi-Wan prodded and Cody shook his head

“No. He was distressed by the sight of us especially when you showed up sir and offered to take him away. He was clearly expecting someone else” Obi-Wan hummed in thought and turned back to the boy. What was a Force sensitive Mandalorian child doing on Aq-Vatina? Why would he accept to come with them then attack them?

A shout and a rattle broke him out of his thoughts. The boy was sitting on top of Helix, eyes dancing around wildly like a caged animal. The Force rippled around him dangerously, as anger, fear and confusion enveloped the room. Obi-Wan put a hand on Cody’s arm without tearing his eyes away from the scene

“Where are they?” The boy asked in a dangerously low and threatening tone even though he had no weapon. When Helix didn’t answer, silenced in his confusion the boy’s glare morphed into ice.

“What have you done to him?”

“Who?” Helix finally found his voice just as Cody wrenched his arm out of his hold, but reluctantly remained in the room since Helix held up a hand to signal to him that everything was under control. Obi-Wan strengthened his shields from the onslaught of negative emotions around him. The boy scoffed as if he didn’t believe him.

“Where is the child?” he questioned, his elbow pressing down threateningly on Helix’s throat, Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow

“What child? There is no child on board besides you” Helix ground out and Cody marched out of the room with a furious expression on his face, he shoved his helmet on his head and busted into the room. Obi-Wan sighed and followed behind though he tried to be less confrontational about his entrance. The boy’s head raised in alarm at the sound of the hissing doors then blinked in confusion at the two of them, relaxing his stance on top of Helix

“Kote?” He whispered. Helix climbed out of the boy’s relaxed hold and glared at them

“What are you doing here? I had it under control” Helix hissed

“Like sith hells you were, vod” After another vicious glare from behind his visor Cody turned to the boy, who was glancing at them suspiciously the anger in the Force evaporating replaced by overwhelming confusion. Cody glared at the boy voice firm under his helmet

“Who are you?” The boy blinked, all fight left him as Cody hauled him and cuffed him to the post of the bed. The boy didn’t answer, only glared at him. Cody continued when it was clear he wouldn't answer.

“Did the Separatists send you?” The boy jolted at that, his face and Force presence morphing through several from fear to anger and then settling back into confusion

“What does the Separatist have to do with any of this?” Bewilderment was evident in his voice as he tugged lower in an attempt to hide his face. Cody glanced at Obi-Wan through his helmet

“You attacked several of my men,” Cody stated. The boy stilled

“I did?” He raised both his eyebrows, and the shock was clear on his face “Those were your men. I don’t understand” he mumbled, then his eyes snapped up to Obi-Wan’s “What’s a jetii doing here on a cruiser?” He asked more venom in his voice and Obi-Wan blinked

“I’m the commanding officer,” Obi-Wan said. The boy glanced around, first to the walls then to Cody and Helix, and finally back to Obi-Wan

“I…That’s not right” he murmured again and examined his hands with strange fascination.

Helix knelt next to the boy and placed a hand on his knee

“Let’s start with something easy,” Helix said, projecting calmness into the Force. The boy’s head perked up and watched Helix with sharp eyes behind the veil of the hood

“How old are you?” He asked and the boy bit his lip in thought

“44,” He said. Cody barely caught a gasp of surprise and Obi-Wan swayed. What happened to this child?

“Alright. Can you tell me where you are?” Helix was still calm, hiding his surprise behind a wall of professionalism. The boy’s nose scrunched up in confusion and he did another cursory glance around the room

“A Light Cruiser, not the kind I thought at first though” Helix nodded

“You’re on the Negotiator, flagship of the 212th Attack Battalion of the GAR” The boy went impossibly still at that his Force presence blanked out then exploded with so much force that Obi-Wan staggered

“Me’ven?” The boy reverted back to Mando’a as he glanced at the three of them then he turned his sharp gaze at Cody and stared into his eyes through the visor

“Am I still dreaming, Kote?” His Commander stiffened, tugged his helmet off, set it on a nearby table, and ran a hand through his regulation cut hair before sighing. He looked at the boy seriously

“No” he stated and the boy deflated, his eyes tracking their positions in the room

“Me’bana?” What happened? He whispered, his posture hunched over his head buried in his hands hiding his face from them. Obi-Wan exchanged a look with Helix.

“You were the only survivor of the attack on Aq-Vetina. We brought you onboard to give you treatment and return you to your family. You woke up about 4 hours ago and tore a med-droid’s arm off and attacked my men” Cody explained gently, making sure to keep his voice steady and clear. The boy stiffened and peeked out from between his fingers

“Ni ceta, Kote” The boy’s voice shook as he kept repeating the apology, tugging at his robes in distress, his breathing slowly increasing in speed and intensity as anxiety, panic, and confusion rolled off of him in the Force. Everyone seemed to be at a loss for words, with no idea how to ground the boy in his sense of reality. Cody stepped closer to the boy telegraphing his movements as the boy lifted his head just enough to peek at Cody with fearful eyes. His apologies had stopped when Cody knelt in front of the child and held out his hand as an offering but the boy shrunk in on himself and did not take it.

“Gar morut’yc” You are safe. Cody murmured voice softer than anything Obi-Wan had heard from him. The boy’s shoulders shook

“K'lamot di'dunla” Apology accepted Cody softly said as he undid the cuffs with a soft click. The boy threw his arms around Cody and hid his face in the pauldron of Cody’s armor. His body shook with silent sobs, Cody murmured low and gentle words to him in Mando’a. The boy whispered something to Cody who tensed for a second before he untangled himself from the mess of limbs. He grabbed his helmet and stared at the T-visor for a long moment. Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow as Cody placed the bucket on the boy’s head and gave it a soft affectionate pat. The low constant hum of anxiety that’s been plaguing Obi-Wan since they found the boy finally quieted down to a shimmer.

“Vor entye” Thank you the boy said, his voice deeper and more confident under the helmet’s voice modulator. The boy’s shoulders relaxed as most of the anxiety and tension dissipated into the Force. Cody gave the boy a gentle smile, his presence wavering with intense emotions

“Feeling better?” Cody asked, his voice still low. The boy nodded, his too big bucket wobbled precariously on his head. Obi-Wan let out an amused huff, and Cody smiled softly as the boy placed a hand on it to stabilize it.

Obi-Wan hanged back as Helix moved to kneel next to Cody keeping level with the boy’s T-visor

“Hey kid, my name is Helix,” he said gently, though the hint of fear still lingered in the Force as he said his name, then he pointed to Cody with his thumb

“You know Kote already, but make sure to only call him that around Vode or the General, he is Cody otherwise. And that’s General Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he introduced them. The boy was more alert, both in the Force and in reality now that he had a helmet, nodded to Obi-Wan in greeting though wariness still seeped out of him. Then he turned his head to Cody

“I understand”

“What should we call you?” Helix asked, his voice quiet and conspiratorial barely loud enough for Obi-Wan to hear. He knew names were important and sacred to the Clones; it’s their identity just like their armor. All of their names were chosen by themselves and reflected who they were on some inner level. No Clone called the other something they did not willingly share with the rest. It took months for his own battalion to warm up to him and share their names, Obi-Wan treasured every single one of them to memory and mourned the ones they lost, just like the rest of the Vode. The boy was deep in thought

“Beroya,” He decided. Bounty hunter - interesting choice Obi-Wan thought and Helix hummed

“Alright, Beroya. You don’t have to answer but could you tell us why you were dreaming?” Helix’s voice was gentle as he took one of Beroya’s hand in his own when he sensed the boy pull away from them. Terror spiked in the Force and Obi-Wan had to suppress a flinch as the terrified emotions of Beroya attacked his shields.

“Gar morut’yc” Cody murmured and Beroya sighed barely loud enough for his helmet’s voice modulator to pick up

“It happened before,” he mumbled. Obi-Wan straightened his attention solely focused on the hunched over the boy as he continued to talk “It was different than my usual nightmares, I usually die in them and it was different from the first time where Buir saved me and took me to the Fighting Corps, and I became a Mando’ad. But this time you save me Kote so I thought I must be having a nice dream for once” The boy’s presence grew solemn

“How long have you been having these visions?” Obi-Wan asked, sure that the boy was Force sensitive and suffered from strong realistic visions. Dissociation was and losing a sense of reality was a common side effect of untrained Seers. Beroya cocked his head to the side the helmet banging against his skull with a soft thud

“Visions?” He asked, confused. Obi-Wan sighed and stepped closer making sure not to crowd the boy

“Your dreams” Beroya balked

“The first time was not a dream. It's a memory” Helix’s hand flexed on the boy’s

“When did this happen to you?” He asked, his voice gentle but with a certain edge to it. Beroya hummed in thought

“About 30 years ago” The boy looked about 12 standard but his Force signature was older. And Obi-Wan had to do a double take just to make sure, how had he not noticed this before

“Ok kid, what year is it?” Cody asked and received a confused head tilt

“Uh… 10ABY” Obi-Wan furrowed his eyebrows, that wasn’t a dating system he was familiar with by the confused looks on his troopers neither were they

“ABY?” Helix asked “Sorry kid, not familiar with that system. How about CRC?”

“Hang on” He seemed to be doing some sort of calculation in his head “7987” Obi-Wan sucked in a breath of surprise, that’s 32 years into the future but he could sense no lie from the boy. How tough? Time travel hadn’t been documented in nearly a millennium and could have dangerous far reaching consequences.

“Are you sure?” Helix asked voice probing but betraying nothing of his skepticism

“Ori’haat” It’s the truth Beroya’s voice was unwavering as he stared down the pair of troopers. Cody bolted from his seat and began pacing in the small room, his thoughts a mixture of disbelief and confusion. Beroya tilted his helmet as he followed Cody’s agitated movements.

“You mentioned a child when you woke up. Who is this child you were looking for?” Obi-Wan asked, cutting through the tense atmosphere of the room. The boy’s head snapped to him, the Force around him going through a complicated set of emotions, mainly distrust though. He sighed with weariness that came from a long hard life, not of the 12 year old boy. He tugged on his robes and Cody was staring holes into the side of his head.

“Promise me you won’t hand them over” There was an edge of violence in his voice that could only come from a paternal role. Obi-Wan stroked his beard in thought. Who would want this child? There are many despicable factions out there that would gladly kidnap a youngling, Slaver especially but they were on the edge of Mandalorian space and they were very fond of children, well until the New Mandalorians took power, adoption became less common with them. And Beroya seemed to think that they would put this youngling in harm’s way. That was a troubling thought. But Obi-Wan did not voice any of that, afraid it might cause the distrustful boy to lose what little trust they did build between them, and keep his mouth shut or attempt another escape. So Obi-Wan promised

“They are small, green, have large eyes and ears and their species ages very slowly, I was told they are 50” Beroya began reluctantly and Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow; that sounded an awful lot like a member of Master Yoda’s species. Cody tensed besides Beroya seeming to come to the same conclusion. The boy sensing their mild reaction looked at both of them in surprise

“You know their species?” He asked

“Yes” Obi-Wan did not say anything more but the curiosity in the boy grew

“Please continue. Do they have a name?” Obi-Wan asked. Maybe with a name, he could find this youngling who was most likely Force sensitive.

“They are special he has…” he waved his hand around in a vague gesture “powers, so they want them” He paused as if debating something. Obi-Wan’s list of kidnappers shrunk; not many would kidnap a Force sensitive child, especially one from Yoda’s species unless they wanted the wrath of the Jedi descending on them. He did notice that Beroya left out the youngling’s name.

“He’s supposed to be with the jetii Skywalker, but I don’t feel him anymore so when I woke here I thought the Empire had him”

The room was silent as all three occupants stared at Beroya in shock, then erupted into a mixture of hurried questions

“You don’t feel him?” Helix asked

“Empire?” Cody’s voice was distressed

“What has Anakin done now?” Obi-Wan muttered in exasperation. Knowing his former Padawan, nothing good. Obi-Wan felt the beginning of a headache forming, there was just so much to unpack with that one sentence alone, let alone karking time travel. Mace would have a field day with the amount of shatter point around Beroya. Obi-Wan sighed as the boy blinked in confusion not knowing who to answer first.

“Let’s start with the important one. Empire?” Cody asked again and dread began to build in his stomach at the thought of whatever future the boy came from or witnessed

“Yes. It rose to power after the Clone Wars had ended” Cody sucked in a pained breath

“We lost?” He asked quietly and defeated, Obi-Wan’s heart ached. Beroya shrugged

“I don’t know much but from what rumors I heard it was some sort of coup” Who would have the power to overthrow the Galactic Senate? And why didn’t the Jedi stop them? Force was getting murkier since Master Qui-Gon died and this confirmed some of Obi-Wan deepest fears, a Sith Lord was pulling the string. Dooku told him but he didn’t believe him, it's still hard to believe but he must stay vigilant from now on.

“What I do know was that they killed anyone opposing them, sometimes wiping the populations of a planet” Beroya shuddered “Including turning Manda’yaim into a glass waste and destroying Alderaan” His voice was barely above a whisper as he withdrew himself from the Force. Everyone in the room was deathly silent.

“What do you mean destroyed?” Helix asked with barely restrained horror

“My friend told me, they just blew it to pieces” his voice was hollow under the helmet and everyone reeled back in shock and horror. Cody’s hand twitched with the urge to throw something as a pained expression sat on his face

“What? Where were the Jedi?” Something awfully cold gripped Obi-Wan’s heart and refused to let go. Beroya glanced at his lightsaber for the first time and impossible sorrow emanated from him as he tilted his head to gaze at his own hands, voice barely loud enough for the bucket’s voice modulator to pick up.

“I haven’t heard of the Jedi until about a year ago from the Armorer, she told me that they were enemy sorcerers of the Mando’ade and I only met two” Too many questions filtered through Obi-Wan’s mind. He wanted nothing more than to bolt out of the room and meditate for an entire week.

“Who did you meet?” Obi-Wan’s voice trembled and Cody’s head snapped up at that his eyes boring into the side of his skull

“A Togruta I think her name was Ahsoka and Skywalker” Obi-Wan sighed in relief at least Anakin was okay

“Is the Empire still around, kid?” Cody asked, voice gruff. Beroya shook his head mindful of the wobbling helmet

“No, the Empire fell about 5 years ago” There was only silence in the small room. Everyone was trying to digest the hoard of information thrown at them.

The shrill beeping of Obi-Wan’s comm cut through the silence, he caught from the corner of his eye as Beroya jumped at the sudden noise. Obi-Wan answered the comm with a little apprehension

“Kenobi”

“General, the Jedi Council wants to speak with you” Feedback’s voice filtered through, a bit tense not used to dealing with the Jedi. Obi-Wan sighed

“I’ll be right there,” he thanked the comm’s officer before he shut off his comm unit. He turned to Helix

“Take care of him” he nodded towards the slumping boy, who was nodding off in exhaustion. Helix saluted and Obi-Wan turned to leave Cody following behind. The halls were almost deserted in the night shift

“Transfer all of the recordings to a secure datapad and delete everything from the records” Cody blinked at him

“Sir?” he glanced at his Commander

“No one can know what was said in that room. It could have dangerous and far reaching consequences” The Force sent the boy back for a reason, and Obi-Wan intends to avert the terrible future he saw. Cody stiffened and nodded sharply, his eyes hardening with experience

“Yes, sir!” his voice was firm and Obi-Wan had no doubt it would be done. He stroked his beard thoughtfully

“Ask the quartermaster if he has any appropriate armor for Beroya, discreetly of course” Cody smiled in amusement.

They arrived at the comms center and the holograms of the Jedi Counselors were already present casting the darkened room into a faint blue glow. He stepped up to the holoprojector The Force heavy in the back of his mind. Cody stood behind him just out of sight of the rest of the Jedi, his presence oddly comforting

“Masters” he greeted with a bow

“Master Kenobi, Did you find what you were looking for on Aq-Vetina?” Master Plo Koon asked, his voice probing behind his ventilator. Obi-Wan had sensed a disturbance in the Force - a nexus building for the past couple of weeks. The Jedi Council was reluctant to send someone out to investigate since Aq-Vetina was on the edge of Mandalorian space and the Jedi are spread thin as is. When he felt the pressure in the Force build yesterday so strong that it nearly threw him off his feet, Obi-Wan ordered the Negotiator to Aq-Vetina without hesitation or waiting for the Council’s permission. He only briefed them after they picked up Beroya and that was cut short by his attempted escape. Now he was certain the Force wanted him to find the boy, he smiled ruefully understanding how Master Qui-Gon felt when he found Anakin

“There was a small scale Separatist attack on the planet. We managed to destroy their forces but there was only one survivor” He let the grief pass through him and into the Force. The Jedi were silent mourning the loss of life

“The Nexus?”

“I believe it's the boy we rescued. He is strong with the Force and he had strong and vivid visions to the point of dissociating.” The last time a Jedi so powerful with the Unifying Force had such visions led to the creation of the clones and this subsequent war. Obi-Wan was still unsure if the boy actually came from the future but he wisely kept his mouth shut about that tidbit of information, not wanting to alarm the Council further. Plus the Force was telling him not to, a bad feeling rose in his gut even at the thought of saying anything. Another long silence, this one heavier than the last. Master Windu leaned forward stapling his fingers as he observed Obi-Wan.

“What did the boy See?” he asked after a long pause. Obi-Wan steeled himself, letting the horror of the vision wash over him

“He Saw the fall of the Republic and an Empire rising from its ashes. The Empire destroyed the Jedi and then many worlds including Mandalore and Alderaan” Even summarized, the vision was laced with darkness, like the Force around them. Dark and sticky like tar covering everything that touches it with a sense of dread and unease, suffocating everything in its wake. The silence this time was filled with mute horror as each Jedi tried to release their emotions into the Force

“How would they wipe the Order out?” There were grumblings of displeasure among the Council and Obi-Wan sighed getting ready for a long meeting as an argument broke out between Master Mace and Yoda. They debated the validity of Beroya’s vision to their limited options and even if they should heed his warning

“Always the future in motion is” Master Yoda finished the argument, and the rest of the Council agreed that they needed more information to agree on the next course of action. Obi-Wan wanted to rip out his hair at that expected development as one of the oldest in the Council Master Yoda had the final say in most matters and he often downplayed the significance of visions as he was more aligned with the Living Force, and he had seen too many Jedi fall due to chasing visions and prophecies. Still, it was maddening because of the nature of the information Beroya presented.

Master Yoda regarded him with thoughtful eyes

“More to say, have you?” Obi-Wan tugged his hands into the sleeves of his rope in consideration

“Yes. The boy was looking for a youngling when he woke” He did not tell them about his escape attempt, likely due to not being able to tell vision from reality apart. “He described the youngling as a member of Master Yoda’s species, clearly Force sensitive and about 20-25 standard. I believe he Saw a future with him as their guardian” A flicker of recognition passed through Master Koon

“Initiate Grogu had been quite loud in the past few days” Master Koon rumbled, his voice deep through the ventilator mask. “They appeared to have formed a strong bond with someone and had been insisting on finding them” Obi-Wan stroked his beard in thought and readied himself for the fallout of his next decision

“Master, may I request a meeting between them?” He looked each of the Masters in the eyes confident that his decision was right. The Council erupted into a shouting match as each Master tried to weigh in their voice in the debate. They debated for hours grilling Obi-Wan on his decision and about Beroya, the debate kept circling back to the question of attachment several times

“Bring the boy to the Jedi you will” Finally Master Yoda agreed though by the down turn of his long ears he wasn’t happy. “Test the boy we will. Decide then his relationship with Initiate Grogu” Master Yoda was particularly protective of Grogu since not many of his species were known. Obi-Wan nodded in acceptance

“Thank you Master” He brewed and then sagged in weariness, this Council meeting had been one of the longer ones since the war started. He could feel Cody’s exhaustion through the Force though he stood to attention despite it

“We have considered your petition to appoint a Padawan to knight Skywalker” Master Mundi began. Obi-Wan had to suppress a tired groan, it appears it wasn’t over yet

“While still young the responsibility of a Padawan should teach both of them to become a better Jedi” Master Windu continued. Hope soared in his heart and a small smile crossed his face

“Chosen we have. Initiate Tano meeting you at Christophsis she will” Yoda finished

“Thank you Masters” Obi-Wan bowed, Anakin will freak out at first but he’ll love his new Padawan, he was certain of that. Then the Council briefed them that the aid Senator Organa brought to the planet was in danger of failing due to a blockade around the planet. They’ll have to rendezvous with the 501st and with a stealth ship bring aid to Senator Organa and free the planet if possible. Once the Masters finished briefing him the holocall faded out leaving the room dim and quiet. Obi-Wan sighed and turned to Cody

“Ready the men, we’re being deployed at Christophsis.”

#fanfic #star wars #the mandalorian #din djarin #obi wan kenobi #commander cody #time travel #force sensitive din djarin #the clone wars #chapter 1 #mandoa #also on ao3

27 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

How the Sacklers rigged the game

Two quotes to ponder as you read “Purdue’s Poison Pill,” Adam Levitin’s forthcoming Texas Law Review paper:

“Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.” (W. Guthrie)

“Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.” (H. Balzac) (paraphrase)

Some background. Purdue was/is the pharmaceutical company that deliberately kickstarted the opioid crisis by deceptive, aggressive marketing of its drug Oxycontin, amassing a fortune so vast that it made its owners, the Sackler family, richer than the Rockefellers.

Many companies are implicated in the opioid crisis, but Purdue played a larger and more singular role in an epidemic that has killed more Americans than the Vietnam war: Purdue, alone among the pharma companies, is almost exclusively devoted to selling opioids.

And Purdue is also uniquely associated with a single family, the Sacklers, whose family dynasty betrays a multigenerational genius for innovating in crime and sleaze.

The founder of the family fortune, Arthur Sackler, invented modern drug marketing with his campaigns for benzos like Valium, kickstarting an addiction crisis that burned for decades and is still with us today.

His kids, while not inventing the art of reputation laundering through elite philanthropy, did more to advance this practice than anyone since the robber barons whose names grace institutions like Carnegie-Mellon University.

The Sackler name became synonymous not with the cynical creation of a mass death drug epidemic and a media strategy that blamed the victims as “criminal addicts” — rather, “Sackler” was associated with museums from the Met to the Louvre.

Handing out crumbs from their vast trove of blood-money was just one half of the Sacklers’ reputation-laundering. The other half used a phalanx of vicious attack-lawyers who’d threaten anyone who criticized them in public (I personally got one of these).

The Sacklers could not have attained their high body count nor their vast bank-balances without the help of elite legal enablers, both the specialists from discreet boutique firms and the rank-and-file of the great white-shoe firms.

I’m not one to take cheap shots at lawyers. Lawyers are often superheroes, defending the powerless against the powerful. But the law has a bullying problem, a sadistic cadre of brilliant people who live to crush their opponents.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#devils

To see the sadism at work, look no further than the K-shaped world of bankruptcy: for the wealthy, bankruptcy is the sport of kings, a way to skip out on consequences. For the poor, bankruptcy is an anchor — or a noose.

When working people are saddled with debts — even debts they did not themselves amass — they are hounded by petty, vindictive monsters who deluge them with calls and emails and threats.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

But it’s very different for the wealthy. Community Hospital Systems is one of the largest hospital chains in America, thanks to the $7.6b worth of debt it acquired along with 80+ hospitals, which it is running into the ground.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

CHS raked in hundreds of millions in interest-free forgivable loans, stimulus and other public subsidies and paid out millions from that to its execs for “performance bonuses.”

It also leads the industry in suing its indigent patients, some for as little as $201.

Debt and bankruptcy are key to private equity’s playbook, especially the most destructive forms of financial engineering, like “club deal” leveraged buyouts that turn productive businesses into bankrupt husks while the PE firms pocket billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

For mere mortals — those of us who can’t afford to hire legal enablers to work the system — bankruptcy is a mystery. If you know someone who went bankrupt, chances are they had their lives destroyed. How can bankruptcy be a gift, rather than a curse?

Purdue Pharma presents a maddening case-study in the corrupt benefits of bankruptcy. When it was announced in March, many were outraged to learn that the Sacklers were going to walk away with billions, while their victims got stiffed.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/31/vaccine-for-the-global-south/#claims-extinguished

Levitin’s paper uses the Purdue bankruptcy as a jumping-off point to explain how this can be — how corporate bankruptcy “megacases” have become a sham that subverts the very purpose of bankruptcy: to allow orderly payments to creditors while preserving good businesses.

Levitin identifies three pathologies corrupting the US bankruptcy system.

First is “coercive restructuring techniques” that allow debtors and senior creditors to tie bankruptcy judges’ hands and those of other creditors, overriding bankruptcy law itself.

These techniques — “DIP financing agreements,” “Stalking Horse bidder protections,” “Hurry-up agreements,” etc — are esoteric, though Levitin does a good job of explaining each.

More significant than their underlying rules is their effect.

That effect? Thousands of Oxy survivors and families of Oxycontin victims lost their right to sue the Sacklers and Purdue pharma because of these techniques. In return, the Sacklers surrendered about a third of the billions they reaped.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Depriving the victims of the Sacklers’ drug empire of the right to sue doesn’t just leave the Sacklers with billions; it also means that no official record will be produced detailing the Sacklers’ complicity in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Levitin: “The single most important question in the most socially important chapter 11 case in history will be determined through a process that does not comport with basic notions of due process.”

The Sacklers are not unique beneficiaries of “coercive restructuring techniques.” The rise of “prepack” and 24-hour “drive through” bankruptcies have turned judges into rubberstampers of private agreements between debtors and their cronies, with no look-in for victims.

It in these proceedings that the law descends into self-parody, more Marx Brothers than casebook. Levitin highlights the Feb ’21 “drive-through” bankruptcy of Belk Department Stores, where the judge was told that failing to accede to the private deal would risk 17,000 jobs.

The trustees representing Belk’s non-crony creditors were railroaded through this “agreement,” upon notice consisting of an “unintelligible” one-page, one-paragraph release opening with “a 630-word sentence with 92commas and five parentheticals.”

Sackler lawyers were geniuses at this game, securing judicial approval of a deal where the Sacklers’ personal liability to the Feds went from $4.5b to $225m. The judge heard no evidence about whether the Sacklers’ voluntary payout was even close to their liabilities.

The corruption of bankruptcy is bad enough, as the creditors for finance criminals are often small firms and workers’ pension.

The Sacklers’ case is far worse: they don’t owe billions in unpaid loans — they owe criminal and civil liability for the lives they destroyed.

The next area of corruption that Levitin takes up is the inadequacy of the appeals process for bankruptcy settlements. This, too, is complex, but it has a simple outcome: once a judge agrees to a settlement, it’s virtually impossible to appeal it.

In those rare instances where people do win appeals, they are still denied justice, because the appellate courts typically find that it’s too late to remedy the lower courts’ decisions.

That makes the business of “coercive restructuring techniques” (in which judges rubber-stamp corrupt arrangements between debtors and their cronies) even more important, since any ruling from a bankruptcy judge is apt to be final.

The third and most important corrupt element of elite bankruptcy that Levitin describes is the ability for debtors’ lawyers to pick which judge will rule on their case, a phenomena that means that only three judges hear nearly every major bankruptcy case in America.

“[In 2020] 39% of large public company bankruptcy filings ended up before Judge David Jones in Houston. 57% of the large company cases ended up before either Jones or two other judges, Marvin Isgur in Houston and Robert Drain in White Plains.”

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2021/05/judge-shopping-in-bankruptcy.html

In other words, elite law firms have figured out how to “hack” the bankruptcy process so they can choose from among three judges. And these three judges weren’t picked at random — rather, they competed to bring these “megacases” to their courts.

This competition is visible in how these judges rule — in ways that are favorable to cronyistic arrangements between debtors and their favored, deep-pocketed creditors — and in the public statements the judges themselves have made, going on the record admitting it.

Levitin cites the groundbreaking work of Harvard/UCLA law prof Lynn LoPucki on why judges want to dominate bankruptcy megacases. LoPucki points out hearing these cases definitely increases “post-judicial employment opportunities” — but says the true motives are more complex.

Levitin, summarizing LoPucki: “[it’s more] in the nature of personal aggrandizement and celebrity and ability to indirectly channel to the local bankruptcy bar.. The judge is the star and the ringmaster of a megacase — very appealing to certain personalities”

Obviously, not every judge wants these things, but the ones that do are of a type — “willing and eager to cater to debtors to attract business…[an] assurance to debtors that…these judges will not transfer out cases with improper venue or rule against the debtor…”

Forum-shopping in bankruptcy is not new, but it has accelerated and mutated.

Once, the game was to transfer cases to Delaware and the Southern District of New York.

It’s why the LA Dodgers went bankrupt in Delaware, why Detroit’s iconic General Motors and Texas’s own Enron got their cases heard in the SDNY.

The bankruptcy courts have long been in on this game, allowing the flimsiest of pretences to locate a case in a favorable venue.

For example, GM argued that it was a New York company on the basis that it owned a single Chevy dealership in Harlem.

Other companies simple open an office in a preferred jurisdiction for a few months before filing for bankruptcy there.

Lately, the venue of choice for dirty bankruptcies is in Texas (if only Enron could have held on for a couple more decades!). Only two Houston judges hear bankruptcy cases, and any bankruptcy lawyer who gets on their bad side risks ending their career.

Once a court becomes a national center for complex bankruptcies, the bankruptcy bar works to ensure that only favorable judges hear cases there, punishing a district by seeking other venues when a judge goes “rogue.” The fix is in from the start.

Purdue did not want to have its case heard in Texas. Instead, it manipulated the system so that it could argue in front of SDNY Judge Robert D Drain.

It was a good call, as Drain is notoriously generous with granting “third-party releases,” which would allow the Sacklers to escape their debts to the victims and survivors of their Oxy-pushing.

Once Drain agreed to the restructuring, he ensured that the victims would never get their day in court, and no evidence — from medical examiners, auditors, and medical professionals who received kickbacks for every patient they addicted — would be entered into the record.

Drain is also notoriously hostile to independent examiners, “an independent third-party appointed by the court to investigate ‘fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or irregularity…by current or former management of the debtor.”

But getting the case in front of Drain took some heroic maneuvering by the Sacklers’ lawyers. Levitin tracks each step of a Byzantine plan that somehow allowed a company that gave its address in Connecticut to have its case heard in New York.

The key to getting in front of Judge Drain appears to involve literally hacking the system, by putting a Westchester County location in the machine-readable metadata for its filing in the federal Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system.

CM/ECF does not parse the text of the PDF that it receives from lawyers; only the metadata is parsed. The company listed a White Plains, NY address in this metadata, even though it had never conducted business there.

Purdue seems to have opened this office 192 days earlier for the sole purpose of getting its bankruptcy in front of Judge Drain (they were eligible for Westchester County jurisdiction 180 days after opening the office).

Their lawyers even went so far as to pre-caption the case filing with “RDD” — for “Robert D Drain” — knowing that all complex bankruptcies in Westchester County were Drain’s to hear.

The fact that the Sacklers were able to choose their judge — a judge who was notorious for his policies that abetted elite impunity in bankruptcy — is nakedly corrupt.

This move is how the Sacklers are walking away from corporate mass murder with a giant fortune. The art galleries have started to remove their names from their buildings, but they’ll have a lot of money to keep themselves warm even if they’re shunned in polite society.

A couple weeks ago, a Texas judge ruled against the NRA, denying its bankruptcy, on the grounds that it was a flimsy pretence designed to escape liability in New York, where it was incorporated.

https://apnews.com/article/nra-bankruptcy-dismissed-a281b888b64d391374f24539a820d60f

For many of us, the NRA bankruptcy was a kind of puzzle. We went from glad that the NRA was bankrupt to glad that they WEREN’T, because for dark money orgs like the NRA, bankruptcy isn’t a punishment, it’s a way to escape justice.

The NRA case is evidence that the corruption of the bankruptcy system isn’t yet complete. That’s no reason to assume everything is fine. The Sacklers are developing a playbook that will be used to escape other elite crimes with vast fortunes intact.

Image: Geographer (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serpentine_Sackler_Gallery.jpg

CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

38 notes · View notes

rpmemesbyarat · 3 years

Conversation

RP meme from the Baali Clanbook V2 in "Vampire the Masquerade" Part 2 of 2

"Look at the world around you. No, truly look. Do you see it? The entropy slowly eating away at the fabric of existence? The world is dying."

"Existence has always teetered on the brink in some way or another."

"From the coming of prophets and gods to the turn of the millennium. Mankind has always found some way to turn the metamorphosis of life into an “end of days” scenario."

"It's not hyperbole."

"All things must come to an end. Even our universe."

"We can either fear this new existence or we can embrace it. I know which I choose. What will your decision be?"

"I find humanity both fascinating and boring."

"I find humanity both fascinating and boring. They are creatures who have risen above their state as pure beasts in the wild. They have domesticated the world, bringing it to heel under the boot of technology and enterprise. They have tamed the lightning and created weapons of such incredible potency that they could end the entire world with the push of a few buttons. But, at the same time, they cannot even control their own impulses."

"I do love seeing the hope in a victim’s eyes slowly die."

"We need to talk about vampires."

"They are all in their positions due to back-alley deals, dirty deeds, and betrayals that they fear will one day topple them."

"They are afraid. Afraid of losing power."

"Power is a cruel master."

"Do not put yourself out there in a manner that draws unwanted attention."

"Those who are worthy of your knowledge should seek you out, not the other way around."

"Use what you know to twist their desires to your own ends."

"Utilize every secret desire and urging until your “clients” are nothing more than puppets on your strings."

"Above all, however, don’t forget to clean when guests come to call. It’s embarrassing to have a bloody carpet."

"Arrogance will be the gap in their armor that you can exploit."

"They wounded ego and regret."

"That’s a level of fucked up I can’t wrap my head around."

"So easy to guide around by their rage."

"Get over it already."

"They’re not corruptors unless you want to be corrupted."

"It’s bargain basement degradation at best."

"All good rites have some semblance of pageantry to help build up psychic energy for ritual release, sure. But when you perform the rite more for the pageantry than sacrifice or offerings? You’ve missed the point."

"The beautiful ones have this fucked up perception that they are icons of style, grace, and tact."

"The punks think of themselves as whirlwinds of creative destruction."

"After all, I want to see the world break out of this nascent shell of physicality and witness the birth of a new universe."

"So, I can get behind wanting to push past pain and physical limitations."

"These. . .things will not think twice about skinning you alive and making you part of the furniture. And honestly. . .I can respect that."

"These fucking guys."

"There comes a time in everyone’s life when they look at the world around them and wonder; “Is this it? Is this everything that there is?”

"Life, if we are honest, is nothing but a series of disappointments."

"My youth was spent chasing some phantom of purpose. Some reason for us being here, for going on, day after day, living."

"My desperate pleas were met with unyielding silence."

"We all wander through the world, clinging to half-promises of something greater."

"We will find the bliss of enlightenment only after the trials of our world."

"Why was everything we did destined to age and rot?"

"There was no blissful release. There was no epiphany of understanding. No moment of realizing my place in the universe."

"We are, each of us, insignificant."

"We don’t get rich off hard work. Luck and heritage define who rises to the top."

"We don’t find enlightenment as we grow older, we only find bitterness and fear of encroaching death."

"We race to accomplish something. . .anything, that will live on after our deaths."

"I thought sensation would provoke deeper understanding. It does not. It only burns bright, then fades quickly, leaving a person yearning for the next instance of fleeting bliss."

"There is nothing. No great reward awaiting the dying. There is no great paradise for the enlightened. There are fading memories of life and the swirling maelstrom of oblivion."

"Why would anyone want to deny themselves anything knowing that, in the end, they are only fit for utter destruction and darkness?"

"Take every moment of disappointment in your life. Every hardship. Every heartbreak. And then realize that none of it matters in any form in the end."

"Fuck the universe."

"Fuck every lie and every false promise of salvation or of some “great reward” that never comes."

"Enlightenment is a trap."

"Fuck every self-styled guru that peddles street corner bliss and a side of eternal understanding."

"This universe is a fucked -up failure."

"This universe is a fucked -up failure. An experiment with no principal investigator at the helm. Let’s scrap it and start something new. Something where we can make our own purpose."

"It is the only choice we have —to grasp our destinies and forge something new out of the corpse of the old."

"The end is coming and there is no stopping it. But. . .we can accelerate it. We can end this torturous existence and craft something new and meaningful from its remains."

"We are not destroyers, nor are we heralds of destruction. We are idealists seeking to bring purpose to existence. We are scholars burdened with the horrible truth that this universe must burn so that something new and pure can take its place."

"Evil. I hate the word."

"To the point, however, the word “evil” is such a catch-all that is, at its core, quite meaningless."

"We are the midwives of eternity, here to see to the proper birth of what is to come."

"Evil may be a word that can fit us, but to the darkness, isn’t the invasive nature of light evil?"

"I do what I do out of simple necessity."

"“Good” and “evil” are terms for children."

"They are just as “evil” as we. They simply lie to themselves about it."

"I think the truth lies between these tales."

"While the stain of grievous sins can color the auras of most, yours, for some reason, remains pure and innocent."

"You may not realize it, but your very essence sings with dark power."

"You understand the state of the world. You understand how it hangs so precariously between collapse and a great rebirth in darkness."

"In these dark, twisting visions, the future is revealed in flashes of blood-soaked fate."

"They will still be a missing person and be mourned, but they will be, effectively, simply considered another statistic and efforts to seek out justice for them will fade."

"While friends and family still remember the individual and their name, any efforts to seek out justice for them or to search for them cease after the ritual is performed."

"By sharing the affections of your damned patron, you can grant infernal powers to others."

"The allure of evil can draw in the curious like a moth to a flame."

"What is your most shameful secret?"

"What do you desire the most?"

"Whom do you secretly despise?"

"The most valuable advice, then, would be to act subtle. Be calm. Act comfortable."

"Akkadian script is simple, but apparently too difficult for you to count in."

"The quest for the next horizon has always haunted your mind."

"No matter what you were doing, no matter where you were at. . .there was always the allure of the unknown calling out to you."

"The allure of history and understanding what came before was simply too great to ignore."

"You were ravenous for knowledge."

"By the end of the week, you were no longer alive."

"Cultures died out across the world. Why?"

"The great puzzle of the universe lays before you. "

"The ancients knew secrets that would sear the minds of today’s scholars."

"The old gods are my strength. They are my shield."

"Mankind has forgotten where its oldest, bloodiest rites came from."

"Your traditions were handed down to you by your parents, and to them by their parents."

"Old deities that were converted into demons and devils by Abrahamic religions were once sources of inspiration to the world."

"While you have dabbled in mainstream paganism, practitioners these days ring hollow to you."

"Their worship more out of desperation than any true passion."

"It wasn’t for you."

"You caught the attention of something in the dark."

"There is a strength in the old ways that it seems many have forgotten."

"What you are doing is not evil. It is necessary."

"Do stop squirming. It ruins the effect."

"Something was always broken inside of you. "

"Your questions cut through the niceties of social decorum."

"You weren’t ignorant of the suffering you caused. You just didn’t care."

"They love their work and the pain it inflicts."

"You? You honestly adore the look of terror ."

"After all, what is the point of your work if you do not enjoy it from time to time?"

"You know the best ways to draw out the psychic energy for a proper sacrifice."

"They will come. Have no doubt of that."

"You simply didn’t understand the need for religion."

"You were out of place."

"There is a calmness that comes from knowing the end is inevitable."

"You are existing on the precipice of a new universe and you know this."

"Your faith sustains you."

"Aren’t you a beautiful soul?"

"It was an easy lie."

"You have been an apt pupil."

"I am here to do the Devil’s work."

"Life hasn’t always sucked."

"Being homeless creates a new kind of resentment."

"People walk by, either with contempt or pity in their eyes for you. Both are an insult."

"In your anger, you lashed out, you reached for something new that could explain all the inconsistencies in the world."

"Beings from beyond time? The hell does that even mean?"

"You are the devil’s own."

"Satan was a model of freedom from tyranny."

"Your soul is foul and beyond redemption."

"Power belongs to those who are daring enough to wield it."

"You became the popular one, the one in demand, who’s very expression could elevate someone or dash their hopes."

"So, you arranged the death of your beneficiary and inherited their wealth."

"They admired the grace and style with which you brought your targets to heel and slowly destroyed them."

"It only took a week to catch your eye."

"The world may be destined to die a slow, agonizing death, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have your fun wherever you can find it."

"Who are you to judge?"

"You are only as good as your last rumor."

"It’s the thrill of the hunt that drives you and exhilarates you."

"You don’t understand. I know what breathes in the dark. I’m trying to keep it asleep."

"You were always looking for a place to fit in."

"The desire to fit in is always powerful. It can guide our actions and even our thoughts. It can shift our perspective, causing a realignment of our core values."

"Once you found some semblance of purpose you could identify with—and one that made you out to be a hero fighting back darkness, you embraced it wholeheartedly."

"You will keep doing what you know you must do."

"If they only knew that you were working to protect all of them. . .maybe they would be more grateful."

"You have a subtle contempt for modern society."

"You understand the desires that drive people to extremes. . .and you have no qualms about twisting those needs and urges to your ends."

"Everyone you meet is a tool to be used, a potential sacrifice, or a threat to be neutralized."

"You dress to impress—always in the most stylish manners according to what is in fashion."

"Use every environmental factor to your benefit when possible."

"Make good entrances and silent exits."

"You are a cutthroat negotiator when you need to be but know that sometimes the appearance of defeat can serve you better than a clear victory."

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay starters #roleplay meme #roleplay memes #vampire the masquerade #worldbuilding #owod #vtm #baali

22 notes · View notes

thinkveganworld · 3 years

Link

Is it possible for the human race to evolve beyond war, extreme income inequality, corporate money’s control of political systems, and other anti-democratic trends? Some people say even hoping for such evolution is too idealistic, even impossible. Others have said if humanity doesn’t evolve it will soon self-destruct. Martin Luther King once said society has to begin to either “love or perish.”

The U.S. today is rapidly becoming more an oligarchy than a democratic republic, and this oligarchy is polluting the environment, siphoning money from the poor and middle class, and dismantling civil liberties and democracy at an ever-accelerating pace. This trend won’t end well.

As our politicians hurtle downhill, the U.S. will experience many disasters and an eventual fatal crash. Many citizens feel their corrupt politicians of both major parties have taken so much power that the people can’t possibly play a significant role in improving the U.S. political system today.

Ordinary Americans often say we oppose our government’s perpetual wars, regressive tax system, extreme income inequality and other ills, but many say it would be impossible to reform the present system. I think meaningful change is possible based on what history has shown us.

The world has always included people who think it’s possible for the human race to evolve and others who say fundamental change isn’t possible. We’ve always had war and greedy politicians. Still, in some parts of the world at given moments in time, human beings have taken sudden leaps and left behind certain inhumane practices. If that weren’t true, we’d still have rampant blood sacrifices, witch burning and the same widespread use of slavery in the same areas of the world where they once existed.

Today some populations still practice those things, but many have evolved beyond them. The changes that happened started with a sort of “tipping point” where enough people acknowledged that a social ill such as slavery should end.

The more enlightened views, anti-slavery, anti witch-burning, etc., picked up speed, and the public took action to move beyond the old way. In a sense, the condoning of slavery, etc., became obsolete and unthinkably cruel. There is no reason to cling to the belief that the U.S. today can’t make perpetual illegal war and other egregious political abuses obsolete.

During the 1860s in the U.S. more and more people began to acknowledge slavery was unacceptable and started to challenge the power structure. Once the public conscience was awakened, people organized abolitionist groups, created the Underground Railroad, and spoke out publicly. Influential writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau spoke out often against slavery. A slave, Frederick Douglass, wrote prolifically and gave passionate speeches.

If those abolitionists and writers had not believed a big leap in human evolution was possible, they would never have made the effort to organize or speak out. Their action started with their confidence that abolishing slavery was possible, and it’s not that they didn’t know what they were up against.

In his May 11, 1847, speech before the American Anti-Slavery Society, “The Right to Criticize American Institutions,” Frederick Douglass talked about the country’s entrenched pro-slavery power structure. He acknowledged that the U.S. government was then so committed to maintaining the atrocities of slavery for financial reasons that he would need to appeal to authorities outside the government to help end slavery.

There are relevant parallels in America today. People who want to help end our country’s continual illegal wars and corporate money’s control of our political system are in a position similar to the one Douglass described.

Douglass said, “Where, pray, can we go to find moral power in this nation, sufficient to overthrow Slavery? To what institution, to what party shall we apply for aid? . . . [Slavery] is such a giant crime, so darkening to the soul, so blinding in its moral influence, so well calculated to blast and corrupt all the human principles of our nature . . . that the people among whom it exists have not the moral power to abolish it. Shall we go to the Church for this influence? We have heard its character described. Shall we go to politicians or political parties.”

He added that instead of helping end slavery, the church, politicians, press and political parties were “voting supplies for Slavery—voting supplies for the extension, the stability, the perpetuation of slavery in this land.”

Today, U.S. politicians, press, political parties and most spiritual leaders keep voting for (by supporting or passively tolerating) perpetual war, income inequality and other injustices. Average citizens who see we need to evolve beyond these maladies feel they have nowhere to turn, just as Douglass did.

However, in the same speech, Douglass also said that although the pro-slavery government was very powerful, there was one thing it couldn’t resist. He said, “Americans may tell of their ability, and I have no doubt they have it, to keep back the invader’s hosts . . . of its capacity to build its ramparts so high that no foe can hope to scale them . . . but, sir, there is one thing it cannot resist, come from what quarter it may. It cannot resist truth. You cannot build your forts so strong, nor your ramparts so high, nor arm yourself so powerfully, as to be able to withstand the overwhelming moral sentiment against slavery now flowing into this land.”

It turns out he was right. It wasn’t that public opinion alone ended slavery, but it was a game-changing factor, just as strong public sentiment against the Vietnam War played an important role in its resolution.

At various points in history, when the people reached a tipping point and became fed up with given injustices, they started to be vocal and organize to move humanity in a healthier direction. Their collective efforts did change things for the better. Humanity evolved.

Even though U.S. politicians have unprecedented power to do evil and squelch dissent, the public can step up its efforts to speak, write and organize to help us evolve beyond perpetual war, devastating income disparity, and the country’s anti-democratic drift. Writers and other public figures can help by clarifying what is going on and urging the few politicians with conscience to join us in finding solutions.

Throughout history the big evolutionary leaps, including moves away from slavery in certain parts of the world, started with the widespread public attitude that change was both imperative and possible. It is imperative and possible for the U.S. to change its war-for-profit paradigm and its condoning and allowing the other government corruption covered here.

A fitting excerpt from the Declaration of Independence says: “Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” People will put up with a large amount of abuse from their government before they make any effort to change it for the better.

It could be the U.S. public hasn’t yet reached a tipping point and will give in to a feeling of powerlessness. There is never a shortage of “can’t do” dialogue, and the pessimists have a point. We’re faced with daunting challenges.

However, as one of my favorite “lefties,” the late historian Howard Zinn once said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, it energizes us to act, and raises at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Can humanity evolve beyond continual war and rule by the worst among us? Yes and no. We can do it if enough of us begin to see we need this evolution in order for our species to survive, and if we start to believe change is doable and take action. We can’t evolve, and probably won’t survive, if most of us stay in denial about the need for change, give in to a sense of powerlessness and do nothing. Frederick Douglass’s idea that powerful evil political forces can be overcome via the truth and public moral sentiment, and Martin Luther King’s view that humanity must ultimately either love or perish, are keys to sorting out which path we should take.

17 notes · View notes

doctorslippery · 4 years

Link

(Knowledge) Ancient tomes of sacred lore begin fading away.

(Life) All healing magic now comes at a cost to the casters own health.

(Light) The sky is darkened to a permanent twilight.

(Nature) Large swathes of wilderness are infected by a strange rot.

(Tempest) Droughts spread across the land as rain doesn’t fall as often.

(Trickery) People with normally good humor become cold and bitter.

(War) Morale is decreased and soldiers begin to mutiny against their officers.

(Death/Grave) Undead creatures have a chance to randomly rise from graves without a spell cast by a necromancer.

(Forge) The knowledge of forging mithral and adamantine armor and weapons is lost.

Nothing. Once the god is the creator of it’s own domain, but it is able to maintain itself in its absence

(Arcana) All spells now have a chance to go wild.

(Fire) The world becomes cold as it goes into a long winter

(Air) The air becomes polluted and difficult to breath. Many people die of lung related issues.

(Water) Rivers and oceans go stagnant and unmoving.

(Earth) The land becomes infertile and unusable.

(Time) Time rifts start appearing everywhere causing things from the past and the future to come into the present.

(Dragons) All dragons, dragonborn, and kobolds turn to dust

(Darkness) The world becomes filled with endless light and a never ending day

(Love) Family and friends start to hate one another and form grudges over the smallest things

(Order) Revolutions happen everywhere and anarchy reigns supreme

(Good) Empathy and altruism are no more as people are looking out for themselves

(Evil) Angels descend from the heavens to purge the world now knowing that there is no evil god to protect the wicked

(Nature) The forests run amok. Animals and plants invade cities, as every natural order accelerates out of control.

(Nature) Conversely, the forests and fields begin to die. Animals grow sickly and lethargic.

(Nature) The seasons begin to spin out of control. A day dawns with blazing heat, but snow covers the ground to a foot by lunch, and a monsoon rages that night.

(Death) Nothing may die. Nothing. Not the cattle, not the sickly, not the old, not those grievously wounded. Souls are bound to their bodies, and may never set off on their journey. Chop someone into bits, and every tiny piece still twitches in agony.

(Any) As the gods ‘body’ decomposes their essence (what they were the god of) infects the land affecting all who lived below their realm eg if the goddess of nature dies – nature explodes over the area (eventually after hundreds of years the natural green will die and become the land will become barren after the body completes decomposing). If it was the god of war or anger – every person and animal in the realm becomes driven by anger/easily angered, and plants become more dangerous, etc

(Nature) nature becomes twisted and more and more aberration like.

(Nature) herbivores turn predatory and hunt for meat

(Forge) weapons turn weak, Metal is prone to bending and it tarnishes easily.

(Weather) drought spreads across the land

(Weather) destructive “sunder storms” where lightning falls like rain destroy the landscape.

(Weather) winter never ends.

(Any) Angels, demons, fey, other gods, and spirits start competing for that gods power and worship to fill the vacuum

(Any) If the god who dies has worshippers still his corpse enters an odd undead state. He’s too week to be an actual god again or become truly alive again. However his remaining worshippers keep him from truly dying.

(Any) desecration of the area in which it died.

(Any) the nature and landscape where it died twisting to reflect the gods domain

(Any) people in the area also changing to reflect the gods domain

(Any) powerful magic soaks into the land creating powerful items. Things like spiders whose venom can only be cured by other god touched magic. Plants whose berries heal you and their juice can even raise the dead, etc.

(Knowledge) every self aware creature must succeed on a DC 10 Int saving throw or take 1D4 psychic damage and lose as many memories as the DM decides while also losing 1d4 Ing Stat.

(Any) The heavens begin to fall to earth/fuse with the material plane

(Any) Paladins will be in a huge pickle during their conquests.

(Protection) Warding and shielding spells no longer work.

(Protection) The ancient wards that kept the Elder Evils, horrible beings whose power even the gods fear, at bay fall.

(Any) People realize the gods are not immortal, and in reaction, faith in all of the gods begins to falter.

(Tempest) The entire world becomes still: no wind, no waves, not even clouds, like the world is perfectly smooth.

(Trickery) Nobody remembers that they can lie. Everyone either states the truth or is silent, ruining the world’s governments by disabling political maneuvering.

(Forge) Metal no longer melts, making all previously forged weapons exponentially more valuable, even an old rusty sword.

(Any) All of the people that were sacrificed to the gods come back (betrayed heroes, betrayed family members etc), but all of the things that gods has given to us fade away.

(Any) Outsiders from other worlds reveal themselves as the liberators, freeing us from our oppressors by killing the gods.

(Any) The god is replaced by another god that does a terrible (or better) job as the dead god temporary replacement.

(Any) The god was slain, the being that slew the god gains the gods power or becomes the god

(Any) Nothing. The god may have been responsible for creating or shaping it’s aspect, but once it was created it doesn’t need the god to maintain it.

(Any) The gods power leaks from its remains. Any magic of the gods aspect is greatly amplified for several years. The closer to the remains the greater the power is amplified

(Death) Everything that dies rises as a zombie.

(Death) Spirits of the dead are unable to move on. Everything that dies becomes a ghost.

(Death) Spirits of the dead start coming back to the living world

(Knowledge) people begin to forget things. (Names, places, history, how to do things, what they were doing, etc.)

(Life) every living thing becomes sterile (animals are unable to have children / plants cant produce seeds)

(Nature) microorganisms reproduce at an accelerated rate & every other living thing gets wiped out

(Nature) plants and animals become withered anemic versions of themselves

(Nature) plants and animals begin to die off (decay / rot / slowly crumble to dust / slowly turn to ash)

(Nature) plants and animals begin to mutate into monstrous versions of themselves

(Nature) plants experience explosive growth and begin to take over everything

(War) People begin to become more violent and warlike.

(War) People begin to become too apathetic to fight each other. Eventually, people become too apathetic to do much of anything. They just stand around in a daze until the die of starvation or thirst.

(Any) All clerics suddenly overload on divine power (as if the gods power has been divided between them). And they all start to slowly go mad, and start to lose control.

(Light) a massive and well known constellation vanishes and leaves a dark patch right in the middle of the night sky

(War) A vanquished war-god drops his enormous miles-long sword, which falls to Earth and pierces deep into the planet’s mantle

(Death) The god’s followers begin killing at random, hoping the power of their faith will resurrect him

(Light) Random people all over the realm begin to go blind

(Tempest) A whirling hurricane forms in the middle of the Ocean… and doesn’t stop growing

(Forge) The followers of this deceased god begin a pilgrimage to destroy every craft ever created and stamped with his symbol

(Arcana) The god’s death leaves a hole in the weave. Something… unwanted fills in the gap with Its body.

(Nature) The wood of the deity’s patron plant (oak) begins to disintegrate into dust all over the world. Buildings topple.

(Life) This god’s followers have a crisis at the oxymoron of their god dying. They are slowly driven insane

(Grave) The god itself rises as an undead, an anathema to its own mission

(Arcana) People start forgetting spells. (As a spell is cast, roll to see if that is the last time it is cast)

(Arcana) Everyone gains a cantrip. Now this minor power is just something everyone does, like breathing or eating.

(Any) Suddenly there is a war in the cosmos. Minor deities, greatly powerful beings like Warlock Patrons, and other generally unknown greater powers are vying for the position.

(Any) Upon the god’s death, their body is split into thousands and thousands of pieces. These rain down like meteorites but instead of being falling rock bits, it’s a new people recently awoken. Who are these newcomers and what is their memory of or connection to this lost god?

(Tempest) Ocean currents fluctuate wildly

(Earth) Widespread tremors and volcanic activity

(Tempest) Unpredictable squalls

(Light) Continuous winter sets in

(Order) Ubiquitous revolutionary sentiment arises

(Music) Instruments quickly go out of tune, and singers forget words and have their voices crack more often

(Magic) All casters and magic items are treated as one level lower

(Nature) Animals behave erratically and crops fail

(Fate) Prominent heroes begin to meet ignominious ends

(Luck) Coin tosses and dice rolls result in predictable patterns (Heads tails, heads, tails/1,2,3,4,5,6,1 etc.)

(Luck) Randomness begins to fade. The first to go are critical successes and critical fails, but very rapidly all rolls end up as 10.5’s.

(Any) Their power returns to its source where anyone could take it for themselves

(Any) When trees and plants are cut down, instead of sap, blood starts to weep from the cuts.

(Winter) Animals that hibernate don’t wake. Plants and trees stay in their winter state. Even if the weather gets warmer things affected by season act like it never ended.

(Knowledge) every creature’s INT ticks down steadily as their memories slowly disappear until all life is reduced to animalistic intelligence.

(Death) no one can die anymore. HP can’t be dropped below 0 and no one can die of old age, accumulating age bonuses and penalties until all physical stats are reduced to 0.

(Light/sun) the sun and stars go out. The temperature continuously drops until the entire world is frozen over.

(Magic) all spells, enchantments, supernatural and spell-like abilities, etc. get progressively weaker until the entire world is basically in a null-magic zone.

(Nature) plants and animals become incapable of reproducing.

(Life) healing magic no longer works. Natural healing progressively weakens until it too is no longer possible.

(Trickery) it becomes impossible for anyone to lie or mislead

(Forge) a small mountain range of metals and the occasional gem crashes into the planet in 3… 2… 1…

(Knowledge) everyone receives random revelations rather simultaneously.

(Trickery) some guy shows up three days later, wondering what all the hubbub’s about.

(Life) Every wound healed by their clerics starts to rot, and everyone reanimated becomes undead.

(Trickery) Their holy texts go blank, holy symbols turn to dust, and all knowledge of the god is ripped from mortal minds, the god is dead and forgotten in all ways. While most people feel like they’ve forgotten something, the most devout worshippers to the lost god go mad from the hole in their mind and soul.

(Trickery) The gods secrets are spread throughout the world, the common-folk learn of their rulers corruption, people discover their spouses cheating, children learn their beloved dog didn’t go to a farm, all secrets good and bad are made known and will rip families, kingdoms, and even other faiths apart.

(Any) A shockwave of power blasts through the realms, knocking everything unconscious for d10 hours

(Arcana) Spellcasters and magic items begin to “glitch”, causing them to either be completely unable to cast spells/activate items or the spells go wild.

(Any) People and clerics begin to notice that something is…missing…

(Nature) Many two headed animals are born the following day.

(Any) The god(s) start to slip away out of people’s mind, and they start questioning if they were ever thing to begin with.

27 notes · View notes

aspiring-bl-writer · 3 years

Text

Flash Fiction: Drukhari & Necrons

Hello again! I want to thank Tim aka TauMan over at Cold Open Stories for giving me a lot of helpful feedback on my last post. I also highly suggest checking out Cold Open Stories if you too are interested in writing or reading 40k fiction (they also have audio dramas). In today's story, a Drukhari raider stumbles upon a Necron tomb that has recently reawakened. With some of Tim's feedback in mind I tried to focus more on imagery and used a first-person POV to give the story a little more punch.

We gush forth from the Webway, a swarm of coal-colored locusts, our intentions cruel and wicked. We are the Kabal of the Flayed Skull, the raiders of the Poisoned Crown. I grip the controls of my Reaver white-knuckled and teeth-gritted, testing the limits of the jet-bike’s acceleration. The Reavers lead the war party and I lead the Reavers, both as their leader and in formation. To outdistance me would be to challenge my authority. I brook no dissent. I cannot show weakness. Only the strongest thrive in the Dark City.

I do not know this world’s name. I do not care. We raided it long ago, then left it to recreate its wealth and population for our future plunder. Most of it is underground, built into caverns, the great halls and corridors of this subterranean race. For all their skill and knowledge of excavation, their weapons are woefully primitive, all but useless against our own. Even more brazenly than is characteristic for me, I dive and glide low over rows of what this species calls “soldiers.” Their globular heads fly off in fountains of magenta-hued blood as the blades attached to my bike slice through their necks in one pass, my conveyance unimpeded by even the slightest resistance. I let out a whoop as we fly deeper into the recesses of the subterrestrial city, taking breakneck turns around tight corners, weaving through compact lanes and passages. The further we go, the fewer defenders we see, the streets empty, the buildings abandoned. Everything is silent.

“They’re hiding!”

“No!” I shriek. “We came in too fast!”

They could not know we were coming. Even with the odds in our favor we never surrender surprise. There is something else amiss here. My curiosity spurs my bravado.

Then I see it. The streets end and buildings conclude where a wide fissure begins, a fracture that is miles across and even deeper. As we circle it, I see an eerie yellowish shade of green emanating from below. I assume it to be coming from some natural gas, but there is no vapor, but patterns, glyphs carved into rock by some strange intelligence.

I see the result of the shot before I hear the blast. One of my followers explodes in a flash of bright light, his bike detonating beneath him. Rising from the crevasse are two floating figures, skeletal heads, arms, and torsos lodged onto hovering platforms. They hold energy weapons alive with the same vivid yellowish-green as the glyphs, pulsing with destructive power. They stare at us with cold contempt on their metal visages.

I veer to avoid another blast, only to steer into another. I jump clear, and the cries and shouts of the other Reavers fade as I fall into the crevice. I plummet, limbs flailing without purchase. Only briefly do I glimpse the grandeur of a throne room. A lord, old, terrible, angry, patient. I feel relief that I will not live to see the doom he brings.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer #40k #40k lore #40k fiction #40k fanfic #wh 40k #drukhari #dark eldar #eldar #aeldari #necron #necrons #tomb world #reavers #games workshop #black library

9 notes · View notes

crystalessenceswrites · 4 years

Text

Shadows- Chapter Three

Shadows

A modern monster AU Pairings: Din Djarin x fem!reader Rating: T (at the moment- subject to change) Warnings: Dark themes, canon-typical violence, descriptions of a dead body, desecration and disposal of a dead body. Summary: Crypto- concealed; secret. You have always lived your life in the shadows; after all, you’re one of the creatures who go bump in the night. He has sworn his life to a creed that aims to protect the world from monsters like you.

[Masterlist] [Chapter Two] [Chapter Three] [Chapter Four] Cross-posted on AO3

Satisfaction was not the right word, but it was the closest you could put your finger on as you watched the Mandalorian walk away. You had escaped his clutches twice now. While that was two more times that you would ever want to have a run-in with one of his kind there was still a sense of pride in being able to outmaneuver him. He dedicated his life to killing your kind but here you were, alive, while he was leaving without his target. A victory for you and Kira, no matter how small a success. Though that victory came with a bit of a mess. You and Kira needed to get the hell out of dodge. The gunshots and shouting would have already drawn attention from folks in the pub or out on the street. Which is exactly why you did not carry firearms for most jobs. Too messy.

“Hold this tight.” You’d had a spare scarf in your bag which was coming in handy. It would help staunch Kira’s bleeding long enough to get her into the clinic, so long as you had it tight enough.

Kira waves you off, “stop hovering. Take care of the body.”

As much as you didn’t need your partner bleeding out, she had a point. You had a body to dispose of.

There’s a routine to it. Stripping the outer layers, shoes, valuables and identifiers. The office had people who properly disposed of identification and could make nearly anyone disappear from any record or database. One less hassle you had to deal with.

You spread out the man’s coat and roll the cooling body onto it before ripping off the bottom of his shirt. Next comes the hand. Every slayer seems to have a preferred limb of extremity for proof of death. Some liked ears, fingers and toes, a tongue or an eyeball. You never could find the will to get that up close and personal with a corpse. A whole hand or foot was your preferred token. Easy enough to sever at the joint and it left plenty to identify the bounty with, keeping confusion to a minimum when you handed it over. In comparison it was just a bit harder to carry around and hide.

The man is only a few minutes dead, so the chop-job at the wrist makes a mess all over the bounty’s jacket. How you wished you had your clean up kit with you. Or more time. This was too rushed to be a proper job. The only upside to your location was its convenience-one dumpster at the ready. You toss the body, jacket and shoes before wrapping the hand up in the torn shirt. The last place you want to put the limb is in your purse but you’re out of options. Gross. Normally you had a proper bag prepared for this.

At least the bounty money would pay for a new bag.

Destruction was the last step. Fire was not your preferred method, it left too much behind, but you kept a lighter on your person at all times. Just in case. Though just a little zippo wasn’t going to cut it for a dumpster fire. Alcohol made a pretty decent accelerant and you were standing just outside a bar.

“You done yet?”

“Shove off,” you roll your eyes at the blonde. “You’re not exactly being much help.”

“Uh, bullet wound?”

“Excuses, excuses…”

Rummaging around the loading dock doesn’t help much, there’s no booze left out, which was probably smart on the pubs account. Most of what they had stored in the back looked like kitchen supplies and extra gas canisters for the bar. Those would provide more fire power than you were looking for and draw more attention than was good for such a rushed job. They would have to be your last resort.

“Hey Kira, what’s the flash point of cooking oil?”

“Average to low, I think.”

“Perfect.” You feel a little bad stealing the barrel but you’re in too much of a rush to dwell on it. “Drape my coat over your shoulders and take my purse, head back in and wait for me by the entrance. I’ll be there in a sec’.”

Kira winces a bit as she situates herself. Your coat just covers the blood stain blossoming across her shirt. Hopefully, no one in the pub looks too closely. Or checks the bag. “Got it.”

It’s not as easy as you’d like to hoist the plastic barrel into the dumpster, but you manage, albeit with very little grace. Popping the seal quickly covers the corpse and the rest of the dumpster’s contents in oil. All it takes is you dropping you lit zippo in for it to all go up in flames. Works almost a little too well.

“Why am I not surprised it was you two to run into the Mandalorian.” Rosalyn clicks her tongue as she goes about fixing Kira’s arm up with ever steady hands.

“(Y/N)’s a Mandalorian magnet, apparently.”

“Please don’t say that,” you groan. That was the last thing you needed. Mando had cornered you twice now and you did not want to see if the third time was charm for him. You wanted nothing more to do with the mysterious dark-haired man.

“But also an escape artist!” Kira grins despite Rosalyn’s ministrations.

The healer frowns, “she shouldn’t have to be. None of you should have to be. You’ve all got enough to worry about.”

Rosalyn, ever the worrier. Her big heart was the reason she became a nurse instead of a slayer in the first place. You’re not sure where you and the others would be without her. Scratch that, you knew Kira would be dead in a ditch without Rosalyn. She’d patched her up more times than either of you could count.

“We choose this life, Ros. We know the risks- Mandalorians and hunters are part of that risk.”

“None of us chose to be born into this life, to live in hiding from humans who want to kill us because we’re different,” Rosalyn’s voice cracks at the end, her eyes downcast.

She’s not wrong. None of you asked to be half-bloods, to be stuck in the in-between. There were few paths in life for your kind, all full of their own risks. But that was how your cards had fallen. You tried not to dwell on it, but it was not always easy. Some of the things you saw brought your circumstances to the forefront, the cruel indiscriminate nature of hunters being one of them. That had always been the biggest thorn in Kira’s side. Why she was so abrasive and hostile towards them.

“ ’M sorry, Ros. I didn’t mean it like that.”

The nurse forces a smile, “I know…I guess we’re all a little on edge lately.”

“That’s an understatement.” Kira gestures to her now properly bandaged arm, “think I will be now too.”

Rosalyn rolls her eyes, “just pay more attention. Or I’m not fixing you up next time you get shot.”

The compound was nearly up and running at full capacity. Families were settling in, supply stores were filling up, the armory stocked and so on. Din allowed himself a moment of pride watching the foundlings training in the yard- the next generation of Mandalorian hunters. It felt like lifetimes ago that he was one of them, day after day of drilling and sparring next to his brothers and sisters. Now Paz leads the training, passing on the wisdom and skills that had been passed to them by the warriors that came before. Passing on the knowledge of the monsters that stalk the world around them.

Monsters like her.

(Y/N)

That was what the blonde had called her.

Slayers, they had called themselves. None of what they had been taught mentioned slayers. There was nothing about monsters killing other monsters. Yet they’d called it their job. Were they some sort of twisted police force?

She certainly did not appear the type. But that’s how they all were. Appearing like something they’re not. Walking around in human skin, the monster swimming just below the surface. Din just had yet to figure what monster was lurking behind her sharp eyes.

“Din Djarin.”

If there was one person in the compound who knew more then he did, more than Paz did, it was the Armorer. Their coverts alor.

“Another successful hunt.”

The words taste like acid on his tongue, “no… I was interrupted.”

“Interrupted?”

“The woman who aided in the escape of the club owner showed up again.”

Armorer pauses, her face pensive, an expression Din does not see her wear often. “Is she tracking you?”

“No.” There was no way (Y/N) had managed to follow him. She’d fled after their first encounter anyways. “She said she was not our enemy.”

“Oh? You’re sure she’s one of them?”

Din nods, “I’ve seen her magic. And she called herself a slayer.”

Armorer’s eyebrows shoot up, “slayer?”

“Is that familiar to you?”

“Only in very old stories,” she muses. “They mimic us in some ways. They rid their kind of nuisances, ones who threaten to expose them, if the old stories are to be believed. I have never seen or heard of their kind otherwise.”

Nuisances. That seems to be what (Y/N) had been doing last night. Attempting to remove a sick criminal whose actions threatened to expose humans to the truth. So why had he never run into one of them until now? He was not new to hunting monsters. Din had a number of years under his belt now -that’s why he was the best in the covert- and he’d never seen or heard of them until he collided with her. Where exactly had they come from and why?

There always seems to be more mysteries with her involved.

“We will need to be vigilant for her and any others on future hunts.”

Din agrees. There could be no more surprises and no more escaped targets. He would not allow it.

“It is rather concerning on both accounts.”

You almost felt as if you and Kira were sitting in the principal’s office, about to be scolded for some dumb prank you’d pulled. Not that you’d ever pulled any pranks in school, or gotten in trouble for that matter. The circumstances of your identity meant you did everything in your power to stay under the radar. Quiet, polite, kept your head down. Your principal probably would not have recognized you back then. Yet you still couldn’t shake the odd sense of déjà vu you felt sitting Boss’s office.

“We’ll pass on the information about the bartender to the knights but if he’s gone this long without detection, it won’t be long before he comes back to us on the bounty list.”

“He’ll have a harder time hiding without his partner around to help.” It’s not much but at least even Kira was trying to be optimistic.

“We can hope,” Boss nods. “As for this Mandalorian… it appears your original concerns have been realized, (Y/N). We may need to be more proactive in monitoring the hunter, lest we have another Fett situation on our hands.”

Boba Fett had been a thorn in your office’s side for years before he’d died. Some of his targets had been known criminals with outstanding bounties, much like this new Mando, but others had been innocents, cryptos just going about their lives alongside humans. The community had been up in arms but there was not anything the office was allowed to do. Fett was human. It was the unfortunate circumstances you all had to navigate in your line of work. Your job was to catch criminal bounties, slayers had no power to protect other cryptos. Despite knowing that, locals had become rather upset with the inaction. There was a number of gathering places slayers had been banned from at the time in retribution. Time had smoothed over relations but the new Mando threatened to dredge everything back up again.

“Any luck on tracking down his informant?” If you could take his contact out of the mix maybe the Mando would skip town. There were plenty of other communities for him to terrorize. Other slayer’s bounties for him to steal.

Boss’s frown deepens, “nothing yet. The knights have been notified and we’ve got a few local leaders keeping their ears open. Someone will hear something soon.”

It had been over a month, if no one had heard anything by now you did not have much hope of anything new coming to light. You didn’t have it in you to contradict the old man though. No one wanted to admit they had hit a dead end.

“Is that all we can do? Pass it over to the knights and wait until someone else gets hurt?” Kira’s frustrations mirror your own. You both had trained for years before being allowed your three-year apprentice ship. To put everything you had into protecting your kind and taking down criminals and then to not have the power to deal with a Mandalorian was maddening. Just waiting on someone else made you want to tear your hair out.

#fic: Shadows #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x f!reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x f!reader #din djarin #reader #the mandalorian #the mandalorian au #the mandalorian fanfiction #x reader #fanfiction #modern au #enemies to lover #monsters and monster hunters #chapter three #crystalessences writes

33 notes · View notes

crimsonfluidessence · 3 years

Text

Prompt 11: Preaching To The Choir

Esredes was always somewhat tense on these nights. It was recruitment night, and one he was at the head of. Ysayle did the bulk of these, seeing who showed up to the invisible ink on the innocuous flyers and seeing who would step forward and join their ranks. She was incredibly good at it, even from the start. But the woman could not be everywhere at once, and Esredes was one of the many others who volunteered to do the task. Security was always tight at the meetings. A lot of his own stood by as guard to both the invited guests and the speaker, and incidents were rare. The meeting was always held somewhere they did not return to again, and with plenty of room to get away by flight, and plenty of distance between the speaker and the audience, surrounded by his people as guard as they were. Yet it never helped that tension of the fact any one could be the incident, and there was still always so much put on the line. Not to even mention, being the speaker himself was always worse than simply guarding it. When he was standing by and managing these events, he was in his usual combat uniform inspecting people one by one to check for weapons, and then standing near Ysayle as guard afterwards. But when he was the speaker, the uniform didn't cut it. The speaker had to have presence, they had to try and captivate the vulnerable and questioning audience. So the weavers at the camp had settled on constructing him a long, black cloak that draped down to his feet, with equally long and draping sleeves. The sleeves add a lot of character, they said. The whole of the cloak was adorned with silver stitched accents, in a way they claimed evaded feeling too fancy, yet evoked a sense of mysticism necessary to captivate the audience. Every other speaker had a similar cloak attire made to them. It seemed they were the uniform look to go with. Esredes somewhat understood the power of the cloak. When he wore it before the ceremony began, it felt a bit awkward, like he was pretending to be a mage when he was an imitator of it at most, and he found himself fumbling idly with the sleeves often. It was only once he took his place and got into the thick of it that he truly felt the concept of presence it evoked. For now, though, Esredes had to stand awkwardly among the rest of the guard on a cliff above the gathering, as below his people continued their process of vetting everyone who came, and watch quietly, reciting his speech in his head repeatedly. It didn't matter how many times he had given this exact speech before, or the fact he often went scriptless for motivational speeches to his people, he still felt the need to be sure he did not mess it up. Behind the cloak's hood, his orange eyes peered out at every new person who arrived carefully, contemplating to himself if they would join or leave, if he would get to know them or they would be just another lost speck on the wind, and what brought them here. There was always an element of fascination to each individual story, no matter how many similar ones came. Finally, a hush fell over the gathered crowd. The guard moved into position, a circle upon the cliff, and he took his place in the middle. How odd it did feel, to be the guarded item in the middle, as if he wasn't just as often on the outer circle, as if there was really anything to guard and he wouldn't just immediately attack anyone who thought they could shoot the messenger. But spectacle was spectacle. Esredes slowly made his way into the center and peered down at the crowd once more from beneath his hood. The air hung silent for a moment as all eyes peered on him, and then he raised his hands up and let his gloved hands point out at the crowd as the long sleeves trailed down gracefully. "Good evening, people of Coerthas and beyond," he began. "Whether you have truly come from within the city's walls or lands beyond, I give you the warmest welcome to our humble little gathering. Though I am sure all of you come from vastly different backgrounds, one thing has brought you here tonight- doubt." He made his first strategic pause, watching the crowd a moment as his words fell down below to them. "We live in a world where there is much and more to doubt- how can the people of Coerthas be truly certain of sleep's next embrace with all that rages above and below?" He paused for a small moment, and began to pace to the left, one arm across his abdomen. "Nor will the walls of Ishgard itself protect anyone, for within them the Church listens to your every thought and ravages its people for heresy. Thus, you are brought here." He turned the other way and dropped both arms, returning slowly to the center. "In all of the doubt that swirls within you, you have come to listen to a truth that hides out here on the northern wind. A tale of the lies of the Church and the origins of our very nation." He faced the crowd full on once more, and held his arms out directly out from their place on the side of his body, forearm and palms raised a little and facing the sky. "The Dragonsong War that has plagued the lands of Coerthas for a thousand years did not begin how we are asked to believe it is. It began even earlier." Murmurs and whispers came from the crowd, and Esredes allowed them to ripple through before he continued. "Long ago, when these lands were fresh and new to the Elezen, they came to settle and encroached directly on the existing territory of the dragons. When war broke out, only one thing could bring it to a ceasefire- that of a maiden named Shiva. You might know her as a witch who lied down with dragons, the original heretic- but she is anything but. She is the one who had the courage to seek out the voice of the other side and found the great wyrm by the name of Hraesvelgr. The two fell in love, and it was the witnessing of their bond by all that lead to a ceasefire. For two hundred years, man and dragon worked together, they built structures that still stand today in Dravania. But it was not Nidhogg who ruined this fleeting peace, but the very founders of Ishgard." Esredes paused. "Do you ever stop to wonder why the wyrm is as lost to vengeance as he is? Why his rage upon the city is so unending? It's because he was betrayed. The founders lured him to the city and stole his eye, devouring it for the taste of a dragon's power without the need to rely on one. And so the wyrm rages on, forever unable to regain that which is lost." Esredes paused once more and trailed slowly across his makeshift stage. "Nidhogg rages on, trying to destroy Ishgard. And Ishgard crumbles piece by piece to his attacks, accelerating its own destruction by tearing each other apart from the inside with accusations of heresy and the lines between high and lowborn. Tonight, all of you have come to the middle." To emphasize his point, he stood in the middle again and raised both hands up. "We are the people who fight not for the self destructive Ishgard, nor the raging horde, but for the one thing neither of them are capable of, peace. For just as Shiva brought man and dragon together once in the midst of conflict, so must something rise again to be the missing link, or else the lands of Coerthas and possibly all of Eorzea, will be eventually be consumed in dragonfire." Another strategic pause came and went. The crowd had much louder murmuring this time. "Until the people of Ishgard can see the light of the truth, there will be nothing but continuous warfare, and the continued destruction of its own people. Ishgard is eating itself alive day by day in its desperation to survive. It fights and resists us at every turn, but it is up to us alone to bring it to parley by any means possible. We will bring salvation to Ishgard and punishment to the wicked, through the collaboration of people of all kinds and dragons who will rise to the task. The very future of this land rests on everything we try to accomplish." Esredes stepped forward and scanned the faces of the crowd. "I expect for many of you beyond the simply curious, you have come here because something in your heart cries out for justice unseen. And for all of you, I say now- justice is possible, and justice will come. Your wounds are not without their sources of healing. For Ishgard is never to flourish again without the weeds exterminated from the garden. Imagine it, for a moment. A land where once again man and dragon work together, benefitting from their mutual talents, the populations of each flourishing and allowing the land to thrive. Children never again wake up afraid of being burned by dragon's fire. That is our greatest future. And that is a future worth fighting for." Esredes moved his hands up to his hood and threw it off, exposing his face and hair to the crowd. With it, he rose his hands all the way up past his head and into the air. "People of Eorzea! I ask you now, to search through the depths of your hearts, and find it in you to take a stand for something greater than yourself. To channel the grievances of your heart into making a world in which others will not suffer the pain you go through each day, and this land will shine with beauty it hasn't glimpsed in a very long time. It is a path of hardship and sacrifice, but it is nothing compared to what will befall everyone if the war is allowed to continue to stain the soil with blood. Through our collective will, we shall bridge the gap, we shall sweep upon the hearts of man and dragon to make them one again- and nothing Ishgard may do will stop us until the Archbishop has atoned for his crimes and every dragon in the land is beyond blind rage." He paused there, to let his words fall over the crowd for a moment, and slowly lowered his arms back to his side. "If you would like to stand with Shiva's people, please step forward and gather by the group of people in front of you. If not, you are free to leave, and never speak of this night again. But make your choice with all due consideration, as there will be no reversing it." The crowd looked to one another. Slowly, one person stepped forward, then another, until every single one had stepped over. The guards began to instruct and lead them up the cliff to rejoin his group up here. And with that, Esredes stepped aside and rejoined the group himself. "Well done," one of them said to him with a soft elbow nudge. "Have you ever considered becoming an actor after you're done saving Coerthas?" "Not in the slightest." Esredes said. "This is just practical acting for a purpose. I don't think I could do artistic acting. People train a long time for that." "Maybe we'll put on our first ever Disciples play and cast you in it someday," he said with a wink. "I would kick you out of this movement." He chuckled. "That's the spirit, Esredes. Never change." Esredes smiled faintly back, and then began walking. "Now," he said. "Let's hope the room counts are accurate tonight..."

#screenshots #in action #ffxivwrite2021 #ysayle #writing

5 notes · View notes