#you bout to summon the whole squad

[freyanistics]

Remember this?

DONNA'S NOODLES🍝

Unfortunately

[dreamii-yume]

SPOILERSSS for Twisted Wonderland Chapter 6 : 1-16!!!

*rubs hands* aight it wont take long before genshin has me in its gacha hell grasp again, I just barely escaped this time— NOW ITS TIME TO SEE THE BOIS CHAPTER 6 omg— wtf happened last time lol it’s been too long

So, no voice over because of some problems which is understandable but— meh I don’t feel like reading lol So I’m watching otome ayui translations this time, because im that one dumbass student who skipped kanji class and now i cant read without sounding like im five _:(´ཀ`」 ∠): “what up im yume im way passed 19 and i never fucking learned how to read”

Also watching Hanayura Kanon stream for the rest that’s not yet been translated lol Because he’s very good at voice acting for the characters and he’s funny af lol

- OKAY OKAY— WTF HAPPENED EXPLAIN

- Fun fact : I haven’t watched Hercules yet so I legit don’t know what’s about to come lol

- Aw, that’s cute— We called over Ace and Deuce late at night AND THEY REALLY CAME OVER AAAAA

- I forgot how fckin pure their friendship is _:(´ཀ`」 ∠):

- Aight, so we actually have a huge-ass scratch from feral Grim lol That’s just fantastic, isn’t it

- FINALLY— We’re talking about Mickey and the stones my monster cat has been eating with Crowley AAAAA

- “Yeah there’s this bitch called mickey and i took his photo—“

- WE’RE FINALLY TALKING ABOUT THIS. AFTER 6 CHAPTERS.

- Bruh this crystal of blot sounds really dangerous why are we discussing this just now

- Speaking of this crystal, Crowley— you were looking for this crystal in chap one and when we asked you about wtf you’re trying to find you just went— “oH itS NothING.”

- I SUPPOSED ITS NOT NOTHING NOW IS IT

- I didnt see you searching for crystals after every chapter mr. crowley where were you 👁👄👁 dont you think it was weird that you didnt see a single one after like— five blotting incidents

- Oh so its rare i see— BRUH R U SURE ABOUT THAT grim literally found one every single chap LMAO

- Okay okay— see, he may be violent but listen— you aint gonna throw out my fucking cat okay

- Wh— THERE WAS A FESTIVAL!? Im dumb so its not just VDC LOL

- Listen LISTEN— GRIM IS FINE. HOLD UP— NO NEED TO THROW HIM OUT JUST LET ME HAVE ANOTHER LOOK AT HIM

- Aww, Ace and Deuce looked pissed about it too AAAAHH THE TRUE DEFINITION OF THE BOIS

- BRUH NO— ALL THE DORM LEADERS TO GO AND CAPTURE GRIM?? HE’LL DIE

- CROWLEY PLS— WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, HONEY

- #Grimportectionsquad

- “It’s bout time for them to come” Who?

- FUCKING— CROWLEY STOP SAYING ITS NOTHING— This is why this school is so fucked, you never tell us anything ahead of time _:(´ཀ`」 ∠):

- Aight he left, Ace Deuce hurry help me what you guys got

- He may be a monster but see— the worst he did is eat the whole tuna stack SO PLS HES STILL BABY AND I LOVE HIM

- THATS RIGHT DEUCE MY MAN GRIM CAN DO NO BAD I SWEAR

- HE WOULDNT EVER AGAIN I SWEAR

- Ace ヽ(；▽；)ノ The character development— im so proud of you, son

- THIS IS THE BOISSS— LETS GOOOO

- Fuck this is so beautiful— just me and the bois on our way in the middle of the night to find our MISSING CAT I—

- CROWLEY REALLY DID ASSEMBLE THEM DORM LEADERS AAAAAAA AT THIS HOUR TOO WTF

- BRUH WE CAN TALK

- Kalim Kalim Kalim Vil Vil Vil— Pls we’ve been through so much last chapter ＨＥＬＰ

- Leona…A big fat ｍｏｏｄ honestly lmao

- Ey ey riddle pls— dont make this any more difficult—

- Shut up azul stay where u are all you’ve done is nothing but chaos since you arrive so SHHH

- MALLEUS IS NOT HERE AGAIN LILIA PLS— where is he when we need him the most LOL

- Ortho, your bro where?? Also— SURVIVAL STATUS BRUH—

- YES PLS DONT HURT HIM OMG

- oh i forgot idia lives in his tablet LOL OF COURSE

- Omg he’s in the apple trees still looking scary as shi aaaaaaa pls kitty come home u just had too much catnip

- OH GOD 15m HE’S CLOSE

- “Starting operation” ORTHO WHAT TF

- EY EY EY oh good he’s knocked out sighhh

- Aight I know this has been translated but I can’t help but to look at the original japanese and im just— wtf is RTS and TAS idia i dont understand this advanced gamer otaku language

- But Idia and Ortho really do be speedrunning on who can fucking kick my cat the hardest LOL

- THATS RIGHT IDIA You understand me— Fellow cat lovers unite, Grim is very cute, he can’t do no bad

- …so can i have him back pls—

- Can we just appreciate the fact that these bois are willing to take the risk of getting their heads chopped off by Riddle by doing all this for us??

- If this isnt what you call true friendship then i dont know what this is

- Lol ambrose is going to appear in this festival again and crowley’s prideful ass is QUAKING

- WHY are we not allowed to see him crowley im sure we can handle it— We’re the BOIS. CMON

- Imagine if they just summon a fcuking— magic vet or something lol

- It’s the next day lol

- HAH ITS THE VDC LOSERS BY ONE VOTE SQUAD

- I mean the NRC Tribe— ٩( ᐛ )و

- VIL. what you have my queen

- Vil pls dont remind me that my cat isnt here but thank you for saying thank you i do not deserve—

- AWW THE ADEUCE SQUAD LOOKS SO SAD AAAAA

- Vil i miss the bad bitch but absolute oneesan energy but the apology— yeah are we gonna cry again lol

- AAAAAAHH why am i so proud— THAT vil is apologizing

- You dont need to maam what we had in chapter 5 was a fucking journey i regret nothing

- I swear if rook goes like— bitch that aint beautiful imma bonk him I WILL DO IT dont think i forgot what u did last chap

- Man i love me a man who can openly admit his mistakes MMMGH

- Rook i swear—

- Im glad that we’re not toning down ace’s brutal honesty lol

- BRUHHH I DONT LIKE IT WHEN VIL US TAKING ALL THE BLAME i mean what he said was kinda true BUT STILL

- Cheer up Vil, it’s not like it’s a complete failure anyways (；ω；) it was fun at least

- Hearing Jamil encourage Vil like this feels surreal BUT YES BOI U TELL EM

- What is this beautiful character development

- Ooff way to hit where it hurts the most vil my queen lol

- AAGH IT HURTS VIL RECOGNIZING NEIGE’S HARDWORK LIKE THIS— THE PRIDE I CAN FEEL IT ＣＲＡＣＫ

- Bruh we appreciate Neige’s impeccable smile in this household— REMEMBER WHEN EVERYONE WAS LIKE NEIGE’S GON BE A BAD BOI??? WELP—

- It was me, i was that person and i shall drown in apple juice for it

- Of course, the ultimate Neige simp already knows that lol

- Bruh the background music has no business being this sad　ｓｔｏｐ

- I hate it when vil is right sometimes omg— TRUEEE KALIM especially wouldn’t be able to stand properly on stage after knowing Neige’s own hardships aaaa

- NOO BABY DONT CRY

- Vil redemption arc??? 👀👀 you can help us cure our cat—

- !? Are we gonna get that money promised in that poster?? 👀👀

- WHAA FUCKING WAHAA VIL IS GONNA PAY THAT US??? THE WHOLE 5 MIL EACH??!! VIL CALM DOWN WHAT I SAID WAS A JOKE

- Damn vil is ＳＴＡＣＫＥＤ He really didnt want to owe anyone anything LMAO YES QUEEN

- WHA— KALIM IS ACCEPTING??? OUT OF EVERYONE HERE, I DID NOT EXPECT YOU TO ACCEPT THAT KALIM

- Kalim is making my heart go boom boom again baby boi ✨👁💧👄💧👁✨✨

- HE’LL DONATE IT TO THE RAMSHACKLE DORM BABY BOIIII

- …sumimasen kalim for having a very rundown dorm 👁💧👄💧👁 but thank you for being nice about it lol

- OKAY OKAY KALIM YOU DONT HAVE TO LIST ALL THE THINGS WRONG IN MY DORM PLS—

- THIS IS EMBARRASSING PLS KALIM IM SORRY FOR BEING POOR

- But this man be such a sunshine holy shit i cant even be mad about it lol

- AW YEAH RAMSHACKLE DORM IS GONNA GET A MAKEOVER

- EVERYONE BE DONATING THEIR MONEY TO US AAAAA Were they always this NICE

- Aight adeuce pls— y’all dont have to force yourself to donate my guys (´；ω；`) being friends is enough lol i get it my bois

- Find me a man who can make me feel like this the way Vil can

- Man if only Grim is here :’) he’d be soo happy :’)) you can have all the tuna you want buddy :’)))

- GRIM PLS ADEUCE IS WILLING TO TREAT YOU TO LUNCH BABY

- Bro this is so wholesome omg

- Im sorry but still up to this day, my understanding of Epel’s accent is still　ｌａｃｋｉｎｇ lmao

- Aight they be talking about how Rook already knew that they were going to lose from the very beginning

- The FORESHADOWING LOL The difference with how Rook said “What a wonderful performance” rather than “What a beautiful performance” sigh

- Honestly we gotta respect Rook’s resolve here lol man just knows what he wants

- Rook and Vil’s friendship lmao

- 👁👄👁 …!?

- EARTHQUAKE WTF How dare you ruin such moment—

- WHAT IS GOING ON

- EY WTF DONT DESTROY MY DORM WTF ARE YOU GUYS

- WHAT ARE THESE ROBOTS OUTSIDERS KILL THEM WITH FIRE

- They look like something that belongs to the Ignihyde dorm HUH

- Oh bruh— Vil in his Dorm Leader mode is so cool AND YES I KNOW THIS IS NOT THE TIME BUT wheww~~ Vil YAS QUEEN

- KALIM TOO AAAAAA JAMIL’S 「はっ！」SO COOL

- so SO— the dorm leader’s have a protocol for outsider attacks like this 👁👄👁 OMG THEY’RE SO HOT

- They don’t seem like our bois anymore aaa just pure professionalism at this point—

- GOD I FORGOT HOW COOL THEY ARE OMG

- HEEEYYY OUR DORM IS GETTING DESTROYED WTF ARE THESE GUYS’ PROBLEM

- We were just talking about renovating it too wtf

- AAAAAHHH HOW DARE YOU— VIL R YOU OK

- Bruh i dont know what is going on but dont touch my man’s face

- They’re targetting Vil and Jamil WHY— overblot men!!??? WHERE ARE YOU— GIVE THEM BACK

- I didnt understand what epel said here lmao BUT—!?

- THEY HAVE GRIM TOO FUCK HE’S BACK LET GO OF MY FUCKING CAT

- WHAT IS GOING ON DARLINGS

- BUDDYY >:’0000 Grimmm MY HEART—

- Are they kidnapping the overblot men?? What— the fucking absolute ｂａｌｌｓ on these robots

- God we’re getting absolutely ｆｕｃｋｅｄ in here

- AND THERE’S A CAULDRON IN THE BACKGROUND LOL DEUCE WENT HAM

- BRING ME BACK MY FUCKING CAT— >:’0000

- I thought there’s going to be a festival not a fucking kidnapping event HEY

- Oh 👀 Rook pls help

- AAAHH SERIOUS ROOK IS HOT—

- IS THE OTHER DORM LEADERS CHILLING WHERE ARE THEY KALIM PLS BE SAFE

- OH RIDDLE IS NOT ANSWERING THEY GOT HIM TOO

- Oh ghad they got him during clubs WTF HOW—

- *nervous hornii chuckling* …angry expression silver 👁👄👁 im sorry

- AAAA Dorm leaders actually be acting like dorm leaders is soo cool i cant—

- Bruh the story is all chaos what is this chapter

- Are they gonna get Leona and Azul too what—

- RIDDLE BABY Jesus christ dont overblot like this again lol

- DAMN HE STRONG FOR A SMOL BOI THO

- Whoever made these robots wtf is their deal lol TO BE ABLE TO BEAT A DORM LEADER—

- …Bruh where is our horned friend when u need him

- Silver and Sebek theorizing with dorm leaders but they took Jamil tho?? It’s probably the overblot men they’re after

- Also Malleus is probably good so you two calm down lol Lilia’s probs having tea with him right now

- Okay, Leona how are you going to get captured KING.

- Omg everything is getting destroyed wtf

- AW LEONA SAVED RUGGIE THATS CUTE AND COOL AF

- Bruh leona these are material robots— cant you just turn them into sand lol

- Oh they do have some kind of brand cmon just turn them into sand pls

- WHAT THE FUCK

- LEONA-SAN!? WHY ARE YOU GIVING UP— OJI-TAN!!!

- OLD MAN WHAT—

- *hearing leona whisper his reasons ✋ 👁👄👁 🤚 okay sir im sorry

- Damn Leona acting like a real prince right now— it’s kinda hot 👀👀

- BRUH PLS COME BACK DONT TALK LIKE YOU AINT GONNA

- BRO WHERE ARE THE TEACHERS

- THE BOARD GAME CLUB

- Idia : “bro we just chilling be cool— MY CHESS PIECE“

- “Aight ortho what’s the situation” “ｆｕｃｋｅｄ＂

- So Idia of course knows about this— why does he look like he’s so done lmao me getting the feeling this isnt the first time idia has encountered this situation before lol

- Man i want to see azul in action too but mehh— Idia told him to settle down cries

- LOL WHAT IS THIS KARONE ROBOTS

- Wait— are they taking idia too?? OH IS THIS THE DOING OF IDIA’S FAMILY

- WHERE IS CROWLEY— THE TEACHERS, YOUR IMPORTANT STUDENTS ARE GETTING KIDNAPPED

- AH THEY ALSO KNOW ABOUT THESE STYX BITCHES WHAT— and they’re just letting them GO whaaat

- Sounds to me that this must be idia’s family taking care of the overblotting students?? Like to protect Idia or something?? I DONT—

- “Gather all the dorm leaders” No, sir, they’re already gone besides my sunshine and the horn boi

- Malleus??? 👁👄👁 TSUNOTAROU

- Pls kill the robots they destroyed my place

- AAH UPSIDE DOWN LILIA long time no see lol

- Bruhh the diasomnia students are so lucky to have Malleus as a dorm leader omg

- BRUH LILIA’S RINGTONE IS SO CUTE LMAO

- Kalim sounds so desperate im so sad

- ARE WE— ARE WE GONNA MEET MALLEUS AGAINNN

- Bruh they just goku teleported their way out of the dorm lol

- AAAAHH EVERYONE IS HERE THIS IS SO FUN

- Wait jack is not here lol did they just forget about him wtf

- Oh shit we here too i did not know LMAO

- S-So are we just gonna..continue school like— like these styx bitches didnt just ruin half the school, my dorm, injure my bois, and took my cat or…???

- GASP AAAA STYX IS A BLOT RESEARCH FACILITY WHAAAT

- So that’s why leona and idia be like bro this is not worth it

- O-Oh yeah— they…they didnt know that Vil overblot— PFFT

- Malleus pls information who are you talking about—

- WHO— LILIA MALLEUS OH NO

- Ey, overblot squad are assembled lol this looks so dangerous

- LMAOO Riddle was sleeping on Leona’s lap for three hours THATS SO CUTE

- Where the fck did they take them, ITS CRAMPED AF

- Bro they’re just exposing Vil and Jamil’s overblot that’s supposed to be a SECRET LOL

- Oji-tan can sound so wise and reliable like this if he really tried lol sugar daddy energy

- Wtf these guys never thought that idia was from a big shot family??? They thought it was just coincidence that they had the same family name PFFT

- AZUL AAAA He was right there my guy BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY MAN

- oh. They finally opened— isn’t this the ignihyde dorm what

- WHAT THE FU— IDIA

- Bro— WHAT WAS THAT IT WAS IDIA ALL ALONG???

- WHAT IS THIS CHAPTER

This chapter is a fucking roller coaster like— literal 0 to 100 ＱＵＩＣＣ From having a moment with Vil and the bois to a FUCKING TERRORIST ATTACK LMAO IM HYPED FOR NEXT CHAP—

It’s been so long, I hope they released the next part soon (๑>◡<๑) I forgot how fine these men are lol at least I want to hear their voices again 👁👄👁

[raguna-blade]

So thinking bout persona, which as far as this blog is concerned is basically all I do, and I got to thinking.

So the Metaverse/Mementos, Shadow Time/Tartarus and The World in the Tv/Midnight Channel are all basically the same thing right? Not PRECISELY the same thing, but the overlap is immense and real. I'd be willing to bet that the various spinoff games Including Q and such would also count towards this in that they're kinda worlds in the sea of the Unconscious (and with at least Two Users of the Universe Arcana sleeping to keep the world secure right now, who knows what weird funky things are going on there.)

But they're generally the same thing, and part of the rules that are generally established have to deal with perception and one and all seem to exist as a rule in weird liminal spaces.

Forgive for innaccuracies it's been a while for P3 and P4, but with that out of the way.

Tartarus is a transformation of a school, and has strict limitations on how long it is active (not unlike a school really) and not only that is made up of discretely aesthetic but also very uniform locations. The Persona Users only have their one Extra Hour to make their way through (or at least in story that should be the case) and reach their final destination.

Tartarus is, without question, one of the most confusing nosense places because of course it extends up and up and up some 300 floors (apparently) which is weird, but what's perhaps weirder, at least in context of the Persona 3-5 Series of games is that there isn't really an effect upon the users precisely. Oh to be sure it effects people, it changes them into coffins which, considering the Tower's Purpose and all makes sense. The place is all about death and that great change, and the way that persona are summoned via Evoker I suppose would explain their not being coffins. There's an awareness of death there I suppose, and so an additional awareness of this special time given.

Ok. Cool.

The Midnight Channel though, it's a world more or less made up of the endless distorting fog, which alters shape to take the form of those who fall into it's greatest fears and concerns writ large and obnoxious, seemingly in an effort to have them confront themselves. At least, in theory, once the fog lifts, but formed in such a way that almost seems tailor made to have people freak the absolute hell out.

And of course, the place it exists/accessed is a television, turned off at midnight which, frankly is a pretty strange space if you're expecting anything to show up on it, or rather expecting NOTHING to show up on it right?

Everything blown up the way that it is, it makes sense that the world is endlessly foggy, not as stable as it initially appears, and all that, but as to the persona users themselves, they're...more or less just as they are. They're granted glasses by Teddie that allow them to see better, but they are otherwise not fundamentally changed.

Which...Leads us to Mementos. A Place that is explained as not only a direct connect to the sea of the unconscious, a rather different statement from the other major locales even if they too are a direct connection, but it also...changes the persona users.

The liminal space (and this is, I think admittedly, somewhat of a stretch) is more or less just any old random place, but you, distinctly, not a part of it. Well, that's the metaverse as a whole, but Mementos itself is a train station, which tracks as far as I understand the subject. It's a place of coming going, and just an endless sea of people who you really are just kind of one of.

But...Why does it change them so much? It's explained that the form that the phantom thieves take is their form of rebellion against the world. Very literally, the manifestation of their Rebellion (Of which Their Transformed Selves are paired with their Persona's with whom they made a contract).

Alright, that tracks, it's consistent to an extent, but this raises the question of why don't we see that in the other shadow worlds? Part of that, I've said before, is Because I think the Phantom Thieves are more or less playing at their Shadows as opposed to the other Persona Teams. The Shadows that We see in Persona 4 seem to be in line with what we're seeing in the Phantom Thieves, in that they are the version of their relevant person pushed to their extremes and distorted, pushed into a state of otherness for one reason or another.

Not all of them get fancy duds of course, and certainly that's at least as much because of the circumstances of their Shadow's formation (with them being dropped into the situation fully conscious as opposed to just kinda dropped int), as well as the nature and degree of their alienation. I expect that for those who didn't quite get the full transformation, they didn't quite feel that degree of alienation that you see in everyone else that develops a Full Dramatic Shadow.

Or perhaps another way to say it is, their personal view of themselves had yet to become distorted in any major way just yet.

Now the Investigation team get's to reintegrate into the world so their degree of isolation never get's to develop but it's worth pointing out that in the case of the Thieves that...doesn't actually happen.

Without fail, they're still outcasts one and all, if now outcasts that now cling together in friendship love and understanding of their circumstances.

But...

I don't know how to phrase this, but I suppose by the line of logic that I'm following here, the Phantom Thieves never quite Cohere as a group.

Like I recall hearing some folks talking about how the games seem to kinda abandon some of the character's personal plot points in rapid succession to focus on different issues, especially seen in their social links. Like the one that immediately pops to mind is Anne and Shiho and the hot nonsense that happens to them early on. Her social link instead of dealing with that at all beyond briefly touching on it as a thing that did happen, focuses instead on her modeling career, and a degree of taking that more seriously.

Which I agree is kinda bullshit. I'd love to know more about how Haru is dealing with the fallout of her dad beyond the lightish touch it gets, or more about Yusuke's relationship with his shitty dad, or more about Makoto's relationship with her sister and her parents and the like.

See, these things aren't NOT touched on, by no means. Haru's entire social link DOES deal with the fallout of her dad's death...In relation to the Company that she now holds a massive share of and not precisely related to her personally.

But they aren't really a thing that the Thieves, as a group, actually touch on. It's not a thing that get's directly dealt with constantly in the storyline as opposed to what goes down in Sees which is damnably intimate despite their initial desires. They do after all live together, and their job has just thoroughly run in and kicked them in the teeth on every front.

Hell, despite how uh...well badly(?) but definitely at least clumsily and obnoxiously (I am assuming, for a moment it's supposed to be awkward and kinda just...not great, for effect. It probably wasn't, but it's what we got, and at the very least I think it deserves an examination in that light.) The Issues that plague the Investigation squad one and all come up constantly. Kanji's issues with masculinity/homosexuality, Naoto's problems with gender/gender roles, Yukiko's princess status, Teddies Emptiness and attempts to fill that void, etc etc. It get's played with, rather directly, it get's shouted from the mountain tops, and for all that people very definitely fuck up and say some shit (Yosuke) this stuff comes up, and frequently I think.

But not with the Phantom Thieves. They're in fact, extremely guarded with each other, despite being on the same side and all that jazz.

Which leads me to Maruki, and the True End antics.

Cause see, Maruki also get's a Rebellion outift. It's not thief themed, no, it's more a kind of messiah. Or rather, A torch bearer. Whatever his means, his objective is and always was to lead people to being happier and better versions of themselves, although It's plainly obvious that he loses sight of doing that well with the method he chooses given how it's a thing that applies the same cure to every single person when that obviously wouldn't be a good idea.

Sumire says it herself, If not for him there's a good chance that she wouldn't have lasted long enough to make friends as is. And I don't think she's wrong considering how....well absolutely fucking done she was. That was not a healthy mental state that she was in BEFORE her sister died, and it wasn't much better after.

More importantly though, is what happens during that Third Semester. With the Third Persona's that everyone gained, every single one, WITHOUT FAIL, addresses the major concerns, the major events that they've all been staunchly ignoring and refusing to talk about. Ryuji's track desires, Haru's dad pain, Morgana's still burning desire to be human, all of it.

And he fixes it, and he makes, at least for a little bit, better. And in doing so, he absolutely changes the course of their lives, let's them see the way things COULD be, actually sit down and acknowledge one more part of themselves that they want to achieve, and in doing so unmasks, without fail, literally every single one of their persona's.

Well, I say unmask, but they also obviously have face coverings still going on or a degree of inorganic/ambiguous heads and faces, but the degree of difference is stark I think between that and their second persona's or their first.

Also, at least, if you actually bother to max out the social links, and just let someone actually IN, such as it is.

But back to Maruki, it's actually rather interesting that his Metaverse Outfit arguably makes him the HARDEST to identify of everyone. Yeah it's a big golden outfit with an obnoxiously huge helmet and cloak but...

The Helmet is far more interesting to look at than the person wearing it, and even looking at his face it's only really recognizable as him if you can get a clean side view. The Outfits is bright and Golden, but is otherwise unidentfiable if someone else were to be wearing it. The Cloak further makes it harder to see anything between being huge, fluttery, and covering basically anything of note body wise (and potentially facially since it again just flutters all over) In addition to his staff/torch it's...

If we're going through the Shadow Cosplay as looking at the person in questions distorted view of themselves, It's interesting that Maruki's distortion basically does everything in it's power to make him a non entity. Which, I suppose makes sense given his ultimately goal.

[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

[aftermathdb]

DEATH BATTLE Review: Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla

Robotic Kaiju fight to see who is the true king of them all!

Power Rangers get a third round to see if they can’t net a win. This is the third 3D battle of the season too.

Oh, preemptively: Some of the screenshots might not be that great-looking. I had to use Photobox to get these on here.

Dragonzord′s Preview.

We all know the Power Rangers. Five teenagers that banded together to fight the evil Rita Repulsa and her army of monsters. Things were going pretty well for them, until Rita hatched a plan. She would create her own Ranger with their own powers and their own zord.

Enter: The Dragonzord. A powerful mech that can go toe-to-toe with the Megazord, and has a large plethora of powers.

The hosts go over these powers and note that despite this large arsenal, the Dragonzord is more of a CQC mech than a long-range one.

The Dragonzord’s pilot is Tommy Oliver. A martial arts expert who was so dedicated to Ranger work, that he wore the tights for a long time, and even mentored other rangers. Fun fact: His actor’s birthday is on the day that the episode airs for Youtube.

Tommy controls and summons the Dragonzord with a dagger that he plays as a flute, which leads into this segment:

This goes about as well as you’d expect, and…

I just want to say that Boomstick’s expression there is hilarious, and should become a shirt.

I enjoy this pun unironically.

Anyways, the Dragonzord made short work of Rita’s monsters, and has even fought against the Megazord, which has a power output of over 50k megavolts.

Also worth remembering is that the Megazord once pulled off a feat of 90 Million Newtons

(I don’t know about you, but the whole “As determined in…” parts are really nice callbacks).

So the Dragonzord is in the same ballpark.

Now, the Dragonzord can reach escape velocity. This means that it can move at speeds over Mach 30.

And for the era it was a part of, the Dragonzord is arguably the most durable.

It once survived a blow worth 356.67 Tons of TNT. And shoutout to the guy who made that set piece knowing that it would be destroyed. That’s some quality work.

And what’s a rundown without feats?

The Dragonzord has defeated the technically superior White Tigerzord, and survived a fight with the Thunder Megazord.

And it certainly stands a chance with it’s own fusion of the Mega Thunderzord… Or Dragonzord Fighting Mode… Or Battle Mode- They establish that he never really settled on a name.

But while Tommy has lost his powers in the past, he has still fought the good fight. Even regaining his powers along the way.

And with the powers returned, perhaps one day, so will the Dragonzord.

Mechagodzilla′s Preview.

We all know Godzilla. The rampaging monster that decimated Japan.

And I’m sure we all know the famous story of how he was defeated. By Dr. Serizawa’s (in)famous Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon so powerful, he destroyed himself with it to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

And while Japan was subject to many giant monster attacks over the years, their special task force would handle it neatly… Until a new Godzilla showed up and started wrecking them all over again.

Without the Oxygen Destroyer, the defense squad needed a new way to fight  back. So they gathered their top scientists in robotics, microwaves, low-temperature physics, and… Cyber-Necromancy to create their own monster.

Enter: Mechagodzilla.

While it’s not the first one of it’s kind (As Wiz notes), it’s certainly the most unique.

So much so, that it was given it’s own designated codename of Kiryu. A combination of Machine and Dragon. Though, Boomstick opts to just call it Mechagodzilla.

Kiryu is equipped with a wide assortment of weapons. From rockets, to maser cannons, to grappling wires, to spinning claws, a hidden blade, and most famously: The Absolute Zero Cannon. This makes it far better suited to long-range attacks. Making Kiryu a zoner.

The Absolute Zero Cannon robs it’s target of all of it’s energy at once. Meaning that whatever it hits shatters at the atomic level.

Kiryu is also built around the skeletal remains of the OG Godzilla, giving him all the size and strength as the King of the Monsters. It even uses cyber-DNA to give it an edge up, allowing Kiryu to preform some rudimentary actions like a simple AI. exactly like Wiz’s own Cyber-Goos3 (Spelling citationn: The commentary. There were some difficulties getting the screenshots to work, so time was needed).

(Whether or not this is the same goose from the Terry Board Preview is unknown).

Much like the Dragonzord, Kiryu is piloted by Akane Yashiro. A hardened warrior of the Anti-Megalosaurus Force.

According to the hosts, she’s your typical antisocial anime protagonist. Cutting herself off from other people because she has no family left, and got her squad killed on accident. Because I guess that wasn’t an overused trope back then.

Akane pilots Kiryu from a nearby jet plane. The AC-3 White Heron can fly at a speed of 930 km/hr. Together, these two have a perfect track record against Godzilla.

But, as Boomstick warns, Plot twist: Akane isn’t the only pilot for Kiryu. As it turns out, the original Godzilla is also there in spirit… Literally. Godzilla can wrestle control away from Akane, making it a rampaging monster again.

Though, it’s strongly implied that the two have reached an understanding. Which is a good thing. Because the giant mech has some impressive feats. Like tossing a second Godzilla that clocks in at about 25000 metric tons.

Kiryu was even fast enough to dodge the Atomic Breath, which moves at a speed of Mach 2.5.

Speaking of speed, the mech once flew an extremely large distance in a manner of minutes.

Regardless of who is behind the wheel, Kiryu is a powerhouse. No monster has ever fought a battle against it and lived to tell the tale.

The Battle Itself.

Animator (and some of their previous works), Tommy Oliver will be voiced by Nicholas Andrew Louie and Akane Yashiro will be voiced by Hitomi Farrell.  sprite artists, Draconic Robotics by Therewolf. Kristina lead on animation, and Chris Kokkinos on audio.

So the fight is similar to Weiss vs. Mitsuru in the sense that there’s no lead-up to the fight. The fight animation just dumps us in the middle of the battle as it’s going on.

Tommy uses his skills to knock Kiryu down, so Akane gives some motivation.

(For the record, these are subtitles provided by the animation. Not mine).

So Tommy knocks down Kiryu and starts kicking him while he’s down. So Kiryu responds by using that hidden blade from earlier to get Dragonzord off of him.

Akane ensures that all systems are go, and opts to play smart.

Like, let’s take a moment to appreciate this animation. It’s awesome. This is stuff that they could only dream of doing, and now, it’s a reality.

Kiryu gets some distance in, and then goes for a missile barrage. Dragonzord responds by using the head fin to blast them.

However, the jet booster does manage a hit, and it knocks Tommy down.

Tommy isn’t going to let some monster blast him with an attack that has a charge though, and retaliates.

I kinda wish I could make gifsets of these, because they are awesome bits of animation that should be seen to be believed. But, that would take away from the suspense, and I’d rather people go watch the video proper than plagiarize viewership from my review. Plus, I wouldn’t be able to have sound on the gifs anyways. And the music is friggin’ awesome.

Akane comes in to provide covering fire.

Tommy retaliates by bringing her down.

Now, if it weren’t for the fact that Godzilla could take over, Kiryu would be done for. So the battle rages on.

The fight remains close-quarters as both sides make impressive blows and make great counters to one another.

As an example, Mechagodzilla grapples the Dragonzord in his mouth, and starts running and pummeling him.

Can I just say that the Run-and-Pummel is one of my favorite things to see in an action scene? It’s just really cool to see a character carrying their opponent, and either hitting them or ramming them through walls. It’s just so cool.

Tommy then pulls the same trick he did (will do?) from Tigerzord vs. Epyon, and calls the other zords to help him out. If they look familiar, that’s because they’re the same model from Megazord vs. Voltron.

(I won’t be showcasing any screennshots of the combining sequence, because that’s something that must be seen with one’s own eyes).

With Fighting Mode ready, Tommy is ready for round two.

The two do battle, and go at each other. It’s a very close bout, and even over time, it’s hard to tell who has the advantage. Though, given that it’s close-quarters, the Dragonzord has an edge up.

Tommy gets ready for his own finishing blow, so… y’know.

Finishing blow in

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

Verdict + Explanation.

So, right off the bat, Tommy had the experience advantage in the bag. Given how long he’s been at the job, that was a given. But experience wasn’t enough to win the day.

In comparison, Kiryu held the advantage in weight, and had more impressive strength.

Take the best feats that both have shown, well, scaled to in Dragonzord’s case.

In direct comparison, the Megazord’s best strength feat isn’t even half as good as Kiryu’s best feat. Meaning that Dragonzord’s best feat is also not as good. It also doesn’t help that Kiryu was also good at fighting at a distance thanks to the wider arsenal of tools he had at his disposal.

They go on to explain that while it’s hard to find the Fighting Mode’s largest output, it’s in the ballpark of the Thunder Megazord and Rita, the latter of whom destroyed an island.

By the size of it, it clocks in at about 2.62 Gigatons of TNT. But still not as good as Kiryu’s best feats.

The Absolute Zero Cannon destroyed the Prince Hotel New Tower building, as well as a few others surrounding it. Using the real-life measurements of the building, this means that the Absolute Zero Cannon’s power output is nearly 130 Teratons of TNT. And since Kiryu was at the center of a blast like that, it’s pretty obvious that he has the durability over Dragonzord.

Which is thousands of times greater than anything that the Dragonzord could potentially do.

Overall impression.

Like I said, the animation and music is friggin’ awesome. And it’s also a nice relief seeing another movie character enter the fight, since we don’t get too much of that these days.

The explanation makes sense too, aside from the Absolute Zero thing, because it feels more like they should have found the amount of energy robbed instead. It’s probably around the same thing, but still.

The jokes are pretty spot-on, and the animated segments between Wiz and Boomstick are pretty funny too.

It took a few years to see it, but it’s well worth the wait if this is the result of having to wait on seeing this matchup.

9.0/10

Next Time…

(Screenshot of the upcoming battle).

… I have no idea as to why these two are fighting.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

Some demon shits.

[abhisheksingh098]

Dragon Ball Super Rap Cypher Lyrics - Daddyphatsnaps

Dragon Ball Super Rap Cypher Lyrics - Daddyphatsnaps

Dragon Ball Super Rap Cypher | "Tournament Of Power" | Daddyphatsnaps ft Rustage, Fabvl, NLJ & More! 

[lyrics]:-

Vegeta (Shwabadi):-

Aah! It's the warrior, formerly known as the prince of Saiyans I'm done playing Galick Gun, you gon' really see purple raining I've been training hyperbolic, the muscle mass that I'm gaining It's in no way hyperbolic when I say I'll crush your face in Erasing entire nations, but I joined the crew Kakarot is on my spot, I got a point to prove I put beams to Beans like I destroy Senzu My finger's like a cannon, I just point and shoot yuh Piccolo (Sl!ck):-

They been killing my people, green lives matter Special beam on the cannon I'll blast ya Take one of mines I take one of yours So tell Frieza that I'm coming for frost Never been OK with taking a loss, for Eighteen bet I'm taking a stance Challenge me you end up in the stands, I don't care, you invisible man You ain't invincible man, for my squad I will line up a fade Don't matter who you is I'm not afraid, anyone can get this hellzone grenade Infinite arms for enemies who wage, war on the Z Fighters, I'm a rider And my adopted son I will die for take a bullet to the heart no lie bruh Frieza (Connor Quest):-

Coldest to enter the tournament, temperatures fallen, a death at my order is never ignored Wreck a whole planet as simple as breaking an ornament, take it by force Step to an emperor, that's not a clever thought Got a rebirth like the renaissance, bow to my beck and call I'm a threat to all when I get these balls, like Messi scoring I'm not gunna let no monkey jump me, turn 'um into dust abruptly Burn up when I'm bursting one beam, beat, no Bean can provide you enough recovery Halo but I'm no angel Get disposed treat um like Dyspo I'mma A-hole, make it so painful Get killed, don't tell me chill bro Majin Buu (GameboyJones):-

You can't beat this pink up cause this pink gon' beat up you You can't hit it, I'm committed, so stop calling me your boo Man I slept right through the tournament, they found somebody cooler But if I was in it best believe it would of ended sooner If you messing with my dogs best believe I'm bout to snap Baba Yaga anybody and I mean it, that's no cap Now I really think it's funny that you think that you can hurt me bitch Shit ain't sweet around here, I'll turn you into a Hershey Kiss Dyspo (Zach Boucher):-

I'm not the one they're gonna hit, it's all on you when you miss I follow my wits and you aren't comparing a bit, honestly though, we don't mix You shouldn't exist, I guess that it's coming to this, I don't really feel at risk Talk about twist, throw out all the doubts, so I do it quick, they won't get me out, but I'll keep it swift They couldn't compete, they're a little weak, if up against me, I've won it I ain't ever gonna leave 'til I'm at the peak, you better believe in justice Think you have it, but you see, you're nothing And they wanna challenge me? They're bluffing Made an incredible feat pretty easily Get ready to meet destruction Kefla (Savvy Hyuga):-

Piss me off, I'll take your planet No small moves, we go gigantic Test me and I'll show you manic Fusion got you in a panic Flying around with can't see me speed If you doubting me, bring receipts or heat Two baddies linked with the instinct to feast Legendary treat, so bring me the fresh meat Let's take a look at your mistakes You underestimating plays And as these consequences weigh I'm only seeing you as pray You waste of space ha With attempts so lame You need to learn your place I am the race that can't be tamed Goku (Dreaded Yasuke):-

I'm Goku for most, Kakarot for some I'm a fighting genius, but y'all thinking I'm dumb I'm just having fun beating down all you bums Try defeating me gonna take longer than prince Vegeta's crown to come KameHameHa make ocean waves, enemies gotta role to play When they comes to be target practice in the open plains Cause you facing a god, so who wanna get tossed See no flaws inside of my orange Gi, that's what I call my secret sauce Android 17 (Rustage):-

Blast Ki, I fire them Fast speed, no Cyberman No heartbeat, no vitamins A park keep, in retirement You tussle with terrible bots Trying no trouble to topple the top Guess I'm a god, guns are on lock Doing my duty like Robocop, uh Fighting psychopaths, no Tony Stark I'm Iron Man I blow apart your fibers and exterminate, my final plan This is my reality, grappling with mortality Won't phone it in, this Androids making plays around the galaxy Hit (NonelikeJoshua):-

If you want to fight me, then it's over in a bit I got my hands within my pocket like I never gave a shit Because you'll never see me coming, let me hear it that you quit You know that I'm the kind of purp that's smoking you in one Hit Kill this power tournament, and I'ma do it all with ease Within a second, I'm wrecking my universe's enemies I got a contract for all of you, only doing guarantees You'll be catching these hands like a cold in my time freeze Skipping the time, flipping your mind, but I'm never killing behind Been more alive than any one of you guys, that's why you running like a child Till I appear in front of your eyes then I'll lie to Jiren, saying I'm the reason his parents died And still survive, my skills are high, you will do time, be still inside this little prison of mine You're lucky that I can't assassinate, I know the cost But you know that it's too late whenever my coat comes off Toppo (Divide Music):-

I got an iron fist, justice served to the peoples, evils And I don't miss, immediate leave no sequels, equals Are far from this, no time to reminisce Can you take a KameHameHa without getting blitz'd and calling quits? No Never see it coming, no evil will ever occupy The energy of destruction, I caught em blind with my god Ki It's all about respect, your motives will be checked With the pride of the troopers you'll have nothing to recollect, oh Jiren (Daddyphatsnaps):-

More than just a killer bitch, I'm stealing every aux cord Dropping every horde and that wasn't in my top form Heard you had a couple bars, yea the battle got warm Let me turn this heater up and make these kiddies bop more It has started and I am its incarnate You're the target, there are levels to this mine it isn't charted Ice cold keep it arctic, I'm stone been the hardest Lurking in the shadows til the troopers need a man departed Alex energy, what is Goku, you can never better me And when you fuse together then your life's in double jeopardy Anyone who isn't just, just another enemy Beat Kefla till she's black, what I like my women ebony Call me One Punch Man, swing knocked dead So smooth cause I'm coming off the Toppo the head dude I ain't even shown you half of my ability I'm in a different universe, you Krillins never killing me Zeno (Fabvl):-

Yeah, who would dare summon me? Sick of all the talking, every god bend the knee I'm feeling finished Universe's fail, they're simply meant to be diminished You been breaking limits I created limits Ill tempered, I could change my mind and make you pay Tournament of power? More like gathering of slaves Please appoint the person who's responsible, I gave Everyone a chance it's time existence went away

https://img.youtube.com/vi/DBUyoAyZ5vI/maxresdefault.jpg from Blogger https://bit.ly/31oTcTw

[datte-ba]

and may your bones sing (no longer with pain but) with roses | naruto

sum: the truth of their lives will always be hard to look at, but it won’t be without its moments that are worth living for either. [post-canon.] a/n: a repost of this very old fic. the title is taken from here. 

The wobbling begins in her knees.

Sakura feels the world buckle beneath her, watches it momentarily blur as she takes on a fighting stance. A tremor works its way up her arms, and she stutters, but not before biting down savagely on her lip, forcing the burn of blood to bring her vision back into focus.

It’s a temporary solution, she knows, but she takes it, immediately directing her line of sight to the pair of men stood nearly fifty feet in front of her. The sharp outlines of her husband and best friend aren’t lost on her. Naruto rolls his shoulders with a resounding crack, and Sasuke’s hand hovers at the hilt of his sword.

The summer gales toss and turn all around them, build up into an eerie and silent roar. A figurative thunder is on the horizon, luring bottled lightning into subsequent realization. Sakura’s eyes shift to the rock face at the other end of the village, where four cloaked figures stand domineering above them.

A rag tag bunch of terrorists, according to Sai; ripe for blood and fear though they are, the lines in their skin are fresh, mendable. They haven't witnessed pain for themselves, only at the cost of others, and that’s turned them wild, one pinch of mental instability mixed in with a number of volatile ideals.

The Akatsuki were misguided and cruel, but their crusade demanded questioning of the systems in place—not of human nature, which was uncontrollable to a degree.

Sakura pumps a fist into her open palm and holds it there, then yells, “Shannaro!” Her visions still swims a little, but the fierce nod of his head that Naruto offers her is mostly clear. Sasuke spares her a curious glance, too, eyes glowing lavender and scarlet as he activates his kekkei genkai.

It’s been six long years since their reunion at the valley, but the reality of them fighting together as a team hasn’t quite sunk in. There’s something different now than from when they were children; so much of what they experienced as a new team was erring and wild and threw them into the worst of circumstances. And admittedly, the circumstances haven’t always fared much better in their present.

But there is something about knowing that Sasuke will never run again and that Naruto will never let him that brings Sakura indescribable comfort. Her boys are breathing and beating back against time, and this time, she’s here to do it all with them.

Naruto brings his thumb to his mouth and bites down, and a trio of towering toads springs into existence at his beckoning. He gingerly jumps onto the middle one’s back—Gamabunta, if she remembers correctly—before turning to look at Sasuke in silent anticipation. The once rogue ninja draws his sword from its sheath, then turns back to Sakura and holds her gaze for a moment.

He’s hesitating, she realizes. It’s strangely reminescent of their childhood, and a part of her hates it because she’s stronger now than she was then and he knows that, but—a part of her loves it, too, unabashedly. For the care, for the concern.

Sakura mirrors Naruto’s earlier action and bites her thumb, blood tracing her lip once more as she calls for Katsuyu. The white and blue slug appears and cocoons her from behind, and Sakura makes a familiar sequence of seals with her hands before black chakra lines criss-cross down her face.

Sasuke remains rooted to the ground, but he motions for Naruto to go on without him, and Gamabunta lifts off into the air before his charge can protest. From what Sakura can see, the fighting has already begun down below, clouds of dirty smoke billowing all around the village as kunai and shuriken rip through.

“Enough already,” she murmurs, quietly enough that only Katsuyu can hear. Sakura takes a breath and shuts her eyes, allows herself one moment of solitude before the village inevitably rests on her back, then presses the palm of one hand to her summon.

There’s a brief moment of clarity; she sees the face of every Konoha resident flash before her eyes as their vitals are all accounted for.

And then, darkness, this time longer than the first.

A gloved hand takes her by the shoulder before her knees buckle, and Sakura blinks her eyes, one, two, three, four times until at last a caricature of Sasuke, severely blurred around the edges, appears in front of her.

“I’m fine,” she insists, although the stress she puts on the latter word, she knows, tells her husband that she is anything but. The spots in her vision are larger and more pronounced, and sweat builds up on her brow, neck, and upper lip as she pants in exhaustion that would normally be two, maybe three hours away.

This—whatever it is—is not happening today. The people of the village are relying on her, and she refuses to back down from that duty for a few spots and sweat. Sakura places her hands on her knees and bends down, once, twice, before vaulting herself back up to a standing position.

Sasuke remains at her side, the embodiment of solemnity.

"You’re not okay," he says with stone cold finality, and Sakura snaps, turns her head in a whirl to face him as hurt takes over.

As she looks over his shoulder, her eyes land on Naruto fighting in the distance, his body a whirlwind of color as shadow clones branch out from him in every direction. Hinata isn’t far behind, either, leading the Hyuuga clan into the fray with her sister while maintaining a steady visual on her husband’s back. There’s Lee and Tenten at the center, too, and Choji, Kiba, and Shino a little off to the side while Ino and Shikamaru micromanage from the sidelines and Sai leads an aerial assault.  

Sakura, sufficiently encouraged, reverts her gaze back to Sasuke. "I'm fine," she reiterates, adamancy still etched into her voice.

"Clearly," he shoots back, gaze still wary. Sakura opens her mouth in a retort, but as if to punish her for her stubborness, her legs give way instead and she falls to the ground. "You need to go to the hospital," Sasuke insists, catching her. He crouches a little and balances her weight against his, then flits his gaze to the battle at hand, as if weighing his options.

The sounds of fighting resonate from every possible direction; it’s a surprise that no one has made their way here to the Hokage Tower already, although it isn’t unlikely that Naruto or Sai has handled that.

A sudden bout of nausea crawls its way up her throat, and she holds it back as much as she can, but not without consequence. The spots in front of her eyes grow in size and clump together, until little more than a sliver of the dusty sky can be seen.

"I don’t,” Sakura whispers, in late answer to his words.

Sasuke’s body shifts beneath hers. "Katsuyu," she hears him say, and the slug answers in tandem. The subsequent exchange between the two is hushed, though, and Sakura doesn’t realize until it’s happening a few moments later that her decision has been made for her. The protest on her lips dies out as he gathers her into his arms, then lifts her onto Katsuyu’s back.

Her breaths are shallower, and there’s little she can see besides black in front of her eyes, but she catches his hand at the last second nonetheless.

“I’m not. . . leaving you,” she musters out, though she hardly hears herself say it.

His fingers linger under her palm, and he rubs a small circle with his thumb before answering, “Sakura, I know.” The words are weighted, worth a thousand and more in gold, and she hates that she can’t see his face when he says them.

She hates that he can’t bring himself to say more before letting go.

. . .

It’s several hours before anything quiets; Sakura doesn’t know for sure until Ino visits and tells her that most of the fighting is over. Of the four primary targets, only one has managed to escape, and the details of a retrieval mission are being arranged. The squad for the job will be lead by Sasuke and Sai, and Ino leaves not ten minutes after she’s arrived to go join them.

A few of the others check in with her throughout the night. Hinata is perhaps her most frequent visitor, and she apologizes on Naruto’s behalf for him not being here. Sakura isn’t surprised that he’s scouring the village for missed casualties and survivors; he’s doing the right thing because he knows she’s in good hands.

The same, she supposes, can be said for someone else, though it genuinely surprises her when he shows up the following morning—she doesn’t know if it speaks more for his prowess or well hidden concern.

Sakura hardly spares him a glance as he enters the room, choosing instead to focus her gaze on other objects, like the wall and its peeling paint. The bed shifts with Sasuke’s weight as he leans into it, and his fingers brush her shoulder before she stubbornly curls away.

"Has she told you yet?" asks Tsunade, doing her morning rounds, from the doorway. The blonde peers at the married couple—mostly Sakura, actually—with a mixture of curiosity and worry. When Sasuke shakes his head, she frowns a little in disapproval, but nothing more than that. Trailing after her as she exits the room is Naruto, who noisily protests why he isn’t allowed to enter. Sakura notices that he’s injured in numerous places, with a multitude of bandages to show for it.

They all are, really—bruised beyond immediate repair but still mendable, even without her hands or her chakra to heal them. The thought makes her cringe, though she knows that it shouldn’t.

Sasuke clears his throat and brings her focus back to him. "What haven’t you told me?" he asks, and as her eyes flit to his face for a second, she sees remorse there, barely visible but present nonetheless. His brow is furrowed a little, too, and his lips are in more of a downturn than usual.

The whole ensemble of concerned attributes almost pleases her, if not for the reasons behind it. Sakura lets out a short huff before shifting under the covers, which fall away as she turns and props herself up against the pillows.

Her breath catches in her throat when she really looks at him.

There are dozens of scars, little and insignificant, that litter his face and hand and neck. A bandage flecked with spots of blood wraps around his head, and he fumbles with a splint that holds his only arm in place. In the grand scheme of things, the damage to his body is minimal, but it still hurts to look at.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, reaching for her hand, then blinking in surprise when she doesn’t pull back. Sakura curls her fingers a little into his touch, turning a single circle over the calluses on his palm. His skin is course and cut in some places, but she appreciates the warmth of his hand over hers, the security.

The truth of their lives will always be hard to look at, but it won’t be without its moments that are worth living for either.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispers, for the very first time. Sasuke’s lips part around an emotion he can’t comprehend; happiness, awe, maybe a little bit of both. He stutters for a moment, but then his fingers wrap around hers, squeeze tight, tight, tight. The first rays of sunlight slant in through the window.

And here in a hospital bed, their world begins to turn.

[storiesbybrian]

The Barber of Ludlow Street (June, 2000)

MK had been in the guitar business for 20 years. When he saw desperate marketers whine about the fickle nature of youthful passion, he scoffed. “A myth!” he said, squirreling away the commissions his boss let him keep until he made enough money to open up his own shop in the nearest epicenter of wildness that he knew, New York City’s Lower East Side. But his time worn formula for getting money out of crazy kids and indulgent parents bought him his independence about three years too late. To MK’s dismay the slow weeks piled up, held together by a thick mortar of bills, until he finally learned that kids today prefer Hip-Hop to Rock ‘n Roll. The Lit Fuse Guitar Shop, the culmination of 20 years of sacrifice, dedicated to serving the dreams of a new generation of Rock ‘n Rollers, opened to an indifferent public.

But MK wouldn’t give up. Conducting his own marketing survey, he noticed a lot of Asian kids strolling around the neighborhood, the yokes of their purchases cutting wide swaths in the sidewalk. MK remembered a piece he had seen on 60 Minutes about the Japanese Hip Hop craze and he snapped his fingers in revelation. He recalled wealthy Japanese kids tanning themselves and having their flat black hair professionally damaged into spongy manes of dreadlocks. So, with the help of RS, his one, slow-witted employee, MK changed his outdated Rock ‘n Roll shop into a one-stop, negrofying boutique that he hoped would keep the Fuse lit for as long as the wind blew black. He needed his customers to trust the with-itness of his taste though in his heart he knew it was only a matter of time before rock stars recaptured the imaginations of alienated children. But until the day when the wail of his guitars could swallow up the beats of his newly stocked dance records, he was gonna wring every dollar he could out of this rap fad. Behind the shop, he poured concrete, installed an old-fashioned barber’s chair, hung a mirror from a hook, draped a mylar canopy over the whole thing and invited kids to let the Rude Boy Salon tend to their fashionable grooming needs. And a haircut got you a 10% discount on a guitar.  

 Morning at the Sunshine Hotel is met with toothless grumbles of resentment.  Morning carries a price tag of $10. Those without monthly benefactors shoot out the door south, south west, west, north west and north like crooked spokes from the Sunshine’s Bowery horizon looking for the means to reserve the pleasure of the Sunshine’s accommodations for yet another evening by the 7 o’clock curfew. But PJ hooked around the corner and went east, to Ludlow Street. He was 54 years old.

           Everybody knew PJ- the police, the neighbors, the mailmen, the supers, the bartenders and owners, the children, the garbagemen. Everybody. He was an inevitability on Ludlow Street with his boisterous gibberish, big bang cloud of cologne and his broom. “I’m fine as wine! You a frien’ o’mine! Anytime you need a rhyme! I see you, cuz!”  

His dire financial straits, his alcoholism, his age- none of it meant a damn thing to PJ. It took a strong being to crumble the way he did and keep his sweaty black resilience about him. He swept and mopped for his pocket money and told stories about busting the spine of the man he caught with his second wife or about his position of authority when he worked for the sanitation department. He had also been a cook, a gardener and a barber, as anyone within 20 feet of his rantings could attest.  

When CN, the owner of a local bar called Barratoba, had t-shirts made with pictures of PJ on the front, his cult status in the neighborhood was lifetime guaranteed. MK, still a new kid by block standards, immediately cultivated a friendship with PJ, thinking it was his ticket to fitting in in the neighborhood.  

One day in August, MK was outside smoking a cigarette and scanning the block for professional music enthusiasts. His sales for the month were still off and the haircut gimmick had no one abuzz. He had hired a barber from a local salon. But too many customers were demanding refunds, disappointed with the authenticity of their new dos. MK was left wondering whether he needed somebody who knew more about hairstyling or less. PJ was taking out the recycling from CN’s bar across the street.  

MK called out to him, “PJ, my friend! How are you today?”

“Yo, cuz! Gimme dolla!”

MK reached into his pocket and PJ crossed the street towards him hand first.  

“PJ, my main man!” MK said, slapping PJ five, “How would you like another job?”

PJ blinked at him seriously for a moment and then burst out laughing.

“No, really. How would you like to cut hair for me?”

“I was a barber for seven years in Nokalyna!”

“That’s what I hear. So how ‘bout it? I pay you ten bucks a head and anytime you want a bottle of anything, you just let me know. Deal?”

PJ shook MK’s hand and told him, “I be back after I get the flo’ mats at Quinine.  They pay me extra to do them. Good music over there. You ever wanna go, you jus’ let me know. But ssshhh. Don’t tell anybody, a’ight? You a good guy. I get you in at Quinine, ‘k? Den I go get Barratoba’s and Guiseppe’s. They nice, too.”

“OK, PJ, I’ll see you later. Thank you.”

And MK had his barber. PJ took off to wherever he went when he had money and MK dropped his cigarette and went inside. Within weeks, PJ’s distinctive style became MK’s greatest source of revenue.

 Any grandparents who came up through Manhattan’s Lower East Side, be they Jews from the first half of the last century or Spanish from the second, would be shocked to learn that one block of Ludlow Street now has seven fancy designer clothing shops and almost no drug trade. Girls who never would have set foot on Ludlow Street five years ago are now running the Community Board.  

The newest proprietress of a clothing shop was called EW. EW had quit her investment banking job to open Glo, an astronomically upscale accessory shop. She had a German shepherd named Tamburlaine who did not get along with PJ.  

A few days before Glo’s grand opening in late August, EW was supervising the finishing touches on her window display- a thick pyramid of handbags that were custom stitched from maple leaf shaped patches of leather and suede in front of a poster of an orange lagoon. Tamburlaine began to growl from inside the window and EW turned to see PJ lugging enormous bags of trash and plopping them down on the sidewalk in front of her new store.

“Excuse me sir, but you can’t put that garbage here,” she said politely to PJ.

“Huh? Naw, dey comin’ for it in two hour.  I use to work for sanitation. Two hour,” PJ said EW.

“I don’t really care. You can’t put that garbage in front of my store.”

“Who you? Ask anybody on the block. They know me! They my friend! Ask cuz over at barbershop.”

PJ dropped his bags and went back inside, returning seconds later with another load of garbage.

“Sir. You’re not listening to me. That’s somebody else’s trash. Put it in front of their building.”

“No!” PJ yelled. His right knee began to pop involuntarily out of joint, an ancient baseball injury that flared up in times of stress. “This the same garbage from the same building I been puttin’ in the same place for 20 year!”

Sensing his mistress was in trouble, Tamburlaine bounded outside and began barking at PJ. PJ said, “You better get that muthafuckin’ clown away from me!”

“Or what?”

“Don’ you worry none. You just get that thing inside. I don’t like him!” PJ said, his trick knee hopping and forcing his hips to grind back and forth.  

At this EW stepped quickly back and pulled out her cell phone and called the police. “Yes, I’m calling from Ludlow Street between Houston and Stanton,” she said. “Yes, a street man is leaving rubbish in front of my store and threatening my dog and myself- what? Right, garbage… Yes. Thank you.”

PJ clucked his mouth exasperatedly, knowing that when the cops learned that the alleged source of trouble was he, they’d laugh the whole thing off and explain PJ’s prestigious status on the block to newcomer EW. He wiped the sweat from his brow and then clutched his leg, trying to get it to stop twitching so violently.

Inside of five minutes, a squad car pulled up next to PJ’s plump row of garbage.  

“Yo!” PJ greeted the pair of officers. “Tell this blonde woman leave me alone!”

One officer got out of the car while the other sat behind the wheel with a pen and summons pad spread across her lap. Tamburlaine continued to bark viciously.

“What’s up PJ?”

“A’right!”

“Hold on a second, PJ. Alright, miss, are you the one who filed the complaint?”

“Yes and thank you for coming so quickly,” said EW, raising her voice to be heard over her dog’s racket. “This person is harassing me and dumping this trash in front of my building.”

“Who, him?”

“Yes. Him.”

The dog continued to bark and flinch everytime PJ’s knee jumped.

“Alright sir,” said the cop with his hands on his hips. “Where is this trash from?”

“Man, you know where this trash from. ‘S from Guiseppe next do’ but I ain’t gon’ put it in front of no goddamn fire hydrant!”

“Well, what about over there?” asked the cop, pointing to space in front of a nightclub that wouldn’t be open until much later.

“Man, I don’t get paid to be draggin’ this shit all up and down the block!”

“There’s no need to yell at the police, you know.”

“Miss, we’ll handle this.”  

“Well, look at how he’s acting. It’s like he’s gonna attack me.”

The cop noticed PJ’s jumpiness and stepped back and began fingering his nightstick. “Sir. Move the garbage and stop bothering the lady or we’ll have to arrest you.”

Drained from the officer’s face was any trace of recognition of PJ. His partner in the car stared down at her lap. With a vicious grunt, PJ snatched up the garbage bags and began dragging them the 10 feet to where the cop had designated. EW and the officers stood over him until he had finished hauling the entire pile of bags and continued to eye him until he left, which he did, cussing and twitching the whole way. PJ needed a drink.

 Meanwhile CT and FL were sitting at Kennedy Airport, waiting to pick up their friend, BD. BD’s flight was arriving from Tokyo via San Francisco. The girls could not stop giggling. They hadn’t seen BD in several years but they kept in touch regularly and now they could finally show their dear friend all of the wonders and marvels of New York in person.  

During the years that CT and FL had been building a life for themselves in New York City, BD had been building a reputation as a world class interior designer. His arrival in the States was greatly anticipated by the design community who found him so fascinating. Throughout their time apart, CT and FL fully cooperated in BD’s plan to cultivate an air of mystery which his arrival would solve with what all three friends hoped would be sensational panache.

When the plane taxied up to the gate, CT and FL clapped their hands excitedly. BD burst from the tunnel and all three old friends met in a fierce collision of joyful reunion. Each of them began speaking rapidly at once which led to uproarious laughter.  The girls had so much to tell BD and to ask him, and he them. CT and FL each clasped one of BD’s hands and led him down to baggage claim where his limousine driver had already collected his gear. BD told them a funny story about customs in San Francisco as he handed his carry-on luggage to the driver as well.

In the back seat of the limo on the way into Manhattan, the girls asked BD what he would like to do first.  

“Well,” BD said with much relish. “The first thing I want to do is visit Rude Boy for a haircut.” And he showed them a small article torn from a Japanese magazine. The article featured a picture of a famous Japanese record producer. The producer’s mangled head looked like a lopsided Rastafarian who had changed his mind about enlisting in the Marines at an extremely inopportune moment.  

“Ahh,” said the girls collectively. “PJ.”

             The article BD held pointed out that MK didn’t allow customers into his barbershop unless they brought at least two friends to hold them down in the old chair. Insurance purposes. It also offered Rude Boy customers a 10% discount on all guitars in the Lit Fuse. So, CT and FL instructed the limousine to drop them off in front of the Lit Fuse and then take their bags to their own shop, which was just one block away on Orchard Street.

The girls led BD into the Rock ‘n Roll/Hip Hop shop where MK greeted them warmly and asked if they’d like to see anything in particular. BD handed MK the cut-out, which flattered MK tremendously. His adaptation to the changing of the times had garnered international notoriety. A glow rushed about MK’s face and his mouth flapped back into the biggest smile that he’d worn in years.  

MK shook hands with CT and FL while BD was looking through the store’s album collection. After a moment, BD returned to MK at the counter with a very high stack of records. CT and FL asked MK if they could leave these records on the counter and cash them out after BD’s superfly haircut. Mentally adding up the value of BD’s purchase, MK wagged his head like a puppy. Then he led the three of them back to the barbershop under the tinselly outdoor shine of the canopy.  

           BD sat down in the chair, flanked by CT and FL. MK gave the chair a good spin round, determined to delight BD to the pits of his soul and surpass every dream that BD had ever had about American Hip Hop culture. BD smiled and closed his eyes, ready to be transformed in appearance to what he already felt in his heart.  

           “Be right back…” sang MK and ran back into the store to summon PJ.  

           Befitting the grand entry of his star attraction, MK had taken a page from the NBA and engineered a garish bit of fanfare to let PJ, and the whole neighborhood, know that he had a customer. With the push of one button, a series of cherrytop police car lights began swirling in the Lit Fuse’s windows. Sirens and ice cream truck songs howled to a techno rhythm, punctuated by blasts from a lifeguard whistle. And then an announcer’s voice blared through the circus jungle beats:

 “THAT’S RIGHT FOLKS! HE STILL AIN’T CROAKED! ANOTHER HEAD FROM A FARAWAY LAND LOOKS TO BE CURED BY THE THUNDERBIRD HAND OF THE MAN OF THE HOUR, MAN OF THE DAY! LET’S HEAR IT HO’S AND G’S FOR HIS TRAVESTY, P-J!”

             The first few times that this explosion of bells and whistles rocked Ludlow Street, a few of PJ’s many friends and empathizers applauded as he burst from wherever to go careening through the Lit Fuse, hellbent on revising the possibilities of a hairdo. But after PJ’s work began to attract a larger number of customers, the frequent cranking of his theme song became a hardcore nuisance. MK received enough complaints that he began to sneak off the premises as soon as he turned on PJ’s noisy invitation. He would wander through the back way to sit and have tea down the street, leaving the store in RS’s incompetent care rather than field complaints from the neighbors.

           So, as BD waited in the chair, the clanging and screeching BOOM BOOM BOOMed to summon PJ. PJ was down in Barratoba’s swilling gin, trying to recover from the shameful outrage of the policeman making him kowtow to that new blonde lady. PJ remembered when that cop was eight years old and shot an old man in the shoulder with his beebee gun. PJ tried to suck the liquor out of the tilted bottle faster than it could pour and it splashed out of his full mouth and ran down his chin in silver trickles. When the bottle was empty, PJ cast it aside and jerked his sleeve across his mouth. Then he charged out of the bar towards the noise that was calling him to sculpt someone’s head like an African banzai tree.

           PJ whirled out into the bright light of the street, his dirty limbs gangling like giant pinwheels. Cars slammed on their breaks to avoid this stumbling dervish that seemed part liberated bull, part agitated rodent. Pretty young women shopping up and down the block reared back in horror to allow PJ to swarm his way past the pounding speakers and blaring lights and into the Lit Fuse.  

           BD was waiting for PJ in the back with an outstretched hand. Something about the scene seemed vaguely familiar to PJ and for a split second he wondered if he had ever fought overseas. He found his hand being tugged vigorously, worshipfully by the young Japanese man with the flat black hair. The mylar glinted above him and his muddy eyes took on a look of understanding.  

           BD mistook PJ’s newfound orientation of his whereabouts for an acknowledgement of their spiritual kinship. He smiled at the older man and lay back in the chair, waving off CT and FL. The two girls went back inside the shop. BD beamed ecstatically from his chair, overjoyed to be face to face with his kindred enigma, PJ. He handed his remaker, his redeemer another picture of the haircut he wanted. This picture was taken from the same magazine but the article was about police brutality in New York City, of which the young man in the picture was a victim.  

           PJ tenderly fingered the ragged edge of the picture and briefly forgot that he was too drunk to stand up. He held out his hand to BD. BD handed him two $100 bills. PJ’s eyes lit up and something about the image that sat under the money in his strong hand clicked. He nodded his head and got to work.  

           BD closed his eyes. PJ shaved tiny stripes into the young man’s eyebrows. Then PJ took the scissors. He raised them straight up and assumed the exact pose of Lady Liberty lifting her lamp beside the golden door. With his other hand, he pressed his large palm to BD’s temple and took a snippet of hair between two of his fingers. Then the scissors began jawing rapidly and swooped down at BD’s head. BD became secretly terrified in PJ’s shaky hands. But the scissors plunged along the shape of his sleek head accurately, shearing off a shaggy wing of hair. It was exhilarating and BD relaxed a little, surrendering to the moment. PJ reared the scissors back like a tailor’s needle. His trick knee had subsided and hardly jerked at all. On this pass, the hand on BD’s forehead rolled towards the incoming razor bomb. With a horrible squinching sound, PJ snipped off BD’s ear.  

           “Oh Lo’d!” shouted PJ as the blood spurted all the way up to the silver ceiling. BD began to cry and chant the comforting words of some of his favorite songs.

           “Docta! We need a docta! He’p! He’p!” cried PJ, dancing around in BD’s blood. BD began convulsing in the chair. “Shee-it!”

           CT and FL were inside the shop listening to BD’s new records on headphones. RS was watching the records spin round and round. But a few other customers peaked into the back to see what the ruckus was about. When they saw PJ’s ghoulish dance under the canopy and the young Japanese man writhing in the chair murmuring “you gon’ make me lose me mind-up in here, up in here” in a thick accent, they immediately searched about the place for cameras, certain as they were that a music video was being filmed out back. It was so easy to accept the absurdity of the scene as some vaguely symbolic play on entertainment and modern medicine. But something about the lack of cameras and the amount of blood blasting out of the side of BD’s head seemed too lavish for a rehearsal. What was going on back here? “i am walrus, i am walrus, ki ko ki shoom,”? Almost apologetically, the gravity of the situation asserted itself and the two young guitar shoppers were forced to accept the irrevocability of what had happened. One of them had been shopping for a guitar, the other a bass. The guitarist swooned but the bass player kept his cool and dashed back into the store and behind the counter to call an ambulance for the mutilated Japanese boy in the chair.  

           Rather than sobering PJ up, the accident thrust him into an entirely different realm of intoxication. He still thought maybe he could keep this whole thing quiet and nobody would find out. So he placed BD’s ear on the counter next to the jar of blue disinfectant. Then he combed some of the blood out of BD’s hair and skillfully continued the abstract trimming he had begun a few moments earlier. BD passed out, certain that his plane to JFK hadn’t even landed yet.

             The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and rushed BD to the hospital. Police arrested PJ and pulled BD’s ear and $200 from his pocket. The ear was perfectly in tact, like an unbitten cookie, but it would never work again. Blood and hair had clogged BD’s auditory canal and damaged his eardrum during his convulsions and the entire left side of his face caught an infection from PJ’s rusty scissors. At CT and FL’s insistence, the ear was sewn back onto BD’s head for reasons purely cosmetic.  

           BD stayed in the hospital for a few days. His design and magazine contacts were notified and they all came to visit him. It was a great disappointment for all parties concerned that the mysterious BD should finally be revealed in a hospital cot with a useless ear freshly stitched onto such a blotched, ugly face, capped now by his astonishing haircut. Several established members of the industry in which BD starred were horrified to learn of the conditions of the Rude Boy Salon. None of them were opposed to underground fashion per se, but a homeless drunk using unsanitary blades seemed too extreme. This was not a haircut. It was assault and they demanded justice.

             Back on Ludlow Street, word spread. MK stood in front of his store smoking and furtively looking for anyone wearing one of CN’s PJ t-shirts, which he was prepared to buy for as much as $35 apiece. He needed to distance himself from the incident and keep his store open. As soon as the police had taken PJ away, he had taken down the canopy and the chair and dumped the remaining furniture in a different alley, in Queens. Then he had RS scrub BD’s blood off of the concrete behind the store. Rude Boy was finished, but he’d be damned before he’d lose the Lit Fuse. He considered offering to pay BD’s medical expenses, but then thought that such a gesture might suggest greater responsibility for the assault than he could afford to accept. PJ lived in a flophouse on skid row. He had no family, no money and, to MK’s way of thinking, a primitive, ill-developed grasp on reality. PJ could afford to take the whole rap.

           But how would a rap stick to a man as disenfranchised as PJ? With no driver’s license, no social security number, no fingerprints on file, no credit, no library card, no nothing except a nickname, he was a phantom, completely disentangled from the institutional marionette strings yanking most of us around.  

             PJ was being held at the 7th Precinct. Detective QV had been called in to help discern PJ’s identity. PJ was little help. No matter what question they asked him, PJ said, “I cut that Chinese boy. I cut that boy.”  

           QV pulled PJ’s arresting officer aside.

           “What do you know about this guy?”

           “Officially, not much, detective. Everybody in the neighborhood knows him but nobody knows anything about him. Last name, where he’s from, nothing. The guy’s slicker than batshit. Most famous John Doe I ever met.”

           “The kid in the hospital pressing charges?”

           “That’s what proprietor of the guitar shop says.”

           “Lit Fuse?”

           “Yeah.”

           “Yeah, I know that guy. MK. He’s a real cocksucker. Wish we could arrest him instead.”

           “Nothing tying him to the incident, detective. The alley where the barber chair was ain’t even his property. And any business ties he had with homeboy in there were strictly off the books. Not a thing we can do about it.”

           “What about all that noisy shit in his window?”

           “He says it’s a gift from some Japanese kid whose friends request him to play it. So how long we gonna keep Mr. PJ in there?”

           “I dunno. Assault like that’s two to four. But we don’t really know who he is. No assets to lean on, no retribution for the kid’s ear. Just punishment for the old guy.”

           The phone rang and the officer went back to his desk to answer it. Detective QV paced back and forth, rubbing his head and smoking. He didn’t like any of it. He was worried that PJ would be remanded to the mental ward at Bellevue with the rest of the John Does if he didn’t cough up more details about himself. But PJ was too distraught to recount a personal history. People around the neighborhood repeated his stories about North Carolina and the sanitation department, the Sunshine Hotel stuck to its policy of non-cooperation, and civic records had nothing that matched his prints or general appearance. He didn’t like any of it.

           PJ’s groaning lament continued: “I cut that Chinese boy. I cut that boy. I cut that Chinese boy. I cut that boy.”

           Several months earlier, back when BD was still in Osaka, AO finally scraped together enough money to buy his guitar back from the Lit Fuse. But MK wanted more than double what AO had hocked it for, which was considerably less than AO had saved up. So, needing something to play on his upcoming tour of central Michigan, AO was forced to settle for an inferior guitar. He handed MK his hard earned cash and stared up at his own baby hanging on the wall, gleaming forlornly back at him. MK shrugged behind the register in mock empathy with AO.  AO was PJ’s cousin.

                       MK sat behind the counter at the Lit Fuse, sweaty and nervous. He hadn’t slept for days and the only thing he’d eaten in the last 24 hours was half a bottle of aspirin. Three times yesterday, he thought he heard PJ shouting in the street. He turned down to his pocket video game to distract himself from the strange paranoia that had afflicted him ever since he had visited the 7th Precinct to wriggle himself out of any occupation of the space between BD and his ear.

           A mist jammed his nostrils and yanked out a sneeze.  

           “God bless you.”

           MK looked up to see PJ towering over him in a cowboy hat.

           Two police officers in uniform entered the Lit Fuse and handcuffed MK and read him the Miranda warning. PJ pulled AO’s baby down from the wall and handed it to him.  

             Back at the hospital, BD was going through therapy to regain a sense of balance and adjust to his hearing loss. CT and FL informed him that PJ was out of jail and that the owner of the shop had been arrested instead. The owner of the alley behind the Lit Fuse had been summoned to prosecute MK for vandalism and conducting unlicensed surgery on private property. PJ had been bailed out by a relative.

           BD wanted to know what the relative had told the police about PJ.  

           “Not much,” FL said. “Just that he didn’t used to be so simple. He wouldn’t say what happened or how he dissipated so or anything.”

           “Is he in any more trouble?” BD asked.

           “That’s up to you,” CT told him.

             A few days later, BD checked out of the hospital and went downtown to see PJ. He wore a hunting hat with earflaps to cover his wound. BD was directed east to a small jazz club called Quinine where he stood outside, smoking cigarettes and waiting for PJ.

Sure enough, the older man emerged from the club lugging his garbage. He was much less exuberant than he had been the first time the two had met. PJ stopped for a rest and struck up a conversation with the young Japanese man in the hat.  

           “Yo cuz! Gimme cigarette.”

           “Here. Take two.”

           “Thank you. Thank you.”

           “Yes.”

           “I used to cut hair over Ludlow Street.”

           “Really?”

           “Yeah. But I hurt somebody. He a Chinese like you.”

           “Mmmm.”

           “He a nice young man, too. I felt bad.I used to be barber, before I work for sanitation department.”

           “Ah.”

           BD looked down at his cigarette.

           “See, you got to learn more English. This the USA, man! This ain’t China.  USA!”

           “I trying. Thank you.”

           “A’ight cuz. See you later, k?”

[dickganseywrites-blog]

my kiddos valentines plans;

copying danni sorry about it.

ivy; dierks was on set so ivy spent the day with her roomies and she kissed cecily on the cheek and bought her a box of heart shaped chocolates lmao. jack sang to her and she fucking Loved It and she told him that dierks wouldn't mind sharing her today and that she was claiming him as her valentine (i'm so sorry). she didn't see will and was sad about it so she sent him a text telling him that she's upset she didn't get to ambush him for cuddles. she also sent conner and riley valentines cards each lmao none for u monty my dude. anyway she spent the evening with dierks, they probably went for a really nice meal and then went back to his for Other Things.

scotty; as we know scotty went a little overboard on donuts and was trying to see how many donuts it was physically possible for him to eat. how is that boy still in such good shape? the mind boggles. anyways he very unapologetically claimed laura as his valentine but he definitely shot eloise a cute, flirty little text. he tried to summon up the courage to text alfie and callum, too, but he chickened out. he definitely sent out texts in the morning to laura, lydia, evie, and all of the cheersquad (including alex), as well as one to christian too.

hazel; haze was definitely working and she had the best day ever handing over cutesy, loved up cupcakes and donuts and the likes to all her customers (though she was a bit baffled by the lovely gent who decided to order 96 donuts!). she got home and decorated cupcakes with ella, and also put up a cover of herself singing love story by taylor swift cos she's a fucking Nerd.

andrew; drew was on set flirting with everyone. he kissed lo. he kissed maggie and ember, too. dierks ducked outta that shit like there's no tomorrow, and he decided he'd just give emma a hug instead of pushing his luck. but he told her that she was pretty and tried again to ask her out on a date lmao.

amelia; AMELIA FLORENCE BARTEN WENT ON A FUCKING DATE WITH LEVI LOWERY

cody; lmao idk kit gave her chocolates and she gave kit a kiss on the fucking mouth lmao. she actually did not go drinking on this here evening, she sorta behaved which is boring. she doesn't give two shits about valentines tho.

darren; darren, you know fucking what i hate this dickhead. i hate him so much. darren spent a lot of time writing a Song for someone (danni don't fucking look at me), but he also sent taylor, james, brooke, bea, alex, rachel, finn, attie, mellie, and harper valentines cards. harper got the biggest card and he painted a god damn family fucking portrait on it, ferris included, because he's so ridiculous i actually hate him a little bit.

hero; hero was definitely working and she gave riley and foster valentines cards and was brave enough to even give riley a kiss on the cheek and a hug. she went to see greyson and brought him a card too, with extra cuddles and told him that she loves him. she wanted to spend more time with him but she had a date with calvin and she felt really guilty because she was worried about greyson, but there you have it. she also got hunter a valentines gift and sent bennett a text that took her 4 hours, 17 minutes, and 21 seconds to muster up the courage to send. she made audrey breakfast too but she didn't make a fuss or anything, she just wanted to do something nice for her bc she adores her.

billy; billy oh my fucking god billy spent the day pining after simon and then feeling guilty about it. he thought about julian a bit, but less than he did last year on valentines day. he's making progress. he wished simon (AND ALL OF HIS EMPLOYEES) a happy valentines day and then went to see how rhodes was doing. he checked on him probably more than he should have, and told him he loves him and then stole one of the cookies harper made for him. he spent the night cuddled on a couch with harry while watching valentines day and regretted it a little. eliana hid in her room because ew, romance.

jax; jaxy was evie's valentine and he decided not to send ronan a text because he's a chicken. he took evie out for a meal though and they stayed up all night watching movies and waiting for daisy to get back from her date so they could get all the details. at his apartment, of course, because he didn't wanna risk seeing ronan. which means oz was probably present for date talk, i'm sorry baby boy.

daisy; went on a date with reuben and had a great time. went back to jaxy's to tell her wee squad all about it, but she definitely stopped by kit's for kisses, cuddles, and her daily kit time. also it was shane's birthday so she didn't forget about that and she brought him a gift and gave him a cuddle and told him to get his shit together with mickey. sorry bout her.

jason; definitely gave caroline a card that said 'i pika-choose you' on it and he was really proud of himself. he gave her loads of cuddles, as always, and sent delaney, elsie, tara, annie, and wardo cute texts too. he didn't do much, though, and just spent the night teasing caroline probably.

lucy; lucy pined after bea a little, if we're being honest. she also sent james and marley long and soppy texts, but spent the night at home doing nothing.

henry; baby boy went birdwatching with wren and blushed and giggled more than is probably socially acceptable, he had a great time and has definitely bombarded riley today to tell him all about it.

indy; indy went out with justin, raegan, and colton, and spent the whole night feeling nervous and insecure. she told justin he's a dick more than once, but never in front of rae or colton. she also spent the morning kissing everyone and anyone that would have her, cuddled with mellie for a solid hour, and felt really guilty about leaving her. she definitely climbed into her bed once she got home though and told her to never ever let her leave the apartment ever again.

ronnie; ronnie spent the day contemplating making max proud by overcoming his fears and throwing himself into the fucking ocean after seeing the card taylor sent. he watched bend it like beckham but then he just felt worse because he's not dating james, he's not dating david beckham, and he's not dating jonathan rhys meyers either.

lizzie; lizzie thought a lot about conrad, a lot more than she cares to admit, and spent the day with richie of course. she wished conrad a happy valentines day too, and then kissed him on the cheek the next time she saw him. she knows angelica will never let her live it down, though.

katie; spent the day working and tried to say hi to holly but she didn't look best pleased so she decided against it. spent the night with her hons tho, and sent noah the soppiest valentines card the world has ever seen. she got a kiss from angelica and turned bright red but tried to act cool about it, and when a guy chatted her up while they were out she panicked and told him that she already had a valentine and hid behind seth. seth still doesn't know what happened, unless kevin told him because kevin nearly cracked a rib laughing at her.

cassie; cassie was carter's valentine but let's not pretend she didn't give so many cuddles!!!! she made noah pancakes (with extra syrup) and screamed when reuben told her about his date, and helped him pick out his outfit (he didn't ask, she just sort of got ahead of herself), and she made sure to text will and louis telling them that she hoped they had the most super duper valentines ever. she cried when dixie told her about their parents, i'm so sorry. and she sent a secret valentines card to kevin but you didn't hear that from me.

jess; jess pouted a lot and was mad that cassie got to be carter's valentine. he still has convinced himself that carter has a thing for her, and cassie's always talking about just how handsome carter is and even the jess wants to yell I KNOW!!!! in her face he doesn't. he just pouts.

isaac; noah sung to him and isaac pretended that he hated it. noah sung to him and isaac pretended that the flutter in his chest was just heartburn. noah sung to him and isaac pretended that the reason he couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the day was because noah just irritated him so much. noah sung to him and isaac's cheeks were pink for the whole of rehearsal.

monty; MONTY PINED OVER RILEY AS PER FUCKING USUAL and had a mini breakdown to adam probably. he gave riley chocolates, and a card, and comics. as a pal though, as a buddy, as a friend. he wished shane a happy birthday too and was far more composed in doing so than he was during any of the time he spent with riley. it was a day.

rose; rose didn't do much. she was working and she kissed clarke, kenny, and harvey on the cheek, and that was that. she also teased kenny relentlessly about harvey but what's new there. then she went home and watched horror movies all night.

david; DAVID KISSED BENJI BECAUSE OF COURSE HE FUCKING DID. and he saw cecily at work and tried to dazzle her with a smile but she seemed a little alarmed and so he tried not to frighten her some more.

blair; went on a date with jimmy, much to robbie's dismay. she didn't mind, she got to spend the day with her fav boy and wellington's newest and cutest farmboy. she was really content and took a cute selfie of herself kissing jimmy on the cheek, as well as taking some pics with robbie because she knows how important memories are to him.

clarke; spent the day thinking about love and wishing that she wasn't such a mess. she bought beau some chocolates and told her what a great job she does, and she probably said something really heartfelt and soppy to rose, kenny, and harvey. she went home and waited for bailey to get back and she made her dinner.

barry; barry got flowers from ellis and tried to remain as civil and composed as possible. he smiled, thanked her, wished her a happy valentines day, and popped one of the flowers into her hair for extra measure. he gave all of his students one piece of valentines candy each, and took all of the cards he received home and stuck them into a scrap book lol. he kept ellis' flowers, too, and put them in a vase and is taking very good care of them, thank you very much. rudy and lola were with their mother so he spent the night alone and he sent caroline a text that he thought was 'cute' but it actually just said 'Have a good one x', so.

cedric; cedric may or may not have shed a tear or two when he saw the drawing from diego, but nobody needs to know that. he has it framed in his shop. he made origami butterflies for diego, and origami horses for nobody in particular. he's not sure why he picked horses, but they just sort of called out to him and now they're hanging from the doorway in his shop. he spent the night with all his pets, though. nothing special.

séamus; dixie wished him a happy valentines and so he had a really really good day. darragh wasn't around all day, probably off drinking and doing lord knows what. he laid low for the day, writing songs and missing home.

rory; kissed ellis and told her that she was his valentine, but he's rory so he went out and ended up stumbling in at 3am with some fella he met whose name he can't recall. a romantic, so he is.

mack; roy forgot it was valentines day and absolutely nobody was subtle in letting her know what they thought about that. she defended him, and defended him some more when he got upset about adam's card. he cooked her a mediocre dinner (no he didn't, he ordered chinese and pretended he cooked it), and got them a cheap bottle of wine (the man is Loaded, but he's a dick), and mack didn't stay the night. she told adam he's a dick but gave him a hug and a kiss and thanked him for the card, even though he's still a dick.

steven; steven didn't know what to do with himself so he just spent the day with his sisters, and sent sonny a text telling him he missed him.

caleb; caleb and becky went out for a meal and did cute couple things. it was nice, they had fun, and he didn't get injured.

jj; wee bab spent the day with mariana (his foster sister) and her daughter, he was working at a novel idea first tho so he saw taylor briefly and panicked and spilled hot coffee down his front. it wasn't cute. he and mariana didn't wanna go back to their house though so he took her and her daughter out and treated them to dinner. then he spent the night painting and drawing in his bedroom, as always.

teddy; TEDDY MET CARTER AND WAS SHOOK AND HUGGED A CUTE BOY. he also had the courage to ask ryke if he wanted to be his valentine bc carter told him that it's ok to ask a straight boy to be your valentine as friends. he was nervous but it was innocent so he figured it was ok. he also hugged wren a lot and he sent his mum a bouquet of flowers and a pretty pearl necklace, and told his parents that he loves them. he probably spent the evening hanging out with ryke though.

jensen; probably glared at lux a little bit while thinking about the fact that she's pretty and that's annoying and dumb. he's a child. he went to work and then hung out at the bar and that was it. he told sawyer she's his valentine, tho. no takebacks.