#you should see my secret lair which is not particularly Secret but nonetheless! really the most impressive thing is this megabase I made

[giantkillerjack]

good news everyone I found a quick and easy way to clearly communicate which chest belongs to which character

(The sign in front of Wes's chest is blank because his chest is empty and I am fucking hilarious.)

[inspector-montoya-fox]

#13 - Menace from the North, eh!

Setting part 1: i mean......... whatever, right? at this point, India got 2 levels and Prague got 2 levels so i’m like ok, let’s get this over with. and i genuinely believe this and Anatomy for Disaster are the game’s two weakest episodes, despite the great conclusion. look, SP... they fucking delivered. they served absolute excellence with episodes 2-4, but it’s getting redundant and Menace from the North, eh! is just Menace from the North, meh? (please forgive me Lord). the game takes a weird environmentalist turn, which i fully appreciate but am ultimately confused by, seeing as He Who Tames The Iron Horse had absolutely nothing to do with Jean Bison’s pollution aspect. it feels weird to return to a Canadian outing after the gang had such a successful run in the previous episode, which felt like a conclusion even with the absence of a bossfight. like, SP could have easily inserted a Bison bossfight at the end of He Who Tames The Iron Horse in order to add another Klaww Gang member for an extra episode or maybe replace Menace from the North, eh! with the lost Monaco episode. it sounds like i’m bitching a lot, and i actually am. what really takes me aback every single time i play this game is that after you complete the Rajan/Contessa saga, it all becomes so anticlimactic. and i can’t comprehend why. by the end of this episode, the stakes are so high but the drive just isn’t there. and it’s not because the gang is demotivated. Sly has been having so much fun throughout the game, even with Neyla’s backstab being a huge obstacle. so getting down, dirty and serious is a much needed mood change. but i feel like i speak for all of us when i say that episodes 5-7 are overshadowed by episodes 2-4. with a few alterations to the order of the episodes and some changes to the script, i really think we could have had an awesome Contessa vs Clock-La final showdown episode and have Bison come right after Dimitri. because, honestly, Canada feels like ‘second episode’ material.

Setting part 2: i’m splitting it up because i don’t want my rant above to spoil the actual writing. the gang sticks around for another Canadian caper after some kooky stuff goes down with the environment and, mainly, the Northern Lights, which as we’ll soon find out, play a rather unexpectedly significant role in the grand scheme of things. and we’re treated to a log-chopping area, an off-the-maps secretive camp which really ups the ante, because Jean Bison is being such a jerk to nature. we’ve got deforestation, we’ve got melting ice, exploitation of wild animals, and Bison getting a raging red boner by literally destroying the environment in order to flex in the Lumberjack Games..... both the player and the gang have had enough of this dude, and i think SP used the fact that his only traits are being an angry idiot and a bigot to their advantage. instead of providing the necessary character development as they did with the Contessa and Rajan, Bison and his actions (especially his communication with the mYsTeRiOuS Arpeggio) are used as a prelude to Anatomy for Disaster. there’s not really a lot of dialogue apart from the final mission and bossfight, because the overall Klaww Gang plot begins to unravel, and particularly so by the time we find out about the lighthouse and its technological contents. in fact, if you think about it, Anatomy for Disaster starts with Clock-La’s shitshow and an info-dump at the beginning, which, if you’ve been paying enough attention to the details (i know that until i turned 12 and replayed the game as a young teen i hadn’t been paying attention to shit so it was all gasp!), is just the connecting of the dots. Menace from the North, eh! is essentially the last piece of the puzzle, before it’s all given to us in full detail by Arpeggio. i mean, apart from Dimitri serving dishes with drugs in them (i still can’t get over that at the age of 21), the rest is all things the player could pick up. and that’s this episode’s main focus. trying to prevent the inevitable under countdown, before Arpeggio’s blimp arrives to collect the Northern Lights energy. so it feels very anticlimactic and strange to put in all this effort without purpose. if you’ve played it before, you know it’s all for nothing since all the parts will be gone by the end of the episode. and it’s even more anticlimactic (although hilarious in tonal shift) to see how the gang scrambles under the pressure of preventing the Klaww Gang’s doomsday by hacking boats and having all these grandiose plans involving the lighthouse, just to then resort to taking part in the Lumberjack Games, without even a clever scheme but actually just cheating, and finally have Bison, an idiot, foil their plans by finding out where they’ve been hiding. and the bossfight is fine, but again, meh... i mean, woohoo Bentley! or whatever the fuck.

Characters: let’s talk about Jean Bison and his mistreatment as a character. we first meet him at Rajan’s ball, where Bentley introduces him as a Canadian shipping baron and says that he owns half the trains in Canada. later on, during the introductory cutscene for He Who Tames The Iron Horse, we get his backstory and how he’s risen from being practically dead, frozen since his time, and back with a vengeance against the environment. in my previous #episodeproject entry i said: SP plays up Bison’s savagery and gruesome nature by spotlighting how his plans affect the environment and even going so far as to call his house ‘the lair of the beast’. this is all true but is never put into practice. like, Jean Bison is all tell and no show, y’know? even the cutscene that plays when Sly gets caught in Bison’s cabin during He Who Tames The Iron Horse’s first mission shows Bison getting angry, but hunty, that’s about it. apart from the Lumberjack Games and his bossfight, it’s all oh Bison will get angry and oh Bison will kill us with the talons. well, where is it? where’s the fucking Canadian shipping baron with a vengeance against the environment? my baby heart was legit quivering when we had to steal Rajan’s blueprints as Bentley, and the Contessa was such a grand sleazebag of a woman, like what a douchebag - and you see that, although i’m often flamboyant in my writing (!!!), the way i describe these moments with these villains is both effective and relatable, because they showed up and lived up to their descriptions. Bison was written to be a ferocious beast of a villain but never showed that. and that’s on SP. whatever... let’s talk about the gang. now, despite the gang looking seriously badass in the opening cutscene for this episode (image below), they’re actually in a pretty good headspace. they’re only missing the talons and whatever Clockwerk parts Arpeggio had before collecting all of them. so it’s only natural for them to feel a bit cocky, and that’s actually gonna be their demise. before that, i just wanna mention that almost all the missions here (as with He Who Tames The Iron Horse) are group missions: Sly and Murray infiltrate the moose club in RC Combat Club, all three of them work together in Lighthouse Break-In, Boat Hack, and Old Grizzle Face. what really stood out to me every time i played this episode, is how, at the end when they take down Bison and they rush to the battery, each member has a different way of entering it, which is a small detail but important nonetheless. this further reinforces how united the gang has become since the Contessa levels and how their bond has strengthened. now, lemme circle back to how they’re cocky. i mean, apart from Jean Bison, Menace from the North, eh! doesn’t present any immediate danger or like trouble, seeing as both Neyla and Carmelita are absent. without any interference, the gang had lots of breathing space to plan ahead, even under countdown before Arpeggio’s blimp arrived. and they kinda wasted the opportunity because, as i’ve already mentioned, the operation was an absolute train-wreck. there’s no plan b, or like something clever or whatever. and usually, the operations tend to get disrupted by third parties, such as Carmelita or Neyla, but here, it failed because it was never smart. and it’s only natural for them to fall hard (by losing all the Clockwerk parts) after feeling all cocky (maybe i’m being too harsh). and all this directly leads to some more Bentley character development.... again. look, i’m all for character development, but the turtle already faced his demons when he busted Sly and Murray out of jail. i know we got Murray vs Rajan, but i don’t know, Murray was always kinda just there throughout the game. the hippo had his ups and downs (face-off with Rajan, imprisonment, losing the van), but not a fully realised story arc. that’s why, when Sly 3 starts off with his enlightenment and return, that story arc is instantly so iconic. i could go on about how Bentley gains self-confidence after defeating Bison, but um, we’ve already done that sis.

Themes: He Who Tames The Iron Horse and Menace from the North, eh! should have been one episode and i truly believe that. they could have shared the same themes. for the former, i said there’s the speed theme, and that applies here too because the gang are under pressure. the countdown lights a fire under their asses and it’s all very destructive. again, there’s an antithesis between the calm Canadian atmosphere and the chaotic energy of the missions. but it’s not just speed theme anymore, it’s more like theme of ferocity. everyone’s kinda on edge??? Old Grizzle Face is a motherfucker and we get up close and personal with the eagles, lasers destroy huge ice pieces, there’s a mammoth, the destroyed oil manes create fiery air drafts... chaos. and it all results in the disastrous events and outcome of the Lumberjack Games, which make Menace from the North, eh! the straightest episode in the game. yuck. it only makes sense for the missions to become less sneaky and more destructive as the stakes get higher and the gang is in a hurry, and that kinda embodies the pollution motif/ environment motif. it’s less of a theme and more of a motif because it’s so story-centric, but that’s the other things the comes into contrast with the calm environment. saws, the buzzing, chopped-up logs flowing down the river, tree stumps spread across: these embody the pollution and the harm Jean Bison has been doing even though it’s a forced storyline in my opinion. and finally, size theme. it’s not major, but it feels like everything’s bigger in Canada... Sly feels so puny in this episode, like especially when climbing the lighthouse. the wild animals are huge, the structures are huge, Jean Bison’s house is huge. it’s just lots and lots of nothingness. if you took absolutely nothing and enlarged it by 10 times, you’d have this episode’s hub. and this is also seen in the bossfight when tiny Bentley takes on Jean Bison. so yea.

What I Like: gliding off the lighthouse and throwing fish onto already stinky guards before Old Grizzle Face rips them to shreds. also, those cute lil catfish-lookin viruses in Bentley’s hacking! they’re so adorable.

What I Don’t Like: erm... it’s not that i don’t like this episode, but i find it kinda boring? apart from interacting with the wild animals, the missions are meh. and i hate the Lumberjack Games...

Quote: Get too close and old Grizzle Face will be eating barbecued raccoon for dinner.

[badgerhuan]

Need to Know

This is, basically, a story where Oliver and Barry are the only ones who don't know that Len and Ray are together.

I began writing this before the current season aired, so this was written under the assumption that the Legends disband after taking out Savage and they all go back to their respective teams. With Len alive, of course.

Read on AO3

It wasn't the first time that Team Flash and Team Arrow decided to collaborate, or, as Ray had giddily called it, much to Oliver's chagrin, “team up”.

Only this time Barry brought a source of aid that Oliver didn't particularly trust.

Namely, the supposedly reformed criminal Leonard Snart.

“There's no one who knows the Central City black market like Snart. We could really use his help on this one,” Barry had said.

Even after Ray and Sara had returned from their time travel adventure and told them about the parts Captain Cold and Heatwave played in saving the world, Oliver still found it hard to trust them.

“You can trust him,” Sara had said with a shrug, “I vouch for him.”

Yes, but that didn't mean Oliver had to like it. It didn't sit well with him either that apparently Snart found out about his identity in a supposedly doomed dystopian future.

“Don't worry! He knows how to keep a secret. He kept Barry’s. And Sara’s. And mine,” Ray had cheerfully tried to reassure him. It didn't really work.

And so Oliver was wary as Team Flash plus one entered the lair. He nodded at Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin but kept his eyes on Snart.

The man seemed to be behaving. He was quiet, his eyes watchful. There was an almost amused glint in his eyes as he shook hands with Oliver while Barry introduced them, but other than that he's pretty complacent.

That is, until Snart moved on to shake Ray's hand. At which point he, with one fluid motion, pulled the taller man down and smashed his lips onto Ray's.

Three things happened at once.

Ray let out a startled sound. Barry moved and in a gust of wind he had Snart pinned against the nearest wall. Oliver stepped forward and pushed Ray behind him as he stood in front of the taller man protectively.

“Snart, have you lost your mind?!” Barry yelled at the older man, who was smirking, then he turned back to Ray and Oliver, holding a hand out in apology, “Ray, I am so, so sorry. This won't happen again, I promise.”

Ray blinked. “Um, it's okay, Barry, I-”

Oliver cut him off with an incredulous bark of laughter, “What? Ray, no. This is not okay. Snart just assaulted you.”

“That's not-” Ray broke off, apparently having a hard time finding the right words to use, “He didn't- I mean-”

Finally, he let out a sigh. “Len, we talked about this.”

There was a beat of silence as no one said anything, and Oliver was just about to ask who the hell is Len when Snart spoke up.

“Can't help it, Raymond, wanted to see their reactions.”

“You only kissed me to test them?”

“Relax, Boy Scout, I'll make it up to you later.”

“Wait. Hold on.” Oliver called out, he eyes closed. Then he turned and stared at Ray in disbelief. “Raymond?” he repeated, at the same time as Barry let out a choked, “Len?”

Somehow both words sounded like accusations, and both seemed to be aimed at Ray, who sputtered under the two heroes’ scrutiny. Snart, for his part, looked like he was absolutely enjoying this.

The silence was again broken when Snart nodded at another member of Team Arrow. “Hello, Felicity.”

Felicity let out a nervous laugh and waved back, “Hey, Leonard.”

Oliver spun on his heels and turned his accusing gaze on her. “You knew?”

She threw her hands up in defense. “Only because I walked in on them at Ray's place!”

“Which is why you should never hack your way into my apartment unannounced ever again.” Ray pointed out, seemingly having found his voice again now that he wasn't the one under interrogation.

“Unless you're into that, in which case you're more than welcome to watch,” Snart drawled. Ray rolled his eyes as Felicity vehemently declined the offer.

“When did this happen?” Barry asked weakly, disbelief seemingly locked into his face as his hands slowly grabbed at his hair.

Sara snorted. “Please. They've been together for more than a year now.”

“More than a year- They met 8 months ago!” Barry protested, waving his arms around wildly to emphasize his point. This time Sara rolled her eyes, “Time travel, remember?”

“Wait,” Cisco suddenly cut in, “how do you count anniversaries, then?”

“Oh-kay!” Oliver called out before anyone could answer, trying to regain some semblance of control. Then he looked sternly at Ray, who actually began squirming despite being taller. “You're with Leonard Snart?”

“Yes?” Ray answered, his voice taking a higher pitch than usual. “I uh- was going to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time and Len didn't really care if I told you or not so I forgot about it most of the time and besides everyone else seems to know so-”

Oliver held up a hand and he gave Ray a look, and Ray snapped his jaw closed and bit his lips, eyes wide.

“Everyone else?”

Ray continued to stare with his mouth clamped shut, giving Oliver something between a shake of his head and a shrug. Oliver let out a huff of incredulity before spinning around to address the rest of the room.

“Who else knows about this?”

Silence.

Then slowly, hands began to rise.

The only ones who hadn't moved were Oliver and Barry.

Oliver could feel the headache pounding at the back of his head.

“Caitlin?” Barry asked, sounding completely scandalized. The biochemist shrugged. “You don’t spend as much time as I do at STAR Labs.”

“Thea.” Oliver called, his tone sounding both like a question and a statement. His sister cocked her head. “Well. I wouldn’t say I knew. But on the forums, there are…theories.”

Ray’s eyes widened. “There are forums? About us??”

Thea smiled at him, “Are there ever. They call you two ColdAtom.”

“Ah ah,” Cisco held up a finger from across the room, then he shook it once with a shit-eating grin on his face, “I coined that.”

This time Thea’s eyes widened. “No way,” she said with a laugh, “You're VibrationsAllAround?”

“The one and only, baby,” he replied with a wink. Then he noticed the half-murderous look on Oliver's face. “Which you are not and I will never call you that or wink at you ever again.”

“How did you know?” At this point, Barry sounded accusing, too. Cisco stared at him.

“Barry. Do you or do you not remember that I'm dating Lisa Snart?”

“Ha!” Thea shouted from across the room, face full of glee. “I knew it!”

Oliver brought up his hands to rub at his eyebrows, a force of habit that he had no idea how to quit, as a hand landed on his shoulder. He glanced over to see John smiling wryly at him. “Hate to break it to you, Oliver, but you're not the most observant when it comes to these kind of things.

Oliver's only response was a sigh of exasperation.

Meanwhile, Ray and Leonard had moved to stand next to each other, both watching Barry and Oliver’s reactions with concern and amusement respectively.

“I think we broke them,” said Ray, his eyebrows raised in slight alarm.

“We can send them flowers.” The smirk seemed permanently etched into Leonard’s face.

Ray rolled his eyes. “You're the worst.” But his lips pulled into a beaming smile nonetheless.

“And yet you love me.” Leonard turned to glance at Ray, and his smirk morphed into something softer.

“I do. I must be pretty terrible, too.” Ray laughed and met his eyes. Then Leonard reached out and pulled Ray down into another kiss.

Just as the door to the lair hissed open.

“Um,” Curtis said, blinking at the doorway, “am I hallucinating, or are Captain Cold and Mr. Palmer actually making out in the Arrow cave right now?”

“Don't call it that,” Oliver said tiredly.

“Definitely actually happening,” Felicity confirmed, her eyes locked on the couple.

“Oh thank God,” Curtis sighed in relief, “I was worried that it was another one of my fever dreams.”

“It feels like a dream,” Barry muttered, his hands covering his face with one eye peeking out.

“Better get cozy then, Scarlet,” Leonard said, having broken away from the kiss. But he didn’t look at Barry, instead he kept his eyes on Ray and wrapped one arm around the taller man’s waist and pulled him closer, even as Ray blushed and laughed. “Because you’re not waking up.”

The End

I hope this was as funny as I wanted it to be. :’D

[remmushound]

Part 11 of my bay/rise crossover! @errorfreak88 @brightlotusmoon

Now that the lair was empty, Donatello felt much more at home. He thought it strange that they give so much trust to a complete stranger, however; it had taken years for his April to be left alone in the lair, and even then it was with all the doors locked and constant calls to make sure she wasn’t up to no good. Yet here Donatello was, in an open lair with open doors and no one to keep him in check. And he was a little gremlin who wanted to get up to no good.

At first, he tried to be discreet about it. Just walking around the main room, casually glancing around at any odds and ends that caught his eye. He gave an unsettled grunt at the state of the couch, looking hardly big enough to fit three of the massive mutants shell-to-shell. It was covered in graffiti and blankets and pillows, and the couch itself was made up of pizza boxes— actual pizza boxes! He certainly wouldn’t want to sit on it with its structural integrity. He looked for any alternate arrangements and only found a dirty bean bag chair, and instead of any tables they just had the same assortment pizza boxes stacked up high. It seemed they never got rid of any of their boxes!

Donatello stopped in his tracks as he beheld the Wall of Boomboxes. Such an outdated tech, nonetheless he admired the style and dedication it would take to collect so many. A quick equation told him there were exactly a hundred and twenty five of them in various states of grime and decay. He stared a moment as he worked through the scene completely in his mind before nodding pointedly.

“Nice.”

The rest of his search brought him a concerning amount of TV’s— forty of them to be exact. And on a separate wall he was drawn particularly to the art he recognized to be from the painters of his and his brothers namesake. So these turtles had least had some type of class. The skateboard chair, made of nine skateboards connected with industrial glue into the shape of a throne, caught his attention almost as long as the Wall of Boomboxes. He looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched by camera or mutant before he hummed and took a seat in the marvelous chair.

“I feel like a king.” He smiled and snickered to himself.

“Well, one would in such a wonderful throne.”

Donatello screamed and launched himself off of the skateboard throne, crawling away and grabbing the first thing he saw— a racket ball— and tossing it at whoever had spoken.

“OH MY BANANA PANCAKES!”

The other mutant caught the racket ball with ease, and then knelt down to roll it back to the frightened softshell. “Be still, young one. I am not here to harm you.”

The mutant was slightly smaller than Donatello, covered in a fine layer of brown fur intermittently speckled with patches of white. His face was outlined in white on his cheeks and around beady black eyes, and on his muzzle was white fur so long it had the appearance of a goatee. Black hair on his head was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and a giant, brownish tail whipped behind him with a mind of its own.

Splinter. Of course there was a Splinter— how could there not be? Splinter laughed and held out his paw to Donatello in an offering of friendship, and Donatello accepted the help without hesitation. Splinter yanked Donatello to his feet with ease and gave the softshell a careful pat on the shoulder, ears flicking as he made a mental note of the soft, leathery skin.

“I am sorry if I frightened you, young one. I am glad you are doing better. When you and your brother arrived here, I was concerned for your wellbeing. Seeing you up and walking is a great relief to me, my child. How are you enjoying our home?”

Donatello churred nervously. “I don’t know, it’s kinda dirty.”

Splinter laughed a low, raspy laugh. “It is a storm drain, young shinobi. Were you expecting the Ritz?”

“If my dork of a brother saw this, he’d go on a cleaning hyperfixation for days!”

“Well I should hope to meet him properly once he wakes.”

“Oh— no, not that brother. Raph’s room looks like a freight train goes through it every morning. Of course, it’s a six foot four hundred pound freight train, but still.”

Splinter’s eyes glistened. “Ah. Yes. My Raphael is much the same way.” He nodded his head pointedly. “Are the rest of your brothers here in the city?”

“I… I don’t know. The Shredder separated us.”

“Ah… Shredder has separated me from my sons once as well…” Splinter lowered his head, his paws going to clutch at his stomach as the memory renewed the pain in his scars. He tried not to make it too obvious. “Your father must be so worried.”

“Eh, I don’t know. He’s never really been worried about us before.”

“I’m sure he has.” Splinter stepped aside and offered the skateboard seat to Donatello, to which Donatello promptly sat. Splinter came up to hover over the ninja’s shoulder, almost like a guardian looking over him. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to worry you in turn.”

“You haven’t met my Splinter. He doesn’t care about anything.”

“I am willing to listen if you are willing to talk.”

Donatello didn't know why he was being so open about his world. Even when his other-him was asking questions, Donatello had made sure to keep his answers vague for personal safety, but just the presence of this mutant rat so much like his father seemed to force out every secret, private thought Donatello had.

“Our dad was human before, the last descendant of an ancient clan of Ninja. He was trained all his life in ninjutsu before he ended up mutating and took me and my brothers as his sons…”

Splinter listened to the story and nodded along, smiling and flicking his ears to encourage the mutant.

“I mean— I’m technically only mentally fourteen, but physically I’m fifteen— it’s just really complicated.”

“Too complicated for an old rat to understand?” Splinter smirked.

“Yes.” Donatello didn't hesitate to answer quite bluntly. He just stared back at Splinter a moment before returning to the story. “He did his best for his situation, but he was… distant at best. Most of our childhood was spent sat in front of the TV watching soap operas and old action movies. That’s where I got my gloriously consequential personality!” Donatello fell dramatically with his hand to his forehead, “Alas, tis the life of a poor, young mutant forsook by the world he was brought into. Shunned by society, forced to live in the sewers with the RATS— sorry, getting off track.” He cleared his throat, “Our favorite show was this action series following a Shinobi master named Lou Jitsu beating bad guys with ladders and hot soup.”

Splinter couldn’t help but laugh, both at the fluctuating dramatics of the younger mutant and the image in his mind of such a funny series. “My Michelangelo and Leonardo would love that. Was the jiu jitsu accurate?”

“Oh yeah, for sure.” Donatello nodded, “The actor was an actual shinobi master, so he did all his stunts himself.”

Splinter was in a thought a moment, humming to himself. “Your father was the actor?”

“Yeah.” Donatello laughed, “My brothers and I first got into ninjitsu from watching his movies over and over and over. We just started to memorize the moves and copy them. Our… dad didn't actually teach us anything in person.”

“No?” Splinter tilted his head curiously.

“No. In fact, he tried to ban all forms of it in the lair until we turned ten. Then he just accepted that it was gonna happen anyway, and it was better he knew about it than us try to sneak it. I mean, it literally ran in our blood! And we were impressionable little hatchlings, so of course we were gonna copy the moves! We watched the movies on loop every day!”

“My sons lived and breathed all things martial arts when they were such an age. I started training myself when they were only six, and then I started training them when they were eight. Ten years of practice did them well to prepare for the Shredder. I could always give you a similar training session if you are feeling up to it.”

“OMIGOSH REALLY?!” Donatello practically tossed himself over the arms of the throne and fell at Splinter’s feet. “I WOULD BE SO—~JAZZED!~”Donatello scrambled back to his feet quickly, taking the rat’s hands in his and holding them tightly.

The pure joy in the young mutant made Splinter’s heart soar. “Well I am always happy to accept such an eager young student. But first, perhaps some Chamomile tea to calm your nerves while you tell me more of your father.”

“OH YES PLEASE!”