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eirichele · 4 years

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a VERY in depth look at fire emblem: three houses and its grooming problem

OR: how this game managed to make an accurate portrayal of grooming and exactly how it made it palatable

(warning: really long. though to be fair, the length is mostly screenshots. you can also read this in google docs)

***

SO i’ve been wanting to write something Formal and In Depth for a while, because this game’s reception has been a nightmare for me and other csa victims and quarantine hit, so i finally had time. i just really wanted to get all my thoughts in one place before i move on from 3h. i’m basically done talking about this after this one because... idk what else i could say that hasn’t been said here, really. fe has history with this, and the in-game excuses ring hollow when we know the fe devs disregard csa victims at every turn while pandering to male gamers who love sexualised teenage girls.

long, long analysis under the cut:

Some previous context: Fire Emblem games have a history of normalising harmful romances

It’s understandable for many to not know the history of the series since 3H was insanely successful and it brought a lot of new fans. Fire Emblem has always been a character driven game where making your units bond was encouraged both for gameplay and story reasons. Some end in special romantic epilogues, and some of those relationships were concerning to say the least: Sylvia, 14 years old, can marry every eligible man in Genealogy of the Holy War, Jill from Radiant Dawn, 18, can marry her father’s protegé who is 34. This is not a new phenomenon for the series, it just became more noticeable and malicious post-Awakening, because it became first person fanservice.

FE decided to rehaul the series sometime in 2011 by including dating sim elements, which made it explode in popularity. Avatars were introduced to represent the player in-game, allowing them to marry whoever they wanted. The first game to include a pseudo-dating sim was Awakening, released in 2012. The player can marry every named playable character, on top of the usual FE shipping mechanics . Donnel, Nowi and Ricken, all children, are part of your party. Nowi is a thousand year old dragon that looks like a child of 11-15. She loves playing, and throws tantrums, and overall acts very childishly, but the narrative insists that she’s really an adult feigning childishness.

In Fire Emblem lore, dragons are veeeery slow ageing people with the power to transform into dragons, which means they can be biologically still children even when they’re hundreds or thousands of years old. Tiki, another similar character, is considered a child in Shadow Dragon by her adult dragon family while explicitly being around Nowi’s age. Despite evidence to the contrary, Awakening treats Nowi like an adult who can marry. Fire Emblem had previously included many dragon child characters in the past, but none were romantic options for anyone, and they were considered a younger sibling of sorts. Nowi was a first in the series, and after her inclusion these romances became common with characters like Nyx in Fates and Flayn and Sothis in Three Houses. Worth noting is her design, which is incredibly sexualised. A (not so) fun fact is that the outfit designer of Awakening and Fates was none other than Three Houses’ future director, Toshiyuki Kusakihara:

Ricken and Donnel are just regular 13-15 year old boys. No magic. Other adult characters and your avatar just marry them, and it’s stated they will have children in the future. The next game, Fates, actually managed to outdo this somehow: Your pedophilic romance options are now five, and unlike Awakening’s avatar Robin, whose age was unknown and could potentially be portrayed in their mid-teens, Corrin canonically is in the 18-21 age range, making this unambiguous pedophilia. Fates is a very standout game when it comes to Fire Emblem’s worst parts: There’s no “children from the future” excuse for the avatar having children like in Awakening. The avatar impregnates all spouses (or gets pregnant) and has the child after an in-game time skip, which means you can canonically impregnate your approximately 15 year old sister in a Fire Emblem game. You really do not want to stan these devs.

pictured: definitely not 18, even if the english localization really tried to pull that.

Which is yet another thing in this game: Incest with adopted siblings is possible and even encouraged. Incest is constantly fetishized through the character of Camilla, who is an attractive and sexualized older sister obsessed with the main character. Another (not so) fun fact is that most characters will continue to call you ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ in the story even if you’re married because Fire Emblem rarely changes the story to fit with your marriage options. The most insidious thing about the incest and pedophilic couples in Fates is that they’re completely normalized. It’s not shown as abusive, and they look like normal couples that could even look cute out of context. They confess their love, tease each other, blush and have cutesy epilogues.

pictured: marrying your sibling and a literal child

All of this is to end with the conclusion that this is a constant pattern with Fire Emblem, especially the ones with marriage. Any potentially awful relationships portrayed are not outwardly abusive. You won’t catch Xander gaslighting Corrin, or anything. They’re a “cute” relationship that just happens to be incest. Their interactions are not outwardly unhealthy, and it’s tailor made for ‘’’harmless’’’ shipping, but in the end, it’s incest and pedophilia portrayed as a valid pairing that’s “healthy” by all means. It’s normalization of something that’s objectively horrifying to live through. As a CSA victim, Fates literally made me quit the franchise for all the years it was popular.

When Three Houses announced that it would take place in a school while you play a teacher, after seeing all of this play out all FE fans could feel was dread. When 3H announced even later that all romance would take place post-time skip everyone forgot about their reservations instantly— ignoring the fact that everyone being over 18 when marriage happens doesn’t absolve all potential problems with predatory writing. How you write a couple with an age gap is critical. Moving on with Actual Three Houses:

Byleth has a canon age unlike Corrin and Robin, but the game tries to hide it

Corrin and Robin were both avatars meant to be somewhat customized. Byleth cannot be customized. They have a set appearance and age. You can choose Byleth’s name, gender and birthday when you start up the game, but Byleth canonically cannot be born anywhere after September 20th 1159, their “canon” birthday, since their father states in his diary that they’re already alive. 3H starts in the year 1180, which makes Byleth 20 or already 21 depending on their chosen birthday.

All other Three Houses characters have their ages shown clearly in their unit menu, and all bios update accordingly when you learn new information, including yours. Byleth’s age is revealed in a cutscene, but despite this, the game tries to “hide” their age. This is all Byleth has in their bio even well into the endgame:

It’s presumably so the player can “headcanon” their age, as the player avatar, but they still have a canon age, because they’re not a customizable one. It’s a very odd design choice that makes no sense until you consider that the game is romantically pushing teenagers at you. Romanceable students range from 14 to 22 years old before the time skip, but the great majority are in the 15-18 range. Early on, when you introduce yourself to your students, they seem taken aback by how young you are and comment how you seem like you’re “their age.” This is your only dialogue option in response:

No sixteen year old has ever told a twenty/-one year old that they’re the same age, but this is anime high school dating sim logic. An addendum is that this game has incredibly shallow dialogue options to hide how linear it really is, and this is the first glaring instance. This comes up later on with the romance options—you have little to no options to reject a student’s advances. Boundaries as both a player and RPG protagonist are non-existent in this game.

pictured: “yes” and “sure why not” dialogue options to agreeing to meet with a student alone. linhardt just turned 17 last month

Byleth can flirt pre-time skip

Most of your units are students, thus all romance should in theory, stay in the war phase…. Which doesn’t happen at all. All the narrative framing of characters’ “closeness” and foreshadowing of romance are definitely a part of the school phase. The worst offender by far is an in-game event called the Goddess Tower, the school’s local romantic spot. It’s said in universe that a man and a woman who make a vow there on a specific night will stay together forever, and this is a prelude to the marriage scenes five years later, which will take place in that Tower. You can even pick who to bring with you to the Tower, and this is what Byleth says to themselves before the drop down menu shows up:

this is one of those lines that’s like semi-innocuous, since byleth is addressing the player here, but what the fuck is a teacher doing thinking about a student “that way”???? my girl doesn’t know there will be a 5 year time skip where they’re going to be legal she’s just saying this about a bunch of sixteen year olds.

The Goddess Tower itself is a mess of bungled flirting and unnatural romantic scenes, made all the worse by the fact that you can only trigger this scene with a student. Older characters like Seteth, Catherine and Shamir are locked out of the Goddess Tower. They can’t be picked from the menu, and if they’re your highest support, the game will default to the next highest supported student. Here’s some lines from Ingrid’s scene:

ingrid is 17 when this takes place. the youngest byleth possible is well over 21 and the oldest is turning 22 next month

Check out this post for more examples of the Goddess Tower. Byleth’s dialogue options here are right out of a god damn PSA about child safety. They genuinely come off as a huge creep here, especially “Just the two of us….” My dude.

Thankfully one of the few instances where you can turn the student down, but notable anyway. Dorothea’s C support, where you have the option of following her flirty lead, and her response will be the same regardless of your choice:

Another infamous bit of inappropriate flirting is Edelgard’s Japanese C1 support, which you’re likely to unlock before her 18th birthday in June because it’s her very first support:

This was thankfully removed in the English version (Though she still has the same flustered reaction), but the intentions are there. Curiously, I’ve seen many supporters of the Byleth/Edelgard ship say they were upset this was removed, while simultaneously denying the ship has any grooming connotations whatsoever— when an authority figure making ha ha, unless? 😳 sexual jokes in front of underage/barely legal kids to see their reaction is textbook grooming:

Once a trusting or special relationship is created, the offender may carefully test the victim’s reaction to sex. (x)

Not helping is the fact that Edelgard falling in love with Byleth during the school phase is practically canon judging by dialogue in CF of her missing you “more” than the others. Which leads to:

Some interactions pre-time skip resemble grooming tactics

In fans’ minds the lack of boundaries are somewhat mitigated by Byleth’s supposed good intentions, and it’s common to hear fans say Byleth obviously didn’t go to Garreg Mach intending to marry one of the kids they’re teaching because grooming must be malicious from the start. However, it’s well known that unlike premeditated abuse of younger kids, sexual abuse of older teens often happens by “accident”

In contrast, educators who teach at the late middle and high school level target victims in this age range. They might be outstanding teachers, although they may also be mediocre (Shakeshaft, 2003). Sexual abuse at this level may be less premeditated and planned and more often a result of bad judgment (Shakeshaft, 2004). (x)

In other words, by putting zero boundaries between teacher and students and enabling weird situations, which is 3H to a T. Many students flirt, but Byleth doesn’t say anything, or even flirts back.

Secondly, Byleth is like… barely a character, so this isn’t meant to be a callout post accusing them of being a manipulative abuser or whatever, because this is about the dev team putting teenagers in these flirty positions to satisfy the player that Byleth is meant to represent. Byleth is just the plot device they use to do so. People often say this flirting isn’t grooming because Byleth has “good intentions,” but they’re a self-insert, and a self-insert doesn’t have to have any in-universe intentions because the outside writing drives their actions— the thing is we KNOW these writers are not above writing pedophilia as harmless romance. People project good intentions on Byleth, because that’s the avatar. You’re supposed to project on them. This of course includes their “good intentions,” and when I play 3H I headcanon that too, but canonically speaking, these intentions are 100% ambiguous. They never voice attraction to another student, or disgust at the thought of dating them because they speak in small, limited dialogue options and thought bubbles. We don’t have a real, canon indication that they would oppose dating a student before the time skip nor that they would actually do it.

What we do have are the canonical interactions that make people uncomfortable, however. Byleth can think of students in “that way” when the Gatekeeper describes a romantic getaway on the Goddess Tower. If we take them at face value, then their dialogue options clearly establish that they’re okay with flirting with students as young as fifteen, at the very least. They “die” before potentially starting to date any of them for real, but the beginnings of an uncomfortable romance are there and the game fully embraces this as okay .

This is all a result of the writing. Fates never condemned you for picking your sister over any of the other thirty (?) romanceable characters, just like Three Houses doesn’t condemn you for picking Lysithea over any older women in the teaching staff. It’s just another S support option, and it even gets some sweet extra content. She’s touched that you care for her, and you do everything in your power to take care of her frail health, and you guys get happily married. No one ever mentions that you were her high school teacher when she was fifteen and you met at said high school, and she was your favourite student— and this is, you know, something of an important detail in any relationship. Just like Fates, it’s sweet and shippable out of context, which just encourages normalization. How dare you say this is unhealthy? It’s tender! Look how much he loves her!

The thing is that 3H initially presents your students as your charges in school. You’re unambiguously in charge of them as both tactician and instructor, even if you treat each other in a familiar way. Even if most students technically outrank you as nobles, Garreg Mach as politically neutral ground implicitly puts you above them as their teacher. The younger ones are vulnerable teenagers, away from home in a boarding school. Most have some sort of underlying emotional problem that they come to you for. They come to you for advice, and sometimes just venting. You can give them gifts, and have tea every week with them if you so wish in an off-screen conversation. Tea also serves as the “skinship” of this game where you get to see the anime boy/girl of your dreams from up-close, which is a pretty creepy thing to do with a fifteen year old anime girl even out of universe, but I digress.

Looking at this chart in the essay I linked earlier gave me a little bit of a stroke, because the “Strategies” aspects are all things you do in 3H prior to the time-skip:

This is obviously accidental, but still concerning because we know these devs have a twisted idea of what romance is, and that culminated in what I sincerely hope is an unintended but still eerily accurate portrayal of grooming.

Emotional confidence, teatime and gifts, flirting, making a vow together at the Goddess Tower, sex jokes, are all things you do pre-timeskip, and some student’s personal arcs make this even worse. Marianne, Dimitri and Bernadetta have mental illnesses, and they heavily rely on you for support. Edelgard and Sylvain express attraction towards you. You meet Felix’s father and he puts his full trust in you. Ignatz, Bernadetta and Marianne have very low self-esteem. Characters like Ashe and Annette have major parental issues that they discuss with you. In short, you see them at their most vulnerable as kids, and then get together as adults.

About the only thing you don’t do pre-time skip in that list is “Isolate,” but some character arcs post time skip have this distinct vibe nonetheless. Many students leave their homes in the war phase explicitly because of you and no other reason. CF Ingrid in particular outright betrays Faerghus and everything she knew for you, as she says she doesn’t really believe in Edelgard’s war. Knowing you as a teacher can string her along in her Goddess Tower scene while she’s underage puts this in an awkward perspective.

This is what makes the five year time skip hold little weight. Everyone is an adult when the relationship is consummated, yes, but it starts pre-time skip.

Emotionally vulnerable teenagers having a strong relationship and frequent alone time with their older teacher, who is a confidant and someone that makes them feel special is already looking bad, but the absolute loyalty, idolisation and close relationship when they’re adults only makes it worse, even if it’s probably just a result of poorly thought out game design and player pandering gone wrong.

It’s not just player pandering, however. The devs just clearly think these relationships are okay. Other non-Byleth student/teacher romances deserve a mention, too—Manuela is forty something and thinks of her romantic potential with some 19 year-old:

Thankfully, this support ends at B, but others don’t. She has romantic endings with Lorenz, Ferdinand and Dorothea, who she even canonically met before Garreg Mach as a child and who idolises her as an opera star. The game doesn’t stop at the normalisation of grooming with Byleth, they’re just the most noticeable example, especially since it’s a power fantasy for the player who can romance all of them, not just a few.

The time skip had the opportunity to fix some of the creepy implications, but it didn’t

People like to look at the time-skip as a justification of romance. That 15 year old kid is 20 now, after all, and your students are adults, who have matured and grown outside of your influence.... Except your interactions with them remain virtually the same. They still call you Professor and hold you in some extremely high esteem as an authority figure.

Three Houses has an avatar worship problem like all newer Fire Emblem games and this definitely contributes to the uncomfortable implications in the narrative, because literally everyone respects you and adores you to an uncomfortable degree. Even as grown ass adults, the avatar worship just makes it seem like your students still idolize you like when they were kids awe struck by how cool you are.

They don’t show the change from “mentor” to “peer” satisfactorily, like they intended for the romance elements to work. Byleth’s name is customizable, making a first name basis difficult, but they easily could have changed your war phase title to something that would make it seem like your students’ view of you changed, like a military title such as Commander, or even just Eisner, your canonical last name. All students still call you “Professor,” in the war phase, though. Some students even call you Professor when you’re about to propose to them in the S support, like Lysithea. Leonie, one of the oldest students who is actually your age, has this to say about calling you by your name… you know, like a normal peer and friend would:

White Clouds is also a whole year while VW, AM, and SS take place during six to seven months, CF during five. You spend more time as their teacher and mentor than as “peers,” so Leonie’s position is pretty understandable despite being like, barely a year younger than you.

To rewind, this game lets you pick a “special” student pre-time skip, who you’re encouraged to build bonds with through tea, gifts and the Goddess Tower. You’re their favourite teacher, as said by many other characters. They grow up and join you in your war regardless of who they have to fight, some even just to be with you. They still affectionately call you Professor, and look up to you. You can then marry them. This is unironically seen as both acceptable and even romantic.

Many of these interactions like tea are gameplay elements and thus come off as the devs not thinking too hard about it. Except, again, we know they have no problem in writing outright pedophilia, but Fates in particular had heavy backlash over this, which explains the need to tone it down a little. Grooming was their “compromise” between not turning off the casual audience while still cheekily pandering to that crowd. Everyone is technically over eighteen in Three Houses, even if they act extremely similar to their teenage selves. The “technically 1000 year old” romances like Flayn and Sothis were also left intact.

This is an important distinction, because a bit of a popular “it’s not grooming” argument when dealing with the war phase is Byleth’s weird dragon powers slowing their aging. Unlike the kids, all adult non-students in Three Houses undergo no portrait changes during the time skip, including Byleth. The thing is that in Chapter 10, they receive dragon powers as part of some plot nonsense, so it has different implications than just anime hating everyone over 25. There’s implications in the game that this definitely affected their ability to age normally, such as the Flayn ending:

However, we don’t know how their aging was affected and to what extent. Three Houses’ lore didn’t specify much about the way dragons age. Rhea undergoes dragon madness, so we can thus tentatively assume Fódlan’s dragons are similar to Archanea and Valentia’s dragons, which would mean there’s a chance Byleth even aged normally for a few years before slowing down significantly like Nah from Awakening did. It’s entirely possible they’re biologically 25-26 like they’re meant to be, because they didn’t physically die. They were just asleep.

Even if they really did not age a day over 21/22, it still makes the pre-time skip hold weight, however. Byleth can flirt with them as teens prior to any fantastical excuse, and they’re still a mentor figure in the students’ eyes, which goes on to colour every interaction with you in the war phase. Post-time skip everyone is legal, but they still have that history with you, and the game makes no real effort to change that whatsoever. It still fulfills the student/teacher fantasy despite the many, many technicalities it tries to pull out of its ass.

Intsys is self aware and knows that this upsets people

To say these devs probably didn’t mean it that way is not entirely impossible, but they don’t exactly inspire confidence. They even “acknowledge” their flippant way of treating teacher/student relationships in a DLC quest during school phase:

Of course, this is a silly complaint because a teacher being friendly with students is a good thing! Students learn better in a positive environment! The problem here is that it’s obviously referencing and mocking the people upset that this becomes romantic later on. I think anyone would have been able to forgive the overly friendly nature of Byleth and the students’ relationships if no line had been crossed regarding romance. This is Fire Emblem after all, and it wouldn’t be Fire Emblem without supports and relationships values.

But also, Intsys is very good at jokingly acknowledging when they’re being creepy rather than striving to do better. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. A really bold faced example is when the Fire Emblem mobile game widely known for fanservice released a ten year old child (no magic or dragons, either, just a child) dressed as a bride and had her say: “This outfit is just for the [bride] festival, don’t get any weird ideas!” when they were the ones who made a child bride for fanservice purposes.

this one was pretty fucked up even by their standards. comment sums it up

The devs also once called Camilla from Fates a “cow” in an interview for having huge breasts and a little tiara that looks like horns. They designed her that way, but then mocked her for looking like an oversexualized caricature. Any way you look at it, they’re well aware they’re being off-putting and cheekily being like, tee hee, I sure made a dating sim set in a high school! Which ultimately leads to the final point:

Though canon definitely has its problems, it’s less about canon and more about the devs’ bad intentions and the fans’ general lack of empathy for CSA victims:

This is not to diminish canon’s impact at all, because it’s outright malicious to portray an unhealthy relationship as cute and harmless. In short, they just pull technicality after technicality out of their ass to make student/teacher okay somehow instead of just..... not having student/teacher at all. After Fates having fucking incest, 3H and teacher grooming seems outright tame and that definitely contributed to the wide acceptance in the fanbase, because it’s less outrageously pandery. I can’t believe I have to say this in 2020, but…... that’s still not good, lads.

I will also admit there’s some nuance here regarding some of the students, especially those 20+ year olds who aren’t easy to manipulate teenagers like Mercedes. We can sit here and argue all day about whether or not this game legitimately 100% can be considered grooming because of those 20+ students, and all of those in-universe technicalities since there’s no real life academic journal on grooming who will talk about the offender being a dragon, but the end of the matter is that the devs chose to portray their pseudo-dating sim franchise in a school, while your MC is a teacher and most of the students are teens. These relationships are also 100% normalised and okay in-game. They did it with incest and with teacher/student, both topics that are majorly upsetting to CSA victims, and that alone is worth calling out. They even mocked people who were upset about it with a little DLC quest, just to rub it in.

This whole post was a critique of 3H and Intsys, but it’s impossible to critique the game without critiquing the fan culture around it, because the devs definitely had a fanbase in mind. We know they take feedback, since they toned it down after complaints about Fates, but the reason why they didn’t just get rid of pandering aspects, is because they’re popular. There’s a huge demand for this, and that’s exactly why they keep doing it, and it’s the simple reason that online anime spaces full of adults have always placed a particular interest in teens and sexualising and shipping them. A Fire Emblem game set in a school with a calendar and a lot of romantic and social elements that started development in 2017 just screams Persona 5 inspired. Fans obviously noticed.

”edelgard is soooo thirsty” jokes are a lot less funny if you know going for the thirsty kid is a legit strategy

Now, I don’t know shit about Atlus, and after seeing all these memes regarding Persona 5 and the fans’ positive reaction to them, I have zero intentions to play it, but I’ve unfortunately played every single FE game and watched the transition to classic FE to 3DS FE to 3H. I have my criticisms about modern FE’s writing quality for sure, and while I obviously can’t say it used to be perfect because it was still a fairly mediocre (but fun) game about teenagers beating up dragons, it’s now become one of the single most unfriendly fanbases if you’ve gone through any kind of sexual trauma. Incest shipping, pedophilic shipping, and sexualizing teenagers was always there to some extent, but it’s blown up now that the devs have emboldened those fans by doing it in canon itself. It’s rampant, especially on “waifu” circles, and now grooming ships are mainstream and everywhere. Even LGBT friendly “safe spaces” are unbrowsable. F!Edeleth in particular is commonly seen as the holy grail of wlw representation. Linhardt is the most popular M/M option despite the other two being adults. Doromanuela was given a shout-out by Dorothea’s English voice actress.

Old FE games had background things like that all the time, (Roy/Cecilia is Literally gender swapped Petra/Byleth) but the keyword here is background. Not like... 80% of the ships involving the MC in game, which means you weren’t bombarded with this every day. Worse, the discussion about this topic has been non-existent. Reddit has not touched this at all despite the community there being well known for meticulous criticism, Twitter and Tumblr have seen its fair share of discourse, but it’s quickly dismissed. Just click here to watch people dismiss the concerns of every single grooming and CSA victim, or even call them stupid like we can’t recognize this shit in every single fandom. Of note are the fans who dismiss grooming concerns by saying all flirting occurs post time skip (which is false, as we just said) and the characters are only 3-6 years apart anyway……………….. and then gleefully consume/produce pre-time skip content:

miscellaneous tags on a pre-time skip linleth comic (20/21/22 and 16/17 if you’re not keeping count) not posting the comic itself cause i don’t want anon hate lol

While there’s an argument to be made for romance with anyone who was 20+ pre-time skip, there is NONE for the underage kids. None. And like, even if you somehow still want to argue that 3H itself isn’t grooming because of the time skip, a huge chunk of the fanworks objectively are, and this is a huge problem that needs to be called out and nobody does so whatsoever. That comic has 2500+ notes.

This isn’t even a call to tell people to throw out their copies and riot, just to be aware of this and try to make fan spaces a little more bearable for CSA victims. A lot of people call this ‘toxic cancel culture’ and whatnot, but I personally can’t defend a dev team who I KNOW has done heinous things in the past, and continue to support the pedophilic mentality in online anime fan spaces but like, in a cheeky subtle way. They easily could have made Byleth a student who tutors the others because of their experienced mercenary background with Jeralt, or just not let them romance the kids at all. They could have pleased both the dating sim and high school camps by letting you choose to be either a 21+ teacher or a 17 year old student with the appropriate romance options, too. They didn’t do any of this, and their questionable past begs me to ask why, and none of the answers I can come up with are very encouraging. They also even blatantly gave you extra content when romancing students.

I hope contextualizing the 3H grooming at least makes some people understand why it’s so upsetting to see it everywhere. It’s just the decent thing to do to tag your posts, and to not dismiss any of these things. It’s just the decent thing to do to listen to people who are sharing their experiences and respecting their boundaries if they simply do not want to interact with you if you decide to continue supporting Intsys.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Stan Claude von Riegan.

#t #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #grooming mention #csa ment

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wheezy-kasp-brak · 4 years

Text

Team Zero (Hargreeves Siblings x Sibling Reader)

Summary: After being sent back in time and finding their father, the eight academy kids have ‘A Light Supper’ with him.

A/N: This is a really gross, unedited page because I really wanted to write this scene. I wrote this in only a few hours and I think I could’ve done a crap ton better but I really wanted to post this so...

Warnings: season two spoilers, mild swearing

Word count 2589

gif credit to @tuagifs

After the draining argument with their siblings, the last thing y/n expected to receive was a letter from their father.

To my pursuers,

I, Reginald Hargreeves, request the pleasure of your company for a light supper on the 20th of November, 1963, half past seven o’clock, 1624 Magnolia Street.

They had received the letter from a strange man in a black car. At first, y/n hesitated to believe it was really from their father but they knew their father better than anyone, even Luther despite what he thinks.

The level of extra Reginald went through to get this letter to them told them all they needed to know so, on the 20th of November, 1963, they arrived at 1624 Magnolia Street just before half past seven.

The building was a tall hotel and the decor very much fit the era they were living in. They wandered towards the back where they slipped in an elevator next to their brother five. Not too soon after, their other siblings joined them in the small box.

“Good, you’re all here” Five face sported his usual smirk and his body language screamed cocky arrogant asshole however, everyone remained quiet on the lift up to the highest floor.

That was until a rather rancid smell reached their noses. “Ugh.. Luther!”

“Sorry, I’m nervous.” The group covered their noses until the doors finally opened, allowing them to take a deep breath of fresh air.

“Alright, when dad gets here, I’ll do the talking.” Fives natural attempt to assert himself failed quickly when Diego snapped back.

“I got a few questions for him myself.”

Y/n rolled their eyes. The seven of them never seemed to be able to enter a room without starting some kind of fight or argument. “Hey, we don’t wanna scare him off alright, he might be able to help us stop doomsday, get us home.”

“No Five, we need to figure out why he’s planning to kill the president.” It’s amazing how hung up on the presidents assassination Diego is, why can’t he just let this go?

“This is a matter of life or death you imbecile.” Sensing that their other siblings were about to chime in, y/n zoned themselves out. Y/n isn’t exactly what you called a team player. They chose to stay quiet and disassociate themselves from their family. Sick of the overbearing weight of having to save the world when they could be doing other things, like being a normal person.

Unfortunately for them, they were soon snapped out of their focused state by a loud crash. What appeared to be some kind of decoration was found shattered in small pieces on the other side of the room.

“Classic.” Allison spit. They all turned their heads when they heard another noise. The doors to the ‘Tiki Lounge” swung open revealing a younger Hargreeves. His posture stood tall and didn’t give them a single glance until he sat at the table, adjusting his sleeves.

“Not only have you burglarized my lab, set my chimp loose, conned your way into the Mexican consulate, repeatedly stalked and attacked me, but you have on numerous occasions, called me...”

Klaus finally joined the table with what seemed like some alcoholic beverage. “Hey Pop. How’s it hangin’?

“...dad.” His voice was stern, slightly scary, but more just assertive. The seven children took a moment to all create eye contact before returning to their younger father.

“My reconnaissance tells me you’re not CIA, not KGB, certainly not MI5, so...” he paused to slam his pen to the desk, “who are you?” Everyone stayed silent trying to find the right words before five cut in again.

“We’re your children,” Reginald gave him a displeased look, “We’re from the future.” Dear old Reggie didn’t seem all too happy with the idea of having children, so when the group stayed silent once again y/n finally spoke up from their seat.

“In 1989, you adopted us all and trained us to fight against the end of the world. You called us the umbrella academy.” The sudden joining of the conversation brought all the attention to them. It surprised the rest of their siblings, seeing as y/n normally just minded their own business. However, they supposed this was their business.

“Why on earth would I adopt seven-”

“Eight. One of us isn’t here.” Allison corrected.

“Dead. One of us is dead.” Diego filled in the answer to what they assumed Reggie’s next question would be.

“Yeah, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Enough of that now.” Klaus spun in his seat, talking to what looked like an empty chair to the rest of them.

Could he just be quiet for FIVE MINUTES.

When he spun back he noticeably shuddered and then it clicked in Klaus’s head. Ignoring the attention from everyone at the table he pushed his chair out and violently pointed his finger at y/n.

“Hey! Get out of my head!” Everyone now turned their looks back to y/n. They had no response other than slouching down into their seat and turning their head to focus back onto the decor.

Reginald took the silence as an invitation to begin speaking again, “Regardless, what would possess me to adopt eight ill-mannered malcontents?”

“We all have special abilities.” Five explained.

“Special?” Reginald Questioned, “In what sense?”

“In the super power sense.” Luther finally joined in on the conversation.

“Call me old fashioned, but I’m a stickler for a pesky little thing called evidence. Show me.”

“Everybody wants to see powers all of a sudden.” Allison proceeded to scoff before she was cut off.

“We’re not circus animals, okay? We’re not gonna bounce balls on our noses and clap like seals for your amusement.” Luther attempted to accentuate his point by literally clapping his hands together. That’s when Diego pulled out a knife and allowed it to slice through the air and around Reginald’s head, sinking into a support post behind him.

Reggie decided to pull out his pen and begin writing in one of those god-awful leather bound notebooks he constantly wrote in when they were younger. They all leaned in, upset that he was doing it again.

“What’re you writing?” Diego asked.

“You are zero for two, young man.” At that statement Diego immediately pushed out of his chair, lunging towards their father. However, Five was much faster using his spatial jumps. He managed to flash in front of Diego, effectively preventing him from being shanked by their dad again.

“Stop!” Fives voice was no louder than a whisper although they all still heard him.

“Now that is interesting.” Reginald noted aloud. Once Diego was 'calm’ again. Five relaxed, walking back to his seat.

“All right, uh, quick rundown-”

“Luther, super strength. Klaus can commune with the dead.” As they gestured to Klaus once more their siblings shocked glances paused them once more.

They’re face scrunched up. “What? We all know Five’s definition of quick.” Their sass earned them chuckles from everyone at the table apart from their very loving brother, Five, and their very loving.... father.

“Anyways,” They continued, “Allison can rumor anyone to do anything-”

“Yea, except she never uses it.” This time it was y/n who was cut off by Diego. That comment caused Allison to give him a pointed look.

“I heard a rumor, you punched yourself in the face.” Diego’s eyes turned white and his fist soar through the air and hit his nose straight on. His groan from the pain echoed through the room and Reginald adjusted himself in his seat, clearly unamused and slightly concerned.

This time, the academy kids held in their laughs worried Diego might be the one shanking them.

"And y/n has the power to read minds.” Five attempted to finish the conversation however they all forgot about the sibling who most recently discovered their powers. “And you?”

To this, Vanya lifted her head and everyone’s amused looks soon turned nervous.

“Uh, maybe we don’t take Vanya for a test run.” Luther’s voice was laced with fear and the table tried to agree with him however Vanya seemed to think differently.

“It’s fine. I can handle it.” She reached forward for a fork and glass.

“Handle it?” Allison asked, “Last time you handled it, you definitely blew up the moon.” This time, the six siblings tried to stop her and braced themselves for the impact of what might be the end of the world... again.

Once the fork hit the glass she focused in on the ringing noise and allowed herself to blow up the fruity centerpiece, sending chunks of pineapple and mango flying everywhere.

While they all tried to wipe away the fruit on their clothes Vanya just let out a small “oops.”

“Look, we know you’re involved in a plot to assassinate the president.” To that, Reggie quipped back at Diego.

“You were recently hospitalized, isn’t that correct?” Diego sputtered at the statement. “You still appear to be suffering from delusions of grandeur and acute paranoia.”

Diego, pissed off, pulled out a photo of him. “Am I?” He asked, standing up. The photo revealed to be-

“That’s you. That’s two days from now on the grassy knoll at the exact spot the presidents gonna get shot.” Reginald slowly picked up the photo, looking at it for a moment.

“Well... I suppose you’ve solved it. You’ve single-handedly unearthed my nefarious plot.” Y/n was taking it in. They supposed that’s what Diego wanted but, there was sarcasm. A lot of it at that.

“Is that what you wanted to hear?” They knew it. “You fancy yourself a do-gooder? The last man who will save us from our descent into corruption and conspiracy? This is a fantastic delusion. The sad reality is that you’re a desperate man, tragically unaware of his own insignificance, desperately clinging to his own ineffectual reasoning. More succinctly, a man in over his head.” At this the table was stunned into silence.

Diego allowed one tear to slip out. It rolled down his cheek in solidarity. “You’re wr-r-r-wrong.” He managed to finally stutter out.

He’s right.

Diego’s body shivered. He quickly whipped out another knife and flung it across the table, stabbing y/n’s upper arm. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?” His voice was laced with venom and seemed to shut them out of his head.

They pulled the knife out of their arm and pressed a thick napkin to the wound. The knife clattered back across the table. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to stab your sibling?”

The group stayed silent until Five spoke up. Shocker. “Look, forget about the president. We have a catastrophic war coming in five days. We need to figure out how to stop it.”

“Why? Men will always be at war with each other.” Reggie tried to reason.

“No, this isn’t just some war. I’m talking about a doomsday. The end of the world.”

“Well.. You’re the special ones aren’t you?” The group proceeded to glare at him. “Why don’t you band together and do something about it?”

Unbelievable.

The siblings collective annoyed thoughts were soon cut off but their brother, Klaus. His body was suddenly jolted forward, shaking violently. His air way seemed to be cut. They all sat concerned and puzzled.

“Y/n is that-”

“No, I don’t know what that is.”

“Is he having a seizure?”

“Overdosing probably.” Diego muttered. All of sudden a voice and thoughts flooded Y/n’s mind. They were so loud. Y/n pushed their chair back, standing up. Their hands flew up to their ears, as if covering them would stop the words flowing through their head.

“Klaus, Y/n. Now is not the time. What’re you doing?”

The noises only got louder. “I’m...” His voice was strangled and chalky.

Reginald had quite enough of whatever was going on. “Well, out with it boy.”

Klaus took a deep breath and finally spit out, “...Ben!” He soon gasped and fell out of his chair. He continued to shake here and there and allowed a few groans to get out but none of the above concerned any of his siblings enough to do anything.

“Well...” Reggie trailed off, “thank you for coming. I’ve seen about enough.” He stacked up his books and climbed over Klaus’s convulsing body.

“No, I-” Luther tried to speak up, however Hargreeves kept walking. Luther, upset he didn’t get to say anything the whole time he was here, slammed his fists down onto the table. That certainly gained the room attention.

He ripped his shirt open revealing his ape like skin. “Look at what you did to me! Look at it!” Allison nearly spit out her drink and and Five let out an “oh, shit. Why?” with a solid eye roll and slouched into his chair.

“Okay then. Anybody else wish to embarrass themselves this evening?” Nobody moved, obviously not wanting to embarrass themselves. “I guess I’ll-”

“No.” Y/n shook their head. “You don’t get to walk away after that. You don’t get to just leave after destroying our lives and blaming it on us. You forced us to dedicate everything to saving the stupid world and the stupid people who live on it. I never.. We never wanted to do that. We didn’t get a choice to be who we are, so, because you are the one who disfigured our existences, you are going to be the one who helps get everything back on track.” Out of breath, they finally looked up and locked gazes with their father

“If anyone disfigured your lives, it was yourselves.”

“Really? That’s all you have to say?” They paused before continuing the rant, “You know, Reginald, I don’t think I’m the one who forced myself to become afraid of people because their thoughts were so loud. Leading me to dissociating myself from my siblings and the people around me. In fact, I don’t think any of us would be this fucked up had you just allowed us to be our own people with a family and parents who actually loved us. Who wanted to dedicate their time to furthering us in life, not just using us for their own advantages.”

“I’m sure whatever I did was to further you in life. I wouldn’t waste my time on something that I was sure to fail.” Hargreeves looked around the room, noticing the mess of a ‘family’ sitting in front of him. “Clearly, I had a miss in judgement.”

At that he finally turned to leave the room. “You in the culottes?” He motioned to Five. “A word, in private?” Five followed suit leaving the six of them disheveled and wondering what to do next.

The ring of the elevator doors sounded around them. “Well, that went as good as any Hargreeves family function.” At that Y/n zoned out again. Maybe they didn’t want to but that’s what they had practiced after so many years. Pretending like their siblings weren’t even in the room with them.

“Where’d that whole speech come from, Y/n/n?” Allison added them into the ‘conversation.’

“Oh, um, I suppose I was just sick of allowing him to get away with whatever he wanted to.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Diego harped on their response, clearly still upset about Y/n entering his head.

The elevator doors finally opened once more, letting them escape the hellhole of a family meeting they just adjourned. They all flooded into the hallway not making any eye contact. “Team Zero my ass.”

#tua #the umbrella academy x reader #the umbrella academy #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #allison hargreevs #luther hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #five hargreeves #diego hargreeves

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keanureevesisbae · 4 years

Text

“Never out of practice” - Chapter 1

Summary: When Darcie’s father loses an important case, a killer seeks revenge, by kidnapping the entire Angel family. Though John thought that he was officially retired, he has to save his Darcie and her family, because he can’t lose her.

John Wick x OFC Darcie

Word count: 2.8k

Warnings: Mentions of a miscarriage.

Masterlist // Previous chapter // Next chapter

It’s officially October. I’ve always really liked it when it’s autumn again. The only thing is that it’s getting darker earlier on and I’ve never been too keen on the dark. The first year when I owned the cafe, I would be so terrified walking to the bus, that eventually I kept hailing cabs, because dealing with that stress on top of owning a cafe, was too much for me at the time.

Thankfully I have a very tough boyfriend now, who loves to pick me up. Today is no different, except that we go to my parents. For the first time in what seemed like forever, my parents have a night off and they really wanted us over for a late dinner.

Today it’s Jennie’s turn to close off, but somehow Raye managed to stick around. ‘When is your next date?’ Jennie asks.

‘Tomorrow,’ Raye answers, ‘but I think about cancelling.’

I stop in the middle of cleaning a table. ‘Jen, did I hear that correctly? Raye Clarke is thinking about cancelling a date?’

Jennie nods. ‘I’m still a little shocked. I can’t believe this is happening.’

‘Very funny,’ Raye growls, looking actually annoyed. Geez, what is up with her? ‘It’s just, he sounds so stupid. I was hoping his looks would make up for it. His looks were the only reason that I swiped right. But talking to him and calling with him, he is really stupid.’

For Raye to say something like that, means that either something really bad happened or that she is growing. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

She sighs. ‘My brother is coming home next week. My parents are really looking forward to it and they keep calling me, demanding I should at least stop by.’

Jennie and I exchange looks. We know Alex Clarke pretty well. He was about a year older than us, but somehow always managed to bully us through high school. I never understood why a nice girl like Raye had a brother like Alex. Alex would always make racist Asian jokes against me and he once cut off two of Jennie’s braids, causing her to shave her entire head..

‘I hate that guy,’ Jennie admits. ‘God, your brother is so fucking annoying.’

‘And he is introducing us to his fiancée.’

‘That bonehead has a fiancée?’ Jennie exclaims. ‘How is it possible that he is fucking engaged and we,’—she gestures to her and Raye—‘are single?’

Raye has been sad for too long, because she literally shakes it off. She always does that. Being sad isn’t something that happens to her a lot. She always says that she’d rather be fake happy than real sad. I really don’t know if that is such a healthy way of dealing with your emotions, but okay. ‘It’s not until next week,’ she states, ‘so no need to dwell on it. I’m going to cancel that Tinder date and you and I, Jennie, are going to hang out.’

‘You can’t just expect us to hang out together, last minute. Maybe I already have plans.’

‘You don’t,’ Raye says. ‘You honestly don’t have plans, like ever. I know you.’

The door opens and when we all look up, I see my handsome boyfriend in the doorway. Tiki and Oreo rush to me and when I crouch down, they push me on my back, trying to see who can lick my face the most. ‘I missed you guys too,’ I squeal and wrap my arms around the dogs. ‘Oh my God, I love you too, but you have to let me get up. John, please help me.’

‘Come here, guys,’ he says, patting his legs, so they look up and let go of me.

I manage to push myself up, only to see Oreo sneaking back to me. I scratch his head, causing him to smile at me. I love that cute smile of his. He is such a big fat baby, always curling up beside me on the couch and always wanting to get in bed with us, but John sends Oreo and Tiki out every time we go to sleep. Somehow he got through an entire year of dating without letting Tiki sleep in our bed and now that we have Oreo, he hasn’t changed his opinion about it. I personally wouldn’t mind if the dogs were in our bed, but John says that he wants me all to himself when we’re sleeping and to be honest, I think that is really sweet.

John walks up to me. ‘Hi sweetheart,’ he says, before kissing me on my forehead. ‘Ready to go?’

‘I am, let me just get my bag.’

I rush to the kitchen and after I collected all my stuff, including my jacket, I give Raye and Jennie a big hug. ‘Say hi to your parents from me,’ Jennie says.

‘Will do. See you two tomorrow.’

‘Bye mommy, bye daddy,’ Raye says and I glare at her. ‘It’s funny and you like it, admit it.’

I send her the finger and with John—who is enjoying this way too much—and our dogs, I walk to the car. While the dogs get in the back, John puts my seat in the right place, but he stops me before we can get it. ‘What is it, honey?’ I ask him.

‘I really missed you.’ He gives me a long kiss and afterwards pulls me in a tight hug.

This isn’t really how he usually is. I frown. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Can’t I show my wonderful girlfriend how much I love her?’

I lean back, so our eyes meet. His dark eyes are so full of love and I can’t help to fall even more in love with him. He is so gorgeous and my boyfriend. Sometimes I still can’t comprehend it. ‘Of course, but… I don’t know. Just wondering.’

I get in the car and when John sits next to me, I still can’t help but worry a little. He has a frown between his brows and when he holds onto the steering wheel, he is also a bit tense, his knuckles almost turning white. When he feels me staring at him, he looks to the side. ‘What’s up, sweetheart?’

‘I love you, you know that right?’

John smiles. ‘I do know that and I also know that you are worried, but please don’t. Going to your parents still makes me a bit nervous.’

‘Why is that? They love you, especially my mom and when you let my dad drive around in your Mustang, he instantly wanted you to be his son in law.’ I place my hand on his. ‘No need to be nervous.’

John parks the car in front of my parents home, but I stop him before he can get out. ‘How about that when we get home and you’re still tense,’ I whisper, ‘I’ll help you relax a bit?’

His eyes widen and a grin appears on his face. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I think a back massage could do wonders.’

He laughs, placing his hand on his chest. ‘You had me there for a second. That is just mean, Darcie.’

I stick out my tongue. We get out of the car and with the dogs we walk to the front door of the house that I grew up in. The door flies open, to reveal both of my parents. My mom nearly pushes me aside to hug John. Mom always wanted to two kids, a boy and a girl. My father once told me that three years before they had me, they were expecting a boy, but in the seventh month of her pregnancy, his heart just stopped beating. They never knew why he never survived and when I asked her at age five why everyone had sibling, except me, she threw her bowl filled with soup against the wall and yelled at me that I should’ve never ask a question like that again.

When I finally got a boyfriend, she thought that she’d treat her son in law like a real son, but she never wanted anything to do with Eric. She hated his guts and at the time I felt awful for not liking her as much as I used to. I mean, Eric was my boyfriend, wasn’t she supposed to be happy?

But the way she loves John like he is her son, though he is only ten years younger than her, warms my heart. I know a tiny bit about his earlier life, how he was an orphan. The way he was welcomed in my family, I know it means a lot to him. When he met my parents for the first time and we got back to the apartment, he told me about how wonderful it felt to belong in a family.

He never really told me anything about Helen’s family, but I feel like sometimes I shouldn’t ask too much about her. I always feel a bit guilty after talking about her, I don’t know why.

But knowing that he was happy to belong to a family and that he would do everything to keep all of us safe (he said so himself), it made me realize once again that John is a good man and that I should never let him go.

I give my dad a hug. ‘I missed you, dad,’ I say to him.

‘Oh, munchkin, I missed you too.’

‘You look tired,’ I note, looking at his dark circles under his eyes.

‘Tough case, that’s all. Don’t you worry about me Your old man can handle it.’

⟢⟡⟣

‘Mom, really?’ I ask her, when I see there are only three chairs at the table. ‘We have four chairs, I know that.’

‘One is broken,’ she lies without skipping a beat. No wonder she is one of the best attorneys ever. For a second I believed her, but I know my mom and I know she’s up to something. My dad and her sit each on a chair, leaving only one left. ‘You can sit on your boyfriends lap.’

Oh my God, I thought once you weren’t a teen anymore, you wouldn’t be ashamed of your mother—guess I was wrong. ‘Mom,’ I whine, ‘please.’

‘Oh Darcie,’ she says. ‘I really like you two together. How do young people call it? Sailing?’

I’m visibly cringing. She always does that, trying to keep up with trends. It was funny when I was young, it was embarrassing when I was a teen, but now I’m thirty one, I really want her to stop doing that. ‘Mom, first of all: it’s called shipping, not sailing. Second of all: John and I are already dating, no need to force us together.’

John can’t hide his amusement. ‘Come on, baby,’ he says, sitting on the only chair left. ‘It’s not so bad.’ He holds my hand and pulls me to him. Knowing I can’t win this (and I’m definitely not eating my dinner standing up), I plop on his lap and my mother, who is a grown woman of sixty, hides her smile behind her hand.

‘I can’t believe you,’ I say to her, but I wrap my arm around John’s shoulders. Not wanting to give this sort of behavior any more attention than it should get, I turn to my father. ‘So, dad, how’s work?’ I ask.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’m defending the family of Whitney Bell.’

I’ve heard about that case. Whitney Bell was a twenty five year old woman, whose ex-boyfriend brutally murdered her and dumped her in Central Park. I just didn’t know my dad was defending her family. But come to think of it, I barely spoke him these last few weeks and though I think my parents are doing a great job with the people who they defend, I barely keep up with it, even when it’s in the news all the time.

At first I was a bit nervous to talk to John about this case, since… Well… You know…

But he sat me down and for the first time, he actually mentioned his work, without me asking for it first. He told me that he only killed men who were better off dead than alive. He would never kill a woman or a child and it kind of eased my mind. Not that I was scared that he would murder me.

‘Must be rough,’ John says, before taking a sip of his drink.

‘It is. Family cases like this, it always pains me when I hear their stories. I asked Whitney’s parents to bring a picture of Whitney, to show the jury. Though I asked for one, they brought all their pictures they have of her with them.’ Dad looks at his glass and adds: ‘Parents always do that. I get it, you know. If something happened to you, Darcie, I’d be dragging every picture I have of you with me, to show the jury.’

‘I’m sorry, dad,’ I whisper, but loud enough for him to hear.

‘Don’t be, munchkin. It’s nothing I can’t handle.’ Dad smiles, but I don’t buy it. He is stressing out. ‘Tomorrow in the late afternoon we’ll hear how he is being sentenced for life.’ He wants to sound like he’s got everything under control, but he fails miserably.

John must picked up on his nerves too, because he suggests: ‘How about you and I take a drive in the Mustang after dinner, Christian?’

‘That would sure ease my mind,’ dad laughs and thankfully it’s a bit more real this time.

We talk during dinner about the customers, John’s book binding (causing my mom to say she has some old books) and our dogs, who are curled up beside each other.

John and dad are about to go for a drive in the Mustang, but before John leaves, he picks up Tiki, since she really want to go with him and he presses a kiss on my cheek. ‘I love you, sweetheart,’ he whispers.

My mom manages to keep quiet, but as soon as the front door is shut, she asks: ‘When are you going to give me grandchildren?’

‘Mom! What the hell?’

‘Oh come on, sweetheart,’ mom laughs. ‘I know you are thinking about it. I mean, you call each other mom and dad.’

‘When we’re talking to or about our dogs,’ I defend myself. ‘I know you want grandchildren, but please, don’t say that sort of stuff when he is around. I’m afraid it might scare him off.’

‘Why?’ she asks. ‘I mean, he loves you dearly and I bet he wants kids with you. I mean, who wouldn’t?’

I can’t believe that last makes me blush. ‘I know that, but it is so far ahead in the future, I don’t want to think about it yet.’

Mom wraps her arms around me, giving me a kiss on my cheek. ‘Okay, I’ll shut up about grandchildren. But you are my favorite sail.’

‘Ship, mom, it’s called a ship. And just say couple, please. There is no need to “fit” in with the cool kids.’

‘Yet you knew exactly what I was talking about.’

‘That’s because I have high school kids hanging around the cafe all day every day. I need to fit in with the cool kids.’

We plop on the couch and Oreo stretches himself out, waddles over to us and sits between us.

‘Mom, be honest with me now. Is dad really okay?’

‘You know how he is,’ she sighs. ‘Gets too wrapped up in a case.’ Mom squeezes my cheek and whispers: ‘He’ll be fine after tomorrow, like he always is after he has won a case.’

Mom and I cuddle up with Oreo, who has been the sweetest companion so far, ever since we rescued him from the shelter. He eventually is sitting a little behind me on the couch, his head placed on my shoulder.

The front door opens. My father is laughing, but when I look at him, I see his eyes are swollen and a bit red. ‘Dad, are you okay?’ I ask him.

‘Yeah, sweetheart, I’m fine. Just hit my head.’

My mother stands up and wraps her arms around my father. ‘Oh nae wangjamin,’ she soothes, giving him a kiss on his cheek.

Tiki rushes to her big brother and jumps on top of him. He simply licks her face, not annoyed by her antics. He never is.

John walks up to me and scratches Oreo’s head. ‘Maybe we should go home,’ John says, ‘it has been a long day.’

I simply nod and when we announce that we’re leaving, my mom gives me a tight hug. When I hold my dad, I’m instantly worried again. This is not who he is, I hardly recognize him anymore. ‘I love you, dad and if something is wrong, just tell me, okay? I’m one phone call away.’

Dad nods. ‘I love you too, munchkin and I will call you.’

Taglist: @toomanystoriessolittletime @flhorah @allie1804-fan @cynic-spirit @raven-black102

#keanu reeves x oc #keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves #keanu reeves x original character #keanu reeves x ofc #john wick fanfic #john wick x oc #john wick #john wick x original character #john wick x ofc #never out of practice

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girls-scenarios · 5 years

Text

Can’t Focus

Idol: Lua (Weki Meki)

Prompt: Weki Meki Lua x Fem!Reader where the reader is distracting Lua from a performance, practice or a show (you can decide) and afterwards she confronts her and confesses to her/asks her on a date

Writer: Admin Kiwi

A/N: Lua owns my entire heart. Also, she didn’t get like ANY lines or screen time in Tiki Taka. What’s up with that, Fantagio? Anyway, I took a few liberties but I hope you all enjoy!

♡ Tip Jar♡

Lua was not the type to get distracted from dancing. Sure, she’d look out the window for a cute dog if she got bored or might take a break from memorizing lines to watch a new music video, but when it came to dancing, she was passionate and nothing could tear her away. She loved dancing and threw everything she had into it, getting tunnel vision until she’d memorized the moves and the dance was natural to her body.

So when she found herself getting distracted by you, it was a shock. This had never happened before, but all of a sudden, even when you weren’t there, she found herself getting distracted by thoughts of you. She’d forget the next move after thinking about your smile, or she’d look away from the practice video to look at you instead. It was weird, and she didn’t know when this had started, but it was starting to drive her a little bit crazy. She had a show to get ready for, but she couldn’t concentrate because of you.

She’d met you a short time before, as a mutual friend of Yoojung’s, and the two of you had immediately hit it off, quickly moving to hanging out with just each other. And then the feelings had started. Lua wasn’t sure what to name them, and honestly she was a bit scared of them, so she tried to just ignore them. But it was hard to ignore her feelings when you laughed at her jokes and smiled brightly and interrupted her thoughts during her private practice time. The feelings kept jumping into her thoughts, until they blocked out the dance she was learning and made it hard to think about anything else. That was when she realized that this was getting out of her control.

She leaned against the mirror in the practice room, closing her eyes and wishing that the mirror could cool her warm skin, breathing hard. The other girls milled around to room, tired and moaning about practice, and it was weird. Lua never got tired out this easily. She could usually dance for hours on end without feeling tired. But now, she felt exhausted and frustrated with herself, just from a few rounds of practicing. What was going on with her?

“Lua, we’re going to take a break for lunch!” Suyeon’s voice rang through the practice room and Lua opened her eyes, blinking at her group mates before nodding and putting on a smile.

“Okay. I think I’m going to stay here and practice a little more.”

Suyeon sent her a little look, but didn’t say anything, just shrugging her shoulders. “Just don’t hurt yourself and make sure you eat.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

As the rest of the girls shuffled out the door, Yoojung hung back. She looked torn between leaving and staying before eventually sighing and walking back over to Lua. Eyebrows raised, the younger girl looked up at her.

“Lua.”

“What’s up?”

“We need to chat.”

Lua felt a chill run through her spine as she thought of the possibilities. Was she going to be scolded for not being able to memorize the dance? Had Yoojung figured out her feelings for you? Had she made too many mistakes? Every thought was scary, and she shivered, but tried to keep a poker face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Yoojung sat down beside her, knocking her head gently back against the glass of the mirror as she pursed her lips, thinking of what to say for a moment before turning to the younger girl. “So. Your dancing. Something has been distracting you.”

Lua could feel her cheeks color as she pulled her legs up to her chest, holding them tight. “Sorry. I’ve been trying to do my best as always but I just can’t focus.”

“What’s on your mind? Maybe if you talk about it, I can help you.”

She bit her lip, weighing her possibilities. Technically, Yoojung was right. Talking to someone about it might help her be able to focus better. Getting those feelings out would only be beneficial. But at the same time, you were good friends with Yoojung, and although she doubted this would happen, you might end up hearing about her feelings if she admitted them. Still, she had to focus. For the sake of her team. So she sighed, and pressed her forehead against her knees.

“Just promise not to judge me or tell anyone else, okay?”

“I promise.”

“I.... Recently, I haven’t been able to get someone out of my mind. I thought I could ignore the feelings I have for them because honestly I was kind of scared of what that would mean but I can’t and now I can’t think about anything but them and those feelings. I keep seeing their smile and, if they’re around, I can’t focus on anything but them.” Lua sucked in a deep breath. “I know, it’s dumb. But I can’t help myself. I’ve tried.”

“It’s not dumb,” Yoojung said, and then, after a beat of quiet, “it’s (Y/N), isn’t it?”

Again, Lua’s face colored, and she closed her eyes, wishing she could melt into the floor. “Am I that obvious?”

“Not to anyone to doesn’t know both of you well. But the two of you have been spending a lot of time together, and I noticed that sparks flew as soon as I introduced the two of you.” She paused and reached over to wrap a comforting arm around the other girl’s shoulders. “Why don’t you just tell them?”

“I can’t do that, what if they don’t feel the same? I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”

“Trust me, you wont do that. (Y/N) literally talks about you all the time. They adore you.”

Could Lua’s face get any more red? She doubted it. “But do they like me? Like that?”

“They haven’t told me anything, but let’s just say that I would be really, really surprised if they turned you down.”

Lua opened her eyes and stared down at the floor. Could you really like her back? She’d noticed some things, too, but she’d been too afraid to get her hopes up. Her heart skipped a beat and she shivered again, turning her head to look at Yoojung. “I really, really like them, Yoojung.”

Yoojung smiled, fond and friendly, and gave her a little hug. “I can tell. Thank you for confiding in me. Do you feel any better now?”

She did feel better, somewhat, but her feelings were still crowding her mind, and she bit her lip. “Kind of? But now I’m thinking about how I should tell them.”

“I can help you with that!”

Warily, Lua raised her eyebrows. “You can?”

“Yeah! I’ve got a great idea.” Yoojung was basically glowing now, and nerves twisted in Lua’s stomach, but she swallowed them down.

“What is it?”

“Let’s invite (Y/N) to the showcase for our new song!”

A few weeks later, Lua paced behind the stage, listening as fans crowded in and the venue tested the microphone and played some of their songs. It was almost time to perform, and she was nervous. You were out there in that crowd, there to watch her (and the rest of the girls, but mostly her) perform, and she had to get this perfect. After confessing everything to Yoojung and planning her confession, she’d been able to focus more on the dance at hand and had gotten it down, but she was still nervous. What if she got distracted by you during the show and messed up? What if she couldn’t remember the dance?

“You’ll do great,” Yoojung said from behind her, knocking her out of her thoughts as the smaller girl threw her arms around her. Smiling, Lua turned around to look at her.

“Thanks. For everything.”

“Listen, that’s what friends are for! You’re going to kill it and (Y/N) is going to totally fall for you even more than they totally already have, and then your confession is going to be adorable. I just know it.” Yoojung beamed and patted the taller girl’s head. “I’m excited for you.”

“I’m nervous,” Lua admitted, looking down at the ground.

“That’s okay. I’m nervous, too, and I’m not even confessing. It’s normal to be nervous. But I know you. And I know you’ll be great on stage like you always are.”

“Thank you.” Taking a deep breath, Lua squared her shoulders. “I can do this.”

“That’s the spirit! Let’s go rock this place!”

It took Lua about five seconds to locate you in the crowd as she walked onstage, and butterflies immediately started up in her stomach as her heart flip-flopped and she felt her face heat up. Thankfully, the makeup artist had done a good job of concealing the blush, so she doubted anyone would noticed as she breathlessly took her place next to Rina on the stage. You smiled up at her and her heart jumped, but she managed to smile back, ignoring the pounding in her chest.

Just as she thought, she couldn’t take her eyes off of you. You were distracting her from the audience, and once again, she felt like she couldn’t focus. But as she got into formation and the music started, she steadied herself and threw her nerves to the wind. She was Lua of Weki Meki, and she could do this, even if she was only putting on a show for you. There was no way she was going to mess this up.

The showcase had gone well. The entire time, Lua had felt a bit breathless and nervous, with her heart pounding in her chest, but as she stepped off the stage, a huge smile spread over her lips and she leaned against one of the walls.

“I did it. I really did it.”

“You killed it,” Suyeon said, supportive although she seemed a little clueless as to why Lua was so relieved. Beaming at her, Lua thanked her before steadying herself on her feet and walking off to find Yoojung. They’d planned that Yoojung would run from the stage to the side door after the performance to let you come backstage, and sure enough, as Lua walked over to that side door, she heard your voice.

“You guys were amazing out there tonight,” you were saying with a smile as you gave Yoojung a quick hug, and she took a deep breath before walking over to the two of you. Your eyes lit up when you saw her walking over, and she gave you a shaky smile.

“Hey, (Y/N). Thanks for coming.”

“Of course, I wasn’t going to miss it! You did amazing up there tonight.”

Lua’s heart jumped once again in her chest, and when she glanced over at Yoojung, the smaller girl gave her a wink and a thumbs up.

“Oh, I need to go take off my mic, I’ll be right back.” With that, Yoojung was gone, leaving the two of you alone. For a moment, it was a bit awkward, and Lua cleared her throat, rubbing the back of her neck.

“I really appreciate your support tonight.”

“I’m always here to support you,” you said, giving her a smile. Was it just her imagination, or did you seem nervous too? “I love watching you dance and sing. Although I keep saying that they should give you more lines!”

Lua had to admit, she was glad she didn’t get too many lines this time. If she had, this showcase could have been a disaster. Still, she grinned, happy at your words. “Awe, thanks! It was Lucy’s turn to get lines, I think.” With a laugh, she shrugged. “We trade them off every comeback.”

“No kidding.” You stepped back to look her over, and she felt her face heating up again. “I like the styling this comeback, though. Your hair looks super cute with the darker color.”

“Thanks,” she said softly, touching the ends of her hair. This was just busy talk, and she knew she had to get to the original subject, so she cleared her throat again and planted herself. “Um, I actually wanted to ask you something tonight.”

“Really?” Your eyebrows raised, and something sparkled in your eyes. Hope, maybe? “What is it?”

Even in the dark-lit backstage area, almost drowned out by the loud sounds of music and people yelling back and forth and under the neon “EXIT” sign, you looked incredible. She was so head over heels for you and your smile and everything about you that it wasn’t even funny. Once again, she named those feelings. She liked you. So, so much. You had mixed up her life so much since she’d met you, and yet she wouldn’t have it any other way. Not when you brought her so much happiness.

“When we were preparing for this comeback, I couldn’t focus. I kept getting distracted. Distracted by your smile or by your voice or your laugh, or by you actually being there. I couldn’t focus on anything but you.” She swallowed, a bit too scared to look at your face as she focused on your shoulder instead. “It made me realize that I really, really like you. So I wanted to ask if you would go out with me. And if it’s a no, then don’t worry, I can-.”

“Of course it’s a yes, silly,” you interrupted her, laughing softly, and she finally looked up at your face to see you smiling widely, cheeks flushed. “I really, really like you too. I’m sorry for distracting you, though.”

“Oh, no! It wasn’t your fault! I just needed to work through my feelings and everything, it totally wasn’t your fault....” Realizing that she was rambling, she cut herself off and felt herself breathe a sigh of relief. It was okay. Everything would be okay. You liked her too. “Um, so will this weekend work? For a date? There’s this cool garden that just opened up, if you want to go there. And then we can go get dinner, wherever you want. If that sounds okay.”

You smiled and reached out to shyly take her hand. Giddy, she giggled, bringing her free hand up to cover her mouth and making you laugh too as you shuffled closer to you, bumping her shoulder with your own. Her manager was probably going to scold her for taking so long later, but she couldn’t care less right now. She just wanted to spend a little more time with you, finally able to just focus on you like she’d wanted to for so long.

“That sounds perfect, Lua. I can hardly wait.”

#weki meki #lua #femifics #kim sookyung #weki meki scenarios #lua scenarios #girl group scenarios #kpop scenario #girl groups #kpop girl groups

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77marvelimagines · 5 years

Text

Beneath The Mask

Behind The Mask

Thor Odinson and Female!Reader

Prompt(s): HI! I am absolutely in loooove with your imagines!! I was wondering if you could do one where like the asguardian royal family has always had like a network of people assigned to protect them, and the reader gets assigned thor. so they’ve grown up together and she’s always kept stuff in and her secrets and then one day they’re just kinda hanging and she spills the beans? and ya know he’s like “danngggg. i’m here for you tho” and it’s fluffy? Sorry! I know this is long

Note(s): Hello!! Thank you for your kind words, and for the lovely prompt! <3 I always love writing about Asgard and the royal family. Sorry this got put on backlog for so long- college is a needy, needy child. Also, sorry it got long. I had a lot of fun thinking up their background and relationship. I hope you do enjoy tho! <3

Warning(s): None.

Word Count: 1711.

Ever since Thor Odinson had learned to walk, (y/n) had been by his side. Her job hadn’t started until sometime between adolescence and childhood, but it had always been an overshadowing fact nonetheless. She was to be there for him, in every way possible, whether it be mentally, emotionally, or physically. (y/n) was his bodyguard, his protection. Should she fail, even in the slightest, it could mean his demise. And it was made clear, very clear, that that should never happen.

She began training at the equivalence of the age of six. By age ten, two years before Thor’s own training would begin, (much to his jealousy) she was a master with the sword and two other types of weapons. Age fourteen, as masterful as the guards roaming the castle halls. When she and Thor turned eighteen, she was considered stronger than some of Asgard’s strongest warriors.

(y/n) made sure that the fact was known far and wide. No one was to mess with Thor Odinson. Not under her watch.

She was a warrior. An assassin. The trainer to Prince Loki’s own bodyguard, who was the equivalence of four years younger to both herself and Prince Thor. (y/n) was stoic, serious, and respectable. She was knowledgeable, because she had to be, and knew much about health and magic. The practice may have been looked down upon by warriors, as she’d discovered long before Prince Loki had, but she was good at it anyway.

She was good at anything and everything. Because she needed to be.

But beneath all that, the hard shell and the gruff attitude, (y/n) was a kind soul. She was gentle and knew just the right things to say to the right person at the right time. She liked birds and books and learning, liked laughing and having friends. Few knew her soft side, which was how she liked it. She’d grown up playing in the gardens with Thor, and at some point Loki and his own bodyguard, before starting her training for real. Of course she still talked and hung out with him- the two of them were encouraged to rely on each other, to be comfortable with one another, for they’d be stuck together until either her own or his demise (and if she had any say in it, for Asgard’s sake, it would be hers).

But the point still stood that she had emotions, and sometimes it was just so hard to not yell in frustration, or laugh at something that Fandral the Dashing had just blurted out loud right in front of the Allmother. It was hard to be someone she was not, behind her mask, when she worried about the family she barely saw and the education she had (forcibly) given up. And try as she might to hide it, the people who really knew her always could tell when something was plaguing her mind.

Prince Thor happened to be one of those people.

His hand on her shoulder startled her away from the magic book she had splayed over her leg. Thor had less than a second to back away from the knife pointed at his throat.

“Whoa, (y/n)! Easy now,” he laughed, “it’s just me. Didn’t you hear me open your door?” (y/n) shook her head. Her and Thor’s rooms were separated by a single door, which usually creaked due to its age and use. Somehow, between the worrying of her thoughts and the re-read paragraph on the page, she’d neglected to listen. Thor shot her an apologetic smile as he extended a hand.

“Come to the tower roof with me. The stars are bright tonight and I want to see them.”

(y/n) raised an eyebrow, though closed her book anyway. “Since when do you like to look at the stars?”

Thor shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice to. Come on!” He waved his arm, which was still outstretched. (y/n) took it, skepticism etched into her entire being, but Thor just grinned and dragged her along.

Together, the two of them snuck through the castle to the far north end. There was a tower there, old and abandoned. It was still structurally intact and sound, so there was no need to worry. It once belonged to the old royal magic department, which had since been disbanded. Dusty books and expired ingredients littered the small room at the top of the stairs, making any type of walking through the space difficult. After years of sneaking off, however, (y/n) and Thor wandered expertly through the mess to the window, where they hefted themselves onto the roof.

Thor was right. The stars really were bright. They twinkled without a care in the world, like the Norns had just adorned them to the night sky not even hours ago. The nebulae accented the inky blackness between with landscapes of color, lighting up the sky into something nearly indescribable. (y/n) sighed. She wished she could explore the universe to the cosmos end and back. Alas, she had a duty here, after all.

A nudge to her elbow startled her again. This time, (y/n) refrained from pulling out the knife hidden in her boot. Thor was undisturbed, however, instead gaze patient as he turned and stared at the stars above.

“You’ve been worried about something lately.”

“How would you know?” (y/n) said, knowing full well that Thor knew her like the back of his hand. The prince chuckled as he easily turned to sit, arms folded over his knees.

“Where do I start? With the targets you missed during archery practice today or the fact that Tiki almost won your sparring match?”

“He did no such thing!” (y/n) scoffed. She pointedly ignored the warm creep of blush on her neck. “I was distracted by the commotion that the stable hands were creating, that’s all. Tiki is getting better though. Loki has a good bodyguard.”

“Aye, though I’ve seen you fight and win battles in less time in the feast hall of all places, and you know how loud and rowdy it is in there.” Thor finally turned to level her with a pinning gaze. He looked like the cat who caught the mouse. “It’d do both you and I well if you’d spill.”

(y/n) pressed her lips together and sighed through her nose. She crouched down to sit beside her prince and, with fists clenched, finally began to pick through her baggage.

“I wanted to laugh so badly when Fandral said that to your mother. He was mortified and she looked ready to strangle some sense into him. Thor, I’m just.. so tired of hiding my emotions. My instructors always told me that I couldn’t have weaknesses, couldn’t be flawed, because it meant that something bad could happen to you. And I get that, I do! But…” She scowled and turned her gaze down to the training yards. “Do you know how much I would give to go to school like my younger sister?”

“Atla?” Thor asked, surprised. “How is she doing?”

“Well, though she’s trying to skip her classes. Skipping class, Thor! I don’t even have classes to skip, and I’d die for the opportunity! I… I’ve been this role for so long. Sometimes I’m afraid I don’t even know myself as a person because I don’t think I’ve had the chance to grow. I mean… do I even like fighting?”

Thor chuckled as he recalled a few memories from their younger days. (y/n) had always beat him in wrestling matches. The only reason she was never yelled at for it was because it was supposed to be her job, though she used to boast take pride in her victories. She didn’t anymore.

(y/n) continued on, oblivious to Thor’s silence. “I’ve been fighting all my life, Thor, I mean seriously, do I even enjoy it? What about education? I loved classes, I loved learning, and now I don’t even have that as an option anymore! Everything I know now is self-taught. My training took priority over everything past basics. I don’t even know anybody outside the royal family anymore. Do I even have friends?”

“You have me,” Thor offered. He sounded hopeful, his shoulder pushed gently up against hers. (y/n) suppressed a grin.

“I know, Thor. I… I’m just worried about myself, is all.”

The prince hummed as he considered her words. He scooted closer a moment later, his arm wrapped firmly around (y/n)’s shoulders. Her breath was soft in his ear, the pulse of her heartbeat steady. Just like her, Thor thought. In all his life, he’d never known her to hesitate.

“Perhaps I can ask Father for some time between my next few adventures. We can spend some time with your family, maybe Loki and Tiki will take you to the library. You’re a very strong person, (y/n), in head and spirit. I shouldn’t be rushing headlong into things without thinking of you first. It’d be nice to take some time and actually rest in a bed instead of dirt, too.”

They both laughed at the memory of their last trip. For days (y/n) had slept on dirt, since in his haste Thor hadn’t packed his sleeping roll. She’d made him take hers, despite his complaints, and in the end they played hot potato with who slept on it. The Warriors Three and Sif started making bets on who would get the sleeping roll on what night. Volstagg won most of them.

Thor looked over and took pride in that he’d been the first to make his kindred-sister smile for the first time all day. Not even Tiki and his dumb jokes could crack her shell. The stars overhead caught his attention again, causing him to tear his gaze away before (y/n) could catch him. She probably already had though, since she was good like that. He squeezed her shoulders tight and laid their heads together.

“Besides,” he said, “beneath that mask of yours, you always have me right beside you. We’ll figure this out, (y/n).”

It took a moment, but (y/n) eventually replied. “I know, Thor.” Despite the doubts that crowded her thoughts, she knew that like an absolute certainty.

Tag list:

@princess76179 @kalechipps @a-confused-blogger @agent-valkyrie-romanoff @starkslaufey @bad-black-angel @pieceofsupersoldiertrash @chari-a @bluudhavens @wowitstonystark

#Thor Odinson #Thor Odinson and Reader #Thor Odinson Imagine #Thor #Thor and Reader #Thor Imagine #The Avengers #The Avengers Imagine #Marvel #Marvel Imagine

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

Note

Clearly, I’m a masochist. But you know what I want...

Lucy Preston does not take the decision to travel to July 21, 2014, São Paulo, Brazil, lightly. This is going to be the first use of the own-timeline technology, Rufus keeps emphasizing the fact that it’s in beta, and if it goes wrong, there is no Lifeboat for the Lifeboat. She won’t even be in any remotely conscious state to know that it did. She would be pulverized atoms outside all constraints of space and time and existence, maybe aware enough to know it and to suffer, but nothing more. It’s basically hell, Rufus says. But worse.

And yet, because of this, because of the other kind of hell they’re already living in, Lucy has to take the chance.

What she actually has to do is not that difficult. Rufus has programmed in the course, and she basically just has to get into the Lifeboat and hit a few buttons – she doesn’t need to steer, it already knows where to go. The trick is pushing it when you know you could be worse-than-dead in negative ten seconds (literally, it might happen in the past, time travel is the worst) if anything goes wrong. But Lucy trusts Rufus’ calculations, and they don’t have a choice. She has written down everything in the journal that she thinks she can possibly risk, and she feels pangs of guilt at how much she’s left out. There’s no way this can be all of what Flynn read, right? It’s like trying to study for an all-important exam with half the textbook badly translated into English by a robot that doesn’t understand quite how language works. The fate of the entire world is riding on this, and –

(She doesn’t tell him that David Rittenhouse is one man, and furthermore, her great-times several grandfather. She doesn’t tell him about Emma’s true allegiances. She doesn’t tell him about her mother, or about Amy.)

(She doesn’t tell him that it’s pretty much this or nothing, that Rittenhouse has essentially won and the world is ever more unrecognizable, that they live underground and sometimes remember a new history every day.)

(She doesn’t tell him that he was shot during that last battle against Emma and company, two days after Hiroshima in 1945, throwing himself into their guns long enough for Wyatt and Rufus to stop Rittenhouse from using several more nukes, and that the last thing he said to her as he died in her arms, as she held him desperately and had to be torn away from his body to run, was, I love.)

(He didn’t have time to finish it.)

The trip itself goes –

Well isn’t exactly the word for it, not when she walks into the dim tiki bar and sees Flynn hunched over and heartbroken and on his third drink, grieving Lorena and Iris and startled out of his mind to see this attractive stranger walk in with a book and a miraculous promise that he can have revenge. But she made it, she didn’t Splinch herself or anything worse, and it’s him, it’s Flynn, he’s red-eyed and drunk and haggard, but he’s real and alive and she barely restrains herself from touching him, from grabbing his face and kissing him. It takes a bit, but she convinces him to trust her, to listen to her, and after that –

She supposes she always knew, in a way, that this was going to happen. He is a drowning man desperate for an anchor, there’s a connection between them that he won’t understand for a few more years, and she misses him so desolately that while she was willing to leave without it happening, she can’t regret for a moment that it does. They have sex twice that night, as he is clawing and clinging to her and she does the same to him. He is never going to know how unimaginably, heart-rendingly difficult it is for her to walk away the next morning, after she’s looked and looked at his face and reminds herself that one way or another, she’ll see it again. The younger version of her is going to meet him in a few more years. Things will happen. Some part of her will still have more time.

(You’d think that in this line of work, you could theoretically have all of it you wanted. And yet, as all of them have discovered, that is the greatest tragedy.)

Lucy goes back to her time the next morning. But as it turns out, she does not go entirely alone.

Being pregnant is rough enough in the usual course of things. Being pregnant after a trip to the better part of a decade ago, to visit your now-dead lover and give him a journal containing the key to saving the world from the Darkest Timeline it’s now ended up in, when you don’t know if Time Travel, Take a Shot! will permit anything to change at all, or shift, or erase, is –

Sucks pretty much wins the understatement of the century award. This, or any century. Lucy didn’t know it was going to happen and it wasn’t planned, but she cannot remotely bring herself to get rid of this last vestige of Flynn. She gives birth in an out-of-the-way hospital under a fake name with Denise holding her hand, while Wyatt, Rufus, and Jiya stand guard at all the exits and Connor idles in the getaway car. They check out six hours later and go back underground. Their war against Rittenhouse is different, localized, guerrilla, and Lucy went on missions until her sixth month, but it’s more difficult to do active fieldwork now. She takes on different responsibilities. Of course she doesn’t stop.

(The baby is a girl, and Lucy names her Amy Maria Preston-Flynn. She couldn’t stand to call her just Amy Preston alone, and maybe later, if there is a later, if there is a future, she will explain to Amy how she was born years after her father died, and everything it has cost. But no child should have to bear that.)

And then. Things change.

The team has known that yes, Flynn got the journal, and yes, events have started to unfold, but happening not quite as Lucy wrote down. There’s another branch of reality, a version of themselves, and long and confusing story short, Rufus dies in Chinatown in 1888, which is a crippling blow. Without him, they won’t invent the new tech, they won’t get back to Flynn, they won’t have any of the limited and fading chance they do have, and after a lot of talking, it’s decided to risk Wyatt and Lucy traveling back again to the bunker. They have to bring the tech to these other selves that are almost them, that could still be them if timelines re-converge, and take the risk to save Rufus. They haven’t lived this loss, but they remember well enough what it’s like.

(And Flynn. Flynn is going to be there. He will not know that he has a two-year-old daughter, who has been raised by the whole team and whose eyes look just like his when she’s angry, and sometimes they make jokes about her shooting Lincoln too, because it’s easier to laugh rather than lie down in the dark, alone, and shake with the silent sobs.)

So Wyatt and Lucy go. Meet the very stunned younger versions of themselves, and she sees Flynn with his arm in a sling, standing there and staring at her like he can’t believe his eyes, and she is two seconds from telling him –

But still, she doesn’t. Talks to her younger self instead, this Lucy that is almost her, and warns her quietly about Hiroshima. That maybe she can stop Flynn from going, that it’s possible he survives, but in that case, it’s very complicated, not to mention dangerous. After all, if he isn’t there, if he doesn’t sacrifice himself in a literal heroic blaze of glory, maybe Rittenhouse sets off those nukes. Maybe that’s it, right there, curtains. And if he doesn’t die, maybe Lucy doesn’t travel back to São Paulo in an attempt to save him, and all this doesn’t happen, is rolled up out of existence altogether. It’s a horrible choice to put on this younger Lucy’s shoulders, especially when she remembers having lost Rufus because of the same kind of time travel paradox. She looks like she wants to throttle her older self, which future Lucy (well, she supposes she’s future Lucy, but this to her is past Lucy, so who gets dibs?) doesn’t blame her for. And yet –

“So what?” Lucy bursts out, at her older self’s back. “Sacrifice Flynn and save the world, or save Flynn and sacrifice the world? Am I – am I really going to have to do that? Am I going to care that – that much?”

It’s not anger, or disbelief that she could come to love Garcia Flynn enough to make it so terrible to give up his life for many. It sounds almost like terror, as if she knows she’s getting too far down that path and might almost back out if she could. “What is it with us? What didn’t he tell me? What are you two to each other? Are you even me?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy feels the weight of all the questions she has kept from Flynn, from this Lucy, from everyone, and wonders if she can ever be forgiven. “But you will care. That’s all I can say. And because of Amy– ”

Lucy Two stares at her, face white. “My sister? I get her back?”

There’s a very long pause. Lucy One doesn’t have any idea how to respond. She feels some helpless impulse to tell her about something, since she has no idea how their timelines are going to tangle again, if at all. But she can’t tell Flynn, and one of them deserves to know. Maybe this is the tipping point. Maybe it’s not. She is so tired of being the one asked to judge. She never asked to be God. She never asked to hold the scales of life and death, time and space – and yet, she does. She is not quite human, she thinks. No longer mortal. There is no way to prepare yourself for that, but still.

“No,” Lucy says quietly, looking into her younger self’s eyes. “Your daughter.”

After their future selves leave, after they rescue Rufus, after it seems like a miracle and a fresh start and everyone else is excited, Lucy has a timer in her head that is counting down to when the Mothership is going to jump to August 8, 1945. That’s what her future self said. Two days after Hiroshima, one before Nagasaki. That’s where Flynn dies. That is where, according to how things have already gone, he has to die, in order to save the world. But that course of action leads to Rittenhouse winning anyway, doesn’t it? Nukes or no nukes? So if he doesn’t go, things change, they don’t end up in the future that her older self prophesied. There’s no way to tell if it’s for better or for much, much worse. That’s the risk you take. They’ve spent so long trying to change the past, or not change it, but can they change the future? At least history gives you a rough guide, a cheat code. The unmanifest, the un-happened, is entirely without space or form. Darkness moving over the face of the deep. It is Genesis.

You’d think the future would be the easiest to change, if it hasn’t happened. But time is a funny thing, and somewhere, it has already gone by, and Lucy doesn’t know. Doesn’t know. Doesn’t know.

Flynn can sense her disquiet. Of course he can. They’re ever more rarely apart, day or night, and Lucy is breaking down with the stress of keeping it from him. At last, she finally tells him. Whenever the Mothership jumps to 1945, they have to decide if he goes or stays. If he goes, he dies, and Rittenhouse could win anyway. If he stays, he will probably survive, but it also might not matter if they set off huge nuclear explosions and God knows whatever else. He could be living in a fallout shelter when they return, or he could have never been born, his ancestors eradicated before they ever got around to him. It could be so much worse. (Or better, but that seems naive to the point of suicide.)

“She told you,” Flynn says at last. It’s not hard to guess where else Lucy might have come by the information. “Didn’t she?”

Lucy hesitates, then nods.

“She never told me.” It’s unclear if Flynn feels betrayed by this or not, but thinking back, certain things might make more sense. “Did she say anything else? About what has happened after I met – well, you?”

Lucy almost can’t bear to tell him. She can’t be sure that her future self’s daughter is also Flynn’s daughter. But she knows in an unshakable way that it is for damn sure not anyone else’s, and it makes the final, terrible piece of the puzzle fall into place. As carefully and neutrally as possible, she does.

Flynn doesn’t say anything for the longest time. He’s clearly reeling. His face has momentarily lit up in wild, desperate joy – that somewhere in the universe, even if in a place he may never see, he has a daughter, a living daughter. She is probably three by now, or four. She is a little person, not a baby. She is out there, she is breathing on her own, she doesn’t exist now (Time Travel, Take a Shot!) but she will. The promise he’s been fighting for all along, even if for another daughter. She is there. She will be. And all he has to do for it is –

(Die.)

“I couldn’t make you lose another Amy,” he says at last, quietly. “I couldn’t do that to you, Lucy.”

This may be so. This may be true. But this Lucy has never met this Amy, and she very much has met Flynn. And between the two, right now, there’s only one loss that sounds, to her, as if it would be utterly unbearable.

The alarm sounds three weeks later.

August 8, 1945.

The blood drains out of the team’s faces as they stare at it. The word has gotten around, they know something terrible and fundamental happens on this mission, and that they aren’t going to get a takie-backsie to save Flynn the way they did with Rufus. Whatever goes down this time, it’s how it goes down, and even Wyatt has gotten fond enough of Flynn that he strenuously objects to the idea of sending him there knowing that he’s going to die. But Flynn argues that they’ve already changed quite a bit from the journal, how Future Lucy remembers it happening. The future is not set in stone. By now, he says, he trusts that Lucy will go back to São Paulo anyway, whether to save him or not. It will happen somehow, even if he has to die. And besides, if he does, it will save his daughter. He can’t regret that.

There’s some confused looks at that, as they think he must mean Iris, and neither Lucy nor Flynn can quite stand to explain otherwise. As Lucy looks at him, she realizes that his mind is made up. He is going on this mission, and he is not going to hear otherwise. Perhaps there is another path that leads him away from the guns, away from the death that still haunts her future self, that was the reason she’s tried to find some way, some fork in the path where he lives. It’s about stopping Rittenhouse too, of course. But it’s more.

(Does their daughter still exist if he survives this mission? It’s the biggest, most impossible paradox imaginable, and Lucy doesn’t know if it makes her a horrible person to almost be willing to make this gamble. If she goes to São Paulo anyway, but in different circumstances, does it still happen? Does it matter?)

She looks back at Flynn. Realizes that he’s entirely at peace with dying, if it means that somewhere, his daughter is going to live. Any daughter, any time. If he’s walking away for good – he always said he would with Lorena and Iris, after all. In a way, this is no different, even though he has never met her and very well never might. This is a Flynn who knows what is worth dying for.

His eyes meet hers, and he turns toward the Lifeboat. A wry smile crosses his lips, as if he’s almost going to miss the old bucket of bolts, knows he very well might not be coming back. Then he takes a deep breath, and manages a grin.

“Come on, Lucy,” he says. “It’s time to go.”

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #protip #do not listen to the interstellar soundtrack while reading this #as i was while writing it #unless idk #you want to go for it?#anyway i apologize in advance #extasiswings #ask

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iturbide · 6 years

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I don’t know if you’ve answered an ask like this before, but does f!grima get along well with the younger dragons too?

You know what I actually haven’t gotten asked this before! I usually get M!Grima asks (or assume they’re M!Grima asks, at least, because he was my first Grima and my mind defaults to him). But the answer to your question is yes F!Grima gets along with the kids just as well as M!Grima and is an integral part of caring for the creche.

F!Grima might have arrived a little later than M!Grima and needed some time to adjust to the bizarre world that is Zenith, but introducing her to the kids outright made for some incredibly rapid strides compared to how slowly her male counterpart adjusted. Since M!Grima volunteered to show her around on arrival, one of the first things he did was take her to the ballroom to meet the babies – and since Fae had already adopted the habit of calling him Papa, please take a moment to imagine the wry look she gave him when as he picked up the little dragon up, as though to ask have you really gone this soft? Of course, as soon as Fae got a look at F!Grima and saw the resemblance between her and her ‘Papa’ (and after asking “Is she a dragon, too?” and getting an affirmative), her first question for F!Grima was “Are you my mama?” And that pretty much sealed the deal.

Also, yes, Fae calls her Mama now the way she calls M!Grima Papa. They are the happiest dragon family and F!Grima will often float around the castle with Fae riding on her shoulders. The Kanas also enjoy this treatment and it’s not uncommon to see her drifting around the ballroom with Fae on her shoulders, one Kana riding piggy-back, and the other cradled to her chest. She can’t necessarily sustain it for long periods, but everyone has a great time while it lasts.

Since M!Grima runs a lot of Askran defense with the Summoner, F!Grima spends a lot of time with the creche herself, especially early in the day. Regardless of the hour, once the babies are up they are off until naptime, but F!Grima’s vessel is an experienced parent (much in the same way that M!Grima’s vessel is), and since she can fly now she has a much easier time keeping up with them (and has been known to pluck particularly naughty little troublemakers up off the ground as they’re trying to be sneaky in their escapes).

M!Grima usually gets back a little before naptime, which leads to big dragon cuddle piles in the ballroom. Having two Grimas makes for a lot of extra snuggle room for all these kids.

Fae, F!Kana, and Tiki usually cuddle in with M!Grima – not because they necessarily like him better, but because he’s the one who’s been absent for most of the day and they like getting to cuddle in with him once he gets back. M!Kana, Myrrh, and Nowi will pile in with F!Grima because they like her and she’s warm and soft to snuggle with. These are by no means hard rules, though, because the kids will just cuddle up to whoever they feel like on any particular day.

F!Grima loves to play, but she’s also very big on field trips, and will take the creche out flying when the opportunity allows. Given how big her dragon form is, when the younger dragons get tired they can just come in for a landing on the doomsday dragon’s back and rest there while getting a lovely view of the surroundings. Picnics are also regular occurrences on field trip days (and M!Grima is always a little disappointed that he can’t take part because the Order agreed that one doomsday dragon needs to be at the Askran castle at all times in case of emergency).

To make up for it, the creche will sometimes have picnics in the garden with both Grimas. F!Grima has been known to let the baby dragons wreak havoc in the kitchens to make things for said picnics – though if nothing else, they have help from the castle cooks so it’s usually all (more or less) edible.

Myrrh in particular really looks up to F!Grima, and they often go flying together around the castle. Myrrh thinks that F!Grima is very graceful and poised and tries hard to emulate her; coupled with how mature Myrrh tries to be in general, she often tries to help take care of the creche in spite of the fact that she’s young enough (in dragon terms) to need babysitting herself. F!Grima looks on it with indulgent fondness, though, and will praise her for the good work she’s doing (while still giving her every chance to have fun and play, rather than expecting Myrrh to do anything).

#fire emblem: heroes #headcanon #f!grima #fae #myrrh #m!grima #answered #anonymous #i seriously love f!grima too don't get me wrong #i have so many ideas for her #she handles things differently from m!grima #but they're both just so parental and love these kids so much #dragon creche

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sentofighta · 4 years

Text

Lucina’s trip with Chrom to the other realms thanks to Kamuz stealing the Fire Emblem and jumping into different worlds, enabled her to meet with a wide variety of people. The duo accepted to help Reiji and the gang because they didn’t want any harm to fall on innocent people. Plus, they can’t allow evil to spread when they know about it.

This is my take on how she might have supports with PXZ2 cast; her opinion on these characters.

Akira is a strange fellow at first but once she talked to him more, she realized he shares a lot with her father. I think it would be cool to see them interact because he is so straightforward and she is as well so they both just want to get into a fight because wait, there was another solution than fighting? lol

An interesting old man. The ninja concept does not exist in Ylisse perhaps in Chon’sin,Valm but not in Ylisse. So she is very curious about how Kage-maru fight. Plus, you could say she has tons of respect for him for fighting despite being ‘old’.

One of Lucina’s sparring partner whenever they have time. Lucina is intrigued by Aty’s fighting style especially that sword of her--Shartos! (also at times she wants to pet her head when she is infused with shartos and have that cute cat ears like because it is soooo cute~)

Besides his familiar voice, Axel is a strange fellow to Lucina. Even to her level of recklessness, he outwins it. She knows he has his heart in the right place but it worries her whenever he is around. Also, somehow it ticks her off at times how he talks. But she would not mind sparring with him if he accepted.

One of Shinra members who are responsible for stopping Ouma organization. Lucina was extremely curious as to how he can handle many and different swords at the same time which made him a target for her sparring practices.

The second member of Shinra and Reiji’s partner. Xiaomu is a quite confusing person for Lucina, especially the way she speaks. Not only that, being older than most of the crew was surprising due to how young she is--just like Ingrid. Which once again reminded her of Tiki.

Lucina just tries to not get on Dr.Urashima’s bad side because she saw what this woman is capable of if she got mad. Lucina respects her intelligent and will power to create and operate all these difficult looking like devices.

Chris’ arsenal always surprises Lucina because of the amount ‘guns’ and ‘grenade’ and all-around equipment he has. She tried one time to use one of his guns but she found it rather difficult and foreign in her hand.

Another regular sparring partner with Lucina. The princess takes all Jill’s advice to heart because Jill always gives Lucina good ones in order to improve. They also chat whenever they are not sparring.

Lucina is slowly becoming one of Chun-Li’s fans because of how strong and intelligent she is. In sparring sessions, Lucina finds it difficult to defend all Chun-Li’s kicks but she is getting there.

Xiaoyu is one of Lucina’s girlfriends she made since she jumped worlds with Chrom. Being from a destroyed world did not allow Lucina to have that many friends so she is thrilled to so girls of her age and a bit younger being cool and badass, fighting alongside her. The two often sit down to talk about different things. Usually, it ends with Xiaoyu talking about Jin this Jin that, and Lucina Father this, Father that.

Alisa with her strange sword fighting had become one of the people Lucina likes to watch when they fighting or training in order to learn from her. If they are not honing their skills together, Alisa and Lucina are chatting about their different lives. Lucina often comments on how Alisa’s outfit is actually cute (and she might want to try it someday.)

Ciel’s tactical ability reminds Lucina of Avatar’s. To Lucina’s surprise, she found some common things between her and Ciel, among them that they keep it to themselves for the sake of the team. The spar to understand each other skills and end it with a heartful chat about each other worlds and friends.

Nana reminds Lucina with her aunt Lissa; they are both optimistic and can make any gathering light and cheerful one. Lucina finds Nana’s sandwich to be one of the best things she ever tasted!

Dante is Inigo if he did not blush and feLT embarrassed about hitting on girls which kind of took Lucina by surprise. Aside from his questionable personality at times, Dante is actually a formidable sparring partner, Lucina finds it rather hard to have a winning match against him.

Vergil one of the few people Lucina does not know a lot about because of how he tends to spend his time away from the group. However, she knows one thing that he will have her back on the battlefield when needed because Dante said so.

Like Vergil, Lucina does not know much about Demitri except he is some sort of ‘Vampire’ which is a creature that preys on people for their blood which kind of made her warry of him but she apologized to him and Morrigan for doubting them which is a bad thing to do for a comrade.

Secretly, Lucina is amused by Morrigan’s clothes. It is strange and bold but at the same time cute. Aside from that, Lucina does not understand half of what Morrigan says and it brushes over her head.

These two princesses became fast friends. They both share the love of their country, their family and friends and seek to be the best and continue to learn in order to be stronger and better. They spar but mostly they enjoy talking about their lives and share experiences.

Yuri is Estelle's friend. He is a reliable man outside and inside the battlefield and always worries about his friends in his own way. Lucina finds his style quite intriguing and often requests to do battle with him in order to improve.

Flynn another friend of Estelle and Yuri and he is a knight. He reminds her of Frederick since he is very loyal to his friends and ready to draw his sword in order to protect them. She heard it would be better to not eat anything cooked by him but she did taste it one time and she can’t seem to find any problem with his food.

Lucina came to know what Heihachi had done and what he might do but she couldn’t bring herself to completely mistrust him due to their circumstances. All she can do is keep her guard up just in case this old man decided to blow this teaming up.

Lucina does not understand Jin so she did not get around to talk to him with how he prefers to stay alone. Despite how Xiaoyu talks about him, it is hard to befriend him when he does not want to.

Same as Heihachi, Lucina does not think Kazuya is a good person because anyone who tries to kill their son for power is, indeed, questionable person but again, due to their circumstances she has to work with him.

Cool and mysterious character, Hibana does her thing whenever she wants and Lucina finds it interesting about Hibana. Whenever possible, Lucina tries to get to know Hibana even through sparring.

A man with a strong sense of justice. Lucina shares that sense with Ichiro and their efforts in preserving peace. They do spar from time to time and chat about their own swordsmanship styles.

A pretty and honest girl. Lucina admires her upbeat personality and cheerfulness and looks forward whenever Erica changes costumes (and secretly wants to join in the quick dress fashion show.)

Lucina remembers Tiki whenever she sees Ingrid--it is the whole old and has the wisdom to share. However, Ingrid is more outgoing and outspoken than Tiki is. Lucina likes talking to Ingrid because the latter often offers good advice to what troubles her.

Kiryu has a questionable background to Lucina but she sees his actions are true to justice so she does not mind trusting him and fighting alongside him.

Majima is a strange man, in his behaviorism, language and certainly fighting style. All of which puzzles the princess but nevertheless she finds it quite humorous whenever he gets himself in trouble.

It still baffles Lucina that both Kite and Haseo’s looks are not real--they are not real but part of something called ‘Pe Ce?’ game. Nonetheless, Lucina finds Kite to be a reliable honest ally.

Contracting to Kite, Haseo may not on Lucina’s favorite people with how snappy and rude he sounds. She values teamwork and Haseo often wants to do things his way, especially whenever an enemy called Tri-Edge appears he goes nuts.

Despite being unfamiliar with the idea of a being like KOS-MOS, Lucina does not see her friend as a ‘non-living’ thing but a trusty ally who she can learn from. The Andriod proves to be a good sparring partner for the princess whenever KOS-MOS is free.

Lucina sympathized with Fiora for what had happened to her. They both share a great sense of doing the impossible to protect their loved ones and that what made them fast friends.

Lucina and Leanne became good friends because they are about the same age. Leanne was impressed with how Lucina’s hair and skin are flawless and Lucina was impressed with Leanne’s smooth move on the battlefield so they agreed to share their secrets of in and outside the battlefield.

Leanne’s friend. Zephyr may sound bratty at times but he is a good kid, reminds her of one of her friends back home. She finds it funny and adorable when he tries to look after Leanne.

Vashyron as the gentleman he may look, Lucina got a subtle hint that he may not be as what he seem to project. Evident by how some female crewmembers react whenever he opens his mouth. However, his skills are real in battle.

Leon like Chris and Jill has a wide range of weapons which surprise and impress Lucina whenever they are in battle. The princess learns a lot from seeing him in action as to how he always manages to survive in weird situations.

An adorable girl with mysterious powers. Lucina finds her quite cute and entertaining. Not that she understands why she keeps poking fun of her friend, Mister Wright but she can understand that they are close, just like her and her father.

A loud heavy sweating guy but an honest. Lucina respects that despite his lack of fighting skills he chose to remain and fight with them (despite that it was for his life.) She is curious about this ‘defense lawyer’ job he leads. It sounds quite similar to a position in Ylisse’s court system. He is also very funny to listen to him. also please look at this art it is so beautiful i cry. thanks kozaki san weeps.

Lucina does not have a full idea of this man but as long as he is a good friend of another ally, he is an ally too.

Like both Kite and Haseo, Lucina was baffled by Mega Man and Zero. Though Mega Man proved to be a reliable ally. Lucina likes it when Mega Man shoots from his arm since it is something she has never seen before.

Lucina may have bothered Zero a couple of times to spar with her looking at his unique fighting style and his sword. However, she does not overdo it whilst she bothers him.

Just like Chun-Li and Xiaoyu, Pai Chan has an amazing fighting style that made Lucina both respect and worries if she tried to spar with her. Pai Chan complements a lot on Lucina’s relationship with her own father and encourages her to preserve it. An energetic straightforward young man. Just like Akira and the others, he fights with his fists which in its own way, pretty amazing fighting style.

Despite his stoic appearance, Ryu is rather easy to talk to. Like the rest of the crew who fight with their limbs, Ryu demonstrates such a fierce fighting style that Lucina cannot help but be impressed every time.

Chatty fellow but he is a good ally on the battlefield. Just like Ryu, his fighting style is impressive to watch.

Sakura reminds Lucina of Say’ri since they both somewhat wield their swords similarly as well for a similar outfit. Sakura is a fun sweet person to talk to and Lucina finds it reassuring to have someone like Sakura around.

Lucina found it hard at first to understand Gemini at times but she gradually got used to her eccentric speech style. The two of them often seen practicing whatever Gemini conveniences Lucina to try to do.

Appears at the right place and time, Segata san is a man hard to be hated.

Strider Hiryu, like Hibana, a ninja who amazes Lucina with both his strength and agility. She often wants to ask him to spar with her but always magically disappear.

Another kept to himself person, Hotsuma rarely appears around for Lucina to have a proper conversation with him.

Natsu is unlike the rest of the ninjas, she is upbeat and easy going. Lucina finds it thrilling to spar with a strange style as Natsu’s.

Another job that Lucina is not familiar with but she enjoys whenever Ulala starts to sing and comment on the current events.

A cheerful catwoman who probably not like how Tegual or Manakete are in her world. Lucina enjoys listening to Felicia whenever she performs.

Valkyrie had been a good help for Lucina and Chrom when the Fire Emblem was stolen. She is a kind and trustworthy woman and Lucina respects her strength.

All-round nice guy with a great sense of justice. Like KOS-MOS and Fiora, Captain Commando puzzle Lucina with how his body looks like but in the end what matters his passion for serving justice and saving people and Lucina cannot stress how she is behind him on these ideas.

The two shares a sad past and with that shared feeling Lucina and June promised each other to work extra hard in order to protect the people who are living with them at the moment. Unlike June, Lucina still has a chance with her father so June encourages her as well to do what she can to protect him.

#⌈⌈verse[pxz; brave new world]. (lucina)#⌈⌈ooc. (faty speaks)#//dabs into the infinity #//this is like a ver where random character can interact and i wannaaa new people come #//it is so funny how some characters are put together but in the end it was a good fun game #//not that i played it im a cheater i watched a letsplay haha #//maybe one day i will . . . .play it...he

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bambi-simmons · 6 years

Text

NaNoWriMo: The Ghost of Stadleter Hall (Preview)

Here’s a short-story preview I wrote when I was conceptualizing my novel for this year! It’s about two of my main characters meeting for the first time, and gave me a feel for writing in Adrián’s voice (spoiler alert: he’s obnoxious.)

Have you ever walked into a room and immediately, completely regretted it?

Like when you walk in to your first class of the semester and understand literally nothing on the syllabus, then remember you decided to take Intro to Ancient Latin because you thought it would be a smart way to cover both your writing and history reqs.

Or, like when Adrián Benitez walked into his first frat party and suddenly remembered why he had never accepted an invitation to a frat party before.

"I count three, no, five people in togas. This isn't even a toga party. What the fuck," he hollered into his phone, "get over here, dude, I'm too skinny and nerdy to make it through this on my own."

Liam, his roommate on the other end of the line, just laughed at him. Adrián rolled his eyes at Liam, both because he was being an asshole and because Liam could never understand the concept of being too skinny and nerdy for anything; he was like a half-Korean version of Thor. "I'm on my way. I can see the house down the road," he said.

"Well, hurry your ass up! Someone's going to try to haze me!" he yelled, and got an unconvinced, "okay, goodbye, Di," for his troubles before Liam hung up on him.

Adrián shoved his phone back in his pocket and surveyed the room again. There were Greek letters painted on pretty much every available surface, including some dudes' torsos. While it looked like they had a healthy amount of alcohol available, Adrián didn't trust these people not to spike something, so he was stuck waiting on Liam, who, as the only one of his friend who was 21, had stopped by the skeevy liquor store on the corner of Main Street and University Court to buy something drinkable.

The house was one of those grand old frat houses that looked like it deserved more than dirty boxers being dropped on the floor and freshmen losing their virginities in the bedrooms. Curved staircases arched up either side of the living room, leading to a railed-off hallway overlooking the crowd, and Adrián immediately worried that someone was going to fall over the railing at some point tonight. The bedrooms must've been upstairs, because he saw more than one eager-looking couple racing up them, trying to work out how to get handsy and not trip up the stairs at the same time.

Adrián was both disgusted and a little jealous, because no girl here would look twice at you unless you had a toga, at least three greek letters somewhere on your person, or a tattoo that said something untranslatable in Chinese. Perks of being a douchebag.

He leaned against the wall and lit his face up with his phone screen, rapidly texting his second roommate, whose main volley of skills included judging basic people and lamenting Adrián's decisions.

Cameron, it seemed, either wasn't awake or (more likely) was killing it in his new favorite MMO, so he didn't respond to Adrián's series of texts, which read, "I am full of regrets," "just saw a dude take a shot out of a girl's cleavage—impressed, but wouldn't that be sweaty?" and, "jfc man they have a hot tub. What percentage of it do you think is semen."

Oh, well. Cameron would think he was funny later.

Adrián supposed he should've maybe started talking to people, but he knew exactly nobody, and felt a little out of his depth even among the groups of new pledges, who all had this year's generic Greek Life shirts on and looked like they were trying way too hard to have fun.

The fifteen minutes until Liam opened the door and dropped a plastic bag with a bottle of rum and a two-liter of Coke into Adrián's hands felt like hours. But there he was, smiling that convincingly sure smile, warm hand patting Adrián on the back. "You're still alive," Liam said, like he was trying to sound surprised.

"Barely, dude. I think that last body shot nearly killed me."

"You were doing body shots?"

"Observing. And it was close to deadly," he said, clearing space on an end table so that he could set down the rum and coke and dig the way-too-fucking-many-pack of Solo cups out of the bag. "How do you want your rum-to-coke ratio?" he asked, "because I'm going to need mine about one-to-one to make it through this."

Liam laughed, warm and loud enough that Adrián heard it easily over the music. "It's not that bad, Di. It's just a party. They've got a dance floor out back, I think." He beckoned for the bottle when Adrián was done filling half his glass with Captain Morgan's. Good rum may have been out there somewhere, but Liam was smart enough not to waste time tracking it down for something as stupid as this.

"Okay, cool, dancing, I can do," Adrián said, handing it over obligingly so Liam could make his own drink. "We gotta hide this somewhere so nobody steals it."

"I'll just ask Micah to put it in his room."

Oh, that's right. Adrián kept forgetting that Liam's younger brother was in this frat, even though that was kind of the whole reason they were at this party. He watched Liam stuff everything back in the bag, glance around the room, and then head in the direction of a huge group of people, one of which must've been his brother. Adrián hadn't met Micah, but he pictured him as a smaller version of Liam, maybe with slightly shorter hair.

He had enough time while Liam was talking his brother into housing their booze to finish his drink, not because he chugged it, but because Liam took for-fucking-ever. Adrián kind of wished that by the time Liam wandered back over to him, the whole thing would be winding down and they could chalk it up to another night of bad decisions and go to IHOP.

Not quite long enough. Liam walked back over, tipping his half-finished cup to his lips. "Micah put our stuff in his room. You wanna check out the dance floor?"

"Dude, yes. Finally, a use for my talents." Adrián tossed his empty cup into a trash bag that had been hooked over one of the door handles, and started for the glass patio door, Liam still laughing and following behind him.

"You know you could've met me out here," he said, but Adrián shook his head.

"No way, I needed at least one drink before this happens," he said. "It's for the social anxiety, not my dancing skills."

"Thanks for the clarification."

"Shut up, I'm trying." He pulled on the door handle and, when it didn't budge, realized he had to push it.

Outside was infinitely better than inside, because it was cooler and less humid, and there was more open air for everyone's sweat-smell to dissippate into. Adrián and Liam steered clear of the pool and extra-clear of the hot tub, because they weren't fond of soggy boxers and possibly-inseminated water. There were tiki torches set up around the perimeter of the fenced-in yard, and the combination of drunk people and fire seemed like a generally bad idea. But hey, people had been serving those shots on fire in bars for years, now, and nobody usually got injured.

Maybe it was the rum kicking in, but Adrián felt a lot calmer about the possibility of someone's hair being set on fire than he normally would've.

He dragged Liam over to a group of girls who looked like they'd already been approached by a bunch of the fraternity brothers, and weren't having it. Probably had something to do with either the painfully obvious spray-tans or the lame white-people attempts at dancing. Liam bent close enough that Adrián could hear him talking over the music in the background. "Put on some Shakira and you'd smoke those sons of bitches."

"I'm also fond of Rhianna's early stuff and the Backstreet Boys."

"Good to know your music tastes haven't changed since the sixth grade."

He shouldered Liam away a few steps. "You don't know me," he said, walking backwards into the crowd, ready to get down to—Ariana Grande? He thought? God, it was hard to hear the lyrics over the bass and the screaming.

This was the part where things were on the upswing for a bit. Adrián found himself a little more in his element, and sure, these weren't the kind of people he normally partied with—there was a distinct lack of weed-smell and nobody had their faces pierced up—but drunk people were all pretty much the same. And when he ended up lip-synching Don't Stop Believing with a group of wasted sorority girls and Liam Song, he was pretty sure he could easily have been at a party some guy in his Brit Lit class threw.

Except, if he was at one of those artsy kid parties, there'd probably be someone criticizing Journey and someone else trying to convince people this song was totally by the Eagles.

There was one girl who was totally into it, who let Adrián twirl her like she was an extra in Grease, not missing a lyric the whole time. It was kind of adorable—she was kind of adorable. Not the usual sorority girl type, either, she had gradiated brown-to-blonde twists pulled up into a pair of buns on either side of her head, standing out brightly against her dark skin. She was wearing a black T-shirt with her sorority's letters in bright pink, but she'd gone at it with a pair of scissors and turned the back into a pattern of artistic knots. She danced like she knew what she was doing, and it was probably made easier by the sneakers she was wearing in lieu of heels.

The song changed, and in the moment of silence between, Adrián stuck out a hand like he was trying to greet her at New Student Orientation, not a crowded frat party. "Hey! Adrián Benitez, nice to meet you."

"Beverly Houston," she replied, responding with a surprisingly firm handshake. "Beta Kappa Tau."

"Does everyone around here introduce themselves in Greek?" he asked, but the start of another pop song—Katy Perry this time—cut off the end of his quip. Wittiness wasted. Damn. He was only good for about one of those a week. Beverly laughed, but it was more at him than at his joke, and she grabbed his hand, pulling him back into the circle, and performing a surprisingly on-beat Charleston.

"Di!" And there was an arm around his shoulder and hey, who—? Oh.

Adrián glanced up to see a familiar face, but not one he'd expect to meet at a place like this. Isaac Washington was his favorite barista-slash-bartender at his favorite coffeeshop-slash-hipster bar, and he'd graduated last Spring, so Adrián had no idea what he was doing at any college party, much less an Omega-something-bullshit-Greek-party.

"Dude, what're you doing? Isn't this like, the most homophobic frat in the row?"

"They asked me to bartend for this thing," Isaac said, "and I had a night off and I like getting paid to do things, so."

"Then why aren't you, uh, bartending?"

He shrugged. "Some dude wearing their letters said he could do better, kicked me out from behind the bar, and started making up drinks that taste nasty, but they're wicked strong."

He gestured behind himself at the "bar," which was just a plastic patio table crowded with liquor bottles and plastic cups, with a cooler full of ice and a second cooler half-full of ice and half-full of beer underneath it. There was a guy behind it who was trying to flip two bottles of beer like a juggler, and who ended up dropping them both. They landed on the grass intact, and he moved on to pouring a drink from a height that mostly served to spill it everywhere.

Adrián shook his head. "Shit, man, I hope they paid you beforehand."

"Uh, hell yeah they did." He high-fived Adrián, then looked to his right at Liam, who was hugging Beverly? Did they know each other? Or was this just yet another benefit of looking like the lost fourth Hemsworth brother? Liam always did get all the girls, which was fine, he was a good wingman anwyways. He had this way of making Adrián sound really cool because he wrote poetry and spoke fluent Spanish. Never mind that he had only taken one poetry class, and had focused his portfolio mainly around themes of death, decay, and that one time he saw a rat living inside a dead raccoon like Luke Skywalker inside of that alien on Hoth.

"Who's your friend?" Isaac asked, and Adrián was forced to stop thinking about Hoth and dead raccoons.

"Oh. Yo, Liam. Liam!" When he finally got Liam's attention, he continued. "Isaac, this is Liam, my roommate. Liam, this is Isaac, he works at the Red Windrose."

"Isn't that the coffeeshop you keep trying to convince me to go to?" Liam asked.

"If you'd go with me, you would know that the answer is yes."

Isaac leaned over and said something to Liam that Adrián couldn't hear, but it, like most things, just made Liam laugh and smile wide enough to show his dimples.

The song changed again, and somehow, the three of them ended up in a crowd of sorority girls. Liam couldn't dance for shit, but he was cute about it, mostly sticking to cheesily exaggerated versions of the very few dance moves he knew. Isaac joined right in with him, but it was clear that his sense of rhythm was superior and his sense of humor was not.

Beverly bounced between the three of them, spitting out the lyrics to every song like she was the human version of Shazam. She clearly knew the other three girls they were dancing with, because she kept trying to drag them into her karaoke performance, but one of them was barely sober enough to remain upright, much less to remember all the words to Crank Dat. Adrián, however, knew his Soulja Boy, and although he didn't have it quite as perfected as Beverly, he could, at the very least, do the accompanying dance without even thinking about it.

The DJ continued to be eclectic in the weirdest ways, vascillating wildly between stuff from 2006 and 2016. But finally, he found a Walk the Moon song that wasn't Shut up and Dance, then Beverly pulled him in by both hands, and yes, this was starting to spell awesome night. She pulled him in close and somehow led him into twirling her into a pretzel twist, and the incongruity between her dance moves and the music blaring was charming.

Adrián had been roped into swing dancing enough times to know how to respond, and he was about to switch poses to the one—shit, he couldn't remember the name—where he'd have her back againt his chest and his arms around her, when something wet and, ew, warm? spilled onto his back.

It took him a minute to figure it out, but yep. Someone had just puked on him.

About par for this particular course. He swore at length in Spanish, most of it impossible to translate.

"Dear god, shit, that's disgusting," Beverly said, "ugh. C'mere, dude." She was giving the girl who was apparently the culprit (and who was now crying) a look that was equal parts grossed out and disappointed. "Come on, upstairs. We'll get you cleaned up—and get her home, okay?" She addressed the last part to the girl's friends, who were standing on either side of her and patting her hair and holding her shoulders gently. Kind of like what Beverly was doing to him.

"Where the hell are we going to go?" he asked, plucking at the hem of his shirt and trying desperately not to think about what was on him. "I feel like all the bedrooms are, uh. Occupied."

"Nah," she shook her head. "My boyfriend lives up here, and I've got his spare key."

She led him to the last door on the left, and as soon as she unlocked it, he tore his shirt off and held it as far away from himself as physically possible. "Oh, god," he said, frowning at the smell. Like vodka and death. "I'm. This thing's tanked."

Beverly chuckled awkwardly from the bathroom and reached underneath the sink, tugging out a plastic bag and a washcloth. She tossed the bag to him and he deposited his shirt into it and tied it as tight as it could go. Thank god he hadn't decided to change out of the three-dollar thrift store Avengers shirt he'd been wearing. Beverly ran the washcloth under the sink and handed it to him. "Gimme that, I'll throw it in the dumpster out back. It won't be the only puked-on thing in there," she said, "clean yourself off real quick, I'll be back."

Adrián scrubbed at his back until his skin went red, borrowing some of what must've been the boyfriend's soap. When he was convinced he smelled more like Old Spice than puke, he rinsed the washcloth clean and draped it over the basin of the sink. He could hear the door opening again and he stuck his head out the bathroom door. "Bev?"

"That's my name," she said, handing him one of a pair of Coronas she'd grabbed from downstairs. "Nothing got on your jeans?"

"Nah, it was a controlled incident," he replied, taking a swallow of the beer. "Thanks for everything."

"Eh, that's what I do. I keep controlled incidents, well, controlled, for the BKT's." She toasted him before tipping back her bottle and draining almost half of it.

"Oh, so you're like, their damage control, or whatever."

"E-yup." She set the half-empty bottle on one of the two desks in the room. It had a picture of her pinned on the corkboard above it. "Listen, not sure if you feel like wandering around all shirtless, but you can totally borrow one of Micah's shirts."

"God, yeah, I'm way too hairy to be walking around half-naked like some kind of Sasquatch—wait, Micah?" he asked, as she started digging through the drawers. "Like, Micah Song? Is that how you know Liam?"

She came back with a plain black T-shirt and held it out toward him. "Yeah, Liam's his brother. This is gonna be a little big, but hey, it's better than nudity." He pulled it on and took a seat at the desk chair, while Beverly sat cross-legged on the bed, pulling her phone out of her back pocket. "Melissa says she's super sorry, by the way."

He shrugged, because, again, he'd kind of expected tonight to be a trainwreck. "Don't you kind of have to, like, go down there and continue controlling damage?"

Beverly shook her head. "Those three were the only Betas here. I technically didn't even have to come to this, since less than ten of our girls were here. I just came because I wanted to hang out with Micah, which, well. I decided not to watch him lose at pool." She leaned back on the bed, readjusting the pillows like she lived there. She was probably there often enough to do that.

Adrián finally got a chance to look around the room, and found that it was basically an explosion of fraternity letters and Burning Lake University memorobilia. Pennants on the walls, throw blankets in BLU red and black, and at least eight BLU lacrosse team photos. "Oh god, your boyfriend plays lacrosse?" Adrián groused, because every LAX guy he'd ever known wore polo shirts every day and didn't even need the athletics scholarship to pay tuition.

"Nah, his roommate does. Bit of a douche."

"Probably because he fuckin' plays lacrosse."

That made Beverly laugh, and Adrián officially decided he was going to be friends with her, because she was a good dancer and she had a poor opinion of lacrosse. "So, how do you know Liam?" she asked. She kicked her shoes off, and Adrián noticed she was wearing mismatched socks.

"He's my roommate," Adrián said, "has been since way back when we were baby freshmen and lived in the dorms still." Granted, that had been like two years ago.

Beverly leaned over to grab her beer off the desk. "Hah, well, my boyfriend's still a baby freshman. I've survived to junior year, though."

"And may we make it through to senior year. And graduation."

She toasted that, and downed the rest of her beer. "So, what dorm were you guys in?"

"Martin Hall," he said, "me and my best friend almost ended up in Greenwood, but thank <i>god,</i> we got offered an option to switch to a triple in Martin." Greenwood Hall, and its sister dorm, Stadleter Hall, were known for thin walls, mouse problems, and the constant and pervasive smell of feet. Adrián took another drink of his Corona, glanced down at the bottle, and realized he still had way more left in it than Beverly did in hers. Probably because he didn't really like Corona.

"Oh, come on," Beverly said, "I was in Stadleter Hall, it wasn't that bad. Just a little haunted."

#my fiction #nano2017 #stadleter2017 #nanowrimo preview

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iamknicole · 7 years

Text

Golden Hearts 💛🖤 - Chapter One

AJ Styles/OC

Warning:None really. A bit of flirting and some less than happy moments mentioned. Its a bit of a slow start but it’ll pick up!

Tears rolled slowly down Tika’s cheeks as a sad smile rose to her lips while she stared at the phone on front of her. While she sat in the car line at the arena, she had gotten bored and decided to look through the gallery on her phone. The line had come to a stop with some sort of hold up she wasn’t sure about the nature, honestly didn’t care. The rain was pouring down around the car with the sun threatening to peak around the clouds mirrored the way she felt. She wanted to cry and smile all at the same time.

Tika’s four-year-old daughter, Serenity, came into view of the camera, a smile on her sun kissed brown skin. Her dimples looked like two wells on her chubby cheeks. She twirled one time in her floral print romper then leaned down to fix the straps of her gold sandals.

“Is that my baby?” Tika asked loudly. “Is that my babv slayin’ like that? With her baby hairs poppin’?”

Serenity giggled as she put her hands on her knees and cocked her little head to the side. “Who else but me, mama. I’m flawless.” She pretended to whip her hair, which was secure at the top of her head in a neat bun.

The video came to an end with Serenity doing her best Beyoncé moves. She was Serenity’s favorite singer so much so Tika made sure to take her daughter to any concert she could and bought her memorabilia as well.

Tika started to go through the pictures they had taken that day. She remembered that day clearly. They were headed off to a summer pool party one of Tika’s friends was having for the kids. If it was one thing Serenity had gotten from her mama, it was her love of photography. She took pictures of any and everything she could. Serenity’s little imagination had knew no bounds just as her mama’s.

The sound of someone laying on their horn snapped Tika’s attention from her phone to her rearview mirror to see the person honking at her. The smile on her face replaced with a scowl, even if she was holding up the line they didn’t need to honk at her like that. She put her car in drive still staring in the mirror wanting badly to flip them the bird. It was one thing she didn’t miss about while she was on leave from the company, some of the rude people she called co-workers. Her time was just as valuable as theirs.

After a year of being gone, things felt a little foreign to Tika. She couldn’t lie though and say it didn’t feel good to be back. Even though she didn’t want as much time as the company had given her off, she was thankful for it. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to make it back in the two months she had originally asked for versus the year they gave her. What’s more, she didn’t think she would still have a job. Yet here she is, backstage at Smackdown Live in Toledo, Ohio. The company, mainly Shane, fought with her to wait till the Smackdown after Blacklash to return instead of the actual pay per view. He didn’t want her to be overwhelmed. She was still a bit apprehensive about being so far from home but she knew she needed to be strong and have faith.

No one seemed to take notice in her being there, which she preferred. She moved in silence through the bright, buzzing backstage area. All Tika wanted to do was make it to her area so she could unpack her bag and start snapping pictures.

“You didn’t tell me you were here, Ti.”

The voice brought her smile back. Tika acted like she didn’t hear them, pretending to search her camera bag for lenses she didn’t need. “You hear me, girl. I know you do.” Suddenly there were arms around her waist, lifting her off the ground making her laugh louder than she should have.

“Let me go, Trin,” she laughed trying to wiggle from her grasp. “We’re in public. Put me down, you’re being extra.”

“Oh, I’m extra,” Trinity asked setting her down. “I’m extra because a certain someone didn’t tell their favorite oldest cousin they were back.”

Trinity gave Tika a fake smile to combat the smirk on younger woman’s face. In her rush to get everything packed and ready for her flight from Orlando, Florida to Toledo, Tika had forgotten to let her cousin know she was returning to work. Their relationship was much more like sisters and best friends. If someone didn’t know them, they would swear they were sisters. Trinity being the more eccentric sister with the bright hair and make-up where as Tika was the tamer one. She liked to keep things simple, natural for the most part and fun.

“First, you’re my only cousin. Second, I’m sorry. I was overwhelmed trying to get everything together for the trip.”

Trinity eyed her for a second as if debating whether she believed her or not. “Mmhm. So how you holdin’ up, Ti?”

“I’m fine, I’m good.”

“If you’re not, you know you can tell me right?” Trinity pulled her into a small hug, resting her head against Tika’s head, lovingly. She appreciated her cousin wanting to check up on her but she didn’t want to talk about any of it. Finally getting to a point where she could leave her house without crying, Tika didn’t want to make any steps backwards. If she did, she knew the result wouldn’t be good for her.

“Enough about me though. What about you, champ? Winning in our backyard, babe. That was everything.” The proud smile was unmistakable. To say Tika was proud would be an understatement. She always knew Trinity would get her WrestleMania moment, her only regret is that she missed it.

Trinity smiled bashfully, ignoring the people moving around them trying to get things ready for the show. Tika noticed and moved them to the other part of the hallway, trying to get out of the way.

“It was amazing. I felt so much love, I didn’t think the people would really be happy I won. It was a shocker.”

“Girl, please.” Tika shooed her playfully. “With all that shaking and flipping you did. Who wouldn’t love you? I was looking at you tryna figure out if that was my big cousin out there slayin’.”

They bumped shoulders as they laughed loudly earning looks from the people around them to which they gave them nasty glares. When they were together, it was loud and everyone had a good time. And if anyone wasn’t having a good time then they could leave as Trinity would always say.

“Come on, I know Jon and Josh wanna see you. They’ve been talkin’ about you since we last saw you in March.”

Trinity was never one to ask anything. The words that came out of her mouth, usually came out in a demand. This time was no difference. Tika gave a fleeting glance as Trinity drug her away holding onto her hand tightly. As they passed throngs of people, their co-workers, they attempted to speak to Tika but Trinity was not slowing down. Instead of a proper conversation, Tika gave them small waves and apologetic smiles.

When they entered the large, open locker room, the room got louder. There was an up roar of cheers, shit talking and laughing. Just what Tika had missed. Watching Austin record for his gaming channel, especially the competitions were pure entertainment. Kofi and E sat in front of the monitors Austin had set up on the table playing UFC. It must have been for the tournament he saw Jon going on and on about on Twitter. Jon, his brother Josh, Antonio and AJ stood around the trio, as spectators and commentators. Trinity bumped shoulders with Jon, he turned around prepared to pop her arm until his eyes landed on me.

“Oh snap! Lil Tiki torch in the house,” he yelled draping his arms around her. His hug swallowed her leaving her no choice but to bury her face in his chest until he was ready to let her go. Tika couldn’t help but laugh at how affectionate he always seemed to be. His outburst had caught the attention of the other males in the room.

“We’ve got the baddest woman in the land with a camera in her hand, Miss Tika Harris” Austin roared looking into the camera. A round of ‘oooh’ emanated from E and Kofi at his rhyme.

“How you doin’, love?” Josh asked pulling her away from his brother’s arms into his. “I’m alright. No worries.” Josh was the calmer twin. He didn’t need to be loud all the time like his older brother. Then again, he could get just as loud if need be. Austin and Antonio gave her quick squeezes then returned to the game play.

“Long time, no see, darlin’.”

“Hi to you too, AJ.”

Tika kept her head forward staring at the screens in front of her not wanting their interaction to be caught on the cameras. She knew that fans paid more attention to those in the background more than the ones right in front. The last thing she needed was marks ganging up on her and sending mean tweets.

His eyes bore into the side of her face. The baby blues were locked in, he didn’t care about the presence of a Austin’s cameras. “Your thumbs don’t look broke to me.”

“What,” she asked with a slight laugh.

“I mean I figured you weren’t textin’ cause your thumbs were broken,” he sighed folding his arms across his chest. “But I see they’re just fine.”

Tika didn’t feel like getting into this conversation while they were in ear shot of everyone else and the camera. The last thing she needed was for someone to make a big deal out of them talking. She’s seen first hands what false accusations can do to someone’s career in this company especially a female. With a nudge to Trinity’s arm, Tika left the locker room already knowing AJ would be right behind her shortly. While she wondered down the hallway towards the large stack of crates she scrolled through the notifications on her phone. There were mainly texts from her parents, especially her mom, who wanted to know how everything was going and how she was doing. The rest were a few friend, who after a year still didn’t get that she didn’t want to constantly relive it all and didn’t want their handouts.

She felt his presence before she saw him. AJ approached her just as she made it to the crates. He lifted her by her hips onto the crates so that he could get a good look at her.

“What is with you wrestlers and picking people up?” She sat her phone beside her on the cart, giving AJ her full attention. In the year that she had been gone, he had let his hair grow longer than what she remembered. His beard was a lot fuller now. Both framed his face, bringing out his eyes even more. “It’s a part of the occupation. Didn’t get these muscles from liftin’ remotes,” he shrugged. A year later and still the same person.

“I’m sorry for not returning your calls and texts. I’m tryna do better now, AJ.”

“Yeah well I accept your apology this time. But next time,” he warned wagging his index finger in Tika’s face. She laughed pushing his finger from her face.

She and AJ had become good friends upon him coming into the company back in 2016. He had such a good spirit, she couldn’t ignore him for long. No matter how hard she tried to ignore him greeting her so nicely every time he saw her or the small conversations and jokes he made when they found themselves near each other with time to kill. Some of the men that worked for the company tried to give off this vibe that they were good people but in reality, they were assholes. But AJ was different, he was the person he put out for others to see.

“No but really. How you holdin’ up, kid?”

“Kid?” She scoffed at the name. “I’m a grown woman, AJ. Not a kid. I told you about that name before.”

“You’re a kid to me. A sassy one.”

“Grown. Woman.” She spoke slowly maintaining eye contact with him. A smile graced his lips as he waved her off playfully. “Whatever, kid or grown woman. How you holdin’ up?”

“I’m fine. Taking it day by day.”

AJ was the first person to find her after it initially happened. She was standing in the lobby of the hotel with Trinity, the twins and some of their other co-workers debating on plans when she got a phone call from her mom. They were in New York for Raw, it was a month before the brand split. She would never forget how her mom sounded on the other end of the phone. For a moment, she felt like she was paralyzed but then she was tripping over herself repeating that she was coming home to her mom before hanging up. The hallway that she had snuck off to was clear, the only noises around her was the dinging from the nearby elevator bank.

All she remembered was AJ helping her from the floor, trying to ask her what’s wrong. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t bring herself to repeat what her mom had told her, she didn’t want to make any assumptions and saying it out loud would make her do just that. For a few minutes, all she could do was cry. She sobbed quietly into his chest, something she wouldn’t be able to do when she reached Orlando. The world around her felt as though it had come to a stand still. She rememberedbletting him know that something was wrong with her daughter and she needed to get home.

AJ stayed with her until Trinity spoke with her aunt, Tika’s mom, to find out what exactly was happening. Tika clung to him, her head was throbbing but she couldn’t stop her tears. He hated to see her upset, he had never seen her do anything but smile, laugh and occasionally glare.

“You’re thinking about it. Don’t do that.” Her voice was soft and sweet. She smiled but AJ saw the sadness behind the smile on her smile. “Thinking about it won’t change it, AJ. I learned that the hard way.”

AJ opened his mouth to speak but Austin yelling out his name cut him off. I shooed him away when he tried to keep talking. Getting AJ away from the whole conversation was for the best. It was part of the reason Tika had stopped responding to his texts. AJ was way more comfortable talking about it than she was. It didn’t upset her that he wanted to talk about it, it upset her that at some point she was comfortable talking about it with him. She just didn’t think she was ready and here it is a year later.

Grabbing her phone, Tika hopped down to go back to her camera so she could do test shots. On the way, she glanced at her phone for the time, her lock screen catching her eye instead. The picture put a smile on her face, most of the time it’s what kept her going. The person she was doing everything for.

#aj styles #aj styles/oc #tika sumpter #naomi #Golden Hearts #my work #masterlist

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houseofvans · 7 years

Photo

Art School | Q&A with Luke Pelletier (LA)

Hawaiian shirts, toucans, palm trees, tiki drinks, alligators, and panthers are just a few of the characters you’ll find in Los Angeles based artist and musician Luke Pelletier’s works. Creating fun, bold, and brightly colored scenes from an imagined paradise, Luke has done collaborations with Valley Cruise Press, Mike Vallely, and most recently with Darkstar skateboards. We’re excited to have him in our Art School Q&A where we talk about his recent trip to Milan, his band The See Ya Laters, and his process and approach to painting.

Portrait by Broza Photo

Introduce yourself I’m Luke Pelletier. I live in Los Angeles, California. I make a lot of paintings, write a few songs, take some pictures, design graphics, and make a bunch of art.

What’s your art background? Where did you attend art school? And how much would you say you learned through practice. I grew up playing in bands. And I always did all of our flyer and shirt designs. That was sort of my introduction to art. Or it was the first time I showed it to anybody. Then I went to The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Then I started making a lot of graphics for skate/surf brands and I started showing in LA. The next thing I knew, I moved out here. It’s been great! I’ve learned a lot! I constantly feel like I’m growing just because I make a lot of stuff. I feel like I’m still “figuring out” how to paint. haha Talk about your process. How do you begin a new painting / piece? How do you think it has changed from when you started painting a few years back and now? What helped you evolve your techniques? It’s usually pretty organic. I work in a lot of different mediums and on a lot of different projects at one time. So if I’m working on a floral pattern for a hawaiin shirt, I might paint that fabric in one of my paintings. Then I might work on a song while the paint is drying. Those lyrics might end up on a painting. Or sometimes I just get high and don’t work at all. haha As far as how my process has changed, I think I’ve just gotten it mored dialed in. I’ve always done a ton of different things at once, but I wasn’t always good at managing my time. So my earlier work was a lot more rushed. I also just take it a little more seriously in general. I think just working helped me evolve. If you make heaps of paintings, you’ll get better at painting and a little more articulate.

In your paintings, you have a lot of reoccurring motifs and images such as patterns, palm trees, cocktail and tiki inspired imagery. What is it that interests you so much and what do they mean to you in your work? I think about a lot of my imagery like a vocabulary. I can reorganize it and the painting can mean something else, or look completely different. As far as what I put in my paintings, It’s usually something I’m interested in. It’s always hard to articulate why you like the things you like because you can like some things for different reasons. Sometimes it’s purely formal. Sometimes it’s because the object has a specific meaning to me. And some of it just came from when I was younger. It could be a floral pattern I remember from a family vacation years ago.

You recently returned from an art show in Milan. Can you tell us a little about what the show was about, how it came about and your favorite part of that trip? It was a ton of fun! My buddy Renato was asked by Antonio Colombo to curated a show with me and T.L. Solien. I had been making work with no real plan to show any of it. So I already had a bunch of stuff to send out there. It was so great to go out there! The food was rad! and the Vatican was insane!

What are some of your favorite art tools and why? Are you looking to try anything out any new mediums? Mostly I use acrylic paint and canvas. I just started painting on panel. I love it! I just made a new sculpture today. And I’m thinking about getting into making some carved wood sculptures.

You’ve done a lot of collaborations over the years. What has been your favorite part of collaborations and what are the drawbacks if any? What would your dream collaboration be like? Honestly, I love doing collaborations! With people and brands. I collaborate with Kristen Liu-Wong all the time. We’re actually working on a collab show for 2018. It’s cool working with her because she’s so good at what she does that I just end up learning a ton. I’d really like to collab with a pontoon boat company. It’d be tight to trick one out. Name your current top 5 artists past and contemporary. This always changes haha H.C. WestermannJim Nutt Charles Bukowski Dwight Yoakam Craig Stecyk What’s a misconception about being an artist that you think people might not be aware of? Did you have any of your own when starting out? I didn’t realize it’s so much work. The pay is super inconsistent, but I sort of expected that, but I had no idea how many emails you have to respond to. It’s the worst. They never stop coming. and they’re always flagged as ***URGENT***. I always end up pitching ideas and signing contracts while I’m stoned. Yeah. Emails suck.

What are your thoughts about the contemporary art world? The good, the bad, and the ugly? Honestly, It’s great! There are so many different communities in the art world. The one that I’m currently living and working in is super fun! The art shows are great and everyone is always working on something new. It keeps you energized. Plus the beer is usually free.

What are your all time favorite Vans? If you were able to decorate a pair, how would you design it? I really like the TNT SG. Those are the ones I always buy. I’d do em all white with gum soles. and art on the sole of the shoe!

You not only do art, but you enjoy playing music as well. Can you tell us a little about your band and what about it you enjoy that gives you a different satisfaction than let say making art or having an art show? My band is on hiatus right now because we don’t live together anymore, but that’s always fun. It’s just cool to run through songs with the boys and write new ones. I couldn’t imagine not writing songs. I just like playing with words. It’s a lot more stream of conciousness than my art is. It’s just a whole different outlet. I’ve actually started putting out some solo music recently. I’m just putting out singles as I record them.

You can check it out here: https://lukepelletier.bandcamp.com/

What type of advice would you give to folks who maybe saw your stuff on the internet and decided they wanted to become an artist? Do it! Making art is fun.

What do you have coming up for the rest of 2017 that you can share with us? Nothing really! I’m trying to keep my schedule clear for a bit so I can focus on making some new work. I’ll definitely be trying to make more sculptures this year!

Follow Luke Pelletier Website: https://www.lukepelletier.com Instagram: https://www.lukepelletier.com/instagram/ Tumblr: http://lukepelletier.tumblr.com

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