#acknowledge how he seems to prioritize his friends over himself??

[wacky-theater-kids]

why does no one understand lemon cookie frmo cookie run like i do

[sunandmoonseisai]

When it comes to broppy relationship in the movies, I think trolls world tour is the weakest in that department.

First movie broppy has this sort of implied history. Poppy has apparently tried to befriend branch for a long time, and even after everyone has given up on him, poppy still treat him warmly. And we know that despite his rude and cruel behavior, branch did apreciate it deep down. It's easy to imagine that they got to know each other a little bit and one of the reason why poppy is still trying to be his friend is because branch showed her a part of himself that he hide to everyone else. What poppy say in the last movie, "I've been by your side from the moment we meet. And you've been by mine! " seems to confirm this. Even if you ignore this headcanons, their contracting personalities and the way they bounce off each other, coupled with the progressing tenderness of their relationship make for a really cute and compelling dynamic.

Then the second movie roll around, branch's feelings are comfirmed but there's something wrong. Here's the thing. The progression of their relationship is entirely on branch's side. We never get a hint of what poppy think of branch. It's all about branch and her feelings for her. I know poppy is supposed to be very self-absorbed and it's something she has to learn from but her feelings for branch just seems kind of hollow when she only acknowledge him to dismiss his worries and criticize him. She just has this realization after their fight that doesn't feel earned at all. Poppy reciprocating branch's feelings *doesn't feel earned at all *.

But then, trolls holiday in harmony came out, and this year, trolls band together. We get to see how our trolls behave as a couple.

And it's so

Fucking

Cute

They bounce off each other like before but in a much more softer way. Branch gently calm down poppy when she's over ecstatic. Branch's realism balance out poppy's optimism. Even with poppy's mind going all over the place, she pay attention to branch and you have the feeling that she's helping him through trauma and gaining self esteem. Poppy prioritize branch feelings and branch adore poppy for her energy and infectious happiness. It feels like a natural progression of their first movie self, with a much softer branch.

Speaking of branch, I think that's the reason why their dynamic in the second movie was so off. Branch wasn't the sarcastic grump anymore and the writers struggled to find their dynamic. Well, I think they nailed it now. He isn't the grump to her sunshine anymore, he's the calm romantic to her hyperactive affection.

[sepublic]

Man I really do wish we had an episode about Hunter and King bonding over being the last of their kind and realizing their belief over being a special guy was a lie, as was their entire life; It’s fitting for King of all people to remind Luz that people will continue to believe lies because they don’t want to believe their whole life is a lie, in the same episode as Hunter having this revelation.

Plus there’s the dynamic in King being an actual Titan and Hunter being told the Titan had plans for him, and King deciding he’s just some guy and Hunter breaking away from this worship mentality of the Titan. Bonus points if we get Lilith therapy as the B-plot. Like, King shouldn’t have to have an episode showing how he’s like Hunter for fans to appreciate the same traits in another character who’s more important, but still.

That gets me to how Hunter’s storylines in S2 are about his similarities with other characters, interestingly enough; The exceptions are Hollow Mind except maybe you could say something about the Grimwalker revelation haha, more on that in a bit… And some other appearances. But in terms of personal storylines and not just tagging along? Hunter’s got parallels with everyone, I always found him most interesting in these episodes because it also shed further light and appreciation on the characters Hunter bounces off of.

And it’s ironic? He’s made to be a clone, to be like someone else, and his storylines in S2 are about how he’s like other people. But the difference is Hunter choosing to notice and acknowledge these similarities in strangers not connected to him and/or vice-versa, to relate to the out-group rather than be a witch hunter as was the intention.

(I also think it’s worth noting that because of the shortening, the show had to be really efficient with its time, and prioritize wrapping up what it already had; Intertwining Hunter’s storylines with a pre-established character is a clever way to develop both in a single A-plot, and also leads to this meta of course. And if Eda’s Requiem was the cut-off point, then I’ve noticed there’s a difference in how Hunter’s plot with Luz takes up the whole episode, but his storylines with characters past that threshold also have to co-exist with a B-plot, interesting!)

Plus in S3, we do see Hunter acknowledge the clone baggage with a storyline about being himself no matter what similarities there are, and his final storyline seems anti-Belos? In that he’s not going to let the death of a loved one (perceived in Belos’ case) be an excuse to be bitter to others offering help, hell he’ll even make it about those friends too; He truly shows he is very much NOT his uncle no matter what circumstances they may share, even the most unpleasant ones that could be an ‘excuse’.

So S2 for Hunter is about how he’s like others (while still having agency on his end), and S3 is how he isn’t, how he’s his own person. And between these it’s no wonder his takeaway from Caleb is being ambivalent about what similarities they have or not because he’s no longer insecure about his own identity or status as a clone, he is who he is and that’s all that matters.

The parallels are familial and not in a clone sense, and ultimately just symbolic and on a meta level, not in-universe. I think Hunter wouldn’t mind having good things in common with someone else, because it means he has them; It’s what led Hunter to his friends after all. He didn’t even seem to care about the revelation that Caleb was actually open to witches, he’d already resolved that.

And the irony is that for all his cloning, Belos was really trying to make Hunter unlike Caleb, because he didn’t really want Caleb either he wanted an idea of his brother. So Hunter being like Caleb but still his own person with his own palisman is great, as is the resemblances being largely unconscious; Because Hunter was never expected to know Caleb beyond the bare minimum, he doesn’t know he was also a woodcarver and so that fact can never bother Hunter as a Palisman carver, especially with his normalness about the subject. The clone status is treated like any other blood relation. Maybe that’s the narrative reason why Hunter never learns much.

(Reminds me of that Steven Universe episode where Steven worries about liberated gems still playing into their designated roles when they should be free of that, only to understand that it doesn’t matter if they’re like those things or not, the point is that they have the agency and free will to be otherwise if they choose to, plus some need space and time to acclimate to experimenting.)

[becomingpart2]

Saw your post about the SA only making Spike the focus, and I agree. What do you think of the argument that it *was* about Buffy because it was about how she could forgive and inspire people to better themselves, and in the end Buffy saved the world by saving Spike and allowing him to be a Champion? And that it totally made sense for Buffy because she was compassionate (forgave Willow for trying to end the world) and acted the same towards Angel in S3, separated him from his soulless self and took care of him?

The only episode that compares in focusing on Angel and his psyche is Amends, as opposed to every other interaction between Spike and Buffy in Season Seven.

Hi, sorry this took so long.

So tbh, this is one of the first times I'm seeing this argument because it's just not common in the buffy circles I'm in. I'm actually a bit shocked that it is even an argument that exists and that is being used in some kind of attempt at justifying or even defending the terrible way the show handled the abuse buffy suffered.

I'm aware that much of the show's idea of what it means to be a hero lies in the idea of perservering despite everything, taking the punches life throws at you and continuing despite it all. Being kind and compassionate through it all because that's the hero's responsiblity, etc. But I don't think you can make that argument when it comes to gendered abuse, especially for a show that calls itself "feminist". It's frankly the opposite of that, it's offensive and misogynistic to the core.

Women are already educated since birth to prioritize other people's needs and comfort, especially men's, over their own. They're made to swallow their pain, their suffering for the comfort of the others, to not "disturb the peace" of their environment, to not make things uncomfortable, to not be "selfish". That is a huge component of patriarchy, whether that is about being a good mother and a good wife or to more extreme cases like being silent about your own abuse. And when women do talk about their abuse, that's usually accompanied by the overanalyzing of their every action and victim blaming; they did something to "earn" getting abused. You know, like Buffy in S6.

So no, I don't think buffy "forgiving" her would-be rapist simply because he's got a soul now is a good storytelling point by any mark. And that's made even worse by the fact she can't really forgive him because the show didn't want to acknowledge it again.

Faith, Angel and Willow, for instance, all had their wrongdoings acknowledged in the text to some extend: Faith went to prison, Willow goes to England and is afraid to use her powers again and Angel is isolated from the rest of the scoobies and at one point even tries to kill himself. Spike gets a soul in an ambiguous way where he makes it seem like he's going to use it to "punish" buffy for rejecting him and then goes back to sunnydale where buffy procedes to protect and take care of him after learning he's got a soul "for her", something that she keeps doing even after he proves himself a danger to her friends and family, even after he starts killing again. So I don't think her "forgiving" him is really comparable to the other instances in the show even if we might think some of them "got off easily" too.

(I think you can only make that argument for Willow, but to me what is different about her is that Willow was not a demon -- she's a human being and that separates her from the other villains. Even though she's killed someone, buffy's not a cop, it's not her job to bring "justice" in that sense, so I think her reaction is understandable).

I'm not really sure I'd say buffy completely separates angel and angelus, she always calls him "angel" even when he's soulless. I think her reaction in Amends is mainly about stopping him from killing himself and I believe she'd do that for anyone. She obviously still loves him and has conflicted feelings about what happened but I never get the impression that what he did to her is being swept under a rug -- they both very much acknowledge the damage that he's caused and how much he hurt her. And again, angel suffers the consequences of that by being isolated from the group, things are never really the same for them after S2, even though they try to lead a somewhat normal relationship after a lot of resistence. It's different from spike and buffy where their "relationship" literally blossoms from the abuse or better yet from pretending the abuse didn't happen.

I wouldn't be opposed to Buffy forgiving spike if that was actually an arc in the show but it wasn't. You can't have an arc about forgiveness when you can't even talk about what happened, when you can't even admit there was someone who was clearly in the wrong, someone who took advantage of the other person and hurt them the most, instead of vague allusions and conversations about "mutual abuse" (if you subscribe to the idea of mutual abuse, you're admitting Buffy did something to earn it). Amends was very explicit -- it was about the importance of keeping fighting and striving to do good even when you think of yourself as a lost cause because of the bad things you did. Your past doesn't define you, you can always choose to do better, to be better.

[nitaekook]

Give You Love

by nitaekook | 4/? | NR | 17,296

Akaashi invites Bokuto over to study, but the evening takes on a more complicated tone when Bokuto joins his family for dinner. Tensions rise as Akaashi’s parents subtly express disapproval of volleyball, putting pressure on Akaashi to prioritize academics. Bokuto navigates the awkward dinner with unexpected ease, supporting Akaashi through the underlying tension. Despite Bokuto’s lighthearted attitude, Akaashi is left reflecting on the differences between his own family’s rigid expectations and Bokuto’s easygoing nature. As the night wears on, both friends begin to sense that their relationship may be evolving into something deeper.

-

Chapter 4 - Hidden Currents

Akaashi stood in front of the mirror, adjusting the collar of his shirt for what felt like the hundredth time. His reflection stared back at him, calm and composed on the surface, but beneath that façade was a churning sea of nerves. Today was important. More important than any practice or tournament. Bokuto was coming over to study.

But it wasn’t just the studying that had him feeling on edge. No, it was dinner. Akaashi had known it would come eventually—introducing Bokuto to his parents, facing the inevitable scrutiny that would follow. He hadn’t told them much about volleyball since joining the team. In fact, he had avoided the topic entirely, choosing to slip home late in the evenings, hoping that the sound of clattering dishes and murmured conversations would mask his late returns. But tonight, there would be no hiding. His parents would see him with Bokuto, and there was no telling how they would react.

“Keiji, your friend is here!” his sister’s voice echoed from downstairs.

He sighed, giving himself one last look before heading down the stairs, his heart pounding with every step. When he reached the bottom, Bokuto stood in the entryway, his usual wide grin plastered on his face, looking completely at ease. He was dressed casually, a light jacket over his school uniform, and his energy seemed to fill the room as soon as he entered.

“Kaashi!” Bokuto greeted brightly, waving as if they hadn’t seen each other earlier that day. His enthusiasm was contagious, and Akaashi couldn’t help but smile, even though his nerves were still very much present.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi replied, his voice quieter than usual. “Thanks for coming.”

Bokuto waved him off. “Of course! We’ve got to get those science scores up, right?” He clapped a hand on Akaashi’s shoulder, completely oblivious to the tension in the air.

Akaashi’s eyes darted toward the dining room, where the faint sounds of his parents preparing dinner could be heard. His father’s voice was low and steady, his mother’s softer but still firm. They weren’t strict, not in the traditional sense, but they had expectations—unspoken rules about academics, success, and appearances. Volleyball wasn’t part of that plan.

They stepped into the dining room, and Akaashi’s mother looked up first, her expression unreadable. His father followed suit, giving a small nod in acknowledgment of Bokuto’s presence.

Bokuto smiled as he took in the room, though he could already feel the difference between Akaashi’s home and his own. The atmosphere here was quiet, almost… tense. His own family was always loud at dinner, full of laughter, teasing, and conversations that spilled over each other. But here? It was stiff. Like a play rehearsed too many times.

“This is Bokuto Koutarou,” Akaashi said, gesturing to him. “He’s… a teammate. From volleyball.”

Bokuto’s smile widened at the mention of volleyball, but he could feel the tension radiating from Akaashi beside him. The shift in the air was subtle, but Bokuto’s instincts picked it up immediately—there was something unspoken between Akaashi and his parents about volleyball, something that made his friend uncomfortable.

“Oh, I wasn’t aware you were still participating in that,” Akaashi’s father said, his voice carrying a slight edge of disapproval that Bokuto didn’t miss.

Bokuto frowned internally, though he didn’t show it. “Still participating?” he thought, confused by the tone. In his family, volleyball was a big deal—something to celebrate and be proud of. But here, it felt like it was something Akaashi had to hide.

Akaashi swallowed, his voice even but tense. “Yes. I’ve been going to practice after school.”

Bokuto could sense the discomfort in his friend’s posture. Akaashi rarely talked about his family, but now Bokuto was starting to understand why. This wasn’t like his house, where everyone shouted over each other, the energy high, playful. The air in the dining room felt… heavy.

His father’s eyes flicked to Bokuto, then back to Akaashi. “I hope this volleyball nonsense isn’t cutting into your studies. You know how important your academics are.”

Nonsense? The word hit Bokuto like a spike blocked at the net. He blinked, surprised at the dismissive tone. Volleyball wasn’t nonsense—it was his life. And he knew Akaashi was just as serious about it, even if he wasn’t as loud about it as Bokuto was.

But before Bokuto could let his frustration show, he caught Akaashi’s nervous glance. That was all it took to calm him down. Instead of snapping back, Bokuto straightened his posture, letting his usual grin soften into something more respectful. He had to handle this carefully.

“Don’t worry, sir,” Bokuto said, keeping his voice polite but firm. “Akaashi’s doing really well in school. We’re actually here to study tonight, to make sure he’s on track for his exams.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bokuto saw Akaashi blink in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected him to answer so smoothly. Bokuto wasn’t always the best with words, but he could read situations when he needed to. And right now, Akaashi needed him to help keep the peace.

Akaashi’s mother gave a small smile at Bokuto’s words, clearly appreciating his politeness. “That’s good to hear,” she said, her tone lighter than her husband’s. “It’s always nice to see friends supporting each other in their studies.”

Bokuto nodded, feeling a little more at ease now that the conversation had smoothed out. But as they all sat down for dinner, the unease lingered. The conversation was… different. Stilted, like a classroom discussion rather than a meal. His own family dinners were messy, noisy affairs, with his sisters teasing him and his mom reminding him to eat more vegetables. This felt more like an interview.

The conversation dragged on, a series of polite questions from his parents that only served to deepen the tension in Akaashi’s chest. His father occasionally asked Bokuto about school or his plans for the future, while his mother made polite comments about the food or their upcoming exams. Bokuto, to his credit, navigated it all perfectly, answering each question with a warmth that managed to ease some of the discomfort.

But then his father brought up volleyball again, and Akaashi braced himself.

“It’s all well and good that you’re playing sports,” his father said, turning his attention back to Akaashi, “but I hope you’re not getting too caught up in it. After all, it’s just a game. It’s not going to take you anywhere.”

Akaashi stiffened, the words hitting him like a physical blow. His father’s words weren’t just dismissive—they were condescending. He kept his eyes on his plate, resisting the urge to argue. But before he could say anything, Bokuto jumped in, once again saving him from having to respond.

Bokuto felt a flash of irritation at the way Akaashi’s father brushed volleyball aside, but he didn’t let it show. He was used to people not understanding the sport’s importance, but to hear someone say it wasn’t going to take Akaashi anywhere? That rubbed him the wrong way.

But instead of snapping back, Bokuto took a breath, keeping his voice respectful but firm. “Actually, sir,” he said, with a hint of pride, “volleyball can open a lot of doors. There are scholarships and career opportunities in the sport. It’s not just a game—it teaches discipline, teamwork, and perseverance. Things that help in all aspects of life.”

For a moment, there was silence. Bokuto could feel Akaashi tense beside him, but he kept his focus on Akaashi’s father, who looked slightly taken aback by the response. There was a pause, and Bokuto wondered if he had overstepped, but then Akaashi’s father nodded, albeit slowly.

“I see,” he said, his voice neutral. “Well, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your studies.”

Bokuto’s shoulders relaxed a little, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was off. It wasn’t just about volleyball. There was something more here—something unspoken but heavy. He glanced at Akaashi, who gave him a small, grateful smile, but Bokuto could tell his friend wasn’t completely at ease.

The rest of the dinner went by in stilted conversation. Akaashi’s mother kept asking polite, safe questions, but the unease never quite left the room. Then, near the end of the meal, Akaashi’s father spoke again, his tone casual, but the words made Bokuto’s brow furrow.

“You know, Akaashi,” his father said, as if offering advice, “as you move forward in life, it’s important to keep your priorities straight. Focus on your academics, your career, and eventually finding a good woman to marry. Someone who compliments you and comes from a good family. We all want what’s best for you.”

Bokuto blinked, glancing at Akaashi, whose grip on his chopsticks tightened just slightly. There was nothing overtly wrong with the statement, but something about the way it was said… rubbed Bokuto the wrong way. It felt like there was an implication there, something Akaashi wasn’t comfortable with.

Bokuto wasn’t sure if it was his place to say anything, but the comment lingered in his mind. Marriage? It felt so distant, so disconnected from everything they were focused on now—volleyball, school, just being teenagers. Why was Akaashi’s dad bringing it up so seriously?

Akaashi only nodded stiffly, offering no response, and the conversation quickly moved on, but Bokuto couldn’t shake the tension that had settled over the table. Something about the way Akaashi had reacted told him this wasn’t the first time he’d heard something like that.

-

After dinner, they retreated to Akaashi’s room, their steps light as they climbed the stairs. As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, Akaashi let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His body sagged slightly, the tension from the dinner finally ebbing away now that they were out of earshot.

“I’m sorry about that,” Akaashi muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “My parents… they’re not very supportive of volleyball.”

Bokuto, already rifling through his bag, shook his head and waved him off. “It’s fine, Kaashi! Really. I get it. Parents worry about stuff like that.”

But Akaashi wasn’t so sure. His parents’ concerns went beyond normal worry. There was always something unspoken, a rigidness in their expectations that weighed on him, heavier than he wanted to admit. He could tell by the furrow in Bokuto’s brow that he had noticed the tension too, even if he didn’t fully grasp the undercurrents that had rippled beneath the surface of their dinner conversation.

He glanced at Bokuto—who was now setting up his textbooks and notes on Akaashi’s desk—and found himself wondering what kind of family dinners Bokuto was used to. He imagined they were loud and boisterous, full of teasing and laughter, with no looming pressure to be perfect. Akaashi had heard stories from Bokuto about his sisters and their lively home, but seeing Bokuto handle the strained atmosphere tonight made him realize just how different their worlds were.

Bokuto’s smile hadn’t faltered once through the whole meal. He had navigated the conversation with such ease, even when Akaashi’s father had subtly undermined the value of volleyball. How did he do it? Akaashi wondered. How could Bokuto-san be so unfazed by things that weighed so heavily on him?

“You handled that really well,” Akaashi said after a moment, his voice quieter, almost hesitant.

Bokuto looked up, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“The way you talked to my parents,” Akaashi clarified. “You… understood the situation.”

Bokuto blinked, then shrugged with a small grin, scratching the back of his head. “Well, I kinda figured they wouldn’t be too thrilled about volleyball, so I just tried to show them how it’s more than just a game.” He paused, looking a little sheepish. “I didn’t wanna make things harder for you.”

Akaashi stared at him for a moment, something warm and unfamiliar curling in his chest. It hit him again, just as it had during dinner—Bokuto wasn’t just the loud, energetic person everyone saw on the surface. He was thoughtful. He cared about the people around him, even if he didn’t always show it in the most conventional ways. He had known exactly how to navigate his parents’ rigid expectations, even without knowing the full story.

“Thanks,” Akaashi said softly, sitting down beside him at the desk, his mind still whirling with thoughts he couldn’t quite name.

“No problem,” Bokuto replied, flashing him a grin before diving into their study materials. “Now, let’s get you ready to ace that science exam!”

Akaashi let out a quiet breath, grateful for Bokuto’s shift back to their usual banter. For now, at least, they could leave the tension of the dinner behind them.

As they started going over the study materials, Bokuto fell into an easy rhythm, his explanations clear and concise, despite the usual scatterbrained persona he carried on the volleyball court. He made complicated concepts seem simple, breaking down Akaashi’s science notes with a precision that made Akaashi feel more confident with each passing minute.

But even as they worked, Akaashi couldn’t fully focus. His thoughts kept drifting back to the dinner table, to the quiet weight of his father’s expectations, and then to Bokuto, who seemed to move through the world with a lightness Akaashi envied. He had noticed the differences before, of course, but tonight it was more pronounced. Bokuto’s family felt like a warm, open place, a place where he could be exactly who he was without constantly feeling judged or second-guessed. Akaashi’s home wasn’t like that.

Not that his parents were cruel—they weren’t. But everything here felt measured, planned, and boxed into narrow definitions of success. Academics were always at the forefront, and anything outside of that was a distraction, something to be tolerated at best, dismissed at worst. His father’s comment about eventually marrying a woman who came from a “good family” had only solidified that sense of confinement, like his life was already written out for him in neat, inflexible lines.

Bokuto, on the other hand, seemed completely free of that kind of pressure. Or if he wasn’t, he sure didn’t let it show.

From Bokuto’s side of the desk, he glanced over at Akaashi, noticing how quiet he had gotten. Bokuto had seen this look on his friend’s face before—a kind of inward pull, as if Akaashi’s thoughts were spiraling somewhere far away. He paused, watching him for a moment, sensing the subtle shift in the air.

Akaashi had been tense all night. Bokuto wasn’t great at reading into things like other people might be, but even he could feel that the dinner had been uncomfortable, like a conversation with a lot left unsaid. His family didn’t talk like that. They didn’t sit in silence or skirt around topics that felt heavy or awkward. If something needed to be said, it was said, even if it was messy. Bokuto was used to noise, to affection, to a warmth that Akaashi’s house seemed to lack.

“Kaashi?” Bokuto asked, his voice gentle, bringing Akaashi back to the present. “You okay?”

Akaashi blinked, his gaze refocusing on the textbook in front of him. “Yeah,” he replied, his voice steady despite the storm of thoughts in his head. “I’m fine.”

But Bokuto wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t the best at picking up on subtleties, but there was something different about Akaashi tonight—something quieter, more withdrawn. He could tell Akaashi was holding something back, though Bokuto couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

Still, he didn’t push. Instead, he nodded, giving Akaashi space to come back to the material, even as that nagging feeling stayed with him, wondering what exactly was weighing his friend down.

The sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway, and a moment later, Akaashi’s older sister, Emiko, appeared in the doorway. She leaned against the frame, her arms crossed over her chest and a curious look in her eyes.

“So,” she began, her gaze flicking between Akaashi and Bokuto, “studying, huh?”

Akaashi nodded, his expression neutral, though his mind was still whirling. “Yes. Studying.”

Emiko’s lips twitched, as if she were suppressing a smile. Her gaze lingered a little too long on Bokuto, her eyes narrowing slightly in that teasing, knowing way that only older sisters seemed to master. “Right. Just… studying.”

Akaashi frowned, sensing the underlying implication in her tone. There it was again—something unspoken, something sharp, hidden beneath her words.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Akaashi asked, his voice tight.

“Nothing,” Emiko replied innocently, though the teasing lilt in her voice was unmistakable. “Just making sure you’re both, you know… focused.”

Akaashi felt his face heat up, irritation and embarrassment swirling together. Before he could come up with a retort, Bokuto chimed in with his usual enthusiasm, completely unfazed.

“Don’t worry! We’re super focused! I’m helping Kaashi get ready for his science exam.”

Emiko raised an eyebrow, her gaze shifting to Bokuto. “Kaashi, huh?”

Akaashi’s stomach flipped, heat rushing to his face. He shot his sister a warning look, but she only smirked, clearly enjoying herself.

“Well, good luck with your studying,” she said, her voice light but her eyes sharp as she turned to leave. “And don’t forget—mom and dad like to check in, so… keep the door open.”

Akaashi’s face burned as she disappeared down the hall, and Bokuto let out a laugh, shaking his head as he turned back to the desk.

“She seems cool,” Bokuto said, oblivious to the implications that lingered between the lines of her teasing.

Akaashi sighed, rubbing his temples. “She’s… something.”

They returned to their study session, but the nagging feeling from before had returned, gnawing at the edges of Akaashi’s thoughts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that his sister had noticed something—something in the way he and Bokuto interacted, in the way they sat just a little too close, in the way they spoke to each other with a kind of familiarity that went beyond simple friendship.

Did she suspect something? No. There was nothing to suspect. They were just friends. Teammates. Nothing more.

But the uncertainty persisted, leaving Akaashi’s thoughts in a tangled mess as they worked through the rest of their notes. Every time Bokuto leaned in close to point out something in the textbook, Akaashi felt his heart race, his skin hyper-aware of the slight brush of Bokuto’s arm against his. It was just studying, but it didn’t feel like just studying.

And that was what unsettled him the most.

-

Later that night, after Akaashi had walked him to the door and the cool night air had enveloped him, Bokuto found himself more unsettled than usual. It wasn’t the science material—that had been easy enough to go through. No, it was something else that had weighed on him ever since dinner at Akaashi’s house. He had always known there were differences between his family and Akaashi’s, but tonight had put them into stark relief.

Bokuto wasn’t one to dwell on things, but the rigid atmosphere at the dinner table, the tension in Akaashi’s shoulders that hadn’t disappeared even after they retreated to his room, kept replaying in his mind. He had seen Akaashi tense before—on the court, sometimes, when a play wasn’t going well—but this felt different. More personal.

And Bokuto, for all his energy and enthusiasm, didn’t know how to help.

So, he did what he always did when something didn’t make sense to him: he turned to Konoha.

“Yo, Konoha!” Bokuto greeted the next morning as he slid into the seat next to his teammate before class started. His voice was a little quieter than usual, more serious. He didn’t feel like broadcasting this conversation to the whole classroom.

Konoha raised an eyebrow, looking over at Bokuto with a smirk. “What’s up, Bokuto? You look like you’ve got something on your mind. Don’t tell me you’re thinking too hard again—last time that happened, you almost fried your brain.”

Bokuto waved him off, his usual enthusiasm dimmed slightly. “No, no, it’s not like that.” He paused, frowning. “It’s about Kaashi.”

At that, Konoha’s expression shifted, his smirk softening into something more curious, almost concerned. “Akaashi? Did something happen?”

Bokuto scratched the back of his head, trying to find the right words. “Not really. I mean… we studied last night at his place, and everything was fine, but…” He trailed off, his brow furrowing. “It was weird, you know? His parents were super intense about school, and I just got this feeling that he’s under a lot of pressure. Like, more than I thought.”

Konoha hummed thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. “Yeah, I figured Akaashi’s family would be that type. All proper and academic. I can see why that might throw you off, considering your family’s… well, you know. Different.”

Bokuto nodded. “It’s not just that, though. I dunno… it just felt like he’s carrying more than he lets on. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell. His parents are pretty strict, and there was this moment during dinner where his dad mentioned something about him getting too caught up in volleyball.” Bokuto glanced at Konoha, guilt flickering across his face. “I just… I don’t want to make things harder for him.”

Konoha was silent for a moment, taking in what Bokuto had said. Finally, he let out a sigh and shook his head. “Look, Bokuto, Akaashi’s not the type to let anyone—or anything—get in the way of his responsibilities. He’s a smart guy. If he’s feeling pressured, it’s not because of volleyball. It’s probably just the weight of his family’s expectations. And that’s not on you.”

Bokuto nodded, though he still looked uncertain. “Yeah, I guess. I just don’t want him to feel like he has to hide that stuff from me, you know?”

Konoha smiled faintly. “You care about him a lot, huh?”

Bokuto’s face brightened at that, the tension easing from his features. “Of course! He’s my best friend! I want him to feel like he can talk to me.”

“Give it time,” Konoha said, leaning forward and clapping Bokuto on the shoulder. “Akaashi doesn’t open up easily. But you’re already closer to him than anyone else. He trusts you. Just be there for him, and he’ll come around when he’s ready.”

Bokuto nodded again, his usual grin returning as Konoha’s words sunk in. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll just keep doing my best.”

Konoha’s smirk returned, but he held back, watching Bokuto with a slight shake of his head. Bokuto might have picked up on some of Akaashi’s tension, but he was still oblivious to the deeper implications. Konoha had seen it all—the way Akaashi’s gaze lingered on Bokuto for just a second too long, the subtle tension in his body whenever they sat too close. And then there was Bokuto, all loud and friendly, completely unaware that Akaashi was probably losing sleep over his every little gesture.

Konoha had to admit, watching the two of them circle each other, completely oblivious to the possibility of something more, was starting to feel like watching the buildup to some kind of romantic comedy. The question was whether either of them would ever figure it out.

“Alright,” Konoha said, getting up with his bag slung over his shoulder. “Let’s head to lunch. I’ve got a plan.”

Akaashi arrived at their usual lunch table a little later than usual, his mind still tangled up in thoughts of last night’s study session. He had barely slept, the weight of his family’s scrutiny—and his sister’s teasing—making it hard to settle. Bokuto had been great, of course, but even now, the pressure of his parents’ expectations lingered.

As he sat down, Konoha, Bokuto, and Komi were already sitting there, engaged in conversation. Bokuto was laughing at something Konoha had said, his usual bright energy lighting up the room, while Komi chuckled quietly beside him. Akaashi let out a small sigh, trying to relax as he unpacked his bento.

“Hey, Akaashi!” Konoha greeted with a grin, leaning forward with a glint in his eyes that instantly put Akaashi on guard. Komi gave him a small wave, looking just as curious as Konoha. “So, Bokuto told us all about your little study date last night.”

Akaashi froze mid-motion, his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“Yeah,” Konoha continued, his grin widening with every word, “a nice, quiet evening studying together, dinner with the parents. Sounds like a classic first date to me.”

Akaashi felt his face flush as he quickly set his chopsticks down, his pulse quickening. “It wasn’t a date,” he insisted, his voice slightly strained. “We were just studying.”

Konoha raised an eyebrow, exchanging a knowing look with Komi, who was already snickering. “Oh, really? You mean you take all your study buddies to dinner with your parents? Interesting.”

Akaashi opened his mouth to retort, but Bokuto beat him to it.

“Oh, yeah! Konoha mentioned that earlier.” Bokuto turned to Akaashi, his expression completely earnest. “I guess it was kind of like a date, huh? I mean, we did have dinner, and then we studied. So… what did you think, Kaashi? How’d you like our date?”

Akaashi blinked, his brain short-circuiting as he tried to process what Bokuto had just said. “What—? I—Bokuto-san, it wasn’t a date!”

Bokuto looked genuinely confused. “It wasn’t? But Konoha said it was—”

“Konoha was joking!” Akaashi interrupted, his voice slightly higher than usual. His heart was pounding, and he could feel his face burning as he shot Konoha a desperate glare. Konoha, meanwhile, looked like he was on the verge of bursting into laughter, while Komi was already muffling his snickers behind his hand.

“Well, joke or not, it kinda felt like one,” Bokuto said with a shrug, completely unbothered. “I had fun, though! We should do it again sometime.”

Akaashi buried his face in his hands, completely mortified. His mind was racing, trying to figure out how the simple act of studying had spiraled into this disaster. Meanwhile, Konoha was practically dying of laughter next to him, leaning into Komi for support.

“You’re evil,” Akaashi muttered, glaring at Konoha from between his fingers.

Konoha wiped away a tear of laughter, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Oh, come on, Akaashi. You’re making this too easy. Besides, if that wasn’t a date, then what was it?”

“It was studying,” Akaashi said firmly, though the heat in his face hadn’t dissipated in the slightest. “Just… studying.”

“Seems like more than studying to me,” Komi piped in with a grin. “Bokuto, you sounded pretty excited about it this morning. I’m starting to think you’re the romantic type after all.”

Bokuto looked between Komi and Konoha, still completely unfazed. “I mean, studying is fun when it’s with Kaashi,” he said earnestly, turning back to Akaashi with a grin. “Next time, let’s study somewhere fun! We can get ice cream after.”

Akaashi groaned, sinking lower in his seat as Bokuto’s casual suggestion made his heart race. His face was practically burning at this point, while Konoha and Komi exchanged amused looks.

“Cute,” Konoha said, nudging Komi with a smirk. “This is like watching a rom-com in real life. We’ve got the oblivious leads and everything.”

Komi nodded, trying to stifle his laughter. “Akaashi, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack at this rate.”

Akaashi shot them both a look, but it only made them laugh harder. Bokuto, still clueless, leaned over and patted Akaashi’s back. “Kaashi, you’re too cute when you’re embarrassed,” he said, completely serious.

Akaashi froze, his breath catching as Bokuto’s words sunk in. Cute? Since when did Bokuto think he was cute?

As the lunch period wore on, Konoha and Komi continued to throw in subtle teasing comments, each one making Akaashi more flustered, while Bokuto remained completely oblivious to the deeper implications of their words. Akaashi, on the other hand, found himself growing more and more anxious, unable to shake the feeling that this was all a little too much like a date.

Meanwhile, Konoha watched the whole thing play out, his internal monologue one of both amusement and disbelief. If there was a more obvious pair of idiots in love, he hadn’t met them. Still, he had to admit, watching Akaashi’s composure crack in real time was pretty entertaining.

“All I’m saying,” Konoha finally added as they packed up for their next class, “is that if you two keep this up, you’re going to end up dating by accident.”

Akaashi groaned again, hiding his face in his hands while Bokuto chuckled beside him, still blissfully unaware of the chaos he’d been causing.

-

Why are we all Konoha during any BokuAka interaction? 🤣

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Trimax Thoughts Vol. 12 Pt. 3

[ID: A panel from Trigun Maximum Volume 12. Knives is shown with eyes narrowed and a slight smile as he asks "What's your name?" End ID.]

"What's your name?" A name is an identifier, and to ask for it is to acknowledge an individual's identity.

We see this with Vash and his strong memory for the names of all the people from his Home. But interestingly, even with this memory for individuals, and the way Vash clearly never forgets a single person who has impacted him, he very rarely calls people by name, and this goes doubly the closer he is to them. Meryl and Milly are just "the insurance girls" most of the time. Wolfwood was referred to by Nicholas only once (though to be fair, this may just be typical use of a surname). I need to go back and check when I have more energy but I'm pretty sure the only name Vash uses with any regularity is Rem's. Vash loves them, but he won't stick around, nor will he use their names. Maybe if he doesn't use them... he can avoid getting too attached. (Mission failed...)

But it's more than that. Vash's guilt and desire to keep people safe prevents attachment that's true... but so does his philosophy. By necessity, Vash has to refuse to prioritize anyone's life over another's. Getting attached, becoming close enough to want to do anything to protect that person... Vash can't have that, because Vash knows himself well. He is far from impartial. We all remember his "diablo" moment at the beginning of the manga, and his outright murderous anger towards Knives over Rem and July - and that's still with him distanced. Here's his reactions to Wolfwood being in danger in Volume 10, after Vash realized both how much he meant to him and that he was dying:

[ID: Two screenshots from Trigun Maximum Volume 10. In the first, Vash's face is shadowed before he whirls around to show his eyes - wide and pale and furious. His face is shaded with dark lines for dramatic emphasis. In the second, Vash shoves two men onto the ground by the barrels of his two guns. He is hunched over them, again, furious. His face is shadowed completely. End ID.]

To love someone in a personal way is to prioritize them. It is that prioritization that could lead someone to kill another. Vash cannot have that, yet another reason why he self-imposes that distance from people.

You can't be impartial about others' lives... if some are more important to you than others.

Knives meanwhile uses Legato's name a lot! Legato, or Bluesummers, but either way, he is using his name. And I really think that Knives cares (?) in some way for Legato. He asked Elendira for Legato to be brought back instead of killed. Kind of just lets Legato do what he wants (except kill Vash, obviously). He entrusts him to keep hold of Vash for months on end. Legato doesn't have a number like the rest of Knives' followers; just a name!!! I feel certain that Knives used to share a lot more with Legato before Fifth Moon - Legato seems shocked that Knives would withhold info from him, and he knew Rem's name! There was clearly some point of understanding between them at the moment of their meeting. At the very least, Knives appreciates Legato far more than he lets on.

...And he will never let on. Knives treats Legato cruelly... probably because if he were to treat him on fairer terms, it would be a compromise to his principle that "all humans are bad and need to die", that the time for communication is over, that there is no "making friends" anymore. Knives cannot treat Legato with respect.

You can't push the narrative that an entire group is irredeemable and beneath you... if you've grown attached to one of them.

Knives uses names but treats the people as inferior. Vash treats people with respect but rarely uses names and distances himself. Both of them are severely hampered by their strict ideologies that they will not waver from - which guarantees their loneliness will never end.

Vash is doomed to lose everyone he cares for without ever giving himself the chance to love them, or them to love him. Knives is doomed to lose all his connections, past or possible future, and exist as an eternal lonely child who will never make all those friends he once craved. All because neither of them can afford to back down.

And now they really are gearing up to lose each other, for good this time. Both of them, doomed to lose, right from the start.

There are really no victors in a fight like this.

[nobodyfamousposts]

To be fair, Adrien's 'apology' effectively amounted to Marinette comforting and reassuring HIM that oh, he's just such a *good person* that he couldn't see how bad and nasty and evil Lila was. Claiming that he was just too PURE and simply couldn't comprehend what kind of person he was dealing with. So I question how much it really 'validated Marinette's feelings' versus patting him on the back and coddling him YET AGAIN, with a hefty dose of "It's not HIS FAULT he's so sheltered and trusting!'

You're not wrong.

Sadly, honestly at this point, the bar is so low for Adrien and the writing around him that it seemed impossible that he would ever say the words "I'm sorry" in any truly meaningful way.

So a lot of us are just happy that he at any point acknowledged being wrong at all and apologized for it. That was all we wanted. That was all we've BEEN wanting. So much so that we're willing to give leeway for the sheer fact that he says it.

Unfortunately, this apology comes a good while too late to really matter and it's further invalidated by having the victim reassure him and make him feel better by framing his justification as being too nice.

The thing is, Adrien's words and apology DID validate Marinette. The problem is that the writers can't let Adrien be at fault for anything and of course make it Marinette's job to make him feel better, so they have the victim try to reassure HIM and thus undercut the validation that she deserved and the fandom was long wanting.

...then there are a couple other things to consider here:

For all that they're trying to twist his mistake into a sign of how wonderful he is, the problem is that Adrien's issue here wasn't that he was "too nice" but that he was passive. He actively prioritized the feelings of a liar and manipulator like Lila over the wellbeing of his friends.

This is evident in the other problem in that Adrien is apologizing for what he said to Marinette and NOT the fact that he hadn't acted himself in the matter. This is indicating that he had no problems with Lila lying until it bothered him and it only bothers him NOW because he's in love with Marinette and they're dating.

The OTHER problem is that Adrien is LYING.

Adrien: I shouldn't have told you to wait to act against Lila.

Stop.

Review that.

Do you see the problem here?

Because while I don't know about the French version of this scene or the scene in Chameleon, there's a major discrepancy here in the English version:

He never told Marinette to wait to act.

Adrien: Are you going to tell everyone? Marinette: 'Course I am. Lila is— Adrien: (interrupting) A liar. Yes, I know. But do you really think exposing her will make things better? If you humiliate her, she'll just be hurt more. Making a bad guy suffer has never turned them into a good guy. Lila: Ladybug and I are like two peas in a pod. Marinette: So we just stand by and let her lie? Adrien: As long as you and I both know the truth, does it really matter? Marinette: You're right, maybe it's not such a big deal.

It's been a common argument from Adrien defenders that this is the approach Adrien was taking. So in a way, it makes sense for that to be the angle the writers try to use since the fandom practically handed the excuse to them.

But at NO point in this discussion did Adrien say to take a wait and see approach. At no point does he imply that they would or even should act against Lila at a later time. At no point does he even express a belief that Lila's lies will be revealed. Because at NO point in any of his lines did he express genuine concern for anyone but Lila.

What he DID do was invalidate Marinette's feelings and dismiss her very valid concerns.

And yet his apology wasn't for that.

[dearestones]

Growing Up While Slowing Down (Mello and Reader)

Warnings: N/A

Anonymous Request: Sorry I'm so late in replying. I'd like to see mello when he's still at Wammy's house, maybe he'd like a caretaker sister who's a few years older than him. Or else you could write about when he was mafia and how awesome he looked like he had the world at his feet. For some reason I don't want to think back to mello dying, he's forever young in my mind. (Thank you for your reply and I wish you all the best!)

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Life was hard. 

And life was infinitely harder growing up in a secluded orphanage that prioritized only what you could offer in the future than who you were as a person. 

You didn't particularly know why you procrastinated on your plans to leave Wammy's. Most other alumni who graduated from the orphanage without getting adopted were either drafted into specific positions to be later used by greater letters than themselves or faded into obscurity. As for you, life seemed to be simultaneously too fast and too slow for your own liking. You knew at one point that you had to leave the safety of your childhood home, but you wanted to stretch the days until it felt like years would pass. Although you knew that the social environment in the orphanage wasn't the best—if what your friends in the psychological sciences were to be believed—you could not bear to let go of something that had sunk its claws into you for so long.

It was childish, but then again, you were still a child.

Today, you were out in the gardens that surrounded the property. Although most of the landscape was maintained by staff, there were a few areas where several students were encouraged to plant and cultivate their own vegetation. Most of the time, the area was frequented with many of the younger children—most of whom believed that they could play in the mud all day.

They weren't exactly wrong—many of their tutors touted Montessori methods of teaching and the benefits of training proprioception—but the children were expected to complete a project or two every season.

From what you could gather, most of the children would not pursue botanical pursuits other than the rare oddball or two.

Even now, there were only two small children being overseen by one of your older cohorts. The older child gave you a nod of acknowledgement before directing one of the children under her care to start digging a small hole on a small patch of bare earth.

As you walked past them and deeper into the gardens, you thought about your future. To have survived this long at Wammy's House, you would have to be smart, cunning, and resourceful. It was no secret that your sole benefactor, the legendary detective L himself, only created and maintained proteges to either replace him or to aid him in future investigations. It was like a  factory where he oversaw the cultivation of future geniuses like himself.

While you were smart and clever, you never made it to the top ten students who made their home at Wammy's. No, that honor went to those who either worked their hardest to reach the top or were either gifted with intellectual superiority. That said, you knew that you were one of the fated students to fade into obscurity unless you were brought out of the shadows for something or other for either L or whoever took over when the elusive detective finally died.

Now that you made your way into the heart of the gardens, you headed towards a wrought iron bench. Despite it being decades old, it didn't look its age. Rather, the groundskeeper must have been doing his due diligence to make sure that everything under his care was flourishing and was the spitting image of what it must have looked like at the orphanage's inception.

Here, underneath the shade of an aging oak tree, you were able to relax. It was an overcast day and whatever sun was available did little to provide you with any warmth. Were you surprised? Of course not, it was England and everyone and everything had their own schedule to adhere to.

It was practically a crime to go against what was normal and usual.

So, it came to a surprise to you when you heard someone trudging down the path, making a beeline towards the bench. 

And you.

It was rare for someone to find you out here, especially since it was the weekend and most of the orphanage's minders didn't keep tabs on the older students since they often proved to be "responsible".

(Was that true? Debatable, but you'd rather that they didn't nag you do to homework or keep a strict eye on your day to day life).

Curious now as to who was following you, you glanced up only to find yourself blanching at the student who was heading your way.

When you first heard the footsteps, you thought it was someone who happened to come near, someone who might have wanted to go see the bushes and the native fauna that had come with the orphanage so long ago. However, that was far from the reality.

Really, you did not see this coming.

The person who picked up speed to talk to you was none other than M or Mello.

Despite the position of his letter in the Latin alphabet, Mello was far from thirteenth place. In fact, he far surpassed those who made it in the top ten. The top five.

He was in the top three, usually making his way to second place.

He was smart and ambitious, always chomping at the bit to leave this wretched place and make a name for himself.

But he couldn't do that.

Not yet.

He was waiting for your esteemed benefactor to announce his successor.

Not that the news would matter to you, but you supposed given the rankings and the personalities of the top three students at the orphanage, you could only assume that N or Near would be the one to take L's place. In fact, most other children would agree with you, but all of you knew to keep quiet about such assumptions.

Mello wasn't a physically aggressive child most of the time, but his anger was more than enough of a deterrent to hinder such rumors.

"Mello," you greeted placidly as he practically fell in his seat next to you, "it's not like you to be walking the grounds so late in the afternoon. What brings you here?"

Sometimes, you wondered about Mello. You knew what his dreams were, what all of his hard work and striving to be the best meant for his future. Unfortunately, you knew that didn't mean that he was going to eventually get what he wanted. There was no way he could ever beat Near in the orphanage and if L ever broke his silence about his definitive successor…

You had to wonder if Mello could be a person outside of M, the second place student.

He scowled at you, but decided to face forward when you gave him a look that conveyed how done you were with him. You were more than well aware of what he was like around other students, particularly when he was angry that Near had beat him again in the rankings, but you weren't scared of him. Despite the height difference that came with puberty, you still had a few years on him. Age was but a number, but higher numbers meant seniority and sometimes, superiority—both of which Mello intimately knew well.

So, his grumbly nature didn't affect you as much as it would had you been the same age or younger than Mello.

Instead, you merely leveled an unimpressed look at him before you poked him gently on the side. 

(Years ago, before the idea of rankings and numbers and letters took over all of his ambitions and dreams, he would have laughed before tickling you back). 

The blond glared at you, but did not offer any more of a rebuttal than to slightly shift his weight upon the bench. You were too caught up in your antics to feel bad, but you were feeling nostalgic. No matter how old some of the students got at Wammy's, you would remember most of them as squalling toddlers or inquisitive children having fun. In the midst of the dread that came with aging out of the system, you had to hold onto things that made you happy.

And—

Well—

Messing with someone who used to be bright eyed and shy was titillating.

Unfortunately for you, after a few more seconds of your shenanigans, Mello finally had enough. He grabbed your wrist tightly—not enough to cause harm, but to stabilize your hand and to prevent you from tickling him. It was then, at that moment, you realized that Mello was uncharacteristically quiet. Subdued. Not at all the type of person who would spend weeks trying to one up Near or the person who would raise hell if he so much as heard whispers that he wasn't the best that Wammy's had to offer.

Curious now, you stopped and looked at him, a question clearly in your eyes.

"Erm, Mello...?" You didn't know what to say, given that he hadn't made it clear why he had chosen to accompany you on this fine day. As a last resort, you tugged out of his hold and leveled him a concerned, but wary glance. "Did you need something?"

That had to be the one thing that made sense to you at that moment. It was rare that Mello talked to you nowadays, even though you used to take care of him when he was younger. You couldn't put a finger on when or why, but he slowly began immersing all of his free time into his studies and beating Near. Before that, he had been content to spend most of his time living life to the fullest and playing with his friends. Now, it seemed that the Mello you used to know was now a mere shadow approaching noon.

That is to say, it no longer existed.

Though, you supposed that it had to happen at some point. People weren't meant to stay the same throughout their entire lives. Growing and change were inherent to every living thing on earth; Mello was not exempt and neither were you.

Or, rather, you knew that you were not exempt from that fact of life, but that didn't stop you from procrastinating on it. It was ironic. You came out to the garden to escape the impending doom of becoming a fully fledged adult, but now that Mello was here, you couldn't think of anything else. It would have been mildly infuriating if it were not for the pensive look upon Mello's face.

"I talked to Roger today." That was not an angle to the conversation you expected. Roger kept up to date on all of the students under his care, but he reserved most of his face to face interactions for those who held potential to become L's successors... Or those who were ready to leave the House. You weren't exactly ready, but you knew that you were due to meet him in a month or so. Presumably, you would have a plan already in place or working on one. If not, you knew that he had a number of connections and career opportunities lined up at the ready for students who needed help or lacked initiative.

While you rarely spoke with the old man, you already knew that you were not looking forward to the impending conversation.

"Okay... And?"

You didn't know what to expect. Mello was a fair bit younger than you, so you didn't expect his news to be anything other than his longtime pursuit of trying to one up Near, but you were surprised.

"You're moving out soon."

You shrugged, not at all concerned on the outside, but cringing on the inside. "Technically, yes. I don't have any concrete plans at the moment."

The most that you could claim were only vague memories picking through university fliers or a list of phone numbers and emails that would get you connected to former Wammy's House alumni. You knew you had to move forward some day, but you did not want to start that large jump for the future right now. Rather... that should be saved for the future.

The frown that spread on his face was more than enough warning that you said the wrong thing.

But what could you have said?

And that’s when you realized that he looked rather downtrodden. For a young teenager recently experiencing the throes of puberty, he looked rather pathetic, but at the same time, you saw that there was a faint anger in his eyes. Even his body language screamed that he was battling something in his mind. Something that must have been bothering him. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, eyes narrowed in irritation. 

“Mello,” you crooned softly. He scoffed at your attempt to calm him, but it wasn’t like your attempts were in vain. Despite his appearance, he gradually relaxed. You faced away at the last possible moment to preserve a few seconds of your poorly disguised mirth. “Use your words, what’s wrong?”

The blond always played at being an adult, especially when talking to actual adults, but to you, he caved. 

His voice started out subtle, almost as if he was tearing out the words out of his mouth like a dentist pulling teeth. Hesitant and soft, he said, “You’re leaving.” A pause. “Without me.”

You blinked at him, confused. “Well, yes. But that’s what happens when we become of age. That’s the way Wammy’s works.” You thought a moment, trying to process why he seemed so put out at your inevitable fate. “You know this already, Mello, why would—”

And that’s when it hit you. 

Really, you knew that you weren’t bright enough to get into the top ten, but still. If you had the capacity to care, you would have been irritated at yourself for blatantly missing the signs. Of course, how could you not have seen it before! 

“You’re going to miss me.” It was a statement you reiterated when you observed Mello about to speak up, probably about to refute your assumption. “Awwww, Mello!”

Before he could leap off the bench, you wrapped your arms around his shoulders and squeezed tight. 

Most students at the House would have balked at giving Mello affection, but not you. It was rare to see Mello be vulnerable and willingly show his more emotional side of himself. You couldn’t imagine him engaging in heart to hearts with Matt or god forbid, Near. 

“You’re just as annoying as I remember,” Mello muttered into the crook of your neck. His warm breath ghosted over your skin, his voice as small as the child he once was. 

For a moment, the both of you basked in the warm embrace. 

However, like all things, this moment had to pass. The both of you had to face reality. 

Grow up. 

At the other end of the garden, you heard the small children who had been busy planting were whooping and hollering in delight. Over the din, you could barely make out that they had found a wriggling patch of worms and were busy trying to get their current caretaker to touch one of them. The added screams made you smile, but also reminded you that you couldn’t hold Mello forever. 

Slowly—achingly—you released him. 

But Mello did not immediately leave. 

Instead, he leaned back against the wrought iron bench and closed his eyes. 

As a bit of sun peeked through the overcast clouds, you could barely make out what he said. 

But you heard him all the same. 

“Yeah… I’ll miss you.”

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If you want to donate a Ko-Fi, feel free: https://ko-fi.com/devintrinidad.

DEATH NOTE MASTERLIST

[rist-ix]

So, I was thinking about that, in chapter 16 tbhtbhs, the chapter bloom runs away, she didn’t kill valtor because she’s kind feel something for him, or because she thought she has no chance?

Hahaha HA, tumblr user supremevaltor, you have fallen right into my trap! For you see, now I have an opening to prepare my favorite attack: analyzing my own fic!

If we jump a few paragraphs back in the very same chapter, we get to see Bloom have an existential crisis over the fact that she COULD convince herself she feels SOMETHING for Valtor, if she tried.

And this vaguest tiniest confession of not-hatred (to herself, mind you, not even to Darcy, who’s witnessing All That) has her absolutely spiraling to the point it’s physically and visibly affecting her.

By the time she gets to the library she has mostly recovered from that realization, and by recovered I mean she’s buried that shit and is politely refusing to look at it.

Now, fast forward to the library. Valtor, for the first time in almost four years, has been completely and utterly honest, is drunk and in a uniquely vulnerable position, and does not demand honesty from Bloom (which she’s struggling with) but a comforting lie (which she’s bad at, but shouldn’t be opposed to).

Betraying him at this point instead of besting him in combat does not feel good for Bloom, but she can rationalize that away pretty easily.

Now though. Now she has a problem.

For ensuring her long-term freedom and the overall safety of the dimension, she should definitely kill him here. Valtor says as much, she will never get a better chance.

Here’s where it gets complicated.

What you mentioned definitely plays a role here: she doubts her chances of success. Valtor has blindsided and overwhelmed her by feigning weakness in the past, every battle so far has gone in his favor, he always has an ace up his sleeve and so on. He’s also - desperately - trying to goad her into attacking, which to him is a way to keep her here until the handcuffs’ spell runs out, and to Bloom seems highly suspicious.

But to attempt to kill him now would also mean to be confronted with the loss of him. Which would mean reopening that Pandora’s box of “What do I feel for him”. And Bloom, due to her feeling of immense guilt and debt to her friends, cannot acknowledge that her hatred for him has softer impurities. If Valtor died, she would not only physically feel the loss of their connection, she would never hear his voice again. She prides herself on being able to predict what he’ll say sometimes, to interpret and understand him in a way no one else can. That would end, immediately.

If he died, she would lose someone whose company she’s grown so used to and familiar with. Someone - maybe the only one! - she has no fear of disappointing, who has unwavering faith in her and who she CANNOT hurt emotionally no matter how angry and violent and bitter she gets. (Because a) he definitely always deserves it, and b) he enjoys fighting verbally almost as much as he enjoys fighting physically. He already knows all the worst impulses of her, and he’s never disapproved.)

It’s a comforting thing to know and be known so fully. Losing that would be daunting, no matter the nature of their relationship.

There’s a reason I chose the library as the setting for this encounter btw. And that’s that libraries are sexy. But also, the book they read the night before is still on that table, page marked. Bloom looks at it very briefly before she runs.

Not only did they have a pleasant time and a very emotionally honest conversation here, Valtor has also surprised her. There’s a point after he realizes Bloom can’t read Domino’s language where he apologizes, and cuts himself off when he starts to look for a scapegoat. (It was Faragonda. He always blames Faragonda.)

Bloom doesn’t know that last part, but it still stood out to her that he stopped talking mid-sentence. (Valtor!!!!! Stopped talking!!!!!)

It’s a short glimpse of a Valtor who does not prioritize control of the situation over Bloom’s feelings, and allows (forces) himself to not make this a power struggle, but a moment of understanding, and connection.

(The page is marked! Symbolizing clear intent to continue! They can go back to it whenever they want, and revisit that genuine and sincere part of their relationship! Bloom looks at it and runs!)

To kill him here, face to face with what he already is to her and who he could be, is not something Bloom can stomach. And this is a Bloom who has killed better people for less, when it meant the immediate safety of her friends.

If Valtor paused long enough to examine that, which I’m undecided on whether he has, he might feel a lot better about that day.

Alas, he goes apeshit.

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

The past couple of weeks I've been reading a bunch of Django Wexler books, and the thing that caught me by surprise was how many of his main characters came across as fairly nuanced aspec rep, and I'm not entirely sure whether it was on purpose or not.

The first book I noticed this in was Ashes of the Sun. It and its sequels are queernorm, and textually acknowledge asexuality and aromanticism as things that are known and accepted within the setting. There are two protagonists, Maya and Gyre, and Gyre's experience of sexual and romantic attraction is deeply interesting in its absence. He has sex on multiple occasions, and seems to enjoy it somewhat, but nothing about his narration ever indicates that he has any interest in seeking it out. He never expresses a specific sexual attraction to either of his partners (or anyone else for that matter), never initiates sex, and never even seems to be thinking about sex as a possibility until someone else points it out to him. His feelings for his partners don't necessarily read as romantic, either. That part is more complicated and more open to interpretation - one of his partners is a fling, and the other deliberately avoids defining their relationship beyond "we are friends and sometimes sleep together", but he clearly feels awkward about the possibility of getting involved with other people in any capacity in spite of their explicit lack of exclusivity. However, his primary partner doesn't receive emotional priority in his narration. He treats her and thinks of her like all of his other close friends, without prioritizing her either higher or lower than anyone else.

However, neither his narration nor anyone else comments on this apparent lack of sexual or romantic interest, which is what makes the authorial intent seem ambiguous to me. In a queernorm setting where aspec people are textually a known and unremarkable part of society, it feels odd that neither Gyre nor anyone else describes himself in those terms. Given that his only partners are women, I'd normally be inclined to say that the author intended for him to allo and straight and just didn't really focus on writing sex and romance if not for our other viewpoint character, Maya. Maya's narration is chock full of visceral romantic and sexual attraction. The force of her attraction regularly hits her like a punch to the gut. At first she has to psych herself up to look her crush in the eye because every time she does her brain functions are replaced with "hnnnnnng girl pretty😳😳😳". It's such a dramatic contrast that it feels like it almost has to be deliberate. It's also worth noting that Maya's eventual partner, Beq, describes herself as having never been interested in someone before and that she hadn't ever expected to be, and as being kind of overwhelmed by the whole experience, which certainly sounds like it could be a description of demisexuality. She doesn't get a pov, though, so that's about as far as that exploration goes.

Demisexuality does come up in a different Wexler series, though. The Shadow Campaigns series is not queernorm - misogyny is dealt with extensively, and homophobia peripherally. One of the pov characters, Raesinia, spends the first half of the series utterly uninterested in romance or sex. She's not dismissive of them, or without opportunities to explore either - she simply doesn't feel either kind of attraction to anyone and never has, and is unbothered by that fact, except for when it puts her in the situation of needing to let one of her friends down gently. However, over the course of two books and about a year and a half in universe time, she develops a friendship and mutual respect with one of the other pov characters, Markus. In spite of a few comments from some of their other friends, Raesinia's feelings for him are pretty unambiguously platonic, with the most she'll concede to her friends' teasing being that he seems and looks nice enough, I guess. However, eventually her feelings for him begin to shift, until eventually she expresses a romantic interest in him. Again, this is not a queernorm series. One of the pov characters and several other main and supporting characters are unambiguously queer, but there's no in-universe cultural awareness of aspec identities, and no one remarks on them as a possibility. Again, here is where I would normally assume that the author intended to write a slowburn between a two allo heterosexual characters, except. There is a specific point in the story, years since they first met and months after they became romantically involved, where Raesinia specifically and dramatically experiences sexual attraction for the first time. And the degree to which that is emphasized by the text makes me think that her demisexuality might have been purposeful.

Ultimately I'm not really concerned with authorial intent; the text is the text, and both series feature characters who read as aspec to me. But it's not often that I'm so uncertain about what the authorial intent was. In any case, it makes for compelling reading.

[shoujomangathoughts]

Chihayafuru Thoughts - How Taichi feels about Arata

The relationship between these two has always been fascinating to me. While the base of their relationship is definitely friendship, they also harbor complicated feelings toward each other. I’m not really going to focus on the romantic “rivalry” they have, although there are instances where that’s a factor. I’ll be using examples from all over the manga so here’s the spoiler warning.

Taichi definitely feels insecure and inadequate in comparison to Arata. The glasses incident is something he thinks of many times throughout the story (in Fukui, at the Yoshino tournament, when he tells Chihaya the truth, etc.) and it’s clear that Arata calling him a coward has led him to try to change that aspect of himself, hence Taichi’s line “I wanna be someone who doesn’t run away”. However, Arata’s karuta prowess also amazes and scares Taichi. Taichi feels as though Arata plays at a level that he himself could never reach, no matter how much time or effort he puts in, and he feels left behind (by Chihaya as well for that matter). There are certain scenes where this is apparent and it reminds me of what Taichi said about Emuro; that he “drew a line” based on their ability, something Taichi seems to do to himself as well.

This is also why Taichi has at times thought that Arata is more beneficial to Chihaya’s growth in karuta than he could be. He thinks of himself as lacking.

This insecurity around Arata occasionally causes him to lash out, muttering Arata is his enemy or feeling flustered at the idea of Arata making a team.

This line, following “Chihaya wants to be on a team with you again, but I don’t”, seems more about how Taichi doesn’t want to play with Arata because he doesn’t want to feel useless next to him like when they were kids (a similar feeling to how Desktomu felt at regionals in their first year). He wants to keep improving and meet Arata as an equal, and he doesn’t see an avenue to that if they played on the same team or if Arata was around more often.

I’ve seen this scene interpreted as Taichi saying this because the team is something Taichi has in relation to Chihaya that Arata doesn’t, but my view is a bit different. To me, this scene has always been about the fact that Taichi has gained a certain confidence in team matches (being the leader, prioritizing the team winning over his individual win, etc). Part of this confidence probably comes from the fact that Arata doesn’t play on a team, and thus Taichi doesn’t have to use him as a point of comparison, and that confidence would most likely be destroyed if Arata made a team. To Taichi it feels like the one area of katura that he hasn’t had to worry about Arata in is being threatened, hence why he says something snarky.

Then there’s also the feelings of jealousy that he harbors due to Chihaya’s attachment (oftentimes near idolization) to Arata. Taichi’s love for her often causes him pain because she would bring Arata up a lot and very clearly acknowledged him, whereas Taichi never felt like he was enough as he was and part of him longed for Chihaya to “see” him as well. He seems to think the qualities that Arata has are among those that Chihaya seems to notice in people (and for a while he’s not entirely wrong, karuta freak that she is) and that he himself lacks them. That probably lends itself as to why he seems very touched whenever Chihaya does see him (offering a towel, caring so much about him making Class A, Yoshino, the Taichi Cup, etc.).

However, it’s also clear that Taichi respects and admires Arata as a player and values him as a friend. He cries when Arata returns, calls him for advice after feeling entirely dejected, supports him after Arata defeats him and becomes the Meijin challenger, etc. Taichi just has parts of him that view Arata more negatively and he actively points that out to himself. He uses phrases like “it’s not Arata’s fault” because he understands it’s not Arata himself but rather some of the feelings he’s attached to Arata that make him feel the way he does. However Taichi also accepts some of the negative sentiment he holds for Arata and the rivalry he feels toward him. His feelings toward Arata are well summed up when Taichi says to himself, “I’m happy when I forget you, but I’m encouraged when I remember you”. It’s complicated, and the matches he and Arata played at the Meijin challengers were a nice exploration into how they view each other. Those matches culminated in a nice moment where they realize despite any complicated feelings, they’re grateful to each other.

Anyway, that was rather long even though I feel like I didn’t say all I initially planned to. I’ll probably make more posts like this, one potentially exploring the opposite of this one; how Arata views Taichi. If you read this far thanks for entertaining my rambles!

[seraphvm]

CHILDHOOD HEADCANNONS, chishiya shuntaro

SYNOPSIS: a heart that couldn’t understand others but thrives to discover more. due to the neglect chishiya shuntaro had experienced during childhood, what could seemingly be the reason of such apathetic behavior?

★ genre & warning/s: angst, angst, angst

★ sera’s notes: i’ve thought of these headcannons while chatting w a friend on discord about chishiya’s past, technically the credit goes to them ++ if ever you like these headcannons of chishiya please do lmk i might make a part 2 !!

chishiya shuntaro, a seemingly outstanding yet clever individual from all his life that prioritized logic & reason over anything else being the solution to all of his issues, but yet why could’ve this brought him to a downfall?

with a sense of ignorance and inconsideration alongside an aptitude of vague emotions that had brought him to the future, his history during grade school & high school wasn’t the one to be expected, all including his household from childhood that had made him quite frankly abandon his fundamentals, he was just closely similar like the stars, the actions & visuals of how each was situated, having a reason with everything.

with a sense of ignorance and inconsideration alongside an aptitude of vague emotions that had brought him to the future, his history during grade school & high school wasn’t the one to be expected, all including his household from childhood that had made him quite frankly abandon his fundamentals, he was just closely similar like the stars, the actions & visuals of how each was situated, having a reason with everything.

act ii. situations / headcannons

001. due to the acts of renunciation he received from his guardians ever since childhood, there was always a lack of sense of love in every crevice of his household including quality time. shuntaro would always keep vast imaginations of friends to keep him company with his toys to feel a bit less lonesome.

002. since shuntaro barely received any sort of gifts from his guardians, he would always keep the one teddy bear his father bought him when he was still a baby to remind himself that maybe his ottou-san still thinks of him and he was just simply busy with a life as a surgeon.

003. unfortunately, his father was never present during shuntaro’s school events since he never bothered to acknowledge his achievements, large or not. furthermore bringing the other kids in the class bully him, and ever since that time shuntaro graduated gradeschool, his classmates would now profusely refuse to believe that he had a father that was the top surgeon, bringing that to the reason he never shows up to events.

“ya! shuntaro, it must be pathetic to lie about your father being the top surgeon eh? he must be a trash collector”

004. as slowly as he grew up, he started to prioritize logic over his emotions but was now thrown into a large amount of accusations of being a heartless human being, and since he was seemingly forcibly brought to the medical field, he decided to take the cardiovascular surgeon route to learn in more depth about the human heart and how exactly do people feel loved, yet unfortunately the years of studying that had gained nothing for him but a filthy certificate and a coat.

005. when he was a teenager and had saw various paintings from famous artists, which he couldn’t help but be intrigued with the idea of art, so whenever he had free time in the weekend he would attempt to paint him with his family in hope of them appreciating his effort. but by the time he showed them it was only a piece of trash that had acrylic paint smudged onto it.

act iii. profound conclusion

after all the occurrences of the lack of humanly emotions that chishiya shuntaro had brought himself upon due to the lack of teaching regimen nor sense of love from his parents, would there seem to be an escape from his adaptation ever since childhood?

even if he had ended up detached from human life, there was always hope he had with his parents finally treating him like a son, however, it seemed like from all of his attempts and abandoned actions, the conclusion had only brought him to realize that they never wanted a child whatsoever, but only someone to provide them money by the time they retire from work.

© seraphvm || SERA?! all rights reserved.

[thedawningofthehour]

Hi,

I am mainly almost done with season 1 of rottmnt.

My mind is thinking if the characters were put in Hazbin Hotel, Leo would be Alastor. I have no idea why.

Another head canon I have is that after Leo finds out that Splinter Big Mama. Leo would not trust Splinter to pick out friends after that.

Also, correct me if I am wrong, Leo seems to be more suspicious, but he knows how to face trust someone well? If that makes any sense.

I mean, I get where you're coming from with the comparison, both Leo and Alastor are very charismatic and prefer to keep their true feelings hidden under a pretty veneer, (though Leo would never be a radio host his face was made to be seen) but morality-wise? Their manipulative talents? Alastor is more similar to Big Mama, and though we've established that Leo is very much like Big Mama, he's still very young. He's basically Big Mama-lite, he still has a lot to learn before he's anywhere close to her or Alastor's level.

And yeah, we can't rule out the morality, Leo may be problematic on several levels but he is still very much a hero. He'll do dumb shit, he's willing to prioritize the 'wrong' things, (like his family over the rest of the world or some shit) but at the end of the day he's here to do good. Alastor 'serial killer but like Dexter' profession and his moral code of 'fuck shit up but respect women,' that's more like Donnie. Sooooo maybe a disaster twin fusion?

It's also hard to judge because I really don't know what Vivziepop's intention with Alastor is. She could be planning to make him the final boss or finish the show with him firmly by Charlie's side, still more of an antihero but one she can rely on. Or she could be totally ironic and have him redeem himself and die for his friends-very unlikely, but if I trusted any show to be able to pull off a redemption like that well it would be Hazbin Hotel. (also why I'm not opposed to an Adam redemption if he's reincarnated into hell in S2-I think they would handle that very well) Normally I'd put my money on Alastor being the ultimate enemy of the show-if it weren't for his own deal. That establishes that Alastor is not pulling all the strings here, that there's someone above him. I think this person will end up being a major antagonist, if not the final antagonist. It's just a complete mystery who this person could be-I've seen theories that it's Lilith, but I doubt that because I think it's implied that this person is an angel, which Lilith very much is not. (Alastor and Lilith's disappearances are most definitely linked though) I'd suspect Lucifer or Adam, except Alastor acknowledges that he's never met either of them. So that leaves Sera, or some unnamed angel we haven't met yet.

(the real emperor of heaven and hell was Niffty all along)

[castielsfeatheredballs]

Something I don't see very often in this fandom is a comparison of deancas to deanjo, which is a pity in my opinion, because I think deanjo is actually the most similar relationship Dean has to the one with Cas. It also imho sheds some light on one of thee destiel Problems, which is the Closet Problem.

Now, I only just named it that, but if you are in the destiel fandom you might understand what I mean by that. It's the fact that Dean is not explicitly, verbally out as a queer man and so much of his relationship with Cas is influenced by this fact. People disagree on what Dean's closet looks like, if he's totally repressed an unaware, if he knows and doesn't act on it, if he knows, acts on it but keeps it secret, if he's okay-ish with people knowing but prefers to keep it low-key. Whichever it is, it means that from Dean's end the fact that he never acknowledged that what he had with Cas might be more than a platonic friendship. It follows that a very predominant fandom interpretation is that the only thing standing in the way of destiel from Dean's side is him being in the closet. Like if Dean came out then he would be ready and willing to get into a romantic relationship with Cas.

Now, I'm not saying this is wrong, but I think this take overshadows the fact that Dean has Issues with relationships in general that go beyond the gender of people involved. That's very evident looking at his romantic history with women. Some people interpret this as evidence for Dean being gay, which is fair, but I find it more compelling to interpret Dean as bisexual and just a relationship disaster in general. Which is where Jo comes in.

The thing is, what usually stands between Dean and a successful love life, what Dean himself would say is the problem in his relationships, is hunting. Hunting is what turned Cassie off him, what put Lisa and Ben in danger enough that Lisa had to break things off. That is also ostensibly the reason why Dean doesn't bother trying for something long-term with most of the women he gets with, because hunting life doesn't leave room for love blah blah blah. Jo is actually the first person he meets that challenges that notion, because Jo is also in the life. She's not just in the know, on the sidelines like Cassie and later Lisa, she actively wants to be a hunter. Which means that Dean's excuse is not applicable here. They have mutual attraction an feelings, and in the beginning of their acquaintance Jo seems like she would be down to date Dean. However, he closes himself off. He's the one who keeps them in a weird limbo where they are friends with insane chemistry they never act upon... this sounds familiar, doesn't it.

The thing is, Dean, despite clearly yearning for a meaningful romantic connection, is very very afraid of actually having one. He has big issues with self-worth, for one, and I think because of his childhood he feels like he has to prioritize his original family--Sam--over everybody else. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only two times we see him actually trying for a relationship is when Sam is out of his life. He falls in love with Cassie when Sam is at Stanford and cut off all contact, and he goes back to Lisa when Sam is dead and he has no one else. Soon as Sam's back in his life, Dean seems like he has to preserve the family unit at all costs, and that is why he never allows himself to be with someone else in a meaningful way. I think the relationship he had with Jo tells us a lot about how he is with Cas, too, regardless of the queer issue. And I'm not gonna lie, it does annoy me to no end when people try to idk, sanitize deanjo, saying he never ever saw her as anything more than a sister, because to me it's very evident that the reason they vere never together is not because he lacked interest, but because Dean never could allow himself a chance at happiness.

[naradivision]

Happy Pride Month!

I saw many divisions making a post to explain their characters’ romantic and sexual orientations in this month last year (and also this year), so I kinda want to follow suits even if it turns out to be this late (´∀｀；)

To be honest; although I’ve spent quite a time doing some research, I’m still not so sure about them! Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy my assumptions and my greatest apologies if I unintentionally offend someone.

—Yuuya

Heteroromantic Demisexual 

Despite being a good friend towards any gender across the spectrum, Yuuya has pondered over his feelings multiple times before coming to the conclusion that he can only see romantic potential in the opposite gender. Thus, he doubts it may stem from his strong attachment towards his big sis and his mother in his childhood.

And although he is certain of never looking at his older sister in any sense of romantic way, he still couldn’t shake off the fact that it’s a high chance he might definitely pursue for her semblance in his significant other —That’s also a part of many reasons why he has shied away from dating unless he could get over his own complex soon. Besides; the idea of getting attached to someone again scares him a bit. He’d always be happy to help his friends get together-together though.

On matters of sex; even if he knows the basics from various sources, he isn’t so enthusiastic about it as others around his age. He has yet to engage in one as well. To him, establishing the mutual understanding is a must before delving into another level of intimacy. Yes, kinda old-fashioned but he wants to ensure his relationship is going to be in the long run so that’s it.

—Asahi

Panromantic Questioning 

Asahi loves any topic about romance and everyone knows it! He may be a bit clueless but he is definitely a curious soul who is highly interested in meeting new people and likes exploring their perspectives about love. 

However, his impression on romance is likely to be through a rose-colored lens than the realistic way owing to many novels and manga he has read. He also has never been in any relationship before. Right now he seems to enjoy himself taking the role of a passionate supporter rather than to have a real part in one.

And to anyone’s surprise; when it comes to sex, his twenty-year-old knowledge regarding this matter is no better than that of an elementary kid —To the point his two teammates (and even one being younger than him) have to question just how sheltered his grandmother has kept him until these days.

—Saigo

Demiromantic Graysexual (Sex-Neutral)

Because of his trust issue, Saigo is undoubtedly skeptical whenever it comes to making connection with other people. He is also known for turning down everyone his family tried to set him up with in the past. Having said that, deep-down he acknowledges the existence of love but doesn’t believe relationships will just work out for everyone. And just as he is currently chill with his alone life while still prioritizing his privacy, he isn’t eager to seek a partner anytime soon. 

Moreover, he thinks people have rights to be whoever they want as long as they are conscious of their own choices and decisions.

On matters of sex; he is neither completely interested nor thoroughly disgusted by it. He might be a bit more curious at his younger age, but now he holds little to no interest in it due to his daily stresses on many things. Normally he deals with those whimsical feelings by just ignoring them or keeping himself occupied with something serious (e.g. work) until they die down.

Happy Pride Month everyone! You matter and who you love and who/what you identify as matter as well! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜💖

[electrasev5nwrites]

Ninja Daily: Clarity 2

Two evenings after Pein's jaunt to scenic Konoha, asshole of the universe, Obito walked the streets gingerly and tried not to step on anything particularly foul. It was difficult, crowded as the relatively flat areas were.

Konoha was thoroughly trashed. Madara laughed with a sickening sort of glee in his head and monologued about how the rubble was an improvement over the mountain monument, but Obito felt nothing at all, other than mild interest at the fact that the only discernible remnant was the lower half of the second Hokage's face. (He'd caused nearly this much damage himself, years ago, it would be hypocritical to be offended or depressed). That was one of the less contemptible Hokages, in Obito's personal opinion. They should keep it like that.

'Pein-kun lost his temper,' Tobi observed with an unusual amount of solemnity. Obito valiantly schooled his expression into seriousness. No one was paying him any particular attention, as the citizens seemed to be either wandering shell-shocked or busily performing manual labor, but it just wouldn't be inconspicuous to start giggling at the voices in his head.

'That's never terribly inconspicuous, actually,' Obito mused philosophically. It was lucky that Tobi was a bit of a flake. Otherwise, even Hidan might have noticed that something was happening. 'Not that Hidan is a problem anymore. He's a bit very dead.'

Tobi giggled incoherently.

It wasn't really that funny, Madara projected crossly. They'd lost resources.

The other two had heard that enough in the past few days that they just rolled their eyes and ignored him. That was probably an ironic way to treat a personality that he'd invented as a way of having someone to bounce ideas off of, but in Obito's defense, he'd forgotten how irritating Madara was at the time. 'Where do you think our friend would be?' Obito posited idly, walking a calm circuit around the outer ring of the village.

Security was obviously not up to par in Konoha. Not that it was ever good enough to keep him out, of course, but it was worthwhile to note as a gauge of the state of affairs within the village. They were obviously prioritizing the relocation of civilians and establishing fortifications instead of tripling the patrols, as another kage might have done.

'Find out if she's dead,' Madara pointed out shortly. 'This errand will have been for naught if the bratling got herself killed.'

Tobi sighed, put-out, and settled to sulk quietly. He disapproved of most of Madara's input.

Obito bristled a little, but acknowledged the advice as good. It was easier said than accomplished, however. Any useful information like that would either be in central administration –tallying deaths would have been their first course of action—or through word of mouth. After an event such as this, it wouldn't exactly be suspicious to express worry about a supposed friend, but it was still an extra risk to make himself memorable. He would have to find where the main office was now operating out of, since the tower appeared to be ruined. That wouldn't be easy, but it was the best option.

'You lie to yourself,' Madara pointed out dryly. 'I do not know why you would bother. Infiltration through subtlety would not be an unwise choice under the circumstances. You would just prefer to abuse kamui and avoid having to talk to the degenerates here.'

He somehow avoided retorting that the older man was hardly a social butterfly himself. Madara was infuriatingly correct, however. Obito'd spent so long alone that he had a hard time talking to other people for more than a few minutes at a time. A little begrudgingly, Obito deigned to wander close enough to other human beings to casually entangle himself in conversations. The first three didn't naturally wander near the topic, but eventually he found a man who mentioned that he had been working on clean-up in the financial sector. That sounded like a clue to him. The highest priority points for reconstruction should be residential and what was needed in order to run the bare bones of the village.

Senju Tsunade had issues, but she was not so hilariously incompetent as to attempt to settle her people in banks and offices.

He was right, of course. It would probably be more intelligent to time matters so that he didn't have to cut down every person in the building, instead of walking through the front door in broad daylight. Shinobi often worked long, hard hours, but everyone had to sleep at some point. Obito found himself a seat outside the busiest building and nursed a drink he had received from a relief station. He went through two waters and the worst cup of coffee he'd ever encountered before the mass exodus of chakra signatures from the building indicated that the Hokage had left the building with her ANBU bodyguards. It may not have been to sleep, however, judging by the odd haste they used when exiting her building. He didn't know or care what the problem was, but it was fine by him.

Then he walked right in. Sneaking would have been more enjoyable, but sometimes it was actually less conspicuous to look bored and act as though you had a reason to be someplace.

It was almost uncanny how well the simple technique worked. If he had been the one running the village, now would be the time he was most concerned with security. On the other hand, the Konoha nin were likely running on fumes at best, and their tragic encounter with Pein had been so recent that no country would have been able to both hear a report and send a team of infiltrators out. When you were able to travel instantaneously, your outlook on security and assessing danger changed a fair bit.

'Speaking of which,' Tobi bubbled cheerily, apparently having forgotten his resolution to ignore Madara and Obito, 'Are we going to break Aiko-chan's legs so she doesn't run away again? Because that would make tag much easier.'

'Idiot,' Madara sneered, even as Obito cringed. He did his best to ignore the commentary and search the sealed office that Tsunade had left behind. It wouldn't have been bad security work, in a world without kamui. 'Hiraishin will be the problem, not running. It would be much more sensible to place a seal of loyalty on her. Much like the one on our body.'

Obito scowled, scratching self-consciously at the warped flesh of his cheek, hidden under a smoothing genjutsu.

It seemed like a dirty trick to him, but it would get the job done. That was a last resort, though. He wasn't a seal master or a surgeon. Cutting someone up to tattoo their insides with complicated fuinjutsu seemed like the sort of solution that Madara had happened upon with rather more trial and error than Obito could afford to invest. He didn't really want to kill Aiko, especially not in a stupid accident.

It wasn't like he was actually going to use her as the sacrifice. Probably. Unless he had to raise Madara after all. In a way, he was still doing her a favor, as he had planned when the idea of taking the girl had first occurred. Konoha was a dump. Anyone who reminded him of Rin deserved better than Konoha.

Whatever her administrative faults, however, Senju Tsunade kept a neat (if unforgivably tacky) office. That made it pleasantly easy to rifle through the visibly out-of-place slate gray filing cabinet she had left beside her pale pink-and-white marble-topped desk, once he'd finally managed to get the damn thing open. He had no idea what she'd done—jammed it, perhaps, or placed some security seals he was unfamiliar with on it—but he couldn't get it to budge at all, even after it was unlocked.

Obito ended up painstakingly carving the side off of the now wobbly box with a kunai, leaving metal shavings on the plush purple carpet. It was probably a good thing for his bid at world domination that no one saw him awkwardly forcing his fingers in and pulling papers out through a couple inches of space. Some papers tore and most wrinkled, but he didn't really care. At this point, he'd pretty much given up on covering his tracks: they were going to know someone had been in the office. Speed was now preferable to stealth. A few grabs were enough to figure out the gist of the organizational system—Shinobi were organized by rank and first names, which had been translated into a number code.

'She's not a complete simpleton,' Madara noted begrudgingly. Anyone who didn't know who they were looking for would be completely lost—last names weren't even on the records. That meant that you couldn't go looking, say, for a Hyuuga, if you were out on a nice jaunt of bloodline theft. It also meant that she was very familiar with her people.

Obito snorted. 'The bias of the voices in my head is clear,' he retorted. 'Otherwise, you'd have the sense to acknowledge that the woman regarded as the best medic in modern history can't possibly be slow.'

'You put too much stock in the opinions of others,' Madara muttered rebelliously.

He didn't bother to acknowledge that. 'Her record hasn't been updated,' Obito noted, utterly disgusted. What a waste of time spent digging through that stupid cabinet. It looked like the box had somehow been salvaged from the tower, then, and wasn't recent. Aiko had a file in it, but it wouldn't tell him what he needed now. He took it anyway to read later. It couldn't hurt to have as much information as possible.

Obito took a petty sort of pride in knowing he'd ruined the cabinet when Pein hadn't managed it. He gave the thing a little kick, just to be thorough. Then he sat unceremoniously in what had to be the Hokage's chair, eyes darting around the room.

"What does she see in her day," he mused thoughtfully. "Where does she look? If I were using sensitive information often, I would keep it either nearby or within sight, so I know it's safe."

There was a wall safe on the left side of the room. Optimistically, Obito pried it open by freezing and shattering the lock. He ducked immediately, senses clueing him in before his conscious mind could know anything was wrong.

"A gas trap," he grumbled wryly. Of course the safe was a decoy set to blow a sedative or poison in the face of whoever opened it. "Fucking Senju."

'So now you agree,' Madara pouted. Well. He wouldn't have described it as a pout, but Obito certainly did.

"Oh, shut up," he sighed, waving the last bit of smoke away from his face and giving a quick glare to the very empty safe.

Still not helpful. Damnit.

Next, Obito tried pulling up the redundant and doubtlessly costly rugs, looking for hidden papers or a floor safe. There was nothing but an old bubblegum wrapper. He found a half-empty bottle of wine hidden in a rather pathetic, obviously maltreated fern, but the flora didn't seem to hide any other secrets. There were no hidden bottoms in her drawers, a quick check revealed no genjutsu—there was nothing, as far as he could see. Flummoxed, Obito fell back onto Tsunade's chair to gather his thoughts.

"She's really good," he said wonderingly. None of the usual tricks were panning out. Wherever she was hiding her paper work, it was really… Oh.

'I'm glad no one was here to see that,' he thought a bit morosely, leaning forward to pick up the folder lying abandoned on her desk labeled 'active personnel'. Goddamnit. At the giggle in his head, Obito snapped, "Shut up, Tobi!"

Tobi was becoming more irritating than useful. Maybe it was time to phase him out of use.

With a bit of a pout, Obito scanned the lists inside and their notations as quickly as possible, looking for familiar names. It mostly seemed to be a handwritten list of names and their current whereabouts, probably so that Tsunade could use it as a reference while Konoha was in such disorder. There seemed to be a few pertinent notes on a select few shinobi, which tugged at his curiosity.

"Kurenai?" Obito mused, stopping for a moment. He hadn't thought about her in years. What was she… Oh. He turned the page. Nothing interesting. It must have been in code, because the notations didn't entirely make sense. He didn't care enough to parse through it.

'We do not have an unlimited time for you to reminisce about your painfully dull childhood peers,' Madara sighed.

'Asshole,' Obito scowled. He couldn't quite bring himself to disagree. Although that brief look at Kurenai's file hadn't been completely worthless. Now that he thought about it, there was a strange notation by Kurenai's name that was by quite a few others—a circled X. Probably a random symbol and not actual code, something that Tsunade had picked on the spot. It seemed to be a lazy marking to pick out certain people by whatever criteria she was using, instead of an attempt to hide something from a casual reader. Tsunade had probably just compiled these notes today, actually, in the last six hours or so in an attempt to sort out her manpower.

Actually… He flipped rapidly, comparing pages. It looked like it was by the name of almost everyone who wasn't either out of the village or most recently assigned to watching civilians or genin. Odd. He didn't recognize it—it didn't seem to mean anything, and he didn't see much correlation between the people who had it. Gender, specialization, and age were all widely varied.

'Maybe it just means anyone who fought Pein!' Tobi piped up helpfully.

Madara chuckled at that. 'Yes, Senju Tsunade could be worried about contamination from his general idiocy,' he agreed amiably. 'A fairly perceptive concern.'

Obito tried valiantly not to roll his eyes. 'You both suck.' Since it was clear that the peanut gallery wasn't going to leave him be, he abandoned his curiosity and went back to reading with all haste. Ooo, Bakashi was in Ame, along with Maito Gai and… damnit, it was irritating that he'd missed out on the chance to snatch up a two-for-one deal on Uzumaki twins.

Kakuzu had mentioned that Naruto was there, but it was still a vexation. Ame was a bit out of the way of his current errand. Besides, he didn't know what he'd do with such a high-level bijuu at the moment. He could probably scrape together enough chakra to deal with the four-tails' jinchuuriki, but not the nine-tail. Not now, anyway. Grumpily, he flipped that section entirely, despite seeing that there were more entries posted in that area. He was already certain that Aiko was in the village, or at least that she hadn't been posted to Ame. Kakuzu hadn't noted anyone of her description present. Not that he would necessarily have remembered, of course. If Kakuzu didn't see dollar signs when he looked at a person, they were a non-entity to him.

'She has that same marking as Kurenai-san,' Tobi noted, mildly surprised when Obito finally found Aiko's rather slim file. And no wonder it took so long—everyone who had been confined to the hospital was in the very back of the records.

'That is all? There are suspiciously few hospitalizations, when the amount of damage Pein caused is taken into consideration,' Madara scowled cautiously. 'We are missing information.'

"Well, that'll make her easier to find," Obito noted optimistically.

And it would have, if the hospital hadn't been about sixty percent missing when he traveled there. Obito stared in mild disbelief at jagged walls and wiring spouting sadly out of ruined metal and drywall.

It was one thing for the Hokage monument to be ruined, and for homes to be destroyed. But the hospital? He shook his head. It just seemed… wrong. What kind of jackass attacked a hospital?

Well, Pein would, obviously. But still.

'What now?'

Obito answered his own question before anyone else could. 'A hospital can't be relocated to another building like the Hokage's office was. It's not currently a state of emergency, so they won't be doing triage or working out of a tent. They had to have relocated to a real facility.'

That left precious few options. No one would want to lug patients further than they had to, so they were probably relatively close, for that reason and so that it was possible to stay in easy communication with Konoha. Tanzaku Gai was closest, but he didn't think they had a full-scale hospital. The civilians who lived there made do with a clinic and an old-fashioned folk healer, and traveled to Konoha for their other medical care.

Otafuku Gai it was, then.

It was the kind of thing he knew he would never be able to forget. No amount of dangerous missions, or banal pranks on his peers to assuage his innate pettiness, or time spent with his nose in a book would make him forget rounding the doorway just in time to see the people inside disappear like a mirage. He wouldn't have seen even that if he had followed protocol instead of slipping in the window of the break room a floor above and coming down the disused stairs to avoid getting spotted by a possessive medic-nin with silly rules about visitation hours. He just meant to check that she was alright and see what was going on, not disturb her.

Kakashi almost thought he was seeing things. They were there, and then they weren't, without any traces of a shunshin or chakra expenditure trail.

Common sense dictated that was not possible.

Except, of course, he knew that it could be done. He personally knew of two techniques that would allow a person to seemingly disappear. He was more than a bit certain that he hadn't accidentally uncovered his eye and used kamui on Aiko and the stranger, so that left Hiraishin.

But that didn't make sense either. There had to be something else. He paced like a caged animal, not caring that he really should be rushing to report to Tsunade. Every breath that he took in that otherwise sterile, unremarkable room filled his nose with a scent that was utterly impossible.

Or at least, it was severely implausible. It did make him re-consider Kamui as a possibility, however.

"You think we've failed to account for an Uchiha," Tsunade said flatly, eyes hard, when he finally managed to see her for more than the few minutes it took to report.

Kakashi nodded, jaw gritted shut tightly and his teeth grinding just a little bit. It was a bad habit, but he couldn't care at the moment. Besides, the office stunk of cleaning agents. Had that been her big emergency that kept her occupied? Her office was dirty? Because he might snap and commit the shinobi equivalent of regicide if Tsunade's nitpickiness had lost their chance to find that man.

"Do you think Itachi would have more information?" she tried, a bit doubtful herself.

"Yes," Kakashi bit out tersely. He ignored her faint surprise. "He was withholding some sort of information in Ame. At the time I thought it was just about Aiko, but it could very well be relevant."

Sasuke's only living relative or not, if that little punk had endangered one of his teammates through high-handed reticence, there was going to be blood.

Without another word, Tsunade flickered through the handseals for a summoning jutsu so fast that he could barely see movement. Unsurprising. Medics had deft fingers. "Kaysuya-sama, is Sasuke's team in condition to move out?"

The slug queen curled a little on the desk, smearing pink-tinted slime on forgotten financial statements from the office's last owners. There was an usual amount of papers out in the open, now that he thought about it. "I suppose," the slug snuffled delicately. "Wouldn't that short-hand the teams, however?"

"I'll send out replacements," Tsunade assured brusquely. "We have plenty of younger teams in good condition. Maintaining control is much less dangerous than the original assignment. Genin can handle it. Tell Sasuke to return home immediately, with as much haste as possible. He should bring Naruto, Karin, and Itachi with him."

"Alright," Katsuya trilled doubtfully, scrunching up her body. "As you say, hime. Should I advise Itachi-kun to disguise himself?"

While the females discussed logistics of bringing back someone internationally reputed as a criminal, Kakashi stood stock still and wished he could be doing something more productive. Like chasing a scent trail (there was no scent trail, except the one from the nurse's station where medical records had been stolen to Aiko's room) or gathering a team to take action (there was no action to take, as far as he could tell) or strangling Shizune's skinny neck for failing not once but twice to secure a patient under her care.

And Jiraiya, now that he thought about it. What the fuck had the old man been thinking? Why hadn't he been watching his goddaughter? The man himself was slumped against the far wall, staring bleakly into space. He barely seemed to be conscious.

'It would be really satisfying to punch Jiraiya right now,' Kakashi mused dangerously. To hell with the witness. What was Tsunade going to do about it?

His body was taut with tension and directionless fury, but Kakashi managed to master himself. He didn't want to look at either Jiraiya or Shizune right now, so it was a good thing Shizune had the wisdom to slink around elsewhere with her tail between her legs. The logical part of his consciousness knew that they weren't to blame, but his temper disagreed.

'I'm being a hypocrite. I'm blaming them because I feel guilty,' he diagnosed. 'What kind of teammate or authority figure can't protect their charges after the danger is actually over? We failed terribly.'

That hardly made him feel any better.

"Kakashi…" Tsunade started warily. He noticed that Katsuya was gone. That didn't explain the tension in Tsunade's face, however. "Tell me again. What did you say you saw?"

"He was holding Aiko's wrist," Kakashi reiterated impatiently. A full-grown man, standing over a teenaged girl's sickbed and grabbing at her. He couldn't remember it without feeling sick with anger. Probably the same man who'd harassed Aiko before, attacking her in a park at night. "Then they were just gone."

Jiraiya made a small, wounded sound.

"And she didn't…" The Hokage trailed off, looking troubled. "There's a possibility you should know about," she said quietly. "Aiko may have gone willingly."

"What."

It was probably a good thing that she spoke quickly, over the rage bubbling at that idiotic statement.

"Aiko wouldn't have known!" Tsunade denied hastily, brushing a bit of unwashed bang off of her forehead. "That's why she was in the hospital. Physically, she was fine."

Physically, she was fine.

Something rather like horror clawed at his gut at the obvious exclusion there.

Tsunade must have seen something horrible in his expression, but he had no idea what his face was doing at the moment. The Hokage swallowed, and her jaw tensed for just a moment before she continued. "It was brain damage of some sort. We hadn't gotten her to a specialist yet. It was…" She trailed off uneasily. "Did anyone tell you what happened here?" Tsunade settled for unhappily, jerking slightly as if to look at her teammate behind her. Jiraiya could have been carved for stone, for all that he moved.

Brain damage. God.

It was a stupid question with an obvious answer, but he obliged. "Akatsuki," Kakashi summed up emotionlessly. He hadn't stayed within Konoha long enough to actually get a full debriefing, once it became clear that Tsunade didn't exactly have the time to indulge him after he'd explained the situation in Ame. He'd set Yamato and Genma to work with the teams re-building the downtown district and set off to find out what had happened to his other subordinates. He hadn't managed to track down Sai, but he hadn't tried that hard either once he'd been reassured that the boy was uninjured but heard that Aiko was in hospital.

"Yes," Tsunade agreed distastefully. "That's the gist of it, I suppose. You're missing some critical information, however. It's unbelievable, but almost everyone died."

"There are almost no casualties," Kakashi rejected instantly. He'd seen that for himself.

"Because of what that freak did," Tsunade rebuffed, not noticing the other Sannin's tortured expression. She waved a hand tiredly. "I'm sure Jiraiya would give you a much more flowery version, but the leader of Akatsuki possessed a dojutsu that gave him control over life and death. Apparently the Rinnegan is a real thing."

It took a moment to chew that over. "That's crazy."

"And sick, and wrong," Tsunade listed wearily, eyes faraway on something he couldn't see. "A boundary that men were not meant to cross. Yes, I know all that already. He brought it up as a condition of his surrender. At that point, I figured we had nothing left to lose." Her thin shoulders shrugged slightly. "Right or wrong, it worked. Not without repercussions, however."

Of course it hadn't. Nothing in the world came without consequences. It was infantile to hope otherwise.

"Those being?" he asked tightly, not liking where this discussion was going. He could put pieces together. He didn't have to hear it from Tsunade's lips to know that-

"Aiko died."

'Ouch'.

"She didn't come back quite the same. I think that's not uncommon, though we haven't had much time to do a study on it."

Still, it hurt to hear.

"How?" he demanded.

Tsunade looked right at him and blatantly lied, gaze flickering down. "I don't know."

Another person might have been enraged that she wouldn't tell him the truth. Kakashi was just logical enough to read between the lines and realize Tsunade thought it would be better if he didn't know the particulars, probably for his own sake.

"I want to know," Kakashi said quietly. It was probably relevant, wasn't it? And if she'd had to endure it, he could cope with hearing, as penance for failing to protect her if nothing else.

Tsunade looked mildly queasy. "Stubborn." There wasn't any heat in her voice at all. "Her ANBU captain reported it in. Along with Mitarashi, they were fighting one of the Akatsuki. Mitarashi went first."

And Kakashi flinched, despite the fact that he'd seen Anko not six hours ago. He knew she was fine. They weren't even that close, so the sudden desire to ascertain that she was well was an illogical and useless impulse.

"I understand that the fight was not going well," Tsunade summed up carefully. He tried not to wonder what that meant. He would have thought that Anko dying was enough reason to rate the fight as a struggle. But there was no reason for Tsunade to be redundant. "Her captain, Yukimasa-san, seemed to think that Aiko was trying to protect him."

Improbable.

And he instantly felt shamefully guilty for doubting that assessment, carefully avoiding eye contact with Jiraiya, whose dull gaze had wandered over to Kakashi's face. Aiko could be very protective, yes, but generally of people she felt were weaker than her, not authority figures. He'd noted more than once that she demonstrated a worrying tendency to assume that her equals and superiors would be fine and to pay them little attention.

Guilt aside, it seemed much more likely that there had been another motivation. (Unless Anko's death really shook her, of course). Probably her damn temper. She wasn't a shouter like Naruto, but hell if she didn't hold grudges and act impulsively.

"And?" he prodded, because Tsunade didn't seem to be about to continue on her own.

"To be blunt, she killed herself," Tsunade admitted.

That was blunt. He realized that he had stopped breathing, but didn't care quite enough to take action to rectify that cease in motor function.

"Were you… No," Tsunade shook her head, tangling her fingers in her hair. "You wouldn't even know about that, would you? Hell. Where to start?" She glanced up at him, and apparently decided to go for the short version. "In the past year, she accidentally acquired a detonation seal that would fail when her chakra system failed to power it."

That really raised more questions than it answered. Though the pathetically guilty look on Jiraiya's face made him wonder…

"I think that she intended to use that to finish the fight." Uncomfortably, Tsunade stared at the bridge of Kakashi's nose in a way that implied she desperately wanted to look away. "According to Yukimasa-san, nothing the team had come up with managed to damage their opponent. And at that point, it appeared as though there weren't any good options she or Yukimasa were physically capable of attempting."

He really tried not to wonder how bad her condition must have been to dismiss any other possibilities. Aiko was very interested in survival. She wasn't always practical about it, but her failing seemed to more generally be an arrogant belief that she wouldn't be killed than that she didn't care about her own life. And that was a pretty typical teenaged viewpoint, if he were honest.

Jiraiya sighed tiredly. "Maybe she could have escaped with Hiraishin, but I don't think Aiko had it in her to leave Yukimasa to die, and she probably wasn't thinking that clearly. If she thought that the choice was between both of them dying and the explosion killing the Akatsuki after the fact, or saving her captain…" the toad sannin trailed off. There wasn't really a need to finish the thought.

In any case, it just didn't seem like her to think that there were really no options left. It didn't fit, it didn't make sense. Or maybe he just didn't want to believe it.

"I think I've heard enough. So this Akatsuki decided to raise Konoha's dead?" Kakashi interrupted, just to quiet the childish denials in his head.

"Yes. Nagato." At his puzzled look, Tsunade elaborated, "Apparently, Akatsuki's leader was one of Jiraiya's old students."

He should probably pity the older man. Maybe later he would be able to work up some sympathy, once he felt less like slamming Jiraiya's face into a wall repeatedly. And there was such a convenient wall, right there. It would look so much better with a Sannin-shaped hole in it.

"He was really the only Akatsuki present. He used some sort of puppet jutsu with corpses to make it seem like there were six shinobi."

Convoluted and stupid. Besides, he didn't really care at the moment.

"So what you're telling me is that this man's jutsu didn't do a good job of putting Aiko back together," Kakashi summarized impatiently.

Tsunade cringed, just a little bit. "For the most part, it worked," she assured weakly. "She just doesn't seem to remember anything. Or anyone, really. Other than that, she seems fine. Her vocabulary is age-appropriate, and she doesn't show any signs of reduced cognitive function. She's just confused."

How comforting. Jiraiya seemed to think so as well. His eyes were forced shut, but his face certainly wasn't peaceful.

"I picked Nagato's brain for everything he knew about the jutsu, but it was the same as the old stories. The Rinnegan can restore the dead to the state they were meant to be. It sounds nice, but it leaves a lot of questions about how the jutsu decides how to work. It doesn't seem consistent, but it could be that I haven't defined the parameters yet. Some people seem just fine, some are better than they were, and some…"

"Are not fine." That bit was obvious in context, so there was no point in dancing around it. "So an unknown Uchiha kidnapped Aiko for unknown reasons and she doesn't necessarily know anything is wrong."

"I hope you're right about Uchiha Itachi having information we can use," Tsunade said, in lieu of a direct answer. He already knew his summation was right. "As much as we need all our manpower, I would let you take a team to go look, if we had the first idea of what to look for. I'll call you in when Itachi reports so you can see for yourself what he knows. If you're going to be the one out looking for her, it makes sense for you to have the chance to get whatever information you deem necessary."

"Alright." He swallowed, feeling like he was carrying an extra hundred pounds on his back. "Have you told Naruto yet?"

The Hokage looked hunted and guilty.

"We're waiting until they're safely in the village to tell them that," Jiraiya rumbled without opening his eyes. "It's not the kind of thing you say via letter or an intermediate until you have to."

'It's not the kind of news you put off either,' Kakashi retorted internally. But he didn't want to be the one to break that news, so he nodded and left.

Two days had never seemed to pass so slowly before. Reconstruction had been sped drastically by Tenzou's assistance, but there was still plenty of banal work to be done by relatively strong helpers.

Kakashi found himself nailing thousands of tiles and laying wiring under his kohai's worried brown eyes, whenever Tenzou could pull himself away from his work for a breather. He almost envied the teams that rushed between Konoha and the nearest towns to carry loads of supplies. But he didn't quite envy them, because he had to be in the village when there was news.

He didn't wait for a messenger from Tsunade when Sasuke's team returned. There was no need. Hōseki had been more than willing to sit by the gates and wait for her mistress (and then "the cat people," as she referred to Itachi and Sasuke when told they might be able to help) to return. She had not been willing to listen to Pakkun's gentle explanation that she shouldn't get her hopes up.

Kakashi hadn't tried to dissuade her, not particularly interested in being an enormous hypocrite. No one was going to complain about an extra set of ears and a sharp nose, even if the attitude that came with was a bit of a bummer.

Not having Uzumaki-esque chakra reserves, it was a constant drain on his abilities to maintain a summoning for days on end (much less two) as Aiko had apparently done for the last week, but he hadn't argued. He'd been lucky enough that Hōseki had allowed him to summon her in an attempt to find out what she knew. It turned out to be almost nothing, a bitter pill in and of itself. Agreeing to help her stay in the human world to find out what had happened was a foregone conclusion, despite knowing that the solution was short-term at best.

When a mournful yap caught his ear, Kakashi dropped his burden without so much as looking back and bounded towards Hokage tower. He actually beat Sasuke's team there. Doubtlessly they were gaping at the destruction instead of speeding over.

Tsunade sighed, but didn't say a thing when he leaned against the wall facing the door to wait. Things became spectacularly more uncomfortable when Jiraiya joined them several minutes later and carefully avoided looking at Kakashi.

He understood the impulse. He'd chucked all his Icha Icha in the bin when he'd gotten to his apartment and discovered that his domicile was one of the lucky, still habitable places. Two minutes later, he had regretfully fished the books out and smoothed over the creases from his fit of temper. That didn't mean he'd felt much like reading them since. Maybe once he was less disappointed with the older man.

'I wonder if he expects me to castigate him?' Kakashi wondered bleakly. Now that his anger had cooled a bit… It was obvious that Jiraiya was doing a decent job of making himself miserable. It probably wasn't worth the effort to help.

The teenagers were a little less impassive than the three experienced shinobi. There was a collective cringe when Karin pushed open the door and they all saw him. They were probably thinking that they were about to be in trouble for their disobedience in Ame.

To be honest, he'd put that out of mind. There would be a reckoning, but not today. "Get out," Kakashi said quietly. "Everyone but Itachi. You three wait outside." His voice turned hard when Sasuke's face twisted and he opened his mouth to object. "This is not debatable," Kakashi clipped. Naruto looked disturbed, but was obedient enough to grab his teammate's shoulder and steer him out. As he went, the blonde whispered, "Itachi's a big boy now, mommy-bear. He'll be fine for a couple of minutes."

Itachi couldn't quite hide the hint of a smile around his eyes. He might not have been trying, as his brother wouldn't be able to see his face regardless.

Oddly, seeing the siblings look relatively happy put Kakashi's hackles up. There was an irony in Naruto comforting Sasuke about Itachi at this moment. Maybe Sasuke would repay the favor.

As soon as the door was closed and Sasuke's grouchy and defensive reply was cut off, Tsunade threw Kakashi a look that was half-way between questioning and annoyed, but he didn't care. This would go much faster without an audience. Kakashi drew himself up to his full height and paced directly in front of the younger man. He wasn't intentionally conveying danger, but Itachi seemed to sense it nonetheless.

"In Ame, you indicated you had information about one of my subordinates," Kakashi said quietly. "I want it, now."

He was mildly gratified to see that Itachi gaped slightly before he let his gaze wander over Kakashi's shoulder to Tsunade. She must have affirmed the order, because he opened his mouth.

"You refer to the Uzumaki girl, I assume?" At his terse nod, Itachi continued fluidly. "Very well, though I have trepidation about releasing this information, since she apparently deemed it unwise."

"And why would Aiko's opinion outweigh the Hokage's order?" Tsunade asked smartly. She was much cleaner than she had been the last time he'd seen her, but if anything, stress was pulling harder at her features and temper.

Somewhat wisely, the Uchiha backtracked a little. "Forgive me, Hokage-sama. I know how that sounds, but I believed that she was best qualified to make that decision at the time, since I did not have the information that she must. Years ago, I encountered Uzumaki-san's psyche when I returned to Konoha to investigate reports of instability after the attempted invasion."

"You mean when you attacked her," Kakashi clarified steadily, giving the younger man a hard stare. "She was what, twelve at the time?"

Even as the words left his mouth, he knew the aggression was unhelpful at this point in time. But Itachi's evasion was infuriating. That was a delicate way of saying that he'd assaulted someone less than half his skill level with genjutsu and presumably touched her mind in the way he'd touched Kakashi's, trapping her consciousness and rifling through her worst fears and the deepest reaches of her soul.

And he was supposedly loyal to Konoha. Konoha wasn't supposed to do that to her own.

"Not now, Kakashi," Tsunade dismissed, though her eyes weren't friendly either. "Continue."

Kakashi may have curled his lip into a snarl. Itachi actually hesitated before the next part- just for a moment, but enough that Kakashi believed he was seriously considering the possible impact of his words.

"I… considered the possibility that she was out of touch." Itachi's gaze remained fixed on Tsunade, despite the fact that Kakashi was in his personal space, and that Jiraiya looked a bit murderous at the reminder. "What I found in her psyche was distinctly odd. She knew a great deal that she could not possibly know, about things that had happened before she was born and had not yet come to pass. Some of those beliefs have since proved true, but many did not." Obviously unnerved, Itachi looked at Kakashi for just an instant. "It is my belief that she has some sort of gift of prophecy."

There was a clatter. All the shinobi moved in time to see that the pen Jiraiya had been fiddling with was rolling to a stop on the floor. The older man bent to pick it up, his mass of hair covering his face.

It took a moment for Itachi to pick back up on his trail of thought. "It seems to be often inaccurate, but still, I felt it would be most unwise to allow anyone else to come to know of her ability. Whether the ability was useful or not, she would be hunted for it."

Kakashi closed his eyes, and put a hand to his forehead. He had no reason to believe that Itachi was a liar, of course. That didn't mean that he wasn't barking mad. Even if he was insane, he was probably right in that a prophet would be a dangerous tool in unscrupulous hands. Someone who wanted to misuse potential information could do a great deal of harm with access to a seer. It wouldn't matter if the claim was true or not, so long as people believed it.

After a moment of silence, he pried his uncovered eye open and twisted to share a look with Tsunade.

She shrugged, clearly just as bemused as he was. "Jiraiya believes in prophecy," she shared noncommittally, giving just the shortest glance in her partner's direction. "You'll forgive me if I don't, of course, but I can still see that this claim would make Aiko a target. Do you have any evidence of this supposed ability?"

"She knew that I acted on orders from Konoha," Itachi offered up quietly. "As well as that Pein was not the true leader of Akatsuki. Or rather, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that she suspected he was not Akatsuki's leader. In other possible futures, Orochimaru would have killed Sandaime-sama and taken on Sasuke as an apprentice."

Tsunade nearly choked.

"Clearly, that did not come to pass, and the future is therefore not a book to be read at leisure," Itachi continued respectfully. "Although Aiko may have some experience with discerning how certain outcomes may be reached. You did have a second apprentice in that future as well," Itachi shared, nodding slightly at Tsunade. "So perhaps some things are set in stone."

If that were true, it would explain Aiko's reticence on this bizarre topic. Sharing the future could change it, and possibly for the worse. It seemed likely that trying to ensure a desirable future could circumvent it. Keeping quiet may have been her best option. Besides, who would have believed her?

He wouldn't have.

"And who was my alternate future's apprentice?" Tsunade rasped dryly, clearly trying for detached nonchalance and not entirely succeeding.

"A girl with pink hair. I did not recognize her."

That sentence felt like a physical blow to the gut. Weakly, Kakashi took a shuddering breath and backed away, trying to regain his composure.

He had no idea how Itachi could possibly have known about Sakura. But god, that meant that if he was right, somehow she could have been saved. And she would have become so strong. It was like losing a student for the first time all over again.

Maybe it just hit him especially hard because he'd just lost his second student.

'No. I haven't lost her yet.' Kakashi grit his teeth and denied that bleak thought, fingers reaching for the kunai in his thigh pouch like a safety blanket. He would have to ask Jiraiya how it was possible, since the Hiraishin should have faded when Aiko died. But he could still feel her chakra humming faintly along the seal. She wasn't dead. And if she wasn't dead, she could be helped.

Unlike Sakura. Poor sweet Sakura.

Jiraiya was giving him a sympathetic look that made him want to hide under the table, rather than risk condolences again. It was belatedly that he realized the other two shinobi were eying him warily. Ah. That was right. Tsunade had never even met Sakura, and Kakashi hadn't exactly had a heart-to-heart with her on the topic. She wouldn't know who Itachi was talking about.

Tsunade still didn't look entirely convinced, but Kakashi had been shown enough circumstantial evidence to at least want more information. He opened his mouth to confirm that Itachi had referenced someone he knew, but shut it without saying a word. They'd already discerned as much from his reaction, and he didn't feel the need to start storytime. Not now.

'Did Aiko know Sakura was going to die?' Kakashi flinched when the possibility hit him like a fist to the head, wracking his memory for anything that hinted one way or the other. Had she said anything that could have been a clue? Looked nervous? No… Maybe she'd pushed the kids a little harder than usual in training, but that made sense when nominating absolute rookies for a Chuunin exam.

'I don't think she knew. Or that she really believed it would happen. Maybe… If Itachi is telling the truth and correct, that could explain why Aiko had an out of character breakdown that night,' he concluded bleakly.

"You said she knew things from before she was born?" Jiraiya spoke for the first time, looking disturbed. "Like what?"

Itachi seemed ready for that question. "Odds and ends," he admitted. "Nothing coherent. A red-headed girl being kidnapped by Kumo nin and saved by a blonde boy. Something about a female jinchuuriki. And…" he frowned, looking perturbed. "my mother," Itachi added flatly. "Holding her the day she was born, in the Hokage's office."

'I have no idea what any of that would be about,' Kakashi thought, slightly relieved. In this, perhaps he preferred ignorance to knowledge of the specific things Aiko had already known about. Judging by the shell-shocked look on Jiraiya's face, something Itachi had said had rung a bell.

The Sannin exchanged an uneasy look. "Uchiha Mikoto was with Aiko when I brought Naruto up," Jiraiya admitted quietly.

"And the reports on Aiko's birth were in her handwriting," Tsunade added wryly. After a moment, her eyes widened and she cursed. "Hell, I wonder if the birth anomaly she recorded had anything to do with-"

"Birth anomaly?" Kakashi interrupted rudely. He'd never heard of anything like that.

"Well, yes," Tsunade said warily. "When Shizune was giving her an advanced physical, she realized that Aiko's chakra composition didn't match her old readings at all. Two days ago, Aiko had perfectly balanced spiritual and physical energy."

That was unlikely. Perfect balance was prized for the way it augmented chakra control abilities, but almost impossible to achieve. Sakura had been damn close. Aiko had never had bad chakra control, but hers wasn't good, either. It was far better than Naruto's, but not as polished as Sasuke's had been at comparative points in their early training.

"But her old records indicated a sharp imbalance in favor of spiritual chakra," the Hokage continued. "Shizune tried to make a timeline to see if the last results were typical, or just an unusually high reading on that particular day." Tsunade exhaled deeply, brow furrowed. "It was typical. Aiko had disproportionate chakra literally since the day she was born."

Creepy.

"That's very strange," Jiraiya said flatly. "What, like a little too much soul tagged along for the ride or something?"

Kakashi didn't believe in souls, but he was now very uncomfortable with the topic of conversation for a reason he couldn't define.

Tsunade cracked her knuckles, giving Kakashi one last troubled look. He was too busy thinking to feel up to reassuring her that he wasn't about to snap. After a moment, she sighed and turned her attention back to Itachi. "Tell me everything you remember."

Kakashi managed to drag himself out of paranoid re-examinations of rather faint memories in order to listen to that. Most of what Itachi knew was all but useless now, hopelessly outdated. According to Itachi, Aiko had known a fair bit about Akatsuki members, but most of them were dead now. So perhaps she had known what she was doing in feigning ignorance and quietly steering actions where she could. It was more than a bit unnerving to hear that she'd believed that the Akatsuki known as Tobi might be the long-dead Uchiha Madara, all things considered.

'Itachi made the same claim when we were in Ame,' he remembered. There had been more time-sensitive issues at the time, but… 'That could be a clue. If Itachi is right, and Madara uses dead Uchiha bodies as hosts, we might be able to track down whose he is using to get some idea as to his current capabilities.'

Feeling ill, Kakashi exchanged a glance with Tsunade. Itachi might have taken it for doubt, because he went on to mention that he had thought she was suspiciously deferential to Tobi.

"She was very careful not to provoke," Itachi informed.

"That doesn't sound much like Aiko in normal circumstances," Tsunade acknowledged a bit weakly. The woman was right. When she felt in danger, Aiko defaulted to flippancy and bravado rather than cautiousness.

And he had thought he smelled an Uchiha. (Cat-loving bastards, Kakashi thought uncharitably. And unfairly—he liked cats just fine himself). If Kakashi had discovered that Obito's eye could be used to tear dimensional rifts, then an Uchiha with a hundred years worth of time to waste and ability to select a designer meat-sack certainly could have encountered the power through experiment as well. That would have been how he had taken Aiko out of the hospital. It fit neatly.

However much circumstantial evidence there appeared to be, there was still a problem with this story.

"Madara should be dead," he rejected. That point he couldn't get over. "He's not a scientist like Orochimaru. There's no reason to believe Madara would possess the requisite skill-set to survive for so long. How would he transfer bodies?"

"I have considered the issue many time," Itachi agreed somberly. "It is my belief that after Madara was defeated at the Valley of the End, the Hokage let Madara go out of the memory of their old friendship. I do not know how he clung to life for so many years, but if anyone could, it would be him."

"Tobi did display interest in Aiko," Tsunade mused, face pale. "It fits."

Itachi narrowed his half-blind eyes on Tsunade with new intensity. "So Naruto-san informed me. I do not know how her knowledge could have come to his attention. I told no one."

"He's an Uchiha too," Jiraiya pointed out sourly, sneering ever so slightly at Itachi. The Uchiha looked uncomfortable. "If you could rummage around her psyche and discover the information, who is to say that he couldn't?

Unsurprisingly, Itachi didn't want to answer that. "Has Tobi come to Konoha?" he asked cautiously.

'I forgot he didn't know what was going on.'

It wasn't a bad guess.

"Yes, and he took Aiko with him when he left." Tsunade paused, apparently noting the collective wince from the light-haired men in the room. "Sorry," she added belatedly.

Kakashi waved her apology off, though the sting of her bluntness hadn't faded.

They stayed in that office for another hour wringing Itachi for information. Unsurprisingly, Kakashi somehow discovered a capacity to feel even worse by the time they were done.

'It would have been nice if he'd known anything useful. Or if he'd shared this before.' Kakashi stayed in his dark thoughts even as Itachi left and the three bored teenagers filed into the doorway in his stead. 'If we'd known, we would have been more careful. Someone would have watched Aiko directly.'

Tsunade seemed to take it as a possible boon that Aiko was currently amnesiac, whether through physical trauma or inability to cope with the information. (She'd nearly theorized aloud that it was because Nagato's jutsu really had worked at restoring her to the state she should be in, a state without strange extra knowledge, before Kakashi's obvious bad mood had brought her back down.) That meant that Madara couldn't get what she'd known out of her. It was good for Konoha as a whole, even if it wasn't for Aiko.

Of course, that didn't mean that she wouldn't have new visions that would endanger Konoha. And if she never did, Madara would probably decide she was worthless and kill her. There was no way to win. He would probably only keep her alive as long as she was useful to him. Of course, that didn't mean much about what state she would be kept in. There were a good many tortures that would leave a person perfectly capable of talking.

"There hasn't been much change since Kakashi left Ame," Sasuke began, clearly thinking they were present for a debriefing of the situation in Ame. Tsunade held up a palm, indicating that he should stop talking.

"Not important right now," she dismissed. "If there were no real changes, in any case. That's not our biggest concern. Right now, Konoha is focusing on itself. I expect all three of you to devote yourselves wholeheartedly to strengthening the village. We are in grave danger at the moment. Our numbers aren't particularly low, but our people are on the streets and we have no fortifications. We're a huge target."

'Nice speech, but that's not why they're here,' Kakashi thought sourly. Honestly. He knew perfectly well that medics were masters of compartmentalization—you had to be, to clinically diagnose bleeding hunks of meat instead of crying over wounded comrades—but at the moment, it rankled.

"But that's not why you're here," Tsunade added guiltily, fidgeting.

'That was uncanny.' Kakashi gave her a suspicious look, which she apparently took as motivation to jump right to the heart of the matter.

"Naruto, your sister is missing in action." Tsunade grimaced slightly. "And she's probably unaware of the danger of her situation."

'Is she technically missing in action? She wasn't in a combat situation at the time.'

That wasn't a productive line of thought. He steered away from it.

"What." It wasn't really a question, but Naruto seemed to want an answer. At his side, Sasuke was dangerously still. "How?"

"No, when," Karin interrupted, frowning. "When did this happen? I thought that the attack was days ago, and that the Ame nin already left."

Kakashi forced himself to wonder how Karin had heard that Ame nin were present instead of listening to the information he himself had compiled for Tsunade. He'd been dwelling on it for days, and turning the same information over hadn't born any fruit.

"She was taken out of the hospital," Tsunade said quietly. "We don't know who, other than that he is the Akatsuki who went by the name Tobi. Kakashi suspects he's an Uchiha. Itachi claims that Madara Uchiha may be possessing younger Uchiha in order to survive, and that this Tobi was the real head of Akatsuki."

He just didn't have any damn ideas. There hadn't been anything new to add until Itachi's report. There had to be a clue there. Something to go off of, a starting place at least.

"An Uchiha?" Sasuke asked incredulously, mouth not quite managing to close. "Where are these people hiding? Are you storing them in your lingerie drawer for when you really need to wow someone?"

'That's an odd thing to say,' Kakashi noted. 'I'm guessing there's something I haven't been told.'

Judging by the look on Itachi's face, he hadn't been told either.

"Probably Uchiha Madara," Jiraiya inserted uncomfortably, ruffling the back of his hair. "That would explain the grudge against Konoha personally."

'It's sad that I'm almost hoping it really was Uchiha Madara and not some mysterious Uchiha survivor,' Kakashi thought bleakly. Despite the frightening likelihood that Madara would be ill-disposed to treating an Uzumaki gently, he at least wasn't a complete unknown. There had to be some way to gather information about him. Childhood haunts, or habits, or mannerisms that could be used to identify him despite a henge or other disguise. It was the only clue he had, so he had to hope it was true.

"I don't- but…" Naruto shook his head, bewildered. His big blue eyes wavered, begging for someone to make it better.

It hurt, to see that Naruto still retained that bit of childish reliance on someone else to fix everything. Or rather, it hurt to see it and know that he couldn't do a thing to preserve it.

'Maybe Aiko made a mistake by taking care of everything Naruto couldn't handle,' Kakashi thought dully.

"He should be long dead," Sasuke argued. A man after Kakashi's own heart, he made the same argument the Copy-nin had made when he'd heard that theory.

"That's crazy," Naruto agreed.

The Hokage sighed. "Telling him that he should be dead probably won't help." Tsunade shared a grim glance with Jiraiya. "When we know more, you'll be the first to hear about it. I promise that we'll find her if there's any way."

Karin was crying silently, tears slipping down without her face moving or wrenched up. Her jaw was hard, and her chin didn't waver. Sasuke was a picture of grim understanding, the other end of the emotional spectrum.

'Strange that Karin is the most openly upset. She knew Aiko the least amount of time.'

A second later, Naruto disproved Kakashi's judgment by screwing his face up. Counter-intuitively, he looked more angry than sad.

"This is bullshit!" Naruto shouted, banging a fist on Tsunade's desk. It shook under the weight, despite looking perfectly sturdy. He didn't seem to notice, but he didn't hit it again. "Don't talk like this is the end or something. She's fine. She's always fine. She'll probably saunter right in the gates and then pretend like she doesn't even understand why we were worried."

"Naruto, don't be immature," Tsunade snapped, glaring at him in obvious frustration at his intentional pig-headedness. "No one is invincible."

"Then we'll go find her," Naruto countered immediately. Ah, Kakashi realized. He'd talked Tsunade into a corner. That was a rather good rhetorical play, for a teenager in a temper. "No offense, but it's stupid to work on putting up buildings when a real person needs help. I'm not doing it." Naruto crossed his arms combatively.

"You'll do what you're told, or you won't be on the team looking for her," Tsunade rejoined fiercely, placing her palms down and leaning over her desk. "Calm the hell down. I didn't say we were giving up, did I? We can't do anything without some information or clues as to where to start, so this is the time that your scruffy godfather and his intelligence network are the only ones who can do anything. Once we have a better idea than 'outside the village', then you can go tear through anyone in your way."

Sullenly, Naruto nodded, apparently not trusting himself to speak. Tsunade kindly pretended not to see Karin curl her fingers around his, or Sasuke carefully lean his shoulder against Naruto's.

Kakashi couldn't stop looking, however, feeling melancholy and strangely empty. Team. They were a good team.

They were probably better off without him. Everything he touched died. With the exception of Gai, but that probably had more to do with Gai's sturdiness than Kakashi's competency as a human being.

He looked away with herculean effort. "I'll contact you as soon as I know something." Even to his ears, his voice sounded strange. Sasuke looked at him sharply. "Assuming all three of you want in on this mission, of course. I'll see you later."

He left before they could say anything, unable to be in that room any longer.