#//COMPLETE!!! Wahoo!!!

[the-daycare-pokecenter]

[Transcript of last nights battle; "Recorded" by Slowking, uploaded by Porygon]

Moor: They're coming. Spade, are you ready?

Spade: I have to be ready.

Admin Yvaine: Hello, hello! I heard you're ready to give up that man you've been attempting to hide from us?

Moor: He's right here. There's no way you're here alone, are you?

Admin Yvaine: I brought my Pokemon. That's enough to keep me safe.

Spade: Where's Lucario?

Admin Yvaine: Not with me, obviously. That'd be stupid of me.

Spade: What was stupid was entering my gym and attempting to destory my mech suit.

Admin Yvaine: Don't you know how noisy that thing was? How loud that entire town is?

Spade: That's my home town you're talking about.

Admin Yvaine: Speaking of noise, that's enough chatter. Come along peacfully, or me and my team will take you by force.

Spade: Let me offer you a bet. If you can beat me in a battle without my ace, you can take me. If I win, you have to leave me and the daycare alone.

Admin Yvaine: Hah! Just want to delay your doom by a few minutes? Fine by me!

[Admin Yvaine Vs Daycare Trainer Spade]

Admin Yvaine sent out Shiinotic!

Daycare Trainer Spade sent out Brozong

Admin Yvaine: Ugh, that disgusting sound type? I'll have it eradicated!

... Bronzong Fainted!

Daycare Trainer Spade sent out Doublade!

Spade: Take this sword of justice!

... Siinotic fainted!

Admin Yvaine sent out Lurantis!

Admin Yvaine: You won't bug me thst easily!

... Lurantis fainted!

Admin Yvaine sent out Gourgeist!

Admin Yvaine: You won't knock me dead just yet!

... Brozong faited!

Daycare Trainer Spade sent out Togedemaru!

Spade: You might find this shocking, but I won't give up!

... Togedemaru fainted!

Daycare Trainer Spade sent out Metagross!

Spade: It doesn't take a mind reader to know things are getting trick for you!

... Gourgeist Fainted!

Admin Yvaine sent out Togekiss!

Admin Yvaine: Just because we want peace doesn't mean we're going to be gentle!

... Metagross Fainted!

Daycare Trainer Spade sent out Melmetal!

Spade: Bet you haven't seen anything like this before! Melmetal, go!

... Togekiss fainted!

Admin Yvaine sent out Vileplume!

Yvaine: We'll take you and your vile Pokemon down!

... Vileplume fainted!

Admin Yvaine sent out Tinkaton!

Yvaine: Now it's our turn to bring out the hammer of justice!

... Melmetal fainted!

Daycare Trainer Spade sent out Archaludon!

Spade: You're not going to take me, and you're going to give me back Lucario!

Admin Yvaine: You are tough to beat! I'll tell you what, if your dragon type can really defeat my fairy, I'll give you back Lucario!

Spade: I think you're forgetting I was a gym leader. I know exactly how to deal with unfavorable type match ups!!!

...

...

...

...

...

...

... Tinkaton fainted!

Daycare Trainer Spade is the winner!!!

Admin Yvaine: You... disrupted my peace...

[Battle end!]

Spade: Give me back Lucario.

Admin Yvaine: Fine. Here.

Moor: Are you going to leave us alone now? The entire daycare, that's what you said.

Admin Yvaine: Ugh! Yes! You're soo anoyying.

Spade: Lucario! You're alright!

Admin Yvaine: This isn't the last you'll hear about us. Your daycare is a magnent for troubled trainers! We'll be back, and your daycare won't stand for long!

Moor: Do you want us to heal your Pokemom for you?

Admin Yvaine: ... No. I'll be fine.

[Transcript ends]

Lucario is returned, and Spade is safe. The daycare is safe, too... for now. What do I know? I'm just a simple Slowking 😼

[pinksilvace]

Inspired by And Through You I Feel Respite Yet Rest Alludes Me Still by @pepsiiwho

[miniiinebulaee]

Kirbtober day 31 - Final Boss

[kriscommitscrimes]

duality of kris

[tracle0]

Snippet Sunday VIII

I think it's the eighth Sunday...? Maybe maybe! Here's some prophet story I wrote freshly for you (yes, you!)

A hand raised to his chest, trying to find the mutilation that had forced his ribs to poke out like ageing farmhouse fencing. His skin was sealed, unblemished under his fingers; sticky from his blood, but otherwise untouched. An identical inspection around his throat found the same. No hole for pathetic, fleshy pleas to wheeze through. All fixed. All perfect.

“You saved me,” he finally whispered, eyes wide and awed. “You – you didn’t have to, but you…?”

The Blight – previously quiet, considerate, letting him get to terms with the gift of his life – curled in his head, content. You’ve done me well, it said simply. I don’t want to lose you yet.

He probed carefully at his skull, hair sliding between his fingers. He could see where shards of his skull had been ejected, pick them up and inspect them, but he found no hollows in his head, no blemishes. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I… thank you.”

Your brother is almost here.

Cain blinked, the brief memory of something – a squirrel? – flashing through his mind, before he shook it away, focused. “We should go, then,” he said, starting to stand. The ground glimmered. His surroundings groaned and sobbed, the forgotten guards whimpering and wheezing, the fury surrendering them to shock and agony. “To Body?”

It hesitated. As he started to walk past a pair of guards, one pinned down by the other, bloodied and bruised, it drew his attention down to the ground, to a discarded knife next to the freed, fighting pair. See if you can slow him down, it suggested idly.

[bpointsplatling]

the salmon can keep wahoo actually

as a treat

[trans-xianxian]

the tower -> the star -> judgement

[unproduciblesmackdown]

why did he do this (rhetorical) (profoundly affected)

[valiantstarlights]

[Dreamling Week Day 7: AUs or Crossovers] Of Surviving

This is a Dreamling Hunger Games AU oneshot. I finished writing it on May 27, but then I saw @mr-sadman 's prompt list for dreamling week 2023 and thought, 'Oooh 🖤 This is going to be perfect for Day 7!'

And here we are 2 weeks later. I hope you guys like it! 😊

CW: I mean...it's The Hunger Games. That's a warning all by itself.

"And why should we bet that you would win?" The host asks, fake teeth gleaming under the harsh stage lights. The same question, the same maddening smile directed at all the tributes.

"Because," Dream says, feeling bile rise up his throat, "I am better than the two who came before me."

The crowd gasps, but he could see a couple of audience members, the rough-looking shark-like types, nodding in consideration.

He hopes his siblings aren't watching.

--

"And why should we bet that you would win?"

"You shouldn't," the smiling boy from District 9 says. "But do it anyway for spite. Who knows, in the unlikely event that I win, you'll have me to thank for getting you at least a dozen new mansions."

The crowd laughs. Dream watches from backstage and immediately dismisses the boy as someone who would die an hour into the games.

--

The next time Dream sees the boy from District 9 is when he was aiming a javelin right at Dream. The first words the boy ever says to him is, "Duck!"

Dream ducks, and watches as the boy's javelin strikes true, right in the chest of District 2's career tribute.

--

"I thank you for saving my life, but I hope you are not expecting me to save you back."

The boy looks at him like he's a weird seven-legged fish. "Sure. You're welcome, District 4."

They part ways.

--

"Thought you said you wouldn't be saving my life," the boy from District 9 says, hand still holding Dream's as the two of them run away from the trap Dream has sprung, which caught a couple of other tributes who had been chasing him. Them both.

It was a coincidence that they were even in the same place at the same time.

Dream should really shake the boy's hand off.

"I am saving mine in the process of saving yours," he says. "Having an ally means surviving longer."

"An ally, huh? Well in that case, the name's Hob. Well, Robert Gadling, actually. I'm from District 9."

'I know,' Dream doesn't say. 'I thought you would be one of the first ones to die.'

--

"My name is Dream."

Dream wouldn't have volunteered this information, or really, anything about himself, but Hob has earned his trust by being an incredibly resourceful partner. He hasn't killed anyone else aside from that one career tribute, but he makes up for his lack of kill count by helping Dream (who grew up near the sea) survive in the arena the gamemakers have fashioned for them, which was part dense forest and part prairie.

"It suits you," Hob says, eyes on Dream's when he says it, his smile soft.

Dream looks away.

--

The faces of the day's dead have just finished being shown in the sky. Five more dead tributes. He imagines how their family back home would react to the news of their death. Would they be angry? Would they be disappointed?

Would they be relieved that there will be less mouths to feed from now on?

Dream wants to scream. He wants to think about anything else, so he turns to Hob, sitting beside him, face still turned upwards, contemplative. Dream wonders if they're thinking the same thing.

"Tell me about your family," Dream says.

Hob shrugs. "Not much to tell, really. We're poor like the rest, work hard like the rest, and try our best to live a life like the rest."

Dream sees his hands balled up into fists by his sides, knuckles white.

--

"What did Johanna mean, when she said you'll share the same fate as your siblings if you cross her path?"

It was early the next day. Hob is talking about a conversation between Dream and Johanna that took place in the morning of the previous day.

"I had six siblings," Dream says. They were gathering firewood now, for another trap that Dream is planning to spring. "Two of them were both reaped last year."

Hob stops in his tracks. "Oh," he says, sadness coloring his tone and setting Dream's teeth on edge. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Dream says simply. He clutches his bundle tighter in his arms so Hob wouldn't see how his hands have began to shake. "You did not pick their names at random."

--

"Their names were Destruction and Delirium," Dream tells him later that night in their little camp, hidden deep within the forest. "Sometimes I wish I had volunteered in my brother's place and managed to save my sister."

"Oh, love."

--

"Why did you call me 'love' yesterday?" Dream does not look at Hob when he asks this.

"Why do you think?"

He wonders if Hob is looking at him when he answered.

--

"You should eat more."

Dream ignores him and curls up more in his tattered sleeping bag. The trap succeeded, but the gamemakers fucked around with the weather and Dream had been soaked to the bone. And now it seems that he has caught a fever.

"Please," Hob begs, warm hand on Dream's freezing arm. He has cooked a meager amount of watery vegetable soup from the plants they had foraged. "For me."

"You will be better off without me," Dream says, because it's true. "There are only a few tributes left."

Hob sighs. "Look, if you don't eat by yourself, then I'm going to feed you like a baby bird, and then we'll both feel awkward."

Dream imagines Hob sipping the soup and keeping it in his mouth, then pressing his lips against Dream's and feeding him in this manner, just to make sure that Dream has something warm and healing in his stomach. He reddens even more despite his raging fever.

He still has some good sense remaining, however, so he sits up and shakily accepts the small bowl from Hob's hands, unable to look directly at him.

--

Dream tilts his face away. "We shouldn't."

"Why not?" Hob has not moved, body still close and face a breath away from Dream's. "What are you so afraid of?"

Dream pushes him away with both hands, but he does so gently and with a lingering touch to Hob's clothed chest that his hands were immediately engulfed by Hob's larger ones.

Dream is becoming a hedonist under the boy's influence. It is apparent when their fingers tangled together almost automatically.

"Because if we share a kiss," Dream says, "then we would cease to be vigilant for a few precious seconds, and that could mean the difference between life and death."

Hob says nothing for a moment, before he inhales deeply and nods. "You're right."

"I almost always am."

Hob rolls his eyes at him. "I mean that you're right in that we should always be vigilant. Not that when I kiss you, I would only want it to last for a few seconds."

'When,' Hob says. Not 'if.'

Dream tries not to obsess about his wording.

He fails.

--

"I apologize. You should not have seen that."

"What, you killing Johanna by drowning her in quicksand?"

"I did not mean to! It was just the easiest way to do it." Dream looks down at Hob coldly, willing his anger to overtake the fear that this would be the thing that would make Hob betray him.

--

"You're afraid of me now."

Hob shakes his head. He still has not looked at Dream in the eye again, but his tone is as kind as always. Dream wants to hold his hand and ask for reassurance that Hob does not hate him. He doesn't, because he has always been a coward.

"I'm afraid of dying," Hob says. "Totally not the same thing."

--

"Dream?"

Dream is pretending to be asleep. He has to. He dares not show Hob his tear-streaked cheeks.

Hob sighs.

--

"Okay, here's the plan." Hob's eyes are looking furtively behind them, body tense. They are almost at the end. There are only a couple more tributes left other than the two of them. "You run right, I run left, then we lead whoever is following us to your traps."

Dream looks at Hob's handsome, dirt-streaked face and wants more than anything to survive with him. But there can only be one victor, and he has already failed two of the people he loves.

He leans forward and kisses Hob for the first and probably the last time. Then, he stands up and runs as fast as his feet can carry him towards the traps, ignoring Hob's panicked shout behind him.

--

"I don't want to survive if you don't survive with me," Hob tells the stars when Dream is pretending to be asleep. "I can't. I wouldn't be able to."

--

"Who says you're dying?" Dream replies just after dawn, when Hob is sound asleep beside him, snoring softly. "You are not allowed to die under my watch, Hob Gadling."

--

"No! Dream!"

"I'm...I'm sorry," Dream says, voice soft and weak. There was way too much red surrounding him. Hob is losing his mind. "I love you. I'm sorry."

"You cheated." Hob's hands are shaking as he takes his jacket off and bunches it up, pressing it hard against the wound on the other boy's stomach. "You're supposed to be the one that survives!"

"I don't want to go back," Dream tells him, eyes turning glassy with unshed tears. "Not without you."

"Shit, you're losing too much blood."

"I would have liked to show you the place where I like to read in secret..."

"Gods, shut up, shut up, shut up--" Hob looks around frantically, trying to find something, anything, that could save Dream.

He is handed a knife by a bloodied, trembling hand, so pale it was almost white. "Here," Dream says. He points to an area under his own jaw. "Put the knife... Slash deep here. A little diagonally. Most effective..." His eyes were already blinking slower, movements growing sluggish.

"No," Hob says fiercely. The knife's handle is digging into his palm from how tight he's gripping it. "No, I'm not killing you. Fuck you for even--"

"Love you..." Dream's lips mouth at him, his striking blue eyes still looking at Hob's, as if he wants Hob's face to be the last thing he sees.

"No," Hob spits in denial. "Fuck this--"

Hob has always been a quick learner. His mother had always told him so. When his older brother was reaped six years ago and died within the hour of the games starting, Hob marched out of their house and immediately learned how to handle all the farming equipment from the older men, so his family could continue to eat.

He now places the knife Dream gave him against his own neck--

--

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

--

Dream gasps awake and clutches at the shape beside him desperately. Hob startles awake at the frantic touch, then pulls Dream towards him, holding him tight and steady, a fortress against a howling storm.

He murmurs soft words next to Dream's ear, one hand rubbing his back gently, while the other partially covers the large jagged scar on Dream's side. Dream presses his face closer to Hob's neck, his nose right where Hob's own scar is. It's small and looks insignificant compared to the one on Dream's body, but it proved more effective in getting the gamemakers to panic. They needed to have a victor, after all.

That year, they had two.

That had been ten years ago.

"We made it, my love," Hob says against his hair. It smells like the very sea that is only a short walk away from their home. Hob can hear the waves lapping peacefully at the shore. "We made it. It's all over now. We made it."

[satans-knitwear]

Got distracted by bug fixes. Have some fishnet 🏳️‍🌈🍑

Treat me ~ Tip me ~ More of me

[finnishtango]

extradimensional

[bonetrousledbones]

its not unusual at this point for me to go several days and occasionally weeks without posting here BUT this time i'm going to have a good excuse and her name is hurricane helene and she sucks and i hate her

[tsunamiam]

day 14 (2 weeks! couldn’t find my Apple Pencil so this is all finger drawn - unfinished)

Character: Asuka Langley Soryu - Neon Genesis Evangelion

[kookyburrowing]

chapter 3 is up!! this one’s pretty heavy ngl.

also, not to sound needy or anything but if you read it please leave a comment or something bc just seeing the hit count go up without seeing any actual engagement is. yeah im not gonna lie it’s a bit disheartening bc i put a lot of effort into this beast.

[tansybeetle]

sardine spoons + can !!

[clannfearrunt]

OC archetype: quiet and introspective interspecies adoptee that doesn't tend to emote in a way that is immediately intuitive to other people