#AFTER TWO YEARS! THE CROCODILE MAN STRIKES AGAIN!!!!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fanaticsnail · 8 months ago

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Donquixote Masterlist

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Donquixote Rosinante:

Despiértame mi Corazon (Dance Series) (Gift One-Shot)

You have been on the run from Donquixote Doflamingo, sheltering and caring for a young, sick child. Your emotions catch up with you as you process the change your life has led you to. You’ve left it all: family, career, friends - all to support Rosinante in his quest to cure the boy. Upon seeing you in this state, your Corazon will do anything to see you smile again.

Donquixote Rosinante's Journey with Modern Slang (crack dialogue)

Mild background context: Law's skills as a doctor saved a person with the devil-fruit with the ability grant a single wish. Law used that wish to bring back Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante as he was: lying in the snow and unresponsive. He wanted the chance to use what he's learnt to save him, and save him he does. Both now in their 20s, Rosi is adjusting and attempting to learn the current slang to relate to his grown son.

Rosinante's Trip Down Under (one-shot)

Modern AU, Rosinante visiting your hometown in Queensland Australia. He is overwhelmed by the cultural differences, but loves to learn the slang.

I Like Matching (NSFW One-Shot)

Returning home from an away mission for your boss, you are immediately spirited away to the nearest unoccupied space and met with the lips, hands and grasp of Corazon. He missed you, and it was showcased in his neediness in every kiss and motion planted against you.

A bit of both (NSFW One-Shot)

You and Rosinante take your trust to a new level, engaging in two levels of weaving you had yet to use in sequence with one another. Kink-fic: bondage, gagging, praise (reader receiving. Gender neutral terms)

Close your eyes and breathe (One-Shot)

Struggling to find rest, you decide to take yourself to the kitchen in the marine base. You stumble upon your commander slouched over his desk and asleep on a pile of papers. Taking him to his quarters, he wants to help you find rest in slumber.

"Mine" (NSFW One-Shot)

Upon viewing you and your boss, Doflamingo, get a little too close to one another, Corazon feels the urge to finally state a claim over you. He loves you, and now wants you to understand one thing and one thing only: you belong to him. You are his, completely.

A day is all I need (One-Shot)

Serving as Trafalgar Law's chronicler aboard the Polar Tang, he convinces you to finally cast aside your former love for a man long since passed. In a bid to move on, you find an intriguing figure in the market who bore a striking resemblance to the man who held your heart.

Donquixote Doflamingo:

Pretty Red Ribbon (One-Shot)

After your birthday was ruined last year at the hands of a certain pink-feather-donning, glasses-wearing gentleman who you love to hate, your fellow warlord, Sir Crocodile, gives you a little gift you did not expect to darken your doorstep.

Play Stupid Games Win Stupid Prizes (NSFW 1/2)

Doffy is attempting to gain the upper hand against you. He's longed for you, yearned for you - in his own unique way. Considering you never give in to his flirtatious advances, he takes matters into his own hands and attempts to spike your drink. The problem? Your quick wit and nimble fingers switch whisky glasses with him, causing unforeseen problems that he has no cure for…

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes (NSFW 2/2)

Doflamingo has been sending you gifts of flowers and trinkets over your time apart, but he refuses to acknowledge you in public. Attending a gala held at marine headquarters. He attends with two concubines on his arms, and you arrive with your friend on the arm of a marine. Doflamingo attempts to make you jealous, but you decide to play his little game by using his own methods against him. You invite Sir Crocodile to play this little game with you.

She Was Mine (One-Shot)

A new transfer is tasked with guarding Doflamingo as he visits the world government headquarters. Doflamingo becomes intoxicated and reminisces about the love of his life to this new transfer, confessing he still loves her and wants to be with her.

Doflamingo's Childhood Friend (Imagine)

Mini-fic of what it would be like to be promised to Doflamingo in his youth, only for that bond to sever when Homing defects.

Seat Number Four (One-Shot NSFW)

You are stuck on an eight hour flight between two gentlemen you have never met before. Unaware of their prior history and dislike for one another, you attempt to relax and watch a new series your friend recommended. The series was a little more raunchy than you had anticipated, and you become a little uncomfortable in your seat between the two attractive men. Doflamingo reassures you your need is nothing to be ashamed of, and he would be more than willing to help you out if you allowed him to teach the younger blonde how to best please you. Doffy x f!reader x Sanji

Teach Me (NSFW One-Shot)

As a Dressrosian concubine, you were accustomed to receiving all kinds of clients. The one you looked forward to the least was Doflamingo. Not because of who he was or what he's done. Simply for one reason. He was bad at sex, and you were bored.

Doflamingo Undergarments (NSFW mini-fic)

Doflamingo walks in on you, his administrative assistant, wearing nothing but his face plastered on your ass.

Happy Birthday Doflamingo (One-Shot)

Doflamingo x reader x Rosinante

Donquixote Doflamingo was in his own little world within the warlord meeting at the world government headquarters. Suddenly, an uncommon source reminded him what day it was, and he was left perplexed and pleasantly surprised.

Better than to break tradition (NSFW One-Shot)

Rival ranches, the Donquixote family and your own, find neutral ground after a successful rodeo tournament. Coming to your aid, at the crowning of a cap on your head, you and Doflamingo know far better than to break tradition. (Cowboy au).

Forge in Gold (Sapsorrow Au)

Two brothers and a young slave girl are bound now by the metalic band atop her unity finger. A spectral ghost, the promises of love, and lies and deceit have the three of them tangle in a bed of lies. There is no happiness to be found at the end of this tale, only sorrow and heartbreak.

Regrets (drabble)

Donquixote Doflamingo is on the sidelines for once, never learning the skill to woo you to the beat of a drum or swell of a melody. Rosinante had, and Doflamingo is regretting that decision.

Between Two Dragons (NSFW Alphabet and mini-fic)

As the bride of Donquixote Doflamingo, it was your role to satisfy your king. He would not allow a single hand to be laid on you other than that of the pure blood of his Donquixote celestial heritage. When Rosinante returned home to the Donquixote Pirates, and expressed interest in you romantically, Doflamingo was the first to suggest a non-conventional unification between the three of you.

Caesar Clown

It's not what it looks like! (NSFW One-Shot)

The ship has taken on a few more guests, the overcrowded Straw-Hat vessel now struggling to accommodate the number. Offering your room to the prisoner, Caesar Clown, you returned to find a sight you were ill-prepared to meet. Caesar had found your secret, and had them over his nose and mouth while chasing his high into his gloved fist.

Misc Drabbles:

You're Angry at the Tall Men: Drabble (One-Shot)

He knows what he did to earn your wrath; your fury ignited in your eyes and the flames physically tangible and searing the room with your scorn. Your brow was furrowed, your lips curling into a snarl to bare your pearled teeth at him.Buggy, Shanks, Mihawk, Sir Crocodile, Corazon, Doflamingo.

Dreaming of You (Drabble) NSFW

They couldn't help it. You looked so heavenly in their dreams. The way they had you wrapped around their body as a marionette in their minds, dancing for them as they awoke to sticky blankets when they jolted upright. Their thoughts got the better of them, and they are wracked with guilt. Doflamingo, Caesar, Rosinante "Corazon".

#one piece #x reader #donquixote #donquixote brothers #donquixote doflamingo #donquixote rosinante #donquixote corazon

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ambiguouspuzuma · 2 days ago

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The Weeper

In a sense, the Weeper had made Kado who he was today.

In the absence of a true name, the city's ruler was known by many others. The Lord Autarch. The Black Veil, for the shroud which always cloaked his face. The Mournful God. Kado had always called him the Weeper, or the Weeping Tyrant. It was said that he never smiled, and a gloved hand could sometimes be seen to disappear behind that veil to dab away his overflowing tears.

Asanji had always thought those imagined, mimed as a symbolic gesture - or an insult to the true mourners he left in his wake. But she supposed even a lie would be better than the confusion of the alternative: a man who knew the horrors of his regime, and yet continued to wade through streets he'd knowingly flooded with grief. A walrus sobbing over oysters. A crocodile, who wept even as he killed. A soul broken in two.

"We're only going to have one shot," Kado told her, in his usual matter-of-fact tone. The Weeper had given both of them plenty of cause to cry over the years - a life of anguish piled upon grief - until his tear ducts had grown dry, and the rest of him had hardened shortly afterwards. "These materials are impossibly rare. Probably a good thing, or everyone would be doing it."

Asanji had known him through it all. Her friend had only worn the one name: the one his mother had left him, along with little else. But he was a different person than the boy she'd first met all those years ago. Shaped, by loss and hardship. Focused by revenge. He was a well-tuned weapon, trained on the Weeper's heart, in retaliation for the heart he'd lost along the way.

"Going back in time." She still couldn't believe it. Kado was capable of much and more; far more than she'd ever imagined of him, as a child. Of both of them. It was staggering, to think what they'd survived, and risen up to inflict on their oppressors. He'd led her to defy the odds before, and she had no doubt that he could do it again. But this wasn't a matter of her belief in him. This was impossible.

Wasn't it?

"The science works out." Kado shrugged. There was no room in his own mind for doubt. "There are rumours that the Weeper did it once before, you know. To first consolidate his power. That would be fitting, I think. If we can turn his own weapon against him."

"I suppose." It wasn't like he'd left them much of a choice. They'd tried other weapons, other angles of attack, but The Black Veil was far too well-shrouded for that. He was untouchable, in the present. But Kado had spent a thousand sleepless nights assessing the problem, and emerged with this idea: that they should strike him when he'd least expect it. Deep in the recesses of the past.

When Asanji came to, after the explosion, she heard him calling her name.

"Kado?" she asked. The room was full of dust. "Where are we? Did it work?"

"I'm sure it will." His voice sounded distorted, but still as sure as ever. That steadied her own uncertainty, disorientated by the explosion and the dust - before casting her adrift again. "Oh, Asanji. It's so good to see you again."

"Again?" Kado answered himself.

"Ah, now we're all awake. Excellent." The dust began to clear with her confusion, and the second man came into view. Asanji could see everything but his face. "You..."

"Yes. Lord Autarch, I think, would be the popular mode of address. Although I understand that Weeping Tyrant has become your favourite."

"You've come to kill us." Kado was always straight to the point.

"Kill? Perish the thought. No, I hope that both of you will survive for many years to come."

"To stop us killing you, then." Asanji tried not to dwell on the implications of that line. What tortures would have planned for his would-be assassins? The Mournful God was the contradiction she'd feared. He spoke to her gently, almost as a friend, even as he promised her a lifetime of suffering.

"To stop you killing everyone," he sighed. "As I almost did."

"Almost?" That set Kado off. "I was there, you monster. The Moon Market Massacre? I've seen the blood on your own hands. I've seen you trailing it through the streets, a tail of entrails as your cloak."

"As you needed to." He reached beneath the veil, as Asanji had seen him do so many time before. Even now, the crocodile tears could flow. But rather than clearing his weeping eyes, their Tyrant dabbed his mask away instead.

"I..." Kado stammered. First from surprise at the gesture, and then from the shock of what it revealed. Asanji had never seen him lost for words. She'd never seen him twice in one room. "I..."

"I is right." The Tyrant - Kado - nodded. He was older, and age had not been kind, but there was no mistaking the set of his jaw, nor the fire behind those famous welling eyes. "I know that this must come as a terrible shock."

"A shock?" Asanji was faring little better. She had recaptured her tongue, but could only echo his own words back to him. Shock was an understatement; the man before her made no sense to her reeling mind. He was stitched together out of opposites.

"You have had a life of them, I know, and may have thought yourself immune - I believed the same of myself, once. But whilst horrors may shore up your walls at first, they soon begin to grind them down again, and mine have long since been reduced to ash. I find myself shocked by my own actions, you know. Things I had already seen: both in the flesh, and in the nightmares that must plague you now."

"Then why do them?" That was the question she had always burned to ask. Why the tyranny, if it truly made him weep? She had other concerns, now, but couldn't grasp hold of them enough to put them into words. Why are you... you? How? What? Kado-as-the-Tyrant was impossible to reconcile, and it was hard to even find a question that made sense.

"It was somebody else, at first. My Lord Autarch. My demon." He sighed. "And here we are, as here I was. Something had to be done, and so I found the only solution possible. An impossible one. I travelled back in time, to cut his strangling fig before it could grow. The man had ended my world. I thought that if I did, I could stop it all. I could bring them back. And for a moment, I did. The science works out, as you said. Unfortunately, we didn't think about what happened after that."

"What do you mean?"

"Then the world really started to end. Reality, unravelling. Because if the Lord Autarch never rose to destroy my life, I would no longer be driven to end his. There would have been no time-travel, though I remembered the future as if it had been yesterday. How could I exist, a grown man back in time, when I would never have travelled there? It created a paradox. I felt it burning in my soul. The death of worlds. The universe ceasing to turn."

"You should have died." Kado grasped his meaning, and fought against what he knew came next. "Ended your own life, rather than..."

"The ripple had been cast. Perhaps my death would be enough, but I doubted it. I couldn't take that risk. I was the only one who would know if it had worked, so there would be nobody left to fix it if it didn't. But I'd already made waves, remember. The old Lord Autarch. If he died then, I would never have come back to kill him. So he'd be alive. But then he'd be dead. And spinning on and on and on until the galaxies burnt out."

"I'm sorry," Asanji interjected. "But I'm not quite following."

"No, I'm the sorry one," the older Kado told her. "There was only one fix, you see. The only solution possible - an impossible one. To recreate the circumstances that made me... well, you. To smooth the ripples of my intervention. To put things wrong, having wrongly put them right."

"You..."

"I had to do it all myself." He nodded, and wiped away another tear. "To step into the shoes of the man I killed, and replace all his killing. It was far worse the second time. I knew all the details of his crimes, as you will, seared into our memory - enough to simulate them, or near enough - but there's something different in actually being there. To be the one doing it. Ever since I killed my tyrant, I've been killing myself to become him."

"So that I became me." Kado nodded too, the tides rising in his own eyes. The two versions had never looked so much alike.

"Yes, I suppose. I created you, and you created this. Ah... we are forced rhubarb, you and I. For us to grow to our potential, to this distorted peak, we need no chink of light in our lives. I had to create such a dystopia that time travel offered the only escape."

"Only for me... not to use it? All of that suffering, twice over... for nothing?"

"That's what I hoped, at first. I thought if I could warn you, we could fix it. You wouldn't go back. I'd disappear. You could kill me, like I was the old Autarch, and you'd be free to make whatever you could from the rest of this broken life. A small victory, I know, but I hoped in time you'd have the chance to heal."

"At first?"

"I'm still here," he said sadly. "I'd hoped the paradox would fade, but it burns today as brightly as ever. You haven't messed with time... but only because I've stopped you. If you don't go back in time, you won't have learnt this lesson, and there would be no me to come and warn you. I think I've only succeeded in creating another loop. A knot over a knot. It's all so tangled now."

"You need me to go back." Kado wasn't asking the question. He'd long learnt how to contemplate his doom. "To do it all over again. To keep the world alive, for one cycle more."

"If you can find another path, I beg you to find it. Perhaps Asanji can help you. I didn't take her. But perhaps there is another way. Go back to another point in time. Find me, back there, and warn me in turn. Or avoid me. Or kill me, before any ripples are made, then find out if that makes any ripples in turn. I've given you a head start. Even if you fail, perhaps you can warn the next version of us, and they can warn the next. We have eternity, this way. A time loop of our own design. With enough generations of blood, we might find a way to wash it clean."

Kado couldn't argue with his fate. He'd been confronted with the story of his life, and even met the author, only to be handed the still leaking pen. The prospect of the pain was nothing new: collapsing realities, fresh atrocities, and endless, endless tears. He'd been resigned to suffering since he was a boy. At least now he understood what it was for. Who was he to argue with the instrument that he was meant to be? He no longer knew that he had ever been anything else. The Weeper had already made him who he was today.

#writing #short story #writeblr #original writing #creative writing

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starryeyedstoryteller · 10 months ago

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Lost in Wonderland?

Preview

For years, not just a couple either, more like thousands upon thousands of years, he kept his secret. Sharing his secrets whenever he believed they were ready to be introduced to reality. That – is specifically saved for normal days, normal situations; being tossed into some dreamscape where his ex-wife took up the role as the white queen, casting her wrath via sentient, rock chess pieces, and separating him from his only baby girl was far from normal. Sakura. He youngest. He strongest. His only baby girl seven children – all the man could think was how that witch would have to watch her kingdom burn. Hoisting Yu, the little ten-year-old ready to fight for his younger twin, had to deal with his father placing him in his aunt's arms. There was confusion, her gaze met the fire burning in the older man's eyes, then, with a dark smirk, she took a step back. Holding a hand to take Vio with her. Teacher breathed in, one, he counted as he walked toward the wall of rock soldiers. Two, rolling his head while his wings unfurled. Three, a sword he swore to never ever hold again, materialized in his hand. The weight was heavy. Four. Pawns became poised, weapons pointed in his direction – ready to strike. Five. Teacher stopped, locked his feet in place as he swung the sword. Every notch glowed. It seemed to scream with energy – but he struck no one. Instead, the tip had been raised towards the cloudy sky. Six.

There was no warning. Clouds swirled and churned. By seconds, the clouds grew heavier, darker, and overall, more ominous. Alas, this would not be enough of a warning. As spidery, cracking blue, violet lightning crashed into the earth. Striking every single pawn. Teacher knew one thing these hard heads couldn’t fathom. Every Veselius child was immune, protected from these vicious attacks. It was a spell he had cast long ago – to make sure his children would never, ever be hurt by their protector. For a second his heart faltered. As the pawns fell to the ground in bits and pieces, he didn’t see Sakura. Until he did. She crouched, smart, making herself the smallest thing, her arms over her head. Her arms came down, revealing those stunning mismatched eyes before she stood. Sprinting toward her dad. He, of which, didn’t spare a second. Dropping his weapon and running towards her with his arms open for the tightest hug. After they hugged, Teacher was almost feverish in the way he checked her. Brushing aside her hair, moving her arms, spinning her around, he swore he heard a rare giggle coming from the girl. Behind them, Lacie ran up, holding onto Yu’s hand, she used her other hand to usher Vio. The poor girl was bewildered. Eyes wide, her mouth opened and breathless.

“I thought you didn’t want her to know.” Lacie teased, nodding her head towards Vio. She was slowly adjusting. Already he could hear the questions.

He stood, giving some space to allow the twins to hug. Okay. So, he gave Sakura the second strongest hug she experienced so far. This was the first time Yu and Sakura had ever been separated. However, the sudden screech interrupted their joy. The twins went to Teacher, one per lag. Those angelic wings, mottled with the same dark stormy clouds, curled around them. Teacher glanced towards his discarded sword. Perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to do. She landed among her fallen pawns. Her golden hair fell around her face, bringing attention to the icy in her blue eyes. Inwardly, Teacher felt all his bravery drain, however he managed to match her glare. It almost hurt. Rose might look like the person he loved, cherished, and adored, but mirrors always lied. Concealing the venom steeped deep in that woman’s veins, and infected heart. Something Teacher would never see past. In typical Rose fashion, she clasped her hands together, smiling her sweetest smile – to him it felt like a crocodile was trying to lure him into the buoy. Hunger for the days catch.

“Teacher - love – my little thunderstorm. What do you think? Like the new look?” Rose inquired, a dangerous game. These questions were as hollow as her.

What she meant, obviously, as she gestured to the white gown, adorning her tall, curvy body. It was almost pearlescent. Off the shoulders with a small, puffed sleeve, the actual gown was similar to regency style.

“...I think blood stains white well.” Teacher breathed – one step taken from her.

“E-excuse me? What blood? There isn’t a drop.” Rose scoffed.

“I forget, you were never one for metaphors. More like cheating, backstabbing, and neglect. I suppose none of that spills any volume of literal blood.” Teacher corrected – another step. Rose’s smile sizzled into a grimace.

“Gary Veselius! How dare - “ She screamed – a gloved hand in the air as she launched forward. Ready to mark his cheek with a sharp slap. He already turned his head, eyes squeezed shut as he waited for the impending sting – yet it never arrived. Lacie had intervened.

She was far smaller, but her strength made the older woman seem like a child. As she gripped the woman’s hand to tight a small yelp escaped her red lips. Rose stumbled backward, leaving the glove in Lacie’s pale death grip from hell. Teacher opened his eyes. He had to thank her for that.

“You should have been the red queen – so disgusting with your spite, and blood lust. How our family could have ever allowed a branch off such as yours always stuns me speechless.” Rose spat, then, literally spat in her direction.

“I will always be classier than you, Rosie poise. Pocket full of poses, I thought you already fell.” Lacie countered.

Even Teacher’s jaw dropped. Years ago, for the crimes of neglect and abuse towards their own children, Rose had been cast down. Banished from the realm of golden, shimmering gates. Every angel and demon felt the impact of royal blood slamming into earth. It was jarring. Not because it was unheard of. Quite the opposite. To be acutely accurate, an Angelous had never been cast down. A family of sirens, healers and muses didn’t do things to warrant such a heinous punishment. A crack, below Rose’s right eye, grew. Spidering out to her cheek, and nose. Quickly her ungloved hand clapped to her face as she spun away. Teacher’s mouth became dry. What was that? Magic? If so – what sort of magic? There were certain magics even fallen Angels were forbidden to practice. An angels soul was unable to withstand the toll. No matter an individualistic moral, their souls were made of pure energy. Rose waved her other hand – the pawns he had shattered quickly, albeit messily, came back together. Chunks created jagged chess pieces, they may have held a similar silhouette of a pawn, only messy. Rockier.

“Just wait Gary, you haven’t won yet. And you won’t. “ Rose hissed. Venom dripping from every single word. He didn’t doubt the intention behind her words. How could he? This wasn’t the first time Rose stole everything and tried to destroy it all.

#oc #ao3 #original art #writing #creative writing #art

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theerrorofmylife · 3 years ago

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Betrayal of Anubis

This tells the story of the avatar of Anubis and how they meet Marc/Steven. Many other gods, characters, and being are included and resemble their myths as closely as possible.

Part 2 for those who enjoyed part 1.

Part 1

Some years later, my ribs had healed, and a scar stretched from my jaw past my eyebrow, very nearly missing my eye by a millimeter. If I hadn’t flinched on instinct that day, I’d be half blind and fully dead. While Sekhmet, Imhotep, Khonsu, and Isis looked after me, the Ennead bound Anubis in stone while Bastet and Montu held him at bay. The feeling of Anubis being ripped from my consciousness and literally separated from my soul was enough to put me on my ass for quite a few days. In the months then years that followed I stayed in the temple, wandering the halls, and attending to the alters. I sometimes went back to my apartment but being away from the gods made me feel sick... made me feel alone.

“My child?” Mahora stood in the doorway, but her eyes were green.

“Nephthys, my lady.” Turning from the alter space I was cleaning, I see her.

“A meeting has been called by Khonsu, though we know not what about. Will you join us? You have always been friends with Khonsu, perhaps it would be good to see him.” Khonsu… I had not seen him in some time. I nodded and followed her into the chamber. There, many other gods were beginning to enter in, and a man stood on the center floor. He was wonderfully handsome, with a striking jawline, curly dark hair, and those forearms… continuing to size him up, I made the mistake of focusing on his thighs...those were something else and my face went scalding hot. Hathor looked over to me and grinned a little too wide for my liking.

“In attendance, Horus, Isis, Tefnut, Osiris, Nephthys, and Hathor, to hear the account of Khonsu,” Hathor announced. I had not realized Khonsu was on trial. Osiris tilted his head to the side.

“You’ve been banished once for nearly exposing us, Khonsu, and you know how we despise your garishness, but manipulate the sky again and we will imprison you in stone.” The idea made me sick. I had known Khonsu for almost as long as I had known Anubis, to think another friend would be lost… His avatar seemed to seize up.

“Spare me your self-righteous threats! I was banished for not abandoning humanity, unlike the rest of you.” Khonsu’s voice rattled his avatar, and I could see the strain Khonsu was putting on him.

“Old friend, please, do not exhaust your avatar.” All eyes looked at me, and for a split second, I see relief in the man’s eyes as his shoulders relax.

“We have not abandoned humanity, they abandoned us. We simply trust our Avatars to carry out our purposes without calling undue attention to ourselves. Not like some of us.”

“Avatars are not enough! We need the might of gods. Return from the opulence of the Overvoid before you lose this realm!”

“For the last time, Khonsu... The Avatars that remain here are simply meant to observe. We decided long ago we did not wish to meddle in the affairs of man.” At this, I cast a glance at Osiris. It was when Anubis was imprisoned that they decided to cut ties with humanity.

“We will decide our best course of action. Speak your purpose.” Isis finally spoke.

“I call for judgment against Arthur Harrow.” Harrow… I did recognize the name… wait, wasn’t that Khonsu’s old avatar?!

“The charges?”

“Conspiracy to release Ammit!” Ammit, Maat’s pet, with the head of a crocodile and the body of a lion, would always sit with Anubis and Maat during the ceremony of the scales. Anubis told me about her, especially when we first met, and I wouldn’t shut up. I remember pestering the shit out of him with questions about the gods and the stories and the truth behind them, but he never minded. He loved answering my questions and loved that I had the desire to learn everything I could. Anubis… He used to tell me she was always so happy. She would enjoy whatever time she could get with the two deities. But a long time ago, cruel people and their crimes began to anger her. She couldn’t stand the pain people were causing and wished to punish people before they could commit the crime, thus stopping the pain they would impart before it even happened. When she tried to explore such options, the gods imprisoned her in stone, and Anubis and Maat were left alone. Anubis didn’t like telling that part of the story.

“That is a heavy accusation, Khonsu. Let us summon the accused.” With a wave of Tefnut’s hand, a doorway opened to the Avatar’s left. A man with long strawberry blond hair and… a strange demeanor. He was dressed something similar to a religious man, with… was that glass crunching in his shoes?!

“So, I see by the presence of Khonsu’s current makeshift avatar, that the purposes of our meeting must be nefarious.” He sounded so pretentious, almost gloating.

“You know exactly why we are here!” Khonsu was getting angry again. Fck- if he put any more strain on his avatar, the effects could verge more on psychological rather than just physical.

“I must admit I do not miss the sound of that voice. But speak, old master, to the point.” Rude.

“Do you not seek to release Ammit from her tomb?” The avatar’s strength looked to be straining and he was slowly getting closer to the floor.

“Khonsu! Please, for your avatar’s sake, go easy! He’s only human, please don’t hurt him, your power is overwhelming for him.” At that, his avatar slumped. The poor man looked to be sweating.

“I was in the desert. But if visiting the sands were a crime, the line of sinners would be longer than the Nile. Khonsu has searched for Ammit's tomb since he ensnared me to his service.” This man was a liar, or at least not a full truth-teller. He even smelled like a liar for Ra’s sake! But without proof, what can I do? “His vision is obscured by jealousy, paranoia, and his-”

“He is a deceiver!” Khonsu was losing control.

“Do not trust the word of a shamed god. No, Khonsu is unhinged and his servant unwell.” His avatar, the man, did look unwell but that could just be because of Khonsu… right?

“How do you mean?”

“This is a man who literally does not know his own name. He has a marriage certificate under the name Marc Spector-” Marc… it fit him nicely. However, married changes things.

“Liar!”

“Employment records under the name Steven Grant.” Steven also fit him, but it sounded… familiar.

“Stop!” It was no longer Khonsu speaking, but Marc.

“I've seen him speak to himself-”

“Shut up!”

“Threaten himself! I have no idea how many personalities he must possess. The man is clearly insane.” Harrow was clearly taunting Marc now, or Steven, or… whoever was in there. I saw his fist pull back before he swung… or attempted to swing? A ring of blue looped around his wrist and drew it back from Harrow.

“We will not tolerate violence in this Chamber.”

“It brings me no pleasure to tell you that this is a deeply troubled man. Khonsu is taking advantage of him the same way that he abused me, the way he aspires to abuse this court. Take action now before it's too late.”

“Let us speak to Marc Spector.” Osiris threw his hands to the sides and Marc fell to his knees. He was panting, and what looked to be in a lot of pain. I stood and stepped down from the platform, slowly approaching Marc, but I made a wide arc to avoid Harrow. Kneeling, I placed a very light hand on his shoulder.

“Are you ok, Marc?” He shook his head, and I gave him my hand to help him stand. I pulled him to his feet and when I looked up, he was staring at me intently. It was wonderful to be looked at like that.

“You’re not a god...?” How astute. As if pondering my own sarcasm, I took in his appearance and nearly stumbled back. My face became unbearably hot. He was extremely attractive.

“No.” Grinning, I let go of his hand and stepped back up the platform, taking my seat again behind Anubis’ small statue. Isis nodded to me, simply as a way to acknowledge that my intervention was finished.

“Are you unwell?” Isis is always the divine mother.

“I am. I am unwell. I need help. But that doesn't change the fact that this man is…” He admitted he was unwell, that he needed help, probably professional help at that, but he was still pleading Khonsu’s case, still clinging to the idea that Harrow is evil and that Khonsu’s vengeance is just.

“This is a safe space for you to tell us if you feel exploited by Khonsu.” Hearing that brought back memories of when I was asked the same question.

“This is not about my feelings! I'm not the one on trial here, he is!” He didn’t deny it, “This is about how dangerous he is if you would just listen for a second.” His voice broke, if only a fraction.

“He has committed no offence. This matter is concluded.” Osiris waved his hand, and the gods left their avatars. Sitting still, I couldn’t help but think that, as adamant as Marc was, I could not shake the idea that instilled in every avatar is an unshakable trust in our patrons. It reminds me of myself so many years ago. Looking up, I spotted Marc and Hathor’s avatar speaking in one of the dim hallways. Hathor was always fond of Khonsu, I wonder if she will tell Marc about Senfu… Suddenly Marc looked up at me. Crap. She did. Anubis told me a lot about Ammit, probably more than he should have now that I think on it. So of course, in no lack of detail, I knew of Senfu, and I knew that he was the only one who knew of Ammit’s resting place… oooooooh no he’s approaching shit shit shit shit!

“Wait!” I was obviously trying to make a run for it, scampering down the nearest hallway. I wanted no part in this, Osiris would have my head for helping Khonsu.

“As handsome as you are, even you cannot command me to stall.” This was a lie. If I took one look at him, I know for a fact I would freeze.

“I need your help! Steven, seriously-” Who the hel??

“Wait, please, we need your help!” A different person spoke this time, a high-pitched European voice, London perhaps. Turning, I still saw only Marc Spector chasing me. “Please, you’re non-godliness…? We-I need your help. We must find Ammit before Harrow does, lives depend on it…” He trailed off, his nervous eyes flitting around the small room. My favorite room, Anubis’ old alter. “My god, this is absolutely incredible. The pyramid of Giza, filled with alters! Whos’ is this, it’s got black candles, dogs, a lovely likeness that. What’s this? An ankh, key of life, very beautiful-”

“Please, Marc, this accent, the interest in my patron’s old alter, this act!” He was frustrating me greatly.

“No, no, no, this isn’t an act. My name is Steven, Steven Grant.” Steven Grant… with the employment records…

“Steven Grant... tell me, is this what Harrow meant? When he said Marc was unwell? Are you one of two in this body?” He almost froze at that, and his sudden hesitation answered my question.

“You talk like a god, but you said you weren’t one. What are you?” Why does he ask so many questions? And why do I care so little that he does?

“I am you. An avatar of a God. But both he and I have been… out of commission for quite some years.”

“Out of commission? How could a god be out of commission?” He spoke with a laugh, awkward as it may be, and it seemed as though he were trying to relieve whatever tension filled the room.

“Stone is quite the separation tactic.” It went silent and all he did was watch me. His eyes were on mine, a quiet pity directed towards me. I nearly prayed Steven never experienced being separated from Khonsu. That kind of pain was unimaginable.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.”

“What do you want, Steven? Why is it that you believe Harrow to be so evil?”

“You already know, Harrow wants to release Ammit so that she can punish people before they commit a crime-”

“No, why do you believe he is evil? Not Khonsu, not Marc, you.” For a moment he was quiet.

“I asked him once if when Ammit judges a person, then is the person technically an innocent? To expand on it, I asked him if she would be ok with killing a child. Harrow wouldn’t answer me, he related a child to a diseased limb that needed severing!” He was emotional… of course, that’s why Khonsu chose him. While Khonsu was a lover of vengeance, he was also a caretaker for those who are lost in the night. His cruelty stemmed from a love for the good humanity had the potential for. The same kind of love that Anubis once had.

“I will help you. I’ll meet you soon, but you must go. Look for Senfu’s sarcophagus.” He nodded so excitedly that I almost found it cute. He turned to leave, and I nearly forgot. “Oh, Steven!”

“Yes!” Gods, he was so adorable.

“From what I can recall, Senfu had a particular love of charts… specifically those in stars.” He nodded slower this time, thoughtfully, and hurried out through an opening doorway. Alone for the first time in hours, alone with my thoughts. How was I to help? I had nothing, no armor like Khonsu gave his avatars, no weapon given to me by the gods, no guiding light. I could speak to Isis and Nephthys but if Osiris caught wind… I need help, in order to help Steven and Marc, I must myself ask for help, from the one goddess I knew would aid in a warrior’s endeavor. Walking out of Anubis’ room, I made my way to the far left of the pyramid, into the large room filled with cats, weapons, and gold. Large and small candles littered the floor and low rising platforms in reds, greens, and whites. Sitting against the far wall, a large statue of a woman holding a sistrum and an ankh, a lioness from the neck up. Bastet, goddess of war, home, and protection.

“Forgive me for this trespass, but uh, I’m just borrowing it I promise.” I carefully stepped forwards to grab the gold cylinder sitting on her alter. It was about the length of my forearm and easily the width of my wrist. Flipping it in the air, it glittered in the candlelight, and I realized I had nearly forgotten what it was like to hold a weapon of the gods. Catching it, I used my other hand to turn the small ring lock and it extended from either side, one end reaching towards the floor and the other jutting out with the tip of a spear. Under the hallow spearhead was an ankh symbol carved into it. Nodding apologetically to the statue, I rushed out and towards the exit.

“Child.” I skittered to a stop. Above me, standing beside the large face in the chamber room, stood Mahora.

“Hi.” I was in so much trouble.

“You are going to aid the avatar and help Khonsu.” It wasn’t a question; she knew exactly what I planned to do.

“I must. If I can help them, avoid what happened to Anubis, maybe even save the world; Then shouldn’t I try?” She just… looked at me. As if she were trying to see something that only a goddess could.

“No other reason?”

“I mean, clearly Marc can’t do this alone, and Steven definitely shouldn’t be left alone-”

“Steven?”

“The uh, the other person living in the avatar's body…? He’s like, another personality I think.”

“I see. And you’ve spoken with him?”

“Yes, he seems to be the smart one. Nephthys… I want to help them.”

“Hm,” she smirked, something I only saw on rare occasions. “Then you best head out now, he’s near the sarcophagus.” She waved her hand and behind me, a doorway opened. When I turned to say goodbye, she was gone. Slipping through the doorway, I was standing on a boardwalk. Where the hel was I??

“Hey!” Snapping to the left, I saw Marc. Stomping and angry, he didn’t look all too happy to see me.

#moon knight #marc spector #steven grant #jake lockley #khonsu #anubis #layla el faouly #i can't think of more tags #marvel series #marvel

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kaizokuou-ni-naru · 4 years ago

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The Voyage So Far: Paramount War (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

ace’s execution is, in a way, the exception that proves the rule when it comes to one piece’s themes of blood and family. ace is set up to die for the crimes of a father he never knew and never wanted, and he does die here, but in the end he dies for the family he did choose, in the form of luffy, rather than the one he didn’t.

god do i wish we knew more about ms portgas d. rouge. with ace’s storyline pretty much wrapped it looks unlikely that we’re going to be learning more about her than what we got, which in my opinion is an absolute tragedy, because what little we do know about her is amazing and she’s an absolute badass. oda give us more female ds please.

whitebeard’s power is so cool. it might be one of the visually coolest devil fruits we’ve ever seen, in my opinion. he he causes earthquakes and tsunamis while far past his prime; he pulls the sky apart with his bare hands. this whole arc is world-shaking, and whitebeard’s power is perfectly appropriate for it.

doflamingo’s speech on justice and rightness is one of the most well-remembered quotes from this whole saga, and rightly so. i’ve always found it fascinating, myself, because he’s right. he dead-on hits how the one piece world works- the world government and the marines rule the world not because of any inherent actual goodness or justice or right, but because they won a war a very long time ago.

in a way, this reminds me of blackbeard’s line of “people’s dreams never die” from jaya. i like how oda isn’t afraid of letting his villains be right about the themes of the story, sometimes even having better awareness of them than the protagonists.

man, if i had to pick a single favorite spread out of the whole manga, it might be luffy’s marineford entrance. it’s so epic, and so completely unexpected for everyone else there. absolutely nobody was expecting strawhat luffy to drop out of the sky with a posse including two former warlords. it just makes me grin!! so much!!

it also gets followed up by a solid two pages of just people’s reactions, from smoker’s “what the HELL is he doing with CROCODILE” to moria’s immediate incoherent rage, and i just love that the world and cast of one piece is so well-established and built up that we know exactly how all of those people know luffy and why they react the way they do.

going back to what i mentioned in the last post about marineford being luffy’s conflict of interest arc, i’d say it’s also the only time where he isn’t the future king first and foremost. in this arc, before anything else, he’s a little brother.

there are a lot of what-if moments in marineford. moments where you kind of have to ask “what if this specific thing hadn’t happened, had gone differently?” would things have turned out differently? squard’s betrayal is one of them. does this change the outcome? would whitebeard have been able to survive if not for this injury? there’s no way to know. marineford is a lot of little tragedies, and they just pile up and up.

marineford has just so many incredibly striking spreads. all of the momentous moments (and there’s a lot of them, in this arc) are done full justice. this is such an image heavy post just because marineford is such an incredibly visually strong arc.

conqueror’s haki is so cool and i love the way it’s set up and built up throughout this saga, with luffy’s constant inadvertent uses of it, from duval’s bull to marigold and sandersonia to the wolves in impel down, all leading up to this moment.

i’ve heard people complain about conqueror’s as kind of a deus ex machina, but i honestly love it, it’s very cool and honestly i think it just seems to fit luffy as a power. if there was ever gonna be a character who turned willpower into a weapon, it would be monkey d. luffy.

i’m gonna take this chance to talk about garp, because this sequence of panels is heavily implied to be garp’s thoughts just before luffy punches him down, and it hurts. garp is a flawed person who makes some bad choices, and there’s no arguing that, but i think it’s very obvious he really, really cares about his grandsons, even if he never could understand them as people and that they never would have been happy as marines. and that’s just tragic, really.

the moment ace gets freed and the brief span of time where he and luffy can fight together feel so triumphant, and i think it’s one of the reasons the final tragedy of marineford hits so hard and feels so cruel, because luffy succeeds, here. he saves ace. he gives absolutely everything he had and makes it, and saves ace. the ultimate failure isn’t his. there was nothing more he could have done.

the first time i was reading one piece, i hit this page (which is also the last in the volume) and had to put the book away, take the bus downtown, wander around for a few hours, and buy myself some candy and some new books before i started feeling okay again.

the thing about ace’s death, i think, is that it’s a tragedy, but it also feels so completely essential to the story going forwards and luffy’s character growth specifically that it’s really, really hard to imagine one piece without it. there are a lot of (really excellent!) fix-fics out there for marineford, and although those are often really good and their authors super talented, i think it’s really hard for them to ever hit the same way canon does with regards to this.

i always think of this scene specifically in contrast to zoro and mihawk’s fight, back on baratie. zoro and mihawk are both people who believe in honor in battle, true victory or death, and that’s reflected in their fight, in zoro’s refusal to turn and run even in the face of imminent death, and mihawk’s respect for that resolve. whitebeard, too, is an honorable man. he refuses to turn to run, even when facing certain death.

the blackbeard pirates, however, are not.

i do enjoy how, just like roger’s, ace’s execution backfires tremendously on the marines. this was entirely a predictable outcome, too! this exact thing happened twenty years ago! the marines don’t learn. they don’t change. they’re so assured of their own rightness and power that they make stupid mistakes like holding a massive public execution after the last one blew up in their faces.

(this is why they need coby so badly, for the record, and why it’s important that he still decides to become a marine after witnessing their corruption firsthand in shells town. the marines are long overdue for a reformation, one that orients them towards real justice.)

i really, really enjoy crocodile in this saga. mostly because he hasn’t been redeemed at all, he’s still pretty much the exact same kinda awful person he was in alabasta, he’s just on luffy’s side this time, and it lets us see him in a better light, when he gets angry at whitebeard for nearly dying or when he helps luffy and jinbe escape to keep the marines from getting their way. few of one piece’s characters are truly so one-dimensional as they can seem, and i really appreciate that.

i really really love all the interactions between luffy, ace and sabo as kids. they’re so fun and bounce off of each other so well. even though we only see them together for a brief time, they really feel like siblings. (which of course only makes later events hurt so much more.

i’ve always been a little fascinated by the fact that it takes us this long to get luffy’s full backstory. it’s almost a fakeout, because we get part of his backstory in the very first chapter, and we’re kind of led to believe that’s all there is. it’s not until ace’s introduction nearly two hundred chapters in that we’re given any indication there’s more.

but at the same time, it makes sense. marineford is luffy’s focus arc, as arlong park to nami or thriller bark to brook. he hasn’t had a focal arc that’s really about him before this, while all his other crewmates have. it makes sense that this would be when he finally gets his flashback.

i think it’s cool that dragon and the revolutionaries show up at the grey terminal fire, because it’s one of the only looks we’ve gotten so far into what their actual regular operations are like. and, of course, they’re saving people. i really like this about the revolutionaries, that helping people in trouble is basically their modus operandi, when pretty much everyone else in one piece’s world mostly does saving on an incidental basis if at all.

i think a lot about how the last line of sabo’s letter to ace is also both of their last words to the strawhats.

death in one piece always feels much realer and more impactful to me than in most other series, and i think this is part of the reason why: in one piece, we are always shown the mourning. nami at bellemere’s grave, carrot grieving pedro, ace and whitebeard’s funeral.

there are fewer deaths, comparatively, than most other series, but they’re given so much room to echo. we’re still feeling the impacts of ace’s life and death in the most recent chapters of wano. it ties into the theme of inherited will and all the way back to hiriluk’s final speech, of men not being dead so long as they’re remembered.

the picture of luffy at marineford always kind of strikes me. he looks so young and so solemn, and yet much more himself than he did when we last saw him losing his mind on amazon lily. i really like it.

sometimes i just think about the sheer depth of trust and love the strawhats must have in each other to separate for two years, far longer than they were ever together, to solely dedicate themselves to improving for the sake of crew and captain. none of them even hesitate, and none of them ever doubt that the crew will be reformed at the end of it.

after all, luffy keeps his promises.

#the voyage so far #one piece #opmeta #not japanese #arc: marineford #arc: post marineford #long post

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ohmightydevviepuu · 4 years ago

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for tonight you’re only here to know / part three

(artwork used with permission from carpedzem) part one | part two | part three AO3

A/N: no beta on this one. we die like real small creatures from alpha centauri.

Sometimes on the rarest nights Comes the vision calm and clear Gleaming with unearthly lights On our path of doubt and fear Winds from that far land are blown Whispering with secret breath Hope that plays a tune alone Love that conquers pain and death

We shall never find that lovely land of might-have-been I can never be your king, nor you can be my queen Days may pass and years may pass and seas may lie between We shall never find that lovely land of might-have-been

Ivor Novello

There is applause and it is thunderous as it echoes off the rafters and the walls and sneaks into the crevices between the bookshelves where every manner of humanity is squeezed in, side-by-side; he feels as if he can hear them all breathing, or trying to, hung on his every word even as he is reliving it. Every second.

There is a voice next to him, poking at the edges of his consciousness, and he remembers.

Who he is.

Where he is.

Here, and now.

He shifts in his chair and glances with only the barest hesitation at the device on the table in front of him that records his voice and transmits it even farther, to those who are not physically present. He directs his question at the woman seated next to him, pert eyes and short hair and a beaming smile.

“Apologies, love,” he says. “Can you repeat that last bit?”

“How does it end? Do the princess and the pirate--?”

“Oh, aye. They get their happily-ever-after. It’s a thrilling tale, to be sure.” He suits his tone to match his words but the truth, of course, was rather more gruesome. He shuts his eyes, an attempt to stave off the flood of memories that threatens to overtake him, replacing the brightness of the bookshop’s event stage with the bleakness and the blackness of the dungeon and how it felt to fall, to catch his breath--his breath, he was breathing. His view of her was magnificent, her hand outstretched in defiance, the purple glow of the squid ink he’d given her--pressed into her hand in a moment of desperation and trust and love--enveloping the Evil Queen and binding her, immobilizing her on the spot. Emma twirled--dancing--spun on sure feet the three steps between herself and the Queen and caught his heart in her hands before it hit the stone floor.

“Killian!” It was a scream and sometimes he hears it, still, in his nightmares.

He coughs, swallowing bile.

There is--as if by magic--a bottle of water being pushed at him and he braces it against his left wrist, bringing into view the black glove he wears on his left hand as he twists off the cap and sips greedily, wishing it was possible to wash away the taste of a memory. The Dark One’s laughter as he smiled, as his teeth glittered and he straightened, pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket and blowing gently across the page as the words disappeared and re-formed in the air and settled on the bars, causing them to vanish. As if the bars were nothing more than an illusion, a trick, a plan. The creature lifted a single finger--in warning, in disappointment--pointed it at the Queen as he spoke. “You should have come to me for help when the Curse failed,” he whispered. It was conversational and chilling and the Queen her mouth to speak but said nothing, moved not a single muscle as she was bundled into the Dark One’s cell and the bars replaced, as solid as they ever had been. “You should have listened when I taught you the proper casting of it. And what have you to show for it, Your Majesty, after all of these years? Nothing.” The creature sighed. “Whereas I have a deal to conclude with this lovely young woman. Emma.”

The way he said the name was a caress and it was Emma’s turn to shiver, blinking as her palm turned up--the hand not holding Hook’s heart--and her knife pointed at the Dark One.

“Put that away, dearie,” the creature said. “I have other weapons I prefer. And you have something I need. And as soon as we are done--”

The plastic crinkles in the tightening grip of his fingers; sometimes the sound it makes still surprises him, soft and loud at the same time.

The water spills and the woman jumps.

“I’m quite all right,” he assures her, and she does not know enough to know he is lying.

She giggles, gives a grin that flashes the whitest and most perfect set of teeth he’s ever seen.

“So the princess, does she give Hook his heart back?”

He pulls at the chains around his neck as if it is a reflex, and maybe it is--maybe every time he feels the weight on it he thinks of nothing but her fingers and the way she smiled when she tangled her hand in the chains and pulled him upright, golden hair and glittering eyes as she smiled at him, the rush of success and victory coursing through her though he could not feel it.

“That would be telling,” he says, raising a single eyebrow and plastering on another smile as a wave of laughter rumbles through the audience.

(Her sad smile and the nervous way she said, “I’ve never done this before.”)

(“Held my heart in your hands?” Hook’s hand on her wrist, the warmth and the energy there. (“You’ve had it for longer than you realize, love. It is--and always will be--yours.”)

“We’ll just have to read and find out,” she laughs, gesturing at the bound book stood up for display on the flimsy table.

The Land of Might-Have-Been.

By Killian Jones.

“So, Killian.” Her eyes flutter. “Tell us more about your main character. Hook. Where did you get your inspiration?”

He smiles, his hand rubs at the back of his neck before he leans forward, anchoring his elbow on the table and settling his hand under his chin. “In some ways I think of him as the man I used to be,” he says. “The man I would have been, if I had not found my way to a change.”

He put his life on the line for two things: Love and revenge.

Captain Hook had been forged in the fires of the former.

Killian Jones had been set free by another kind of flame.

“I had a brother once. And a first love.” He rubs unconsciously at his right wrist, though the thick fabric of his shirt more than covers the tattoo there--more than covers all of them, the details of his life inked into his arm like a sleeve, that told the story as easily as the book did and in fewer words. “I was hurting, and chasing after anything that might help me to overcome that pain, to regain control.” The octopus curling around his shoulder and down the side of his torso; the roped sailor’s knots; the tangled thorns of the vines digging into his bicep, dripping black venom. “I realized that I could be a better man. That I wanted to be, and what I needed was to try something new.”

The Dark One’s voice was silk and oil, smooth and greasy. “--as soon as we are done, Regina, you are going to give me Belle. You are going to tell me what you’ve done with her. I will flay you while you speak, perhaps, or--”

“Rumplestiltskin.” It was the first time Hook had spoken the man’s name in decades.

Names had Power.

Such as the power of distraction; Hook struck as the creature turned, blocking Emma’s whitening face from his view as he stepped in between them and grasped the creature’s wrist with his hook, wrapping his hand around the other. Wrapping his hand and the object he concealed there--for while Hook may have been fatally unprepared for his first encounter with the Dark One, he’d vowed never to be without recourse again.

The creature screamed as the cuff closed around his wrist and Hook said, “Surely you did not think I only traveled to Neverland in my quest for your demise? Cora sends her regards, crocodile.”

The Queen’s gasp was audible--as well it might be, for she had banished her mother to Wonderland almost thirty years ago--and Emma’s face was blank, a cipher, as the creature whirled back to face her, clutching his wrist as if his hand had been sliced off, and pleaded. “Missy. Missy…”

Hook stepped in between them, blocking the princess from the Dark One’s sight. “You want to make a deal, Dark One? Then you’re going to deal with me. That cuff will block your ability to access your magic unless or until I decide to remove it, and not a minute sooner.” He turned to Emma. “Promise me, Swan, that you will see to it that Ariel truly got away safely, back to her prince and to her home. And perhaps you can do for Graham what you have done for me.”

“Killian.” Power. Magic. Fire. “What are you going to do?”

Lunacy.

The room around him is fully silent and even the interviewer is holding her breath when Killian says, “I thought about what it would be like for him--for Hook--if he had a chance to be a part of something. Because I know a little something about that, about not being able to forget your first love, to believe that you can’t move on. But all it took was meeting the right person--”

And on his left shoulder blade, just above his heart, a swan.

“It’s like he said. The Curse failed, love,” Hook said. “None of this was meant to happen--none of this is what he foresaw, or what she planned. Isn’t that right, crocodile?”

The Evil Queen moved as if to strike, as if she had--or would ever have again--that freedom of movement, but the Dark One merely smiled.

“It wasn’t just your parents that were meant to be swept away by the Queen’s curse,” Hook said. “It was all of us. This entire realm sent someplace else, into a Land Without Magic. That’s where Baelfire went when he left his father.” Hook paused before continuing. “When he left me. He believed it was the only place he would be safe.”

“What’s your point, pirate?” The Dark One snapped.

“My point is that all magic comes with a price. My point is that when the spell failed, something went wrong. And now is your chance, crocodile--to tell us. The truth. And in return--” he held up his hand, pointed it at the Dark One in attempt to forestall the protest that was surely imminent “--I will tell you where the maid is, your precious Belle. Where Regina has kept her all of these years. Perhaps I will even remove that cuff and allow you to do something about it.”

It took all of his strength not to mention the other thing, the object that consumed his days and his nights and his nightmares for the better part of three decades. The object that could kill the Dark One--his crocodile, Milah’s murderer. But Hook had made his choice.

He just wished he could feel it--feel her--the fire--the magic--because now he had a name for it, the way he felt about her--all of the things she made him feel and want and believe.

“Tell us, and I will use the portal to bring back the King and the Queen; I will leave, so long as you leave Emma out of this. Emma and her family will be free of you and all of your schemes, hereafter.”

The creature cocked his head and tasted the air with his tongue, considering, until--

“No.” Emma was definitive.

The creature giggled as Emma moved, deliberately switching places with Hook to place herself between him and the crocodile, so she could force him to look at her and her green eyes. “I don’t need saving,” she said.

Hook smiled and said, “That’s good. Because I’m not a hero.”

“I can handle it. I’m not a damsel in distress.” She was lying; there was distress written all over her face, but this--this was something he could do for her, something he wanted to do. Something with purpose, with meaning, something new.

“Emma, think of yourself. Of your family. Of your kingdom. You can’t leave--and even if you could--there would be nothing left for me here. Not even the pursuit of my revenge. I cannot be that man any more. Darkness and hatred have left my life empty.” He cupped his hand over her cheek and stroked the tear forming there, brushing it aside. “I do not want to end up like Regina. Please.”

It was then and not a moment sooner that the world he’d so carefully constructed over the long years shattered, finally--completely--to pieces. As he stepped forward and pulled her against him, a drowning man grasping for a rope. As he pressed his lips to hers and she kissed him as if he were dying and she alone had oxygen.

“So, one last question, then, Killian. We’ll take it from the audience this time.”

In the crowd, someone rises--there is a flash of blonde and blue and Killian cannot--he cannot--

The woman’s eyes sparkle with amusement as she speaks. “Killian,” she says, “do you believe in True Love?”

Killian smiles. He forces himself to. He exhales a laugh.

He exhales a laugh to cover up the fact that all of his breath seems, suddenly, to leave his body.

Again.

On account of a kiss.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like that, slow degrees of feeling welling up inside him, coming from someplace deep and unfamiliar except for the heat and the magic that seemed to guide it; he had no defense for it, no protection against it, and it built into a wave so powerful that to feel it crest over him, exploding in sparkes of rainbow light, was nothing so much as a relief. He staggered back under its impact and braced himself against the bars of Regina’s cell and watched as a door formed before his--before their--eyes. His heart, so recently returned to him, pounding so hard that everything around him seemed to vibrate--his mind a thick haze of fire and light and magic. The torches in the dungeon ablaze and every kiss before this one merely a prelude, flint to light the kindling.

The door was three times the height of a man, taller than the dungeon as it seemed to pierce the ceiling. When it opened there was a lonely stretch of forest bisected by a strangely-paved path and a sign.

“Welcome to Storybrooke.”

At the sign--or more properly at the edge of it, just where it met the road--was a vessel unlike any Hook had ever seen before, heaving and steaming as a man kicked at it, swearing under his breath as if his invective would serve as fuel.

“Father,” Emma whispered.

And--from inside the vessel--a woman’s voice; “Mother.” There was the sound of something opening and closing as a piece of the thing swung open--a door--and a boy slid out.

No. Not a boy.

A young man.

The Evil Queen growled.

The Dark One hissed.

And Emma said, “Oh. Oh, shit.”

The lights are dim and the crowd dispersed as he leaves, waving a hand behind him and walking away from the storefront branded Housing Works Bookstore. It’s dry--a rarity in this city, he has found--dry and cool and clear, and if he angles his head just so between the so-called ‘skyscrapers’ there is a faint glimmer of the stars that are very nearly the same here as they were there. He still remembers them, the way they shone in her eyes as the truth of what they were watching through the portal struck her.

“I have a brother,” she said, and her voice seemed to carry across the portal, across time and space, because a petite, dark-haired woman nearly fell out of the vessel as she looked up, looked around.

“Emma?”

It was a sound of disbelief and doubt and hope but it, too, carried; the man straightened, the vessel forgotten as he started walking unerringly toward the portal that surely he could not see.

Emma swore again and turned to her grandmother, to the Evil Queen, and said, “They remember?” Out of all the possible questions, of course she chose the least expected. How--why--what--none of them was as salient as the simple fact. They remembered.

The Queen raised in eyebrow in pure hauteur and Emma grabbed his hook and pulled him toward the door. “I must go to them,” she said, and he followed.

He would follow her to the end of the world and beyond; with a cry and a lunge she hurled herself at them, at her parents, at her brother.

Hook watched as Queen Snow took her daughter’s head in her hands and kissed the forehead, delicately--as King David pulled his daughter into his arms and cupped the back of her head, gently--as Leo introduced himself.

“Please don’t call me Leopold,” he said, and Emma laughed through her tears.

“This is Killian,” she said. “Captain Killian Jones.”

David’s eyes narrowed as he took in the silver prosthetic where Hook’s left hand used to be. “Captain Hook?”

But Snow said, “Now is not the time, David,” and her green eyes shone almost as brightly as her daughter’s as she looked at him, up and down from his boots to his eyes that were lowered, respectfully--as she stepped forward and took his face in her hands the same way she had taken Emma’s. “Thank you,” she said.

Hook blushed. “I--milady--gratitude is hardly necessary,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly and, for the first time in a long time, uncertain. He was uncertain and his hand reached, unthinkingly, for Emma’s, for the warmth and the comfort he found there.

“You found us,” Snow insisted.

“Emma found you,” Hook said.

“And I never doubted she would,” Snow said. “But I know what you did for her, why she is able to be here right now.”

“What--” Hook swallowed. “What did I do?”

Queen Snow looked at him, and looked at her daughter, at their hands clasped together and said, “True Love’s Kiss. It’s the only magic strong enough to break any curse.”

“Oh,” Hook said. Oh.

He dropped Emma’s hand and stepped back.

The King grumbled. “Let’s discuss this at home. We have a kingdom to take back.” Then, under his breath: “Again.”

The word hung in the air. Home.

Hook took another step back--turned away--opened his mouth--all he knew, with certainty, was that he could not go back there. He could not go back to that place and that person who carried around all of that darkness and anger and hate. He wanted to stay. He was a pirate, a Lost Boy; it would not be the first time in his life that he found himself in a new place with nothing but his wits and his hook and the things he carried.

But Swan--

Emma.

Princess Emma.

She--

He would follow her. Of course he would. He could just as soon live without air as he could live without her.

(He’s known that since the first morning he’d woken up to find her gone; he’s known that every night he’s dreamed of her and every morning since.)

“Oh,” Snow said. “Oh.” Mother and daughter watched each other, identical eyes matched in understanding. “Emma’s not coming home,” Snow said.

It is very nearly midnight when Killian returns home, unlocking his front door with practiced ease and slipping the keys into the pocket of his leather blazer.

What he is not prepared for, or expecting, is her.

Waiting for him.

(Truth be known, he might never be.)

Emma Swan, his True Love, is waiting for him, her green eyes twinkling in the streetlights that are shining through the windows of their flat and still--always--nothing prepares him for the sight of her. Her golden hair is lighter now, streaked with very fine strands of silver; the blue leather of her jacket is bright and adorned with zippers instead of gemstones. She wears no jewelry, in this place--they sold most of it a long time ago. Her only adornment is a silver chain around her neck and the ring he gave her--his brother’s ring--between her breasts.

“You beat me home,” he says.

“You had your adoring fans to contend with,” she says, and laughs. Killian shuts the door behind him and inhales, slowly, savoring it the way he always does--sweet and spicy--and she watches him.

“Your eyes,” she says. “I love the way you look at me. Still.”

“Always.”

And it’s not a dream, but sometimes it still feels like one, when she grabs him and says his name and--somehow--he can feel the Power in it. She grabs him and he forgets where they are and when they are and he remembers the day she decided to stay here. With him.

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said, looking at her mother and her father and her younger brother, the heir-presumptive once the King and the Queen were back on their rightful thrones. Killian had no doubts that they would see to Regina, and to the Dark One. Snow would give Graham back his heart and make certain that Belle was safe and cared for.

For the moment, there were more important matters to attend to.

Snow White ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair. Her voice was somehow strong and brittle at the same time--understanding twinged with sadness. “No,” she murmured. “You didn’t.”

Emma didn’t cry when she said, “I want something free of all of this. Free of the past and all its scars. Something I’ve chosen. Away from--”

“Us,” King David--the man once known across realms as Prince Charming--said.

“No,” Emma said. “But--yes. I’m sorry.”

That’s when David took her in his arms. “You have nothing to apologize for. Not to us. Not ever. We love you. All that matters is that you know that, and are happy.”

And they were.

They are.

Together; they still make a good team.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she whispers. “Do you believe in True Love, Killian?” She stands on her toes and kisses him and it’s full of sweetness and love and he can feel it--the warmth and comfort and the magic that they were both told couldn’t exist in this place but which they kindled with the light they made for each other. The past, here, is nothing more than a bad dream from which he’s awakened, finding himself in her arms until the nightmares are banished and there is nothing but the two of them.

Killian lifts his mouth from hers and takes her hands and kisses them, the backs, each knuckle, before he settles them over his heart. It beats, hard but steady--so steady--as he holds her hands there. “Aye, love,” he says. “You are my happy ending.”

She pulls her hands away, pulls his hands in hers as she says, “That’s not what this is.” He feels it through the layers of her clothing as his hand rests over her abdomen--the flutter there--and he laughs, as she smiles a real smile, that same smile, from the night they met. “It’s a happy beginning.”

And that, surely, is nothing short of magic.

-30-

@profdanglaisstuff @katie-dub @thisonesatellite @carpedzem @captain-emmajones @kmomof4 @optomisticgirl @spartanguard @karl0ta @mariakov81 @tiganasummertree @stahlop @scientificapricot

#cs fic #enchanted forest #true love and other stuff

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hoaqins-funk-house · 4 years ago

Text

Hoaqin/White

Yandere

Part 3

Walking through the halls, the other Hoaqin stays at your side. It seemed he had also gotten attached. “Y/N. I’m hungry.”

“You’re very similar to the other you. As for food, I’d ask the two behind us.”

He nods, looking over his shoulder. “Hey… I’m a bit hungry. Do either of you have something to eat?”

They freeze. “Wh-what do you mean by that...?”

“Like snacks.”

Yihwa pauses to look through her bag as Wangnan breathes a sigh of relief. “We have some snacks here.”

She hands him banana chips, you raising an eyebrow.

“Banana-shaped chips? Aren’t those for children?”

“Try them.” She urges, him shrugging and doing so.

“Oh, not bad. Thank you.” Holding the bag, he continues on down the hall, looking back at you in order to spur you into movement once more.

Loud rumbling fills the hall as you walk along, the Hoaqin at your side looking in the direction of its origin. “It’s not another me. Let’s go check it out.”

You crack your neck, looking in the same direction as him. “Sure.”

Wangnan and Yihwa look at each other, worried, soon running to catch up to you and Hoaqin.

“It isn’t the smartest decision to have such a loud fight on this dangerous train, is it?”

You look around at the group, seeing the angel lady and dog guy near two women and a small crocodilian.

“Mr. Crocodile!” Yihwa shouts. “Where’s Bam?!”

Hoaqin turns. “You’re their acquaintances?”

The dog guy turns to face your new group and Wangnan stutters out an answer.

“Is it possible that you’re another Hoaqin, sir?” He asks, the boy at your side confirming it.

“If you both know who I am, you must know the other me. Why are you fighting?”

Your eyes met with the crocodilian, him tilting his head at you. You both look away at the same time, seeing as a gargantuan sword made of white energy floated above Hoaqin. Your eyebrows raise, impressed. “Woah.”

“The ones who fed me are who I will side with. This situation may be unknown to me, but if you’re an enemy of theirs, I will not hesitate to slice you with this.” He threatens, the angel lady stammering as the blade gets pointed her way. “So, tell me. Are you an enemy? Or an ally?”

Before she can answer, the familiar voice of Hoaqin breaks the tense silence.

“Vicente!” He shouts, eyes widening before shifting into a glare at the sight of you next to him. “So, you’re the second one. It’s been a while! The first time seeing each other since we were one.” His grin was unnerving, not matching the anger that filled his eyes. “We need to become one.”

Vicente hums. “Right now?”

“Yes, a new Slayer Nominee has appeared, and everything has fallen apart. His name is Jue Viole Grace. We have to compete for the title of Slayer Nominee! Now, let’s become one, so we can defeat that bastard!”

Looking at the ground, Vicente stays quiet for a moment. “Okay. But if we do… who’s going to vanish?”

Hoaqin hesitates. “H-huh? What do you mean by that? We’re one, but many! It’s not like one lives and the other disappears! All we want is to be the perfect sword!”

“No.” Vicente states. “It’s only been you. You were the one living as a perfect sword. More than one soul cannot be awake in one body, so the others were asleep.”

Hoaqin’s lips twitch into a snarl, eyes glancing over to you, who was now next to the crocodile. By the time he was looking back to Vicente, he had continued to speak. “After we split, and got sealed in that unstable condition, I realized. I wasn’t awake for all of the years you climbed. It was only you, claiming the throne, and using our powers.”

Hoaqin grits his teeth.

“It’s my turn now, Hoaqin. I’ll be the next slayer, and I’ll cut off our father’s head, and make him look back at me.”

“So, if you want to be awake, do you plan on eating me or something?!” Hoaqin laughs, jumping into the air. “Cut the crap!”

“Daniel, take out the small fry!” He orders, Daniel readying his abilities as the crocodile by your side rushes forward, meeting him in the middle.

A large explosion rings out in the center, Hoaqin and Vicente having struck each other’s blades.

Hoaqin begins to shout at the other boy, you watching passively as Wangnan rushes forward with the knife he had threatened you with, striking Vicente through the heart. He vanishes right after, Hoaqin’s eyes wide. “He vanished? What the hell did you do, blondie?!”

“Yihwa, burn ‘em all!” He shouts, charging away as the flames explode. He was followed by the others, you slightly disappointed by not being able to get the crocodile’s name. He seemed interesting.

Hoaqin cuts through the flame, bolting forwards before getting stopped as the path shifts, obscuring the retreating group from view.

“Damn it! I was so close!” Hoaqin shouts, slashing at the new wall and scarring it. Walking over, you place a hand on his shoulder, him looking back (and up) at you. “Y/N...“

He sighs angrily. “Well, at least I got you back. Still, I was so damn close! That yellow guy just took him and ran!” He grumbles, grabbing your hand as he steps away and striding forward, you following without resistance. He turns down a hall, trailed by the normal group of evil-doers that followed him. “At this rate, how can I become one?!”

“Calm down, Hoaqin. Let’s go to the test, we need to get to the next floor anyway.” Daniel suggests.

He clicks his tongue, continuing down the hall.

"Wait, Rachel." Her head perks up as Hoaqin speaks, him still holding your hand. "Do you happen to know where the other copies are?"

You glance back at the blonde woman, her nodding. "A-ah, Emily knows where they were sealed, but they all seem to have gotten out…"

He huffs. “So, locating them exactly is out of the question, huh?”

She nods again. “Unfortunately, it seems so…”

“Then who let them out…?” He mumbles, head lifting as a young girl’s voice calls his name. “What?”

You turn before he does, releasing his hand in order to approach her, tilting your head as you crouch down in front of her. You glance over your shoulder as Hoaqin jogs over, soon facing the girl again.

“Anna?! Is that you?” Hoaqin asks, her slowly nodding as she looks at him, soon refocusing on you.

“Who are you?”

“Me? Well… I’m Y/N.” You answer, mindlessly scratching your head as you stand up once more, looking down as Anna grabs the edge of your sleeve, her other arm still wrapped around her rabbit plushie.

Hmm… every Hoaqin piece seems to like you. You’re like a Hoaqin whisperer.

Hoaqin grabs your hand once more, pulling you and Anna along.

“Why does she get to ride on your back?” Hoaqin pouts, you sending him an amused glance.

“She asked.”

Anna was on your back as you continued your trek, sound asleep while you carried her bunny for her. Looking around the group, you noticed the missing man, saying nothing.

“Any idea of how close we are to the match?” You ask, Rachel answering.

“About a week away. We still have a bit of traveling to do, so we’ll probably make it just in time.”

You hum. “That’s good to hear.”

Hoaqin glances up at your peaceful face, wondering. You seemed more expressive since getting out of that room. It was still rather rare for you to show emotion, but you seemed less lifeless and more just unemotional. It wasn’t as worrisome to see your expression never move, as the face it never moved from was warmer.

That was another thing he noticed…

You were a rather warm person.

When describing how you were in your past, you portrayed yourself as a workaholic who was cold and uncaring, but this present view of you seemed to be diverging from that path. Now, even if only through your eyes, you showed something. Before, you had slept so much it felt like he never got to see your eyes, but now you were awake. You were doing something, you were tagging along with him, you were helping one of his pieces. Quite frankly, he couldn’t wait to become whole once again, because as he had told you countless times, you would be his.

He wants your smile, your frown, your expressions, your emotion. He wants to see it all, He wants to have it all.

He wants you.

Every bit of you.

He just needs to become one.

Approaching a sudden drop to an arena with Anna still practically attached to your hip, Hoaqin was… also practically attached to your hip. He wasn’t holding your hand, though.

“It seems like Jue Viole Grace has yet to show himself.” Hoaqin states. “Let’s hope he doesn’t chicken out.”

You yawn, rubbing your neck with your free hand as you observe the large arena

“Did that bastard really run?”

“Hah! As if Viole would be afraid of a kid like you. Watch what you say.” Wangnan calls, from another entrance. “Even if it’s not Viole, we’ll beat you!”

Hoaqin gawks at the other team. “Vicente! Seriously?! You teamed up with those weaklings?! How far are you willing to go to beat me?!”

Your eyes fall to the girl at your side, who seems slightly conflicted as she stares at another one of her brothers.

Suddenly, you look up, feeling a surge in Shinsu a moment before it strikes down onto the center platform like lightning. A small group of people appears, including that red guide you had met a bit ago before Hoaqin dragged you away from her.

“That’s Viole…” Hoaqin mumbles… a frown on his face.

“Is Viole the black-haired one?” You ask, Hoaqin nodding.

“Now Anna; that guy, Viole? He’s our enemy.”

Anna finally separates from you as she follows Hoaqin’s lead in standing at the edge of the hall, looking down at them. “As always, a loud entrance, Jue Viole Grace.” He laughs. “I almost thought you were chickening out! I can respect your courage. Still, you’ll soon regret your decision to stay.”

Right as he finished, Vicente’s group began to shout at the new arrivals, filled with 'welcome back's and a shout of betrayal from the crocodile.

Everyone went quiet as the man floating above the arena where Viole stood began to speak. He seemed to be the moderator.

"Now that the participating Regulars have gathered, we'll begin the event." He pauses for a moment, seemingly gathering his voice. "Hell Train Stage 4! The fight for the title of Slayer Nominee! A deathmatch! The test for this floor will be-"

The screen behind him shows a golden coin, the words 'Dallar Show!' scrawled beneath in a swirly handwriting. "The Dallar Show!" He finishes.

You stare up as he continues explaining the game, uncaring to its history and relation to the 10 Great Families. In your experience, most of their kin were stuck-up and snobbish. They were the ones you gave up on approaching to form teams.

The Arie in front of you was… not prideful in his family so much as his own abilities, which, to be fair, did hold up.

"This test will have 3 rounds, with each consecutive round needing you to use the Dallars you earned in the previous! You can see this as a point-saving type of game!"

You hum, looking at Viole's group. Viole himself seemed to be the strongest of them, if his entrance meant anything, but he had a serious case of baby face that made you doubt his ability to kill.

“Every regular will have Dallars given to them, and their teams sum will equal the opposing team's. Wangnan and Viole's groups will be merged and counted as one. The first round will take place here."

You continue to ignore him, still uncaring of the rules, only zoning back in as the Dallar on screen began to spin, glowing a bright white that blotted out your vision. Falling coins then came to your sight, and you got one marked with a 2.

"Let's begin the first round! The reward for this is 15 Dallars, and due to it being the first round, only two from each team will participate! If you have 10 Dallars, step up!"

You obviously didn't have it, but it appears Rachel and the dog guy did. You never really spoke to him enough to care about learning his name, but Rachel seemed to want to talk to you a lot. Thankfully, Hoaqin was there to be jealous and pull you away from her.

There was just… something off about that girl.

“Let’s begin the first round! 10 Dallar Regulars, please get down to the stadium!”

As they do so, Anna steps back to pull you forward, sitting down on the edge with her legs swinging over it, you joining her. Hoaqin sits on your other side, looking over the roster for the battle.

“We aren’t going to win this one.” You proclaim, Hoaqin raising an eyebrow.

“What makes you say so?”

“The woman with candy; look at how she’s muttering and glaring at the dog guy. She’ll go after him, and I doubt this battle will just be as simple as catching a little fish, which Rachel doesn’t seem to realize. I can sense its Shinsu, and it's compressed. The blue guy knows what he’s doing; he’s probably the second most dangerous after Viole, just based on his intelligence. His posture is completely relaxed, confident. Even if Rachel knows that the fish isn’t just a guppy, she’ll have no chance to catch it; her lighthouses aren’t strong enough.” You explain, Hoaqin’s expression growing impressed.

“Hmm… you make a strong point. Let’s see how this goes.”

The moment the battle begins, the candy lady launches at the dog guy, and the blue guy begins to speak to Rachel, allowing her a chance to catch the fish. You gently shake your head, laying back. “This battle was over before it even started.”

Hoaqin would admit; he was impressed. Your quick, accurate deductions weren’t something that just anyone could do. You were smart, that much was clear.

“Hmph. Pathetic.” He watches as the suddenly enlarged fish flies up, its roar echoing as it focuses on the one who fished it out, beginning its descent in order to swallow her whole.

It was stopped by the Khun, whose lighthouses swung around it, catching it in an invisible prison. He says a few words to her collapsed form, her fists clenching against the floor.

“Khun Aguero Agnes caught the Sweetfish! The round goes to Viole Grace’s team! All participating Regulars, please return to your teams!”

After a brief pause, the participants returned to the hall, you having stood up with your Hoaqins doing the same. Hoaqin’s eyes trail after Rachel as she passes, ignoring the dog guy. “It was an interesting match. You’ve shown how pathetic you are, and it really makes me wonder… just how did you get up here? I suppose I should’ve been more careful when designating you as a useful one.”

His vague smile grows more into a sneer, one only she could see. “Don’t even think of participating in any more matches. You won’t be anywhere near me in battle unless you want to be missing a limb.” The threat was clear. He was trying to keep her from the one person Hoaqin had been around for so long, someone whose abilities she was doing her best to gauge.

You.

Her golden eyes meet yours for a moment, quickly looking away. Your eyebrow raises as you stare at her back, your gaze then shifting to the white boy at your side, his normal cocky grin on his lips.

Your attention is drawn back to the arena momentarily as a 20 minute break is announced, you taking the chance to lean against the wall and sit down. Your group broke off into smaller pairs, Hoaqin’s pieces gravitating in your direction. You close your eyes as Anna sits down next to you, leaning into your side. You don’t react any further as Hoaqin joins you both, laying his head in your lap.

And with that, you took a small nap, at least until the platform you were on started to move. You got the Hoaqins off of you and stood up as the floor slid away from the walls, everything beginning to shift as a cage with hostages came into view, hanging above you. Pipes filled the area, twisting and coiling around the empty space, surrounding a brightly glowing core that seemingly beat, thrumming with life.

“Welcome!” The announcer, moderator guy calls out. “This is the stage for the second round!”

You peeked over the edge, watching the core with dull fascination. It reminded you much of a human heart, its steady pulses copying the rhythm. Mesmerizing…

You lift your head as you end up in a pipe. “Huh. That was sudden.”

Looking around, you don’t see anyone near you. “Well. This blows.”

Sighing, you begin to walk in the direction of where you sensed Hoaqin and Anna’s Shinsu.

Then you sensed Vicente’s Shinsu.

Then you sensed another signature, similar to the other pieces of the whole.

It was weird, to be fully honest, and you didn’t think about it too much as you flipped and spun your Dallar, continuing to walk. Staring at the ceiling as you meander forwards, you come to a stop as the pieces’ Shinsu vanishes, the hair on the back of your neck standing as a cold wave of power hits you, its center being Hoaqin.

“Did he actually…?” You mumble, looking down the dark pipe. “I should probably pick up my pace…” Humming, you begin to run, brows furrowed. “It doesn’t seem like he’s fully one, as his power isn’t too overwhelming, but I could guess he got the three that I sensed.” You speak, organizing your thoughts. “Then where’s the last-” You come to a stop as a girl floats in front of you.

“-one. Are you the last sibling?” You ask, her floating in a circle around you, observing.

“I’m impressed you figured it out so quick. Yes, I am.” She smiles, moving closer to you. “I can see why Hoaqin and the others found you so interesting.”

“Really, because I can’t.” You sigh. “It’s been nice meeting you, but Hoaqin just ate his other siblings and I doubt it’ll be long ‘til he sees you. You seem strong though.”

Her smile widens. “Thank you. But I’m afraid it wouldn’t be wise to leave just yet. Hoaqin and Jue Viole Grace have just met again. It’s not safe for you.”

You stretch your neck. “If I’m confident in one thing, it’s my defense. Nothing has been able to penetrate it since the 20th floor, but if you say it’s unsafe, I suppose I’ll listen.” You sit down again, her landing in front of you and sitting on her knees.

“This battle won’t last for very long, but I’ll bring you straight to the core afterwards.”

“Oh, good. Hoaqin probably wouldn’t be too happy if I up and disappeared again. Well, if I stayed gone.”

“Are you ever gonna call him his Slayer name?” She asks, tilting her head.

“Did he ever mention his Slayer name…? I can’t remember. I’ll probably just call him Hoaqin until he tells me to call him otherwise.”

“Do you even know it?”

“Can’t remember, so I guess no.”

“It’s White.”

“White, huh? I guess it fits him, considering his Arie heritage and freakishly pale skin.”

She giggles, standing up. “Alright, It’s time to go.”

“Already? I guess sitting down was useless then…” You sigh, getting up.

She dusts off her skirt, holding her hand out. “Do I just, uh…” You mumble, her rolling her eyes and grabbing your hand as your vision gets enveloped by a bright light.

The next thing you knew, you were standing in front of a large group, with Jue Viole Grace walking in as everyone turns to face you, alarmed. “Huh. She moved me to the wrong place I guess.”

The Khun walks up to you, lighthouses menacingly floating behind him as he stares you down. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our area?”

“Oh, I’m Y/N. I met Hoaqin’s last piece and she moved me here instead of to the other place. I’m not here to cause a fight, I never really wanted to be part of this entire thing anyway.” You drawl. “Before you ask, I was with Hoaqin because I was sealed in the same room before him, so I got to know him over the 600 years we were in there.”

Khun hums, beginning to do some digging.

“White’s last clone?” Viole asks, running up.

“Yep. She seemed pretty powerful.”

“You are the blank turtle I saw!” The crocodile shouts.

“And you’re the compressed dragon-lookin’ guy.”

He huffs happily. “Dragon! That’s what they should call me! I like you, Blank Turtle!”

“Hm? Did you say something, crocodile?” Khun asks, looking up.

“Blue Turtle, one day I will hunt you down and kill you!”

Your lips twitch up, a small smile on your face as you watch Viole try to calm down his squabbling team. Khun’s eyes widen as he finishes his searches, your face already back to its blank slate as he looks up.

“You’re known as Y/N, the Cursed.”

“Sounds about right.” You sigh, sitting down.

“It’s believed that you made a pact with a demon in order to gain the ultimate defense, and it kills all your teammates as a sacrifice.”

“Now that’s wrong. If I had a pact with a demon that killed my teammates, Hoaqin would be dead.” You bluntly refute.

“Well now I kinda wish you did.” Khun shrugs, ignoring Rak's complaints about how cool your nickname sounded.

“This last match will be a one-on-one, so I doubt my team-killer status will be of much effect. Actually, I want to test something; Dragon, that spear of yours is a special throwing spear, right?”

Khun’s eyes stay on you. How did you figure that out?

“Well… decompress and throw it at me as hard as you can. I want to see how much my defenses have improved.”

You could sense the flow of Shinsu in that spear, with its main flow points being from the grip and from the bottom, with a more concentrated amount at the bottom as compared to normal throwing spears.

“Yes! I will do my best to annihilate you!” He cheers, decompressing and jumping back as Khun holds Viole back from getting involved. The other group members make the wise decision to not interfere at all.

Reeling his arm back, Rak soon launches it towards you, the spear flying at you at an impressive speed. Dust kicks up around it as it flies at you, obscuring you from view as it impacts with the sound of something ripping.

It goes silent for a few seconds, only to be interrupted by your monotone voice. “Damnit. I wasn’t thinking about how it would affect my clothes.”

You sigh, stepping back into view with a top that was essentially a crop top, and a small one at that. You toss the spear back over to Rak, thanking him and ignoring everyone else’s stares as you begin to converse with the rather dumb lizard.

Your torso was littered with scars from before you became an impenetrable shield, still having done your best to block attacks from hitting any of your teammates. It didn’t matter in the end, they all died anyway, but you still tried as hard as you could to protect them, even as fate clawed their souls to the afterlife.

You knew it was useless, and that they would die, and yet you couldn’t bring yourself to either betray the promise to the Lightbearer or give up on trying to defend those who joined you.

It was a pitiful existence, really.

Getting sealed was the first time that you felt as if maybe, just maybe, you had helped your team. You really did hope they survived, and yet you couldn’t help but doubt. If they were your teammates, were they truly cursed to die early?

You didn’t know.

#hoaqin #hoaqin x reader #tower of god #tower of god x reader #arie hoaqin #hoaquin #white x reader #white #tog #yandere tower of god #yandere x reader #yandere #x reader #reader insert #gender neutral reader #gender neutral #khun #rak #jue viole grace

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unioncolours · 4 years ago

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Yamanaka Week Day 6: Fanfiction 💗🌺

@yamanaka-week Day 6, prompt: espionage

Fanfiction: The best spy there ever was.

Length: 1,5k

Genre: Fluff and cute

⚔ My AO3 username is Majsasaurus

Read below ⬇💜

The best spy there ever was

Shikadai crossed his arms over his stomach and stared at Inojin with an grimace of irritation smacked on his face.

“You are stupid”, he said, face scrunching together in a way he only did when he was turning more and more angry.

Inojin stared back at him with a little wrinkle between his brows.

“No, I’m not”, he retorted. “You are just scared we’ll get caught.”

The two boys were crouching behind the corner of the house of the Yamanaka residence. They were at the backside of the house, in the protection among shadows and bushes, the part of the garden Ino referred as ‘the hopeless part’. The hopeless part of the garden was filled with nettles and weed, ready to be ripped out of the soil, but neither Ino nor Sai had had time for gardening that part of their garden. They liked to put their focus on the front yard, on the rose bushes and myriad of colourful flowers that needed their care and attention, instead of the weed and shadowy part.

It was the perfect hiding place for two six-year-old spies.

Or ‘spies’. This title was exactly the root of the disagreement between the boys.

“Your Mom is a psychic ninja”, Shikadai said, intending to serve waterproof arguments. “She will catch us immediately. And it’s not fun to play if we can’t win.”

Inojin puffed out his cheeks.

“You are the worst spy I’ve ever seen”, he said, poking a needle in Shikadai’s ego. “And you fail as a shinobi. Shinobi do not give up.”

“I don’t fail”, Shikadai said.

“Then prove it”, Inojin shot back and the wrinkle between his eyebrows had grew in size, because now he was irritated at his friend for not sharing his ambitious plan. Who cared if ‘Mom was a psychic ninja’, when he was the best spy there ever was and could well sneak up behind her?

“Okay”, Shikadai said, took a step forward and a stringy leaf of a nettle stroked by his exposed calf. He winced at the sudden pain and seemed to grow more insecure at the reminder he was not as big and powerful as he maybe wanted to think. “But only up until nap time, okay? I’m tired.”

Inojin smiled at him, knowing that ‘I’m tired’ was Shikadai’s way of saying he was unsure what to do.

“Follow me”, Inojin said, bent down on all four, and began crawling around the corner, towards the front part of the garden. The unaware parents, who were having a nice time taking care of the flowers, were blissfully unaware two dangerous spies made their way towards them.

Sai and Ino had just finished plucking away the bad leaves and dried out branches of some of their parade bushes by the road, the first thing visitors see when they curve down the road past the flower shop and see the house the family lived in. These bushes had beautiful roses; blue to their colour, Ino’s pride after cultivating generations of bushes, slowly getting the petals into a beautiful blue shade from the white she had started from.

Sai meant the colour is the same as Ino’s eyes, Ino claimed they are more like Inojin’s eyes, which are a shade greener than her own.

They looked over their craft, fingers a bit sore after thorns had penetrated through the gardening gloves and poked their skins, but they felt satisfied by the result.

And they were not deaf either. Inojin was still unaware to which degree his voice could rise when he was in a disagreement, and disagreements with Shikadai were never settled with low voices.

The two spies made their way over cobble stone placed into grass, through bushes and heaps of flowers and a around a little man-made pond. Ino’s mother had made that pond together with Inoichi years and years back. Inojin liked to complain over the lack of koi fish in the pond, but Ino took his complaints with grain of salt, since Inojin wasn’t just appreciating the frogs which lived there.

“Let’s go behind this bush”, Inojin suggested and pointed towards the bush closest to his parents.

“No way!” Shikadai disagreed, mouth in frown. “We need to attack from multiple different angles.”

“But we are only two”, Inojin said and shoved two fingers close to Shikadai’s face. “We strike were we are strongest – together!”

“We would need Chocho, that’s when we are strongest”, Shikadai complained, thinking about the gymnastics they were training together. Since they were still so small and largely were unable to exploit chakra, they practised gymnastics to better their skills in motoric, coordination and strength. But Inojin wasn’t listening to his whining today and grabbed Shikadai’s arm, manhandling him closer to the bush of Inojin’s choice.

“No”, Inojin said. “We are strong on our own. Let’s find out what they are talking about.”

Sai turned to look at Ino when the boys came closer.

“What are we going to talk about?”

Ino smirked.

“Let’s talk about the medicine we are going to give Inojin.” There was no medicine in question. Ino was just going to tease her son. They were well aware of where the boys were, and they were not particularly had to spot either. Shikadai’s fluffy, black ponytail was sticking up above the top part of the bush – he had to be sitting on his knees, while Inojin’s feet were visible from the side, probably sitting on his bum, leaning against one of his hands.

“Let’s spy on them”, Inojin said again and the boys fell silent, listening eagerly.

“Well, Sai”, Ino said loudly, almost as in overacting. “When Inojin is done playing with Shikadai we’ll give him his medicine.”

Sai stared at Ino, eyes begging her to please do not make me play in an act, I don’t know how and Ino took his hand.

“He was coughing this morning, wasn’t he?” Ino asked. “Then it’s best to give him his cough medicine, you know, the one that tastes really bad.”

Inojin stared at Shikadai, who stared back in mutual mortification. Medicine time. The worst nightmare of a six-year-old.

“Oh no”, Shikadai whispered.

“I don’t wanna”, Inojin whined back.

“Let’s not give away our position”, Shikadai said when Inojin raised his voice.

“But I don’t wanna take medicine, it was a single cough because I got dust in my nose”, Inojin said.

“That was a sneeze.”

“You don’t understand!” Inojin yelled back. “They’ll give me medicine!”

Ino and Sai stood on the other side of the bush, snickering a bit to their son’s panic. He had grown up sheltered in cotton, protected from the dangers of the outer world, their little sunshine boy, so a once in a while scare would only do him good.

“Inojin”, Ino finally said. “I know you are there. You can come out. We won’t give you medicine. Mommy and Daddy were just teasing you.”

Inojin sprang to his feet and stumbled around the bush into his mother’s arms.

“Moo-o-om”, he whined against her stomach as his big crocodile tears fell down his cheek. “I don’t wanna take medicine.”

“Oh, by little boy, you don’t have to, Mommy just teased you”, Ino said. “We heard you were a spy, so we gave you a little lead to listen to.”

“And we were the worst spies ever!” Shikadai added, peeking out from the bush. “Next time we need to do my tactic.”

“You always want us to do your tactic”, Inojin muttered against Ino’s hip.

Ino smiled to him.

“Come on, little one”, she said. “It’s okay, you don’t have to take medicine.”

“It was dusty”, Inojin pouted. “I coughed because it was dusty.”

Ino looked over at Sai.

“Sounds like a good reason to vacuum, doesn’t it, darling?” she asked and raised her eyebrows in a meaningful way. “Right?”

“Yes, yes”, Sai said in defeat. “Inojin, go back and play now. You were a fantastic spy. Soon enough you can be a shinobi too, and then you’ll be the best spy there ever is.”

Inojin looked at him with big, blue eyes.

“Really?”

“Really”, Sai said. “I am sure you will surpass us both when you are big and strong.”

Inojin almost blushed.

Ino and Sai went back inside, to vacuum clean and to begin prepping for lunch. Shikadai was going to stay at theirs for the whole evening, so they had a second child to entertain for the evening. Entertaining Shikadai was never an issue, so they didn’t fret and happily left the two boys in the garden.

“They were fooling us”, Shikadai said.

“I know”, Inojin said. His tears from the abrupt emotional tantrum at the fear of getting medicine had tried in an instant, just as the tantrum had faded away. “What should we do now?”

Shikadai mulled for a while.

“Continue spying?”

“Yes!”

The two boys hurried inside, not having learned their mistakes.

There was a dinner to supervise and parents to stalk. And who knew, maybe they would get to learn actual secrets this time?

Little did they know of the future far off beyond the horizon, when they would spy in dangerous temples, when they would slay enemies and lose faith in the world as chaos and war would reign around them. Little did they know.

And now, there was no time to think of such times.

Now they were the greatest spies there ever were.

#yamanakaweek2021 #yamanakaweek #inojin yamanaka #saiino #shikadai nara #fanfiction

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madatobiweek2019-2021 · 4 years ago

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Submission from PeacefulDiscord

Back To Spots

“Are you sure this is a good idea?,” Madara stared at his idiot friend incredulously. “If we die in here, I’m going to kill you Hashirama.”

Hashirama paused his snooping, turning away from the test tubes balancing precariously in his hands. He set them down on the table, a smidge too close to the edge if you asked Madara but whatever. That was Hashirama’s problem when Tobirama saw how displaced everything was. Brown eyes peered woefully at him, tearfully vehement as the other man pouted, though ineffective with the messy state Hashirama was in. Scraps of parchment paper were stuck in his hair, ink streaking across his cheek and speckling his fingers.

Madara crinkled his nose, chucking a handkerchief into Hashirama’s face.

Hashirama beamed, rubbing the cloth against his cheek and smearing the ink more. “I don’t think it will be that bad Madara. Tobirama has a lot of protective seals around his lab to keep it safe!”

“Seals that you’ve no problem getting around!”

It was worrisome really, as foolish as Hashirama was, being related to Tobirama and married to Mito had left him with many chances to learn basic skills. While he could not fully understand the way seals functioned or how to lay them, he knew much too well how to disable some. Some like the ones Tobirama had around his lab.

Not to mention his willingness to disable them.

“Now Madara—,” Hashirama began, shoving the napkin into his pocket before snatching up another scroll that looked newer and striking through yet another one of Tobirama’s protective seals.

“See! Like that! You even took down the damn wall with your Mokuton just to get in here! If we don’t die because of whatever disasters are in here then we will die at your brother’s hands!”

Madara shuddered. The last time he aggravated the younger man he’d found himself on the receiving end on some awful seal that summoned nearby birds and critters to him, drawing them to burrow and nest in his hair. Villagers had flocked around him, curious and far too amused, tittering behind hands as they watched the animals lay siege to Madara’s hair knowing he was too busy running away to scream at them. His hair was ruined, bitten off and tangled so horribly that he had to chop the strands to a length he hadn’t had since being twelve years old.

He can already hear the sharp snap of the younger man’s voice— “Don’t go in my lab without me!"— as if he were standing right there.

"It’s important! He’s been in here for weeks—" Hashirama exclaimed, puppy dog eyes on full force.

"Three days! He was in here for three days and he actually came out to eat and take naps—”

“—and who knows what he’s been getting up to! He could be getting hurt or devising something awful—”

“He’s been making food preserving seals for the past month!”

“Do you remember the chain-reacting explosive tags? The undead jutsu? He said he was working on enhanced storage seals!”

Madara froze, mouth opened to yell, and clamped his lips shut. Tobirama did have a way of spiraling away from his original intentions— it wouldn’t hurt to just look to make sure nothing was too….deviated.

“Fine,” he huffed. “But if anything happens I’m chopping your hair off!”

Hashirama squeaked, hands coming up to clutch at his hair. And knocking over the test tubes, sending them careening to the floor with a resounding shatter. Madara watched in horror as the liquids met the black lines of a seal Hashirama had left on the floor— to be analyzed with Mito, he said— and lit them. Colored smoke filled the air and Madara could hear the ground breaking apart moments before Hashirama used Mokuton to send them upwards away from the mess. With a quick wind jutsu, weaker than usual he noticed as his vision swam, Madara sent the smoke into the vent system Tobirama had incorporated early on in case of explosions or dangerous fumes.

Madara rubbed his eyes, carefully lowering himself to the ground. His body was aching— much like the summer over a decade ago when he’d grown almost half a foot in what felt like a few short nights. Coughing, he looked up to see how his friend fared and shrieked.

Sitting in front of him, rubbing his eyes, was Hashirama. But a twelve year old Hashirama. With too big clothes and that godforsaken bowl cut.

“What the fuck! Hashirama, you're—”

“Oh my god, Madara you—”

Madara glanced at his hands. His smaller than before, less calloused hands. “We’re kids again. What the fuck? How? Hashirama!”

He snarled, throwing himself forward to tackle the other man, no, boy, to the ground. “The fuck did you do Senju?!”

“I don’t know— ow! Madara! Don’t, not the face!”

“I'll end you!”

———————————————————-

Half an hour and a semi brutal spar that resulted in Hashirama’s entire face being painted in ink later and both boys were sitting sullenly in the debris they had made of the once pristine lab.

“Tobi’s gonna kill is,” Hashirama sniffled, tears cutting through the black. “I won’t even get to see what my baby looks like.”

“If they’re lucky, nothing like you,” Madara sneered, pulling at the sticky glue-like substance that he’d tumbled into during the fight, snarling angrily as his sleeves still stuck together.

He was surprised his clothes even stayed on, they were so big, but the ties must have worked for something. Hashirama had already wrapped himself up in the excess cloth and tied it off as tightly as he could with his obi and other straps of fabric that he tore from his haori. Madara, on the other hand, would just have to wait.

He tugged at his sleeves again, cursing the glue and Hashirama.

“Ah Madara, don’t be mean!” The brunette sobbed. “My baby would be cute! Even if they looked like me!”

Madara opened his mouth to respond— wanted to sneer that it was good Hashirama knew he wasn’t attractive— but froze as the door opened at just that moment. Red eyes peered distractedly over a thick book, widening as they caught onto the state of the lab. With careful movements, Tobirama lowered the book and set it down, hand reaching for his sword.

“Anija. Madara. What did you do?” He snarled low in his throat, biting through every word like a separate sentence.

The boys blanched, glancing to each other and then shunshinning to the window only for Tobirama to slam his hand against the wall, a seal stretching across the metal to form a barrier they couldn’t get through.

“It was an accident!” Hashirama wailed, gasping through his crocodile tears. “I-am-so so-rry o-tou-to.”

He ran over and clutched at Tobirama’s yukata, burying his messy face into it. “I’m such a bad brother!”

“Anija! Stop that! You’re dirtying my— get off you idiot!”

“I just wanted to make sure you were safe and—!”

“By destroying my lab?” Tobirama shoved at Hashirama, stumbling when the boy’s grip didn’t let up. “Damn it, you poisonous vine, let go!”

“Tobi—!”

“I will get Mito-nee in here so fast—”

Hashirama yelped, letting go with a heavy pout. “You don’t have to be like thaaaat,” he whined, scuffing his foot on the ground. “That’s a really low blow, Tobi. How could you do that to your precious brother—”

“After he destroyed my lab and turned he and his idiot friend back into children?” Tobirama snarked, leveling both of them with a sharp glare. “I’ve no idea.”

Madara shuffled guiltily, wincing as he took in the mess they made.

“We can clean it up!” He offered quickly. Hashirama squawked, shaking his head.

“Oh?” Tobirama quirked a brow. “Properly?”

Madara could feel Tobirama’s chakra rise and fall, unsteady and bothered like a riptide, dragging him closer to anger and not letting him calm down, and nodded hastily. Hashirama became frantic in his head shaking, panicked as he looked at the mess miserably,

“Absolutely. No problem. It’ll take an hour. Tops!” Madara promised, grinning a touch sheepishly even as he tossed his friend a glare. “I understand why you’re upset— we shouldn’t have invaded your privacy and we certainly shouldn’t have made such a mess of things. We were concerned but we should have respected your boundaries. You’ve my sincerest apologies Tobirama.”

Tobirama’s gaze softened and he huffed out a breath, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

“It’s fine. You haven’t gotten into anything too important. We now need to figure out what you two have done and fix it. None of my seals were meant to do this.”

Hashirama slumped in relief, “Oh thank god, I hate cleaning— what?”

———————————————————

“Oh wow, I haven’t seen Hashirama look that awful in years," Touka breathed out in wonderment. ”I almost forgot he was such an ugly bastard.“

"Touka-nee, you’re supposed to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t destroy anything, not keep an eye on his confidence to just destroy it,” Tobirama sighed over his brother’s wailing. Then, speaking over the sound of Madara pummeling his brother, asked, “Mito-nee, will you be able to handle the Hokage’s duties in your state?”

His sister-in-law and he were able to deduce that the jutsu, since many had overlapped and were then combined by the liquid soaking through the papers and smudging the inks, would eventually wear off on its own, a few days at most given the seals were not meant for major bends in time and space. And, even without that, it would, or at least should, not take them too long to devise a remedy.

But that was for tomorrow. Now, they were much too tired and irritable.

“My pregnant state, Tobirama?” Mito arched a brow. “You’d be amazed at what I can handle in this state, brother-in-law. The bigger concern is will you be able to handle Madara while Izuna is away?”

Tobirama looked at the two boys now disguised as other, unidentifiable children. Too many people remembered them as children or at least would recognize their features. With their weaker abilities it was best to keep them hidden and separated (they couldn’t last too long without bickering and yelling each other’s name in rage, like the complete idiots they were) to not give away the precarious situation the Village had now found itself in. The jutsu that changed Madara’s haír to a soft, pale blue, gently wishing about his face and skin to an olive tone did nothing to hide the fire in his chakra boiling beneath.

A new student from a distant place— Cloud Country perhaps— that was the story they would go by. A student adopted from parents Tobirama had saved.

The younger man felt a sudden tiredness fill his bones watching Madara blow flames at Hashirama’s shoulder length purple hair only to be slapped at by many flowers that erupted quite spontaneously from the wood paneling on the wall.

This would be a long few days if they couldn’t undo the mess that was made of Tobirama’s work.

“Izuna may find himself rather alone if he doesn’t hurry back,” he rubbed between his eyes, hand glowing green to chase away the headache. “Who knows? He might thank me.”

He ignored the smirks on his cousin and sister-in-law’s faces, snatching Madara by the wrist and all but hauling him out of Hashirama’s home to his own. Madara glared and very pointedly took his hand away to instead clasp Tobirama’s in his own, twining their fingers together and smiling triumphantly when Tobirama did nothing but sigh.

Oh yes, it’d be a long few days indeed.

———————————————————

The walk home had been silent, the streets much too empty for distraction and they were inside Tobirama’s home before he could properly gather himself. He could admire the timing, if anything. Just yesterday his house had been strewn with far too many papers and even some dust, given the time he spent in the office or his lab instead. Messes from ruined meals had been spattered across his kitchen and his dirty laundry pile had consisted of all of his clothes save for the set on his back. That was the breaking point, sending him into the cleaning frenzy that lasted clear into early morning, until every corner was cleaned to pristine, his laundry washed, dried, and packed neatly away. It was the most presentable and welcoming his home had ever been and the first time Madara, child or not, would actually step past the threshold.

He resolved to give himself a silent pat on the back, watching carefully as Madara took everything from the bookshelves to the altar in, knowing those hawk-like eyes were looking for dust as his clean freakishness often had him doing and finding none.

The tension seeped from Madara’s shoulders and he carefully took off his shoes, setting them neatly aside as he wandered furthered in, already growing comfortable in Tobirama’s small space. At least, if anything, Tobirama could rest knowing he had made a good impression, hoping it would serve him well when the jutsu finally wore off.

“You know,” Madara began over his bowl of noodles, slurping the noodles gracelessly. “I don’t think your brother would’ve wanted me to come stay with you if he knew I was courting you.”

“You’re a child at the moment— that’s hardly relevant right now,” still Tobirama felt his face warm and he swallowed some of his food quickly to disguise it. What they had while Madara was an adult was— nice. A small secret for just the two of them while they got comfortable with each other.

Just the other day he and the older man had a picnic besides a lake closer to the edges of Konoha, waded deep and relaxed beneath the stars— quiet because they hadn’t needed any words to enjoy just being with each other. It was smiles upon eye contact, soft laughs at little quirks. Thinking of slightly chapped, languid lips against his own, gentle like the brush of fingers on something so invaluably precious and irreplaceable, the feel of coarse hair twisting in his hands and just the comfort of a body pressed to his to block the chill of night air made something warm build in his chest and spread to his cheeks.

It wasn’t so nice a memory to think about when his beau was a mere twelve years old to his twenty-eight however.

Madara set his bowl down carefully. “Does it bother you?”

“Hm?” Tobirama wasn’t used to the other man, boy, being so pensive. He put his scroll down and met Madara’s eyes, concerned.

“Does it bother you to be with me?” Madara clarified, clearing his throat as he sat up straight. “I know with our past, the rumors, and our temperaments— they don’t exactly make for an ideal relationship but…”

Tobirama interrupted. “But yet I have not rejected you or your gifts,” he frowned. “Madara, my only problem before was that— well, I had wanted to keep things private for a bit and have time for us before Anija started planning a wedding and now, well you’re a child now,” he scrunched his nose in disgust, giving Madara a pointed look when the boy stared at him with a fondness much too heady and mature for his age. “It’s best not to think of my attraction to you given the circumstances.”

Madara flushed, looking away quickly. “Ah right.” He paused for a long moment before a cheeky grin pulled at his lips. “I suppose I won’t be allowed to sleep in your room then?”

Tobirama scowled, throwing cold tea into Madara’s face, relishing, privately, the crack of the boy’s voice, so much more high pitched than how Tobirama knew it to be.

———————————————————

“You can’t do that Shouta,” Tobirama hissed between gritted teeth. It was only the second day and he was ready to throw Madara, now going by Shouta, into the deepest, roughest river he could find.

Drawing a deep breath to calm himself, he willed water from the air to douse the flames engulfing the now terrified shopkeeper’s stall.

“He was flirting—” Madara bristled, crossing his arms. “He deserved it!”

Tobirama huffed, apologizing quickly to the shopkeeper and pulling Madara away. “He asked where I got my kimono—”

“Because he was admiring the way it fits you!”

Tobirama cringed. Madara’s voice as an adult never, not once no matter how much he was yelling, ever got so shrill. He would need to invest in earplugs at this rate. Glancing around discreetly, he shoved Madara around the corner, away from prying eyes and dropped to a crouch so they could talk face to face.

“Because he liked the fabric and wanted some pieces made for his daughter! You are completely insufferable, even as a child!” Tobirama snapped.

“I’m protecting your virtue! Hashirama said you never realized when people were interested. And that shopkeeper was interested. I know he was!” Madara protested angrily, before turning away and crossing his arms, grumbling curses under his breath.

Rubbing at his nose— it was a wonder the shape hadn’t changed after all the times his frustration had him irritating it— he sighed explosively before swallowing a quick, calming breath. Younger Madara lacked maturity and sense apparently so Tobirama needed to gain patience.

“Madara, you trust me, correct?” he asked softly.

Madara turned back to him curiously. “Of course.”

“So why would anyone showing interest in me be a reason to get so angry unless you thought I would leave my courtship with you for them? That is a lack of trust towards me Madara,” Tobirama explained. He’d seen too many people treat their partners in such a manner and he detested it. He wanted to be able to be himself without worrying how others would perceive him— he had lived much too long with others in mind.

Madara fiddled at the braided bangs Tobirama had put his hair into, pinky finger touching his lip.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel that way,” he whispered. “I just…don’t like it.”

Tobirama smiled softly. Madara, no matter his age, was always much too protective. He couldn’t fault him though. Not now.

“Let’s go, I have to get some shopping done. I think you already finished all the food I had in the house.”

Madara blushed fiercely, ducking his head so his hair fell in front of his face though he still took Tobirama’s hand in his.

“You said I could have whatever I wanted!” Madara’s free hand was back by his lips again.

“Ah right. Whatever, everything. I see how you could get the words confused,” Tobirama ribbed gently, easily pushing down Madara’s hand so the boy wouldn’t bite his nails. “That’s a bad habit, don’t do that.”

As they passed the still horrified shopkeeper, Madara stood upright, pout replaced with a haughty sneer. “You talking to him won’t change anything. He’s mine.”

Tobirama flushed, letting out an awkward laugh as the other villagers eyed him in curious amusement.

“New student,” he grimaced through an explanation. “You know how they are.”

“We know how they are with you Tobirama-sama!” Someone called out, drawing more chuckles from the crowd.

“He’s so cute!” A lady smiled, gently patting Madara’s head as she passed by. “If only people closer to our age were like this, hmm, Tobirama-sama?”

Madara preened under the attention, tugging Tobirama closer and intertwining their fingers, much to the growing entertainment of the entire marketplace. Tobirama thanked every kami for his happuri, casually activating the seal on the side to cool his flaming skin.

If he let Hiruzen test his monkey summon on Madara later that day, no one would have to know (something that was more terrifying without the ability to use his sharingan anymore, having been sent back to an age where he did not have them).

Not that that stopped Madara from yelling at anyone that showed a smidgeon of too much interest in Tobirama to “get their own boyfriend”. ———————————————————

“Madara, you needn’t carry everything,” Tobirama sighed, watching fondly as the boy shifted the basket and bags about in his arms, stumbling along as they made their way back to Tobirama’s home. “I am perfectly capable of carrying my own groceries.”

It was only the fourth day of Madara’s stay and they’d run out of groceries again. Especially the few sweets he had bought just for Madara. Those were gone within moments.

Madara squawked suddenly, one leg tripping over the other, and went sprawling to the ground. With a quick shunshin, Tobirama dropped a scroll onto the dirt to catch all the groceries, letting his free hand shoot out to grab Madara and pull him upright. Straightening the young boy’s collar, he snatched up the now rolled scroll and tucked it into his pocket.

“Like I said, perfectly capable of carrying my groceries,” he drawled. Catching sight of Madara’s embarrassed pout— and oh, he made that exact expression as an adult too!— hair moving forward to hide his face again, Tobirama pushed the unruly strands back with an indulgent smile. “How about we get some dango?”

The word koibito hovered on the tip of his tongue but he bit it back. He was getting rather impatient waiting on this jutsu to let up.

He ignored the flicker of ire and almost-sadness, grinning as Madara’s face lit up. If anything, he was given quite the ideal opportunity to know his suitor. He could enjoy it while it lasted.

———————————————————

“Save me,” Mito snarled as soon as he and Madara stepped through the door. Her face was splotchy and she seemed less composed than ever. “Before I kill your brother.”

Tobirama blinked, eyes searching, landing on his brother sat in the corner and facing the wall. “Mito-nee—”

“Because Hashirama doesn’t realize being in his childhood body doesn’t mean he can act like a child. He keeps making messes and being too loud and, Hashirama if I hear you wailing one more time—”

“Breathe Aneue,” Tobirama held his hands up placatingly.

Mito heaved a breath, pushing her hair behind her ear before resting her hands on her belly. Her eyes were watering when she looked back at Tobirama. “We need to work on the jutsu Tobirama. I can't— with the Hokage duties and watching Hashirama and feeling sick all the time—”

Tobirama nodded. “Go sit, Aneue. Madara—”

“I can make you some tea, Mito-hime,” the boy said, bowing quickly and heading to the kitchen. “Ginger maybe? Or chamomile?”

Mito stared at him in wonderment. “How—I thought he’d be like Hashirama. I was sure of it. Has he been well-behaved this entire week?”

Tobirama smiled sheepishly. “More or less.” He frowned, sending a hard look to the boy all but wilted over himself. “Has Anija been giving you a lot of trouble?”

“Not really—” she glanced at the boy. “Hashirama, can you be a dear and help Madara in the kitchen please?”

Hashirama sprang from his seat, wiping his eyes and nodding hurriedly. “Of course Mito-!”

The rest of the sentence was lost as he scurried away.

“I just need my husband, Tobirama. Not this child who can’t keep his hands off my belly or food in his mouth. I— he’s not even being bad! Not really, just—”

“Overwhelming?”

Mito gave a small nod, looking horribly miserable.

“He was like that as a child. He only learned more restraint as an adult when he realized he kept accidentally hurting others in his enthusiasm,” Tobirama rolled his eyes, heart feeling a little too fond given the grievances his brother had put him through. Once, Hashirama had fractured his ribs with a hug. He’d hoped, however, that Hashirama would not fall back on childhood habits.

He should’ve seen it though— Madara had after all. The flailing, the quirky habits, threatening with fire— wait no, he did that as an adult— but everything else was so painstakingly innocent. Tobirama should’ve really kept a closer watch on Hashirama.

“I’ve been working on the jutsu, a little while longer and I believe I will be able to undo everything,” he reassured.

Mito sighed in relief, pulling Tobirama into a hug as best as she could around the swell of her stomach. Tobirama let her hold onto him for a few long moments, talking softly of the progress he made with the seals and making note of her suggestions, before coaxing her into the kitchen to eat.

And let Mito freeze, hiding his smile at her surprise. Dishes were neatly laid across the table, a cup of steaming tea covered with a small plate and placed by Mito’s seat. Madara grinned at them from beside the stove, turning at a pot.

“I’m making ramen! I know it’s nothing fancy but you seemed stressed and tired so I thought you might want something easier to eat so you can go rest sooner.”

Mito blinked. Settled herself into her seat and took a sip of her tea, humming appreciatively. “I didn’t even remember having those spices.”

“You didn’t,” Madara frowned. “I don’t know what the hell you two are eating but without these,” he gestured to the various small bottles he had set on the counter, “it can’t be anything good. I sent Hashi to Tobi’s. I made him buy these earlier.”

Hashirama grinned, swinging his feet from where he sat atop the counter. “See! I helped! I even set the table!”

He looked at Mito hopefully and she smiled. “Thank you Hashirama. Thank you Madara.”

Both boys beamed proudly though Madara quickly ducked behind his hair, adorably bashful. “It’s very simple. I hope you find it as pleasing as the effort.”

Mito smiled encouragingly, taking the pot from Madara and helping share it into the bowls. “I am certain it is delightful Madara.”

Madara blushed a bit brighter, settling quickly in front of his own bowl.

“Itadakimasu!”

Tobirama grinned, making sure to limit his own portion as he watched his brother’s and sister-in-law’s eyes open with surprise, noises of appreciation slipping past their lips as they dug in with a little more vigor than would be polite. Mito and Hashirama were sure to want seconds. Maybe even thirds.

Madara’s eyes darted to Tobirama’s bowl and he looked up with confusion, eyes silently asking if Tobirama were okay. Smiling gently, Tobirama glanced at their other two companions before dropping Madara a wink.

It was okay. He’d get Madara to cook for him later.

———————————————————

“I uh want to go look for berries at the river! From over there!” Madara called out awkwardly, shuffling from one foot to the other.

Hashirama looked up from the berries he and Tobirama were picking. He looked bemused for all of two seconds before his lips spread in a wicked grin that he hid behind his basket. “Okay!”

Tobirama, too busy separating the berries (and perhaps sneaking a few to eat) just nodded distractedly, only looking up when Hashirama stood up a few minutes later. “Anija?”

“Let’s go look at the river too, Tobi!”

Rolling his eyes, Tobirama let himself be pulled down the path Madara took, frowning when he heard something like a trickle of water when usually the river was silent during these times of low-tide. As they neared, he could just faintly make out Madara’s hair and, just before he could call out, watched Hashirama throw himself out of the bushes right behind the other boy.

Madara’s back went ramrod straight.

“Still can’t go when someone’s behind you?” Hashirama laughed loudly, finger pointing.

Madara whirled around just as Tobirama stepped through the bushes, face cherry red and mouth open to scream at Hashirama. Upon seeing Tobirama, he burned even redder, looking for all the world humiliated and betrayed as he hissed at Hashirama to shut up.

And suddenly so many other things made sense. Madara’s insistence to wait until Tobirama was far too distracted or not even in the house to use the restroom, mumbled excuses of needing privacy to go do something like clean or having to water plants of all things (“better for him to get the job done correctly”) keeping the bathroom door firmly locked even though Tobirama had not once known him to be body shy. Hell, just that morning Madara thought it appropriate to walk around the house with nothing but a small towel wrapped about his waist.

Madara was shy to use the bathroom around…anyone apparently. Tobirama bit back a laugh, frowning instead when he saw Madara hide more behind his hair, the tip of his nose reddening as he curled as much into himself as he could.

Tobirama could feel the headache coming. Why did he think agreeing to watch over both of them was a good idea? Oh right, so Mito could rest and Touka wouldn’t feel tempted to commit treason by killing one of the two brats. Especially given the fiasco that happened yesterday when Touka was in his shoes so he and Mito could work on the seal more.

He really was too kind for his own good.

“Anija!” Tobirama snapped. “Stop wasting time bothering Madara.”

“But Tobi—” Hashirama whined. “I—”

“We are going to pick berries at the river mouth—Madara already has this area covered.”

That would put them far off out each other’s sight so Madara could have his privacy and still be close enough for Tobirama to come if anything were to happen. He dragged his brother away without another word, missing the besotted and grateful look Madara shot him.

It wasn’t too long until Madara joined them again, flicking his hands through a much too familiar sign and setting the edge of Hashirama’s clothing on fire. Shrieking, Hashirama took off upstream before Tobirama could douse him with water, passing the place Madara had been and diving beneath the river surface.

“I suppose that was fair,” Tobirama mused. “I don’t think he got hurt at least.”

Madara scuffed the ground with his shoe, voice soft when he responded. “Yeah.”

“There’s no need to be embarrassed. While I’m certainly surprised your bladder cooperated with your discomfort in quite the opposite manner than I would have expected—”

The boy flushed deeper. “No! I um yeah that’s odd but I um, I actually have something for you!”

“Oh?” Tobirama raised a brow. “Did you get something you were with Touka?”

Madara shook his head, determinedly looking at his shoes. “No I, I meant to give this to you earlier but then,” he waved his hand about awkwardly. “-all of this happened instead.”

Tobirama squinted, nose wrinkled. “Before you do that, did you wash your hands?”

The Uchiha squawked. “Of course I did! I’m not your brother! Stupid Senju—!” He shoved a small box in Tobirama’s hands as he continued his tirade against the Senju Clan.

Ignoring him— Tobirama had gotten quite good at that even before they began courting— he opened the box carefully and stilled. Inside was a small chain with a circular tanzanite pendant, a silver dragon figurine curled around one edge, its tail curling up to connect the pendant to the chain, and a silver leopard figurine stretched along the opposite edge. Their eyes were little red gems, pyrope, and almost exactly the shape and shade of his eyes. The only difference was the trace of black cutting through the red, carving Madara’s mangekyou into the dragon’s eyes.

Tobirama felt his breath catch.

“Madara—”

“You like both those animals! And, and you said I'm— that having me around is like having you’re own personal dragon so I…” his voice fell to little over a whisper. “I had that made for you. So it’s like I’m always around, like we’re always together.”

And now Tobirama’s eyes were watering, happy tears, and wasn’t that an idea. After so much grief, after never once even humoring such an absurdity as crying happily like his brother, Tobirama was well on the verge of doing the same.

Falling to his knees, he pulled the Uchiha into his arms, habit leading him to tuck his face against Madara’s hair. “I find myself really wishing you weren’t a child right now.”

Madara stroked a hand through Tobi’s hair, returning the hug tightly with a disgruntled pout. “Me too. This is fucking annoying. I want to kiss your pretty face, damn. Why’s that so much to ask for?”

“What!”

Hashirama stood gaping behind them, horror and anger twisting his features. “You’re dating my brother?”

“Anija—” Tobirama sighed, hand going right for the bridge of his nose.

“No!” Hashirama yelled, stomping his foot, childishly if not for the Mokuton poking through the dirt. “No, you don’t get to say anything! You were supposed to tell me before— don’t bother explaining or, or giving excuses now! I forbid it!”

Tobirama reeled back in shock. Not once, not even in the worse of Hashirama’s anger, had he ever tried to silence Tobirama.

“What?" Madara growled. "You what?”

Hashirama snarled. “I forbid you from dating my brother.”

The plants and grass were growing, leaves and stems thickening, hardening, and coiling up towards Madara.

“You can’t do that!”

“I can! And I will! I know you! I know your habits—”

“My habits?”

“All that damn time— you can’t handle a long-term relationship! And I’m not letting you use my brother, you backstabbing—” Hashirama was shaking with rage. “You, you bastard!”

With a yell, he lunged towards Madara recklessly only to be thrown over the Uchiha’s shoulder. Madara kneeled onto Hashirama’s chest, wrapping a hand around his throat, body also trembling with fury.

Tobirama moved to separate them, hands grabbing at Madara’s shoulders.

“I love him!” Madara yelled. “I love him! And you don’t get a damn say in any of it!”

Hashirama stopped clawing at Madara’s hands and Tobirama’s own hands went slack. Madara spun to look at him, sharingan burning in his eyes. Something like desperation seemed to spin in the commas.

“You hear me? I love you.”

Perhaps with the best timing ever, the air filled with smoke, startling them all apart. Tobirama covered his eyes as a bright light danced between the wisps and tossed the scroll he’d kept packed with Hashirama’s and Madara’s clothes into the fog, right at the red eyes looking back at him. When it dissipated, a Madara, an adult Madara (thankfully somewhst properly dressed) was standing there, sharingan still spinning in his eyes as he stared at Tobirama. No words passed before the two men pressed their lips together, hands tangling in each other’s hair. Something wet trickled down their cheeks and Tobirama couldn’t tell if the tears were coming from his eyes or Madara’s.

“I love you, I love you,” Madara whispered between kisses. And Tobirama nodded as of to answer some unspoken question.

“You love him?” Hashirama whispered, eyes flooding with tears. He tugged a haori over his shoulders. “You love my baby brother? You’re not just— Oh. Oh Madara I thought you were— oh I’m so happy!”

They weren’t paying attention to Hashirama’s babbling though, too transfixed and overly emotional at the admission of a confession they had been denying themselves.

“I’ve missed you,” Tobirama murmured, pressing his forehead against Madara’s. “Don’t ever go in my lab without me again.”

Madara laughed shakily. “Never. I’m never going anywhere without you ever again."

———————————————————

Omake:

Hashirama wailed, squirming against the chains and seals in vain to get away as Madara used his kama to shear his long brown locks down to the base of his scalp.

"I told you I’d chop your hair off, bastard!” Madara cackled. “Now stay still before I accidentally take your head off!”

“I can’t believe you disguised yourself as Mito!” Hashirama sobbed. “I can’t believe she and Tobirama helped you! Traitors!”

Madara just laughed louder and continued hacking at Hashirama’s hair.

#madatobiweek2020 #de-aged #fanfiction #submission

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bywordofaphrodite · 4 years ago

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Book Reviews 3&4: Nancy Drew and the Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene & Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell Tatham

This review’s theme is girl detective books ! Audience age range: roughly 12 and up !

Just as Enid Blyton’s books made me fall in love with magical creatures and faraway lands, detective novels became an obsession during late primary school, with classic lead female characters Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden being my absolute favourites. My school had an extremely small and limited library, and the Nancy Drew books were one of the only decent series there- even with a great chunk of the collection missing. My mother introduced me to Trixie Belden, which she insisted was better than Nancy Drew, though I refused to listen to such a declaration at the time.

Now, though? My opinions have definitely changed.

Nostalgic review

Rating: ★★★★★

From memory, Nancy Drew is a clever, beautiful and well-off girl in her late teens, living with her lawyer father Carson Drew and her housekeeper Hannah Gruen, who has looked after Nancy since her mother’s passing when she was only three. I always enjoyed the dynamic between Nancy and her father, as it was similar to mine with my father, also a lawyer- Carson doesn’t step in unless Nancy needs his help, but he does assist in legal advice when necessary. I also loved Nancy’s friendship with the cousins Bess and George, and liked that her relationship with her ‘special friend’ Ned never got in the way of solving mysteries or hanging out with her friends (‘hanging out’ was practically code for sleuthing in these novels anyway). Overall, my memories of this series amount mostly to exciting searches for missing heiresses, finding beautiful jewels and battling crocodiles in Florida.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Trixie Belden- rough-around-the-edges thirteen year-old from a poor family living with both her parents and three brothers. Where Nancy has a housekeeper, lives in an affluent suburban neighbourhood and never wants for money, Trixie lives on the outskirts of a small town, both her parents work, and she is constantly reminded of how important it is to work for money as they do not have much of it to spare on mindless things. Nancy is a fairly solitary character, often working alone unless her friends show up, and even then she does most of the legwork; Trixie is also the main sleuth in her series, but her best friend Honey is almost always at her side. While the mysteries were great, the warm friendships in Trixie Belden novels are what I remember best.

Regardless of whatever my thoughts may be after rereading books from these two series, I’ve never ceased referencing either of them and my love of the mystery genre still holds fast even now.

Nancy Drew and the Lilac Inn Review

Post-read: ★★

Synopsis: girl detective Nancy Drew is called to solve a series of odd goings on at her newly engaged friend Emily’s inn, in what seems to be an attempt to prevent Emily and her fiancé from opening. Disaster strikes when her aunt retrieves Emily’s inheritance of diamonds- Emily’s last hope to cover the costs of fixing up the inn- and they are swiftly stolen within the hour. Nancy vows to catch the thief and the intruder and save Emily’s inn from failure.

I struggled in choosing which Nancy Drew book to reread for this review, and after reading through multiple rankings lists I decided on the Lilac Inn because it ranked highly on every list. I now wish I had just gone with Crocodile Island anyway… at least there was something snappy about it. In between the bomb, the theft, the doppelganger, the underwater fake-shark, the kidnapping, the spear-gun attack- I think I’ve made my point. There’s far too much going on, and if it was well-written I would be okay with it, really I would, but it’s all so blandly articulated that half the time I had to reread just to make sure I’d read correctly what nonsense was occurring at any given time.

Straight out the gate, I just want to say how shocking the writing was- that’s shockingly bad, by the way. If I thought Enid Blyton’s work was stunted, well, this was far, far worse. Especially since it lacks the excuse of being written for young children. It was incredibly difficult to push through in the slower parts, and I must admit I basically skim-read the lead up parts to the action sequences (which were incredibly minimal compared to the gnashing crocodile teeth I longed for, but alas). Sadly for me, Bess (my old fave), George and Ned were not present at all, and I cannot remember if they had actually been introduced that early in the series because they are not mentioned once.

I did really like the concept of the story, and the element of Nancy having a creepy doppelganger posing as Nancy to cause mischief (she has several over the series) was fun, even more so that said doppelganger was an actual actress and quite ruthless in her attempts to steal Emily’s diamonds- I love a morally-corrupt pretty female villain as much as the next person, after all. There is a romance teased between Nancy and a young man staying at the inn, a young man who continuously seems to be in the same room as the diamond thief messing with Emily’s inn, but ultimately both never amount to anything. This hardly surprised me given the book is written in the thirties, and Ned and Nancy never do anything but attend dances together the entire series, but still, come on. He could’ve at least stolen the diamonds to add some spice to his useless appearances.

It’s possible that were a very talented scriptwriter to take this book and make it into a movie it could work out a lot better than it does on paper- provided the casting was done well. The sets would be interesting, and I think the creepiness of the ‘ghost’ in the orchard and the diving scenes would translate a lot better on camera. Normally I’m not one to nominate live actions of novels for no reason, but this thought kept recurring as I struggled to get through the writing.

Characters who aged well: Nancy is smart and weirdly good at everything (they don’t explain why she knows how to do all the things she does, but diving and freeing herself from bonds seems to be easy enough for her. Given male characters are always allowed to be perfect without training, I’ll allow it). For a female character written in the 30s she has plenty of agency and does not once rely on a man’s help to do anything, which is why I always enjoyed her books. Carson Drew also aged well- not present that often, but useful without being interfering, and his trust in his daughter is refreshing. As for the other main characters in the series… they didn’t even show up in this book so I can’t really comment on this.

Characters who aged badly: plot twist- I’m adding Nancy here too. She is a little too perfect, too polished, a common criticism by modern readers, though at the time of publication was her main selling point. Additionally, earlier editions of the series featured racist comments made by Nancy, although those have since been taken out. However, the publisher and creator of the first books was not a very pleasant person, so I find myself able to separate that from Nancy’s character.

Favourite scene/quote: ‘The article went on to tell that Nancy had just completed a course in advanced skin diving in the Muskoka River, and that she had finished first in total points in the twenty student group’.

I find this quote amusing because there is really no need for Nancy to be good at every single thing, and this is a good example of the many times throughout the series that Nancy is the ‘best’ at a very random activity that is often never mentioned again.

As for my favourite scene, though nothing interesting actually ends up happening in the orchard, I did like the eerie setting of Nancy dressing up as a ghost and chilling behind a tree for a while (okay it was partially eerie, mostly just oddly comedic). The actress/impostor posing as Nancy provided a few good scenes, too, but for the main villain of the story she was hardly in as many scenes as she should’ve been in.

After doing some research, I discovered something most interesting: Nancy was written with significantly more character by the original ghost-writer of the series, a woman named Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote Nancy ‘embodying qualities that she wished she had’- but the publisher Edward Stratemeyer did not want a bold female character, and she was rewritten with similar dialogue but now accompanied with ‘dainty’ verbs to sweeten her words. Stratemeyer was also known for his beliefs that women belonged in the kitchen, and the only reason he created Nancy in the first place was to capitalise on young female readers who wanted their own equivalent of the Hardy Boys.

With all of this in mind, it’s very possible that the Nancy from my memories is a mix of the older and new editions, which allowed Nancy more personality as the series went on, no longer needing to confirm to the sexist expectations of the 1930s. And despite these origins, Nancy Drew aged quite well as an unintended feminist icon: she solves her mysteries alone and rarely needs Ned’s help at all; in fact, most of the time, Nancy is the one doing the saving. It’s nice to think that, almost one hundred years later, Mildred Wirt Benson’s version of Nancy is the one being kept alive, both on paper and onscreen.

Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion Review

Post-read: ★★★★★

Synopsis: energetic teen Trixie Belden’s boring town of Sleepyside is turned upside down when a rich new family moves onto the property opposite her own, an old miser winds up in hospital and his empty mansion is suddenly inhabited by a runaway boy, and a missing fortune is waiting to be uncovered.

Whewww.

This was a massive breath of fresh air after the Lilac Inn! After being so unimpressed by both Blyton and Keene’s writing, Tatham’s writing restored my faith in my childhood judgement. Her words flowed well and the conversation between the characters was very natural. The blank slate characters in the Lilac Inn were showed up by the animated and multiple-dimensional characters in the Secret of the Mansion, and I never once felt the need to rush myself through the chapters.

Unlike my method of choosing a Nancy Drew book, I simply decided on reading the first Trixie book for this review. While I almost went for a later book where all the main characters had been introduced, I couldn’t remember how Trixie first met Honey and Jim, which I felt was pretty important to her character. I’m very glad I did. Even in the first book, Trixie endures so much character development (contrasting very strongly with Nancy’s flawless existence). Longing for a friend, Trixie takes herself up the hill to the newly habited mansion to introduce herself and her little brother Bobby, who she is babysitting to earn money to buy herself a horse. There she meets rich girl Honey Wheeler, a sickly and sheltered but sweet girl of the same age, whose parents pay little attention to her. Things fall into place with all the expected luck of a teen heroine- Honey’s governess is a lovely woman who wants Honey to befriend Trixie and offers to look after Bobby, and of course Honey’s stables are now filled with horses and a stable hand who can teach her to ride.

But for every easy thing comes an opportunity for Trixie to grow: she comes to admire Honey’s bravery after previously being irritated by her fear of trying outdoor activities; she ignores the stable hand’s orders not to ride the stallion and falls as a result, leading to her having to work to regain his trust and also being taught the valuable lesson to recognise her own limits; finally, as much as Trixie hates looking after little Bobby, when he is bitten by a snake Trixie is resourceful and quick on her feet in helping him, keeping him well enough until a doctor and other adults arrive.

Rather like the Lilac Inn, the mystery of the story centres on the hidden will to a supposed fortune of the elderly man who lived in the old mansion not far from Honey’s new home. On a whim, Trixie nags Honey into accompanying her to snoop around the building, leading to their discovery of the old man’s nephew Jim hiding there. By the end of the book, the girls have helped Jim to find the will and safely escape his abusive step-father. Later in the series, Jim is adopted by the Wheeler family, and also becomes Trixie’s primary love interest (I love that this relationship is not at all rushed either).

The reading level for the Trixie Belden series is listed as grade 3 and above, but I had no problems being completely involved and intrigued by the storyline and characters as a twenty-three year old. I think I’ll continue to read the series on my own time, as I always enjoyed the full character line-up developed after a few books in.

Characters who aged well: Trixie! If my praise during this review didn’t make clear enough, she’s a wonderful character with great development. Honey and Jim are also solid characters, and Bobby and Trixie’s parents are well-written too- supportive and kind, but realistic concerning raising Trixie to be a responsible kid. Also going to add that Trixie’s group of best friends- self-named the Bob-Whites of the Glen and consisting of her two older brothers Brian and Mart, Honey, Jim and the later additions of Dan and Di- have a strong presence and very distinct personalities when they show up in the later novels.

Characters who aged badly: nobody! All the side characters were well done, including the villain. He wasn’t over-the-top by any means, his abuse of Jim was both emotion and physical in a realistic manner that concerned the adults around him enough to comment on it without actually taking proper action to help him, as it often goes. I appreciated the author’s ability to write a male character the vulnerable one, to recognise what was wrong about the situation, and to gladly accept help from two girls younger than him.

Favourite scene/quote: “‘serves him right,’ Trixie said, wiping her grimy hands on her rolled-up blue jeans. ‘The mean old miser. You should have left him lying in the driveway, Dad.’”

An earlier quote in the book, this sets the tone for Trixie’s character: she’s messy, no-nonsense and cheeky. For a female character written in 1948 I found this quite amusing. There’s none of the internalised misogyny that often popped up in ‘tomboy’ characters of the time: Trixie just is what she is, and she’s great.

A standout scene would be Trixie sucking the venom from her brother’s snakebite to save him, and the chapters focused on the developing friendship with Honey and Jim while the two teach Trixie how to handle horses is also enjoyable.

Overall verdict:

My mother was right, Trixie Belden is far better than Nancy Drew in every category I can think of. I wish that the series had gained the popularity that Nancy Drew did, because it would make for a fun movie or television show. There is an eighteen year gap between the publication of the first novel from both series, and both heroines saw many more books written after that. Nancy Drew is so persistent, however, that multiple movies and even a recent CW show have been made, though it is not very accurate to the books at all. Even now, modern-day setting Nancy Drew mysteries are still being released under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym, showing her unending mythical status.

I still love Nancy, bad writing and all, but in all fairness, Miss Trixie deserves a cut of the nostalgic hype surrounding the girl-detective genre. I’d also like to bask in the poetic justice of Nancy not only remaining a more iconic character than the Hardy Boys, but also becoming more feminist as time goes on. I’m sure the publisher is rolling in his grave!

#nancy drew #carolyn keene #trixie belden #girl detective #fiction #university project #nostalgia #feminism #female characters

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mst3kproject · 4 years ago

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The River of the Giant Alligator

A bunch of Italians pretending they’re not Italian in a movie about a guy who chose the wrong place to build a hotel… it’s like Avalanche by way of Devil Fish, with an alligator. And racism. You can’t have a 70’s Italian jungle movie without the racism, and this one layers it on real thick. I think The River of the Giant Alligator has its MST3K bases covered.

Rich Asshole Joshua has opened Paradise House, a resort in the middle of the ‘virgin jungle’. He proudly tells visitors that not only has he left the surrounding ecosystem undamaged, but he’s helping the local people by giving them jobs and improving their standard of living. Naturally it’s not as simple as that. Trouble begins when Sheena, the model they brought for their advertising photographs (just for a dash of Killer Fish), vanishes overnight. Photographer Daniel and hotel manager Ally go to the locals looking for her, and are told that the River God has awakened and intends to drive the white people away by assuming the form of a giant crocodile and eating them all. Considering how mind-bogglingly stupid the tourists in this movie are, that should take all of twenty minutes.

The locals, who call themselves the Kuma, have a name for their River God but it’s pronounced five different ways and I won’t guess how to spell it. Because of the deep breathing sounds that presage its first appearance, I shall call the creature Darth Gator.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first. The whole movie is dubbed and the voice actors are bad. The Darth Gator prop is completely immobile but they mostly keep it in the dark or in really tight shots so we don’t notice… it’s only the occasional ill-advised wide shot where it’s obviously fake enough to be funny. There’s a spiky fence that exists mostly so that people can get impaled on it and a cloying little kid for no reason whatsoever. The ‘wildlife’ is a stock footage smorgasbord that includes orangutans and hippos on the same river. The worst effect in the film is a terrible miniature shot of the hotel on fire, which would have looked just fine if the people involved hadn’t forgotten that flames don’t scale.

So all that sucks, but is fairly harmless. Now let’s talk about the racism.

We’ll start with the movie’s treatment of its two ‘love stories’, and I use the floating commas because neither of them quite qualifies. Daniel and Ally are the main ‘couple’ of the movie. The camera lingers on each of them to show that he thinks she’s beautiful and she thinks he’s rugged, and they spend the whole movie hanging out on balconies and boats together and discussing whether the resort is good or bad for the local people… but they never get so much as a kiss. This is kind of nice, actually, because there’s very little time to stop and make out when you’re being chased by a large carnivorous reptile. It does, however, make for a hell of a contrast between them and the other ‘couple’ we see.

This is the model, Sheena, and her Kuma boyfriend. I am unclear on where this movie is set (the closest we get to a clue is Ally referring to the area as ‘the Orient’, which could honestly mean anything) but it’s perfectly clear that the reason they hired a black woman for their publicity photos is to make the place look ‘exotic’. There’s a weird moment when Joshua attempts to flirt with Sheena by telling her, “it occurs to me that Eve herself may have been black”, which… yes, that is how human evolution worked, what about it? All that aside, at the end of the day, Sheena runs off for a romantic evening with one of the tribesmen. We never see her talk to this guy or have any clue what made her pick him over any of the others. They just go fuck on a beach and then get eaten by an alligator.

So… we have blonde, blue-eyed white people having a perfectly chaste, wait-for-marriage love affair in which they actually get to know each other… and black people who run off with a stranger and screw out in the open like animals. Holy shit. I want to say I hope this wasn’t something the film-makers actively thought about, but it might be worse if they didn’t. Naturally, this is also a version of the ‘people who have premarital sex must die’ trope from slasher movies, and the movie makes doubly sure we know this is Bad Behaviour by having Ally remark that the Kuma are forbidden from visiting ‘the Island of Love’ on the full moon.

The deaths of Sheena and Nameless Kuma Guy also begin a pattern that lasts almost the entire movie. Even though we’re told, repeatedly, that Darth Gator wants to drive the white people out of his jungle, for the vast majority of the running time it’s the brown people who are getting chomped. We’re told that twelve white missionaries came here years ago and Darth Gator ate all but one of them, who then became a crazy jungle man (not gonna lie, Father Jonathan was my favourite character and I wish we’d seen more of him). We see Sheena, her boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s brother get eaten alive. Furthermore, most of the white deaths in the movie are at the hands of the Kuma, who run in and kill the tourists with spears and fire arrows in the belief that they’re doing their god’s bidding, and much of this happens offscreen. Those hit by the arrows quickly fall into the water and vanish from sight. The only time the camera lingers on a white person dying is Joshua, who I guess they think deserved it. The impression one gets is that white death is a horror better implied than shown, while brown death is a spectacle. Again… holy shit.

The River of the Giant Alligator can’t seem to decide what we’re supposed to think about the Kuma people. Early in the film they’re portrayed as victims. These foreigners have invaded their land and built this giant hotel, and claimed to be helping them by giving them ‘work’. Ally notes that they’ll be able to live longer, healthier lives, but Daniel wonders if it’s worth it when they’ve basically become Joshua’s slaves. The movie leaves this question hanging there without exploring it any further. When Daniel and Ally come looking for information about the alligator attacks, the Kuma direct them to Father Jonathan, knowing they’re more likely to believe a white man, even one who’s obviously not quite all there. The movie really wants to be about the exploitation of indigenous peoples, treated as decorations and curiosities by white tourists.

The problem is, it wants to eat that cake, too. By the end of the story, the Kuma have devolved into stock savages. They attack the hotel and kill everybody, and kidnap Ally so they can tie her to a horizontal King Kong contraption as a sacrifice. The ending just makes it all the more confusing, as they turn up to discover that their god has been blown to bloody chunks after biting into a van full of explosives, and they cheer and they just leave. Is it really that easy to kill a god? Won’t a dead god demand vengeance anyway? Does this mean they actually like the white people after all, and were only angry because Darth Gator was eating them?

The ending also muddles the movie’s other point, about the nature of eco-tourism. One of the selling points of Paradise House is that it’s in the middle of virgin jungle. Joshua brags about how he’s left the surrounding ecosystem untouched – but then we cut straight to trees being cleared using dynamite, and later we see live piglets being thrown into the river to keep the crocodiles hanging around so people can gawk at them. You can’t build a hotel in the middle of a place and then call it ‘virgin jungle’. You’re the one who violated it!

The script is a little unclear on whether Darth Gator is a natural or supernatural threat. Ally and Daniel insist that it’s no mere alligator (I don’t think this movie knows the difference between crocodiles and alligators any better than I do) and Father Jonathan seems to believe it’s the Devil Himself, but it certainly dies like a flesh-and-blood creature. Whatever its nature, it’s clear enough that Darth Gator represents the jungle striking back at these intruders to drive them out. The Kuma literally say as much. So what are we to take from the fact that it dies at the end? Have we won the right to destroy the forest by killing its guardian? I don’t believe the people who make these movies think this stuff through.

I can tell that we’re supposed to hate the tourists, and we do, although not always for the reasons the movie wants us to. Minnow, the red-haired little girl who ‘only likes to play with boys’, tries so hard to be Adorable that you want to punt her across the room. Her mother leaves her to wander around the hotel alone, because Mummy’s got a smarmy mustached boyfriend to bang (even this relationship gets more attention than Sheena and Unnamed Kuma Guy, by the way… we are told that Mummy and Mustache have met before, and are here mostly to see each other rather than the jungle). Other notable annoyances include a lady who seems perfectly sane until she starts talking about the aliens, and a guy who loves to complain about Youth These Days and will seize any opportunity to do so.

I kinda wanna gripe about these obnoxious characters, but I don’t feel like I can. You may recall that I spent a month stuck on a cruise ship earlier this year. I can tell you definitively that these people do exist, and I hate them even more in real life.

Man, this could have been a fun monster movie. I’ve seen movies about man-eating crocodiles (or alligators… does it honestly matter that much?) that I really enjoyed. Primeval wasn’t even that bad – it was about how humans are more monstrous than anything nature can produce. Lake Placid had that immortal bit where Betty White says if I had a dick, this is where I’d tell you to suck it. The River of the Great Alligator is just boring bullshit and things that seem kinda racist on the surface but then you think about them a little longer and realize they’re incredibly racist. I went into this one hoping to like it, but it absolutely pissed on the last shreds of my optimism... like a lot of other things in 2020.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the river of the great alligator #the great alligator #fuck this movie #fuck it so much #70s

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eluminium · 4 years ago

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Previous Conductors of the BBs, an incomplete list

These are not in chronicle order. I just wanted to write about some previous Conductors because why not.

Rikard Sunbäck/Erik Sunbäck - The Sunbäcks were the first "Conductors" (the role of Conductor wasn't created until after their deaths) and co-ruled the Bowtie Bastards. They fonded the Bowtie Bastards in the city of Gothenburg around the 1850s, after being thrown out of society for various reasons.

Rikard was the brains, a very calm, rational, and head strong man. He worked as an actual Conductor before creating the BBs, which gave him the ability to steal a train to act as their base. Although, he struggled with expressing himself and could fall into self-isolation at times.

Since these were early times, Rikard didn't have a personal Bowtie. Instead, he was the sole bearer of the Conductors Cap. He died due to an infected bullet wound a few years after the creation of the BBs.

Erik was the heart. He was compassionate, caring, and determined. He also shared a calm attitude with his husband, although he was more emotional and stubborn. Erik was a tailor before the creation of the BBs who specialized in bowties, and he was the lad who crafted the earlier bowties by hand, including the Conductors Bowtie.

The Conductors Bowtie was his personal bowtie, the one he got married in. He wore it around his neck. Erik died of typhus only a few months after his husband passed away, but many bowties throughout the years have believed and still believe that he died of a broken heart, with the typhus just speeding up the process.

Harris Miller - Harris was the first person to bear the title of Conductor after the Sunbäcks deaths. Many of the traditions the Bowties Bastards now hold dear started with him, and he's viewed as one of the best Conductors they've ever had. He was a bit of a hothead but also had a knack for devious plans and negotiating. Harris treated the Bowties as his children, as he always wanted to be a father. He never got that wish due to a genetic condition and never having the time to adopt a kid. Although he is viewed as one of the greatest Conductors to have ever lived, he was very close to becoming an actual dictator. Harris was authoritarian and a bit of a control freak, a fact often swept under the rug.

His personal bowtie resembles pieces of coal, which represents his hotheadedness and ability to put pressure on an enemy for a fair amount of time. He didn't wear his personal bowtie during his Conductor years. He died of a single gunshot to the head after sacrificing himself for another member.

Dory Geraldton - The first female Conductor and the one to introduce the Young Soul/Old Soul system to bring peace between the old and the young, with the help of her partner Isitshalo Dube. (more about that here) She was a very traditional woman with a very motherly aura, making her a great domestic Conductor. Despite being very feminine she had a sharp wit and a love of bar fighting. It wasn't uncommon to find her dresses ripped och damaged. Even if she loved to clob idiots over the head with a beer bottle, she struggled with planning heists and leading high-stress situations. She's seen as a pretty good Conductor and her name is spoken positively.

It became a tradition to shout out "DOOOORY" when engaging in a bar fight. If you invoked her name and won the bar fight you'll have to shout "THE LADY STRIKES AGAIN!" as is custom. Although if you lost you get to shout "DAMN YOU GERALDTON!". Dory never lost a single barfight so invoking her name is like a lucky charm.

Her personal bowtie is made up of two dropping bits of cloth that interlinked with each other just below her breasts. Small patterns of bottles were sewn into the fabric, and it's said the cloth was from one of her dresses that got torn up. She wore her personal Bowtie around her left arm during her Conductor years. She died of injuries sustained from a bad fall.

Stirrin Doorsnee - Stirrin was a pretty bellow average Conductor, and is mostly remembered for a few small things. They were Conductor when the precious Portuguese Purpurnite was brought into the organization's hands, which has become one of their greatest treasures. They also increased the budget for The Doves and The Metallics (more about them here) which caused an intellectual boom for the Bowties. But Stirrin was way too overly careful and suffered from an undiagnosed iron problem, which was never detected because the lad was terrified of doctors. They often fell asleep during important times and were often tired in one way or another. So he didn't bring much to the BBs, not that he put much effort in any way.

His personal bowtie resembled two mugs with a bottle cap in the middle since he almost always had a mug with him and he collected bottle caps for fun. He wore his personal bowtie around his left ankle.

The most famous thing about Stirrin however was his death, as it introduced a new policy for future Conductors. They died in their sleep due to strangulation when the Conductors Bowtie got caught on the bedframe. After that, the Council implemented a new rule where a Conductor isn't allowed to sleep in the Conductor gear for their safety (something you can read more about here)

EXE - EXE is recognized as one of the worst Conductors in the history of the Bowtie Bastards. They were bratty, harsh, a bad listener, and barely cared about the family they were supposed to protect. They struggled with severe anger issues as well, but they refused to be treated. They did bring a fair amount of riches to the Bowtie Bastards with their brutal yet somehow well-coordinated raids and heists but at a major cost. So many Bowties perished in these attacks that EXE is referred to as "The Barney Bucherer" inside the organization. The reason for EXEs uncaringness towards the Bowties was that she wasn't a Bowtie. She was a Toppat spy bribed into power and used the Bowtie Bastards as a lesser part of the Toppats. They never wore the Conductors Cap, choosing instead to wear their iris tophat.

Their personal bowtie was also based on an iris, because EXE had one hell of a stare, and most of their emotions were expressed via their eyes. Said bowtie was worn around her tophat. They perished when the Bowtie Bastards decided that they didn't want a leader that threw away their fellow bowties like nothing and cared more about being a high ranking Toppat then being the Conductor of the Bowtie Bastards. They kicked their ass hard enough so they wouldn't be able to escape and then dropped them off in a crocodile-filled river located in a remote area of Australia. They got eaten alive not long after.

Jessie Clarin - Jessie was the Conductor before the current Conductor, Elg, took power. There are very mixed opinions on her as she died so recently compared to other Conductors and her legacy hasn't been fully established yet. But she'll go down in the Bowtie history books for being the women behind a new subclass creation, the Tactical Bowties. (which you can read more about here) the Tactical Bowties stand alongside the Metallic Bowties and Dove Bowties as being groups with special duties compared to your average Bowtie. For Jessie herself, she's a pretty mixed bag. She was a very careful leader and could usually come up with complex plans to get as few people as possible hurt, although she wasn't as good at being a domestic Conductor. She got a lot of critique about how she was uncaring and cold, something that caused a few bowties to fear her. She was also a bit of a flirty smooth talker, which was a bit taboo for a Conductor. Nevertheless, she was a good Conductor when it came to bringing the bowties into a new age.

Her personal bowtie resembled two dropping wings with a beak in the middle, a reference to one of her most famous moments as a Metallic. There was a hawk who made a nest in the train's engine and she managed to both fight off the mother hawk on her own, fix the engine, and save the babies. She got a big scar across her eye from the whole thing, but she bore no ill will to the hawk. Jessie wore her personal bowtie around her shoulder. She died during a surprise Government raid, where she was shot fatally in the chest.

#bowtie bastards #lore #tw strangulation #cw strangulation #tw eaten alive #tw crocodiles #tw death #tw gunshot #just tryna be sure because damn people die a lot huh #henry stickmin fanfaction #thsc #toppats #the henry stickmin collection #fanfaction #henry stickmim collection #loredump #previous conductors #symbolism

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mrneighbourlove · 4 years ago

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Digging up Trouble: Ch 1. Plover and the Crocodile

"Fuck off you bastards! And don't you come back!"

Leere took the bow and fired off another arrow just for good measure. She knew Al-Daida could be dangerous, but she had hoped to avoid conflict by staying under the radar and being foreign. Heading back to the archaeological grounds, she checked on her team. At the age of 25, Leere's current passion was discovering ancient treasures across the world. Her latest search brought her to the dunes of Al-Daida, looking for the remains of princess of Hyrule that married a matriarch of Al-Daida thousands of years ago. She hoped to find the remains of the princess and return her to Hyrule. The site was discovered three days into their arrival, and her team opened up a massive underground tomb. Each layer would take days of work to uncover, which made work slow. What started the trouble was finding a trove of jewels that had been buried away. All it took was slip of the tongue from one of crew mates and word spread fast. A group of bandits tried to raid them when they were tired after a day of work.

Returning to camp, Leere was thankful no one was killed. A few injuries and the account only herself and the one Goron she brought with her could fight put a pit in her stomach. They couldn't afford to work by themselves now. After putting it to a vote with her crew, they decided to buy some protection from the local government.

The next morning, when things were calm, Leere journeyed an hour out towards the city by herself. Walking through the markets, she tried to not pry too much on the towns on goings. Adjusting her hat, she made her way up to the palace gates. "Excuse me? Is this the home of Matriarch Fayruz?"

"What business do you have here?" The guard asked Leere, not allowing her to pass into the palace just yet. Visitors were frowned upon by the matriarch unless an appointment was previously set. There were only a few exceptions, like that one defeated royal lady from a couple of years back. "The matriarch's time is very precious and she does not like to be disturbed. Do you have an appointment set with her?"

"I do not. But I seek her help. I am Doctor Dragmire, archaeologist of Hyrule. My team has recently come under attack by bandits, and I wish to strike a bargain with her for our safety." When the man only raised an eyebrow, Leere sighed. She didn't like throwing her royal title around, especially when outside of her own country, but she supposed she might get more help from a royal if she was recognized as one. "I'm also known as a Princess of Hryule."

"... I will send a messenger. Please wait." The guard had no patience for dealing with issues like this. There were plenty of princesses, princes, kings, and queens in the world, but only one matriarch. She would decide if she wanted to receive this supposed 'daughter' of Hyrule. She did not look like any Hylian he ever encountered. The servant returned with a whisper in the guard's ear. "Fine. You may pass."

"Thank you."

Leere was escorted inside the chambers of the palace. As she entered, she politely took her hat off. The Doctor had heard rumours of certain monarchs nailing hats into the heads of rude guests who refused to remove them. Looking at a pool, her red eyes grew three sizes at the sight of a massive crocodile relaxing in the sun. She then laid her gaze upon a tanned skinned woman with horns upon her head. Holding her hat, Leere politely gave a gentle bow of the head. "Matriarch Fayruz, I presume?"

"That I am, and you, my child, a supposed 'princess' of Hyrule?" Fayruz got right to the point. She had her servants attending to her every need. One was blocking the sun with a rather large elephant leaf, while another had a tray of fruit and cheese for her to enjoy. "You are... very different than any Hylian I've ever seen. Something tells me you are not exactly Hylian."

"It's true I'm no Hylian. My name is Leere Dragmire, adopted daughter of Ganondorf and Zelda."

"Ah, adopted. That makes much more sense now." Fayruz stood from her fainting couch and greeted Leere with a wave of open arms. "I am Matriarch Fayruz Ola. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, though I have to say, I am surprised." The Nara then crossed one arm over the other, while an expression of puzzlement adorned her face. "To find one of you here of all places."

"I came to your lands in search of the tomb of Queen Wannaba. She was an ancient princess of Hyrule who long ago married a Matriarch of Al-Daida, although back then I believe they might have been known as Pharaohs. I was hoping to return her body and secrets to Hyrule. Unfortunately, I hit a snag. May I sit down?"

"The majestic Pharoah Walijah, also known as Wannaba to foreigners." Fayruz chuckled with a soft smile. "I understand, some names are hard to say in various tongues." She clapped her hands and the servants provided Leere with a chair. "Though, you do know that the beliefs of our people say that lovers are to be together?"

Leere nodded. "I hope you don't think me a thief. Truth is, my kingdom, well, I merely acquire what she was buried with. They say the Queen was highly fascinated with death, studying the living dead as well as the realm of the dead. She left an artifact upon the surface with her King before dying, but she was buried with some personal pieces, as well as instructions on where one could find what she left behind. Unfortunately, she also was buried with a massive amount of treasure. And that's where my problems have arrived. The moment word of treasure spread outside my crew, bandits organized and attack my site. I was barely able to push back a small raid on my own. I've journeyed here today in hopes that I could strike a bargain with you that could grant me and my crew protection."

"There is a difference between a thief and a scholar hoping to study history, but Al-Daida likes to hold onto their dead." Fayruz listened to Leere's suggestion of a bargain. The matriarch really had no interest in this historical dig. The dead were in the afterlife, where the worries of life and the pressures of being a ruler were no more. Yet, the dead were to be respected. "What is your bargain?"

"There are sure to be many historical treasures that are native to Al-Daida alone. I originally was going to sell them to merchants and scholars across the country. However, I would like to offer these finds exclusively to you. You can also have 25% of the jewels I uncover. Does this satisfy you?"

"This does, however, I do have one condition of my own." Fayruz informed Leere. "Princess Walijah stays here. It is not proper to separate lovers in my culture who are bound by the soul."

"Agreed." Leere was thankful. It was nice to secure a bargain so quickly. Standing up, she went to shake the Matriarchs hand. "You know, you're shorter than I expected."

Fayruz actually laughed at Leere's observation while the servants looked upon the foreigner with large eyes. No one was ever so straightforward with the matriarch. At least she was amused, that was a good sign. "True, I am not as... what is the translation in Hylian?" Fayruz thought for a moment and then said, "I believe it is 'butch' as the other females here?"

"Nothing wrong with being butch or not being so. You're still taller than myself. I have to ask, is the blue around your eyes part of your skin or eyeliner? I assume the yellow must be part of your genetic makeup rather than tattoos." Leere had a truly fascinated look in her eyes. "I've never met a people that have varied so colorfully from individual to individual."

"That is kohl, dear, we Al-Daidans have a variety of skin tones." Fayruz mused at Leere's starry look. It seemed the princess was rather fascinated with the culture of her people. There were plenty of brothels the woman could visit if she wished, but the matriarch was not sure if it was appropriate. Hylian people had certain sensitivities to the talk of sex. At least, that was what the matriarch was told. "Tattoos are seen here as a piece of art. You ought to visit one of our tattoo artists for one if you'd like."

"Oh, one tattoo is enough for me, but thank you." Leere gave Fayruz a smile. "I'd like to extend the offer to check in on the dig anytime you wish."

"I appreciate the offer, but Naunet is not a big fan of the desert." Fayruz motioned to her huge crocodile who was crawling out of the pool. "She likes her patches of sunshine, but is a little too prissy to get sand under her claws. However, if you need any translations, please let me know."

“If it’s from your tongue, a translation would be marvellous.” Leere gave the Matriarch a wink as she made her way out. “I’m going to inform my crew of your generosity. Thank you once again Matriarch.”

"Don't worry, dear, my marvelous pets will ensure your camps will not be disturbed." Fayruz certainly noted the princess was a flirty one. Perhaps the 'proper' customs of Hyrule never stuck with her. Or maybe she was simply curious.

Fayruz meant exactly what she said when referring to pets. Marvelous sand rays, the size of craters, sailed through the desert. The talented riders made sure to encircle the camp to protect it, taking shifts here and there.

Leere and her team had made marvellous progress, digging down to the second level. She had spent two weeks at the site now, carefully cataloguing and studying her findings. Eventually, they came across the doorway to the third and final floor, where the ancient Queen’s remains should remain. Inside the door chamber, she found hieroglyphs giving warnings about the book of the dead, the staff of ghosts, and the crown of life. Littered on the wall were multiple priest masks, which Leere took.

After some inspection she deduced none of the masks held any curses. After some deliberation, she thought the colourful masks could make a good gift to the matriarch. Sending a request out, she wanted to know if the Matriach would host a small party for her dig team.

"Matriarch, I do not know why you entertain that desert digger and her team." Bennu scoffed as he read the letter that Leere sent, requesting a small audience and a party celebrating their discovery. "We should have chased her out. The dead are not to be disturbed."

"I know, my mate, I do not necessarily like the idea of her digging into the tombs of our ancestors, yet this one had a Hylian bride." Fayruz reminded her husband gently. "And shared blood ties have the right since she is a princess of Hyrule."

"Adopted princess, not true blood."

"While that may be, she is offering us money for her efforts and our protection."

Another Nara bowed gently to the Matriarch and Bennu. "How do we know for sure she is a princess? These tomb raiders are sly and dishonorable people. It doesn't matter how much money she throws us if she is seeking an even greater prize."

A fourth, a noble visiting, nodded. "Matriarch Fayruz, I have seen this Doctor Dragmire. Her red eyes and pale skin betray what she is. A Mortuus. I have owned a handful over the years."

"There are portraits in historical books of every royal born or adopted. Check the archives if you wish." Fayruz dismissed their worries. "Besides, if she does try to get away, the sand rays already have her in sight. They can simply eat her and we can take what she tries to steal. Do not fret, I always am one step ahead." She then arched an eyebrow. "Do you not believe in my capabilities? Perhaps you'd like to continue the discussion with Bennu? Or my beautiful Naunet instead?"

This first Nara bowed, quickly shaking his head. "No my Matriarch."

The lord shook his head, sighing. "Sand Rays would be such a waste~" ________________________________________________________________

Crossover Story with @ridersoftheapocalypse

Next Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/643133699902390272/digging-up-trouble-ch-2-picking-out-a-book

#Leere #Fayruz #Al-Daida #Necromancy #ridersoftheapocalypse

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snowbellewells · 5 years ago

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Self Promo Sunday: ��Heart in Hand, I Know Your Worth”

In the aftermath of that doozy of a two hour midseason finale back in season four, I had all kinds of ideas rolling around in my head for all the other ways that Killian’s heart being taken could have played out, along with how Emma fighting to get his heart back could have gotten more time. I still don't own these two characters, or anything related to the show, but if i did we probably would have seen a powerful True Love's Kiss all the way back here. {Canon divergence in the midst of 4x11}

Also on AO3 or ff.net

"Heart in Hand, I Know Your Worth"

by: @snowbellewells

This cannot be real, cannot be happening again. Another man she loves – yes, loves – falling to the cold, hard floor of the Sheriff's station, clutching his chest, mouth gaping in a struggle for breath, eyes already going half-glassy from their usually crisp, brilliant blue.

"Killian!" Emma chokes, falling to his side and reaching for him, forcing herself not to scream. His body stretches out before her limply, looking too much like Graham's had nearly three years ago, too much like the horrifying death pose seared into her mind's eye, no matter how much time has passed. She wants to ask what is wrong, but is petrified that she doesn't need to; she knows exactly what is happening to her pirate. There had been nothing she could do when she was in this position before, and this is so much worse, so much more desperately necessary.

As she reaches out to shake Killian, gripping his shoulders with frantic hands, begging him to stay with her, stay awake, her eyes fall on the shoelace wrapped around her wrist – her reminder of the gentle, kind man who had died in her arms in this same station – and tears well over her eyelids, spilling down her cheeks to fall on Killian's paling face. Those lovely, kissable lips that have always been so soft and tenderly coaxing on hers are open, panting, as he struggles to form her name, his one good hand clasping hers to pull her closer where she can hear his desperately whispered words. "Em-Emma…Love, I'm sorry…I k-know I promised…you d-didn't have to w-worry…I m-may not be as g-good at…surviving…as I p-promised. The Crocodile…has m-made sure of it…this time…"

Emma can feel her brow furrowing, leaning nearer and clutching at the material of his black vest, as if to lug him up off the floor and back into the fight for life. "Hey," she whispers hoarsely near his ear, wanting to shake him as she sees his eyes fluttering closed despite his best efforts. "Killian, hey, stay with me."

His stunning eyes labor to open again, trying to focus on her, though it is obviously an uphill battle. His breath is rattling harshly, bringing sympathetic pain to Emma's throat as he continues to fight for air. Her hand presses warmly to his chest, wishing she could hold the missing heart in place, even though she is too late.

Tears are pouring, slip-sliding down her cheeks, and Emma knows the pain clenching in her gut is only going to get worse if she cannot stop this. She knows Killian has done the best he can to be with her, to become a better man for her, but all she can think is, 'You promised! You promised you'd stay if I let you in. I can't lose you too!'

She finds herself fisting her hand and pounding it against his chest repeatedly, despite her worry for him; she has to let out the hurt and fear. Her forehead falls to rest against the warm, furred skin of his chest, his ridiculously still-open shirt, allowing the blessing of his living comfort a bit longer. It is going to be taken away, he is going to leave her, and all because some power-hungry imp wants her magic as well and to settle an old grudge. All Killian has done to change. All he has given up to protect her is illustrated in his dying form sprawled before her. He has sacrificed the very heart in his chest just to warn her, in hopes of seeing her still alive and unharmed.

"Why didn't you tell me, Killian? Let me try to help you? We could have figured this out together." She whispers the words tearfully against his neck, into his skin. She wants answers, knows she will debate and wonder and wish from now on – why he didn't feel he could come to her, why she had taken so long to trust him, why she hadn't let him know how much she truly felt for him, that she had done something, anything, different to avoid him suffering this fate. Beyond that though, she wants to hear him, savor his voice, the cozy, affectionate burr of it as it thaws her long-cold heart.

Killian manages to draw yet one more ragged, shaky breath to respond. "How…could I…Love? What would…you have…thought of me…if I had?" He clumsily manages to snag her wrist and pull that hand to lie along his cheek, turning his face into her touch. "Besides…though I do not…wish to…leave you…I will gladly go…before I see…that monster…take you from me."

His eyes drift closed again, his struggle for breath eases, and Emma feels his body relax against hers. Praying he isn't gone already, a strangled scream finally escapes her when he doesn't respond to her further touches. "Killian, no! Please!"

"I'm afraid you're wasting your breath, Dearie," a taunting voice chortles evilly behind her. A chill runs down Emma's spine before anger floods her, rushing into every space where she could feel fear. Her head whips around to glare over her shoulder at Gold, every fiber of her burning to blast the smug, victoriously gloating smile off his face.

Letting that emotion swell, Emma gathers her feet under her, shifting to stand and face Killian's Crocodile. As if he senses the risk she is about to take, the way she is letting her fury overrule her caution, her pirate tries to pull her back, though too weakened to truly hold her. "Don't, Swan! I'm not worth your crossing him!"

Emma shakes her head angrily, wanting to argue with him that he is more than worth it, but she doesn't want him expending any more of his desperately needed breath. Instead, she pulls her hand from his slackening grip and completes her stand to face Gold. Literally vibrating, rage sparks and begins to tingle under her skin and through her veins. "I am not letting you do this," she grits out between clenched teeth, eyes narrowed and tone practically a growl.

"Please do try to stop me, Miss Swan," the pawnbroker, who is more and more Dark One all the time, challenges, the thin veneer of polite civility no longer masking the hatred beneath the surface. He stands before them, hands resting atop the head of his ornate cane, feet planted, stance wide. "I do intend to put an end to this wretched pirate's life once and for all, as I should have done ages ago, and then I shall have your powers before I go."

Emma doesn't answer, but focuses instead on the advice, the incantation that Regina had given her to combat their now-common enemy. She had needed him present before she could attempt her counterattack, and now that he is, she can't afford mistakes. Closing her eyes, and quickly raising her hands up and outward towards the spinner, Emma tries to whisper the correct words, while concentrating on Killian, his love for her and how she cannot do without him, how much she needs him, and what she hopes to accomplish, all before Rumplestiltskin reacts and stops her.

The air around them whooshes with magic, as a raw burst of power seems to roll out from between she and Gold, then fades again. There is an eerie silence for mere moments, before Emma feels a separate, living pulse in her hand. She opens her eyes with almost breathless hope, and there within her careful grasp is Killian's beating heart, glowing brightly red.

Her glare flicks back to the Crocodile, even as she casts a protection spell over Killian's heart, much like the one Regina protected Henry's with after getting it back from Pan. Once she returns it to his chest, they will not suffer this again, not while she draws breath.

Gold lets out a bloodcurdling giggle, which sounds frighteningly mad rather than the least bit humored. It is as though her strike against him was an invitation to a deadly game. He throws his hands forward in what Emma is sure will be a horrific curse. Before it can reach them, she has created a shield and thrown it up in front of them. She sees a ripple in the translucent barrier before her eyes, but her spell holds, keeping whatever the Dark One has attempted to strike them with at bay.

"All to save that miserable cur's hide!" Gold howls with rage. "You will regret this!" He waves his hand wildly, and then vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Once sure that he is gone, Emma falls to her knees at Killian's side again, letting the shield fall and focusing all her energy and attention on this reckless, infuriating, incredible man, having to believe he still has a chance. She runs her hand back through the dark shock of hair that has fallen across his brow, stroking trembling fingers over his forehead and cheeks, then down to his neck, hoping for a pulse. The exertion flagging from expending so much magic, the fear and anxiety, and now the frantic need to bring Killian back around, are taking their toll, but she cannot falter now.

Holding Killian's heart gingerly in her palm, barely using any pressure with her fingers, Emma moves it to hover above the area of his chest where it belongs. Killian barely stirs, and Emma knows there isn't time to waste. There has already been too much torture – squeezing, manhandling, whatever else Gold has done to it – but uncertainty makes her hesitate. Could she finish him off if she gets this wrong?

Breathily, the barest words escape his lips, soft and low, but enough to give her the push she needs. His chest barely rises and falls, but Killian manages to force the words out, "You…can do this…Emma. I…trust you…"

She nods, setting her resolve, and then without any further lingering, plunges her hand and his beating heart into his chest cavity. Praying it will be enough, Emma releases the organ and withdraws her hand, willing things to return to the way they were before it was taken. Sitting back on her haunches, Emma watches his face tensely for some sign.

Endless, stretching minutes seem to drag on before Killian suddenly lunges forward, drawing in huge gulps of air, eyes frantically wide. She quickly reaches around him, hand supporting at his back though she can feel herself trembling with relief and emotion. She wants to ask a dozen things at once, but Emma bits them all back, trying to first let him regain his bearings.

When Killian finally blinks and looks to her with recognition once more in his haunting gaze, Emma swallows a sob and can't help leaning forward, half wrapping him up and cradling him in her arms and half falling into his. Soon, she is letting her eyes fall closed, a sigh escaping her lips as her adrenaline drains and the curve of Killian's hook rubs soothingly up and down her back, his voice warm in her ear. "There now, Love. I'm still here…thanks to you. Bloody brilliant you are, Swan."

Sniffling, Emma nods into his shoulder, burrowing closer to his warmth, craving the contact. "You can't do that to me, Killian," she chokes out. "If you think I don't need you, that I'll be fine whether you're here or not, you're wrong. You are worth it. You mean more to me than anyone outside of Henry." She leans back only slightly to look into his eyes and be sure that he sees how seriously she means her words.

Her pirate captain appears to have no ready response to her admission, but the volumes in his eyes show how overcome he is as she watches him swallow hard, mastering his own churning emotion. "You must know you mean everything to me as well, Emma. We might have to agree to disagree on my worth." He wets his lips, gaze tentative under his dark brows as he studies her face. "You retrieved my heart. You defeated the bloody Crocodile! …But you took quite the risk, Love. A risk I would not have had you take merely for my benefit. Are you alright?"

A laugh escapes her that is tear-soaked and a bit hysterical, but real, and she clasps his hand firmly. "I am now, Captain," she avows. "Let's keep that heart of yours in your chest from now on, and things should be just fine."

His roughly calloused fingers rise to delicately brush a flyaway strand of golden hair from her cheek and tuck it behind her ear, and then he lets his hand linger to frame her face with his palm. "What a beautiful avenging angel you make, Swan. I would never have thought a princess would be fighting to save me." Leaning forward, Killian pauses only when his nose brushes hers, warm puffs of his breath heating her skin. "Truly, Lass…You are a marvel."

Emma shakes her head, flushing and embarrassed at the effusive praise. "Enough of your pretty words, Sailor," she mutters, even if good naturedly. Standing, she never breaks her connection to him at their entwined hands, but instead pulls him rather shakily to his feet. "Come on, let's not hang around here like sitting ducks. Gold isn't finished, just regrouping. And I want Regina to have a look at you; make sure things are okay with your heart now."

Killian dips his head in acquiescence, his gaze not leaving hers, as though searching to see if she has recovered, despite his being the one who was in danger. "As you wish," he murmurs, moving to the coat rack and holding her red leather jacket out for her as she slips her arms into the sleeves.

She smiles at him over her shoulder, the tears still shimmering on her lashes, but a pride and happiness beginning to sparkle in her green eyes. They cross the room before Emma turns out the lights and locks the station for the night. Moving towards her little yellow car, Emma suddenly pulls him up short, holding him with her stare. "I should have told you this much sooner," she whispers, her voice suspiciously raspy, "but I love you, Killian Jones. Whatever happens from here on, no matter what either of us do…I love you. And don't you forget it."

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Emma drags Killian's face down to kiss him urgently; swallowing his 'I love you too'. She already knows. Has seen it in all he has given up for her, has felt it in every hopeful, guiding, sheltering touch, and has heard it in every endearment and 'as you wish'. His hand and hook come up around her back to hold her, and he sighs into her kiss in contentment.

When they do part, Emma sees the peace and fulfillment on his face as she pulls him along rather than relinquishing her hold of his hand; her heart swells at not letting go.

Tagging: @searchingwardrobes @whimsicallyenchantedrose @kmomof4 @laschatzi @lfh1226-linda @hollyethecurious @teamhook @revanmeetra87 @jennjenn615 @therooksshiningknight @winterbaby89 @stahlop @thislassishooked @winterbaby89 @tiganasummertree @optomisticgirl @shireness-says @thisonesatellite @darkcolinodonorgasm @profdanglaisstuff

#self promo sunday #cs ff #cs oneshot #canon divergence from 4x11

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myhauntedsalem · 5 years ago

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Horror Movies Based on True Events 2

Winchester (2018)

Helen Mirren stars in the movie as a firearm manufacturer’s widow who thinks she is being haunted by the ghosts of people who were killed by the rifles of her husband’s company. The mansion she lives in is based on a real place, known as the Winchester Mystery House, which the real-life woman who Mirren plays spent 38 years constructing and renovating as she lived there. Legend has it she was taking building direction from spirits, with a tour guide telling Vanity Fair that Ms. Winchester would have séances at night and then give new building plans to her foreman in the morning.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977 & 2006)

Wes Craven’s cult classic (and its remake) centers around a traveling family whose car breaks down, leaving them stranded and in the clutches of cannibals. The movie was inspired by Sawney Bean, a Scottish man who, according to legend, led his clan to kill and eat 1,000 people around the year 1600. A Scottish historian told The BBC in 2013 though that the legend was fiction, created by prejudiced Englishmen “as a dig at Scots.”

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Ed and Lorraine Warren strike again! The couple claimed that a Connecticut home rented by the Snedeker family in 1986 had been overtaken by demons, likely because the building was previously a mortuary. In the movie, a fictional Campbell family is tormented by supernatural beings.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

The movie’s title character is a 19-year-old girl who dies following an exorcism, and the film focuses on the trial of the priest who performed it. It’s based on the real 1976 case of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who died at the age of 23 from starvation following 67 exorcisms to rid her of supposed demons.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

In the movie, a young couple buys a house in Amityville, New York, and it turns out to be haunted by supernatural evils. The real-life Lutz family moved to an Amityville home in 1975 about a year after Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered six family members there. The Lutzes moved out after just 28 days, citing strange odors, sounds, gelatinous drops, and other terrifying phenomena.

Dahmer (2002)

Jeremy Renner starred as the notorious serial killer in this horror biopic that includes fictional versions of several of Dahmer’s victims. Dahmer, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, ultimately took the lives of 17 boys and men.

The Blob (1958)

The Blob was inspired by a 1950 incident involving a handful of Philadelphia police officers who witnessed a mysterious, gelatinous alien mass fall from the sky. It allegedly dissolved before long, and thankfully didn’t eat anyone.

Deranged (1974)

A deranged man becomes obsessed with corpses, eventually resorting to creating new ones. The film was subtitled “The Confessions of a Necrophile” in the US. Like so many other horror films of the era, Deranged killer Ezra Cobb was based on the murderer Ed Gein.

Jaws (1975)

An enormous shark terrorizes beachgoers off the coast of the fictional New England town of Amity Island. Jaws was inspired by the 1916 deaths in New Jersey of five victims at the teeth of one ferocious rogue shark.

Eaten Alive (1977)

The proprietor of a rural Texas hotel attacks victims and feed them to his pet crocodile. The events of Eaten Alive, which also went by the alternate titles Death Trap, Horror Hotel, and Starlight Slaughter, were based on the real life “alligator killer,” Joe Ball. Ball murdered at least two women in the 1930s, and rumor is he disposed of the bodies by feeding them to the pet alligators he kept at his Elmendorf, Texas bar.

Audrey Rose (1977)

In one of his earliest roles, Anthony Hopkins plays Elliot Hoover, who becomes convinced that a 10-year-old girl is the reincarnation of his dead daughter. Audrey Rose was adapted from a novel of the same title by Frank De Felitta, who was inspired to explore reincarnation in his writing after his 6-year-old son allegedly began spontaneously playing ragtime piano.

The Entity (1982)

A woman is attacked by a paranormal, invisible attacker. The Entity was adapted from the novel of the same name by Frank De Felitta (also the author of Audrey Rose). It was based on the story of a Culver City, Calif. woman who believed she was being raped by ghosts.

The Entity (1982)

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

An ethnobotanist–a scientist who studies how native cultures use plants for medicine and other purposes–investigates a drug that allegedly creates Voodoo zombies. It was based on the nonfiction book of the same name by real world ethnobotanist Wade Davis, who investigated the story of alleged zombie Clairvius Narcisse.

Child’s Play (1988)

A child’s doll is possessed by the soul of a serial killer. Chucky’s story was inspired by Robert, a haunted doll that allegedly talked and inspired fits of rage in its young owner. Robert is still on display in the Florida Key West Martello Museum.

Fire in the Sky (1993)

A group of men are investigated for murder after a friend was apparently abducted by aliens. In 1975 Travis Walton claimed to have been abducted by a UFO, although he was never able to prove it.

The Dentist (1996)

Amid various hallucinations, a sadistic dentist gets revenge on his cheating wife. It’s been speculated that The Dentist was based on the true story of Dr. Glennon Edward Engleman, a Missouri dentist who, over decades, convinced multiple women to marry other men, who he would then murder. They’d split the insurance checks.

Ravenous (1999)

A US soldier during the Mexican-American War is assigned to a remote mountain fort, where he encounters a stranger who turns out to be a murderous cannibal. Ravenous was inspired both by the Donner Party, the infamous group of pioneers who were forced to resort to cannibalism after becoming stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and by Alfred Packer, who apparently ate his companions on a gold-prospecting expedition when they became stranded in the Rockies.

From Hell (2001)

Scotland Yard investigates the murders committed by the infamous Jack the Ripper, uncovering conspiracies along the way. From Hell, based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore, speculates on the real murderer Jack the Ripper, who was never definitively identified.

Wolf Creek (2005)

Three backpackers are hunted by a madman through the Australian outback. Writer and director Greg McLean said Wolf Creek was based on three separate real life Australian serial killers: Ivan Milat, AKA The Backpacker Killer, who murdered backpackers in the ’90s; Bradley Murdoch, who allegedly tried to kidnap a woman after murdering her boyfriend; and the Snowtown Murders, a series of 11 grisly murders carried out by four men and one woman in the small town of Snowtown in South Australia.

Them (2006)

A couple are attacked in their home by a group of sadistic children and teenagers. Them is reportedly based on the story of an Austrian couple murdered at their home in the Czech Republic. That said, the details on those alleged real events are hard to come by, so take this one with a grain of salt.

#Horror Movies Based on True Events 2 #horror #horror movies #paranormal #ghost and hauntings #ghost and spirits

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