#Also Panic at the Dojo exists | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

quietmunn · 1 month ago

Text

THE TALES OF V

Sketch made by my friend @enshant

Also posted on Ao3

A/N: Hi, this is my first time posting fanfiction here. I write pretty slow and try to check grammar, but there still might be mistakes, sorry

Word count: around 5k

Summary: Mutagen appears in NYC again and the boys need to figure out what's going on. They try their best to collect the ampoules thrown around, yet one gets taken by a 'stupid' girl, who has a weird way of forming friendships...

CHAPTER #1 - Turtle-lover

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A year has passed since the invasion of Krang that was successfully disrupted by fellow mutant ninja turtles. They decided to stay the way they were since childhood – hidden from humans above, however, from now on they have friends and connections to help them out in keeping New York safe. What can go wrong? Shredder isn’t there anymore, Krang too, so mainly they must deal with some arrogant baddies causing problems on the streets. And it’s not boring at all for heroes like these four...as it seems, at least.

“BOOYA!” Michelangelo bursts through the tunnel of the lair, trying to do a double backflip on his skateboard. He speeds a full circle but instead of continuing the way forward to the high-angled wooden platform he keeps spinning in the tunnel. “Woah-ah, I feel lunch pizza begging for freedom...”

“Ew, Mikey, keep it inside.” The leader in blue says as he stops the skateboard with his foot; he just came out of the dojo after a long session of meditation accompanied by Master Splinter. Transport might’ve been stopped, but Mikey hasn’t- his mutant body almost got slammed against the round brick wall, but Leo extended his hand in front of him in time. “Next time be careful to not get stuck in a loop.” Leo chuckles.

Donatello is sitting at his working desk in a nearby room, his lab, slurping grape juice as he studies the recent news and listens to the walkie-talkie that stands near his table lamp, but nothing interesting comes through – only simple observations from policemen with comments like ‘sector is clear’ or ‘bad guy found’ or ‘who took all the toilet paper from the station’s bathroom’. Yet that was until loud beeping made him jump in his shell-shaped seat, box of juice fell onto the floor, leaving the straw to hang from the corner of his mouth. “Guys! Come here, we have a problem!”

“What’s up?” Raphael asks, a towel hangs from his neck because he finished a heavy workout seconds ago. Leo and Mikey paddle over to see what happened too; now the three stood behind Donnie and stared in shock at the sight of multiple red dots covering the map of New York.

“Yo...what’s that?” A slow whistle comes from Michelangelo, and he leans forward to the screen as if looking closer and narrowing his eyes would help him to divide a few dots glued together in one place.

Raph shoves his face away. “Let us see too.” He grumbles, his face turning even more serious than it usually is when he notices the way Leo tensed up, his non-existent eyebrows furrowed together thoughtfully.

“My detectors show a sudden wave of mutagen thrown around the city!” Donnie mumbles in a fast pace, his fingers flying from button to button on the keyboard in panic as he transfers the coordinates to his watch.

Three brothers from the back look at each other, then nod as the situation sinks in. “Let’s go. The faster we get rid of mutagen and find the source of it – the better.” Leonardo commands before each of them follows and, after gathering weapons and devices, ninja turtles jump out of an open manhole in a dark alley, finding their way up to the rooftop of a nearby building.

Their mutagen hunt started at 5 PM and continues for two hours straight now; brothers decided to split for a while, which did help to collect more mutagen vials than when they searched around as a crowd. But still, the four met in the last location, gathering the last piece of the hard day into their green hands. "So, here it is. Last container of mutagen has been found!”

“Wow, great, brilliant. Now let’s move on, this mission is exhausting.” Donnie rolls his eyes at Raphael’s sarcastic comment, holding the container tightly in one hand while controlling the situation on the map that his watch shows.

Mikey’s eyes immediately sparkle. “Oh, oh, can I carry it this time? Pretty please!”

Leonardo looks at him with slight worry; he doesn’t want to show distrust towards him, so, despite the mental conflict, he agrees. “Just hold it tight.”

The turtle with the purple headband squints at the situation: their younger brother is far from the neatest of the four, but since Leo gives Mikey a chance, apparently, he will have to put up with it. Donnie hands him the mutagen ampoule, saying ‘be careful’ and ‘don’t drop it’ along the way, to which Michelangelo responds with a confident smile, acquired under the weight of new responsibility. “See? Everything is a-ma-zing.”

Raph tries not to smirk at Mikey’s words, but he doesn’t succeed in doing so, considering the twitch of his lips. “We should go-“ Before Raphael has time to finish, Mikey yelps because of the cry of some bird and drops the mutagen on the asphalt. Surprisingly, the capsule did not break right away and continued to roll on its own.

“Mikey!” Older brothers shout in unison, staring at Michelangelo’s bashful expression.

“Oops.”

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Another school day ends in turmoil: students run out of the building in a huge crowd immediately after the last bell from the secondary activities, but one girl is not in a hurry at all, nervously looking at the screen of her phone while the flow of people goes around her from all sides.

"Mom, I'm done. Pick me up pls?”

The answer did not come immediately, but it was obvious: "Mia, your mother is at the meeting, she can’t pick you up.”

Well, yes, of course, how could it be otherwise? As if after every second refusal, she will suddenly agree and not ask her secretary to answer text messages. Mia leans against the concrete pillar that connects the school porch to the roof and takes a deep breath. Again, she has to walk home and catch a stuffy bus in almost pitch darkness, barely lit by the dim streetlamps of New York.

Putting her hands into the pockets of her shabby white hoodie with green sleeves and a large tortoise patch on the front, she sets off alone, muttering irritated comments under her breath. But the path was not very calm: in the next alley a loud click caught Mia's attention. From the deep shadows a strange, tinted flask rolled to her feet, more like an orbital test tube with two holes plugged by two foreign bolts. "Is it some kind of sick joke?! Not funny!"

Mia kicks the flask, causing it to fly off into a brick wall. A crack formed on the dark matte coating began to glow with an unfamiliar green light as a single drop of radioactive-looking substance slid down the glass. Her first thought was ‘a lava lamp’, but she deeply doubted this: if this was really a lamp, then why was it covered with a greasy layer of tint that hid its neon glow? And those giant bolts on the sides? It is completely incomprehensible how such ‘lamp’ would stand firmly on the table.

After looking around and making sure that no one was there, Mia pulled her work gloves out of her bag and carefully lifted the capsule before carefully placing it in her pouch cracked upwards, so that nothing would leak out.

"No, the bus!" The schoolgirl yells, holding the bag tight against her chest as she runs towards the bus stop.

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"Well? Any ideas?" Raphael asks, plowing from roof to roof with his brothers to track at which stop that dumb curious girl will get off.

"We need to take the mutagen at all costs, so I suggest that we follow her to the end. We'll decide on the next steps as things go along." Leo muses aloud before stopping as soon as he sees her get off the bus.

This girl lives in Dumbo - pretty rich for a teenager. She enters a block of flats, and the boys watch intently at the lights flickering in the windows of each floor through the camera of Donnie’s drone. They know it is disrespectful to peek into windows like that, but it is for the safety of people, so it’s fine.

“That window. There’s even a fire escape we can use.” Raphael points at the third floor, apartment to the left, and then folds muscular hands in front of his plastron. “You know, I’m kinda starting to like this mission.”

“Wait, are we actually planning to break into someone’s apartment?” The brainiac brother glances at them, eyes wide behind his goggles.

Leo sighs, then nods. “We don’t have other choice, what if she decides to drink it or touches it? Having a person turn mutant against their will is the least we need to happen. Mikey, Raphael, stay on the fire escape for the rescue. Donnie, we’ll go in together.”

Mikey’s expression turns a tad upset, but he walks after his brothers anyway. “Aw man, why can’t I go in too?”

Raphael tchs. “Mikey, are you for real right now?” Seeing his brother’s sour face he softens a bit, giving his shoulder a brotherly pat once they arrived at the fire escape ladder.

Another glance into the window...No one around, seems like she left her room for now. Donatello opens the window with his tools and fast enough he and Leo slide inside, silently landing onto the floor. The room felt like an oasis – green wallpapers, soft blue light surrounding the space. A bed stood in the corner in front of the window along with a small bedside table on which stood a small glass aquarium. Inside of it, as it seems, the girl placed the mutagen vial vertically so that it doesn’t spill anywhere else. Smart. Above the bed, on the ceiling, were glued biology related posters and a small, printed picture of a kitten swinging on a rope that says: ‘hang in there’.

Two brothers made their way forward to take mutagen out, careful to not knock anything off considering their big shells, when a chirp made them freeze in place. A tortoise with a comically small black cylinder on its head noticed intruders from a huge round terrarium that occupies the most part of the room. It also has a handmade wooden desk attached to it from one side.

“Well, that’s awkward. Don’t give us away, please.” Donnie comments quietly when his gaze meets the turtle’s.

Then sound of nearing steps makes them gulp; genius brother quickly grabs mutagen and, as he almost reached the window to escape with Leo, the door clicked open. Mia enters the room yawning, all prepared for sleep; baggy pajamas all painted in star pattern sat on her small form, long ash-brown locks hang freely over her shoulders and glasses grace her pale face.

Her destination immediately switches to her pet turtles in the terrarium, and she sits onto her spinning chair, rolling to the side of turtles’ home to see them closer. “Hi Molly, hi Holly, hi Big George.” She greets them, placing a palm against the warm glass. Soft chirping can be heard in response as three turtles see Mia and step closer to the barrier. “The only guys happy to see me, huh? Well, I’m happy to see you too, it was a tough day.”

Oh, little did she know there were not one, but four mutant turtles unintentionally eavesdropping, and two of them held for life on her ceiling. Leo supports Donnie with one hand since he holds the ampoule, and they took their breath, afraid to make themselves known so easily.

“The heck are they doin’??” Raphael whispers to himself as they watch from the outside.

“Ooo, this gives me Spider-Man vibes. Maybe this bae is Mary Jane?” Mikey giggles, finding the situation amusing no matter how many eyerolls he gets from his brother in red bandana.

“I wish I could take you with me, it would make me feel better at school for sure. Well, at least not as lonely,” Mia sighs, now pressing her forehead against the glass, Holly squeaks in return, she is a sea turtle and wears a cute pink bow. It makes the girl smile; she spins around to take out fresh salad leaves from a container and puts a few into the terrarium for them to snack on. With a creak of the chair she stands up, heading to turn off the lights and go to bed when a bright green drop falls before her eyes and lands by her feet. She slowly looks up, blinking a few times to make sure if what she is seeing is real. The amount of curse words flying across Donnie’s mind is indescribable; he should’ve taken the aquarium too to avoid this from happening but failed to do so because they were in a panicked hurry.

“Turtles...Human-sized turtles...In my room.” Mia stares at them, glasses slide down her nose in surprise. But it isn’t a look of fear, no, it is pure fascination, curiosity. “Turtles in my room! There are big turtles in my room!” The girl begins jumping excitedly, speaking in squeaky voice like a fangirl on her favorite artist’s concert.

Leonardo jumps down, gently stopping her in place by putting his large green hands onto her shoulders; she was near to stepping into spilled mutagen on the floor. “Miss, please, stop.” He felt utterly confused, like the rest of his brothers, even Donnie kind of squeezed into himself with the ampoule as he joined Leo downwards. Usually people scream and call them ‘monsters’, not turn all excited and happy – it’s their first time experiencing such encounter. Mikey, however, felt quite engaged as he watched this unroll with Raph, who looked just as astonished, through the open window.

Mia took a deep breath to calm down and once Leo was sure she wouldn’t move energetically like she did, he backed his hands away. “We’re here to take this with us. It is a very dangerous chemical which you picked up by mistake. Now, if you excuse us, we’ll leave and you will keep your mouth shut about us, got it?” He says in a stern tone, making her feel a lump in her throat. “If you tell someone – we’ll know about it and find you. It won’t be nice at all.”

She nods frantically. Donnie wipes the neon liquid on the floor while Leo politely threatens the poor girl; it’s not the first time they do that, this happened with April too. Except she didn’t listen to them at all as it later turned out, trying to use them as a plot for her journalistic job.

“Who are you?” Her voice sounded normal, much better than that torturing high-pitched noise she made a few moments ago. As two brothers get out her window, she walks closer, now realizing that there are four of them on the metal stairs.

Turtle in the orange headband turns to look at her with a smile once others jumped off to leave silently. “Your best nightmare, angelcakes.” He responds, winking cheekily before disappearing into the night too.

Mia follows them with her gaze in awe. This meeting will keep her awake for a long time...

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Test tubes and papers scattered around the lab, fluorescent lamps above feel almost blinding, enough to make anyone suffer from a headache if they stay here too long. Dr. Stockman is standing at the long lab table, watching the chemicals flow from one vial to another, filtering into green glowing substance that fills huge glass container in the center of the room. At the moment only quarter of it is filled, but with each drop the contains rise, disrupting annoying white lightning by its own neon glow.

“It seems like you memorized the creation of mutagen quite well, Dr. Stockman. I have to admit that I’m impressed.” Sacks watches his colleague, genuinely surprised by his abilities. It’s been a few months since new leader of Clan Foot, Karai, got him out of prison, now he is working alongside Stockman on recreation of mutagen which already turned out to be a success thanks to mutants Bebop and Rocksteady. This time mutagen was more powerful than before, much more reactive – a single drop can cause a massive disaster, yet there they were, following Karai’s orders and creating more and more of it.

“It’s nice to hear from you, Mr. Sacks.” He responds with an awkward smile, glancing at Eric who leaned side-ways against the corner of the table, his expression might be friendly but it’s obvious his real feelings towards Stockman are complete opposite from what his face shows. This black man was betrayed by Shredder and, before he was able to go against Clan Foot, the soldiers captured him, so now he is used in interests of Karai, specifically - scientific ones. And after what happened to his sensei, Eric will do anything for revenge, even if that means pushing a fool like Stockman to his limits. “I need to use the bathroom, can you look after all this, please?”

“Sure.” Eric nods, his gaze following the man as he heads to the exit before focusing back on the filtering process.

On the way out of the lab Stockman is met by two sharp blades crossed at his neck; two Foot soldiers stood at each side of the door like guard dogs, ready to pounce at any moment. “Where are you going?” One of them asks.

The doctor rises his hands submissively and clears his throat a bit, words leaving his mouth with a stutter. “B-bathroom.” Only then the blades are lowered, and soldiers follow him to the toilets located down the corridor of the complex. It was hidden beneath the ground, outside New York, and used to be an abandoned bunker until Foot took over it long time ago, back when Shredder wasn’t taken by Krang for its collection of ice figures.

Soon enough they arrive, soldiers already guarding the door as Stockman gets inside. He closes the door behind him, walking over to the sinks to splash some water on his face before he looks up at his reflection in the mirror; dark circles visible beneath his eyes; moustache gotten out of control and a beard formed on his face; curly hair faced the same, looking like a badly shaped cloud. Of course, if he lived in better conditions, he’d take care of himself properly, but while he’s among the Foot he is nothing but a tool.

His hand dives underneath the lab coat into the hidden pocket of his shirt and retrieves with a small test tube filled with mutagen, wrapped in a handkerchief. He looks back at the mirror, his breathing turning shaky. “Okay, okay, let’s weight pros and cons, Baxter. Pros – I become an unbelievably strong mutant and get out of here, cons – I lose my handsome face...and some rationality too.” Stockman releases a heavy sigh, already preparing to pour that liquid down his throat, when a loud knock makes the vial drop from his hand, shattering into little crystals of glass sparkling in the green puddle of mutagen.

“Ten minutes passed! Leave or we’ll take you out ourselves.”

“Shit.” Baxter gathers himself together, avoiding dangerous chemical on the floor as he leaves the men’s bathroom in disappointment. Then, soldiers nudge him to go back to the lab, not leaving his side even for a moment.

Toxic smell in the bathroom attracts a housefly that flies around without a single thought in its little head. It landed onto the dirty tiled floor, crawling closer and closer towards the tantalizing substance before little feet gather some of it to taste.

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“All these locations make no sense. The only thing here making sense is that it happens in New York.”

“Casey, are you seriously implying that New York is the only city where weird stuff happens?” April’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, hands resting on her hips as she glances at him and then back at the map hanging on the wall in Donnie’s lab. Jones responds with a ‘duh’ expression; he is a detective and he’s seen stuff in NYC that is impossible to describe, and his friends are literally four turtles and a rat, who know ninja-something martial arts.

“Please, be quiet for a moment, I think I found something...” The genius turtle types on keyboard with the speed of light, sitting scrunched at his desk. “There are camera records you should look at.” He turns the monitor to their side, the two step closer, watching the videos on the display; each managed to capture bikers going in and out of the alleyways where the turtle brothers found mutagen. Don pauses the video and zooms in onto biker’s shoulder – the Foot emblem.

A hand glides down Casey’s face as he stares at the screen in disbelief. “Clan Foot is back...” He murmurs loud enough to hear, then turns around and kicks the air in frustration. So long working his ass off in the NYPD just for the Foot to be back again. “So? Any ideas about where they came from?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out! It’ll take some time to track them though.” Donnie sighs, diving head-deep into his work right away. He’ll have to follow one of the bikes by connecting videos from the cameras together.

“Do what you need,” Leo approves, he was standing in the doorway the entire time. He is already working on a plan in his mind to use once his brother finds the source of the trouble. “April, Casey, thank you for cooperation, it means a lot like always.”

“Dude, you’re so polite sometimes that it makes me feel really awkward- ow!” Casey muses, but then April nudges his ribs with her elbow. He uses both hands to shield his side from the evil woman, ready to attack back if she tries the trick again.

“Don’t listen to him, Leo. We’re more than glad to help.” She smiles softly, even when her boyfriend is looking daggers at her for interrupting him like this.

Repetitive sounds of fists rhythmically hitting the punching bag echo through the lair as Raphael works out alone, wanting to distract himself from nagging thoughts and burn some energy. Meanwhile his younger brother has other plans; his footsteps are light when he sneaks his way to the exit of the lair, managing to stay unnoticed by Master Splinter, who is meditating behind dojo’s closed doors. But not sneaky enough, considering that Raph saw him passing by. Just as Mikey is about to reach the exit tunnel, the grumpy brother loudly clears his throat, causing youngest to turn around slowly – his blue eyes meet suspicious green.

“Where are ya going?” Raphael steps forward in an intimidating way, which makes Mikey gulp even though he knows his older brother would never be mad at him as much as the other two. Well, unless Leo is near, but thankfully he is not.

“To the Halloween parade…?” Mikey ‘admits’, hands squeezing the skateboard he presses against his plastron protectively.

Raph lets out a thinking hum and narrows eyes, totally not buying it. “In the middle of September?” That was until a smirk formed on his serious mug. “I’m going with you. Let’s say we’re going to patrol early today.”

“Hell yeah!” Michelangelo jumps excitedly and watches his usually impulsive brother inform the rest about ‘patrol’ before he grabs his own skateboard and the two set off into the tunnel. After a few minutes of racing through the sewer system, they slide open a manhole in one of the Brooklyn’s alleyways.

Big terrapins climb up onto the rooftop, setting their skateboards down to finally put their riding skills to use as they glide along the edges of the roof like a fury. The excited yell of “Cowabunga!” and noise of small plastic wheels clanking against the scratchy surface spread across the sleeping city. Two brothers land with a trick onto a flat rooftop, sharing a high five. “Sick move, bro.” Mikey winks, earning a light flick from Raphael, when sudden screams close by distract them, making both flash towards the rooftop’s edge to see what’s going on.

These screams are coming from the amusement park nearby and they aren’t casual scared whimpers of people riding the extreme roller-coaster, no, there’s an entire night crowd running away.

“Uhh, should we like...call Leo or somethin’?” Turtle in orange gazes at the whole situation with confusion, still unable to figure out what is happening there.

“Nah, we’ll work it out ourselves. Let’s go.” Raph cracks his neck and takes out Sai from his belt, spinning them a little for show-off before jumping down onto the roof of a lower building nearby, heading towards the park.

Hiding behind a ticket booth, they look out, finally realizing the problem. There’s a big, mutated housefly flying around and spitting acid at the attractions, causing the steel constructions to collapse. “Bzzz-bzzz, stupiddd hummmansss, runnn!”

Raphael makes a grossed-out face at the sight; he is not fond of bugs in general, especially ugly ones like that thing. “Hey, shit-eater, maybe you’ll fight someone your size?” He taunts with a whistle, stepping into its view alongside Mikey.

“Turtlzzz, how irrrronic,” The fly buzzes, rubbing its front two limbs in amusement. “So brrrave of you to prrrotect those who don’t even see you as herroesss, but monsterrrrsss. Aren’t you tired of such life? Why not join me in creation of ourr own world?”

“Damn, you sound like you have no life at all.” Mikey comments, angering the flying mutant. It quickly gathers enough saliva to make its cheeks seem like they’re about to blow up before shooting out explosive balls of sticky substance at the terrapins, who run away from them ninja-style, throwing shurikens at this ugly only to watch them get dissolved mid-air.

Brothers hide for a moment behind one of the café banners for a moment; a drop of the acid got onto Mikey’s carapace, making a string of steam raise in the air from that spot until Raphael wiped it quickly with the bandage wrapped around his wrist. “Okay, Plan B, call guys-” Raph finally agrees, dodging another caustic blob that made a hole in the banner as it flew a centimeter away from his face.

“Ahh!” Mike yells a little when the fly throws spit way worse, destroying the wooden banner altogether. He rolls away with Raphael, back on the run again as he searches for Leonardo’s contact on his phone. “Leo! We’re at the Marine Park, we have an emergency!”

“Hah! How long are you planning to rrrun?” It laughs, but not for long – a roar sounds from behind, turning into full-speed wheeze of a drifting vehicle. A random vigilante uses the collapsed metal constructions as a trampoline, flying up on a motorcycle into the housefly’s direction. Barbed tires drive along the trajectory of its face before landing onto the rooftop of a ticket booth.

“Wow.” Turtle in red is genuinely impressed, even his younger brother stopped in tracks at the sudden escalation of events.

Yet the bug didn’t plan to give up so easily, soon it swapped into the air again, this time focusing solely on this armoured interrupter. From afar it looks like a tall slender guy, fully dressed in a thick black leather suit with pieces of armour attached to their shoulders and legs, making them look like a character straight from D&D. A mask and a hood hiding their head don’t give out a single guess of who this might be.

“You,” The fly hyperventilates, turning red at the prospect of being treated like this by some freak. “How dare YOU! You will pay forrr that, you hearrr me?! I will-!”

Michelangelo catches it with the chains of his nunchakus, making it flop onto the ground without a way to move. “Didn’t rodeo that, did ya?” The youngest chuckles before the damn bug dissolves the chain with its spit. Right. Acid. But before it got up again, someone knocked it out with a tranquilizer.

“Look who finally decided to show up,” Raph's tone drips with sarcasm, trying not to show that he is relieved by the fact that Don and Leo are here.

“We’d have gotten here faster if you’d alerted us earlier.” The leader states in full seriousness, disappointed by the fact Mikey called him in the middle of the fight. What if both of them got injured? You never know how strong the opponent is.

Meanwhile Donnie observes the mutant he shot with his tranquilizer gun, pulling out a little flashlight to see how its eyes react to it. “Fascinating...” While pointing the light, he notices the tire trail imprinted into its skin. “Mikey, Raph, what also happened here?”

“Oh man, some wild stuff happened. So, we were having a skating sesh when we heard screams. This flying dude was terrorizing the people and spitted out these gross acid bombs, so we started the fight with it, but then an epic guy dressed like batman flies out on a motorbike and knocks the fly out!” Mikey starts to explain, energetically hand gesturing stuff that happened.

“An…epic guy dressed like batman?” Leo repeats after him, feeling both amused and confused.

“Yeah, bro!” The youngest nods with wide eyes and points at the ticket booth. “They were right- there…”

“Seems like they got away already. Didn’t even bother to take the bike with them.”

“Let’s leave it to the officers. For now, let’s make sure nobody got trapped under all this metal.” Leo commands and the four split to check the territory of the Marine Park.

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“WOOOHOO! If only you saw me there, guys!” Mia enters her bedroom through the window, immediately sharing everything that happened to her. “I was, like, all dramatic there, flew up on a moto and smashed the bad guy. And the two of them saw me and I was trying so hard to not show how nervous I was!”

She straddles over to the painting hanging on the wall behind the big terrarium and moves it to the side with one hand while emptying the contents of her backpack into the hidden locker. Her black leather costume and armour scatter down with a bunch of clinks. “Ew, I should totally put these into the washing machine.”

Her pet turtles though remain weirdly quiet, which catches her attention. “What’s wrong?” She glances over the glass, being met with Molly’s sceptical gaze. “Come on, I have a plan just like always. And, after all, I do it all for good.” The girl reassures, though an anxious chuckle leaves her throat.

#tmnt fanfiction #tmnt bayverse #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #bayverse tmnt #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #ao3 #angst #original character

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tunaculosis · 7 months ago

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Everyone has their entirely unrealistic white whale tabletop RPG. I'm partially writing this now so I've got a script to work with to make into a tiktok tomorrow. This is my pitch, inspired by improvgm on tiktok. Also shoutouts to StrayHousePet, who is one of the only TRPG creators on tiktok who's also in the FGC--that'll be relevant later.

So the idea is I wanna make a tabletop campaign that feels like a 90s-00s action game franchise, with each game system being a different game in the franchise:

-I'm sorry did you say street magic: Create a city rooted in Fight World martial arts aesthetics. The premise of that one is we're the "game devs" sort of but prolly not directly saying so. Street Magic's another mapmaking game like Quiet Year or Deep Forest but more focused on the location and with a less constrained tone compared to Quiet Year

-Gone To Hell: "The single player game" to tell the story of its first great hero in the form of an arcade beat em up. Inspired by Streets of Rage. Gone To Hell is a diceless, many-GM, one rotating player, game homaging stupid macho action.

-Panic at the Dojo: Arcade brawler sequel where you fight the PC from Gone to Hell as the final boss, playing as a group avenging the villains he beat up. Something about how it was "controversial for the canon ending being the villain team's win." Panic at the Dojo is the wargamiest TRPG to ever exist, with a very cool combat system and very very fast skill check system (or a lack thereof).

-Shirtless on a Rooftop: "Man weird, they made a life sim sequel to these fighting games." Partly inspired by how Shenmue was gonna be a Virtua Fighter spinoff. An actual longer-running campaign set in the world shaped by the last 3 games. Shirtless on a Rooftop is a game kind of like Lancer that sharply divides slice of life vibing/melodrama/downtime and missions/operations with an emphasis on up close street brawling.

#shirtless on a rooftop #im sorry did you say street msgic #gone to hell #panic at the dojo #ttrpg #worldbuilding games #worldbuilding #mapmaking #indie ttrpg

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gravity-what · 5 months ago

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I need to rewatch this ep but it never occurred to me to think "Huh, Dojo is for public auction on the internet, if Kimiko came across him naturally while browsing, there's no way Chase Young hasn't when he would absolutely be the target audience and high-paying customer for that."

So kudos to you for both raising this question in my mind and also immediately giving the funniest possible answer you could have.

It did sort of occur to me to question why Guan was gone when the episode was still set at his own temple, but again, you come through and deliver the funniest possible explanation that it could have had! Run out of his own temple by the terrifying thought of childcare! This is one beast Guan is not trained to battle.

Shoutout to the fallen warriors, they were so cute desperately trying to interrupt that fight with an ipad in toe!

And that hint of a throwback to Dashi ordering Guan to just chuck this thing in a volcano and never think about it again, I wanna know if Dashi said that flippantly or in a hasty panic or what! You even gave him a name that Chase remembered right away. Bǎolánlóng must've left some kind of impression on them!

That ending was the icing on top! Now I think the reason the monks go home after this adventure was because Guan just demanded Master Fung take them back after he saw the mess left in his courtyard. Coming in his temple and messing it up like that, ah, kids...!

Whether you're writing based on an original plot idea or riffing off an existing episode, your stories are always tons of fun to read! This was another good one! Thanks for sharing ♡ ♥💕❤

I had been chatting with @grasshopperdoingdogpaddle about the idea but, honestly, Chase should have jumped at that chance to buy dojo!! Something had to be stopping him and combining that with Guan (and the sapphire dragon) being missing?? It just made sense 🤣

Lucky for Guan I suppose since he came out of the whole thing looking heroic~ and not like a man terrified of a bunch of teens

宝蓝龙 or Bǎolánlóng does just translate to Sapphire dragon so I wasn’t being too creative with that one. However I do actually have a WIP for the Dashi trio facing off against him! Honestly, it’s a fun one~ (spoiler: it’s definitely the second option. There was a lot of panic with that fight! The Sapphire Dragon was definitely their hardest battle they ever fought outside Wuya!)

Guan had had such a…nice visit to his ex-best friends only to come back to his garden trashed 🤣. He wasn’t going to deal with anything more!

At least he got a new (and better) dragon out of the whole situation…

#xiaolin showdown

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onedragonarmy · 5 months ago

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When my computer is fixed I would like to run a full bard Pracidai Wraith focused campaign where the squad must fight off infohazardous shadow creatures that you turn into upon death if you know they exist and can't fight off the sadness and fear in your heart

Think SCP special ops but you have to also be a Performer of some kind to make sure you and your friends all get out alive

Thinking about hip hop clowns a la Tommy the Clown, mariachi ranged dps and Jalisco dancer melees

Could run it at a convention and just bring character sheets for people to choose between

I bet Panic at the Dojo would work great...

#ttrpgs #writing #DnD #kinda

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miyagifangkai · 3 years ago

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Best Friends

Word count: 1,506

Summary: practically best friends to lovers one shot lol couldn’t help myself

Characters involved: Johnny, Y/N, Miguel

Warnings: not really any; cursing, mention of the word sex, maybe angst??

A/N: also this is not my gif so please take credit if this is yours. Thank you. 😊

You were never one for drama. Never really feeling the need to get involved in something that will always escalate and end up biting you back. You liked being in the background and listening to gossip but never getting involved until you met the one and only Johnny Lawrence. It seemed like he could never find a way out of it or he always chose to dig a deeper hole for himself. You were always there to pick up the pieces though; after a bad fight you’d bandage him up or when you would call him for what seemed like the hundredth time with no answer. You would have to show up to his place and wash his drunken escapades off of him and put him safe and soundly in bed. Johnny and you always had a special bond ever since you first met each other at the dojo.

You had always shopped at the mini mart beside the dojo just because it was closer to you but when you went that day you caught sight of a very fit blonde headed man. You were instantly drawn to him and wanted to figure out what all he was about. For a while you held back and just watched him shop and caught on to his traits on how he walked or talked; he was always wearing some type of plaid shirt over a band T-shirt with distressed jeans and sneakers and today wasn’t any different. But today was the day you were going to speak to this mysterious man that you just couldn’t tear your eyes off of. You bought yourself some liquid courage and had a mini panic attack in your car as you kept repeating to yourself, “am I doing this? Am I really going to do this?” You had a feeling that this was going to be a disaster because you always saw the glass as half empty in any situation. You look at yourself in your extremely small mirror in your red sports car and decide to spruce yourself up a bit.

Letting your hair down out of its ponytail and putting a little makeup on but not too much because that might make you look desperate, right? You take another small swig of your beverage and decide to get out of your car and take a step out of your bubble and try to break down your walls a bit.

You had just shown up during one of his lessons to see if there was any way that he would recognize your existence. You take a seat near the wall and wait out the lesson because you didn’t want to be rude. Many of the students didn’t pay you no mind but there were a few who gave you some confused looks which made you feel like you were a fish out of water here. The students carry on and you see tons of things that could possibly be illegal to teach for a bunch of minors and the amount of cursing their Sensei would use probably wasn’t the best for them either; but you powered through without judgement because you couldn’t help but be enamored with this man. After the lesson, the students pack up and leave the dojo as the man approaches you and says, “Did you like what you see?” You have heard him speak before but his voice being aimed towards your direction made your entire body fill up with chills.

“I- uhm.. Yes. I did. I just wanted to check this out. Just for my own curiosity.” You say, nervously. Johnny gives you a small, albeit, cocky smirk. You couldn’t help but think that he might know something you don’t.“Oh, really? Not sure you’re just here checking me out?” Johnny says as your palms start to sweat and you say “What do you mean? I don’t even know your name yet.”

Johnny chuckles, “I’ve seen you stare at me before.” There was a long pause, “My name is Sensei Johnny Lawrence. And yours?” Your face starts to feel hot as your cheeks start to turn a bright shade of red. You’ve been caught red handed.

“Oh.. uhm.. I’m Y/N. It’s very nice to meet you, sir”Johnny smiles and says, “Please, call me Johnny. Are you wanting to join my class?” You answer quickly, “oh no! I don’t have many anger issues! At least not enough to beat up anyone.” Oh God, you’re rambling and you knew it was the alcohol. Johnny replies, “Well.. then.. why are you here?” And you say, “Honestly, I just wanted to speak to you. Just to say hello,” you mumble, “and to see if you were available”Johnny gives you a look, “to see what?” Your face is 100% blood red by now but that liquid courage has hyped you up to the point of no return so you say, “to see if you were available. To, you know, maybe meet for coffee?”

Since that day you two have become good friends. The date never really made you two amount to anything; not even sex or even a kiss. Even though, you were still completely in love with Johnny you never admitted to him. He was one of the most emotionally constipated men you’ve ever met and somehow that had rubbed off on you as well. It’s been two years since that day and you can’t help but go back to that day over and over again. You hope that one day your feelings won’t be just a fantasy anymore.

Until one night you find Johnny passed out on the floor in a drunken haze and you couldn’t help but wonder what happened to cause Johnny to drink this bad again. He’d been getting better and he seemed to be very happy with his students, especially Miguel, who you’ve grown to love like a son. You help Johnny off the floor and as he’s waking up he looks at you and says, “I’m so sorry I put you through this shit all the time. I am so sorry that I am such a shitty person and can never do anything right.” As you take Johnny to his room and help him lay on the bed he’s still going on about being the worst human being to walk the Earth but this time you weren’t just going to sit and listen you chose to speak up and say, “Johnny, please can you stop talking for one minute? I know you have trouble listening and you choose to drown yourself in the bottle; but this time I’m going to need you to listen to me,” Johnny nods and you continue, “You’ve made mistakes, yes. Sometimes you keep making mistakes and never learn from them but you know what, Lawrence? You still get back up and try again. So far I haven’t seen you give up. Those kids you’re teaching love you, okay? Especially Miguel. He looks up to you. You may not know it or understand it now because you’re clearly drunk and you’re gonna forget abou—“ Johnny cuts you off with his lips. You stay still because you’re in a state of shock, everything you’ve ever thought about or wanted is finally happening. Johnny has just kissed you, very passionately you might add! Johnny sits back slowly his face screaming regret as he thinks you didn’t want him to kiss you and he says, “I’m so sorry. That was out of line.” And you just look at Johnny as your heart is about to burst open and say, “Johnny, no. I wanted you too.” You decide to kiss him this time not worrying that he’s drunk and possibly won’t remember this tomorrow. Johnny lifts his hand to your face and caresses your cheek as you put your hands around his neck and tug at the tufts of blonde hair on the nape of his neck. As you start to deepen the kiss you pull away both of you breathing hard and staring into each other’s eyes. You place your forehead on his and say, “We can finish this tomorrow, okay? When you’re not drunk.” And Johnny says, “Okay, lay down with me?”You laugh and lay down beside Johnny as he hugs you up.

Johnny kisses you on the cheek and says, “I love you, Y/N” and your whole body tenses up and you have no words to say. Before you could answer back you hear him softly snore. You let yourself drift off as well.

“HOLY SHIT!! Sensei, did you get some??” You hear a familiar voice whisper yell from the kitchen as Johnny shushes them.

You walk out from the bedroom to see Miguel’s wide eyes and bright smile as he says good morning and you smile back and you say, “No Miguel, he didn’t get any. At least not yet.”

“Oh, c’mon! See what you’ve done now Miguel! You’re such a cockblock.” Johnny exclaims as you smack Johnny’s arm telling him to watch his language.

A/N: hi, I wrote another one! I actually really like this one. Hope you all do too! 💕

I think I might start taking some Cobra Kai requests. What do you all think??

#cobra kai #johnny lawrence #daniel larusso #miguel diaz #eli moskowitz #demetri cobra kai #cobra kai smut #cobra kai imagine

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lunar-wandering · 3 years ago

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petals for two

finally, here it is. the Shadowpeach non-fatal Hanahaki AU the people have been waiting for.

Word Count: 13k

Read on Ao3

Bajie and Wujing found Wukong kneeling down by the river.

Again.

For the third day in a row.

"...Elder brother?" Wujing asked, watching how Wukong's back and tail stiffened. "Are you...okay?"

"...Just peachy..." Wukong said, but the way he said it was quiet, wheezy, and entirely unconvincing. Bajie quirked an eyebrow.

"Really? Because that's what you've said the last two times now." He said, crossing his arms with a healthy dose of suspicion on his face. "That last fight was pretty bad- y'know it would be pretty unwise of the 'Intelligent Stone Monkey' to be hiding an injury-"

"I said I'm fine!" Wukong snapped, turning around to glare at them with firey red eyes, his fur bristling with anger.

There was a pause, Bajie and Wujing both falling silent as Wukong continued to glare at them-

And then Wukong's hand flew to his mouth, as he turned back around to face the river, his body shaking with muffled coughs. Both Wujing and Bajie rushed to his side, concerned-

Only to freeze as they saw the purple petals slipping through Wukong's fingers, falling into the river and floating downstream. There was a moment of silence, broken only by Wukong's wheezing breaths.

And then they were both kneeling beside him, Wujing rubbing comforting circles on Wukong's back, while Bajie pulled the Monkey King's hand away from his mouth, letting the petals fall freely.

Wukong, surprisingly enough, let them do this, and the three of them quietly watched the petals float away, vanishing as they went around the riverbend.

If Wujing and Bajie noticed the tears running down Wukong's face, they didn't comment on it.

"...I'm sorry." Is what Wujing chose to say, in a soft murmur.

"It's fine, I'm fine." Wukong whispered, for a whisper was all his throat could manage at the time. "I'll be okay."

They all knew he was trying to reassure himself with his words more so than them.

When the three of them returned to their makeshift camp with an apology and a half-baked excuse, Tripitaka barely batted an eye.

Bai Longma, however, stared at a stray petal clinging to Wukong's outfit with a look of knowing.

Miles away, in a cave hidden by shadows, a figure leaned against the cave wall, one hand steadying himself while the other covered the fresh wound to his eye, petals falling out of his mouth as he cursed whoever decided that love could be unrequited.

Hanahaki. The disease of unrequited love.

Or, well, as it was known nowadays, the disease of pining.

Originally, when people were first discovering the disease, they thought it to be only born out of feelings that could never be reciprocated.

As it turns out, that simply wasn't the entire truth.

Overall, about 20% of Hanahaki cases reported end up being due to unrequited love.

The other 80% are due to people who simply, for one reason or another, refuse to confess.

As was recently discovered, about a century or so ago, the one true cure for Hanahaki is to look your beloved in the eyes, and say; "I love you."

As you can imagine, not many people have the courage to do that.

Luckily, the disease has never truly been fatal more than it was a slight hindrance. There even exists some medicines and teas that can reduce the effects of the flowers, although using them comes with its own ballpark of side effects.

Anyways, to make a long story short, MK wasn't surprised to end up meeting someone currently suffering from Hanahaki.

He just hadn't been expecting it to have been the Monkey King.

It hadn't really been obvious at first. Hanahaki will sometimes wither slightly when distanced from whoever the afflicted person has a crush on, but it never really takes much to send the flowers into full bloom again.

MK didn't actually hand out with Wukong a lot, and even when he did, it was only for training, something Mk restlessly focused on in the hopes of getting better at being, well, the Monkey King's successor.

Which was why, when during one of their rare breaks, Wukong froze in shock when MK actually asked him a question (one that, for once, wasn't about training).

"...Monkey King? Do you have any friends?" MK asked.

"Sure I do!" Wukong lied, "Why do you ask?"

"Ah- well-" MK stuttered, staring down at the ground in front of him as he seemed to ponder how to phrase his next sentence. "You just seemed... lonely, I guess."

"Well, I'm not, since I do, in fact, have friends, so. Yeah." Wukong said, crossing his arms as his tail slowly swung back and forth nervously.

"Are your friends from now or before?" MK asked, tilting his head in curiosity. "Actually, did you even have friends before?"

"...Before?"

"Before the Journey to the West." MK elaborated.

"Psh, of course I did!" Wukong said, "Y'know, I was even friends with Demon Bull King back then- you wouldn't believe some of the stories I have about him..."

MK had, in fact, already known about Wukong and Demon Bull King having been friends. Tang had been more than happy to bring that up, multiple times.

But what MK really wanted to know was-

"Was there anybody else?" He asked.

"Of course there was! For example, M-" Wukong started, but very quickly cut himself off, the light in his eyes dulling slightly. MK winced, sensing that he'd somehow stumbled upon a sensitive subject.

Before he could apologize though, Wukong suddenly tensed, before turning and starting to walk away.

"Uh, I'll be right back, I just need to check on the younger monkeys for a moment, okay?" He said. It was an excuse that was easily seen through, but MK couldn't bring himself to mention it.

Similar situations kept happening.

Sometimes it was understandable, like when Wukong would take a second or so to throw a smile back on his face (a smile MK was starting to recognize as fake) whenever MK brought up the subject of the Journey to the West.

Other times, however, it was a little confusing. Like, for example, when after an unspoken kitchen incident, MK had worn a purple jacket to training. (Mei had let him borrow it from her, since his yellow jacket was still in the wash, due to the Kitchen Incident That Shall Not Be Named).

As soon as Wukong had seen the purple jacket, he'd froze, before hastily turning away and running back inside his little house, claiming to have forgotten something.

MK had taken the jacket off and stuffed it into his bag by the time Wukong returned.

It was only after the Macaque fight that things became clear.

They'd been silent, watching the sunrise, and MK had started to doze off, leaning on his mentor's shoulder as he slowly started to fall asleep.

...Only to be jostled back into awareness as Wukong's shoulders shook with barely muffled coughs.

"Are you okay?" MK asked, lifting his head off of Wukong's shoulder and staring at the Monkey King with thinly veiled worry. Wukong leaned away from MK's gaze, a hand still covering his mouth.

He was too busy coughing to give a good response.

"If you broke a rib or something and didn't tell me I'm not going to be very impressed." MK deadpanned. Wukong shook his head 'no' in response, hand still over his mouth despite the fact his coughing fit had already died down. "Well, what is it then?"

MK waited as Wukong seemed to internally debate with himself.

And then the Monkey King slowly removed his hand from his mouth, revealing the petals that he had confined within his palm.

"Oh. Oh!" MK said, realization striking him as the dots connected in his mind. "Oh, you have terrible taste."

"I know..." Wukong groaned, placing his head in his hands, not caring about how this caused some of the petals to stick to his face and fur. MK giggled a little over how silly his mentor looked, Wukong glaring at him and sticking one of the petals onto his successor's cheek in response. MK made a noise of disgust as he wiped the petal off of his face.

Far away from the two of them, Macaque stumbled back into his dojo, nursing a new injury, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and holding crushed flower petals in his fist.

Well. Wukong could officially say that he'd never been in a situation like this before.

Tangled up and dangling from the Spider Queen's spiderweb, Wukong tried to distract himself from the feeling of being trapped, unable to move.... by doing his best to observe his surroundings.

There... sure were a lot of other demons here. He couldn't figure out if it was good or bad that he didn't recognize most of them.

Wait.

Wukong looked around the room again with narrowed eyes.

Could Spider Queen have also taken-

No.

Wukong couldn't see him anywhere, not to mention that the other monkey had always been concerned with his own safety first and foremost. He'd probably scrambled to get out of town at the first sign of trouble. Wukong wasn't going to find Macaque in here.

He wasn't sure why he'd even looked.

...And there was that warm, tickly feeling in the back of his throat again.

Wukong squirmed, trying to ignore the sensation for as long as possible. He even started humming, his go to method for repressing the petals, but it barely worked, and a small dose of panic started to overtake him. He had no way of covering up the petals that would come, his arms and hands pinned at his sides.

He would not let Spider Queen or the rest of her crew find out about this, not to mention....her.

(If the Lady Bone Demon found out about his Hanahaki... well, she already has enough leverage as it is. Wukong isn't about to hand over any more.)

And then there was Demon Bull King. Wukong wasn't entirely sure how his old friend, (ex-friend, he reminded himself), would react, and honestly he wasn't too keen on finding out.

Still though.

The flowers always win in the end.

Wukong did his best to duck his head into his shoulder, and hoped it would be enough as his chest was wracked with coughs.

The Demon Bull King was many things, but he was not, in fact, stupid.

He had been quick to notice the growing panic on Wukong's face, (really, the monkey hadn't even tried to hide it, either due to being lost in thought or because he thought nobody was paying close enough attention to notice), and had decided to watch and see what the Monkey King would do next.

He hadn't expected Wukong to turn his head to the side, doing his upmost best to silence his coughing fit.

He'd expected the flower petals even less.

"You, of all people, haven't gathered up the strength to confess?" Demon Bull King asked, startling Wukong right out of his coughing fit. "I did not take you to be a coward."

"I take offense to that." Wukong wheezed, a few more petals falling from his mouth as he spoke. "Besides, I remember you taking forever to confess to Princess Iron Fan-"

"I'm not the one who held my words in long enough for them to take root and bloom." Demon Bull King said, "Who is the object your affections anyways?"

"None of your business." Wukong said, once again squirming within the confines of the webs. Demon Bull King raised an eyebrow, before glancing down at the petals now littering the floor. The flowers typically would hint at who the afflicted had a crush on, but Demon Bull King was too far away to be able to tell what flowers the petals belonged to.

If he were to hazard a guess though...

"The Six Eared Macaque?" He asked, proceeding to find great amusement in how Wukong's fur stood on end, panic flashing on his face. "Ah, so I'm right then-"

"Shut up." Wukong hissed, his eyes flashing red. "Seriously, shut up. You can't tell anyone else about this-"

"Tell someone- I see flowers aren't the only nonsense your mouth spits out." Demon Bull King said. The red glow faded slightly from Wukong's eyes, as his expression shifted to confusion, with a small dash of hope.

"You... aren't going to tell anyone?" Wukong asked.

"And loose the precious blackmail material you have graced me with? Of course not!" Demon Bull King laughed, and Wukong sighed, sensing that somehow this would come back to bite him later.

Wukong forced his suitcase shut, trying to ignore the niggling feeling of guilt as MK stared at him, unimpressed. Okay, so maybe 'going on a vacation' wasn't the best excuse to use, but Wukong couldn't afford to waste any time coming up with a better one.

He was ready for MK to be worried about training.

He wasn't ready for Mk to be worried about him.

"...Will you be okay?" MK asked, "I mean, you seem to not want anyone to know about your Hanahaki, but if you're with friends then you'll be surrounded by other people at all times, so-"

"Oh, it'll be fine." Wukong said, waving MK's concerns away. "Besides, if the flowers act up, I'll just rip out my lungs."

"Please do not do that!" MK said, the horrified look on his face making Wukong chuckle.

"Oh, c'mon, it's not that bad." He said, "I've done it before."

"That does not make it better!" MK said, looking like he was about to start ranting, and Wukong took that as his cue that it was time to go.

MK pushed the exit door open, stumbling a little as he rushed into the alley way.

"Ugh- why did you do-.....that......" He said, voice trailing off as he registered that the alley way was empty.

Well. Seemingly empty.

One quick check with his true sight later, (he wasn't going to be falling for any tricks again), and MK was holding a dumpster over his head, revealing the shadow monkey that had been crouched down, hiding behind it. Macaque glanced up, his scarf covering his mouth and his fur bristling in shock as MK set the dumpster off to the side.

"So much for you having been a great warrior, huh?" MK said, crossing his arms and staring down at Macaque with an unimpressed expression.

"Uh- ah, so you figured that out, did you? Maybe you aren't as dense as you look." Macaque said, voice slightly raspy, as he stood up, trying to pretend he wasn't just hiding behind a dumpster-

Only for his scarf to slip down a little, allowing some golden flower petals to fall out. Macaque made quick work of snatching them out of the air, crushing them in his grip as he hid them behind his back, tail swishing nervously, but it was too late.

MK had seen.

"...Oh. Oh!" MK said, feeling torn between screaming in frustration or laughing in amusement over what had just been revealed to him. "Oh, you have terrible taste."

"...I have no idea what you're talking about." Macaque said, sighing and breathing out a few more golden petals as he did so, completely unaware of how much this revelation had shaken MK's already very delicate mental state. "Seriously. I don't even know where you got the idea that I'm in love with someone or something like that, because I'm definitely not."

"I never said anything about you being in love." MK said, starting to lean more towards being amused at this entire situation as Macaque stiffened, his tail stilling. "I just said you had terrible taste- maybe I was implying your whole 'performance' with the shadow play back in the theatre was simply lackluster."

"I take offense to that." Macaque hissed, his shadow growing slightly bigger as his tail once again started to thrash back and forth, this time in anger. MK ignored this obvious attempt at intimidation for another question that was on his mind, a much more pressing one, in his opinion.

"You still haven't answered my question from earlier, why did you do that?" He asked, watching as Macaque took a minute to process the question, having not expected the sudden subject change.

"....Why did I do what- Oh! Why did I break the lantern, you mean?" Macaque said, suddenly avoiding eye contact, his hand twitching like he wanted to grab hold of the edge of his scarf as he chewed on the corner of his lip, nervously rubbing the back of his neck with his other hand. "Well, I was going to do the whole 'watch the hero get tormented by their inner demons and insecurities' thing like all the other villains, but you seem to already be doing that to yourself so- yeah. Didn't want to bother using my own expansive list of abilities when I could just lay back and watch the show you were already putting on for me."

"But I thought you wanted to be center stage, not in the audience. Y'know, because you want to steal the spotlight from Monkey King." MK said, raising an eyebrow as Macaque's hand finally grabbed the edge of his scarf, and he started fiddling with it nervously. "Or well, either that or you want to share a stage with him."

Something must have been brought to the forefront of Macaque's mind when MK said that, as suddenly he was turning away, using his scarf to cover his mouth as he coughed. MK remained standing in front of him, arms crossed, waiting patiently for the shadow monkey's response.

"I- I have no intention of shar- sharing a stage." Macaque eventually wheezed, pulling his scarf back down as he spoke so that he could be heard clearly. MK amusedly noted that he could see some golden petals peeking out from within the confines of the red cloth. "Not now, not before, and not ever."

"Ah, sure, keep telling yourself that." Mk said, staring pointedly at the flower petals.

Macaque flicked him on the forehead.

"Ow!" MK said, recoiling, a hand going to his forehead to try and numb the sting, his eyes closing reflexively as he leaned back. "Why would you do that for-"

MK paused, blinking bewilderedly, as he realized Macaque was no longer in front of him, seemingly having vanished entirely, having used MK's momentary distraction to fade away into the shadows, only a single left behind flower petal revealing that he had ever actually been there.

If MK had used his true sight again then and there, he would've found that Macaque was now resting on top of one of the nearby rooftops.

As it was though, his friends burst through into the alley way, prepped with questions he wasn't ready to answer.

(Later, Macaque would severely regret failing to remember to warn MK of the danger that was approaching him. But that would be later, and now he fully intended on sneaking back into the theatre to retrieve his shadow lantern...)

Life on the ship honestly wasn't all that bad. Sure, MK had lost all of his powers, and there was the ever looming threat of the Lady Bone Demon, but ignoring all of that important stuff?

Life on the ship was actually rather nice.

"You know what? I think I could actually get used to living like this." MK said, leaning against the railing of the ship, letting the wind rustle his hair. Wukong hummed in agreement, sitting on the railing beside his successor.

"...When all this is said and done, we should take a vacation." He said, "A real vacation. Together this time."

"Can I bring my friends with me?" MK wasn't so sure he could handle leaving the others behind after everything that had happened.

"Sure, go right ahead, if that's what you want." Wukong said, shrugging. MK visibly brightened, and an idea struck him.

"Oh- and you could bring your friends along too, you know, the ones I haven't met yet!" He said, and Wukong stiffened.

"....Uh.... about that..." He started, and MK's smile fell, replaced with a mixture of disappointment and concern.

"...You lied about the whole 'having other friends' thing, didn't you." He said, looking his mentor up and down before rolling out another accusation. "You're far lonelier that I thought you were."

"...Immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, Kid." Wukong said, a sad, half-hearted smile on his face. MK tried to come up with a response, either a joke or maybe some comforting words (how do you even comfort an immortal, who has been through so much and had probably heard everything you could possibly say?)-

Only to be completely distracted as the ship was heavily rocked by something crashing into it. MK's grip tightened around the steel railing, steadying himself as he heard the others rush up to the deck, shouting in confusion. Out of the corner of his eye, MK could see Wukong scramble to keep himself from falling over the side of the ship. (Which MK had to admit was... strange. Wukong had his whole cloud sail thing, he could fly, why would he be concerned about falling off?)

The rocking stopped, the ship steadying itself, and MK could smell smoke. Cautiously and slowly, he turned around, mentally preparing himself for the possibility of an attack, brought about by the Lady Bone Demon or one of her 'followers' (demons, that she had entranced to think that they were getting a good deal out of this, when in reality all she was doing was using them, with the full intent to throw them aside once they had served their purpose).

MK expected the broken bits and pieces of another, smaller ship, some parts still burning (and really, they should deal with those fire before they became a bigger problem. Sandy seemed to be running to get the fire extinguisher, so hopefully there wouldn't be any fire induced explosions today).

What he hadn't been expecting (but in hindsight, really should have been), was to see Red Son, standing in the center of the debris, nervously dusting the dirt off of his jacket, with Macaque laying face down on the deck behind him.

Red Son was having a very long day. Or, well, it had been about three days, really, but that wasn't the point here.

He brushed the remaining ship debris off of himself, making himself more 'presentable' while also purposefully prolonging the amount of time he could go without meeting the questioning gazes of MK and his friends.

Catching sight of the monkey still laying on the ground behind him, he turned and nudged Macaque with his foot.

"You really aren't making a good impression here." Red Son hissed, under his breath, knowing that the other's exceptional hearing meant that he could easily hear him.

"There truthfully isn't a good impression to be made." Macaque said, voice muffled by both the deck and his scarf, as he continued to lay face down, making no move to get up. "Not to mention, I'm feeling a little... singed, at the moment. Not everyone is as fire proof as you are, you- you hot headed fool."

The shadow monkey had, overall, been a great help in escaping from the Lady Bone Demon's dungeons, but Red Son wasn't past the point of kicking him in the side. Hard.

Macaque yelped in pain, curling up a little as though to shield himself, but continued to not even try to get up.

Red Son was unfortunately stopped from kicking the monkey again as he was tapped on the shoulder. Turning around, he found himself face to face with MK and Mei, their expressions completely neutral.

"Ah- Hello, Noodle Boy, Dragon Girl." Red Son said, politely nodding to each of them, trying to ignore his own nervousness (he did not feel like getting thrown off a ship today, thank you very much). MK and Mei said nothing, and Red Son began to wonder for a moment if crashing into their ship twice was somehow crossing a line.

But then both of them smiled, and Red Son braced himself just in time as Mei tackle-hugged him, MK laughing as he watched her do so.

"Wow, you really don't have much luck with vehicles and driving, on the ground or in the air, huh?" MK said, pushing a piece of debris from the miniature ship Red Son had flown in to the side with his foot. "Seriously, it's a wonder you ever managed to pass a driving test with skills like this."

"A driving what?" Red Son asked, immediately regretting it as both MK and Mei fixed him with a look of complete and utter horror.

"Oh heavens." Mei breathed, her grip on Red Son's shoulders growing almost uncomfortably tight. "You entered a race without knowing how to drive."

Too loud.

It was far, far too loud.

Still though, it was much better than being trapped down in the Lady Bone Demon's cold, dark, and desolate dungeons.

Or, at least, that is what Macaque thought to himself, even as he subtly pulled his scarf up over his ears, trying and failing miserably to block out the rumble of the engine, the hiss of the fires from the remains of their ship, the hushed whispers from Tang, Pigsy, and Sandy, and the trio's argument about Red Son's apparently non-existent drivers license.

(If he had known Red Son had never really, truly learned how to drive, Macaque wouldn't have let him pilot their escape ship.

...Albeit, Macaque himself wasn't all that much better, having had no idea as to what over half of the buttons in the ship were actually for.

Still though, he would have at least tried to land a perfect landing, instead of going all out on making sure they, quote, 'crashed in style', like what a certain hot tempered demon did.

Seriously Red Son. What the fuck.)

It took a few more minutes of laying there, trying to block everything out, before he realized that, over the roar of the engines and the trio's arguing, he couldn't hear where Wukong was.

...Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

Macaque stiffened as a warm hand landed on his shoulder, its grip alternating between being soothing soft and threateningly tight.

"...Macaque?" Wukong's voice asked, and Macaque felt the unfortunately all too familiar twinge in both his chest and throat.

Ah. It was definitely a bad thing then.

Wukong pulled his hand back as Macaque abruptly stood up, stumbling away from him and towards the side of the ship. For a moment, Wukong genuinely wondered if Macaque planned to just jump off the ship, despite the fact that they were thousands of miles above ground.

But Macaque simply grabbed hold of the railing, leaning slightly over it, his shoulders shaking.

"What's the matter, are you sea sick already?" Mei asked, noticing Macaque's movement. "Or, wait, would it be air sick? Meh, it's probably the same thing..."

Macaque gave no response other than raising his hand to flip her off, which simply made her cackle like a mad man. Wukong would've walked right on over to him and smacked the shadow monkey for the rude gesture-

That is, if he hadn't been already preoccupied with covering up the petals his concern for the other had caused him to start coughing up.

Unseen by either of them, MK glanced back and forth between the two monkeys, seeing how Wukong tucked the petals into the pocket of his shirt, and spotting a few golden ones fluttering away from Macaque, carried by the wind. MK sighed, ignoring how Mei and Red Son, the two closest to him who had noticed his reaction, looked at him in confusion.

It was going to be a really long trip.

Macaque stirred a bowl full of cake mix, deeply lost in his thoughts.

You see, being stuck in a ship, thousands of miles up in the air, surrounded by people, especially MK and the others, was a very stressful situation to be in. And unlike back at his dojo, Macaque didn't exactly have any training dummies to take said stress out on.

So, he naturally defaulted to another, less violent technique.

Stress baking.

Macaque had waited patiently in the shadows until Pigsy had left the kitchen to join the others up on the deck, and then had promptly taken over the entire room.

...He wasn't sure why he decided to make a chocolate cake though. He had really just been going through the motions, using the first thing he saw or what was directly in front of him, not feeling like putting in the effort to really search for anything else.

Well, at least thus far only MK had stumbled upon him like this, and the Monkey King's successor had been easily chased away by a purple glare and a hissed threat.

'...Although...' Macaque thought, stirring slowing down slightly as he heard footsteps coming down the hallway, approaching him. 'Maybe saying that I was poisoning everything in the kitchen wasn't the best choice of threat.'

He very nearly dropped the bowl when Wukong entered the room.

"So." Wukong said, leaping up onto the counter and sitting down, cross-legged. "Poison, huh?"

Well. He might as well go along with it. No use in changing his excuse now.

"Yep." Macaque said, taking the spoon out of the bowl as he gestured at the room. "I'm so one hundred percent done with all of you, so I have decided to poison all of you. Finally get rid of the noise, have a bit of peace, you know?"

As he said this, he made the mistake of putting the spoon within Wukong's reach.

The Monkey King, spurred by nothing but his own impulsivity, leaned forwards and casually licked the edge of the spoon.

Macaque pulled the utensil back at record breaking speeds (he avoided putting it back into the bowl, he knew far better than to do that) and proceeded to stare at Wukong with the most offended expression he could manage.

Wukong completely ignored it.

"Your 'poison' happens to taste an awful lot like chocolate." He said, taking a glance around the kitchen, noting all the ingredients on the kitchen island, before looking Macaque up and down. "...Stress baking?"

"Poison." Macaque corrected, glaring at the other as he got a new spoon to stir with. "I'm making poison."

"...Poison for yourself, maybe." Wukong said, looking thoughtful, "If I remember right, you can't eat chocolate, can you?"

Macaque didn't bother to grace him with a response, instead turning his back to the other monkey, continuing to mix more ingredients into the bowl. It was blessedly silent for a while, but-

With Wukong sitting right behind him, watching his every move, even stress baking wasn't able to help Macaque relax.

Not to mention the flowers in his chest that were once again begging to make themselves known.

Macaque forced the flurry of emotions and petals back down as much as he could. He flicked an ear, listening behind him.

Wukong was still there. Why was he still there-

Macaque slammed the bowl down on the kitchen island, barely avoiding chipping it, and taking brief pleasure in how he could hear the Wukong's breath catch, before the Monkey King descended into a small coughing fit, probably from surprise at the shadow monkey's sudden movements. Macaque turned back around to face Wukong, crossing his arms over his chest as he did so.

"What do you want from me?" He hissed, his tail swishing back and forth from agitation. Wukong's tail swished too, but Macaque could tell that his was a sign of nervousness.

"Ah, oh nothing." Wukong said, his hands behind his back as his legs swayed back and forth over the counter. "Just making sure you don't actually decide to poison anything."

"If I had poison, you and I both know that I would have used it already." Macaque said, "I don't even think there's anything I could even use as poison on this ship."

"...Point taken." Wukong said, leaning forwards and resting his chin on his right hand.

(He kept his other hand tucked in behind his back. Macaque did pick up on Wukong seemingly acting suspicious, but was far too focused on trying to get the Monkey King out of the kitchen to actually think much of it.

Something that Wukong was extremely grateful for, as it gave him the time to actually hide the crushed flower petals in his palm within one of his pockets.)

"Um, so uh, how do you know if the kid and the others are all okay?" Macaque asked, deciding to try a new tactic of getting Wukong out of the kitchen, hoping that the Monkey King's stupid over-protectiveness would prompt him to leave the room, which would let Macaque finally bake in peace.

"Oh, I left a hair clone with them." Wukong said, and Macaque slumped, his hopes dashed. "...Say, on a different subject, how do you know if it tastes good?"

"Huh?" Macaque asked, befuddled for a moment before remembering the cake bowl on the table behind him. "Oh- the cake? Well, I don't know really, usually I just sell it or something... Not that I really do this often, mind you! This isn't- I don't- I'm- wait. You want to taste test it more, to get free samples, don't you?"

Wukong simply gave a non-commital shrug, but the smirk on his face gave his intentions away. Macaque sighed wearily, before pulling a smaller spoon out of a nearby drawer with his tail, scooping a bit of cake batter into it, and tossing the spoon at Wukong, mentally willing the utensil to hit the Monkey King smack dab on the forehead.

The utensil, unfortunately, did not, in fact, obey Macaque's wills, as Wukong caught it with ease, and started licking the cake batter off of it, his tail wagging happily.

Macaque bit the inside of his cheek, nearly drawing blood as he used the pain to push the flowers in his throat back down, a light blush dusting his cheeks as he realized just how... cute the other looked in the current moment.

...No, nope, absolutely not-

Macaque spun back around, throwing himself entirely into the task of mixing the last of the ingredients together, and doing his upmost best to ignore the monkey sitting behind him.

Wukong's incessant humming was absolutely not helping in any way shape or form.

Things continued on, Macaque making the cake and occasionally tossing a batter covered spoon over his shoulder so that Wukong could taste it.

(Macaque silently told himself that he was doing it in the hopes that Wukong would become satisfied and leave, already-

But, deep down, he knew it was just because he liked seeing the other monkey happy.)

Macaque dumped the cake batter into a pan, setting the now empty mixing bowl off to the side before shoving the pan into the oven, and setting a small timer.

When he looked back over to where he had placed the mixing bowl, fully intent on washing it and proceeding to use it to make some icing, the bowl was gone.

"What the-" He started, looking around bewildered, before realizing what must have happened.

Sure enough, Wukong had the bowl on his lap, and was using a spoon to scrape the remaining cake batter out of it, to eat.

"...It's not like you were gonna use it anymore... right?" Wukong asked, almost looking sheepish as he realized Macaque was staring at him, and he curled around the bowl protectively.

Macaque glared at him, using his magic to make his eyes flash purple and make the room grow slightly darker.

"Get out of my kitchen before I retract my truce card and cash in on punching you in the face." He threatened.

Although the threat didn't hold much weight (Macaque would probably end up breaking his hand punching Wukong before he could ever hope to actually injure the other) Wukong still scrambled to get out of the room, taking the bowl and spoon with him as he went.

As Wukong rushed pass Macaque in his haste to leave, their tails lightly brushed together.

And that was the last straw for Macaque, who, once he was sure the other was gone, hurried to turn on the sink to cover up the sound of his coughing.

'..........Stupid monkey....' Macaque thought, leaning over the sink and watching flour and flowers go down the drain.

MK found Wukong in the hallway, with petals falling out of both the Monkey King's pocket and his mouth. He seemed to be spacing out, lost within his own thoughts.

He was still carrying the mixing bowl.

"...So I take it you didn't confess to Macaque?" MK asked, sounding almost disappointed.

"What- no- why on Earth would I confess?" Wukong asked, snapping out of his reverie. MK merely shrugged in response, but mentally he cursed.

'I was so sure that baking together would settle this whole mess once and for all.' He thought, watching as Wukong balance his bowl in one hand and softly rubbed a spot on his tail with the other. 'I guess it's back to the drawing board...

....Maybe the others would have some ideas?'

"How to get someone with Hanahaki to confess?" Tang asked, setting his book to the side. "MK, you know that's not really a thing you can force, I mean, look at how long it took Pigsy and I-"

"I know, I know, the both of you have told me about your confession, and how long it took to get there, multiple times." MK said, rolling his eyes. "But like, this is worse than you guys, which honestly, before now I didn't think it was possible, but. This has been going on for centuries."

"...I feel like there's a majorly important piece of information I'm missing here." Tang said, leaning forwards with renewed interest. "Who, exactly, has Hanahaki?"

MK paused, debating for a moment on whether or not he should actually tell him.

But, well, it was kind of obvious, and he seriously needed help getting the two of them together, so-

"Monkey King and Macaque." MK said, before adding, for clarification; "Both of them have it. For each other."

"Oh. Oh, that makes so much sense." Tang said, sounding as though pieces of a centuries old puzzle had magically connected right before his eyes. "...I'm sorry though, I can't help you."

"...Oh. Okay, I'll just ask someone else then-"

"However. I am not opposed to starting a betting pool."

"Hanahaki? Why would I know anything about Hanahaki?" Red Son asked, sounding oddly nervous as MK stood in the door way to his room. "...Why are you even asking me about it anyways?"

"Because Monkey King and Macaque have been pining for centuries, even back during the Journey to the West if the stories from Mei's great grandfather are to be believed, and while I've only been witness to a small portion of it, and I guess it's kinda been amusing, I am so done with it, like-" MK waved his hands around in frustration. "Why won't they just confess already?!"

"...I'm....sure they have their reasons." Red Son said, "What... did Mei say, about this, exactly?"

"Oh, she just laughed when I told her about it, and then cemented her place in the betting pool." MK said.

"There's a betting- Noodle Boy, why didn't you start with the betting pool?!"

Red Son had, in fact, already known about Macaque's Hanahaki.

That kind of thing was a little hard to miss when you're locked up in a cell with someone for an extended period of time.

Finding out Wukong also had Hanahaki came as a little bit of a surprise (though, really, now that he knew about it, it was kind of obvious, but as they say, 20/20 hindsight-).

Outside of making bets though, Red Son was mostly content to just sit back and watch the two monkeys stumble around each other. Sure, he did think their inability to confess made them cowards, but.

At least MK was too wrapped up in his frustration over the monkeys drama to notice the fire demon coughing up smoke and petals behind him.

Wukong slowly sneaked into the room, as quietly as he possibly could. Staying low to the ground, he tip toed over to the shelf, cautiously reaching up-

Only for someone to grab a hold of his hand, stopping him from reaching his prize. A nearby lamp flicked on, and Wukong looked up to see Sandy intently staring down at him.

"...Hi." Wukong said, laughing nervously as he slipped his hand out of Sandy's grip. "Um. I totally wasn't sneaking around or anything, I was just... sleep walking?"

"...I see." Sandy said, reaching over and taking one of the tea tins off of the shelf. "In that case, this one right here will do wonders to improve your sleep-"

"Ah, oh, no thank you, it's fine, I can handle it." Wukong said, subtly scanning the shelf of teas, slumping slightly when he couldn't seem to find the one that he wanted. Upon seeing the monkey's dejected face, Sandy sighed.

"Is this what you were looking for?" He asked, pulling a tin of tea out from behind his back. Wukong looked at it in shock.

"How'd you-" He started.

"It was just a lucky guess." Sandy said, setting the tin in Wukong's waiting hands. "Use it sparingly though, I'm running a little low on supplies right now. Oh, and be careful with the side effects, okay? Stop taking it if anything seriously bad starts to happen."

"...Thank you." Wukong said, pocketing the tea tin and turning to leave Sandy's room.

"Oh, one more thing." Sandy said, causing Wukong to pause mid-step. "The next time you try sneaking around in the dark, use a stronger glamour over your eyes. The glow seriously gives you away."

"...Duly noted."

It smelled like smoke.

That was the first thing Macaque noticed as he stepped out of the shadows in the corner of the storage room. Immediately, he tensed up, his fur standing on end. After all, where there was smoke, there was usually fire as well. And although Macaque would never, never admit it... he wasn't exactly the most... fond of fire.

(A capture hero, trapped and unaware.

A burning mountain, the air choked by smoke.

And an abandoned warrior, trying desperately to escape the mountain's flames.)

But... Macaque couldn't hear any of the noises that usually accompanied something burning. Instead all he could hear was someone's slightly irregular heart beat, and their wheezing breaths.

Macaque forced himself to walk forwards, curiosity starting to over power his caution.

He rounded the shelf of boxes just in time to see Red Son cough out more smoke, along with a few burnt petals.

Macaque paused, knowing the other had yet to actually see him, as he pondered what to do next. His hands twitched towards the edge of his scarf, but he kept himself frozen.

On the one hand, he could just turn around and leave before Red Son could even notice him. As was said before, Macaque was truly not very fond of fire, and despite having spent at least two days trapped with the fire demon, Macaque hadn't really gotten over his general...wariness of him.

On the other hand though, now that he'd seen the other demon, Macaque's curiosity was peaked.

...Well, they say curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, so-

"Who's it for?" Macaque asked, chuckling a little to himself as Red Son startled, finally noticing the other's presence.

"What?" He asked, looking at the shadow monkey in shock and confusion.

"Your Hanahaki." Macaque elaborated, "Who is it for, Mei or MK?"

Red Son remained silent for another moment, blinking in confusion, before the question, along with what was currently happening, seemed to register within his brain, and a furious blush over took his face, a few sparks flying off of him.

(At the sight of said sparks, Macaque took a hesitant step back, glancing around for anything that was possibly flammable.

Red Son was far too wrapped up within his own emotions to notice the monkey's anxiety.)

He sputtered for a moment, struggling and failing to come up with a proper response.

"...Both. It's, It's both of them." He eventually muttered under his breath, avoiding eye contact with Macaque as he shyly rubbed his arm.

"What was that? Sorry, I didn't hear you the first time, could you say that again?" Macaque said, not at all surprised by this new development and instantly deciding that now was the perfect opportunity to mess with the fire demon.

"You damn well did hear me and we both know it." Red Son said, shifting from flustered to angry in the blink of an eye.

...Macaque outright laughed at hm.

"Oh, oh, like you're one to laugh." Red Son said, "I know all about your thing for Monkey King. You're in the same boat as I am, both literally and figuratively."

"...Okay, first of all, we are in an airship, not a boat." Macaque said, leaning 'casually' against a wall of supply boxes. "Secondly- I have literally no idea what you're talking about."

"Why haven't you confessed yet?" Red Son said, moving on with his line of thinking and completely ignoring the shadow monkey's denial.

"Conf- I, I could ask you the exact same question!" Macaque said, caught off guard before pulling himself together and recovering. "Why haven't you confessed?"

"I, am simply waiting for the right time. I'm planning a big romantic gesture, I'll have you know." Red Son said, "You, on the other hand, are simply being a pining idiot."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Macaque denied yet again, a slight growl making it's way into his voice as his eyes flashed purple.

Red Son wasn't impressed.

"Your pitiful attempts at denial and intimidation have little to no effect on me." He said, "Seriously, just admit that you're in love with Monkey King already. Pretty much everyone else already knows about it."

"...I won't say I'm in love."

"Do not start the random musical numbers again, you already did it far too many times when we were trapped together in that cell, and if I have to bear one more minute of it I will not hesitate to toss you overboard."

The tea was bitter.

Very bitter.

Still though, it tasted leagues better than weed killer, which had been a not very well though through experience that Wukong never ever wanted to repeat.

And the tea worked better too, repressing, the flowers better than humming or the previously stated weed killer ever could.

Still though, there was a reason as to why Wukong had never opted to try this method before.

Said reason, of course, being the side effects.

He sighed, staring at how there were now purple flecks within his red eyes. Nothing that his usual glamours couldn't cover, but his magic was dwindling fast. He would have to start cutting a few corners soon if he didn't want to end up completely and utterly powerless, and the glamours concealing his height and eye colour would probably end up having to be the first ones to go.

Other than that though, it was concerning that the eye colour change was happening so soon, not to mention the speed at which it was progressing. A change in eye colour was the most common starting side effect of repressing Hanahaki, after that... things start to tend to become strange and rather unpredictable. The list of side effects caused by repressing Hanahaki was miles long, and was always having new things added to it- the reaction seemed to always depend on the person.

Basically, Wukong had literally no idea of what the side effect would be for him, nor how he could prepare for them.

And, of course, this meant he wouldn't be able to know how to hide them either.

When Wukong woke up the next morning and found that his eyes had already turned fully purple, a faint sense of unease settled itself over him like how a morning mist settles in a forest. He supposed he should've expected this to happen quick, he was repressing thousands of years of pining after all, but still, he hadn't been expecting it to progress this fast....

He felt fine though, nothing different than usual. (He did feel a bit weaker, but that had already been happening before the tea. No, that was something else.) For a moment he wondered if his immortality had made him completely immune to any possible side effects, but immediately shot that idea down, as if that had been the case, his eyes wouldn't have changed colour at all.

Wukong exited his room, throwing his usual glamours back on just in case, and made his way to the ship's kitchen as quietly as possible, he'd awoken a bit earlier than usual this morning, and didn't want to accidentally wake any of the others up.

Warming up the kettle and taking the tea tin out of the pocket (he sadly noted that it was almost empty already), he carefully followed the instructions on the side of the tin, not wanting to mess anything up and risk the tea not working.

A few minutes later, and Wukong sat at the kitchen table, spacing out a little as he slowly sipped his Hanahaki Repressing Tea.

He was starting to almost fall asleep in his chair when Pigsy entered the kitchen.

"Morning." Pigsy greeted, looking Wukong up and down with a mix of worry and suspicion. "You're not usually up this early, is something wrong?"

'No, I'm fine, perfectly fine.' Was what Wukong wanted to say.

Instead though, no sound left his mouth at all.

Oh.

Oh shit.

It wasn't every day that someone say Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, speechless.

Today, however, seemed to be one of the days where he was.

Pigsy watched as Wukong's mouth clicked shut, panic briefly flashing across his face before being replaced with an easily recognizable nervous smile as the monkey drew his tea cup closer to himself, as though to hide it. Pigsy rolled his eyes, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from Wukong, immediately noticing how the monkey avoided eye contact entirely.

"Experiencing the side effects, huh?" Pigsy asked, "Don't give me that surprised look. Even if Sandy hadn't told me about you taking the tea, you're being rather obvious right now."

Wukong visibly winced at that, sipping his tea again.

"How exactly do you plan to get through the day without being able to talk huh?" Pigsy asked, leaning forwards slightly. "Surely you must have some plan prepared."

Wukong started to shake his head no, to show that he didn't, in fact, have any plan here, but then he paused, looking thoughtful.

A sudden pang ran through Pigsy's mind, and he gripped the sides of his head, looking down at the table as he winced, trying to collect himself, feeling as though he'd been set off balance.

"-an you hear me?" Wukong's voice was faint and echoey, before growing stronger. "Can you hear me? Hello-"

"Yes I can fucking hear you." Pigsy said, looking back up, and proceeding to be almost shocked (but at the same time really not) to find that there were now two Wukong's sitting across from him. The new Wukong was obviously Wukong's golden astral projection form, as it perfectly matched how MK had described it.

Or well, it almost matched perfectly...

"Oh, good." Wukong said, via astral connection, "I wasn't sure this would work, but since it does I can just talk to the others like this-"

"Does this form of yours normally look like.... well, that?" Pigsy asked, interrupting.

"...What?" Wukong took a moment to analyze his astral form.

Unlike MK's description of it being 'Monkey King but in gold, like a shiny pokemon', Wukong currently had three tails, one pink, one red, and one purple. Said colours were also splashed all over his astral body, almost giving him a sunset-like appearance.

"...Huh. That's new." Wukong said, "I guess the side effects go deeper than I thought."

"Is this something we should be more concerned about?" Pigsy asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Oh, no, it's fine. At least, it's far better compared to everything else. Maybe. Probably." Wukong said, the nervous smile on both his real self and his astral self growing slightly bigger.

"...Everything else? Probably?" Pigsy questioned, sitting up straighter with worry.

"...Ah, you weren't meant to hear that part." Wukong said, wincing. "Which I suppose that means it's time for me to go-"

"Hey, wait-" Pigsy started, but didn't manage to get any words out as Wukong abruptly closed the astral connection, before standing up and leaving the room faster than the other could ever hope to follow. Pigsy sighed as he caught the barest glimpse of Wukong's tail going out the door.

That damn monkey was definitely going to need a serious intervention one of these days.

"Monkey King this is an intervention." MK said, crossing his arms as he tried to do his best impersonation of one of Tang's infamous glares. He assumed he failed miserably, given Mei's muffled snickering, but Wukong at least shrunk down sheepishly, so he must've been doing something right.

MK sighed as a pang ran through his head, having expected it- before blinking in shock at the astral image that now stood before him.

"Why do I need an intervention? I'm perfectly fine." Wukong said, both his real self and his astral self smiling nervously- and the three other astral copies of him mimicked the motion. One was pink, one was purple, and one was red. They were each surrounded by a faint golden glow, and were each connected to the main golden astral version of Wukong by their tails.

"You- you are definitely not fine!" MK shouted, still having not recovered from the shock, and wasn't given any more time to try and process what he was seeing as the three bonus Wukong's started speaking.

"Shit." The red one hissed, frustration in his voice. "Fuck." (MK blinks, shocked to hear any version of his mentor swear, and immediately decides to smack Wukong on the arm the next time his mentor tries to reprimand him for swearing.)

"At least he's learning how to read people better, now he won't get tricked as easily." The pink one said, sounding almost....proud?

"I won't be able to trick him anymore either- He's catching on. He's starting to catch on now-" The purple one said, panicked. "I need to lie, lie lie lie-"

"Once again, I don't know what you're talking about." The golden, normal Wukong insisted, seemingly ignorant to the existence of the others.

MK had, of course, set up this intervention to talk about how Wukong tended to repress his emotions, (specifically those concerning a certain shadow monkey), but he definitely hadn't been prepared for... whatever all this is.

"Are you fucking seeing this?" He asked Mei.

"I'm not seeing shit." Mei said, wrapping her arm around MK's shoulder and lightly knocking their heads together, as though doing so would transfer the images that MK was seeing into her own brain.

"Language." All four astral Wukong's said, in perfect unison, and MK reached over and smacked the real Wukong on the arm for his hypocrisy.

The hastily put together intervention steadily went downhill from that point forwards, Mei complaining about not having been let in to the Astral Connection, and Wukong closing said connection the instant that MK had revealed the existence of the astral copies to him. The Monkey King had left the room rather swiftly after that, and MK sighed, for what seemed to be the millionth time since he'd found out about his mentor's Hanahaki.

He would have to do a much better, and much more well put together intervention next time.

Wukong ended up running out of tea the next day.

On the one hand, this was a good thing, as it meant he would only have to wait a day or so for the side effects to finally wear off, and he could go back to actually speaking again.

But on the other hand, this meant that he'd be back to coughing up flowers again, much, much sooner than he would like.

Wukong sighed, leaning against the railing of the ship, watching the sunset. He could probably jump off the ship and find the materials needed to make the tea himself, but without his cloud sail, it would certainly cost him precious time.

Time that he currently absolutely could not waste.

So he resigned himself to what would have to happen, and tried to mentally prepare himself for the flowers that would return within the next twenty four hours.

.....For some reason, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched....

In his many years of having known Wukong, Macaque had never seen him be quiet.

But he sure was quiet now, leaning against the ship railing, peacefully watching the sun as it dipped below the horizon.

(The fading colours of the sun reflected perfectly off of Wukong's fur, covering the other in golds, red, purples, and pinks, and overall making him look really pre-

No, nope, Macaque absolutely could not think about that right now, if he started coughing up flowers here and now it was sure to be noticed, and he absolutely couldn't have that happen.)

Macaque really wanted to consider the silence a blessing, finally, a break from the seemingly endless amount of chitter-chatter-

But instead, he couldn't help but feel worried.

Sliding back down to hide behind the crate he'd been sitting on before Wukong had come out onto the deck twenty minutes ago, Macaque lightly chewed on the edge of his scarf, thinking.

Option one: he waltzes over there, throws on a Perfect Smile, and asks Wukong what's wrong. Maybe he could even throw in a jab or two, or say it sarcastically in order to hide his very real concern.

Option two: he sneaks past Wukong, reenters the ship, and hides out inside of his room until he feels confident enough that these stupid emotions have passed.

Macaque was just deciding on option two- when the shadows surrounding him shifted.

Glancing up, he found that Wukong was now holding the crate the shadow monkey had been hiding behind over his head, and was staring down at him, unimpressed.

"...Hi?" Macaque said, letting the edge of his scarf fall out of his mouth and glamouring away any sign that he'd been chewing on it in the first place. "Um. Fancy meeting you here?"

If possible, Wukong's unimpressed look deepened.

"I was- I was here first, I'll have you know." Macaque said, hurriedly standing up, brushing non-existent dirt off of his clothes. "I don't really appreciate you encroaching on my personal space."

Wukong's expression did not waver, but he did set the crate down to the side, so at least Macaque no longer had to worry about having it be thrown at him. Still though, Wukong continued to stare, so maybe he wasn't out of the woods yet.

"So uh, what's with the whole silent act, huh?" Macaque asked, trying his best to be nonchalant about it. He hoped the response would be something meaningless, like a silly little bet or something along those lines.

He didn't expect to receive no verbal response at all, with Wukong's expression shifting away from unimpressed to something Macaque immediately identified as nervous.

Which....probably meant that this really was something to be concerned about.

Which probably also meant that asking any more about it would eventually result in some kind of long, emotional talk, which absolutely was not Macaque's forte.

...Well, he'd been planning to go with option number two from the beginning, so-

"Welp, this was a nice talk." Macaque said, "But, unfortunately, I have some other stuff that need to be tended to so.... bye!"

And with that, Macaque awkwardly flashed a peace sign, before falling down into the shadows, reappearing within the comforts of his own room. Deciding that he'd definitely had enough for one day, he crawled into his bed, pulling the covers over his head and trying his best to banish any thoughts of Wukong from his mind as he fell asleep.

He'd tried to sleep.

Really, he'd tried.

But after his third petal coughing fit of the night (courtesy of his brain refusing to forget how beautiful Wukong looked in the light of the sunset), Macaque gave up.

Which was why he was currently sitting on the couch, staring at the shadows on the wall, letting his mind play tricks on himself, making it seem like the darkness was moving.

He startled when he heard the sound of someone walking down the hallway.

Macaque wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been up for, but something told him that it was still far too early for even the early-risers to be up and about.

It was at the exact moment that someone sluggishly entered the room that Macaque remembered his glamours were down, and he tensed, knowing it was far too late and that he was far too tired to throw them on now.

He relaxed ever so slightly once he realized that the one who had entered the room had seen him glamourless multiple times before.

...Still though. What was Wukong doing up so late?

"...Got nightmares? I hope they're all about me." Macaque said, almost instantly cringing at the words coming out of his mouth, wanting to take them back and shove them into whatever sleep deprived corner of his mind they had come from.

Funnily enough though, Wukong didn't react at all, there wasn't even a small twitch of the ear or tilt of the head to even indicate that the other had even heard him.

There was a beat of silence, and Macaque chewed on the edge of his scarf, distracting himself from the awkwardness of it all by focusing on the sounds of the ship at night.

The beeping of the autopilot, the whir of the engines, the quiet sleeping sounds of the others, Wukong's steady, slow heart beat...

His.... slow heart beat...

"Oh" Macaque breathed, his voice partially muffled as he still had part of his scarf in his mouth. "You're sleep walking."

A contradictory mixture of concern and relief flooded through him at this realization. For a moment he just sat there, watching as Wukong continued to sluggishly make his way around the room.

And then Wukong bumped into the edge of the coffee table, and Macaque got up in record time, ready to catch the other if he fell-

Only to pull himself back as Wukong righted himself, still fast asleep. Macaque sighed, sitting back down on the couch. Why had he even been worried? There was literally nothing to worry about here, Wukong was literally invulnerable, he'd be fine. This was fine.

He rescinded that thought when Wukong suddenly turned, slowly but surely making his way towards Macaque. The shadow monkey watched the other's approach warily, stiffening when Wukog clumsily crawled onto the couch beside him.

Macaque stayed as still as possible, practically frozen, and partially hoping Wukong would get back up and sleep walk his way back to his own bed.

That, of course, didn't happen, and Macaque barely bit back a gasp, the edge of his scarf falling from his mouth to rest on his lap, as Wukong's tail found and curled around Macaque's own.

'Okay.' Macaque thought, feeling the flowers surge within his chest, as well as a faint tingling sensation covering most of his body (it had been a while, since he'd had any positive affection). 'Okay. I can handle this.'

And then Wukong leaned against him, his head resting on Macaque's shoulder.

'I can not handle this.'

When Wukong woke up in the early morning, the first thing he noticed was that he was not, in fact, in his bedroom.

'Ah. I slept walked again.' He thought, wincing, slowly pushing himself up. '...At least I didn't collapse in the middle of the hallway or inside of MK's room this time...'

The second thing he noticed was fabric sliding off of him, landing in a pool on the floor.

Leaning over and picking it up, he instantly identified it as Macaque's scarf.

He'd. Been sleeping while curled around Macaque's scarf.....

Almost immediately, he started coughing, purple petals falling from his mouth.

'Well. There goes the last effects of the tea.'

(When Macaque opened his door later on in the after noon, he would find his scarf sitting on the floor in front of him, perfectly folded.

He would find a singular purple petal within it upon unfolding it, but immediately dismiss it as being unimportant.)

"Why is it a forest, why did the engine need to malfunction and land us in a forest." Macaque complained, laying in the shadow of a tree, staring up into the branches as though the tree would give him an answer.

"Hey, it's better than a mountain." Wukong said, setting down a glass of lemonade beside the other monkey, before turning to hand another one off to Tang. (Pigsy had, for reasons unknown, made Wukong act as his waiter for the day. Nobody was quite sure why, and from the way Wukong glared whenever the subject was brought up, they figured it was best not to ask). "Can you hear how MK and the others are doing though, they've been gone for a while..."

"Why don't you just use your cloud to go check on them?" Macaque groaned, but still did what had been asked of him, tilting his head to the side, listening intently. After a moment, he was able to pin point the trio's voices. As for what they were saying....

Macaque smirked.

"They're fine." He said, "Although, they might be another few minutes before they come back."

When the trio came out of the forest wearing flower crowns, Macaque mentally cheered.

(After somebody with Hanahaki confesses, the flowers need somewhere to go. Usually they simply pop out of the ground around the person who has confessed.

It was a popular tradition to make and wear flower crowns using said flowers if your love was reciprocated.)

"Oh, did Red Son finally confess?" Tang asked, "We've been waiting on that for like. Ever."

"Oh heavens- Was I the only one who didn't know?" MK said, hiding his face in his hands.

"Oh no, I don't think Monkey King here knew either." Sandy said, lightly patting Wukong on the head. Wukong had been adorned with a look of utter shock since the trio had returned, but now he finally broke out of his surprise, and before the trio could even think to move, Wukong had grabbed hold of them, lifting them up a little in an excited hug.

"Oh my gosh- I'm so happy for you!" He said, only putting them down as Red Son started struggling. "We've- we've gotta throw a party- Pigsy can we throw a party-"

Macaque rolled his eyes, blocking out the current party planning, going back to staring at the sky through the tree branches.

"...Macaque."

Macaque looked over to see Red Son standing beside him.

"...Yes?" Macaque asked.

"...I'm braver than you are."

"What the fuck does that mean-"

Of course, Wukong had ended up deciding that they couldn't have the party on the ship. For some reason or another, he was utterly convinced that this party had to be big, which, of course, meant that there had to be a large space to hold it in.

...Had the situation been different, he would've brought everyone to Flower Fruit Mountain.

As it was, he found the next best thing.

"How the fuck did you know about my family hide out?" Red Son asked, watched as Wukong knocked three times on the door.

"You forget I was friends with your father, Red Boy." Wukong said, sending Red Son a smirk. "Oh, and watch your language."

The rest of the group stood slightly behind them, some of them prepared to run away if, somehow, this went awry.

Luckily enough, they didn't have to worry. Demon Bull King and Princess Iron Fan took the fact that Red Son was now dating his former enemies surprisingly well, and were fully willing to let them use the base to hold a party.

Wukong, surprisingly enough, ended up being the one to regret the decision to come here, the realization that maybe he had made a mistake hitting when Demon Bull King grabbed him by the back of his scarf, lifting him into the air. Wukong went slack immediately, knowing that struggling would be futile.

"The rest of you can keep sorting things out." Demon Bull King said, "I would like to have a few.... words with the simian."

And with that he turned, walking out of the room and bringing Wukong with him.

Demon Bull King entered a smaller room, reaching and closing the door behind him as he did so. Unceremoniously, he let go of Wukong's scarf and let the monkey drop down to the floor. Wukong let out an 'oof' as he hit the solid concrete.

"Ow." He hissed, glaring up at Demon Bull King. "Ya could have been a little more gentle there, Bull King."

"You can handle it." Demon Bull King said, "Now, onto the real matter of business. You haven't confessed yet, have you."

"What? Oh, is that what this is all about- I mean, I have no idea what you're talking about." Wukong said, laughing nervously. Demon Bull King stared down at him, unimpressed.

"So I'm right, you really still haven't confessed." Demon Bull King sighed, "Really, I expected better from you. Oh well, I suppose it is a good thing that my son is braver than you, not that that's very hard."

"Ouch." Wukong said, slightly jokingly. "You...really aren't pulling back your punches today huh."

"You trapped me under a mountain. I can be permitted to throw a few heavy hits." Demon Bull King said, "As it is though, if you do not confess sooner rather than later, you may miss your chance."

"Huh?"

"Do not make me out to be a fool, Sun Wukong. I can see the way your body grows weaker." Demon Bull King stared pointedly at a scrape Wukong had gotten on his hand when he'd been dropped onto the floor. Wukong, following the other's gaze, hid it behind his back. "You can't hide it from me. A month ago that fall would've been nothing to you. The Lady Bone Demon has affected you more than you're letting on."

"...So what if she has?" Wukong asked, "It's fine, it doesn't really mean anything, my powers will come back to their full strength sooner or later, you know."

"When I carried you, you weighed a little heavier than you used to."

"Hey now, don't go making comments about my weight!" Wukong said, letting the glamour on his eyes drop so that he could give Demon Bull King the red-eyed glare. "Seriously, I don't know what you think you've figured out, but just, drop it, okay?"

"...If that is what you wish." Demon Bull King sighed, opening the door and standing slightly to the side in order to let Wukong through first. "Promise me one thing though, for the sake of our old friendship."

"...Of course."

"Please confess before the time runs out."

"I'll... I'll try."

The party had been great.

In fact, the party had been spectacular.

Which was why, of course, that merely a week after the party, their luck seemingly ran out.

One of the Lady Bone Demon's 'followers' attacked the group during a supply run. Somehow, someway, Wukong and Macaque had managed to draw it away from the others, giving the rest of the group ample time to get the ship loaded and get everyone to a safe place.

Now all the two monkeys had to do was find a way for themselves to escape.

Macaque ducked under a wave of magic, glancing over at Wukong, hoping that the other would have some kind of plan.

He could immediately tell from the look on the other's face that he did not, in fact, have any sort of plan.

Macaque kept dodging as he watched Wukong impulsively take the offensive, sliding under a wave of magic, running up and jumping to kick the demon in the face- Only for the demon to catch him by the foot, spinning him around and tossing him. Wukong's back slammed against the mountain they'd ended up fighting beside, and he fell onto one knee for a moment.

And then he slowly stood back up, his fur messed up. He used his sleeve to wipe some blood away from the corner of his mouth, his eyes burning red and oh-

Oh, that was kinda hot-

Macaque immediately cursed letting himself get distracted, as the flowers grew in his chest, and he stumbled, wheezing as a few golden petals fell out of his mouth.

A wave of magic hit him from behind, knocking him to the ground and sending him skidding over to where Wukong now stood.

"Shit- are you okay?" Wukong asked, keeping one eye on the demon, who simply watched them in slight amusement, as he helped the shadow monkey back to his feet. Macaque glanced between the demon and Wukong, feeling the flowers in both his throat and his mouth.

Fuck, he wouldn't be able to win this fight if he stayed like this, in this state.

...Which only left him one option.

Taking only the barest of seconds to prepare himself, Macaque grabbed a hold of both side of Wukong's face, ignoring the monkey's confused squeak as he made sure their eyes met.

"I love you." Macaque said, a single petal falling out of his mouth.

"...I love you too?" Wukong said, confusion and shock filling his face.

"Wait, what?" Macaque asked, but was given no time to question it as the demon seemingly had enough of waiting, and threw a whip of magic at them, the two monkeys having to separate from each other and leap to different sides in order to avoid the attack. As the dust from the attack settled, Macaque locked eyes with Wukong again, the Monkey King's face coloured with a blush, looking shocked, and Macaque was sure the expression was reflected on his own face.

"You love me too?!" He asked, sliding to the side, to avoid another attack.

"Yes!" Wukong shouted, backflipping out of the way of a burst of flame.

"Then why did you say it as a question?!" Macaque asked, slowly making his way back over to the other monkey while avoiding the demon's attempts to hit him at the same time.

"I don't know, why did you confess in the middle of a fight!?" Wukong asked, mirroring the other monkey's movements.

"It seemed like the best option!" Macaque said, leaping over top of another magic whip, spinning around and finding himself back to back with Wukong. "I- I didn't really think it through."

"And people say that I'm the impulsive one." Wukong muttered, deflecting a beam of magic away from them with his wrist.

"I heard that." Macaque hissed, turning ever so slightly to glare at him.

"I know." Wukong said- before turning and knocking Macaque to the ground, just in time for a blade to go sailing over top of them. "When did he get a scythe?!"

"How should I know?!" Macaque asked- before his ear twitched, and he grabbed Wukong's shoulders, rolling the both of over to the right, swapping their positions as the ground where they had previously been suddenly broke apart, a spike rising out of it. Both of them stared at it in shock, before glancing back at each other.

"Well, there's one thing that I think we both know." Wukong said, as Macaque stood up, pulling Wukong to his feet along with him. They both turned to glare at the demon. "And it's that we're starting to get real sick of this guy."

"...You know, I hear that there's a solar eclipse coming up." Macaque said, and Wukong immediately smirked.

The demon sent another blast of magic, and, still holding hands, the two of them stepped to the side, Macaque even taking things one step further, twirling Wukong as they dodged the blast, before pulling away, giving the Monkey King a small bow before falling down into the shadows. Wukong, smirk still wide on his face, turned to face the demon with a determined look.

Running forwards, swiftly moving left and right to stay out of the way of the demon's attacks, Wukong got himself right up in the demon's face. Jumping, he flipped backwards, hitting the demon in the chin with his foot as he did so, before landing on his feet slightly further back than he'd been before.

The demon rubbed his chin, eyes blazing with anger, and Wukong laughed.

"C'mon, is this the best you can throw at me?" He taunted, practically dancing out of the way of the spikes that shot out of the ground at him. "Surely you can do better than this!"

The demon growled, not seeing the trap for what it was, summoning his scythe and charging forwards. Wukong stayed where he was, smirk still firm in place on his face.

When the blade was almost close enough for Wukong to taste the tang of the metal, the shadows in front of him shifted.

Macaque shot up from the shadows, with a spear made out of the darkness, easily blocking the demon's attack, his eyes glowing purple as he stepped forwards, shadows still trailing and swirling around his feet as he forced the demon to take a step back.

The demon grit his teeth, so focused in trying to keep Macaque advancing any further- that he failed to notice as Wukong slid beside him, his eyes glowing red as he took power away from his glamours and channeled it into making sure this punch was the last one.

The strike hit, and Macaque stepped back, his fur rustled by the wind as the demon was sent flying past him, slamming into the mountain, hard.

The two monkeys stood there for a moment, panting, staring at the demon's prone form.

A minute passed, and that was all it took for the two of them to confirm that the demon was not going to be getting back up.

A sigh of relief left the two of them, Wukong falling down to sit on the ground, while Macaque slumped, leaning against his spear as the two of them took a moment to finally relax.

Only to jump as a field of yellow chrysanthemums and purple, flowering wisterias appeared around them.

The two of them stared around themselves in shock for a moment, Macaque dispelling his spear as he sank down to the ground beside Wukong. A breeze flew by, knocking loose a few petals, mixing yellow and purple together.

"...You know, I can't decide if these flowers are hilariously late or perfectly on time." Macaque said, and Wukong laughed.

"Say, who do you think has more flowers for them?" He asked, and the both of them took a second to think about it, looking out over the field. Wukong abruptly stood up. "Why don't we make some clones to help and find out?"

Macaque laughed, standing up and summoning his own shadow clones as Wukong blew on a few of his hairs, and they went to work, counting flowers.

...In the end, they ended up giving up after the third recount also ended up in a tie.

When the two of them finally returned to the ship, adorn in matching flower crowns, MK took one look at them, a brief expression of shock flickering on his face, before he fell backwards onto the couch, a strangled laugh escaping him.

"Fucking finally!"

#Monkie Kid #shadowpeach #fanfic #my writing #non fatal hanahaki au #this took forever

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indecisive-behaviors · 3 years ago

Text

Originally I was just going to add this as a reblog to my previous post about the parking lot scene in KK2 but it’s almost 2k words so now it’s getting it’s own post. Be forewarned- this is fucking long.

TW for discussion of PTSD, child abuse, neglect, injury, and death, in relation to topics surrounding the show, under the cut-

Obviously, Cobra Kai is a show based around the premise of “what happened to that Lawrence kid after he got kicked in the face?”, which is honestly a pretty cool idea for a show. Johnny’s story is never explained past sitting on the sidewalk with his head in his hands at the tournament, and there are no real context clue’s to figure out what may or may not have happened.

In the show we get to learn early on that Johnny’s life spiraled after the tournament, going from bad to worse to “holy shit how are you still alive”-dropping out/never going to college, working jobs he seems to hate, becoming an alcoholic, presumably many dead end relationships, and not being there for his kid. And yeah, obviously, this would be a hard pill to swallow for anyone watching the show if Johnny had just lost the tournament. If we never got the scene in KK2, he would have just been some kid who lost a tournament- we see at the end of the first movie that(through tears holy shit Billy) that Johnny is the one who gives the trophy to Daniel with his famous line, “You’re alright, LaRusso.” There’s a level of grudging respect in that moment that isn’t lost on anyone who sees that movie- that Johnny, who throughout the movie only sees Daniel as some whimpy kid, gets proven wrong and respects that. If we didn’t have that scene, there’s reason to believe Johnny would have apologized, tried to make amends, Something, even if it was just being less of a dick at school.

But then, we get the parking lot. We get a far off shot, intended to distance you from the scene, framed over Daniel’s shoulder. This makes sense, Daniel is the main character, the protagonist, the underdog hero- why wouldn’t it be framed in his perspective? But the scene is about Johnny. We get the shouting match, the back and forth- “No, you’re the loser man.”- and again it’s fairly obvious how Johnny sees this situation. This is a man who we assume(and is later confirmed) to be a surrogate father figure, who set his friend up for failure, and then basically forced him to do the same by targeting an injured opponent, and forcing him to fight without honor. This same man presumably follows a teenager out to the parking lot, to harass him, to tell him he’s off the team, to tell him he’s a loser, that he’s nothing.

But at that point, Johnny knows the truth, even if subconsciously. At the end of the day Johnny knows that Daniel LaRusso was a worthy opponent, and that regardless of the cheating and manipulation, Daniel could have won anyway, and did win, despite of it.

And then Kreese grabs him, too fast to react to, Johnny too surprised even knowing that Kreese is the bad guy here, not believing that he would ever willingly hurt him- and Johnny isn’t strong enough to fight him off, none of the boys are, so Johnny is forced to suffocate for almost a full 30 seconds(which I double checked for the record- also as a reference, 30 seconds is about the average time it takes for a person voluntarily holding their breath to pass out- this does not account for the oxygen lost during a struggle, and the lack of preparation from both surprise and panic. The only silver lining here is the fact that Kreese was most likely compressing his windpipe, not his jugular, which would have made him pass out in about 5-10 seconds, and would have caused permanent brain damage or death in about 15).

Now, PTSD is a complex thing. I’m not a psychiatrist, and what small amount of information we have is all we have to work off of, but I feel fairly comfortable in saying Johnny mostly likely developed it after the incident. This not an uncommon take in the fandom as far as I’m aware either. But, if we assume this, we also have to assume that after the fact nothing would have been done about this. Not just in the sense that we still don’t really know everything that happened right after the tournament, but that in the early 80s, PTSD wasn’t really a thing yet.

Sure it was absolutely a condition that existed, but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t even added to the DSM-III until 1980- and for a long time afterward, was only seen as a condition that affected primarily war vets. Even after an event as traumatic as having a man you considered a father trying to kill you, in public, without remorse, would not have been seen as something to warrant the diagnoses, let alone treatment.

Johnny Lawrence was 17 when Kreese tried to kill him, and this boy would have been offered no resources beyond filing charges with the police. And as we see in KK3, either this didn’t happen either, or someone(presumably Silver) got the charges dropped. So on top of almost being murdered, Johnny had to live with the fact that the man who did that to him was still out there, and to top it off, still ran a dojo at least for a few months after the event. The only relief he could have gotten is after Kreese faked his death.

And sure, Mr Miyagi may have gotten Kreese to let go eventually, but as several people have pointed out in comments and tags, left him and the other boys alone with Kreese still standing there in the parking lot and just... drove off. Kreese has already been established to be a psycho with no problem hurting children, a little bit of glass might not have prevented him from trying again.

So why did I talk about all of that? Because it all contributes to why Daniel LaRusso works as a credible antagonist in season 1 of Cobra Kai.

Think about this- Johnny blames losing everything on Daniel in season 1, but we specifically get a shot in KK1 and later KK2(”You’re alright, LaRusso” and “I did my best” come to mind) where he seems to be at least mostly accepting of the fact that he lost(with what was actually an illegal kick but that’s a rant for another time). So why does he blame him for everything 30 years later?

Because 30 years later, Johnny is forced to go outside, go to work, and pretend like he doesn’t see what feels like every street corner(including right outside his apartment mind you), a literal billboard sized reminder of what happened to him.

The rest of this is mostly speculation but it makes sense in my head so bear with me.

When we get introduced to Robby, it’s made pretty clear that Johnny has not been in his life for a bit. In season 2 we get Johnny’s heart to heart with Miguel, where he divulges that he missed the birth, because he spiraled after his mom’s death. This however doesn’t suggest that he stayed gone, especially knowing that it wasn’t long enough for Robby to not consider seeking out his dad. Because tacked up to the fridge, is a picture of Robby in his soccer uniform as a kid. It’s an early detail you can see in previous episodes, and says a lot about how Robby grew up. To be fair, this could have been given to him by Shannon, and not taken himself, but it’s the sport Robby’s playing that makes me question this. KK1 dedicates an entire scene to Johnny being on the soccer team in high school. Soccer, while maybe not as important to him as karate, is still part of his character. Robby does not know karate in season 1, Johnny obviously didn’t share it with him, but that doesn’t mean Johnny didn’t share anything with him.

So Johnny’s back in his kids life, maybe doing better for himself, maybe cutting back on the drinking. LaRusso Auto is already established to exist at this point but it’s in Encino, a place Johnny has no reason to go to, and probably doesn’t want to. He’s trying again and things are okay. But Robby knows enough about Daniel to know that going to him will piss off his dad. So Johnny had to have talked about him at some point. The billboards here are what’s important- they’re in the first episode, the first scene montage, Johnny draws a dick on one of them as some petty revenge.

The first billboard goes up in the late 2000s to mid 2010s. Johnny sees it, maybe he has Robby with him at the time, maybe he goes home and says something there, but he says something in a way that sticks with even a child as being important. More billboards go up. Dealerships starting popping up more and more. Daniel’s face, and by extension, the memories, the flashbacks, become inescapable. Johnny, for a third time, spirals again. Before he even knows what’s happening, he’s lost his relationship with his son. And it’s all Daniel’s fault. Of course Daniel doesn’t do it deliberately, but the constant reminders are enough to send him back into a tailspin and Johnny blames him for it.

Because it’s Daniel who is a constant reminder of his failures- it’s Daniel who caused him to lose the tournament and almost get killed, Daniel who put up the billboards that trigger his flashbacks, it’s always Daniel Daniel Daniel.

And then Johnny gets it in his head that he wants to be better. He opens a dojo, teaches Miguel and the other kids, wants to try again- and he almost succeeds.

Johnny up to this point has not deliberately antagonized Daniel in any way. Sure he named the dojo Cobra Kai, but Cobra Kai is all he knows. Besides Johnny doesn’t blame karate for his failures, his best memories are Cobra Kai and he’s trying to be better than Kreese. So what’s the harm in this really? His building is in Reseda, there’s no reason for Daniel to ever be there, he doesn’t do it out of spite, it’s because he lives there and rent is cheap. He doesn’t know about KK3, doesn’t know about Daniel’s own trauma. This isn’t an attack. Johnny sincerely just doesn’t know.

Enter Daniel, stage left. Daniel makes no attempt to talk to him- he simply makes demands and accusations, before he starts making active attempts to put him out of business.

Sure, we as the audience know Daniel has good reasons to not want Cobra Kai back. But Johnny doesn’t. All Johnny knows is that the kid he picked on in high school- who won, who got everything Johnny wanted, who grew up to be successful, has a wonderful wife, two kids who love him, a thriving business- is doing everything he can to make his life hell 30 years after the fact.

And this could only have happened because in 1986 John G. Avildsen decided to add in a scene meant for the original movie into the sequel, for absolutely no fucking reason.

#meta analysis #ranting about cobra kai cuz I can #johnny lawrence #daniel larusso #cobra kai #karate kid #I will never get over the fact that that was an actual scene that they filmed #and then got no resolution #FOR 30 YEARS #I apologize to everyone for this post #obviously I have a lot of feelings about this

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morporkian-cryptid · 3 years ago

Note

13 & 23 for Lupin/Goemon and also for whatever is your favorite ship rn

I mean, my fave ship is the whole-ass Polygang, so that would be a bit long. Thanks for the ask, there really needs to be more content about Lupin and Goemon, so I'll take any opportunity to make that content myself!

13 - What do they do for fun? Do they have a favorite activity or do they like to switch things up?

DUEL TO THE DEATH. I'm only half joking (re: Kooki Kabuki).

Hmm... Tbh I think going on heists is probably a fun couple bonding activity for both of them. Goemon also spends a lot of time training, in the dojo or on his own, and sometimes offers Lupin to come along - Lupin is always eager to learn new fighting techniques, and he's actually pretty good at sword fighting (and he loves to see the glint of pride in Goemon's eyes when he manages to get a difficult move right). Sword fighting is also extremely homoerotic, and he'll take any occasion he can get to be pinned against a wall by a strong, handsome samurai. Lupin also tried to learn go once, so he could play with Goemon. Turns out Goe doesn't know how to play go.

Most of the time, I think they just... like to exist near each other. Sitting in the same room, Lupin reading a newspaper or planning a new heist while Goe is meditating, drinking matcha in comfortable silence, or cooking together.

23 - How do they hug? Kiss? Tease? Flirt? Comfort?

Like I said earlier, Lupin needs physical affection or he will die. Unfortunately for him, his two boyfriends are both touch-starved AND emotionally constipated; but he wouldn't be Lupin the Third if he didn't love challenges.

Goemon actually opens up faster than Jigen; it's not so much that he's built up barriers against his emotions and needs, mostly that he's never taken the time to listen to himself, and didn't realize how much he wants physical affection. So the first few times Lupin hugs him, or gives him a back rub, or cards his fingers through his hair (Goemon's hair is SO SOFT), Goe is startled by how nice it feels, and unconsciously leans into the touch before he realizes what he's doing. Lupin finds that absolutely adorable. That said, Goemon isn't as physical as Lupin (and as Jigen, despite what the gunman might say), and needs his space, so Lupin doesn't bother him too much; if the thief is insistently demanding cuddles from his samurai, it's usually because both Fujiko and Jigen have sent him packing.

Goemon is a hopeless romantic, to Lupin's great delight. He loves small attentions, but doesn't know how to deal wit them; he furiously blushes whenever Lupin compliments him, flirts with him, etc. He prefers slow and soft kisses, and only devolves into hungry making-out when he's drunk (thankfully for his boyfriends, he's a light weight). He gets extremely flustered whenever Lupin tries anything remotely sexual, and usually pushes him away (not because he doesn't like it, mostly because he's extremely prudish and shy). But he'll give in every now and then.

Surprisingly, Goemon (along with Fujiko) is the one in the Gang who's the best at comforting the others. So it's usually him who'll comfort Lupin when he has the occasional nightmare or almost-perfectly-hidden panic attack. Lupin never acknowledges own his moments of weakness, and Goemon doesn't push him to, he's just there for him when Lupin needs him, and he never tells the others. Lupin is grateful for that.

...Welp. This got out of hand.

(I just love them so much. SO MUCH.)

#lupin iii #goemon ishikawa #lupgoe #-slaps roof of goemon- this samurai can fit so much self-projecting into it #the hobbit's headcanons

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arashikitten · 4 years ago

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The Light that Burns Twice as Bright Burns Half as Long

When Macaque had first spotted the kid, he had immediately been drawn to him. The aura that seemed to flicker from him was warm, bright and comforting like a ray of sunlight in the afternoon. It was strong and silly, like a child’s laughter, but there was power hidden there, raw and ancient and monstrous, like that of a malicious trickster deity toying with humanity for the hell of it.

The realization snapped into him only when he finally noticed the ornate, red and gold staff strapped to the kid’s back, the familiarity slamming into him with the force of a crashing mountain, crushing him beneath it’s oppressive wieght.

That was Wukong’s staff. The Monkey King’s most well known weapon and source of power.

And it was being wielded by a child. Anger had bubbled in Macaque then, simmering and burning away at the corners of his vision like lava.

He’d contemplated, then, whether or not he should just kill the boy then and there and be done with the day. It would be so simple, just a quick snap of the neck. Humans were so fragile, it was honestly a miracle they had lasted so long in the face of much more powerful, demonic creatures.

Macaque had dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it came. No, the boy would likely be more useful to him alive. Macaque lifted one of his paws, and quickly summoned the small purple seal. He grinned before clenching his fist, extinguishing it in a small trail of smoke.

Yes, that was a much better idea than killing him outright. Sure, it would require patience, and a lot of acting on his part, but if all went according to plan…

Macaque backed into the dark shadows of the alleyway, reveling in the darkness they brought as they consumed him. A sharp smirk grew on his face.

Watching Wukong’s face as he destroyed him with his own powers would be so much more satisfying than just killing some kid.

——————— ——————— ——————— ———————

His first real meeting with the kid had been… interesting. Everything had gone according to plan, of course: catch the kid’s attention with a shadow clone avatar, have the avatar beat him, show up and defeat the avatar while looking as cool as possible. The kid had been impressed, and Macaque could feel the admiration pouring off of him in waves as he had scrambled to the top of the building Macaque was on.

It was a nice feeling.

One that had been completely shattered when the kid had realized he wasn’t Wukong, and had ever so kindly pointed that out.

But Macaque, with his impressive self-restraint, was able to just barely bite down the growl crawling up his throat, turning his grimace into an awkward smile. He needed the kid’s trust, and he couldn’t have that if he snapped at him.

Maybe this was a bad idea, a part of him thought. He wasn’t exactly known for his patience, or his people skills, and the kid would probably be comparing him to Wukong the entire time if Macaque did decide to “train” him.

Yeah, no thank you.

But as Macaque started to leave, the kid jumped up yet again, rushing in front of him with clear awe and excitement.

“Can you teach me that awesome thing?!” Oh hell, he looked so excited and hopeful, like he really wanted Macaque to teach him. Macaque backed away slightly, so the kid wasn’t up in his face.

“Uhh… don’t you already have a master? I thought Monkey king was training you?” Please take the bait please take the bait…

Thankfully, the kid did, backing away slightly and, to Macaque’s surprise, looking a bit… disappointed. Like he wasn’t getting what he wanted from training with the great Sun Wukong.

Suddenly, that small voice of doubt vanished in Macaque, replaced by interest. Maybe… maybe he should continue with this plan. He smiled to himself, anticipation brewing in his gut like a storm.

“But you can never have too many teachers, right? I’m sure Monkey King would agree? It’s not like he’d want to hold you back!” Yes, Macaque could see the temptation growing in the kid. He could also see the beginnings of doubt, dissatisfaction toward the Monkey King being stoked by Macaque’s carefully chosen words.

“Ummm… Yeah! Yes, he’d totally be cool with it!” That was a blatant lie, but Macaque let it slide. He needed the kid’s trust if he wanted this plan to work.

He slung his arm around the kid’s shoulder, leading him to the edge of the building. He called the seal to his fingertips as he did so, quietly pushing it into the kid’s aura to slowly feed off it, before letting his paw slide from Xiaotian’s back.

Now, all he had to do was wait.

——————— ——————— ——————— ———————

Macaque was losing his mind.

Three days. That was all it should’ve taken for the seal to fill up completely. That was the most it ever had taken, and that was only because Macaque had been unable to complete it at the time. So, the seal on Xiaotian’s back should’ve been full to bursting.

And yet, when Macaque had finally decided to check it, he’d found that it was barely 5% full. At first, he’d thought it was because the kid hadn’t been using his full power. But then he’d thought back to the day before when, in a fit of frustration, the kid had blasted a hole clean through the side of a small mountain. Aside from scaring the absolute shit out of Macaque, because holy fuck this kid is strong, that one blast alone should’ve filled up at least 20% of the seal. Clearly, that was not the case.

Which left two options: either a) Macaque hadn’t correctly applied the seal (an idea that was very quickly disproven with a second check), or b) the kid’s aura was so strong, it was messing with his seal. It was honestly the only option that made even a bit of sense. After all, the kid’s presence had been enough to draw Macaque’s attention even when he was in a large crowd of people.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that Macaque could do to fix that. Maybe if the seal had been incomplete, he could remove it and replace the old seal with a new, complete one. It would’ve been a pain, sure, but he could stand to wait an extra day or so. But this… this wasn’t something that he could fix. If he removed the seal now, then all his hard work from the past three days would go to waste, and he could not let that happen.

Macaque sighed as he sat next to Xiaotian. The kid was out cold, curled up on the small futon that Macaque had set up in one of the rooms of his dojo. The kid had been exhausted, worked to the bone by his boss, Sun Wukong, and Macaque himself, and had come into the dojo two hours earlier with dark purple bags under his eyes and a bad case of bedhead. They’d trained for about an hour before Macaque had told the kid to get some sleep, unable to watch the kid try to clumsily strike him only to trip over his own feet.

It was odd, really. Macaque typically wasn’t the type to enjoy being with others. He was a loner, had been for hundreds of years now. And he’d enjoyed it! No burdensome connections, no one to carry but himself, no one to tie him down to any one place. Besides, he found humans to be too annoying and needy, and demons were often so pretentious it made Macaque’s eyes want to roll out of his head. In short, he didn’t like being with other people.

And yet, the kid had somehow managed to begin worming his way through all of Macaque’s barriers with an ease that, if he was being honest, scared him a fair bit. He’d spent years, years, building up those walls, making sure that every crack, every little weakness, was sealed up and airtight.

Only for a kid, who Macaque had absolutely planned on killing, and whom he had only met three days ago, to bypass all of that as fast as though the walls had never even existed.

That was why Macaque was starting to panic. If he got attached, if he actually started to care about Xiaotian- no, he couldn’t start calling the kid by his name, he’d get even more attached- if he actually started to care about the kid, then not only would he be unable to execute his plan, he’d be making himself vulnerable. He’d give himself a weakness, one that other demons would exploit.

He could not, under any circumstances, let that happen. He needed to distance himself from the kid as much as possible, while still “training” him and filling the seal. It would take a couple of months, a lot of patience, and really, really good acting on his part, but he could do it.

Besides, the kid was the apprentice of his worst enemy. How hard could it be?

—————— —————— —————— —————— ——————

He couldn’t believe this. It was absurd. Ridiculous. An absolute waste of his time. And beyond that…

“C’mon Macaque! I need to show you this one game! You’re gonna love it!!”

...It was embarrassing. It was so, so embarrassing.

Qi Xiaotian had come into his dojo about an hour earlier, somehow buzzing with even more energy than usual and excitement making his eyes glitter like a diamond in the sunlight. When Macaque had asked the kid what had him so excited that he was literally vibrating, he’d expected it to be something along the lines of ‘Wukong finally taught me a new move’, or something else related to the Monkey king.

What he had not expected was for the kid to start ranting about some video game that had just come out today. The kid had been talking so fast that Macaque couldn’t understand about 90% of what the kid said, and the 10% he could make out made no goddamned sense. Who the hell was Minecraft Steve? And on top of that, what the fuck is a “Sans”?

When the kid had finally finished, Macaque had sat there for a moment, just trying to process what had just happened. He’d probably looked like an absolute idiot, just sitting there staring.

When he’d finally found his voice, he’d said that it sounded interesting, and that he knew Xiaotian would have fun playing it. That was when things started to go downhill.

As they had been walking to the training area, the kid had asked him what video games he played. He’d sounded genuinely interested too, like he really cared about what Macaque did in his free time (like he actually cared about Macaque). Without thinking, Macaque had responded that he didn’t play video games, preferring to use his time to train or carve stuff.

At that point his fate was sealed.

The kid gasped, giving Macaque a scandalized look. It was almost comical, and he’d had to bite back a snort.

“You’ve NEVER PLAYED A VIDEO GAME?!!” The kid gave him an incredulous look, mouth gaping. Macaque rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, his tail twitching nervously.

“Ummmm… no? It’s not that big a deal-“ Macaque was cut off by the kid grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the dojo. Shit, this was not going as planned.

Macaque dug his feet into the floor, halting Qi Xiaotian even as he struggled to tug Macaque along with him. The kid was strong, he’d give him that. He’d actually struggled a bit to stay in place.

“Whoa whoa whoa, easy there kid. What’s with the hurry?”

“You’ve never played a video game! How is it that you’ve never played a video game?!” Macaque shrugged nonchalantly.

“I have other, more important things to do. Besides, they can’t be that good-“

They’d argued over that for a while, until Xiaotian had gotten the idea to take the dark monkey to an arcade a few blocks away. That was when it happened.

Macaque had opened his mouth, the word no already on his tongue, when the kid had given him this look. It reminded Macaque of a kicked puppy, except somehow even sadder and more pleading, and suddenly he’d found himself agreeing to go. Which was how he ended up standing in a shitty, loud, brightly colored arcade with an excitable young human buzzing around him like a hummingbird.

Macaque couldn’t even get frustrated about it. Oh, he’d been pissed on the walk here, for sure. But then the kid had smiled at him, and he looked so goddamned happy that Macaque was going with that he couldn’t find it in himself to snap at him. He’d even started to feel excited about going, before he remembered that arcades are loud and smelly and full of people, and by that point it had already been too late.

“OH MY GOD, THEY HAVE MONKEY MECH 3??!?! MACAQUE WE HAVE TO PLAY IT!!!” Still, he couldn’t help the small smile that crossed his face as his protege dragged him toward one of the brightly colored games.

—————— —————— —————— —————— ——————

Shit. Shit. Shit. How had he let this happen? How could he have been so damn stupid?

Macaque paced the darkened halls of the dojo, tearing at his hair in frustration. Xiaotian- no, the kid, he was the kid dammit- was fast asleep in one of the small office rooms, curled up on the spare futon that had effectively become his bed. Training had run far longer than either of them had been expecting, and it had started pouring rain as well. The kid had shyly asked Macaque if he could stay the night and, wanting to check on the seal’s progress, Macaque had obliged.

It was more than two thirds of the way full. Which, given that a month and a half had passed since he last checked it, made sense.

What didn’t make sense was the distinct dread that overcame him upon that discovery, turning his insides to ice and causing worry to twist in his stomach. Dread quickly turned to confusion, which became anger, which gave way to one hell of a realization.

He’d fucking grown attached. The one person in the world that he needed to emotionally distant from, and of course Macaque had gotten attached. It was just… he’d never had anyone be genuinely happy or excited to hang out with him, or talk to him, or anything like that. Most people who saw him tended to shy away or, if they knew who he was, bolt in terror. And in the past few hundred years, he’d grown accustomed to that.

And then there was Xiaotian, who actively sought him out, who really enjoyed being with Macaque, who actually talked to Macaque like he was really interested in what he had to say, and who smiled at him whenever he entered the dojo, and who treated him like an actual goddamned person. Macaque had never gotten to feel that before, like someone really gave a damn about him.

And slowly, Macaque had begun to feel the same about Xiaotian. He found himself genuinely interested in whatever the kid would rattle on about, found himself feeling actual concern whenever the kid showed up to train with bruises or injuries. He’d grown fond of the kid, with their training time becoming his favorite part of the day.

Which would be great, if it wasn’t for two little things: a), the kid is also being mentored by his worst enemy, and b), MACAQUE WAS STILL PLANNING ON BETRAYING THE KID! Except now, the mere thought of that made Macaque feel sick with guilt as he imagined the confused, hurt look Xiaotian would give him if he did, and Macaque knew he wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

But he didn’t have a choice! If he didn’t do this, if he didn’t go through with the plan, then he’d lose everything! All that progress, all that hard work, wasted! He’d be alone for the rest of his life…

And if you do go through with it, you’ll end up pushing away the only person who cares about you.

Macaque froze, ramrod straight. His arms fell to his sides as the sounds of the night permeated the air. He stood in the darkness, surrounded by the shadows of his regret.

“Oh,” he said quietly, as tears dropped from his cheeks onto the cold, wooden floor.

—————— —————— —————— ——————

He removed the seal that night, while the kid was asleep. It had been easy, easier than he expected, and the resulting golden glow from the kid’s aura made it worth it. He’d basked in the glow until he’d finally fallen asleep, and when he woke up the next morning, the kid was gone. He’d panicked at first, believing that Xiaotian had somehow found out about the seal and the plan and that he hated Macaque now and was gonna get Sun Wukong and-

And then he’d seen the kid’s note, saying that he needed to go to work and he’d be back at around 6:00, and Macaque breathed a sigh of relief.

Before cringing slightly at his earlier panic. It hadn’t even been a whole day since he’d decided not to betrayXiaotian, and he was already panicking about the kid turning his back on him? What was he, the kid's father?

Some deep part of him said yes, before he quickly shoved it back down. No, he was not the kid’s parent. Mentor? Maybe. Friend? Honestly, yeah. Parent? Hell fucking no. He already had enough to worry about without mother-henning the reckless young adult.

Slowly, Macaque went about his day. Went out into the city to get (read: steal) food, fought a demon or two for the hell of it, watched people from atop a building, before he headed back to the Dojo to get ready for the day’s training session with Xiaotian.

Macaque checked the clock as he finished up. 5:55. Excitement rose within him. The kid said he would be here at six; he should be arriving soon.

Macaque tried to hide his excitement as he waited, leaning against the front door. He’d gotten rid of the seal, Wukong didn’t know about him, and Xiaotian still wanted to train with him. All in all, this had been a good 24 hours, Macaque thought.

The minutes ticked by. 6:00 became 6:30, which became 7:00. Excitement become concern, which became anxiety. Xiaotian was never, ever this late. Hell, the kid would usually be so excited to train that he’d show up ten minutes early, before Macaque would be fully prepared.

Macaque checked his new phone (Courtesy of an impromptu shopping spree with Xiaotian). Nothing from the kid saying he would be late. Actually, aside from a message from this morning that mirrored the paper note he’d found on his desk, there was nothing at all.

That was what spurred Macaque to start running through the city, leaping across rooftops with ease. In just a few minutes, he was almost to the kid’s apartment, wind in his fur as he turned the corner-

Rubble. Yellow police tape everywhere. Massive scorch marks that streaked the walls and ground. One of the walls of the apartment had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole.

There was the scent of blood and burning flesh.

Macaque couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t B R E A T H E.

He stumbled away from the scene from the flashing light of police cars and the scent, that horrible scent-

It was Xiaotian’s scent. Gods, that was Xiaotian’s scent, mixed in with the blood and burned flesh, and something had- someone had hurt him- someone had hurt his kid-

He was running now, rushing to the hospital because his kid was injured and he needed to be there to make sure he was alive and ok, because he couldn’t lose the one person on the goddamned planet who cared, or he would go insane. Guilt crashed over him in waves, he should’ve been there-

He doesn’t remember the trip to the hospital. He doesn’t remember transforming into a finch and flying around the building, doesn’t remember the search at all.

He does, however, remember finally finding the kid’s room. He does, however, remember the short, old doctor saying that he had several 3rd degree burns, multiple broken bones, and that he may never be able to see out of his left eye ever again.

He remembers, so vividly, finally catching sight of the kid’s battered and burned form, bandages obscuring the entire left side of his face, an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose.

He will forever remember just how pale the kid looked.

Like he was dead.

Macaque flew to the roof of the hospital, clumsily transforming back as he skidded to a stop. He fell to his knees, staring numbly down at the concrete rooftop. He was dimly aware of the tears that silently streaked down his face, but he could not feel them.

He couldn’t feel much of anything.

Why? Why couldn’t he have just one person who cared? Why did the universe have to take the only person who gave a damn?

Anger, slow and hot, began to burn at the tears. Why the hell did Xiaotian have to be the one to get hurt? Was it karma for Macaque? Was it the universe’s way of getting revenge for all of his misdeeds?

But if that was the case, then why had Xiaotian been the one who got hurt? Why had Xiaotian been the one to almost die, to have his bones shattered, his flesh burned, his blood spilled? Why hadn’t Macaque been the one to suffer, instead of a kid who did nothing but give a monster hope to be better?

“WHY??!!”, Macaque screamed to the heavens, “WHY DIDN’T YOU TAKE-ta-take me….. wh-why didn’t you take me instead...why….” his voice broke into a whisper, as his tears burned like liquid fire in his eyes.

The heavens, cold and uncaring and so unlike Xiaotian’s warmth and light and kindness, gave him no answer.

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mochisquish · 4 years ago

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I made this Karate Kid/Cobra Kai survey and I want you to take it

I'm doing my own survey. Thanks for tagging me, me!

It's the year 2021 and you're obsessed with The Karate Kid. How are you feeling?: I hadn’t thought of the movie in years, but I love the sense of nostalgia intertwined with a brand new fandom in Cobra Kai.

Did you grow up with TKK or are you new to the series?: I remember the first movie and The Next Karate Kid from my childhood. I don't remember if I saw the others, but I gave the whole series a watch after getting into CK.

We gotta do the basics. Favorite character: Jawhnny Lahwrence. When he kicked that teenager in the face in CK it was over for me

Favorite ship: Lawrusso and Cobra Husbands

Underrated character: Bert. He’s adorable and hilarious and I want to be his mother.

Underrated ship (don’t say therapy, lol): Carmanda

Wax On, Wax Off or Sweep the Leg?: Sweep the leg

Which of Daniel’s dumb little outfits is your favorite?: That plaid/camo combo did a number on me. Not necessarily a good number.

Character from the films you most want to return, who’s not Terry Silver: I want to see Julie Pierce because TNKK is not a great movie and I'd like to see her character given a better chance. I think if they did well with her in CK it would kind of redeem TNKK for me, too.

Scene that lives in your head rent-free: Young Johnny trusting Kreese to fix his injuries and Kreese coldly wiping the blood from his face, Johnny and Daniel using their signature moves on the chop shop dude, Kreese and Silver hugging desperately in Vietnam

Will Anthony LaRusso ever be relevant?: I hope he never is because his existence is funnier that way.

You live in The Valley and are forced into the karate gang war. Which dojo do you join?: Realistically it'd be Miyagi-do bc I'm soft and not evil, but in my fantasies it'd be CK so I could be a badass.

What’s your training montage song?: “Mortal Kombat” - The Immortals. Also the only song that will play at my wedding.

It’s the crossover event of the century! Which TV show are you combining with Cobra Kai for an hour-long Saturday night special?: The Office. Dunder Mifflin travels to California on a business trip, and while there, Dwight inserts himself into the rival karate dojos feud. When he gets kicked out of both dojos, he creates his own, and enters Mose in the All Valley Tournament. Through a series of comical events, Mose inches closer to the final and both Kreese and Daniel start to panic. Johnny tries to beat up Dwight in front of the entire crowd and their dojos get disqualified, allowing Cobra Kai to win. Dwight goes back to Scranton as if nothing happened. Johnny and Daniel’s lives are completely destroyed.

Tag time! @cobraking @justveeing @thorniest-rose @dedlit @phantomcomet @pohjanneito @libertinepast @oceluna @twobrokenwyngs

If I missed you, or you're an internet stranger who wants to do it, please feel free!

#mo #Cobra Kai #The Karate Kid

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icecreamkink · 4 years ago

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so i watched cobra kai all in two days and i have so many -

this show has so many cool and smart angles to it, but the same time.... its so stupid oh my god everyone is so dumb literally mr miyagi held all of the braincells in this whole universe

like i am but at the same time i am not surprised it was made like this, bc in hindsight of course there were hordes of ppl simping over johnny lawrence .... but it still amuses me that this is like... an Actual Official Thing

ok this will get long so cut it is

how much fun this cast has is super visible and i love it

i rly enjoy how the world was expanded ! i did grow up watching the karate kid movies, so watching how they progressed the world of the movies so organically was pretty cool. it rly feels like its the same universe

i fucking LOVE stories that are largely about a Thing. dancing ,skating, sports its just so thrilling to experience this all consuming relationship people can have with this type of activity? and martial arts are just that much more intense, so yeah, grown ass men kicking each other around at the lightest provocation and a war veteran caring so much abt teen karate is Ridiculous.... but i love it all because thats the intensity i find so thrilling

was kinda surprised with how much im missing mr. miyagi. first because, like everyone is so unhinged jesus christo, it just really throws into relief how much his character grounded the narrative of the movies. but also hes just a really great character

and on that note it rly Gets Me that the show itself aknowledges that and plays that into daniels angst and all the little ways they sorta weave myiagisms into the whole show........ im not getting emotional over this dumb karate dads show OK

related - i really miss hearing ‘daniel-san’ 🥺🥺

ACE DEGENERATE oh god oh no

they really went down the down and out johnny lawrence route huh. like i was always kinda bummed we see kreese choking him and then we never see him again in the movies, and while i love dumpster fire problematic trash himbo ck johnny, its like......................... actually really sad that his life turned out like this fjngn

everytime i hear ‘babes’ and ‘pussy’ i die a little inside. i know thats the point but i am a v cringe easy person, have mercy (ehe)

loved the way they are constantly drawing parallels between johnny and mr. myiagi of all people. hes the handy man of his building that has a bullied kid asking for help and eventually steps up to teach them karate, beats up a bunch of bullies for him, creates a friendship with said kid, estranged from family, drinks his sorrows away, surprisingly one of the least quick to anger characters (which says more about everyone else really but.... Well.), no schemes or ulterior motives hes just tryna vibe here.... oh and ofc magically heals miguel of is asthma apparently. the true disciple.. meanwhile daniel is his usual messy petty self even tho he wants to be mr myiagi so bad

also interesting about that is how miguels character is a parallel of both johnny and daniel at the same time

overall the parallels in ck are done really well, drawing comparisons and also subverting them constantly. theyre well thought out

THE PARALELOGRAMS

fr tho, the angle being explicitly the cycle of trauma and its effects and how trumatized adults in turn traumatize kids, maliciously or not, is so interesting

but! on the flip side of that, it feels like the writers are getting in their own way @ letting the characters grow. especially this last season. theres only so many times you can do "johnny and daniel are getting along but 5mins later they are (literally) fighting over some dumbass random issue" or "johnny puts in 20% of effort with robby and then gives up" before it gets on your nerves yknow?

i see daniel no longer talks like macchio ingested 15 shots of espresso before every take and idk how to feel about that tbh

interesting tension in daniel, as in, in tkk mr miyagi was there and daniel was frankly, kind of a lil shit, this messy petty spitfire hot tempered sassy kid,(johnny lawrence voice: just... stop being so annoying) but now hes the adult, and he wants to be mr. miyagi... but hes just not, and never will be to his very core and it shakes him and in a way hes trying to find who he is now that he sees himself in a position to be a not! cobra kai figure. i kinda really like that

plus how that relates to his cobra kai trauma. idk if the writers thought abt it Like That, i think so, but in any case, its interesting bc it seems like daniel has told everyone whod listen about johnny lawrence his Pretty Boy Karate Rival and high school and 84 cobra kai... But. no one seems to know what went on in 85 (or 86? idk) which was just so much worse

like ye og cobras were shitheads, but tkk iii is just two hours of daniel being emotionally and physically tortured.

like, the third movie is.............chaotic, to put it nicely, and many people ignore it, but the writers clearly didnt. daniels actions are, in a way, responding so much more to the events of tkk iii than to the first movie ie. johnny himself, AND. daniel doesnt rly seem to have dealt with that trauma? he never told sam? doesnt feel like hes ever told amanda? he doesnt even say terrys name out loud? freaks Out over kreese ? the way he reacts to robbys deceit? his FACE when he walks past the new "fear does not exist in this dojo" paint or kreeses photo? hmMm i sense Pain

his fashion tho........... disappointing. where are the flower shirts daniel huh we had one (1) shirt what a tragedy STOP WEARING SUITS ALL THE TIME . also the band ts/grunge bi are a look for johnny but part of me longs for the preppy lovable 80s bully chic johnny lawrence getups

weird that they never used that last moment of karate kid where johnny kinda... snaps out of his anger and hands daniel the trophy almost in tears. like “youre alright larusso, good match” “thanks a lot” that being their last direct interection seems like itd be perfect fruit for cobra kai but... they just dont. weird.

especially when, the FIRST SCENE they see each other, suposedly in 30+ years, the first thing to come out of daniels mouth is QUOTE "u still got those golden locks huh?" WHO SAYS SHIT LIKE THAT DANIEL FUCKING SAN

also amandas immediate reaction "your pretty boy rival?" like. can we talk about the fact that daniel had to have imparted to his wife the very important information that his high school bully/karate rival was like Really Cute and Fucking Hot Actually

the writers Knew exactly what they were doing and honestly.............. power to them

tkk director voice: and billy was just so cute

also I was thinking that daniel sounded strangely fond in that first scene, and i wonder if he developed a weird affection for johnny on the grounds that of all of his Karate Rivals johnny was actually the only one who didn’t actively tried to literally kill him

i was actually delightedly surprised with how great the chemistry between them is, like from the get go i am Invested. their rl friendship totally bleeds through and its fantastic

. granted, idiots enemies to lovers friends is my Thing so i am biased

johnny lawrence: i am down in the dumps, i fucked up my whole life and my sons probably, largely in light of the trauma that the father figure sensei and the philosophy of my karate inflicted on me and all my friends. u know what i should do, as a traumatized, unreliable mess of an adult? teach that same philosophy to some other kids! what could go wrong!

but really i enjoy the setup of it. i kinda like that i watched it late because, season 1 was johnny setting himself up for failure in a way and it was exciting to watch it all go to shit sjfn

Like. his heart might be in the right place, but theres just.... not a way to teach something like ‘strike hard, no mercy’ and not have it fuck up a kid

case and point: aisha, miguel and hawk become annoying as all hell over that bullshit in the end of s1, even before shit gets truly fucked up

billys subtle panicked eyes when he sees hawk and miguel fighting dirty in the all valley was SO GOOD especially in parallel with the panic that is so visible in his face in the movie when kreese tells bobby to injure daniel and in the sweep the leg scene

seen people question wether kreese should have returned and i absolutely think he needed to. johnny needed to realize that cobra kais fundamentals are flawed, at the root, beyond kreese himself being a toxic piece of shit

also who are we kidding? we are here to see the tkk characters play on new playgrounds!

i get what they're doing abt kreeses backstory, ( also. cobra kai. pq eles caem nas cobras djjs sorry) but did it need to take up that much time? feels like they couldve done it in half the run time and developed some other stories better

martin kove has such an evil eye. i love it

love that we get a good follow up to kreese breaks johnnys trophy and tries to CHOKE HIM in the parking lot, which happened in the movie and then....................... was never mentioned again

“the gang is all back together again” aaaa u piece of SHIT

also. terry silver is definetely appearing ha ha ha PAIN i cant wait

seen ppl say kreese was too much of a cartoon villain like..........................oh......... sweetie........... u dont even Know

interested how johnny will fit into that bc kreese was simping rly hard for johnny here. like i did not expect him to be so adamant to have him with cobra kai ... under his control, sure, but he really wants johnny by his side despite already having control of the dojo and how will terry silver self appointed jon kreeses forever simp going to feel abt that?

like bitchs dropping by every episode like ‘joooooohnny ..... come bacc to me joooonny......... this ur last warning! for real this time johnny! i wont say it again! watch me ! im leaving johnny! im rly leaving ! im dragging a chair” and johnny is just like. dont let the door hit ya bitch it was so funny pls

and on that subject oof, johnny! doesnt! Know! he doesnt get that side of daniels cobra kai trauma. and i kind of.............. cannot wait for ck 2021 johnny lawrence to meet terry silver like. what a shit show i need a front row seat and popcorn (imagine terry tries some greasy charm and johnny just roundhouse kicks him in the teeth bc he just doest Not Have the Patience for This. glorious)

feels like we, as a society, should acknowledge that cobra kai will never die................ bc their sense of design is just chefs kiss. their name is COBRA KAI. they have sexie sleeveless black gis. theyve sneks. colorful leather jackets with embroided naja insignia, the get ppl thru the aesthetics. evil geniuses

the flashback cuts : masterpiece behavior

the other takes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the differente angles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of the FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE CLOSE UP ON JOHNNYS FACE AT THE KICK

that scene of daniel and johnny vibing to 80s music in the car. just. oh my god. the fan wish fullfilment. no thoughts head empty.

the new characters! theyre .... good. but. idk. i really like miguel (save for the annoying phase mid s1 - end s2) and amanda, who is a damn riot and has some functioning braincells, but everyone else is

like dont get me wrong, i dont hate anyone,its not a jane and rafael from jtv situation, and i am interested and invested in their arcs, but i wouldnt say i like Like them, as in, personality wise

like, sams grappling with ptsd was rly gutting and i enjoyed that plus her slight rage issues,

which nicely parallel torys rage issues. torys background is all over the place tho so im pretty on the fence abt her so far

robby deserves better in every way, and i like how smart and cunning and surprisingly sweet he is

hawk............... is there i guess,

demetri is annoying in the best way possible,

carmen is sweet but. i just feel like her character is blunted to make the johnny relationship easier. like when shes furious with him after miguels injury but then forgives him like an episode later? and then convinces him to fight for the tournament bc she had a karate epiphany off screen even tho she was always against it? meh. feels like with the plot thiccening she was swallowed and now shes like a crutch for johnny mora than anything, which is disappointing.

aisha was cool and im kinda mad she wasnt in s3, especially bc a storyline with her tory and sam was like RIGHT THERE , but also... cant say i was super super fond of her... doesnt feel like we ever spent enough time on her

moon the bi icon,

overall its a good cast but the main draw for me remains the og cast

the tory/sam miguel/robby Thing. enjoy how theyre Narrative Foils and i like how their stories were so dramatically entangled but oh god give me a break with the teenage love square for the love of god. if u gonna put us through that at least have the decency to not make it so straight

and honestly some sam/tory miguel/robby romantic tension would even make more sense. just saying!

also im not sure how i feel abt the cobra kai: red miyagi do: blue theyre going with since some of daniels most iconic looks in tkk are also red. like it was a color they (johnny and him) sorta shared. i get it, opposite but complementary but idk... a little too fire nation and water tribe for me .

and like the cobra kai kids are so funny abt it bc their outifts grow progressively more ridiculously coordinated. its like do they group chat every morning before leaving their houses?

robby still sticks out like that tho. he went thru an athleisure/daniel san tsleeves phase and now hes back in the bandts grunge, but his color scheme doesnt fully blend with the other cobra kais. hmmmm.

LOVED LOVED LOVED both the okinawa episode and the cobra kais easy rider episode just such good good heart aching fun

bobby is an icon. he was in tkk and he is now ck hope appears more and more

tommy is like the most iconic background character. all his lines, freaking gold then and now. sigh :(

the framing in the okinawa trip was so good everything was so good

i stand by the fact that kumiko was the love interest daniel had the most chemistry with and shes is overall such a joy to watch, loved to see her again, idola, fashion icon

also tkk ii is good u guys are just mean

also really enjoyed chozens role in the episode, his evolution; i love that they introduced the pressure points (ty lee the blueprint) and! the honk + karate! cousins! absolutely iconic

when kumiko reads mr miyagis letters........ oh my god, my eyes FILLED with tears, it was so heart wrenching :(( tamlyns delivery was so emotional and lovely and its so obvious everyone involved in ck has so much love and respect for pat morita and mr miyagi as character, and i adore that it exists like this electric current through the show

when we were watching i told my sister i thought that ali would be miguels big shot surgeon and ngl i am so disappointed that didnt happen. hire me cobra kai writers

also the johnny ali daniel amanda chemistry? off the charts

AND the sassy retconning of daniel and alis breakup! LMAO ‘I HOPE U DIDNT TELL MR MIYAGI IT WAS MY FAULT’ HFDJJGNKFKSD

i am preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty sure back injuries dont work like that but oke

daniel and johnny are so good together whenever, like they never actually help the kids or get shit done and end up fighting anyway but its just so much fun when theyre hanging

JOHNNY LAWRENCE AND DANIEL LARUSSO FIGHTING TOGETHER

daniels “plan” on how to get robby to juvie was so stupid. literally were u TRYING to make him hate you. dumbass

parents at those hearing rly brave for ppl that did not do ANYTHING as their kids got involved in a karate gang war until now

“bullshit i heard u were the real bully!” i mightve screeched

this s3 ending was SO DRAMATIC omg

everyone is such a MESS go to THERAPY u unhinged motherfckers

also im sorry but uh. a richass neighborhood in california doesnt have some type of neighborhood watch? the larussos rly dont have any security at all? neighbors wont hear the sound of a damn karate brawl happening next door??? also wasnt tory all like ooo i cant go to juvie, my mom yada yada yet shes always running around town getting into fights even at the rich girls house she was kicked out of school for fighting?? ? ?? ?? ? ? ? ?? ? ? girl??

stop destroying the larussos house, its so pretty :((((

sam finding her center looking at mr miyagis picture... uwu maybe

robby yelling ‘U ARE WEAAK’@ johnny \as he is easily blocking him is like.... so funny and so sad to me. sweetheart.

also i know it was meant as ‘oh johnny pushes him and HURTS HIM’ but it just looks like robby runs himself into the lockers and IM SO SORRY I FEEL SO BAD BUT IT WAS SO FUNNY

i like that he and tory are the cobra kai kids now. we need ppl we care abt there to not revert to a good vs evil schtick, and this is the most engaging it could be... tho it hurts that these kids cant catch a break

ah yes "lets bet some real shit on the result of this teen karate tournament bc that is always a great idea" is BACK

so daniel saves johnny from kreese..... maybe johnny will save him from terry 🧐

and dojos unite ohohoho. lets SEE how that’ll work out

miguels face of Despair when the ck defectors and the md kids are bickering like 'this is never gonna work' : gold

also. Johnny Lawrence is gonna learn some myiagi-do karate AHAAHSJAKDFH

ive been waiting for this moment all my lifeeee oh lawrd

final thoughts! there are def things i hope the writers will improve on the next season, but i am very excited for it either way AND i feel like it has made me enjoy the movies even more and that is a win for a reboot/sequel to me!!

#m.#did i procrastinate watching this since it came out and only watched it now bc my sister nagged me to when i said we should #watch karate kid over the holidays?#and then binged the whole thing in two days??#mayhaps and what abt it #cobra kai #the karate kid #its funn #y bc like karate kid is a Childhood movie but i wouldnt say #it was like particularly special for me?#like i wasnt in a fandom or anything #but now.#i might be invested #maybe #talvez

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itsuki-minamy · 4 years ago

Text

“K SIDE: PURPLE 08”

Translation: Naru-kun Raws: Ridia

K - Side: Purple (Chapter List)

Looking at the customer who entered, Taka-san widened his eyes.

Isshin Hase, a man who settled in "Niibangai" about half a year ago. He was a big man with muscular bones, and if he had had the aptitude, he could have been hired by this "Massive Boys", but for now, he "established himself as a goalkeeper for all of Niibangai".

Hase looked confused while he was at the store entrance. It is not surprising. "Massive Boys" is a so-called "tourist bar" that anyone can walk into, but there are chaotic fluorescent neon signs, bondage fashion Greek sculptures, and bright posters of gay porn stars all over the store. At first glance, customers are often confused and some leave the store immediately.

"Sensei, come here."

When Taka-san beckoned, Hase looked relieved and walked over to the counter. When he put his giant body on a stool, he looked like one of the figures in the store.

Taka-san laughs a bit as he hands him a hand towel.

"Welcome. It's rare for Sensei to come to us."

"Um, well, that's right. I'm not good at these kinds of places."

Taka-san is in awe of the wording. Since Hase was in a hurry, he wondered why he had come if he wasn't good at it, or what if he said it in front of them.

"Oh, no, no! It's not about you, there's just no green tea in this place to drink. Sorry."

Taka-san involuntarily bursts out laughing. It seems true that he wasn't good at socializing, although he didn't have to panic.

"Well, that's correct. Sure, you can't drink?"

"Um, I can't."

"Ah, I'm not serious. I apologize, we have many other non-alcoholic drinks."

He glanced sideways and pointed at Chief Satoshi. He saw this person, so the instructions mean that others are welcome. Satoshi looked ahead and yelled, he came out of the counter to stop an employee who is getting involved with a customer.

Taka-san turns to Hase and says with a soft smile.

"So what are you going to do, Sensei?"

"That's right. I'll order a sake that I can drink."

"Yes."

Taka-san took the shaker. There was no doubt that Hase asked for that for his sake. There are days when he still wants to drink alcohol that he cannot drink. He has been doing this kind of business for a long time, so he knows it.

He adds syrup, sugar and lemon to some cocoa liquor and shake it. Transferring it to a glass, he poured in sparkling water and was slightly driven, Taka-san presented the glass in front of Hase.

"Yes, please. Cacao Fiz. It has less alcohol, so feel free to drink."

"Oh, thanks."

He raised the glass with a nervous hand, and took a sip. Hase's eyes widened.

"Uh, it tastes good."

"Thank you."

Taka-san smiled. Hase tipped his glass again and drank several times.

He wondered what happened.

For half a year after the gangster attacked, Hase has solved many problems in "Niibangai". There are many people, including Taka-san, who have been helped and protected by him. Still, his good-natured personality who never snorts his achievements, was welcomed favorably by the "Niibangai" neighbors.

Still, Taka-san doesn't know Hase's details. Also Mi-chan and Seiya. He is forbidden to snoop unnecessarily, which was implicitly a rule of thumb in "Niibangai", which has many wounds on its inhabitants.

So Taka-san didn't force him to answer, he just shook off the little talk.

"How about these days? What about Mishakuji-chan?"

Hase laughs on one cheek. A sip of cocoa and then a sip of words.

"His sword is..."

"Yes?"

"I was right. That boy has a good sword."

For a moment, Taka-san didn't understand what Hase was saying.

Hase's ability is brute force. He has taken down several thugs in the blink of an eye. He was not sure about the sword, but he could understand through common sense that he had been studying for many years and that his technique cannot be surpassed by one half.

That is to say…

"Why are you asking that all of a sudden?"

"I heard you promised Sayuri to try to avoid injury. Until now, you've been hitting with a move that doesn't care, but it seems like you've decided to change that."

"……"

"The word genius is lukewarm. Yukari is real, so is his ability."

Speaking to himself, Hase set the empty glass on the counter.

"Give me a refill."

"Yes."

While preparing a new cocktail, Taka-san implicitly observed Hase's expression.

Hase seemed to be laughing. Eyes closed and thoughtful, his lips formed a slight smile. But Taka-san didn't know what he thought was true. What do people feel when they are outmatched by humans for just half a year after many years of research? Only the person knows.

"He's a great kid. That's it."

Taka-san is even more cheerful as he pours a new cocktail into the glass.

"Yeah, he really does cause that feeling, right? Mishakuji-chan is amazing. He's been able to do anything for a long time, he's smart, he has a good face. It's weird that he's in a place like this."

Hase smiles bitterly as he looked at the glass that Taka-san gave him.

"A place like this, is a greeting. I wonder if this is where I live."

"Yes. "Niibangai" is certainly our place. But after all, it is a place like this."

Taka-san turned his gaze towards the shop, saying that selfishly. The burly men in XL evening gowns and prima donna suits hold their glasses cross-shouldered and the singing voice is out of tune.

"Drop something, run away from something. This is a mound of snow where these people gather. The more time we spend here, people like me, Mi-chan, Seiya, Sayuri, we have no place to stay other than here."

Hase's glass was empty. Taka-san unconsciously poured half sake.

"But Mishakuji-chan is different. Since he is a big boy, it is possible that he can fly to a wide world that we cannot imagine. I think he is a boy, who unlike us who cannot escape, can open up by himself One Way."

Taka-san says that, narrowing his eyes.

Mishakuji Yukari was certainly such an existence for the people of "Niibangai". Hope and possibility. Being able to fly to places where they can never go. That's why everyone who likes Yukari feels that he is not suitable for this place.

"Escape."

Suddenly, Hase's face was dyed bright red and the giant swayed. Taka-san rushes to replace the glass.

"My God, I wonder if I drank too much. Water, water."

"Hm..."

Hase looks at the water that Taka-san offered him. Hase flutters with some drunken eye flashes.

"I'm the same. I wonder if it was fate that brought me here."

"……"

Do not poke around uselessly. That is the "Niibangai" rule. They all have the same scars that they don't want to be explored.

However, you cannot live with your own pain forever. There are times when you still want to spit out the scars you don't want to find. In such a case, listen to the story silently. That's not "Niibangai's" rule, it was Taka-san's rule.

"Why did you come here, Sensei?"

When Taka-san poured the water, Hase leaned his elbows on the counter, closed his eyes, and began to speak slowly.

"I betrayed my friend and ran away from him."

++++++++++

The Miwa Meishinryu Dojo was located near Hase's birthplace.

He doesn't remember why he got a sword. He was not good at socializing due to his natural nature, and he believed that swinging a stick was easier than playing with friends at school. There were few outsiders who bothered to learn old-fashioned swordplay, and it was even rarer when they were younger, and there was only one disciple his own age.

That was Miwa Ichigen's school.

Miwa was the grandson of the owner of the dojo, a boy who was sought out to take over the Miwa Meishin style. For that reason, it seems that he was strictly taught not only the sword, but also all martial arts and etiquette. From the boy Hase's perspective, Miwa seemed to have little time to break free.

However, he didn't make sense of Miwa's character. He always had a spring breeze atmosphere that made his feel relaxed just by being next to him. It wasn't a bother for Hase, who wasn't good at socializing, to be around Miwa. Not only was he a friend of the sword of the same age, but Hase and Miwa believed that they fit together in terms of personality.

However, even Hase often couldn't understand Miwa.

For example, while he was practicing in the presence of a sword, there was a moment when he suddenly lost his head. Even if it's practice, if the hit is bad, it will hurt. Since he knew, he should have to put stress on his whole body, but Miwa just looked somewhere far away, and sometimes his heart wasn't even there.

And Hase couldn't attack Miwa. He should be full of spaces, but there was no possibility of attacking anywhere. He was caught up in the premonition that a ridiculous counterattack would ensue the moment he hit him, and he had no choice but to turn Miwa around. Meanwhile, both of them were severely scolded by the owner of the dojo.

"Hey. What the hell was that?"

After a day of practice, Hase scold Miwa.

Half intended to complain. Both of them were ordered to clean the entire dojo as punishment for clumsy practice. He couldn't help but wonder why he wasn't fed up with Miwa, but he couldn't think of beating Miwa if he acted immature in front of him.

As he squeezed the cloth he had just lifted from the bucket, Miwa asked mysteriously.

"What's that?"

"That's it. It's like you go somewhere from time to time, whatever you're practicing. It's hard to do and I can't get over you."

"Ah..."

Miwa was a bit shy.

"That's the word that comes to mind."

"Word?"

"Yeah. Words that usually come to mind that aren't cohesive probably come together at that moment, and then my head goes that way."

He has turned his lips into a sword. He knew from his long relationship that Miwa wasn't teasing him.

"I do not know why."

"Yes. I really don't get it."

"I can't understand what you don't understand."

Having said that, Hase smiled bitterly. The one who laughed was the loser. He placed both hands on the mop placed on the floor and cleaned as he took a step. Hase lecture Miwa that he was a little late.

"If those words come together, let me know."

Miwa also laughed a bit and replied.

"Yes. I'll tell you when the time comes."

In the future, Miwa will be the owner of the Miwa Meishin-style dojo. Become a friend of Miwa, he will have the level of a teacher, sometimes they would exchange swords, teach the sword technique to the neighborhood children and hear those "words" one day. Somehow, Hase envisioned that future.

So when he heard that Miwa was leaving the house, he wasn't surprised at all.

Hase and Ichigen Miwa's sword arms were almost the same, but their heads were different.

When he heard that Miwa would be enrolled in the highest school in the country, he thought reflexively, "This guy will do long before breakfast."

But he really didn't understand. Why wasn't he the successor to the dojo? What happened to the promise to hear the "words"? Does he throw the sword? Out of anger, Hase was asking that question in quick succession.

Miwa was a bit embarrassed, as he bent his neck.

"No. I'm sure I'll be waving my sword wherever I am."

Then, with a look soft like a spring breeze, he added:

"The 'words' are not organized yet. Once they are organized, I'll show them to you first."

"Really?"

Hase had no choice but to say so. There were no other words.

The difference between him and Miwa was clearly shown.

First of all, he was a different person than him, who was not good at socializing because he was careless and had no choice but to cling to this land while he brandished his sword. Miwa, she was smart and had many brilliant talents. He was a person who could advance to a larger world for a better future. It was just that Hase was so crazy that he thought he must be around him all the time.

"Do not feel alone."

The words that came out of his mouth surprised him. He should be pleased with the prosperity of his friend, but the first thing that comes up is his feeling. Masochistically, he thought that place would be different without him.

Still, Miwa smiled and replied.

"Me too. I will be a teacher who teaches from the heart."

Then, Miwa flew all over the world.

Shortly after Miwa disappeared, Hase became the teacher of the Miwa Meishin school.

It seems that the owner of the dojo still wanted Miwa to take over the dojo. The instructor would only be Miwa, and he claimed that he was in the middle of a "long absence". That was not important to Hase. He was not interested in the position or title as long as he could live wielding his sword, he thought it was the most suitable life for him.

Meanwhile, almost 10 years have passed.

One day, Miwa came by chance.

After graduating from high school, he heard that he got a job in an overseas securities company and that he is doing a great job. It would be a lie not to say that his friend was living a completely different life from his, and that he didn't feel alone, but when he thought "that's what it is", it was a story he could swallow. He thought that he had found something that could be the basis for him, just like he was living with a sword.

The face of his friend that he saw after a long time seemed to be dead.

Hase looked at his face seriously, and Miwa smiled like a spring breeze, as in the past.

"I'm sick. I left the company."

If asked, it seems that dark circles floated under his eyes and his body was thin. Hase could only imagine what a foreign securities company would look like, but it was probably a hostile environment that could damage the trained body with a sword. Hase ran into a friend, who fell ill and eventually returned from an unknown land.

"Miwa. Stay here forever. This is your home."

With a smile on his face, he shook his head gently.

"No. This is your dojo. I decided to retreat into the distance."

Hase opened his eyes. He didn't know what Miwa was thinking.

He said that he will soon go somewhere even though he had returned. Miwa took Hase's hand and said, wondering if such doubts had appeared on his face.

"It is said that good air is better for me. I can go calmly because you are in charge of this dojo."

"……"

"I lost the Miwa Meishin style."

When he told him that, Hase couldn't do anything else.

That night. Hase saw Miwa in the Kendo room.

Miwa dressed in a sash and calmly waved a wooden sword. It was probably because of the feeling that he was sick and did such a thing. It is a dojo where he spent his childhood and youth. Miwa who returned after a long time, thought it was inevitable that he would want to breathe the air of the dojo even if he made his sick.

"I understand your feelings, but don't overdo it."

He tried to yell that when he saw it.

Miwa, waved his sword as if dancing. As if running water flowed incessantly, his feet and the sword of judgment as well, they never stayed in one place.

Silently, gracefully, without the gap of habit, Miwa manipulated the wooden sword lightly.

It was hard to believe that this sick man was away from the sword for many years.

Indescribable discomfort hit Hase's chest. When he realized it, he was entering the kendo room. Hase didn't stop even if he looked back in surprise when he noticed that.

Miwa unexpectedly pointed at his throat.

"Miwa, fix things with me."

Hase, unknowingly holding a wooden sword that he hung on the wall in one hand, raised it unconsciously.

His bloodied eyes are wide open, his shoulders are tight, and his lips are tight. When he saw Hase, he had a sad expression on his face.

"Oh, I…"

"Don't say anything. I ask you to fix things with me."

Then Hase held his sword to his eyes.

Miwa was silent for a while. He had his face down, so Hase didn't know what kind of expression he had. With a wooden sword in his hands, he said in a hazy voice.

"I will not reduce the number of hits."

"Try this. I will never forgive you."

Miwa looked directly at Hase and held his sword in the top row.

That only made the skin all over his body crawl.

He didn't want to admit it. He couldn't forgive him. However, as a grave fact, he stood in front of Hase.

Miwa was stronger than him. Much stronger.

He couldn't admit it.

Hase was surprised that such pride lurked in him. Hase saw himself as a disinterested and cheerful person just by wielding his sword.

But that meant that if he turned it over, he only had one sword. He thought that he wouldn't lose, even if it was Miwa. No matter how beautiful he was, no matter how glamorous he was in the world, only the sword. He only believed in this way of life, yet somewhere in his being, he believed that he was inferior to Miwa.

He was crushed.

The moment he saw the sword dance, he knew that he was in a situation where he couldn't even compete with Miwa. He was sick. He believed that he had been working for a company for a long time.

Miwa was much more skilled than him, who has directly thrust the sword.

He couldn't forgive him.

Miwa, no. He cannot forgive himself. The chief was not skilled enough to trick him into pretending not to see him. All feelings and consideration turned to dust at that moment. Isshin Hase had to challenge Ichigen Miwa.

Miwa with the sword in the top row had a transparent expression. The expression was familiar. It's the expression he used to have when he practiced, when his heart was going somewhere.

The facial expression when the "words" arise

At that moment, he couldn't hit him. He had a feeling that he was going to receive a terrible counterattack and could only turn around.

But now…

If he didn't hit him now, he will regret it for the rest of his life.

"Oooooooooooooh!"

Driven by thoughts of him, Hase kicked the dojo floor. A reverse kasaya that appears to be licked from the bottom left. He fired the strongest blow of his life.

And…

++++++++++

"So what happened?"

Taka-san asked in a low voice, looking at Hase, who has fallen onto the counter.

"Fu…"

With his forehead pressed against the counter, Hase shook his shoulders and laughed.

"Of course I lost. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't even touch it with the sword."

"……"

"The next morning, Miwa left. He left a letter."

There was a brief goodbye and a "word" in which the words were finally joined. No words of apology were written. Hase was saved by that.

"The next morning I left the dojo. I should have decided once that it was my place to live. I couldn't bear to be there anymore."

If he entered the dojo and swung his sword, he would remember that night. When he realized that, his life was worth nothing.

"I ran away. I left the dojo that night. For the very fact that I couldn't get over Miwa. I left the dojo that Miwa had entrusted to me and the disciples who trusted me, I fled, kept running, and then I came here."

Hase laughed deep in his throat, lifting his flushed face and squeezing it.

"I tried to assume that Miwa was special. He was a monster given two or three times by the sky. Then Yukari appeared."

With a laugh, Hase covered his eyes with his big palm.

"When I saw his movement today, I remembered Miwa that night. I moved like I danced and didn't stop. It's funny, right? After running away from a monster, I ended up meeting another monster. Kukuku…"

Hase kept laughing deep in his throat. Maybe he wasn't laughing. Thinking like this, Taka-san gently walked away.

"In the end, I can't. I couldn't beat him or forgive myself for losing. I saw Yukari today and I remembered him. I'm a useless person."

Taka-san thinks that there are two types of people who despise themselves.

Someone who wants you to deny it, and some who really believe it.

Hase now is probably the last. There was an opponent who lived with a sword and still couldn't beat him. He doesn't think he can understand all the regrets, despair and helplessness at that time. Suffering can only be understood by the person who tasted it.

However, there was still a problem with Hase.

"Miwa, right? I have never met him, but I am grateful to that person."

When Taka-san said, Hase looked up mysteriously.

"Because without that person, I could have been dead."

Hase looks at Taka-san with drunken eyes. Taka smiled, poured water into the glass, and presented it to Hase.

"Isn't that true? If you had overcome that feeling before that person, you wouldn't be here right now. Then I could have been stabbed by that yakuza and would die."

"……"

"It's not just me. It's the same for Mishakuji-chan. He could have been seriously injured protecting me, and that boy could have died if you hadn't intervened. Right?"

Hase shook his head, saying that he couldn't turn his head properly. Taka-san sighed and looked directly at Hase.

"You may have lost. You may have escaped, thrown away, betrayed and come here. But there are people who have been saved."

"……"

"So don't say you're worthless, much less say that in front of Mishakuji-chan, because he respects you."

"Does he respect me?"

Hase repeated it, like the words he heard for the first time. As he looked down at the glass.

"But eventually he will be stronger than me."

"But now you are still that child's teacher."

Hase was listening to the words and sinking into the depths of the water in the glass.

"So, be proud and be like a teacher. Not for you, but for Mishakuji-chan. One day when that child leaves the nest, you will be able to proudly say, 'Isshin Hase taught him the sword.'"

Hase was silent for a while.

Taka-san didn't say anything else. He thought it was Hase's problem. After all, Hase himself is the only one who can come out of despair and suffering.

"So is."

Finally, Hase muttered and crept into his chest.

What he took out of it was a messy piece of paper. It was slightly dirty and covered with hand stains, and the written characters were not clear. However, Hase squinted to see the precious written treasure and murmured.

"I may have come here for that."

#K #k project #k fan clan #mishakuji yukari #k side purple

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runningracingdancingchasing · 4 years ago

Note

“is this okay?” (HEAR ME OUT. one of their proper make-outs after they start dating, and maybe the first time he kinda leans over her/lies her back?)

The world was a wonderful place. Rapunzel had always known this. Every day, looking out her tower window, she would behold wonders she wanted to be a part of. Every year, as she charted stars and followed seasons and learned about weather patterns, she knew there was a deeper wonder to the Earth than she was allowed to participate in. Even as she sang for a golden flower, and a pull from deep inside her made it work better than for anyone else who sang for it, she knew there was magic in the world, magic in her, and it was wonderful.

And ever since Rai and Dojo had found her, those wonders had been opening up to her. The natural ones, yes, but also the wonders of interpersonal relationships. Things she hadn’t even known existed, let alone understood her want for them. Friendship and found family and romance and attraction.

Rai had been opening her eyes to so many things.

Her head swam as he tugged on her lower lip with his teeth, pulling a blush to her cheeks and tugging at something much deeper inside her than just her lip. She loved it. She’d follow his lips and teeth wherever he wanted her to go.

She did not expect him to lay her back, though, and her eyes opened wide when she felt her back hit the soft grass of the field. There was the briefest moments of internal panic, and when she saw him leaning over her, she didn’t see him at first. Just... someone. She’d felt cornered, trapped, and words like assault and rape flashed through her mind. She hadn’t understood the lance of fear.

It was nighttime, and they could see the Temple from where they were, but they were out of everyone’s hair and, more importantly, hiding somewhere they were unlikely to be seen like this. They’d started making out as the colors of a gorgeous sunset flooded the evening sky, that fantastical, glowing display flooding her with a warmth that she had always associated with amazing light displays and was now starting to associate with Rai as well.

Now, she looked up at him, silhouetted against the star-strewn sky, and for a moment she felt... ashamed. Ashamed for having felt any fear at all when it was Rai she was with. Rai, who she trusted with every aspect of her life.

He must have read her expression, because he backed off a little, enough to give her some space and some air. A soft current caressed her cheek and ruffled her bangs, and she knew it was him doing it. “Hey, is this okay? Are you okay?” he asked gently. She knew that hurting her was the very last thing he wanted to do.

The question alone flooded her with affection. She’d been at the Temple for over a year, and she still wasn’t completely used to people checking on her, making sure she was okay. The way she’d grown up, that just... never happened. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes a moment, then opened them on the exhale. “Yes,” she assured him with a smile. “This is okay. I had a moment of confusion there, but I trust you completely.”

Damn, but the smile he gave her after that was one of her favorite things ever. It was so bright that it filled her up with warmth and light, the kind of smile she imagined when she closed her eyes at night. “Okay, but you tell me to stop if it gets not okay, yeah?” he pressed gently, slowly moving in again.

“Yeah,” she agreed, and caressed his cheek and ran her thumb across the nearly-invisible freckles on his nose. The ones he’d deny all day, but that she found so attractive.

She needn’t say more as his lips found hers once more.

#Drabble #Raipunzel #xiaolindude #tw assault mention #tw rape mention #meme

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waddlenotwaddles · 4 years ago

Text

Beginnings

Or: the story of one agent’s unconventional recruitment to the PSA.

“Fishsticks,” Wei muttered, prodding at the stubborn image scan on her laptop that simply refused to un-pixelate. “Come on, you old thing. Why won’t you load?”

She clicked a few keys decisively and pressed ‘Enter’. The image juddered, somehow pixelated even more, and then the entire webpage crashed, showing only a grey, sad-looking error icon on-screen with a blue ? in its centre. Wei clutched at her hair and resisted the urge to shriek, but it was a near thing.

(read the rest on ao3, or:)

It was no use. If she wanted any chance of finishing her work before midnight tonight, she would have to return to her tiny desk at the Club Penguin Times offices, where the internet was reliable but which was also busy and crowded and clamouring with penguins to the point that her flippers started to shake just at the thought of it.

Wei closed her eyes and swore under her breath. This is impossible. I can’t get into a panic every time I enter my own place of work.

Her laptop beeped feebly at her, announcing the imminent decline of both her battery percentage and continued will to live. Wei cursed again and fumbled her laptop into her arms, pulling the charging cable from her bag and casting around frantically for an outlet. The Book Room, it seemed, was allergic not only to reliable internet but also to basic technology as a whole; the only outlet in sight was already fully occupied by both an ancient, sputtering lamp and a small black box with a blinking red light in one corner. With a muttered “sorry”, Wei unplugged the dying lamp and replaced it with her laptop’s charging cable. At the very least, waiting for her laptop to charge up would give her time to mentally brace herself before she had to return to the office.

Wei sat on the floor with a bump and a sigh, and something knocked against her flipper. She twisted around, and saw she had narrowly avoided sitting on that little black box with the blinking red light which still occupied the second plug of the electrical outlet. Even with her stomach growling with hunger (she’d missed lunch) and her overtaxed brain making her thoughts lag more than usual, it should’ve occurred to her sooner that this black box was, in fact, a router. An internet router, to be precise.

Wei’s eyes widened. She reached out for the router, but then withdrew. She was in the Book Room above the very public Coffee Shop, not in her own igloo, for crying out loud. She couldn’t just — just poke around other folks’ electronics without asking permission first! Even if she was, for the moment, completely alone and unobserved in the room… and even if said electronic was sitting right there, blinking tantalizingly up at her as though pleading to be fixed…

Wei’s flipper twitched again in the direction of the router. All she wanted to do was fix the Book Room’s terrible internet. Surely there would be no harm in that.

Wei didn’t consider her technological knowledge to be that remarkable, all things considered. Certainly not even close to the realm of penguins like Gary the Gadget Guy, whose inventions held an undercurrent of genius that she could never possibly hope to understand. That being said, Wei had picked up one or two tricks over the years, and these had eventually allowed her to develop her own Methods for doing things. Said Methods weren’t illegal, exactly, but they could occasionally be a little… flexible. One of these Methods included the program she began to boot up on her laptop, even as she connected her laptop to the router with a second cable from her bag. She had written this program herself several years back, to improve the internet at the workplace of a friend whose boss had refused to hire a technician to fix their network connectivity issues, and it only required a few more tweaks in code before it began scanning through the Book Room’s router as easily as picking o’berries. It took a few minutes longer to gain access to the router’s configuration, which Wei accomplished with a few guilty glances over her shoulder toward the still-closed door of the Book Room.

“Sorry,” she muttered again to no one in particular. “I promise I just want to make the network run faster. Even the Dojo has better internet than this.”

Ding. The program wrapped up its final processes and obediently closed itself with a self-satisfied air. In her other window, Wei could see the previously crashed webpage reloading, now much, much faster than before. She allowed herself a little fist-pump of victory.

Which was promptly cut short when her entire screen froze, went grey, and proceeded to throw up several glaring error windows all over the display.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” she yelped, tapping desperately at the keys. “What’s wrong with you now?”

The screen flickered. She could practically hear the fans on her poor laptop strain with the effort of preventing it from overheating. This is a straightforward process, she thought with dismay as her laptop’s memory nearly overflowed despite her frantic efforts. Or at least it should be!

Then as suddenly as it had begun, the blowup stopped. No further error windows appeared, and her screen only lagged slightly when she tentatively tested a few keys. The laptop fans died down to their usual quiet hum.

Only… something was different. When she checked, her laptop memory was still fuller than it should’ve been, and it didn’t take long for her to discover the reason why: a program that had definitely not been present before was now running itself innocuously on her laptop, like a small but stubborn snow-leech sucking away at her RAM.

Wei’s eyes narrowed. She tested the internet, and found that it was running as smoothly as expected.

So this was the reason why the internet connection had been so terrible. Not merely because of a faulty router, but because someone had — had somehow installed a secret program onto said router, where it had stayed for who knew how long, eating away at the extra space and mangling the system into an unusable mess.

But who on the island would do such a thing, and why? A penguin playing a prank? Or someone with more malicious intentions — someone trying to steal information, perhaps, or install malware or even spyware on unknowing penguins’ devices if they tried to use the Coffee Shop’s public internet?

Wei would be the first to admit that she had something of a vivid imagination, but this seemed off in a way that genuinely unsettled her. Her suspicions only grew when she attempted to open this strange program, only to discover the file was heavily encrypted — and it was no amateur’s work, either.

“Alright, then,” she said under her breath, squinting at the numbers on screen. “You want to play this game with me, jerk? Then let’s play.”

She hadn’t done anything like this in ages. Not since she was still in school at least, and eager to push the boundaries of her technological capabilities. But like many of Wei’s more dubious Methods, once learnt, it proved to be a hard one to forget. It took her quite a few attempts to suss out the full thirty-two digit encryption key, even with her computer making full use of its ability to compute, but after what seemed like an interminably long time, the firewall collapsed beneath her assault like a stubborn snow-fort finally being knocked over.

“Got you,” Wei murmured triumphantly. The mysterious program sure looked malware-y enough, even after being decrypted, but she had her own ways of protecting her computer from harm. She moused over to the file and opened it with a decisive click.

She was expecting anything from irritating advertisements to a virus’s game attempt at deleting her files. What she was decidedly not expecting was for a nonsense slew of squares dotted with circles and Xs to suddenly shoot across the screen, followed by her own startled face staring back at her from the monitor. With a furious squawk, she scrambled to cover her webcam with one flipper, but already there was large text blinking into existence above the image of her face, this time in readable letters:

NAME: ANWEI

STATUS: CIVILIAN

ERROR 403 — ACCESS DENIED

LOCK DOWN FOREIGN DEVICE IMMEDIATELY.

What do you mean, lock down — !!!

Wei’s laptop screen suddenly flared with an eye-searingly blue light, so bright that she was forced to shield her eyes. Then, with a fatal-sounding whine, the display sputtered, spasmed, and slowly died out, leaving Wei still sitting on the floor of the Book Room, gaping silently at her unresponsive laptop. - - -

Wei did not sleep well that night.

She was too anxious to eat more than a few bites of dinner, and when ten o’clock rolled around, she found herself turning on all the lights in her igloo and triple-checking the locks on her doors and windows. Her laptop, which she had firmly closed and weighed down with a heavy book for good measure, sat in the centre of her cleared-out desk where she could keep a close eye on it. Then she dragged a chair into the foyer so she could sit and guard the front door, phone in flipper and poised to call… somebody, should anyone try to break in, or something.

In her head, a quiet voice that sounded a bit like her last girlfriend’s asked if maybe she was being a tad overdramatic about what was probably just a prank being played on her.

Sagging back in her chair, Wei shook her head furiously to clear it. Mere pranks couldn’t just — just shut down someone’s laptop remotely, or identify exactly who she was from a single blurry photo taken by her webcam.

She wondered, a little wildly, if she ought to start running through her old Card-jitsu katas just in case.

An hour passed; then another, then another. Despite herself, Wei’s eyelids were growing heavy by around three in the morning, and before she knew it, she was startling awake in her chair when her usual seven a.m. work alarm rang shrilly from her bedroom.

In her lap, her white puffle Ai squeaked indignantly at this disturbance before flouncing off in a huff. Meanwhile, Crown, Wei’s second puffle, had somehow found her way on top of her desk and was now rubbing her furry face against the still-closed laptop.

“Get away from that,” Wei muttered, staggering over to her desk and scooping Crown into her arms. “That might not be safe.”

Crown chirruped and head-butted Wei’s face affectionately. At the other end of her igloo, Ai began to demand for her breakfast with loud, imperious squeaks. Wei sighed, and despite the prospect of confronting her massive unfinished workload thanks to her laptop practically imploding the day before, the tight knot in her chest finally loosened somewhat.

“I guess it does seem silly to think about now, huh,” she said to Crown, ruffling the yellow puffle’s fur. Crown tolerated the cuddle for a few moments longer before she squirmed free and hopped over to join Ai by the food bowls.

In spite of her restless night, the brisk morning air revived Wei somewhat when she finally stepped out her front door. Her spirits only continued to rise when she encountered no unpleasant surprises during her walk to the local branch of the Club Penguin Times offices. Today was Friday, the day after the weekly issue was released, and therefore it was the day when her workplace was at its emptiest. It was, in turn, Wei’s favourite day of the week to work, for it meant she had to endure the barest minimum of social interaction possible.

So it was that Wei became relaxed enough to hum along to the tune on her MP3000 as she pushed open the doors to the front lobby. But she stopped short at the entrance when she noticed several things at once:

The usual receptionist was gone, and standing by the front desk instead were three penguins who, eerily, all turned around at the same time to look at her when she walked in.

One of these penguins was Aunt Arctic herself, even though the Club Penguin Times editing offices were located on the other side of the island, and:

One of the other two penguins, wearing a black suit and dark sunglasses like something straight out of ‘Penguins in Black’, stepped forward, half-opened her jacket to reveal a shiny emblem pinned to her lapel, and said in a calm voice,

“Are you Anwei, the employee from the Archives Department? We need you to come with us.”

- - -

“So let me get this straight,” the suited penguin said slowly.

I’m not, Wei’s brain supplied uselessly. She kept her beak shut.

“You located and broke into a PSA Level 5 High-Security Clearance Server… because you were trying to fix the internet in the Coffee Shop.”

“In the Book Room, actually,” Wei said in a small voice. “And it was an accident.”

The heating was turned on in the small basement room where the three of them currently sat, but Wei’s flippers were ice-cold all the same. She clasped them in her lap to keep them still. She had been placed into a chair in front of a dusty, unused office desk, while the other two penguins sat behind the desk in their own chairs, facing her. The black-suited penguin must have sensed Wei’s nervousness, for she visibly softened before speaking once more.

“Again, you’re not in any trouble, Wei,” the suited penguin said gently. Wei kept her eyes fixed on the nametag pinned to the other penguin’s blazer, which only read ‘S’. “We know you didn’t mean anything malicious by it. All we want to know is how you were able to do it.”

At that, the brown penguin accompanying S snorted and kicked their feet up over the arm of their chair, looking for all the world like they were lounging on a sofa in the Ski Lodge instead of crammed into a wooden chair in a dank little basement of the Club Penguin Times offices.

“And don’t give us any of that nonsense about it being an accident,” they drawled. “The day some penguin can bypass G’s security by accident is the day puffles sprout wings and fly.”

S turned around to give the brown penguin a truly withering glare that was obvious even under those impenetrable sunglasses. “Not helping, Zed,” she hissed.

Zed stuck their tongue out at her, and S scowled back. Watching them now, the two penguins could not be more diametrically opposed; S sitting primly in her neatly buttoned-up suit and tie, and Zed slouched over in a comfortably worn pink hoodie with a blue baseball cap turned sideways on their head. And yet the way in which the two of them interacted, like squabbling siblings who had known each other from the egg, was just so mundane that Wei began to relax, despite herself.

“It really was an accident,” she said. The other two halted their staredown immediately to refocus on her. Wei resisted the urge to shrink back.

“I mean,” she stammered, “I honestly had no idea what I was looking at when I found it. I thought it was a virus, at first.”

Zed sat up and raised an eyebrow. “You thought it was a virus and you still opened it?”

Wei fidgeted. “Well, yeah. I couldn’t just — leave it there, and let some other poor penguin who came after me get their account information stolen, or something.”

S and Zed were silent. Wei tried to elaborate. “I know how to protect my own data from most cyberattacks, so I thought it’d be best if I, er, extracted the corrupt files and dismantled them so they wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Only, when I opened the file, that happened.” Wei gestured at her laptop sitting on the desk, which was open and turned toward the other two penguins but still without power. “And, um. I guess you know what happened next.”

“...right.” S exchanged a look with Zed. “You still haven’t told us how you were able to break the encryption on the server.”

Wei couldn’t help but bristle a little. “I used my own decryption program. But I can’t exactly show you how I did it with my laptop like that, can I?”

“So she does have a backbone,” Zed said, sounding amused. They reached a flipper into their hoodie pocket, pulled out a battered blue phone, and held it up to their ear. “Everything’s good, folks,” they said into the phone unexpectedly. “You can let up now.”

There was no reply that Wei could discern, but Zed tucked the phone back into their hoodie and waved at Wei’s laptop. “Go ahead, you can open it now. I’ve told HQ that they could transfer control back to you.”

No part of that sentence made any sense to Wei, but the startled way in which S jerked and whipped around to face Zed was telling. “Zed,” she whispered. Then, with a significant glance back at Wei, S visibly calmed herself and said stiffly to Zed, “Agent, may I have a word with you outside?”

“Bit late for that now, I think,” Zed said dryly, and Wei tried not to look like she’d been listening too obviously. “C’mon, Sash,” they went on, nudging S/Sash/??? in the shoulder. “You heard what G said. This is too good of an opportunity to waste.” Then to Wei, good-naturedly, “Open up that laptop for us, would you?”

“This is remarkable,” S murmured some time later, with no sign of her previous reservations. She scanned avidly through the programming code that Wei had pulled up on the screen of her now miraculously-restored laptop. “May I…” Her flipper hovered over the keyboard, and Wei nodded, recognizing the fervour of a fellow nerd who desperately wanted to take a closer look at the Cool Thing in front of them — not that she ever would have considered one of her own programs to be “cool”. S immediately took off those dark sunglasses and pulled the laptop closer to her, leaning toward the screen.

“The code is a little disorganized,” Wei said nervously. She jumped when Zed clapped a flipper to her shoulder.

“No use talking to her for a while, I’m afraid,” they said cheerfully as S began to write fervently in a small notebook she pulled from her jacket, eyes still fixed to the laptop screen. “When she gets like this, everything goes in one ear and right out the other.”

“Shut up,” S said without looking up.

Zed smirked, but steered Wei aside. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something else,” they said, leaning against the wall and crossing their flippers. “You probably have a lot of questions.”

“I’ll say.” Wei shook her head vigorously, then burst out, “Who even are you? Why are you questioning me like this? How did you take over my computer and what was that program I opened and what does any of it have to do with me?”

Zed held up their flippers. “Whoa, slow down. One question at a time, please.”

Wei breathed out slowly. “Fine. Who are you?”

Zed grinned. “Well, that’s easy enough. I’m Zed, and the penguin with the stick down her collar over there is S. Not our real names, of course, but we can tell those to you, too, soon enough. We’re members of an organization called the PSA.”

“You mentioned that… PSA thing before,” Wei said, gathering her thoughts. “What is it?”

“Let’s just say we’re a specialized, anonymous group dedicated to protecting the island from harm.” Zed reached into their pocket and pulled out a slightly more scuffed-up version of that same shiny emblem S had shown her earlier. They passed it to Wei, who examined it closely. “Most of the island leaders and mascots are aware of our existence, including your boss, Aunt Arctic, though we generally prefer to keep out of sight of the general public.”

“Wait.” Wei looked up. “You know Aunt Arctic?”

Zed shrugged. “Not personally. More like she knows of us, really. She’s not a member of the PSA, of course, but she demanded to see our identification before she let us speak with you. Nice lady.”

“Oh,” Wei said, a bit faintly. She had only met Aunt Arctic once before this, during a party to celebrate the publication of the 100th edition of the Club Penguin Times, and even then, she’d only had the courage to stammer out a quick ‘hello’ before bolting. The thought that Aunt Arctic would go through all that trouble, just to protect an employee she probably didn’t even remember meeting, was a little staggering, though Wei was grateful for it. I ought to send her a fish basket or something as thanks.

“Which brings me to my next point.” Zed gave Wei an unexpectedly piercing look. “What you did with that program in the Book Room… you really shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Wei glared at them a little. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What Zed means is that the encryption on that program was designed to be foolproof,” S said, suddenly appearing at Zed’s shoulder. She paged through her notebook with a scrutinizing eye. “There are only a few penguins on the island that we know of who are capable of that level of decoding expertise, and all four of them are in the employ of the PSA. Heck, G and K were the ones who wrote that encryption in the first place.” S looked up at Wei, and surprisingly, she smiled. “And then you turned up.”

“Um,” Wei said. “Sorry about that?”

“No, you don’t need to apologize. Quite the opposite, actually.” S stepped forward and held out a file toward Wei. Hesitantly, Wei accepted it, running her flipper over the word CLASSIFIED stamped in red on the cover.

“You possess a number of skills that the Penguin Secret Agency would find quite useful for a number of reasons,” S said, refocusing Wei’s attention on her. “And we sought you out today because we’d like to offer you a position.”

Wei blinked, then shook herself. She didn’t have water in her ears, did she? “I’m sorry — a position?” Wei repeated. “You mean, like — like a job? At this Penguin Secret… thing?”

“Yep,” Zed said.

Wei opened her beak, then closed it. “But —” she floundered. “But I already have a job here, with the Club Penguin Times!”

“We’re not saying you have to quit your position here at the newspaper,” S hastened to assure her. “Most of us work regular jobs in our civilian lives. Agency work is usually assigned on an on-call basis, so there’s plenty of downtime between assignments.”

“The PSA’s probably most interested in hiring you as a consultant, anyway,” Zed added. “That’s, like, one assignment every six months, tops. And the pay’s not half-bad, either—”

“Not to mention,” S said loudly, interrupting Zed with a glare, “You would be helping us keep the island safe from threats of all kinds.”

Wei stared down at the file in her flippers. She eased the cover back, and her own name gazed up at her in bold black letters from the page inside.

“Take some time to think about it,” S said more gently. “No hard feelings if you decide the job’s not for you, but if you are interested, all the information’s there in the file.”

Wei could only stand there and continue to stare blankly down, the gears in her mind whirring away frantically. Eventually the other two penguins stepped away and began gathering their things, leaving Wei’s laptop still open on the desk.

“Wait,” Wei heard herself say before S and Zed could leave for good. The scuff of their feet paused at the other end of the room.

“You still haven’t told me what that server was for,” she said, not looking up from the file. “The one I accidentally opened, I mean. Why was it in a router in the Book Room, of all places?”

There was a pause, then an amused chuckle. “If you must know, it’s part of a series of secure PSA servers hidden in select locations around the island,” Zed said. “In the event that the computer mainframe at Headquarters is compromised, our most sensitive information can still be kept safe and accessible by our agents, if they know where to look.”

“The server that you accessed is a bit of a… special case, though,” S said. She sounded a little exasperated. “The Book Room was already ruled out by our tech division as being too public of a space to be truly secure, so its server was left empty, only to be used in the worst of emergencies.”

Wei was finally able to drag her eyes from the file to S and Zed hovering at the door. “But it wasn’t empty,” she said, confused.

Zed looked like they were holding back a laugh, and S sighed. “As it turns out, one of our agents thought that a secure PSA server which had been mostly discarded by the agency as useless would be a grand place to store his family’s top-secret fish recipes,” she said dryly. “The penguins on duty yesterday were just as surprised as you were to be notified of a security breach taking place in a supposedly empty server.”

“The agent responsible for misusing the server has already been reprimanded,” Zed added, snickering. “You should’ve seen his face when he learned of what happened from the Director themself.”

“More worried for his job, or for the sanctity of his oh-so-important apple-fish pie?” S muttered to Zed as the two of them left the room. The door clicked shut before Wei could hear any more of their ensuing conversation, but Zed’s laugh echoed loudly down the hall.

- - -

“This is crazy,” Wei said to a sleeping Ai later that day back at her igloo. (Aunt Arctic had taken one look at her after her conversation with S and Zed and immediately given her the rest of the day off, much to Wei’s relief.)

“This is just absolutely ridiculous,” Wei continued, petting Ai’s fur a little desperately. “I don’t even know who these penguins are. I shouldn’t want to join their weird little secret club and weird secret ways, even if their technology is incredible and like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my life.”

Ai’s only response was a snore. On the coffee table in front of them, Crown hopped over the scattered pages of the file that Wei had spread out and read and reread countless times over the past several hours.

Wei stared at Crown. Crown stared back and let out a questioning squeak. Wei sighed.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said, and reached for the phone.

The penguin on the other end picked up after two rings. “Hello, you’ve reached the Sports Shop in the Ski Village,” they said cheerfully. “How can I help you today?”

“Um.” Wei glanced at the file in front of her. “I think the password is, ‘G has forty-five pairs of socks.’”

#club penguin #club penguin oc #club penguin ace #agent ace #penguin secret agency #club penguin psa #club penguin fanfic #waddle.txt #my writing #wei #anxiety mention

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