#But I decided to scope creep by making it full color so who knows if it'll get finished

[vynnyal]

Actually you know what, I'm gonna post this. Check it out, I'm fiddling with this PMV. Spoils the whole game ofc. And the name of the song is pure imagination by Fiona Apple!

Also I'm apparently a big fan of drawing moon laying down 😂 total count including scrapped drawings is 5 (technically 6)

[jessepinwheel]

tell us about all your obiclones?

all the obi-clones? but there's 2000 of them 🤔

nah, just kidding. the obi-clones are definitely main characters of parex, and we meet a good handful of them. this one is longer so I will tuck it under a read more

for quick background, all the obi-clones were raised in kamino. obi-wan taught them most of their morals and ways to use the force via psychic skype and also by possessing one of the obi-clones to teach them in a more hands-on manner, while mandalorian trainers taught the obi-clones stuff like speaking the language, combat, and technical skills. of course among these mandalorian trainers was cin drallig, a mandalorian jedi who was supposed to teach the obi-clones some stuff about the force, but obviously obi-wan's knowledge far outstrips cin's, and also cin was so depressed and lonely that a bunch of obi-clone children decided to make him feel better by forming a psychic connection with him that, uh, ended up absorbing him into their hive mind along with the entire contents of his brain. so if you want to be technical, he did teach them everything he knew about the force!

the obi-clones were created in batches of 100, numbered sequentially going from 0000 to 1999, but within each batch of 100 the ID number doesn't correspond to order in which they were decanted, so 0000 isn't necessarily the oldest out of the 0 batch. the obi-clones all have names, with the early batches were named by the mandalorians (and so tend to have mandalorian names) while later batches were named by obi-wan or the older obi-clones (and so do not have mandalorian names)

while I'm going to refer to all the obi-clones as 'he', they're gender neutral by default because they didn't really inherit any kind of gender identity from obi-wan, who is very apathetic about his own gender identity. some obi-clones do end up identifying specifically as male or female or something else as time goes on (especially after they absorbed cin into the hive mind and learned about the concept of being male), but that's kind of beyond the scope of what parex is actually about, which is kicking jango's ass for being the worst father of all time and destroying the mandalorian empire

all obi-clones have been made to wear collars pretty much from birth. the collars are different from the mandalorian jedi ranking collars in that they are made specifically to control the obi-clones--they track the obi-clones vitals, with visible light pips on the outside that are synced with their heartbeat and which change color when they're using the force, and they are fitted with electroshock and location tracking capabilities. the only way to remove a collar is with a special device, or by cutting through it with a lightsaber. the obi-clone uniform is all white, and includes a tunic, surcoat, and full-face mask much in the style of old jedi temple guards. customizing the uniform isn't something that the obi-clones do very much, because physical individuality isn't really something they value, all being part of a psychic hive mind and everything. they do sometimes customize the masks, though, and each obi-clone has their own preferences of whether they like wearing the mask. they're not required to wear the mask at all times though because the mandalorian trainers were creeped the fuck out by a bunch of kids wearing faceless masks.

also for the purposes of parex, obi-wan and his clones are played by toshiro mifune but with lighter hair because I said so.

moving on to the obi-clones themselves...

the first obi-clone we meet is Kote (#0066). he was chosen by jango, possibly because of his name, which as most people reading this know means 'glory'. as part of the 0 batch, he has a strong sense of self and is seen as a sort of leader within the obi-clones. he's very competent and very good at keeping his emotions under control, which is good because if he didn't he would have murdered jango so many times. kote acts as jango's personal aide, with increasing duties as time goes on, until he's helping jango don his armor, sparring with him, advising on imperial affairs, and becoming all but the emperor consort. of all the obi-clones, kote is the only one who sees obi-wan in person and is able to confirm that obi-wan is a real person who is still alive. which is great except for the fact that obi-wan is in jango's torture basement after 11 years of solitary confinement and torture and looks like shit. kote is so angry at jango for the entirety of this story that kicking jango's ass on live television is probably the best day of his life. after the coup he changes his name to Six

the next clone we meet is Kenobi (#0212). his actual name is gratika, which means 'little revenge' and he hates that name, so he tells everyone else to call him Kenobi, while his brothers refer to him as Ori. kenobi is assigned to cody's squad, which is specifically a jedi hunting special forces team. kenobi is one of the most proficient force users of all his brothers, and he wears his hair in a braid that goes down across the scalp behind his right ear--because he's heard of jedi padawans and the braids they used to wear, but the practice died after the mandalorians destroyed the jedi and he doesn't actually know what the braid is supposed to look like. kenobi is polite, but at the core he's ruthless and a bit mean. he ends up forcibly absorbing ventress into the obi-collective to stop her from leaking information and destroying at least one other person's mind. cody ends up infatuated with him because kenobi offers emotional support that cody needs so badly it's not even funny but kenobi isn't even a little bit interested in cody

after that is Surau (#0501). his name means 'light eyes', so named because he has a mutation which gives him gold eyes. he is assigned to rex, probably because jango is an asshole and thinks it would be funny to remind rex of that time anakin went full darkside and rex had to put him down. surau is mild-tempered and diligent, but rex hates interacting with him because rex has huge hangups about both jedi and clones. rex's squad is mostly law enforcement and suppression of rebellion forces, so surau ends up incidentally coming into contact with multiple rebel forces, who see his gold eyes and are like uhhh is he evil? do we need to worry about that?

next on the list is Azar (#916). here we get into the clones that don't have mandalorian names. azar is assigned to work under ursa wren, whose squad also includes padme and ahsoka, which is primarily an intimidation and enforcement squad to keep citizens in line. azar is probably the most obi-wan of the obi-clones, with a tendency towards teaching and watching over others. he ends up being a sort of mentor figure to ahsoka, helping her through her anger issues and teaching her things like mindfulness and how maybe murder is bad, actually. this leads to a huge clusterfuck where azar has to fucking book it and is on the run from the empire with a literal tracking beacon attached to his neck. this does not end well for him.

then we have Ben (#1555). sometimes called fives by his brothers, he is assigned to the kryzes to effectively monitor them (and death watch, who hate jango's guts) for rebellious activity. he's got more of a soft personality, and doesn't really like confrontation. for some reason satine really likes the look of ben and dresses him up and takes him out to parties, which ben finds extremely uncomfortable, while bo-katan hates the fact that satine is getting sweet on a clone. he spends time around mandalorian high society and generally gets treated like shit or like a pet, because clones are not really thought of as people, since most of them are just purchased to be on standby as spare parts and are chipped or otherwise lobotomized. anyways, ben snoops around and overhears the fact that death watch does, in fact, have a plan to murder jango and obliterate all of keldabe, and he gets found out and murdered by bo-katan for it

which leads us to Ira (#1565), who is brought in as ben's replacement after ben was 'killed by an unknown attacker' but which ira knows is bullshit because he is in the hivemind and saw bo-katan strangle ben to death. ira is forced by bo-katan to pretend he is ben, and satine doesn't even notice that he's a different clone. ira and ben were very close brothers, so ira is very angry about this whole situation and he is just biding his time so that he can turn bo-katan and satine against each other

then we have our last main obi-clone, which is Boga (#1977). as one of the youngest clones, he really doesn't have a very strong sense of self or individuality, instead deferring heavily to the collective consciousness. he's assigned to pre viszla, who is leading a bunch of soldiers who are basically cleaning up at the end of mandalore's successful conquest of zygerria. he ends up befriending another soldier, who turns out to be fox, the third jango clone (after cody and rex) who has been brainwashed into oblivion and is being used as a soldier and on standby as spare parts. boga stands up to pre about how he treats fox like shit, and pre ends sending boga off a cliff. boga, however, is able to send out a psychic distress call and is rescued by the jedi order, which allows the obi-collective to finally touch base with the jedi and coordinate their efforts

there are of course many other obi-clones. the ones who aren't deployed across the military are stationed in keldabe to work with myles and dooku as intelligence officers, and also cin ends up adopting one of the obi-clones as his son, who helps him manage his disability and also keeps him psychic connected to the hive mind

at the start of the story, about 1800 of the clones are alive, with the remainder being killed in kamino mostly from unethical research into force suppression methods, and by the end of the story about 1000 of the clones are still alive, with many having been killed by neglectful or malicious squads, or during the coup where they do a mass assassination of major mandalorian commanders and leaders and the mandalorians are not really into that for some reason

there are a lot of characters in parex :)

ask me questions about parasitic extraction, the role reversal mandalorian empire au that I have

[rocorambles]

A Skulk of Foxes

Pairing: Kita x Reader

Prompt: Fantasy

Genre: SFW, Fluff, Fox Shifter Kita, Fantasy AU, Shifter AU

Summary: You moved to the woods to start fresh, begin a new chapter in your life. Little do you know just how much your world is about to change because of a skulk of foxes.  

Author’s Note: This is my contribution for my HQ Discord Server’s SFW collaboration. There are so many talented writers on the server and I highly encourage you to check out the collaboration masterlist here to see how everyone decided to run with this prompt. (Masterlist goes live Thursday, October 29th 11:00pm U.K. time!) 

You sigh with relief when you finally finish unpacking the last box of your possessions, stretching your aching muscles as excitement finally begins to bubble inside of you when you proudly look at your new home you’ve made for yourself. Reality is finally sinking in and your giddy with the feeling of a fresh start, a new beginning. The quaint little cabin is certainly different from the cramped modern apartment you had in the heart of Tokyo, but different is exactly what you need and you nestle into the cozy armchair by the window in your new living room, a cup of hot tea in your hands as you enjoy the silence of nature and the view of swaying branches. 

If anyone were to have told you that you’d willingly choose to live in the middle of the woods by yourself a few years ago, you would have laughed. You were a city girl through and through and the idea of not being surrounded by the noise of traffic and crowds of people was baffling. But after your long-term relationship had taken a nosedive into the ground and crash and burned, suddenly the city felt suffocating, filled with too many memories, too many mutual acquaintances and when you had seen this listing on your way back home from work one night, you had jumped at the opportunity to escape it all and start a new chapter. 

Your new way of life takes some adjusting to, but you don’t mind as you pull on your new hiking boots, eager to explore the acres of wooded lands you’re surrounded by. The air is crisp and fresh, and you inhale deeply, soaking in the peaceful quiet only interrupted by the crunching of dirt and grass under your feet. And that’s how your days idle by, you scoping out the area in the early mornings as the sun is rising with your trusty nature handbook you’d bought in one hand, a basket in the other hand as you look back and forth between the herbs and plants you see and the painted illustrations and tips in the book, returning with a bundle of freshly picked produce before signing onto your work computer and dutifully putting in your hours. It’s a tiring grind, but when you finally get to power down your laptop and sit outside under the bright night stars with a glass of wine in your hand, it doesn’t seem so bad after all. 

You get savvier and more adventurous, really leaning into country living as you begin to grow your own vegetables and fruit, set up a fire pit, plant flowers that you use to spruce up your living space. It’s a wonderful life, but there’s only one slight concern in the back of your mind.

The foxes. 

Growing up in the city, you’d never learned how to handle animals other than the rats and roaches the concrete jungle was infested with. Sure, you love your share of fluffy dogs and cats that you’d pet and play with, but there’s a big difference between domesticized pets and wild animals and you had noticed early on that your neck of the woods seemed to be rampant with foxes. You wonder if it’s just the fact that you’d never seen a fox in real life before, but you can’t help but think these foxes seem much larger than your usual fox, their fur and eye colors ranging far more than you thought was biologically possible. But even though they seem to like hovering around you and watching you intently from a distance, they never draw near and they leave your gardens alone, so you dismiss their presence, letting them do as they please as you go about your own business. 

The weather’s getting colder and you figure now is the time to test the fire pit you’d built. It takes a bit of fumbling around, but you beam with pride when you get a flame started, mesmerized by the flickering light and warmth beginning to billow. And although the wind has a bite to it, the radiating heat keeps you comfortable as you roast the chicken you had bought in town, mouth already watering as the smell of cooked meat begins to permeate throughout the air. But you’re startled when two furry bodies suddenly brush up against you and you stay perfectly still, unsure what to do when a gold fox leaps into your lap, curling into a fluffy ball as he stares at you while a silver fox calmly sits next to you, nudging your hand with his head in a silent order to pet him and you tentatively scratch behind his ears, staring in awe as he leans into your touch. 

For wild animals, they’re oddly well behaved and affectionate and you’re frankly stunned that they hadn’t just pounced at the raw meat and ran away with your dinner. But you’re not complaining and you continue petting them as your meal continues cooking, only stopping to their dismay when the chicken is ready to be cut up. Your heart breaks a bit when you see them staring expectantly at you and you swear they're both pouting as you make a move to bring the chicken inside the house, but their ears perk up when you leave your door open and beckon them inside and they’re quick to race towards you, rushing between your legs before making their way to your dining table and jumping up on the extra chairs you have set. It’s certainly an odd sight to see two large wild foxes easily make themselves at home, but you can’t help but fondly smile at them when you prepare three plates of food and they eagerly dig in. 

They’re surprisingly neat about eating and it’s almost eerie how they seem to purposefully keep the scraps and bones on their plate, almost human-like the way they grab your napkin, using it to wipe their mouths and paws. Maybe they used to be someone’s pets? But you don’t dwell on it, enjoying the company they provide as they curl up by your feet as you wash the dishes, as their feet pitter-patter after you as you do some errands around the cabin and you’re almost sad when they nudge you to the door, waiting for you to let them out before you go to sleep. 

You quickly realize there’s nothing to be sad about, not when you have a furry entourage that walks beside you whenever you’re outside, not when bodies are weaving in between your legs, almost threatening to trip you with how excited they are to play with you, not when heads are constantly butting against you, begging for pets. It seems like your two friends had spread the word and now you have a whole slew of friendly foxes wanting to get to know you better and you love every second of it, even building a little door for them to easily walk in and out of your cabin and it becomes a common occurrence for you to wake up to fluffy bodies curled around your body, for foxes to be perched on your dining room chairs at meal times, for you to have a lap full of needy foxes wanting your attention when all your bellies are full.  

But there’s one fox who keeps his distance from you and even though he’s not the largest of the bunch, even you can sense the quiet authority he has as the other foxes are quick to lower their heads submissively and run to him when he barks at them. Even the golden fox who you’ve come to pinpoint as the troublemaker of the group seems to quiet down a bit around him and one day when he’s being just a tad too rowdy with you, nipping you harder than usual as he excitedly pounces on you, he immediately whines and sinks his head into the crook of your neck in apology when the light gray leader harshly growls at him. You affectionately pet the sad gold pile in your arms and verbally assure the gray fox that you’re fine even though you’re sure that he can’t understand a word you’re saying, but to your surprise, as if he comprehends exactly what you’re trying to convey, the gray fox relaxes a bit and lies back down, going back to quietly watching his pack and you. 

The weather’s becoming frigid and you know it’s silly to worry about clearly healthy and strong wild animals who’ve fended for themselves their whole lives, but you can’t help the pang of concern you have for your furry friends as snow begins to creep in. However, in hindsight, maybe you should have been more concerned for yourself. It’s an especially brutal day and you really shouldn’t be outside at all, not with the wind whipping at neck breaking speeds and torrential amounts of snow pouring down, but like a true city idiot, you’d procrastinated about restocking your wood supply and now with nothing left to keep you warm, you have no choice but to venture out and collect as much as you can to at least keep a fire going on during the worst of the snow storm. 

You pride yourself on knowing the woods like the back of your hand now, but the pain of the wind whipping your face and the never ending white in your vision as the snow keeps on coming down makes it hard to concentrate, makes it hard to orient yourself and as the frost begins to get to you, making you shiver, making you lose all train of thoughts other than the fact that you’re literally freezing to death, you panic. You’re frozen stiff as you wildly circle around, trying to calm the swirling dark thoughts in your head as you try to make sense of where you are, but it’s no use. Everything looks the same now and you think you might be sick from the rocketing anxiety inside of you, but you’re pulled back to reality by a harsh tug at your coat sleeve and you almost sob in relief when you see a familiar light gray pelt tipped with black. 

Brown eyes look imploringly at you as he gives your sleeve another harsh tug and that’s all the encouragement you need to stumble after him, trusting him to bring you back to safety. Your legs are numb and there’s not a hint of grace in your steps and for a second, you’re afraid of falling behind, but your heart warms at the way he makes sure to never be more than an arm's length in front of you, always turning his head back to make sure you’re still right behind him, nipping insistently at you when you pause for too long. And even when you finally reach your cabin, he practically shoves you through your door with his whole body, almost ripping your clothes as he rapidly helps you remove your soaked through clothing. 

You’re shocked to see him still standing outside your bathroom door when you finally step out of the warm water, but still overwhelmed and exhausted by the day’s events, you only briefly acknowledge him as your body barely makes it to your bed before collapsing. And as your eyes shut and you slip under a heavy cloud of sleep, you swear you feel arms and hands rearranging you, carefully tucking you underneath your blankets, propping your head up on a pillow. You swear you hear a male voice scolding you for putting yourself in danger, telling you to rest. But too exhausted to open your heavy lids, you chalk it up to your imagination before completely drifting off. 

You’ll never be able to fully explain what happened as you finally wake up only to find that a fire has been started, a healthy supply of dry wood set up by it, your wet clothes hung up to dry, but unable to really remember much after you’d been guided back to your cabin, you think you must have just been working on auto-pilot before you passed out. (Never mind that you certainly don’t remember collecting that much wood.) But with no better explanation, you let it be, just glad to be safe and warm. And it seems like you’re not the only one happy to still see you alive and kicking as familiar visitors come by to check in on you and you have a strange suspicion that they’re worried about you, even the gold fox being more docile than usual as he cuddles with you. To your surprise, their leader also pays you a visit and you can’t help but feel chastised when you thank him for rescuing you, only to get a sharp nip and a growl in return and you swear he’s glowering at you. But it seems that all is forgiven when he shoves the gold fox out of your lap and regally takes his place, curling up and falling fast asleep on top of you. 

They never let you leave your cabin alone again that winter and it’s almost comical when they let out a series of howls as you climb into your car when you refuse to let even one of them ride with you. You wonder if an outsider would think you’re crazy as you speak to them, telling them you’d be right back after you pick up some much needed supplies and food from town that you can’t get by yourself in the woods. But eventually they quiet down and you chuckle when you see them all sitting outside your cabin through your rear car window, watching you leave, and you have a strong suspicion that they’ll be in the same exact position waiting for you when you return home. 

The town’s small, but everyone’s so friendly and helpful that you don’t mind waiting a tiny bit longer in line as the sole cashier takes care of everyone, enjoying the friendly chitter chatter and catching up on what’s been going on. The sheriff greets you and you smile at the handsome man. Daichi had been one of the first people to go out of his way to greet you. “It’s a sheriff’s duty to know everyone in town,” he had said, but you had a feeling that sheriff or not, he’d still be friendly enough to try and get to know the new person in town. Conversation is pleasant as both of you share what’s been going on in your lives, but your heart drops when he warns you to be careful of poachers in your area. His team is still trying to find and arrest them, but until then, he cautions you from wandering too far from home. He continues rambling on, but you’ve completely tuned him out, your mind only thinking of your new furry family and everything is a blur as you shakily pack your car trunk and race home. 

Relief floods through you when you see the foxes still lazing about and lounging in your yard, perking up at the sight and sound of your rapidly approaching vehicle. But their fur stands up and their tails rise in agitation at your distressed state as you usher them into the safety of your cabin and before you know it, you’re surrounded by multiple bodies whimpering and trying to jump on you to soothe you. You know it’s silly to talk to them and try to explain what’s going on, but with no other way to relay your feelings, you tell them what Daichi had told you, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes when you beg them to be careful, telling them they can use your house as a safe shelter whenever they need, and you don’t even realize that you’re almost completely sobbing until their light gray leader leaps into your lap and gently laps away your salty tears, nuzzling his face against your cheek as if he’s trying to comfort you. And whether or not that’s really what he was intending, you do feel better as you hug his large body close to you, burying your face into his soft fur. 

You feel lighter after that night, still a little wary and concerned for your newfound friends, but days pass and life seems normal. You don’t hear gunshots. You don’t see strange men roaming through the woods. Daichi and you keep in contact and although he tells you they still haven’t caught the perpetrators yet, slight hope rises in you and you wonder if they’ve moved on to a different area. But your hopes are instantly dashed when you’re abruptly woken by paws frantically clawing at you, loud distressed howls right in your ear and with your heart thumping out of your chest you stare with wide bleary eyes at the gold and silver foxes nudging you out of bed, one leading the way, the other repeatedly rushing you, his head pushing against the back of your legs. 

You have a bad feeling about what has them in such an uproar and you hate that your apprehension was warranted when you see their leader crying in pain, an ugly sharp metal contraption digging deeply into one of his front legs and suddenly you’re moving even faster than your furry companions as you lunge towards him, quickly, but carefully trying to assess the damage, trying to figure out how to untangle him from the horrid trap. You’ve just managed to pry open the trap enough for him to free himself and limp a bit aways when you hear the sounds of men's voices and approaching footsteps. And there’s nothing friendly about the way they’re shouting, nothing welcoming about the glint of their guns in the flashlight beams bouncing around, so before you can even strategically think about what you’re doing, you pick up the injured fox, careful not to jostle or touch his wound as you run as fast as your legs can move, not stopping even when your lungs are burning from exertion, even when you want to keel over from exhaustion, urged on and not allowed to slow down by the nips to your ankles the gold and silver foxes give you as they run alongside you. 

Gunshots are whizzing around you, but you have the knowledge of the terrain and expert guides on your side and the angry screams get quieter and farther away the longer you race forward before soon enough there’s only your labored breathing and the tiny cries of the fox you’re holding to your chest. But despite that, you don’t slow down, throwing your front door open as you slowly lay the gray fox on your bed, rushing to grab your first-aid box while simultaneously calling Daichi, putting him on speaker phone as you wash the bloody matted fur. You know you must sound frazzled, distracted as you fumble with words, trying to give him the best approximate location you can of where you’d lost the poachers while you tenderly pet the whimpering fox who’s hissing with every wipe you give to his bleeding injury, but you thank whoever’s listening that Daichi makes sense of your stuttered words and tells you he’s on his way to scan the area and for you to get some rest before hanging up and leaving you to give your sole attention to your patient. 

You whisper sweet encouraging words in a soft tone, apologizing and stroking his stomach everytime he winces as you continue cleaning his wound, but he stays perfectly still, not budging even an inch despite his discomfort and when you finally bandage him up, you smile as you see him finally slumping into your bedsheets, exhaustion finally catching up to him now that adrenaline isn’t amping him up and you can’t help the affectionate kiss you plant on his forehead as you tuck him into your bed, unaware of the way brown eyes stare at you in shock, unblinking as they process the intimate gesture you’d gifted him. And when you get ready for bed, shooing the other foxes out of your room to give your special guest some space and peace to fully relax, you’re still oblivious to the way a wet snout tentatively returns your gesture when you close your eyes, making light contact with your own forehead before curling his furry head underneath your chin and basking in your natural warmth. 

It’s warm when you wake up, which is welcome when it’s frigid outside of the safety of your blankets and you instinctively lean into the source expecting to feel the familiar plush fur of the foxes who come to share your bed sometimes. But your eyes shoot open when you feel warm skin underneath your fingertips and you have to fight back the scream when you come face to face with a man you don’t recognize who’s groggily opening his brown eyes, your body scrambling backwards. Tangled in the sheets, you don’t get far and fear lances through you as you stare wide-eyed at the stranger beside you who’s...panicking even more than you are? 

You pause in your escape attempt as you take a closer look at the man who’s frantically wrapping your blanket around his bare body, brown eyes staring at you in fear which is strange considering this is your room he’s intruding in. Common sense tells you to be wary and yet there’s something familiar about his eyes and when you finally take note of his light gray hair tipped with black and the bandage around his arm, disbelief runs through you as you tentatively approach his huddled form. 

“Are you- are you the fox I took care of?”

Brown eyes warily observe you as you draw near, but they widen in surprise when your hand gently runs through his hair and you give him the same sweet smile you’ve always given him when he was in his fox form. 

“You’re not scared of me?” 

You laugh. “If anything, I’m more surprised than anything else. Care to explain?”

And spurred on by the hope that the human he’s come to love might actually accept him for who he really is, he is quick to tell you everything and anything and you listen in amazement as he tells you about shifters, how him and his pack are all fox shifters, how there are different types of shifters all over the world, how they’re much more common than humans realize. He tells you his name, Kita, and the names of every fox shifter you’ve met. He tells you about the awful history of humans hunting them down to sell on the black market which has led them to live as foxes, deep in the woods, away from any living soul. He tells you about how you’re the first human his pack has interacted with for years, the first human to gain their trust after years of loneliness, never being able to access or connect with their human side. 

There’s a brief moment of silence as you take everything in, still softly carding your fingers through his hair. But the lingering question in your head finally slips out. 

“Why did you reveal yourself to me now?”

And your lips quirk at the shy flustered expression on his face as he buries deeper into your cozy blankets. 

“I was too exhausted to keep my fox form after everything that happened last night.”

But before you can tease him a bit more, there’s a knock on your door and you panic, unsure how to explain the unknown man in your cabin. However, it seems that you have nothing to worry about when you spin around, only to see Kita’s fox form nonchalantly curled up in your bed, looking at you with his own smug amusement at your gaping mouth. You rush to the door, Kita padding after you, a slight limp from his front leg and upon seeing the sheriff through your peephole, you greet him, giddy with relief when he tells you that they’ve managed to apprehend all the poachers thanks to your tip last night. 

It never crosses your mind how strange it was that Daichi so easily arrested all the men despite your extremely vague directions and despite it being pitch black, but unknown to you, it’s easier than you think to maneuver through the dense night woods when you have wings. However, Kita’s more perceptive than you and when he scents the air, he looks in interest at the man who smells like a crow and brown and black eyes lock for a second as a hint of acknowledgement runs through Daichi’s eyes when the shifter inside of him sees the fox for what he really is. But it’s only a fleeting glance, too quick for your human eyes to notice, and Daichi parts ways, subtly nodding to the fox who’s currently laying on your feet before waving goodbye to you, leaving Kita and you alone once again. Well, maybe not that alone, you think, as a group of familiar foxes come racing towards the both of you once Daichi is gone. 

Life is chaotic, in a good way, but chaotic nonetheless after that. It’s a new dynamic for all of you as you try to merge your two worlds and ways of life together. It no longer phases you when you see glimpses of naked men running here and there as they shift between their human and fox forms and you’ve learned to always have spare sets of clothing on hand to quickly throw their way when they do decide to take their human shape for a spin. Atsumu has finally stopped whining about not being allowed to sleep in your bed with you anymore after Kita had put him in his place and your face goes hot when you remember exactly what had transpired during that conversation. 

When you had found out they were shifters, you found yourself being a little more self-conscious and self-aware around them. It seemed unbecoming of a woman to be sharing the same bed or changing in front of foxes that turned into handsome men and soon Kita was the only one allowed in your bedroom. Atsumu had howled and complained the first night that Kita slipped into your bed next to you, demanding to also be let in, questioning why Kita was allowed to sleep with you, especially in his human form. And suddenly feeling like a parent who suddenly has to explain the birds and the bees to their child, you grow flustered, unsure how to broach the subject. But sensing your panic, a large hand gently grabbed your chin, turning you until you were facing the serious countenance that you’d come to love, and in front of the still wailing younger man, he had captured your lips in a searing kiss before pointedly looking at a suddenly silent Atsumu. 

“That’s why,” he had calmly said, but before he could even fully voice those two words, Atsumu had quickly retreated, closing the door behind him and leaving the two of you alone. 

The two of you had skirted around directly talking about what was going on between the two of you, but that kiss had officially sealed the deal and you both stay up late that night, talking about your future life together, as his mate, as your boyfriend and it seems like unsurprisingly, Atsumu has run his mouth off and the whole pack is there waiting to congratulate you two on finally getting together the next morning. 

And now here you are, living in a recently expanded cabin, loud and full of bodies, both furry and human. You take a sip of your coffee, rolling your eyes as you hear the twins bicker, a slight smile on your face when you see Aran and Suna in their fox forms, napping on the couch, the others sprawled out here and there as they cook and eat breakfast. But it’s the strong arms that wrap around your waist from behind, the mouth stealing a sip from your piping hot mug before burying his face in the crook of your neck and shoulder that makes your heart flutter and you turn to kiss Kita, melting into his hold as you both survey your new family, your new home.   

[cherrynojutsu]

Title: Like Gold

Summary: Sasuke grapples with love and intimacy regarding his developing relationship with Sakura after returning to the village from his journey of redemption. Kind of a character study on Sasuke handling an intimate relationship after dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt in solitude for so long. Blank period, canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric, lots of fluff and pining, slowly becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes beginning/ending author's notes

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Chapter 4/?: Soothe

Sasuke arrives outside her building shortly before seven in the morning, an ubiquitous aubade sung by birds, polished and practiced for many years, lilting into his ears along the way. The village for the most part is still slowly awakening from its slumber; no merchants in the streets yet, and he only passes a few people here and there as light slowly seeps higher into the sky.

He carefully pushes open the glass door of the exterior portion of her complex, making sure to keep it quiet in case her neighbors are still asleep. As he goes up the stairs, he notices that all of the downstairs tenants’ lights are on, emanating from beneath the trio of entryways. Once he reaches the upper landing, he sees that Sakura’s light is on, too, though her other two neighbors' are not.

The doors of each unit are all painted different colors. Hers is sage green; he hadn’t been able to discern that previously, with the desaturation that night brings.

He's wondering if maybe he should knock to let her know he’s here, but then she emerges a few minutes early, beautiful and bright-eyed and full of life, pale yellow sunshine coating her from the large window with diamond patterning behind him.

She seems pretty awake already; she must be an early riser. She's carrying her tote bag again, and today she wears a dark skirt with a red top, along with a familiar pair of knee-high sandals. She's also wearing a smile, directed upwards at him.

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun," she acknowledges him softly, looking very happy to see him.

"...Morning." He keeps his voice low, because it is still a little hoarse. He tries to memorize her eyes again in the span of seconds before she turns to lock her door behind her.

It's 6:58 by the time they're out the glass door, her leading the way. They take the main road west a few blocks before turning to go north, this time. There are several more buildings that appear residential on her street. One of them has vines creeping up the sides, starting to bud after the warmer spring weather. He notes there is also a bakery on the corner, not open yet, but one that seems like the kind to also sell confections. He wonders if that factored into her apartment selection at all; he remembers she has a sweet tooth.

It is an easy silence they share on the walk there, bird calls lulling in as background noise again. There are more of them now, a more layered song than earlier, with a wider variety of voices filtering in and out.

Sakura leads them to a very small tea shop within five minutes of the hospital; it is quaint and simple, definitely not modern. It is also quite small, with only four or so small tables situated by windows, looking out towards the street. The entire establishment utilizes a spread of cinnamon-colored wood for its surfaces; floors, counters, and the shelving in the back, laden with neatly-labeled teas of several varieties in glass jars. He assumes the larger jars are store stock, with the smaller ones higher up on the shelves being available for purchase for use at home, if one decides they like a particular flavor enough.

He finds he likes the atmosphere. He figured he would. It's not a formal place, but rather one where you retrieve what you've ordered from the counter and can choose whether to stay or go. He supposes that makes sense; it’s closer to the busier part of the village. There appears to be a small area to the left of the counter where one can add cream, sugar, lemon, or honey, though he knows he won't. He vaguely remembers that she used to take lemon and sugar in her tea, and possibly cream, depending on the brew. Honey seems like something Sakura would like, too, now that he’s thinking about it.

He scans the menu briefly upon entering before deciding something hot with caffeine would probably be best. Sencha green tea is usually what he gravitates toward. He also enjoys black tea during cooler weather, and jasmine occasionally, though not often; it had been his mother’s favorite.

Once he orders, he says, "Hers, too," and glances back towards Sakura expectantly. She looks at him with a blush that rivals the color of her hair when she realizes he's offering to pay for hers.

"Oh! Um, lavender matcha. Hot, please."

His lips quirk upwards a little, because that is possibly the most Sakura thing she could have ordered.

It doesn’t take very long until it’s ready, as they’re not busy; they are the only ones there, thus far. He takes a sip while idling by the end of the counter as he watches her add honey and cream into hers, stirring carefully. It is one of the better blends of sencha he’s had, aside from a particular place nestled on the edge of the Land of Mountains, where he’s pretty sure the elderly woman who ran the place harvested the tea straight from her private garden. He had pilgrimaged there a total of five times on his journey, months scattered like the seasons in between.

It was an odd teahouse, more formal than this one and off the beaten path, not near any major landmarks, nor plotted on any map he’d seen before or after. The lady, who had wizened eyes of a crystal clear blue, slightly lighter in hue than Naruto’s, had served the brews in eclectic and sometimes chipped mugs and teacups, from which he had assumed after multiple visits must be a fairly vast collection. The china was different every time, but he had liked the tea itself so much he kept coming back, if he was anywhere near the area. Twice he had been the only customer there, the first two visits occurring during early morning hours, and there was something extremely cathartic about sitting at the table in the far corner, looking out the window as the sun rose higher in the sky until it no longer skimmed the horizon and the mountains in the distance.

The other three visits had occurred during the afternoon, so there had been at least one or two other people present, at those times. He had noticed that third time that other patrons were served out of much different teacups than he was; he had secretly suspected, after that, that the woman tried to match the stoneware from her collection to whatever she saw in her patrons.

There had been a father sitting with his daughter, who had looked to be around six or seven, on his third visit. The father’s teacup had been robust, solid with carved detail that appeared to have been created with something like a miniature chisel, and an earthenware glaze mix of green and russet, strangely looking similar to the color of seaweed. The daughter’s had been a smaller cup, dainty finery of opalescent sky blue, with a similar mother of pearl finish coating the inside. The girl had quickly drained her glass once she realized the inside was pretty, too; she had spent the rest of the time there in awe of its beauty, turning it in the light as her father watched with soft eyes, enjoying his own cup more slowly. Sasuke had thought it must have been an expensive teacup, not necessarily what you’d typically give a child that young, but the girl hadn’t chipped or broken it. Instead, she had been enamored by its beautiful finish, even more enthralled with the inside than she had been with the outside, and had handled it with great care.

He never saw the same cup twice, for him or any other customer there. He had hoped by the third and fourth time that this was a good sign, that it meant progress. Once he figured it out, he wished he’d examined the first two cups, near five months apart, with greater care; he had thought there might have been a lesson there he had missed. His first teacup, from what he remembered, had been rather plain: rounded, no handle, slightly hard to grip, a shiny black glaze with a burnt orange rim. The second time, he’d been served the sencha in another black piece of china, though this one must have been fired differently; there was no glaze at the very bottom of the outer portion of the vessel, bare toasted clay in an oatmeal color. Carved designs on the outer portion of the piece had nearly melted glaze off it, allowing for the viewer to see the true color of the clay body beneath, creating an effect of brushstrokes in the third dimension, rippling out of the darkness. That one had had a chip at the top, but it hadn’t compromised the structural integrity of the piece, and was easily avoided simply by sipping from the undamaged side.

The third cup had taken him off guard in its uniqueness, and is what had caused him to look to the girl and her father. He had analyzed theirs, and then his own cup closely for a long time that day, thinking. Still no handle, but it had been a bit more narrow, as well as taller, easier to grip. The glaze design was fascinating, a thick glossy black base coat overlaid with a strange dissolving mixture of sapphire and indigo. It had reminded him of a night sky in the middle of nowhere, tiny amounts of galaxy blues and violets barely visible to the naked eye in their sheer scope and complexity. The glaze itself also only covered around two thirds of the vessel, at an asymmetrical angle, with the remaining half left unglazed, as if it hadn’t dripped down to be fully covered yet because the artist had liked the way it looked as is.

When he went back for a fourth cup several months later, the lady had given him an entirely too knowing look, and served his tea in a somewhat misshapen mug, this time with a handle. The handle was awkward, too small, and slightly malformed; the mug’s overall shape seemed as though it may have been an artist’s first attempt, shoddily trimmed and uneven in many places. The glaze design itself was mesmerizing, though, something like a gradient this time, shifting from splattering black to sepia to a lighter color, akin to the inside of a water chestnut. It was almost as if the cup had been constructed by a beginner and then drenched in magisterial color by a master. The sencha had tasted just as good from that cup as it had from any of the others, despite the challenge of grasping it with any semblance of comfort.

The last cup had been only a few months ago: well-designed, with a near perfect handle, easy to hold. The foot and interior of the mug was a smoky gray, well-trimmed, but the exterior body of it was a white raku crackle, twisting patterns of scale-like ivory and black outlines, small dots sprinkled in between where the unevenness of the heat must have interfered in the firing process.

When he reached the very bottom of the vessel, having finished his tea, it had been gilded gold, metallic and astonishingly bright, catching the light of the sun coming through the farthest window, where he sat in the corner alone.

He had sat there staring at it for the better portion of an afternoon. It was a peculiar artistic choice.

This sencha is good, too, he thinks as he takes another sip, here with Sakura, also at a table in the farthest corner, looking out another window. Herbaceous, earthy, and light, and in a cup that matches hers. It feels cleansing on his sore throat, corrosion, not too hot but not lukewarm, either; a rather perfect medium between mellow and astringent. It is a nice way to greet the break of day.

“Thank you, Sasuke-kun," she murmurs, after they’ve been seated for a few seconds.

He nods; she’s still flushed as she says it. He can see it better now, in the bright light of the window. He takes another sip, and continues to enjoy looking at her.

“How is yours?” She asks.

“...I like it.” He considers his next words. “You didn’t add lemon.”

Her lips quirk upward, dimple appearing. “It doesn’t go the best with the lavender. They only have this kind on hand for the springtime.” She pauses, then adds, “I still put lemon in pretty much all my tea, otherwise.”

Sasuke inclines his head again, and she takes another sip.

They sit there for a while in a comfortable silence, watching more of the village wake up and people pass by from the window, on their way to work and other responsibilities. There are two small birds across the street, perched on the awning over an apartment building’s entrance. Finches, he deduces by their plumage and size. Perhaps they are looking for a mixture of materials with which to build a nest.

“It’s a good place to just sit and watch, in the morning,” Sakura mentions after a while, still looking out the window contentedly.

“...Is that your favorite thing about it?”

She meets his eyes, then, and smiles. “One of them.”

He looks at her expectantly, so she continues. “The tea itself is good. It’s close to the hospital, and I like... “ Her voice trails off, and she glances over at the station where she added cream and honey, lips still turned upwards. “I like that they don’t overfill the cup; it makes it easier to add what it needs.”

A ghost of a smile overtakes him. Practical, as always.

Sasuke finds himself contemplating what kind of teacup the elderly lady would give Sakura, if he took her there.

XXX

"You're a little on the skinny side for your height, now," Sakura notes as she writes down his information on the form he's given her, stepping off the scale; 163 pounds. "Not unhealthy, necessarily, but you should try to put on some weight."

They are at the hospital, in an exam room this time instead of her office. Her voice has shifted to something more professional, and Sasuke knows he is now with Sakura the clinician, though her affection is still an undercurrent in the way she's looking at him carefully with warm eyes. She’s already measured his height, and has his paperwork from his last physical to compare it to; apparently he’s grown another two inches since then.

He hopes he’s done growing, in that regard. It doesn’t seem likely that she’ll grow any taller; she’s twenty now, and they already have a considerable height difference. He doesn’t know how tall she is, exactly. He must hover over her by at least six or seven inches.

"Okay," He responds, because he trusts her judgment. Being away and mulling on his failures never gave him much of an appetite. Being back in Konoha hasn't much either, so far, but he can try. “How much?”

She looks somewhat surprised that he asked. “160 to 196 pounds is considered a normal range for six feet; I’d start with ten, and then evaluate from there.”

He nods. Her eyes linger on him, as if she’s contemplating saying something more. When she turns to set down her clipboard and grab the cuff typically used to measure blood pressure, he thinks she must have decided against it, whatever it was. He goes to sit in the patient’s chair, familiar with the routine at this point. He's gotten a physical near every year of his life that he’s spent in Konoha.

She sits on the wheeled chair that’s next to the desk, rolling it closer to him. He extends his right arm, and as she carefully adjusts the cuff, she tells him, tone casual, “You’ve got an inch on Naruto, now.”

There is a very stupid and juvenile part of him that takes immense satisfaction in this news, but she doesn’t look like she’s finished speaking yet. He waits for the rest.

She smiles apologetically. “He’s got about fifteen pounds on you, though. There’s some motivation for you.”

He pins her with a pointed stare, unimpressed but also a little amused. Motivation, indeed.

Her expression turns somewhat guilty, now. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I did his about a month ago; he came back from a mission with a cracked rib, and it needed to be updated.”

She starts increasing the pressure, and he suddenly becomes aware that she is closer to him than before, by the nature of the operation of the equipment. He had become aware of her physical proximity at roughly this point in the exam the last time, too.

He’s thankful it doesn’t seem to affect his blood pressure. “105 over 70; good,” she concludes, before reaching to remove the cuff from his arm. Her fingertips make brief contact with his skin, this time, and he has to fight an urge to shiver, even though they’re warm.

She picks up her pen to input this information in the appropriate slot, then sets it aside and puts away the cuff. When she turns back to him, she says, “Heart rate is next. Hold out your wrist, please.”

He holds out his right arm again, letting his elbow rest on the surface of the desk this time. Both of her hands come to grip his single one, lightly and carefully feeling for his pulse. He tries to hold very still, and to not think about how soft her hands are. He distracts himself by preoccupying his gaze with the clock on the wall behind her. It feels like a very long thirty seconds, though he knows by watching the hand tick that it’s actually not.

She doesn’t vocalize what the number is, just removes her hands finally and reaches for the pen to fill it in on the paper. He wonders if it was elevated.

“Heart and lungs next.” She reaches for the stethoscope, positioning it in her ears before leaning in to listen to his heart first, over his shirt. He looks to the ceiling.

It doesn’t take very long. “Sounds good. Lungs, next.” She gets up and comes around the chair slightly behind him. He shifts to pull the back portion of his shirt up to his shoulder; he remembers this from the last exam, too.

“It’ll be cold; I’m sorry,” she warns gently, before pressing the instrument to his back. She is nothing but professional as she asks him to take a few deep breaths. Routine, and very careful not to touch his skin with anything but the diaphragm of the stethoscope, cool metal.

It feels… different than the last exam. He had been a little on edge during this part, then, too, even though she was nothing but professional then, as well.

He is just… very aware that she is behind him, and that his shirt is pulled up, and she’s listening to him breathe and can see the skin of his back. And that he's kissed her.

The coolness slips away after a short amount of time. “Lung function sounds good.” He pulls his shirt back into place, feeling a faint sense of relief as he does so. She goes back to document her findings on the paperwork.

She then lays the stethoscope back in its appropriate place. Scanning the page, she asks, “Any issues with your hearing?”

“Not that I’m aware,” Sasuke responds. She dips her head in acknowledgement, filling in that box with what he assumes is non-applicable.

“Sense of smell?”

He recalls raspberries and antiseptic. “No.” She fills another box.

“Sinus or lymph node issues?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m assuming you’ve used the Sharingan and Rinnegan since last time, so I’ll look at your eyes towards the end.”

He nods, and she reaches for a light instrument to use to look at his throat, as well as one of the wooden sticks from a glass jar in the corner. “Throat next,” she says, flicking the light on.

He tries not to furrow his brow. He wasn't looking forward to this part.

He opens his mouth for the wood, reedlike and firm against his tongue, and then she’s shining the light in and frowning.

“Say ah, please.”

He complies, feeling quite undignified, though he knows it’s necessary and just part of her job. She removes the stick after a second, setting the flashlight instrument aside, and he closes his mouth.

"Teeth and gums look good, and your tonsils look fine, but your throat looks a little raw. Have you been sick recently?"

"Yes." It is technically the truth, though not in a viral sense.

She looks thoughtful as she’s making a note on her clipboard. “Within the past week?”

He nods. She must see him from the corner of her eye, because then she asks, while still writing, “Any other symptoms? Cough? Does it feel sore?”

“No.” He pauses, then clarifies. “No cough. A little sore. Not bad.”

Verdant eyes flick up to him for a long moment. He feels somewhat guilty; even if he knows the truth, she might be thinking right now that he’s been irresponsible, that he may have given her an illness via kissing.

She breaks eye contact eventually, and sets the pen down, standing to open the uppermost cupboard door in the exam room. His brow furrows, until she’s pulling down a small box that he sees has cough drops in them.

“We only have mixed berry; they’ll be kind of sweet, but it should help. Take a few for later, and put one in now, please.”

Sasuke blinks, and then takes a handful. He puts all but one in his pocket, and then unwraps the one left in his hand, putting it in his mouth, as she asked.

She arches to put the box back in the cupboard, and he forces himself to look elsewhere.

It does feel good on his throat, soothing. “...Thank you,” he says after a few more seconds, as she makes another note on his form.

“You’re welcome,” she replies. Then, back to clinical Sakura. “Any other issues? Abdominal, neurological?”

“No.”

She flips the page. “Infectious disease screening questions are next. Obviously you’ve traveled outside the village in the past 21 days, but have you been outside of Fire Country in that time?”

He thinks. “Rain, about thirteen days ago. Wind, 19 days ago.”

Sakura inclines her head, and writes in the information. He notices she keeps her eyes trained on the questionnaire now. “Have you, to your knowledge, had close contact with a person with measles, mumps, or chickenpox in that time period?”

“No.” She checks the 'no' box.

“Have you, to your knowledge, had close contact with a person or source in that time period for any of the following: botulism, diphtheria, E. coli, encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever, hepatitis, influenza, listeriosis, malaria, meningitis, pneumonia, rabies, severe acute respiratory syndrome, smallpox, or yellow fever?”

“No.” He watches her check several 'no' boxes.

“Have you, to your knowledge, had close contact with a person in that time period who may have exposed you to any sexually transmitted infections?”

He’s glad she’s looking at the paper still, even if that answer is obvious. “No.” She checks several more 'no' boxes.

“And you didn’t have a fever earlier.” She checks another 'no' box. “And sore throat, but no shortness of breath at any point?”

“No.”

“Vomiting or diarrhea?”

“...Vomiting, yes,” he answers honestly. “No to the second.”

She nods, as if she knew that already from looking at his throat. She probably did. She’s good at what she does.

“Any kind of rash?”

“No.”

That’s the last question on the page, so she turns to the next one.

“Next is bloodwork. We’ll do a cholesterol screening, in regards to heart health, and then we’ll also do a general workup and run it for any infectious diseases. I don’t think we’ll find anything if it’s just the vomiting and resulting sore throat, but better safe than sorry.”

She then starts getting out the necessary supplies with which to get a blood sample. It doesn’t take very long; he holds out his right arm again, and Sakura finds the vein easily. “You’ll feel a pinch.” Within sixty seconds it’s over, and she’s pressing and holding the cotton to the dot of red before taping over it, a small pressure dressing.

“Leave that on for a few hours, please,” she advises, and he nods to indicate that he will. She makes quick work of labeling the blood sample, and sets it aside with the clipboard, he assumes for the end of the appointment.

She scribbles in a few more comments on the sheet, he assumes for whoever is running the tests. “Okay, just eyes and arm left. We’ll do eyes first. Any deterioration in vision that you’ve noticed?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ll shine the light to check your pupils quick before I use chakra to look at them.” She grabs a different light tool, a penlight, and turns it on, before looking at him expectantly.

He blinks, curious what she’s waiting for, and then she asks softly, “Could you move your hair out of the way, please?”

Oh. He complies, and she shines the light in one eye, moving it slightly and monitoring the progress. She then does the same to his Rinnegan.

“Reactivity is good; no signs of defect.” She sets the penlight back where it belongs, then makes a note in his paperwork indicating that. Then she’s shifting her chair a tiny bit closer, so she can reach his eyes with her hands.

“Do you have a preference, which one I start with?” She asks. He shakes his head. “Okay; I’ll check the right eye first.” She reaches out with her left hand, pressing her thumb above his eye over his eyebrow, and her other four fingers lightly to his temple, just next to his eye socket.

Sasuke tries not to dwell on how close she is again as green chakra drizzles into his ocular system; he keeps his vision trained forward, as he knows he’s supposed to as she examines. There is a freckle on her right ear that he remembers focusing on, the last time; he does this time, too.

Around thirty seconds passes, before she informs him, “I’m going to funnel some chakra into the retina and optic nerve here; there’s some damage.”

He had suspected there might be, though his vision has not suffered; mostly there was just a bit of pain, sometimes. He hasn’t overworked it by any means, but he hasn’t completely abstained from using it since he’d last been healed by her, either. “Okay.”

The flow of her chakra works its way deeper, more of it now. This part has always relaxed him; her chakra really is quite calming, careful and gentle, threading its way behind his eye and wrapping around the nerve.

She works for about five minutes before the chakra starts to let up.

“...There. That should be a little better,” she says before lifting her hand from his right. “Look up, down, please.”

He complies.

“Left to right, now.” He does. “Good. Does it feel okay?”

He nods, meeting her eyes again finally. It feels stronger, no pain. He decides to verbalize that, even though he’s already nodded. “It’s better. Thank you.”

She smiles at him. “Good.” Then she’s detailing whatever she’s supposed to detail in the paperwork, before setting the pen down again.

“Left eye now.”

She repeats the process, frowning again. “There’s some damage here, too. I’ll fix it.”

This time, it takes longer; not quite ten minutes, but fairly close. He tries to focus on the wall behind her.

He had asked her once, when she was healing him following the war, if it used a lot of chakra. She had said not necessarily, but it depended on the level of damage. She also told him that it was moreso a delicate process, requiring careful manipulation, so he has tried not to talk during any healing sessions since.

When her hand finally pulls away, he’s gotten so used to the contact that it feels like a loss.

“Look up, down, please,” she requests again. Then left to right.

“Function looks good. How does it feel?”

“Better. Thank you.”

She smiles at him gently, just Sakura again for a second, before turning back to the form to finish the optical section.

Then, she turns the page. “Arm is last. Could you please roll up your sleeve to your shoulder?” He grabs his empty left sleeve with his right arm and starts shifting it upwards, rolling it so that it stays put once it’s to the top.

She touches the end of what’s left of the limb with careful fingers, soft but steady on marred skin and scar tissue. “I’ll look with chakra in a second, but any redness that you’ve noticed?”

“No.” He shifts his gaze forward, because her fingertips really are softer than he remembers.

“Any areas that occasionally feel warmer than is typical?”

He shakes his head.

“Swelling of any kind?”

“No.”

“Have you been stretching it as instructed?”

He meets her eyes, then. “Yes.” He wants her to know he listens to her recommendations.

Soft jade, and she’s smiling again. She moves her hands away momentarily, and grabs the clipboard with the papers, checking several boxes as he has indicated. He looks back forward.

“Any phantom limb pain?”

“Sometimes.”

“Residual limb pain?”

“...Sometimes.”

Her gaze flicks upward. “If you had to rate it on a scale, one being hardly anything and ten being the worst?”

“...Usually two or three.” He pauses, and she waits. “...Sometimes four or five.”

“How often, for the worst of it?”

He thinks. “Maybe twice or three times a month.” It’s a bit more often than that, but not by a lot.

She notes it on the paper; that must be a normal range. “Alright. I’ll check with chakra, now.” Her fingers come back to his stump, touching more firmly now. Green chakra starts to thread its way in.

Sakura frowns, after a second. “Nerve endings are a little inflamed. I’ll fix it.” The flow of her chakra increases, and he feels almost instant relief; he supposes it still hurt, faintly. Maybe he just got used to it. “Has it hurt in the last day or so?”

“...Late last night.”

She nods, as if that makes sense. “It won’t take too long. Maybe five minutes.”

He inclines his head just barely, not wanting to move while she’s working.

“You should let me know if it hurts again,” she suggests quietly, after a moment. “It doesn’t take much to fix.”

“...Okay.”

There is a comfortable silence for a few minutes as she works. He feels the chakra start to dilute a little towards the end of it.

“I’m going to stop my chakra and manually massage the tissue, now. It should help prolong the effect.”

He feels her chakra dissipate. She has done this to him before, throughout the rehabilitation process following the war; it was more important then, she’d said, to develop tolerance to touch and pressure of the residual limb. It had hurt, the first few times, but later in the healing process, he had secretly enjoyed it; it made it hurt much less, and the process itself felt… nice.

He had privately wondered what it would feel like on his back.

It elicits the same response now, too, kneading fingertips gradually increasing pressure to access deeper tissue, helping to work away pain that has lived there for a while.

"You wear your hair differently now," she comments after an incredibly nice period of time, still pressing tenderly in little circles, though the pressure is starting to taper off now, since they’re getting towards the end of five minutes; that was roughly the time she would do back then. Since there’s no chakra anymore, it must require less of her concentration.

He realizes he hasn’t shifted his hair back into place yet, then. He takes a moment, then responds quietly, furtively, "Most people dislike looking at the Rinnegan."

She doesn’t respond right away; just finishes massaging the end of his stump, then removes her hands to pick up her pen.

"Not me," she murmurs softly as she makes her final notations.

His heart flips in his chest, and he feels his face grow warm. He's glad she's focusing on the forms, so she can't see the effect her words have had.

The lozenge has dissolved fully, and his throat isn't as sore.

XXX

Sasuke goes to the Hokage’s office, after, to see if the dobe is there. He has some time to kill before lunch, and he wants to take him up on his offer to spar at some point, given that his eyes are freshly healed. Now that he knows Sakura’s schedule for the next few days, he can fill the rest of his time with whatever else. He’ll see her tomorrow at four, at the hospital, and then at Ichiraku’s on Saturday, and then for a bit after, too; they still need to confirm an actual time for that with Naruto and Kakashi. He assumes Sunday and Monday must be her days off. If they’re not, she works too much. He’s going to ask her tomorrow, he thinks.

Oddly, he finds only Kakashi in his office.

“Ah, Sasuke. Good morning,” he greets as he walks through the doors.

“...Morning.”

The copy ninja sizes him up with a single eye for a long moment, as if considering what to ask him. Sasuke braces himself.

"You got your physical done."

Sakura had said after the bloodwork was complete, she’d drop off the paperwork for him. "...I did."

"It went well, I assume."

"...It did."

"Wonderful," he says quietly, sounding pensive.

There is a very long pause.

“And the date, with Sakura this morning, before that? That went well, also?”

Sasuke deliberates. There is no teasing lilt to his old sensei's voice this time, just genuine curiosity, so he answers honestly, even though his neck warms and he doesn’t quite appreciate being spied on. “...It did.”

Kakashi gives him one of the widest and most genuine smiles he has ever seen him wear, beneath the mask.

“Wonderful,” the copy ninja says again, this time teeming clearly with pride and meaning.

“...Yeah.” Sasuke agrees, looking anywhere but at him.

Kakashi shuffles a few papers around his desk, and starts talking again, as if Sasuke has not just admitted to something he’s sure their sensei had suspicions about for the better portion of eight years. “Well, Naruto’s not here; I’m assuming that’s who you were looking for. Hinata’s leaving for a mission later today, around one, so I gave him the day off. I kind of assumed he’d use the opportunity to seek you out for a spar in the afternoon, after she leaves. He was going on about it yesterday, along with a Team Seven dinner on Saturday night; sounds like that will be at six.”

Sasuke just blinks, gears turning still; the scroll from yesterday is still on the desk, so he's not sure why he'd grant Naruto another day off so easily.

Kakashi further clarifies, smile shifting into something more sly. “I wouldn’t go over there before a little after one, if I were you.”

His first thought is oh, and he feels rather stupid. His next thought is gross. His old sensei is grinning, as if his reaction amuses him; he must have made some kind of face that belayed his internal thought process.

“Ah, love requited and besotten newlyweds. What a time." Sasuke's neck burns again, because he realizes after a second that the ‘love requited' portion of that is referring to Sakura and himself. Kakashi's moving on, though. "Anyway, now that I’ve given you too much information…” His voice trails off, and he looks at the intricate scroll tucked away at the table beside his desk, where Naruto usually sits. “If you’re not busy and want something to do until lunch, you could take a look at this scroll for me, since Naruto won’t be getting to it today.” He appears to be thinking, then adds. “For all his progress, he can still be less than perceptive, in certain instances. Your assistance could be invaluable, since I’m occupied with other tasks at the moment.”

Sasuke ponders for a bit; he has already read a good portion of the way through his books, and it’ll be a few hours before he needs to eat. It's not lost on him that this involves a level of trust in him on Kakashi's part, as whatever is in the scroll is likely not public knowledge.

He decides it can’t hurt, though he hopes he doesn’t get asked any more questions about Sakura. He makes his way to take Naruto’s seat, opening up the scroll.

He stares at it long and hard, rolling it out on the table to examine it more closely. Kakashi wordlessly grabs the stapler on his desk and sets it on the top end of the parchment, to hold it in place as he further unravels it. It appears to be a cipher, and quite a complicated one.

“...You think Naruto’s going to be able to crack this?” Sasuke questions incredulously, glancing towards his old sensei with his brows furrowed in doubt. His eyes catch as he does so on the framed photograph sitting on his desk; from this angle, the side instead of the front, he can now see that it’s their original Team Seven photo. He hasn't seen it in a long time.

Kakashi chuckles, not looking up from his paperwork. “Not at all, which is why I was helping him with it yesterday. It’s good practice for him, though, and at the very least, it does keep him busy when I don't have anything else for him to do.”

XXX

Sasuke ambles back to his apartment around noon. He made some progress on the cipher, enough that Kakashi said Naruto might actually be able to take it from there. It feels good to be of use.

It also feels good to have something to give the idiot shit over, when he goes to visit him later.

He empties the cough drops from his pocket into one of the cups he bought yesterday, and pops another one into his mouth before he starts getting out ingredients to cook. It feels good on his throat, menthol pleasantly numbing despite the slightly sweet taste. He pours a hefty amount of rice into a pot to start boiling, and then begins slicing carrots and scallions and mushrooms for takikomi gohan. It takes a while to slice with one arm, as holding the vegetables in place with one hand is a challenge, but he manages by summoning a clone. Once he’s done, he slips them in a pan with some salt and dashi stock. He also adds frozen peas before covering it with the lid to simmer.

Once that’s going, he washes his hand, then folds the comforter he had washed and left out to dry this morning, ultimately storing it in the closet. He stirs the vegetable mixture occasionally, after, reading more of his book while he waits for the rice to finish. The one about kenjutsu is more interesting than he thought it would be. He might finish it by the time he sees Sakura tomorrow.

He really hopes he can walk her home again; he hadn’t gotten a chance to kiss her today. She might not want him to, if she thinks he's sick, but somehow he suspects she likely understood it wasn't actual illness. She's good at what she does, and smart.

It’s a simple but savory lunch, a larger portion than he’s accustomed to. He eats all of it, albeit slowly, as he reads.

Uncannily, an abrupt and earsplitting knocking erupts on his door as he puts the last bite in his mouth to chew.

“TEME! Open up!” More incessant knocking. “I’m fucking bored, and Kakashi-sensei gave me the day off! Let’s spar!”

Sasuke rolls his eyes and closes his book before standing to rinse his dish, setting it in the sink to wash later, along with the pot and pan already rinsed and stacked there.

“Alright, dobe. You don’t need to bust down my door.”

He grabs another cough drop and removes the tape and cotton from his arm before he goes. It’s a little tender, but the blood has clotted by now.

[monstersfear]

sweeten the pot // emilio & teagan

TIMING: current PARTIES: @teaganmyrick & @monstersfear SUMMARY: when emilio finds teagan clearly upset in a coffee shop, he decides to try to help. results are mixed. CONTENT: parental death (mentioned), sibling death (mentioned), internalized homophobia

Sweets were a comfort food for everyone, especially to those with a bigger sweet tooth than most. That’s how Teagan found herself at a coffee shop with coffee that had way too much sugar and a table full of pastries. Tears were threatening to fall, but she kept them at bay, and even if they did creep over her cheeks, she had hidden herself in a small corner. She had enough to deal with. Having someone approach her unnecessarily would just make things worse. There was no one she wanted around her more than her sister anyway. Maybe her new friend. Anyone else would just be a nuisance.

He didn’t typically frequent coffee shops. Emilio was more of a ‘make a burnt pot of coffee at home’ type of guy, but when you’d been out half the night frozen to a fire escape, trying to catch a money shot for some rich asshole of a client who was so sure his business partner was selling information to the enemy, you wanted something warm and fast. The coffee shop was only a block away from his client’s office, and it was warm inside, which was a draw all its own. The bell rung above the door as Emilio entered, and he made his way to the counter and ordered his drink in a mumble before turning to scope out the cafe.

He was looking for danger, of course. It was an old habit, the kind he doubted any hunter ever really shook. He was looking for any kind of threat that might come at him while his back was turned, but what he found instead was a woman sitting in a booth looking close to tears. Something stirred in his gut and, inexplicably, Emilio was reminded of his sister. Maybe that was what had him approaching the table, knuckles knocking against the wood as if he was knocking on a door. “Uh… Sorry. I don’t mean to bother you. I just… Are you okay?”

Looking up from her chocolate croissant, Teagan’s eyes were like oceans, not because of their color, but because of the tears that welled. Why did this man have to approach her? “I’m fine,” she bit out her response, a little too cruel than she would have liked. She was on edge. She was stressed. And now her stomach was turning. “Sorry. That was rude. I’m just stressed. No need to worry about a stranger.” That wasn’t a lie, thankfully. With all the sweets she had consumed, another lie would threaten to fill her throat with acid. And subsequently, that would release all of the delicious treats in her stomach.

“Do you want one of my sweets? I’m not going to eat them all, as much as I’d like to.” Teagan offered with a crooked smile. She felt bad for cutting the man off so abruptly when he was just trying to be a gentleman. Sipping on her honey lavender latte, she used her free hand to push a random pastry Emilio’s way. Her energy was diluted with her stress, and had she known he was a slayer, she would have certainly kept up her bite. But she didn’t have senses like he did.

She’d definitely been crying. She was definitely about to start crying some more, too, and Emilio felt utterly out of his element. He was good at trading blows, good at wielding a knife or a stake, but he was bad at this. He’d always been better at violence than at comfort, always been more familiar with it. “Not worried,” he replied, and it wasn’t true but he didn’t know why. “Just… trying to check up on somebody who looks like they could use it.” It wasn’t characteristic of Emilio, felt unfamiliar in a way that made him unsteady. So did her offer, and he eyed the sweets with a quirked brow.

“I don’t usually…” He’d never been allowed much of a sweet tooth. Food was fuel more than it was something to be enjoyed, was a thing that existed as needed. But she was pushing a pastry towards him, and eating was a necessity. Hesitantly, Emilio took the plate. “No poison, yeah?” It was only half a joke. Paranoia was the only part of Emilio that he still understood, in this moment.

“Ah…” The mug shook in Teagan’s hand, the tension from her squeezing it tightly forcing it to tremble. She let out a soft scoff and pushed her hair behind her ear. “Well, that’s kind of you. I’m just having a slight rough go at it, but I’m hoping it’ll get better.” As much as she wished she was, the nix just wasn’t very good at speaking to anyone outside her Aos Sí. There was never a need for it. Everyone she needed or wanted was in her community. Besides that, she learned at a very early age that humans and hunters weren’t people she should associate with often, or even wanted to.

Emilio’s question about poison kind of took her aback, but she could relate. Dancing on the side of caution always did well to protect her. “Kind of a shitty place to poison someone, isn’t it? Out in the open for everyone to see?” Teagan gave a genuine smile and shook her head to give Emilio a definite answer. “The pastry isn’t poisoned, no. I’d be in quite the predicament if they were. I’ve eaten loads of these things.” Her hand reached over to grab another chocolate croissant, feeling another jab of emotion she needed to quell with sugar. She’d probably pay for her comfort later with a stomachache.

He nodded, because he could understand that. Emilio wasn’t someone who could judge anyone for discomfort when it came to discussing how they felt — not when he hadn’t attempted to put his own feelings into words in years now, if he’d ever tried at all. “I’d offer advice,” he said, “but my methods of coping tend to fall into the ‘drink until you don’t think about it anymore’ camp. I’ve been told there are healthier places to be.” It was a joke. A dry joke, a flat joke, but a joke all the same. Emilio didn’t know how to tell them any other way.

Emilio huffed, and he wanted to say my mother died in the middle of a street surrounded by people, wanted to say I watched someone murder my sister in a public place, but it was the kind of thing that wouldn’t much help the situation, the kind of thing he’d say only so he could pretend it was funny when it was anything but. And she was having a bad day already. He’d be an even bigger asshole than he typically was, adding to that. So he shrugged instead, said, “If you really wanna take somebody out, being in public’s not gonna stop you,” and took a bite out of it like he was taking an olive branch. It was good. Not something he’d usually indulge in, but good. “It’s nice,” he said, because it seemed like he should really say something. “I’ve never had the food here. Usually just get coffee. But it’s nice.”

Teagan laughed into her cup and looked at Emilio over the rim as she drank. He looked like he might be objectively handsome. The fact that she couldn’t feel that frustrated her, but she wanted to try. Well, maybe she didn’t want to try, but she thought she should. “I think whoever told you that is right. I don’t drink much myself, so I’m not sure that’s the route I’d take. I rather like the ‘bury it til you can’t find it’ route.” For icy eyes, they were actually quite warm and friendly. She watched him consume the pastry and propped her head on her hand. Having someone join her didn’t seem ideal at first, but it was indeed better than being alone in a corner, trying not to cry.

“You’re very dark,” Teagan poked, making it clear she was only being playful with her bright smirk. Her joy even reached her eyes, diluting the redness and erasing the tears. “Perhaps eating some of their sweet food will help with that morbid sense of humor you got there.”

She laughed at his joke, which was an uncommon thing. Emilio wasn’t funny in a way that matched up with most people’s humor. He was only funny in the driest sense, only funny to people who could handle jokes darker than they ought to be. He wasn’t sure, most days, if that came from growing up a hunter or if it was a predetermined aspect of his personality. “Burying it’s good, too,” he agreed with a shrug. “I’m good at burying things.” She seemed to be lightening up a little, not quite as sad as she was a moment ago. Emilio told himself he didn’t care one way or another, but… it did feel kind of good, helping someone.

“I prefer to think of it as honesty,” he retorted, returning her smirk with one of his own. “Wouldn’t count on that. Nothing’s managed to get rid of it so far, so I’m thinking it’s probably here to stay.” And there were a lot of reasons for that, but none he’d bring up in a coffee shop to someone who already seemed to be having a shit day.

“You’re good at burying things? I hope that only pertains to incorporeal things. We might have a whole different problem.” Teagan rubbed her thumb into the palm of her hand, massaging the muscle to keep herself steady. Her siblings always told her she had a decent sense of humor, but she was never sure it would translate over to strangers. She never thought to practice because that meant dealing with humans. The more she was immersed into White Crest though, the easier it was to see humans as people. Not all of them were bad, it seemed. But Teagan hated being wrong, and being wrong about something like humans could be deadly. The cost was not remotely close to the reward, and that stark difference of currency couldn’t even relate to the phrase ‘you have to give more than you’re given.’

Teagan nibbled on what she decided would be her final pastry, listening and watching with stormy tinged eyes. “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. It certainly gave me the distraction I needed. Wasn’t expecting to,” she swallowed. “Strike up a conversation that would help. Even a little. I appreciate you stopping by.” Reaching out, she patted Emilio’s hand gently, then pulled it back. Her smile was warm, genuinely grateful for the reprieve from her emotional tidal waves.

“Could be into gardening,” Emilio offered, raising a brow and trying to decide if it was a joke or not. It shouldn’t be so hard to tell whether the words coming out of your own mouth were said in jest, but it felt impossible, sometimes. Emilio didn’t know himself. He hadn’t in a while now. And something told him that he wasn’t the only one at this table who could say that. There shouldn’t be comfort in that, but there was. It was like with Marley — sometimes, you wanted to know that you weren’t the only one suffering, even if that meant taking comfort in somebody else’s shitty day.

Emilio nodded, offering her something closer to a smile than his previous smirk. “I’m glad I could give you that,” he replied, and it was true in a way that was unexpected. He didn’t usually care about this sort of thing, didn’t usually give much of a shit one way or another how a stranger was feeling. “I’m Emilio, by the way.” It seemed fair enough, offering an introduction.

“A man gardening? Well, that’s every woman’s dream.” Maybe. Probably. It was never Teagan’s dream, but it could be. She could make it so, right? Isn’t that how it worked? You picked someone to try to be attracted to. That wasn’t usually the case when she caught her eyes drifting, and they were doing that a lot more often now. A distraction was one thing, but now she was trading one crisis for another. There were so many questions in her head, but the biggest one was whether or not she was flirting well enough for the man to catch on. The idea that it might, made her stomach sink. And not in the nice way it had when she spent the whole night talking to Anita. That was easy, it wasn’t forced. As unnatural as she saw it, it felt so much more natural than what she was doing now. She thought that maybe, perhaps, Bex did have a point.

Teagan pulled herself from her thoughts in time to catch Emilio’s name. Her smile was a lie, but it wasn’t the kind that could hurt her, and it was definitely believable. “I’m Teagan. It’s a pleasure. Which is a surprise. Having a stranger approach me randomly would usually upset me, but you’ve been enjoyable.”

The come on, if it could be called such, wasn’t one Emilio had been expecting. It almost seemed as though she hadn’t been expecting it, either. She seemed uncertain, seemed to shift with the words. Emilio returned them with a polite chuckle, shrugging a shoulder. “Not the first time I’ve been called a dream,” he replied, a hint of teasing to his tone. He hardly expected anything to come of it, because she’d been crying moments before and she didn’t seem the type to share the same outlet as Emilio and Marley and others like them, but it hardly seemed fair to leave her hanging. Perhaps a little light flirting would clear her mind, cheer her up. It seemed as good a bet as any.

“Teagan,” he repeated her name with a nod, committing it to memory. “It’s good to meet you. And I’m glad to hear I’m enjoyable. It’s nice to not be a bother.”

“Not surprised.” Teagan replied with a glimmer of clumsiness. She needed to abort before she got herself into a situation that she would end up detesting. With her latte and three-quarters of her pastries consumed, she felt like her departure wouldn’t be too unwarranted. Her cheeks and eyes were still a little puffy, but she wasn’t actively trying to hold back tears anymore. “You were enjoyable, yes,” Standing up, the chair noisily scraped the floor, almost toppling over. “But I need to head home.” Her fingers interlaced tightly, making her knuckles even whiter with pink around the edges. The small fib tasted like acid in her mouth, made her stomach twist into painful knots. She couldn’t force herself to do something that definitely didn’t feel natural. But she could go home and sit in her denial. Or finally accept it and let herself be. Let herself do something that’s only for her for once. Maybe talk to Anita a bit more about it. Maybe tell Bex she might be right. She was standing still for a little too long, she realized. Too many thoughts.

Teagan whipped around and left hastily, not bothering to look back as she spoke one last time, “Please have a good rest of your day.”

There was a hint of discomfort to the compliment, like she was forcing it out against her own will. Emilio shifted subtly away from the table, adding distance between the two of them unconsciously. There was confusion tugging at his gut, but he didn’t voice it. The situation already seemed awkward enough, a quick turn from what it had been only moments ago. The last thing he wanted to do was make it worse. Suddenly, Teagan was standing, so quickly that Emilio thought her chair might topple to the ground. Hesitantly, he nodded. “Okay,” he agreed, voice neutral. “It was good meeting you, Teagan.” He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d done something wrong.

[hvitserkmarcosource]

The Arrangement

Chapter Eight - Lioness

Warnings: Angst in the beginning, Fluff at the end (Warnings will be updated with each chapter, so make sure you read them!)

Chapter Eight Summary: Hvitserk makes a life changing promise.

Word count: 2,314

Thank you for all of your love and support 🥰

Chapter Seven

Chapter Nine - Coming Soon

................................................

The castle lay like an old man on the hill, the sunlight shone on his, once beautiful, cracked face. Moss clung in the shade of the ancient walls like a scraggly beard. The once proud turrets had crumbled in places giving the impression of battle worn armour. The only part of the castle that was well kept are his doors, still the richest of reds, like a fresh wound seeping blood.

Hvitserk laughs from behind you “Now I understand the red cloak”

You smile and turn to look at him. “It was my Mother’s favorite, Father honored her by making it the Kingdom's color.”

“That is romantic” he observes “What is your favorite?”

You shake your head “I’m not sure, no one has ever asked me”

His arms wrap around you “Then I will keep asking until you choose one”

Your heart starts to race and a pink tint graces your cheeks. Hvitserk can be quite charming when he wants to be. And in this moment you decide that he will inevitably be the death of you.

As the boat draws near your fathers men draw their bows and swords, no doubt thinking you a threat. Until one of them spots you and yells for the rest to let the boat pass.

“Remind me the next time we raid England to wear red-“

You playfully nudge his shoulder, cutting off his sentence.

“What?!” He says in self defense “they just let us through, it’s so much easier than fighting in the water and much less wet.”

“But now you have me, there is no need to raid England when it is half yours. Why would you steal from your own Kingdom?” The question was rhetorical, but you can tell it made him think. Marrying the princess must not have sunken in yet.

If something were to ever happen to your father Hvitserk would be made King and you Queen, your children would be the heirs of this great Kingdom. Your bloodline would rule for a lifetime and never have to raid or plunder another place ever again. War will be over between Scandanivia and England, there will finally be peace.

“The King awaits you Princess, he is in the throne room.” A knight you do not recognize reaches out his hand and helps you off of the boat. “The Pagans will have to remain outside of the walls. Per the King’s wishes”

Hvitserk begins to follow you off of the boat, but the Knight stops him “All of the Pagans must remain outside of the walls.”

You scoff “This is my future husband, Prince Hvitserk, he will not wait outside.”

The Knight looks at you and says timidly “M’lady the King gave strict orders. Only you are allowed inside of the Castle.”

Hvitserk begins to reach for his sword but you stop him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I will speak to my father, he is a difficult man but he will listen to me… you won’t have to wait for long.”

Hvitserk groans in frustration “I don’t like you going in there by yourself”

You smile “This is my home, I will be alright. Please don’t start a war while I’m gone.”

He nods “If you aren’t back by nightfall I will come in after you.”

An ounce of bravery floods through your veins and you do something you wouldn’t normally do, standing on your tiptoes you lean in and kiss his cheek ”It's a deal. I will see you soon.”

When you pull away there is a smirk on his face and you blush, perhaps you’ve made a tiny mistake…

................................................

The king stumbled from his throne and collapsed in front of you, gripping the bottom of your cloak so tight it felt as if it might tear in two. He was a wreck, tears streaming down his wrinkled face. The crown on top of his head tilted and unpolished. No one was allowed in the room with you, not even his counsel. The two of you were alone and now you understand why. Your father didn’t want anyone to see him fall apart.

You kneel with him and take his hand in yours, for the first time you realize just how old he truly is. Frail. “What is it father? Why are you feeling so much sorrow?”

He sniffles and looks up at you “I’ve lost it… all the gold, the stones, your mother's rubies. All of it is gone!”

Your heart drops and you begin to panic “What do you mean you lost it? How could you lose that much, we need it for our people” you drop his hands forcefully and stand up. After everything he’s put you through and he just loses it? You can’t believe it.

He sobs harder “My child we must find a solution-“

“This was the solution! I was the solution! Or do you not remember selling me to the highest bidder!?”

He does not say anything at your outburst, so you continue.

“Do you have any idea what I've had to go through?! What I’ve done! All because you were greedy and selfish! Now you’re telling me you’ve lost it, how? HOW DO YOU LOSE ALL OF THAT!?”

Your father looks up at you, tears in his eyes, and mouth agape.

“Explain yourself father before I walk out of this castle and tell Hvitserk what is happening, I am sure King Ivar would not like that you’ve lost all of his gold so quickly.” You seethe. Disgusted at the man before you and his stupidity.

He clears his throat and stands, taking a deep breath before he says “A dragon egg”

You can’t believe your ears, how could anyone believe what he just said. “A dragon egg?” you repeat

“A man came to me and offered three of them for a price. At first I thought him mad, and then I saw them. My girl, they were giant and colorful. The colors of precious stones, but even more beautiful.. I held them in my arms and could not stop thinking about them. I was hypnotized.”

Scoffing, you sit down on his throne and gesture for him to continue. Your mind so full of worry you aren’t sure if your legs or voice will continue to support you.

“I gave him everything… all of it, every cent, gem, and stone. I needed those dragons- we needed them, the kingdom-“

“WHAT THE KINGDOM NEEDS IS A RULER WHO DOESN'T SPEND THEIR GOLD ON FAIRY TALES!!” You take a deep breath, trying desperately to calm down. He’s still your father after all. “What the Kingdom needs is protection from people like Ivar Lothbrok and now you’ve taken that away from them. You’ve striped them of any security. How could you do that, when they have supported you through everything?”

He looks at you, confusion scanning his face. And then you’ve realized you’ve made a mistake. You spoke about Ivar.

“I may belong to Hvitserk but Ivar is ruthless. He does not care about his brother or me and will come for our Kingdom the first chance he gets. You’ve just given him a reason to come sooner.”

“There is no reason to start a war with me, Ivar and I got along quite well when we were discussing you.”

you laugh “Yes, Ivar was kind to me as well in the beginning. But it was only a show, believe me when I tell you all the stories about Ivar Lothbrok are true.”

A chill runs through the air, goose flesh creeps up on your arms, and the hair at the back of your neck stands on end. Suddenly you feel like you’re being watched. “I will speak with Hvitserk, he is smart and knows his brother best. If he does not have a solution I fear no one will… I have one more question, father.”

He nods “Yes of course, what is it you want to know?”

“What happened to the dragon eggs?”

Once more he hangs his head “It was all a lie. An egg shattered one day, it had fallen and hit the floor. I was expecting to find a body but nothing was inside. It was completely empty. The other two were the same.”

You walk away without saying another word to your father. Feeling betrayed and angry. Angry that he could be so foolish to believe in such things as dragons. Betrayed that he spent all the gold Ivar had given him in return for you… Sick that now your father will have no means to pay an army when Ivar comes for him.

................................................

When the castle begins to fill with Vikings you start to feel uneasy. You are comfortable with Hvitserk but you don’t know these men, more importantly you don’t know their motives for wanting to come along. If what Hvitserk said is true, all of these men could be doing Ivar‘s bidding. They could be scoping out the castle for Ivar, seeing if the information you gave him was the truth.

All of a sudden you get the urge to run, run away from all of this, leave everything behind and start new. Some place where no one knows who you are and can’t force you to betray anyone. A place that is beautiful and not in the midst of war.

Somewhere far away from Vikings and Kings, gold and greed. A place that hasn’t been touched by the foul hands of power hungry men and their ambitions.

But does a place like that really exist? Or is it just another fairytale?

A hand grabs yours and you wonder if the man it belongs to also shares you dreams of a better place. Or is he just like all the rest? Would you grow old with him and watch in silence as he destroys Kingdoms and tears apart families, like your mother watched your father do so many years ago? Would you become numb to all of his crimes?

You hope not.

You hope he shares your need to make this Kingdom a better place. You hope he grows old and happy with you and your children. You hope to tell your grandchildren about the Viking who married a Princess and together they made England a place of sanctuary and peace.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Hvitserk pulls you closer and whispers in your ear “What is wrong Princess? You are awfully quiet.”

You sigh and look up at him. “I was only thinking”

He chuckles “Then I am sorry for the interruption, it looked like a wonderful thought.”

“It was, but do not apologize. I find when I talk to you my thoughts only get happier.”

He smiles “I hope you always feel that way.”

You look away from him then, searching the room for your father. When you find him he is face down in a mug of ale, screaming and carrying on like he didn’t just condemn his entire Kingdom to death.

Pointing at your father you whisper to Hvitserk “Do you see my father? He has lost everything, he has destroyed this Kingdom and the people in it. And he celebrates like nothing is wrong, that is because he doesn’t care. So long as he weasels his way into another deal with Ivar, as long as it is favorable to him. Painting my father as the hero, he will be happy. So long as he still has power and that power has the possibility to grow he will be happy. No matter who it crushes in its path…”

You look at Hvitserk then and say aloud “I will always feel happiness when I think of you, for as long as I have breath in my lungs, you will always make me smile. But you must promise me something.”

He nods

“Do not become like him, do not forget about peace and honor. Do not toss aside our people for gold. Please treat them with kindness and help those who are in desperate need. Help me make this a better place.”

He takes your hand and brings it to his lips, kissing your knuckles gently. He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wedding band. “This ring is very special to me, much like the necklace you wore on our first meeting. I do not take my promises lightly, I want you to know that, and I swear on this ring and my arm ring to never be like that man.” He places the ring on your finger and continues “I promise to love and honor you, and your wishes. I promise to protect your people as well as my own and do so with dignity and selflessness. I promise to always make your thoughts of me be filled with laughter and joy. I promise to help you fulfill your dreams for your Kingdom… But most importantly, I promise to be your husband, the father of your children, and the man you wish me to be for as long as you wish me to be. For every passing moment I spend with you I realize I am falling more in love and I do not want to waste more time in not telling you.”

A tear falls from your eye but for the first time in a long time it is not out of sadness. It’s out of love.

“Will you promise to love me Princess? A savage, worthless Viking that does not deserve anyone, let alone a woman like you.”

You nod and let a sob escape, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into an embrace “You are worthy. I do promise, I promise to always love you and stand by your side.”

He rests his head in the crook of your neck and lets out a breath. Saying the three words you never thought you’d hear him say “I love you”

Tag list: @alexhogh7137 @ivarthebloodyking @sfyri @curlyhairedhoseok @mavalenovaninagavi @lol-haha-joke @joebob15274 @itsharleyalb @motherofkattegat @kaitieskidmore1

[yandere-wishes]

Twisted Wonderland //Yandere! Ignihyde//

I practically sleep typed this whole thing, feel free to call me out on any errors you may find. Please bear in mind that this post may be edited one the official game is released. 

Idia shroud

Idia is a very shy and reserved person by nature. Thus it shouldn't come as a shock that his yandere traits are well hidden and indistinguishable, if he was to fall into a certain category it would most likely be, a stalker type with an immoderate obsession with how perfect his darling is.

 Idia met you online through one of the many group servers he's a part of. You were new to the chat and eager the start up a conversation with anyone available. That person just so happened to be Idia. He was reluctant at first after all he barely spoke to the people he knew, and you were a total stranger. It was an easy discussion t first simply talking about what had brought you to this server and why you liked it the main point focused so much. This discussion quickly became more personal, other things that you liked, how Idia felt about them. 

Then you did the unthinkable, added him as a friend! His heart pounded deafeningly in his chest, as he slowly slid the cursor to the green "accept" button. Once he'd excepted you, you quickly texted a pink heart emoji followed by a large smelly face. Idia texted back with four consecutive question marks. And through that add beginning, the two of you became close online buds. 

Each morning like clockwork Idia would log on and strike up a random conversation with you. It felt like a steady routine something that would (he hoped) never change. 

Gradually your replies became further and further apart. One worded rushed replies where all you gave, days after he'd sent you a message. It was around this time that Idia decided that he need your full attention. He began scoping you out on the internet, trying to absorb as much information as possible. 

He learned who your friends were, where you lived, your online schedule, when you were online on what days. His plummet into madness began here. 

"You're perfect..."

It took a lot of convincing from Ortho, who had never seen his older brother so infatuated with anyone. But Idia finally began to creep around your house, hiding behind walls and trees, setting up cameras all over the back and front yard. He found ways into your house through unlocked doors and forgotten windows. 

He began setting up mini camera's in your room and living room, two places you where mostly going to be. 

It was better this way, he could keep you safe from afar. 

And so Idia would spend countless hours watching you from his computer. Eyes glancing over your digital photo, fingers caressing the screen with so much love, so much passion. 

And still, he wasn't satisfied, for once in his eternal life a computer screen just wasn't good enough. Watching wasn't enough he wanted to feel. To feel every bump of your skin, hear every breath, have your fingers draw soothing circles on his chest. 

In the mists of a starless night, Idia found himself staring down at your sleeping form, he outstretched his arm to move a few strands of silky hair away from your face. You felt so strange, so new.... you felt alive! something he never knew, everything was always fir and hard metal, sure Ortho's personality could rival the most sprightly humans but his body was still that of a machine's. 

He grasped your shoulder squeezing it ever so slightly, moving his fingers up your neck and to your mouth. His other arm snaked under your legs. He hosted you up with ease carrying you away to his digitally dead kingdom. 

"Perfect and alive"

Bonus

Idia always dresses you in vivid colored gowns, snowy whites and summer sky blues. Furthering his belief that you are a perfect thing and alive thing. 

He forces you to spend time with Ortho - not that your mind- wanting the only two people he's ever cared about to "love" each other as much as he loves them. 

Idia has a low sex drive, a normally keeps to the things you like. After having kept you for a while he slowly began to explore his likes and dislikes. There are only two things that can turn Idia on, one being a blowjob and the other asphyxiation. When you squeeze his neck between your delicate fingers it gives him the sense that he's somewhat alive, like his life is devoted to you and inform yours to him.

Ortho shroud

Ortho is so lively and friendly that it can be easy to overlook just how obsessed he can become. He will cling onto you both emotionally and physically. Other than his brother your the only person that truly seems to understand him. 

He'll never kidnap you or force you to return his feelings, never manipulate your or hurt you in any way. He loves you, love means protecting that which you love. Truth is you're going to fall hard for the robot boy, you'll trust him and be willing to give up everything for him. 

You're both so obsessed with each other that everybody else around you beings to fade. Your lives are fairy tales in the realm of the digital and dead. 

"I love you (Y/N)...."

The youngest Shroud brother is extremely sensitive and will take offense to any reason why you don't want to be around him. "Me time" or "alone time" don't make sense to him, why can't you be alone with him close by? Well be super quiet, you won't even know he's there. 

This tie's into why Ortho tries his best to keep all your friends and family away. They're only distractions, obstacles that get in the way of his love. He many have methods for keeping them away, normally they go missing or are found dead with no cause of death being rolled out. 

"....we'll always be together right?"

Ortho doesn't exactly grasp why this is a bad thing, he got rid of an opponent he should be happy! Never the fewer people keep popping up, keep demanding your attention and he keeps having to deal with them. 

Ortho does have a yandere side, it practically unnoticeable, but it there and it keeps getting stronger, his need and want for you keep getting stronger. 

Bonus 

Ortho will take out on cute dates to carnivals and arcades, winning you as many prizes as he can. Impressing you with how well he can beat any game. To him, this is yet another way to show you how well he can protect you.  

He'll plan little "family event" where you try out something new together with Idia such as cooking or binge-watching a new show. The two of you are the only family he's ever had and your perfect. Together all three of you are the perfect family in his algorithm based brain. 

[razorblade180]

Code Black

[Lasting Embers Au] [Warning, it’s dark]

Atlas, three o’clock in the morning. A lone airship soars across the barren tundra to an unmarked Atlas warehouse that had been abandoned for years, until recently that is. Inside, Sienna sat in silence with a deep seeded anxiety that went to her bones deeper than the frigid cold that made its way through the cockpit.

Today was mission 0, final exam day. Every recruit for The Shadows has to take it before actually making it in. They took it one at a time and weren't allowed to speak about it. Not that mattered since each test tailored to the recruit, but none of them were aware of that fact. Everything was so bizarre and mysterious more than usual, even the close. Sienna was in specialized gear for the first time today. A black form fitting bodysuit covered by white military style cargo pants, and turtleneck that would be disposed of once she got out of the snow. Sienna put on her black leather gloves and picked up her very own Shadows mask, which was simply a full face White Fang mask that was painted completely black with specks of grayish white to match her ears. She even had a change of shoes in her duffel bag once the snow boots served their purpose. The bag also housed extra ammunition for her party as well as her chain for the time being. This was a standard op it seems. This was…

xxxx

“A code black, what is that?” Sienna said to Adam in his office, clearly confused by the code. Normal recruits weren’t allowed in the office since only actual members and a few others knew he was alive, but Adam raised her so there wasn’t a real reason for her not to ask directly.

“Yes,” he said. Adam stood up and moved in front of his desk and sat on the edge with his legs stretched out. He found it a little funny how his daughter stood in front of him at attention. “You know it’s just the two of us, relax.”

Sienna shoulders dropped immediately. “Sorry, I was practicing for when we’re in public. It would cause trouble if the others suspected something.”

They already know but I’m glad she’s thinking ahead. “Did they go over the different color codes for recruits by any chance?”

Sienna stood up straight and cleared her throat. “Every mission for The Shadows is given a specific color depending on what kind of operation it is, that way members can have an idea of what’s entail and if they think they are qualified.”

“Did...was that in a handbook or something? Since when do you use words like entail?”

Sienna let out a sigh as she stared at her feet. “Ilia is a very strict instructor.”

Adam immediately felt her pain. Even in the old days, Ilia was always the kind of person to cross her t’s and dot her i’s when it came to just about anything.

“I guess that means you could name a few of those codes.”

“Oh of course!” Sienna perked up immediately. She loved flaunting her knowledge “Red is assassination, white is deep undercover, green is theft, gray tends to be more head to head confrontation, pink is torture…” that last one always creeped her out. “I could name a few more if you like?”

“No you’ve proven your point. I gotta remember to thank Ilia. Teaching was never really my strong suit.” Adam started thinking about how he tried teaching Sienna and Jael to swim. Jacquelyn might’ve actually killed him that day. He still thinks floaties are for the weak. Just dive right in!

Sienna got a little bit more comfortable and decided to sit on his desk next to him. “I’ve memorized almost all the codes and I’m positive I never saw black. Could she have forgotten it?”

Adam turned his body to his daughter. Suddenly everything felt like it had gotten more serious, even the air. “No, Ilia probably didn’t think it mattered since they’re rare. Code black, erasure.”

Sienna’s body went cold. “E-Erasure? As in no evidence, or witnesses?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.” Adam rubbed his hand through his hair. “When it comes to the codes, all the other ones deal with small groups or even a single person that’s typically a key player or just beginning to cause trouble, so completing those missions usually puts whatever plan they had to a complete stop.”

“Like taking a gear out of a machine. Each mission takes a gear out and it gets too complicated to get new pieces.”

“Hey that’s a pretty good way of thinking about it.” Adam smiled. He’d have to remember that analogy.

“So what makes code black different from the rest?”

“Well following your logic, let’s say the other missions were machines that were being built. Many different things are in the progress of creating it and nothing is finalized, there’s not a true system to mass produce the machine. Black codes are for situations where the machine is already up and running. You can take a part out but it will be replaced eventually. So you break the machine along with the factory, with all the workers inside. As well as the inventors.”

“Oh…” was all Sienna could say to that. She could tell he wasn’t just talking about the grunts. If you want a machine to not be built, then even people who know if the idea has to go. “So, can I get specifics?”

“To put it briefly, a terrorist group's main base has been discovered. They’ve been doing things for a while now and with efficiency to boot. They’re incredibly dangerous and though we’ve dwindled their numbers, there’s still a lot of them. People keep joining their ranks which is the very reason we know all about them now. A recruiter slipped up and we got information. Down to the letter. They’re regrouping in two days.”

“So my final exam is to go to the base and…let it all fade to memory, erase it from history.”

“Mass murder, a slaughter.” Adam said it out right, like ripping off a bandaid. Sienna looked down at her hands and clenched them tightly. He had a pretty good idea what was going through her head. Seconds past before she looked back at him with a will that refused to break.

“What else do I need to know.” The anxiousness in her voice was being pushed back with all her strength. She knew what this job was about. Turning back was not an option. It was never an option.

“Code blacks are only carried out by the absolute best here, all of them. With the exception of me this time because it’s a test. I don’t trust myself to not baby you.”

At least he was honest about it.* Sienna honestly wished he was going but yeah, it would totally be cheating. Well, possibly. What she was being graded on was a mystery to her.

“Wait...” she replayed what he told her. “The absolute best? Do you mean-”

Adam put his hand on her head and rubbed it. “Yep. Just follow their lead and you’ll be fine. Do your best Sienna.”

xxxx

Turbulence hit the airship and the mask slipped out of her hands. Right before it hit the ground, Mercury’s foot hooked the inside of it and he sent it back up into her hands. “Careful, can’t have that breaking on us.”

Emerald sat right next to him and hit him lightly on the head. “If that’s your worry then maybe don’t use your feet?” She said, deadpanned. She might’ve hit him again if Neo didn’t turn around from steering and motioned towards their clearly one edge recruit.

Neo didn’t even have to speak for them to know she wanted them to do something. Mercury gave Emerald a look and shrugged his shoulders.

“Got any ideas?” He whispered.

Emerald shrugged back. “Maybe what Nora does for Tenzen? That calms his nerves.

Mercury thought about it for a minute then nodded. Sienna had completely zoned out, caught up in her mind when the feeling of Mercury’s hand ruffling her hair shocked her out of it.

“What the!? Hey!”

Mercury smiled. “There, now you can worry about your hair instead of anything else.” He watched the girl fix her pixie cut while giving him a pouty look that hid a small smile.

“That was so dumb” Sienna muttered. “Thanks.”

Mercury gave her a thumbs up then sat back down next to his wife. He peeked over at Neo who also gave him a thumbs up. So far so good. Missions could get tense so it was important to stay loose.

The ride continued for another twenty minutes before the ship finally landed. Sienna didn’t say anything but had decided it was best to mimic some of their movements. Checking shoes, stretching, putting on the mask; no way was she going to look like a complete noob. Though she did almost gasp from shock when she all three entirely suited up. There was something really cool about the only differences was the speckled pattern on the masks. She hadn’t seen herself in a mirror so she wondered if she looked just as intense.

Mercury opened up the door,letting in a rush a cold air that snapped Sienna into focusing. One by one they hopped out into the tundra. There was nothing but snow for miles, except for a cliff in the distance. Not extremely far, but far enough for Sienna to ask the dreadful question.

“We’re heading to the cliff by foot, aren’t we?” She really didn’t want to complain but the idea of it was really making her consider failing. Neo laughed at the girl though.

“I don’t need to see your face right now to know what you’re thinking. As entertaining as it would be to say yes, I need you in high spirits. That cliff is our destination, however….” Neo pulled out her scroll and started texting. “We’re on a tight schedule so we’re gonna cut a corner or two.”

A red portal opened up in front of her. Mercury and Emerald walked through immediately while Neo grabbed Sienna’s hand then led her through. Red and black consumed everything before she saw white again. They were on the cliff, just like that!

Sienna turned around to see the portal closing. Before it did, she caught a glimpse of a figure in red and black. It was easy to see that they were a woman by their outfit but Sienna couldn’t think of one person from what little details she saw. The hair did remind her of the blonde woman she met once. Yang was it? She couldn’t remember. Sienna turned back around to see an extra person she did recognize. Ilia was on her stomach at the edge of the cliff and looking through the scope of a sniper rifle. She was geared up like everyone else and seemed to have been here for quite awhile. Her hair had changed white but Sienna could see plenty of snow in it. Sienna walked over to her and went into a prone position as well.

Down below was the abandoned base. It looked like a base and more of a Frankenstein’s monster. The structure had looked part warehouse and part oil rig with how many pipes and beams there were, not to mention the size. The building was pretty huge from this far away but that made sense. There’s supposed to be a lot of these terrorists here. If it wasn’t for the wind then she could probably hear most of them. A good thing to keep in mind for later.

“See anything?” Sienna asked.

Ilia perked her head up and looked at the girl confused? “Wait, this is your test?”

Now Sienna’s face matched Ilia’s. “Dad didn’t tell you?”

“No, he just said this mission was extra special. Now I see why. Did the flight here agree with you?”

“Yes ma’am, I’m ready” her voice held a certain apathy to it that Ilia noticed right away. She gave Sienna some binoculars and turned her head towards some large busted pipes.

“See that? That is an old pipeline that was used for transporting dust. This base should still have plenty inside and even residue all up through it.”

“So… we’re blowing this place up?”

Ilia nodded. “That’s half right. They’re big enough for someone to go through without much of a problem. No doubt they lead somewhere inside.” Ilia takes the binoculars back. “That’s where you’re going.”

“I see…” Sienna bit her lip. If I understand this right, I’m taking out people from inside, I assume Neo disguises herself and goes through the front door, you’re picking off anyone who tries escaping if things get loud…” she turned to look at Em and Mercury. “I guess one of you goes for the higher up places?”

Emerald almost wanted to clap. “ Not half bad with these guesses, any rhyme to your reason?”

“It’s not like I don’t know what you all are particularly good at. That being said, Mercury, what are you doing?”

“Hmm what do you think I should do?” He cracked his knuckles. “If you were running this op, what would be your orders?”

Gears in her head were turning. There was a high chance that this was the test portion and the others would compensate accordingly. They were pros so no doubt they could actually fill any role. She however could not. Sienna knew she was bound to make a mistake. A slip up that might make things more challenging in the long run. Sienna needed a safety net.

“You’re with Mercury. If I’m going right into the lion's den then I might need help when things eventually get loud.”

“Roger that. Consider me your extra muscle.”

Glad to know my lessons got through to her. Ilia thought to herself. She looked back at everyone, they were all ready.

“What are y’all standing around here for? You heard the lady. Remember to keep calm and take off the snow camouflage when you’re inside. There could be hundreds in there and I’d like to do this quietly for as long as possible. It’ll make my life easier. Sienna, would you like to do the honors?”

Sienna nodded, “Let the operation begin.”

xxxx

“This operation stinks.” Sienna said while holding her breath in. These old pipes were disgusting! Her and Mercury must’ve been traveling down them for at least ten minutes. Both were now in black and besides from Mercury’s hair, it was pretty damn hard to spot him. Sienna was confident in her decision.

“Yeah stealth tends to have the smellier routes. They typically put us in sweet spots though.” Finally they reach an exit point in the form of a vent opening on the ground. Sienna looked down and spotted crates of old dust. The lights were dim and she could faintly here one, no, two people.

“Two people, far end of the room. They sound like two guys,older guys.” She whispered.

“One for you and one for me then. You ready?”

Sienna ignored the smell and took a deep breath to calm the last bit of her nerves and removed the vent. Mercury saw her ears fold down.

“Word of advice, it helps if you make it brief. For you and-”

“I’ve killed before Mercury.” She briefly takes off her mask to let him see her blank expression. Her eyes almost looked devoid of anything. Almost like a broken doll. Sienna put her mask back on. “Let’s get started.”

Sienna hopped down and immediately rolled behind the crates. Mercury followed suit. They poked their heads over them to see two people with rifles simply chatting. It would appear Sienna and Mercury had entered through the basement and the guards were meant to keep people from getting inside this room. Too bad for them. Sienna pulled out and looked at Mercury. He gave her nod and held up fingers, then two, and finally one. He dropped the last finger and they immediately vaulted over the crates, kicking off the edge of it to propel themselves right out the guards. The one on the left didn’t even register the blade gliding across his throat while the one on the right found himself trying to breathe desperately as his neck was in a deadly choke hold. In seconds they were both gone, two down. Sienna looked down at the body for a second before picking it carefully and placing it behind the crate. Mercury grabbed his duffel bag and pulled out a timed bomb that would blow in forty minutes.

“Shouldn’t take us this long to wrap this all up but it gives us wiggle room.”

“I can hear twenty more right above us, then another thirty above them. Anything above that is too muffled to tell.”

“Interesting, grab your chain. We’re gonna get creative.”

xxxx

Ilia watched the outside carefully. She can see Emerald taking down terrorists on the roof and Neo was visible a few minutes ago through a window. She was wearing her favorite disguise. The one with green eyes and black hair. “ She should really switch things up sometimes.” Illia thought aloud. Ilia kept watching. Twenty minutes had passed.

I wonder if Sienna is holding up? Mercury won’t baby her but I hope he shows some kind of compassion. That girl, she’s…

Ilia couldn’t help but think of Sienna’s eyes when they first met. The coldness, the complete lack of light they had. Sienna was in many ways still that girl. No matter how much love Adam and Jacquelyn has given her. That’s why Adam must’ve chosen this code for her. He knew Sienna had to traverse her demons, not block them off. Even if he hated the idea of it.

“Anyone got any info for me?” Ilia said, pressing a button on her earpiece.

“Top floor has forty, the main floor has about sixty.” Emerald responded. “What about you Neo?”

“I’m on the main floor. From what I can see there’s no one here huntsman grade. I doubt these people have aura honestly which makes sense. They keep trying to replenish troops because of us so guns are all they really got. Anyone know what the leader looks like?”

“All I know is that they’re a woman.” Emerald scanned the area. “Which means nothing without any features. Mercury, you and Sienna make it inside?”

There was no response. “Mercury?” Emerald said again but still didn’t get an answer. “Could they be held up?”

“Well we at least know they haven’t been made. Everyone would’ve been alerted if they had.” Neo looked along the worn down walls and followed the trail of pipes with her eyes. “ Want me to go look for them?”

Ilia bit her lip and looked at her scroll. Their aura was still full. “Don’t poke around too much. They should be-”

“Basement is full of live ammo, the floor above has seventeen, and the one above has thirty. The woman in charge has red eyes? White hair, and in a yellow suit.” Mercury said, abruptly. Ilia started looking through the windows of each floor she could until a woman with that description briefly passed by the top floor.

“Second floor, right side of the wall.”

Neo looked up and spotted the middle aged woman. What really caught her eye was the five people in black tuxes that made to stay several feet away, but close enough to keep an eye on things. Three of the five were also women who looked almost as stone cold as Cinder was. The two looked like loads of fun as well.

“She has five bodyguards, and I’ll bet my favorite hat they are huntsman level, or military trained at the very least. If this woman called this whole group here then she’ll probably make a speech. Could be a good opportunity to take her down.”

“That aside, Mercury, why did it take you so long to answer? Ilia asked.

xxxx

Mercury took a moment before responding. He stared at his that were thankfully covered by his gloves to avoid blood stains and evidence. He then looked at two more dead bodies that had piled with the first two. “I was trying to get some answers.” He finally answered.

“And where’s Sienna?”

“Sienna….Sienna is the one who got the info.” He said, with a bit of shock. No one said anything after that for several seconds, until Ilia spoke again.

“Do I even wanna know?” A bit of concern was in her voice.

Mercury looked towards the middle of the room to see their third victim on top of one of the crates, his toes barely scraping the top of it. The only thing stopping the man from screaming is the chain around their neck that was thrown over a support beam and being held tightly by Sienna.

“No, just know it’s handled. Say I was thinking we might need to speed things along, and I’m not just saying that because the time on the bomb has about half the time on it. Probably should’ve made it remote detonate.” He said, looking at the bomb options.

Sienna finally let the body drop now that it had expired. She made no attempt to hide her displeasure in doing torture, her hand clenching her stomach out of obvious disgust. It was one of the few things that truly ate away at her. “The only reason Mercury and I haven’t sent off anyone is because they know better than to shoot in a highly explosive room.”

Mercury walked over to her and rubbed her back. Suddenly she felt a lot less nauseous. He couldn’t see her gentle smile, the wiggle of her ears said thank you on their own. “Sooner or later they’re gonna realize five people are missing, and get suspicious.”

“The point of a code black mission is erasure right? You also said it’ll eventually get loud. May I suggest something?” Sienna asked.

“It’s your test squirt.” Neo replied.

“Let’s just blow everything up now. The explosion will at least get the floor below us, but this place doesn’t look too stable. Won’t the cold kill any stragglers trying to escape? Picking them off wouldn’t be too hard and if Neo or Em can kill the boss in the middle of the chaos then we’re on the up and up. I know it’s risky, not to mention completely chaotic…”

Sienna looked out the basement entrance and could see dozens of feet and shadows constantly moving. “But there’s just so many of them. They need to panic.”

Ilia looked around the building and saw several airships. Maybe, just maybe… “Emerald, can you be a dear and make sure no one can fly away?”

“We’re actually just blowing this place up?”

“Yes we are. It’s fucking cold out here and I’d like to get this done before sunrise. Sienna…”

“Ma’am?”

“The hard part starts now. Stay focused, and safe.” Her tone carried a sense of maternal love that made Sienna’s chest warm. Ilia caring about her was something she always knew but it was nice to actually hear it in a way that wasn’t a lecture or intense drills. It was weird when Sienna thought about it. Ilia must’ve known how on edge this was making her. They all seemed to.

Mercury pulled out his combat knife and handed it to Sienna. “Here, you’ll use it more than me.” Sienna twirled his and her knife in each hand. The weight felt good, unnervingly good.

“I know this isn’t the same, but all of us here have done some pretty dreadful things at extremely young ages. So if this is too much or you need to vent, we’re all ears. Except Neo. She’s really chatty.

Sienna couldn’t help but chuckle at that comment. “Thanks” Her attention turned towards the door filled with looming threats just outside of it. “I might take you up on that offer.”

xxxx

Life, a precious thing bestowed to all but never in equal shares. That’s how Mercury saw it anyways. To him, the world was always a place where your life depended on robbing that precious thing from others in some shape or form. He still believed that to a certain degree. Even while his own was fading.

The bomb had gone off several minutes ago. Thick smoke and immense heat from the rapidly spreading flames surrounded each crumbling floor as bullets flew in every direction, the screams of panic constantly attacking his eardrums. He felt a little bad for how much he couldn’t care less. Especially since he’s been on the wrong side of the law most of his life. He was more jaded than he thought. Emerald would say otherwise but she was just being nice. He’d miss that about her.

Mercury leaned against a broken wall clenching his left side. A lucky aimed grande had gone off inches away from him and took almost all of the shrapnel. Even with aura, his ribs didn’t enjoy that one bit. The pain was almost too much to bear. Between that and the heat, Mercury’s vision was starting to blur. Halfway across the room he could still make out a figure, that obviously wasn’t friendly, point a gun at him with deadly accuracy. All he could do was cough and try to stand, but his legs gave out on him. For once he missed the prosthetics.

“Well Em, looks like you don’t have to deal with my terrible sense of humor anymore.” He wheezed. Mercury held his arms in front of his body, hoping he had enough aura left to take a few more bullets. He never got the chance to know as the marksman gun got snatched from his hands by a chain and was quickly used against him, ending his life. It all happened too fast, or maybe it was because of his mission, but Mercury didn’t know what just happened.

“S- Tigress?” He said, barely catching himself from using her name in the middle of a fight. He couldn’t see her. All he saw, were the sway of flames. They flickered almost like a dying candle each time before he heard a scream or saw gunshots stop in a direction. A shadow on the walls contoured and flowed like a wave that engulfed other shadows like a predator on the hunt.

It was only when that shadow lunged out of the flames did he see what it was. Sienna crouched several feet in front of him on a body, someone in a suit that was breathing their last breath as Sienna pulled knives out of their chest. She didn’t appear to notice him, not at first. Her head was too busy swiveling to locate her next target. Mercury felt his soul leave his body the moment their eyes locked. The absolute hunger and lack of anything but fiery bloodlust made her look like a demon than anything else. Not even wild animals or grimm showed this kind of evil, this overwhelming desire to kill. Her blood soaked clothes and mask didn’t help either. This was Sienna? This was the same twenty year old girl he comforted earlier? One thing was for sure, nothing was robbing Sienna of her life.

She approached him slowly. The way she stayed low and never blinked made Mercury almost wish she stayed away. Sienna didn’t though. She got closer and closer until he was in arms reach. Mercury closed his eyes tightly in fear. He could feel her hand press against his mask gently, then adjusted it slightly.

“Icarus?” He heard her call out his code name. He opened his eyes slowly to see the soulless eyes replaced with the warm and sincere eyes he had gotten used to. “Are you okay?” She spoke again.

“I-I uh, can barely stand.” The lump in his throat was serious. It had been awhile since he felt this level of fear. That’s all he could think to call it. Sienna had managed to terrify him. A feat only achieved by a select few. Salem, his father, Neo, and his first encounter with Jacquelyn, to name a few.

Sienna lifted his arm and used herself as a crunch to support him. “Lady Em would be really upset if my plan killed you. Can’t have that now can we? Let’s get you somewhere a little bit cooler.”

“You should be...more concerned about completing the mission. Complete erasure remember?”

“I remember. I also remember you saying I could chat with you later if I wanted. I’m a ‘have your cake and eat it too’, kind of gal.” Sienna took no further protest from him and began walking. One of the good parts about a blown up building was the many holes leading outside. It took no time at all to find a sizable one to get through. Sienna placed by some debris out of reach of the flames but not too far to get cold. She looked to the right of her to find an abandoned rifle and gave it to him.

“Play dead or fight whoever you can. I’ll let our resident sniper know where you are to watch your back. This won’t take much longer by the sound of it.”

Mercury said nothing. He simply watched her walk back into flames, the faint sense of her intent to kill returning to her before she was out of sight.

Sienna could feel her body go numb again. It was only moments later when another person jumped out ready to fight and quickly regretted the idea as they saw a knife fly into the air, and get stuck in their windpipe. All of this felt so familiar to her.Blood, fire, tears, screams; what ruled her nightmares was back again happening in reality. How many have died by her hand now? At least forty five by now. In a single day, the blood on her hands had gone up forty three, yet that first two still clawed its way to the front of her mind. She could never forget that day. It wouldn’t allow her to forget that day. The day she died twice by her own hands. Sienna continued walking through the flames, looking for the next target.

xxxx

The ride back home was quiet. Ilia had decided to be the one flying since she didn’t have to fight up close while Mercury was fast asleep in his seat. Emerald clung to his arm, sleeping as well. The woman was almost moved to tears when she saw how battered he had gotten. Mercury tried to play it cool but Sienna got the feeling he was so relieved to be in Emerald’s embrace again. Sienna could see the love between them as clear as a shining star. She was happy that they were together again. Sienna hoped she too would find a love like that. A love that took the pain away. Not that her family didn’t do that, but she hoped that she'd find it from a stranger as well. Adam did it, so it was possible. Neo was awake for the whole ride but said very little. Ilia told Sienna that Neo tended to fall back into being mute after missions like these. As if they brought back the old her from days long past. Maybe that’s why she was so good at what she did. Even the shining pink in her eyes held a different presence to them. Somehow Sienna understood it perfectly.

Sienna wasn’t in a chatty mood anyways. She calmly waited for the airship to reach its destination when she realized it was landing in Menagerie, but not in town. It had landed by her house.

“It would be pretty awful for you to have to walk home or not sleep in your own bed after tonight.” Ilia commented.

“You could’ve dropped me off at my bunk.”

“What bunk? Those are for recruits, not full fledged members. I’d say congratulations but that sounds a little inappropriate so..” Ilia held out her hand. “Welcome to The Shadows.”

Sienna didn’t know what to say. She went to shake Ilia’s hand but realized she had never taken off the gloves that were now covered in dried blood. Almost all of her was like that. Sienna hadn’t even realized her mask was still on. She took it off and finally breathed her first breath of fresh air in hours. She removed the gloves as well and shook Ilia’s hand.

“Thanks” was all she could muster to say. Sienna turned around to hop off but not before exchanging looks with Neo. They raised their adrenaline filled fists and bumped them before Sienna finally left.

“What do you think she’ll do now?” Ilia asked

“I don’t have to think, I know exactly what comes next.” Neo responded before standing up and walking to the restroom inside the ship.

Sienna took the several foot walk home before staring at the front door to see both her family standing before her. Sienna suddenly started to feel hot. Her stomach churned and her throat tightened before tears welled up frantically. The adrenaline in her body left and Sienna dropped to her knees, vomiting hard into the sand. Adam quickly ran to her side while Jacquelyn stood by her second daughter.

“Jael go get your sister some water.”

“Yes ma’am.” Jael ran inside, taking the hint.

Jacquelyn walked over to Adam who was rubbing Sienna’s back as she wept. Jacquelyn followed suit by hugging the girl tight, silently shushing her and rubbing her fingers through her hair.

“Why?” Sienna gasped, “Why did it feel so good? My head went back to that day and everything just felt so wrong yet so...so natural! I felt… comfortable even. Like I finally got to take all that anger and give it back tenfold! How do you deal with that feeling!? How do you live with it!?”

Sienna balled her eyes out into her mother’s chest. If her voice wasn’t so horse then she’d probably scream her lungs out. Everything she did should’ve felt disgusting and it did to a certain degree, but not the way it should’ve. Sienna knew she’d do it again in a heartbeat. The feeling of Adam’s arms wrapping around here back controlled her breathing a little. The embrace of both of her parents somehow only brought more tears. It’s like she had forgotten what it’s life to feel safe until now. Adam let go briefly and turned her head in his direction. Her distressed face was enough to break his heart a thousand times over.

“I can’t say I have an answer for you, but know I’ll be here as long as it takes until we find the answer.”

“We both will.” Jacquelyn chimed in.

Sienna pulled them back into her arms as physically possible and simply wept. She opened her eyes briefly to see Jael watch from the door and Sienna extended her arm for the girl to come rushing in, giving her big sister all the love she could give. At last...

Daybreak came.

[rufousnmacska]

Museum Day

A modern manorian au request

Part 1

Part 2

“Don’t give yourself a headache.”

Manon looked up from the microscope and rubbed her eyes, giving them a moment to adjust. The preparation work on this fossil was so delicate she needed the scope to see properly. Fossil prep was tedious and could definitely cause headaches, but she enjoyed it. Seeing something spring to life out of the rock matrix was rewarding, even if it took a long time. And the work was quiet, meditative. The only bad part was that she wasn’t getting paid. It was her day off yet she was at the museum, volunteering in this lab for the boost to her university applications.

“I’m almost done for the day,” she told Ghislaine.

Asterin had met Ghislaine a couple of years ago. Manon was still unsure how, but when her cousin found out Ghislaine was a paleontologist at the museum, she’d brought her to the next Blackbeak family dinner. It took almost a year for her to get Manon a job there, what with reduced funding and not many openings. Once she got in, Manon made sure to spread the word that she wanted to learn anything and everything. Most of her spare time was spent helping out in labs and with exhibits.

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow? Like, work work?” Ghislaine asked, standing up to stretch. She rubbed her eyes too and groaned. “I don’t know what’s worse. The scope or the computer.”

“At least I don’t need reading glasses yet, old lady,” Manon teased, trying to get a few more particles free from the ammonite.

“Oh hey,” Ghislaine said innocently. “Look at this.”

Manon turned to find Ghislaine giving her the finger and she snorted. “I’m only a few years behind you. Soon you can throw it back in my face.”

“I will. But for now, I’m leaving. Which means you are too. It’s Friday and I need a drink. What’s Asterin doing tonight? Want to have her meet us?”

Manon finished the section she was working on and cleaned up her area. “I think she’s free.” As Ghislaine texted Asterin, Manon gathered her things. She caught her reflection in a glass case and frowned. Quickly, so Ghislaine wouldn’t see, she redid her braid and told herself it was because it was falling in her face.

A few minutes later, as they walked through the main dinosaur hall, she repeated that excuse in her head. But it didn’t matter. She knew it was a lie. She knew it the moment she saw Dorian sitting in front of an exhibit at the other end of the room. The moment her heart jumped against her chest.

It had been a few weeks since that nightmare of a tour. Only, it hadn’t really been a nightmare. Another lie she told herself. She couldn’t get him out of her head. Hadn’t been able to, really, since the night they’d first met. But seeing him here, in the light of day, brought him front and center in her mind.

Since then, Dorian had been back to the museum eight times. Sometimes with his brother, sometimes on his own. Not that she was counting. The first time he’d just waved hello from afar, not coming to talk to her. And that’s how it went, her disappoint growing with each sighting. Whether she was giving a tour or not, if she saw him, he waved and went about his business. What his business here was, she didn’t know.

“Are you okay?”

Manon realized she’d stopped to stare at him.

“I’ve seen him around a lot lately,” Ghislaine said, casting an appreciative eye towards Dorian. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” she admitted, though she refused to go into detail when Ghislaine pressed her. His back was to them, so she could have easily kept walking. Instead, she said, “You go ahead. Tell Asterin I’ll call her tomorrow.”

Ghislaine very politely said nothing, but her devilish grin made Manon laugh. “Okay. Have a good night.”

She waited til her friend was out of sight and started towards Dorian. He was sitting on a bench, bent over something in his lap. As she approached, he sat up and stared at the skeleton on display in front of him.

“Deinonychus,” she said, by way of greeting. “The velociraptor in Jurassic Park was based off this guy.”

Dorian twisted slowly around, his face comically bemused. “Was nothing in that movie accurate? No feathers. Fake velociraptor. The T. rex chasing down a car. Everything I knew is a lie.”

With a heavy sigh, that didn’t cover up her laugh, Manon sat down next to him. She was surprised to find a sketchbook in his lap and a bag overflowing with art supplies on the floor next to him. He winked and said hello then went back to his drawing.

The page held different renditions of the skeleton, rough outlines of various poses and movements that he’d imagined from the skeleton. But he was working on a full color reproduction of the dinosaur as it would have looked in real life. Pulling a bright green colored pencil from the bunch he clasped in one hand, he started to add foliage around the deinonychus.

Manon watched, silent and amazed by his talent. She had seen scientists make sketches of fossils and anatomy, but she didn’t know anyone who could bring a creature to life so easily. It looked effortless. Of course she knew that it wasn’t. Even for someone born with natural artistic talent, it took plenty of time and hard work to get good and stay good.

Noticing his hand had stopped, she looked up to find him smiling at her. Oh no, she thought. I’m screwed. She almost laughed out loud. Too late, that already happened.

“So what is your favorite exhibit?” she asked, hoping the catch in her voice wasn’t that obvious.

He looked at her for a second before saying, “Currently I have four, and I can’t decide between them. Maybe, dinner in exchange for your professional opinion on which one I should choose?”

Manon glanced back to his sketchbook. It was large and worn, and it looked like he was more than half way through it. “Deal,” she said. “Only if you show me the rest of your work.”

A grin lit up his face and she couldn’t help but return it. “Oh, that was already included in the dinner,” he said, bending to stuff everything into his bag. She wondered how anything survived the process.

“So you woo women with your dinosaur drawings?” she teased.

“Only one woman,” he said, giving her a heated look that she felt deep down through her chest. Then he leaned in, conspiratorially, and said, “I think I might have a chance with her.”

Manon closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Let’s go, witchling,” he said, pulling her up. “I know a good burger place a few streets down.”

*****

The restaurant wasn’t far, and even though that placed it in the central part of the city, it had an air of seclusion Dorian liked. It didn’t hurt that Gavriel’s brother Lorcan owned it, ensuring some amount of privacy.

It hadn’t happened to him often, but just one encounter with the city’s paparazzi had been too many. Dorian learned quickly how to avoid them - he rarely ever discussed anything important with his mother. She and her friends were of the opinion that only the lower classes bothered with trashy gossip sites. Of course, he was almost positive her friends were the ones selling their secrets. His mother knew it. There was no way she couldn’t. But as long as she had money to buy things and travel wherever she wanted in luxury, she didn’t care. Her bank account was her main interest these days.

The streets were crowded and it was starting to rain, so he and Manon walked quickly to the restaurant. Lorcan wasn’t behind the bar, but Dorian knew the waiter so they got a booth in the back corner. After he took their drink orders, they sat in awkward silence.

“So when did you-”

“How did you-”

They both spoke at once, and then stopped. Dorian motioned for her to go ahead.

“How did you learn to draw so well? Are you a professional artist?”

He pulled the sketchbook he’d been using out of his bag and handed it to her. “As promised,” he said, smiling as she eagerly began flipping through the pages. “I took art classes in high school, and I’ve had a couple in college. But I’m in my final year of architecture. So, not a professional.”

Not looking up, she shrugged and said, “That’s artistic. I’d say it qualifies.”

He couldn’t help feeling a burst of pride at her expression each time she turned a page. Most of the sketches were a mess. Quick impressions of displays and objects from the museum - an assortment of skulls, artifacts, taxidermy, and sketches of the building’s architecture. Only the last few pages held more complete drawings done in color instead of pencil. But she took her time, examining every detail.

“I recognize almost everything in here,” she said, her eyes finally leaving the book to meet his. “This is amazing. You’re really talented.”

“Thanks,” Dorian said, feeling a slight warmth creep over his cheeks. He was used to receiving compliments. As a Havilliard, he’d learned at a young age that most of them were fake, usually given with the hope of some kind of favor in return. Manon looked and sounded so genuine, and it felt so refreshing, that he wondered when he’d last been given real praise.

When they ordered food, the waiter made the mistake of questioning Manon’s choice of medium rare for her burger, thinking she might be grossed out by any blood. The look she gave the poor guy was beyond lethal. He hoped to never be on the receiving end of that stare. or, maybe a part of him did, he thought, realizing his pulse was racing. The waiter left and she turned to see him holding back laughter.

“What? I like red meat,” she said, still annoyed. “The bloodier, the better.”

Dorian held his hands up. “I didn’t say anything. Besides, I-”

Just then, his phone started to ring. It was the ringtone he had for Hollin, otherwise, he would have ignored it. And since Hollin only texted and rarely called...

“Sorry, I should get this,” he said. “It’s my brother.”

“Sure,” she said, sensing his tension and moving to stand. “Do you want me to give you some privacy?”

As he answered, he shook his head and she sat back down. “Hollin? What do you-”

Before he could finish, Hollin started rattling on so fast, Dorian could barely understand him. “Wait, slow down. I’m not hearing you.” He heard his brother inhale and exhale a few times. Manon was watching him with concern. “Okay, now tell me what’s happening? Are you alright?”

“Uncle Perrington,” Hollin said, making an effort to get the words out. “I got home late and ... he ... he must have been drinking and-”

“Where are you now?” Dorian asked, and he saw Manon grab her things, put his book in a bag and throw on her coat.

“I'm at Terran’s. I didn’t know where else to go. His house is the closest.” Hollin's words were starting to run together again.

“Okay. Deep breaths. Are his parents home?”

“Yeah. But... I don’t want to stay here.”

“Don’t worry,” Dorian said, giving Manon a look before they both stood and headed for the exit. “I’m on my way.”

Thankfully, he was parked close by, but he still ran, Manon right beside him. He didn’t think of telling her not to. All he could think of was Hollin. And how he should have taken his brother out of that house the moment his dad died. He should have fought to get his trust fund, should have done more to keep him safe.

When they got to his car, he expected to give her a quick apology and be on his way, but she went for the passenger side door.

“You don’t need to come,” he said, hesitating before getting in. This was already bad enough. He didn’t think he could handle her seeing the ugly truth behind his rich and famous family. But she only stared at him across the roof of the car, her fierce eyes giving him an answer. If he really wanted her to stay behind, she would. But she was willing to go. No matter what.

“Okay,” he said, and they both jumped in.

*****

Manon waited in the car while Dorian went inside the house - mansion - to get his brother. Her foot was tapping involuntarily, and she couldn’t stop her hands from fidgeting.

Dorian had said little on the ride here, but she could guess enough. The death of Dorian Sr., and how the man’s brother had taken over the company, was all over the news a few months back. And a person didn’t need to stay on top of things to know Perrington Havilliard was a prick. With the family money, he’d avoided a handful of white-collar criminal convictions, some DUIs. There were rumors he’d done worse, but nothing ever stuck.

Imagining what he might do to a kid wasn’t hard. That was something she knew first hand.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for them to come outside. Dorian stopped at the door to thank a woman who must be the friend’s mom. Hollin practically ran to the car and got in the back, not thinking anything of her sitting in the front seat. She stole a glance back at him, relieved to see that despite looking shaken, he seemed unharmed. At least, physically.

“Sorry I messed up your date,” he said.

Twisting around in her seat, she frowned, “Who said this was a date?” He smiled, as she’d hoped, and she could see a little of his older brother in the expression.

“Dorian did. He talks about you all the time.”

Feeling her cheeks flush hot, she turned away from him. “Oh he does? That sounds creepy.”

Hollin sat forward, worried he was messing things up for his brother. “No, not like that. Mostly he talks about the museum. He’d never been to the natural history part until my class trip. Just the art side. I think he really liked it. Not just because of you either.”

Manon laughed and Hollin relaxed, just as Dorian got in the car. Seeing their faces, he opened his mouth to ask something but Manon gave him a little shake of her head. He examined Hollin, then her.

Her face was heating again under his gaze, so she said, “Are you hungry Hollin? We didn’t eat yet.”

“Sure,” he said. His excitement fell as he remembered. “I don’t have my bag, or homework, or anything. You’re not taking me back there are you?”

“No,” Dorian said, pulling out of the driveway. “I’ll get your things tomorrow. You can stay with me tonight.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he swore and said, “Gavriel’s parents are here this weekend. My apartment is packed. We can just get a hotel room. Then figure things out next week. Okay?”

Hollin agreed, seeming to believe the cheeriness Dorian was projecting. But she saw through it. It reminded her of Asterin. A few years older than her, Asterin had acted this way countless times after their grandmother had gone on one of her rampages. Dorian caught her staring at him and his brows dipped in concern.

“I’ve got room. You both can stay with me,” she blurted out, surprising everyone, herself included, with the offer. Hollin immediately agreed while Dorian quietly tried to turn her down. “It’s nothing fancy, but it might be better than a hotel. We can order pizza.”

That was a lie. They could afford a penthouse suite for god’s sake. And Dorian had seen her place. He knew her reasoning was bullshit. But after asking several times if she was sure, he relented.

He thanked her with what was probably the sweetest, most genuine smile she’d ever seen. Heart racing, she made herself stare straight ahead.

“Can we get pineapple?” Hollin asked. Dorian groaned loudly, and the brothers began what seemed to be a longstanding argument.

The bickering ended when she interrupted, “Yes, you can get pineapple." Dorian shot her a wounded look as Hollin celebrated in the back seat. “My house, my rules,” she said, totally forgetting what they’d done there. And what rules she’d made him follow that night. His smirk brought it all back though.

*****

Hollin had fallen asleep on Manon’s couch shortly after dinner. Dorian hadn’t asked him for many details aside from whether he was hurt. He’d managed to get out before Perrington could physically stop him, but the kid was scared. As he watched his brother sleep, Dorian’s anger, at himself as much as at their uncle, was starting to flood back.

Manon sat down at the table with a beer and handed him one.

Tonight, she’d been incredible. Not just by going with him, but letting them stay here, distracting Hollin and making him feel... normal. Like a kid. Not some fragile thing to be pitied or talked down to. It made him wonder if she’d had to deal with something like this before. The thought didn’t sit well and he pushed it from his mind.

“So, tomorrow...” she prompted.

He sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Tomorrow, I will talk to Hollin and call a lawyer.”

“For custody? Don’t you already have one? A lawyer I mean.”

“A family lawyer,” he said. “I’ve known him most of my life, but I wouldn’t say that I trust him. And yes, for custody. I should have done it way before now.” He tore at the label on the beer bottle. “I thought it could wait. That we could wait until I graduated. But that was stupid. And selfish.”

Manon rested her chin in her hand. “You don’t have your own money.”

Dorian laughed, grim and humorless. “Nope. I have some. No more than most people though.” She arched an eyebrow. “Okay,” he said. “More than some. But not enough that I could live on my own.”

“In my defense,” she said, glancing around the apartment she lived in alone, “this building is shitty and thankfully, this neighborhood has been overlooked by the gentrification brigade.” She tipped her beer at him. “But I understand what you’re saying.”

He smiled, enjoying the easy way they could talk to each other. “My friend Chaol’s dad is a lawyer. He’s a bit of an asshole, but I think he’ll help. And I’ve got some money, but my trust fund won’t be available for another couple of years. I’m hoping to find a loophole.”

She looked across the room to where Hollin slept. “Well, for what it’s worth, I hope you do.”

Before he could think, Dorian reached across to take Manon’s hand. She didn’t pull away, but her eyes flared. He held on, long enough to say, “Thank you.” He opened his mouth to go on, but he didn’t know what more he could say. “Thank you,” he repeated.

Manon’s face softened and he let go of her hand. She bit her lip and asked, “So you never told me what your favorite exhibits are.”

“Ah,” he said, “I thought I’d gotten out of the inquisition, but I guess not.” She offered him the remaining pineapple pizza in exchange for not answering, but he passed it up.

“Well, I wasn’t lying about the pterosaurs. You could probably tell from the sketchbook. I’m not sure which of them specifically. They all scare the shit out of me. But when I’m there I can’t stop staring at them.”

“Yeah, their size is a little disconcerting,” she agreed.

“And them walking on all fours?” He cringed, took a drink and said, “I like them, but in the way someone who’s not into heights might like roller coasters. The whale exhibit was good. And I also liked the Age of Mammals hall. The irish elk actually might be my favorite. I know everyone goes for the dinosaurs, but the mammals are just as interesting.“

Manon’s lips twitched and she nodded approvingly. “And the fourth?” she asked. Dorian’s eyes widened with surprise. “You said there were four,” she added.

“I did.” He didn’t hide his pleasure that she’d remembered. “The entomology wing. The...” he paused, thinking, then said, “the lepidoptera.”

Manon laughed quietly. “After those others I would not have guessed the butterfly exhibit.”

“Would you like to know my favorite rock?”

“I’ve created a monster,” she teased, standing and putting her beer bottle in the sink.

He joined her and there was an awkward silence as they realized it was late. And Hollin was on the couch. And she had one bed.

“I’ll sleep out here,” he said, ignoring the ungentlemanly voice in his head telling him to wait and see if she offered to share. “You have to work tomorrow,” he added. “And I think it’d be better for me to stay near him.”

She gave him a little smile, and it made her whole face light up. The sight of her - so beautiful and tender - revived that voice and he was about to reconsider when she pointed into the living room. “There are extra blankets in the chest. And pillows are on the couch.”

Before he could say goodnight, she placed her hand on his chest and stood on her tiptoes. The kiss was feather light on his lips. The opposite of the kisses they’d shared that previous night. Kisses that were passionate and hungry and breathless, as if time was rushing by them. Kisses that had been perfect for the moment.

This kiss, soft and plush and chaste, was perfect too. And far more intimate than all the others.

“Goodnight,” she said, then disappeared down the hallway.

“Goodnight, witchling.”

To be continued...

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[wheremytwinwatches]

[Where My Twin Watches]: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 30

Last time: May Chang ducked just in time, Doc lost patience with his patients, and Ed decided to go for a double-major. Onwards!

Roy? Faded-out colors? Wait, are we getting a flashback episode? Come on, we just started progressing the plot again, especially after Beard’s episode-long mental debate. Ok, fine. Some old guy in a sickbed is refusing to teach Roy “Flame Alchemy” (aka the one thing he’s known for so I can tell how this is going to go) because he’s joining the Military. Obviously Roy’s teacher, given the different hair color I’m guessing not related. Student!Roy keeps talking about how Amestris is under threat from all sides, that the military needs Alchemists to protect their homes, but Master refuses to hear it. Even an appeal to Military funds to deal with the rundown house doesn’t work, since Master doesn’t need a grant for “something I’ve already completed.” What was Master researching? Master muses about he’s created “the most powerful alchemy”, and he’s grown complacent since completing it. The guy is definitely a Ravenclaw, saying that Alchemists have to hunt for knowledge all their lives, that he’s “been dead for a long time.” Oooh, and now Master’s coughs are a bit more wet sounding, we know that Roy figures out Flame Alchemy later but it’s not going to be from this- [Student!Roy]: “Are you all right?! Master Hawkeye!” [Master Hawkeye]: “Look after… my daughter. She’s in possession of… my research…look after...” Whoa, Master is Riza’s father? Was Riza’s father? Ok scratch my earlier complaining, I am totally down for an episode on how Roy and Riza met! Episode 30 - “The Ishvalan War of Extermination “ ...of course. I get all excited about seeing how my #2 ship first met, and of course it takes place during a friggin genocide. Thank Leto, their first meeting wasn’t in the middle of the ‘Civil War’. I guess they met up when Roy studied under Master Hawkeye, they seem familiar enough as they stand in the graveyard at her father’s headstone. Uh, Roy? I may not have much experience flirting or dating, but I’m pretty sure giving a girl your number literally over her father’s dead body is a slight faux pas. Beyond that, we get Roy giving his idealistic “I wanna make a difference in this country” speech, Riza saying she thinks it’s good to care. And with that, she trusts him with her father’s research. Back to modern day it seems! Gratuitous shot of Riza in the shower good LETO what is that on your back? Ok hold up, Riza’s always been one of the few in their merry band who doesn’t use Alchemy, faces down foes who can generate and manipulate matter with only her pistols or maybe a rifle. But that giant tattoo on her back (scars aside) just screams Alchemy, with something like that I’d expect her to be throwing lightning around with the best of them. What’s the story here? Barking dog? Oh yeah, Riza was walking a dog back when Barry made the poor decision to attack her. And Ed continues his streak of losing horribly to canines, he’s stopped by to catch up with Riza after everything’s that happened. Oh, and to return the gun! Riza’s cleaning it as Ed says he never had to use it. Or rather, he could never use it. Face to faces with Envy, he- Never mind, he’s talking about the time he dropped the gun facing Scar, and then stopped Winry from shooting him. Yikes, keep talking down about Riza’s method of combat as “something evil”, I’m sure she’ll take that well. (And hoo boy, this is gonna be an interesting episode if we go into the ethics of firearms, isn’t it?) Riza says he’s just dwelling because he made it back alive, he just needs to focus on living, to help Winry. [Riza]: “How else can you protect her? I mean after all, you love her, don’t you?” [Ed]: *spit take on the dog, frantic denials* Ha! But back to serious business, Riza’s saying that she’s killed too many to feel sorry for herself, that she chose this path. Yikes. Need to remember that although I don’t think we’ve seen Riza kill anyone on screen so far, she was involved in Ishval like all the other State Alchemists. Just like in another reality, Hawkeye can be a good friend, but they’re still a trained killer. Speaking of Ishval, Scar’s questioning Doctor Marcoh about his involvement in the genocide! Then we’re back to Riza, talking about the Ishvalan homeland and people. A place of sand and rocks, with a resolute people. A faction protested their annexation by Amestris (so was there a war of conquest before this, or did Amestris just roll in one day and say “You lot pay us taxes now”?), a random soldier/Envy shot a kid, the torches and pitchforks were taken out, and civil war raged for seven years. Huh, that long? With how calm and peaceful the Ishvalans seemed in past flashbacks and the sudden shock of cannons firing on Scar’s town, I thought this was a much quicker affair. Then, the Fuhrer signed a little piece of paper called “Executive Order 3066”.

Obligatory comparison is obligatory. So the Ishvalan War of Extermination began, and we get the now-familiar clips of cannons firing and blue-eyed soldiers marching in, with flashes of State Alchemists doing their thing. And- oh, Leto. By this point Riza had joined the military. As a sniper. That’s… that scene of seeing the Ishvalan through the scope… her eyes... [Riza]: “Most combat is blind. A normal soldier might fire erratically without a clear target in mind. But it’s different for snipers. Someone is sure to die when we pull the trigger. Where other soldiers don’t always have a direct line of sight on the effects of their actions… snipers do.” And then we’re back to the State Alchemists, who share a sniper’s viewpoint. Some pompous guy who I dimly remember getting HoD’d by Scar. Roy snapping his fingers. A familiar metal glove slamming down and Earthbending up a wall to block fleeing Ishvalans. And young Armstrong kneeling behind that wall, trembling as he listens to the Ishvalans being gunned down on the other side. ...why did I agree to see this show? We’re in the Amestris camp now, a guy who I’m pretty sure is Mr. Monopoly is ranting about “the savages” taking his leg, when Hughes (guuuuuuuuuh) spots Roy walking through the white cloaks. He turns around to show the same eyes as Riza. And as Hughes chats with Roy cleaning up, the Flame Alchemist points out those same eyes behind those shiny glasses. A letter? Aw, Hughes got a letter from Gracia, after the initial glee attack he starts worrying that being all alone in Central some creep’s going to hit on her. Awwwww. Wait, no. No! [Roy]: “Hey, Hughes? I got a little advice for you. It happens in movies in novels all of the time; the soldiers who never shut up about their girls back home? *finger gun* They don’t make it.” HOW DARE As heartbreaking as future events will be, it is good to see Hughes happy, having something to look forward to tomorrow. And then the mood goes RIGHT BACK DOWN as Riza shuffles up and greets Major Mustang, asking if he remembers her. Leto, this is the first time they’ve met since her father’s grave?! “Damn this war” indeed! Two mid-ep pictures of gratuitous-Riza with her tattoo? Although in the first one there’s no scarring… The three are sitting in camp now, wondering why they’re being ordered to kill citizens rather than protect them. [?]: “Because that’s the job we State Alchemists have been given to do!” Wait. Wait wait wait. I don’t have subtitles anymore, but that face… Mister Smiley? Oh wow. Mister Smiley is an ass. Guy’s happily saying that their job seems to be causing tragedy, and then slams Riza by asking if she feels satisfaction and pride when she shoots an enemy. Yeah, Asshole. Get this guy in the show proper so I can see his ass getting kicked, writers. Roy confronts Kimblee, who insults him for putting on a uniform and then being “surprised’ when he has to kill and arguing that the only thing worse than killing is turning your eyes away blah blah blah just SHUT UP you ass. This whole situation is messed up beyond anything our characters know at this point, but by no means can you sit there and say that it’s right. But it’s time to get back to “work”. Kimblee saunters off with a smile, and Hughes has to go as well. While explaining to Roy that his reason to fight is simple; he doesn’t want to die. Back to Marcoh, overseeing some Ishvalans getting ritually sacrificed to make a Stone. And to be completely honest… I’m a bit underwhelmed at the size of the sacrifice. Maybe it’s just how Leto-damn dark this show is, but with all the talk about the Ishvalan War being a cover to make Philosopher’s Stones I was expecting to see a heck of a lot more people dying to make the MacGuffin of the series. Or maybe…? This Stone was given to Mister Smiley, who Scar recognizes as the one who killed his family. We see the Crimson Alchemist laughing madly as he turns the battle around with that single stone, ranting about the “beautiful sound” of destruction. Again, get this ass into the show proper so he can suffer. Teatime with Riza again, now talking about how the Ishvalan High Priest surrendered personally to the Fuhrer- who mocks him for his ‘arrogance’ at offering his life as an equal exchange for every other Ishvalan’s, and when the guy’s flunkies declare God will punish him Bradley taunts them about how God hasn’t struck him down yet, how if they want to see him struck down for all his atrocities (his word, not mine, the guy literally calls his own actions ‘atrocities’) that they should use their own hands. Easy for you to say, buddy. You’re not the one with their hands tied behind their back. So the war ends, Roy gives his “I’ll protect my loved ones so they can protect their loved ones” speech now set to much more menacing music than last time, and after he has a staredown with the Fuhrer he’s sitting in his office when Riza walks in. Wait, “decided to take this path after all”? I would have thought that her serving as a sniper meant she was already in the military, how does that work? Or maybe it’s that she’s still continuing in the military even after what she’s seen in Ishval. [Riza]: “If the world truly operates based on the principles of Equivalent Exchange-” EEC: 11 “-then we soldiers have plenty to give back.” And with that, Roy assigns Riza to be his assistant, to watch his back. Aww, the couple’s finally- [Roy]: “Although, I expect you understand what this means. You’ll be able to shoot me in the back as well. If I ever deviate from this path, then I want you to shoot me. And I’m trusting you to do so. Do you accept my offer?” [Riza]: “Of course I do, sir. I’ll follow you into hell if you ask me to.” ...well ok then. I guess that’s one way to ask someone on a date. Back to tea time, Ed’s asking how things can be fixed even if Roy becomes the Fuhrer. That’s right, he’s grown up in Bradley’s military state, hasn’t he? Riza talks about restoring democratic principles, bringing back Parliament, charging the ‘heroes’ of the Ishvalan War as war criminals- wait, what?! Wow. Ok then. So even if our good guys beat the Goths, uncover the corruption of the Military and restore power to the people, they set themselves up to take the fall. That’s… wow. Ed protests that it wasn’t their fault, that the Goths were pulling the strings, but Riza just says that regardless of who started it they still carried out the orders. No hiding behind the chain of command, here. Ouch, Riza. You’ve carried around Mister Smiley’s words all this time, about never forgetting those you kill? I mean it’s great that you turned around that monster’s meaning, but still. What a way to live. Al’s saying bye to the Doc when May stops him, to thank him for saving her and her panda. She’s surprised to learn he’s an Elric, gripes that he probably looks like his mean older brother- Al, no. Al, NO! YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU HAVE UNLEASHED! Well ok then. That was a Leto-depressing episode for the most part, we got introduced to a character that I can’t wait to meet a painful demise, there’s an intriguing mystery of Riza’s tattoos and scars, and then we ended on Al making the second-biggest mistake of his life. Can’t wait to see how that turns out. After credits scene: Envy’s knocking on a door, asks if the Doc’s decent. Notes that it’s dark and quiet when he brings in food- and yup, Scar got his Vengeance on the one who empowered his family’s murderer. One down...

[shastelly]

Team - March Klance Prompts from MonthlyKlance - Day 20

Day 20 TEAM (Part 3 of the Story Began in Day 14 Distance, continued in Day 16 Rivalry)

 "It's a good plan Keith."  Allura urged.

 "I don't like it.  It splits us up too much, look what happened when we split up!"  Keith growled pointed over to where Lance was lying on the floor.  They had managed to get him bandaged up, but he was not in good shape.  The wound in his leg was serious and he would not be going anywhere very far.  Quite frankly Keith was shocked he'd gotten so far on it.  Sometimes he underestimated Lance's stubbornness.    But the most concerning injury was the head wound from being slammed in or rather through the wall.

 "I know, Keith."  Allura placed a hand on his shoulder.  "But that doesn't mean this isn't the best idea for getting us all out of here."

 "Keith, man, you know I'd be happier if we were all staying together, but I can't see how we can do that and get out of here alive."  Hunk frowned, willing Keith to agree.

 "I know Hunk, and I keep trying to think of a reason not to split up or go with your plan, but I don't have a good one.  Your plan is solid."  Keith sighed. "Okay.  Let's do it."

 Hunk's plan involved splitting the group three ways.  They would first find a safe place to keep Lance.  Keith would stand guard over him.  Hunk would provide a distraction.  He would move a relative safe distance from the troop lines around Green and start blasting them, providing a distraction as long as possible. When the Galra move to attack him, he will have to lead them away and then make a break for it and loop back around to a prearranged safe spot.  Pidge and Allura would sneak into Green while the guards are distracted and make their way to the castle bringing back Blue and Coran.

 It was risky, especially for Hunk, Pidge and Allura.  Keith wanted to be out there on the front line taking the risks, but he also wanted to be with Lance.  It was frustrating and he kept doubting whether his motives for the decision to move forward with the plan were the right ones.

 "Keith. He's awake and asking for you." Pidge called him over to Lance's side. She'd been sitting with him as they talked, having loudly declared her preference for the plan and left them to finally decide to come to the correct decision and agree with her.

 "Keith?"  Lance blinked bleary eyes, trying to find the boy in question.

 "Hey, I'm here."  Keith knelt and grabbed the hand that had reached out searching for him. "How's the vision?"

 "Are there five of you?"  Lance asked shakily.

 "No, still just the one."

 "Then it sucks, also that's probably for the best.  I'm not sure the universe is ready for five Keith Koganes." Lance's voice was weaker than usual, but his humor remained the same.

 "Better that than five Lance McClains!"  Keith retorted.

 "Ha, as if!  The universe would collapse under our sheer awesomeness."  Lance managed to grin back.  Sometimes Keith remembered how much humor kept Lance grounded, kept him sane when everything around him was too much to deal with.

 "Did you get the plan?"  Keith asked, humor wiped away.

 "Hunk's the distraction, Allura and Pidge are the message in a bottle of Green Lion, and you're stuck guarding the dead weight."  Lance sighed.

 Keith closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  He'd been expecting this.  Hunk had been expecting this.  Lance was prone to such thoughts on a good day, but combine head wound and blood loss and it was inevitable that it would be bad.

 "Lance. I would be dead right now if it wasn't for you and most likely we would all be captured.  You are not dead weight."  Keith stated firmly and evenly.  Everything he said was true.

 "Okay, granted, but then I went and got myself hurt and now I'm keeping us on this rock and putting Hunk's life in danger and leaving Pidge and Allura to get us help and…" He signed.  "I just wish I could help."

 "You can help.  Pidge has a pretty good rendering of the area around Green from the scans we made when we landed.  We need to choose our locations, where Hunk will attack from and the safest and easiest place for Hunk to hide after the attack."  Keith pulled the map up on a hologram from the device on his wrist.

 Keith had some spots in mind already, but Lance was an excellent strategist and the team's sharpshooter, his input in a plan like this was priceless.  Keith had found that reassuring Lance of his importance through words helped but give him something to do and an opportunity to prove himself and it was like a cure to his self-doubt.  And Lance never failed to prove himself.

 "Okay,” Lance squinted and blinked.  "Here, this is where we should be, fifth floor."

 "Lance we aren't looking for a sniper’s nest.  I'm a lousy shot and you can't see straight."  Keith frowned.

 "Maybe not, but my rifle still has an awesome scope and we can keep an eye on troop movement and the others as the plan goes down."  Lance argued firmly.  

 "Good. That's a good addition to the plan."  Keith nodded in agreement.

 "Okay, good."  Lance flushed with Keith's praise and seemed surprised as always by the compliment. "Hunk should start here. It's a long haul for him to get there, but his weapon has awesome power and range, and this will optimize the effect."  Lance pointed to a high rise further within the city.  "He'll want to use his jet pack instead of the stairs when he leaves and use these buildings,” Lance pointed to the map, "to stairstep down and then move over to this area to lay low."

 "Why that area?"  Keith wondered as he looked at the map.

 "It's blocked as far as line of sight to Green.  I hope they will find it an unlikely place to hide."  Lance finished a little out of breath.

 "Hunk, Pidge, Allura, come here, Lance has some improvements for the plan." Keith found it easy to admit that the only place that matched his original picks was Hunk's point of attack, but all of Lance's suggestions were good and he was prepared to implement them.

 The others gathered round, and they reviewed the plan.  Keith showed Lance where Pidge and Allura would be moving in from and Pidge outlined her back up hologram distraction that could be used if needed. They were all in agreement.  They could do this.

 Lance insisted that he walk.  Hunk wanted to carry him, but Lance wasn't having it.  He said Hunk needed to be fresh for his role and wearing him out by carrying Lance was a bad plan.  Keith hitched Lance up with an arm over his shoulder and said then by that logic he should help him since they would just be sitting and waiting for the rest of the team anyway.  Lance scowled, but a few dobashes into the trek could not deny that he needed the help. Each step was agony.  His leg throbbed mercilessly, and his back felt like all the muscles were pulled too tight and neither of those held a candle to the agony that was his head.

 Allura took point and Hunk brought up the rear.  Pidge stuck near Keith and Lance as they slowly crossed the broken city. The Galra that had been searching for Lance were either more spread out now or most of them had given up and headed back to Green because they only once had to hide from a patrol.

 It took nearly a varga to reach the building Keith and Lance were supposed to hide out in. Lance got progressively slower but refused help.  They had stopped at one point to rest when Pidge adamantly declared she needed a break, though it is not clear if she thought she was fooling anyone as her eyes kept creeping back to Lance's pale sweating face.

 "Okay. From here we split up." Keith took a deep breath. "Stay on the coms, follow the plan and stay safe.  We'll be out of here and these Galra will be regretting ever thinking they should mess with Voltron before nightfall."  He met each team member's eye and each nodded with him in turn.  

 Allura took his hand and squeezed it before leaning in and whispering in his ear, "Keep him safe."  Keith nodded while Allura leaned in to hug Lance as well.

 Pidge slugged Keith in the arm and smirked at him, "Don't you too get any ideas, just because we got you a hotel room."  Keith blushed and sputtered something.  

 While Hunk laughed and ruffled Pidge's hair, "Inappropriate humor check."  

 Pidge moved on to Lance who was grinning but also blushing, while Hunk gave Keith a full bear hug.

 "Hunk," this time it was Keith whispering.  "Be careful, move when you have to, don't wait too long." Hunk nodded, the anxiety in his eyes was not hidden from Keith.  They were both aware this was the role that Lance would normally have taken, the longer distance sniper rifle was less likely to be spotted quickly and the lanky sharpshooter could run circles around Hunk.

 Hunk moved to Lance, giving him a gentle wrap that could hardly be compared to his usual hugs.  Lance rested his forehead against Hunk’s.

 "I'm sorry."  He breathed.

 "Why? You have nothing to be sorry for." Hunk tensed.

 "I just wish I was able to go with you.  I don't like you being alone."  Lance sighed.

 "I got this."  Hunk met his eyes and though Lance read worry he could also see the determination.  

 Lance nodded and gave Hunk another squeeze, "I know you do."

 Keith and Lance made their way slowly up the stairs to the fifth floor.  Hunk reported in, Allura and Pidge reported in, progress was being made and so far, little resistance.  When they made it to the floor, Lance picked a room with a large window from which they could see Green.  There were less tall buildings on the outskirts of the city, as though the original planners had intended to provide many with a view of the large lake. Lance wondered if it had been a pretty color before the world had been wiped out.

 Keith helped him sit near the window and made sure that they were not visible from the street below.   Lance formed his bayard and looked through the scoop of the sniper rifle for Allura and Pidge.  Hunk would be at the wrong angle to see right now, but once he was in position, this room offered a view of him as well.

 "I've got a patrol coming up two blocks ahead of you."  Lance reported to Pidge and Allura.  "I can't give you an accurate count though, sorry, vision is still wonky."

 "Is that a technical term?"  Pidge laughed.

 "What's wonky?"  Allura inquired honestly.  Pidge laughed more.

 "He's saying he is still seeing at least double.  Can we bypass them, or do we need to wait them out?"  Pidge came back.

 "Wait. They are moving your way." Lance answered calmly

 "Copy that."  Pidge and Allura ducked into a building and waited while the patrol came and went.

 "Clear."  Lance chirped when the patrol was safely out of sight.  He could feel Keith hovering at his shoulder, tense.  Keith did not like having nothing to do.

 "We've reached our location."  Pidge reported about half a Varga later.

 "Almost there guys, few more stairs."  Hunk had puked once on his way up and Lance had snapped at him to slow down.  He didn’t need to run up the stairs so fast he made himself dizzy.

 "Okay everyone, once Hunk is in place and ready, we'll be a go.  Allura, Pidge, be sure to give the troops time to move away from your location.  Hunk when they hit that line we talked about; you move out of that building as fast as you can.  No waiting."  Keith reminded everyone.

 "Got it." Hunk answered.

 "For the twentieth time." Pidge snarked.

 "We understand."  Allura assured.

"Okay, I'm in position."  Hunk announced.

 Lance was being unusually quiet, but then again, he was hurting and trying to focus on watching Pidge and Allura, so Keith let it go.  

 "Alright team, let's do this."  

 Hunk's blasts rocked the line of Galra surrounding Green.  Several flew back from the first blasts as they landed right on top of the soldiers guarding the lion.  They moved and ran for cover as the shots continued to rain.  Hunk started blasting the nearby buildings they were using for cover and there was debris and dust everywhere.  The damage was too much for the Galra to ignore for long and soon Lance could see large groups of them moving off to where Hunk was stationed.

 "Coming your way, Hunk.  I'd say two thirds of them if I had to guess."  Lance spoke into the coms.

 "Give it another dobash or two."  Keith cautioned, "I'd like to see at least another group leave before you go in.  Keep doing what you are doing Hunk.  It's working."

 About three dobashes later, "Another group moving out, and great job keeping up the dust, Hunk."  

 "Okay, we are moving in."  Allura announced.  She and Pidge began to slowly make their way to Green.

 "Hunk, can you see where the first group is?"  Keith asked.

 "Um, no not really."  Hunk admitted.

 "Quiznak.  Hunk how can you tell if they're too close if you can't see them."  Lance reproached.  

 "I'm going to the other side of the building, Lance, see if I can spot them from there."  Keith started moving, "Be ready to go if I say, okay Hunk?"

 "Yeah. Okay.  How are Allura and Pidge?"

 "They are moving, too close to be talking right now."  Lance added.  He was watching Allura and Pidge navigate the rubble.  They were within a football field of reaching Green's particle barrier.  There was still a small contingent of guards at the front of the Lion.  They would notice the particle barrier dropping. "Pidge, looks like you need to use your hologram plan.  There is a group right on Green's front doorstep, they will definitely notice the glowy green wall behind them disappearing."  Lance blinked he was still seeing three Green's and it was a bit disorienting.

 Pidge hummed into the com.  It wasn't long after that the guards at the front started running away.  Lance guessed Pidge had set off the hologram, but it didn't really read in his scope, interesting to note.  

 "Hunk, you need to move.  I still can't spot them, but they have to be at the mark or past, stop firing and go." Keith ordered.

 "Okay, going."  Hunk answered.  The sound of his jet pack activating could be heard over the com.  "By the way this sucks."  Everyone could hear the little whimper as he was forced to jump from the roof and use the jetpack to guide himself down to the next roof and they all breathed a sigh of relief when his exhale indicated he'd landed safely.

 Lance watched as the particle barrier dropped and Pidge and Allura scrambled into Green. Her eyes lit up and she leapt into the air.  He tried to get up to go to Keith so he could keep an eye on Hunk, but his head spun, and his leg refused to even try to move.

 "Keith, help me over there and I can cover him."  Lance requested, though his voice sounded weak even in his own ears. He heard footsteps coming into the room and didn't even look up, expecting Keith to be there.  The sound of a metallic clank had his head whipping around and staring at the Galran droids that had entered the room.  It looked like there were ten or more, but then maybe there were only three it was hard to tell.  He spun the bayard rifle around and fired at the droids, trying to aim for the ones in the middle.  He knew he hit at least one, because it looked like there were several on the ground, but they were still coming and getting closer.

 Then there were the Keiths, all three of them, running into the room blades swirling and catching bots, throwing them around in bits and pieces.  Lance decided this is what it would be like to watch a fight through a kaleidoscope.  He had stopped firing for fear of hitting Keith.

 "Guys?"  Hunk's voice echoed.

 "Got some droids, must have been the ones that were looking for me." Lance answered though he thought his voice might have slurred some, between his injuries and everything that had happened he was really wearing out fast now.

 "I've reached my location.  I think I'm secure, but I can come your way if you need me."  Hunk seemed unsure about staying where he was.

 "No stay, if you come out, they will see you.  Besides all these Keiths seem to have this covered."  Lance answered noticing there were no longer any standing droids.

 "Lance, there is only one of me."  Keith huffed.

 "Yep, one of you and then there's one of you and another one of you."  Lance pointed to nothing on either side of Keith.

 "Fine."  The Keiths shook their heads.  Hunk snorted in laughter.

 "Paladins?"  Coran's voice echoed in the coms.  

 "Coran?"  The Keiths answered happily.  "Did Pidge and Allura get to you?"

 "Indeed, they did, Number Four and are on their way back to you now.  Number five will be arriving cloaked to retrieve Number Two and then the princess will be there in Blue to fetch you and Number three."

 "Hunk, I'm here."  Pidge announced a couple of dobashes later.  "Okay, Allura, I have Hunk."

 Suddenly Blue appeared in front of the window Lance had been looking out of, her mouth open and waiting for them.  Keith smiled as he helped Lance to his feet and with the help of the jet packs, they leapt into her waiting mouth.

 "Clear, Coran."  Allura spoke as they entered the cockpit.  

 "Blasting."  Coran fired the castle weapons destroying a Galra ship that had landed on the outskirts of the city, assuring that they would not be followed into space.

 Later that evening when Lance fell out of the cryopod into the waiting arms of his team he couldn’t help but wonder at the amazing group of people that surrounded him. Keith was holding up one side of him and Allura had the other side.

 "I love you guys."  He smiled sleepily.  

 Keith leaned forward and brushed a kiss to his forehead.  "We love you too."

 "Yeah, expect the rest of us don't love you in a kissy face kind of way." Pidge snarked.

 "Pidge, that was tame for you."  Hunk smiled at the Green paladin.

 "I didn't want to ruin the moment with a sex joke." she deadpanned.

 "Okay, moment ruined," Keith blushed.  

 "Nothing could ruin this moment, Mullet," Lance laughed.

 "Kiss him already,” Allura pushed Lance up into Keith's arms, luckily Keith was fast enough on his feet to react and keep him from falling.  

 "Sounded like an order from the Princess," Lance smiled.

 "So, it did."  Keith pressed his lips against Lance's warm lips.  He smiled into the kiss and closed his eyes deepening the pressure and slightly parting his lips to slip his tongue against Lance's.

 In the background Coran laughed, Pidge hooted, Hunk cheered, and Allura simply nodded. Never let it be said that they did not have the complete support of their team in everything that they did.

[chalabrun]

*casually takes you up on this* how about Life Foundation [or insert any other scientific organization here] decided they weren't through with Venom, and as a result a very pissed off Eddie Brock has to break out of one of their cells all on his own, and sets half the building on fire, before he gets to open the container and lets his almost unresponsive alien seep back into the safety of his body, all while fighting off half the personnel of said organization? Pretty please? ^.^

Sorry for the late, but I hope you likey! 8)

Warning(s): G, someviolence

He’d been staying on a straight path in the months followingthe Life Foundation’s collapse. Granted, even after the expose on the Foundationhad gone through the wringer with the freelance editors he’d hired, newsstations across the Seaborg had been vying for the right to publish that story,offering him exclusive rights and a whole host of excesses he didn’t want.

No, the Eddie Brock Report would hold full culpability ofits own intellectual property, thank you.

That didn’t mean the fallout that followed wasn’t immense.Hell, it could be called nuclear.

Eddie had prepared himself for it, his own role and thebarrage of phone calls and e-mails that followed, these same networks mewlingat him for interviews and debates and a whole host of things a recluse such ashimself didn’t care to indulge in. If they wanted their panels and experts totear him down word for word, that was on them.

No, he had bigger fish to fry.

As his own, unaffiliated diggings had concluded, StarkIndustries had recently acquired a new asset that was unprecedented. Or rather,assets. One that had been rumored to be slithering through the exhaust vents ofthe sewage system had been recently captured and neutralized, the docket he’dhacked into had claimed. Hook, line, and sinker.

He felt its presence when it’d been captured, the agony.While his story on the Life Foundation distracted both the public and privateentities, he had to act.

Eddie had to somehow alleviate the terrible sense ofloneliness that had pervaded his mind for months.

Being a journalist like him meant you had to know how to becrafty and resourceful. Setting up an interview was easy, and the next logicalstep in this arc involving the Life Foundation’s downfall. As Stark Industrieshad bought and repossessed its assets, it seemed like the next move. He couldbe generic enough, asking sanitized questions and ensuring any articlepublished would only be good PR. While, internally, it would be to scope outthe place and make a plan of attack to free the symbiote that mattered the mostto him.

Tony Stark was as infamous as he was insufferable, Eddie ableto hide his disdain while they say within the executive’s spacious andcontemporary study, bleeding white as if it hid the grime at the feet of StarkTower. And of course that was the case. It always was.

Dressed expensively in Armani and leaning back in his chair,the initial parts of the interview were cut and dry. Routine, completely standard.Even though it went against his code of ethics to do anything but report thebald truth, this had been his ticket in. And there might be other stints in thefuture. Kissing ass was sour work, but sometimes, it had to be done.

“So, uh—Mr. Stark. While this has all been real illuminatin’and all, I think my readers are goin’ be to askin’: where’d all the symbiotesgo? Y’know, the whole reason the Life Foundation had been taken out in thefirst place.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t ask that first thing,Brock,” Tony said over distractedly tapping at the screen of his smartphone,which seemed superfluous considering the technologies at his disposal. Asidefrom being haughty and rude, that was. He tapped an earpiece in the shell ofhis ear. “Hey, Maria, you mind giving the paparazzi a tour of the labs? I’mgoing to be busy.”

Figured. Men like Stark seemed to seldom do the dirty workunless there was an iota of glory involved, hence the Avengers.

Maria Hill’s heels clicked on the floor as she appeared inher asymmetrical pantsuit, probably much smarter in appearance than mostpersonnel within the building. Stark didn’t bothered even saying some form offarewell before Eddie took her offered hand. “Maria Hill. I’ve heard a lotabout you, Mr. Brock. Why don’t you come with me and we can get you squaredaway?”

“Say, y’mind if I record this? Nothin’ real confidential,but I figured if you’re talkin’ t’me y’wouldn’t be revealin’ a whole lotanyhow.”

Maria combed an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “Surething. Just as long as you follow lab protocol, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

They seemed in agreement as they headed towards the elevatorat the far end of the office, away from a distracted Stark soon setting off onsome other important endeavor. Whatever it was grotesquely rich corporatistsdid in their free time.

Once inside, Maria scanned her thumbprint on a keypad andselected the corresponding floor. “Now, did I hear right that you were actuallythe host of the symbiote, Mr. Brock?”

Eddie felt his blood curdle in his veins at the mention. Didthey know? Was she on to his true intention? “Hm? Oh, yeah. Wide ride fromstart t’finish, but we put the bad guys away and I haven’t seen Venom since.Guessing he’s in alien heaven or wherever his type go off to.”

For the remainder of their descent to the subterranean labs,he felt jittery and clammy. Did he give any indication of feeling like anaddict going through withdrawal? Of how his body had craved and craved Venom’spresence until it’d driven him mad at night, until he made himself into afucking Trojan horse just to get it back?

His Other. His darling.

Speaking with Maria Hill was lulling her into a false senseof security, because if she suspected any foul play, she gave no indication ofit. When the elevatored pinged at the arrival to their destination, immediatelyhe was swarmed with a frenzy to find Venom, a feral want and need that almostmade him lunge madly into the fray of lab coats and sterile hazmat suits behindplanes of reinforced glass.

Then, there they were.

Eddie feigned a scholarly, pedestrian interest in them:taking pictures of the vividly colored symbiotes, taking scribbly notes with astylus to his smartphone until he almost cracked the screen, complexion lookingwaxy and pale in his desperation beneath the florescent lighting. White, snowwhite. All before he felt like his knees would buckle at the first sight ofsomething black.

Venom lay listlessly in its capsule, a bevy of scientiststaking notes and preparing what looked like experiments the Life Foundation hadtried conducting months before with gradual introductions of organisms to bondwith. Except, Venom never responded.

Eddie felt his palms sweat and shake, smartphone ready toslip from sweaty palms. “It’s okay, baby, I’m here,” he murmured under hisbreath, Maria glancing at him oddly.

“Mr. Brock…?”

“I’m real sorry for this,” he murmured apologetically beforeswiftly dashing Maria’s skull into the glass and knocking her out upon impact,the woman crumpling to the ground as the scientists scattered. Heedless ofwhatever airborne toxins could be present, Eddie wormed his way onto the labfloor and sprinted towards Venom’s holding chamber, grunting as he capsized itwithout preemptive warning and the symbiote uttered a low whine at theinterruption, but immediately relented when it realized who it was.

Eddie brought his foot down repeatedly until he crackedthrough the casing, enough for Venom to seep through and creep up his leg. Theblond grinned in elation, heart throbbing gladly when he felt Venom mergingwith his person, whooping joyfully as they bonded together once more.

“Been too long, darlin’,” he murmured affectionately beforesirens began blaring and security stormed the floor, amorphous limbs engulfinghis own and whipping outwards in a whiplash that pinned several to a wall topart while Eddie ran through freely.

Another attempted to stun him through, but Venom hissed andsnapped at them, lobbing back the capsules of tear gas launched into the room.

The windows, Eddie!

“Mask?” he asked aloud, grinning.

Copy!

Eddie broke into a headlong sprint before leaping, tuckinghis legs towards his chest as they broke through reinforced glass, shatteringlike shards of ice as the gulf of sky and the cityscape of Manhattan yawned cavernouslybefore them and they plunged into the world below, knowing the hell that wouldinevitably follow.

He didn’t care.

He had his Other back and felt like he could take on thewhole damn world.

[mexican-texican]

Sandman (Not That One)

Part of the “Repercussions of an Earworm” series Megamind/Minion T rating Words:2913 "Mister Sandman" by The Chordettes, Single, 1954 It's the end of the world and the lives of the survivors of Metro City rely heavily on two former villains and their boombox.

Those who witnessed their arrival, and survived the first waves of attack, claim they fell from the sky.

People didn't know what to do with them in the beginning. They looked, harmless, with their friendly forms and colorful pigmentation. What was one to expect from something so small and innocent?

The scientists who harbored the creatures didn't know what they fed off of at first when studying their behavior (or lack thereof). As far as they could tell these things didn't really have mouths. Or limbs. Or possibly conscious thought. If anything they more closely resembled marimo moss, which came to a surprise when one of the less experienced interns thought to feed one of the balls of fluff blood meal and it showed signs of positive reaction.

That should've been the first sign.

During a standard inner building transport one of the loading dock staff noticed the moss would shift erratically when its containment unit was stored adjacently to a cage of testing mice. Drawing curiosity, more testing was conducted on the reactive moss when placed within the confinements of a live animal, its soft fur-like coverage shifting to reveal long wisps that were eventually concluded to be feelers.

That was the first sign.

Proceeding with caution and following through the standard practice that came with handling a live and potentially dangerous biological threat, the moss balls were sent to be secured in a solitary lab set in a more desolate section of the research wing. Access was restricted to level III and only those with a double guarded suit were allowed to handle the creatures, ensuring they would not pick up the scent or vitals of living tissue underneath. As was such the progress of research proceeded without disturbance in the protection of the sectioned laboratory.

However all the safety defenses and containment precautions in the world could hold no measure of idiocy for the well-being of mankind. As was proven by one of the first responders to the scene of the landing site.

,:':,

In the shadow of downtown Metro City stood a six-story apartment complex, fifteen apartments per floor that homed the average single working individual with the exception of a young family on level four.

A few of the tenants had been milling around when the landlord trudged his way through the lobby trailing an EMT and the fire chief, a ring of keys jingling nervously in his hands. It had been at the least a week since anyone had heard from the young technician and the neighbors below his room had complained of a distinctive smell of molasses lingering in the air.

A couple of hesitant knocks and a hard shove of a wooden door later and the heavy smell of beet sugar attacked their senses, the only thing that was available to them in the dim and quiet apartment.

The chief took hesitant steps towards the center of the living area, cautious of the dead silence and weary of the dark corners as he called out to his subordinate.

"Moore?"

Receiving no response the fire chief turned on one heel to give a shrug of uncertainty towards the landlord and EMT standing in the kitchen entrance, waiting in the awkward silence when the sudden sound of shuffling and a thud drew their attention to the bedroom.

Being the closer responder, the chief moved in position to open the bedroom door where the sickly strong smell of sweetness clung to the heavy humidity that poured from the room.

The EMT will later recall thinking the firefighter must've been sick if the mounds of multivitamins and the humidifier being on full blast was anything to account for. He will also recall being unsettled by the thick coverage of overgrown plant life creeping up the bedroom walls, the leaves and stamens fluttering in the breeze.

And remember how there was no fan on.

Once the chief had walked into the room, the landlord following close behind, the EMT admittingly let his nerves get the best of him and planted himself firmly in the middle of the living room, bolting out the front door at the sounds of the first screams.

And that's how humanity was introduced to The Mass. _____

The physical competition was so sad, they were even given the opportunity to run on a few occasions. Which in case lead to the immediate dismemberment and disfiguration beyond recognition of what was once a living organism known under the binomial name of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Many instances the choices seemed trivial, a clearance on the field where the risk ran low and the prospect of freedom was too inane to ignore. In others the chances ran hazardous, a gap between waves of attacks or a brief opening in the fog of war and death that seemed to be a liberating opening.

Either ways, the option to escape was always overshadowed by the prospect of receiving the same results. Agonizing and reciprocating slaughter.

Out in the distance of the rising drafts of chemical smoke and rotting meat were the remnants of the city, destroyed within itself and fallen by the hands of righteous leaders sought to clarify their lands of its mistakes as god had leveled Sodom and Gomorrah.

Smells of molten iron and blood-stained lands, the deafening silence from the absence of sound within the once sprawling metropolis, the scenery shook the two beings standing on the edge of an abandoned warehouse roof overlooking what was once their domain in which they ran rampart, void of the civilians whom at a point would flee from their chaos and climactic actions.

With a kick of an empty shell casing from a reinforced boot, one of them muttered "So much for taking over the city," before they both made their way to check on the blockade they had set up earlier in the week.

Being a creature of habit the blue man did not let the despairing surroundings depress him, at least not to face value, and had summoned the energy to hoist himself over a battered city bus resting on its side which up to that morning had been in use as a barricade.

With the perimeter security breach throwing everyone within the confines of their refuge in a frenzy, The Overlord himself sought to clear the threat and patch up the barrier before the danger would prove their current location unsafe to keep as a sanctuary.

Although with the title of Overlord came the assumption there were individuals to order and a functioning civilization to rule.

With the swagger of someone preparing for a fight, The Overlord paced down the length of the bus from one end to the next, his right hand man standing aside with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder watching him attentively while keeping caution to the streets below them in case any of the Mass decided to make an early appearance.

"I think we should set up here, I have sights on the intersection up ahead and the alleys filter out in both directions leaving them with nowhere to head to in case they try to back-track. From this height I should be able to clear out any that might've made their way past the bus and we could work our way forward to secure the breach through the first barrier once they start trickling in."

"But Sir, this setting leaves you exposed by all sides and with all the sound we'll be making that's surely inevitable, they might not be known to climb but they can pile on each other pretty well-"

"In which case leaves more openings for someone else to take the shot if I get crowded, hence why you're here."

"I still don't like it," his henchman responded bitterly.

"Just set up the sound system, Minion."

The robotic suit moved mechanically as Minion brought the bag down from his shoulders to drop between his feet with a clemp. The fishlike being eyed his boss with exasperated annoyance while going through the bag to pull a cylindrical speaker that stood at waist height when he bolted it to the side of the bus.

Uncoiling wires and pulling a laptop from a side slot, the henchman set to readying the sound system as the blue man took note from which direction the, things, might wobble from first.

The parasite was known to be attracted by the low pitch of rumbling thunder, as they had first witnessed during a late thunderstorm. However, they also seemed to be sensitive to the waves emitted by high soundwave frequencies to the point of being stunned, the Hz count lingering around the capacity of a burglar alarm.

Luckily for them, both The Overlord and Minion tolerate soundwaves at a much higher frequency, and The Overlord found it immensely useful to be able to layer the vibrations over a few of the songs on his "showtime" playlist.

After sighting-in his scope he looked over his shoulder towards Minion, giving him a sly smile with a nod for confirmation to start the song.

"Which one, Sir?"

He was in the midst of replying when his attention snapped back towards the streets, the sound of a guttural scream rising from a Mass.

"Shit. I guess we're going to have to start early," The Overlord said as the first of the parasite infested bodies loomed forward from their hiding spots, spotted trails of black and brown left behind each one as they rushed forward towards the source of another potential host.

He raised his scope to his eyes and immediately had one of the pulsating organic things in his crosshairs, readying position from his spot on the side of the bus.

"Sandman."

Minion began to type away furiously on his keyboard over the sounds of the gun going off in quick succession as his boss picked off a few of the hosts edging their way forward. He quickly dropped the gun to his side and gave a stabbing kick towards a Mass lingering under the edge of the bus before it could figure out how to climb over, then brought the gun back up to shoot off another couple of rounds into the creeping crowd ahead of them.

He slowed his shooting when the sound of static and clapping came over the speaker, then stopped shooting all together when he heard a- barbershop quartet he realized with disbelief, start singing in varying "bung's". He couldn't help his head rolling over to glare at Minion when the ladies started to sing.

"Not," he raised his gun and blindly shot out towards the horde, "-that one."

"I'm sorry Sir! I have-, I have no idea how this, happened, I-I-"

"Change it!"

"I can't!"

"Why-" BAM "Why not?!"

"It says 'exe stopped working'."

"WHAT-" the blue man shouted sternly over shoulder, "how is that even-, it's a song, not a program!"

He shot off a few frustrated rounds into a group of Mass rounding out a corner to their far left, coming out of one of the back alleys in groves. Once he whittled the group down to a few lone stragglers he set his focus on the ones pouring out of a shuttered mechanic store slightly to his right, his voice venting out over the song.

"How the hell did that one end up playing?"

"It's in order."

"What 'order' and why do we even have that song to begin with?!," he griped lowering the gun, trails of gunpowder smoke lingering off the chamber while he made a few adjustments and let it cool briefly from its moment of overheating. There were a lot more of the Masses than he was prepared to take on with just the two of them.

"We used it during a plot to create a serum for sedating Metro Man-, Sir you sure you don't want me to bring out any more muscle from the Lair? At least another form of firepower-"

"If those idiots hadn't put off the scavenge we-" BAM "-would have properly raided the military-" CLA-CLACK BAM "-military base and everyone would have a proper means to def-" CLACK-BAM "-end themselves instead of some shitty ass twenty twos and a Barrett, which no one can figure out how to handle properly-" CLA-CLA-CLICK

CLICK-CLICK-CLICK

He eyed his gun with hate, gritting his teeth at being so caught up in his anger to have ignored the signs his weapon was overheating drastically.

"You could've at least let Metro Man stay to help out," his henchfish muttered behind him, drawing a deeper scowl and adding napalm to the fire.

"Oh, Metromahn, I can't do without you, so helpless as the villain now the world has ended, save me," the blue man retorted in a mocking high pitched voice, his hands flailing around and fanning his face dramatically only briefly before the scowl returned to his face and he went off.

"That bumbleheaded buffoon wouldn't know how to save anyone that isn't surrounded by cameras, he's just as useless after civilization as he was back then trying to deter actual crime!"

"But at least he could help fend off the Masses!"

"I can do that on my own! He needs to help those that aren't lucky to have two supers!"

"That doesn't mean he couldn't have helped us regain control before he le-SIR!" the extraterrestrial fish raised an arm to warn the angry villain of a Mass climbing over the edge of the bus, a few of its ribbon like tendrils from its head swinging around madly towards one of his booted feet.

He turned in time to side step the ribbons and crush them under-boot, lifting and swinging his leg again to connect with the shell of its head and send it sprawling over the mound of Masses on the side of the bus that had created during their exchange.

"Minion turn it off!" The Overlord shouted over the chiming-piano singing women and the buzzing growls from the Massive. He threw a coupled of hard jabbed kicks and knocked a few that made it to the top of the swarming pile. They seemed to find the song appealing.

"I'm trying! I-GEH!"

Turning towards his companion panic took over the slender blue alien, seeing a handful of Masses climbing over the mechanical suit he'd made him in their youth, their ribbons pocking and prodding to find access into his holding tank.

Forgetting all about the strength the suit itself had from its power armor, The Overlord rushed to free his brother from the swarm trying to crush the suit. He had succeeded to incapacitate a couple when a third climbed over the edge of the bus and stumbled towards the blue alien with sluggish movements, throwing its weight onto the man's back and bringing him down to the glass siding of the bus.

"Get off me!" he struggled against the hard casing surrounding the parasite hiding inside what used to be a human head, cocooned in layers of dried membrane and hardened tumors making it look similar to the shell of a walnut. And an old one too, judging by the strength of the casing.

"I said get OFF!" he cried with more of a panic, the ribbons unfurling themselves from within the casing and making their way towards the blue man's head and neck.

"MINION!"

The Mass imploded on itself, what would have been the partial lobe launching cleanly off the left side of its head in a cloud of maroon and black dust as the ribbons went limp and the dead weight fell on top of The Overlord.

A split second after the body dropped did he hear the telltale echo of a distant gunshot, followed by a couple more as Minion was freed from two of the four Masses that had overtaken him, giving him enough room to work on neutralizing the last two.

Still on his back, the blue alien tossed the body aside with a grunt while catching his breath, finally regaining control over his pulse to look over where the delayed crack's came from.

Half a mile down their path with a squint of his eyes he caught glimpse of a dark figure huddled close to a rooftop adjacent to their lair, a hand shooting out from the darkness ending in a fist with a single middle digit raised towards his direction.

"You think she's still mad at me?" he muttered as Minion helped him regain his footing.

"I told you not anger Miss Ritchie, I'm pretty sure she's been watching ever since we left," Minion replied with a tone that was almost scolding.

"I'm sure she was just, setting her calculations and couldn't aid sooner. We don't all have the luxury of taking time to do adjustments on an oversized 50 cal," his boss offered as an excuse, his attention taken up by checking on his gun.

The sudden pass of a hiss by his blue ear combined with a ripping burn and a thud of a Mass collapsing behind them was her reply.

"Nope, she's still mad," Minion replied smugly.

The Overlord gripped his left ear with a hiss. "How the hell did she know what I was saying?!"

"You still have your earpiece on you blue moron," her voice suddenly manifested inside his right ear making him jump slightly, Minion restraining a snicker as his boss tried to burn him down with a glare.

"For the love of Hodr just change the damn song already."

[brienneofthrace]

Stormpilot: Gay Cowboy Style

Poe Dameron.

Most notorious outlaw West of the Mississippi. Maybe East of it as well. He wouldn’t know. Never had much cause to go back that way.

It was unsurprising, given his parentage. Ma’s brains and pa’s shooting were the two gifts they’d left him before they passed, and they’d served him well all his life.

He’d been more or less on his own ever since. He partnered up when it suited him, but extending trust too far had taught him lessons early on he wasn’t likely to forget, and once he cleared adolescence he made it policy never to let anyone get too close.

He was a rogue of the West, and spent his days creating headaches and causing trouble for the men he deemed unfit to lead, relieving them of goods and wealth he didn't think they deserved. He spent his days helping folk who needed it- and helping himself when he needed it- and always staying one step ahead of the law.

He never expected one day he’d be in desperate need of help from someone else.

And he most definitely never expected that help to come from a deputy of the most corrupt sheriff the West had ever seen.

Poe had a tendency to walk into every town like he owned the place. It didn’t always serve him well, but who didn’t love a good bar brawl now and then? Got the juices flowin’. Made a man feel alive.

Still, he was forced to admit it may have been a poor move, heading into the township of Sheriff Ren with an excess of swagger and a defect of fear… especially given their history, and how much of a rotten pissant the man was.

Poe had a tendency to walk into every town like he owned the place. It didn’t always serve him well, but who didn’t love a good bar brawl now and then? Got the juices flowin’. Made a man feel alive.

Still, he was forced to admit it may have been a poor move, heading into the township of Sheriff Ren with an excess of swagger and a defect of fear… especially given their history, and how much of a rotten pissant the man was.

Sure enough, he’d only just finished his first whiskey and started scoping about for the right kind of gamblers to swindle out of their gold (trying to be too intrigued by that guy in the corner by himself, drinking quietly with his head down and what look’s like the weight of the world on his shoulders), when the cavalry arrived, a veritable storm of bounty hunters, deputies and average folk wanting a piece of the prize. They clutched wanted posters and pistols in their fists and had dollar signs in their eyes.

Goddamn.

He gave them a run for their money. At least he liked to tell himself as much when he thought back on it years later, but the men he’d rode into town with proved yellow as soon as the first wave of hunters came into the saloon. Turned tail faster than a beat dog.

Not surprising.

Poe had a knack for getting himself out of dicey situations, usually through the use of his considerable wit, charm and his blessedly dashing looks. Sadly, it seemed talking his way out of this one wasn’t going to work for once. Sheriff Ren had lost a whole lot of good money on account of Poe, and he was not the forgiving type.

Poe's luck, it seemed, had finally caught up with him.

___

He was set to be hanged at high noon, but the noose never touched his neck.

Not, sadly, due to any ingenious plan of his own, but by the mercy of a complete stranger.

The most courageous and hopelessly naive man he’d ever come across in his life or probably ever would again.

His goddamn hero.

Finn.

They escaped by the skin of their teeth and headed into the wilds. Poe was pretty banged up, courtesy of Sheriff Kylo Ren and his lackeys, but there was air in his lungs and blood still pumped in his veins, and for that he was infinitely grateful. He also had a certain amount of gratitude for the gentleness of the courageous stranger’s hands, and the way he doctored Poe’s wounds with such patience and care, never once commenting if Poe winced or cried out in pain.

He tried not to dwell on that bit, and managed for the most part.

The Sheriff, it seemed, was not a man to be trifled with. For Poe to have crossed him not once but twice and still be breathing was already more than he could handle. That he’d managed to escape through betrayal by one of his own deputies was more than he could bear.

He pursued them relentlessly.

With such enormous targets on their backs, it only made sense to stick together, to watch one another's until the danger passed.

Just for a while, Poe told himself.

‘Til they got far enough away Ren would give up, if that ever happened.

In the mean time, Finn was doing this really unsettling thing where he was acting like a good man and it was doing a number on Poe's carefully constructed walls. He had determined long before meeting Finn that that such men didn’t exist, or were few and far between. He tried not to like him overmuch, but you can't be around that kind of relentless earnestness and not be affected by it.

In a thousand little ways, without even knowing it Finn seemed dead set on shaking him up and proving his closely held beliefs wrong.

He did it again and again, and Poe was powerless to stop it. He did it with his easy laugh, or the way it just seemed so easy for him to dole out kindness. In the way he tended to horses, always chattering away to them as he did, calling them pretty when they were good and chastising them when they weren’t. In the way he always offered up peppermint or licorice when he got a stash in town, or the way his eyes sparkled with enjoyment when he and Poe argued about the merits (or lack thereof) of licorice, or whatever silly thing they picked to fill up the quiet.

He didn’t even make it a week before he started thinking of Finn as the best damn friend he’d ever had.

  It had been over a year since Finn cut him down from the gallows and out of the jaws of death.

Ren stopped chasing them, or at least lost their trail, but they never did manage to part ways. At this point, Poe was certain the only way Finn would ever get rid of him would be if he decided to pump him full of bullets and leave him for dead.

Dammit, even if he did that (not that Poe could even imagine it), Poe was sure he’d crawl across the entire fucking desert just to look him in the eyes and ask him why.

Finn wasn’t just his friend any more.

He wanted him to be, desperately but more than half a year ago, things had started to get twisted up in Poe’s head and he couldn’t untangle them. Maybe longer ago than that.

He tried not to think about it, and by day they were usually too busy outrunning and outgunning trouble for him to fret about it. But by night, the yearning had started to creep in, and it was all Finn's goddamn fault.

Finn was too goddamn soft.

It was impossible not to think about him in the kinda way a man shouldn’t think about another. His eyes were kind and his laugh was easy, and Poe spent so much time just trying to avert his gaze, to push down the longing so he wouldn’t act like a damn fool and scare off the best thing that ever happened to him. Because that’s what Finn was.

The kind of man who’d take a bullet for you without a second thought. The kind of man you could tell things to, things Poe never thought he’d say out loud to anyone. Things about his parents, or the things Poe did to survive in the first few years after their passing. Things he never wanted to say, things he never thought he could, seemed to just come out of him when he looked at chocolate colored eyes gleaming in the firelight, sensitive and patient.

Stopping the thing inside him is impossible, Poe knew that. Poe didn't think anyone who lived a life in such shadow could come into contact with the light that was Finn and not come ti love him with every last bit of themselves.

Stopping such feelings was more than impossible, but controlling them wasn't. At nights, he laid awake and thought about what Finn's strong arms would feel like around him, what those beautiful hands would feel like on his body, but by days he smiled at him but never for too long.

And then one night at their campfire, when the ache had gotten so bad that Poe thought he might just get on his horse and ride away and never look back, Finn simply leaned over and pressed his lips against Poe’s. It was gentle and his lips were soft, and it lasted only seconds before he pulled back and fixed Poe with a stare that was equal parts heated and terrified.

Poe's heart nearly stopped and his brain worked overtime trying to catch up on what had just happened, that brief, beautiful and entirely unexpected thing.

They’d run outta whiskey two nights before, so there was no way he could blame it on…

So that meant…did Finn want...?

“If I crossed a line, and you wanna take a swing at me, I understand,” Finn said, eyes downcast but still reflecting firelight. “Though I’d take it as kindness if you didn’t,” he mumbled, and something inside Poe exploded, because how could Finn not know, how could he not know that he was everything? From the minute he cut him down from the gallows, and every minute after.

Then show him, growled an impatient voice in his head, and he finally had the sense to take Finn by the jaw and return his kiss hard enough to hurt.

And that was it.

The end of the longing, the beginning of a life he never knew he wanted.

---

They got by on skirting the law for another couple of years. Finn, in spite of his charming naivety, proved useful in a fight and could usually be trusted to help carry out a scheme of Poe’s without difficulty.

They kept it up, toeing the lines of right and wrong to get by, but once they realized the extent of the thing between them, they knew it was time to stop running and start living.

So that’s what they do.

They find themselves a nice-sized plot with the money they’ve taken from them who never deserved it, in a place where no one they’ve crossed will be likely to find them.

It’s not much, really, the life they have. No one else would ever find it particularly grand or exciting. The men he’d known in his glory days, the men he’d fought with, killed with…they’d laugh in his face to see him now. And maybe try to stick a knife in him for being so wrong.

Poe doesn’t care. He has Finn now, Finn who is the best man he’s ever known, maybe the best man who ever lived. He has Finn however he wants, whenever he wants and Finn has him back.

In the bed they share, on the rug in front of the wood stove. In the grassy field under the summer sun, or when they crawl out of the creek after a swim, shivering and nude and in need of the best kind of warmth. After they bicker over whether or not raising chickens is worth the effort, after Finn shows him how to make a cobbler.

No matter where it is, no matter what leads to it, from the first time as young, men embarking on something alien and terrifying, to the very last, when they’re both gray and more than a little achey, every single time, it’s home.

ETA: Didn’t realize you could post graphics on AO3. Now there’s a version of it on there too. 

[unconqueredfun]

Bunch of sorcery

Have some sorcery spells I’ve fiddled with for exalted 3e. Some ideas and thoughts and fun with magic. Some from the black and white treatise of 2e and updated for the new times. 

Terrestrial Circle

The Horse that travels earth and water Cost: 10sm As the sorcerer makes the Sign of the Horseman, the winds in his area converge in the bubble of Essence before him. The Essence takes a hue that indicates the nearest Elemental Pole—red in the South, blue in the North, green in the East, black in the West and white nearest the Imperial Mountain—and then forms itself into a horse-shaped being. The horse’s coat matches the bubble of Essence whence it came, though its mane and tail are either black or white. The horse lands next to the caster, tossing and stamping, eager to be ridden. It serves as perfect warhorse with a speed rating of 4. The stallion never tires and gallops over water as easily as land and moves at a speed of 25 mph (around 40 km/h). It can travel at its full speed until the sun next crosses the horizon (whether rising or setting), at which point it dissipates into colored wind and is gone.

It can carry another rider other than the sorcerer, but the sorcerer must command it to do so and give it a destination. The horse will then move at full speed toward that destination, regardless of what its passenger wishes. It ignores attempts to redirect it. If the passenger falls or jumps from the stallion’s saddle, the horse dissipates, its purpose fulfilled. The automaton does not like being used as a pack mount. Should someone try to use it as such, reduces it's speed rating to 1.

Control effect: A sorcerer who knows the horse that travels earth and water as their control spell has the horse take on aspects of her anima or person. Such as traits of other animals from the anima or wearing standards and seals of her anima on it's tackle. The duration is also changed to indefinite.

Distort: 8 When distorted the steed becomes unruly and requires a successful dex+ride difficulty 3 roll once every hour to remain riding.

(While it looks innocous and not worth it at first. It’s worth noting that mounted combat is pretty legit in 3e, doesn’t require a commitment goes over water and is pretty subtle for the concerned sorcerer. It also takes until essence 4 for Cirrus skiff to match it in raw speed. All in all it’s a versatile spell that looks less powerful than it is until you look at mounted combat)

Raise the Dragon's Bones Ritual 1wp

The military forces of both Lookshy and the Realm make frequent use of this spell, which enables military sorcerers to raise earthworks and tone walls for defensive positions or otherwise to reshape a battlefield to their advantage. The sorcerer first marks out the area he wants to affect by driving cut sapling branches into the ground and infusing them with his anima. He can do so up to ([Intelligence + War or Craft + Essence] x 10) yards in any direction. The sorcerer also paces along the line of any berms, mottes, buildings or trenches he wishes to construct. The area must also be cleared of any creature larger than a rabbit.

When the sorcerer casts the spell, he visualizes the structure he wants to create. The paced lines and sapling poles glow ocher-yellow as earth and stone flow like wax to shape themselves into the proper forms. Casting the sorcery is a five-minute dramatic action. No structure raised by this spell can exceed three stories in height or depth, and available materials limit the sorcerer. He cannot raise stone walls in the bottomless sand-seas of the South, for instance. Once the structures exist, countermagic has no effect: They were shaped by sorcery but are not themselves magical.

During a strategic manuever, as long as her enemy does not succeed with an ambush, the sorcerer can apply the fortifications stratagem for free even without succeeding on a manuever roll.

Sorcerers that know Raise the Dragon's Bones as their control spell rarely face difficulty as long as her feet remain against the earth. As such she cannot suffer any difficult terrain penalties if she's touching stone or earth. Even if moving through a battlegroup.

Distort 8 an enemy sorcerer in a strategic planning phase of mass combat can attempt to distort the spell and nullify the army’s advantage, ensuring that only light cover exists in the terrain for individual combatants and that it counts as normal terrain for both parts.

(Simple and easy really. It’s a simple very Realm and Lookshy bog-standard sorcerer-general kind of spell with relatively powerful control effect in order to counteract the fact that it’s not combat castable, which also has non-war applications if you so chose!)

Multitudinous Magic Missile Massacre Cost:  5sm+ 1wp

The sorcerer gathers essence from the world around her and forms it into projectiles to strike at her foes from a distance. These often take the shape depending on the sorcerer’s shaping rituals or initiation into sorcery. When cast she generates 3 projectiles +1 for every 2 additional sorcerous mote she desires to gather. These last until the end of the scene and can be used with either archery or thrown whereupon they count as artifact ranged weapons and have the following tags.

Archery version: Lethal, Mounted, Archery (Medium), Crossbow, Two-handed. Special Thrown Version: Lethal, Mounted, Thrown (Medium), (Is considered to be launched with Strength 4), Two-handed. Special

Both versions may gain special traits from the sorcerer’s initiation or even aspect in the case of the Dragonblooded. Such as able to cause fires, sonic booms, poisons or even disease. These effects should be considered mostly aesthetic or fluff for stunt material rather than hard mechanical benefit. 

When cast, the sorcerer must decide upon which version, thrown or archery, the missiles are. They use the apropriate ability and dexterity for attacks as normal and may use appropriate charms with a 1m extra surcharge.

A sorcerer who knows Multitudinous Magic Missile Massacre as her control spell may create evocations for the missiles.

Distort 5 when distorted the missiles count as mundane weapons and also lack the special tag, the fire isn’t hot enough to burn, the disease barely a sniffle or the creeping shadows have all the impact of a shadow puppet. A lethal shadow puppet but puppet nonetheless.

(A simple enough terrestrial spell for the person who want to throw magic missiles around but doesn’t have a merit that would otherwise allow them to do so (like burning name). If you don’t want sorcerers to do this in your setting that’s fine, it’s just an option and idea.)

Celestial Circle

Mountains Molded as Clay Ritual 3 wp

The sorcerer gathers a lump of fresh clay and mixes it with soil from the area she intends to mold. After performing a three hour ritual of infusing the clay with essence from the area, the lump takes the shape of the area around the sorcerer for essence x 5 miles. After which she may reshape the ground as she desires with a few limitations. *The ground under structures requires a sample of the soil beneath the structure in order to be moldable. *It cannot be shaped to destroy or ruin structures. *The sorcerer cannot add or remove mineral resources to the ground. (Such as metals, minerals used for metalwork or crystals etc.) Creating rivers or lakes is fine however. *Spirits who live or are located in the area can resist the changes of the ground if it damages or hurts their domain significantly. (This should be used as a ST's fiat to deny parts of a change)

Once she has finished forming the ground, she makes another ritual and the clay sinks into the ground. Whereupon the ground will begin to shift into the sorcerer's desired shape over the course of a week. with certain things))

Distortion: 10 If distorted the ground becomes uneven and jagged in the spots she changed and counts as difficult terrain.

(A terraforming spell! You can’t really add stuff into the ground, you can in theory make an area more defensible. Or make a lake, but it’s uses are kindof limited in game terms and is mostly fluff, but interesting fluff! I figured that making a hill is not a craft endavour because any person can shovel dirt and make a big enough mound, it just takes time. But this spell changes that and comes with a ST fiat to say “no fucking space needles or buggy geometry kthx.”)

Heavenly Citadel Formulation. Ritual 3 wp

The sorcerer traces the ground with chalk in perfect unison with the lines of a design of a structure. In each corner she places a rock and draws a line between them in ink. In the centre she places a miniature of the structure she desires to build. After everything is placed, she steps out of it and speaks ancient words of construction several times and pace over the grounds for the next ten hours. Over the course of the next twenty-four hours. The building raises itself from the ground.

She can construct any form of mundane structure this way. Building the miniature and drawing up the building plans requires the normal crafting rolls for the structure in mind and requires the crafting skills necessary for a non-minituraized version of the structure (carpentry, masonry etc.), the structure can be a major or even a superior project in terms of scope. However, the interval at which she may roll for the miniature and plans together is once per day and they have a terminus of 5, the miniature must be fresh for the amgic to work. As the magic in the spell provides the materials of the structure, unless the materials needed are magical or rare, such as salt, gold, silver, etc. or simply completely unavailible at the location. Granite next to volcanos, wood in the desert, sandstone in the frozen wastes.

Distort: 15 If distorted during the casting the structure become warped and wrong. Corridors don't lead where they're supposed to, doors open into walls, or windows sit between floor. Fortifications don't protect as well as they should either, fortified structures afflicted by distortions cannot have more than light cover against attackers and most of it counts as difficult terrain for everyone.

(Remember Raise the puissant sanctum? Yeah let’s not spam manses any more but it would be fun to instantly build things! It’s best if the sorcerer is a crafter as well but it can be outsourced. The long ritual prevents it from being spammed every day but still allows you to build impressive structures in a relatively short amount of time with few resources, although doing so is probably going to be a dead giveaway that you’re anathema to the local immaculate monks. And possibly upset regional lords if you just do it on their grounds without saying anything. So use with care. I considered having a control effect that the sorcerer would gain a permanent fascination with building models and miniatures of things and gain an extra dice on any craft project that involved small objects and a desire to build a model village at some point.)

God-Forged Champion of War. Ritual 3wp

The sorcerer pulls essence from the air around her and suffuses it into her body, creating a startling transformation of her being. After a half a hour long ritual, the sorcerer's body grows and expands until she is the size of a warstrider and remains such for an amount of hours equal to her permanent essence rating. During this time she has to attune her own personal essence for the spell as well and commit 10m for the duration. For the duration however she's considered to be wearing heavy artifact armor, regardless of what armor she wears in actuality. All her weapons and armor changes size with her but only confer the reaching tag on all melee attacks against smaller targets.

While under the effect of God-Forged Champion of War, the sorcerer gains the following merits.

Legendary size: Withering attacks made by smaller enemies cannot drop the sorcerer below 1 Initiative unless they have a post-soak damage of at least 10 dice, though they award attacks the full amount of initiative. Decisive attacks by smaller opponents can’t inflict more than 3+Strength levels of damage to a Warstrider, not counting any levels of damage added by charms of other magic.

Health: The sorcerer gains +2x0/+1x-1/+2x-2/+1x-4 whilst transformed.

Titanic strength: She gains two to her strength score, for the purposes of feats of strength, both for her dice pool and calculating what feats of strength she is capable of and damage, even if this brings her over 5. These do not add to charm caps however. Additionally she may double her strength score of feats of strength for situations where her tremendous size provides an advantage.

Colossal Rampage: The sorcerer becomes exceptionally effective against large groups of closely packed human-sized enemies. Battle Groups suffer a -2 penalty to Defense against her attacks. Her withering attacks double their post-soak damage against Battle Groups, while her Decisive attacks deal one automatic level of bonus damage for every 2 dice rolled, rather than for every 4.

Tiny Targets: Against single normal sized targets, the sorcerer gains less initiative when the smaller target applies their evasion against her attack. When they target applies their evasion, the sorcerer deals (base evasion /2 rounded down) less initiative damage (min 1) on a successful attack.

A sorcerer who knows God-Forged Champion of War as their control spell are unnaturally strong even not in a colossal form, in a normal state she is considered to have two more strength than she actually does for the meeting the requirements of attempting certain feats of strength where being large can be advantageous. Her shadow also become unnaturally long compared to her peers and have an uncanny ability to loom over others.

Distort 10: When distorted by another sorcerer, the sorcerer's sense of balance becomes impaired and is not scaled for the sorcerer's new size. Thusly she  becomes massively clumsy, all actions get a -3 penalty and her dv receives a -2 penalty

(Kindof long-winded and uses @winterwombat​ ‘s warstrider rules so mad props to em. I think it straddles the line between “you can’t always use it” (because the benefits are hueg (see what I did there?)) because of the ritual cast and having the spell doesn’t make getting a warstrider redundant and having a warstrider doesn’t make the spell redundant even though it kinda does the same thing. And it comes with a weakness to quick nimble people and a very steep willpower cost and attunement.

[tyrantisterror]

How I’d Ruin It: Batman

(thanks to The Lego Batman Movie for making my brain keep coming back to this, and also for making such awesome goddamn toys for my retail therapy needs)

While I write my own stories nowadays, the old fanfic writer in me resurfaces every now and then in the form of idle thoughts about how I’d handle certain stories I love.  Sometimes these musings lead me to one horrible conclusion: that no matter how much I may love the story in question, I’d be absolutely fuck awful at writing it.  This is because the scope of things I’m interested in writing is significantly smaller than the scope of things I’m interested in reading/watching - my muse is a pickier eater than I am.

Still, no matter how awful and off message my bastardized mental versions of these stories may be, they keep popping up now and then, demanding to manifest as stories are wont to do.  So today I’m going to exorcise one of them by summarizing it to you.

Today, my wonderful readers, I’m going to tell you how I’d utterly fuck up at writing Batman.

I’m a conditional Batman fan, because there’s a lot of Batman media out there and a lot of it is shit - and also there’s so much of it by volume that even reading/watching only the good Batman stuff would take more time than I can spare.  So when I say I love Batman, know that I mean, like, mostly the 90′s animated series and scattered arcs like The Long Halloween that can stand alone, and The Dark Knight, and the Adam West show, and Holy Musical B@man, and some other random Batman stuff.  I only know/like some Batman, but the amount of Batman I like is still, like, a lot of Batman.  Jesus Christ there’s so much fucking Batman dudes.

But I have some problems with Batman, two of which are relevant to this post because they’re also kind of necessary to its appeal.  The first is one that is almost justifiable, although it will undoubtedly sound preposterous to most people: why does Batman have to be so dark?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a horror fan, so obviously I’m not completely averse to darkness in my fiction.  A big part of Batman’s appeal to me comes from how it’s rooted in Gothic Horror tropes.  It’s a comic about a dude who dresses up as a Dracula to fight monster men in a city that’s literally called Gotham, so darkness has to be part of the story.

But jeeeeeesus christ Batman is needlessly dark sometimes.  Does a bat themed super hero really need to be fighting a guy who carves tally marks into his skin for every person he’s murdered?  Is the Joker really more interesting when he’s killing everyone he sees than when he committed clown themed heists?  Isn’t being a crocodile man enough intrigue for Killer Croc, or does he need to be a creepy cannibal too?  Does every villain need to be a murderer?

While the Adam West Batman show is so campy that I can only tolerate it in small doses, it nonetheless makes me pine for a brighter take on the character/series.  It’s kind of nice to have bright colors and jokes and a Batman who doesn’t whine about how sad he is, and villains who are more into making elaborate puzzles and traps instead of finding new ways to mutilate their victims.  I’d love to see it blended with the complex psychology of the darker Batmans - but more on that after we get to problem number 2.

Which is, of course, Batman himself.

Batman can be an interesting character.  In the best Batman stories, I certainly do love him.  But, to be totally honest with you, even at his best, Batman is never the main draw to me in a Batman story.  He’s like the bun of a hot dog - it’d be weird to have one without him, and a lot of the more interesting ingredients would sort of fall apart without him holding everything together, and you’d have a great big sticky mess on your hands, but... I mean, if I’m honest, he’s not the part of this I’m looking forward to experiencing.  Batman isn’t the meat of the meal to me - no, that role goes instead to his villains.

Goddammit those villains are great! Joker, Two Face, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, the Riddler, even the obscure ones like Killer Croc and Clayface, and even the shitty ones like Calendar Man - I just fuckin’ love almost every single one of ‘em, and they’re the reason I keep thinking about how I’d love to just... just utterly ruin Batman.

But when I start thinking of the story I want to tell with those villains, inevitably I remember that, oh hey, I need to have something for Batman to do because, y’know, it’s called Batman for a reason, and my muse just wants nothing to do with that.  And that’s why the wheels always fall off.

Well, that and I have a billion other stories to write, but still.

So here’s how I’d ruin Batman in a brief pitch: My Batman story would star the villains, almost none of whom are murderers, in a version of Gotham where Bruce Wayne died with his parents, and thus has no Batman.

You’d have a Gotham City much like the one in Year One (I hate to reference a Frank Miller comic but it’s easily the most well known framework for where I’m starting here), ruled by a mix of slightly exaggerated gangsters and corrupt businessmen - more outlandish in their evil than the real thing but not quite on supervillain level.  The villains would all retain their origins for the most part, but without a Batman to draw their focus they sort of turn on each other.  It sort of splits into two factions: the Freaks, who are victims/products of the corruption inherent to the city, and the Crimelords, who are the few members of the old/mundane criminal element that adapt to the superpower boom and transition from normal gangsters to supervillains.

The resulting conflict would be the story of a bunch of broken people trying to destroy the system that made them, and the horrible remnants of the old crime world desperately trying to return things to how they are - anarchists vs. tyrants.

Now that we’ve got the basic plot/conflict down, let’s go to what I always focus on first when writing a story: the characters.  We’ll begin with our protagonists...

The Freaks

The Joker - obviously the leader of the bunch, the Joker is probably one of the characters I would bastardize/alter the most.  Nowadays it’s set pretty firmly in stone that the Joker has to be, like, the most evil man in existence.  He’s gotta kill people on a whim, physically abuse his girlfriend, cut off his own face and wear it like a mask, and just generally be a real fuckin’ creep.  But does he have to be that evil?

Well yes, yes he does, it’s what makes him iconic and is basically his defining trait, and without it most of the stories told with the character wouldn’t be possible.  The idea that he’s the villain who gives other villains nightmares is what makes him stand out.  If you lessen the depths of his depravity, you’d ruin Batman.

but does he haaaaaaaaaave to?

Imagine if you will a young, down on his luck commedian named Jack Napier who, in an attempt to provide for his wife, accidentally gets involved with the mob.  They make him dress up as a (fictional) crime boss called the Red Hood for a caper - he has to act the part to get the police off the scent of the real bosses.  Little does he know that he’s a patsy, set up to not only mislead the police but to buy time for the crooks’ escape by getting into a firefight.  He’s shot and falls into some chemicals, gets bleached, and wakes up with a new, much more unhinged state of mind.  Like the normal Joker, he finds the magnitude of his tragedy to hilariously absurd.  Also like the normal Joker, he decides to become an agent of entropy in hopes of dismantling the city that made him a monster.

Unlike the normal Joker, however, the focus of his wrath isn’t a paragon of morality and justice, but rather the corrupt and powerful rulers of Gotham.  He becomes the arch enemy of mobsters, crooked cops, and politicians - people the normal version of the Joker also antagonizes, of course, but not to this level.  Since his nemeses are different, this Joker never defines himself as a force of evil and corruption.  Instead he humiliates - this Joker punches up and brings those in power down a peg.

The “joke” theme because important here, as the Joker ends up creating a lot of schemes designed to ridicule and embarrass his victims as much as destroy them.  It’s not enough to just shoot the corrupt politician - he needs to kill their ego and their sense of power.  This Joker would much rather scare the shit out of his victim with a convoluted and frankly stupid “death” trap than just shoot them - and he’d be perfectly content just splatting them in the face with a vaudevillian pie instead of actually killing them at the end.

He wouldn’t be an out and out hero - he doesn’t go out of his way to save people or anything - but he’d also be a far cry from the “killing dozens of people a day for the sake of proving he’s evil” Joker we get nowadays.

He also wouldn’t be aware of the fact that other people don’t necessarily get the joke - not in the malicious “BWAHAHA I’M EVIL AND I’M KILLING YOU WITH LAUGHING GAS IT’S FUNNY TO ME BECAUSE I’M EVIL” way, but in the “Look, I know you’re technically in peril here but you have to admit it’s objectively ridiculous that you’re being dangled above a tank full of piranhas, right?  I mean, is it even true that they eat people, or is that a myth?  This whole thing’s pretty surreal right?” sort of way.

Harley Quinn - Harley is my favorite Batman character when she’s written well, but sadly she’s normally written absolutely horribly so I’m kind of happy to just fuckin’ ruin this story for her sake.  Part of her problem is that the core concept for her character is “psychiatrist is seduced by patient, subjected to psychological and physical abuse by him, and because of said abuse becomes a supervillain.”  I mean, a lot of Batman villains also have the “horrible psychological problems make people evil” thing going on which is, y’know, horribly unfortunate, but I feel like Harley’s hit harder than most.

But since the Joker isn’t nearly as much of a bastard in this story, maybe Harley can get out with a nicer origin as well?

This version of Harley isn’t the Joker’s victim so much as a collaborator - maybe the Robin to his Batman?  They’re kindred spirits in their love of whimsy and their distaste for how the city is run - Harley in particular has a focus on the corrupt nature of the mental health facility she works at (I mean, Arkham’s not particularly good at its purpose even in the normal Batman universe).  Like Robin, Harley softens the Joker’s war on Gotham’s criminal underworld a bit - she drags him into a more compassionate viewpoint.  Unlike Robin, she’s not a subordinate/ward - while Harley plays on the Joker’s clown motiff, she doesn’t follow his schemes without question, and always argues for a different way of doing things when the Joker’s plans get too mean-spirited.  They’re actual partners in crime, as opposed to the victim/abuser dynamic they had in past fiction.

I realize this is the kind of alteration to canon - y’know, making the main villain sympathetic and a canonically abusive relationship into a healthy romanticized one - that makes people use the word “fanfic” as a pejorative, but, well, I did say this is how I’d ruin Batman.

Catwoman - while the Joker is obviously going to be the leader of the bunch, Catwoman would be the deuteragonist, both because she’s just as iconic and also because she’s probably the closest thing to Batman in this world, and it is still ultimately a world designed to work around a Batman-ish character.  Born poor, Catwoman pickpockets her way into wealth, specifically targeting the most corrupt of the wealthy.  Unlike most of the other Freaks, she has the option of living a normal life, but is ultimately compelled to keep robbing from the rich and giving to the poor (and also herself - look, she has a lot of cats to feed).  Catwoman grounds the Freaks in reality and helps them understand the rules of the system they’re trying to break - and, with her status as an up and coming socialite, is able to give them valuable intel on some of their targets.

Mr. Freeze - honestly you could just transplant the Batman: The Animated Series take on him right into here, because it’s kind of baffling he was considered a villain in the first place.  It takes literally no effort to make him a heroic figure - you just have to remove the more-traditionally-heroic Batman to make him shine.  Mr. Freeze isn’t as daffy and volatile as the Joker, but is every bit as determined to bring Gotham crashing down and to make the corrupt pay for their cruelty toward people like him.  He’s also hilariously serious, providing a stoic counterpoint to the more flamboyant personalities of the other villains.

Poison Ivy - Poison Ivy’s motivation has been “protect the environment, plants specifically”, which is pretty noble to be honest - it’s just that her methods are unnecessarily homicidal.  So, y’know, maybe tone that down a bit?  Less “mind controlling innocent people and murdering them for money to build a plant park” and more “using convenient giant animate plants to halt construction that threatens local parks” sort of schemes.  She’d basically be an environmental sciences themed vigilante - Captain Planet with an aggressive streak.

I know it’s more traditional to pair her with Harley Quinn, but I’d kinda like to try setting her up with Catwoman instead - both of them has this history of being femme fatales/evil seducers of men, so it’d be kind of fun to have a story where they just have none of that at all.  Though pairing her with Harley and making the Harley/Joker relationship purely platonic is an interesting dynamic too...

Killer Croc - he’s a great big crocodile man who lives in the sewers because no one above ground accepts him, on account of him being a big crocodile man and all.  Despite his fearsome appearance and prodigious strength, he’s a pretty swell guy - the gentle bruiser of the group.

Two-Face - like Mr. Freeze, you really don’t have to alter much to make him a good guy.  Just keep Two-Face pointed at mobsters and he works as a hero pretty well.

The Riddler - In this world, the Riddler begins as a cop who, while clever, isn’t corrupt enough to excel in the police department.  His superiors assign him to the Freak case in hopes of getting rid of him (preferably in a fatal sort of way), but that plan succeeds in the worst way, as he ends up defecting to their side.  The Riddler helps the Freaks make their schemes truly bizarre and unpredictable, and helps them get to the bottom of who is truly running Gotham City.  He’s also a smug prick about it, because smugness is key to his character.

Clayface - a star of Gotham’s theater scene, Basil Karlo is convinced to try an experiment age-defying makeup which turns him into a giant shape changing mud man.  He becomes the group’s master of disguise and also ups their general theatricality, and can back up Croc as the muscle in a pinch.

The Crimelords

Penguin - a petty thug with delusions of grandeur, Penguin wants to rise to the ranks of the social elite and goes to great lengths to seem more educated and “classy” than he is.  While he is never accepted by the rich people he idolizes, he continues to do their dirty work in hopes of getting their approval.  He is cunning in a way, though, and rises to prominence throughout the story as one of the few criminals who can keep up with the increasingly eccentric Freaks - probably because he’s basically one of them despite his protests.

Scarecrow - a corrupt psychologist at Arkham Asylum who helps the mafia by providing insanity defenses for mobsters and driving key witnesses insane, Scarecrow’s obsession with fear would spiral out of control throughout the story.  Eventually he’d switch sides to the Freaks when he gets too weird for the oldschool criminals to tolerate, although he’d never be well liked by either side.

Firefly - a particularly skilled arsonist for the Maroni crime family.  Not much more than that.

Deathstroke - the greatest assassin employed by the Falcone crime family, Deathstroke takes himself very seriously, which is to his detriment considering the pack of ridiculous monster men he’s facing in this story.  He has a bitter rivalry with...

Deadshot - the greatest assassin employed by the Maroni crime family.  Deadshot doesn’t take his work very seriously at all and is prone to sarcasm and flippancy.  He kind of loves the fact that the freaks are causing so much ridiculous trouble for his employers, but that doesn’t mean he won’t kill them for a paycheck.

Bane - a mercenary hired by the crime families to take down the Freaks.  Bane eventually switches sides; he may be a bad guy, but he also cares about the downtrodden having grown up in a city not unlike Gotham itself.

Calendar Man - the youngest son of the mafia boss Carmine Falcone, Alberto Falcone is inspired by the theatricality of the Freaks and becomes a holiday themed serial killer, targeting enemies of his father’s business in a misguided attempt to earn his approval.

Black Mask - As the different crime families slowly dwindle in number over the course of the story, Roland Sionis, an underboss for the Maroni family, eventually rises in the ranks (due to his superiors dying) and unites what remains of the mafia under his iron fist.  Deciding to fight fire with fire, he crafts a grim alter ego for himself in hopes of striking fear into the Freaks.  It doesn’t work because he’s just not theatrical enough to pull it off, but he does manage to be a thorn in their side for a while.

Hugo Strange - the chief psychologist of Arkham Asylum, Hugo Strange is an awful, awful man.  He’s also an incredibly intelligent one, master minding many of the problems the Freaks encounter.  He’s not the root of Gotham’s problems, though, as he ultimately serves...

Ra’s Al Ghul - an ancient sorceror who has made and destroyed countless societies in his many centuries of scheming, Ra’s Al Ghul made Gotham City into a nexus of misery and cruelty in hopes of awakening a world ruining entity - i.e. basically he’s trying to bring about Gozer the Destroyer.  ‘Cause why not bring in a bit of Lovecraftian terror to a setting that has a madhouse that makes monster people that’s literally called Arkham Asylum?

And that’s it.  That’s how I’d ruin Batman.

I’ll probably repurpose some of these ideas into other stories like I do with most of my fanfic ideas, but man, this sure is shitty as a Batman story, huh?