#COBRA FRY

[arunparia]

The Cobra Eaters

Hanoi, 2022

When it’s cut from the body with one chop, in Hang Ha Noi restaurant, the king cobra’s severed head yawns. In the death dream, the fangs come out to bite, then hide inside the sleeping jaws. The headless body leaps high from the metal pan, gets tangled with the wiggling tail. Minutes later, it’s skinned, slit with kitchen knife, dripping blood into a plastic cup.

It’s still alive. In a way we’re alive when we recuse the body to sleep, tuck our fangs in in a helpless yawn, poison hid in the nook of the heart. The sleeping torsos jerk at the thud of a chop, thump the ground with a fuming tail: when we cobra eaters crawl in the hollow of the night slowly serpentine between dream and death.

(The poem was first published in Issue 15 of HeartWood Literary Magazine: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/the-cobra-eaters , and then in Outlook: https://www.outlookindia.com/culture-society/five-poems-about-people-across-the-world-weekender_story-328626)

[gemini-sensei]

Ephyra!reader and fry!reader need to become besties because they both grew up as outcasts

Agreed! @sensei-venus

They'd get along so well too! They'd be so enamored by their similarities because they both have tentacles. They dance around and swish their tentacles around. They don't get too close while they are dancing because ephyra!Reader doesn't want to sting fry!Reader by accident.

Omg! They'll sit together and play, do each other's hair, dress up and sp much more. They talk quietly to each other and share ideas and giggle. As they get older, they might even shit talk all the people who think wrongly of them, who judge them and so on.

!!!! What if they are buddies! Because their swimming patterns are similar!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

[legocobrakai]

"I call it 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire.'"

Here's your first look at the opening eight minutes of #CobraKaiSeason6 Part 1: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/cobra-kai-season-6-premiere-sneak-peek

[southerndragontamer]

You Only Get Three Strikes

This is my interpretation of how things after the amazing fanart by @andaboop went

Actor hummed an old tune to himself as he adjusted his tie in the mirror and flashed himself a grin. He had just finished up setting things up for the confrontation with Dark in their next encounter, he wondered if it would work enough he could bring out Damien again. He had sent his….no not partner, that was reserved for someone else…..like minded fellow? That sounded right, out to go through the plan Actor had crafted for him about some hero, magician? Whoever the target he was after.

He’d really lucked out in meeting the other, it was always nice to have a trump card in your pocket and though he was a bit…jagged around the edges the actor was confident that the shared interest in their respective goals would help him figure out how to direct those edges the way he’d like.

His thought process was derailed when the door was slammed open. No, that wasn’t quite right, it wasn’t slammed so much as kicked in so hard it flew to the opposite wall. He whirled around, cane in hand ready to defend himself as his mind immediately jumped to William or Damien only to blink as he saw the glitch there. His smile fit into place as he relaxed.

“Oh it’s you my friend! You gave me a heart attack there-”

His voice cut off by force by a clawed hand that snapped around it with the speed of a striking cobra, or a bear trap when it shut from the pressure plate being triggered. He gagged and choked and instinctively tried to pry away the fingers that felt like they were going to snap his windpipe in two. He attempted to kick as he was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall.

Anti’s face was twisted in a near wild fury, all his fangs bared and body glitching as the lights began to flicker and dim. His eyes were glowing like a live wire as he spat out, Irish accent thickened even further than normal.

“Shut yer damn mouth. I don’t wanna hear a sound outta ye, unless I say you can talk.”

Actor couldn’t have tried to speak right now if he wanted to, he tried to nod as his vision swam with black spots. Just as he thought he was going to pass out, or need to reconstruct his throat again, he was let go and dropped like a sack of bricks. He held in the gasp as oxygen flooded into his lungs and covered his mouth to muffle the cough as he looked up at the glitch for a reason why he’d suddenly flown off the handle.

Anti’s glare was like looking at a lightning strike inches from where you stood, the sense of if he wasn’t careful he’d have to dig himself out of a grave again. The glitch stepped back and manifested his knife as he started to absently twirl it in his fingers with the ease of someone that had wielded a blade for a long time.

“I was willing to give ye a chance ya know, at working together. You talk a big game pretty boy. But you can’t cash it. I went with that ‘plan’ of yours that ye made for me. And do you wanna know what happened?”

Actor felt his stomach start to knot and sink, his heart picked up and he felt the hair raise on the back of his neck at the way the lights flickered and threatened to pop, sparks arced off of the glitch’s skin as his voice dropped into a growling hiss.

“I had the magician about to collapse at my feet when the damned timekeeper intervened. They got away from me. Oh I can find em again, easy as breathing, my strings don’t allow any less. But it’s the principle of it all.”

Actor resisted the urge to hunch in on himself as Anti’s head snapped around at a sickeningly off angle and speed and instead he began to try to save face, backpedal as he stood up. His best apologetic expression on as he tried to keep from going out of the frying pan into the fire. His eyes shone a brighter red and he weaved his own kind of power into his words like red ribbon braided together to hide blood.

“I’m sorry that it didn’t work like I intended friend, but I didn’t take everything into account it seems when I made my plan.”

That was as far as the ‘apology’, because such a word was only proper in a true sense of remorse for actions, got as he found his jaw exploded in pain from the literally lightning fast blow to one side. He felt bone crunch and fracture as he collapsed to the floor and held his jaw in place as it began to repair itself.

Only to choke and blood to spurt out of his mouth by the sharp kick that echoed with the cracking of ribs, just as quickly he was hauled up by the collar of his suit and the knife was pressed deeply against his skin. Ruby droplets trailed down the edge of the blade as Anti half snarled.

“I told you. Not. A. Sound. You must not have much grey matter between your ears, or you’re just a glutton to get your arse beaten. So let me explain this in a way you’ll be sure to understand.”

Actor winced and his eyes squinted as the glowering, searing light of Anti’s eyes were right in front of him. The knife cut in just a bit deeper into his skin. The glitch’s tone went from utterly furious about to stab someone, to calm and measured and almost cold rage that was somehow almost more terrifying.

“If you’re not one of my puppets, you get three strikes. Your first mistake was fockin things up for me reclaiming one of mine. The second one was the half-arsed, shite apology ya tried to make.”

And Anti grinned, slow and cruel and his eyes had a sadistic glint in them as he chuckled and finished in an almost croon. The lights shone green and the white noise of static snow started to hurt Actor’s ears enough to make him wince and he swore for a second something started to bleed.

“Your final strike? Thinking I was too stupid to know you didn’t expect more out of me than dumb muscle eager to get to fighting, someone that wouldn’t question anything.”

The lights flared such a bright green that it went white and then popped with the sound of fizzling soda and shattered glass. Actor subconsciously, human instinct still ingrained after so long of being inhuman, flinched, shut his eyes and covered his head. The sound of shrieking static made him cover his ears as they ached and he was positive he felt his eardrums burst, his head ached as the sound pierced through his skull.

The shrieking came again, not just a wall of sound but laughter. Actor had never been one that dealt well with being made a joke, pride bristled in indignation as his eyes snapped open and he started to growl, to snap back at the glitch for being so ungrateful for his help. His mask dropped as his true form slipped through the handsome image he portrayed. Like the true face of Dorian Grey, sickened, rotten and ugly.

Only he saw that Anti had dropped his mask as well…

Instead of a human with glowing green eyes, sharp claws and fangs to betray the inhuman underneath…what stood in front of Actor was something that could only be called eldritch. Lightning and static in a silhouette that was humanoid but not, it glitched and twisted on itself, crackling at the seams. He blinked and it shifted each time as if it couldn’t decide on how to ‘appear’. Too long, too many ‘limbs’ too long claws that took the place of fingers, jaws filled with rows and rows of razor blade fangs, it looked too big for the space it was in, the walls creaked and groaned with the strain to hold it in.

His head ached like the worst migraine he’d ever had, his ears rang and he felt blood dripping from his nose, the world felt like it tilted and he felt like he was going to throw up. There was a rumbling of thunder and then he was aware of his body falling and convulsing as his brain lit up with only agony as a reason. Past the pain and the searing white noise in his ears that felt like it was trying to break his mind apart, he grit his teeth at the shrieking, piercing laugh that had him swallow down bile.

“Already on the ground writhing like a snake without its head~ You thought you were such a tough shot because you constantly annoyed Dark, ohhh boyo you got no idea of what forces you’re playing with now~”

The sensation of barbed wire cutting and tearing, ripping into his skin as the glitch’s strings wrapped around his limbs and yanked him up to his feet. Up further still to Anti’s ‘face’…too many eyes, shades of green, black, blue and some brown, they looked like fractured images through cracks in a mirror. The glitch’s body waved and rose as it spoke, like watching a sound wave on a computer screen.

As much as Actor tried to hold it in, as he finally realized how in over his head he was, that making a deal with the glitch had been a horrible mistake, when he felt the lightning forced through his body again, he screamed. Anti’s cackling laughter of delight rang in his ears and covered the sound as it echoed in on itself.

“It’s been a while since I had a chance to play with something that can survive it~ Oh yes, I’m aware you can’t stay dead~ You’re gonna wish you were back in that manor when I get bored of you~”

[incorrect-skylanders-quotes]

Skylanders That Haven't Been Used On This Blog Yet (Updated again!)

I'd like to get at least one quote with every Skylander, so if you have any ideas please submit them!

(*) means they were mentioned, but haven't gotten a proper quote.

SWAP Force:

Dune Bug

Rip Tide

Rubble Rouser

Scorp

Stink Bomb

Fryno

Trap Team:

Cobra Cadabra

Jawbreaker

Chopper

Krypt King

Thunderbolt

Flip Wreck*

Wallop

Fist Bump

Imaginators:

Pain-Yatta

Dr. Neo Cortex

Grave Clobber

Tri-Tip*

Minis:

Barkley

Gill Runt

Terrabite

Thumpling

Small Fry

Weeruptor

Ring of Heroes Portal Masters:

George

Bruno

Ryeo

Oscar

Adriana

[msfbgraves]

I'm rewatching the Karate Kid trilogy, and I'm once again struck by Daniel's sweetness and his capacity for affection and love. Yes, he's sassy, and hot-headed, and mouthy...but his true defining trait is his kind, good heart. I don't understand people who hate him in Cobra Kai, or think HE'S the villain (!!!!) to Johnny Lawrence, the world's most immature man, a terrible parent, and a genuine loser.

I don't know if they hate Daniel for being successful and wealthy but still compassionate and sweet, or what it is. He's a very good dad, husband, and friend who is still imperfect and flawed. He's been right from the start concerning Cobra Kai.

I also hate the whole demonizing of his wonderful relationship with Mr. Miyagi!! It makes me sick.

I'm sorry that the creators of this show and 12 year olds on tik-tok and Johnny fans hate Daniel when he's so loveable. I'd love to have a guy like that in my life, may it be a friend or a husband. He's the best.

He is the best, Nonnie, but some people can't handle that. What they see is someone being demonstrably good, and kind, and what they recognise is: I'm not like that, and Being that kind would be work, I'm not there yet, and then Am I willing to put the work in? And then you can get Nah, I'm good, (Louie), Yes, of course (Bobby) or No, and fuck you for making me aware of that!! I shouldn't have to work on myself!!! I want to be loved as a shit person!!!!

Now with Daniel you also mix in "And I'm gay for him...!" Which can also drive people really mean. And when you're twelve on TikTok... I've woken up 20 years later and thought: OMG, I was an asshole and I had no idea. Not continuously but we all have bad days or don't yet know how to be at the receiving end of shitty behaviour. That's human. It's part of growing up to learn how to imagine being someone else and anticipating what your deeds may mean for someone else. Some people, like Daniel, have enormous hearts and can do this instinctively, almost without effort. It's harder for others. He doesn't seek all that much power, Daniel. Johnny does and that's fine. But what Cobra Kai didn't teach - something that's immensely important - is how to give yourself your own power kick. And that is finding something you enjoy doing and hitting milestones there. Be it winning the All Valley or saving up for a trip or nursing a goldfish or winning a level or building something in Minecraft or flying to Mars or learning how to deep fry your own Haggis or editing a vid. It doesn't matter as long as it doesn't hurt people. Hurting people is the easiest, lowest, most self destructive power kick you can imagine. And if you never learn constructive power kicks, and hurt your own relationships because you're mean to others.... it isn't it easy to resent people that are liked? That people are drawn to? That can be huge dorks and get away with it? It's so unfair!

And if you're twelve you'll learn how to be a person and regulate your own emotions and work for what you want, even when others seem to have it easier. It's a problem though when you haven't learnt this by 52. Because those people look at Miyagi and think: how dare he make me feel bad for being nice, I'll get him for that, especially now Pat isn't alive to oppose me, look at how clever I am, I'll show them!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mx-piggy]

i've already posted about this in the past but like i really need to watch Cobra Kai, just because i need to be able to write a reader-insert fic where the reader is Johnny Lawrence's lameass trans kid. like they don't know karate. they're an adult (like 18-20) and they still live with him. they're mostly a loser. they're Philip J. Fry-coded. i'm sure that would be an interesting dynamic. it would definitely heal me. i know i can't write it until i finally watch Cobra Kai. oh boy i sure wish someone would write something like this.

[drarrily-we-row-along]

Making It Work (Chapter Four)

Even though Harry knew that he needed to apologize, he found himself incapable of doing so. Every time he looked at the other man, the words got swallowed by the sheer irritation he felt at being put in this situation in the first place.

It wasn't fair. And frankly, Harry had a hard time with anything that smacked of unfairness at this point, his mind healer would certainly tell him that was a trauma response.

Still, as the next three days wore on and they continued to either not talk at all or bicker with each other, as they came to verbal blows, if not physical yet, Harry knew something had to give. This wasn't sustainable.

So, Harry set his alarm early the next morning and rolled out of bed, intent on apologizing for being an arse, on owning his part in their disagreements. He trudged into the kitchen, shoving his glasses up into his hair so he could rub his eyes as he went. 

He started by making coffee, hoping that Malfoy drank coffee in the morning, too. Then he pulled out eggs and bacon, grabbed chives, onions, and mushrooms, noting sadly that there weren’t any peppers. As the vegetables started chopping themselves and the beater scrambled the eggs, he started frying up the bacon. While the bacon sizzled away, filling the house with the delightful, comforting smell, he combined the veggies and eggs and set about making omelets. 

It was only another ten minutes before he’d plated omelets, bacon, toast, and orange slices. Breakfast didn’t look half bad, if he said so himself. He set their plates out on the table, along with their coffee and put everything under a stasis charm to keep it warm. 

Just as he was headed to knock on Malfoy’s door, motion from the deck caught his eye. He glanced over toward the windows to see that Malfoy was out on the deck, blonde hair (tied up in a loose topknot that Harry refused to admit was sexy as hell) glinting in the sun, bare chest glistening with sweat, and sweatpants slung low on his sharp hip bones as he held his body in a perfect warrior pose. 

He was undeniably beautiful from a purely aesthetical standpoint. Too bad his personality was so off putting.

As Harry watched, Malfoy arched his back and moved into a reverse warrior pose and Harry could see the definition of his tightly toned muscles in his lean stomach. He held the position for far longer than Harry could imagine that he himself would have been able to, before Malfoy's body effortlessly transitioned into a side angle, his arm reaching up high. 

From there he slowly, gracefully flowed through to a flawless triangle pose, then a half moon pose making it look like it was the most natural thing in the world to hold yourself on one leg, with your other leg at a ninety degree angle to your body. 

Harry held his breath as Malfoy moved into downward dog, pressing his heels flat to the ground, his (shapely) arse in the air. He couldn’t help the way his mind wandered as he watched Malfoy hold his body in that pose for long moments. 

Then he eased out of it and into chaturanga, holding his body in a perfectly straight line, the muscles in his biceps bulging as he kept his arms tight to his body. His hips slowly lowered to the floor and Malfoy pressed his torso up off the ground, his neck elongating into a gorgeous cobra pose and Harry watched as a bead of sweat rolled down his neck, along his collarbones, and into the divot at the base of his throat. 

After a long moment held in that position, Malfoy rolled his back up and folded himself back onto his knees as his arms stretched out on the mat in front of him and he was in the perfect child’s pose.  

Eventually, Malfoy gracefully rose from his mat and before Harry could even think to stop looking, Malfoy turned to come inside. He froze when he caught sight of Harry through the glass door.

“Sorry,” Harry managed to splutter, “Breakfast is... I should have... I-”

Malfoy raised an eyebrow, “Enjoying the view, Potter?” he asked as he stepped through the door and into the living room. 

“Err,” Harry said.

“Did you make coffee?” Malfoy asked with a sniff as he walked toward the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the tap.

“Yes,” Harry said, glad that he could say something that didn’t make him sound like an idiot. 

“Enough for two?” Malfoy asked before taking a long draw of his water. 

Harry watched him swallow before managing to get himself out of his stupor, “Yes. I also made toast and omelets if you’re interested.”

Malfoy raised an eyebrow at him, “Well that’s unexpected.”

Harry followed him to the table and sat down in the seat he’d taken that first night when Malfoy had held out an olive branch that Harry had squashed. “Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Listen, Malfoy,” he started, “I wanted to say sorry-”

“There’s no need,” Malfoy said shortly as he bit into the omelet. “Thank you for breakfast but honestly, there’s no need for you to apologize. I knew this partnership would be hard for you.” He looked up, then dipped his head as he amended, “For both of us, really. There is a lot of history between us and I know I will need to earn your trust as you need to earn mine.” 

“Still,” Harry said. “Those things I said, well thought,” he corrected since he’d never said them outloud. “It wasn’t fair of me. I’m sure the past five years since the war have been complete hell for you. And I’m sorry.”

Malfoy nodded once, “Apology accepted.” He set his fork and knife down as he looked at Harry, “I don’t expect us to be best friends or anything, Potter, but I do think we might be able to work together.”

Harry shrugged, “Maybe,” he said. Then he cleared his throat and changed the topic, “So, you’re pretty good at yoga.”

Malfoy snorted, “Enjoyed that, did you?” Harry skin heated but before he could say anything stupid Malfoy continued, “It’s very centering for me.”

“Where did you learn?” Harry asked around a bite of his omelet. 

“Oh, I learned when I was a boy,” he said with a shrug. “When I was young, before Hogwarts,” he added, “I had a hard time controlling my magic. I was always vanishing things or setting things on fire,” he waved a hand, “so my parents hired a tutor to teach me to do yoga. I worked with the same man when I was home on breaks throughout my years at Hogwarts.”

“Wow,” Harry said, “That is a lot of dedication.”

Malfoy shrugged, “There are all sorts of strange things you’re taught when you’re a pureblood in lines like the one I came from.”

Harry tried not to bristle at the casual way Malfoy said it, “Like what?” he asked because maybe if he understood better he wouldn’t hate it so much. 

“Well,” Malfoy said carefully, “A lot of things come with privilege. I also learned to speak Latin, French, and Greek fluently, along with a handful of others well enough to be able to get by. I took piano lessons until I was fourteen. I was taught to paint as a child, taught classical literature, basic alchemy, things like that.” He tilted his head at Harry, “You went to a muggle school as a child, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Harry replied. “And we certainly weren’t taught things like that.”

Malfoy laughed, “I imagine muggle private schools are similar, though. Or wealthy families who bring tutors into their homes.”

Harry nodded, “I suppose. Dudley went to private schools, I’m not sure what he learned, really, but he was never the brightest bulb in the box.”

“Who’s Dudley?” Malfoy asked, wrinkling his nose and sounding out the name as though it were a disease of some sort. 

“Cousin,” Harry said. “He was a few months older than me.”

“Why did Dudley go to a different school than you?” Malfoy asked, sounding genuinely curious. 

Harry rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, he didn’t talk about his childhood before Hogwarts. Still. If he was going to try to make this work a little bit of trust between the two of them was certainly required. “Because he was their son,” he said lamely, “and I was just a burden dumped on them.”

Malfoy stared at him calculatingly for a moment then opened his mouth but before he could speak, one of the tempus charms Malfoy had set alerted him. “Salazar,” he muttered. He flicked his wrist to silence it and turned to look at Harry again. “I have to get ready or I’ll be late to work, but I’d like to...” he trailed off uncertainly. “That is to say, if you’d want to...” he swallowed. “I would like to hear more about your childhood later, if you want.”

“Yeah, alright,” Harry said, even though he had no idea why. If you’d asked him yesterday there is no one he would rather talk to less about his childhood than Malfoy. But that was yesterday. 

Malfoy’s lips quirked in the corner and he nodded once before sending his plate and silverware to the sink with a flick of the wrist and picking up his coffee to take with him to get ready. “Thank you for breakfast.”

Harry shrugged carelessly, “it was the least I could do after-“

“I already said you don’t have to apologize,” he interrupted. 

“I was going to say after the dinner you made the other night,” Harry replied. 

“Oh. Alright then,” he opened his mouth as though he might say more but then closed it again as he toward his room. 

“Oh, Malfoy?” Harry called. 

“Mmhmm?” He hummed through a sip of coffee as he turned to look at Harry. 

“Maybe you could tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up with magic?” 

“Could do,” Malfoy replied. “If you’d like.”

“I would, I think,” Harry said. 

“Alright. Tonight, then.”

“Yeah,” Harry said as Malfoy turned and started toward his room once more. “Tonight," he repeated, a little uncertainly.

--------------------

Chapter Three | Chapter Five

Read Making It Work on AO3 (where subscribing to updates is easier)

[marinerainbow]

I have four official AU's for the WFRR universe. One of which I already posted about (The Toon Medic AU), but I got three more.

The last two are more horror related though, so unless someone asks I won't post them. This one however, is literally just changing the species of the characters. So, despite the fact that nobody asked, here is my

WFRR Monster AU

Tagging @wicked1will0sparkles so you can see ^^

Basically, instead of there being toons, there are different species of monsters. The humans are still humans, so it's monsters and humans coexisting. And it still takes place in the late forties. This barely does anything to the plot, I just love fantasy/monster AU's.

The monsters the toons would be are:

Roger Rabbit: Fairy. In fea folklore, there are all types of fairies, including more friendly fairies. Roger would be one of those. He's not the most powerful fairy, but he does have some magic, that he uses to bring happiness to people. Though if he's pushed to far, like his wife being kidnapped, he could easily use his magic to confront the offenders.

He's not Tinker Bell size, though he is still small. So even though he's not a toon rabbit anymore, he's still a shorty potorty. And yes, he's got wings (he's a cute and funny guy, the wings would help emphasize that).

Jessica Rabbit: Gorgon (I'm willing to bet my whole check that somebody thought that she was gonna be a siren or succubus). With the stories surrounding Medusa, especially with the slightly happier ending to how Medusa became the way she is, I think gorgon would fit Jessica more. Her poisonous snakes and petrifying gaze is her defense against groping men instead of booby traps and frying pans.

Jessica is still a gorgeous woman. Aside from the snakes in her hair, powers, and more reptilian eyes, she looks normal. I like to imagine that her snakes have hoods, like cobras, to make her hair more round, like how her hair ends are more curved in the movie. And yes, they all give Roger kisses too.

Baby Herman: Goblin. Don't let the tiny man fool you, Herman is still a bastard, and is not afraid at all to use his cute appearance to get what he wants. He is pretty old despite what his appearance may indicate, just like in the movie. He and Roger are still friends too.

Unlike other fea, he rarely bothers using his magic. He's a star, so nobody will be a threat to him- according to his ego. And like I said, he knows how to play cute, so he's got that going for him.

Benny the Cab: Mechanical Being. This one was pretty easy. Who knows how this machine was given life. All that we do know, is that he decided to serve the people as a smart-mouthed cab. There are rumors that it was actually Roger who gave Benny life, considering their strong bond. Though this hasn't been confirmed- or denied.

I'm not entirely sure if I want him to remain a car, or if he can shift his body to become something else like a transformer. I'm leaning more towards the first option though.

Judge Doom: Unknown. Nobody knows who, or what, the mysterious judge was. Obviously he is a shape-shifter, though that is the only clue to his true identity. After all, part of the mystery was who Doom really was in the movie, why not have it be the same in this AU?

Doom looks pretty much the same as he does in the movie. His transformations are less toony though.

Smartass Weasel: Werewolf. On the surface, the sergeant looks like any other human, and he's able to carry himself like one. However, Anyone who's been around him notices his oddly heightened senses and strength. If pushed too far, you might even see his eyes flash momentarily. But if he needs to, he can and will summon his more beastly side.

Smartass, as stated above, is able to pass as a human. As such, it makes him the most ideal to lead the Patrol, and interact with other humans. Just be sure to avoid him on the full moon.

Greasy Weasel: Incubus. Other than his overt sexual nature, this right-hand man might look normal too. However, if one were to look closely, one might notice his more hellish features through his glamor. Though most people just brush it off as a trick of the light.

Like Smartass, Greasy looks like a human, though he doesn't has as good of a handle on himself; the more lascivious he gets, the more obvious that he's not human (Also uses his Incubus powers to charm women into sleeping with him)

Wheezy Weasel: Ghoul. Not to be confused with a mindless zombie. He may be undead, but he still has his own will and mind after being mysteriously brought back to life. At least now he can smoke all he wants with no risk to his health. Though the stench you smell when he enters the room is a bit more than the cigarettes...

Wheezy has wrappings and stitches all over him, to cover and close all the wounds he's accumulated that won't heal. Other than that, he could look like any other human too... Just don't try to take his food away from him when he's eating.

Psycho Weasel: Poltergeist. With that scene in the end where, even after he died, he still managed to almost kill Jessica and Roger, I knew this was perfect for him. Even though he's dead, don't underestimate the absolute nightmare this loon can and will be for you. And since he's already dead-dead, he has no worries of being killed or re-killed like the others. As such, this ghost has very little reason to hold back.

Don't invite this little shit into your house. He will cause problems just because he can. From slyly placing objects in different places to making the exorcism movies look like a Disney franchise.

Stupid Weasel: Troll. Big, dumb, and brute strength all in one package. Pretty straightforward. No one knows why he follows Smarty around, he may not even know himself. Though the creature seems to have gotten attached to the werewolf somehow and will do what he says, and pretty much got adopted into the gang when he wouldn't go away.

In troll folklore, they turn to stone in the sun. So Stupid doesn't like going out at that time. If he has to, he'll bring something to cover himself like a huge blanket or a parasol. It's almost cute, until you remember this guy can squash you like a grape.

Eddie (and Teddy) Valient: Monster Hunter. To call him a hunter wouldn't entirely be accurate. He and Teddy protected humans from monsters, yes, but they also protected the monsters too. It wasn't until Teddy's death at the hands of a mysterious creature did Eddie swore to never work or help creatures again.

He doesn't actively hunt the creatures, but he doesn't step in when Judge Doom and the Monster Patrol take over Los Angeles either. It isn't until a certain fairy comes to him pleading for help that he's able to slowly come back.

Dolores: Monster Huntress. In the movie, the picture frame containing the picture of Eddie, Teddy, and Dolores says "Two Flatfoots and a Floozy enter a Business", heavily implying that Dolores was indeed a part of their business. The case would be the same in this AU. And just like in the movie, she branched off to become a bartender when the business started going under to try to help both herself and Eddie.

Like in the movie, Dolores is fearless and witty in this AU. She still cares for Eddie, but she's at her wit's end too. In the end, she just wants what's best for them both.

There are certain scenes from the movie I want to write out but in the Monster AU. This post is already pretty long, so I'll save the scene re-writes for another day.

That's that! I hope you guys like this. Any questions you guys have, I'll be more than happy to answer ^^

[asknarashikari]

Geats cast meeting Lovekov XD

Neon: Aaaaah, you're such a cutie, Love-chan! Can we cuddle, pretty please?

Lovekov: Sure~ You're so pretty as well, Neon, kobu kobu!

Neon: *squeals in joy*

Keiwa: ...Can I have a hug with you too?

Lovekov: *matchmaker mode activated* Okay, but you gotta cuddle with Neon too, kobu~ It's more fun that way, love love! *squishes them together*

Neon and Keiwa: *blushing madly*

Ace: *pokes at Lovekov* *gets slapped away* Hey, what gives?

Lovekov: I don't like being poked, kuzu.

Azuma: Heh, you got called trash by the snake demon.

Lovekov: You're not any better, zako.

Azuma: Small fry- I'll teach you who's small fry, you little... eh?

Hiromi: *smiling in a very scary manner while holding Azuma's arm* What were you about to do to Love-chan, hmm? You wouldn't want to cause trouble with your senpai now?

Azuma: ....No sir.

Tsumuri: Well, everyone seems to be having fun ^^

Sakura: *putting away the King Cobra Vistamp* Yep, yep~

[x-heesy]

Ph̶̨̢̺̪̻̱̞̓̓͊ͅư̵̛̞̙̩͔̭̠̅̈́̊͆͝c̶̡̙̙̞̊̅̋́̒̔̈̑̑ķ̴̢̨̻̲͖͋͌̏͛̕ y̵̧̛̝͙̪̘͑͋͌͂̓͌̉ͅe̵̯̞̎̈́̀͑̂̓̽̕͝ǎ̸̹͔̅̈́͘: ǵ̷̦̈͐̓̀̉͌ǎ̸̹͔̅̈́͘ṋ̷͆̽̍͊ǵ̷̦̈͐̓̀̉͌s̶̢͎̮̝̭̫̞̏̒͛͗͜t̵͎̳̠̏͐͒͆̐ǎ̸̹͔̅̈́͘ r̵̠͖̂̀̄́́̕ǎ̸̹͔̅̈́͘p̸͎̝̲̬̗̳̺̥͗͌̑̽͑̍̈͒

Yeah

Cut the head off the basilisk, in the grass hunting

Anybody coming after me, get no pass from me

Oh my god, this is blasphemous, they don't blast for me

Just trying to get this fast money, you a crash dummy

Fill my heart with the darkness, I feel like Ansem

Get them grumpy at the game, oh, they're Arin Hanson

SP where I came boy, I stay advancing

CRT ghosting, I am Danny Phantom

Shit, I'm going off on tangents, still I get the cosine

Lay them on they back, wait, that shit is no lie

Younging's stepping to me saying that my shit is old time

I've been Lo-fi since before you called it Lo-fi, bitch

In a bull fight pit, trying to hold my shit

Wave a flag same color as a old spice stick

Read the scrolls I writ, how you've grown to exist

What is Jar Jar Binks, to the four five six?

When I die, put the bullet on my tombstone

Sorry, who are you? Couldn't tell like this a new phone

Covered up in gold, buried underneath a dark sky

If you're trying to rob me you're gonna have to find the clue scroll

Pharaoh cloth wrapping me, caught in this catastrophe

You ain't been the same since we dropped, boy, that's sad to see

Captains at the wheel, you don't want to be a casualty

Lost in my lane, if you're hating, get the savagery

Doubled up on bad investment

Probably try if I had contestants

Got 'em gasping like asthma breaths and

They all mad, looking sad and desperate

Love the looks that I get, when I pass pedestrians

And all the words that you got ain't

Mean shit when the devil speak in Latin

You can possum and piss on yourself when he passing

'Cause it's all in the fist, like the heart of the dragon

You a passionate kid, but you old now, what happened?

Want my cash little bitch? Didn't think so

Please don't ever hit me up on my cellphone

Said my cash low, bitch? Didn't think so

Better get the price right, this ain't Plinko

Want my cash little bitch? Didn't think so

Please don't ever hit me up on my cellphone

Said my cash low, bitch? Didn't think so

Better get the price right, this ain't Plinko

I want that cash money, rap money

Everything is trash money

Bitch, I feel like Jimmy Neutron

'Cause I got that blast on me

Watch my wrist, it does glisten, fridge

You is just a pussy bitch

I can tell 'cause your mom's dressed you in that Rip and Dip

Yeah, welcome to the Black Parade

We saving face like labor day

We doing shit the fatal way

You cannot keep up with the pace

It's cloud mac with that booky shit

Music biz, lucrative

Bitch, I feel like Harrison

I'm a fucking fugitive

Bumping MCR, Sony MDRs on me

I fill up every bar fully, feel my empty heart

Jody Highroller never love a bitch, could've made the league

Rap game whoever, just throw a name on the beat

The flow is ever discreet, I am anything but

Like our denim we tough, so tie an enemy up

And I'll fry them granted he fucked, the ire in me is spilling over

Akin to cobras how I spit before I kill them slowly

Rest in peace, tearing throats open like they mezzanines

Blow like Desert Eagle let the smoke up out my chest to breath

Keenly coded with the meanest kinda motus

And the coldest soul eroded no condolence 'til I'm older, got a

Callous style it's all malice a foul paladin

Silence I found solace in sliding these sly talons in

Blessed with maligned madness and chatter that chall acquiesce

Black is my soul agonous bragging, we so back in this

Want my cash little bitch? Didn't think so

Please don't ever hit me up on my cellphone

Said my cash low, bitch? Didn't think so

Better get the price right, this ain't Plinko

Want my cash little bitch? Didn't think so

Please don't ever hit me up on my cellphone

Said my cash low, bitch? Didn't think so

Better get the price right, this ain't Plinko

Bǎ̸̹͔̅̈́͘s̶̢͎̮̝̭̫̞̏̒͛͗͜i̴̛͕͍̤̐͆͆͂̇̈́̍̍͊l̵̡̬̹̙͕͍͙̜̂͌̾i̴̛͕͍̤̐͆͆͂̇̈́̍̍͊s̶̢͎̮̝̭̫̞̏̒͛͗͜ķ̴̢̨̻̲͖͋͌̏͛̕ b̵̧̙̮̰̜̳̟͈̞̓̀͋̅̓̔ͅy̵̧̛̝͙̪̘͑͋͌͂̓͌̉ͅ Ce̵̯̞̎̈́̀͑̂̓̽̕͝m̵̖͌̈́͜͠e̵̯̞̎̈́̀͑̂̓̽̕͝t̵͎̳̠̏͐͒͆̐e̵̯̞̎̈́̀͑̂̓̽̕͝r̵̠͖̂̀̄́́̕y̵̧̛̝͙̪̘͑͋͌͂̓͌̉ͅ Dr̵̠͖̂̀̄́́̕i̴̛͕͍̤̐͆͆͂̇̈́̍̍͊v̷̛̼̣͍͈̮̉̾͗̄̋̉̄̀̄e̵̯̞̎̈́̀͑̂̓̽̕͝

@bigbonzo @boanerges20

[tranquilitybasehotelcasino]

You got me listening to so much cobra starship on repeat its frying my brain but I've yet to touch an mcr song.

re: cobra starship…..just as planned. re: mcr obviously you don’t HAVE to listen to them but if you’re into more electro/dance stuff well. i will never pass up a chance to gas up danger days

[lonesomedotmp3]

amvs that are simply never getting finished. kiara carrera drunk drivers/killer whales. morgana pendragon hermit the frog. riverdale you give death a bad name. the pendragons family jewels. lancelot and merlin enchanted. archie andrews between the bars. cobra kai the chain. samtory dancing in the dark. merlin and arthur smoke slow. merlin and arthur me and my husband. brendan fry I'm just a kid. john b and sarah cameron hollywood. morgana pendragon toxic. merlin and morgana one way or another. I know for a fact there are at least a dozen more I can't remember rn

[red-riding-wood]

Heroes - Chapter 3

Chpt. 1 , Masterlist , Chpt. 4

Pairing: Sgt. Elias Grodin x Female OC (Alexis Ryder)

Fandoms: Platoon (1986), Cherry (2021)

WARNINGS: I'm just going to put down a blanket for the entire book/all chapters: graphic depictions of violence and gore, torture, explicit sexual content, attempted sexual assault, language, marijuana use

Dawn was rolling over the horizon, filtering in through scraggly branches and needled boughs with its warm, soothing touch; and although it made my eyes dart less nervously around at the shadowy brush, it did nothing to help the sweat that funneled in rivulets down the grooves of my back.

My armour, helmet, rig, and rucksack lay in a heap beside my shovel, which I thrust into the earth with another lethargic swing.

I’d barely gotten any sleep since my turn on last night’s watch, and I was running off of adrenaline.

Wolfe and the sergeants of each squad had met early in the morning to discuss a converging mass of al-Qaeda on our position, and had been strategizing – though mostly bickering – about how we would tackle this threat.

Most of us new fry were tasked with digging foxholes, while the more experienced soldiers would flank the hostiles and flush them towards us.

O’Neill had stayed to keep an eye on us, make sure we were doing our jobs, but really, it was just so that he could kick back his boots and leave the work for someone else.

I huffed out a strained breath over the handle of my shovel, arms quivering over it. My head felt as if it were growing light, from my lack of sleep and from not allowing myself a single break over the past two hours.

“Hey, Sweet Cheeks!” O’Neill’s voice cut through the air, and with my back turned to him, he couldn’t see my wince, the curling of my gums over my teeth as I panted out each laboured breath.

“Get back to diggin’ that hole, will ya? I was enjoying my little show,” the sergeant remarked, and I clenched my jaw, but said nothing.

This was precisely why I hadn’t allowed myself any breaks.

I drove the shovel deeper into the soil, and with reluctance, bent my aching spine with it. My shirt rode up at the base of my spine, catching on the stickiness of my perspiration, and a cat-call behind me signalled that I’d appeased the NCO.

As I went to heave another load of dirt from my shovel, I caught sight of a flicker of movement across the dirt, and I heard the guy next to me – Taylor, his name was – suck in a sharp breath.

I stilled for a moment, watching as a scaled, mud-brown rope curved and slithered its way around his boots. I narrowed my eyes, studying the dull patterns on its body, and then flicked my eyes up to meet the wide, fearful ones of Taylor.

“It’s non-venomous,” I told him, under my breath. “It’s just a dice snake… I think.”

A week into basic, some of my fellow recruits had found out that Taylor had a fear of snakes, and had gathered a few cobras from the outskirts of Kandahar and stuck them under his blanket. Poor guy hadn’t seemed to shake the feeling of scales on his flesh for a good couple days after that.

That was when I’d learned that you never told people of your fears in the army.

Taylor was the transfer that had taken Cherry’s spot in Two Bravo. I hadn’t properly been introduced to him yet, but we were digging the same foxhole and had been working alongside each other all morning. He wasn’t like Bunny, or Junior, or any of the other guys that had been giving me grief all morning. He was quiet, shy, kind of like Cherry, and seemed to be just as rattled as I was by everything that was happening.

And though everyone got their fair share of teasing, Taylor was one that everyone loved to just take out their aggressive, restless energy on. He’d been some rich kid, apparently, had shown up on his first day smelling like La Chatelaine soap and sporting luxuriously-styled locks of hair that had since been mercilessly buzzed like the rest of the new men.

As rough as I had it, I didn’t have it as rough as the rich white kid amid a platoon of uneducated men who’d joined because they had no money or no place to be.

Taylor nodded at me, though the fear didn’t leave his eyes until the snake had, its lithe form disappearing beneath a few fallen branches.

I resumed my digging, though Taylor, in his gratitude, said to me, “Thanks. I still don’t know which ones are the gonna-bite-your-dick-off kind or not.”

My lip curled into the slightest of smiles, and I said, “Well, I’m not really an expert on that myself.”

“I’m Chris,” he said. “Chris Taylor.”

I looked up at him from where I laboured over my shovel, and nodded. “Ryder,” I reciprocated.

“Heard some talk ‘bout snakes over here?” Bunny cut in, sauntering over from the foxhole he dug with Junior. He flashed me a toothy grin, and added, “Taylor bein’ a pussy again? Might have to shove it down his pants, this time. Heard there’s plenty o’room.”

I eyed the man warily, and said, “Snake’s gone.”

“’Course it is,” Bunny said, wild eyes flashing and fixing me with a look. “What’re you two chummin’ ‘bout, anyway?” The wiry soldier shoved his way between us, knocking my shoulder with his.

“We’re talking about books,” Taylor said, and I caught his eye over Bunny’s shoulder. In our gaze, for a mere second or so, flickered the seed of an alliance, and I forced back a smile.

“Fuckin’ books? ‘Course fuckin’ rich boy’s yabberin’ ‘bout books. You don’t really wanna be hearin’ ‘bout that, do ya, Sugar Tits?” Bunny jostled my shoulder again, intentionally this time, and I felt his fingers graze the sweat-slicked fabric on my lower back.

I hoped he didn’t notice how I’d stiffened, and I cast a glance back at O’Neill. Was he not going to tell Bunny to get back to his foxhole?     

O’Neill simply flashed a wink at me, leaning back against a pile of rocks like they were a throne.

“No,” I told Bunny, because disagreeing with this maniac would’ve been suicide. “I don’t wanna hear about books.”

With Bunny’s attention now fixated on me, Taylor went back to digging, trying to mind his own business. I wish I could’ve. Suddenly, the physical toll of working the shovel didn’t seem so bad if only Bunny’s wandering hand and the stench of his sweat would take their leave.

Instead, I found myself fake-laughing at some fucked-up joke he made about one of the al-Qaeda he’d killed yesterday. Something about them sucking air through the hole he’d blown in their spine, how he’d thought of sticking his dick in it for a quick blowjob… I had a feeling that Bunny’s creativity would never cease to amaze me, nor would his blatant lack of regard for human life.

But I shouldn’t have been talking. I’d blown away three men yesterday out of peer pressure and hate.

“You like that one?” Bunny said, grin spreading from ear to ear. “Wait ‘til I tell ya about – “

Thwack.

My head snapped around to glimpse the remnants of a tree’s bark exploding in a puff of air, a gunshot announcing its presence along with the sound it made against the wood.

I dropped my shovel, and dove into what Taylor and I had managed to dig so far of our foxhole, fingers dragging across the earth and soil lodging itself beneath my fingernails as I grasped desperately for my M-4.

My heart thudded rapidly in my chest, but I couldn’t hear it over the ringing in my ears; more gunshots followed suit, and equipping my headset wasn’t my priority at the moment.

The gunfire was coming from the trees to the north of us, where the platoon officers had said the al-Qaeda would be headed from. But if these were the same ones, they’d arrived much earlier than their estimation.

Bunny was shouting something; I could tell that much from the way his ribcage expanded and contracted so fervently against my side, where he’d fallen into cover between Taylor and I, and I was just propping up my elbows to open fire when he stuck his head up and began reefing on his trigger, spraying the forest wildly with rounds. Casings landed beside me in the dirt, and I tried not to flinch every time the brass caught a wink of sunlight.

With him laying cover fire, I had enough time to toss my helmet and headset on and pull my plate-carrier around myself before getting myself back into position to shoot.

I was working up the nerve to poke my head out from my foxhole, but seemed to be frozen.

Just do it for a second, I told myself, but another part of me caught the splatter of blood and the violent whiplash of a skull and I also thought to myself, I don’t want to die.

So I thrust my arms up so that barely my wrist was showing, and my gun was held over my shoulders, and I fired blindly into the trees.

When I was out of bullets, I pulled my rifle back down so that I could grab another mag from my rig, little rivers of dirt cascading down around my face as I did so. My eyes and sinuses burned as I inhaled, and a cough wracked my body, but I shoved the mag into place with a relieving click.         

With my headset now protecting my ears, other sounds were starting to trickle in past the gunfire: the frenzied shouting of al-Qaeda, the hammer of sandals and boots against earth above me.    

And suddenly, my M-4 was being kicked from my hands, and I was staring up at one of the terrorists, their dark eyes wild from where they peered at me beneath their distinguishable black niqab, though the rest of their uniform was camouflaged, designed to mimic U.S. soldiers.

But darker than their wild eyes was the barrel of the AK-47 that stared down at me, maybe a foot from my face.

Though my heart had been palpitating wildly, I thought for a moment that it might have stopped.

I was being yanked upward by the collar of my uniform, and I gritted my teeth, hands lunging for their arms, their throat, but all in vain, for I was seized, not just by one soldier but by three.

But the gunshots had finally ceased, and the al-Qaeda had descended on us like an inexorable tide. Grunts and screeches of defiance mingled with their shouting as my fellow soldiers fought against their clammy, choking hands and their ruthless shoves.

One of these shoves sent my body flying to the earth, a spray of dust raining around me, coating a tongue that was exposed by my panicked breaths, and wedging itself between rheumy eyelids.

Beside me lied a bloodied and mangled Gardner, his chin quivering as he rolled his head to meet my gaze past dying eyes. I swallowed bile as the metallic stench of his blood and the sordid tang of his punctured guts filled my nostrils, and I reached for the rifle that rested beside him, his fingers attempting weakly to close around its stock.

But Gardner shook his head at me, fear laced brightly into those dying eyes, and I hesitated, pulling my hand back beneath me.

Don’t try and be a hero, some part of my mind narrated this action. Just live.

So I was yanked viciously back up, empty-handed, my unlatched helmet falling to the earth, and then my world became blackness; my breaths were coming hot and fast against burlap, and someone’s hand tightened the bag around my throat for a moment just to choke a sputtering cough from me.

But I conceded, allowed rough, calloused fingers to shove me forward over perilous terrain that I could no longer see, and allowed the compensator of an AK to rest assuredly against my spine.

---

Brilliant light blinded me as the burlap sack was torn from my head, and I cringed, wincing against the flashlight that someone was holding to my retinas. It strobed a few times, and I blinked hard against the rheum and dirt and dried mucus that rimmed my eyes. I felt my head roll like a bobble-head’s on an unsteady axis, and a knife split my skull, hot and fiery. My jaw gaped open, and I inhaled the musty stench of straw, the staleness of the air, the faint yet rotten tang of dried blood that my weary eyes now glimpsed beneath my bound legs.

The room was dim, brighter than the burlap sack only by a few shades; it took my eyes a second or two to adjust since the flashlight, and as they did, I dragged them deliriously across the fractured seams of the walls, where daylight spilled in and highlighted clouds of dust that clung thick to the stale air.

My legs burned as hot as my skull, and I was almost certain that I’d torn a ligament or two when they’d escorted me down the rocky terrain of the mountains. Though I’d no idea what direction we were facing, we’d lost plenty of elevation.

Two men stood in the room with me. One uttered unintelligibly into his partner’s ear, though I recognized a few of the syllables, the cadence of his language, to be Arabic. I was fairly certain he’d been the asshole with the flashlight.

The other simply stared at me from those dark eyes, nodding along to who was probably his superior. I couldn’t really tell apart from their body language; their uniforms mimicked ours, though they bore no badges of honour. As far as I knew, terrorists had no real honour.

Fucking pigs, I thought to myself, though I kept my lips sealed. And it was only after my mind uttered these words did I recognize them to be Barnes’.

Once the first man had spoken into the second’s ear, the latter of the two revealed himself to be a translator, for he spoke to me in accented, broken English:

“Tell us mission. How many of you? Where? Purpose here?”

I swallowed past a dry throat, and my gaze flicked to the man who now left the translator’s side to pick from an array of tools on a splintered, deteriorating bench. He was the torturer, and I was his prisoner of war. If I didn’t talk, he would make me.

I hissed in a sharp breath, and clenched my teeth, now glaring up at the torturer’s dark, emotionless eyes and bracing myself for whatever was to come. But something in those veiled, glassy eyes, something in the way he walked toward me told me that there was no way, not even from the training that I had received, that I could prepare myself for anything that was to come.

The torturer held an iron rod that glowed hot with fire; he muttered something to the translator.

“Look down,” the translator told me. “Don’t look in his eye.”

I furrowed my brow, confused, but dropped my gaze to the floor, my eyes once again tracing over the dried blood that had spattered the dirty floor beneath my chair.

They were trying to ingrain subordination into me, I realized; it was their first attempt to break my will.

Though my gaze never left the floor, I promised to myself in that moment that I wouldn’t break, that I wouldn’t compromise any of the men that I had trained and fought with. Not Barnes, not Elias, not even Bunny, who would’ve probably given my name up without a moment’s hesitation.

I felt the heat of the iron grow closer to my flesh, to the sleeve they had ripped upward on my arm.

“Start talking!” The translator screamed at me, and the torturer gripped my jaw in his firm, merciless grasp, dirtied and bloodied fingernails digging past the flesh and feeling as if they might scrape bone.

I gasped, pain searing along my jaw, but I kept my gaze on the floor, and my tongue bound.

A pair of knuckles struck my cheekbone, and my head whipped to the side, but I merely breathed, listened to the sound of my heart drumming against my ribcage, counted the beats and kept my mind off of the horrors that were only beginning to unfold.

Then, it was the iron that struck my flesh, and I convulsed in my chair as pain greeted every nerve of my body, and I wailed, screeched, lamented my pain until a filthy, sour rag that tasted of urine and grime was stuffed between my molars.

When the iron left, its searing pain did not; I glanced down at my arm, at the reddened, swollen skin that seemed to be starting to peel away like old leather. I panted short, frenzied breaths around the rag in my mouth, and I counted the beats of my heart again.

One, two, three, six, eight, eleven… I couldn’t keep track anymore.

“Talk!” the interrogator yelled at me again, but I remained still, my body a statue in every way but the fervid heaving of my chest and the shaking, quivering curling of my fingers into a loose fist.

My shirt was torn from my torso, which, for a moment, was almost a relief, for the room, in the heat of the summer and its stagnant air, was like a boiling pot. Sweat glistened across every inch of my flesh, beading and collecting to form rivulets down the grooves of my abdomen and back.

But then, next came my bra, and my trousers, and even my boots and socks. I shivered, the sweat that had beaded on my flesh beginning to chill me, the sensation so alien in contrast to the magma that boiled on the flesh of my arm.

My whimpers were made into what I was now convinced was a urine-soaked rag, and I resisted the urge to curl in on myself, to appear weaker to my torturers. They wanted to humiliate me.

And then my world tipped over, my head growing light as it fell like an iron weight to the floorboards, the backings of my chair digging harshly into my bare spine and the impact sending a jolt through my quivering body.

The rag was ripped from my mouth in time to unleash a cry, but then blackened my face, and my heart, which was already running in time to a racehorse, skipped a beat in my chest.

In survival training, every soldier had been water-boarded for a number of seconds to prepare us for times like this. Even in training, nearly every recruit had given in to this method of torture. I’d hoped and prayed that day that it would’ve been the last time I ever experienced it.

I wormed beneath my bindings in anticipation, the ropes twisting into my flesh and allowing bubbles of blood to emerge along my wrists, hot against my skin, metallic in my nose.

Someone’s fingers were laced into my hair, holding my head down, and the rag flattened against my face, curving around the orifices of my mouth and nostrils as a cold liquid poured across it.

And I began to drown.

Oxygen became nonexistent, though my lungs fought for it like a ravening wolf would its prey; they filled, tightened, and convulsed, and my mind could not even count to one with the beating of my heart, because all I knew was panic. All I knew was helplessness. All I knew was the flood, the burning of my nasal cavity and the absence of life from my lungs.

And finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, the cloth was removed, my bulging eyes darting across the cracks in the overgrown ceilings, and an elbow struck my abdomen, made me heave the watery contents of my lungs or my stomach or both onto my chest and the floor next to me.

The torturer pulled me up by the roots of my hair, contorting my face in pain, and he asked me again to talk.

When trained for becoming a POW, every officer always told you that there was a point you would reach when you needed to start talking for your survival, but to only give up information that was irrelevant, that bid you time.

With my body trembling, my flesh on fire and my muscles seizing and my lungs burning so intensely that tears poured from my eyes, I realized that now was this time.

“My name is Private Alexis Ryder,” I coughed, spurts of water flying from my lips. “I am a soldier in Two Bravo, a squad in the second platoon of Bravo Company.” I panted out a couple more frenzied, wet, gurgling breaths, and then recited my serial number.

Spittle landed across my cheekbone as the torturer communicated some words in Arabic, and his translator said,

“More, girl. More, or your punishment won’t stop.”

My trembling lip curled over my teeth, and my eyelids fluttered, delirious, but the torturer’s hold tightened on my locks.

I thought of my father. He wouldn’t have given up the details of his mission, wouldn’t have been broken.

I thought of Barnes. He would’ve spat back in their faces.

And, strangely, I thought of Elias, and his bright, blue eyes, and the stars that glittered above him in a hollow, black sky.

And I wanted to ask him what he saw in them. I wanted to ask him if he ever looked up and thought about Heaven, or a life after death. I wanted to ask him if he feared death as I did, in this moment.

The torturer released my scalp, but landed another blow to my stomach, and I keeled over, ropes tightening against the abrasions on my wrists.

And then the two left, and my tears pooled on quivering, naked kneecaps before trickling down aching calves like venomous snakes leaving a lifeless corpse.

--- 

I had blissfully nodded off, and when I peeled back crusted, tear-ridden eyes, I noticed daylight again through the seams of the walls, and the air around me felt cold, frigid against the sweat and tears and blood that had congealed on my bare form.

It must have morning again.

The first sound I noticed was the screaming.

The wails that echoed down the halls, beyond my room of isolation. The howls that were likely from the rest of my teammates, the “cherries” that had been digging the foxholes.

Taylor was probably one of them.

And then I heard the faint humming of music, so low that for a moment, all I could do was close my blurry eyes and listen, gulping against the dryness of my throat and the taste of bile and urine on my tongue.

Ever-so-softly, “Heroes”was playing, and with how heavy each limb weighed, with how much pain still coursed from the charred flesh of my arm and the chasm that split each leg, and the sting that had formed beneath each rope, I wondered if this was my passing, my ascent through the pearly gates themselves.

But when I blinked open my eyes, forcefully blinking the rheum from them, I saw one of the al-Qaeda men sitting with his back leaned against the wall, and a niqab pulled back around his ears to make room for a pair of headphones. He rocked his head gently to the beat.

“Hey,” I snapped, though my voice came out quiet, weak from my strangled lungs.

“Hey,” I spoke, louder, collecting the deepest notes of my diaphragm and thrusting them into the stale air between us.

The al-Qaeda’s head snapped up, and he set the headphones and the iPod aside next to my other belongings.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” I hissed, and swallowed again past the taste of bile as I bravely – or perhaps foolishly – met his eye.

“You belong to us now, girl,” The terrorist growled as he strode forward. His English sounded crisper than the last, though I couldn’t tell them apart. They all wore the same thing, all shrouded their faces in darkness. I’d begun to wonder if it was more than a cultural custom, or a means of obscuring one’s identity – if, perhaps, it was yet another variable to drive one mad.

“So you’d better talk,” he added, his fingers wrapping around my throat and emptying my lungs of any breath.

Past my strangulation, I mouthed a few vulgarities, and this caused his grip to loosen, his eyes to narrow from between the dark lines of his niqab.

I remembered how helpless, how useless and impotent I had been after my first firefight, and I refused to be that pathetic, scared child again. I refused to be anything less than my father, or Barnes, or the hero that I’d set out to be.

“No,” I panted.

Rage danced in those beady, dark eyes, and a clammy hand ran down my flesh, streaking blood across it. A dirtied fingernail dragged over my nipple, and I winced.

“I’m going to rape you, if you don’t talk, girl,” the al-Qaeda warned, his thumb now hooking the hem of my underwear and his filthy fingernails digging deep into my hipbone.

I swallowed. I panted. I counted my heart-beat again. And I closed my eyes.

The jingle of a metal buckle nearly made me flinch, but I steadied myself, forced a calm to wash over my trembling form that nearly rocked from each beat of my heart.

I heard the thud of a rifle being placed on the ground, felt the brush of its wooden stock against my toe.

My wrists began to fumble with my bindings, pushing the rope past the abrasions of my flesh. They were looser than they’d been before, perhaps from my struggle, and hope flared from somewhere deep inside my chest. Somewhere dark, somewhere buried, it blazed to life, a sole light in an endless expanse of black.

As the belt hit the floor alongside the AK, I jolted, not from the sound but from the freeing of my wrists; the rope had sidled down and was now cradled delicately over the hillocks of my knuckles.

And then, shouting, and the hammering of boots against the floor joined the echo of wails, and my eyes shot open, gazing past the al-Qaeda torturer and to the door that remained closed.

Gunshots rang in my ears, and his head snapped to the door, too.

This was my chance, and I took it.

I tore my bloodied wrists from my bindings and lurched forward, sending my chair tumbling over where my ankles were still bound to its legs. My finger wrapped around the trigger of the AK, and the others elevated it enough to fire a round into my captor’s leg.

His scream curdled my blood, but it also stoked something in that abyssal wasteland in my chest, a human instinct to survive, to hate, to kill.

I shot a couple more rounds somewhere into his chest, and he collapsed on the floor beside me, blood pooling at my fingertips and staining the long strands of blonde hair that clung to the floorboards.

I took the butt of the AK and began slamming it against the rope that bound my ankles, my muscles straining with each effort but adrenaline giving every cell a newfound strength.

Finally, I scrambled free, frayed ropes falling from bruised and bloodied ankles, and with one hand cradling the AK, I reached the other to pull my khakis over my legs, and hastily pulled my shirt around my shoulders, but didn’t bother with the buttons.

My head spun, and I teetered, but I steadied my shoulder against the wall. Even though every instinct told me to curl up against it in the fetal position and let the battle rage on outside the door, I forced myself back into the fray.

I shoved the iPod into the pocket of my khakis, hooking the headphones in their hem, and then thrust the barrel of my weapon towards a door that rattled and shook on its old hinges.

My finger tensed, the iron sights moving and blurring out of focus as I fought to steady my breath.

And then a cloud of dust rained down on me, and I raised the barrel of my weapon to the roof, because the uniforms that greeted me bore the stars of the American flag, and the faces that stared at me, though once intimidating, were now so wonderfully familiar.

“Clear!” Warren – the sergeant of Two Delta – shouted, before moving on through the halls with a cluster of followers.

A few others rushed in to my aid, but one gestured the others away.

“Get back in the fight,” Elias barked at them. “Go, get the other prisoners, now!”

A sigh of relief escaped my aching lungs as my gaze settled into blue eyes, and my grip loosened on my rifle as a dizzying wave struck my skull.

“Ryder,” he said, his eyes raking across my form with urgency. “Are you injured?”

“Elias,” I breathed, and as I staggered across the floor, my fingers reached for him, brushing the fabric of his shirt and grazing the hot flesh of his neck.

“Alex,” he repeated, and asked me the same question as his hands wrapped around my waist.

“I don’t know,” I breathed, my words barely a whisper as darkness teased the edges of my vision.

He smelled of sweat, but also of wildflowers, and earth; and when I inhaled, my head reeled again, the darkness threatening to consume me. But I was okay with that. I was okay with being transported from this nightmare into a place where I could embrace those beautiful scents of nature, where I could be cradled by the warmth of his touch – it soothed my aching body, like honey melting and oozing through every pore.

I wasn’t thinking anymore. My world was being fed in broken fragments to me.

The baritones of his voice murmuring above me, the brightness that streamed through the cracks in the ceiling, the weightlessness that seemed to consume me, the warmth of that honeyed-touch lulling me into sleep as the final thread of my consciousness snapped like a wire.

[grapenehifics]

Chapter 56

(Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40473339/chapters/111176644#workskin)

Disneyland opened Star Wars land like a year or two before the pandemic but I didn't get a chance to go before it closed. I dealt with this (very first world problem) by making these fictional characters go to Disneyland for me...although of course they can't actually go to Star Wars land (which didn't exist in the year this chapter is set anyway), nor acknowledge that Star Tours exists.

-I did go on a school trip to Disneyland once, for kids who had a certain GPA, so that is a thing that happens. (Or at least used to happen. I don't know about now. Disneyland keeps getting more expensive every year.)

-I just realized in editing this chapter that the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year also has Obi-Wan braiding hair.

-Grumbling about parking costs and bringing in your own sandwiches? This is basically Disneyland with my family 101.

-Obi-Wan trying to take a map and Anakin not letting him is a callback to the chapter where they went to the Getty together.

-Pre-cellphones, picking a meeting spot 'in case we get separated' in theme parks was a huge deal.

-I think Disneyland finally realized those stupid French-fry looking bronze rocks by the entrance to Tomorrowland were really ugly and are getting rid of them.

-The key to having a good time at Disneyland in general, and on the Jungle Cruise in particular, is really leaning into the corniness of it.

-First Visit buttons are real, and you can get them just for the asking! I've seen them at Universal, too.

-Of course Anakin would wonder what something is called while standing directly under the very large sign that tells you what it is called.

-One of my running jokes in this story is that Anakin has basically no pop-culture knowledge whatsoever. (We'll pretend that in this universe, like ours except Star Wars doesn't exist, Harrison Ford is just slightly less famous.)

-Yes, Obi-Wan and Anakin realizing they both find the same man attractive but Ahsoka did not is an incredibly backhanded nod to Ahsoka being a lesbian. It's not really relevant to this story because she's fourteen, but in general I will probably write her as a lesbian in everything I write ever.

-(Movie night will become important next chapter)

-Between the riverboat, the canoes, the shooting gallery, and mint juleps, this fic is getting into some deep-cut Disneyland activities, here.

-Don't even get me started on COBRA, UGH

-(Water polo will come up again next chapter, too)

-It is almost impossible for Obi-Wan to have a nice day without some sort of emotional crisis. Today's comes courtesy of Ahsoka asking him to be her backup guardian (yes there probably is a more technical term for that).

-I also got started playing Heads Up Charades because I saw other groups doing it while in line for Space Mountain. (Yes there is a Star Wars category.)

-Anakin's dialogue about Steve McQueen (and Daniel Craig, and Ewan McGregor) mirrors my own opinions. (The first time I saw Daniel Craig was in a trailer for Casino Royale and I had to forcibly remind myself that human cloning doesn't exist because he just looked so much like Steve McQueen to me.)

-Yes, Lightning McQueen the character is named after Steve McQueen the actor.

-When I picture Ahsoka saying, "He's really bad at opening jars," I'm actually picturing April Ludgate talking about her three-legged dog Champion. "Champion's great at everything! Except digging. He's really bad at digging."

-Matterhorn no longer has the cuddle seats, but they used to have cuddle seats, where you put the taller person in the back and the shorter person sat between their legs. This provided a realm of opportunities to horny high schoolers, so long as you could fit it in the three-minute or so window while the ride lasted (and was probably also why they redesigned the cuddle seats).

-I like the dynamic of Anakin, usually so competitive, simply sitting back and admiring Obi-Wan being really good at air rifles.

-Indiana Jones is, IMO, the gold standard of theme parks giving you things to do while you wait in line. Pull this! Watch this! Decipher these hieroglyphics!

-If you can time it right, my favorite place to watch fireworks is while in line for/riding the Matterhorn. (You can also *sort of* see Fantasmic while in line for Haunted Mansion, fyi).

[incorrect-skylanders-quotes]

Skylanders Characters that still haven’t been used on this blog yet (updated)

Removed the characters that’ve been used on this blog since the original post. If anyone has some quote ideas with these characters, please submit them to me.

SWAP Force:

Dune Bug

Wind-Up

Countdown

Rattle Shake

Pop Thorn

Rip Tide

Rubble Rouser

Scorp

Stink Bomb

Fryno

Trap Team:

Cobra Cadabra

Jawbreaker

Chopper

Tread Head

Krypt King

Short Cut

Gusto

Thunderbolt

Lob-Star

Flip Wreck

Wallop

Head Rush

Fist Bump

Rocky and Roll

Ka-Boom

Trail Blazer

Imaginators:

Pain-Yatta

Chain Reaction

Dr. Neo Cortex

Pit Boss

Air Strike

King Pen

Grave Clobber

Tri-Tip

Crash Bandicoot

Flare Wolf

Minis:

Barkley

Gill Runt

Terrabite

Thumpling

Pet-Vac

Small Fry

Weeruptor

Notable Villains & Enemies:

Mesmerelda

Malefor

Strykor

The Gulper

Luminous

Broccoli Guy

Chompies

NPCs:

Sharpfin

Ring of Heroes Portal Masters:

Eugenie

George

Bruno

Ryeo

Oscar

Adriana