#He has an entire elaborate trap where the whole catch is figuring out if the person inside the box is alive or dead. surprise bitch its both

[stealingyourbones]

It's been months since the Riddler has one upped the Batman. Thousands of crumpled pieces of paper overflowed his recycling bin near his desk of sub par riddles and imperfect plans. Edward snapped the pencil in his hand with an angry jerk of the hand and let out an angry yell. Nothing is good enough to be used to beat the Bat! Edward slumped in his chair, grumbling nonsensical curses and half parsed riddles when something caught his eye.

Near his desk he always had at least 4 tv's that randomly switched through local news channels from around the world. Both as something to look at to clear his mind and to help spur ideas.

His attention was caught by the bottom left screen showing a very distressed man in a wannabe Conan O'Brian haircut talking about reports of an "Invis-o-Bill" sighting near a local school.

Edward checked the location on his computer which was running the code that randomized the news channels. This one hailed from Amity Park, Illinois.

---

It was quick work figuring out Invis-o-Bill's identity, a boy named Daniel "Danny" Fenton. The boy's self titled moniker "Phantom" made Edward have a fit of crazed giggles, it was like the boy wasn't even trying to hide his identity!

Edward got to thinking... A boy who's both dead and alive at the same time. The plan of a Schrodinger's boy in a Schrödinger's box was slowly being molded in his mind. It's perfect.

Edward grabs a new piece of paper and starts writing frantically. He needs to set everything up but in the meantime, he needs to call up some of his goons to capture Daniel Fenton.

[7-wonders]

Hardships Unnumbered

Summary: The quest to save Julia begins, but not everything is as it seems in this mystical land.

Word Count: 1969

A/N: Hi friends! This is the second chapter of my Labyrinth King!Michael AU fic, "It's Only Forever." I'll link the first chapter down below. I hope that you enjoy and, as always, likes, comments, and reblogs make my world go round.

(also there's a couple of little easter eggs/one big one and I'm really excited to see who figures them out)

Chapter One

Though you put your hands out in front of you to brace yourself, it doesn’t help you to discern which way is up and which way is down until you finally stop rolling. With a groan, you shove yourself up to your feet. Your palms are scraped and slightly bleeding, your jeans are torn at the knees, and leaves and twigs now adorn your hair. All in all, this is not the way you had hoped to start this mission to get Julia back.

Now that you’re already at the bottom of the hill, it’s easier to decide how to start this jaunt through the Labyrinth. After all, you certainly can’t go back up, and the solid ground beneath your feet only leads one way. The shining spires of Michael's castle at the center of the maze, closer than you had thought, rise high above you and act as a compass. All factors considered, you can definitely run this in a couple of hours. Then, once you’re both safely out of here, your first order of business is to call the cops.

Your confidence begins to fade the longer that you walk along with the wall separating you from the inside of the maze. There’s no door, or arch, or opening anywhere to be seen. Turning around, you look back to see if you’ve missed the entrance. Instead of finding one, movement catches your eye. A man, tall and willowy, cries out victoriously at something trapped under his foot. He seems to be your best bet, and you decide to approach him.

“Excuse me?” you say.

The man startles, obviously not expecting to see anybody here. “Oh!” he cries in surprise, looking at you as if you’re the first person to ever cross his path. His hair is bleached to look almost white, and he has a pair of oddly-shaped sunglasses with purple lenses covering his eyes. The checkered jumpsuit, complete with ruffles on the shoulders, both does and doesn’t go with the sunglasses. You’re not quite sure why the people that live here dress so funny, but it’s making you feel underdressed.

“Which way do I go to get into the Labyrinth?”

“Now, why would I tell you that?”

“Because you must have come from there,” you pause, looking down at the man’s foot when you hear a squeaking, “oh! Is that a fairy?”

“Mhm.” Your childlike wonder is abruptly swept out from under you when he kicks the small, blue creature into the forest.

“Why did you do that? That wasn’t very nice!”

“Go ahead and pick one up,” the man says, “you’ll see how nice they are when you’re missing a finger.” As if to prove his point, a fairy flies up to you and hisses in your face, showing off two rows of razor sharp teeth. “What is it that you wanted, again?”

You huff. “To know which way to go to get into the Labyrinth.”

“Did you try asking it?”

“I’m sorry, what?” You roll your eyes in disbelief before mocking him. “‘Labyrinth, please let me in!’ Is that what I should say?”

He doesn’t have to respond, for a sudden rumbling has you turning around. To your shock, there’s suddenly an open space in the wall that hadn’t been there just a second ago.

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m Gallant.” You want to tell him that you weren’t guessing his name, you don’t even want to know his name, but he continues. “Who are you?”

“(Y/N).”

“Ah, that’s right.” So this is one of Michael’s ‘subjects?’ After all, if your dreams have been right (and you’re still half-convinced this is just the elaborate scheme of some unhinged weirdo and not magic, despite what you just saw), then that means that Michael is also the ruler of the Underworld. With that logic, Gallant must be some sort of a demon. If that’s the case, you certainly don’t want anything to do with him.

“Well,” you say awkwardly, “I’m going to go now. Running on limited time, and all that.”

“You’re just going to go in there? Alone?”

“Yep.”

“But--but the Labyrinth leads to the Labyrinth King!”

“That’s kind of the whole reason why I’m here.”

“You’re going to get hurt in there.” Gallant gasps. “You could even die in there!”

You set your shoulders, walking to the hole in the wall and glancing back. “I won’t, but thanks for the concern.”

“Wait!” Even if you did want to listen to what he had to say, you couldn’t, for the wall closes back up on itself the moment you step through it. Mildly jarred though you may be, there’s not much you can do to change this, so you turn around and try to figure out whether to go right or left. Both directions look exactly the same, so with the flip of a mental coin, you go right.

After both walking and jogging for what must have been over a mile, you’re no closer to any sort of landmark that would tell you where you are or how close you are to the castle. There haven’t even been any corners to turn past, just one long, unending aisle. You’re starting to feel a little claustrophobic as you finally come to a stop, needing to take a break for a minute. Sinking down against the wall into a sitting position, you find yourself looking back and forth down the path. Both directions look exactly the same, for as far as you can see. You groan dejectedly and put your head in your hands, allowing yourself a moment of pity before getting up and trying again.

“Hey there!”

You jump at the sudden Southern-sounding voice. “Who’s there?”

“Me, of course!”

Looking around, you see a small door just to your left, and a small woman, probably less than a foot tall, standing next to you. Her curly blonde hair is pulled up into a ponytail, showing off her pointy ears. “And you’re...talking to me?”

“There’s nobody else around, is there?” The woman glances inside the open door. “‘Cept the missus, of course.”

Another woman, also blonde, pokes her head outside and smiles up at you. “Hello!”

“Why don’t ya come inside for a while? ‘Delia makes a killer gumbo.”

“Uh...no thanks. I’m just taking a break for a moment before I find a way to the castle.”

The woman’s face turns severe, and she holds her shawl tighter around herself. “You must be awfully brave if you’re so determined to go up there.”

Brave? You wouldn’t call yourself brave. Stupid, maybe, for bowing to the whims of the guy who’s kidnapped your charge, but not brave.

“But anyways, just go through the wall across from us and you’ll be on your way.”

You look in front of you to see the solid wall. “Through there?”

She nods.

Logic is telling you that this is obviously false, but, considering the same thing happened with Gallant, it can’t hurt to try. Standing up, you cautiously put your hand up to the wall, expecting to meet, well, a wall. Instead, you almost fall through a doorway that leads to another passage in the Labyrinth. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You will be if you keep going.”

You choose to ignore this, at this point knowing that everybody who lives here is terrified of their ruler. “Thanks for the help.”

The elf stares at your back as you walk through the new corridor, figure becoming smaller and smaller. “If she would have stuck around, I would have been able to get her on the right track back home, not towards that horrible man.”

From inside the house, a timer beeps. “Misty, supper’s ready!”

///

In the stone chamber of the King of the Underworld’s throne room, a three year old girl is currently winning a staring contest against a demon. Michael watches as the demon’s eyes begin to water (with blood, of course), before he eventually gives in and blinks. The little girl cheers before looking at Michael.

“My daddy’s gonna kick your butt, you know. He saved mama from aliens once.”

“Silence, child,” Michael commands, but he can’t help the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. It’s difficult to hide his amusement when this child is the most lively thing to grace his castle since...well, he can’t quite remember since when.

Being surrounded by demons of all shapes and sizes, with a variety of horns or extra eyes or tails, gets old after a while. Demons, quite frankly, are a bore. All they want to do is scare people and cause mayhem, yet continue to use the same methods that have been in place for thousands of years. If Michael’s being honest with himself, everything’s a bore to him here. In the early years, this job had been quite fun. Lots of naive humans to terrify and endless souls to torture.

Michael himself had been prone to naivety, then. It was easy to deal with the buffoons that called themselves demons when it seemed that, soon enough, he would find somebody to share this burden with him. After all, it was the guy upstairs who believed that emotions were for the humans. Michael, however, found it to be one of the most carnal pleasures. To love, and to be loved, seemed like the greatest sin. As the years passed, and the whole routine of ruling the Underworld became stale, Michael began to embrace the feelings of dejection, while simultaneously dreading the thought of an eternity alone.

That’s why, no matter the outcome of tonight, Michael would at least have something to add a little color to his black-and-white world. At the very least, the child would provide much-needed entertainment in the Underworld. She seems quite creative, which could potentially lend itself to some new and innovative torture methods. But, that would almost be a non-starter, considering the whole reason that she’s here, the whole reason Michael implemented this plan in the first place, is to get to you.

You, who managed to somehow win over demons disguised as beggars that loitered outside of the bookstore you worked for. You, who was constantly coming up with your own ideas for stories, creating and erasing entire worlds within your mind (a power far more powerful than any regular magic, Michael believes). You, who had somehow managed to vex and enchant him, without ever having spoken a word to him. He had seen you on one of his visits up Above, talking to a beggar demon as if they were your equal, offering food and shelter to their grotesque form. From then on, he knew that he had to have you, and from that, a plan was born. The Labyrinth, which he had subtly placed in every single one of your dreams for months now, was impossible to run through. You would inevitably lose. And when that happens, he’s prepared to accept your frantic offer where you exchange yourself for the child. He is, after all, a benevolent ruler.

“Mr. Michael?” Julia questions, breaking Michael out of his pondering.

Michael hums, deciding that he won’t lecture her on the importance of referring to rulers by their titles. “Yes, little one?”

“Do you have juice here? ‘M thirsty.”

“Abaddon!” Michael calls, the demon appearing in a puff of smoke. “Get our guest some refreshments.”

The demon turns to do Michael’s bidding, shocked when Julia grabs their clawed hand and skips along with them. “I really like your spiky horns,” she says.

Michael looks up at the clock on the wall, noting that only nine hours remain for you to reach the center of the Labyrinth and rescue the child. Perfect. He’s not one to get too cocky (yes he is), but these are odds he’s willing to take.

//

Tag List (send me a message if you want to be on this!): @sojournmichael @dark-mei-rose @blakescoven @xavierplympton @michaellangdon @trelaney @ajokeformur-ray @babyloutattoo89 @bloodcoatedeclipse @threeminutesoflife @annikathebananana @wth-trippy @thatonehumanbeing05 @dumybitch

[set-phasers-to-whump]

feel the heat

prompt: overheating

whumpee: nick burkhardt

fandom: grimm

hi! welcome to my first fic for @summer-of-whump! i’m super excited to be doing this event and finally getting back into writing lmao. shit has been crazy but now i get to relax and beat up my faves :) hope you enjoy this one!

“It’s gonna be a hot one out there today, Portland,” announces the DJ on the car radio. “Temperatures are expected to rise into the high nineties and possibly even break 100, so stay cool if you can.”

Hank casts a glance at Nick, who even today is wearing his usual long-shirt-long-pants outfit. “You’re gonna melt, man,” he warns, making the turn that’ll lead them to their latest crime scene - a body at the top of Mt. Tabor Park, stabbed to death and discovered by a jogger early that morning. 

Nick shrugs. “I’ll roll up my sleeves if it’s really that hot.” Privately, though, he has no intention of exposing his arms today. They’re covered in some fairly scary-looking and difficult-to-explain marks, courtesy of a run-in with, of all things, an unusually angry and confrontational Eisbiber. He’ll sacrifice a little discomfort in exchange for no one wondering what the hell kind of animal he’d gotten into a confrontation with.

They arrive at the park, climbing out of the car and into the sweltering midday heat. It’s a bit of a walk up the hill to their murder scene, and by the time they arrive Nick is already feeling the effects of his ill-chosen clothes. But there’s nothing that can be done about it now, so he pushes the discomfort aside and approaches the body. 

‘Stabbed to death’ seems somehow like an understatement in this particular case. The body is absolutely covered in stab wounds, each one at least two inches long and the majority of them fairly deep. Someone had certainly been angry, or had wanted to be really sure that this person was dead. 

“Damn,” Hank says, which sums up Nick’s feelings on the matter quite well. He takes a step closer to the body, then looks up suddenly as something catches his attention. It’s a person, he realizes, trying very hard to sneak away from the area unnoticed. But they must sense his attention, because all of a sudden they start running. Naturally, so does Nick.

Hank’s eye catches the movement at the same instant that Nick takes off running down the other side of the hill. Someone is racing off through the trees, dressed all in black and obviously fleeing something, presumably the police presence at the scene of the murder they committed. He starts running as well, and although Nick has a couple seconds and his Grimm-ness to his advantage, Hank catches up to him after no more than a minute, panting, with his hands braced on his knees. He’s definitely regretting his choice of clothes right now, Hank thinks, scanning the scenery around them for any signs of their possible killer. 

“Lost them,” Nick voices Hank’s thoughts as he straightens up. He gives Hank a rueful sort of half-smile and then takes a look at the hill they’ve just run down. He really wishes that they didn’t have to climb back up it. He feels sort of...odd. Weirdly dizzy, and way too tired for the fairly small amount of running he’s just done. That’s probably not good, he thinks, and then starts the unavoidable walk back up. 

Hank walks beside Nick, who is walking at a slower pace than normal. He wonders why in the hell Nick doesn’t roll up his sleeves, or at the very least undo the top button of his Henley. Hank himself is hot and more than a little uncomfortable in his t-shirt and lightweight pants, and he can only imagine how much more uncomfortable Nick must be. Maybe it’s a Grimm thing, he figures. Maybe Nick is less sensitive to extreme temperatures, or something.

Nick so desperately wishes that Grimms were resistant to the heat. But if anything, it feels like he’s more susceptible to it. The air is like a thick blanket wrapped way too tightly around his body, slowly suffocating him, cutting off the air to his lungs and making him feel like he might just collapse at any second. He imagines his choice of clothes today is also not helping, but his arms feel too weak to reach up and undo a button, and the sleeves are a non-starter regardless. At least they’re almost to the top of the hill…

Nick and Hank step back into the main part of their crime scene just as the techs are packing up. Wu waves them over from where he’s standing next to a bench, looking at something in his notebook. “We’re just about done here, unless you guys noticed anything else while you were running away?”

Hank waits for Nick to tell Wu about the person they’d seen fleeing, but after a second it becomes clear that Nick must be expecting Hank to speak, so he says, “we saw someone running off down the hill. We followed them, but they got away. I didn’t get a good look - just that they were dressed all in black. Did you get a better look?” He turns to Nick with the question. 

Nick shakes his head once, then immediately stops when the world starts spinning. He closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths, pushing down a sudden, intense wave of dizziness and nausea. Something is wrong, he thinks, but he has no idea what it is. 

“Nick? You good?”

Nick opens his eyes at Wu’s question. “Yeah,” he manages to say. He thinks he should probably elaborate a little, but he really doesn’t have the energy. 

“O...kay,” Wu says, glancing between Nick and Hank like he’s maybe missed something. Hank, for his part, is looking at Nick, who is looking a little bit off. His face is pale, his eyes are unfocused, and he generally looks kind of miserable. But before he can ask Nick whether he’s really okay, Wu is continuing. 

“If that’s all you guys saw, I’ll let the Captain know. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to do with ‘running figure, dressed all in black,’ but it’s something.” He pauses for a second, wipes a hand across his forehead. “They must be crazy, wearing head-to-toe black in this heat. Now, I think I’m gonna retreat to the air conditioning in my patrol car, if you don’t mind.”

With that, Wu heads off, meandering down the path to where his car is parked. 

“Let’s follow him,” Hank says, starting off after Wu. “Some air conditioning sounds pretty damn good to me right now.”

Nick tries to follow him, but his legs feel like they’ve suddenly turned into lead. “Hank,” he says, reaching out a hand to try and tap Hank’s retreating shoulder. 

He misses wildly, obviously, but Hank turns around anyway. “You okay?”

Talking feels like the most difficult task in the world, but after a moment of intense concentration, Nick is able to string a few words together. “I feel…” 

How does he feel again? Oh. Right.

“Really bad.”

His knees choose that exact moment to buckle, and fortunately Hank has also chosen that moment to hurry back over to Nick. He catches him before he hits the ground, then wraps an arm around Nick to keep him standing. 

This close, he knows something isn’t right. Nick is shaking, and far sweatier than he should be, even considering his warm clothes and recent physical activity. Hank puts a hand to the side of his neck and feels Nick’s pulse, which is absolutely racing beneath his fingers. His skin is strangely cold to the touch. Heat exhaustion.

“We need to cool you down,” Hank says firmly, moving his arm to wrap around Nick’s waist as he begins walking towards the car. 

“Wha’s happening?” Nick mumbles, his feet dragging along the ground. He tries to make them move, but they refuse. He feels so bad. 

“You have heat exhaustion, and if we don’t cool you down, you’re going to have to go to the hospital. This turns into heatstroke and it can kill you,” Hank says, reaching into his pocket with the hand that’s not currently preventing Nick from faceplanting into the ground and grabbing his keys. 

Nick catches the words “exhaustion,” “cool,” and “hospital,” and immediately uses what little strength he currently possesses to try and pull away from Hank. “No hospital,” he says pleadingly. He hates the hospital.

“You won’t have to go to the hospital as long as you cool off,” Hank repeats. He pushes the unlock button on the keys. “We’re almost to the car, and then you can sit down and we’ll turn on the air conditioning and get you some water.”

“‘Kay,” Nick agrees, again having heard approximately half of Hank’s words but getting the general sense of what they mean, which essentially boils down to no hospital, which is more than good enough for him. 

They reach the car at long last, and Hank carefully leans Nick against the side of it as he opens the passenger door. He guides Nick inside and closes him in, then circles around the front of the car and gets into the driver’s seat, wincing at the stagnant heat trapped in the car. He quickly turns on the engine and cranks the air conditioning on full blast, slamming his door. That done, he leans into the backseat, searching for the water bottle that he knows he’d left in there the other day. He finds it underneath the seats and pulls it free triumphantly, then hands it to Nick. 

“It’s gonna be warm, but it’s better than nothing. Drink it all,” he instructs. 

Nick doesn’t say anything, but his shaking hands twist off the cap, and he drinks the whole bottle. It is unpleasantly warm, as Hank had warned, but it feels like the best thing in the entire world anyway. He actually starts to feel a little bit better, and cautiously opens his eyes. 

And promptly shuts them when the world starts spinning again. ‘A little bit better’ from ‘really bad’ is still pretty bad, evidently. 

“Try putting your head down,” Hank says, gently prying the empty bottle from Nick’s hands. “It might help with the dizziness.”

Nick complies, resting his head between his knees and trying to take a few deep breaths. He feels Hank reach across him and buckle his seatbelt, and then they’re moving, and he’s suddenly very glad that he’s already in the anti-dizziness position. 

“Where we going?” he asks quietly, when he feels somewhat like he can speak.

“My place,” Hank says. It had seemed like the easiest option. It’s closer to the park than Nick and Juliette’s, and certainly closer than the precinct or Monroe and Rosalee’s. He answers the question he’s sure Nick would be asking if he felt up to it. “I texted Wu and told him. He said he’d let Renard know that we’d both be taking off early today.”

Ordinarily, Nick would argue against this decision, try to insist that he is fine and fully capable of going back to work. But honestly, he feels so far from fine right now, and the thought of lying down on Hank’s couch with the fan going and a nice cold glass of water sounds like heaven. So just this once, he doesn’t fight it. He lets Hank take care of him.

thanks for reading this! i hope you enjoyed :) i did a lot of research on temperatures and heat exhaustion and whatnot for this and had a good time lol. also i feel the need to say idk if we ever know where hank lives so the part ab him living closer to the park is just made up on my part. 

[xxxrubytuesdayxxx]

If you wait to talk to Jeongguk about it instead...

Word Count: 3,181

Disclaimers: This is part (48) of a Choose Your Own Ending!

Check at the end for glossary of Korean terms*

Start here:

“Mwoh?” he asks, wide-eyed.

“Never mind,” you mutter, unsure what to say. Jimin continues to stare at you, then understanding slowly dawns in his eyes and his mouth twists as he tries not to smile.

“Wait a minute...You and JK are banging each other aren’t you?” he realises. You avoid his eyes and his question, which confirms the answer for him. He hits the table with his open palm and giggles. “Oh my God - you totally are!”

“Okay, okay! Keep it down or Namjoon will have my head,” you hiss.

“But...I mean he already knows, right? Isn’t that why he’s mad?” Jimin asks, obviously confused. You grimace in acknowledgement of what he’s saying.

“Ne, but he probably doesn’t want the whole thing to escalate. Especially as they’re asking Kookie to do one of those stupid fake couple game shows right now,” you elaborate, unable to keep the venom out of your tone. Jimin’s eyes widen.

“He wouldn’t,” he negates you immediately. “He’s...well...no, never mind,” he imitates your reticence and looks down at his hands.

“Come on Jimin-ssi. You can’t possibly expect me not to insist you finish that sentence,” you worry, biting your lip. “Why wouldn’t he? He’s what? My God, is he okay?!” You jump to the worst possible conclusions straight away.

“No, he’s fine!” Jimin assures you, hurriedly. “I just can’t say anything else though,” he persists. “It wouldn’t be fair on him.”

“Ugh! Jimin!” you growl, but you let it go, aware he’s trying to do the right thing. You’re both attempting to return the conversation to less fraught territory when the door to the little room that serves as an office bangs open. Jeongguk exits and stamps across to his bedroom, looking mutinous, whereupon he messes around with the door rather fretfully before disappearing from view. He looks suspiciously like he’s been crying but, even if he has, they’re probably just tears of frustration you reason. Still, Jimin’s words play over in your head as you ponder. A few moments later, Bang PD Nim and Namjoon emerge, both looking tired.

“I thought you had told him,” the older man queries, looking puzzled. Namjoon sighs deeply, and raises his palms in a gesture that indicates his own bemusement.

“I did tell him. Late last night, I admit but he seemed fine with it. Or at least he didn’t raise any concerns or objections in my presence,” Bangtan’s leader responds.

“Something I should know then?” You address your question to them both, struggling to keep your expression neutral as you’re trying to look professional but also desperate to go see if your baby is okay without making it obvious to Hitman Bang. Namjoon’s jaw sets but he manages to speak calmly:

“Maybe go check on him,” he suggests, giving you the excuse you need. You nod, bow your head to wait for Bang PD Nim’s permission, and then make your escape. You tap timidly on Jeongguk’s door, with them all watching you, but there’s no reply.

“Kookie?” you try. “It’s your noona. Can I come in?” There is a pause, then the door slides open a crack and you slip inside. You catch a glimpse of Namjoon’s warning look before Jeongguk slides the door across, trapping you both in his room.

He looks miserable, but at least he seems to have composed himself, though you can see his eyes are still a little red.

“What happened in there?” you ask him softly. He doesn’t answer, but grabs your face in his hands, and kisses you insistently, transferring his attention to your jawline and neck when you’re too taken aback to respond.

“Kiss me, please,” he begs. “You’re not mad, are you? Kiss me!”

“Jeongguk, stop,” you whisper, urgently. “I’m not mad: why would I be mad? But they’re practically listening at the door - they’ll figure it out and then we’re both screwed! Jebal…hajima!” You push him, very gently, away from you. He does, but he looks a bit cut. You stroke his cheek with the back of your fingers. “I’m sorry, cheonsa,” you tell him. “But I’ll come see you later, when it’s not so dangerous. Now - are you going to tell me what happened in there to make you so frustrated?” you persist. He shrugs, pouting.

“I just don’t want to do it. It’s so…[he struggles for the English word, trying to help you understand] contrived?” he tries. You nod, smiling despite yourself.

“Yeah. Contrived,” you reassure him on his word choice. “But why would that upset you?” you press. He shrugs.

“Who says I’m upset?” he asks.

“Well I mean. You look like you’ve been…you look upset,” you prompt him gently. He looks shy, like he knows what you’re implying but doesn’t want to own it. He takes your hand from where it’s fallen to rest against his neck, and kisses your fingertips before placing it back on his cheek. You melt at his sweetness, but you’re still hesitant to tell him you’ve fallen for him hook, line and sinker, especially if it’s really just the contrivance that’s bothering him when it’s the whole set-up that’s bothering you.

“I thought. I mean I was worried they’d kind of – you know – that they’d be making a joke of me and hoping I’d do something dumb on the show cos I’m young and not…you know…super-smart like Namjoon-hyung and Yoongi-hyung,” he murmurs, self-conscious.

“I really don’t think they would,” you console him, but you feel terrible, as you’d never realised he was still so self-conscious, considering he plays up for the cameras so much and, as Hobi puts it, is “shameless” with his bids for attention these days.

“I’m okay now though,” he reassures you, seemingly reading your mind.

“Well then I’d better go tell them you’re okay,” you apologise. “Unless you want to come out and tell them yourself?” He shakes his head.

“Come back after, okay?” he requests, uncharacteristically meek.

“Okay,” you agree. He smiles and lies back on his bed, with his eyes shut.

“Well?” Hitman Bang prompts you, when you return.

“He’s upset because he thinks it’s contrived,” you explain, leaving aside his other concerns to explain to Namjoon later, if appropriate. Bang PD Nim looks bemused, while Namjoon remains justifiably skeptical.

“What fanservice isn’t contrived? he interjects.

“Something’s obviously bothering him,” the BigHit CEO muses, looking to you and Namjoon for confirmation. Namjoon looks uneasy. You look at the floor. “RM - What do you know that we don’t?” Bang PD Nim catches on to the exchange, but misses the implications.

“Nothing. I mean - he can be pretty temperamental sometimes. And he - out of all of us - is infuriatingly hot-blooded. Even Hoseok wants to strangle him some days, and he’s an angel when it comes to patience. Maybe we just timed it badly,” Namjoon, replies, choosing, for some reason, to save you and Jeongguk’s asses with his convincing rhetoric. He shoots you a look, letting you know that you owe him big time.

“What did he really say?” Namjoon asks you, much more gently, once you’ve all said your goodbyes and you and he are left alone in the main room.

“That’s exactly what he said,” you confirm, looking Namjoon straight in the eyes.

“He said ‘contrived’?” he asks, disbelievingly.

“Yes. He said ‘contrived’ and that’s precisely what he meant. His English is getting much better,” you point out. Namjoon raises his eyebrows, impressed despite the circumstances.

“Is that all he said?” he presses. You purse your lips, trying not to laugh.

“No,” you confess. Namjoon snorts and shakes his head, exasperated.

“And I suppose he wants you to go back in there?” he guesses correctly. You bite your tongue and sigh. “Well I don’t think I should make it too easy after what you two have put me through last night and this morning,” he teases, pulling out his phone.

“What are you…” you start. He just grins, waves your hand away and texts something, shoving his phone back in his pocket once he’s done. He crosses his arms and waits, darting glances across at Jeongguk’s door. “He might have gone back to sleep,” you try.

“Doubt it. Not if he thought he was about to get some,” Namjoon counters you. Sure enough, Jeongguk’s door slides across and he stalks out, looking surly. “How are you feeling Jeongguk?” Namjoon asks.

“Frustrated,” Jeongguk announces in convincingly American-accented English. Namjoon laughs briefly.

“You’re frustrated?” he replies. “How do you think I feel then? Do you have any idea how much your little tantrum potentially cost us?”

“Mianhamnida, hyung,” he apologises formally, bowing his head. Namjoon sighs, but acknowledges the apology with a tilt of his head.

“I just don’t understand why, Jeongguk. Is there something else going on that I don’t know about? Do you want to think about it, then come back and tell me when you’ve got your head sorted?” he suggests. Jeongguk nods, head still bowed. “Off you go then,” Namjoon dismisses him, then steps back into the kitchen.

Jeongguk tangles his fingers with yours and swings both of your hands back and forth, looking mischievous and totally unrepentant now that Namjoon has left the room.

“Come to our old park with me, noona?” he asks.

“Mwoh? Hakdong Gongwon?” you clarify. He nods, pulling you over to cuddle you from behind. He buries his face in your neck and purrs like a satisfied kitten.

“Okay, you are really pushing it with Joonie, you warn him, elbowing him gently, but unconvincingly, to try and make him stop tormenting you with his lips. “He just saved our asses with Hitman Bang and you’re gonna push his buttons again?” He ignores you, lifting your hair off your neck to continue his sweet misbehaviour. Anyway, what’s...ahh hajima Kookie, you tease...what’s wrong with Seoul-sup or Ttuk-seom all of a sudden?” you press him, trying to ignore the fact that your entire body is vibrating under his touch.

“Amu geotdo,” he answers your question belatedly. “I just want to go to Hakdong Gongwon with you. For a little adventure.” He makes the word ‘adventure’ sound like innuendo, which gives you pause for thought. You want to tell him you have feelings for him that go beyond the rush of illicit hook-ups, but you’re not so sure he’s in it for anything more than that and you don’t want to scare him off. You’re so busy mulling it over that you thoughtlessly allow him to turn you around, pull your top askew and start teasing a new love-bite at the base of your throat, dangerously close to your chest. Consequently, instead of stopping him like you know you should, you cradle his head with your hand, absent-mindedly, and let him go wild while your mind wanders over the possible outcomes of your two options.

Which may be why Taehyung voices his objection when he happens to wander past on his way to the living room, game controller at the ready.

“Mwoh?! Why are Jeongguk and Noona straight-up necking in the middle of the hallway?” I thought that wasn’t allowed,” he protests.

“It’s definitely not,” comes Namjoon’s voice from the kitchen. “In fact if I see anything I object to when I come out there in a minute, I may be forced to retract my earlier statement to Hitman Bang.” Tae glares at Jeongguk, who, after looking up from your cleavage somewhat guiltily, is admittedly now being a bit smirky. Tae continues to look totally unimpressed until Jeongguk tugs on your hand to get you to follow him over to the door out of the apartment, which you willingly do. Anything to avoid World War III. Besides it’ll give you time to make your mind up.

You and Jeongguk make it down to the underground garage quickly enough, where he guides you over to the sleek new car he splashed out on a week or so ago, and gestures for you to climb in the passenger side. Mistakenly assuming his desire to drive you himself, rather than call the car around, means he might actually behave with the requisite dignity and maturity, you acquiesce. The drive begins innocently enough, even though you swiftly come to the realisation that it’s the lack of a chaperone or any uncomfortable questions from staff or neighbours that has put this entire idea into Kookie’s head.

That is until you’re tearing over Seongsu bridge, at the pace only a boy Jeongguk’s age and temperament would drive at, and he turns to give you a wicked little smile and glances pointedly down at his lap. You feel your cheeks flush bright red.

“Aniyo, Jeongguk-ah!” you exclaim, feeling the warmth of your blush travel down between your legs. “You’ll crash the car,” you try, feebly. Ignoring your protests, he lifts his free hand to play with your hair, then, when he has your attention, he turns on the pouting. You sigh deeply and bite your lip, trying not to smile. He turns his attention back to the road to guide the car onto the off-ramp but still manages to get his jeans unbuttoned and his flies unzipped, releasing his erection from his knickers without breaking his concentration. His slender fingers toy with his dick, adjusting it so you’ll be able to reach it if you just lean across and lower your head.

“Such a pro,” you tease him. “Have you done this before?” It’s his turn to blush, as he turns those Bambi eyes on you again and shakes his head, innocent.

“I just always wanted to try it,” he confesses. “But I never had the opportunity. Too many people watching me. But yeah, I mean I practised that bit,” he admits. You lean across and lick him once, like an ice-cream, failing to notice that your top has fallen open so that he can see your black lace bra. “Unf…shibal...” he mutters, as a dribble of pre-cum leaks from his tip and the car swerves along with his hormones.

“Jeongguk!” you squeal, panicked. “Keep your eyes on the road, jebal!” He smirks and twists the wheel to adjust the car back into the dead centre of the lane as you struggle to readjust your top.

“Go on then...suck it babyyyy,” he demands, dragging the English word out deliberately. “You know you want to.” You roll your eyes, trying to hold back a snort of laughter.

“Tacky babe. Very tacky,” you tease him.

“Tacky?” he checks, his lips pursing and his brow furrowing as they always do when he’s concentrating. You feel bad. You’re always forgetting not to overuse slang when he’s studying his English so diligently.

“Um...like trashy? You know? Cheap? Cliche? Too obvious or predictable?” you fumble for explanations.

“Ahhh!” he gives you one of his cute bunny smiles; an indication that he understands and has now added ‘tacky’ and possibly ‘trashy’ as well to his ever-expanding English slang vocabulary.

“Gwaenchanhaeyo, though? I mean...it’s okay for...blowjob experiment?” he persists. The innocence sparkling in his huge eyes completely belies the words coming out of his pretty mouth. Somehow you imagine it would be much less unnerving if he asked you things like this in his native tongue, but you realise he’s trying very hard to learn ‘conversational’ English and relies mostly on you and Namjoon. Though this latest experiment is stretching the definition of ‘conversational’ to its extreme limit.

Pushing all of your reservations aside, you smile indulgently at him, tell him it’s fine and begin to gently stroke his erection, while keeping your own eyes on his face to make sure he’s watching what he’s doing, not what you’re doing. He does okay, though his steering is a little erratic at some points. Meanwhile his cock stiffens until he’s rock hard and quivering against your palm and his breathing is becoming laboured and shallow, punctuated by the occasional whimper or moan.

“Uh...ne! Yes...Oh God…” he gasps, as he twists the car through Gangnam’s streets. “Jebal...noona…” he begs you, his voice dripping with desire, as the fingers of his free hand thread themselves into the back of your hair, first inviting, then gently insisting that you lower your head. You smile, unable to resist this feeling that he wants you so badly. You give in to the insistent pressure of his lovely fingers and take him in your mouth, relishing the taste of him on your tongue and the illicit thrill of doing this in public. After a moment, you feel the autumn breeze lift your hair and tickle the back of your neck. That’s when you realise that the little exhibitionist has lowered the roof of his car as you rocket ever nearer to your destination.

You speed up your licks and your strokes, coaxing him towards his peak. The taste of his precum titillates you: the prospect of you both christening his fancy leather seats with the pearly results of his first road head causing the heat to rise between your legs again. You recognise the feel of the roads as he turns to crawl up the narrow hills approaching Hakdong so you deliberately give him all you’ve got, caressing the silky head of his dick with quick licks, hollowing out your cheeks and then wrapping his shaft in languorous tongue strokes. And he doesn’t disappoint. You’re just on the final block when he lets out an obscenely loud moan and your mouth is filled with his warm, sticky semen.

“Oh holy shit!” he gasps, his chest heaving as he finally stops the car, throwing his head back against the seat and closing his eyes with a tiny but wicked smile playing on his lips. You wipe your mouth and sit back up, carefully arranging your jacket over his lap to hide his depleted erection.

“Fuck,” he swears softly, his beautiful accent making even the muttered cuss word sound sexy. “We made such a mess…” he comments, awestruck at the leftovers of your feast festooning his leather seat and your velvet jacket. “Aish...your jacket…sorry...” he grimaces apologetically.

“Ah it’ll wash up fine. Just as well the weather isn’t too bad,” you tease him, sticking out your tongue. “C’mon then. Fix yourself and the seats up and let’s go play in the park.” He scrunches up his mouth, trying to figure out the best way to tackle the seats, while you scrounge in his boot for suitable rags. The best you can come up with is a lovely dark blue picnic rug in a red tartan pattern, which you hold up for his appraisal. He scrunches his lips even further and wrinkles his nose.

“Temporary solution?” you suggest.

“But I was going to use it so we could have a picnic in the park before we explore,” he admits, his voice anxious. “I got it the other day and I was keeping it in the car - just in case I could convince you to come here with me one day...” Your heart stops at the look in his eyes. Maybe you should tell him. Maybe you and he are on the same page. Or maybe you’re just reading too much into his tendency to carefully plan things.

If you tell him you’ve fallen for him If you’re too insecure to tell him

Glossary: (feel free to submit corrections for these ^.^)

Amu geotdo (아무 것도) Nothing at all

[incorrectly-quoted-queers]

DS9 Murder Mystery Party

So picture this:

A season 5 DS9 episode. Julian and Miles organize a murder mystery party for senior staff because they thought it would be fun. It’s to be held in Quark’s bar, and everyone gets roles to play. The only real rule is that by the end of the party, they have to figure out the culprit to win “the prize”

The biggest snag? They desperately want Odo to narrate the party and guide the events, since he is the resident detective on the station. He says a flat not, but then Kira asks

So he agrees, albeit it grumbling the entire time

When the party starts, the rules are simple: Quark was killed in one of the areas of the bar with a weapon. They have to find out where the item is hidden, what space it happened in, and who did it. It could be anyone at the party, and anywhere from the holodeck to the bar, the gambling tables to the loft

The weapons are as follows: Odo’s bucket, Kira’s phaser, Garak’s sewing scissors, Quark’s bar of latinum, O’Brien’s toolkit, Bashir’s tennis racket, Sisko’s baseball, Dax’s bat’leth, and a (possible poisoned) cup of Worf’s favorite prune juice

Overall, it goes as expected. Y’know, Quark dying dramatically then smugly sitting behind the bar wondering if he could get money off of recording this shit, Dax and Worf doing their early couple quarreling (he’s insisting if Quark was killed everyone would know who did it because they’d do it in the open out of revenge. That or he’d fake his own death for insurance money; Dax keeps telling him to play along), and Kira’s loud laughter is the only thing keeping Odo from abandoning the whole thing for writing his daily crime reports 

Shit goes sideways, of course, when clues are everywhere, a strange figure keeps showing up in corners, and Quark and Sisko even go missing

Everyone starts stressing out and being particularly annoyed at Bashir and O’Brien for setting this up, especially since the two are now insisting they have no clue what’s going on (and they mean it this time) 

Finally, Worf catches the mysterious person, and they find out its “a man hired by Quark to make the scene look as convincing as possible, and remove and complications”. Bashir and O’Brien barge in, pissed, saying this isn’t what the script was. After some bickering and shenanigans, the mysterious man starts laughing at them

Then it changes shape

Apparently, after watching everyone squabble and see that people were getting close to the truth boringly quickly, Odo decided to change up the narrative. After all, the narrator has those kind of creative liberties, right? 

Sisko killing Quark wasn’t realistic and he insists the Captain would never be so sloppy. So instead, he figured it would be more realistic for Quark to fake his own death elaborately, and try to pin it on Sisko, than it ever being this dumb

Worf releases Odo and says to Jadzia, “I told you so”

At the end, an amused Kira says, “does Odo get the prize then? or Worf?” 

Julian almost answers them, but then O’Brien says, “The real prize is the fun you guys had along the way” 

Everyone grumbles, boos, and leaves

Confused, Bashir leans over to O’Brien and says, “But didn’t we have some real Irish Whiskey for them?”

Miles scoffs. “After that headache, the real people who deserve it are us”

Bashir makes a face, but nods in agreement 

The final shot is Sisko and Quark trapped in a cell together, wondering when someone is going to get them out 

Sisko is just thankful for the goddamn peace and quiet 

Episode ends. 

[endless-vall]

Not Born, But Made - TCATF fanfic, Chapter Eight - Riddle Me This

Summary: Before they can start their mission to sign an alliance between all of the kingdoms, there’s one more stop they should make.

Author’s note: I have a few more chapters ready. Some things are not important to the story, so I didn’t make an effort to elaborate on them. We, the readers, already know the characters.

Hope you’ll enjoy!

“So, where to now? Should we start making our rounds across the kingdom, then?” Leon asked.

The members of the group were all standing in the command tent, with Kenna and Leon in front of them.

“Actually, I have another suggestion.” Annelyse stepped forward.

“Yes, Queen Annelyse?” Leon certainly knew not to disrespect her, but he did raise a questioning eyebrow at her.

“I advice we go to the city of the Technorats. They have technology that far surpasses even my Aurelia’s strongest weapons. If we get them on our side, we have a better chance at this war, along with a better chance at convincing others to join us.” Annelyse rested her case.

There seemed to be agreement across the tent, and Leon smiled at her in a satiesfing matter. He was happy to be proven wrong, for a change.

Arragments were made, and a small group was out on its way to the sacred haven of the Technorats.

“But aren’t the Technorats, like the Aurelians, kept themselves hidden on purpose? Why would they join us now?” Kenna asked Annelyse.

“We joined you, didn’t we?” Annelyse winks at her, although she doesn’t quite answer Kenna’s question.

“Kenna’s right. I do agree we need the Technorats help, but convincing them wouldn’t be easy.” Raydan stepped forward. He was the one to lead them on their mission. If someone knew how to find someone, or someplace that didn’t want to be found, it was him.

“The Technorats are known as pacifistic people. The Technorat’s city, the Foundry, is a place for people with nowhere else to go, who doesn’t want to participate in the outside world’s wars and conflicts. They share a passion for learning and discovery, which brings them all together.” He revealed as they edged closer.

“Are they really pacifists, or do they just want it to be someone else’s problem?” Kenna was visibly upset by that. “You can’t just ignore a war.” She throws her hands in the air in frusturation.

“Apparently, they can.” Raydan shrugs. “But keep that energy in you. It might just be what we need to convince them to help us.” He places a comforting hand over Kenna’s shoulder. 

Kenna nods, feeling the anger leaving her. If the Technorats are peaceful people, she can’t just barge in and demand they help her. She needs to convince them it’s for the sake of bringing peace to the realm.

“Thank you, Raydan.” 

They arrive at the entrence of a labyrinth. “The Foundry is just beyond that labyrinth.” Raydan tells them.

“Let me guess, the labyrinth is filled with deadly traps and sophisticated riddles?” Leon asks.

“They wouldn’t have it any other way.” Raydan nodded.

Just as they came closer to the labyrinth entrence, a figure standing in it’s way cleared into the view.

“Let me guess, are you some sort of a guard?” Leon strode to the head of the group, his hand on his weapon, but he didn’t pull it out just yet.

Kenna looked closer. It was just a child. She placed a hand over Leon’s shoulder a gave him a determined look. Hold your weapon. She said without words, and Leon dropped his hand. He wasn’t too happy about it, but he didn’t protest either.

“No, a mere traveler like you. My name is Whitlock. What brings you to the Foundry?”

They didn’t trust him, just yet, but they needed all the help they could get. Having someone who actually belongs in the Foundry help them solve the riddles of the maze could be what decided between their sucsess or failure.

“I-” Kenna started talking, but Raydan stepped forward. “We heard the Foundry is a safe place for people who wanted to learn and discover, and not being haunted by outside enemies. I’m sure you heard about the blood king?” Raydan’s cover story might’ve not been the best one. But that Whitlock kid had no reason not to believe them, right?

Looking Whitlock up and down, noticing his prostethic limbs... It was quite obvious he heard about king Luther.

Kenna couldn’t help but share a symphathic look with him.

“Sure.” Whitlock’s expression wasn’t exactly readable, but whatever game they were playing now seemed to work.

“So you wouldn’t mind coming with us through the maze, would you? You seek shelter in the Foundry as well?” Kenna asked, playing along with Raydan’s cover.

“Really? You’ll let me come with you?” Whitlock’s eyes widened in surprise. Whatever he thought about their group, Kenna did catch him by surprise.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Let’s go.” Kenna leaded the way into the maze.

After solving a few riddles and advancing inside the maze, she got separated from her group, and locked inside a battle with a mechanic bull, with Withlock outside the door, shouting advices at her.

“1... 2... 3... Now’s my chance!” She stroke the bull, one last time, and he fell on the ground. As she emerged victorious in her battle, the door separating her from Withlock swiped open.

“I guess that means I solved that riddle, too.” Kenna smiled at Whitlock gladly. He obviously knew more than he let on.

He knew too much about the labyrinth to be a mere traveler, but Kenna decided to hold her tongue until the right moment to call him out on his bluff.

So instead, as she and Whitlock advanced in the maze, she turned to him. “Whitlock... if you don’t mind me asking,” She couldn’t finish her sentence before Withlock intertwined. “My hands?” 

Kenna nods. “I don’t mind sharing the story with you. If the labyrinth dims you worthy, how can I not?” 

Something about the way he pharsed it caught Kenna attention, but before she could dwell on it Whitlock began his story.

He told her about how he was siezed by Nevrakis soldiers. How they made him work for them. How he saw all that blood shed, for nothing but their personal amusement. It brought disgust to Kenna to hear it, but also fueled her desire to bring Luther down even more.

Eventually, Whitlock told her how he refused to hurt innocent people, and later helped them escape the soldiers. And that he payed for it with his... Hands.

The villegers came back for him. Tended to his wounds. And that with their help he construckted his prosthethic arms.

This was her chance. She could confront him about making out as much as him not being a mere traveler. And with the fact that he personally was victimized by the Nevrakis army... 

Even his pacifist heart could be swayed. Couldn’t it? 

“Whitlock... I’m going to be honest with you.” She told him. Whitlock merely turned to face her and nodded. He was studying her face intently.

“I’m not a mere traveler. And you definitely figured it out. You’re too smart not to. But I also figured out you’re not a mere traveler as well. You already belong in the Foundry, don’t you?” She cornered him with the question.

Whitlock... Broke into a smile.

“You might not have come here to join the Foundry, you’re right. But you passed every one of the tests. Including me.” He nodded.

“You were a test, too?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“My name is Whitlock, and I’m the leader of the Technorats. Congratulations, Kenna. You passed every test I threw at you, so I’m going to hear you out.”

Exsiting the labyrinth, she met the rest of her group. Raydan rushed to her side, taking her hands in his frantically.

“Kenna, thank god you’re safe-” He breathed out, before composing himself.

“I’m glad to see you out of there. We were inside the maze and a door opened leading exactly to here. I guess we have you to thank that for?” Raydan asked, now more reserved.

Kenna eyed him coyly.

“Yes, Kenna here passed all the tests of the labyrinth.” Whitlock answered instead of her. “Let’s go to my workshop so we could talk.”

“Wait, what?-” Val asked shockingly.

“Oh, Whitlock is the leader of the Technorats, isn’t he?” Raydan asked rethorically.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do what you’re asking of me. I can’t get involved.” Whitlock shook his head, although it was visible on his face he was conflicted.

“Withlock, you know this isn’t right. You know how many people they’ve hurt. We don’t want to fight with them. We have to.”

“You’re asking me to build you weapons. This whole society is build, no- thrives on peace and intelectual advance... How can I throw that all away and build you weapons? How would I be able to face my people after that? What would I say to the people I banished for the very same reason?” Whitlock wasn’t against helping her, not entirely, was he?

“Then we won’t ask you for weapons,” Leon stood by Kenna. “We’re just asking you for a drill, strong enough to bring Stormholt’s walls down.” Gabriel joined them.

From the information they brought to Kenna, Stormholt’s walls has never been taken down. And they’ll need something new and powerful to be able to do it, for the first time ever.

“And besides, you already know that the scales aren’t balanced. One of the people you banished... I believe you were close with... Is on Luther’s side.” Raydan took a step forward as well.

Whitlock hesitated. “Hex?” He looked upset. Raydan nodded.

“I should’ve known.” Whitlock shook his head in disbelief and sorrow.

“I didn’t want to bring that up, but it’s our last leverage and we really, really need your help.” Raydan admitted.

Maybe with other leaders that tactic wouldn’t work. If a certain person knows you need him more than he needs you he has all the power in that dynamic...

But not with Whitlock.

“I’ll help you.”

“Raydan, I wanted to personally thank you. I’m not sure we could’ve convinced Whitlock to join us without you.” Kenna catches him later, when they can talk in private.

Whitlock was generous enough to offer them to spend the night before joining them in the rest of their journey tomorrow morning.

Raydan was enjoying a walk outside, when Kenna caught him.

“You definitely had him in the bag, but the knowledge of his former mentor helping the enemy pushed him over the edge quicker, I suppose.” Raydan didn’t want to take the credit, but Kenna understood.

Somehow, she felt like she understood him so well already, even though she hadn’t known him for a long time.

Then again, Raydan was a master at that. Wasn’t he?

Making people think, see, and feel exactly how he wanted them to.

She banished those thoughts and met his eyes again. “Nevertheless, you were of great assitance.” She smiled at him.

Her smile seemed to catch him off guard, and even in the dim-moonlight, Kenna could see his cheeks darkening and his lips parting, ever so slightly, in shock.

“Happy to help.” He composed himself once again, and smiled back at her.

[athenafire]

Song of Frost

Because @xdeusxmachinax​ is a poo poo head.

    "What's wrong, TB?" Darci asked, concern clear in her tone. The two had been on a date in the woods outside of town, walking off a large meal.

   He stared in to darkness, watching a pale shape dance about. A discarded plastic bag flew past them, bringing about a sigh of relief. "Hah--litter bugs." he joked, noticing his breath fogging. "We should get going, got a test in math tomorrow." Toby groaned.

   "Oh no I forgot all about it!" Darci grabbed her hair in frustration. "Why do we even need algebra?"

   "Beats me--" Toby took several steps forward, leading the way. His foot caught a root, throwing him down a ditch in to a cold, wet wallow. He winced, feeling a cold pain crawl up his spine. "Darci?!" Toby called out, hearing no answer, he called again. Once more, and a fourth time with no answer. He turned his head to the mud, catching a glance of white in the corner of his eye. He lurched back, finding it only to be the moon. "Relax, Tobs, she probably...just can't hear you." he tried to comfort himself, finding it hard to stand, and even harder to escape the mud trap.     Once free, Toby tried to remove the mud and leaves caking themselves to his side, only to find them stuck there, frozen solid. "Huh that's weird. It never gets this cold in Arcadia." he wondered aloud. A hallow sound pricked his ear, like wind rushing through a cave. "Hhnn--Hello?" he called out, trying to reason with himself. The sound came again, throwing the teen in a panic, fleeing from the small wallow.

   Toby never was a good runner, he knew this. The mud became his downfall, hitting the dirt face-first, splitting his back-pack open. Supplies, snacks, his cell phone, and unfinished homework spilled out, water seeping in to the contents. "No--no, no, no!" he began with his phone, then shoving the snacks in his pockets before he noticed the last item. A wooden mask, propped against a rock, as if placed there. A trophy he stole from his time in the Darklands.

   "Heh--" he tried again, to calm himself. "How'd you get out here?" He reached for the mask, feeling cold breath at his back. His fingers froze to the mask, keeping him there. Afraid to turn around, and unable to move, it was now, that Tobias learned true fear. He could hear lips parting, that sound, the familiar sound of teeth scraping against stone.

   The sound shifted in to a song, first, as that same hallow sound as before. They held a rhythm. Then, the song changed, morphing in to the sound of his alarm clock.

   Morning, his warm bed sheets a welcome sanctuary as he awoke in a cold sweat. It had been only days since Tobys venture in the Darklands, but each night since, he had a nightmare of cold and frost. Teeth coming close enough, but always ending before the attack.

   "Wing-man?" Arrrgh inquired. He had watched Tobys fitful dream, but dared not wake him.

   'I have a big day tomorrow, so I need lots of sleep.' Toby had told him the night before.

   "Yeah I'm fine, just a bad dream again." he assured Arrrgh, getting up to start his day, ignoring his protectors concerns. They were just dreams. That thing was stuck in the Darklands. The only ways out were that mirror, and the fetch. Neither were big enough to let it out. Toby was safe here, he told himself. ---------------------------     Later, that night, Toby had planned to expand his rock collection in Trollmarket. When he spotted a familar set of horns, a smile bloomed, "HEY! VENDEL!!" Toby shouted, trotting over to the old Troll.

    With a sigh, the leader of Trollmarket greeted him, "Tobias! What brings you here this...fine evening?" Vendel stared down at the smallest Trollhunter, folding his hand behind his back.

   "Rocks! I saw a cool bit of rose quartz the other day. Oh, and some labradorite." he pulled open his backpack to pull out several stones, dropping it in the process. Toby explained the stones to Vendel, who barely listened, more interested in the colorful book covers than the chemical composition of stones he knew by heart.

   One thing, however, caught his eye. It looked like a bit of petrified driftwood. But then he noticed the grain did not match the bend, figuring it had to be carved. What stood out the most, were two slits, centered horizontally on odd bumps. His fur stood on end, as an ancient memory stirred. "Tobias...." Vendel spoke softly, "This way. Now." His words were quiet, but sharp. He gave the teen no time to gather his things, having to run to keep up with him.

   "Hey what's got you all spooked? You look like you saw a--"

   "Not now, Tobias." Vendel warned.

   They moved in silence, finding refuge in Vendels chamber. The old Troll paced around, making sure  no listeners could spy on their conversation. Slowly, he made his way back over to Toby, gently pulling a wooden mask from his backpack.

   "Where, on Earth, did you find this?" Vendel addressed Toby, concerned. His stare growing more intense the longer Toby did not answer. Neither would leave this room, until the mystery of this mask had been solved. "This is a matter pertaining not only to the safety of Heartstone Trollmarket, but to all of Troll kind, Tobias."

    With the gravity of the situation well established, he caved, explaining his trip to the Darklands, and his fight against the furred giant, the game-master of the Gumm-Gumms, Oddball.

   Vendel grew paler with each passing moment. "Frost Troll." The fear from before came crawling back, causing the old Troll to shake, gripping his staff tight enough almost crack it.

   "Frost Troll? Is that what she was? I thought she was just a weird hairy Krubera, like Arrrgh, but, white, and hairier. ...And bigger."

   "You swear you saw only one?" Vendel asked, watching Toby nod. "Then we may be lucky." he scratched his beard, "Had the whole clan decided to join Gunmar, after all these years..."

   Tobys frown grew, "What's a Frost Troll?"

   "Raiders! The whole reason any of this even started." he ranted, "Without Juns foolish actions, Gunmar may have never--" Vendel realized the confusion in Toby. "Perhaps a longer explanation is in order." He sat down, sighing a breath he sword froze the air around it. "This is an old story, Tobias."

   "Older than you are?"

   "I was young when I last heard the thunder, before--Before the ice cracked." He took a moment to gather his thoughts.

    "Frost Trolls, rulers of the North. They came with the frost, raiding the plains, retreating to their homes in steppes and on mountain peaks. Small bands, never more than ten or twenty. Never needed more, nothing could stop a roving band of Frost Trolls from their hunt. Except for another, larger band of Frost Trolls. Some clans hired them as mercenaries, others paid off their attackers to harass those that had sent them instead. Others? Trampled in the stampede, or frozen in their wake. Stories of Frost Trolls waving banners of fur shaved from fallen warriors could summon a storm, fed by angry spirits of their ancestors who still longed for battle. With the very storm on their side, they could have taken over every other clan in the North. But they were to busy fighting each other to organize. That was until Boguta the Bright-Eyed."

   "Boguta the what?"

   "Descriptions say she had eyes as white as newly fallen snow." Vendel elaborated. "Boguta was the daughter of a errr--oh, what's the word in your tongue?

   "King?"

   "No not quite...anyway, she saw the endless carnage between Frost Trolls, and all the clans below the line of permafrost. She saw no other way, but to make alliances with other roving war bands. One of my earliest memories, was the sound of a hundred Frost Trolls storming through, and the devastation they caused. Her army grew, bringing the Northern clans to their knees in a matter of months."

   "So what stopped them?"

   "That much is unclear, but her youngest son took up her mantle. He was Temui the Timid. Small, scholarly, unlike his siblings. He still towered over most other Trolls, but he too came with thunderous footsteps. He bore the banner of his mother, and demanded an audience with all of the local leaders."

   "Why would he want to talk?"

   "What was said never left that room. But, after that, the raids stopped, all at once. Many Frost Trolls tried to...integrate in to Troll society as hunters and laborers. But, even less trusted them. He met with the new council several more times, even more after Gunmar had begun his crusade."

   Toby swallowed, fearing what may come next.

   "But--one night, every Frost Troll across all of the Kingdoms vanished. Their homes emptied of belongings, leaving only unanswered questions. No one knows why they left, where they went, or if they even still exist. Not long after, Gunmar made his move. The organized army of Temui being one of the few things we felt stopped Gunmar from waging all out war."

   "And that's when it all started?"  

   Vendel nodded. "They wore masks during battle, much more elaborate than that one, covered in marks, and braided beads dangling from their horns and beards." he scratched his own again. "Tobias...if Gunmar has even one Frost Troll, this could mean he has more..."

  Vendels words echoed in Tobys mind. A roving band could topple an entire village. And Oddball had listened intently to Gunmar, obeying his every command. If Gunmar had even a few integrated in to his standing army, did Jim even have a shred of hope?

[blackberrywidow]

Suffocating

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff

Word Count: 5.2k

Warnings: Langauge. Mild violence. 

Prompt: “That took my breath away.” “Good. I aim to suffocate.” 

Summary: Agent James Barnes has dedicated his life to tracking down psychopaths and serial killers and putting them behind bars, but when a possibly psychopathic, definitely beautiful assassin asks for his help, how can he say no?

A/N: This prompt was requested by @blackwidws several months ago (and was based on an actual conversation we had), but I just now managed to finish it. It is also loosely based on Killing Eve, so there’s that. Enjoy!

Bucky had been through… well, several tough situations during his career as CIA agent.

He had been captured by the Russians two years ago—tortured and maimed, ending with the acquisition of a shiny, state of the art prosthetic arm, courtesy of Tony Stark.

Then there was the issue with Zemo’s attack on the CIA itself, which hinged greatly upon his framing of Bucky as the bomber that was targeting CIA operatives and their families.

And of course, there were countless other instances where Steve dragged him into trouble, both during their adolescence, during their time in Afghanistan, and even now, when Steve was in the FBI.

But never before had Bucky felt this monumentally screwed.

He wasn’t letting that show though. For all she could tell, he got kidnapped by beautiful, potentially psychopathic assassins every day.

He was suave, he was cool, he was in control. And he could only hope that it bothered her—how unbothered he was.

Not that he could tell either way. She was just as cold and unaffected as she stared out the windshield, one hand held firmly on the steering wheel, the other pressing a gun into his side.

Bucky decided that just wouldn’t do. So, he did what he does best: annoy.

“Are we there yet?”

And finally, the mask cracked, though the slight twitching of her cheek would have gone unnoticed by anyone who hadn’t spent the last three hours analyzing her face.

“Does it look like we’re there?” she bites out through gritted teeth, eyes never once leaving the road, despite them being the only car around for miles.

Bucky shrugs, noting how the motion did nothing to dislodge the gun she held to him. Her grip was tight, unyielding; he would be more concerned about that if he thought he would have a chance of escaping even if he could get control of the gun. As it was, they were going down the highway at 70 mph, heading in an undisclosed direction for an unknown amount of time.

“I’d have a better idea if you would tell me where exactly it is we’re going, ma’am.”

There, again. A tick in her jaw so minuscule any normal person would miss it. From someone so controlled, he couldn’t help but wonder if she were doing it consciously.

“One, don’t call me that. Two, I’ll explain everything once we get there. Not a moment sooner.” She spoke clearly, evenly, her Russian accent only serving to make the words seem more authoritative.

If he didn’t have a dominance kink before, he definitely did now.

Which was really inconvenient, considering all of the afore mentioned issues.

“Okay,” Bucky sighs, resting his head back against the headrest in a practiced sign of disinterest. “Fine. I’ll play your game since, clearly, I have no choice. But what am I supposed to call you, considering I don’t even know your name? Or should I just call you The Widow?”

“Don’t call me anything,” she answers easily. “In fact, don’t feel that you have to speak at all.”

Bucky’s lip twitches at that, and he decides that maybe it would be best to heed her warning. He was already fairly fucked as it is. The only thing to do now is play it out and wait for his opening.

.

…

.

It had been a long day, to say the least.

The CIA had been working in tandem with the FBI, which was always a nightmare, even if it did mean he got to work with Steve. But it meant something was wrong, that they were chasing something dangerous.

That something was called The Widow, or at least that’s what the reports said.

A cold-blooded assassin intent on taking out key political figures in a bid to destabilize. To create chaos.

It was unclear who exactly she was working for, though some signs were pointing to Russian intelligence.

Bucky knew it didn’t really matter though; they were all the same in the end. Just another psychopath wreaking havoc on the world.

What he did know was that it was his job to stop her.

It was always his job, tracking down the serial killers and assassins that threatened the country. They all posed their own challenges, but this one involved more late nights and stressful meetings with assholes who didn’t have the slightest clue what they were talking about.

So, as previously mentioned, it had been a long day, and Bucky was ready to go home and sleep for a record-setting 4 hours before dragging his ass back here tomorrow.

At least, that wasthe plan, until he reached his car, only to find a woman with beautiful red hair and sharp green eyes waiting for him.

Bucky’s first thought was, woah, both because he was exhausted, and she really was incredibly attractive. But his second thought was a much more rational, what the fuck does this woman want from me?

His pace slowed, though he didn’t let any other outward signs of caution show. They were in the parking garage of one of the most secure facilities in the world, after all. Though a stranger waiting by his car certainly warranted some hesitation, it was nothing to worry about.

He was, as it would turn out, mistaken.

“Something I can help you with, ma’am?” he asked, taking a page out of Steve’s book and shooting for polite interest.

Her mouth curved up at the corner, forming what Bucky would consider a smile on others, but seemed too… menacing to be called that on her. Her voice was a soft rasp, the accent and grate of it catching him so off guard he almost missed her words.

“No, but there is something I can help you with, James Barnes.”

And maybe it was because there was a spike of adrenaline as he finally realized how monumentally badthis was, or maybe the universe just had an exceptional sense of timing, but that was when he felt it.

He stumbled, catching himself on the trunk of his car, wide eyes staring accusingly up at the woman who had yet to move from the passenger door. “You—did you drug me? When?”

She shrugged, looking wholly unconcerned by the whole thing. “Just a minor sedative slipped into your coffee. It seemed like the safest option. For both of us. Now, I suggest you relax, Agent Barnes. You’ll be more comfortable if you don’t fight it.”

“Oh fuck you,” Bucky managed to growl out before the pavement rushed up to meet him.

.

…

.

“We’re here,” is the only things she says to him before she opens the door, removing the weapon from his side and stepping out of the vehicle.

Bucky blinks once, watches her stride up to a cabin that looks mostly-intact and enter it without looking back, and he blinks again.

It seems like maybe this is some sort of test, or a trap. To leave him unguarded out here, just expecting that he would follow her in.

His options are admittedly limited. He can only guess at their general location based on the signs they passed on the highway, but they had been traveling on back roads for some time now. This cabin is the only notable thing that they had passed in what felt like hours. He could tryto hotwire the car—his own fucking car—but… well, if there was one thing Bucky was good at, it was making terrible decisions.

He follows her in.

He enters cautiously, taking in the rustic wood paneling and the single couch and table that served as furniture for the entire one-room cabin. There are no pictures on the wall, no TV, no phone, nothing but The Widow, sitting silently at the table as she waits for him.

Bucky whistles lowly, and because he’s an idiot, he opens his mouth. “I thought a high-profile assassin such as yourself would be able to afford a nicer place. Maybe even one with a window, or a one of those vacuums that follows you around. This place really looks like it could use a good cleaning,” he noted, only half-joking as he surveyed the dust covered floor and moth-eaten couch.

Her expression doesn’t change. “I don’t live here.”

He waits for her to elaborate, but after another thirty seconds pass by in complete silence, he clears his throat. “Well then, Miss Widow, why are we here?”

She narrows her eyes but doesn’t bother correcting him again. Instead, she reaches into the pocket of her coat—cream-colored, long, elegant, and likely worth more than his car—and pulls out a flash drive, smacking it down on the table and sliding it forward, not once breaking eye contact.

He hesitates only a moment before striding to the table and taking the seat in front of the flash drive. It seems that he made the right choice, because as soon as he picks up the device to examine it, she finally speaks.

“You’ve been looking into an assassin, one that’s been targeting politicians and world leaders across the globe.”

She’s still watching him, and it’s unsettling, but he ignores it and takes the opportunity to watch herthis time. Her face is smooth, expressionless in a way that is clearly practiced. She speaks about the assassin in a way that leads him to believe he was wrong in his assumption that it was her, but… there’s a familiarity there. A connection that goes beyond this flash drive that he holds in his hand. And her eyes, green and hard as stone as they may be, tell him he’s right.

“So you’re not her?” Bucky clarifies, because it really is the most pressing question at the moment. If he’s sitting in a cabin in the woods with the assassin he’s been chasing, it would be nice to know. “You’re not The Widow?”

She hesitates, and her teeth graze her lip, as though she were about to bite it before she caught herself. Not that he was looking at her lips, of course. “I was, once,” she says reluctantly, almost wistfully. “But not anymore. Never again.”

There’s steel in her voice now, and Bucky is having a hard time processing what all of this means, but if he were hard pressed, he’d say he believes her.

“Okay, so I’m gonna need you to tell me where I fit into all of this?” he said, all pretenses of nonchalance dropped as he waved the flash drive at her. “If you’re not the assassin—but used to be one—why am I here? What are you giving me?”

“Everything you want,” the woman says, still betraying nothing. “Information on the organization she works for. Information on her. Enough to bring them all down.”

Bucky cocks an eyebrow, because he’s been a soldier and he’s been a spy and he knows when something is too good to be true. And he knows when he’s being used. “All of that, huh? And I’m just supposed to trust you?”

“Of course you don’t have to trust me,” she shoots back, exasperation creeping into her tone for the first time. “All you have to do is look at the files, and—”

“With what computer?” Bucky cuts her off, looking around with wide eyes, taking in the complete lack of any sort of technology. “And why me? I know you want me to think this is just some gift that’s been dropped in my lap, but I know better than accept it without question. So tell me, sweetheart, why the whole show? Why drag me all the way out here just to give me a flash drive containing information on people you used to work for? ”

Her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare and it’s the largest reaction he’s managed to get out of her, and it doesn’t surprise him at all that it’s anger he’s inspired in her. “Do not call me that,” she seethed, venom lacing her tone in a way that made it clear he had struck a nerve.

Bucky would have felt bad, were it not for the previously stated factors.

So he scoffed, shaking his head. “Oh yeah, be angry about that. It’s not as though you’ve been kind enough to give me your name, even a fake one. Though that seems par for the course, as you haven’t given me any information.”

The apparently-former assassin seemed to be considering that, a glint of something like admiration sparking in her eyes before she nodded, resolute. “You may call me Natasha.”

The name sounded false on her lips, but he didn’t question it, knowing he had larger concerns. “Natasha it is then. Mind telling me the whole story then, as you’ve dragged me all the way out here and we seem to be lacking in any other entertainment?”

And he couldn’t be sure if it were a trick of the light or if it was genuine, but he could have sworn the corner of her mouth twitched up into the semblance of a smile.

But then she started talking, and neither of them felt like smiling any more.

.

…

.

Bucky learned a lot in the following three hours, enough that he felt like he had to reevaluate everything he thought he knew before he had met Natasha.

She had been taken from her family when she was young, sold off to some Russian intelligence organization called The Red Room. It was an experimental endeavor at first—take 28 young girls and train them to be killers. Simple, and apparently very easy if you got to them young enough. If you were cruel enough, manipulative enough.

But perhaps not perfect, because here was Natasha, telling him everything in a bid to ruin their plans.

“We were bought and traded, once we were old enough,” she was explaining, all cool detachment once again. Describing traumatizing events as though they had happened to someone else. “Kill a mob boss who took more than his fair share here. A politician who asked a few too many questions there. But then a different organization, one I’m sure your familiar with, got involved. And things changed.”

“Hydra,” Bucky says, mind flashing back to a winter spent in Russia not that long ago, one that ended with him losing an arm.

She nods, lips thinning almost imperceptibly, and he can tell she’s making a point not to look at the shining metal of his left arm. He doesn’t comment on it, and she continues. “Yes. They wanted to think bigger. They wanted to create chaos where there was peace, completely destabilize countries where there wasn’t. And they had a plan to do it: a list of fifty people that would completely change the world, so long as they were killed in the right way, at the right time.”

“And The Widow, she’s the one they have carrying this mission out?”

“It’s not just one girl,” Natasha corrects, still watching him carefully for a reaction. “We were all called that—it’s the name of the operation that called for our capture. ‘The Black Widow Program.’ This—this murder spree is just the culmination of their life’s work.”

“So why leave?” Bucky asked, leaning forward with narrowed eyes, suddenly too curious to resist any longer. “Why now? Why turn your back on them and sell them out after all this time? We’ve been chasing these women for almost a year now, thinking it was just one assassin, and now you waltz in, kidnap me, and tell me we’ve got it all wrong? I’m gonna need some sort of reasoning before I believe you.”

He tried to sound apologetic—as apologetic as one can sound after having been abducted and forced to hold conversation with woman who grew up murderingpeople anyway—but she didn’t seem to buy it. She did, however, nod in acceptance.

“Alright Agent Barnes, fine. Here’s the truth: I chose to come forward now because I have officially exhausted all my other options. As soon as I realized what they were doing—how far they were taking this—I knew that I couldn’t be a part of the end of the world. So I waited, and I bid my time, until finally I was able to make it out. And you were there.”

As surprising as everything Natasha had said in the past hour was, this was the only sentence that elicited a visible reaction from him.

His head snapped as if struck without his permission, and he blinked at her several times before he managed to ask, “Me? Where?”

This time he knew she was smiling, though there was no kindness in the gesture, when she said, “It was D.C. You were following a lead on the investigation and were looking into Senator Cortez as a potential target. You were right, of course, and you managed to mess it up just enough to give me my opening.”

Bucky was quiet as he tried to recall every detail about the week he had spent in D.C., from the meetings with the Senator to the extra security he ordered. And finally, after he thought about the staff he interviewed, he remembered her.

“You were blonde then.”

The smile was wider this time and gave Bucky the impression of a wolf looking at its dinner. “You do remember.”

“He died a week later,” Bucky responds, thinly vailed accusation in his voice.

She had the decency to look contrite, but he knew it was only for his benefit. “It wasn’t me. I left that night—my handlers were panicking, trying to find a new way to circumvent your new security protocols. I was supposed to be seducing you.” She says it with such casualness that Bucky just knows she’s toying with him.

“Wasn’t interested?” he asks dryly, wondering if it would have worked if she had. He remembered her for a reason, after all, and it wasn’t the carefully meek American accent she had used then or her tentative answers to his questions. It was her eyes, intelligent and watchful in a way that gave him pause, and a beauty that made everything else around her seem even more dull than usual.

She smirks then, and he knows she had guessed his train of thought. She is at least kind enough not to comment on it.

“I saw the opportunity for what it was: my out. I followed you to your room, just as I was asked, but instead of knocking on your door and fucking you for answers, I cut back to the staff entrance in the basement and made my way out with everyone else who was leaving for the night. No one suspected anything since I was already on the list of staff members investigated, and my handlers thought I was handlingyou. By the time they realized I had escaped, it was too late.”

“But not too late to kill Senator Cortez?”

Her face hardens, and if he didn’t know better, he’d say she looked genuinely guilty. “I thought that I could get back there, have some sort of plan in time to stop them from killing him, or anyone else for that matter. I didn’t expect to be replaced so quickly.”

“Bitter?” Bucky couldn’t help but ask, picking up on the sour note in her voice.

She doesn’t respond with words, only narrows her eyes at him in a way that makes him regret having asked. “I’ve spent the last six months trying to gain enough intelligence to turn over to your government, so that it can be your problem now. So that I can live my life the way I want, without The Red Room or Hydra following me wherever I go, looking to collect on their investment. I want out,” she says decisively, and he can’t help but believe her. “I just need you to help me end this so that I can be free of them.”

Bucky nods, thinking on her reasoning and actually finding that it makes sense, at least from her perspective. But he still had one more question. “So, is that why you chose me to be your messenger? Because you knew my name from the investigation?”

Natasha tilts her head from side to side, looking contemplative. “I suppose that was one reason. But I looked into you after that, found out your own history with Hydra, and assumed you were my best bet.” Bucky raised a brow in question. “Best bet for what?”

“To help me,” she says, clearly hating that she has to say it out loud. “I brought you here because it’s a safe place that neither your bosses nor mine can find us. Because I want to give you this information, and I want to walk out of here of my own free will. And I can’t do that if you take me in.” She leans then, her keen eyes catching him off guard as they practically beg for him to understand. “If I give myself up to your government, even if it is to bring Hydra down, I’ll never have that freedom. You understand that, don’t you?”

Bucky understands a lot of things. He knows what it’s like to be tortured and abused by Hydra. Knows what it is like to have control and free will stripped from you. He had experienced it for nearly five months—he couldn’t imagine enduring it for decades.

He nods. “Alright then. I believe that’s all I need then, Miss Natasha.”

Her smile when she stands is the first genuine one she’s worn in a very long time.

.

…

.

Because they have just the one car—his car—they agree to drive back to the nearest city together. From there, Natasha will board a bus to a destination unknown to him, and Bucky will head back home to give the information to his boss, effectively single-handedly ending this war before it even begins.

At least that was the plan, but then there’s a blockade in the middle of the highway, still miles away from civilization, from any backup that he could call, and the plan is forced to change.

Bucky, behind the wheel this time, slows, thinking over his options as they approach the three armored cars and small army of men that block his path.

Natasha, who is used to thinking on her feet, does not entertain any thoughts of stopping as she stretches her foot over the center console and slams it down onto Bucky’s, pressing the gas pedal down as far as she can.

And Bucky isn’t sure who’s more surprised, him or the Hydra agents he’s suddenly plowing into, but he doesn’t have time to really consider it before his car crashes into two of the SUVs and his face hits the air bag.

After he’s able to gain his bearings enough to move and confirm that he’s alive and mostly unharmed, he sees that Natasha is already out of the car and that there are shots being fired all around him.

He curses, fumbling for his seatbelt and reaching for his gun. He takes cover as soon as he gets his door open, and he raises his gun, ready to start returning fire when suddenly it stops entirely.

He chances a look, ready to duck back down once they start firing again, only to see thirteen bodies lying scattered on the group, and Natasha squaring off against the last man standing. He was large-built, though not quite as bulky as Steve. He was grinning as he advanced upon her slowly, a knife with a blade the size of Bucky’s forearm held threateningly, and though the words were too quiet for him to hear, he was clearly taunting her.

Bucky raises his weapon, ready and willing to contribute even though Natasha had managed to take care of most of it within three minutes, but that turned out to be unnecessary as well.

Natasha flashes a smile that is all teeth and threat before taking a running leap, neatly vaulting over the slash of her target’s knife, and landing on his shoulders. He only has a second to look stunned before she gives a sudden twist of her thighs and snaps his neck with a sharp crack that Bucky can hear from ten feet away.

The man lands in a heap on the ground, but Natasha rolls gracefully off of him before rising to her feet once again. As she takes in the carnage—a car on fire to his left, his car with its crushed front right next to him, a scattering of bodies in various position, all of them dead—he can only watch her with wide, awe-struck eyes.

When she turned her striking green eyes back on him, looking him over for any injury, he can only think of one thing to say.

“That took my breath away.”

“Good. I aim to suffocate.” Her tone was dry, but her lips curved up into an amused smile before she jerked her chin in the direction of the only car that had survived the attack. “Come on, Agent Barnes. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us if I’m going to take you all the way back to New York.”

“Bucky,” he corrects as she climbs up into the driver’s seat and he takes the passenger without protest. She clearly had a better handle on this than him anyhow.

Her eyes flash to him for only a second as she pulls away from the scene, and he can’t help but be happy that he finally managed to tell her something about himself that she didn’t already know.

She, of course, is not one to be outdone. “My real name is Natalia.”

“Well Natalia,” Bucky says, rolling her name across his tongue like it’s something to be savored, not spoken, “let’s get this thing to my boss so you can finally get a taste of that freedom you want.”

When she smiles at him this time, it actually reaches her eyes.

.

…

.

Natasha surprises him when she does exactly what she said she would and takes him all the way to his office in New York.

He supposes it shouldn’t though: if there’s one thing he’s learned about Natasha—Natalia—it is that she has her own sort of code that she follows. And apparently it includes being honest with him.

The moment she pulls the stolen car into the same parking spot she had abducted him from not even 24 hours ago, she disappears without a word.

Bucky rolls with it, of course, because though she has been an assassin and a killer, she deserves the chance to be better. She had never been given a choice before, and he’d make sure she wasn’t robbed of one now.

So he takes the flash drive with the information into his boss with an abridged version of the events that led to its procurement, and hopes to be allowed to head home for a solid 8 hours of sleep before sitting through the debriefing.

His request is denied, which doesn’t come as a surprise, and he sits through another four hours of mindlessly repetitive questions and answers. They ask him to go over every detail, from his capture to the mess he left on some highway in New Jersey, and he recites the details again and again. They ask for information on Natalia, and he refuses every time.

He’s detached, just going through the motions of this bureaucratic shitshow while the CIA sort through the treasure trove of information that Natalia handed them. Steve notices, catching his eye and giving him a look that’s meant to be reassuring, and he’s not the only one.

Bucky’s boss finally sends him home with an exasperated sigh and an order to report in at 0600 tomorrow, and Bucky barely catches himself before sighing in relief.

It’s short lived.

Steve catches him in the hallway, concern clear in his eyes, and Bucky loves him like a brother, but he just wants to go homegoddammit. Seemingly sensing his irritation, Steve holds up a hand in surrender. “I won’t hold you up, God knows you could use a full night’s rest right about now. But I do just have one question.”

Bucky cocks an eyebrow, exhausted but willing to play along for his best friend’s sake. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

“Why are you protecting her?”

Bucky blinks in surprise, both at the simplicity of the question and his inability to verbalize his answer.

Because she didn’t deserve this. Because she was a weapon in the hands of murderers, but the courts will never see it that way. Because she deserves a chance to be free and learn what it’s like to make decisions yourself. Because the thought of her behind bars for the rest of her life makes me sick.

So he doesn’t answer, and Steve doesn’t appear to expect him to as he steps to the side and allows Bucky to pass him on his way to the garage.

.

…

.

For the third time in a row, Bucky’s attempt to find a moment of peace to just fucking sleep is thwarted. But the moment his eyes lock on the beautiful red head sitting on his couch, looking as though she belonged there, he knew he wasn’t going to complain.

“Nat,” Bucky blurts out, dropping his keys onto his side table in surprise. “I—What are you doing here?”

Her lips twitch up into a smile, and she doesn’t chastise him for the nickname, only waves a hand in greeting. “Bucky.  I’m waiting for you, of course. What else would I be doing?”

“Oh I don’t know.” Bucky rolls his eyes and leans against his wall, still just watching her watch him. “I thought you’d be half-way to Mexico by now.”

Natalia wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Mexico is a bit too sunny for my taste. I was thinking we should head north, maybe hit Canada and figure out where we go from there.”

It took him an embarrassingly long time to process what she was saying. “We?”

“Well, yes,” she says, looking unsure for the first time since he had met her, and the sight made his heart jump. “I thought—well, I thought maybe you’d like to find out what freedom tastes like too.”

And the second the words left her lips, he knew he did. Because she understood him better than anyone after just a handful of hours spent together. She knew what it was like to feel like you were suffocating under the thumb of another, and she knew what it was like to break free of its hold.

She saw something of her past and her struggles in him, and he finally realized what it was that he saw when he looked into her eyes: his future.

When he takes too long to respond, she shrugs and says, “Besides, I might get bored if you weren’t around to annoy the shit out of me.”

He scoffs, but thinks, I’ll follow you anywhere, and he knows it’s true.

What he says is, “We’ll have to steal a new car.”

Bu she just smiles, all teeth and wicked intent, and he knows she understands anyway.

[imagine-loki]

Mad Predictions

TITLE: Mad Predictions

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 8

AUTHOR: inspired-snowflace

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: “A freedom restrained the sun shall invoke, The gift from the plea a mother spoke, Purpose shall be bestowed upon your life, In form of one you should have called wife, A lover presumed dead shall be back, Now shall you truly pay for your attack.”

Ever since the fortune teller had spilt these words, Loki’s life was thrown into a hurricane. He dared to hope that after the attack on New York and the following arrest, things would get better, but these words seemed to point in an opposite direction.

Things would never remain the same, for better or worse.

RATING: Everyone

NOTES/WARNINGS: Description of war. This includes something that isn’t part of the MCU Canon. Also, a short ellaboration on your powers- when you turn your wrist counter-clockwise, it tortures your subject (The slower, the more pain) and turning it clockwise kills them easily and consumes way less power. Updates earlier on my tumblr!!

RECAP : Loki regrets his past actions but doesn’t confess the reason he did them. Time passes on.

~a month later~

The attack started the first thing in the morning.

The city of Sokovia was once again threatened by extra-terrestrial beings. They were similar to the Chitauri, but they were obviously smarter and stronger than their brethren who had attacked New York. Apparently, they wanted vengeance for their previous defeat and so they decided that the best place to attack would be Sokovia, which had already suffered one attack in the past and had not recovered from it entirely. For the first time, the tide was in favour of the Avengers.

Wanda put all her emotions in her fight since her brother, Pietro had died saving the city and she would do all in her power to protect it.

Unbeknownst to you all, even Loki worked overtime since he wanted his own sweet revenge on the Chitauri for making him a mere puppet in the hands of Thanos.

You stood in the place since the past hour, turning any nasty Chitauri that dared to come close to you to dust. But of course, they had a ace up their sleeve.

You first heard it over the comms, Hawkeye muttered, “Guys! How are you even dealing with these things? They don’t seem to die!!”

“Dear Hawk, looks like your eyesight has worsened. For each of these stupid things that die, there are two!” Black Widow said in the comms.

“Guys, for the past hour I have been trying to kill them, frying, roasting, boiling, deep frying, nothing seems to work on them.” Tony sounded exhausted through the comms. “I have been avoiding them by flying. Cap’s Orders- first evacuate citizens and then find a way to kill them.”

“Even lightning doesn’t work!” Thor sounded irritated through the comms.

“And from my and Hawk’s side, you can definitely eliminate arrows and bullets.”

You were completely confused. Two for each that die? What was going on?

Then Steve’s voice crackled through, “Team, focus on civilians first. We will deal with these creatures, later. Ok?”

“Umm.. Guys, could you please elaborate on the issue of ‘kill one get two free’?” You asked.

“Y/N, since you haven’t noticed…. THESE IDIOTIC CREATURES DO NOT DIE, NOT REALLY, THEY JUST SPRING BACK ALONG WITH A SECOND BODY AND KEEP COMING!” Tony screamed. “Does anybody have any ideas to kill them?” He added.

You looked at all the dust around you. Not a single one had resurrected. What were these guys talking about? Then you saw it. Hawkeye jumped over buildings with a small crew of Chitauri running behind him. When one of them came too close, Hawk shot him. But the monster would fall for a second and then suddenly awaken back as two. It was that moment that you realised that the perfect recipe to a dead Chitauri was shredding it to perfection.

“Have any of you guys tried turning them to dust?” You questioned over the comms.

“Well breaking news, Y/N!! You can’t exactly turn these things to dust with an arrow!!” Clint said, exhaustion and frustration imminent in his voice.

“Well, Congratulations Clint, for your birthday you get some Chitauri dust!!” You exclaimed while quickly twisting your wrist clockwise at Barton’s tail.

They immediately disintegrated into piles of Chitauri dust. Clint looked behind him in shock only to see no followers. However, killing so many together took its toll on you. You started huffing like you had just run a marathon. Meanwhile a grateful Clint jumped down a two floored building and landed gracefully.

He headed towards you and said, “Well, Chitauri dust makes a decent birthday gift.”

“Cap, your recipe is to turn them to dust.” Clint said in the comms.

“Well, I don’t think that except Y/N, there are many of us who can do that. Y/N, Charge to you. Over.”

“Fine. Cap, Nat, Thor and Clint; I want you to help the civilians. Loki and Wanda, my fellow magicians, just hold these guys out or if you can turn then to dust, do that! Tony head over to my location, I would like an aerial position to murder these creatures. Do not kill these creatures yourself unless there in an absolute necessary.”

“On it!” Wanda confirmed.

Clint quickly headed to the direction where he could hear screams.

“Ummm.. Y/N, I would gladly head over but I have a tail of like 40, very, very, angry looking Chitauri.” Tony said.

“Head over to my location and give me a window and a clear shot. I shall deal with them.”

“Fine Y/N, behind you!!” Tony screamed. You turned to see Tony soaring skywards and the Chitauri following him. You made quick work using both your wrist and soon it was raining dust a few feet ahead of you.

The effort caused you lots. You were literally on the ground trying to catch your breath. Tony came back down and lifted you from behind.

“Nice work there, kid!!”

“Tony, to Wanda and Loki’s position.” You panted.

You arrived quickly at Wanda’s location. Wanda had managed to turn many to dust herself, so had very few Chitauri in front of her. But you saw the deep gash on her left leg and figured she could use some help. Tony flew you closer so that you could get a better shot. You turned your left wrist and the dumb things turned to ash. Wanda turned and smiled at your pair.

“Loki is dealing with too many, I can sense it. He is at the centre of the city. Y/N, here is my energy.” Wanda said while red wisps floated towards you, providing you with a new boost. As a contrast, Wanda fell to the ground with all her energy drained.

Feeling newly energized with whole of Wanda’s energy, Tony flew you to Loki’s location. You had prepared yourself to be extremely professional on field, so Loki and your past didn’t matter on the battlefield.

But the moment he came into your view, you were shocked. Loki was fighting hundreds, if not a thousand, all alone! He froze some, trapped some in magical loops, cast illusions of himself running away to distract a few Chitauri. Behind him, Steve, Nat and Hawkeye guided the civilians to safety. By the sheer number of civilians present, you assumed that they were being held hostage. Steve would occasionally join Loki, to knock some out. Not strong enough to kill them, but enough to keep them down for a few moments. You intended on using your powers, but there were so many! Killing a mere 40 had caused the wind to knock off your lungs, but handling more than a hundred all by yourself!! Even with Wanda’s energy, you would die before you even erased half of them from existence. A sudden surge of panic hit you when you remembered that you were the only one capable of defeating them, the others could only assist you. This victory was riding on what you did.

“I can’t do this!! There are too many!!” You cried out from sheer panic gripping your veins.

“Y/N, you can do this. I have complete faith in you.” Steve said with firmness. This reassured you a bit.

You turned your wrist in the direction of a few Chitauri which were about to attack Loki. Your breath become more laboured almost immediately. It was ironic how an action as small as turning your wrist caused you to lose so much energy.

“Tony, set me down there; that will give me good height.” You said pointing to a crashed car behind Loki.

Tony flew you over while you decimated a few Chitauri that were heading towards the civilians. He set you down nimbly on a car, ensuring that you had enough energy to stand.

“Fly over to Wanda! Get her to the evac ships!” You told Tony.

“Kid, you sure?” Tony’s voice seemed uncertain.

“Yeah! The Chitauri might attack her!” and to prove your point a few Chitauri disintegrated on the turn of your hand. You started panting heavily, but there was no way the war was over yet. Hundreds of Chitauri still surrounded you, while Loki did his best to hold them off. Tony flew with a start, leaving black marks on the bonnet of the car you stood on.

Suddenly, a voice whispered something in your mind. While training with Wanda, you had learned that the thing you called your ‘gut instinct’ was actually the soul stone talking to you. You had got used to the soul stone warning you in your mind, but this didn’t seem like a warning. It seemed more like an idea.

“Uhhh… Guys? I have an idea…. Not sure of it, really…” You said uncertainly, this was definitely crazy.

“Is it crazy?” Tony asked over the comms.

“Would it kill all the Chitauri?” Steve enquired.

“Yes! Yes to both!” You exclaimed. “Not sure whether I have the energy though…” You muttered under your breath.

“Then go with it!” Steve and Tony exclaimed in unison.

You were sure that no one heard your second sentence. But a string of green energy flew into your body from Loki’s direction, leaving you energized, then surprised.

“It is all I can manage. I will require the rest to hold them off. You can do this, Y/N.” Loki said loudly while looking dead ahead, as if he wasn’t talking to you.

The Asgardian God did provide you with a lot of strength. Atleast now you will be able to save the avengers, even if you yourself die. “Thank you.” You said as gratitude flooded your voice.

On the comms you said, “I would need cover!”

“On it!” Steve replied almost immediately. You let the soul stone take over you. You started chanting a spell with your hands slightly raised at your side, palms as if you were holding two beach balls.

You saw Steve jump to your protection and knocking a few Chitauri out, even killing some in the process. On his left, Loki did as earlier, freezing the Chitauri, trapping some in magic and even lulling some to sleep.

You muttered ancient words that made no sense to you. However, You knew that they were your only chance. Suddenly, a group of about 50 Chitauri stopped completely and turned back as if they were being controlled by a remote. Was this the soul stone’s idea?

You traced the line of direction in which they were walking. Oh shit!! They were heading straight towards the civilians!! You wanted to use your energy, but you knew you couldn’t waste any. Steve also came to the same conclusion and started heading towards the small battalion.

“Y/N, you have lost cover!! Some are following the common men!!” Steve shouted over the comms.

At that exact moment, as if the Chitauri knew your vulnerability, he shot a weapon, which looked very much like an arrow, only sharper and extra-terrestrial, straight at your heart. You looked with shock at Loki, who was too busy re-freezing soldiers who had gotten free and were trying to attack him.

So this is how you would die.

[miraclesnail]

Writer’s Month Day 10: Dark AU

Fandom: PJO

Summary: So alternate dimensions exist and guess what! Turns out in one of those dimensions, I am on Kronos’s side. Who woulda guess? 

(Sorry, this is my self-indulgent fic for Kronos-side!Travis and Connor. I actually have a lot more ideas for this and once I’m done with the published wip I have on ao3, I’ll turn this into a multi-chapter! I used this prompt to kick start the first chapter which is always the hardest for me :P)

Content Warning: graphic violence 

Words: 3.7k

When you think of Travis Stoll, what comes to mind?

Powerful? Important? A main character in the grand scheme of things?

Hell no. 

Weak, insignificant, and a side character more like it, right? 

That’s who he is. A minor character, someone who doesn’t get quests, whose contributions barely make a ripple, and only remembered as that one guy who likes to prank. 

So why — why, why, why, why, why — is he being chased by a man in stupid black sweatpants and a stupid black turtleneck in a stupid black motorcycle helmet holding a stupid, blood-stained, 13 inch knife?

This is something Percy gets into. Or Nico. Or Jason.

But not him.

Never him. 

Travis leaps over rubble, feet catching on the granite, and tumbles forward. He curses loudly, but rights himself and continue running. He doesn’t dare look back (he heard the stories. You look back to see where the killer is and you end up tripping and dying), so he keeps his eyes train up ahead to the not quite darkness, but close enough darkness that objects are just a dark fuzz. 

Rain is pouring a thunderous downpour, a drumming so loud it’s like a waterfall. The occasional lightning gives him a clear snapshot of his surroundings and those few milliseconds where he could see the rubble, he engraves in his mind. 

A fallen cabinet, a broken desk, shattered computers, a houseplant, a family portrait, cracked tile floors, a hole-ridden hand hanging over a toppled swivel chair— 

Nope! Nope, nope, nope, nope. He did not saw that. That is not what he thinks it is. That has to be doll or a mannequin. Something fake and plastic. Not real and flesh, because if it is then that means there’s something wrong! Something is killing people! (plague, monsters, aliens) And Travis don’t have time to think about that just yet. 

There’s a turn up ahead. Left? Right? Right is always right so right it is. 

He slows only a little bit, if only to make sure to doesn’t crash into the wall, before running full speed again. He prays to his dad that there’s no rubble in his way. 

And like his prayer is answered, lightning flashes, thunder booms and Travis skids to a stop, sneakers barely gripping the wet tiles that otherwise would have sent him careening over the edge of the crumbled building wall. He clasps his shaking hands together and take a deep breath, commanding his pounding heart to calm down, that no, you did not die. You almost die, but you didn’t. So stop beating so fast.  

He takes in the surrounding, noting the clouds first. They’re dark grey and expands as far as the broken, tilted buildings allow him to see. It blots out the sun and explains the darkness even though just a few minutes ago, it was as sunny as Camp Half Blood could be. His eyes lower to the buildings, all with broken windows, missing sections of bodies, and most tilted too precariously to be considered stable. He lower his eyes even further and gulps when he couldn’t see the bottom. A heavy mist permeates a couple feet down that not even the heavy rain could dissipate. For all he knows, the fall could be 20 feet or 150 feet.

Is there a way to get to the floor below him? Maybe if he just cling to the wall and — nope, the moment his hand touches where the wall meets air, it crumbles. There’s no way he can descend to the floor below. 

Macaroni.

This is a dead end. 

He turns around, fumbling and tripping over his shoulders, but freezes. 

Someone is turning the corner. And the glint of that wicked knife in their hand tells him it’s not Chiron dressed as Santa Clause. 

Cheese sticks, he’s trapped. Maybe he could hide before the man sees him and wait till — the man turns to the aisle to him and walks right in the middle towards him. 

Oh holy sandals. Travis takes a step back and his heel pushes the rubble off the ledge, a grim reminder that there’s no exit behind him. He glances behind him, a who-knows-how-high-drop into the abyss, then back to the front, a cynical man with a loose grip on his knife. 

Which is the better chance? Should he just jump? Does he even know if the man is dangerous? 

He has a knife and it’s stained with blood! Of course he’s dangerous! Travis bites his lips. If Connor was here, he knows what to do. 

The man is drawing scarily close now, close enough for Travis to see the black, tight-fitting sport shirt with long sleeves and collar up to his chin. Close enough for him to see his belt ladles with all sort of pointy objects. Close enough to see the brand of his black pants. Close enough to see black, hiking boots and definitely close enough to see the ocean blue of his eyes past the tinted shield of his Motorcycle helmet.

They’re cold, terrifying cold. 

If Travis wasn’t so scared for his life, he would ask the man where he shops. He’s sure Nico would like to know. 

He glances over his shoulder to the abyss again and stiffens. He can’t survive a high fall. He’s not Percy or Jason. There’s no way he can buffer his fall, but he’s a good talker. He’ll talk his way out of this like he always have with his pranks. So he snaps his eyes back forward and steels himself. 

“H-Hey!” AH NO his voice cracked! “Pal, buddy, amigo, I don’t know if this is your idea of a joke or a prank or just a very elaborate plan to get me to pee my pants, but can you please stop?”

The man didn’t even falter, didn’t even miss a step. 

“Look, I applaud you. Your dedication to your role is amazing, like your costume is some A+ design.” 

Oh gods, he’s still coming. And he’s actually tightening his grip on his knife!

“Unless you really are here to kill me to which I say, please don’t. I don’t even have a weapon to protect myself! That’s not fair, you know?” 

And finally, finally, finally, the man stops walking towards him, only standing two arms length away. He raises his free hand and Travis jerks his body into defense, but the rising hand only rubs the man’s neck. He raises his chin and talks. “Are you done, Connor? I don’t have time for your jokes.” 

The response is automatic, years of being called the wrong name ingrained this reflex in him. It’s natural to him, something he doesn’t even think about. As soon as the man finished his sentence, Travis was already saying, “I’m Travis.” 

The man falters and so did he. 

Most people never hear their voice before, most probably can’t identify their voice. But Travis hears his voice every day and before he left for college, every second of his life. They all said he shares everything with Connor, even in voice. 

“You… have the same voice as me,” Travis says hesitantly. 

The man isn’t advancing, his wide eyes train on Travis. He could see shock, surprise in those eyes. Or maybe it’s mania. It’s easier to differentiate emotions with the mouth in view. He stares for a few more seconds, looking up and down his entire body although his stare linger most on his Camp Half Blood shirt. 

“You’re… Travis?” he whispers.

There’s no mistaking it. That’s definitely his voice and there’s only one person Travis knows who shares the same voice as his. 

“Connor, you donkey. This isn’t funny. You really scared me!” The man freezes at his words, but Travis didn’t really pay much attention to it. Serves Connor right. He should have realize his older brother isn’t that stupid he can’t figure out this whole situation is a prank. 

He kicks the rubble, all tension leaving him. “I have to admit though that this is so cool. Who did you bribe to make this? Hazel? Lou Ellen? Annabeth? Wow, this place is so realistic.”

He saunters over to Connor. “And your costume is so cool. Did you got it from Nico?” 

He’s standing in front of Connor now, but his grins falter. Something is off. There’s fear in his eyes. Connor fears nothing. 

“Connor?” he asks, worry creeping into his voice. “What’s wrong?”

He raises a hand to take the gloved hand into his.

It happen then.

Travis is falling backwards, feet kicked in from below him. As he falls, he sees the fear melds into panic, rage as his back hit the tile and an arm raising a dagger that is definitely not celestial bronze and he watches as the dagger comes closer, closer, and closer to his face. 

It stops an inch from his eye. 

He didn't move. 

The hand holding the dagger looming dangerously over his face is shaking. Shaking rather badly. He wonders if he could ask Connor if he could just move that dagger out of way a bit.

“Why.” 

He spoke again. That’s definitely Connor’s voice. 

“Why didn’t you run? What are you doing? What game are you playing, Connor?” The voice is shaking so badly, more bad than his hand that is holding the dagger too close to his face. His instincts kicks in. He’s not playing along anymore. 

He grabs the hand with the weapon and tugs it off to the side. He stands up and picks up Connor with him too. “Let’s stop with the pranks for the moment. Are you okay?” he asks. 

Connor shakes his head, backing away.

Now Travis is really worried. “What’s the matter then?”

He doesn’t get an answer. Instead Connor rubs his neck. He takes a shuddering breath. “Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods.” 

Travis takes a step forward. “Connor, come on. You’re really sca—”

“I’m not Connor,” ‘Connor’ snaps. “I’m — I’m not who you — I’m just a dream. You’re dreaming. Now you’re gonna wake up. 

Not-Connor shoves his hand through his plumber’s belt and takes out a clover leaf the size of his palm. He holds it by the stem, twirls it once and let if fall. The air ripples as it descend, shimmering and and waving until the gray canvas that was the wall became a patch of beautiful yellow and grass.

“You’re dreaming,” Not-Connor repeats. 

Travis didn’t say anything, because really, this burn in his side? This heart pounding from his near fall off the ledge? This pain in his chest from the worry? It all feels so real to him.

Maybe this is how lucid dreaming is. It doesn’t matter. The man in front of him is in pain. The man shares his and Connor’s voice. Dream or no dream, he can’t let his brother imposter suffer. So he lingers. He looks to the side. He opens his mouth. “Hey, are you really—” 

Then Travis is falling for the second time that day. The man grunts and shoves him to the side with a hand. His other hand raises a shield, Athena’s Aegis shield, the shield with Medusa’s face that could with one look turn anything to stone. No sooner did he realize that and tries to avert his eyes (Annabeth’s lecturing voice always coming to haunt him with Greek lessons), did he sees  an arrow fly past him. It hits the shield with a thunk and Travis looks back to see the man recoiling from the impact. He’s falling back, falling right into the shimmering canvas with the pretty grass and sunkissed trees. 

That moment, their eyes met. One in shock, the other with fear.

Their hand reaches out, grasping at nothing, the blue in their eyes gleaming with despair and he was gone. The shimmering canvas is gone. The man is gone. Travis is all alone sans the crunch, crunch of boots stepping on broken tile. 

Travis turns his head sharply to see who’s coming and winces at the sudden voice from the end of the aisle shrouded in dark. “Listen to my orders or I’ll shoot again.” 

He listens, head down and a sick feeling in his stomach. This isn’t a prank, is it? This is real. This situation is real. “Hands up, all the way up.” 

As Travis complies, he could see leather boots in his peripheral vision. Even though he’s scared shitless and just as clueless, his curiosity beats over every emotion he has. And with his brother’s voice yelling in his voice about how he’s stupid and dumb and reckless, he raises his head up slowly. 

Past the brown, leather boots.

Past the tears-riddled jeans.

Past the cloth-covered arm and the crossbow in that arm, arrow notched and pointed at his face.

And to the scrunched up face that’s really familiar. 

He didn’t change much at all. He’s still short. His hair is still black. He’s still scowling. His face is still scrunched up like he stared down the shaft of his arrow for too long. The only thing that’s different is the bow — he always justs a traditional bow, not a crossbow — and the hostility. 

His friend never looked at him like that. 

Michael Yew glares at him like he’s Kronos himself and says with hate Travis didn’t know Michael has, “Travis. I swear on my left arm that if you move one more time, I’ll make sure you won’t be able to walk.” 

////////////

He’s tumbling back. It strikes him that the portal site is behind him. 

But it’s too late. 

He can’t plant his feet in time. [no.] 

He’s falling. [no.]

His eyes meet the boy’s with the painful orange shirt and they’re wide, clueless, still bright with life, not dead like his are. 

He’s passing. [no.]

Not the kid in front of him. 

Not the kid. 

And he’s out there. 

And shit. Fuck. shit shit shit. [do something!]

He reaches out, praying, hoping, that his fingers snag on his.

But it didn’t. 

And he’s falling.

.

falling 

.

falling.

.

The ground comes faster than he expected. 

He groans, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head, and opens his eyes.

Blinding yellow, that’s the first thing he notices.

Speckled blue and swaying green are the next. 

Colors. Real colors. He’s seeing real colors. 

[what is this? what’s going on?]

He leans forward, hands crunching — no, something crunching when he uses his hands as leverage to stand. Green, he sees, and brown. Soft green, hard brown. 

He stares at it, knowing what they are, but the names… their names aren’t coming to him. None of this are. It’s been so long since he saw them, or even uses their words.

But he eventually recalls what they are. Leaves and sticks and the sun, the sky, the trees, the — 

[we shouldn’t have these]

He bolts to his feet, stumbling heavily. It’s too hot. It’s too warm. It’s suffocating. He rips the helmet off and tosses it aside. But it isn’t better. He can see more, could hear more, could smell more.  (The clouds, the wind, the birds, the chirping, the trees, the swaying )

Someone’s breathing heavily and he spins around out of instinct, expecting a stumbler but only seeing more trees (pine trees, birch trees, willow trees) 

[calm down you need to calm down]

It’s him. He’s breathing too loud and he stops gulping air, holding it in. And then letting it go. He can’t panic here. He needs to find a way back over. He’s in danger. He’s out there. He saw him, saw them running. He knows they’re there. He needs to get back now.

He fumbles with his thigh pouch (the ground, it’s so dry) his hands won’t stop shaking (he could see the the sky) he could see the inklings of the green leaf among the black inside of his pouch (the sun feels so warm) and he grasps it in his gloved hand. 

They crumble into pieces that the wind blew away.

He stares at the crumbled pieces, not comprehending, not understanding.

This is a dream. It has to be a dream. There’s no possible explanation.

His neck twinges and he cups it. 

It hurts. 

It hurts. This isn’t a dream. It can’t be a dream. It hurts.

So this is real? [it’s real] Is all this real? [it’s real] Or is it just another twisted image the Gods are giving him? [i can’t believe this is real.]

He starts when a branch cracks behind him and before he could turn around, a man’s voice rings out,

“Travis! There you are!” 

It’s familiar. But also not. 

“Where you been? We’ve been looking for you for over an hour.” 

A remnant of a memory from so long ago floats to the surface. 

“Come on, I have arts and crafts with your cabin. Tyson is stoked for it.” 

And he turns around to see him. The one that haunts his dreams. That terrorizes his sleep and stalks his conscious.  The one with black hair (caked with blood) that hangs over sea-green eyes (fill with bloodlust) and a grin (a glower) on his face with a 6 (6?) beaded necklace over a sickening bright, orange T-shirt.

Son of Poseidon, Perseus Jackson.

His blood freezes.

His heart stops. 

His throat closes. 

[kill him.]

And a hazy, belligerent red washes over him. 

[don’t. you need to run. you’re in danger] [no. you should kill him]

[get out of there. he’ll kill you] [kill him. end this life]

[run away now][get your revenge]

“Travis? What’s the matter?” Perseus asks, his voice infuriatingly friendly, light-hearted.

Perseus takes one step towards him [run] [attack] and another and one more till he’s within arms reach.

[within stabbing reach. do it. do it now.] 

[don’t. run. please. just run.]

[aim for his torso. let his organs trail.]

[stop it.]

[you’re going to run like a coward? after everything he did to you?] 

[don’t listen to him. run away.]

[don’t be a coward.]

[you need to survive.]

“Travis? You okay? You look like you’re out of it.” And a hand touches his shoulder. 

He made his decision then. 

He pulls the knife from his thigh and lunges forward with every intention of stabbing the face clean of skin, muscle, and bone. 

Perseus leaps back, stuttering, “Hey! What are doing?”

He shot forward. The chest is just as good as the face. Probably more painful too. 

“Travis! What the heck! What’s wrong? Hey!”

He didn’t answer. All that matters is getting his dagger into (unmarred?) flesh and twisting it free and thrusting it back in. Again and again and again. Till he’s dead as much as the others. 

Perseus turns tail and runs. 

He follows. 

“Crap, crap, crap!” 

He catches up in seconds, kicking his feet out under him so he’ll tumble to the ground. He’s on him the next second, pulling the arm behind Percy’s back and across to rest against his hips. He pushes down at the wrist. The yelp that follows didn’t quench the red haze. Maybe if he sees actual red, actual blood. He raises his knife. Perseus bucks and tries to throw him off  and he nearly did, but he locks down more. A knife in the spine should stop his struggling. He tightens his hold on his handle, lift it higher and — 

someone rips it from his hand.

Another pulls him back by the shoulder till he’s off completely and on his back. 

And a third is trying to restrain him by digging their knee into the cavity of his throat.

He slips his dagger from behind his back and jabs the knife right above where the kneecap should be. He slices out. Blood splatters across his face and screams break out in multiple directions. One in pain. Several in terror. Zombies don’t scream. Zombies don’t bleed. The knees retracts and he rolls out from under the restraint and onto his knees. 

But a hand is already on his upper arm the next second. He grabs the owner’s arm and their ugly orange shirt, sweep his leg out, and tugs down. The fourth person fell. 

But a fifth and sixth person already have hands on him and they shove his face into the dirt and pin his wrists behind his back. 

He struggles for all he’s worth, but there’s more hands and more force and more yelling. So he struggles harder. 

“Shit, what the fuck is wrong with you Travis!” 

He kicks a shin.  

“Clarisse! Clarisse!! Oh my god. Oh my GOD!”

He bites a hand. 

“Get out of my way. I’m going to kick his teeth in!”

He headbutts someone in the balls. 

“Dude, calm down! Piper, charmspeak his ass!”

[Piper?] and he stops struggling. 

Hands are locking his wrist together. But the only thing he can think about is 

[Piper? But Piper is—]

“Forget charmspeaking. Someone get Connor! Wait, I see him. Connor, get over here! Your brother went off the radar.” 

“Travis.”

He raises his head an inch and stare at the monster. At the man. At the horse. A centaur. A familiar face. A face from before the apocalypse. What was his name? 

“Travis, will you please tell us what is ailing you?” 

Gods, what is his name? What is his name? 

[a bastard]

“Travis? Can you understand me?”

What was it? Cylas? Chance? Camdyn? Caelan?  Charon? Chiron? 

“What are you wearing, Travis? ”

Chiron. It was Chiron.

“Travis, can you speak?”

Chiron Chiron Chiron Chiron Chiron. That’s Chiron. But how, why, what?

“Tra… vis?”

And he trace it to the source, eyes landing on the face he sees everyday. The ocean blue eyes he etchs down to memory. The unruly, unbrushed brown hair he knows down to the last curl. But the orange shirt. The brown khakis. The 9 beaded necklace. That thin line running across his left brow. The surprise, the worry, the unsureness is all new. 

That isn’t his brother.

The beads don’t match up. The scar don’t add up. Something’s wrong. 

Another man comes up beside Chiron. He looks familiar too. But he recalls his name in an instant. Dionysus.

Dionysus waves a hand and his eyes fall shut without permission. Before passing out, he hears Chiron, in his scold he haven’t heard for so, so long, “Mr. D!” 

[catgluue]

Chapter Five: Trapped

I’m back, babies!! And IT IS STILL ROYAI WEEK IN MY HEART. Basically this took forever because I’m writing this by the seat of my pants and I tried to make it work with the prompts in the order given (if we ignore the fact that I am loosely referencing the prompts at best) but you know what I give up, this is happening, it’s fine. 

Anyway big BIG thank you to everyone who reads and/or reviews, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. 

Read on A03

Chapter Five: Trapped

Come nightfall she tries to sleep on the couch, which seems the most promising spot given her limited success two nights ago. After tossing and turning - when did the clock become so unbearably loud? - she finds herself walking up the stairs seemingly aimlessly, until she’s back in the room that used to be Roy’s. She takes a moment to stand in the window, looking out at the moon lighting the tops of the trees and the lawn and the path she used to walk long ago, before she chose another path entirely. Settling down on top of the bed she imagines it still smells faintly of him and drifts off more quickly than she would have thought possible.

When she awakens suddenly the moonlight has shifted, and there are noises in the hall.

Silently she rolls off the bed, hitting the wood floor noiselessly, grateful for the old carpet that still sits under the bed that muffles the faint thud of her stocking feet hitting the floor. Someone is creeping in the hall. Someone is not as stealthy as they think. Two someones, she amends, pulling her sidearm from the holster at her back and holding her breath to catch the faint scuffling as they move along. When they enter the room in a burst of noise and light (what kind of burglars bring a flashlight , she thinks in annoyance) she’s ready, neatly grazing the shin of one and then the thigh of the other. They’re bleeding profusely with superficial wounds when she gets to her feet, having taken the cord off the curtain, and sweeps the feet out from the slower one with her leg. The other thunders down the stairs and she pays him no mind, flipping this one onto his back, her knee digging into his spine as she wraps the cord tightly around his wrists.

“Who sent you?” she asks, guessing that this wiry man in threadbare clothing isn’t here to rob her of his own volition. The house is in disrepair and everyone knows her family was all but destitute by the end.

“Bitch!” he spits, and she sighs, digging her knee in further as he lets out an involuntary yell against the carpet; he can answer or he can crack a rib.

“What is your name?” she tries instead and this time he gasps out an answer.

“Johnson,” he gasps. “Frank Johnson, and that’s all you’ll get, I hope it’s satisfactory.”

She gets to her feet, dragging him up with her, just as Fuery comes thundering into the room, gun drawn.

“Captain, are you hurt?”

“No,” she replies. “Did you get the other one?”

They did, as it happens, and he’s tied to a chair in the kitchen by the time they get downstairs. Havoc has his weapon drawn but looks unconcerned; the colonel has a single white glove on and an impassive expression that would be unreadable to everyone but her, and Breda is eating an apple noisily while regarding the robber with a stony expression. Their second captive’s face is nearly the same color as the glove that he eyes warily while he sings like a canary.

“-said there might be one woman in the house, didn’t say anything about the damn Hero of Ishval being here! This is well above my pay grade if you ask me-”

“Well did he mention that the woman was the country’s most renowned sharpshooter?” Roy is saying dryly. “You’d think that would be pertinent information. Hawkeye, are you all right?”

“Fine, sir,” she says, depositing Frank in a chair next to the other man. No one bothers tying him up.

“Good. Well, now you are both going to tell me what you were intending to do with my Captain,” he directs at the two men, expression dark as he fingers the end of his ignition glove with his other hand. “And I’d choose your words carefully.”

“We weren’t to hurt her,” Frank volunteers, “Just ah, apprehend her.”

“Idiots,” Breda mutters, rolling his eyes, and Riza appreciates this. She gives a quick half-smile as his eyes flicker to hers and he grins widely, taking another bite of the apple.

“Sir,” she interjects, but Roy is already standing from his perch on a barstool tugging on his glove reflexively.

“And why , exactly, were you sent to apprehend her?”

“Look,” the other man says, speaking up at last, “We weren’t told the specifics - clearly, or else we’d have been more prepared. I mean we haven’t even talked to this guy in the flesh-”

“ General ,” she cuts in, loudly enough that he turns to look at her. “What if they did apprehend me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out-”

“No, I mean suppose I go with them, and see what this criminal mastermind wants,” she suggests. Roy’s brow furrows.

“Absolutely not .”

“I dunno boss, that’s a pretty solid plan. She goes in as bait, with us as backup. We find out what exactly this person’s endgame is, and then we take them down,” Breda reasons, apple discarded as he carefully and conspicuously cleans his own gun, an action that Riza is certain isn’t altogether necessary but helps to set the mood.

“I’ll go ahead, find a vantage point, it’ll be safe as can be,” Havoc volunteers. Fuery is looking curiously at Roy, gun still in the arm that hands slack at his side.

“Sorry if this sounds insubordinate, sir, but since when do you not think the Captain can take care of herself?” he asks in a quiet voice. Riza cocks an eyebrow at the General and Havoc’s face lights up.

“An excellent point,” he says. “Why wouldn’t you trust your own bodyguard in this very important capacity?” They have him there. Roy is regarding his Lieutenant with a mixture of confusion and annoyance when Riza turns to Frank, hands on her hips.

“You’re going to take me to whoever this person is.”

“That’s it, you’re just gonna untie us and come willingly?” The other man asks incredulously. “You’ll be making our job real easy, thanks for that.”

“They really have no idea who they were trying to kidnap,” Breda mutters. “You’ll want to watch your mouth when you’re talking to a lady with five guns on her person.”

-x-

“Hmm,”

Riza lifted her head from where it had been laying on her arms and turned slightly at the sound of Roy’s hum behind her. She was sprawled out on one of the couches in the parlor, him seated in a chair next to her with pen and paper, mapping out the intricate tattoo that fanned out across her back. It was late afternoon on the second day of this study and she’d been dozing as he worked in silence.

“What?” she asked when he didn’t elaborate. “Find something interesting?”

“It’s all interesting,” he said earnestly. “I’ve been trying to sketch it first and worry about figuring it all out later but sometimes pieces just catch my eye.” She knew perfectly well that he hadn’t been diligently sketching for two days - for one thing it had been two days, and while it was a complicated array it wasn’tthat complicated. For another, the sound of his pencil scratching against the paper was often punctuated by long moments of silence while he contemplated whatever he had written down. She, in no hurry to end the process, hadn’t said anything, content to bask in the dreamy autumn sunlight and his presence.

“I don’t know anything about it,” she confessed. “I’m just the human sketchbook.” She didn’t mean for it to sound bitter but to her ears it was petulant, and she bit her lip in annoyance. She started as his fingertips brushed along her shoulder blade, down towards her spine. He had barely touched her during the whole process, excepting the few times he reached out without thinking. Riza didn’t know how to tell him she didn’t mind.

In a way the past few days felt like she was fulfilling the destiny her father set for her; a path she was bound to take regardless of what her own wishes might be. Her father told her that she was to guard his secrets and disclose them to a worthy alchemist who conspicuously remained nameless. In the years to follow she wondered, many times, if he saw her as some being of judgement, placed in his life to choose a worthy successor, instead of a very human daughter who only craved love and support. She saw herself as a train on a track, chugging steadily towards the only possible destination. Riza had been frustrated at times by her apparent lack of options but if the September sun, the worn, comfortable furniture, and the dark-haired man she trusted above all others constructed a prison, it was one she would have gladly spent the rest of her days in.

But the tattoo was only so big. She knew her days in the sun were numbered.

“It’s - I’m not done yet by any means, but considering this is flame alchemy we’re talking about I had wondered why there’s so much to do with air. It makes sense of course: fires are controlled by oxygen flow, among other things. But this part seems to indicate that a spark or some existing source of fire is needed.”

Riza half rolled over, holding the pillow to her chest as she turned to look at him. He snatched his hand back as she did so, turning pink as if just now realizing he was touching her.

“So it’s not about creating fire at all - it’s about controlling and directing it.”

“Exactly. I guess I’m just surprised, considering the secrecy surrounding it. There really is no such thing as creating fire from alchemy-”

“A spark has to already exist,” she finished. His eyes traveled up her body from the array to settle on hers, before quickly flicking back down to his notebook.

“It’s getting late, we can stop for the day if you want to,” he said. She turned her head and nestled her cheek back into the pillow, letting her eyes close as she breathed in deeply.

“No,” she told him. “I’m fine where I am.”

-x-

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me what this is all about?” She asks as they lead her away from the old house and down the sloping lawn towards the forest. The moonlight illuminates the grounds a little, and she’s always had exceptional night vision, but she doesn't see anything ahead but trees. In fact unless things have drastically changed she knows for a fact that there’s nothing ahead but trees; not for five, six miles when they’d run into the O’Connell’s lands. But she doubts they’re taking her there, somehow. Wherever they’re headed is somewhere in the woods - her woods.

“Course not,” Aldman - she was able to get a name, at least - tells her almost cheerfully. “Not my business, anyhow. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“What’s in it for you?”  

“Money, of course,” he responds.

“Yeah, all Rainer wants is the alchemy, he said. We get anything of material value,” Frank supplies, and Aldman nudges him hard in the ribs as Riza lets out a quiet laugh.

“Anything of value? Sorry to disappoint you but there’s nothing there, alchemy or otherwise,” she lies. Well not quite a lie - everything she’s found so far of her mother’s jewelry is gone from the house already, given to the General this afternoon for safekeeping.

“What do you mean by that?” Frank asks sharply.

“What, do you think I would have left gold bricks in the house for fifteen years while I survived off an army salary? Unless you collect antique armoires, I hope this Rainer person has something else to pay you off with.” More than threats of shooting or incineration, this seems to give them pause. It’s one thing to be darkly informed that harming a hair on Riza’s head will result in immediate immolation but quite another to realize one might not get paid for a job one has mostly completed.

“No more talking,” Aldman growls, jabbing her with the one pistol they have between them, and she rolls her eyes in the darkness. “We’re nearly there anyhow.”

Riza peers through the trees, searching for any kind of a structure, or even a person , but still sees nothing, nothing but trees growing thickly around them. Aldman and Frank hang back and she balks, but starts walking again at a nudge from the pistol, though she walks slowly, scanning the forest carefully. She used to play in these woods as a child, but the same trees now seem unfamiliar, and despite her assurance that these criminals are blundering fools, faintly menacing in the near-darkness.

She’s almost past the tree when she sees the transmutation circle, carved into the bark just below eye level.

Riza digs her heels in and whirls around, reaching for her own gun concealed at the small of her back and as she does so she sees the same mark on another tree, feet away; she’d been about to walk between them.

“What is this?” she demands, pointing her gun at Aldman, who is pointing his right back at her.

“Keep walking,” he orders her and she decides all bets are off. Before she can yell for backup Frank moves faster than she thought he had the ability to, ducking under her gun and slamming into her midsection. She falls backwards, and has the wind knocked out of her as she hits the floor. She rolls, gasping, and jumps to her feet, pulling her gun up-

Only to find she’s aiming at her own back.

She sees herself suspended between the trees, arms stretched out to either side, mid-fall, for all the world like an insect caught in a spiderweb. The two men on the other side look about as surprised as she feels, Frank stepping forward to look at her face while Aldman grins, gun lowering. She holds up her hands and finds they have an odd, transparent quality to them, and sinks to her knees. The forest floor makes no noise as she settles onto it.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Frank is saying. “Rainer wrote ‘just get her through the trees’ and he’d take care of the rest but I wasn’t expecting this. Now what, we leave her? How do we get our cut with all those soldiers swarming the mansion anyway?” Aldman doesn’t answer, but lifts his pistol and puts a bullet between Frank’s eyes. The other man drops like a stone, and Aldman walks through the pair of trees purposefully, stepping out of his own body as though it was as comfortable as slipping off a pair of shoes.

Riza rises slowly to her feet, doing her best to ignore the yelling as Havoc and Fuery descend on the scene, guns drawn - she supposes that whatever she is now, they won’t be able to help her; their yelling sounds muffled, as though she’s hearing it from beneath several inches of water.

“What did you do to me?” she asks him. The pistol is a comforting weight in her hand, though she knows it won’t do much for her now, a shade of its former self. Just like her. Fuery takes off running back towards the house while Havoc inches towards her, delicately holding a hand up to her neck, feeling for a pulse. She turns her back on the whole scene, not wanting to see who Fuery would inevitably bring back. She doesn’t want to see the look on Roy’s face when he sees her hanging there.

“You’re not an alchemist,” he shrugs. “It’ll go over your head.”

“Try me,” she challenges. This feels like a test of some kind and from the way he grins, she feels both that she’s somehow passed and that this isn’t a good thing. There is one thing that she knows to be a universal truth about all alchemists; each and every one of them is at one point convinced that he alone understands the idiosyncrasies of the universe. She suspects that this is that moment for Aldman - Rainer, whoever - but she knows that like all the others, his moment of hubris shall be fleeting. Her grip tightens.

“Oh it’s impressive,” he tells her. “You see there’s a little trick I know - one that the military wasn’t much interested in when they learned the restrictions-”

“Let me guess, the restrictions involve you needing to seperate my consciousness from my body,” she says flatly. He doesn’t flinch away from her furious glare - with her being incorporeal, there isn’t a reason to.

“And I thought you were just the muscle and Mustang was the brains of the operation,” he purrs. “But unfortunately yes.”

“Well it can’t be permanent,” she says. “Or else you’d be trapped here with me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he tells her, fishing out a pendant necklace from a string around his neck. The pendant is an oval of beaten copper, and she can see a sigil etched into the metal. “I’ve taken precautions. I don’t think that I can say the same for you; I just needed to isolate your subconscious so we could really delve into things.”

“So I’m asleep,” she surmises, looking back at her prone body suspended between the trees. Three figures are running full-tilt from the house and she turns away again, taking an unsteady, shallow breath before she continues. “Should be easy enough to wake me.”

“Closer to a coma, so think again,” he corrects her.

“CAPTAIN!! ” The anguished cry breaks through whatever barrier hangs between her and her team as the men skid to a halt before the tree. Breda ducks to check Frank and Havoc waves him away, as Fuery prods at Aldman - Rainer - and her General walks up to where she hangs limply, lifting a hand and hesitantly holding it to her face, his confident mask briefly dropping to show a man utterly lost. Riza makes herself turn away.

“You haven’t explained what you want from me that you couldn’t get from me while awake,” she says, and he fishes around in his pocket, finally pulling out what seems to be a photograph.

“Think of it as being a little like hypnosis,” he explains. “But more hands on, a touch more visceral. We’re going to sift through your memories together.” She doesn’t like the sound of this one bit - sifting through her memories isn’t something she even cares to do alone. But she can’t see that she has much choice at all in the matter -  she’s been forced from her body and stands as a shade in front of him, the General calling to her behind her back, and there is nowhere to go.

[blog-in-a-corner]

TSOTBL - A Poor Choice

After the talk Lucinda and Kim had yesterday, Kim though she'd pay Aphmau a little visit as well.

Aaron, Zane and Aphmau were all in the lobby playing UNO, as Zane had forgotten he had packed a deck of UNO cards with himself.

“The UNO company themselves said that you can't stack draw-4s!” Aphmau argued, mulling over all the cards she had in her hand. “Oh so now you're bringing that up, not when I was the one getting stacked on?” Zane commented. “Sorry Aphmau, we play by the street rules here.” Aaron claimed, although he wasn't smirking you could tell through his voice he practically was. “Hmph, it's not fair I tells ya!” Aphmau whined. “Hey Aphmau can I-oh, are you guys busy?” Kim accidentally interrupted. “We’re just busy watching Aph get her butt kicked in UNO.” Zane joked. “It's not funny!” Aphmau fumed. “Do you wanna join me, Zane and Aphmau for a game?” Aaron offered Kim. “Ah, no thank you. I actually came here because I was looking for Aphmau.” Kim explained. “What do ya need?” Aphmau asked. “I wanted to talk to you about... something.” Kim muttered. “Can't you tell me right now?” Aphmau said, putting down a card. “No, I need to talk to you in private.” Kim insisted. “Okay, okay, just let me finish this game and I'll meet you in your room, 'kay?” Aphmau suggested. “Sure.” Kim accepted, leaving the lobby and back to her room.

After quite a bit of time, Aphmau finally came up to Kim's room.

“That was a long game of UNO.” Kim commented. “I'm….very bad at the game.” Aphmau admitted sheepishly. “Yeah I can tell.” Kim added. “Anyways, what'd ya wanna talk to me about?” Aphmau asked. “I...erm..did you ever...” Kim mumbled nervously. “Huh? What was that?” Aphmau asked again, leaning closer to Kim. “C'mon Kim just get to the point.” Kim thought to herself. “Aphmau did….did you ever actually talk to Zane, or did you just lie to me?” Kim confronted Aphmau sharply.

Aphmau nervously avoided eye contact and fiddled with her hair, trying to mutter up something to say.

“I...I didn't lie to you Kim, I did talk to Zane.” Aphmau explained. “You did?” Kim implored. “Yes.” Aphmau confirmed. “So why the heck is he still bad mouthing Garroth?!” Kim raised her voice. “Listen it's not that simple, he...has a lot of family issues.” “What, did Garroth do something to him when they were younger or something?” Kim questioned. “No not at all! He just-it's just complicated okay! It's family stuff between them and I really don't think it's my place to tell you exactly what.” “So what! I have family issues, a lot of people have family issues. Big deal. Didn't give me the right to treat the people who didn't do anything wrong like crap.” “No it's-argh you wouldn't understand!” “I understand that apparently Garroth covered for him when you guys disbanded the jury! You know I always wondered why I never saw Garroth during his senior year.” “I-how do you know about that?!” Aphmau asked in shock. “Lucinda told me about it.” Kim answered, lowering her voice. “What else do you know about it…?” Aphmau questioned. “Not a lot, just that and then some.” Kim explained. “Hm I see….” “I'm sure that after doing something like that, now that Zane is all “nice” or whatever, that they should have a good relationship by now? Garroth sure as hell loves Zane so why does Zane still treat him like crap despite everything?” “L...Listen Kim I'm going to be real with you, but you better not let Zane get word of this!” Aphmau whisper-shouted. “You have my word.” Kim promised. “I know that Zane is full of it, Garroth definitely isn't blameless in the situation, the guy still has plenty of flaws, but Zane is taking things way out of proportion.” Aphmau elaborated. “So why don't you tell him that?” Kim asked in confusion. “Because he'll just think I'm siding with Garroth and make this whole fiasco out of it! I don't want to deal with that, especially trapped in some run down lodge with four of my friends and my ex and no connection to the outside world!” Aphmau claimed in frustration, sitting on the bed. “Besides...he's on the right track right now, he still needs a lot of work albeit, but he's a way better person than he was a year ago...and I don't want to mess that up...” “I understand what you're saying Aphmau, but sometimes the only way to improve is by taking criticism instead of what you want to hear.” Kim sighed. “Yeah…I guess you're right…” Aphmau admitted. “Listen, you can just deal with the Zane situation later, it's bad enough already with having to be trapped in a place with the ex you promised to stay away from for a while, the Zane thing can wait. Garroth's been dealing with him for years, what's a couple more days?” Kim suggested, sitting beside Aphmau. “I’m sorry for not being more understanding earlier, I was so irritated at Zane that I didn't take a moment to consider how you were doing with everything that's happened.” “It's all right Kim, I understand why you got upset. I promise I'll really face Zane about it, just...not right now okay?” Aphmau promised. “Thanks Aph.” Kim muttered. “It's not a problem Kim..” Aphmau said, giving Kim a light smile. “Anyways, I'll let you go now. You probably wanna play some more with Aaron and Zane right now.” Kim said, getting up and opening the door for Aphmau. “Wanna join us?” Aphmau offered. “Oh, erm, I don't know. You guys looked like you were having fun all together and I wouldn't want to disturb you guys.” Kim rejected the offer nervously. “Aw c'mon! You're always welcome to a game of UNO!” Aphmau insisted. “Well...okay, maybe just one game.” Kim gave in. “Great! C'mon let's ask Lucinda is she wants to play!” Aphmau dragged Kim out of the room. “Ah but she's asleep! She's been taking a lot of naps to make up for the lack of sleep. “Aw well that's too bad, oh well!” Aphmau sighed. “At least it’s one less person to watch you get your butt kicked at UNO.” Kim joked, trying not to giggle.

“Hey!” Aphmau laughed, walking back to the lobby with Kim.

_____________________________________________

It was late at night. Kim, Aaron, Aphmau, and Zane had already gone to bed. Lucinda on the other hand, had just woken up.

“Urgh….what time is it?” Lucinda groaned, looking at her surroundings. It was pretty dark inside her room. “How long was I asleep?” Lucinda was still slightly disoriented from waking up. She picked up her phone and looked at the time. “Ten thirty? Damn, looks like I won't be falling asleep for a while” she sighed. She slipped on her purple fuzzy bunny slippers(the most iconic slippers) and stood up.”Guess I'll walk around for a bit as long as I'm up.”

Lucinda walked out of her room and stretched her arms, she was awake but her body still felt tired. She froze as she passed up the rooms. “That static feeling again! Eugh that feeling is stronger than ever right now…” Lucinda thought to herself. She continued to walk down the hall despite her discomfort. She made it downstairs and looked around. “Man I'm still feeling that damn static! I didn't feel it down here before but now I do…and even during the day…” She stood in the middle of the lobby, deep in thought. Was the static just a feeling? Or was it...a presence? Lucinda would have come to her conclusion but-

Lucinda heard shuffling through the bushes a thick snow, but not just any shuffling, it almost sounded as if someone was outside.

“What the hell?” Lucinda muttered, switching her attention to the outside window. “Hold on Lucinda, think logically, it's probably just a wolf outside or-” Lucinda then heard a grunt. “Dammit.” A voice outside uttered, shuffling not so quietly.

Lucinda instantly shifted into action, she summoned her wand in hand and bust open the door outside.

“Who's out there!” Lucinda shouted, keeping her wand close by.

There was no answer.

“I'm not going to ask twice, if you don't reveal yourself now, I'll blast this whole perimeter!” She yelled, prepping a spell with her wand.

Still, no answer.

“Alright, have it your way.” Lucinda then casted a blasting spell, it blasted a wave of magic around the entire lodge.

Although there was nothing to be heard from the mysterious voice.

“Hm, whoever it was must've run off before I could blast them. What a coward and a creep. Worst of both worlds.” Lucinda muttered to herself, walking back inside, locking the doors tightly. “But for extra precaution, let's play with magic shall we?” She then guarded the lodge with a small protection spell, it would last them the night to say the least. “Well, I've got the heebie-jeebies now, so I guess I'll head back to my room, don't want to get spooked by another asshat in the woods.” She walked back upstairs and into her room, where she sat on her bed quietly, trying her best to fall asleep again.

“That was close.” The cloaked figure said under his breath, running through the snow ridden woods. He stopped by a tree, trying to catch his breath. “Too close….I have to be more careful next time. Things are aligning with each other….if anything time is running out.” The man stopped panting and looked up to the ever so bright moon. “I have to keep going forward. I can't stop now. Not when I'm so close to achieving what I...have worked so hard for all these years….”

//Howdy y’all! The story is going to be on hold for while, PAGE 23 is going to have a LOT of artwork, unfortunately I’ve been having some tablet and computer issues so it’s going to take a while T-T. But hey better late than never! In the meantime I’m going to make a book of oneshots next monday! Mostly featuring my au’s, maybe a few shippy or platonic ones here and there, and even a few comdey ones. So stay tuned! ;3//

[wesker20]

Fallen Hero 1.5 Episode 1: I Really Hate Polymorphs

On hindsight you are starting to regret beating the Rangers so handily. In the last four months you have become the new target for most new and upcoming heroes seeking some recognition. Is not that they are any good or challenging, but you have seen bigger villains fall because they were swarmed by many weaker heroes. If you weren’t careful, one of them could get lucky and take you down. Like the one you fought last week. You beat him easily enough but he managed to sneak in a hard blow, destroying half of your mask. Mortum had a field day with that one. You killed him but still, if he had harnessed any more energy into that punch, he could have decapitated you.

So lately you have become a little paranoid; ok more than usual, keeping an eye out all around while your crew takes care of a small gang that decided to take your name as theirs. Yes, that is another problem: small time criminals taking your name to have a better reputation themselves. This latest one has taken to calling themselves the Army of Mastermind. Besides how lazy that name is, they smear your reputation by randomly killing anyone who insults them. Not that you are against killing obviously, but killing a guy in the middle of the day, on a public street because he called you “a little bitch” is stupid and in turn makes you look petty. So a message to all other gangs who have your name is in order. And so you put all of your contacts to use and one of them gave you a tip of where their hideout was.

“Boss,” you hear Pelayo’s voice in your communicator.

“What?”

“Everything’s set.”

“No boosts or mods in there?” you question to make sure.

“None that we have noticed.”

“Good. Move in,” you order. Plan is simple. Get in, plant a small bomb and get out before anyone knows you are here. If anything goes wrong your crew has their orders to escape as fast as possible, no heroics or last minute attempts for success. Or at least deep down you hope it goes that way. And then you hear the explosion.

“Pelayo, what’s going on? That came out early.”

“They knew we were coming boss.” You hear shooting and screams through the communicator.

“And I remember ordering you to escape if that was the case,” you answer, frustrated.

“We tried but-“

“Nehal,” you whisper with little surprise. The girl needs to learn self-control.

“And then Zaza followed up.”

You roll your eyes at that too. Too trigger happy for his own good. Thankfully Zaza is a great shot so at least no bullet will go to waste. “Get out of there now, that’s an order. And tell Nehal that if she doesn’t follow, I’ll go there and knock her out myself,” you finish. It would not be the first time she tries to fight it out to the bitter end. You admire her determination but you have more use for a living underling than a dead one.

You quickly jump down, using your rockets to soften your landing and run through the alley towards the gang’s hideout. You begin to wonder how they could have known you were coming. Someone tipped them off obviously, but who? Only you, Rosie, and the rest of the crew knew of this. Not even Mortum knew. Ok scratch that, she most likely did, but you doubt she would care or bother to do it. And even less if it meant endangering Jane. Rosie is too loyal for that and the crew would not sabotage their own mission. So who the hell tipped them off?

And then you feel the sudden thoughts of rage and you duck, dodging what appears to be some sort of long rope. You turn around and see someone standing at least twenty feet away in the shadows. And they have an unnaturally long arm, long enough to reach you. It takes you a second to put two and two together and realize that what you thought was a long rope is actually an arm and you roll to the side dodging the incoming attack from said arm. Having failed the arm retracts back to its owner and the owner walks out of the shadows.

“Didn’t thought I would find you here. Lucky me,” says the figure in a feminine voice, a young feminine voice. As you stand up you eye her up and find a young woman, probably no older than Herald, dressed in a red and white skin tight suit and a mask that covers most of her face except for her mouth and her long black hair. She stands in front of you, fists closed and eyes staring deep into you, and you sense a deep seethed rage directed at you. What the hell did you do to her?

“If by lucky you mean you’ll end up as a bloody pulp then sure, let’s go with that,” you answer with sarcasm. It’s nothing new for you, just another rookie biting more than they can chew.

“We’ll see about that asshole.”

“You know it’s rude not to present yourself. My name’s Mastermind,” you say making an elaborated bow. Might look like you are cocky and not taking her seriously… ok the second half is true but the first half is not. You are simply trying to extend the conversation, confuse her, or piss her off. Either of those three will give you an advantage over her and see what she is about.

“And I’m about to kick your fucking ass,” she yells and both of her arms shoot forward, elongating and aiming at you. Pissed off it is. And she’s a polymorph. Shit.

You are long out of the way by the time the arms reach you. But then her arms quickly retract and she leaps forward turning into some sort of wheel and rolling at you fast enough that you need both the Rat King and your own abilities to get out of the way. Damn, she’s fast. May be a rookie but she knows how to use those powers. Shit. You really hate polymorphs.

They are arguably one of the most, if not the most, annoying enemies to fight against. They can stretch, twist and transform their body into almost anything they want. You cannot punch them or kick them unless you want to be trapped in their elastic bodies, and you can’t lock them in keys or locks as they either slip out of your grasp or turn those moves against you and lock you on one instead. Or both. And that’s just physically speaking, mentally speaking it is a whole other issue. Their minds are as chaotic and transformative as their bodies, you get in and you might never get out. You can sense some surface level thoughts but that’s it. Anything else risks getting you trapped in their minds.

“Pelayo, I’m a bit occupied. Don’t wait for me, just go. I’ll meet you all at the hide out,” you whisper into the microphone.

“Boss, are you sure?”

“Yes. Now go,” you say with authority. A quick yes sir and now you have nothing to worry about. Well except for Polygirl over there. She quickly jumps from wall to wall and jumps at you, expanding her body until it resembles a sheet; a big, big sheet that threatens to cover and trap you, a sheet that you cannot dodge. You really hate Polymorphs.

“Got you,” she yells triumphantly until you rest the palm of your hand on her and activate it. Suddenly a small shock of electricity shoots out and the girl screams in pain. She lets you go and falls back. Just a little thing you asked Mortum to add just in case you found yourself surrounded by multiple enemies. It instantly paralyzes most people and heroes. But of course, polymorphs just love to spit in the face of that.

You flex your muscles trying to look as nonchalant as possible. “Listen I got better things to do, so how about we call it quits tonight and meet another day shall we?” you say. You are sure that will not work but it doesn’t hurt to try.

“You are not getting away!” she yells and launches herself at you. Oh great. You shoot your palm forward but she twists her body around you and instead tangles herself through your entire body, tying up your arms and legs. You shoot your rockets and fly both of you against a brick wall, crashing through it and knocking her down. Instantly your mind is swallowed up by the Rat King’s own as it tries to protect you. You soothe it, letting it know you are safe and sound. For now anyway, you have to get out of here fast. This girl is determined to get you for whatever reason. Huh, what is her reason?

“Hey I’m beginning to wonder, why do you want to get me so badly?” you ask taking the direct approach while mixing in a bit of mockery. She seems a lot more determined to get you than most other rookies you have fought. Not only that but you felt her rage before you first saw her and then again when she rushed at you. She really hates you.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t even know who I am?” she says as if it should be obvious.

“I have far too many other, better things to do than to search up every rookie who thinks they are good enough to fight me, so no.”

“You arrogant son of a bitch. Do you even remember the hero you killed last week?” she says more pissed off and incredulous.

“What about him? Another rookie who thought he was big shit,” you say as her eyes narrow on you. Though you asked, you are starting to put all of the pieces together. And you do not like how that looks.

“He was… he was,” she tries to say, tears in her eyes.

And you catch the stray thought “Oh, boyfriend.” Shit. Should’ve known something like this would happen. “Alright listen up, he’s the one who rushed at me first ok? Is not my fault that he…” but your words fall on deaf ears as her hands grow, pick up two dumpsters and prepares to crush you with them. I really, really hate polymorphs.

You rush out of the way but she throws one at you that catches you. You end up with a dumpster on you and through a brick wall. Thanks Mortum for her suit, you really appreciate it. You push the Dumpster out of the way to find yourself inside an abandoned building. You quickly come up with a plan, just lure her in and use the nanites to eat through a column and let the roof fall on her. It wouldn’t kill her but it will delay her for a while. Well, you hope so.

“Ok listen can we at least talk about it,” you say but she shoots another elongated arm at you and you dodge. “I guess that’s a no.” You dodge another incoming attack and position yourself just besides a column.

“You’ve caused enough pain already. There’s nothing to talk about,” she says.

Your eyes narrow on her so much you think she could see them behind your mask. “Kid, you have no idea what true pain really is,” you say and proceed to touch the column with your left hand. The nanites shoot out eagerly and devour the column. The girl gasps as she stares at the disintegrating column. You rush out of the way just in time as the roof collapses on top of her. The entire two stories building falls and you wonder if that was a bit excessive. Movement under the rocks change your mind and you decide to move. But just as you begin walking your communicator turns up and you hear Pelayo’s voice.

“Boss.”

“What is it now? Did Zaza or Nehal do something stupid again?” you ask wondering. First Polygirl over here and now something else.

“No sir. Worst. We have a big problem.”

You hear someone scream a curse, a scream that can only belong to Nehal. “How big?” you ask.

“A big silver problem.”

Oh, Argent.

Shit.

Episode 2: Three's a Crowd

[synthient]

Could you elaborate on what you mean about Death T re stanning and fairness? It sounds interesting and I'd love to hear about it if you don't mind sharing.

ajhfakj hoo boy. Okay.

So some time around the summer before last (judging by the point where the first baffled and frustrated readmores start showing up on this blog), I read Death-T. It made me feel…some kind of way. An…unpleasant kind of way.

Here’s the thing about me: I can’t just let myself have an emotional reaction to a piece of fiction. I have to, first, pick apart my own emotions to figure out why I had that reaction, and second, pick apart the story to figure out how it works and how it made me feel that way.

On the Feelings Front, I’ve isolated two main causes:

1. I have a brain that Needs Things To Be Fair. That doesn’t mean I can’t handle unfairness in a piece of fiction. Unfairness creates conflict, and conflict is what makes for good storytelling. But it does mean that I need the story to be aware of its own unfairness. I need the unfairness to be the point. Otherwise I start vibrating at high speeds and shaking my fist at clouds.

2. I’m a Kaiba stan. I accidentally got emotionally attached to the Funny Card Game Boy from the Funny Card Game Show. 

There’s the feelings part. That leaves the “picking apart the story” side of the equation. And I’ve been trying to do that in nice punchy little one-or-two-paragraph text posts for the past year or so, but I don’t think I’ve ever really done the argument justice that way. So I guess that leaves only one option: writing a giant wordvomit essay on Yugioh (1996-2004).

Why This Is A Death-T Hateblog: The Masterpost

An important note: I like being able to back up my thoughts with Evidence From The Text, but I’m specifically working off the (Viz translated) manga. You can read Cards with Teeth here, Capumon here, and Death-T starting here if you want to check any of my facts or draw your own conclusions. Keep in mind that the Toei anime made pretty huge changes to the s0 Kaiba storyline, and the DM anime skipped most of it entirely–if you’re more familiar with those continuities, there’re some major differences in the manga.

(Also this thing probably reads better on desktop. I think the formatting got screwed up on mobile)

How We Got Here

Before we can actually dig into Death-T, we need to start at the very beginning (♫a very good place to start♫). So that means taking a look at “The Cards with Teeth (Part 1)” and “The Cards with Teeth (Part 2).”

For its first 8 chapters, the Yugioh manga chugs blissfully (if repetitively) along with an episodic, conflict-of-the-week formula. No overarching plot. Next to no sense of continuity. No trading cards in sight.

Then this asshole shows up. 

His name is Seto Kaiba (or “Kaiba,” at least–not sure if this is just a Viz thing, but my copy of CwT never mentions his given name). Not that he bears a whole lot of resemblance to the Seto Kaiba we later come to know and love (and/or love to hate).

Almost none of his most defining traits are there yet. There’s no mention of Mokuba, no mention of Kaibacorp, no indicationthat he’s especially rich (besides the fact that he’s carrying around a wholebriefcase of trading cards), no reason to believe he has a specific obsession with Blue Eyes (he just thinks it’s a strong card and it’d help him win tournaments), and no sign of any special hacking/strategy/hand-to-hand-combat/etc. skills (the kid is hilariously incompetent). 

This dude was never supposed to be a recurring character, and it shows.

But anyway, let’s run through the basic series of events:

- Kaiba wanders into the game shop looking forbooster packs. Yugi recognizes him as an acquaintance from school (not as a famous kid CEO, and not as a recent transfer student)

- Kaiba happens to notice the Blue Eyes card lying out onGrandpa’s counter (in this version of events, he hasn’t been stealing rare cards for months before this, he didn’t creep on Yugi’s conversation and followhim home, he had no idea going in that the Blue Eyes was there, and he didn’t already have the other three)

- He offers to trade all the cards in his briefcasefor the Blue Eyes (although he doesn’t tell Grandpa to name his price—again,the millionaire CEO element isn’t a thing yet)

- Grandpa refuses, so the next day Kaiba comes up with alaughably badly thought-out plan to steal the card

- Shockingly, Yugi notices that the “color copy from the catalog” isn’t the real deal. He gently tries to confront Kaiba about it in private

- Kaiba (without showing an ounce of the cool head you’d think you’d need to take over and run a company) panics, starts stammering and unconvincingly denying it, and then smacks Yugi with his briefcase

Annnd then Part 2 plays out like a standard s0 chapter.

“Yami Yugi” takes over. They play a shadow game. Kaiba cheats by slipping the stolen Blue Eyes out of his sleeve (Atem’s like “That’s my Grandpa’s card!” and Kaiba straight up goes “Whaaat, nooo, that’s my card that I, uh, found on the street just now.” A teen genius criminal mastermind, everybody). The shadow magic gives him a spritz from its metaphorical Karmic Cat-Training Spray Bottle and makes his Blue Eyes dissolve (I’d like to think that was Kisara going “I’m not mad, just disappointed,” and Memory World tries to retroactively make that connection, but it’s pretty abundantly clear that nothing about this series was planned that far ahead). He loses. Yadda yadda yadda.

And then Atem goes in for the penalty game.

To recap: 

Some random 10th grader from Yugi’s school stole a trading card, hit someone, and was generally kind of a jerk. As punishment, he was trapped in a hyper-realistic illusion of being ripped apart and slaughtered by half a dozen monsters at once.

Y…ay…?

Let’s Stop and Reflect for a Sec

In theory, I shouldn’t be that much more upset about Cards with Teeth than I am about any other part of s0, right? It’s not like the manga framed it as horrific and wrong when Atem set off an explosion in some teenage bully’s face a couple chapters ago. Giving us the vicarious pleasure of punishing our bullies in over-the-top, Carrie-style ways without actually exploring any of the consequences is, like, the early manga’s whole thing.

But even taking into account the fact that I already had an attachment to this Nasty Bowl Cut Boy thanks to the anime, I do actually think that there are at least two factors that set CwT apart.

The first is that Atem’s karmic punishments are usually…well, karmic. If he inflicts physical harm on someone, it’s because they already inflicted or tried to inflict roughly the same amount of harm on Yugi & co. If the crime was relatively minor, then he only gives out a minor punishment–like, say, when the homeroom teacher was Just Kinda Mean, all he did was allow the class to see her without her makeup on (…setting aside the Let’s Get Into Gender Politics-ness of that chapter).

There’s even a few cases where you could argue that the punishment is too light to fit the crime. Ushio beat Jonouchi and Honda half to death and tried to murder Yugi with a knife, and all he got was this lousy t-shirt an illusion that made the trash on the ground look like money.

In another chapter, the villain of the week tried to rape Anzu, and the only punishment he faced was having his side business exposed as a scam (Let’s Get Into Gender Politics).

Yet in CwT, we see one of the most harmless villains in all of s0 (no prolonged beatings or attempted murder? unheard of!) receive what’s arguably the most horrifying penalty game in the whole manga. At least when that guy got set on fire, it was over fast.

And that brings us to factor number two: Kaiba is the first penalty game victim in s0 who comes back. 

Capumon: Gotta Catch ‘em All!

Well, technically he doesn’t come back in person, at first. Someone else shows up to fight in his name.

Oh hey Mokie. How’s it going?

Rather understandably (imo), Mokuba wants the guy who tortured his brother last week to face some actual consequences for it.

Now here’s an interesting opportunity that the manga has set up for itself. Is it going to dig deep into the balance between defending yourself vs lashing out and causing undue harm? Is it going to remind us that most of the penalty game victims so far, whatever their crimes,have been children? Is it going to demonstrate that when you take out your anger on someone, you don’t just hurt your immediate target, but their loved ones as well?

Nah, who am I kidding.  

Hurting or inconveniencing the Good Guys in any way is Bad. Anything the Good Guys do is Good and Justified. Using magic to stick an already-hurting eleven-year-old in his own personalized hell? Good and Justified.

Before he’s shoved screaming into the Giant Vending Machine Capsule Where Bad And Naughty Elementary Schoolers Go To Atone For Their Crimes, Mokuba mentions that the other penalty game he heard about “made my brother go crazy!”

He also drops a hint of things to come with all the subtlety of an anvil. So I guess by this point, the numbers had come in and the card game chapter had proved unexpectedly popular enough that a sequel was in the works.

Death-Twink? Death-Tastic?Death-Two: Electric Boogaloo?

I’ve been pretty hard on Cards with Teeth and Capsule Monsters Chess so far. But you want to know the truth?

On their own, they aren’t necessarily that bad.

What really matters in a story isn’t the literal events: it’s how those events are framed. At the moment, we’re only midway through an incomplete storyline. Maybe we’re supposed to be horrified. Maybe we’re supposed to be questioning whether or not the hero is really in the right. It all hangs on what these chapters are building to.

As it turns out–as Mokuba just helpfully clued us in on–they were building to Death-T.

And that’s where the shit hits the fan.

Over a dozen chapters after we first met Kaiba, a whole bunch of completely-unforeshadowed facts about him are suddenly dumped on us all at once. He’s rich! The kind of rich that allows for limo rides, a giant mansion, and flouncing around in a fur-lined cape like feudal European nobility! And he’s the president of a company, even though “Whaa?!! But he’s still in high school!” Speaking of which, apparently Kaiba “hasn’t been at school recently.”

The Death-T arc opens with Yugi and Jonouchi attending the world’s most awkward sleepover–the host never shows up, and they don’t even get to paint each others’ nails or watch movies. Also Mokuba tries to murder them in the night, but you know what? If someone tortured my brother, “made him go crazy,” and left him huddled in the house feverishly working on a bizarre project and refusing to go to school for the next few weeks, I’d probably poison them too.

The morning after the sleepover, we learn another new Kaiba Fact…

Ever since the Experience of Death happened, he’s been having horrible recurring PTSD nightmares about it. As you do. When you get tortured.

(This is why, even though I know intellectually that it’s Not That Deep and people arejust having fun, I still get a little skeeved out when I see jokes about howDeath-T happened “just” because Kaiba was that mad about losing a card game or “just”because he had a crush on Yugi and he didn’t know how to deal with it. I’malways internally like “Nnno, I’m pretty sure it was the torture?”)

So far we’ve been shown in pretty brutal detail that our “hero” psychologically broke a fifteen-year-old for no good reason. The manga’s going to have its work cut out for it if it really wants to do a convincing redemption arc for its protagonist. And there’s no way it could possibly try to spin that random act of torture as an acceptable thing, right?

…right?

Crime and Punishment

That’s one of my first big problems with Death-T: to me, it reads as a way of trying to retroactively justify the Experience of Death.

That seems to be the purpose of suddenly giving Kaiba all this wealth and power that was never hinted at in Cards with Teeth. See, he wasn’t just some random high school kid who had the bad luck of crossing someone with magic powers; he was (however improbable that is, as the story lampshades) a high school-aged CEO. He’s so ludicrously powerful that he can torture an old man in front of a live audience and get away with it. Punching up looks a lot better than punching down, doesn’t it?

And you can’t really fault the hero for torturing someone evil, can you? Kaiba used Grandpa’s sanity as a blackmail chip! He ran experiments on human test subjects! He wants to kill Yugi and everyone he loves! Surely a little torture is no worse than he deserved.

There’s only one one problem with that: the Experience of Death happened before Death-T. There’s no way Atem could have known any of this was coming. The audience couldn’t have known it was coming. Takahashi didn’t know. Chronologically speaking, the Experience of Death wasn’t revenge for Death-T. It’s the other way around.

Best Served Cold

So Death-T is a form of eye-for-an-eye vengeance: “Yugi” beat Kaiba at Duel Monsters and tortured him, so now Kaiba’s gonna beat Yugi and torture him, using his own perfect virtual recreation of “Yugi’s” penalty game (oh yeah, that whole “the average person goes insane in about 10 minutes” thing? Kaiba was able to program that detail from personal experience).

But wait! This isn’t really eye-for-an-eye! Kaiba’s going after Yugi’s loved ones, not just Yugi, and that’s worse than what Yugi did to him! And even if it was proportionate, revenge is bad and wrong. That’s how you get endless back-and-forth chains of vengeance and generational blood feuds and stuff. Two wrongs don’t make a right!

And those could all be reasonable points, except…

This entire story is about how great and badass eye-for-an-eye justice is.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take everyone who ever hurt you and make them suffer even worse” is practically the thesis of Season 0. You can’t make something look awesome when the protagonist does it and then turn around and make it seem evil and inexcusable coming from anyone else.

And while Kaiba does wind up targeting Yugi’s friends, that wasn’t part of his original plan. He’s surprised when random people start jumping out of the bleachers/the Kaibacorp employee roster and insisting that they won’t let Yugi do this alone. The writing uses his surprise as proof that he just doesn’t understand The Power of Friendship, but it’s also evidence that his original target was just Yugi.

“If you’re gonna side with my torturer, then you can have the same fate as him, I guess.” It’s not even that far outside the logic Atem’s been using all this time. Just because there’s only one main gang member who personally hurt his friend, that doesn’t mean that Atem won’t rope every random mook who gets in his way into the death game too. (Granted, this doesn’t really apply to Kaiba’s treatment of Grandpa. Or the offscreen experimentation/blackmailing. Or Mokuba, but…we’ll get to that).

…But like I said before, the big issue isn’t the events. It’s the framing. Maybe the point will ultimately be that if penalty games are wrong when the bad guy does them, then they’re wrong when the hero does them too. Maybe this is all leading up to a big reexamination of Atem’s moral code and some much-needed character development.

Maybe. Let’s keep going and see.

*Great Gatsby comic voice* Baby? What Baby

Death-T runs for 14 chapters, but Kaiba isn’t actually there for, like…half of them.

I mean, he’s technically there? Occasionally? He’ll show up long enough to dramatically play chess for a panel or so, or to stick his head on a TV monitor and provide some Helpful Death Game Hints. But for all practical purposes, he’s pretty much absent for the entire middle section of the story arc.

And, uh…let’s just say I 100% understand and respect the DM anime’s decisionto go straight from Grandpa’s heart attack to the final duel and skipeverything in between.

If Kaiba’s real goal is to beat Yugi at Duel Monsters, then all the death games leading up to that one are basically filler. And they manage to be just as contrived and nonsensical as any anime filler arc, without a fraction of the fun.

It’s largely a tonal issue. The writing swings wildly between grimdark dramatics, sentimental conversations about friendship where everyone hugs and cries (tbh that’s one of the few redeeming qualities of the arc), and “comic relief” where the “““comedy””” is all either bodily function jokes or sexual assault jokes (L̠̤̯͍̦e̮̪͎̞t's̞̮̳̱̰̦̲ ̲G͖͉̹̻̯͉͖e̜̝̗͓̟͚t̖͚ ͚̰̞̮̝̫͎I͓̜̦̳̭͚͎n̪̪͈t͍̥̰̼o͚͎͇̣̘̝ ̪̼̜̣̳G͈̠̫e̳̝̗̪ṋ͚̞͎ͅd͔̙͓̯̹e̯̺̯̩r͔̣̲͔̳̗ ̘͙P̖̦o̩̺͖͎̞̬l͎̺͕̹i͇̣̼̦t̰i̬̰̝͙̗̝c̜̼̺̪̲̞s).

Honestly, in terms of the “stanning and fairness” argument, there’s not much to talk about here. It just adds insult to injury that not only does Death-T throw my fave under the bus, but it’s really badly written.

The Mokuba Thing

Okay, let’s fast-forward through the filler zone and stoppp…here. 

In the context of the anime, where we know (and see multiple flashbacks demonstrating) that their whole life has been an “us against the world” story, this scene is tragic. Seto’s trust in people has been eroded so much that he even thinks Mokuba is conspiring against him? Their love and support for each other, which has survived through so much hardship, has finally cracked under the weight of this latest trauma? There’s a lot of dramatic and tearjerking potential there.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us bring our baggage from the anime with us when we read the manga. The vast majority of the western Yugioh fandom did start with DM. 

But if we look at this purely in the context of the manga–if we can pretend, for a second, that none of us have ever heard of the anime–this is the first time we see the two of them interacting onscreen. And none of those touching flashbacks of Seto comforting Mokuba and defending him from bullies and promising to be his father exist here. All we ever really learn about their relationship before this point is “They used to be a little closer when they were younger. Source: one (1) photo of them playing chess.”

So instead of serving as the tragic lowpoint of their relationship, this scene sets the baseline for it: Mokuba desperately wants to make his brother happy and earn his approval, while Seto responds with dismissal and cruelty.

In the anime (and to a certain extent in the later manga), Mokuba’s purpose in the narrative is to humanize Seto. But in Death-T, he serves the opposite function. Every interaction they have is an opportunity for Seto to kick the dog and prove what a monster he is.

And it’s all downhill from here.

………………

…So.

I have…mixed feelings about this.

On one level–a meta level–I think this scene serves the same purpose as taking that random high schooler from CwT and suddenly giving him ridiculous amounts of money and power and mustache-twirling levels of villainy. It’s a way of making the Experience of Death seem retroactively justified (and also a way of making the upcoming penalty game look fair).

On the other hand. It’s. 

Horrific.

This scene is supposed to make us hate Kaiba, and it does it’s job really really well.

Personally speaking? I’m of the opinion that trying to hurt the child under your care as badly as you conceivably can is a “don’t pass go, don’t collect $100″ kind of deal. There’s no coming back from that. There’s no fixing or salvaging this relationship.  

(God, this whole thing is wrapped in so many layers of fantasy that I’m not even sure what the real-world equivalent would be. Trying to beat your child not quite to death?)

Mokuba should not have had to continue living with his brother after this, any more than the Ishtars should have had to stay with their dad or Seto should have had to stay with Gozaburo. Mokuba forgiving Seto for this isn’t touching to me, it’s gut-wrenching. Every “heartwarming” brotherly moment in the later manga (all, like…2 and a half of them) feels hollow and sad.

As far as I’m concerned, this scene doesn’t “complicate” their relationship in any interesting or meaningful way. Their anime relationship already has plenty of complications–their sometimes unhealthy co-dependence, the fact that Seto is still a kid himself and he’s not really equipped to be a parent,Mokuba’s difficulty understanding that Seto can’t just “go back to who he was” before his trauma, the times when Seto is too caught up in his own pain to really be there for Mokuba, the manipulation involved in Seto’s takeover plan, etc. This just makes their relationship outright child abuse.

But hey, they hugged that one time in Duelist Kingdom, so it’s fine, right?

ExODiA iiiIIIIT’s not pAHsible

The final duel happens. The big Blue Eyes vs Exodia showdown.

*Bill Wurtz voice* So that’s pretty nifty, I would say.

It’s..? A genuinely cool and dramatic duel. There’s a reason it’s one of the, like, three Death-T elements the DM anime actually bothered to keep. Not much to say about it.

Sure was a whole lot of buildup just to end things with one (1) deus ex machina instawin card, tho.

The Tragic Backstory

So if all this happened because of a penalty game, what do you think the solution could be?

Did you say “another, even harsher penalty game”?

Ding ding ding!

This time, instead of torturing the fifteen-year-old, our hero puts the fifteen-year-old in a vegetative state as he begs for mercy.

Yaaaayy! 

Some fun facts about the Mind Crush that we don’t actually learn until Duelist Kingdom:

1. It lasted for 6 months

2. Mokuba spent that entire time alone, in the big empty mansion, with no parental guidance or adult supervision except the butlers and maids, caring for his brother’s comatose body 24/7

3. When Atem put Kaiba in that coma, he had absolutely no idea if he’d ever be able to wake up or not. He thought he could, maybe–Kaiba’s pretty strong, right? But he also finds the idea that Kaiba died in his coma and came back to haunt him perfectly believable. “Fixed,” dead…eh, it was kind of a coin toss.

But wait, the story’s not over yet! First we have to find out Why Kaiba Is The Way He Is (“Because your buddy tortured him last month” isn’t enough of an answer, apparently).

This is communicated in the most natural way possible: Mokuba just starts monologuing about all his brother’s deepest darkest traumas to a bunch of strangers his brother hates.

The claim that Kaiba’s backstory is “more complex” in the manga than it is in the anime has always confused me, because this is…it. These three pages are the whole backstory. I mean, in Battle City we do get one more passing line of dialog about how Kaibacorp used to be a weapons manufacturer and Gozaburo “sold Seto’s soul to the military industrial complex,” but other than that… The anime took these bare bones and fleshed them out significantly, but from a pure manga canon standpoint, it’s not a whole lot to work with.

But there’s still enough here to rub me the wrong way.

For one thing, this sequence is almost an exact parallel to two later moments in the manga: Pegasus’s backstory dump at the end of Duelist Kingdom, and Malik’s backstory dump mid-Battle City. In both of those cases, the purpose of the scene is to take a villain whose motives seemed cruel and inexplicable and finally reveal the reasons behind his actions. We’re supposed to be seeing these characters in a sympathetic light for the very first time.

But Kaiba’s motives in Death-T, uh, weren’t exactly a mystery. He already made it pretty explicitly clear that this was about the torture. So as a narrative tool, Mokuba’s monologue:

1. seems a little superfluous

2. seems like a way of taking any responsibility out of the protagonist’s hands. Kaiba didn’t snap because of anything Atem did, he just had a bunch of fucked up baggage that Atem couldn’t possibly have known about or accounted for. Who knew some people take it badly when you torture them??

3. seems to suggest that we weren’t supposed to be sympathizing with Kaiba before this point. If this is the big “oh, now that I know why he did it, I guess I feel a little bad for him :(” moment, then that means the part where he got tortured…wasn’t?

And, as always, there’s the issue of the framing.

The grace note of the monologue–the thought it leaves us with, the intended takeaway–isn’t “If only he hadn’t gone through years of abuse, in circumstances he had no real control over because he was a child.” It’s “If only he hadn’t brought all this upon himself by cheating.”

Even if we ignore the fact that it’s physically impossible to cheat at chess (which seems like kind of a big oversight for a gaming manga, but oh well, That’s Yugioh Babe)…

How can you possibly present a ten-year-old cheating at a board game in a desperate gambit to get himself and his brother out of an orphanage as his start of darkness?

Yet that’s exactly what the writing does. This is a story about how games “reveal the true hearts” of their players and bring karmic retribution down on anyone who doesn’t respect the game and follow the rules. The implication is that the child abuse Seto suffered was karma. He rightfully earned it by cheating at chess, just like he brought the Experience of Death upon himself by cheating at Duel Monsters.

Oh yeah, speaking of which…

Wheel of Morality, Turn Turn Turn, Tell Us The Lesson We Should Learn

What was the outcome of Death-T? What impact did it actually have? 

Did it bring about any big moral reckoning? Any questioning of the heroes’ values? Did Atem learn the difficult but important lesson “torture bad”?

Nnnnope!

Death-T is immediately followed by a series of episodic chapters that take us right back to the status quo like nothing happened. Atem keeps merrily handing out penalty games all the way up to the very end of Duelist Kingdom. When he does finally stop doing them, his decision has nothing to do with Death-T. It takes a comment from Pegasus about the Millennium Items having an “evil intelligence” to make him wonder “wait…I’m from a Millennium Item…I’m an intelligence…could evil…maybe include…torture????”

And even after the manga lukewarmly reverses its position to “torture sort of bad I guess,” it never really does anything with that revelation. None of the past penalty games are ever reexamined. No apologies are made. The Experience of Death is quietly swept under the rug, and the Mind Crush, when it’s brought up at all, is framed as noble act that “fixed” Kaiba (because “if you make someone suffer badly enough, you can hurt them into being a better person” is a great message).

Basically, we learned nothing from Death-T, nothing changed, and our takeaway is supposed to be “Atem was 100% in the right and Kaiba was 100% in the wrong, and also he’s an evil monster who deserved everything he got.”

Guess I Need A Satisfying Conclusion of Some Kind Even Through Death-T Didn’t Really Have One, Huh

Wow.

That was…a whole lot of words of Death-T rage that I apparently had in me zjkghzkkf. 

I tend to feel less justified about constantly harping on Death-T then I do when it comes to, like, the racism in Memory World, or the series’ general Miss O’Gyny. It’s not like “magical vigilantism” is exactly a real-word social issue that’s being reflected in this piece of fiction. I realize a lot of my anger pretty much boils down to “hey,, ! thats…my fave. stopp...being mean to him >:(”

But I also feel like the issues in Death-T aren’t limited to Death-T.

The manga has this…this thing where it wants to be able to pinpoint a few clear, unchanging moral rules (“cheating is bad!” “graverobbing is bad!” “patricide is bad!”) and just apply them neatly to every situation, without having to take into account any of that inconvenient stuff like “what were the circumstances of this specific situation,” or “how many choices were actually open to this person,” or “how much harm was done by this choice compared to its benefits in terms of basic human well-being.” Yet at the same time, that moral absolutism is somehow coupled with a reluctance to apply any moral judgement to its protagonists at all. 

The two points where that becomes clearest are Death-T and Memory World. And I feel like even when people acknowledge the issues with those arcs, they still want to be able to write it off as “oh, that was just a problem with the early chapters, it was fixed as the writing matured,” or “oh, that was just a problem at the end because of the mad rush to finish the story before it got canceled, it was never a thing before then.” But it’s not an isolated problem. It’s there at the beginning of the story, it’s there at the end, and it’s baked into everything in the middle.

…but anyhow. 

hey,, ! thats…my fave. stopp...being mean to him >:(

[xthebirdofhermesx]

Hellsing: The Return - Chapter 2

Chapter 2! Oh Section XIII... what you do’n?

(∩｀-´)⊃━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?! ｡ﾟ･*.｡ﾟ☆--c(`-' ∩) 

MATURE CONTENT FOLKS. There’s violence, strong language, smut, and gore cause... well Hellsing. No warnings beyond that currently (no sexual violence or anything like that), so have at thee if ya like. All Chapters compiled here, but I’ll be posting inline for anyone who just tumblrz.

Chapter 2 - Divine Intervention

“Chief Makube,” Integra said walking into the foyer of Hellsing Manor by herself, “To what do I owe the pleasure of you staying in the lobby today, unlike yesterday?”

The older man was tall, Italian, and bore a scar over his right eye that stretched from forehead to jawline. He smiled and spread his hands gracefully, as if to indicate he was also alone. “Today I have no children to entertain,” he smiled. “S’cuzzi for not being able to conclude all business yesterday, Sir Hellsing… but I’m afraid the Vatican does not know that today, I am here.”

Seras, having been leaning against the banister with crossed arms and a dower expression, raised an eyebrow and looked to her human master. That… was a fishy statement from the head of Section XIII, Iscariot Division. Integra was no less impressed or concerned, but her expression remained stoic.

“Well, you have my attention,” she said and turned. “Please, follow me. My office will be more comfortable.”

Up the stairs and to the only door visible from below, Integra lead the way to her office as Makube and Seras followed. The Knight repressed a smirk as she was the only one to see Alucard’s smile fade into the shadows before she opened the curtains behind her desk. “I can assure you, Chief Makube,” Integra said and nodded for Seras to close the door. As she did so the room flashed with black and red energy, Pip securing the room at Seras’s will. “This room is secured from eavesdropping,” Integra finished with a small smirk.

As she sat behind the desk, Makube sat in front, crossing his legs and weaving his fingers on one knee. “I apologize for dropping in unannounced, Director. Unfortunately the nature of this visit is… sensitive.”

“Not to be indelicate, Chief Makube,” Integra said, lighting a cigar, “But shall we cut to the chase?”

Makube smiled patiently. “Of course. There is a leak, a potential traitor to The Vatican and specifically Section XIII within our ranks. I would like to enlist the aid of the Hellsing Organization to investigate and hopefully find this mole.”

Well. That… had not at all been what Integra, Seras, or even Alucard would have predicted coming from this conversation. As Alucard’s deep laughter began to echo around them, Makube’s expression fell from pleasant to concerned, and eventually to slightly upset when Alucard manifested from the shadows in the corner.

“Oh this is quite the welcome home present,” the ancient vampire chuckled.

“When did this occur?” Makube frowned at Integra.

“Last night, actually. I fear you came to call before any official statement could be released. I’d barely finished breakfast when I was alerted of your arrival.”

“He has a plane to catch,” Seras stated of Makube, Arms crossed and standing now near to her vampiric master.

The Chief swallowed audibly, but regained his composure rather quickly. “Well then this may be all the more swift a resolution. Though I must request as few casualties as possible?”

“We’re not murderers, Makube,” Interga’s tone was flat and unforgiving. “We’re monster hunters.”

“Of course, I was not implying anything. Allow me to explain.” Spreading his hands, the Leader of Section XIII went into detail about a few investigative missions that had gone deadly unexpectedly approximately six months prior. At first it had not raised any concerns as these thing happened occasionally. However it seemed that the number and frequency of these events had been slowly increasing, and it was not until a single survivor confessed with in intensive care that the attackers who’d killed them all were not of the original investigated threat. He was then assassinated that night in his hospital room in Vatican City.

“This has happened now outside of Roma, as well,” Makube pressed the tips of his fingers together, elbows resting on the arms of his chair. “Not only does there seem to be a white clad figure leading an attack against the Vatican, but one of our own is giving them information on where to find our people to take them by surprise and murder them all.”

Integra twisted her cigar between two gloved fingers as she thought. Makube was not his aggressive predecessor Maxwell, nor his embittered subordinate Heinkel Wolfe. Neither was she a fool, and an olive branch from the Vatican could still be a trap. The Vatican as a whole had made no bones about believing the Protestant Knights to be blasphemous, and specifically the Hellsing organization, Integra herself in fact, to be the worst of them. She wasn’t entirely certain if she’d been officially declared a witch in the eyes of Rome or not.

And yet intuition told her Makube was sincere. How frustrating.

“With all due respect, Chief Makube, and I mean that sincerely,” the knight said, tapping ashes from the end of her cigar into the ashtray, “I have a far greater respect and appreciation of your methods and approach than I could ever have for your predecessor. But what guarantees do I have that this is not an elaborate trap for my organization?”

“Outside of my personal word and promise that if it is, I have been kept in the dark and know nothing of such a plot?” he sighed and spread his hands. “None. But if this is a trap for Hellsing, it is not the act of Section XIII or an openly sanctioned operation from the Vatican.”

“How delightfully dangerous,” Alucard chuckled, his grin upsettingly wide.

“I also can guarantee you that even if it is a cu,” Makube added, eyeing the elder vampire, “They might, at best, be prepared for you and Ms. Victoria. No one at the Vatican knows of Alucard’s return, clearly.” Meeting eyes with Integra, the chief smiled. “And I don’t intend to enlighten them at this time.”

That… pushed Integra’s eyebrows up.

“Noted,” she said, keeping all other surprise from her response. “If we agree, what would be expected of us in this endeavor?”

“Discretion. Once we leave this room, I will deny any knowledge of this conversation. I merely came by to apologize  for any offensive comments Agent Heinkel Wolfe made yesterday.” Makube sighed and shook his head. “The most recent attack happened this morning in the wee hours. We received the briefest of communications in the form of a video message from one of ours before they were killed and the phone destroyed. The White Cloaked figure was seen for a brief second. Does it not, to you, seem as if a supernatural threat in Scotland, where this occurred, would be reason enough for Hellsing to investigate?”

“Will the Vatican let us onto the site?” Seras inquired.”

“By the time you arrive, they will not have yet. The scene is being held for their investigation, but you can arrive first. I will… waylay them as long as I can. Heinkel and my assistant have not yet been informed, or Agent Wolfe would very much want to go. However, I will handle that.”

“I see. So we are to go as soon as now, then?” Integra grumbled.

“I know we are not… friends, Sir Hellsing,” Makube started, leaning forward in his chair. “I know that the Vatican sees the Protestants of your Council of Twelve and the Hellsing Organization as heretics, and in the past has been an open enemy. However, we want the same thing - safety of the people, and the end to monsters. And this… has potential to threaten us all.”

“I doubt greatly that a single other member of your organization would agree that we have the same goals,” Integra sighed and stood, snuffing her cigar out. “However I agree that if there is someone hunting the Iscariot, it is at least prudent to make certain that they will not turn their aggression toward Hellsing, The Council or The King once they are done.”

Makube gave a partial smile and nodded, standing to take Integra’s hand as Alucard’s chuckling began to grow in volume. “I will accept that, Sir Hellsing.”

“Should we find this mole along the way, how should we be in contact?”

“A phone call to my mobile will suffice. I should think we can communicate in such a way that anyone near would not decipher the information exchanged.”

With a nod, Integra watched as Seras escorted the man out. When the door was closed she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I do not like this.”

“Oh come now, my master,” Alucard purred in open amusement. “This, will be fun. ”

Integra sighed and cut her eyes to Alucard. “Your definition of fun differs greatly from mine.” Standing, she tilted her head to one side and cracked her neck in the attempts to relieve a newly growing tension. “I will get my things together. Yours are in your rooms below,” she explained and turned to him with a look of narrow suspicion. “Have you been down there yet?”

With a wide grin, Alucard stepped back towards the shadowed corner of her office. “Why look at some dusty old stones, when I have such a lovely view of angels from up here?” But any retort Integra might have had she kept to herself. It was no fun to say it to the wall, and Alucard was gone.

***

“I don’t like it, Master,” Seras grumped from the wall of Integra’s bedroom. She leaned, much as she had downstairs, with arms crossed against the wall. It was a good way to tell when Seras was unhappy about something. She hadn’t pouted in years, not in sincerity. But when she was displeased about something, her face tilted down and she crossed her arms. Everyone had tells, if one knew for what to look.

“I don’t either, Seras,” Integra sighed and tucked the neatly folded change of clothes into her small overnight bag. It was never a poor idea to bring a change of clothes to a murder investigation. Better to not need it than need it and be caught without. “But we won’t know if it is a trap until the trap has been sprung, and if it is not, and Makube actually came to us for help, then perhaps that is a bargaining chip we can use in the future.”

“What could we possibly bargain with the zealots and fanatics for?”

“For them to stay the hell away from us.”

Seras wobbled her head back and forward at that in consideration. “Alright, you have a point there. Want I should get my things?”

“No, I want you to stay here. The men trust you, and as much as these words are foul tasting to fall from my lips, Makube is right. They will not be prepared for Alucard.” Integra sneered. “I hope I never have to say that again.”

“Yeah, that statement physically hurts me to hear from you, Master.”

“ I think I threw up a little myself, ” Pip chimed in.

“EW GROSS NO THROWING UP INSIDE ME!”

“ WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? Dégueuler all over Integra’s floor?!”

“Children, please,” Integra sighed, zipping her bag. “Seras, I must go purchase plane tickets for myself and Alucard. Would you please call Sir Gregory? I’ll need to speak with him.”

“Why Sir. Gregory?” Seras and Pip asked in unison.

Integra just smiled. “Because, he will agree to help me.”

[overwatchworks]

A True Man of His Word:

McCree head-canon that has gone too far Chapter 2: Part 1

Jesse had been complaining the entire time he was being walked out of the little interrogation room-mostly because he couldn’t stand the silence and didn’t want to focus on the thoughts going through his head at the moment-and only the butt of a rifle to his jaw shut him up. These people were not by any means going to treat him as one of their own, and he doubted any of them actually knew why he was coming along anyways. Jesse stared at the floor while his cuffs jangled with each step. 

He spat the blood that had been welling up in his mouth after a moment, and he carefully prodded around with his tongue to make sure all his teeth were still intact. Satisfied that he could still charm the socks off of anyone with his grin, Jesse finally dragged his eyes up to see where the agents at either side of him were leading him.

“Woah, wait a minute. Where are we goin’?” He asked upon noticing the sleekest airship he had ever seen.

“Overwatch HQ.” One of the agents told him in a strict, clipped tone.

“The hell is that?”

Jesse didn’t get an answer, and he leaned over into the field of vision of the one agent that had spoke first.

“Helloooo? Anyone?”

“You haven’t heard of Overwatch?” Another asked gruffly, and Jesse immediately went on the defensive.

“Nah, I haven’t. Is that a problem?”

“Jeez kid, have you been living under a rock?”

“What in the hell is Overwatch?!”

“Pft. You’ll find out soon enough.”

Jesse glared at the non-answer, then stopped dead in his tracks right before they tried to load him onto the aircraft.

“Oh nu-uh I ain’t gettin��� on that. No way in hell.”

“You walk on yourself or we knock you out and drag your stupid ass on. I’m inclined towards the latter just to shut you the hell up.” The first agent snapped, and Jesse opened his mouth with a smug grin.

“Aw, yer too nice sweetpea. But yer gonna have ta carry me on ta that thin’, ‘cause I ain’t goin’.” He drawled with a little quirk of his brow, and the agent sighed.

“That’s it.”

Their fist crunched into his already broken nose, and Jesse had to bite back a scream, blood pumping down his face and dripping onto the floor as he doubled over.

“MOTHERFUCKER! WHAT IN THE HELL WAS THAT FER?! IT’S ALREADY FUCKIN’ BROKEN!” Jesse shouted, hands going up to cup his nose gingerly, and a gloved palm shoved him forward unceremoniously.

“Damn, he still talks...”

Jesse blinked back tears from the pain, and he saw the floor beneath him go from the dusty concrete to a smooth black metal, his boots clicking a bit as he stumbled forward, the harsh grips of the agents on his shoulder forcing him to walk. They ended up shoving him into a seat roughly, rifles held in view just in case, and Jesse huffed.

“Y’all ain’t gotta worry. I ain’t gonna try an’ run off...”

“Shut up.”

“Aw, hon, ya wound me! But I’m gonna be askin’ questions, ‘cause I got a lot of ‘em. How long did ya say this ride was?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, then why don’t we start with that?”

Silence.

“I wanna know how long I’m gonna be on this fuckin’ thin’, an’ I ain’t gonna stop askin’ ‘till I get an answer.”

“Fifteen hours, McCree, so shut your trap or I’ll have to gag you.” A new voice called out, and Jesse watched as Reyes strode onto the ship, making a quick motion with his hand to the pilot.

“Oooh~ kinky.”

“Alright, I’ve already had enough. Lock him down.” The commander sighed, and Jesse glared as a rag was produced by one of the agents. It was shoved into Jesse’s mouth, his lip splitting from the rough treatment and tied around the back of his head. 

The ship doors shut then, and the whole thing shuddered a bit as it lifted off the ground, Jesse’s eyes going wide as he realized that this was actually happening. There had been hundreds of times he wished to be taken away from that place, a thousand times he had wanted to be anywhere but there, and yet now that it was actually happening, Jesse was scared. Santa Fe was all he had ever known, and now he was being taken by a group that he had no idea existed, and he had no idea where they were taking him or why. 

Jesse curled up a bit in his seat, staring at the floor between his boots and instead focusing on his breathing. It was hard enough with the broken nose and gag, but panicking wasn’t going to make it any better. Jesse didn’t realize how much his hands were shaking until he tried to wipe them on his jeans, his whole body feeling just a bit too hot and skin clammy. He needed a smoke, what he wouldn’t give for a smoke and some whiskey to calm his nerves...

Jesse stayed uncharacteristically quiet throughout the flight, partly from the gag, partly from fear. He knew these people would have no problem shooting him if he put even a toe out of line, and he wouldn’t be surprised if those were their orders anyways. He was a criminal, a murderer, a common thief and gangster, and now he had angered a particularly lethal group of people who actually knew what they were doing. 

Jesse watched them during the flight, trying to get a read on them, listening for any bits of information he could, but he soon realized that they were all just people wanting to get back home to their showers and beds, perhaps a significant other. Where this ‘home’ was, Jesse still didn’t have a damn clue, but he figured he’d find out in another couple of hours anyways. 

And those couple of hours passed as slowly as they fucking could, Jesse doing the smallest things for any sort of entertainment, because god was he bored out of his mind. He hated sitting still for any long amounts of time, it just wasn’t in his nature to sit around and do nothing, but this was absolute torture. He couldn’t even talk or hum to fill the overbearing silence around him, and the drone of the aircraft and murmurs of the people around him didn’t do too much to make it better either. There was nothing comforting about them, and Jesse shrank back into his seat, not having to do much to seem small, not compared to these guys. 

Everyone in Deadlock had been a sickly, gangly kind of muscled, either that or built like tanks, not as well fed nor as well kept as the agents surrounding him. These guys were the real deal, and Jesse didn’t have to be told to know he was way out of his league. Even the agent’s eyes were different, they had a more steely hardness to them, whereas Jesse was used to seeing hungry cruelty in those around him. 

He had never felt like more of an outcast before in his life. 

He happened to glance up and catch Reyes’ eye, and Jesse shivered involuntarily under the dark gaze, getting the odd feeling that he couldn’t hide a single thing from that man. Averting his eyes quickly, Jesse scooted his knees up closer to his chest, locking his arms around his shins and carefully setting his cheek against them.

Jesse didn’t realize he had dozed off until his shoulder was shaken roughly by one of the agents that had brought him onto the shuttle, and he stood without a fuss. He didn’t make a sound as he was escorted off the carrier, but that changed as soon as a bitter cold wind hit him right in the face.

“HON OPH A PHIPH FASS AH MEAHM MOPHERFUPHAH!” (Son of a bitch that’s a real motherfucker!) He bit out, everything muffled and a full body shiver shuddering through his form. Jesse had honestly never known anything below desert night temperatures, and while those could get bad, this was brutal. 

He shivered as he took in as much of his surroundings as he could in the short time they were walking from the ship. There was a huge, elaborate looking building they were heading towards, and if he twisted his head to look outside, he saw snow-covered, high hills rolling over to a lake and lots of orange-leaved or bare trees as far as the eye could see. There were similar airships to their own that were flying in and out of the hangar they were in, and Jesse saw that everyone but them were wearing some variation of a blue uniform sporting a symbol that kind of looked like a peace sign. Weird.

“Miff haff meffeh mom fee ah muphiff hiphhy hooph.” (This had better not be a fucking hippie group.) Jesse grumbled to no one in particular, and he was answered with a little shove, everyone filing into the building now. 

He stared in barely contained awe at the inside, which was even more impressive than the outside. He didn’t have time to gawk as they pulled him along, however, and Jesse grunted as they changed direction sharply, heading to a more familiar looking set up. Interrogation rooms. Wonderful.

~~

“Are you kidding me Gabe?!”

“I have my reasons, okay? I always know what I’m doing, and when have I ever been wrong, hm?” Gabe sighed, handing his weapons and extra armour to a waiting agent, then continuing his long stride. Jack followed after him with a glare, and he put a hand on Gabe’s broad shoulder.

“Lots of times! Believe it or not, even you can make mistakes, and this was a really fucking big one!” He hissed, and Gabe snorted.

“Ooooh~ I made him mad enough to curse. What are you gonna do about it Jackie, send the UN in to give me a slap on the wrist and a lecture?”

“Gabe, I swear to god—“

“Yes yes, and I’m listening. But seriously, I need you to hear me out on this, okay?” Gabe murmured, lowering his voice as a group of Overwatch agents jogged past.

“I wasn’t planning on taking any of those fuckers alive. But that kid came out of nowhere and killed all his little gang friends—“

“And that’s why you brought him back?!”

“I told you to hear me out, Jack! He killed all of them and took off, almost got away too. He got past my guys Jack. They don’t miss a thing, and yet the kid said he didn’t even break a sweat getting by. Hell, he was in the same fucking room as I was and I couldn’t even tell. I did a scan of the room not a second before the shots went off and suddenly eight people were dead right in front of me.”

“And his gun, Jack, he’s got a fucking revolver. Six shots in it but eight deaths, all a perfect hole between the eyes. It doesn’t add up. They called him Deadeye, and I don’t have a fucking clue what it means, but he sure as hell knows how to shoot, and the others seemed to think real highly of him.” Gabe told him, brows furrowing as he spoke, and Jack stared at him for a moment. He then stopped, the Blackwatch commander halting as well and turning.

“Gabe...” Jack muttered, giving him The Look, and the other man sighed heavily.

“Shit, Jack, he’s seventeen. The kid hasn’t even been given a chance in life! And there was something different about him too. He’s got a fire, and he’s fearless. Stupid and hasn’t got a fucking clue what he’s doing, but there’s goodness in him. I’m sick and tired of seeing good people who can make a change in this world being taken, I’m sick of ending lives that don’t deserve it, and that kid is one of those who does. He deserves to be given a chance, because I know he will do something great with it.”

Jack pursed his lips, and Gabe stared back, crossing his arms over his chest and waiting for approval he already knew he’d won.

“Fuck...Fine. Fine, but if this goes to shit, it’s all on you.” Jack sighed heavily. Gabe smiled and elbowed the blonde fondly, getting a finger shoved in his face and a cute, angry glare.

“And don’t you dare complain to me about him either. If you want to vent, go pester Ana with it.”

“Fair enough Cariño. And I’ll get you that coffee you like from Brazil too.”

“Oh, god yes.”

Gabe laughed lightly, wrapping an arm around Jack’s shoulder and tugging him to his side, pressing a kiss to his temple.

“Gabe we’re in public...”

“And I say fuck the public, I’ve missed my boyfriend.” Gabe hummed, squeezing Jack’s side lightly and getting a light punch to the ribs back.

“I missed you too.”

“Awwwww Jackie!” Gabe cooed, rocking them both a bit in their little side hug and garnering a few quick glances.

“You know what, never mind, you can go back to Santa Fe.” Jack huffed, shoving his boyfriend half heartedly, though only actually scooting closer to him.

“Mhm~. Not that I’m not having a ton of fun embarrassing you, but I have to be professional and make my new agent official.”

“Woo hoo, more paperwork.” Jack deadpanned, and Gabe ran his hand through the other’s hair with a huff of dry laughter.

“Fun fun, joy of all joys. Anyways, I’ll see you later Cariño. We’ll have to catch up some more later tonight.” Gabe said with a smirk and a slap to Jack’s ass, striding off before the other could react with more than a blush and a middle finger flipped up at him fondly.

~~

Jesse had not been treated well while he was waiting for whoever was going to come in to interrogate him, though he didn’t complain because he knew he deserved it. Karma and all that bullshit coming back to bite him in the ass. Hard. 

Jesse’s breath was coming out raggedly as another hit landed on his already busted side, and he winced. He hadn’t been fighting back-he was smart enough to know that definitely wouldn’t end well for him-and he didn’t say anything either, mostly because his fucking jaw was probably broken. It sure felt broken, and Jesse wasn’t in the mood to test it. 

He had actually been behaving for once, and then suddenly three big guys came in to rough him up. Nothing he wasn’t used to, of course, but then again he normally wasn’t in cuffs and immobile. Normally he could avoid the hits easy, even with three against one, but no such luck was given to him today. 

The guy that had been holding him up suddenly dropped him, and Jesse fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes, hitting it with a grunt and feeling his body scream in protest. He heard heavy, quiet footfalls enter the room, and Jesse looked up with a glare, wiping blood off his lips.

“Oooh, that’s a shiner.”

Jesse smiled thinly at the Blackwatch commander, getting the hint of a grin back before a quick motion had him being thrown back into the seat he had originally been in.

“Alright, Hernandez, Smith, Kellerman, you all can go. Tell the doc I’ll be sending someone in her way pretty soon when you leave.” Reyes ordered, and the three agents nodded then left quickly. 

Jesse watched as the man sat down elegantly-odd for such a big guy and with his personality-and he glared in distrust when Reyes produced a little key from his pocket.

“Gimme your hands kid.”

Jesse eyed the sharp point on the end of the key nervously, his own previously commanded torture sessions coming back to mind with painful detail. He shook his head.

“What, so you just want to sit in chains for the rest of the day?” Reyes asked, then motioned with his free hand.

“Come on. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Jesse had never in his life trusted that particular statement from anyone, having learned from a very young age that it was always a lie, but he slowly held out his hands, careful to keep his fingers balled into tight fists. The commander fit the key into the cuffs and they came off with a little click, clattering to the table between them. Jesse retracted his hands quickly, rubbing his wrists under the table and waiting for whatever the man would do to him next.

“Oh good, you didn’t just bolt. Glad to see you’re not that stupid. So I’m going to talk to you, and you’ll listen very carefully because I won’t be saying it again, got it?” The commander told him sternly, and Jesse nodded, his whole mouth feeling like it was filled with cotton. Barbed, poisoned, painful cotton, but cotton nonetheless.

“Good. Now, the division you’ll be working for in this organization of ours is mine. It’s called Blackwatch, and we specialize in the more covert ops. Basically, we do all the dirty work that Overwatch can’t be seen apart of, but they cover our asses and deal with the politics for us in return. You don’t have a fucking clue what I’m even talking about, do you?” Reyes suddenly sighed, and Jesse hesitated before shaking his head.

“This is just great...Okay, what don’t you get?” Reyes asked, rubbing a hand against his temple in exasperation. Jesse stared for a moment, not realizing that the commander could speak Spanish-finding smug satisfaction that he at least knew what curses he had been spitting earlier-then forced himself to focus. 

That wasn’t important, he had better questions to ask rather than just stating the obvious. Jesse tried to open his mouth to speak, then quickly snapped it back shut, regretting any movement of it in the first place with a choked sound of pain. It was definitely broken.

“Hm, didn’t think they’d go and break your jaw...Okay, well, I’ll just explain from the beginning, and whatever you don’t understand you can ask someone else later.” Reyes compromised with an unaffected wave of his hand, Jesse going back to glaring at the commander’s careless air.

“Everyone knows about the Omnic Crisis, so I won’t say anything about that other than I, along with many of the commanding rank officers here, fought in the war. When the world decided to get its fucking act together to make peace, this organization we’re apart of was created. Overwatch was made as a symbol of peace, a place where people of all kinds and abilities could come in to basically rebuild the world into something that resembled what it used to be. Of course, not all we do can be considered ‘good’ and ‘peaceful’, but that’s Overwatch stands for.”

“Blackwatch is here to do the things that can’t be mentioned, to get the jobs done that Overwatch cannot be seen doing. It’s all politics and dumb shit like that, but we do keep a good hold on the peace we have now that the war is over, we make sure another one doesn’t break out again. We can’t do everything, but it could be a hell of a lot worse without us.” Gabe finished, leaning back in his chair and giving Jesse a look that unsettled him a bit. 

The cowboy then nodded when the silence prevailed, motioning a bit to let the commander know he understood and wanted him to continue.

“Okay. This particular Overwatch base is one of our headquarters, the Swiss base in Zürich. You up to snuff on everything now?”

Jesse looked down at the table as he processed everything, nodding slowly when he felt like he wasn’t about to pass out. He was a long ways from home.

“I know it’s a lot to choke down. You need a minute...?” Reyes asked quietly, fingers tapping on the table as he watched Jesse’s pale face. The cowboy shook his head, swallowing thickly and wrinkling his nose a bit at the taste of blood and bile mixing unpleasantly.

“If you insist...I’m going to be personally training you from now on, and before you get excited, no, it’s not because you’re special. No one else trusts you here yet, and for good reason, but I’m sure if we work together, we’ll change that. Key words there being ‘work together’, got it? I’ve already got you a room and uniform, and you’ll get the tablet containing all your information after you visit the med bay to get patched up.”

“Training begins at seven tomorrow morning, and if you’re late, I’ll be kicking you out. You act up, talk back, put a toe out of line, you’re done here. I’ll send you to jail and you can rot there for all I care, so if you know what’s good for you, stay on my good side. Do you understand?”

Jesse bobbed his head as much as he could with the way it was throbbing, and he stood after Reyes did.

“Alright, get on outta here. Someone’s waiting to take you to the med bay outside, go with them. And kid,” Jesse turned, eyeing the commander warily. His commander.

“Welcome to Blackwatch. It’s gonna be one hell of a ride.”

~~