#I don’t think canon really depicts them as ‘gentle’

[theshadowrealmitself]

Just…thinking about a species from a death planet, with great strength, and intense emotions, that almost wiped themselves out with their violence, and how they worked on themselves, and through effort became these levelheaded people, but also going a step further and picturing them deciding against everything inside of them to be gentle? It Makes Me Feral I’m Sorry

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

:((((((((( i ran out of tags . tumblr hates to see me thrive!!!!!!!

ok niku just . read the tags first and then come back here ok 🙏🙏 i have a lot i still need to say this is so important to me . this fic changed my life .

(WARNING this got long ….. really long ….. mysteriously. i got carried away 💔 PLS don’t feel the need to respond to any of this btw i mean that sincerely i know this is kind of a Lot i just need you to know much i adored this fic <3333)

BACK TO GOJO ok so his talk w reader…… it was just so satisfying to see them finally get to tell someone about their experience. it must’ve been such a great feeling for them !!!! to get some of it off their chest :((( … and to have Gojo Fucking Satoru our safe harbour of a man there to believe them and listen to them and reassure them. he’s so mature when it comes down to it and you captured that so well…… like as much as he acts childish and teasing this is exactly how i picture him interacting w someone he doesn’t know in a situation like this!! he’s flirty and unserious but he tells you he’ll protect you and means it. (i’m so down bad it physically hurts)

sorry i’m abt to go on a tangent i think BUT I JUST 😔😔 really… REALLY love their dynamic…. how it evolves so much even though he doesn’t even know reader exists for most loops!! and to them he’s just this beautiful Something that they can’t help but look at…… ”inhumanly attractive” is a great way to put it like he’s just….. this magnetic force……….. and i feel like even before they speak to him for the first time they probably find some kind of hope in him.

AND that’s so important bc to me that’s like . the main Theme of the fic? hope. reader has to find some kind of hope to make it through shibuya and more often than not they find it in gojo!!! in just seeing a familiar handsome face, in learning how to navigate the timeline through his actions, in talking to him and finally having him on their side. their choice to trust him fully at the end just made me soooo insane. and obv the hope theme continues even after that because gojo believes in them!!! believes that they’ll be okay in the prison realm….. more on that later actually bc i Still. have a lot to talk abt 😔👉👈 i’m just wildly flipping through my notes at this point i’m sorry to throw this at u when we’ve barely interacted but in my defense this fic reached into my actual skull and started rewiring my brain so!!!! yeah.

i got completely sidetracked there but . yes!! the conversation between them when gojo gets sent back in time is. so good!!!!! so wonderfully written!!!!! i haven’t mentioned it that much yet i think but i love your writing i devoured every line…… i struggle w the flow of my own writing SO much but this just flows so incredibly well??? it was sm fun to read????? and the rhythm of the paragraphs (that sounds. Insane but i hope u know what i mean 😭😭) is so distinct!!! and ofc there are SO many banger lines in this in general…. the gore descriptions and the lines abt reader and their fixation on hope. on gojo!! ”He's a terrifying sort of beauty and you can't help but be captivated by him.” <- this is just one example but!! idk i’m just so enamored by ur writing style.

and the dialogue!!!!!!!! i cried!!!!!! it’s so consistently gojo…. him going all ”oh?” ”interesting…” but not explaining anything … the ”ding ding ding!” after making reader guess what he should just be telling them (it’s the teacher in him <33) AND AND AND these too!!!! :3

“Just think of it like having a lot of MP.”

“You know, your technique kind of reminds me of save scumming.” 

THEY JUST FEEL SO CANON that’s our gojo…… that’s exactly what he would say…… he’s so unserious and so funny and so charming 😔😔 sigh.

ANDDDDD reader telling him good luck!!!! gojo beaming and squeezing their shoulder!!!!! the lil wave!!!!! 🥺🥺 that made me smile so wide niku he’s so infuriatingly cute . it felt so genuine!!!! pls know that this gojo will probably live in my brain forever like genuinely . i’ve been brainrotting over him all week and this was the final nail in the coffin. i’ll never be free.

ok but also !!!! extremely important !!!!!!! before i get to the ending i just need to tell u . how much i loved kenjaku in this ……….. kenjaku nation (me & six others) will never forget these crumbs of content like he just feels so real!!!!! and he’s so interesting!!!!! made me realize how truly down bad i am for him bc these lines made me so fucking happy 😭😭 brain started releasing serotonin like CRAZY i’m so ashamed.

“You can come out, you know.”

”How interesting.”

"I'll be nice, though. I'll make it painless."

…….. he’s just ….. yeah. yeahhhhh. 😔😔 i’ll never be normal abt him. i think it’s SUCH an interesting detail that he always makes reader’s death painless in every single loop…. he never lies about it. that feels so in character to me too!!! he’s kinda fascinated at first and when that interest disappears he kills them. but he doesn’t make it unecessarily cruel because there’s just. no need. kenjaku is a sicko but he’s oddly polite at times and i’m just……. yeah. gonna need you to take over for gege akutami actually 🙏🙏 get in the writer’s chair!!! the fandom needs u!!!!!

wait while we’re on this topic pls just know the entire confrontation between reader and kenjaku was one of my favorite moments in the entire fic <333 not JUST because i’m a kenny stan ok……… reader’s resignation and ”I appreciate it.” made my brain spin because it’s just . kinda chilling? kinda sick? that they aren’t even really afraid of death anymore… or more like they’re just so frighteningly used to it.

AND AND ANDDDD niku your writing in this scene 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 gutted me like a fish.

Time doesn't flow in the box. He didn't lie. You die again.

i exploded btw . ackkk i wish i could explain it better i just!!! :< adore your writing. these lines made me go completely batshit they’re just so good. and the ”time doesn’t flow in the box” line … how that ties in with the ending and reader’s choice. whewww.

segway time <3333 this is the final rant i promise!!! i just need to talk about the ending bc it was so perfect and like many other things in this fic it made me insane …. have i said that already …. probably at least a couple times 😔👉👈 it’s true ok!! it’s just sooo interesting to me and obviously so wellwritten and fitting and just. thematically ties everything together so well? i was FLOORED

hhhhh i don’t know where to begin so i’ll just start w the final convo between reader and gojo :> he asks for their name !!!!!!! i cried !!!!!!!!!! calling someone by their name or knowing their name as a form of like . Closeness or Affection is one of my greatest weaknesses and i also think it’s soooo telling that GOJO wants to know Your Name. he wants to know you. to hear that from someone who seems so inhumanly beautiful and violent….. for him to kind of extend a final olive branch and attempt to connect w you :((((( it just says so much without spelling it out and i. started chewing at my desk. it’s so good!!!!!!! such a genius way to tie everything together!!!! and reader’s final words to him…

“Thank you, Satoru Gojo.” You burn the glittering glow of his brilliant bright blue eyes into your mind.  And then, everything is engulfed in an unending black. 

first of all!!! so so sooooo pretty. wowow. second of all THE THANK YOU ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️ that’s also such a perfect conclusion…….. reader finally put their trust in someone and had that faith returned. and they thank him!!!! i like to think it means something to gojo too…. likeeee how often do people really thank him for what he does? how often is his hard work to protect people acknowledged and appreciated? sorry to bring gojo back into the discussion all the time sadly i AM in love w him….. 😔😔 and this fic made it worse so technically it’s your fault. kind of.

okay so my brain is kinda spinning away again so i’ll get to the final final thing!!!! for real this time!!!!! reader’s decision to be imprisoned in gojo’s stead… that’s so . genius? i’m so in awe??????? it makes so much sense from a character perspective based on what they’ve been through — after being at the mercy of time for so long, wouldn’t it be nice to be free of it? completely? it’s almost kind of chilling and just the idea of it scares me LMAO but it makes sm sense that reader would be drawn to it.

AND like i mentioned before!!! how it leads to a deeper connection between them and gojo, and how at the very end of the fic he’s the one who has faith in them. faith that they’ll be alright, of sound mind.

…… and that brings me to the final final final thing because. it’s just like the opening poem!! reader is the cat in the box. nobody can say for sure if they’re alright, not to mention alive, until the box is opened. and we don’t get to know!!! you leave us on a cliffhanger and that’s so good bc it really is like the cat in the box…. we can only wonder but it also gives us the freedom to decide for ourselves if we think they come out okay or not and i’m just………….. in love. with this fic. and the ending and the reader and gojo and you.

hopefully you’ve noticed atp but i really did go completely insane reading this 😭😭 i said it at the beginning but just to reiterate!!: for SURE one of my all time favorite gojo fics . AND loopfics in general…. thank you sm for your hard work :’3 aaaa i can’t tell u how much i admire the time you spent working on this??? your storytelling and writing and characterization skills????? i genuinely feel sooo giddy and excited and happy rn bc. i just adored this fic!!!! i’m so lucky i got to read it!!!!! :33 pls pat your gojo on the head from me and let him know i love him…. it’ll boost his ego but that’s a risk i’m willing to take 😔😔 i hope you have theeeee loveliest day or night a human being can have bc you made mine <3333333

beyond the unending night (reader + satoru gojo)

notes: it's finally here. the long awaited halloween fic. yes, i know it's march, but i did start working on it in september. haha. there's so much i could say, but i will leave it at that this fic is, in every sense, a fic that i would not normally write. and yet here we are.

contains: f!reader (no physical description or gendered language is used), no explicit romantic pairing (though you don't have to look hard to find the reader x gojo implications), major character death (played with), semi-graphic depictions of death, blood and violence, minor suicide ideation, canon retelling (lines of dialogue are pulled from the jjk english dub because i'm a dirty dub watcher). opening poem is from higurashi no naku koro ni (minagoroshi-hen). fic title is from giga's beyond the way.

please note that this is a time loop fic and, by nature contains repeating scenes (particularly from canon). please do not read this fic if you do not like that sort of thing.

wc: 21,883 read on ao3 (account required)

Please tell me what happened in this night. It's like the cat inside the box.

Please tell me what happened in this night. You don't know if the cat in the box is dead or alive. Please tell me what happened in this night. The cat in the box was dead.

The first time, it is instant— you don’t even know what’s happening.

The second, it is by flame, but you barely realize it, barely feel it— a second of mind numbing heat before nothing.

The third time, it is something slicing across your throat; you see the blood spilling everywhere, then the pain follows— a moment of pure agony before nothing.

The fourth time you realize what’s going on; what’s really going on.

You realize you’ve been dying.

You think your head is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because the subway platform is crowded, insanely so— there are hundreds of people shoved into this space alongside you, packed like sardines in a can. You’ve never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you live in Tokyo. For the most part, you’ve learned to accept it, but even this crowd is a little much and you wish you hadn’t listened to your friends when they said you should go party in Shibuya for Halloween; you don’t even like partying.

There’s a sharp pain in your temple followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone is screaming it at you through a megaphone positioned right next to your ear.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

For the eighth time.

Before you can even question the thought, images flash in your mind’s eye, blurry at first before they come into focus. The platform gates open. Chaos ensues. People dropping onto the subway tracks— spontaneously bursting into flame— their heads, necks sliced off, stomachs cut open—

Bile rapidly builds up in your throat, and you clamp your jaw shut, trying to force it down. Not here. Not now. You try to focus on something else, anything else happening outside of your brain. There’s a pair next to you musing about the people standing on the subway tracks, wondering what the two (the four?) of them are talking about. You blink back tears as you look. You can only see two: a freakishly tall man with white hair dressed in all black, and another man, dressed in strange, yet more traditional looking garb. Are those costumes too? You don’t have a lot of time to think about it as another image forces its way into your brain.

Your corpse— lifeless on the ground.

Your corpse— burning to ash.

Your corpse— bleeding out.

You can’t hold it in any more. Every fiber in your being screams at you to get away from the subway tracks, but instead you rush toward them, shoving people left and right as your hands desperately reach the stability of the gate. You grip it like a lifeline as you retch over the side of it, the contents of your stomach spilling all over the subway tracks.

There’s a quiet murmur of disgust behind you but you can’t be bothered to respond. You need to get out of here. You need to leave. You need to do it before—

The gates open and the crowd starts to move like a tidal wave, pushing and shoving their way through the gate. You’re swept away, vomit long forgotten as you and a few dozen others tumble onto the railway.

Alarm bells go off in your brain, loud and deafening. A voice in the back of your head screams for you to get off the track! Get off the track now before—

The platform erupts into a cacophony of screams, drenched in horror, saturated in fear. You are surrounded by people, by corpses— beheaded, sliced open, bursting into flames.

Your terror roots you to the ground as the carnage ensues around you. It’s only when another person, another corpse, dressed in a magical girl costume collides with your body that you can finally move. But it’s too late, you realize, despaired and helpless, as your bodies fall to the ground.

It’s too late.

You die an eighth time.

You think your chest is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because it’s so hard to breathe, frustratingly so— there are hundreds of people squeezed into this space alongside you, packed like cattle for slaughter. You've never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you’re in Shibuya. For the most part, you’ve come to accept it, but this crowd is way too much and you wish you had just stayed home and ordered a pizza; though honestly, the thought of pizza kind of makes you sick.

There’s a dull throbbing in your forehead, followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone’s hollering at you from a loudspeaker that’s been installed in your brain.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You think it's the ninth time now.

Behind you, you hear a woman screaming, her voice crazed and terrified. You turn your head automatically to look at her and when you see her you realize you recognize her yellow and white magical girl costume. You can say with certainty that you’ve never seen her before and yet—

Before you can ruminate more on it, images— memories assault your mind’s eye with a clarity that is absolutely sickening. That woman colliding into you, your bodies slamming into the subway tracks before you both— Your stomach churns violently,

and you feel like you’re going to puke, but you force it down— can't afford to right now. Instead, you make your way over to the woman.

Her head is in her hands as she mutters over and over again about how everyone is going to die. People around her figure that being stuck in here with the crowd has probably gotten to her. You, however, know better.

“...hey,” you say softly.

Her muttering comes to an abrupt halt and slowly she raises her head to look at you. There’s a flash of recognition in her eyes and she grabs you violently by the shoulders. “You! You know, don’t you? That we’re going to die?”

If it weren’t for the fact that you have indeed experienced death here eight times already, then you would have thought she’s lost her mind. Slowly, you nod and she seems relieved by it, her grip on you loosening.

You can’t help but feel a little relieved too— glad to know that you’re not the only one experiencing this nightmare. There’s a voice in the back of your mind that’s confused though. Why is she only remembering now? But then again, it took you a few times before you realized yourself.

Around you people start to gasp, and you glance back toward the railway to see an abnormally tall man with white hair and dressed in all black jump down from the atrium onto the railway. He lands rather gracefully for someone who jumped at least one floor and starts to converse with the other three people (you think they're people— two of them are in some pretty wild costumes) on the track.

Wait. Isn’t it supposed to be just two people: the tall man and the one in the traditional clothes? Where did the other two come from?

“We have to get out of here,” the woman says. “Before they kill us.”

Her grip shifts from your shoulders to your arms and she starts to shove at everyone around you, trying to force her way through. She seems to know, just as well as you do, that any second now the gates will open and the crowd will start spilling onto the railway, littering the tracks with bodies and ash. Neither of you can let yourselves get swept up with the rest. If you do and you end up on those tracks, you’re as good as dead.

People move aside at a snail's pace, many of them too focused on trying to see what is going on on the subway tracks. This isn't good. You need to move faster or else—

The collective sound of the gates opening echoes in your head, a metallic hiss that makes your stomach fold into itself. Before either of you can stop yourselves, you both whip your heads back to look, to confirm, but it’s a mistake.

The briefest lapse in attention is enough to pull you both into the current of people, and try as you might to fight against it, the crowd splits you and the woman apart as it swallows you both whole. You’re both spat onto the tracks at the edge of the platform and your head collides with the metal rails of the track. It feels like your skull is about to crack in two, and it takes every fiber in your being to scramble to your feet. You're close enough to the platform that if you can just climb up it, then you'll be—

“Help! Help!”

It’s the woman’s voice. You turn to see that she ended up a couple meters away from you. She’s staring at you, eyes brimming with fear filled tears as she extends her hand in your direction. You take a step toward her, reaching out.

And then, her entire body is engulfed in flames, the skirt of her magical girl costume a ring of fiery death around her.

Her blood curdling scream is the only thing you can hear, her burning flesh, the only thing you can see. You don’t know what to do.

You can’t save her.

There's something touching your back. You can barely feel the pressure, but it's hot, scorching hot, mind numbingly hot, painfully hothothot.

You know this sensation. You have felt it before. The scent of burning cloth, burning hair, burning flesh clogs your nostrils. It's too late, you realize, helpless, despaired as the flames eat at your body— your soon to be corpse.

It's too late.

You die a ninth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the tenth time.

Your head hurts, but you ignore it. There’s something more important that you need to attend to. You immediately make your way to the woman you met during your last round, the one you watched burn to death. Her costume is still pristine, unmarred by fire and death.

For now.

She’s not screaming this time and while there’s a little voice in the back of your mind that’s concerned by this, you try to ignore it.

“Um, excuse me?” you say when she doesn’t acknowledge you as you approach.

The woman turns to look at you. You’re taken aback by the distinct lack of recognition and it feels almost as if the woman you encountered previously and the one before you now are two separate people. In a way, they technically are.

“Do I… know you?” she finally asks when you don’t say anything.

Your mouth is dry. How do you even answer that? You don’t know her. You just watched her die twice. You know her. She begged you for help. You couldn’t save her.

If you explain all of this you know she’s just going to think you’ve lost your mind. Maybe you already have— you’ve died nine times after all.

You give her a weak smile. “I… just wanted to tell you that you think your costume looks great.”

She blinks, taken aback by your words. There’s no doubt that she wasn’t expecting you to say that. It’s the truth though, her costume is nice; she’s dressed up as a character from a magical girl anime that was popular a couple years ago.

“Thank you! I made it myself!” The woman breaks out into a genuine smile and your heart hurts. In a few moments she’ll die and the costume she worked so hard to make will be nothing but ash on the subway tracks.

“Sorry,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

“For?”

For watching her die. For not being able to save her.“...I just kind of came up to you all of a sudden…”

She laughs. “It’s okay.”

It’s not.

You consider telling her that she should try to move. That if she stays here she will die. You don’t want her to die. Again. You can still hear her screaming in your ears as she burned to death. You want to tell her.

You don’t.

“Stay safe, okay?” you say. It almost sounds like you’re begging.

She gives you another smile, kind and gentle and you think you’re far too undeserving of it for not telling her what fate will soon befall her. “You too.”

“I’ll try,” you say and move away from the woman just as the gates open and the crowd surges toward the railway. You do not fight it as you are swept up into the crowd and despite what you said, you do not try, this time, to stay safe.

You die for the tenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the fourteenth time.

There’s a slight ache in your head, but it’s subtle enough that you can ignore it. The pain you feel lessens with each round and you think it’s a sign that your body no longer feels the need to remind you of the precarious situation that you’re in.

Or maybe you are just becoming numb to everything: your death, the death of the people around you, the death of the woman in the magical girl costume—

You try not to think about it too much as you reach into your bag to check the time on your phone: 8:37PM. There’s not a lot of time: you need to move.

At the very end of your last attempt to escape this nightmare you realized something. You need to know exactly what is going on around you so you can plan accordingly: where to not stand, where to not go. Up until now, you’ve relied almost solely on the knowledge gained from your previous failures to try and survive, but obviously it’s not enough to keep you alive. You’re not sure why you didn’t realize this earlier. The panic, maybe? The fear?

Maybe you really are becoming numb to all this.

Unlike previous iterations, this time you elect to move closer to the gate, positioning yourself somewhere against it where you’re unlikely to be pushed off the platform in a couple minutes when they open. You take great care to place yourself where you can see the ones responsible for the slaughter very clearly. At the beginning, you could only see one, the one who looks the most human, but with each repetition, the other two have become more and more clear. You wonder why. You don’t have time to think about it.

Murmurs nearby alert you to the arrival of the fourth major player involved in the night’s events. You look up and see the white haired man dressed in all black descending upon the platform like an angel from the heavens. This is your first time really looking at him and you realize there’s something almost inhumanly attractive about him. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it occurs to you that you shouldn’t even try; you don’t have the time to be drooling over some handsome stranger.

You’ve naturally never taken the time to try and listen to whatever the conversation the man and his opponents have before all hell breaks loose on the platform, but you try and lean closer to listen. It’s hard to hear over the dozens of conversations going on behind you, but you try anyway. There might be a clue to what’s actually going on— or better yet, a clue on how to get out of it.

It’s obvious that you’re missing context from what bits of the conversation you do manage to hear, but honestly it all sounds like stuff out of a shounen battle manga. There is one part of the exchange that you manage to hear with a startling sort of clarity. It feels almost as if your heart stops beating as your blood turns ice cold in your veins.

“If I run away, you’re just gonna kill everyone here, right?” the man in black asks.

There’s a pause, and if your heart was still beating it’d be long enough for just four heartbeats.

“If you run away?” The monster with cane repeats, the sadistic grin spreading wide across its features, displaying its charcoal black teeth. The gravelly sound of its voice sets fire to the blood in your veins, your stilled heart thumping wildly, in fear, in anticipation. Soon. It’s happening soon. You brace yourself. “We’re going to do that even if you don’t!”

You die a fourteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the seventeenth time now.

Things are going surprisingly well, even as the people around you tumble onto the tracks. You manage to hold on, desperation keeping you from falling into the abyss. This is good, you tell yourself, despite the fact that it’s not the first time you’ve achieved this. Every little victory is worth celebrating, but you have to remain vigilant. This is yet another information gathering loop, and while you know that maybe this time you’ll be lucky and live, there’s still a chance, a big one, at that, that you will die again.

You have to make the most of each and every death.

It’s such a morbid thought, but the ends justify the means, or so you tell yourself. If you have to die a few times to make it out of this unending nightmare, then so be it.

The spot you’re in is a good vantage point; it’s easier to see everything happening below you. It’s so good that it’s actually sickening. You watch as the monster with the cane and one with what looks like branches for eyes slaughter the people on the track, mowing them down, setting them aflame. In another life, in another many lives, that was you down there, and for what feels like the first time in forever, you feel like you’re going to be sick. You feel like, at some point, you likened the scene before you to some kind of shounen battle manga, but you think that was wrong.

This is borderline horror.

Everything plays out before you like a scene out of an action horror flick. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were just an extra on set, but you know the reality is that you’re just an extra to whatever phantasmal battle is taking place in front of you. The monsters and the strangely dressed man all try to attack the man in black, but he manages to block every hit effortlessly, as if he is protected by some sort of invisible barrier. When it seems the two monsters are about to hit him, he merely jumps out of the way and the two monsters seem to collide, the force of their combined strength sending a gust of air throughout the crowd. The man in black neatly lands on a nearby platform half wall and says something about curse users, whatever those are, to the monsters, before he starts to mock them, pulling down his strange blindfold in the process.

And this, you’ve found, is where you start to get in trouble.

You clearly remember thinking, at some point, previously, that there was something attractive about this man. You still don’t know what it is. You haven’t had the time to try and figure it out, but there is one thing that you do know: you can’t keep your eyes off of him.

He drops back down onto the tracks, antagonizing his opponents in an arrogant tone as he approaches. When he comes to a stop between the two monsters, the second round of their fight begins. They try to hit him, but he dodges still, gracefully, fluidly, like the three of them are embroiled in some sort of passionate, yet violent dance.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he cruelly rips off one of the arms of the one-eyed monster.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he brutally kicks the branch-eyed monster in the abdomen, sending them flying to the other side of the platform.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he effortlessly hurls the one-eyed, now one-armed monster in the same direction, sending them smashing into the wall.

Only when the man in black seems to fly to the other side is the spell over you seemingly broken. Still, your eyes give chase, and your body too, rushing from one side of the platform to the other. You can’t lose sight of this fight, you tell yourself, settling in a spot you recall being safe during your last round. Doing so could mean another death, another loop, another October 31.

You watch as the man in black acrobatically dodges what looks to be vines or roots that the monster with branches for eyes seems to have summoned from the depths of the Tokyo metro. He lands on the monster’s shoulders, balancing on them as he uses its branch-eyes for leverage. The look in the man’s eyes is so crazed that you can see it from where you’re standing. He says something to it and then—

With a feral and sadistic smile, he rips their eyes straight out of their skull.

Your heart is pounding wildly in your chest as you watch the fight unfold. It is horrifyingly, disgustingly violent, yet still you watch as people on the track are killed by the human-like person, blood raining down as their freshly beheaded skulls go flying into the air. He and the one-eyed monster launch their counter attacks against the man in black and the blowback is so intense the power goes out causing everyone to scream.

There’s a faint glow where the man in black is standing that starts to grow brighter and brighter. You can make out his form turning to face the wall, and it seems almost like he’s slammed the monster that had branches for eyes against it with some sort of telekinetic power. Despite the panic from the people around you, you manage to hear him, chuckling like a mad man as he draws closer and closer to the monster.

The one-eyed monster yells out a name, a name you think must belong to the man, but he doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as he extends his hands out toward the eyeless monster, exerting some kind of force that you can’t really see. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as the eyeless monster’s entire body is vaporized in a flash of blue light. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster, as the lights flicker back on revealing a smoking crater stained with purple blood where the eyeless monster once stood.

But you do.

Satoru Gojo.

You make sure to remember that.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And this is the eighteenth time.

You watch as the man called Satoru Gojo stalks through the crowd of people on the subway tracks, chasing after the one-eyed fire monster. It throws people at him, in a clear attempt to slow him down.

It does not work.

Satoru Gojo climbs back onto the platform in a way that you can only describe as inhuman, and the people nearby shriek and move away from him, out of terror, out of fear. You, on the other hand, draw closer, refusing to lose sight of him.

He is relentless in his pursuit of the one-eyed monster. It continues to throw person after person at him, but he does not stop and the people float there, suspended in midair before they are gently lowered to the ground by some unseen force and scramble away.

No one dares get close to Satoru Gojo, everyone on the platform seems to know that doing so means certain death, yourself included. But you still feel the need to keep an eye on him. The monster and the strangely dressed man are focusing more on him than the crowd— anyone in between is just collateral damage.

But not you.

Especially since you’ve made it this far— you’ve never made it this far before.

A voice echoes throughout the platform; you realize it’s the automated announcement.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You can hear everyone’s relief coming from all sides. The train is coming! The train is coming! A ripple of hope makes its way throughout the crowd. With the train comes the chance to get off the platform and the senseless violence that’s been happening here. Some of the people around you are talking excitedly and others are running toward the gates, toeing the yellow line they’ve been instructed to wait behind. And you, you should be excited, you should be hopeful.

All you feel is dread.

It eats at your stomach, at your chest, at your mind. Clawing and gnawing at you in a way that leaves you paralyzed on the platform. There’s something wrong here. You can’t be sure because you’ve never made it this far, never survived long enough for the train to come, but something is just not right.

No.

You must be paranoid. The train coming is a good thing. It has to be a good thing. You are just paranoid. It’s normal. It’s natural. Dying seventeen times would do that to anyone— rob them of hope, condemn them to an existence full of fear.

It is not lost on you that the thought of dying more than once, much less, dying seventeen times is not normal or natural in the very slightest.

But you need hope, you crave it, wildly, desperately. The hope of freedom, of escape is the only thing getting you through this unending nightmare. Every time you die, every time you wake, it is with the hope that maybe, just maybe this iteration will be different, maybe this one will be the one where you make it out, make it back to your friends who must be waiting for you, make it back home where you can be safe and sound. You need the hope to keep going. Because without hope, what will you have left?

The train screeches as it pulls into the station and the people around you laugh in both disbelief and relief. They start to push and shove toward it, fighting to be able to board because there’s no way everyone here will be able to get on an eight car train and being left behind at this point is practically synonymous with death. Unable to decide if you believe in the train as a symbol of hope or a new layer of fear, you are pushed along with the crowd toward it.

The doors of the train cars slide open and the current passengers all rush off as they disembark. You as well as everyone else on the platform can see with a horrifying clarity that the train is filled to the brim with monsters. Monsters that reach out and grab anyone their hands can reach. The woman to your left. The person to your right.

You.

Hope is gone.

What do you have left?

You die for the eighteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is probably the twenty-sixth time now.

If there is anything this entire ordeal has taught you, it is that you are resilient. Whether it is some innate trait that you never had any reason to uncover before or just a byproduct of being trapped in an unending cycle of being dead and not dead, you don't know. What you do know, though, is that even if you no longer have hope, you at least have your resilience.

Whether you want it or not.

You check the time. It’s 8:35PM. Something flickers in your chest, like a faint light in a sea of darkness, but you ignore it. You don’t have time right now.

With a nimbleness born from your previous failures, you weave your way through the crowd. You’ve done this enough times to know where the gaps are— who will yield and who won’t. Your destination is the escalator that leads off the platform and up to a higher part of the station. You’d noticed previously that the escalator along with every other entrance onto the platform will eventually be blocked by vines or roots of some sort (the work of the branch-eyed monster probably). It’s not a perfect plan because you don’t know what happens on the other side, but whatever it is has to be better than whatever is happening on the side that you’ve been on.

You’d tried to get to the stairs during your last two rounds, but you’d just missed it. You hadn’t been fast enough and had gotten caged and slaughtered along with the rest. But this time, this time you have more time. It’s just one minute, but it’s enough. You know it is.

The flickering in your heart grows stronger. Hope. You try not to pay attention to it— you don’t want to be disappointed yet again. But you want to so badly. A voice in the back of your mind tells you to focus on the good, tells you that if there was truly no way out of this endless nightmare, then why would you get more and more time with each round to escape your fate?

With that thought in mind, you break out into a run, recklessly rushing through the crowd, shoving anyone who will not yield to the side. Out of the corner of your eye you can see the stark white of Satoru Gojo’s hair as he descends upon the platform.

You need to get up those stairs.

Now.

If you remember correctly, the roots and vines don’t close off the area the moment he touches down, but a little after they start talking, so you think there is probably some time, but you can’t leave it to chance.

The stairs are packed, and for some reason no one is moving. The escalator right next to it is just as full and the power doesn’t seem to be working. You don’t have time for this. You clamber onto the escalator’s rubber handrail, ignoring the weird feeling that passes through your body as you do so. You don’t have the time to worry about whatever that is. The people around you start exclaiming around you, but you don’t care, you don’t listen. You wobble as you try to balance yourself and when you think you’re steady you try to run.

But you trip.

And you die for the twenty-sixth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This marks the thirtieth time.

And you have, finally, finally made it up the escalator, up the stairs with barely a second to spare. You pause, glancing back as the roots or vines or whatever the hell they are seal off the entrance to the platform. You notice that the area where the plants come down is actually fairly clear, despite the crowd. It seems weird, but you don’t dwell on it.

A strange feeling envelops your entire body and your legs turn into jelly. As you sink to the floor, you realize what you’re feeling is relief as all the tension, maybe thirty iterations of Halloween 2018 worth, seeps from your being. You don't remember the last time you felt anything other than fear and dread; it’s weird, but not unwelcome.

That voice in the back of your mind tells you that you can't relax just yet: October 31st isn’t over. Even though you have repeated this night again and again, burning the events that play out on the platform into your memory, you do not know a single thing that happens over here. It would be smart to scope everything out.

Legs still shaky, you rise to your feet and start walking. You think it’s probably for the best to try and head up to the surface and you make your way up to the next floor.

It’s packed with people here too, but relatively peaceful, especially when you compare it to the pandemonium taking place beneath your feet. Still, you can make out the undeniable hum of displeasure resonating throughout the crowd. People complaining about how uncomfortable their costumes are, people complaining about how much they want to go home, people complaining about how much their nights have been ruined because they couldn’t meet up with their friends and—

A thought hits you like an eight car train.

You were supposed to meet up with your friends.

That’s why you were on the platform in the first place— you were waiting for them to arrive, but then the trains stopped working, and people just started pouring into the station out of seemingly nowhere (you think you heard some people say they’d come from the crossing?). Soon after that is when everything went to shit.

You check your phone, though, for once it’s not to look at the time (8:56PM). Instead, you open LINE to check your friends’ group chat. There’s no signal here, for whatever reason, so if there are any new messages, you haven’t received them. The last one was from Kei, mentioning he was enroute, but as far as you know, you’re the only one who made it to Shibuya before the trains stopped.

Did one of them maybe make it here though? Surely, you would have run into them if—

The image of a woman in a magical girl costume fills your vision, burning to death before your very eyes as her screams echo in your ears. It is the first time in what feels like forever that you’ve thought about her and your stomach churns violently. You couldn’t help her, you can’t even help yourself, so how could you even expect to do the same for your friends if they were here? The mere thought of having to watch them die over and over is almost enough to send you over the edge. You don’t know if you could do it.

Would you even have a choice?

No. You can't think like that. You have choices. You've had choices. If you didn’t then, you would still be down below, among the fire and brimstone. Dying, if not dead already. However, instead, you are up here, where, for the moment, it is quiet and peaceful.

That thought, in of itself, is enough to give you a shred of solace, a glimmer of hope.

You take a deep breath and fiddle with your phone a little more, changing your lock screen to a picture you and your friends took at a photo booth not too long ago. The four of you are huddled together, faces squished as if you're all struggling to fit in the frame, despite there being plenty of room. You're mid-laugh because it's the first time you've been in a photo booth in years, Mio and Shin are grinning mischievously and finally, Kei is smiling, but only just slightly, the embarrassment clear on his face. It's probably only been a few months since you all took this picture, but the fact that it feels like it's been years makes your heart ache.

You press your forehead to the screen, like a prayer, like a promise.

You will make it out of this nightmare.

No matter what.

A shrill scream yanks you from your thoughts and you are instantly on your feet, alert as your eyes flit around frantically to identify the source. It doesn't take long for you to find it and when you do, you think you might have stumbled upon a new layer of horror to this nightmare.

It’s not the corpse, dangling by a noose, that terrifies you— by now you’ve seen dozens upon dozens of dead bodies that the sight of just one more doesn’t faze you in the slightest. The thing that’s the most mortifying, that’s the most disturbing is that right next to where the body is tied are two girls, two teenage girls still dressed in their school uniforms.

You can accept monsters and weirdly dressed men being responsible for the carnage tonight, but children too? Both girls look like they’re barely in high school and try as you might to rationalize things, to chalk it up to coincidence, you cannot ignore the ominous energy radiating from them.

The very notion that these two children could have killed someone here is a hard pill to swallow, but so is the fact that you’ve died.

And you’ve had to swallow that pill thirty times now, so what’s once more?

“Listen up!” one of the girls yells over the crowd, but she is mostly ignored; you don’t think everyone here has noticed her and the corpse dangling from the rafters. She scowls and turns to the other girl and says something quietly to her. The other girl nods and almost instantly she’s stringing up another person, another example. You want to look away so badly, and yet you cannot bring yourself to and you watch the poor soul choke to death.

“I said listen, you dumb monkeys!” the girl shouts, and this time she’s caught most of the crowd’s attention. “If you don’t want to end up like these two, you’ll listen to what we have to say!”

There is clear dissent among the crowd, people dismissive as they utter their disbelief. Some seem to think it’s a prank, but you know better. It takes two more examples before the crowd goes silent before the two high schoolers.

“About damn time!” The girl roars and then points toward the atrium, which is currently covered by roots and branches. “All of you move over there!”

You have a bad feeling about this.

Still, you comply; the girls have made it abundantly clear that failure to do so will result in death, though, at this point, you're almost certain this iteration is a bust and death is all but imminent. You try to keep positive— thinking you can at least gather information or, who knows, maybe there's a chance that this one is the one.

Yet when you step onto the mound of vines and branches that cover the atrium it feels as if you've crossed the threshold into hell. Your footing is stable… but for how long?

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

It's faint, but you can hear the announcement from below. The liquid in your stomach curdles at the sound as you recall the train and, in particular, what is on board. Soon enough, those monsters will be swarming the platform, massacring everyone in reach, guzzling down their blood, feasting on their flesh—

It dawns on you that the people on the platform are the monsters' first course.

And you, and those around you here in the shrubbery, are the second.

As you realize this, the branches and vines disintegrate beneath your very feet and suddenly you are mid air— falling, falling into the abyss below.

You die for the thirtieth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You've done this nearly sixty times now.

After countless failures, you've decided that you're just not going to go upstairs any more. No matter where you try to go, you still end up herded onto the death trap above the platform where you ultimately fall to your death. You've tried positioning yourself in the same spot, tried bracing yourself for the drop— but nothing seems to work: upon landing, assuming you manage to land without hurting yourself or dying in midair (which has happened a couple times) you get grabbed and killed by one of the monsters from the train. It's probably not impossible, you just don't have the physical prowess or reflexes for it.

If anything, you can try again later, but you sincerely hope you don't have to.

It's 8:32PM, and you have plenty of time to get to your chosen spot for this loop— it's close to the stairs, in the very center of the platform. Here, there's little risk of getting pushed off onto the tracks when the gates open. You'll probably have to move when the train comes, or even before (assuming you survive) to avoid the monsters, but you'll get to that when it's time.

You can't really see the fight once it breaks out after Satoru Gojo arrives, but you still try to keep track of it as best as you can. You see when he hurls both monsters across the platform and you're not sure if it's muscle memory or what but you have to fight the urge to move to the side and watch. It's been a while, yes, but you've seen the fight countless times before— it doesn't change. Satoru Gojo will give chase. He will rip the branches from the branch eyed monster's skull. He will use some kind of power to eviscerate them.

You don't need to watch, but there's something in you that wants to.

It doesn't make sense, you've seen it all before; if you're unlucky you'll see it all again.

The lights go out and people start screaming; Satoru Gojo is ending the life of that one monster. Soon enough he'll be back on the platform, in pursuit of the other. You think at that point it would be good to move, reposition yourself as far from the incoming train as possible.

When he rises from the tracks like a demon straight from hell, you realize it's the first time this loop that you've actually gotten a good look at him. You remind yourself, again, that this isn't the first time you've seen this man, this scene. You can't help but watch, but stare at Satoru Gojo as he stalks through the crowd in pursuit of his prey. His expression is an eerie sort of calm that's at odds with the acts of violence you've seen him commit— his eyes an unnaturally bright blue.

He's a terrifying sort of beauty and you can't help but be captivated by him.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

The sound of the announcement sends your heartbeat into a frenzy, snapping you out of your little trance. The train is coming and you need to get moving. As you dart to the edge of the platform, the thought occurs to you that even if you avoid the initial wave of monsters, it's likely you will inevitably be caught by them and killed. It wouldn't be impossible for Satoru Gojo to turn his attention to them instead of the two he's currently facing, but he's just one man— can he truly defeat all those monsters?

You can see the train pulling in and you brace yourself, praying that it'll work out somehow.

The doors hiss open and the screaming starts again as the monsters come bursting out of the train, biting and mauling anyone they can get their hands on. Those who were lucky enough to not be at the front start to scramble away and the monsters give chase. Your body is taut, ready to try and dodge any that come your way.

Out of the corner of your eye you notice something moving through the air. A person? With blue hair? You take the risk to look— they're attacking Satoru Gojo. He tries to punch them but they fly away from him to dodge— disappearing into the crowd.

You hear a loud cracking sound over the cacophony of the crowd and your stomach twists; you know what that sound is. The roots above the atrium disintegrate and bodies from above start to rain down onto the platform.

And then, you're not sure what happens— it's so quick that you only manage to see what looks like an explosion of blood surrounding Satoru Gojo. Corpses litter the ground around him and even from here you can tell he is shaken by the carnage.

The monsters have finally reached where you're standing, and you duck under one as it lunges at you. Although it's big and scary, you realize it's moving kind of slow. Right after it another one comes at you and you take a side step to avoid it; this monster is kind of slow too.

Maybe you can do this.

As soon as you think that a strange feeling courses through you. Every hair on your body feels like it's standing on edge and the voice in your head is telling you to look at Satoru Gojo. You don't understand why because you think he's the least of your worries right now, but you do it anyway.

He's in some sort of stance, one hand raised to his face, fingers bent in some kind of gesture. There's some sort of aura, oppressive and frightening emanating from his form.

Satoru Gojo is doing something.

You just can't tell what.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are utterly confused.

Barring your first few loops when you weren't fully aware of what was happening, you have very distinct memories of how each of your previous iterations of this night have gone— of each and every one of your deaths. But for your last round, the last thing you remember was feeling the immense power radiating from Satoru Gojo's body, but that's it.

You do not remember dying.

In fact, you don't think you did.

And yet, here you are again, back at the start: it's 8:32PM and the monsters and strangely dressed man are standing on the subway tracks waiting for the arrival of Satoru Gojo.

You don't understand what's going on; you didn't die but you're still stuck in this damn loop. Up until now, your death has served as the trigger to restart the loop. It's not impossible that maybe you suffered a quick and painless death but you're almost certain that isn't the case.

Something else must have happened.

Something having to do with Satoru Gojo.

You have to find out what. If you don't, you won't know how to avoid it, and if you can't do that, then you really might spend an eternity stuck in this nightmare. And so you take great care to repeat the steps of your last round. You need to make sure to survive to the same point you made it to last time.

Miraculously, you do.

The moment you feel that sensation again, a prickling sort of feeling that envelops your entire body, your eyes are on Satoru Gojo— trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. His eyes are crazed with a desperate kind of focus. You see his mouth move— he's saying something. A spell? A prayer? A curse?

You don't know.

You do know.

Your brain feels like it's going to explode.

Again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

Again.

You do not know how many times it's been the night of Halloween in Shibuya: you stopped counting around the hundredth loop. It feels like it's been a while since then. Or maybe it hasn't? You don't know any more.

What you do know is that this night ends up going one of two ways before you are forced to repeat it. Either you die, in some way, shape or form or something happens just after nine that forces you to reset. You still don't know what it is exactly; you only know that Satoru Gojo is responsible for it.

You do prefer it to dying— it's far less painful.

But if anything, you wish you could just die permanently and never have to repeat this night ever again.

Unfortunately, you know better.

The only good thing you’ve noticed about all of this is that you really do seem to keep waking up earlier and earlier. The last time you checked, it was at around 8:30. It might take hundreds of thousands of loops, but eventually you’ll certainly wake up early enough to avoid this damn entire mess.

But by the time that happens… will your sanity still be intact? Will you really be able to go back to a normal day to day life after living the equivalent of hundreds of years, repeating the same night over and over again? You don’t even know how you’ve managed to stay sane all this time and as much as you want to believe you could do it…

There has to be a breaking point.

For both your mind and this time loop.

If you’re lucky, you’ll reach the latter first.

There’s a dull ache in your head that feels foreign yet familiar. Your mind is foggy, all your thoughts hazy as you try to recall what the word for this feeling is.

Groggy.

It feels as if you’ve woken up from a nap and you blink the sleepiness away from your eyes. When was the last time you took a nap? It’s been a while… You think you maybe tried once or twice, but you were too nervous, too on edge. Awake or asleep, it didn’t matter because, either way, you were doomed to repeat this nightmare.

As you think this, you realize that something is different.

You’re used to how the start of each loop feels like waking up suddenly and abruptly and it becomes clear to you that you haven’t looped. This is completely uncharted territory.

You need to find out what’s going on.

The first thing you notice is that it’s quiet. Almost eerily so, especially when the last thing you remember was screaming and chaos. You glance around you and find that it looks like all the monsters from the train are dead, the ground littered in their bloodstains and corpses. There were so many of them, you don’t know how someone could have wiped them out so quickly… Could it possibly have been Satoru Gojo’s doing?

More concerning than the complete eradication of the monsters is the fact that nearly everyone else on the platform is standing stock still, their mouths ajar with blank expressions on their faces. It’s almost as if their souls have completely vacated their bodies…

Were you like that too before you woke up?

You hear voices, and your body immediately goes tense as you turn your head in their direction. A little ways ahead of you, you see a man dressed as a monk conversing with the blue haired person from earlier and before them is—

Your heart nearly stops: it’s Satoru Gojo, restrained and on his knees.

Honestly, you can’t make heads or tails of the conversation they’re having; it’s more shounen battle manga nonsense. Satoru Gojo doesn’t seem to be enjoying their conversation either, and he interrupts them, clearly annoyed.

“Are we gonna do this or what?” he asks. “The view sucks and I’m just kinda bored.”

“I wanted to enjoy this sight for a little bit longer, but you are right,” the monk says. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen— gate, close.”

When he says that, Satoru Gojo’s restraints move, the weirdly shaped cubes at the ends of them closing in around him, trapping him in a giant red cube. It starts to shrink until it’s small enough to fit in the monk’s hand.

You gulp and hope they don’t notice that you’re awake. The fact that they haven’t slaughtered the rest of the people standing around you is a good sign, but you don’t want to find out what happens if they know you’re cognizant.

It’s not hard to play the part of a living statue, especially when you compare it to everything else you’ve had to suffer through on this night. You watch as the monk’s allies, the ones who had attacked everyone on the platform, wake up, but before they can do or say anything, the box holding Satoru Gojo slips through the monk’s fingers and makes a dent in the concrete. The look on the monk’s face makes it clear that it’s a problem he wasn’t expecting.

You don’t know a damn thing about Satoru Gojo, but you feel like this kind of thing is the norm for him.

The blue haired person suddenly looks in your direction and you nearly stop breathing. Have they noticed you? It takes everything in you to keep perfectly still, in hopes that maybe they didn't, that maybe they’re looking at something else. They raise their arm and it extends, their hand acting like some kind of projectile. You almost shut your eyes and brace yourself for impact, but their hand flies upwards and hits something on the ceiling, destroying it.

Inwardly, you breathe a sigh of relief— you’re still safe.

For now.

You listen to their following conversation and while you still don’t fully understand everything, it’s clear they’re talking about what to do next since they’ve taken care of Satoru Gojo. Something having to do with someone named Yuji Itadori? The group seems split on what to do about him but it’s clear he’s their next target.

Eventually, everyone but the monk (you heard the blue haired person, who is apparently named Mahito, call him Geto?) runs off, probably to find this Yuji Itadori person. Once they’re gone, Geto speaks and, at first, you think he’s talking to you, but it becomes clear he’s addressing someone else. “Those cursed spirits are actually smarter than the two of you.”

“Give him back!” a voice hidden among the crowd hisses. Your blood runs cold at the sound. You recognize it; it’s one of the high school girls from the upper floor.

“We cooperated with you fully and kept dropping monkeys for you,” says another voice; it must be the other girl that was with her, the one who hung all those people.

“Now give us back Master Geto’s body like you promised!”

“Don’t toy with Master Geto any further than you have!”

You blink in confusion. Isn’t the monk named Geto? The way the girls are talking it sounds like they’re talking about someone else… Is it possible that the body is ‘Geto’ but the person they’re talking to is someone else possessing it? It sounds kind of crazy, but then again, so is every single thing you’ve experienced tonight.

Your suspicions concerning this ‘Geto’ are confirmed only seconds later as he says, “Now begone, or is it your desire to be killed by this body?”

One of the girls vows her revenge and you hear shuffling somewhere else in the crowd as they scurry away. Now you think it’s just you and whoever it is that’s puppeting Geto’s body. You see him plop down in front of the box (the prison realm, you think he’d called it) that’s holding Satoru Gojo.

“You can come out, you know,” he says after a while.

You freeze. The rest of the platform is completely silent. This time you think he might actually be talking to you.

“I know you’re there,” ‘Geto’ adds, his voice casual. “If you’re insistent on hiding, you should know that I’m not afraid of using whatever means necessary to smoke you out.”

Given everything his allies have done, there’s no doubt in your mind that he’s serious. You were hoping to hide out among the crowd until he decided to leave, but it looks like you won’t be able to now.

Looks like this loop is a bust after all.

Your heart starts to race as you weave your way through the crowd. In every single one of your loops, you were always treated like a bit character, never noticed or singled out by any of the major players of the night. Although this is your first time encountering this ‘Geto’ it’s clear to you that he’s involved with everything that’s happened here and honestly, you get the feeling he might actually be the mastermind behind the massacre.

That makes you even more nervous.

You come to a stop in the place where Satoru Gojo was once kneeling before he was put in that box. Now that you’re out in the open, ‘Geto’ looks you over with some sort of nonchalant curiosity.

“You’re…” he starts, sounding thoughtful, "not a sorcerer, are you?”

Sorcerer. You heard that term thrown around by him and his group a few times. It’s what they’ve been referring to their enemies as. It probably wouldn’t be smart to lie and say you are one; you get the feeling he’d see through your lie anyway. “I’m not.”

He hums. “How interesting.”

“...what do you mean?” you ask before you can help yourself.

“It’s just you have an abnormally large amount of cursed energy for a non-sorcerer,” he explains. “Though, I suppose that all just sounds like gibberish to you."

You nod and look down at the box lodged in the floor. It has eyes, big creepy looking eyes. "...are you going to do the same thing to me as you did to that man?"

He laughs, "...fortunately for you, the prison realm only holds one person at a time and I need him sealed away more than you."

"...does that mean you're going to leave him in there forever?"

"If I'm feeling nice, I might unseal him in a hundred years or so."

One hundred years? At this point, you've probably lived roughly that amount of time through your loops alone, but for Satoru Gojo… "Won't he die first?"

"Only if he decides to," 'Geto' says, looking completely and wholly unbothered. "Time doesn't doesn't flow in the box, so when I unseal him, he'll be the same as he was just now. Physically anyway. Who knows how deteriorated his mind will be after all that."

Time doesn't flow in the box.

The words echo in your mind over and over. Time doesn't flow in the box. In other words, that means time has stopped in the box, and if that's the case then—

"Anyway, rather than worry about him, shouldn't you be more worried about yourself?"

You look at 'Geto' and he's smiling at you, it's friendly, but ominous. There's no doubt what is going to happen next, though you had already resigned yourself to this iteration being a bust; it was only a matter of time.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I was thinking I might keep you around, even if you aren’t a sorcerer, your wealth of cursed energy would serve my plans well," he muses. "But… it would be too much trouble trying to teach you how to use it in time."

As he talks, you realize this is probably the first time your death is intentional— every other death you've suffered has just been a byproduct of the ongoing slaughter. You were just another casualty, a victim, never a target.

You're scared.

Even though you know that once he kills you, once you die, you'll just loop back to around 8:30 again. You'll be on the platform again. And you'll play out some sequence of events before you eventually die again. And again and again.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I'll be nice, though," 'Geto' says, raising a hand and another monster appears out of nowhere. You don’t even bother trying to figure out from where. It doesn’t matter, especially since this monster will surely be the one to end your life. "I'll make it painless."

"...I appreciate it," you say and close your eyes hoping that he's not lying about it.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

He didn't lie.

You die again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you're trapped.

You don't know how and you don't know why, but you are stuck in a time loop— forced to suffer through the horrific events of the night before you die and begin it all again. It's been a long time since you stopped counting how many loops you've gone through, but if you had to guess, it's probably somewhere in the hundreds now.

You are so very tired.

But it doesn't stop. It won't stop no matter what you seem to do. You are stuck. You are trapped. You are doomed.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

Ever since that first loop where you heard whoever is possessing Geto's body say that, the words have been stuck in your head, playing on loop.

You finally realize why.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

It's 8:25PM when you wake up; that should be plenty of time.

You need to find Satoru Gojo.

After hundreds of loops you've come to a singular conclusion: you need to prevent him being sealed in the prison realm. You've witnessed it enough to know that you won't be able to do it alone; you'll need his cooperation.

You rush upstairs as fast as you can, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine as you step onto the stairwell. According to your previous loops, Satoru Gojo arrives on the subway tracks at 8:40PM. With how crowded the upper floor is, you don’t know if you’ll have the time to intercept him and talk to him, but if you can at least figure out where to find him, then you can try and talk to him during a subsequent loop.

When you reach the fourth basement floor, however, you don’t know where you should even start. He’s pretty tall so you think you could spot him in the crowd, but… there are still so many people. It occurs to you that maybe it would be better to try and look from a higher vantage point so you head to the stairs that lead up to the third basement floor. You check your phone again. It’s 8:35PM; you need to hurry.

Luckily for you, you find him very easily on the third basement floor.

The only problem is that he’s in a hard to reach spot— squatting above a sign hanging over the crowd.

You check your phone again. It’s 8:38PM and he’s starting to move, presumably to meet with those waiting for him on the subway tracks. It’s good that you found him, but there’s no doubt about it.

You’re going to need more time.

The moment you wake up, you immediately bolt toward the stairs. It's taken many, many more loops, but you've finally brought the time you wake down to around 8:15. You're still not sure if it's enough time, but there's only one way to find out.

You barrel your way up to the next floor and zig zag through the crowd to get to the next flight of stairs. By the time you get to your destination, you're completely out of breath, your chest heaving as your lungs clamor for air. You’ve done this so many times, yet your body acts like it’s always the first. It sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it. You slow to a brisk pace to catch your breath and check the time. It’s 8:27— a new record. Hopefully it’ll be enough.

The goal is to catch Satoru Gojo before he moves to his lookout point above the crowd. While not impossible, it would be difficult for you to follow him there. You eye the safety barricade that blocks off the area where he’ll be moving in just a few minutes warily.

Yes, getting over there would be extremely difficult.

You don’t want to think about it right now; you’ll deal with it when the time comes.

Especially since Satoru Gojo has now entered your field of vision.

Your heart starts to race at the sight of him and it feels like it’s beating a million times a second. There isn’t a lot of time. You need to talk to him, but your legs only wobble, your feet planted firmly to the ground. This is not good. You need to move. You need to move.

Finally, after what feels like both an instant and an eternity, your feet finally budge, propelling you in Satoru Gojo’s direction. The beating of your heart only grows louder as you make your way toward him, mingling with the single thought that’s echoing throughout your mind right now: will he even hear you out?

You need to make him.

“Excuse me!” The words nearly come out in a stutter as you realize that you are actually talking to Satoru Gojo. You have watched this man at a distance for so long that it almost felt like he wasn’t real, like he was just another fixture in this nightmare that you’ve been living for far too long. And yet, here he is, right in front of you, in the flesh.

And his attention is on you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is actually a little overwhelming. Your mouth is dry and suddenly you don’t know what to say, but you need to say something. You need to say something before he thinks maybe you bumped into him by accident and just walks away without a word.

“I need to talk to you!” The words just burst out from your mouth and something about it is just absolutely embarrassing. You’re not sure if it's desperation or the fact that you haven’t really talked to anyone other than the existence occupying Suguru Geto’s body in nearly forever.

Satoru Gojo’s lips slowly start to form a smile, “Oh, yeah?”

The sound of his voice makes your mind go blank. There’s something different about it right now; more playful, amused even. Maybe it’s because he’s talking to you, a harmless human being and not a monster trying to kill him. It’s almost kind of jarring, but you know, with certainty, what Satoru Gojo’s voice sounds like. And the fact that he’s actually talking to you right now has you kind of excited. You nod, doing your best to not show how thrilled you are that he’s not ignoring you.

He hums thoughtfully, “Sorry… but unfortunately I kind of have some business to attend to right now.”

“I—” You start to say that you know that he’s headed down to the platform below to fight with…Choso and Jogo, you think their names are— you don’t know the name of the monster with the branches for eyes. “It’s— it’s really important!”

Gojo tilts his head a little, clearly thinking. You should probably say something else, something to try and convince him to stay a little longer and hear you out, but your mind is both full and blank. Where do you start? From the beginning? Or do you start with what is most important? Maybe you should say what you think will get his attention. You’re not sure, and you realize you really should have thought about this earlier because you’re running out of time right now.

“...mind handing me your phone?”

You stare at Gojo, completely and wholly confused, but he just holds out his hand expectantly. When you don’t move, he wiggles his fingers a little, a silent gesture telling you to hurry it up. Without thinking, you reach into your bag and unlock your phone before handing it to him.

“Kind of sucks that cell service isn’t working right now,” he remarks as he types something into your phone before handing it back. “But! Here's my number.”

You look down at your phone and, sure enough, Satoru Gojo has added himself as one of your contacts. He’s even added a little star to the end of his name. That’s… a little unexpected. Why his number though?

“Are you… hitting on me?” you mutter in your confusion.

He laughs, “Well, you said you had something really important to talk to me about, right? So just give me a call when you get home or some time tomorrow and we can talk then!”

You’re not going to make it home, or even to tomorrow, and neither will Satoru Gojo. As you start to tell him this, he steps past you. Desperate, you try to grab him, but somehow, for some reason, you can’t. You remember he did this with Jogo and the other monster, made himself untouchable.

This is not good.

He gives you a little wave, cheery as he says, “I’ll talk to you later!”

You watch, helpless as he hops over the barricade beyond your reach.

Gripping your phone tightly, you take a deep breath. It's fine, it's not like you didn’t expect things to go well anyway.

You'll just have to try again.

Every time you’ve tried to solicit help from Satoru Gojo, it has gone the same way. He just won’t give you the time of day, and in some ways you can’t blame him; he’s clearly here to deal with the monsters down on the platform. You’re fairly certain that he probably thinks that whatever is going on with you is a much lesser issue in comparison.

Plus, it probably doesn’t help that in the times that you’ve approached him, you haven’t been able to articulate yourself particularly well. Once you start talking to him, you just get hit with something akin to stage fright and the connection between your mind and your mouth just stops working. It’s gotten better with each attempt, but…

It’s just so frustrating.

It is interesting that Gojo has given you his number every time, star symbol and all. You’re not sure what kind of person you were expecting him to be, but after witnessing him literally and viciously rip monsters apart, you’d figured he’d be a little more somber. However, in the fragmented conversations you’ve had with him he’s come off as far more friendly and playful than you would have thought. Is he the type of person to get more serious when the situation calls for it? You can’t help but wonder, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.

What really matters is that you’re able to convince him to help you.

You have to convince him.

“Excuse me!” you say, stepping in Satoru Gojo’s path. You don’t stutter this time, and your voice is more sure. This is good.

“Yes?”

His head turns in your direction and you gulp. Gojo’s gaze, despite that blindfold of his, still feels just as overwhelming as it did the very first time you approached him. You have no doubt that he’s sizing you up, but there’s just something about it that makes you feel like you’re being picked apart.

You take a deep breath and step closer to him, hoping your voice sounds firm enough as you say, “I need your help. I’m trapped.”

He chuckles a little, “I know, but yours truly is on his way to go beat up the bad guys keeping you all trapped here, so soon enough you’ll be all free to go on your merry little way.”

Right. You were so caught up in your own plight that you nearly forgot that technically you’re not the only one ‘trapped.’ Satoru Gojo obviously knows that everyone else is confined to this station, but you doubt he knows that you’re confined to this night alone.

“That’s not what I mean!” you sputter.

“Then what do you mean?” Gojo asks. Should you tell him that you mean that you’re trapped in a time loop? You’re honestly not sure— in the movies and manga you’ve read about time travel, revealing that sort of thing risks creating a time paradox which seems to be a bad thing. If you have to tell him, you will, but— “Oh, I get it.”

You stare, bewildered. Did you maybe just spew all of that aloud?

Gojo gives you a mischievous smile. “You’re hitting on me, aren’t you?”

“No!” The word comes flying out of your mouth. You can’t deny he’s attractive— you’ve thought it all this time, but that is not what’s happening here.

“No need to be embarrassed,” he continues, ignoring you. “I totally get it, so if you want, I’d be happy to give you my number!”

Again? You’ve received Satoru Gojo’s contact details in every loop you’ve talked to him, star symbol and all— you even have his number memorized. There’s something kind of odd about how he keeps giving you his number. Part of you wonders if he’s got some sort of ulterior motive, but you haven’t thought too deeply about it. There are way more important things going on.

“I don’t need your phone number,” you say. “I need to talk.”

Your response seems to give Gojo pause. Did you somehow manage to get through to him? No way. Your suspicions are all but confirmed when he gives you that familiar apologetic smile.

“Like, I said, I’m sort of in the middle of something, but…” Gojo reaches into his pockets and rummages around until one hand fishes out a folded up piece of paper. The other hand keeps digging around in his pocket and when Gojo seems to give up on whatever he’s looking for, he turns his attention back to you. “Got a pen?”

What?

Gojo tilts his head. “Well?”

“I do, but…” You trail off, unsure why he’s asking.

He holds out his hand waiting for you to just hand him the pen. You still don’t get it, but you reach into your bag’s front pocket and pull out the pen and hand it to him. Gojo looks almost like an excited child when he takes it from you, quickly scribbling something onto his paper before shoving it and your pen back into your hand.

You look at the paper; it looks like a receipt. For a disturbing amount of mochi that Gojo bought earlier today. The amount of money he spent is almost sickening; way too much to be paying for mochi. More importantly, you notice something juxtaposed over the receipt’s print.

It’s Satoru Gojo’s name and number.

He even drew a little star next to his name.

“If you change your mind later, just give me a call!” he tells you cheerily. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while!”

You gawk at him. He cannot be serious. You literally just told him that you didn’t need it and yet he still gave it to you. He must want you to contact him later, but you can’t even begin to understand why. It can’t have been something you said or did, right? Unless, he’s actually—

“Later!” Gojo’s voice cuts through your thoughts and you notice him walking off with a wave.

You can’t let him get away.

Again.

You crush the receipt in your hand and rush after him. Despite the crowd, Gojo seems to move through the people with ease and it almost seems like they are yielding to him naturally. It’s good for you. Makes him easier to chase.

“Wait!” you yell, but Gojo doesn’t even look back. Bastard. Your muscles strain as you try to run faster. You know you won’t be able to grab him if you get to him, but there has to still be something you can do to stop him. Circle around him? Cut him off before he—

Satoru Gojo reaches the barricade.

“Wait!” you yell again. “Satoru Gojo, wait!”

He does not even acknowledge you.

You’re almost there though. Almost. If you reach out your hand, then maybe, maybe you can grab him. Something in your head tells you that it’s useless; you’ve never been able to touch him. But, you don’t care, you don’t care because you have to try. You stretch out your hand, desperate and hoping, but just as you do, Gojo effortlessly jumps over the barricade, moving to survey the crowd.

Due to your momentum, you almost collide into the barricade, but you manage to stop yourself. You stare at Satoru Gojo through the glass. He watches the crowd for at most three minutes. Is this just another bust? Is there really nothing you can do? There must be a way you can get his attention. Is it possible to climb over the barricade? No, it’s too high. There’s nothing you can grasp onto or use as footing either.

This fucking sucks.

Another minute or two and Gojo will be on the move again, and there will be no way you can follow, no way you can get his attention. You press your hands against the glass, pushing against it. Naturally, it doesn’t budge. Why would it? If only you could get it out of the way. If only you could break it. This stupid barricade is the only thing between you and Satoru Gojo and there’s no way you can climb it, but if only you could break it.

If only you could fucking break it.

Suddenly, the glass feels warm. Satoru Gojo’s image starts to look a little distorted as the warmth beneath your fingers grows. Something is happening. The glass starts to vibrate and shake. Violently. The tremors grow stronger and stronger. You should stop. You should back away.

You don’t.

The barricade starts to crack and fracture and soon the sound of shattering glass resounds throughout the entire room. Everyone starts screaming. No one knows what’s going on— not even you. But you don’t care. It’s gone. The barricade is gone.

You take a step forward, toward Satoru Gojo. He’s on a beam that’s about a two meter drop from where you’re standing. That’s fine. That’s okay. You can make it. You have to. Without a second thought, you jump—

And you land on the beam. You look up and Satoru Gojo’s attention is back on you. He’s finally, finally turned toward you, face twisted into an expression you can’t decipher or even comprehend, but—

Something’s wrong; your world is turning on its axis, but—

Satoru Gojo is looking at you, and—

Up is very quickly becoming down, and—

Satoru Gojo is coming closer, but—

You’re slipping—

But he’s right there, and—

You’re falling, but—

He’s trying to catch you, but—

It’s too late. It’s too late.

The last thing you think you feel—

—is Satoru Gojo’s arms around you.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are causing a commotion.

“Shit! Fuck!” you curse loudly. The people near you start to shift away but you barely notice; you don’t really care.

You were so close, so fucking close and yet… yet here you are again. It’s quarter past eight and you are back on the goddamn platform. You don’t know what happened; you remember falling and thinking you were going to die, but you are absolutely certain that, once again, this time, you didn’t die.

Is Satoru Gojo at fault again? Did he do something? Like he did all those other times you looped without dying? When you think about it more, you don’t think so. You don’t know what happened; all you know is that you tried to get to him, but you slipped.

And he caught you, you definitely remember that.

You still don’t understand why you looped, but there’s not much you can do about it now; it’s not like you can go back anymore. It just sucks, because you think he might have actually listened if you’d talked to him.

Or he would have come after you for… whatever happened with the barricade. It could have been taken as an attack on the crowd… But if he thought you were doing that, then why would he catch you?

You don’t know.

All you know is that you have to try again.

The only problem is that you don’t know how you managed to shatter the barricade. You think about it as you make your way up to where you’ll find Satoru Gojo. There is the possibility that it wasn’t you and something else happened to it instead, but that feels way too coincidental. It had to be you. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You just can’t figure out how you did it outside of wanting, wishing, praying for the barricade to break. It’s not like you have supernatural powers like Satoru Gojo and his enemies.

Despite your mind being completely and wholly occupied by trying to figure out how in the world you managed to break through that barricade, you still manage to make it to the second basement floor of Shibuya Hikarie by 8:25PM— a brand new record. Satoru Gojo doesn’t show up until around 8:34PM, so that gives you almost ten minutes to try and figure out what you need to do to try and replicate shattering the glass barricade again.

Except—

Except Satoru Gojo is already here.

The thought that maybe you’re mistaken flashes in your mind before it’s quickly dismissed; there’s no way you’d mistake anyone else for him. There is absolutely no denying it: that is Satoru Gojo. Bewildered, you double check the time on your phone. Maybe you misread it and you’re actually late but sure enough you read it right— Satoru Gojo is here early.

What the hell is going on?

Of the thousands of times you have experienced this night, this hell, this sort of thing has never happened before. Everything happens at a specific time, as if adhering to an unseen schedule. It’s likely that what happened in your last iteration did delay Satoru Gojo’s arrival onto the platform, but other than that there has never been a deviation to the time table.

And yet, here Satoru Gojo is, nine minutes early now.

You realize that that’s not the only thing that’s strange: he’s not moving. In previous rounds, when you encounter Gojo here, he’s walking to the lookout spot beyond the barricade. But, right now, he’s just standing there, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. It almost looks like he's waiting for something.

Or someone.

This unexpected turn of events has you rooted to the spot. You’re not sure what you should do. No. This shouldn’t change anything. You need to talk to him. As concerning as a change like this is, the extra time it gives you should be a good thing. Despite knowing that, your feet are still firmly planted to the ground.

The crowd shifts and you see Satoru Gojo start to move. Toward the barricade? No. He’s not heading in his usual direction, rather he’s—

You stop breathing.

He’s headed toward you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is absolutely mind numbing.

He comes to a stop before you, lips curled up to form an amused sort of smile as he says, “Soooo, you needed to talk to me?”

You try to answer but no words come out of your mouth. Are you dreaming? You have to be, right? There's no way that this is actually happening. Could it be that, after thousands of loops, you’ve finally lost it? Your mind shattering along with the glass of the barricade at the end of the last one?

Gojo tilts his head, indicating that he's still waiting for an answer. When you open your mouth, at first, nothing comes out, the words stuck in your throat. You force them out, your voice cracking, “...how did you know?”

He smiles, looking almost mischievous as he reaches up and lightly taps the side of his head. “I remembered, of course!”

All you can do is stare at Satoru Gojo. He remembered? How is that possible? From his perspective, this is the first time you’ve met and while it shouldn’t be possible for him to remember there’s something in your mind that’s keeping you from completely dismissing the possibility.

Gojo laughs, “I take it from the look on your face that you’re not used to this sort of thing happening. Is this the first time?”

“No.” The fact that the word is out of your mouth before you can even really think about it surprises you and you really have to think. Your face scrunches together as you try to remember. Is this really not the first time? Then, the memories assault you, overlapping as they replay simultaneously in your head— a woman in a yellow and white magical girl costume— begging you for help as she burns to death— smiling as she tells you she made her costume herself. “...it happened just once a long time ago.”

“‘A long time ago,’ huh. Sounds like you've been at this for a while now.”

“...unfortunately.”

Gojo hums. “So when you said you didn’t need my phone number…”

“You’d already given it to me a few times,” you say, figuring that’s where this conversation is going.

“Really now?”

Does he not believe you? Or is he just being an ass? You’re not sure, but since you had taken the liberty of memorizing Satoru Gojo’s phone number you recite it back to him to prove your point.

Just when you think you may have stunned Gojo into silence he starts to laugh, obviously finding something funny about the fact that you know his cell phone number. “Seems like you've got quite the fascinating technique there.”

Technique? What is he talking about? Your confusion must be plain on your face because he adds, elaborating, “The time travel.”

You continue to stare at him. You don't think you'd consider what you've been going through time travel, because traveling implies moving from point A to point B, but you've been stuck walking in circles at point A for a long time. What really gets you is… “What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“You mean you don’t— oh. I get it; no wonder you’re trapped.”

That does not answer your question in the slightest. “Can you please explain what you're talking about? What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“Right, right… So basically, a technique is like a special sort of power,” he finally explains. “Like I said, your technique seems to be a kind of time travel. Whenever you activate it, your mind is sent back in time.”

What he's saying makes sense, but… “How come you were sent back too?”

He laughs again. “Isn't it obvious? Think back to before— do you remember that I caught you as you were falling?”

You nod slowly. The memory of his arms around you is almost embarrassingly vivid. “...is it because we were touching?”

“Ding, ding, ding! That's correct! Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!”

Something about his tone annoys you, but you try to ignore it. He could have just told you rather than make you guess. “How do you know that for sure?”

“Well,” he continues. “You’ve done your little time loop a bunch of times, right? If your technique affected everyone, or even a few people in a select range you would have noticed for sure. And if it affected only just you then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, now would we?”

When you think about it, you do think that the woman in the magical girl costume might have bumped into you before the loop where she remembered.

“That’s honestly just conjecture, but I've got pretty good eyes, so I’m hardly ever wrong.”

Gojo gives you a grin and while you do think that his reasoning is sound enough his confidence is a little grating. More than that, though, you’re glad that this conversation is actually going really well.

“Either way,” he says thoughtfully. “It doesn’t look like you can control your technique. Usually a person’s technique manifests when they’re a kid, but you seem to be a special case… in fact, I bet your technique activated for the very first time tonight— probably under some pretty extreme circumstances, too.”

“...dying counts as an ‘extreme circumstance,’ right?”

“Oh, absolutely. Or legitimately thinking that you’re gonna die, but it seems like your body has been unconsciously activating your technique as a sort of defense mechanism. Which is why you’re trapped.”

“So, if I could control it I’d be able to make it out of this time loop.”

“Yeah, but in this case it probably wouldn’t end very well for you,” he points out with a chuckle. “It’s not like you actually want to die, right? I mean, if you did, then your technique wouldn’t even activate in the first place.”

You don’t; what you want is for this night to finally end. To be free from the endless cycle of dying over and over again and again. You don’t think death is quite the answer; even if you were to learn how to control this supposed technique of yours, there’s no guarantee that you would just unconsciously activate it when the grim reaper comes knocking on your door. No, the answer is…

“Anyway!” Gojo’s cheery voice cuts through your thoughts. “I highly doubt that you’re the type that makes a habit of jumping off ledges for the funsies, so the fact that you’ve been dying tells me that some pretty gruesome stuff is about to go down, so, tell me what happens tonight.”

The sudden drop of his voice sends a shiver running down your spine. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve seen how serious Gojo can get, the sudden shift in demeanor would probably freak you out a bit, but it doesn’t. This is the Satoru Gojo you’re familiar with.

You do have one concern though. “That… won’t create a time paradox or anything, will it?”

“Nah,” Gojo shrugs. “You wouldn’t cause one with the way your technique works, besides, if you’ve only been going back at most an hour or two in time it’s hard to believe you’d be making a really big impact… unless you really believe in the butterfly effect.”

You’re still not quite sure.

“Trust me, it’ll be fine.”

His voice sounds strange. Gentle. Kind. It's the most soothing thing you've heard in a long time and it makes you want to believe him.

“...okay.”

Anxiety is still gripping at you, but you try to dispel it, taking a deep breath before beginning your explanation. For the sake of brevity, it’s probably best that you’re as concise as possible. There isn’t much need to really get into the nitty gritty of things unless he asks specifically.

Naturally, you begin with his arrival onto the platform and how soon after a fight breaks out and how the crowd is unfortunate enough to be involved. Gojo’s expression is passive for the most part, but he does crack the faintest hint of a smile when you mention how he manages to eviscerate one of the monsters.

It disappears once you tell him about the arrival of the train. Between the dozens upon dozens of people being dropped onto the platform by those two high school girls and the hoard of monsters disembarking from the train, everything devolves into pandemonium.

“Wait,” Gojo holds a hand up and you pause. This is his first interruption since you started recounting the night’s events for him. “Everyone is able to see the monsters?”

You stare at him. What a weird question. “...yeah?”

His mouth twists and it looks like he’s thinking about something. You can’t even begin to imagine what. Finally, he comments, “Makes sense.”

It does not, but you don’t ask him to elaborate. Surely if it was important he would have just done so.

“Anyway, in the middle of all that, you… you do something.” Your brows bunch together as you remember the stance Gojo took, the crazed and desperate look in his eyes, the feeling of your head about to explode. “I don’t know how to describe it. At first, it would just force me to… activate my technique, I guess. But now, it just knocks me out for a few minutes.”

Gojo frowns and he rubs at his chin, obviously thinking about what you’ve said. Eventually, he raises a hand and bends his fingers into a familiar gesture. It’s the one that preludes whatever he does on the platform. “Do I do this?”

“Yeah.”

He hums. “Interesting.”

You wait to see if he’ll explain. He doesn’t. Great. Even if he doesn’t think you need to know, it certainly would be nice to. It’s annoying otherwise, but you ignore the feeling and continue. “I can’t tell you what happens when I’m knocked out, but when I come to everyone is basically a zombie and all the monsters from the train are gone. I think you kill them.”

“I probably do,” he says casually. “But what about Volcano Head?”

“...you don't…get a chance to kill him,” you say slowly. Gojo tilts his head, waiting for you to elaborate, but you hesitate. You have to tell him, you know you do, but…

You have seen the interaction so many times and though you don't know the exact nature of the relationship between them, you can tell that seeing Suguru Geto (or rather seeing his body) shook Satoru Gojo to his very core.

There's no doubt in your mind that he will not take this news well.

“Come on now,” Gojo's tone is light-hearted, unaware. “Don't keep me in suspense here.”

It's as if you're withholding the punchline to a joke. In a way, you suppose you are, but you don't think he's going to find it funny.

You take a deep breath. You need to tell him. The worst thing that could happen is that he doesn't believe you, but if that's the case… you'll probably just end up repeating this all again until you find a loop where he does.

Having made it this far, you'd like to avoid all that.

“Before you can get Volcano Head you get restrained by something called the prison realm,” you say slowly, “by someone calling themselves… Suguru Geto.”

The second the name leaves your mouth, there is a clear and obvious shift in the air. Gone is Gojo’s laid-back and frivolous demeanor, replaced with something more somber and almost frightening. The tension grows more and more palpable to the point that you think it might almost choke you.

You almost wish that it would.

“You can’t be serious,” Gojo finally says, once your words have fully sunk in.

“I—” You start to speak, but come to an abrupt stop when you see him shove his hand into his pocket to yank out his phone of all things.

The both of you know full well that there’s no reception here, but you don’t think that he’s planning on making any calls. Gojo scrolls and scrolls on his phone before he stops and shoves the screen in your face. It shows a picture of three people— a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth, a younger, happier version of Gojo sporting a pair of round sunglasses and—

“When you say ‘Geto’ is this who you’re referring to?” Gojo demands, using his other hand to point at the third person in the frame— a handsome young man with long dark hair pulled up into a bun.

“Yes, but—”

“That’s impossible. It can’t be him,” Gojo interrupts, his voice firm, cold even. “He’s dead.”

There’s a note of finality in his words that is definitely meant to leave no room for argument. It doesn’t stop you, though. Instead, you glare at Gojo’s stupid blindfold and say, “...being dead doesn’t mean a damn thing! I’ve died hundreds of times and yet I’m still fucking here, but—”

“Your situation is different,” he interjects, the temperature of his tone hiking up, his words like heated hissing. “I killed him almost a year ago. There's no way—”

“You didn't get rid of the body properly!” You cut him off, raising your voice in hopes that he'll take even just a second to stop and listen. It seems to work and you add something you remember ‘Geto’ saying. “You should have had Shoko Ieiri get rid of it, but you didn’t and now some… some kind of gross brain thing is possessing the corpse!”

The air between you both is silent as the grave. Though you can't see it, you can feel the weight of his gaze pressing down on you. He’s definitely having second thoughts about everything you’ve said so far. There’s a chance he might even think you’re his enemy now. You stare him down though, refusing to look away. You’ve made it this far, you can’t— you won’t back down.

“...you’re not lying, are you.” Gojo’s words are more of a statement than a question. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows the answer, and yet he’s still asking. You wonder if maybe he’s clinging onto some vain hope that maybe, just maybe this all a sick, cruel joke that’s gone way too far.

“I’m not.”

Gojo holds your gaze for a second longer before he lets out a curse. “Fuck!”

“...I’m sorry,” you say quietly, mostly because it feels like the most correct thing to say at this moment. You don’t know the whole story, but it seems like they were close. If so, then it must have hurt Gojo a lot to have killed him, and must hurt even more to know that someone is desecrating the body. You hate that you, a complete and utter stranger, happened to be the person to tell him, but…

It had to be done, for the sake of getting past this unending night, it had to be done.

Gojo runs a hand through his hair and lets out a ragged sigh. “Okay. What happens after that?”

You give him a rundown of what follows; he gets sealed, the monsters wake up and all but ‘Geto’ leave in search of their next target. When you mention the high school girls demanding the brain give Geto’s body back, Gojo snorts loudly.

“Fat chance of that,” he says derisively.

You nod in agreement. It was clear to you that the brain parasite has no intent on giving it up any time soon. “After they leave, he… talks to me.”

“Probably couldn't ignore all that cursed energy you have,” Gojo remarks offhandedly.

You stare at him, expression twisted in a way that shows that you have absolutely no clue what that means. It should be fine for you to ask this one question; it actually concerns you after all. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, though… probably doesn't make much sense to you, does it?”

You give him a pointed glare and all Gojo does is laugh.

“Just think of it like having a lot of MP.”

“...Like in a video game?”

“Exactly!” Then, Gojo tilts his head, clearly thinking. You don't bother asking; you don't feel like he'll explain.

“He does ask me if I'm a sorcerer, whatever that is. Is that why?”

“Probably. Ordinary people don't have even a fraction of the energy you're packing.”

‘Ordinary people’ he says as if you’re not an ordinary person who got caught up in all this supernatural sorcery bullshit. Or at least you were, but if the time loops are really a product of your own doing…

“Does he kill you when you answer?” Gojo asks to get the conversation back on track.

“Not right away. What happens next kind of varies,” you answer. “He usually lets me have a question or two before he kills me; I've asked him a couple different things.”

“Really taking advantage, aren’t you?” Gojo says and you're not sure what to make of his tone. Is he mocking you or is he easing back into that laid-back persona of his?

“If I’m doomed to repeat the same situation over and over, I might as well make the most of it,” you respond flatly.

“You know, your technique kind of reminds me of save scumming.”

He’s definitely gone back to acting almost completely unserious— all signs of his earlier agitation are nearly gone.

“So what did you learn?”

“Well, the prison realm only holds one occupant. Once they’re sealed, time stops for them and the only way out is if the bearer unseals them or if they choose to kill themselves.”

“I see… And what about our body jacker?”

“He didn’t go into detail but he said something about… striving toward the evolution of mankind?” You frown a little at the memory. He didn’t explain further because he said that you wouldn’t understand.

“Huh. Interesting. Wonder how he was gonna go about doing that.”

“I don't know, but I can't imagine you'd like it since he goes out of his way to seal you into that box,” you say. “Said you’d get in the way because you’re too strong.”

Gojo shrugs his shoulders and grins a little. Cocky. “Well, I am the strongest sorcerer around, you know.”

You would think him overconfident if you hadn't seen the magnitude of his strength first hand.

“Anyway, that's as far as I ever go. When he's decided he’s done talking to me, he kills me and I loop back.”

“So, in short, what you want help with is getting past that point, right?”

“More or less.”

“And all I have to do is avoid getting caught by the prison realm?”

You nod.

“What’s it look like?” he asks. “A big cage with a bunch of metal bars?”

Now that you think about it, you haven’t woken up early enough to see it before it traps him, but you can’t imagine it looks that much different. “No.. It’s a small box with eyes… It gets big enough to fit you in it, though.”

“Huh.” He stretches his arms out above his head as if he’s trying to emphasize how large he actually is and shoots you a grin. “Should be easy enough then. I bet our body snatcher used the shock of seeing Suguru to trap me but since I'll see it coming, avoiding it'll be a piece of cake.”

Gojo makes it sound so easy, and maybe it really is as simple as that, but you can't help but be worried still.

“Don't tell me you don't think I can do it,” he says, tilting his head.

“It's not that,” you admit. “I'm just concerned I might die before we can get to that point.”

Truthfully, since you know that will just result in another loop you're less concerned with dying itself and more worried about losing the progress you've made in convincing Gojo to help you. Even though it's been clearly proven you can loop him as well, there's no guarantee you'll be able to make the physical contact needed to do it upon death.

“You've made it pretty far on your own, though, right?”

“Yeah, but… I’ve messed up plenty of times.” More than you can even count. “There's also the possibility that taking the time to talk to you might have thrown things out of whack.”

Speaking of time, you check your phone. It's 8:39PM. You curse.

Gojo leans over to check your phone. “Let me guess, I'm supposed to be somewhere right now.”

“Yeah, this is when you’re descending down onto the platform.”

“You know where I am down to the exact minute?” He asks and you tilt your head back and forth a little. It’s not exact per se, but it’s close enough. Gojo chuckles a little. “Man, I didn’t realize that you were actually that into me.”

That earns Gojo a glare from you, but he just laughs it off. “I doubt being a few minutes late is going to make a big difference.”

You certainly hope so.

“Don't worry,” Gojo says and you notice he's using that tone from earlier. “You won't die.”

It’s hard to argue with him when he uses such a reassuring sounding voice and yet, you still open your mouth to try— to voice your doubts, but what he says next silences you before you even can.

“I'll protect you.”

You think your heart stops beating in your chest and your words dissolve in your throat.

He grins at you. “Did you fall in love with me just now?”

That catches you a little off guard. You're willing to admit he's hot, but surely he must be joking. “How could you even think of something like that at a time like this?”

Gojo laughs again. “Well, since someone is so worried about their time table being all messed up, I better head down there; can’t keep Volcano Head and friends waiting, right?”

You blink. Is that it? “Wait, shouldn’t we make a plan or something?”

“Isn’t the plan for me to not get caught in the prison realm?”

Yes, but… “But what about me? Is there anything I can do?”

Gojo stares at you, or at least you think he does. “...I don’t know, is there?”

You’ve seen the encounter between Satoru Gojo and those monsters so many times and you try to picture a version of it where you intervene and… all you can see is yourself getting in his way. You’re no fighter, no… sorcerer, or whatever he is, you’re just some ordinary person that was unfortunate enough to get all caught up in this mess. The most you can probably do is kick the prison realm out of the way when the time comes, but otherwise… “...no, I guess not.”

His expression turns sympathetic. “You’ve done plenty by telling me everything that happens. So just wait up here, and let me handle the monsters.”

You almost nod. Almost. But then you remember what transpires up here above the platform. You know it sounds safer up here where you’re less likely to get involved in the carnage, but… “Wait, no, if I stay up here then I’ll fall to my death when those girls—”

Gojo laughs, interrupting you. “Don’t worry about that. It’ll be fine.”

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

“I…” It’s hard to. After everything you’ve gone through it’s hard to trust in anything, to believe in anything. Even though you’ve made it this far this time, the worry that something will go wrong and that you’ll have to do it all again still lurks in the back of your mind.

Despite all that, you want to believe.

You want to believe that you can make it past this unending night, that one day you’ll wake up and it’ll no longer be October 31, 2018. And the first step towards that is trusting in Satoru Gojo.

“...okay,” you say quietly. “Okay.”

Gojo chuckles then asks, “Anything else before I head off?”

You start to ask if there’s anything you should say, in case things don’t work out, but you stop yourself. You’re choosing to trust him, to believe in him— you can figure out that stuff later if things end up going south after all. So, instead you give him a smile and it feels a little weird because you don’t remember the last time you did. “Good luck!”

For a split second, Gojo looks almost surprised, but then he laughs again, beaming widely at you. He starts to move past you and reaches out to give you what you think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and then he’s off. You turn to watch him go, the crowd, once again, parting almost naturally for him.

When he reaches the barricade, he pauses, raising his hand as if he’s giving you one last wave. Then he jumps over it onto his little perch and then less than a minute later he’s gone, descending to the platform below.

Now, all you can do is wait.

You check your phone again and it’s 8:44PM. If you remember correctly, the high school girls start threatening everyone right before 9PM. With Gojo’s arrival being shifted back almost five minutes, does that mean that they’ll be shifted back too? It would make sense, but you’re not too sure.

Out of habit, you keep checking your phone and at nearly 9PM, you hear the shrill voice of one of the girls over the crowd, commanding everyone to do what she says, her partner stringing up bodies until everyone listens. Everything plays out just as you remember it, which is mildly comforting, though you know that the events that happen up here are more or less independent from what happens below.

Surely, just as Gojo said, a few minutes aren’t going to change anything, but—

No.

You agreed to trust him. To trust that everything would be fine.

When the girls start to demand that as many people as possible climb onto the roots and vines covering the atrium your heart starts to hammer in your chest. In just a few minutes, all the foliage will disintegrate beneath you, and you and everyone else here will fall into the abyss below.

You are afraid.

There isn’t a single loop where you’ve really survived this fall. If you don’t die in midair, you die right after landing. It’s a death trap, and that’s why you’ve stopped coming up here. There’s a part of you, the part that knows what’s about to happen, that wants to try and run back onto stable footing. But you can’t, because you know if you do then the girls will kill you for sure; you have to stay.

It’ll be fine, you tell yourself, it’ll be okay.

You just have to trust Gojo.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You hear the announcement faintly below you. It’s almost time. You brace yourself and try to stay calm. Gojo said he would protect you, that you wouldn’t die. You don’t know how he intends to keep that promise, but all you can do is believe in his words.

It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay.

The vines and roots start to crack and the ground beneath you starts to give out. You squeeze your eyes shut as that sickening weightless feeling overtakes you. It occurs to you that this is actually quite literally a trust fall— will Satoru Gojo really be able to catch you?

As you fall, you realize almost instantly that something is different.

You’ve experienced this fall dozens of times and so, even though it has been a while since you’ve gone this route, you are very familiar with what it feels like. Something is different. You’re falling faster. The trajectory is changing. It’s like some force, other than gravity, is pulling at you.

Is this Gojo’s doing?

Just as your body collides with the ground you hear the sounds of mutilating flesh meld with the screams surrounding you. Blood and severed limbs litter the ground, but you try to ignore it. You need to focus on your own survival right now. Quickly, you scramble to your feet scan the area around you; you’re on the platform right now and right in front of you is—

Right in front of you is Satoru Gojo.

His back is turned to you, his focus currently elsewhere. Looking at him you realize you recognize this scene, though it’s much closer and at a different angle. He’s about to do that thing, that thing that knocks you out.

Something in you tells you to move closer to him, after all, he used his mysterious powers to deliberately bring you closer to him, right? You rush toward him and as you do something he said earlier pops up in your mind.

Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!

Whatever he’s about to do… Is that his ‘technique?’ And if it is, would it work the same way as yours? If so, there’s only one way to find out: you need to touch him. You dodge monsters and other people as you run toward Satoru Gojo and—

A monster still manages to grab you, its large hands wrapping around your wrist. You try and yank it free, but it's much stronger than you are.

“Shit!” you hiss as the monster starts to pull you toward it and away from Gojo. What do you do? Your other hand is still free, should you try to punch it in the face? Or—

Before you can do anything, something blasts the monster’s head clean off. Shocked, you stare as the monster’s body slumps onto the ground, its grip loosening on you instantly. You whip your head around to find that while Gojo still has his back to you, his arm is bent back in your direction, his palm open as if he fired some invisible blast from it.

Then you feel it again, something pulling at you, but this time it's more forceful. Your body is yanked toward Gojo and the second you feel his hand press against you, you see him make that gesture with his other hand.

“Domain Expansion,” he whispers in a strained voice. “Infinite Void!”

Something happens and your vision flashes for a fraction of a second. And then—

The room is enveloped in an eerie stillness; all the violence and bloodshed coming to an abrupt stop. Monsters and humans alike stand like the living dead, unconscious with their eyes wide open as if they are staring into an infinite abyss. You recognize this scene, you’re familiar with it because it’s similar to the one you wake up to after being hit by Gojo’s ‘domain expansion.’ The only difference is the presence of the monsters, who are all but gone when you regain consciousness.

The pressure from Gojo’s hand is gone and he says to you, his voice still low. “If you’re squeamish when it comes to blood and gore, it might be best for you to close your eyes.”

And then he’s gone.

You do not take his advice. You do not close your eyes. How many loops were you unable to witness what’s about to unfold? A few hundred? A few thousand? And if all goes to plan, then you will never get another chance again: there’s no way you could possibly look away.

And what you see unfold before you is that Satoru Gojo was right.

He is the one to kill all the monsters.

It’s not as if you really had any doubt, after all, it seemed like the most logical conclusion to come to and yet…

There’s a difference between knowing and seeing.

All the violence resumes and the platform is engulfed in the sounds of carnage and slaughter once more. The lack of terrified screams makes everything more disconcerting— without them, all you can hear is the squelching echo of mangled flesh and blood splattering all over the place. You can’t really see him, but you can tell where Satoru Gojo is in the crowd as he leaves dozens upon dozens of decapitated heads soaring in his wake. Once or twice, he leaps out of the crowd and even from where you stand you can see the crazed glow of his inhumanly blue eyes as he massacres monster after monster.

Even though you don’t think you have anything to be scared of, you are still terrified: Satoru Gojo is no longer a man, but violence incarnate. You want to move closer to where Gojo gets trapped, but you’re afraid to. What if you get in his way? What if he kills you by accident?

Dying again when you’ve made it this far is definitely not ideal, but isn’t being killed by Gojo the best case scenario? Because then the two of you would probably loop together again and—

No.

Gojo said you wouldn’t die.

He said he’d protect you.

It’s hard to believe when he’s in the middle of a massacre, slaughtering monsters left and right, but you remind yourself yet again that you have to believe in him.

You take a deep breath and start moving, taking care to keep an eye on where Gojo is. You don’t know how long this is supposed to take, but you do know where he ends up when he’s just about done. The closer he gets to that spot, the sooner the prison realm will be unleashed upon him.

There’s a small group of zombified people nearby and you settle yourself among them. It’s not super close, but you think it's close enough that you'd be able to run over and kick the box away from Gojo if you have to. You do a quick survey to see if you can spot the body snatcher, but he's nowhere to be found. Hopefully, he hasn't noticed you moving around, or, if he has, he's more concerned with Gojo than he is with you. Given that you always seem to be the last thing he acknowledges, you'd like to think that he doesn't consider you a threat.

Which you're not, not really anyway.

The sounds of slaughter start to die down and you look to see Gojo approaching the spot where he gets caught. He looks beat, his eyes unfocused and his breathing heavy. You do another quick scan around him and notice a small box a few meters away from him, wrapped in what looks like paper charms or seals or whatever they're called. That has to be the prison realm— though it looks different than what you saw before. Gojo seems to notice it right after you do, his gaze honing in on it, examining it with some measure of bewilderment. Then, some invisible force slices through all the paper seals covering the box and it expands, the corners of the box floating up in midair to reveal what looks like a large sheet of dark red flesh with a large bloodshot eye stapled to the middle.

Disgusting.

If Gojo didn’t realize before, he seems to now, because he takes a step back, away from the grotesque thing. Good, good—

“Hey! Satoru!” Your blood runs cold at the sound of the body snatcher’s voice. He emerges from the crowd, smiling widely as he gives Gojo a wave. “Long time no see!”

Satoru Gojo’s entire body goes rigid. Shit. You told him, you warned him about what was going to happen, who he was going to see, but was that not enough? It’s possible that no amount of warning would have been enough to mentally prepare Satoru Gojo for the sight of the man he said he killed a year ago. After all, you know that there’s a stark difference between knowing and seeing. Even then, if Gojo doesn’t gather his wits and move now then he’s going to get caught and you can’t let that happen.

Your body moves before you can even think about it.

You scramble out from your hiding spot in the crowd and throw yourself in between Satoru Gojo and the prison realm. There’s no way you can kick it away from him now, not when it’s in this form, but maybe, if you get between them you can at least keep it from capturing him.

The eye quivers erratically, as it flits from Gojo to you. Every hair on your body stands on end as it watches you, the pupil dilating and contracting uncontrollably. You can’t look away from it, your own gaze fixed to your image reflected in the black abyss of the pupil. Something in the back of your mind tells you to stop, to get away, it’s dangerous, but you keep your feet firmly planted to the ground.

A second, or maybe even a minute passes and the prison realm shifts, its fleshy form morphing to restrain you.

The body jacker looks at you, his frown tinged with disgust. “Don’t you think you’re being rather rude by butting into what could have been a touching reunion?”

You scowl. Is he still trying to play the role of Suguru Geto?

He sighs and looks past you at Gojo. “Satoru, I thought bringing lesser sorcerers to fight alongside you was more trouble than it was worth?”

You hear Gojo snort from behind you, “It is… but this person here isn’t a sorcerer… Just like you aren’t Suguru Geto.”

The faker almost pouts and presses his hand to his chest as if Gojo's words have wounded him. “Satoru, I’m hurt, how could you say such a thing to your best friend?”

“Cut the bullshit,” Gojo snarls. “You can’t fucking fool me. You might be in Suguru’s body but I know with all my heart and soul that you’re not him.”

The corpse snatcher stares at Gojo, expression blank before he sighs once more. Then, his gaze shifts back to you, his eyes narrowed as he looks at you with sheer disdain. It feels as if you’ve been drenched in ice cold water. There's no smile this time but you already know what's going to happen.

He’s going to kill you.

“I intended to deal with you later since you seemed harmless enough,” he says, raising a hand to summon a monster— the same one he always uses to end your life. “But you’re in the way. So, I think it’s for the best if I just get rid of you right now.”

Instinctively, you try to take a step back but the prison realm’s restraints keep you in place. Not that it would have mattered much, even in the loops where you’ve tried to escape the faker’s monster, it still kills you, too fast and too agile for an ordinary human like you to avoid. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the monster to kill you. At least, it’s always painless.

Something touches your back.

Your eyes shoot open.

Before you is the monster, wiggling and writhing only mere centimeters from your face. It gurgles and snarls at you, desperate to fulfill its master’s wishes and kill you but it doesn’t move any closer. You stare at it with wide eyes, unsure of what to do.

Someone behind you clicks their tongue— Gojo. You try to turn your head to look at him, but your movements are too limited, the most you can do is turn your head to the side. The sounds the monster is making start to change, sounding more frenzied, almost as if it’s in pain, and you flit your eyes in its direction just in time to see its entire body explode. The monster's guts and bright purple blood fly off in every direction, getting on the floor, the ceiling, the zombified bodies of the people unfortunate enough to be nearby, but not on you.

This is Satoru Gojo’s doing.

He steps in front of you, half turned towards you as he moves in between you and the body snatcher. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he loudly says, “Did you really forget about me?”

You’re not sure if he’s talking to you or the body snatcher.

Past him, the imposter scowls, raising his hand once more, probably to summon even more monsters, but Gojo’s quicker, and it almost looks like his eyes are glowing even brighter, the blue looking almost white as he whips his head in the faker’s direction. The sound of mangling flesh and breaking bones echoes throughout the room as Gojo, using that mysterious power of his, seems to break the faker’s arm.

The body snatcher hisses loudly and despite the fact that his face is twisted in very obvious pain, he tries to shoot Gojo a mocking smile. “Do you really think you can kill your best friend again?”

“I already told you,” Gojo turns to fully face the monster inhabiting Geto’s corpse. He tilts his head a little to the side and some force starts to squeeze at the faker’s neck. “You’re not Suguru.”

You hear a loud crack as Gojo telekinetically snaps his neck.

The head rolls onto the ground and you almost look away, but then you notice his eyes still moving, looking around. Is he still alive? Then you remember: the thing possessing Suguru Geto’s body was some kind of parasite. “Gojo! Wait! The brain!”

He reacts almost instantly, head turning and in an instant the skull is crushed and all that remains is red splotch on the ground.

You almost relax. Almost.

But the body is still standing.

Horrified, you watch as it quivers violently before falling to the ground. Then what looks like dozens of black spirits start to erupt from the corpse and the entire room is engulfed with a shrill howling.

What the hell is going on?

“Those must be all the cursed spirits he consumed,” Gojo explains uselessly, voice barely audible over the screaming. “Guess he was empty before.”

You don’t bother asking what he means. There are bigger problems right now. “What do we do?”

“No choice to exorcise them,” he answers plainly.

For him to exorcise them, he means. You both know that there’s not much that you can do. You still can’t move and honestly, you don’t even know if it’s possible to get out of the prison realm’s restraints. Not without dying. And if you die now…

Everything will have been for naught.

You’ll reset time and have to do this all over again— assuming you can even get to this point again.

There has to be something, you just have to think outside the box.

Or rather—

“Gojo!”

He glances back at you.

“You need to seal me in the prison realm!” you exclaim. He turns to face you fully, looking bewildered and you start to explain as fast as you can. “Those things are going to attack any minute right? I can’t move or try to hide and I can’t expect you to protect me the entire time and if I die then I’ll end up looping time again, but— but, if you seal me in the prison realm then that won’t happen.”

Gojo frowns, looking conflicted. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“Wouldn't it be easier if you didn’t have to?”

He tilts head and you think he’s conceding your point.

“Please,” you beg, staring at him desperately. “We don’t have much time. The other… cursed spirits will wake up soon too!”

You don’t have to explain that you mean Volcano Head and friends.

It takes only a second for Gojo to consider the very few options you have. “...how do you seal it? Do you know?”

“I think so,” you answer. “There’s no guarantee it’ll work but I think that if you say ‘prison realm, gate close’ it should seal me inside.”

If anything, it’s worth a shot.

Gojo nods. “Do you know how to break the seal?”

“I… don’t,” you confess. You never asked, and you don’t think the body snatcher would have told you even if you did. He only told you that it holds one and that…

That time doesn’t flow in the box.

“...you don’t have to break the seal.”

Gojo frowns, “Wait a sec—”

“Even if I make it past tonight… What if this all happens again? What if I inadvertently trap myself in another time loop?” you ask. “I… I don’t want to have to go through all of this again. It’s better for me in a place where time doesn’t pass.”

You don’t know for sure if it’ll be better, but right here, right now, it seems like the best option.

It feels like an eternity passes before Gojo says anything.

“...fine,” he agrees and you don’t quite know how to feel about it. The howling around you all grows louder. You wonder why the cursed spirits haven’t attacked yet. Maybe Gojo’s power is holding them at bay… for now anyway. You both know that he can’t ignore them forever.

“...before I do, though, mind if I ask you just one thing?”

You blink. “Not sure what I can do for you in this state…”

He laughs. “I just want to know your name.”

What an odd request. Though, now that you think about it, you don’t think that during this loop or any other loop really, you’ve ever told him your name. It only seems fair to tell him, since you’ve known his for longer than he’s known of your existence.

You tell him your name.

He nods, looking as if he’s committing to memory. Probably easier to remember than his phone number. “Any last words?”

You try to think of something. Nothing comes to mind and you just shake your head.

Gojo takes a deep breath, “Alrighty then… Prison realm, gate close.”

Just as it did the many times you’ve seen Satoru Gojo sealed away, the boxes and restraints around you vibrate a little before they start to close around you, growing large enough to fit your body as they approach.

You won’t see it, but once you’re inside the box will shrink and become small enough to fit in the palm of someone’s hand.

Will it be quiet inside?

In your final seconds, some words, some last words come to mind, and you say them, hoping that he hears them in time. “Thank you, Satoru Gojo.”

You burn the glittering glow of his brilliant bright blue eyes into your mind.

And then, everything is engulfed in an unending black.

It’s November 30, 2018— morning on the campus of Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School.

Satoru Gojo strides through the school grounds, casually tossing a small silver box with eerie blue eyes known as the prison realm up and down in his grasp. Walking at his side is Shoko Ieiri, a pretty woman who’s been unfortunate enough to have been Satoru’s friend since high school.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Shoko asks, twirling a few strands of her long brown hair.

“What do you mean?” Satoru responds nonchalantly. “All my ideas are good ideas.”

Shoko hums in clear dissent, but doesn’t say anything more. Even she knows better than to try and waste her time trying to argue with Satoru. “I’m just worried about their mental state. Didn’t you say that time doesn’t flow in the box?”

“I’d be worried if it was some normal person,” Satoru says. “But after what they’ve gone through I think they’ll be fine.”

“...well, if you say so.”

The two arrive at their destination: the largest training area on the Jujutsu High grounds. Satoru places the prison realm at the center and takes a few steps back with Shoko standing behind him, in case anything happens.

He doesn’t think it will, but it’s always good to take at least a few precautions.

“Gojo, are you sure we should be doing this?” Shoko asks again. “Didn’t they want to remain in the box?”

“Of course I am,” Satoru says with his usual air of confidence before looking back at the prison realm nestled in the grass. He grins and then—

“Prison realm, gate open.”

if you made it this far. thank you. it's my sincerest hope that you enjoyed the ride. 3

[bestosunglass]

Hi! I just wanted to say how lovely and interesting you make your platonic radiostatic :)) I saw your stuff on TikTok and I’m loving seeing it here as well!

I see so much one-sided or romantic radiostatic, and while I love it all, this is by far my personal favorite depiction of their relationship. Your art makes them look like such cuties even while they’re two of the scariest demons in hell <3 my personal fav so far is Al laying with Vox while he recharges it’s just so cute!!!

If you don’t mind me poking your brain of it I’d love to hear more about your AU and headcannons! If you want to bounce off of something specific then I’d love to hear how the residents of the hotel think of Alastor and Vox and if they clump them together or think of them differently.

In any case I adore your art and hope to see more of it no matter the fandom!

I'm really glad you like it!!! I didn't expect it to get this reception at all as I was planning on it being something more along the lines of "Comfort" after seeing so much Angst content, so I'm genuinely glad so many people liked it!<33

As much as I like the ship I wasn't entirely sold on seeing it in a romantic or suggestive context; I rlly love that Alastor is respected as an individual Aroace (as a fellow Aroace lol) so seeing him in contexts of that sort were a bit ... demotivating??? So I wanted to create this Au of them being typical husbands but on a platonic way.

The residents of the hotel definitely have different opinions. On one side is Charlie who sees this as a great miracle, the two great entertainment representatives from hell, giving her hotel a chance! Especially when her relationship dances very well between the two of them; with Alastor there is "the voice of reason", the one who offers a solution and listens patiently and undaunted to whatever news she gives him, where she knows she will find an answer as Alastor chooses the pen over the sword; while with Vox there is the chaotic, where the sword is above the pen. He vocifies his opinions tactlessly and offers the less gentle, quicker and more effective ways. In him Charlie finds far more vivid emotions than Alastor would be willing to unveil.

Then there is Vaggie who is of course the most informed about these two and her concern is very much on the edge as she knows that the Media Demons are a couple that absolutely no one knows anything about beyond the false image they paint in their shows and the imminent danger these two represent.

Angel, Pentius and Cherry don't really have a strong opinion about them as they pass over or ignore them. Nifty is already more than familiar with both of them.

Husk (his relationship with Alastor is considerably "better", even though Al still owns his soul, than it is in canon as Alastor still owning his soul and having a faithful and warm companion with him for years, his personality is arguably somewhat more relaxed and patient than the original), like Nifty is already familiar with them so he doesn't give the matter much thought.

And Lucifer ofc is terrified that it's not just one but two Overlords who apparently want to steal his daughter.

I still have a lot of polishing to do on this Au as it's new but I want to slowly build it here as people can offer different points of view that can be explored (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡

[talktonytome]

Don't you guys wish the relationship was more fleshed out? I don't even like Tommy, I'm indifferent to him, and I still wish that Buck's first queer relationship actually was handled well, tenderly and gently and with respect instead of getting so little screen time that the bits and pieces of Tommy we know are from LFJ's cameos or interviews. Yes, I want Buddie canon, but more than anything I want Buck's bisexuality and his first relationship with a man to be given more care than it currently is! But so many people who only started watching the show because Buck kissed a man (aka 99% of people who started watching post-7x04) seem to only care that, well, Buck kissed a man, and don't care for the storyline to be treated well so long as the conventionally attractive cis white guy is kissing another conventionally attractive cis white guy.

“I don’t even like Tommy.”

“I want Buddie canon”

I’m already weary of your intentions with this ask, but I’m gonna answer because you came to my inbox about it. With all due respect, do you know how most people meet in real life? Strangers meet, if they vibe and hit it off, they hang out more and they get to know each other. I’m sorry Tommy hasn’t had 7 years of being on the show, but he’s not the main cast and this season was short. Their relationship is new. The fact that we even got the Buck and Tommy we got is great and in those little moments, we got to see the tenderness and gentleness- being so blinded by shipping goggles and hate for Tommy that certain people refuse to see it is a whole other thing.

And I think Buck’s queer relationship has been handled well, actually!! That’s WHY people like them- it’s so joyful and genuine and refreshing.

And it’s frankly insulting to say people only want two conventionally attractive white guys kissing. I love the characters, I love Buck and I, along with many others, are capable of digesting his story that is beautiful by the way- and both Oliver and Lou have done a great job with the scenes they did get. They have chemistry, the characters have chemistry and potential, and if you don’t see that, then ok, cool but don’t act like Buck isn’t being treated right or isn’t the happiest he’s ever been in a relationship. There is a difference between canon and what is depicted onscreen and fanon tropes.

It’s funny, because I’ve seen so many amazing-in depth posts about Buck and Tommy as separate people and their character growth and almost all buddie posts are about Buck in relation to Eddie. They’re interesting characters and no, we don’t just care about two white guys kissing. Maybe ask yourself why YOU assume that.

Lastly, I’m not going to try to convince you or anyone of anything. If you don’t like tommy and you ship buddie, then just scroll away, don’t interact with things you don’t like 🤷🏻‍♀️ it’s what I do. scroll away, block, filter tags. because if you’re already decided, why would I waste my time doing something that doesn’t make me happy?

Anon, I really hope you have a great rest of your day and remember to have fun and a little joy! And if bucktommy isn’t for you, find blogs and content that align with your interests <3

[giggly-squiggily]

Could I request some Korekiyo x reader hurt/comfort? Like it gets REALLY FUCKING ANGSTY (As angsty are you’re comfy with :3) and then it gets resolved at the end? (Maybe throw some tickles in there 👀) thank you!

WHOO BOY- when I tell you I read this and said "Challenge accepted", I wasn't kidding! This..is really angsty hehe. Due to the contents of the fic, I didn't feel right putting tickles in, but there is a decent amount of comfort hopefully somewhere in the mix? Either way, I hope you like this angsty Korekiyo fic anon! (and if you'd like, I'd be more than happy to write tickles for Kiyo as I'm slowly falling back in love with Danganronpa and miss him)

@sevenincubistolemyheart @giggly-toybox

CW: Danganronpa V3 chapter 1 spoilers, angst, panic attacks, graphic depictions of the first execution, grief, loss, angst, mentions of illness, mentions of death (also we're ignoring parts of canon because I said so)

The crash of the piano closing rattled you. You couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Around you everyone seemed to fall mute. You could see them talking, crying, shouting, but you didn’t hear a thing. All you could hear was the broken notes of Der Flohwalzer as Kaede slowly died before all of you.

You needed to get out. You needed to run, to flee from it all. You turned, slipping on your feet as you bolted. Bodies- there were too many bodies. The room was too hot, you couldn’t breathe-

Her body swung like a metronome. Long blonde hair hung in her face, hiding the anguish remaining. The lid of the giant piano slowly fell forward-

Your stomach turned. You clung to the wall as you tried not to throw up, head spinning with lack of oxygen. You were gonna pass out right here and now. Falling to your knees, a blood curdling scream ripped out your throat. How’d you manage that without any air you could only wonder.

“Don’t go dying on me now!” Were her last words, tears dripping down her face as she looked at each and everyone of you. Kaede- her beautiful smile wrecked with grief. She mouthed to you a soft goodbye just as-

“(Y/N).” Who was that? Who was talking right now? You couldn’t see- the world suddenly went dark. You heard your name shouted once more before your head hit the cold hard ground.

~~~

When you woke up, you were in an unfamiliar room.

“Forgive me.” The voice from earlier spoke, so gentle but so startling to your shaken form.. “We only have access to our own rooms. I couldn’t get into yours, so I brought you to mine.”

Daring a peek, you found Korekiyo kneeling by the bed. He was a good distance away, dripping the last few drops of tea into a mug with careful hands. He was always so wrapped up- you could see the bandages were fresh. “Tea? It soothes the soul.” He held up the cup to you.

“Tea…right now?” You almost laughed. Then you did laugh, a hollow bitter sound. “Kaede just died and you’re offering me tea?” You smacked the cup out of his hand, sending the contents spilling across the floor. “How can you be so calm after- after all of that just happened?”

Korekiyo looked at the discarded mug, watching the hot liquid melt into the floor. Then he reached around him, pulling out a towel. “I had a feeling you’d do that.”

“If you did, why bother offering- What are you doing now?” You yelped when he pressed the towel against the stain. “That’s hot! You’ll burn yourself!”

“I’ve done it before.” He spoke casually, but you were already on the floor, taking his hand away from the damp towel before it could touch him. “Really, it’s not that hot.”

“Shut up. That mug was steaming!” You held up his hand, looking for wet spots through the bandages. “I think I burned my hand when I-”

That’s when you felt it. The slightest of tremors. Staring at his hand, you watched it shake within your grasp, the muscles tensing in his arms. They were so clammy beneath the bandages.

“You’re shaking…” You mumbled, looking up at his face. At first glance he seemed calm, but you could see it. The darkness in his eyes, the paleness of his cheeks above the mask. “Korekiyo…”

“Apologies. I meant to be comforting you. You passed out in the hallway- we all assumed the worst.” He muttered, gently taking his hand out of yours as he carried on dabbing the spill. The towel was no longer steaming, but you suspected it was still hot. “I don’t blame you- a sight such as that can be rather…”

“Terrifying.” You finished when he couldn’t go on. Your heart broke when he nodded, something of a shaky exhale could be heard. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s quite alright.” He reassured, but it didn’t make you feel any less guilty. Reaching out, you began to gather the pieces of shattered mug, waving him off when he started to protest. “I don’t care if I get cut.”

“...” He didn’t have much to say to that. When the spill was gone and the mug pieces were discarded, the two of you sat facing one another, you leaning against his bed and him kneeling before you. “I’m aware this is a…rhetorical question, but..how are you?”

You snorted, then immediately felt bad. “Sorry. I’m…better? No- not really. I’m numb. But I’m not gonna pass out again if that’s what you mean.”

Korekiyo nodded, and the silence continued.

“Was this…your first time? Witnessing death?” He asked, something small in his voice that put a stopper on your snappy retort.

“Was this yours?” You asked in return. Korekiyo seemed to sink into himself.

“My sister…I was there in her final moments. It wasn’t as…violent as Kaede’s.” He stammered some, as if saying her name was difficult. Hearing it was just as bad. “But it felt like it. It felt far worse, if I’m being selfish. She went so quietly and yet…”

“Her loss is so loud.” You finished, reaching out and grabbing his hand. It was shaking again. You squeezed it. “How did she die?”

“...Illness. She had grown weak so fast.” Korekiyo seemed to tremble. Tears rolled down his masked cheeks, leaving wet lines along the fabric. “One day she was smiling and sitting up, the next she couldn’t open her eyes. She just…left.” He choked out the last words with such grief it brought tears to your eyes, blurring your vision of him. “F-Forgive me…I shouldn’t be speaking of her right now. We just lost Kaede, and yet-”

You had closed the distance so fast. You weren’t even aware you were doing it until he was wrapped in your arms, your face pressed into his shoulder as you held together his fragile core. “It’s okay.” You whispered against his shoulder. “It’s okay to grief her too.”

Something broke then. Arms wrapped around you tightly as Korekiyo let out a sob. It wasn’t long before you were both crying, grieving the loss of Kaede, Rantaro, and all those who have come before. It hurt. It hurt so, so much, and you felt like you were gonna crumble away like ash at any moment. You hung on tighter, steadying yourself against Korekiyo as all the pain you felt since coming to this twisted game all spilled over.

Eventually, when you ran out of tears and felt strange for hanging on, you released Korekiyo, sitting back until you were sitting knee to knee. His eyes were red and puffy, and his mask was wet with residue tears. You were sure you didn’t look any better.

“He-eh…you know, I bet Kaede’s fussing at us right now.” You smiled, wiping your face as much as you could. “She’s probably pissed we didn’t get to hear her play a proper rendition of Der Flohwalzer.”

Korekiyo let out a shocked laugh, finding your eyes. “That’s terrible!”

“I cope with humor.” You shrugged, earning more wet laughs from Korekiyo. “Seriously though…I’m gonna miss her.”

“Yes..as will I.” Korekiyo nodded. “I’ve only known her acquaintance, but she was a lovely girl.” Something sad passed over his expression then. “I wish I weren’t so harsh with her before.”

“What’s done is done. I don’t think she’d hold it against you.” You tried to smile, but you felt so drained it hurt. Instead you leaned into his shoulder, squeezing his hand. “Hey…thanks for being there for me, Korekiyo.”

“Please, call me Kiyo.” He took your hand back. For once this entire evening, it didn’t feel cold. “Thank you too. You’ve..helped me in more ways than you know.”

Once again, you’ve fallen into silence. Your chest hurt, your face burned and your head felt like you smashed it through several concrete walls. You were sure Korekiyo wasn’t doing any better.

“I can’t stay for the night. The bear’s orders.” You groaned, burying your face into the soft fabric of his shoulder. “But could I stay here with you? Until he makes me leave?”

Korekiyo didn’t answer. He didn’t have to- not verbally. He simply got comfortable, letting you lean fully into him as he leaned into you. Your hands stayed interlocked as you lounged in comfortable silence.

For the first time since coming here, you felt safe.

Thanks for reading!

[blooming-water-roses]

TobiIzu Oneshot WIP wherein Tobirama realizes he messed up the second he wounds Izuna - ‘The Day Hell Froze Over’

I’ll be posting this ficlet here & Ao3, I have the first part done and I wanted to tease a little flashback Tobirama has after he’s realized his mistake.

Relevant details: canon-compliant, depiction of blood and wounds, angst, guilt

Read below cut:

Izuna.

I never meant to go this far.

Fighting was a formality. We knew peace would come once the clans were worn down. We just needed time.

You told me you had just needed time. One week ago…

Izuna stares out at the stars blanketing the night sky, smiling to himself.

“I will never tire of this view.”

Tobirama is only looking at him. “Nor will I.”

The Uchiha’s gaze flits to Tobirama’s, a softness in them not shown on the battlefield. Here, they don’t need to pretend for the sake of keeping appearances to appease their clans. Here, they can be free, they can act however they wish.

“What are you thinking about, Tobirama?”

How I felt when I first met you, Tobirama thinks. How I knew I found my equal. How my heart leaps every time I know I’ll see you, be it here in secret or out in battle. How you managed to burrow yourself a home in my breast so intricately constructed that to force you out would mean to collapse the foundation of my ribs.

He doesn’t say any of that. Tobirama is no good with emotions. He can only be blunt, can only state things as they are.

“Despite our rather bloody history, it seems I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Izuna’s eyes immediately widen, and if the moonlight wasn’t so dim, he’d be sporting a blush for the Senju to see.

“That’s���well, that’s…”

He looks to his lap, heart pounding in his chest. “Love is not something so easily felt in the Uchiha clan, Tobirama. To us, love is…a double-edged sword. A blessing just as easily ruined to a curse.”

“I’m well aware,” Tobirama insists, risking a touch to Izuna’s hand. “But you and I both know that we are each other’s match. In strength, in prowess, in intelligence, in mentality…no one understands me like you do.”

Izuna sucks in a breath. “You’re right. We both live in our brother’s shadows. Tirelessly working to fulfill their dreams, to act as the more ‘loyal, level-headed’ heirs while we both want peace as much as they do…”

“We’ll have that peace. We’ll build their village. We’ll live side by side—so we can freely be together.”

“Then let’s save it,” Izuna resolves, touching Tobirama’s hands with his own and holding his stare. “I want to tell you that I love you back, Tobirama. But we need to achieve peace first. We aren’t reckless like our brothers. Once we reach that goal…you and I can explore our relationship freely. How does that sound?”

Tobirama sighs softly, giving Izuna a rare, small smile. “You know I appreciate how insightful and smart you are. You’re right. It won’t be long anyways. Soon, we can have this.”

Izuna smiles back. “Yes, soon. And when the moment comes…I’m not opposed to sharing a kiss with you. Maybe more if I like the first one.”

The Senju teen feels the tips of his ears grow hot. His gaze flits down to the Uchiha’s lips, wondering what the smooth, pale-pink skin would feel like against his own mouth. To him, they seem as though they would be soft as cherry blossom petals in full bloom.

He catches his train of thought as Izuna gives him an amused, slightly teasing smile. His face grows hotter—since when did he become so romantic? So…heart-driven? This Uchiha really has had an effect on him, hasn’t he?

He’s defrosted Tobirama’s frigid, barren heart.

He takes a breath, squeezing Izuna’s hand. “I will make our first kiss exceptionally enjoyable so that we may have many more in the future.”

Izuna laughs breathily. “I look forward to it, Senju.”

And then, he leans in, pressing a gentle peck into the red line on Tobirama’s cheek before moving to press their sides together and leaning against Tobirama’s shoulder.

Tobirama doesn’t think his heart has ever beat harder.

“Just a little more time. That’s all I need. And then, I will be yours.”

Tobirama has just robbed him of it. That time he needed, slashed away carelessly. All because of a careless miscalculation.

I thought he would have countered it.

[sparklingpax]

“Don’t be scared” with Optimus saying it to someone please

From this!! (Requests still open actually....^^'')

HIIII ok ok so, I'm not exactly sure if this was what you were looking for, but after ages of thinking and contemplating ideas, this popped into my head all of a sudden!! So....I hope you enjoy???

And of course, I am deeply sorry for the wait..............idk if it's even good at all *sobs* but I enjoyed writing it in the sense that it was like...something I needed to write. Something meaningful to me. So...yea.

-Set in canon

-there are DEFINITELY typos and weird stuff like that.....I'm really really sorry 😭 I'll see it at a later date when I do a read-through editing session days from now I bet 💀 anyways yea.

-We definitely needed more moments of Optimus interacting with the kids. He definitely would be like a gentle, comforting, fatherly figure idk

-Also touching on the HC I have & love, that the kids all think of the base as their home more than where they actually live.

....enjoy...?

///

Miko flicked a pencil to the edge of her desk, then back again, staring off into the distance. In front of her, one kid was passed out and snoring, and another two were trying to have a conversation made entirely of discrete (not really) gestures and facial expressions. The elderly teacher overseeing them was hidden behind a huge newspaper, and Miko wondered if, after this past half hour, he was even awake anymore. 

Bulkhead’s like, apparently too busy to come get me, so…I’m stuck here. 

The multiple calls she tried to make behind her physics textbook had all gone to voicemail, so she could only guess he was out on a mission or something at the moment. She sighed and abruptly swiped up the pencil, switching to tapping its point on the desk as she let her mind drift to other things. 

Like how boring detention already was, and how it was somehow even worse when she actually sat the full duration of it. 

It’s not fair! It’s not like I committed a crime–I even did the damn vocab test! What else do they want?!  

Another huff and she folded her arms, leaving the pencil alone on the desk. 

She could guess the teacher probably hadn’t appreciated her artistic endeavors on the back. Sure, it was a unflattering depiction of half the teacher in the school in unfortunate situations, but it was still funny, quite well-drawn, and deserved! 

A loud snore and the sound of folding paper sounded from the teacher’s desk. 

Is he…? 

Miko looked up at the teacher’s desk to see their overseer was in fact, dead to the world at present. His paper hung limply from his hand, jaw open just a little. 

Who wouldn’t be bored in a place like this? 

The other kids seemed not to notice or care, only one briefly blinking up at Miko, then putting their head down again. It didn’t matter if they shouted anyway, cause Miko made her way out quick. Grinning, backpack strap in hand, she slipped out into the hallways, and promptly bolted. 

As she jogged down the front stairs and into the sidewalk, she was glad to find no one in sight. With a triumphant laugh, she nodded to herself and resolved to simply hang around town until someone returned her calls. 

It couldn’t be too long, right? 

That meant her only job now was to keep busy until then. No biggie! She knew the town, had a couple dollars. 

It was about dinner time, anyway. 

Maybe Jack’s working his shift at that K.O. Burger place! I’ll go bother him while I get dinner, she thought, smirking. 

She turned and practically skipped down the sidewalk. 

///

‘The number you have dialed is not currently in–’

Miko jammed the ‘end call’ button with her thumb, swallowing. 

The sky was no longer a pinkish blue hued with orangey glow, but now a thick tarp of navy and black. The moon was not out tonight, and everything was closed. 

As she exhaled, Miko's breath formed soft white shapes in front of her face, before delicately drifting up and fading.

“Eighth time,” she muttered, huffing sharply. “Pick up, dammit.”

It was something of a mix of both frustration and apprehension stiffening her motion. She felt her heart pounding louder and louder with every passing moment, her mind just barely keeping itself at bay. 

Deep breaths. Breathe in, breathe out, in, out, in…..

He’s not coming. He’s not picking up. Bulkhead forgot. He…

No, he couldn’t. That was irrational. 

She started to shift weight from one side to the other, staring at her phone, then the open road in front of her. Miko opened her phone again, thumb hovering over the keypad for a moment before her hand fell to her side and she thrust her gaze to the barren sky above. She tried again to breathe deeply. 

He’s busy. They’re busy.  

She slid it into her coat pocket, but kept her hand in the pocket, gripping the device. Somehow, that seemed to calm her nerves a small amount. The jitters making her movements so sudden seemed to lift, only by a little. Uneasiness still hovered its fingers around her, as if to strike again when she least expected it.

It’s only 2 am. I can manage. Why do I care?

The sound of a voice shouting in the distance followed by a loud clang gave uneasiness its chance almost instantly. 

With a groan, Miko felt her bones ache with fear and her breath grew so short her stomach started to hurt. Dreading the loss of her cheap but delicious dinner, she backed away from the road and leaned against the brick wall of some antique shop before sinking to a crouch. 

She found herself trying to keep a relatively flat look on her face, as if aiming to maintain some composure. 

But she was alone. Why did it matter how she looked? 

Her situation wasn’t impossible—probably a lack of communication on different accounts; Jack hadn’t been at the burger place, so he was probably busy somewhere. She was supposed to go home with her host family after detention, but…well, that was the past. And now, no one would pick up, not even let her leave a message. 

What if something had happened? And then, what would it be? 

Calm down, Miko. You can’t act like this. You’ve seen zombie-cons and the guts—cables?—pulled right outta guys Bulkhead fought. You’ve almost been killed, crushed…you’ve been in the dark, you’ve been alone before! 

But perhaps that was it, she realized, dropping her head and clenching her fist methodically—open and closed, open and closed—sucking in shaky breaths, trying to calm down. Trying to steady it all out, while her mind seemed to bump up the speed to the max. 

Maybe it was too much all the time, all at once, disregarding the part of her that had already had enough when Miko thought to push on. Put on a laughing face, brush it off like it didn’t matter—nothing mattered. 

That was what she always did, right? Wasn’t consistency important? Was she a liar for being so scared? It wasn’t exactly being alone in the dark that scared her. Not even being in this sketchy part of town by herself…

Where are they? Where is everyone? 

Maybe it was also the suddenness of this fear, the seeming culmination of so much she hadn’t quite considered as deeply—every single thread of thought demanding her attention and her body simply ceasing proper coordination and control. Something she hadn’t anticipated because it was always there in the background, but kept tightly under lock and key. 

Where was the lock and key? Why was this happening? The questions only darkened the feelings bounding about inside like sparks of electricity. 

The darkness and emptiness of the town seemed to press at her, tightening her nerves and causing her arms and legs to feel like jelly all at the same time. She was shaking. 

And regardless of how much her sensible, conscious mind reminded her that if she was alone, it meant alone, her subconscious breathed over and over, over and over….

Someone’s there. Someone’s coming. Someone…no control…you have no control of what’s coming for you…no one remembered you, did they? 

Then, as if fate’s answer to the question, she heard a horn honk down the road. 

At first, her heart skipped a beat—sudden noises in the silence when she was having a low moment weren’t so helpful—but her mind registered instantly. 

And as quickly as it had overtaken her, the fear left, and she felt the shaking in her body intensify—probably out of muscle exhaustion this time. 

Suddenly, the cold ache left her, replaced with a trickling warmth. Maybe it was relief, or something else…Miko wasn’t sure. She watched the semi draw closer, letting her mind go blank for a bit. 

The vehicle rolled down the road rather quietly, coming to a gentle stop across from her, letting off a little hiss as the lights dimmed a bit. Miko could make out that it was indeed, the Autobot leader himself, even though something in the back of her mind had already let her know it was him.  

Optimus…what’s he doing out here? 

She could barely stand, swallowing again before pushing off the ground and unevenly making her way across the road and to the door to the passenger’s seat. She felt like she couldn't control her coordination as well as she’d like, but wasn’t too worries as much as glad to have a warm seat to sit in for now. 

“Miko….”

Optimus rumbled softly, gently, her name. He sounded as if he was going to say something, so she plopped down in the blue seat, waiting quietly. But he seemed to choose silence for the moment. 

After a moment, the headlights brightened and Miko felt the start of the engines. They began down the road, and looking out the window, Miko could see they were headed home—not her house, but home. 

She smiled, letting her body go limp in the seat, eyes wide open and trained on the outside view as it flitted by. Letting herself lie there as the hum of the truck filled the air, she dared not move or else she’d start shaking again. 

Drowsiness lurked in the background somewhere, but before that, she was curious. 

“Ne, Optimus,” she murmured, shifting her gaze to the front window. There was not a soul on the road, only Optimus’s headlight illuminating the navy dark surrounding them. “You were gonna say something, right?”

A pause. 

“I was.” 

“What was it?”

“Well…” Optimus seemed to be searching for words, then spoke again. “You were alone tonight.” 

“Yeah…no one would pick up. Did you get my calls?”

“No,” the mech responded. “But I did realize your absence. Rafael and Jack were having a…schoolwork review session–”

Study session.

“—and the others are scouting a mine in another country.”

That’s why he didn’t pick up. Something funky with phone regions, I bet. 

“Ratchet was otherwise engaged. I asked the boys what had happened to you that you were not there, and they mentioned you were in…detainment again.”

“Yea, detention,” Miko sighed. “Ditched it early though.”

Optimus was silent again, so this time, Miko thought to fill the silence. 

“Hey, Optimus? I’m…sorry if I made you worry,” she murmured, dropping her gaze a little. “I was doing alright…woulda found a way home or something.”

“Miko,” his voice sounded serious. “Are you certain of that?”

The teen thought to answer, then pressed her lips together, unable to respond again. What would she have done if he hadn’t come by? 

“I sense you are troubled,” Optimus continued more softly. “Are you alright?”

Miko felt a flash of indignance, so she masked it with a scoff. “Are you kidding? I’m always good!” But her tone wavered a bit, and she felt herself grow smaller in her seat. But she continued. “What makes you ask?”

“Miko…” 

“Yeah?”

“To answer your initial question, we Autobots are always worried for you three. We realize you are individuals, and that you have time and again proven strong in the face of terrifying circumstances. You especially show much strength.”

There was something else to that, so Miko waited, quietly. 

“You show so much strength that…I feel as if perhaps you carry too much inside.”

Miko swallowed, feeling emotion well up inside her. Not fear, not apprehension…something stronger, deeper…raw. 

“Miko, you were alone tonight. We were unaware of what you needed. For that, I am deeply sorry.”

“N-nah, it’s not…”

“It is. Did anything happen to you?”

“No, I just…” she found herself speaking without thinking. “Seemed like…everyone forgot about me. I’m used to being alone though, I guess…”

“You are not alone, Miko.” Optimus spoke with firm gentleness that seemed to level out the feelings threatening to bubble over the brim. She quickly looked out the window to her side again. “I respect what you wish to tell or not tell me. But something tells me, you were afraid tonight.”

She bit her lip. 

Someone noticed. Someone saw. 

But it was a relieved voice that whispered in her mind. She remained quiet, biting her lip harder. 

“Are you alright, Miko?”

She knew what the question really meant. 

“I was…scared, like…” she swallowed, steadying her breathing as best as she could. A tear slid down her cheek, which she quickly rubbed away. “...I dunno, something…I didn’t know what was happening, it was so…strong. So…bad…”

“I know well the emotions you speak of.”

“R-really?”

“Yes. I know it well even now. Especially now.” 

He deals with so much too…but he’s so…well, I guess we all put up some face. I laugh, Optimus shuts down…whatever keeps the monster at bay. 

“Don’t be scared, Miko,” he finally said gently and simply—yet with so much intent. “You are never alone.”

Miko inhaled sharply, as if debating to control it or let it happen…but only for a moment. She exhaled heavily, her face twisting as she started to cry quietly. But even as she sobbed, a smile peaked through, shimmering in her eyes. 

She needed to cry, she realized. Not light tears of stress, but also the tears that she had pent up every time her heart had pounded so hard her bones hurt. The tears she pent up when she did cry and then bite her tongue to swallow them up. And it was alright. 

It was freeing. 

And as if reading her mind, Optimus remained quiet. But she felt his presence–more than simply knowing he was there. They didn’t really need to say much more, and spent the last of the ride to HQ in silence. 

Because even if Optimus wasn’t using the same words she’d use, she knew what he meant. She always knew what the others meant to say. Robot or human, alien or not, Miko could feel it. 

She knew that he wasn’t ordering her to can it, like she knew she ordered herself to. 

‘Don’t be scared,’ or rather…‘it will not win. You will.’ 

I will. 

///

[gendervapor14]

two fights for freedom ~ teaser for chapter twenty-seven: a give and a take

plugging away at writing and organizing!! i've got drafts for chapter 27 and 28, so this week, i'll bring you a chonky teaser of chapter twenty-seven, with some cora & bell domesticity and backstory exploration :D

enjoy!! ♥

“Hey, hey, wait.” Bell-mère eyed over from the pot of rice she was preparing. “Don’t cut like that.” Before he could question her, she eased in and took the knife away from him. “That’s how you cut yourself. You have to tuck your fingers in.” She demonstrated after setting the blade down. “Like this, see? Hold the stems like that.”

“Doesn’t seem very comfortable…”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen you. I have all reason to monitor your knife skills, or lack thereof.” She joked, keeping a watchful eye on him while he attempted her method. “Yeah, good. Just like that.”

“Where’d you learn this?” He asked, “Your parents?”

For half a second, Bell-mère froze photo-still. Then resumed tending to her rice. “My parents weren’t around when I was young. I learned on my own. Trial and error, baby.”

“Guess that makes two of us.” He mused, “I—I think I already mentioned that, though.”

“You did. Weirdly enough, it’s one of the reasons I figured you were somewhat dependable. At least you know what it’s like.” He watched her eyelashes flutter from where she stood over the steamy pot, stirring a rich, chicken broth. “I think it’s funny too, how…we almost seemed to compensate for that, don’t you think?” She grinned at him, but there was something inquisitive there. “You with Law? Me with the girls?”

“Compensating…?” He paused his slicing, “What, like…we’re standing in for the parents we didn’t have or something?”

“Yeah. Something like that. Ever feel that way?”

Rosinante scraped up a handful of chopped greens and carefully dumped them in the soup pot. “Not really, to tell you the truth. I’d really love to say I’m the image of my parents but…” He took his time returning to his post. “They were the sweetest, gentlest people I’ve ever met.” A little self-deprecating laugh. “Hell, they’d probably be disappointed by my temper. Tell me something like…you must appreciate the challenges in life or…something like that.”

Bell-mère watched him wave the knife around as he lost himself to his imagination. “You remember a lot about them?”

“My parents? Yeah, yeah. Er—well, I like to think I remember a lot about them, but…” A little sigh. Back to dicing. “They died when I was eight, so I don’t remember much. Enough to honor them, to think of them fondly, but not enough to really know who they were.”

“Can I ask what happened to them?”

His knife felt as if it gained a ton. He felt the kick to shut down or lie, something easy, something quick, but there was a gentleness to her request. There was consent. There was that conversation earlier in the day. They’d take things slow.

It was okay to take things slow. He didn’t have to overthink this.

“Another time, maybe.” He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t like to…to think about it, or discuss it. Sorry.”

“No, no, that’s alright. I get it, trust me.” She wiped her hand off on a dishtowel before passing him the actual carrots. “I understand the difference between something you don’t want to discuss due to unpleasant memories, and something you don’t want to discuss because you think you shouldn’t share it with me. Big difference.”

Rosinante decided this was somehow both.

title: two fights for freedom rating: M category: F/M, gen content warnings: graphic depictions of violence status: incomplete, twenty-six chapters, 77,420 words relationships: rosinante/bell-mere, cora & law, rosinante & hatchan, bell-mere & rosinante & law & nami & nojiko, rosinante & genzo, bell-mere & genzo characters: rosinante, bell-mere, law, nami, nojiko, genzo, nako, hatchan, arlong, arlong pirates additional tags: canon divergent, fix-it, everybody lives, pre-arlong park, angst with a happy ending, angst and feels, fluff and humor, hurt/comfort, suggestive themes, sexual tension, limes (yes i'm bringing limes back), eventual smut, romance, slow burn, financial issues, broken bones, references to depression, alcoholism, mental health issues, canon backstory, mentioned doflamingo, non-canon backstory (giving bell-mere a backstory), found family, medical inaccuracies, blood and injury, trafalgar d. water law is a little shit, developing friendships, past child abuse, nightmares, self-harm, fake marriage, selective mutism, PTSD, more tags to be added later summary: freedom for one means adventure. exploring all the world has to offer, while avoiding the occasional haunting. freedom for another almost costs an arm and two daughters. a home, a village. perhaps freedom is best sought back-to-back. {a cora and bell-mère lives au}

♥

[hiero-green]

Top 5 Batman portrayals? 👁️🫦👁️💕

OOOO OK OK

So Misha said they don’t have to be live action portrayals so there’s a mix in here! This was also SUPER HARD TO CHOOSE so for the record these aren’t so much ranked as they are a nebulous cloud of a top 5

Kevin Conroy in B:TAS/TNBA/JL. This was probably pretty predictable. Come on. He’s first voice I hear in my head while thinking about Batman (a close second tho actually is something like his voice in Arkham Origins and the Hush movie! Idk their actors tho) and he played one of if not the most important Batman portrayals ever. To get NUANCED about this briefly, I do have issues with the DCAU’s later writing for Bruce, namely how everything about him seems to get so grimdark and edgy compared to his warmth and gentleness in B:TAS BUT how and ever SO. Kevin Conroy king forever 👑

Robert Pattinson in The Batman. You know I love me my Rpatz. I can absolutely understand why he might not be someone’s favourite, especially if they’re a fan of the classic depiction of Bruce, but what I really love about him (and this extends to Riddler too!) is that despite being different in some ways on the surface, all his traits ultimately come from the same core character and experience as depictions that feature more galas, swimwear models and ski trips in the Alps Brucie Waynes. He’s both a very grounded depiction of a deeply troubled man yet he toes the line between the “realism” of ‘verses like the Nolanverse and more camp superhero stuff so well and he has so much potential for his sequel, as well as of course giving us the chance to see him be a detective!! Finally!! To mention Robert himself then, he did such an amazing job playing Bruce. I love Robert Pattinson, I really do, I seek out movies with him in them, and still every time I see him in a movie, Rob completely melts away and it’s just… the character. There truly are few actors I can say that about, but I feel it so strongly for him, and his Batman portrayal was no different. (Also autidm bruce yuh). I also love his dynamic with Jim, Rob and Jeffrey are so good together.

Bruce in Batman: The Imposter. A non-actor one on here! Admittedly I don’t read as many comics as I’d like, but Batman: The Imposter was one I had to buy in May after seeing The Batman and having it recommended to me. For a lot of the same reasons I like The Batman 2022 Bruce, I like B:TI Bruce. I find with him that there’s such a… a softness to him. When he’s Bruce, there’s such a quietness, almost a meekness to him. He really reads as very pained but still somehow managing to find a kindness in his heart, even when he’s so isolated from the world. I also think it’s interesting — if slightly concerning — that Alfred is pretty much gone from Bruce’s life. A while after Bruce comes into Alfred’s care as a child, Alfred can’t handle him anymore, sends him off to boarding school, and dips from the Wayne family completely. Absolute worst Alfred I’ve ever seen, we do not stan. BUT my point is that, while I feel like there’s a chance the author wrote Bruce to be alone for the sake of cliche lone wolf edgelord, it just makes his shy nature outside of the Batman suit stand out to me more. Even so alone, he hasn’t lost hope. And. The page where he’s talking about his effect on Gotham, and he sheds a tear from under the cowl. Yeah. Yeah it got to me. Also! He’s the closest we have to a canonically autistic Bruce!

David Mazouz in Gotham. Okay. Okay. Gotham is not well-written, nor do I like the fact that Bruce plays a part in the show at all, I don’t like him being on a path to Batman from the moment his parents die. HOWEVER. I think David is a fantastic depiction of a young, struggling to grieve, anger-filled, doesn’t-want-to-feel-powerless Bruce. He’s a kid trying to understand himself and the world that’s been turned upside down on him, and David portrays a great balance of innocence and blooming maturity. Also, the older he gets, the more he looks like a perfect Bruce I swear to god. Even if I don’t like Bruce’s role in the show, I always thought David Mazouz was a great fit.

Bruce in The Batman 2004 cartoon. This one’s just fun. They don’t really touch on the darker aspects of him and they don’t mention his parents much at all (they don’t pretend they never died, but they’re very *very* vague and rare about their mentions of them) but I just think he’s really fun. He’s young and energetic but he’s not a party animal, and I think he’s interesting as a,, surprisingly stable Bruce. He also doesn’t have as much separation between Batman —> Bruce and Bruce —> Brucie as other depictions which I think is interesting! He feels very genuine and always like himself, but they’re also not afraid to show him being self-destructive or neglecting his needs for his work.

BONUS MENTION BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS: Ben Affleck in the DCEU. Okay okay OKAY I do not like the DCEU. I really don’t, and I think Bruce is grievously miswritten (???) in BvS. But. Ben deserved better. I can very easily see him as Bruce. I think he makes a very good older Bruce, AND he was great in the party scene in BvS where he meets Clark and they butt heads. Same as with Henry Cavill, they deserved to play better written versions of their characters.

Thank you for the thought provoking ask, Mish!!!!

[bleachcakes]

Into the Fog, Following You - Fanfic Advertisement

Into the Fog, Following You

Fanfic Chapter Excerpt - Read in Full on Ao3

Jackie is a delinquent just out of Highschool who decides to do something big as his final fuck you to the small town he hates. But when things go wrong he flees to the woods, only to find himself in this new and strange realm where death is endless. The Entity’s world.

New and clueless—he was never the sharpest tool in the shed—, he asks a strange masked man for help in his first trial. How was Frank supposed to know a little fun with a naive new survivor would turn into something no one’s seen before.

A/N—Writing all of this entirely as something to do before bed, please don’t overestimate how logical this plot will be. I'm just a silly guy writing to silly people. I’ll keep adding tags as it goes on.

(Current) Entire Fic Word Count: 31,861

(Current) Number of Chapters: 12

Chapter Word Count: 829

Pairing: Male Oc (Jackie) / Frank Morrison Dead By Daylight

Fic Warnings: Canon typical graphic Depictions of Violence, gore, and death.  Chapter 1 [You Took My Hand (But I want it Back)]

Excerpt: 

Deep mist surrounded him, pulling him in, calling to him. He stumbled towards it, searching for safety from the barking dogs and shouting people that were on his heels. Take me away, get me out of here, he asked it, and it answered with a hug. He grasped at the black mist, the sounds of his pursuers getting quieter and far off but he still did not stop, latching onto the spidery limbs that closed around him. Then he felt like he was slipping and the world seemed to be sideways yet the view stayed the same. Unable to see anything but darkness, he could not tell if his eyes were open or closed. He started to regret his plea, maybe he had been too hasty, maybe he should have looked for sanctuary elsewhere first.

A dull warmth kissed his cheek, Jackie slowly opened his eyes, blinking several times, trying to clear the blurriness that always hovered over his eyes. He felt sick, like he had been spinning around on a merry-go-round for hours on end in his sleep. There was gentle patting on his back and the hushed sounds of whispering that sounded muddy in his ears. 

“What the fuck,” he choked out, pushing his arms underneath him to sit up. The hushed whispers got more excited and he rubbed at his eyes trying to clear the bleariness from them. 

“You’re awake,” Jackie heard someone say, lifting his head to come face to face with another guy. They looked like some rando office worker and were staring at him with concern.

Jackie squinted, rubbing his eyes again, trying to figure out if his vision problems had suddenly doubled since he last had his eyes open. But the man was still there, crouched in front of him. Surveying the space with a quick few glances he also noticed many other people, some looking at him, others too engrossed in their conversations. “You’re not the police…”

Jackie started to try and piece together what happened and how he possibly ended up near all these strangers who did not look like they fit together. But as soon as he started backtracking through his mind the guy in front of him started taking again. 

“Hey, I know you must be really confused right now, we’ll explain everything. Or… at least as much as we know, so don’t worry-“ He was cut off. Jackie pressed a hand against the side of their face, gently pushing their head to the side to get them to stop talking.

“Shut up,” he muttered just as limply, brows furrowing together in thought, “I'm thinking…” he immediately drowned out the following protests. Jackie’s mind reeled as hard as his stomach was, chewing on his lip as he tried to remember a scene that was on the edge of his vision but escaping him all the same. 

Then, he started to get it. Whispers that mimicked him but didn’t sound quite like his own voice filled his head. Police chasing. His escape into her arms. His new home. His new nightmare. 

Keep Reading on Ao3

[violet-shadows]

Missing Piece (Part Ten)

Series Index | Masterlist

Summary: Cassian and Nesta are happily mated and in love, so why do they feel like something is missing? When a newcomer arrives in the City of Starlight, they learn that their bond is not yet complete. 

Pairing: Cassian x Nesta x Reader (She/Her) (Poly Relationship)

Word Count: 3.0k

Warnings: blood and injury, graphic depiction of canon typical violence, death

A/N: We’re on the home stretch! I really appreciate all the support this series has received. I hope you enjoy this next part. 

⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰

He didn’t wait for me to respond before stepping over the threshold. I stumbled backward as he advanced, realizing a moment too late that it was the wrong move. With no other exits aside from the front door, I was now cornered, watching in horror as he closed the door behind him. I glanced sideways at the window, which was cracked to let a breeze in. If I could cross the room fast enough, I’d be able to jump. A second-story fall would hurt but it would likely be preferable to whatever this male had planned. He seemed to catch my intentions and stepped forward several paces, corralling me towards the kitchen until my back was pressed against the cabinets. “W-what do you want?” I sputtered, resenting the way my voice shook. 

He smirked, squaring his shoulder the way a boxer does before they swing. “I remembered where I’ve seen you before… back in Winter, right?” I shook my head, but neither of us believed the lie. “It’s coming back to me now… Your father was that idiot merchant, the one who gave us trouble over that healer bitch.” 

“That was my mother!” I hissed. For a moment, rage overshadowed my terror and I surged forward, grasping him by the collar impulsively. He didn’t so much as flinch as a barreled into him, his mouth still twisted in a smug smirk. Up close, I had to crane my neck to look him in the eyes and my stomach dropped. With the steadiness of a predator, he reached up and caught my wrists in a crushing grip, holding them in front of me like makeshift shackles. I tried to pull away, but he held firm, taking a step forward until I was backed against the cabinets once more. 

“Yes,” he replied, looking me up and down, “I can see the resemblance. I’ll admit her loss was a waste… of a pretty face, at least.” My mother’s face, kind and gentle and full of life flashed before me in my mind's eye, and to think he saw her as nothing more than decoration made me see red. Unable to free myself from his hold, I did the next best thing to express my anger, spitting directly in his face. He froze, the amusement draining from him, and before I could react, I was on the ground, my face throbbing from the blow he just landed. “More fiery than you look, healer,” he commented, crouching over me as I clutched my aching cheek.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” I seethed, glaring up at him. I wracked my brain for solutions. What would Cassian do? How would Nesta respond? 

“I want you to keep your little mouth shut before you ruin everything,” he replied, glowering at me. “And I know one good way of shutting bitches like you up.” Time seemed to slow as he reached down for me, his bare hands more threatening than any talons or claws I had ever encountered. Desperately, I searched my surroundings one last time for something, anything, I could use to turn the tide in my favor. My kitchen was largely barren, but just as I was about to give up my search, a flash of color caught my attention. Steel blue, sage green, and ochre dishes. It was as though the potter had based them on Cassian and Nesta’s eyes. A single dinner plate was sitting on the countertop, close enough for me to grasp if I was quick. 

If there was one thing healing had taught me, it was that, in a crisis, you don’t have time to second guess yourself. You have to make split-second decisions and commit to them because lingering in indecision will get your patient killed. So, I didn’t think twice, lunging upward to snatch the plate. I brought it down on the side of his head as hard as I could, the sturdy ceramic shattering on impact. I didn’t wait to see if the blow was effective, scrambling towards the front door. He recovered too quickly, though, cutting me off mid-stride, but he was thrown off enough that I was able to pivot towards my second, less ideal exit strategy. 

I leapt over the bed and grasped the window frame, intending to throw it open and dive onto the street below. ‘Don’t hesitate’, a voice chanted in my mind, ‘just act.’ Just as my fingers closed around the window frame, however, a wall of muscle slammed into me from behind. The momentum of the blow sent my head forward and I squeezed my eyes shut as the glass shattered against my skull. At the same moment, all of the air was forced from my lungs and I toppled, falling onto the glass-covered floor as spots danced in my vision. I could hear nothing but the ringing in my ears as a pair of boots approached my prone form, and, had I not been gasping for breath, I might have cried out in frustration. 

The room spun as I was hauled to my feet, supported only by a large hand wrapped tightly around my neck. The male had blood dripping down his temple from my move with the plate, and I was happy I had at least done some damage before he killed me. There was a wild look in his eyes as he pulled one hand back, drawing a dagger from his belt. “The best part is,” he growled, pulling his arm back and leveling the dagger at my sternum, “there’s no one left alive to miss you.”

I thought of Nesta and Cassian, of the future with them I had been dreaming of before I knew their names, and I knew he was wrong. I steeled myself and closed my palm around the large shard of glass I had pinched between my fingertips, ignoring the pain as it cut into my palm. I zeroed in on his neck, eyeing the soft spots just beneath the jaw, on either side of the trachea. If my aim was true, I would avoid the protective thyroid cartilage and slide the blade home, severing the major vessels supplying his brain with blood. I had seen such injuries before, watched how quickly life drained from the victims, and I’d never imagined I would be the one inflicting it. 

I screamed as I did it, swinging my arm with all the force I could muster as I lodged the shard into his neck. It sunk through flesh just as a blade would, sending blood spattering outwards, coating my face and chest. Just as I anticipated, his hold on his blade faltered as he reached up to claw at the wound. His eyes went wide in shock as he stumbled backward, falling to the floor where blood was already beginning to pool. I slid to the ground, transfixed by the grisly scene before me. Instinctively, I counted respirations and took stock of his rapidly waning consciousness, the healer in me screaming to put pressure on the wound, to begin life-sustaining measures.

It was what my mother would have done. She would have put aside her personal vendetta and sprung into action, trying to save the dying man at her feet regardless of how he had wronged her. She wouldn’t have thought twice about trying to stop the bleeding. But she had not seen her father murdered before her eyes. She had not watched her mother be dragged away in chains. She had not tended to soldiers and prisoners of war, their bodies so mangled that death was a mercy. She had not known rage and anger and despair as I had and she had not been changed by the cruelty of the world. 

My mother would have helped that male, but I was not my mother. So, instead, I remained curled up on the floor, watching his complexion go from sunkissed to ashen to grey. The only sounds he made were quiet, stilted gasps: agonal breathing, the last impulses from a dying brainstem trying to keep itself alive. First, the choked wheezes stopped, then the twitching ceased, and he was utterly still. All in all, it took less than a minute for him to die, and I hadn’t moved an inch to try and save him. 

Perhaps that made me a monster. Perhaps I didn’t care. 

⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰

Nesta paced the balcony as she waited for Azriel’s return, her anxiety growing as darkness swept over the city below. She wanted, needed, to hear that her mate was safe and well, and she was beginning to regret her decision to send Azriel in her stead. At the time, with Nesta still struggling to come up with something to say to her mate, sending the Spymaster seemed like the most reasonable course of action. Now, she wondered if it was time she got over her fears and go directly to Y/N herself, consequences be damned. Just as Nesta was considering braving the stairs on her own, she heard the familiar flap of large wings as a figure appeared out of the night sky. It was Cassian, not Azriel, who landed before her on the balcony, striding forward to pull her into a hug. 

“How was the meeting?” she asked, looking up to study his face.

“Boring,” he replied with a shrug, “why are you hanging around out here?”

“Waiting for Azriel,” Nesta explained. Cassian gave her a quizzical look and her cheeks darkened slightly. “I may have sent him to check on Y/N… to make sure she gets home safely.” Cassian smiled, affection echoing down the bond between them, but just as he opened his mouth to retort, another set of wings could be heard approaching.

“We have a problem,” Azriel stated, landing on the balcony with a thud. Nesta’s blood turned to ice in her veins and she could hear Cassian’s heart rate quicken. “Y/N’s fine, she’s at her apartment. But she ran into some males who were less than gentlemanly.” 

Cassian’s siphons flared with life, illuminating the foyer in a blinding red glow. His fists were clenched, shaking with untold power and rage. “As I said, she’s physically unharmed, but she believes one of them is the male who killed her father. She was… is… distraught.”

“These males,” Nesta said lowly, her jaw clenched, “where are they?”

“Being rounded up as we speak. I’ll take them to the Hewn City and look into the one she recognized, but first, you should go to her,” Azriel replied. The pair was momentarily torn between going to their mate and ripping apart those that had threatened her, but in one shared look, the decision was made. 

Cassian flew low over Velaris, flapping his wings to propel the two toward Y/N’s apartment. They landed on the street and all but ran up the steps with Cassian in the lead. When they reached the top, both were hit by the pungent smell of blood hanging thick in the air. Nesta’s heart hammered in her ears as Cassian drew his dagger, throwing open the front door and barreling into the dwelling without hesitation. 

They were hit with a wave of blood and terror, the stench nearly overpowering the small space. On the floor, in the center of the room, was the body of a male High Fae laying face up in a pool of blood, a gash torn into the side of his neck. Blood and glass covered the floor and the window next to the bed was shattered. In the low light, Nesta almost missed the small, shaking figure huddled in the corner, beneath the destroyed window. She surged forward, letting out a strangled cry of surprise and anguish, and fell to her knees before her mate. Cassian was close behind, closing the gap in an instant. “Y/N?” Nesta murmured, reaching out to touch her arm. “Y/N, are you hurt?” 

Her mate looked up, revealing a blood-soaked and bruised face, and Nesta felt panic begin to bubble within her. Cassian cursed and pushed past her, using his hands to wipe the blood from the small healer’s face and neck, assessing her wounds. Her face had several superficial cuts, and a nasty gash marred her temple. He moved down her body, pausing when he found another deep laceration on her palm. “She needs a healer,” Nesta sputtered, dashing to the bathroom to retrieve a towel. 

“Rhys is on his way,” Cassian explained, having reached out to the High Lord the moment he scented blood. “Y/N, can you hear me?”

“I killed him,” she whispered in reply, her eyes locked on the lifeless body behind them. “He was going to kill me. He killed my father.” Cassian shot a wing out, blocking her view of the bloody scene, and began wrapping her hand with the towel Nesta fetched. Nesta pressed another cloth to the wound on her temple, stemming the bleeding.

“You did good, sweetheart,” he murmured, holding her hand in a firm grip. “You’re safe now.” 

“I didn’t want to,” she whispered, her eyes distant and unfocused. It didn’t take a healer to know she was in shock. “I didn’t stop the bleeding.”

Nesta wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her close, “shhh, it’s okay. You did what you had to. It’s over now.” She smoothed a hand over Y/N’s hair, allowing her to cry into her chest while Cassian sheltered them both, his wings blocking out the horror that lay just a few meters away. Later, they would both be consumed by unyielding rage at what had been done to their mate, but as she cried in their arms, they couldn’t help but simply feel broken as well. 

Rhysand took mere minutes to arrive with Azriel close behind. The latter of the two assessed the scene and sent his shadows forward, concealing the body in waves of impenetrable darkness. Cassian’s siphons flared when Rhys approached, and he fought to suppress his instincts. 

“I’ll winnow you to the House,” said the High Lord, “Madja is there.” Cassian nodded stiffly, reaching out to gather Y/N into his arms. Nesta hovered close by, her eyes never leaving her injured mate as Rhysand transported them across the city in a snap. Cassian kept Y/N held tightly to his chest as they landed in the foyer, his face a mask of fury. Madja greeted them, along with Mor and Feyre, and directed him to place Y/N on the sofa. 

“Wait,” Y/N objected, sounding more coherent than before, “I’ll get blood on the upholstery.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Rhys replied, “magic does wonders for getting out blood stains.” Cassian set her down before she could argue more, his arm never leaving her shoulder as he took a seat to her right. Nesta joined them on the other side, fetching a throw to wrap around her shivering form. Madja crouched before her, gently unwrapping the crude bandages as she pulsed her healing magic outwards, taking stock of the younger healer’s injuries. She addressed the gash to her temple first, stitching it shut then cleaning the remaining scratches. Once her face was mostly clean, Madja moved on to addressing her hand.

“This is deep… full thickness,” she commented, gently dabbing away coagulated blood to reveal an angry looking gash. Y/N hissed in pain, instinctively pulling away, and Cassian surged forward, catching Madja’s wrist before she could touch his mate again. She gave the General a withering look and he withdrew, looking sheepish. 

“I’m okay,” Y/N said, her voice hoarse and quiet. He resisted the urge to argue, to scream that none of this was anywhere close to okay. 

“Your face is bruised,” Madja commented, resuming her work cleaning the wound. “Any vision changes? Loss of consciousness?” 

“No, maybe a mild concussion if that. It just smarts, is all,” Y/N replied, her gaze fixed on her sluggishly bleeding hand. 

“Anything else?” Madja asked, retrieving her suturing kit. 

“Bruise ribs, I think,” Y/N replied, sounding distant. Nesta cursed under her breath, her fists clenching and unclenching in her lap. “Maybe broken, I’m not sure.” 

She sounded so casual, clinical even, in the way she reported her injuries. It was a coping strategy Cassian recognized from the battlefield, the suppression of emotion in the wake of violence. The calm facade would come crashing down later, but for now, Y/N appeared almost nonchalant, resting her head on his shoulder, her uninjured hand intertwined with Nesta’s. Rhysand approached, sitting across from them with a grim expression on his face. He seemed to hesitate, as though choosing his words carefully. “That male,” he began, catching Y/N’s attention, “I recognized him from Under the Mountain. I don’t know how… one of them got into Velaris, but we’re going to find out. If there’s any more of her people here, they’ll be found.”

Feyre approached him, resting a hand on his shoulder in comfort. Cassian recognized the darkness swirling in his brother’s eyes, the doubt and shame and deep anger that had lived in him since he returned from Amarantha’s clutches. To have found one of her vermin living in his city, hurting someone who was practically family, no less, was not something he took lightly. He gave his brother a slight nod as if to say ‘I understand’, and Rhysand returned the gesture. A heavy silence hung in the air, and after several heartbeats, Cassian realized Y/N was yet to answer. “Y/N?” he asked, turning to look at her. She was looking down, not at the wound on her hand, but at the blood drying on the front of her dress, blood that was not her own.

“I killed him,” she whispered, beginning to shake once more. “I’m a healer. I’m not supposed to kill people.” 

Before anyone could open their mouth to reassure her, Madja spoke. “Now listen to me, young lady,” the old healer began, placing a firm hand on her knee. She waited patiently for Y/N to make eye contact before continuing. “Your job, as a healer, is to preserve life. You know as well as I do that, sometimes, that involves making hard decisions. You made a call, the right call, to preserve the life of someone good over a murderer. I will not have you faulting yourself for that. Do you understand?” 

Y/N nodded mutely, a few stray tears falling down her cheek. Her mates could tell the matter was not entirely settled, but Madja’s words had brought some degree of comfort. They sat in silence while the healer finished her work, suturing and bandaging her injured hand before moving on to examining Y/N’s ribs. They were indeed bruised, with one cracked but not displaced. She elected not to wrap the injury but left strict instructions to be careful with the area. When she was finished, Cassian lifted Y/N into his arms again, careful not to place pressure on her ribs. “I can walk,” she murmured, resting her head on his shoulder nonetheless. 

“No need,” Cassian replied, ascending the steps towards his and Nesta’s shared bedroom. He paused outside the door, momentarily conflicted. The three of them had made progress in their relationship, and although the thought of being separated from her tormented them both, it occurred to him that sharing a room with them might be an overstep. “This is our room,” he said, not specifying who our encompassed, “but we can bring you to a guest room if you’d prefer.”

“I’d like— I’d prefer not to be alone, right now… if that’s alright,” Y/N replied. 

“That’s more than alright,” Nesta said, opening the door for her mates. Nuala had gone ahead of them, already running a hot bath, and Cassian set her down gently on a bench in the bathing room. 

“I can help you if you need it. Or we can get someone else…” Nesta offered, slightly apprehensive. Y/N blushed, biting her lip as she contemplated her options. 

“I should be able to manage.”

“Call out, if you need us. There’s a nightgown on the vanity that should be your size, if a bit long,” Nesta said, wringing her hands.

“Thank you,” their mate replied, her voice barely a whisper. “To both of you.” 

“No need to thank us,” Cassian said, offering a forced smile from his place in the doorway. “Shout if you need anything.” 

⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰

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[coffee-in-veins]

If the heroes could play instruments, what do you think they'd play? Sarmenti is the obvious one, but what about the others?

ho boi... this one took a while to make. I have a lot of headcanons, not gonna lie, but bear in mind that my knowledge of music is mostly based on a few years of learning to play the piano (fruitless endeavour, ngl) and Sideway’s rants about it (honestly, go check the dude, he’s amazing and talks on a level even someone with zero knowledge can understand). 

So brace yourself, a lot of very odd things are incoming with a lot of sample links. Because it’s hard to explain music in words. Thou hast been warned.

Heroes are sorted in alphabetical order by their class, with added “canon” names for clarity. 

Abomination/Bigby - oof, only starting, and this one was already a hard one, but I think I have one that would fit him: a glass harp. We have records of it being used as early as 1492, so it should fit the setting, I guess? And also it fits him, imo. There’s more to this man than his chains and his rags, as there’s more to some water-filled glasses than what they look like. Also, it doesn’t require a lot, just glasses, some chalk and water. And lots and lots of patience. Fitting, don’t you think?

Antiquarian/Josephine - this one gave me the biggest pause. Because frankly, I don’t really have an opinion on Josephine. She was a useful mule in-game but as her own person...? Ehhh... This one was hard. But I can propose tambourine despite it being canonically used by Jester (based on his trinkets), maybe? It’s both unassuming and can be used for more than you can initially imagine, but still sounds very distinct - much like the antiquarian class in itself. I can also definitely see her sneaking one in her bags on an expedition (before I went and double checked, I was sure she was holding one in the Curious Incantation skill icon).

Arbalest/Missandei - something like french horn comes to mind, frankly, with all the march references she has in her toolkit. Or maybe a trumpet. Trumpet fits a bit better, imo, considering the “Marked for Death” quartet she’s part of. Metallic, militaristic, much like her armour and her crossbow. Or her character. But also capable of sounding incredibly sincere and gentle.

Bounty Hunter/Tardif - yet another one which gave me a big pause. But he looks a lot like Varangian Guard, imo, so I looked up some Byzantine instruments and found one that I think fits both his “always on the road” bounty hunter lifestyle, his aesthetic (since it can be played without taking off his helmet cloth... I guess, don’t quote me on this one), and the feelings he probably invokes in people upon meeting them - aulos. Just listen to this beauty, especially the starting dissonance. It sounds like an alarm siren to me. And if it’s not Tardif in music form, I dunno what is.

Crusader/Reynauld - a strong contender for “his voice is his instrument” because of his chanting, but nope, while our boi Rey can yell commands in a way that makes Barristan proud, I don’t think that singing is his strong suit. If we abandon his demonstrative disinterest in anything not Verse-related for a moment, I really wanna put something like zitra in his hands to show his gentler, humane side and because he is now strongly associated with Franko-German origin for me thanks to @engelsschwert and his real-world inspiration. Psaltery might fit it better? Sounds closer to how I can imagine him, at least. And the name is like ‘psalms’ too. But it’s still a part of the zitra family, so a win-win, imo.

Flagellant/Damian - his voice. No, really, I can easily depict this man bellowing the gregorian chant with the might needed to be heard from any remote part of a cathedral. Human voice is an incredible instrument after all, it was the very first one we had, and I believe Damian can use his to the fullest. It also fits the “having nothing but burden” mentality of flagellants, I think? You can’t get any more minimalistic than that. I think his singing voice also makes Rey jealous but he’d rather die than admit it.

Grave Robber/Audrey - she most likely knows how to play some “proper”, “feminine” and classic instruments like the harp. Because of that, she most likely hates it with passion and would rather strangle you upon the request than play a melody, even if she can play decently “since that is what’s expected from a proper lady”.

Hellion/Boudica - another contender for using her voice as a musical instrument, more in a “war chant” scenario. But also I can see her using tagelharpa. I suppose she’s meant to be Celtic with name and all, but Celtic lyre is too gentle-sounding, and I don’t think she was a chieftain/chieftain's daughter to be given a carnyx to play. So yeah, may be historically inaccurate since we cannot prove her being related to Vikings if we omit stereotypes, but the sound fits, imo, and DD as a whole is a historic nightmare, so...

Highwayman/Dismas - this one was incredibly easy and strong: harmonica. Small, compact, can be made out of a leaf and a comb, or just a leaf if you know how. Easy to use on the road, easy to conceal if needed. Can be used to gouge our someone’s eye in a clutch. Ideal for a constantly low on funds runaway convict or a vagabond. Also it feels like a very cheeky instrument (pun definitely intended) and it fits the character quite well, imo. The saxophone comes close second if we’re going bonkers. Oh, you all know why. He’s the most shipped character for a reason.

Houndmaster/Willam - I’m not gonna beat around the bush with our beloved dog guy. It’s the Irish tin whistle also known as feadóg. Don’t judge me. I couldn’t pass this one.

Jester/Sarmenti - although the lute might be his preferred music instrument, I would’ve really, really loved it if the mad lad found remains of an organ in the Abbey and with enough help from Baldwin and the company could restore it. Because honestly, the guy is a mad genius, and have you seen how many pins, keyboards and the like the thing has? The sheer freedom, range and scale! He’d fit right in, just as much as I believe in his dedication to break through this monster of the instrument and make it obey his whim. 

Leper/Baldwin - canonically plays the flute (at least until the point where he still has some lips left to do it); however, based on the noble upbringing of that era, he probably knew some other, “proper” instrument as part of his upbringing. Oud, maybe? It’s very complex from what I could gather, and has a lot of regularly used scales, but you wouldn’t assume it by looking at it. Much like you wouldn’t assume that a mere leper is a once-King. 

Man-at-Arms/Barristan - I can easily imagine him knowing the drums. Snare drums to be specific. But not in a way of music, not entirely, more in a way of military-signals-turned-music, if that makes sense? Though I believe he can perform one hell of a solo if you nag him long enough.

Musketeer/Margaret - this one was more of a continuation of Arbalest, Houndmaster and MAA quartet, if you will, much like the Margaret herself is, mechanically at least, just a reskin of Misendei. So to finish the arrangement, I decided to give her fifa. Not only does it fits their general “soldier” idea, but also it’s a flute, an instrument that got a lot of “feminization” and sounds gentler than the trumpet, but is capable of sounding just as harsh and demanding if needed.

Occultist/Alhazred - another strong contender for his voice being his instrument. If the guy can yell “ Y'LW'NAFH N'GHFT “ without stuttering, he deserves it, in my opinion. But I also find kamancheh quite fitting. It sounds like a lament, to me, which fits Alhazred’s narrative and the instrument itself also looks both sophisticated and very elegant. It can also be considered a ritualistic instrument, used at many celebrations and is widely used in classical music. 

Plague Doctor/Paracelsus - this one was tricky, and at first, I even thought I’d have to admit that she isn’t musical but. But. What is the music if not the fluctuations in the air? What are they but math and physics, give or take? And if so, you can make a scientific way of producing it - a marble machine. Unorthodox, just like the woman in question. And admit it, it even looks like something she’d try to build just to drive Sarmenti up the wall.

Shieldbreaker/Amani - initially I wanted to give her a rattle (I’m a horrible person, I’m aware of it). I also was sure she had some sort of jingles, much like Jester, during her moves, but no. The problem is, she’s one-handed, and it’s rare you can use an instrument with only one hand. But I found one and it actually fits her, thematically - zills! And first ones of those were found in Greece around 500 BC, so no issues in using them in our medieval-ish setting.

Vestal/Junia - this one was also a doozy to think of, but I think I have a very nice fit: a handbell. It can be gentle, it can be deafening, it’s useless in untrained hands, and has the added bonus of having a strong link to church bells if you squint hard enough. Also most of the carols I’m aware of use bells, so do with it what you will.

[forestlingincorporated]

I wanna talk about Janet Drake

I’m not against exaggeratedly evil versions of Tim’s parents, tbh. It’s fanfiction, if we can depict an Exaggeratedly Good version of Bruce (which we can, and I do, and I love) then we can depict the Drakes as Exaggeratedly Bad. As someone who personally identifies with Tim, and his brand of complicated parental abuse in particular, I find it cathartic to uncomplicate that abuse and rescue him from the Obviously Evil Bad People. 

That said, since much of comics lore is passed down word of mouth, the oral tradition surrounding Tim has developed this idea of Janet as The Worse Parent between her and Jack that was never really present in the comics. We see much LESS of Janet, and we have 20 years worth of comics depicting Jack as a neglectful hotheaded idiot who ultimate does love his son. More importantly, Jack isn’t very much LIKE Tim, so there is a habit to attribute Tim’s traits to his mother... and, as someone who really really identifies with Tim, Tim has... some negative traits. Tim can be a bitch sometimes. He’s fiercely intelligent and sweet and kind, with a strong sense of justice, but he can be cold and judgmental and unthinking - he fights those traits, but he does have them. 

And it is perfectly fine to depict Janet that way. I’ve enjoyed depictions of Cold Calculating Janet Drake, but it’s not the ONLY option, and I want to challenge fans to consider different avenues. Tim could pick up these traits from anywhere: a nanny, Mrs. Mc Ilvaine (”Mrs. Mac”), a teacher, tv, Sherlock Holmes novels, Bruce Wayne himself. Tim is capable of not being like EITHER parent. 

So, what do we KNOW about Janet? (I’ll also touch on Jack, but only in scenes he appears with Janet.) 

When Janet was first introduced she was depicted as a gentle but “modern” woman. This was written in 1989, told by a 13 year old Tim, so this theoretically was meant to take place in 1979. I’m not here to give a lecture on the history of sex discrimination in the united states, but much of the legislation protecting women in the workforce or surrounding women’s bodily autonomy would have been very very new in this initial depiction. 

Here, Janet is shown to be encouraging, emotional, maternal, and projects her own feelings onto Tim. Jack is shown to be slightly sexist, possibly discouraging, but not overbearing. And the artist is shown not to know how to draw children. 

To insert some speculation, I think it’s important to note all the Drakes witnessed a terrible murder/accident that day. I point this out, because this is the last time Jack and Janet are depicted this way. It’s possible they changed as a result of this event specifically. 

However, this is also a story being told by Tim. It’s also possible these events aren’t really “real” at all, and Tim is misremembering what his parents were like as a three-year-old, possibly projecting a more palatable version of his parents into the narrative. This is entirely up to personal interpretation. 

In fact, the Drakes are shown in Legend of the Dark Knight attending Haly’s Circus, and the artist knows what a toddler looks like and they’re depicted as already having a slightly strained relationship. Jack is clearly on the defensive, and Janet seems to be passive-aggressive, though she could just be attempting to explain the situation to her toddler honestly. The intended tone isn’t especially clear. 

I do want to point out, in this depiction, Tim isn’t being carried like he was in the previous one. He’s walking ahead of his parents, which isn’t a terrible horrible crime, but could be dangerous in a crowded place like the circus. Might be a subtle hint to his parents overall neglect. 

Back to A Lonely Place of Dying, in Tim’s memories of the night he discovered Robin and Dick Grayson were the same person at nine-years-old, his parents are home, and watching TV together while Tim played... trucks, idk, in the living room with them. (This is semi-interesting, because you could say “oh, Tim liked vehicle toys as a kid” or you could extrapolate that this is another subtle indication of Jack’s sexism, providing Tim with appropriately “boy toys.” Either interpretation is valid. If Tim was assigned female at birth, would they have been given “girl toys,” or allowed to play with whatever they wanted?) 

This is, to my knowledge, the only panel of the Drakes when Tim is between ages 3 and 13. They’re all together, which might indicate that the Drakes were home more often when Tim was 9, only later going on business trips when Tim was “old enough” but... 

This is Tim��s boarding school when he’s 13. While most boarding schools in the US are for grades 9-12, Tim is clearly not a freshman at age 13; look how much younger the other kids in this panel are. In the US, the youngest you can attend most boarding schools is 7. 

That means Tim could have begun going to boarding school anytime between 7 and 13. He most likely spent all of middle school in boarding school, at least. There are an almost infinite number of possible ways the Drakes handled having a business that required lots of international travel, an archeology hobby, AND a very young child. Janet staying home until Tim was 7, 11, 13, is equally possible as the Drakes having a nanny until 7, 11, 13. Tim just doesn’t talk about that period of his life very much.

(”What about Mrs. Mac?” - it is unclear when Mrs. Mac begins working for the Drakes. We only see her when Jack comes out of his coma. She could either be a long standing staff member, or a recent hire.) 

Note: I’ve seen it said that it’s canon that “According to Tim, when his parents were home, they made a point to try and include him in their activities, bringing him along to events that were normally adults only.” I have never seen this panel, or I don’t remember it, so I cannot confirm, but I also cannot debunk this because... comics. 

By the time Tim is 13, Jack and Janet are away on business trips a lot, with limited communication, and no firm return date. If I’m feeling generous, I’d say it was harder to communicate internationally in 1990 than it is today. If I’m not feeling generous, I’d say the Drakes are extremely wealthy, and international communication was easier than ever before in the 80s and 90s. They’re not even going home to see Tim in a week or two, they’re going home and calling Tim at boarding school in a week or two. 

Even Bruce thinks its weird, though he doesn’t say so to Tim’s face. It’s written almost as if Tim’s parents’ neglect was meant to be a plot point that just got forgotten about. 

Tim’s parents are fighting at this point (their poor assistant), but Janet still goes with Jack on these business trips. And she’s clearly involved in the business, somehow, but the comics never SAY what Janet’s JOB is. We’re told Jack is the exec, but Janet is ONLY ever referred to as Jack’s wife, though they’re later described as the “heads” of the company, plural. 

Just to be clear, this is Jack’s business. There’s a perception that Jack is a bad business man because he and Janet fight over company decisions, and Jack looses the business after Janet dies, but Jack looses the company YEARS after Janet dies, and maintains it for about a year after No Man’s Land at that. We’re not told how Jack looses the business, but he’s got to be doing something right. Janet isn’t necessarily the “real brains” of Drake Industries. 

And I’m not... gonna... touch the... exploitation and racism because... I’m not qualified to do that. But, here’s the panel. The Drakes sure seem exploitative and racist in their business decisions. Someone else can... analyze that with more nuance. 

Regardless how how long they’ve been fighting, when their lives are in danger, the Drakes fall back into a loving husband and wife. Their marriage may be falling apart, but they do care about each other. 

I want to show these panels because it shows that Tim and Jack do have things in common. They’re both level headed in a crisis and can be somewhat cold in their practicality. Janet meanwhile and silent. Jack is later willing rant and rave at their captors, but Janet remains silent. 

That is, until they’re alone, and she finally lets herself fall apart. 

God, Jack can be obnoxious. Janet just looks miserable and resigned. I actually think Tim takes after his parents in this respect in equal measure. Tim can have a temper, but he can also be fairly melancholy and defeatist. 

Jack keeps reminding Janet to be strong and in control, which could be period typical sexism? But Jack seems so practiced and ready with the words of encouragement, and with Tim’s history with depression, I wonder if Janet has an inclination towards it as well. 

As the end approaches, when Jack brings up Tim, Janet seems to have a lot of regret. She talks about “wasting” the good things, and I don’t think it’s too big of a stretch to assume she’s talking about time spent with her only child. 

From this point on, Janet is at times spoken of, but not seen. Like here, when Jack says Janet wouldn’t approve of him and Tim being so “far apart.” He says this after he tells him he takes back his threat to send him back to boarding school, which might imply Janet was against the idea of boarding school? Though she obviously lost that argument when she was alive. 

Jack will of course renege on this later, but that’s Jack Drake for you. 

Or here in Tim’s illness induced dream, where he gets everything he wants. Though, since this is a fantasy of Tim’s, where his father and girlfriend are both more accepting and understanding than they are in real life, I would take this depiction of Janet with a grain of salt. 

After loosing Drake Industries, Jack thinks about Janet (though, they call her Catherine/Cathy for some fucking reason) during his depressive episode. And... uh... 

Hallucinates a Valkyrie???? Is this symbolic of suicidal thoughts, or is she... real? Or is he seriously hallucinating? 

Anyway, we’re not here to discuss Jack’s mental state, the fact that he forgot Tim’s birthday, or that concerning “I was going to knock some sense into you but you’re still bigger than me” statement from Tim, we’re here to talk about Janet. And even though this entire arc is about Jack mourning his first wife, they don’t SAY anything about Janet herself at all. I mean, they don’t even get her name right, so I guess what was I expecting. 

Then there’s Origins and Omens, which also doesn’t say anything about Janet, except that Tim’s memory of her is faulty - Janet was poisoned, her assistant Jeremy’s throat was slit on television, but Tim seems to have conflated the death he did see with the death he didn’t. 

The only piece of canon to suggest that Janet might be cold, is Tim compares her to Thalia. And even then, he’s really just saying Janet was protective of him. It’s kind of a scary look to make at your kid, but Bruce does the same thing, so. 

I do want to say... it’s not 100% clear if Tim is even talking about Janet. He could be talking about Dana. Dana was observably protective of Tim, though I don’t think he’s ever called her mom. He PROBABLY means Janet. 

And finally we have Tim visiting his mother’s grave (in a duel Christian/Jewish cemetery, make of that what you will), where Tim says she was “a little religious.”

And that’s it! That is all we know about Janet Drake in New Earth. Hardly the Mom From Hell, but she isn’t perfect. I’d be interested in seeing some alternate depictions of her within the fandom. 

I’m still gonna eat up Terrible Parents From Hell like a starving puppy dog, though. Just some food for creative thought. 

[madara-fate]

ARGH, this peachimom on Twitter is such an ass. People on my tl saying that you need to block her and I blocked her without really checking her account, but when I did damn.. no words, no words and then I realize she accuse a minor for leaking her own n*des?! A fucking minor?! (She’s an full grown adult!) Saying that someone leaks her nudes is actually more embarrassing cause she actually exposes herself instead. Her so called n*des was spread before the accusing happened, the real ones who spread them are her own followers, she was so loyal that she even accuse a innocent minor minding his business and BAM that accusing happened

She believes everything, she even believes that fillers are canon, and promptly saying the other novels EXCEPTION to the ones including NH in it ARE FANFICTION. I don’t know with what’s wrong with this woman I swear.

This peachimom is a red flag frfr

I guess now you know why people suggested that you block her then.

I'm pretty certain that people only ever started overhyping the Gentle Fist like this due to the Sakura vs Hinata debates, and people wanted to downplay Sakura, so they started portraying the Gentle Fist as this all-encompassing trump card against short ranged fighters, when it was obviously never depicted as such. They think that as soon as anybody comes within short range of a Gentle Fist user, the fight is over, which really is just so stupid.

That, and it's pretty funny how they say that the Gentle Fist is a counter to Sakura's move set, when the Seal is actually a counter to the Gentle Fist, as I made clear during this post and this post (among many others), so I won't be repeating myself on this matter.

[bg3kagha]

on that note tho, ravenously hungry for some good adult Jack content ... like there’s some good stuff out there but none of it really jives with the idea of him in my mind. 

like, idk, Jack’s still very young - and he seems really lost and broken, tbh - and I just don’t really enjoy content where he does, indeed, become the very thing his parents wished for him to escape. Jack Marston as some kind of bad boy bounty hunter/gunslinger just.. isn’t what I want. The epilogue of RDR1 is a goddamn hopeless tragedy, and I want better for him. I want something gentle for him, where he learns to love reading and carpentry again...

like... owing to his low honour lines, he’s always depicted as incredibly sexually confident, which.. like, I’m pretty sure that Jack hasn’t had sex at this point - I’m not sure when he’d find the time, and we never hear about any relationships he’s had. I think he mentions in dialogue how lonely he is, so, like... I think his lines @ sex workers are just him puffing his chest to try and seem more impressive than he actually is -- which fits with some of his behaviour as a teenager, such as his trying to hunt a bear. Jack desperately wants to prove himself, and feels like he has his big shoes to fill, and I read his low honour comments to sex workers as more in-line with that behaviour than as him being sexually experienced. They’re also incredibly awkward and sleazy lines - not exactly the most charming or attractive things in the world (plus, canonically, the sex workers call him out as being mean to them, so they’re intended as gross and sleazy). If somebody said even half the shit that Jack says to those women to me, he’d be getting bottled; I would not dream of gratifying that behaviour with positive attention, because it’s disrespectful. 

plus, Jack isn’t the most pleasant individual. He’s moody as a teen, often aggressive as an adult; he’s immature and can be entitled and surly. He has a lot of insecurities and self-loathing. These are good traits! They make him interesting! I hate when they’re ignored. 

[thevalleyisjolly]

I tend to be extremely picky and judgmental about depictions of Elrond in Tolkien adaptations, in no small part because he’s my favourite character and I am, if nothing else, an Opinionated™ person.  But, because he is my favourite, I feel like it’s only fair to the spirit of the character to try to be a little less judgmental and a lot more gracious.  Therefore, here are things I like about the different Elronds of screen!

The Hobbit, 1977 (Rankin/Bass)

Absolutely iconic character design.  I laughed my head off when I first watched this as a child, but looking back on it now, I kind of like it!  Definitely not remotely anywhere near his canonical appearance, but I love the interpretation of a crown of stars, A+++ (even if it gives the impression that he’s suffering from a permanent concussion), and kudos to them for giving Elrond a beard!  I am a big proponent of Elrond choosing to grow a beard, it’s one of my favourite headcanons.  Hush Tolkien, he’s Peredhel, he can grow a beard if he wants to.  I don’t remember anything about how his actual character was adapted because I was about 8 the one and only time I watched this film, but I gotta hand it to them, the character design is very creative and I do have a soft spot for 2D animation.

The Lord of the Rings, 1978 (Bakshi)

Alright, so he has a relatively small role and the character design definitely isn’t much to sneeze at, but damn, that voice!  Like a warm knife through butter, but also something that makes you really get what a Voice of Power might sound like.  “I will not touch it!”  Props to André Morell, he really Went Off on the handful of lines he got.

The Lord of the Rings, 2001-2003 (Jackson)

Cards on the table, while these movies are my absolute favourite movies of all time, I’ve never liked what they did with Elrond’s character in relation to the Aragorn and Arwen storyline.  However, I do get why they did it, and in the context of the story they’re telling, it works.  He fills a specific role for the type of character journey that this film’s Aragorn is on, and if you judge that storyline on its own, independent of source material, it works for what it is - a reluctant hero who needs a strict mentor/parent figure to challenge him to really think about who he is, who he wants to be, and what he really wants.  It’s not a creative decision that I personally would have made if I were on the production team, I’m not a fan at all of the decision to pursue this particular type of storyline, but spilled milk and all that.

Apart from the character’s changed role in the story, Hugo Weaving does a great job of portraying Elrond as someone’s who’s lived a long life, that famous “in his face was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful” descriptor.  There’s a reason why “I was there, Gandalf.  I was there 3000 years ago” has lasting power as a meme - his delivery of that line resonates with this weight and you just can’t forget it.  Also, his face in ROTK during the coronation after he tells Arwen to go to Aragorn is heartbreaking and so good. 

The Hobbit, 2012-2014 (Jackson)

This is my favourite on-screen Elrond thus far, so this will be more like a small essay. I say this wholeheartedly, Elrond in The Hobbit trilogy is the closest any screen adaptation has come thus far to capturing his character from the books.  You got the “kind as summer” in his interactions and burgeoning friendship with Bilbo, you feel that warmth and the fondness in his interactions with Gandalf, the big hug of greeting and the gentle teasing and even how they can disagree with each other on pretty major issues but still walk side by side as friends. 

You got the “wise as a wizard...venerable as a king of dwarves,” most evident in the plot scenes where he’s reading secret maps and participating in important councils, but also just in the way he moves around Rivendell with that measured self-assurance.  Sure, his guests might be starting food fights, breaking furniture, or arguing with White Wizards about the necessity of investigating necromantic activity, but surprise Morgul blades aside, he never really loses his composure beyond a *deep sigh* or a mildly judgmental look of ‘Really?’  He’s not bothered by people showing him a lack of respect, and he’ll extend them hospitality all the same.  Wise and venerable indeed.

They even got his flaws, and I’m pretty happy with the way they adapted that one line from the book, “he did not altogether approve of dwarves and their love of gold.”  Not a great line, of course, and people are probably right in saying that Tolkien had not fully developed his idea of the character yet so it should be taken with a grain of salt, but I like that they kept him having reservations about the Quest, and translated it into something a little less racist (although the casual ableism still isn’t great) by making his disapproval more akin to “the eyes of the great are elsewhere” and so he fails to consider the personal significance of the Quest to the Company.

Because he’s heard of the history that Thorin’s family has with gold sickness, he’s concerned about messing with sleeping dragons, he’s suspicious of Gandalf’s motives for encouraging the quest because he views it as a level of geopolitical interference that none of them have a right to, and all these big overarching factors means he does not consider what the Quest means to the Dwarves, what Erebor means as a homeland forcibly snatched away in fire and blood.  It’s a great way to have an organic character flaw, taking what are usually a person’s positive traits (wisdom and caution) and showing how they too can inform flawed decisions or perspectives under the right circumstances.

Also, possibly my favourite underrated element, but I love how much they incorporated “strong as a warrior." From that first entrance, riding back into Rivendell in full armour after destroying an Orc hunting pack, to the Battle of Dol Goldur, holy shit I could talk about that for ages.  The sheer confidence of “You should have stayed dead,” the excellent battle choreography.  He just impaled a Ringwraith through the spine, from behind!  Watch closely, his fights never last more than two or three blows - he goes straight for what would be killing/KO blows on living creatures.  He’s not here to duel or show off fancy sword skills, he’s here to eliminate the threat as quickly and efficiently as possible.  And then of course, there’s that fantastic line, “Sauron must be hunted down and destroyed, once and for all.” 

Love that for him, honestly, it’s what he deserves.  Beyond the circles of the world, Lúthien is eating popcorn and cheering.

Rings of Power, 2022 (that one company, you know the one)

This is the only thing on the list that I haven’t watched at all so bear in mind that everything I’ve heard is secondhand, but I do have to say that I really like how they’re showing Elrond being good friends with Durin and the other Dwarves.  He absolutely would! (that one line in The Hobbit aside)  I’m still not planning on ever watching the show, but credit where credit is due, it’s very sweet to see them get along so warmly and enthusiastically in the gifsets.