#I have some other thoughts on how to do alt prompts if this event runs again but I made it on too short notice for that this time

[snakebites-and-ink]

Seven Songs of Suffering Prompts

Event info 　

Day 1: Control - Halsey

Day 2: Sweet but Psycho - Ava Max

Day 3: Bury a Friend - Billie Eilish

Day 4: Daylight - David Kushner

Day 5: Secrets - OneRepublic

Day 6: I Can't Decide - Scissor Sisters

Day 7: Rescue - Lauren Daigle 　

Alt: If one of these songs doesn’t work for you, pick any song you like that has lyrics and use it as your prompt instead! 　

A big thank you to everyone who sent in suggestions, but unfortunately I couldn’t use all of them.

When the event is actually running, I will post each day's prompt with the lyrics and a link or two to the song on youtube/spotify/etc. But here is the basic list of them all!

CWs: Some of the songs contain swearing, some dark topics, a suggestive line

[starryeyed-seer]

a fading wash of sunlight

So. This is a retired event, where the bazaar started emitting light for a few hours. At one point a voice is heard, and it seems to be the Bazaar (I mean, look at the echoing!)

This is also the event where you could release your dark carapaced crustacean into the light, and it would emerge gilded and giggling like a school girl.

The event is retired and old, so it's hard to say "this information is still fully canon to the universe", but the Bazaar's speech here is really really interesting.

Here's my rampant speculation:

I think the bazaar is talking to Sol, maybe in her sleep or something: the wash of sunlight is coming from the bazaar, but the Bazaar is acting like Sol has appeared unexpectedly and she's scrambling to implore it to Understand something. I think the fading wash of sunlight is a Day-dream, is what I'm saying

"these are my children/this is my light" "this is the Sun who commands run below"

I think light is law here and the bazaar might be comparing itself to a sun. I've been long into the idea the bazaar has aspirations of ascension, as being a judgement is the only way they could legally be together. it might be saying here 'look! I have a world of my own, my own law, my own kingdom, like you'. With the MOTR:

we get the Bazaar's feelings after London just fell. It seems a bit depressed in general but is tired of running and being a Courier. It wants a place of its own. But we know it doesn't ONLY want that, or it would stay in the Neath and chill.

"The one who denied" is likely the. One who said NO to sol, which prompted the bazaar to do All This Shit.

this and

this from 7th letter are all we have about this Other Sun. We don't strictly know it was a love letter, that just makes thematic sense (and the bazaar seems jealous)(and it would work for "love's enemy" of course)(It probably was a rejected love letter but I like to point out alt interpretations and how little we know total)(I got into suncrab out of spite you know initially. I realized the fandom had given me a false idea of the relationship which simplified it to a black/white "sun dickhead bazaar pathetic". So I thought about alt readings of them until I got into it)

Also, note the Bazaar rocking up to the Pheonix like "wait you don't want your flame?? 👀 is it free? Free fire 🔥??"

I'm not sure what "but the enemy, love, is the last we shall see". Beyond 'enemies of love' being the forces which keep them apart. Their relationship is forbidden because of the oppressive laws of the Chain. If their relationship is found out, they and their daughter will be put on trial and sent to some judgement torment nexus.

It makes a promise that All shall be Well. I think the Bazaar's motto might be an echo of what the sun has said to it before. It repeats "all shall be well" constantly without having much luck ensuring that (see: axile). I don't think it has failed to keep All Well on purpose, I think he is basically muttering this promise as a lifeline. Echoing and hoping it'll be true.

and then "Crown me with a knot of flames, my love, my love"

Crown being a word of royalty/ascension. what 'flames' means in FL I'm not sure, but it here is suggestive of 'make me a judgement'.

Then it apologizes... "Forgive my trespasses" a bit late after asking to be crowned. What trespass? Something it did angered the sun but it wasn't punished or killed either.

Elsewhere in a lacre vision: "You dream, feverishly, of a bright light in a long lone empty place; of a gift given and a gift rejected; of the one you love moving away, inevitably as the motions of an orrery, distant as childhood." and elsewhere is it repeated the sun rejected the bazaar.

I think the gift rejected is love, and the bazaar's trespass was something in the confession of that love.

It continues "the fire and the rose are one"-- if the bazaar wishes for a fire crown, does it wear a rose one now? Roses are love, follies, devils, temptation, desire.... is the bazaar trying to prove a point that love is an equal force to fire? Love and feeling are as powerful as law and the fabric of the universe? More powerful?

Anyway thanks for coming to my BazaarTalk. For the 15th anniversary we should get this event back but better (it was hourly so few peoplegot to see all of it). And more.

[transformerskinkfest]

Fic Fest FAQs!

Welcome to the official blog for the first Transformers Kinkfest!

This promptfest will be running for two weeks from 17 - 31 October 2024, with daily prompts (based on your submissions). The list of prompts will be released in August to give you time to write/draw/create - then, once the fest starts, share your creations for each day's prompt!

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS AN 18+ EVENT.

What kind of prompts will these be?

Each prompt on the main list will be a Transformers-specific kink. There will also be an alternative list with broader prompts (like, say, bondage). Feel free to pick from either list or combine the two, and feel free to make different decisions on different days - up to you!

As for what Transformers-specific kink means: basically, these are kinks that rely on/take advantage of Transformers being Transformers. These can include kinks that depend on Transformer physiology, like fuel-siphoning or alt mode sex, but they can also depend on Transformer culture, like faction roleplay. (Those have all been suggestions to date, btw. :))

What if I have a prompt idea but I don't know what the kink would be called?

Totally okay! We're flying without a star chart here - it's not like even the estimable TF Wiki has a list of Transformers kinks :D. Describe it as best you can, and I will try and sum it up for the list as best I can. There will probably need to be some explanatory notes to the prompt list...

How do I suggest a prompt?

Send an ask with your prompt idea. I can't guarantee that every idea will be included - it will depend on how many we receive, and I'll also use my discretion when it comes to picking prompts.

Just to keep things organised, please send your ideas here to @transformerskinkfest. (However, I will also include any that end up getting sent to the mod's blog at @decepticonsensual.)

Please keep in mind that the prompt is just the kink. Don't bother to include a specific pairing or a specific continuity, as these will not be part of the prompt list. (If you did include these things in an ask you submitted, that's okay, but I'm only going to take the kink idea part of the ask.) Speaking of -

What characters/continuities can I create for?

Anything under the Transformers umbrella! That includes shows, films, comics, games, novels, and that Optimus Prime Potatohead, which is actually canon. We live in an age of marvels.

What if I can't create something for every day?

No worries! Create as much as you want to. If you contribute something for a single day's prompt, that's awesome, and if you do it for every day, that's also awesome.

How do I share my fic, fanart, or other creations?

Post on your own account and tag #transformerskinkfest or #tf kinkfest, please!

Please make sure you TAG/WARN FOR YOUR WORK APPROPRIATELY. (A warning that you aren't going to warn people - like the "Choose Not To Warn" tag on AO3 - is fine, provided that readers have to choose to click through to your creation after seeing that warning.)

That title looks like it says Transformer Skink Fest - is this a festival for fanfic and art about Transformers becoming lizards?

No, but now I wish I'd thought of that.

[whos-orion]

“It’s not what you think”

Summary: Omega has been running missions for Echo’s rebel cell, and none of her other brothers know. She gets back late to Pabu one night, in need of more supplies, and Hunter catches her in the act.

Word Count: 1001

Prompt: “It’s not what you think” (alt prompt)

Notes: FINALLY GOT THIS DONE. I had 0 inspo for this prompt but I really wanna do all 26 for this event, but I got through it and got some ideas from @twinsunstars !! I hope you enjoy. (Banners/dividers by @summer-of-bad-batch )

Omega quietly crept out of the Marauder II, careful not to make much noise. It wasn’t like anyone was down in the cavern where she left her ship, but she couldn’t be too cautious. She wasn’t sure how Hunter would react if he knew she’d been running missions for Echo and his rebel cell. She’d been doing it a few years now, and he hadn’t found out, but she didn’t want to push her luck too far.

Omega checked over her supplies outside, and suddenly she heard footsteps. She considered running back inside the Marauder II, but didn’t as Batcher ran up to her. The lurca hound happily licked her hand, and Omega gave her a soft scratch on her head. She gave a sigh of relief and went back to her supplies. Her next mission was in a few days, and she noticed she was running low on power cells. Omega’s ship had gotten damaged more than once on these missions, and having extra parts around was quite helpful. She walked with Batcher out of the cavern and up the cliff, heading to her supply of parts she had stashed away in the rocks. Phee knew about Omega working for Echo’s rebel cell, and supplied her with parts and whatnot when she needed them. Omega kept them hidden in the cliffs near the cavern, making a shorter trip for her and not risking Hunter finding out why she needed those parts.

Omega grabbed the power cells from the stash and shoved them into her satchel. She began making her way back down the rocks, back to the cavern to drop them off.

Hunter couldn’t sleep that night. He’d had a bad nightmare, the kind that made him forget Tantiss was a thing of the past. He was off on a walk along the shore, trying to calm his nerves. The waves lapped calmly against the sand, giving him a nice ambience for his time alone in the dead of night. Hunter was deep in thought, considering the past few years. Pabu was nice, their little slice of heaven. It was home, it had always felt like home. And he knew Omega enjoyed being here, but he also knew how much she wanted to fight the Empire. He knew how resilient she was, but he didn’t want her going off so soon. He still wanted to keep her safe. Hemlock may be gone, but the Empire was still incredibly dangerous. So when the cavern came into view and the lanterns were on, Hunter got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Omega walked up to the cavern, flipping the switch to turn the ground lanterns on so she had some light. She began walking to the ship, dragging some more supplies inside, when she heard his voice.

“Omega?”

Hunter was standing in the cavern entrance, looking confused and concerned. “Omega, what are you doing?” Omega instantly set the supplies down, looking at Hunter, attempting to defend herself.

“Hunter! I was just, uhm, doing repairs on the Marauder II. Upgrades, not repairs. Why would I need to repair it?” She laughed nervously, but Hunter’s expression was unmoving as he stepped further into the cavern.

“Omega, are you running away?” He asked, his voice nearly breaking. Omega’s anxious smile was instantly wiped off her face, she looked at him in slight horror.

“What? No, no! It’s not what you think, I swear!” She quickly said, doing her best to convince him. She sighed and walked towards him. “I’m not running away.”

“Then…then why are you filling the ship with supplies? What’s going on?” He placed a hand on her shoulder, now right in front of her. Omega glanced aside, feeling a little shameful.

“I was restocking on supplies.”

“For what?” Hunter’s concern did not leave his voice. Omega looked back at him, putting her hand over the one holding her shoulder.

“For…missions. I’ve been doing missions for Echo and his crew.” Omega said. Hunter’s eyes widened, and then he pulled her into a hug. Omega hugged him back, close to tears. That went a lot better than she thought it would.

“I should be mad. I should tell you that you’re going to be grounded forever. But…I’m just glad you’re not leaving.” He said. Omega laughed softly into his shoulder, holding him tighter. She was so glad he wasn’t angry, but felt terrible she’d made him think she was running away.

“I know, I’m sorry. But…why’d you think I was running away? Why would I want to run away?” Omega asked. She pulled away from the hug and looked at Hunter with concern. He let out a sigh.

“I…you’ve talked so much about joining the Rebellion. About leaving. I…I don’t want you getting hurt. You’re our kid, Omega. I don’t ever want you to relive what happened on Tantiss. And I…thought you felt like we were forcing you to stay here. And I don’t want you to think that, and I don’t want you running away because of us.” Hunter’s voice began breaking, tears in the corners of his eyes. Omega put a hand on his shoulder.

“I wouldn’t do that. I love you. You’re my brother. I understand the risks something like this comes with, but I believe it’s worth it. For now, I’m just helping Echo. Maybe later I’ll find a larger group, uniting different cells to create a stronger effort. But, right now, I’m perfectly content here with you.” Omega smiled at him, and pulled him into another hug. She could feel her jacket sleeve growing damp as Hunter softly sobbed into the hug. She felt tears fall from her own eyes too. They stood there like that for a bit, in understanding and love. This conversation was certain to come up again, but it would end the same way. In just a few years, when Omega would go off to do exactly as she said—unite more rebel cells, train pilots, and always visit her brothers as often as she could.

[theresademoninyouroven]

Right, here’s some more info!

Under the cut to keep it tidy.

There are five states that The Decider can be in, starting from the first formation of existing. As a player would go through a full run of the game, they would gain opportunities to metaphorically ‘poke’ The Decider into speaking, which would further their development into being something that exists.

The first event is the one that is necessary to start forming them. This is the most specific to achieve as the TPatD alt path is the only way that the voice can be formed. As stated before, the conversation can lead to The Princess, and what could become The Decider, to ponder the existence of them.

After this, the player can choose whatever routes and choices (that don’t avoid interacting with VotD) they desire.

The second time (and the rest up until the final fifth time) can seem like a regression. They’re just about as silent as when they were less than a possibility. At this stage most of the interactions are acknowledgment of Decider’s existence. The other voices will also have comments, mainly the Hero, as he’s always there, and the Skeptic, because of obvious reasons. Overall, their minuscule reactions generally follow the emotional state of the collective of TLQ, but mostly TLQ himself.

The third route is a pivotal point, as it is where VotD shows signs of cognizance. They speak in single words or simple sentences, and actually respond to being talked to, or the situation at hand. Here, they start to offer their own thoughts without prompting, even if simple. Nothing they say is too profound, though.

The fourth princess-vessel collection is a midpoint. It’s when The Decider develops more into someone rather than something. Though they still have their bouts of silence, they now actively participate in Voice Conversations. They tend to add on to any given statement by any voice (with some exception to The Opportunist), rather than have their own comments. They do have their own things to say sometimes, but most of it relates to them feeling like they’ve seen things before.

The fifth and final run is when they are fully formed. They function like any other voice, and have a more extensive vocabulary than before. Unlike Voice of the Hero and The Long Quiet, they remember past routes to some degree (Mostly the fourth run). At this point, VotD can offer a few additional solutions in some situations. Most would lead to a variation of an existing route, but they would offer a few totally new ones.

What happens to The Decider after five vessels are collected, depends on when The Decider is first collected, and how many runs they’ve been on since. If you’ve only collected them, or if you’ve collected them and only actualized them once, they will not have a strong enough identity to withstand the confrontation with The Shifting Mound, and will simply fade back into TLQ. If you interact with them two or more times, they will be able to survive the confrontation—given that you do not try to get rid of them yourself.

What they’re like in the confrontation depends on how many successful interactions you’ve had with The Voice of the Decider (which would be roughly once per death in a route, with exceptions to ones like The Razor) beyond the necessary TPatD route and the second route you chose. To put it simply, they’ll be however cognizant you’ve made them before the confrontation. This means they’re either grasping at the threads of sentience, a full, separate being, or somewhere in-between.

Now that I’ve explained how they come to be, I can talk about VotD themself! Though it will be in a separate post. Additionally, I have some more Original Voices, though since they work like one of the usual 11, I won’t put them under an AU. I could talk about them, if someone’s interested.

There’s been some big storms lately, so I haven’t gotten much done lately. However, I’ve decided (hah) on what the name of the AU I’m making!

Introducing:

The Voice of The Decider!

The Pristine Cut Spoilers below!

The Voice of the Decider is an AU where a 12th voice is created via an alt path in The Princess and The Dragon!

How is The Decider created on this alt path? What is this alt path?

Well, for starters, the path starts when the option ‘Cut her free on your own’ is chosen. However, when you are put back into the Princess, there is an option (perhaps quicktime, but maybe not) to make the first move before The Opportunist takes the opportunity to kill you.

This action causes You and the Princess to knock the knife out of Your original body’s hand, giving You a chance to escape.

Disregarding my divergent scenario of this alt path, You and The Princess make your escape out of the cabin. You’re taken into the abyss, and, before Shifting takes the new vessel, you have a chance at a conversation.

In this conversation, You and The Princess discuss your situation at hand. You talk about things such as The Voices, and Yourself. She asks about ‘You’ being named The Decider. It’s not something ‘You’ have ever considered, being a voice just like those others.

Something stirs, but, before you can discuss more, your connection is pulled away, painfully. You are subsumed back into your original body.

Might reblog later with more!

[whumptober]

Whumptober 2020 - Updated

Welcome to Whumptober 2020! We’re doing things a little differently this year so please make sure to read the Event Info carefully. We are also excited to announce the addition of an AO3 Collection, which can be found here.

We hope you’re as excited as us to watch the Whump Community come together once again for a month of bone-crunching creativity and collaboration!

(All 31 Themes + Prompts, Event Information, and FAQs are posted below the cut!)

No 1. LET'S HANG OUT SOMETIME Waking Up Restrained | Shackled | Hanging

No 2. IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY  "Pick Who Dies" | Collars | Kidnapped

No 3. MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY Manhandled | Forced to their Knees | Held at Gunpoint

No 4. RUNNING OUT OF TIME Caged | Buried Alive | Collapsed Building

No 5. WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING? On the Run | Failed Escape | Rescue

No 6. PLEASE.... "Get it Out" | No More | "Stop, please"

No 7. I'VE GOT YOU Support | Carrying | Enemy to Caretaker

No 8. WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO? "Don't Say Goodbye" | Abandoned | Isolation

No 9. FOR THE GREATER GOOD "Take Me Instead" | "Run!” | Ritual Sacrifice

No 10. THEY LOOK SO PRETTY WHEN THEY BLEED Blood Loss | Internal Bleeding | Trail of Blood

No 11. PSYCH 101 Defiance | Struggling | Crying

No 12. I THINK I'VE BROKEN SOMETHING Broken Down | Broken Bones | Broken Trust

No 13. BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT Delayed Drowning | Chemical Pneumonia | Oxygen Mask

No 14. IS SOMETHING BURNING? Branding | Heat Exhaustion | Fire

No 15. INTO THE UNKNOWN Possession | Magical Healing | Science Gone Wrong

No 16. A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY Forced to Beg | Hallucinations | Shoot the Hostage

No 17. I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING Blackmail | Dirty Secret | Wrongfully Accused

No 18. PANIC! AT THE DISCO Panic Attacks | Phobias | Paranoia

No 19. BROKEN HEARTS Grief | Mourning Loved One | Survivor's Guilt

No 20. TOTO, I HAVE A FEELING WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE Lost | Field Medicine | Medieval

No 21. I DON'T FEEL SO WELL Chronic Pain | Hypothermia | Infection

No 22. DO THESE TACOS TASTE FUNNY TO YOU? Poisoned | Drugged | Withdrawal

No 23. WHAT’S A WHUMPEE GOTTA DO TO GET SOME SLEEP AROUND HERE? Exhaustion | Narcolepsy | Sleep Deprivation

No 24. YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE Forced Mutism | Blindfolded | Sensory Deprivation

No 25. I THINK I’LL JUST COLLAPSE RIGHT HERE, THANKS Disorientation | Blurred Vision | Ringing Ears

No 26. IF YOU THOUGHT THE HEAD TRAUMA WAS BAD... Migraine | Concussion | Blindness

No 27. OK, WHO HAD NATURAL DISASTERS ON THEIR 2020 BINGO CARD? Earthquake | Extreme Weather | Power Outage

No 28. SUCH WOW. MANY NORMAL. VERY OOPS. Accidents | Hunting Season | Mugged

No 29. I THINK I NEED A DOCTOR Intubation | Emergency Room | Reluctant Bedrest

No 30. NOW WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? Wound Reveal | Ignoring an Injury | Internal Organ Injury

No 31. TODAY’S SPECIAL: TORTURE Experiment | Whipped | Left for Dead

Alternate Prompt List

Alt 1. Punctured

Alt 2. Falling

Alt 3. Comfort

Alt 4. Stitches

Alt 5. Stoic Whumpees

Alt 6. Altered States

Alt 7. Found Family

Alt 8. Adverse Reactions

Alt 9. Memory Loss

Alt 10. Nightmares

Alt 11. Presumed Dead

Alt. 12. Water

Alt. 13 Accidents

Alt. 14 Shot

Alt. 15 Carry/Support

Event Info

WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation challenge (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are 31 Official themes this year - one for each day of the month - which can be used, skipped, or combined in any way you’d like. They are meant to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don't have to include the exact wording into your work). Additionally, there are 3 prompts for each theme.  These are optional suggestions and can be used in conjunction with the theme, or as options/alternatives.  We want to give everyone as much creative freedom as possible, as well as increase event accessibility for folks with triggers and squicks.

Creators can PRODUCE work in any media they choose, including but not limited to: writing, visual artwork, and photo/video/audio edits. Creators can PARTICIPATE as much or as little as they want (i.e. you don’t have to do ALL the prompts if you don’t want to) and prompts can be used in any order. They are also free to use even after the event ends.

When uploading Whumptober content to your blog, be sure to tag the with:

#whumptober2020 …..(the event tag)

#no.1, #no.2, #no.3, …..(theme number)

#bruised, #stabbed,  …..(the theme or specific prompt you chose)

#fandom or #OC

#medium …..(gifs, fic, podcast, art, etc.)

#teeth, #etc …..(trigger warnings & any additional tags. Keep in mind not to add “tw” in front but only use the word/trigger itself, because tumblr sucks)

#nsfw, #nsfwhump …..(only for nsfw content)

PLEASE BE DILIGENT WITH YOUR TAGGING. Only properly tagged posts are considered for archiving on the official @whumptober2020​ blog. They must be tagged in the order above.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of participants in recent years, we cannot guarantee your work will be archived. A random selection of properly tagged posts from all genres will be reblogged each day.

Whumpers who produce content for 31 total theme days are considered event completionists and will be tagged in a masterpost at the end of the month.

Questions not addressed below can be directed to this blog as well.

Thanks for reading, and happy whumping!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What kind of content can I make? Can it be NSFW?

This is a MIXED MEDIA event! You can write fic, post meta, doodle or paint, create a gif set or photo edit, link a song, or get crafty with video - anything goes. As for NSFW, make what you like, we just hope that you’ll tag your work accordingly so that others participating in the event can stay safe :)

Q. Do I have to do all 31 Days? Can I post early/late?

Participate as much or little as you like, and post whenever! Just be sure to tag your posts properly (ex. #no.11, #psych101). Combining prompts into one piece of work is okay, and posting late is as well so as long as it’s in October.

Q. What if I don’t understand a theme?

Send us an ask! We’re happy to help clarify. That said, the themes are entirely up for interpretation :)

Q. Can I combine Whumptober with other creation challenges?

Absolutely! That’s like shooting two whumpees with one bullet :)

Q. Can I upload/repost my whumptober content to other social media platforms?

Of course! We’ve created an AO3 Collection to archive any fics posted there. The archive can be accessed here. The blog is the official archive, so please respect the boundaries of any closeted whumpers in your social circle :)

Q. Can I use prompts to write a new chapter for an existing fic?

Yes

Q. An existing fic I am currently writing contains many of the Whumptober prompts, can I use it?

If you are actively writing this fic at the moment with the whumptober prompts in mind, yes. If it just conveniently checks the boxes, then please don’t. You can, however, add new chapters answering one or more of the prompts.

Q. What kind of characters can I write for?

Fandom characters, OC characters, human, furry, alien, cyborg, whoever you like.

Q. Can I use a prompt multiple times?

Yes,  but it only counts once

Q. If I’m not comfortable with one day's prompts can I use a prompt of a different day as a substitute and still be a completionist?

Yes, but please do not use a specific prompt twice. We have also created an alternate prompts list that you can draw from [here].

Q. Where can I post my work?

Post where and how you want. You don’t even have to (cross)post it to Tumblr. Just keep in mind if it’s not on Tumblr we will not be able to add it to the blog archive.

Q. Can I start posting early?

You can, but this is an October event and wouldn’t it be more fun with everyone doing it at the same time? That being said, you can post early, but we won’t be reblogging any work predating October 1st.

Q. Do I have to finish a fic I started/can I post WIP’s.?

Yes you can post WIPs. And you’re not obligated to finish it in October for it to count towards being a completionist.  

Q. Is co-writing allowed?

Yes, absolutely, and it would count towards being a completionist for both/all of you :)

Q. Do I have to create 31 standalone pieces to be considered a completionist or can I write one continuous story?

One continuous story is fine.  The challenge is to write something for 31 prompts. If that’s spread over 31 fics or just one, you are still considered a completionist. (The same goes for every other media you choose.)

Q. Is there a min/max limit on word count?

There is no limit

Q. Can I combine prompts? Is there a limit on how many?

No limit and combine as many as you’d like.

Q. Is a hc/angst focus ok?

Of course!

Q. What’s considered nsfw?

See this post

Q. What's whump?

See this post

Q. My interpretation of the prompt isn't whumpy at all, does that count?

No, sorry, but keep in mind that whump [see definition] is something very nuanced and different for everyone and emotional whump/angst is just as much part of it, as is physical whump and torture. So before you dismiss your idea, think about this.

Q. Can I start working on the prompts before October?

Absolutely! That’s why we posted the prompts a month in advance. We recognise how difficult it can be creating for 31 days in “real time”.

Q. How do I tag triggers?

tw at the end of the word, ex. emeto tw

Q. Do I have to use your tags?

Yes, if you want your work archived on the blog. If not, feel free to use whatever tags you want.  

Q. Does combining prompts count towards completion?

Yes

Q. Can we @ you?

Yes but we mostly rely on the whumptober2020 tag

Q. Is there anything we are absolutely not allowed to write?

There are no rules, just be sure to properly tag your trigger warnings. And keep in mind Tumblr’s policies if you are posting it here (or the policies of whatever site you use).

Q. Where can I go for brainstorming help?

Here on Discord

Q. My characters are minors, is that ok?

Yes, but as with everything else, tags are your best friend.

Q. Can I cross post on other blogs?

Yes, multiple platforms and blogs are perfectly acceptable. You can also post different works to different accounts under different names, without posting them everywhere at once.

Note: This is a creation challenge, please don’t repost your old work under our tags (unless it’s been changed or edited for the event).

[northlight14]

Another secret to keep

Description: Janus gets back home from a pride event. Now he has to deal with his homophobic dad.

Tw: being dead named, alcohol, cursing, homophobia

Ships: platonic or QPR dukeceit

Genre: human au

Alt prompt 2: rainbow (prompt by @pridewrite2021)

(Janus’ pronouns are he/she/they in this)

Janus examined their face in their phone camera for one last time, doing their best to ensure that no face paint had managed to escape them scrubbing their cheek furiously on the way back. Finally satisfied, they entered their house.

“Damien, where the hell have you been?!” Her dad called from the other room. Janus cringed at their dead name. “I was just about to send out a search party.” He chuckled.

“Study group ran late.” Janus lied smoothly, entering the living room. His dad was sat on the couch, beer in hand. The tv was on and flashing images from the news. Janus almost went dizzy as videos of the pride parade flashed across the screen.

His dad scoffed. “God, why do they have to be showing that shit?” He said, gruffly.

Janus had learned a while ago how to not let their discomfort show and they prided themselves on being able to lie well. But damn it was it hard sometimes. The comment stung like a bullet wound but they still somehow managed a nod and a thin smile.

“You’re right, it’s not like it’s a current event and it’s their job to cover it or anything.” He said, sarcastically.

“I just don’t see why they have to shove it in our faces.” His dad said, rolling his eyes.

‘Well, I don’t love being bombarded with your sexuality 24/7 either but I seem to manage fine’ Janus didn’t say.

“I just think a man should be with a woman. That’s the way it’s always been. I mean, gay couples can’t even have kids!”

‘Neither can a lot of straight couples but I don’t see you attacking their right to exist. And gay people have existed for literal centuries but whatever.’ Janus thought.

“I mean, look at him!” His dad said, pointing to a drag queen on the screen. She wore a short blue skirt with a sequin trail attached to the back and a crop top to match. Her hair was curly and done up big, dyed in blues and purples with a feather headdress which she wore like a crown. Her makeup was bold, with sparkling eyeshadow reaching up to her eyebrows and long eyelashes perfectly curled. The drag queens cheekbones were sharp, contour done perfectly. Her lipstick was a beautiful purple that glistened and made her lips look fuller than they likely were without it. She strutted down the street in her heels, radiating pure confidence.

“Any man going out like that should be ashamed of himself.” Janus’ dad spat. Ok, that one really hurt.

“If you don’t mind dad, I’m a little tired. I’m just gonna head to my room.” Janus said.

Janus did his best not to run up the stairs. It was already risky leaving in the middle of that type of conversation. Hurrying out the room wouldn’t help his case.

Janus then entered his room, locked his door and flopped onto his bed, the soft black and yellow duvet bringing the smallest of comforts to him as his dads words wrung in his head like some kind of annoying school bell.

“It’s just until I can move out” he told himself. “Then I never have to speak to the bastard again and I can move on with my life.”

She then felt her phone buzz from her hoodie pocked. She looked to see it was Remus. Opening it, she couldn’t help but smile.

It was a picture they’d taken from earlier that day. Remus was wearing his black denim jacket wearing his asexual and aromantic pride badges. Underneath he wore a green and black shirt which read ‘sounds gay, I’m in.’ He was also wearing a black choker that Janus had given him for his birthday. Remus had done his makeup slightly differently too, making his eyeshadow the full rainbow rather than just purple, and wearing black lipstick. It was hard to tell from the photo, but brown hair was also sparkling too from when he’d thrown an entire tub of glitter on himself. He was stood to Janus’ side, kissing his cheek (despite Janus’ many objections.)

Janus hadn’t been able to do as much for the pride parade, fearing their dad found out, but they had still let Remus paint the non binary and rainbow flags on their cheek. He’d also worn a skirt that he’d borrowed from Remus. It was simple, just a plain black skirt that went just above his knees with some lace at the bottom of it but he couldn’t help feeling so genuinely happy as he wore it. He’d been slightly disappointed when he had to give it back at the end, fearing his dad would find it. In one particularly brave moment, they’d also bought a rainbow pin which they’d stuck to their mustard hoodie.

As she took in all the pride flags in the background of the photo, her phone buzzed again.

Remus: we look sexy as hell in this photo😉

Janus couldn’t help but laugh.

Janus: don’t we always?😉

Remus: 😘

Janus looked at the rainbow pin in the photo for a moment before reached into their hoodie and pulling it out, running their thumb across the shiny surface.

They knew they wouldn’t be able to wear it out in public much. Plus, it’d have to be hidden from their dad. But it felt oddly good to have it.

‘Oh well.’ Janus thought ‘what’s another secret to keep?’

Reblog’s >>> likes

[quitetheketch-moved]

so I’ve been seeing bad taste in youtubers, not like in my mutuals or anything but in general but it made me want to make a like, recommended list of youtubers i like who are pretty chill if not full on comrades so here we are - not prompted by anything specific but an itch I got here some of the channels I like:

Cooking:

BORE.D - Fun cooking channel with a stylish presentation 

Chinese Cooking Demystified - Like it says on the tin, informative authentic Chinese dishes from all over the country. 

David Seymour - started with buzzfeed taste tests but now covers most big cooking channels seeing if he can recreate them and how they are

Maangchi - Plz cook for me, like i’m begging feed me it all looks amazing 

My Name Is Andong - fun cooking videos from all over, especially the ones about Russian food.

Simply Sara Kitchen  - good home style cooking 

Souped Up Recipes - Traditional Chinese cooking

Movies/Tv:

Accented Cinema - a video essay channel with a focus on Asian cinema

Folding Ideas - Not strictly about film but I tend to watch a lot of essayists who fall into multiple things and I kinda just have to lean into their main aesthetic but Dan is a gif so check him out.

Jack Saint  - Jack and Joel have a lot of similar style of content but Jack leans into media stuff more so i’m moving him over here. (although i’ve been working on this post for over an hour going through my alphabetical yt sub list and i’m starting to regret trying to categorize them)

PushingUpRoses  - a must watch if you love old tv especially Murder She Wrote

Renegade Cut - Does games too, and frankly they are some of their best work, but quality media analysis.

Ryan Hollinger - Horror movie analysis

Scaredy Cats  - More horror movie analysis but my favorite channel of this kind

Gaming Essays:

Adam Millard - video essays about video games - really recommend the video on Frog Fractions and the Longing

Curio - I’m putting them here because theres been a big focus on games lately and they recently started twitch streaming which is fun but really it’s all media essay. Just please check out their four part Witcher series adfkj it’s the most recent so easy to find.

Errant Signal - I dont have much to add other than please check out Errant Signal, they dont post much but I am in love with this channel.

Game Maker's Toolkit  - in depth essays about elements of game design

Jim Sterling  - Okay not essays but gaming news - if you dont check out anyone else here you should still check out Jim. Especially if you care about the rights of workers in the gaming industry. 

Gaming Play:

Biffa Plays Indie Games - mostly does Cities Skylines but sometimes other, great videos to relax to.

GaLm - GaLm deserves so much much than he gets, Love him been watching him for forever and honestly he’s enough of a workaholic that there’s so much content you WILL find something you like. All complete with critical analysis.

GrayStillPlays - one of the few like, non overtly left-os here but listen, if you want some slightly silly slightly more edgy style of video game videos to kinda turn off your brain and just enjoy you cant get much better than grey. He’s chaos but chaos that doesn’t rely on racism. Maybe one too many jokes about addiction but they aren’t usually punching down so???

John Wolfe - chill horror youtuber - not much to say but one of my favorites.

KatherineOfSky - want the most soothing voice ever to gently play hardcore logistic games at you? Well holy fuzzy cats, you’re home.

Many A True Nerd - Partner to Claire in the category below, known for his fallout but plays just about anything. Also loves grand strategy and paradox games. Good playlist management too do easy to find what you need.

Wanderbots - A just, massive amount of indie game content.

Commentary/Other:

Claire Rousseau - Books youtuber who is just a delight, I dont know how else to describe her but even tho I dont read anymore i’d still die for her.

Courtreezy -  just the queen of being bubbly and fun (some of these I dont have good sales pitches for just *shoves them at you* give em a shot)

D'Angelo Wallace and dangelowallace - Main and second channel, both the same kind of content but the formats are different. Dont always agree with all his opinions but man, theres no fault in the way he presents and researches them - solid essayist but also just oozes charisma and good times.

Drawfee Show - one of the bigger channels here save D’Angelo above so you may already be familiar with them but just a fun weekly drawing show. Good times.

Foo the Flowerhorn  - Watch fish be fed bits of blanched vegetables, like that either sells you or not but it’s Good.

Jarvis Johnson and Jarvis Johnson! GOLD - primary and secondary channels, pure commentary channel on a wide range of topics - i recommend the videos on 5 min crafts and the bachelor.

Life in Jars? - Eco-spheres and terrariums oh me :0

MacDoesIt - Gay chaotic energy, just chock full of Moods and fun times.

Sarah Z - Unofficial tumblr historian

Politics:

Big Joel - kinda variety content, plenty of media analysis but through a strongly leftist lens. Torn between here and commentary but the balance is slightly more overtly political than just media commentary through a political lens so here we go.

Black Red Guard - A black leftist commentary/essay channel focused on black issues and self described as a “New Afrikan Maoist”, this is fairly new channel I found so I’m not as good at describing his content def not better than he does but solid stuff through a perspective I wouldn’t normally get.

hbomberguy - Just watch his video on Pathologic please. Or like, watch 20 mins then go play Pathologic then come back after you’ve beaten it and Pathologic 2 and finish the video.

Innuendo Studios  - Frankly I had no idea where to put this one, because it’s a little of everything but mostly media analysis but also please watch the alt-right playbook if you like, want to understand more about how radicalization happens.

KAR - Black anarchist channel, solid political videos but shorter than most of the ones here so better for consuming when you dont have much time.

Leslie Exp - Videos about disability

Luna oi! and NonCompete  - frankly best agitprop communist duo. A good place to start learning about mutual aid and what anarchism is, beginner friendly videos on leftist theory.

Philosophy Tube - Videos are super polished and well made essays about philosophy, super theatrical and flashy. Honestly cannot stress enough how fun the production value of these are.

Professor Flowers - Nuanced important discussions about race, media, and the political landscape.

Some More News - Like it says on the tin, news but told to you by a disheveled fed up leftist (I joke because i’m running out of things to say in the comment for each but really, Cody and his entire team deserve a lot of credit for their well researched videos on current events)

Thought Slime  - Agitprop but make it a little silly because tbh we all need some jokes rn

Honorable mentions of some slightly bigger channels you may already know but I enjoy: UpIsNotJump , Steve1989MREInfo , SmallishBeans , RTGame , Primitive Survival Tool  , Mumbo Jumbo ,  emmymadeinjapan ,  Kurtis Conner ,  Danny Gonzalez , Drew Gooden  , How To Cook That , JunsKitchen , Defunctland 

[im-definitely-not-trash]

Heehoo here’s the first prompt for whumptober! This is the first year I’m determined to complete it on time by posting every day so here’s the beginning of the attempt. Anyway!

Alt prompt #6: Head Injury

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

TW: vomiting, mentions of vomit

Word count: 2591

“-idge! Pidge, come on! Answer me!”

“K… Keith?” Pidge opened her eyes, squinting at the shadow above her.

“Thank god, Pidgey, I was… I’m glad you’re okay.”

“What happened?” Keith pushed her down by the shoulders as she tried to sit up.

“Green got hit, bad. You crashed on this moon and we couldn’t reach your comms.”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Finishing off the Galra. It took us a while to spread them thin enough that I could come down here.”

While recapping the events, Keith had been checking over Pidge thoroughly for any injuries, and he seemed content. “Okay. Let’s go. The others are surely done and waiting for us. Can you get Green back on?”

Pidge got up with Keith’s help. She stumbled into him once on her feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just got up too fast, just a tick.” Pidge used Keith as a support as the blood rushed to her head, trying to find her footing and balance. It took a bit longer than she thought it should, but eventually, she got her bearings and sat in the cockpit chair. “Go ahead and go back to Red, Keith, I’ll get her up and running. Then I’ll meet you guys at the castle.”

“I don’t want to leave you here, that was a really rough crash. And not only that, you were thrown from your chair and were on the floor. Outwards, your body looks fine, but I don’t want to leave you alone until we’re sure everything is fine internally.”

“Keith, I feel fine. I was a little dizzy when I stood up but I had been on the floor for… I don’t know how long, you know better than me, but whatever! I’m fine!”

Keith’s face was still brushed over with concern.

Pidge sighed. “If you’re really that worried, once we get back to the castle we can do a full scan and if needs be, I’ll go into a pod.”

Keith sighed as well, ready to resign his worries. “Fine, but if anything feels off, you need to tell me as soon as you can. Here’s a communicator if Green won’t wake up.” He handed it to her. “Let me know if something feels wrong, with Green or with you.”

“Okay, whatever you say, Keith.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you later.” He waved and ducked out of the cockpit. Pidge saw him running to Red from the windshield. She sat in the pilot’s chair and groaned. Her head killed. Her stomach rolled. She still felt dizzy.

She tried to shake off the feeling to connect with Green, and Green woke up.

“Hey, girl.”

The lion groaned as it stood, sounding much like Pidge felt.

“Okay, we got hit and crashed hard, but we’re fine now. We need to get back to the team to help.”

Green seemed to say, You aren’t well, paladin.

“I’m just as well as you. Banged up but functional.”

You’re worse off then me. You have a fragile body.

“Your mom.”

Green went silent, knowing Pidge wouldn’t listen.

Pidge steered Green to where they could safely take off without damaging the surrounding ecosystem and off they went. Once in the atmosphere, Pidge grabbed the little communicator. “Paladins of Voltron, this is the Green Paladin and her lion.” The sound of her own voice echoed in her ears loudly.

“I hear you, Pidge,” Keith said. “We’re still fighting, and the others don’t have this communicator frequency. We could really use your help right now.”

“I’m not sure if Green is up to it.” She was lying through her teeth. Green seemed fine if not a little banged up. It was her who wasn’t up to it.

“Then stay still, we don’t want the Galra to see you and target you when you can’t dodge or counterattack.”

“No, I want to help! Green is just banged up and can take all the time she needs to recover in the hangar of the castle. I’m on my way.”

Pidge could hear Keith sigh over the comms. “Okay, but be careful. Don’t get hit again.” Static crackled and Pidge knew she was alone again.

Her vision blurred as she looked up to see where her friends were fighting. There were blurs of pink and blue lights, coming from the Galra and from the Lions. She was too far away to see any of her friends clearly, just the lights from the blasts. And assorted explosions.

For once, Pidge was grateful that space was a vacuum, because if she had been able to hear those explosions, her head probably would’ve exploded itself.

Slowly, she crept up on the battle, trying to figure out where she could possibly go in to help. “Hey, Green, activate the reflective shield.” Invisible, she got even closer.

Her comms crackled to life.

“-m on the left, someone get-” That was Lance.

“-eith, where’s Pidge?! We need to for-” Shiro.

“She said she was coming! I don’t know-” Keith.

Hunk seemed to be quiet but active. Coran and Allura were shouting affirmations for everyone from the castle.

And Pidge was sitting here doing nothing. The yells from the comms were louder than they had been earlier, but that was probably just from the little “time-out” she had on that moon.

“All right,” she said to herself. Then she shot Green forward to the middle of the battle and joined all the chaos on the comms.

The whole team was still yelling, but this time more excited that they had a chance to win this now that they could form Voltron.

The lights were closer now, brighter than before.

Every explosion shook Green, and Pidge inside.

For a minute, everything was quiet and dark.

Pidge gagged and vomited.

It wouldn’t stop, she was so dizzy and everything was so loud and she couldn’t stop moving and her head- oh god her head—

She coughed and heaved and she couldn’t breathe and it wouldn’t stop it wouldn’t stop it wouldn’t stop it—

And then it stopped.

But Pidge didn’t know that.

~~~

Keith tuned out everyone’s voices. They were all saying generally the same thing. ‘Pidge, are you okay,’ ‘Pidge, are you there,’ ‘what’s going on,’ ‘is she okay,’ all the same stuff.

I shouldn’t have left her alone, he thought. I should’ve known that she was lying, of course she would, she never wants to feel helpless.

“Keith!” Shiro yelled through the comms. “It doesn’t matter what you should’ve done, stay focused!”

Was he saying that out loud?

“Yes, sorry.” He glanced again at the Green Lion, eyes glowing and standing in ready position, but not moving at all. No pilot to control it.

“If Pidge is incapacitated, we can’t form Voltron! We need to defend her and beat the Galra,” Lance said. “We can’t separate more than we already have, and we can’t run.”

“I’ll go protect Pidge, my lion can take blasts meant for her until we can overpower them,” Hunk said.

“You can’t take them for long, it would be easier to just get done with the Galra.” Shiro sounded exhausted and worried, reasonably.

The team was still trying to plan amongst themselves when Allura bursted into the comms.

“Everyone, get out of the way, and take Pidge with you!”

The Paladins and their Lions quickly left where they were surrounding the Galra ship, and Keith and Red shoved Green out of the proximity.

A huge blue blast came from the castle and hit dead on the Galra ship.

There was nothing left of it.

A collective sigh of relief made it’s way through the team, and then Lance said, “Why didn’t you do that earlier?!”

Allura moaned at his lack of logic. “It took time to charge up to be that powerful, Lance, and with us helping with the smaller shots from the turrets, it took much longer than it could’ve. Be glad it worked at all before anyone got hurt.”

“Thank you, Allura, Coran,” Shiro said. “Let’s get back.”

It was quiet while everyone was taking a couple breaths, finally done with the battle.

“We can’t take more time, guys,” Keith said. “Pidge… Pidge was definitely worse than she let on to me. I’ve got Green, but Red isn’t strong enough by herself to push Green to the Castle.”

The Yellow Lion showed up at the Red Lion’s side, then Blue too. Together, they pushed Green as fast as they could to the Castle.

~~~

Everyone met in Green’s hangar.

“Green, you have to let us in!” Lance was a bit frantic. “We get you’re trying to protect her but we can protect her too, and you probably don’t have the tools to help her if she’s hurt!”

Lance kept pleading with the Lion while the others stood by, worried about their youngest family member. Allura walked to the Lion and put her hand on its leg.

“Please, Green Lion, I can’t lose another Paladin. Please let us in to help Pidge.”

The Lion didn’t answer.

Allura turned to the Paladins and Coran. “If the Lion won’t open… there’s only one explanation.” Her voice broke and tears welled up as she tried to blink them back. “The Green Lion is waiting for a new Paladin to take Pidge’s place because she’s—”

Everyone finished that sentence in their minds.

Coran started working on something to open the Lion in the corner. Lance kept begging, Allura quietly started to cry. Hunk tried to put on a brave face, but his eyes were watering too. Shiro paced.

Keith couldn’t believe it.

Pidge was like a little sister to him. A best friend. She managed to get him to open up when he wouldn’t talk to anyone else. He trusted her with all his heart. If she had said she was fine, she was fine, not…

Not dead.

He’d had enough.

“OPEN UP YOU STUPID LION!!! YOU CAN’T KEEP HER!! SHE’S OURS, SHE’S HUMAN LIKE US, NOT A STUPID ROBOT LIKE YOU ARE AND YOU NEED TO GIVE HER BACK!!! PIDGE IS OUR FRIEND, AND EVEN IF SHE’S YOURS TOO, SHE WAS OURS FIRST! SO LET HER OUT OR LET US IN!!!!!”

Everyone went silent at Keith’s outburst.

“Keith, it’s okay. We’ll get in soon enough.”

“No, it’s not okay!! She was hurt, and I thought she wasn’t, and if she’s still alive, I doubt she will be for much longer! We need to help Pidge now!”

Tears were falling down Keith’s face, along with some snot down his nose.

A thud echoed through the room.

Green’s maw was opened wide.

~~~

Keith was first to reach the cockpit. He turned the pilot chair toward him and saw Pidge. She was quiet, still wearing her suit, but not her helmet. She hadn’t had it on when Keith had first gone to check on her and Green when they first crashed. Had it come off in the crash or was she just not wearing it? And then why didn’t she put it on again.

There was puke all over the front of her suit. A goose egg showed through her bangs. Pidge didn’t have any good tanning abilities, but she was paler than usual. Keith knelt in front of her and pulled off the pieces of her Paladin suit after unbuckling her.

“Pidge?” His voice shook.

She didn’t respond.

Keith put his hand under her mouth and for a few terrible seconds, nothing happened, but then he felt warmth cover his hand as she exhaled.

Breathing. That’s good.

He checked her over for injuries, just like he had done a couple hours earlier, but slower and more carefully.

Nothing seems to be broken.

Then he got to the back of her head.

It was warm and wet.

“Shit.”

Gently, he let her body flop over him. He saw her flight suit stained red all down her back and her hair matted near the base of her neck.

No wonder she was off balance and dizzy. If she had hit her head bad enough to bleed, surely she had a concussion, at best.

Keith picked her up so her arms were over his shoulders and he had grip on her legs. He made sure the back of her head wasn’t going to hit his chin or anything else and carried her out of the Lion.

Allura, Coran and the Paladins stood waiting as he walked out. The room held its breath.

“She’s alive,” Keith said.

It let out the breath.

“But she really needs a pod, like immediately. She must’ve hit her head without her helmet when she crashed. I missed it when I checked her over the first time. She’s bleeding.”

The room then went kind of crazy. Shiro grabbed Pidge from Keith (with his permission [he has attachment issues]) and ran to the infirmary with Coran. Hunk walked over to Keith and talked to him. Lance paced and Allura sat near Keith to support.

Eventually, they all sat in the common bay with each other. Hunk got up and made some food for everyone and they all ate together in silence.

~~~

A few days passed and the whole team had sort of gotten back into a routine of checking on everything. Checking for Galra outposts on planets that needed help, checking in with the Blades of Marmora, checking on Pidge, checking on the Lions, et cetera.

Almost a week later was when the pod opened. It was the middle of the night and Pidge walked out to discover she was alone.

“Guys?” She was bewildered. The last thing she knew was crashing to the moon that was near their battle with the Galra. “Hunk? Allura?” She walked around the castle in the pod suit. “Guys, hello?”

Making her way around the entire Castle, Pidge made it to the common bay and sat down on the couch and she felt a lump underneath her.

“Ow, Lance, get off. No one else has a butt that bony.”

“Keith?”

“I said get off.”

“Keith! What happened?”

Keith finally seemed to wake up and he flipped the blanked off his head. “Pidge??”

“What happened? And why are you sleeping on the couch?”

Keith stood up, throwing Pidge to the floor, and then jumped on her and gave her a hug. “Pidge!”

“Yeah, that’s me. What’s your deal?”

“It’s been about a week.”

“Since what?”

“Since you crashed.”

Pidge’s demeanor changed and she got off the floor. “A week? All I remember was being on my way down to that moon. That’s it.”

“Oh, Pidgey. You hit your head really bad when you crashed. When I got to you, you were unconscious and thrown from your seat. You woke up and complained about dizziness but you got Green up and came to help but then something happened and you were out, unable to control your Lion. We won and brought Green back to the hangar but she wouldn’t open, so Allura assumed you were…”

Pidge’s hands shook as she reached to Keith. “I’m not though.” She smiled.

“You don’t know how glad I am for that,” he said, laughing.

They hugged again, Pidge pulling Keith tight. “Thanks for protecting me.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay. I can’t imagine losing a little sister, especially since you’re my only one.”

“Too bad you aren’t my only big brother. I could have a favorite that isn’t you.”

Keith pushed her off him so she could see his pout.

Pidge laughed. “Just kidding. I already know my favorite is Hunk.”

Keith was about to protest but then nodded. “His food though.”

“Exactly.”

[bloodsweatandpotato]

Whumpay day 7

Alt prompt: Apologies

Fandom: DHMIS

Characters: Harry (red guy), Robin (duck guy).

Tw: Panic attacks. Mention/description of body horror.

Summary: Harry’s been having a bad day and just wants to take a shower. Robin’s unable to clear his mind, and just wants to spend some time alone. Could be Fluffybird if that’s your thing. I just wanted to write a little bit of comfort for my bois. Also... uh... in my interpretation/AU, puppet trio’s in a simulation so.... yeah.

The smell of fish lingered long after the day was over. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. One one hand, it convinced him that he wasn’t insane. The clock, (Tony, he had called himself), had really come alive, and no matter how reality bent and warped, the stench of fish grounded him.

On the other hand, when he said that the smell of fish lingered, he meant that it coated the house. It coated the house in a way that only fish could. It stuck to the roof of his mouth, clung to his long, red hair. It permeated the air and the water and the warmed can of beans that Harry had numbly prepared for dinner after the day’s events.

It clung to his nightclothes and bedsheets, small splatters of fish slime scattered about the house as a reminder of the lesson.

Harry needed to get away. He needed to get clean. And he needed to do it now. If he didn’t now, he was sure that he would never be clean again. He took a calming breath, ignoring the way his hands shook by his sides.

He walked to the bathroom door, sock covered feet dragging on the floor. His hand lingered over the doorknob, ear pricked to the sound of fast, shallow breathing.

Harry knocked.

“Robin, that you?”

“Don’t come in!” Robin squawked in the way that he often did.

Harry pushed open the door.

Robin stood staring into the mirror, hands braced on the edge of the counter, clutching it with a white knuckled grip. His brown eyes were wide, fixed on his reflection with an almost inhuman focus.

“Go-go away!”

“Robin?” Harry stepped through the doorway, reaching out to lay a hand on Robin’s bare shoulder. Robin flinched away.

“I’m sorry.” The brunette gasped.

Harry’s frown deepened, eyebrows knitting in concern.

“Robin, what are you doing here? I thought you went to bed.” Harry withdrew his hand, deciding that letting Robin be was the best course of action at the moment.

Robin squeezed his eyes shut, reaching up to grope at his own face.

“I can’t... I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I- I can’t get it... I- I’m sorry! Sorry! S-sorry!”

Robin kept his eyes closed, but his hand lowered to clutch at the side of the toilet. He shook, repeating his one-word mantra like it was all he knew.

Harry reached out to grab at Robin’s shoulders, not wanting to distress him anymore, but afraid that Robin’s shaking legs would give out.

“Robin, Robin. What are you saying story for?”

Robin didn’t seem to hear, staying stiff and still except for his rapidly rising and falling chest. Robin’s white undershirt slipped off of one shoulder in his panic, the strap handing limply against his upper arm. Harry gently adjusted it, lifting it back into its correct position.

Robin had always been fussy about his appearance.

“Robin. Talk to me.”

“It hurt so much...”

Harry was silent. Rubbing circles onto Robin’s shoulder.

“It hurt so much when I... when he pulled us apart...”

Harry said nothing. He had nothing to say. Tony hadn’t been kind to them, yelling until Manny’s ears bled, demonstrating the power of time in a way Harry would much rather forget.

What Robin said was true. It had hurt. It wasn’t a burning hurt, but a slow, aching agony that radiated from his very bones. That seeped through his body, stealing his breath and stilling his heart until he couldn’t move or think or do anything but feel himself rot.

Feel his hair pull away from his scalp and his scalp pull away from his skull, falling into his lap in matted, fleshy clumps. Feel his flesh pulling away from bones, tears slipping out of his eyes until they too, succumbed to age and shriveled like raisins in the sun.

Harry kept rubbing.

“I’m sorry...” Whispered Robin. “I know we all felt it... It’s silly, how worked up I’m getting.”

Harry grasped Robin’s chin, running a thumb over his jawline. “It’s not silly...” Harry just wished he could figure out what he was missing. It wasn’t silly, the teachers weren’t normal... but he couldn’t quite grasp what normal was... The smell of antiseptic seeped into his nostrils. Leather straps against his wrists.

Robin reached out, burying his head in Harry’s chest. Harry returned the hug, letting the smell of books and tea and the faint scent of mahogany overpower the fish.

They stayed like that for a long time, neither one acknowledging the wetness that trailed down their intact, unwrinkled faces.

[riskeith]

happy weekend dearest!

other than the snow angels, i haven’t done much.,, just been cozying it up with coffee and blankets at home hehe. 30 degrees... amazing. ideal feeling like a rotisserie chicken weather. 😌 bc of global warming we’ve been having some great summers these past few years. it even gets to 30 degrees as well which was unheard of tbh.

you’re so cute for caring ilysm <3 and aaa! a walk! do you have any perticular place you enjoy walking to or does the winds guide you, hehe? EDITING A FIC... 👀 i’m looking respectfully...... 👀 wait did the event open up for you already? i tried to play it earlier today but it wasn’t there yet... the lost riches one right?

bennett is best boy i still can’t believe it either!!! he’s seriously the cutest he just makes me so happy. when i need to explore and run around i always run with him bc i love his lines so much. what a bebie. you should go for it there are still some days left! + he’s a four star so he’s easier to get. GUOBA IS SO FUNNY he’s just.... a little fucking bear i can’t stop laughing... tbh the little creatures like amber’s bunny too just 😭 have you seen those yt clips of them dancing? obsession..

i need to ask you this bc when i found out i lost my mind: did you know that the japanese va for razor is also the va for tsukishima (haikyuu) and shigaraki (bnha)???? insane!!! it made me consider switch to japanese dub tbh.. which dub do you use?

maybe i’ll send you a little part and you can read or something shdkdhskdjdjf help 😳 it’s not edited or anything so it might take a while plus i’m super into writing bnha these days so.... but hey if You have any prompts you want to read maybe i’ll write a drabble for you. i don’t mind at all! <33333 ask for anything!!

(FIC-COLLAB!!:!/$:)!:&//&/!$:’sidnd HELP.... omg what kind of fic would we write....?)

exactly! i think when you realize that there’s nothing keeping you there anymore that brings you joy, that’s when you need to step back. social media is a bit fucked up that way imo. like you want to be there to be informed and to have fun but it takes so much.. hm. also you always tell me this but i wanna tell you to that YOU are the reason i enjoy social media these days so.. thank you <3

you relate to bakugou and lance? that’s super hot of you.. 🥵 my wifey is a self assured, super intense and talented person.. couldn’t ask for better tbh. i think out of them both i’m pretty much like todoroki.. we’re super similar in so many ways now that i think about it shsjdhdhdj.. how about we just stay c.r and m.a our dynamic is perfect as is LMAO

DOUBLE VENTI! I’D LOOOOVE THAT FOR US. bow users are difficult indeed but venti is one of the easier bow users it feels like... idk watching others game play he doesn’t have as much pushback as say amber for example. 12K PRIMOGEMS..... babe you’re getting your xiao!!!!!! how long have you been saving? also i seriously don’t mind if it comes down to it hakshddkhd i can be your genshin sugar mommy... ;) imagine a c6 venti though that seems insane. literal insanity.

SPEAKING OF SHIPPING.... THE POST YOU POSTED... THEY STOLE OUR IDEA AND IT LOOKS SO CUTE AND ITS CHONGYUN AND XINGYUN WHICH IS EVEN BETTER... THEY LOOK SOOOOO CUTE TOGETHER I’M OBSESSEDDDDD!!!! <3333 dude idk how but we are doing that co-op date somehow i’m super inspired i want that for us so badly... (also i need to say smth... my love language is when people say ‘i thought of you when i...’ and the fact that you said that just hsjdfhjdjdksk shit)

actually you’re right.. the only way we’d get a sequel is if they did something with the mfe fighters.. like kinkade james veronica nadia and ina. idk how attractive that would be tho...

i’m a lady, my dearest *dips* no but my pronouns are she/her!! sorry i didn’t mention it before i thought i made it clear shsjsjdkdj. ty for asking tho ♥️ super sweet!

AAA!!!!!!!!!! EEE!! i’m super super excited. if it’s like,, too public and you don’t just wanna post it i might think about exposing myself or smth... if that would make you more comfy. no matter what you do i’m just gonna be here buzzing, *hinata voice* one more one more one more.

oh!! i listen to everything but kpop sjdjdkdhdk i did have a semi-phase around like 2014-19 ish but dropped it pretty hard . now i have no clue what goes on there anymore i mostly enjoy rnb indie n rap/hip.. my gay ass was considering making a little playlist or smth for u but i want to make it with songs You’d like so i might pull up my old kpop faves hehe..

guess chilling is out of the question then, heh. hope you slept well!! i’m gonna try to wake up earlier so we’ll have a chance to send more messages during the weekend perhaps... mwah!!

YOURS, m.a. <3

happy weekend!!!! hope you can ease up a bit since there’s no school hehe

“feeling like a rotisserie chicken weather” FHSKFHKSDF yes!! but it honestly sucks when it gets any hotter bc we don’t have central cooling in our house so rip... and my laptop fan goes crazy ahaha. 30 degrees being unheard of.. can’t relate! fsdfjs. have you guys had to adjust to those changing temperatures? rip climate change tho :’(

<333 i do!! i usually walk to the local park and then the streets around that.. omg speaking of... do you play pokemon go? DHAFKHSDKFHSKDFHKSDH i got back into it again recently ahaha. it’s for a free bakudeku zine!! hehehe it’s out at the end of jan so 👀

i just checked and the event is open !!!!!!!!! good luck hehe !

yup lost riches!! and the event opens at 4am server time, so since i’m in asia i get it earlier hehe which colour seelie are you gonna go for tho omg i was debating it with my friend last night.. i’m gonna pick gold!!

baby bennett!! that’s true but i can’t risk getting a 5 star otherwise my pity will reset for xiao fhdskfhskjfhkjshkfj next time :(((( but albedo /is/ super pretty and i see a lot of people saying they like him... NO !!! xiao only >:( no omg i don’t think i’ve seen those clips ? is it mmd where they like dance to other songs and stuff ahah

yes i did!!!! and the VA for diluc is giorno from jjba and kuroko from knb!! omg wait and venti’s VA is hinata did you know that? fun fact i guessed it was him when i first heard his voice LOL that’s my secret talent 😩 and i use japanese dub!! i’ve considered using chinese too bc i can understand it but i just like the japanese voice actors tbh and also i can excuse it as “listening practice” AHAH

yes pls!! sending something bnha is fine too, or legit anything else lmao i’m open arms over here~~ 🤗👐 and ooft... it’s hard thinking of prompts that’s why i always ask others HSDKFJHSDKFHSD but i’ll let you know if i think of something!!!

(no clue!!!! but we could each write from a character’s POV so hopefully it’s more consistent 🤪🤪 idk i have no clue how fic collabs work AHAHA)

yeahhh one of my mutuals said “social media is a curse” and honestly hard agree.. we’re all kinda trapped in a way LMAO. and no pls don’t thank me.. you’re the one who found me first 😩💘 ily..

FSDHKJFS pls you’re making me blush come on 😳😳 but yes i love that for us... m.a. x c.r. the only valid ship 😩

woooo!!!! yeah you’re probably right, like given the fact he’s a 5 star his mechanics are probably different.. i know that diluc’s charged attack is different to the other claymore users so! IM GETTING MY XIAO!!!! and hm i’ve been saving since the middle of zhongli banner! so december 10 ish around then? dragonspine was a blessing tbh i reckon i got sooo many primogems from that. FGJKSHFKJSDHFKSDHSHKJFH my genshin sugar mummy 🥵🥵 c6 venti unstoppable..

AHAHAHA YEAH THEY LOOK /SO/ CUTE TOGETHER!!! i wonder how they got so many of the images tho like they must’ve been so in sync?!?!? ugh that could be us but no cross-server co-op be playin’.. (fhdskjfhdskjfhs um!! noted for future reference 🤪)

omg them.. i always forget about them LMAOOOOOOOOO ugh. actually i wouldn’t be mad if we got a prequel of like when keith was in the garrison... or even when shiro was with adam... ugh so much they could’ve given us and they chose not to

*waggles eyebrows* well hello there, m’lady ;) and it’s fine fhdskjf i had some inklings but didn’t wanna assume ya know? ahah :p

no!! it’s all g, i’ve thought about posting it before anyway. like, just releasing all of my WIPs and letting people do what they want with them HAAHA. (i could also just put the link under a read more and less people would see it, so it’s no biggie!) fkdshfkjs the hinata impression omg precious <33

FJHFDSKJ awks ahah which groups were you into tho! if it’s not like scarring for you to think back to LOL. and oooo i like indie too! i think.. or is it alt? honestly i don’t even know, tbh my music taste is pretty diverse and a mess, i can usually listen to a lot of things. except slow songs i don’t really like those hfdskj. and i don’t like rap too much either FHSDKJS whenever my friend gives me a rec i’m just like “oh i liked the singing parts in that” FDSKJF. a playlist tho huh 😳🥺

and pls!! if the weekend is your only chance to sleep in then do it.. for me 😩 i’ve been legit waking up at 12pm these past few days FKJHSKDF idek why like i’m sleeping 10 hours?? yikes. but as always i shall be waiting for your response <3 💌

[cooltrainererika]

Alt-talia Double Feature: From Across The Sea

Hello, everyone! Halloween is nearing its end here.

So this is another late prompt, 10/25: Pumpkin/Grave/… I managed to throw this together quickly! Yay! So while I wanted to write about the origins of modern Halloween on the free space day, it turns out that the websites Google threw at me never gave me satisfactory answers for that. So instead, I repurposed one idea I had for Jack o’ lanterns specifically, and used it for the first in this double feature. Also, I asked hetaween, and it seems that this day is supposed to be about typical “Halloween” things. So for the second fic, I decided to use a ghost folklore a friend of mine on this site told me about. It was first suggested for the Mystical Creatures prompt, but I wasn’t sure if ghosts counted as “creatures”. But I’m glad I get to write more horror for this, you know, Halloween event.

Though heads up; America acts… pretty damn racist in the first fic. It’s supposed to be the 19th century, so it’s pretty normal, sadly. Also, there’s two OCs, but I can’t explain much about them since I haven’t developed them much myself (and I’m not even sure what gender they are, though they’re male for now for the sake of the fic). Though I do have ideas for a basic personality outline, I don’t think it’s that important here. All I know is that the second OC who shows up has red hair and green eyes.

Without further ado…

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(Also… people who read my fics, please reblog? I’ve spent so much time on them, I want more people to see them.)

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Slum Pumpkins

“Massachusetts, where are we again?”

America and Massachusetts had been wandering around Boston, and had ended up in its outskirts; and now, wherever this was.

They stood just past the entrance of a small street; a dim one, stinking distinctly of alcohol, the houses dilapidated, dirty children running around.

Massachusetts looked around, and immediately wrinkled his nose, before looking at America knowingly.

“Oh no. We’re in the Irish part of town.”

“…Yeah, I can tell with the smell; it has ‘Paddy’ written everywhere!”

But on this streets of this dank, hopeless neighborhood where the streetlights flickered begging for gas, on the porch of every house, there were spots of warm, glowing light.

As they walked through, the inhabitants running indoors or staring suspiciously or curiously at the two well-dressed men walking through their borderline slum, the sources of light became clear.

“…Pumpkins?”

Pumpkins, of various colors, carved with exaggerated, even intimidating facial expressions.

However, their light seemed to give the hopeless place a whole different face; fun, warm, even welcoming.

“America? Hey, Al!”

America looked back to the state, adjusting his glasses a bit.

“I think I heard from Scotland about something like this, actually. On All Hallows’ Eve, something about carving. He didn’t say anything about pumpkins though. I think he said it was radishes.”

“All Hallows Eve? Oh, it is that time of year. I remember how we shunned it as heretical all those years ago… But I do not like the face that one is making at me.” He flinched a bit.

As they walked, they saw the inhabitants making the best of the holiday; children stuck their heads into barrels to fetch apples as their friends encouraged them, and many sat around a table, playing some kind of game with saucers.

“I think they look pretty nice. I think I want one of those on my porch!”

“You be careful with Paddies,. You might catch something.”

From outside his window, the one whose true identity was Ireland watched as he carried his newly-carved Jack o’ lantern outside.

They didn’t notice, the two young men talking joyfully to themselves as they passed by the unassuming residence.

At least they didn’t look down on all of his traditions.

He knew better than to hope this meant anything, though.

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Lost At Sea

The ship left the dock at twilight without much trouble.

As with every departure, the folks of the crew waved goodbye, wishing them good luck.

The briny air blew through young Lukas’ hair as he stood at the back of the longboat, the dark sea turbulent, but manageable.

That soon changed.

A storm rocked the ship, the waves battering the hull, the wind howling.

Lukas hung onto the railing, used to the untamed seas; despite what his young appearance indicated, this storm was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

He just hated seeing perfectly good mead going to waste-

A scream pierced through the winds.

An ugly, pained, horrible scream.

Lukas froze.

No, it couldn’t be.

Lukas looked out across the chaotic waters.

And indeed, there it was, in the distance.

A massive, monstrous seaweed-covered humanoid, rowing in the remains of a longboat that had been long gone.

Lukas’ eyes widened.

“D-DRAUGEN! DRAUGEN!”

He shouted, straining his prepubescent voice.

Everyone’s attention was immediately drawn to the young boy.

“DRAUGEN!”

Fright immediately spread contagiously throughout the crew, some inexperienced sailors even panicking and running about.

The captain, however, jumped straight into action. He didn’t need confirmation.

“ROW BACK TO SHORE! ROW AWAY! ROW AWAY!”

The screams had become deafening even to the rest of the crew by now, some even taking spare rows to assist.

Lukas looked again as they rowed away; yet the screams were only becoming closer.

Oh, sure, he knew he would eventually wake up back on land; however, for his crew, that ghoul could be them sometime in the future. 

“HURRY!”

The screams, despaired of wrath, only became louder and more deafening.

“HURRY HURRY! ROW! ROW!”

He started shouting as well, panicked.

“LAND! SEND THEM THE SIGNAL!”

They were almost there. Almost.

Closer… closer…

Lukas thought he could hear the ghoul call out a name. But he couldn’t make out exactly what.

“FULL SPEED!”

Soon, they were met with the light of civilization, the locals having gathered around the dock, in shock they had returned so early.

Finally, the hull hit the dock, the crew beelining off the ship, pushing and shoving, almost knocking each other over, as the locals helped the dazed sailors off.

As suddenly as they started, ths screams ceased.

As Lukas looked out over the sea again, the Draugen merely watched, before returning to the stormy, unforgiving ocean where it once came.

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. Green deltas are for requested prompts.)

The schemer got schemed.

5K words. 5 fucking thousands words on some overly edgy Inazuma fic. I guess that's the power of self-indulgent writing lmao I'm sorry for how purple prose-y this reads. I don't know what it is about me this September that makes me want to write abstract stuff. And why was it so weird to write dialogue for this? I wasn't writing this awkwardly on purpose I s w e a r About the fic itself, it's mostly Orion-compliant, aside from a couple details and me deciding the match against France should have happened. The idea made more sense in my head before I started actually writing it, but oh well. I'm more impressed by how much I've written for this than anything else, tbh. I hope you still like it! I really want to write more Inazuma, so this was still a blast to write, even if the last part is... kind of weird? I didn't think I'd take this direction, but I didn't want it to end on a depressing note. Inazuma wouldn't, so why should I? This is already way too edgy for its own good, better balance things out. I also may have forgotten they're supposed to be fourteen or something, but it's easy to forgot with the alt continuity honestly. It may also be fairly OOC, but it depends on how you see the characters, I suppose. In all cases, I have a lot of fun writing these three in particular, so you can expect more of them to come one of these days.

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Two Birds in One Stone

Summary: For once, Nosaka didn't quite guess what was ahead of and coming for him. Now, if he had been the only one affected by his fight against Orion... Then it'd have been much better than that, most certainly so.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven: Orion no Kokuin Relationships: Platonic Ichihoshi & Nosaka, Nishikage & Nosaka

Wordcount: 5.5K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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The biggest traps are the stealthiest, Nosaka learned against his will during the worldwide tournament.

 It’s a stupid lesson to learn this late, way too late, in fact. It’s like observing a bird dying in his hands and realizing this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t caused its death by accidentally crashing into it. Death he’s very nearly avoided causing recently, but even that detail doesn’t help relieve him. It was obvious, yet he didn’t take it as seriously as he should have, brushing it off as no bark and no bite…

He wishes he had gotten bitten instead, right as he stands in front of a door in a corridor, alone, half sunk in the darkness. His hands are bloodied, he doesn’t want to see them.

 The events keep repeating in a loop, tinted with bitter regret and a desperate wish to redo everything again. He’s not used to the awful taste of failure and near-defeat: even if they’ve won in the end, it wasn’t thanks to him, quite the opposite way around. If Ichihoshi hadn’t been there at the right time and properly equipped –and that thought sends chills down his spine— who knows would have happened to him and Japan’s team next.

It’s not like he can do anything about it now, since time is a treacherous one-way road, but it doesn’t prevent his mind from looping around the question over and over again. After all this time spent scheming, spent elaborating complex plans and betting on the near-impossible, he’s finding himself stuck in one place, contemplating failure and decisions he could and should have taken.

But it’s easy to just regret and mop around, licking one’s wounds like an injured animal: fixing one’s mess is much harder than people make it out to be.

 It started with the least subtle trap anyone from Orion could have laid before him: a message written in Cyrillic, all in Russian, as if trying to stir some primal fear he found himself missing. He wasn’t scared of Russia or their team, Perfect Spark was terrific as a team but they were no actual criminals. As such, he merely asked Ichihoshi to translate it for him, which the latter did with ease: as he had guessed, living and playing in Russia for a while had made Ichihoshi bilingual. He had to have talked with Froy Girikanan in one language anyway.

Ichihoshi didn’t seem very thrilled about the meaning of the piece of paper, eyebrows frowning and sweat pearling down his temples. The more he read, the worse his expression got, to a point where Nosaka was starting to wonder how bad these few words could have been. Cyrillic couldn’t have expressed in so few characters such violence that a former Orion agent would have been horrified about it.

 “N-Nosaka,” he asked him with a hesitating voice, “where does this come from?”

“It was slipped under my door,” he replied with the least worry in the world. “I suspect it to be no more than an ill-tasted joke. It’s too easy.”

“I guess, but… This sounds very serious. We know the Orion Foundation has enough funds and means to do this to us.”

“Do what? I’m afraid you haven’t told me about the meaning of this message yet, Ichihoshi.”

“R-right…” He seemed more than reluctant to read it. “It’s more or less telling you to stop investigating into Orion’s business if you don’t want everyone around you to suffer the consequences. It also states it won’t hesitate to employ great means to reach that goal and that you should better off surrender to them right now. And… well… The rest is tasteless, to say the least…”

“Tasteless?”

“I… I’m not sure if I want to read out all of this, it’s a gruesome list of what they’d do to us…”

“I see,” Nosaka didn’t, really, but there was no way Ichihoshi would be able to withstand translating that for him. “Thank you for this anyway. I’m still convinced this is but a bluff, so you shouldn’t worry over it.”

“Got it…”

 And he seemed to be right, for a couple days. The training sessions went perfectly smoothly, the match against France unfolded correctly (having to face not a single Orion player felt refreshing, for once). The team was growing and improving, welcoming Seishuu’s Mizukamiya in its ranks soon enough. More bickering amongst players, more discussions shared around a plate of dinner at the cafeteria, more scheming on his part against Orion. It was all fine, all so fine, and it’d obviously eventually resolve things in the long run.

He should have seen it coming, frankly, in retrospect. He should have sensed it was all too good, coming from the snake that was Orion, slithering in the dark with dagger-sharp fangs waiting for the opportunity to strike.

 The first real weird instance that happened was already fitting of Ichihoshi’s intimidated stance when reading a simple piece of paper. People sometimes missing dinner had never been much of a weird thing: they’d show up later and grab a plate of what would be left, once they’d have been finished with whatever they were doing. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a microwave oven to heat up food that’d have gone cold since then.

Still, he had mentally noted down who was always showing up for dinner at the same hour, nagged by the message despite his best judgement. Some were fairly obvious: Iwato, Asuto, Umihara, (in fact, most of Raimon’s members) they’d never fail showing up at the time dinner started. Technically, Nishikage and he were part of them, mostly due to the message having gone around (and it was obvious that he’d tell his right-hand about that, wasn’t it?). One of the few other people who’d have never failed showing up early was also Ichihoshi, ever since his identities merged together.

 As such, it was no less than odd for the latter not to show up when dinner was announced, on one day, soon before the match against Brazil. He was miffed about this fact, sure, but there was a possible rational explanation for it, so he didn’t insist against himself: if Ichihoshi was late, it may have been because he was researching information on the team they were going to go against soon and had forgotten to check the time it was, most likely too engulfed in searches to do so.

Yet, there was something off enough about this to make him almost bite his thumbnail. A few minutes to arrive late was all fine and not suspicious, but seeing everyone but someone who was always on-time show up, eat and leave was starting to make him worry. The message kept coming back to him, no matter how many times he forced himself to push it back into the depths of his mind, until it was almost unbearable and Nishikage himself made notice of how tense he had become throughout the evening.

 In the end, they were the last to leave the cafeteria, and he decided to go search for Ichihoshi. It was weird that this boy had still not shown up in the cafeteria.

 Their footsteps resonated in the corridors as he viciously searched for a familiar tuff of blue hair, for anything that’d give him an idea of where his aide had gone. His room was empty, no shared room had any trace of him in it and anyone he asked about their comrade’s whereabouts met him with confusion, worry or simply no information to give. No amounts of “Sorry, I’ve not seen him tonight yet, I’ll make sure to tell you if I see him” would give him an idea of where to head next, but at least, that was confirming this was indeed suspicious and not just his mind rendered unable to rationalize little things.

Seeing a trail of blood made his go cold, though. Before he realized it, he had started running in the corridors, forgetting everything around him, until the zigzagging lines stopped in a darker corner of the establishment and he was faced with what must have been matching the lines Ichihoshi hadn’t dared saying in out-loud Japanese.

Not that his unconscious body would have been able to do so either.

 Nosaka wasn’t that used to the sight of blood, this much he was discovering when coming across this disaster of a vision, a nauseating stench of iron immediately reaching his head and making it spin for a moment. In a sharp reflex, almost forgetting he wasn’t alone in this mess, he ordered Nishikage to call for help in a hurry and kneeled next to the body drenched in red, still liquid enough to taint his hands as he tried to make sure his comrade wasn’t dead, observing the surroundings as he searched for a pulse and exhaled a sight of relief when feeling one.

It was a sinister sighting he got forced to face. Sinking in the night’s darkness, barely lit by the emergency alarms, the faraway lights of nearby corridors and the stars and moon by the window, was Ichihoshi, hands covered in his own blood, a stainless exacto knife discarded nearby and a flare of murder to it all. This was gratuitous and needlessly violent, and his eye couldn’t help but spot in the darkness a paper with Cyrillic written on it.

It wasn’t a mere coincidence.

 By a miracle, they didn’t lose Ichihoshi that night, saved in extremis by a blood transfusion and a few stitches. He was clearly not in a playing condition from the incident, yet his recovery was announcing itself to be a quick one: he had actually not lost that much in the corridor. More scare than harm, he supposed.

That was a relief Nosaka didn’t dare make obvious to the outside of his mind.

 It was ashamed and shameful that he presented himself in front of a hospital door on the day after. He insisted on being alone, leaving Nishikage behind (who could wait for him or just do his own thing, he wouldn’t have minded either way), and entering the room with heavy footsteps and even heavier thoughts swirling in his mind. In his pocket, one of the reasons he was there. One of the reasons he was ashamed of being here too.

He had inspected every corner of the hospital corridors he had walked through to get there, just in case. He had also learnt some Cyrillic before coming, but that wasn’t to transcribe anything: it was only so he wouldn’t get a room number wrong. He couldn’t risk asking a receptionist, so better do that by himself and not risk anyone’s life in the process again. One endangered comrade was far than enough for a trickster resorting to cryptic messages. A trickster that made him feel unsafe enough for everyone around him and himself that he couldn’t even ensure himself of anyone’s safety anymore.

 Scheming against someone he knew the face and modus operandi of was easy. It had always been easier to point holes in a known person��s plans and means than some unknown mask smirking upon them with contempt. He couldn’t come up with an actual rebuttal with how little information: even the handwriting wouldn’t get them anywhere. The cleanliness of the knife found at the scene indicated this person had more than likely gotten rid of any DNA possible, hiding their track like a meticulous mind.

For the first time, Nosaka felt unable to do anything real against a situation he should have been able to do something in. It was a wit’s match, after all: there was no reason for him to be this paralyzed by difficulty when he had always been capable of winning his previous chess matches. Suddenly, he tasted powerlessness and it made him go restless. Not even kicking a ball was emptying his mind of the worry.

 When he eventually pushed the handle of the door and entered the room, he was surprisingly greeted by a smiling Ichihoshi, his skin barely paler than usual, waving at him slowly and gently. He didn’t quite know why he couldn’t find any resentment in his teammate’s eyes or demeanour but brushed that side for the moment being: there had to be an explanation and he could just wait for it. Patience was key in a situation where he wasn’t in control. For now, that was: after all, being patient and resisting the assault would provide him with an opportunity eventually, wouldn’t it?

He sat next to Ichihoshi, studying in rapid glances his condition from he could see. An intravenous injection in the left wrist, a bag of blood; another in the forearm, of something else, either painkillers or antibiotics, maybe nutriments. No way to tell for sure, so he skipped to the next element. Bandages on the chest, from what he could see: made sense. He couldn’t see any other limb, but neither arm bore anything that wasn’t clothing, so—

 “Ah,” Ichihoshi suddenly spoke up, “I got told it was just a deep scratch. I wasn’t stabbed or anything.”

Wait, had he just somehow read his thoughts?

“I see. I’m glad it wasn’t as grievous as we thought it was. Speaking of which, how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine! Well, fine enough for someone who got attacked like that, but it’s not entirely unexpected, coming from Orion… Sorry for worrying you all like this. I’ll be fine soon, at least.”

“Will you be back for the next match?”

“I’m afraid not, but I’ll be there for the one against Italy, I promise.”

A smile. Too bad he’d have to crush it.

 “Say, Ichihoshi”, he asked, “I know this is of bad taste and comes with bad timing, but could you translate something for me?”

The smile disappeared as soon as it appeared.

“The word left next to me, right? That’s the last thing I remember before passing out.”

“Exactly.”

 As soon as he put it out of his pocket, left almost intact, Ichihoshi picked the paper in his hands and read through it, expression only slightly more relaxed than the first time around. His hands trembled, almost folding the paper under their press, until they untensed and their discussion resumed.

“This is but the beginning, for I’ll hit two birds with one stone. What’s odd is that it’s written in older Russian…”

“And the first wasn’t?”

“Not as far as I remember, at least… I wonder what they’re trying to mean with this. I don’t think it’s anything positive, though.”

“I doubt their intentions are any better than what’s happened to you anyway. It’s certain that you were the first ‘bird’, but who could be the second?”

“It has to be you, right, Nosaka?”

He paused for a minute to think about it. It only made sense for an Orion agent to get rid of their enemy’s commander, right? He had the flare of the Emperor of Tactics shining all around him in this tournament. He had to be the second target mentioned by the sombre message. There was no other way around, right?

“I suppose you’re right, Ichihoshi. Let’s be careful from then on.”

“Agreed.”

 The day Ichihoshi got discharged from the hospital was, coincidentally, the day Japan went against Brazil in the FFI. As he had expected, there was Orion meddling threaded through the entire faceoff: acupuncture tactics against Mizukamiya choosing to pretend like they’d be doing the same. It all ended with Japan’s victory, a freed Brazilian team, and an injured right hand. Nothing quite out of the ordinary, even if the messages kept popping in his head, and his eye always glanced back at Ichihoshi sitting on the bench, as if it made him feel safer about it all.

Which was a mistake, but on the pitch, he couldn’t have focused on that. There was a match to play and much bigger stakes hanging over the grass, other people to free from the enemy’s clutches, a tactic to pay attention to. At least, he still had his talent for acting to his service, as to seal the deal and sell the lie. The victory absolutely mattered, as it had always done since the beginning of the tournament.

 The blinding optimism of Inazuma Japan’s players almost intoxicated him into sharing their appeased mindset, almost made him forget about the poisonous fangs here to eat him alive in two vicious bites. Two birds, one stone. The vague wording of it still reminded him of nothing precise, but he still told Nishikage about it, brainstorming as they usually did, yet nothing came of it. Talk about running out of inspiration.

Both papers used were nothing but ordinary: white lined paper, standard printing paper that was then cut. Almost a bland modus operandi: it wasn’t original, but it was effective as not to be traced. Contacting the authorities came to his mind, but he quickly realized that’d end up putting all of them in danger in the long run. They never knew how brutal Orion could get on them. Oh, they had never known, in the end.

 The following days untensed his shoulders and brought back some of his sleep. The lack of anything serious happening combined with the training for the match against Italy had taken most of his awake thoughts, trying to piece together a strategy to adopt before it even started, helped by Ichihoshi and his analyses. It was nothing out of the ordinary for them, quite frankly, as this had become their routine, yet something still felt off. The, perhaps baseless, threats still swung over his head like Damocles’ sword.

That was his main mistake there: being unable to tell precisely where the sword was going to fall.

 A mistake he realized far too late, as it only came to his mind when discussing Italy’s team with Nishikage and Ichihoshi before the afternoon training session. It had been a casual conversation until the point where the latter wanted to check the paper again, thinking of something new for the investigation.

“What do you have in mind?” Nosaka asked as he put it out of his pocket and gave it away.

“I’m wondering who the second bird is again… We were sure it’d you, but nothing’s happened yet, and I wonder if it’s not because you’re always with someone else. I got attacked when I was alone.”

“That’s true. I suppose they’re only armed and prepared as to assault people when they can’t be spotted doing so.”

“Considering Orion’s influence and power,” Ichihoshi then pointed out a detail, pensive stance and eyes shining in a new light, “it’d be weird for them to be this careful. They could easily manipulate the situation to their advantage. I also still don’t understand why I wasn’t brought back to Orion either, if their motivation was to neutralize the people going against them. You’d think a traitor would have been a prime target to get rid of, but they left me to bleed out instead…”

“You’re rising a good point. I don’t think our enemy is actually siding with Orion. They seem more like opportunists profiting off from our conflict with the foundation.” He needed a third perspective on this, certain to have finally made a breakthrough in this blind investigation, so he turned to his usual aide. “What do you think of this, Nishi…”

 There was no one to meet his eyes.

“Nishikage was called by Sekiya.” Ichihoshi couldn’t hide the amusement in his reaction. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice him leaving!”

It was weird for him not to notice someone leaving his side, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t planned. He did remember something about a check-up. And it wasn’t like Nishikage couldn’t defend himself, so even if he was alone, he’d be…

“Wait, Ichihoshi.”

Something was wrong.

“You were attacked inside our centre, right?”

“I…” A struggle to remember. “I was. Why?”

Nosaka suddenly rose from his chair, almost punching the table they were sitting around while he was at it.

“His hand! How could have I forgotten about his hand?!”

He left in a hurry, forgetting to drag a half-confused Ichihoshi with him on a chase against time. That was what had sounded so wrong with this entire ordeal…!

 His thoughts were racing inside his head. He was a fool: the second bird had never been him. If they had wanted to get rid of the enemy, they’d have gotten to him first, wouldn’t have bothered leaving their former mole to die, as if giving him a chance to survive the attack. The cryptic Cyrillic had been a lie all along: someone wasn’t out for the team, he was out for him, and he had been a fool to believe otherwise. How in the hell had he taken so long to realize about what Ichihoshi had pointed out?

It was revenge by proxy. Someone was out for him and was using the worst means possible to reach their goals. A cold-blooded revenge whose devilish devise had to have made them be quiet about it, scared of the power of the Orion Foundation when it had never been implicated in the entire thing to begin with. That had been a lie and he had been too focused on something else to notice everything crashing down around him, just because the ceiling hadn’t started sweating dust above his head…!

 Yet, Nosaka’s blood almost ran cold when he saw, in a different corner of their living quarters, his closest ally being put a knifepoint by the person who had most likely already attempted killing Ichihoshi.

The crimson peeking through the bandages on his right hand was all he needed to get furious at the other man and himself alike.

 “No…” A strangled scream, stopped by the slash of a blade.

The unknown man barked some words in a language he didn’t understand, most likely Russian, while putting his available hand on his prey’s mouth. What was going on was absolutely cryptic, undecipherable to him: he lacked the linguistics to understand, he was finding out. Somehow, he had attracted the hatred of a man whom he didn’t even share a language with.

 Obviously, that meant there was no hope with talking with him: his words would never reach him, even on the most literary level of the saying. All there was to it now was trying to act against a situation where he was put at an obvious disadvantage. Not quite an easy feat to accomplish, would he say so himself, especially when trapped in such a catastrophe.

There was no air for a misplay on his part, so he analysed the situation. He was himself unarmed, couldn’t speak Russian, but was the object of the conspiracy. On the other side of a narrow corridor, a corner almost hidden away, Nishikage held at knifepoint and already bleeding and a man who didn’t speak a word of Japanese, armed with just this one knife he was using, face hidden by a mask. Calling for backup or leaving to get some would possibly result in Nishikage dying while he’d be gone or in front of his eyes. Yet, the lack of backup was an issue on both sides, so it was almost equal on that front. He only needed a hostage of his, a human shield to use, he supposed.

 “Nosaka!!”

The echo of Ichihoshi’s voice made him turn around in a bolt, panic settling in for a moment. If the man ever heard someone else coming their way…

“Don’t,” he almost said, before hearing a muffled yelp coming from his side. Turned around, saw his friend bleeding from the chest, and didn’t need anything else.

 Ichihoshi reached him in mere moments, breathless, a ball in his hands. Anxiety could be read all over his face, splattered on his eyes and brows, breath shaking. As soon as he came into the field of vision, the man started barking again, shooting his words like a machine gun, an aura of threat to them.

“A-ah…” Ichihoshi started mumbling, expression worsening.

“You understand what he’s saying, don’t you?” Nosaka asked, still in a hurry, putting all hopes on a comrade’s abilities.

“Y-yeah… It’s kinda hard to translate because he speaks so violently and so quickly, but he’s saying that you’ve ruined his life by interfering with Orion’s plans…” He gulped, hands trembling. “He’s also saying you’re next… We need to stop him as soon as possible!”

“Agreed,” he replied with his head turning back to the lone renegade. “Do you have a plan?”

“I…” Another gulp. “I don’t!”

He was getting impatient with all of this.

“Fine.”

 Noticing a little space between the blade and the throat it threatened to slash, Nosaka picked the ball from Ichihoshi’s arms and calculated an angle as quickly as possible. He had only a couple seconds, if not frames, to have it hit as perfectly as possible, lives being on the line more than previously. Yet, he lacked the time to think about it, so he kicked the ball and hoped for the shoot to do as hoped.

A smirk drew itself on his face when the knife was launched away from the vicious hand, flying in the air, as the hostage freed himself and the blade fell back to the floor, clinking against the tiles. Not leaving the time to the man to react properly, he rushed to the latter, putting his foot as firmly as possible over the guilty wrist. If his intent wasn’t to directly cause pain, there was still a desire in him to do so festering inside his chest.

“Ichihoshi, go get some help, please,” he ordered as calmly as possible, even if the flame was becoming a fire by the moment.

“C-coming!”

 Events after that passed by in a flash. Cries from his teammates, grunts from the assailant, panic, phone calls, sirens. The dopamine rush he had had when tackling the culprit had disappeared as soon as it had come, leaving him to just observe things from a distant point of view, trying to keep himself under control.

He walked mechanically out of the situation, rummaging through a sea of boggled thoughts. Coming after him was one thing: he expected it. Ichihoshi had been tasked with neutralizing him by Orion until fairly recently. However, coming after people close to him to get to him had nothing on that. While one could have argued Ichihoshi had always been a risk for being a former disciple of Orion, it couldn’t justify coming after Nishikage, who had merely been as much of an adversary of Orion as everyone else. Someone made personal what had always been a conflict of collectives and, to that, he may have wanted to punch a wall.

 The door opens right next to him, reminding him to break away from his thoughts. It’s only been a couple hours at most since this entire disaster unfolded, and even then, he’s trying to convince himself it’s been longer than that. Well, even the best of lies won’t work in this situation, so he shakes his head and faces his captain, with whom he’s just had a talk.

Truth be told, Endou had never been the type to hold a grudge against a teammate, even when they had almost committed a crime. It wasn’t that Nosaka had been surprised to be immediately forgiven right after he had finished explaining everything with rage still trembling inside his throat, as it was but the opposite way around: he was more so astonished by Endou not sharing his point of view on the situation. In fact, faced with the anger of a captain whom hadn’t been informed about the message or neither of Ichihoshi or his theories on the matter, he had almost run out of words, yet defended his position anyway.

 Endou’s opinions made sense, he has to admit. The smile and soft tap on his shoulder much less.

“He’s asked for you,” he tells him, a thumb pointing at the door frame. “You should speak to him yourself. See you later!”

On that, Endou takes his leave, leaving his secondary captain alone in the middle of a echoing corridor and a door that just has to have conveyed their conversation on the other side of the room.

 Left with no choice, Nosaka takes a deep breath and enters. There is a galaxy of somewhat similar events where he wasn’t scared by having to confront Nishikage. Not even the tumour intimidated him into being unsure of the outcome of the conversation. However, all previous certitudes are now lying on the floor, because this isn’t the same as before: the situation has changed, his responsibilities too. Mind racing to process through the memories, trying not to succumb to anxiety, he makes his way in.

The discussion about that tumour keeps nagging at him, but he quickly busts out what allows it to do so. Put into perspective, it only affected him: even if he had betrayed Nishikage’s trust by hiding that away from him like he had hid it away from the world until that point, it had never affected Nishikage himself. This, however, is a different situation: should have he guessed not to have been the second bird, this would have never happened. Injustice has always made his blood boil, from the day he was conscious enough to understand the concept, and knowing he’s partially responsible for it this time around makes him want to go back in time and defy the odds to do so.

Instead, he’s just faced with the fatality of facing his own misplays in this messed-up chess game.

 He doesn’t sit on the chair he can guess to still be warm. He only feels like staying up, so he doesn’t have to prevent his eyes from noticing every detail that bothers him. Still, he’s a diplomat of sorts, a representative of Japan to the rest of the world and the captain whenever Endou isn’t on the field. He should be able to talk to a teammate, especially one as close as this one.

“I’ll admit I don’t know what you expect from me,” he starts, unsure himself of what he’s supposed to do right now, scoffing at himself with an excuse for a laugh. “I don’t know what to say, or rather, how to say it.”

Silence on the other side of the line. He doesn’t look up to see what this translates into visually.

“I should have been more careful than that. I blindly assumed I’d be next and forgot they could get to you instead. You were only collateral damage in all this. For that, I’m deeply sorry. It shouldn’t have been this way.”

 He crosses his arms and tries not to sulk. It’d be a dumb thing to do on his part. He’s guilty as charged, doesn’t deserve to be the pitied one. Not that either of them would appreciate pity of all feelings. He believes what he’s feeling is sympathy and not dirty pity, perhaps closer to empathy, but in the end, it’s all words and nuances for nothing. Overthinking what to call something won’t fix the things he’s allowed breaking.

 “Nosaka.”

The calm tone in Nishikage’s voice almost makes him jump, eyes now on his teammate. To his surprise, he gets greeted by what he thinks is a smile.

“What is it?” He gathers himself in time for a reply.

“It’s fine.”

Short and straight to the point. As expected, coming from Nishikage. Still, the sentiment behind it is more perplexing.

“You… do mean it, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

 Nosaka feels a smile coming to his face, inexorable.

“Well then. You don’t mind having been attacked because you were my aide?”

“No.”

There’s just something so much more convincing to a dry, single word, than any long speech he could be given.

“Hearing you say this gives me relief. I’ll be more careful next time so that doesn’t happen again. This was already one time too many.”

“Don’t beat yourself over this, Nosaka. It’s fine. I understand.”

“…Thank you. In fact, thank you for always being there.”

“That’s nothing.”

 Silence rises up again and he goes to finally sit on the chair, whose gone cold. The air isn’t as heavy anymore, yet they don’t exchange words: they’re silent and content in being so, it seems, and he doesn’t have the words to break through it. There is nothing to be added anyway: they’ve made their cases, their points and, in the end, he gets to postpone guilting over all this sometime later, when he’ll have a clearer mind. When the heat of the moment will have passed, when the optimism of the team will intoxicate him again and he’ll have his wounds patched up by the sun.

He likes the calm between two storms much more than as he thought he would until now.

[set-phasers-to-whump]

whumptober day 26

prompt: fist fight (alt prompt #5)

whumpee: neal caffrey

i woke up at 6:30 and wrote this lol sorry for any errors im a lil sleepy still

Most people, if you pickpocketed them right, wouldn’t even know they’d been pickpocketed until they went for their wallet and found it missing. Even then, they might suppose it had simply come out of their pocket, and it might take them quite a while to determine what had really happened. Maybe they’d go back over the events of the day mentally, and remember their brief but unusual encounter with you. But it was unlikely they’d be able to remember you, and you’d have at least half an hour to do some shopping with their credit cards before they called the bank to cancel them, plus you got whatever cash they’d happened to be carrying. Most people were easy to pickpocket.

Neal Caffrey was not most people. He was a conman-he knew all the tricks. So when a nice young man approached him, asking for directions and looking for all the world like another lost tourist, Neal was suspicious. He directed the man to the sandwich shop he’d been looking for, and felt a hand in his pocket that most people wouldn’t have noticed.

He stepped back away from the man and pushed his wallet back into his pocket. “Nice try,” he commented. 

The man looked at him in surprise for a second, and then his fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. Most pickpockets, when discovered, would go for the flight option, as it presented far less of a risk for further discovery then getting into a fight on the street.

But this man knew the risks-it was late evening, getting dark, and there weren’t a whole lot of people around. So he went for the option of fight.

Neal, who had not at all expected this, and who’d been prepared to simply let the man run off, was caught entirely off guard by a punch to the face. He stumbled backwards slightly, then stood back up. “You can run,” he offered. “I won’t tell anyone.”

The man grinned at him. “Just gimme your wallet and I’ll be on my way.”

“I really shouldn’t do that,” Neal replied. He could only imagine that the FBI would be angry at him if he had the audacity to get mugged, considering his background. He’d be a little angry at himself, too. So he also went for the fight option, and kicked at the man’s ankles, which sent him stumbling backwards as well.

The man was quick, though, and Neal found himself pushed into a wall, the bricks digging uncomfortably into his back. A fist connected with his eye and his head was slammed into the wall. He kicked the man again and wriggled away from his grasp, blinking away the stars from his vision. 

He attempted to punch the other man in the face as well, but was stopped by an uppercut to the jaw. He yelped in surprise as his head snapped back, throwing his balance off for a second-which was all his attacker needed. The hand once again snaked into his pocket. 

Neal decided he might as well use his already-aching head. But not in the thinking sense. He headbutted the man just as his wallet came out of his pocket which caused said wallet to clatter to the ground. He quickly scooped it up and was punched in the nose for his efforts. He felt blood begin to drip down his face and ran at his attacker, tackling him to the ground. They grappled for a few seconds, during which both of them sustained quite a few punches, and suddenly Neal’s wallet was ripped from his hands, and before he could do anything, he was alone.

Neal staggered to his feet, wiping the blood away from under his nose, which continued to bleed. His body ached, and his head was pounding, and his wallet was gone. He needed to do something about at least one of those things, he decided. So he went to the Burkes’.

It wasn’t a far walk-he supposed he should be thankful for that. Even a two-mile radius could turn into a lot of walking from one end to the other, but he’d been mugged around halfway between his place and the Burkes’. Lucky him.

It was a little after eight when he arrived at their door. Good, he thought. I won’t be interrupting their dinner or their sleep. He knocked, then leaned against the door to rest and wait for them to answer. 

The door was opened, and he nearly went stumbling into Elizabeth, managing to catch himself on the doorframe at the last second.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said. 

“What happened?” El asked, already pulling him inside. “Lean your head forward and pinch your nose closed, okay? That’ll stop the bleeding. Peter!” she called.

Neal did as he was told, glancing up when Peter came into the room. He asked the same question as his wife.

“Just a fistfight,” Neal replied in a slightly muffled voice, not wanting to tell Peter that his wallet had been stolen. How embarrassing was that, an (alleged) thief being stolen from?

Peter sighed and led him to the bathroom. “Please don’t bleed on my floor,” he said, directing Neal to sit down on the closed lid of the toilet.

“I’m not trying to,” Neal muttered, slightly regretting his decision to come.

“Be nice to him, Peter,” Elizabeth admonished her husband. “I’m sure it wasn’t his fault, was it, Neal?”

Neal shook his head, immediately wishing he hadn’t, as the movement caused his head to hurt even more. 

“See?” El said. 

Peter didn’t look convinced. “What did happen, then?” he asked.

Now it was Neal’s turn to sigh. Was he really going to have to tell them he’d been mugged?

“Fine, I got mugged, okay?” His hand came away from his nose, which had mostly stopped bleeding. “Some guy tried to take my wallet but I noticed him, and then he hit me, and I hit him, but he got away and he has my wallet now.”

“How many times did you hit each other?” Peter asked, as he applied antiseptic to the few scrapes Neal had received during the fight.

“I dunno. A lot,” Neal offered, sitting as still as he could while Peter worked. 

“You’re going to have a hell of a black eye,” Peter informed him as he finished with the antiseptic. “How much does it hurt?”

“It’s not that bad. Mostly it’s my head that hurts,” Neal confessed.

At this, El promptly stood up from her seat on the edge of the bathtub and hurried to the kitchen to grab some ibuprofen. 

While his wife was up, Peter carefully wiped the blood away from under Neal’s nose, and from the rest of his face below that, down to his neck. “How long was this bleeding?” he asked.

“Fifteen minutes?” Neal guessed. “I dunno.”

“Next time, try to stop the bleeding when it happens,” Peter advised.

“I was a little busy trying not to get beat up,” Neal retorted. 

Elizabeth returned with a glass of water and two ibuprofen. “For your headache,” she told him, pressing the items into his hands. He took them gratefully, then stood up slowly. 

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll get out of your hair now.”

“Oh no, you won’t,” El said. “Peter and I were just about to watch a movie. I’ll make some popcorn, and you two call the bank and cancel your cards.”

Neal looked to Peter uncertainly. 

“Of course you can stay,” Peter said finally. “Come sit on the couch and we’ll take care of your cards.”

“The FBI’s not gonna be mad at me?” Neal asked.

“They might be a little upset, but they’ll get over it,” Peter said reassuringly. 

A few minutes later, the three of them were settled on the couch, watching Return of the Jedi. Neal was sitting between the two Burkes, Elizabeth’s arm draped over his shoulders, her hand resting atop Peter’s shoulder. His head was aching less, and the bruises which he was sure he had were also managing to not hurt very much, thanks to the drugs. 

The Burkes still enjoyed their movie night, and if Neal happened to fall asleep halfway through with his head on Peter’s shoulder, who would ever know?

thanks for reading!!!

[orokinarchives]

Operation: Ambulas Reborn

(Operation: Ambulas Reborn splash)

Operation

On Thursday (04 May 2017), the event began with the release of Update 20.4 and was set to run for a week. Upon logging in, the Tenno would receive an inbox message from Ergo Glast containing a marketing video by Frohd Bek.

Inbox message: OPERATION: AMBULAS REBORN

Tenno,

I have intercepted this disturbing communication from Corpus Board Chairman Frohd Bek. Watch carefully. We cannot allow his project to reach fruition.

—Ergo Glast

Frohd Bek (video): "Actualise… synergy… SYNERGISE. Growth… profit… GROFIT?! Fellow profiteers, this is a once-in-a-lifetime strategic investment opportunity. A game-changer in robotic combat solutions. We're taking big data from our Animo Project and doing a full-stack integration into our most lethal combat proxies. This is: AMBULAS, REBORN! But we need you. Your investment will push us past the pre-revenue stage and move Ambulas into full production. We are so close to our goal! Thought leaders, are you ready to pivot downturns into rising Grofit?! Act quickly before— [bell sounds] wait… I'm being told— Yes, this is it! The Ambulas Reborn project has reached its funding goal!"

Ergo Glast: "The Sequence has raised funds necessary to back this project. Of course, we do not seek to complete it, but to destroy it. Because of our small backing, we're entitled to information regarding the Ambulas production details. Will you help us stop Frohd's project, Tenno?"

The news post for the event had additional information:

Frohd Bek is back and he's brought a powerful new threat!

Perrin Sequence leader Ergo Glast has intercepted disturbing communication. The profit-hungry Corpus are attempting to grow their military to dangerous and uncontrollable levels. Corpus Board Chairman Frohd Bek is inviting investors to witness the newest and deadliest Ambulas prototype live on the battlefield. The Ambulas is equipped with a state-of-the-art processor called Animo that learns and grows from every encounter.

Work with Ergo Glast and fellow Tenno to halt Frohd's project and disrupt Ambulas deployment before they see widespread use. New dropships containing the Ambulas prototype have been sighted on Corpus planets. Take them down and make the investors think twice!

Phase One: Animo Beacons

On all Corpus-controlled planets, new Condor dropships would appear on open-air tiles. These dropships were indestructible and equipped with turrets (which were themselves destructible), and would deliver several Corpus units to the area, along with a new Ambulas proxy.

(when a dropship warps in, variant) Frohd Bek: "Here comes the dropship with a special delivery! Ah, I haven't felt this good since they rebuilt my larynx."

(when a dropship warps in, variant) Frohd Bek: "Our dropship response times are second to none, ensuring prompt delivery in mission-critical roles."

(when a dropship deploys an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Crewmen, today my reborn Ambulas takes her first steps in the field. You must be thinking, 'If I work hard and sacrifice as much as Frohd Bek has done, may I someday share in this inestimable profit?' The answer is yes."

(when a dropship deploys an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Corpus investors, ready for a surprise demonstration? I give you my reborn Ambulas. Allow me to show you what she can do to these Tenno, uh, 'volunteers'."

(when a dropship deploys an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Men like Frohd Bek are the reason the Perrin Sequence exists. Show him you won't allow suffering to be profitable."

(when a dropship deploys an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Ambulas is only the beginning. If Animo reaches a critical mass of understanding… well, this was the mistake the Orokin made. Things did not turn out so well for them."

(when a dropship deploys an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Animo learns from every Ambulas encounter. Under its command, no two proxies will repeat the same mistake. We can't allow this machine mind to mature."

(when a dropship deploys an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "The wealth generated by this new Ambulas will flow entirely to the Corpus Board. Meanwhile, the rest of the System is going to pay for it, some with their lives. Tenno, shut this program down now."

The Tenno had to destroy the Ambulas proxy.

(when Ambulas uses its Fusion Thrower, variant) Frohd Bek: "Powerful. Precise. Pitiless. There has never been a fusion thrower like this."

(when Ambulas uses its Fusion Thrower, variant) Frohd Bek: "One of our engineers commented that Ambulas' fusion thrower is precise enough to shave the back hairs off a Phobian desert flea. Delightful."

(when Ambulas uses its ground slams, variant) Frohd Bek: "Ground-burst technology ensures effortless target suppression."

(when Ambulas uses its ground slams, variant) Frohd Bek: "X-axis gravity-driven assaults yield a 200% improvement in kinetic force."

(when Ambulas uses its ground slams, variant) Frohd Bek: "Ground bursts register 0.3% survivability for unarmoured personnel."

(when Ambulas uses its Electro-Mortars, variant) Frohd Bek: "Wonderful."

(when Ambulas uses its Electro-Mortars, variant) Frohd Bek: "That never gets boring."

(when Ambulas uses its Electro-Mortars, variant) Frohd Bek: "It's a thing of beauty, isn't it?"

(when an Ambulas kills a Tenno, variant) Frohd Bek: "Is there anything this proxy can't do?"

(when an Ambulas kills a Tenno, variant) Frohd Bek: "This is the future: Power. Precision. Prestige. The pinnacle of the war-smith's art."

(when an Ambulas kills a Tenno, variant) Frohd Bek: "Beautiful, is she not? And available. Merely open your accounts, dear investors, and introduce yourselves."

After the Ambulas' health had been depleted, it would be rendered disabled instead of totally destroyed. The Tenno had to hack a panel on the back of the disabled unit, similar to a Bursa, whereupon it would reactivate and fight for the Tenno for a short time.

(upon disabling an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Don't just stand there; fix my Ambulas!"

(upon disabling an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "My Ambulas! What have they done to her? Fix this!"

(upon disabling an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "The Ambulas is down. Hack into its systems."

(upon disabling an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "This is your chance; hack into that disabled Ambulas."

(upon hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "That's all for today. (whispers) Cut the feed."

(upon hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Oh! Uh… have I mentioned our round-the-clock support program?"

(upon hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Wait… wait, what are they doing? [pause] And— and that concludes our demonstration."

(upon hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Obviously, new technology always has its kinks. Wise investors, you understand this!"

Eventually, the Ambulas proxy would die, dropping a number of a new currency called Animo beacons. The number of beacons from a single Ambulas could be from 2 to 6, depending on its level.

(upon collecting Animo nav beacons, variant) Ergo Glast: "An Animo nav beacon! With enough of those, we'll be able to find where Bek is hiding Animo."

(upon collecting Animo nav beacons, variant) Ergo Glast: "That hack blocked the upload of critical tactical data to Animo, while simultaneously giving us a clue to its location. Well done."

In the Relays, Ergo Glast could be found in the Perrin Sequence Boardroom. Upon interacting with him, the Tenno could select the prompt, "I have Animo nav beacons", which would open up a store interface where Animo nav beacons could be exchanged for items. The wares Ergo Glast offered included Operation badges and sigils, an Ambulas noggle, and a variety of mods that were either new or not available by other means.

(upon displaying wares) Ergo Glast: "Taken down a few Ambulas in the wild, I see? Very impressive. Those beacons have much value for us. They hold clues to some of Bek's most secretive intellectual property. Information too valuable to be hoarded by one man. Allow me to copy them, and I will reward your generosity with a selection of fine items."

(exiting wares after purchase, variant) Ergo Glast: "The information you have given me today will help the whole System tomorrow."

(exiting wares after purchase, variant) Ergo Glast: "A mutually beneficial exchange – how all business should be done."

(exiting wares without purchase) Ergo Glast: "Good fortune, Tenno."

Phase Two: Showdown

The final fight of the operation was hidden until the Tenno's clan collected enough Animo beacons, with the number scaling based on the size of the clan, from 200 (no clan) to 31.800 (Moon clan). This number was the total amount of Animo beacons acquired, regardless of whether they had been spent or not. Once the clan had acquired the requisite number, all clan members received an inbox message from Ergo Glast.

Inbox message: Time to Take Our Fight to Bek

Tenno,

We have located Bek's Animo processor. Now we attack.

Ergo Glast (video message): "It seems my faith in you was well founded. You've reached the critical mass of Animo nav beacons needed to reveal the processor's location. Analysing… hmm, I should've known. He's not hiding it at all. It's in his capital ship. The ship is stationed directly over the Ambulas factory. Unbelievable. The most advanced super-weapon of our time, and he couldn't resist showing it off like a new toy. When you're ready, we attack."

—Ergo Glast

The mission was revealed to be on Hades, Pluto, and cost the Tenno 40 Animo nav beacons to enter. It took place on the Corpus Outpost tileset, with normal Corpus enemies.

Ergo Glast: "Frohd Bek, you're nothing if not predictable. I bet your advisors begged you to hide Animo somewhere defensible and undetectable? But you had to show it off, didn't you. As an investor, I must say, I don't approve."

Frohd Bek: "Glast? You're the shadow investor? You ingrate! You could have had everything. And now you seek to ruin your mentor's hard work?"

Ergo Glast: "Your hard work? I didn't design Animo to be a weapon. And I would have never disabled its governor."

Frohd Bek: "You always were clever, but you never did have vision."

Ergo Glast: "On the contrary, I envision this whole venture will come crashing down around you."

Frohd Bek: "Each Tenno attack on my Ambulas has been logged, analysed and refactored from our Animo Project. You've brought these Tenno to their deaths. A terrible miscalculation. You've learned nothing from me."

Ergo Glast: "Oh, I learned one thing, Bek: never underestimate the competition."

The Ambulas location is a large open space ringed by rocky mountains, with a cliff overlooking a lake. Corpus structures are built into the terrain around the arena, and Corpus units will emerge from them regularly to engage the Tenno. The central space features a series of metal platforms built into the ground. A massive Obelisk capital ship looms in the sky. As the Tenno enter the area, an Ambulas proxy will emerge from an underground compartment on one of the platforms, and a 2-minute timer will start counting down. The Tenno must disable the Ambulas, as before, and hack it.

(upon disabling an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Quick, hack that disabled Ambulas and upload this protocol."

(upon disabling an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Opportunity! Hack into that Ambulas and deploy this protocol."

(after hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Get a team down there to pick that Ambulas up. Don't let her go to waste."

(after hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Someone retrieve that Ambulas model before autodestruction kicks in. She can be refurbished."

(after hacking an Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Thanks to your investment, I can keep throwing Ambulas at the Tenno all day."

(after hacking an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "They're going to try and fix the hacked Ambulas. Don't let them. It's crucial that Bek takes it back onto his ship as-is."

(after hacking an Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Whatever you do, don't let them fix that Ambulas."

After the Ambulas has been hacked, it will not turn friendly, but remain inoperative. The Tenno must defend it, as Corpus units will attack, including special Remech Ospreys. If the Remech Ospreys get too close to the hacked Ambulas proxy, they will begin repairing it (visible as a cyan beam of energy). If they sufficiently repair the Ambulas, it will reactivate and begin fighting the Tenno again. The Tenno must destroy the Remech Ospreys to keep the Ambulas disabled. After the countdown finishes, a Condor Storm dropship will arrive from the Obelisk ship and retrieve the Ambulas by tractor beam, whether it was successfully hacked and inactivated or not.

(after the dropship retrieves a hacked Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "You fools should have finished the job while you had the chance. That Ambulas will live to fight another day."

(after the dropship retrieves a hacked Ambulas, variant) Frohd Bek: "Glast, how are these Tenno going to finish me when they can't even end what they have begun?"

(if the dropship retrieves an untampered Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "No, no! You need to hack the Ambulas before Bek recovers them. This is crucial to my plan's success."

(if the dropship retrieves an untampered Ambulas, variant) Ergo Glast: "Don't let Bek recover un-hacked Ambulas. This is the only way we can defeat him."

After the Condor Storm dropship delivers the Ambulas to Frohd's ship, another Ambulas proxy will spawn, and the 2-minute countdown to another Condor dropship will begin. The Tenno must overcome and hack this Ambulas unit as well. In all, the Tenno had to deliver four hacked Ambulas units to Frohd's ship, while ensuring that fewer than three untampered Ambulas units were recovered. Periodically, the Obelisk would deliver devastating artillery blasts and laser beams to the area.

(when firing artillery, variant) Frohd Bek: "Fire the artillery!"

(when firing artillery, variant) Frohd Bek: "Fire artillery. Scatter those stainless-steel rats!"

(after retrieving the second wave of Ambulas proxies) Frohd Bek: "Everything I own I built. Worked my way to the top of the Board from nothing. You? You create nothing! You earned nothing! You deserve nothing!"

(after retrieving the third wave of Ambulas proxies) Ergo Glast: "You made your fortune on the backs of others, Frohd. Your hard work is their hard work. You let the burdens rain down, while the credits trickle up."

(after retrieving the fourth wave of Ambulas proxies) Ergo Glast: "You could have rebuilt the system, Frohd; instead you've made death machines. What have they done for you?"

(if the dropship retrieves a third untampered Ambulas) Frohd Bek: "We could do this dance all day long, Tenno, but you'll never defeat my Ambulas army. Now you're just wasting my time. Give my regards to Glast." [mission fails]

(upon delivering the fifth hacked Ambulas) Ergo Glast: "All we need is one more Ambulas to be returned to the dropship."

(upon delivering the sixth hacked Ambulas) Ergo Glast: "You're done, Frohd. This ends now."

Frohd Bek: "Throw everything at them. They will not take this away from me. They will not win. They've not earned it."

The Obelisk capital ship in the sky will fire its engines and begin turning away from the battlefield, heading away.

Ergo Glast: "I know this for certain, Frohd: you've earned this. I'm sorry, Animo. Execute the protocol!"

Explosions will break out all across the Obelisk and the hull will begin to glow red.

Frohd Bek: "What was that? My ship? Ahh… eject the bridge module. Eject it now!!!"

The capital ship will explode and disintegrate, leaving Frohd's fate ambiguous.

Ergo Glast: "Animo… once my pride and joy, has been destroyed. I abandoned the project when I fled the Corpus. I should have known it was too powerful to leave in their hands. The Ambulas proxies still exist, and they are no doubt formidable, but the threat of their super-intelligence is now gone. Thank you, Tenno."

After returning to their ship, the Tenno received another inbox message from Ergo Glast, containing a Supra Vandal.

Inbox message: Animo Has Been Destroyed

Tenno,

Frohd Bek bastardised my work. The Animo system was explicitly designed to resolve conflict, not initiate it. In weaponising the system, he forced my hand. The Animo processor had to be destroyed.

You put yourself at great risk to stop that threat. The Perrin Sequence thanks you and hopes you find this weapon to be just compensation.

Until our next venture, Ergo Glast

Rewards

Apart from the Supra Vandal, all rewards from the event were purchased from Ergo Glast using Animo nav beacons, including the Operation badge and sigil. These rewards could be purchased as many times as the Tenno could afford. The more Ambulas proxies were defeated in the field, the more rewards a Tenno could purchase.

The warlord of a participating clan received an inbox message from Ergo Glast containing a trophy to place in the dojo, with the quality of the trophy dependant on the clanmembers' achievements in the operation.

Inbox message: Recognition for [clan]

[clan],

Owing to your overwhelming effort in taking down Frohd Bek's Ambulas and its Animo processor, the Perrin Sequence and I would like to present [clan] with this trophy.

We could not have won without your tireless fight.

Thank you, Ergo Glast

Aftermath

After the event, Condor dropships would still appear on open-air Corpus zones, but would not drop Ambulas proxies except on Pluto. The boss fight against Frohd Bek's capital ship still remained at Hades, Pluto, although the cost was later lowered to 20 Animo beacons, 10 of which are refunded on successful completion. Variants of Condor dropships would later appear on the Orb Vallis and Gas City.

[Navigation: Hub → Events → Operation: Ambulas Reborn]

[tiefling-queer]

★★★★★★ *whispers* tell me about all your ocsssssssss :D

:D

Allen Krueger - he’s the Chosen One and he’s just trying his best. Allen would rather be spending his time playing Overwatch with his discord pals or longboarding around listening to music than taking on these dangerous missions where people die or trying to figure out this weird axe that makes his head overload or some destiny and Choice-with-a-capital-c that he has to make. This was cool for about a day before it got incredibly overwhelming. Allen’s mixed race - his father is middle eastern, his mother is white. He’s 16 at the start of all this (which begins in 2016) and a sophomore in high school and he doesn’t deserve what we put him through lol. Allen’s big into emo, pop punk, punk, and basically anything you can find on a warped tour comp cd (since his mom was big into the offspring and green day back in the day, and his uncle is big into alt rock, so as a kid he latched onto fob and mcr and was just like ‘these. these are good’). Allen loves animals, especially marine mammals (ESPECIALLY WHALES), and was defo one of those kids who just kinda sits around and if prompted gives you their entire encyclopedic knowledge of wildlife. Allen often has difficulty putting his thoughts to words, and so he’ll trail off, try to use hand gestures to symbolize the word he’s looking for, use vague language like ‘the thing’ or ‘stuff’. That said, Allen also has problems filtering his words, and often says things as they come to mind. A double-edged sword because Talking is Hard. This boy is also just a terrible, terrible liar. He doesn’t like lying, he’s not good at it, Allen’s quick to draw conclusions about situations, things, and people, but also open-minded and quick to reconsider. He thrives on praise and a well-defined set of instructions or plan - he likes to know that he’s doing the right thing and on the right track.Allen was originally a Monster of the Week character, but is currently one of the characters in a webcomic i’m cowriting with @i-want-it-on-fire​. his personality is based on a combination of some of my brother’s personality with some of my own (so instead of a sarcastic wallflower stoner or an edgy emo theater kid, Allen is a sarcastic edgy emo wallflower)

Tam es Eleutherios - he’s a minotaur. he’s a sailor. he’s a scottish highland cow who talks like barbosa. he’s a little over a century old. he’s deadly with a long sword or a trident. he’s the last of his name and told his fiance he was getting some wine and purposefully got himself shanghaied to a pirate ship. Tam’s the equivalent of about 60 in human years, has a long, long list of vessels he’s sailed on over the past century (about half of those are pirate vessels) and he took the mission sailing on this expedition past the Ghostly Isles in the Undersea to die.For Tam, the idea of dying on an uncharted and untamed ocean is, well, exactly what he’s always dreamed of (frankly he’s surprised he lived this long). While he went through a minor crisis at first with how dauntingly still and unmoving and dead the Undersea appears to be, he’s back to his original goal after they’ve slowly discovered currents and life in the black waters. Tam’s afraid of commitment, and doesn’t like facing consequences of his actions or mistakes. He really just kind of goes with the flow, and does what needs to get done, and doesn’t put a lot of thought into what he’s doing.

Baylock Craft stole his name, coat, and boots off a dead man. He’s been in prison for 5 years, since he was left behind by his thieves’ guild to take the fall for a job that went bad. He’s lied about his identity to get a group of rebels breaking out prisoners to believe he’s also a rebel fighter. Baylock’s a bit in over his head now, and has only recently had a couple close-enough calls to realize just how fucked he is, and how dangerous the missions the rebel fighters go on are. His goal is to get back to his home town and get revenge on his former friends.Baylock is, despite his raspberry pink skin and lavender hair, more suited to life in the shadows. His strange arcane powers come from being born during a solar eclipse, and his personality is that of someone who’s reserved and a bit shy - content to observe. He errs to the side of caution, but is kind of a bad judge of character. The betrayal and years in prison kind of twisted that original nature - he’s now mistrusting, abrasive, and guarded.

Sydel Anastol - As a younger man, Sydel had… noble intentions. Lofty goals. A sense of duty and a desire to right wrongs and protect innocents. These were the parts of him that contributed to his becoming a blood hunter as a teenager. But over the years of self-mutilating and watching the people around him lose themselves to their obsessive quests, he began to become unhinged. Hunting wasn’t about killing monsters and protecting innocents anymore - it was about the hunt. It was about the rush. It was about any distraction he could get from the pain of the hunter’s bane, even if that was more immediate pain. Those lofty ideals, they don’t make you a better fighter, a better hunter. They don’t make you heal faster or hit harder. He drifted from the order, turned to bounty hunting.Sydel hasn’t felt a human emotion in years. He spends most of his time drunk, partly to distract from the chronic pain caused by the hunter’s bane, and partly to keep from thinking about his time with the order. Sydel is eccentric, a little unhinged, will lick anything he doesn’t recognize, and is seeking the rush of a hunt or battle in order to feel something and keep himself distracted. If he can keep himself in a constant state of intoxication and adrenaline high, he can feel good. Sydel is impulsive, reckless, callous, and doesn’t think ahead or care who gets hurt as a result of his actions (though it’s usually just him so it’s fine). He’s also a masochist. All in all he’s just a garbage bastard man, trying to keep the part of himself that was trained to be an obsessive monster hunter from taking over again - ‘because that’s how you go crazy.’

Tsuruchi Natsumi just wants peace in her life, but she hasn’t had any since some asshole Matsu dropped out of the sky and demons destroyed her village. As the eldest child of the current Wasp clan leader, she’s technically pretty damn important. Too bad she wants nothing to do with it. She planned to run away at a young age, citing being ‘fed up with clan politics’ and not enjoying her training with anything other than a bow - she didn’t want to learn court niceties, she didn’t want to learn bushido, she just wanted to shoot her bow and wear comfortable clothes. However, being a child, and with things at work in the world she was unaware of, she found herself literally spirited away, dropped in the spirit world and left there, a world apart from her family. She was taken in by a seaside village she was drawn to because of her sea-spirit folk heritage on her mother’s side (originally of the Mantis Clan), where she continued to do what she does best - shoot a bow and mind her own business. As she grew older, she eventually became the village’s protector and primary watch, and things were pretty good - just her, her village, her bow, and the red panda she took in as a pet - for a little over a decade. Until the Matsu and that Phoenix clan idiot dropped from the sky and upset the balance of the worlds, leading to a disastrous string of events that landed her back in the mortal world, having her ancestral bow thrust upon her, getting sucked back into clan politics, and dealing with a brother she barely remembers telling her that she’s got, like, some kind of duty to protect the city her family founded, or some kind of destiny as the person currently wielding Tsuruchi’s Yumi.Natsumi, while she claims to not want to be involved in clan politics, still follows Wasp Code, and still holds clan grudges and prejudices. While she is compassionate and (with some exceptions) quick to make friends and form bonds with the people around her, she’s ultimately a self-oriented person - Natsumi is very in tune with herself, what she wants, and her own beliefs, but isn’t likely to pick up on the wants and beliefs of those around her. She doesn’t even attempt to anticipate the desires and goals of other people, unless she suspects they’re up to no good, and as such comes off as a self-absorbed. Her pride is easily wounded (but don’t tell her that), she’s no-nonsense in the field, and she’ll shoot her way out of any problem she can’t talk her way out of. Her experiences in the last 5 years have left her paranoid and slow to trust her surroundings once weird spirit shit starts happening.

Ainsley grew up in Mesnia, a country where magic is a capital offense, on the streets of the central trade city of Kerrys, following their older brother and cousins in attempts to become a thief. They weren’t very good at it. One day, while their brother was giving them the slip, they were enthralled by a street musician and jumped on the offer this man gave them for apprenticeship. Growing up, they split their time between shenanigans and schemes with their cousin Brynn and learning this instrument, as well as, unbeknownst to them, bardic magic. After their mentor was tried, found guilty of, and hanged for illegal use of magic, they put their time into simple cons with Brynn - or rather, Brynn would get them into trouble, Ainsley would talk them out of it, and the ferret would manage to steal some coin.Ainsley is curious, naive, quick to make friends, compassionate towards strangers, genuinely wants to do good and right the things that are wrong, and primarily trusts their eyes. They spent most of their life not believing in gods, and only decided to do so after they saw one. They’re also mostly illiterate, stubborn, and they don’t think things through very well. They drank a potion that they were warned caused ‘random mutations and death through madness’ in desperation after an enemy killed one of their party members, hoping to gain some kind of power that could destroy him (now they can breathe fire). While eventually on their travels they found out and accepted that what their bardic abilities did was magic, they were in denial about it for quite a while.

Kip - Joffric ‘Kip’ Ravenhall was born to the head priest at a temple to the Raven Queen, with a proud lineage of Ghostwise Halfling Raven Queen worshipers - funeral preparers and Grave Clerics. As a child, he and his older sister Hattie were well on their training for priesthood themselves (though Hattie would eventually leave to find her own way to follow their goddess). However, when Kip’s father fell ill while he was still young (about 18 - Halflings reach maturity around 20), Kip began desperately searching for ways to cure his disease, or at least extend his father’s life until they could get him to a priest who could help. His father, being at peace with death and believing that the dying aren’t to be pitied, disapproved of Kip’s studies and attempts to heal him, and Kip, becoming more and more desperate to save his father, eventually sought the aid of a necromancer he and his father had dealt with several years before, agreeing to bail him out of jail in exchange for training in the necromantic arts - particularly those involved with extending life. His father found out, there was a big fight and falling out, Kip abandoned his priesthood training and tensions were high when his father died. But Kip was already too curious and too far gone, and so he continued studying, occasionally seeking help from the necromancer he bailed out. Kip’s primary area of study was reviving the dead, and extending the life of the living. His belief was that if it were possible to choose when one dies, or ensure everyone died only after living a full and fruitful life, after they’ve accomplished whatever they set out to do, society could flourish. He didn’t think it was fair that study of resurrection apparently stopped once people found out that diamonds could serve as a conduit for the spells - it limited resurrection to only the rich, the powerful, and the truly desperate. If only he could, say, find a cheaper solution? A more plentiful component?His family found out about his studies. He was disgraced, accused of necromancy, and has been on the run under the alias of ‘Geoffric Greenbough’ ever since.Kip is deeply conflicted about his studies, as he believes that undead - creatures brought back without agency or souls - are affronts to nature, and those creating and using them are particularly morally bankrupt for desecrating and enslaving the dead. While he’s abandoned his religion, he still finds himself following his old ways, and often feels directionless without the peace that worship once gave him. That said, Kip is truly driven by a morbid curiosity, a desire to see and feel and know - that’s what keeps him going through failed experiments and terrible mistakes and feeling sick to his stomach. Although Kip tries to hide his true colors to keep people from getting close enough to find him out, those who travel with him will find that his humorless and cold personality is a facade, and that under that he’s a pretty playful and friendly person. The exception to this is when he’s in a situation that requires spell casting, which is a personality quirk that even predates his necromantic studies - he’s always been taught that magic is a serious thing that requires full attention and focus, and he doesn’t have time for nonsense then. Kip is incredibly loyal and very quick to become ride-or-die for those around him. Above all, he wants to help people, and he wants to make people happy. (Ironically, while his sister was more devoted to the Raven Queen than he was, Kip was always more suited to being a cleric, and if Hattie had been around to keep him level during their father’s sickness, he probably would have finished his training and become a cleric.)

These are just a few, and mostly rp characters since it’s been 3 billion years since I’ve thought about my other ocs.

As characters, they’ve all got really fun aspects to them. Allen is probably the most ‘real’ character to me, and honestly probably has the most of me in him. Sydel is my first attempt to play someone who’s just, objectively, not a good person, and it is challenging (he’s officially done damage to every member of the party except the kobold and the rogue). Ainsley is a very simple character who I honestly slip into like a glove. Kip has the most fleshed out backstory of any RP character I’ve ever had I think, and I love the internal conflict between his need to sate his curiosity and help people and his questioning about whether what he’s doing will do more harm than good.