#I just slowed down the footage and put it on a loop

[smokiedokie]

I know there’s lots of exciting stuff, but HOW IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Is this Louis we think? Do we think he’ll start the TDV fire by his igniting his fire powers for the first time?? That would be such a good way to show him becoming more of the monster that his vampiric nature makes him despite his wish to maintain his humanity. Yet again, his rage and torment defines him and brings about great change in his inner and outwardly world

[cy-cyborg-draws]

It's been a very long time since I gave Kiesse some proper love!

I've been hyperfixating on the setting she's from and her story lately, so I wanted to redo her design since I'd been unhappy with for a while.

One of the biggest issues I had with it, was the prosthetics she used. I think I actually had an anonymous ask on my main account about how to make wing prosthetics work, so consider this an answer to that, if you're still out there anon lol.

In the past, I had hand-waved how her prosthetics worked because there are no functional wing prosthetics irl to reference. The previous solution was basically "magic robot wings" - which folks from my main page might recognise, is an example of the "perfect magic prosthetic" trope, a trope that I, as an amputee myself, absolutely hate lol, but I just couldn't think of another way to do it without giving her wing-elbows back. It didn't really fit the technology level of the setting either, so I got to work trying to think of something better.

I ended up digging up my old animation stuff from university, modelling a very basic dragon and spent a few days animating a flight cycle (and watching a bunch of slow-mo footage of birds and bats) to see what would be needed for the full range of motion in a wing-flap, and what could feasibly be altered, as a mechanical wing prosthetic will require some alteration to the way the whole wing moves, especially since the only natural joint Kiesse has on her wings is the shoulder.

The system I came up is a wing using a pretty simple pulley system anchored to her sides. There is a wire (which is mostly hidden) pulling the wing's elbow closed by default when the wing is back, but when the shoulder is rotated forward (which it would need to be during the majority of the wing-beat) a different set of wires an pulleys pull the elbow and hand/finger open again. This allows a pretty decent (if a bit awkward) range of motion for a wing-beat, and allows the wings to fold when she's not actively flying (though the tension line attached to her side can be unhooked to prevent accidental wings-to-the-face if she was to move around a lot on the ground).

I also wanted to make the prosthetics so that Kiesse could put them on herself. With this design, the harness would be placed on her back first and done up around her stomach using her front claws or tail with some kind of reinforced zipper. Next would be the sockets, which could be slid on with the assistance of some kind of frame to hold the wing when she's not wearing it (these are not common but do already exist for prosthetic legs to help elderly people/people with other mobility problems get them on). The membane can then be pulled into a track with a locking mechanism on the harness using her tail with the loops, and finally the tension wire can be pulled down and hooked onto the harness, most likely using her tail (the hook is, admittedly, not a great design since it wouldn't be very secure, but Kiesse would lack the dexterity for much else, so I'm still figuring that part out as of right now).

As much as Kiesse herself would hate it, I also had to dim the colours of the prosthetic, since the materials they have access to wouldn't allow for the bright colours I was using before. I feel like Kiesse will probably end up painting something on it instead during her story though lol.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my little nerd-out lol. This took me a lot of attempts to get something that could *potentially* work without a heavy reliance on magic/tech, and I feel like a lot of the issues I couldn't solve are pretty reflective of actual mechanical prosthetics, which I have used in the past (being convoluted to get on, requiring weird alterations to how the limb naturally works to get a functional result, being a bit finicky to actually use) so I'm pretty content with it for now!

[shiisiln]

The Outwaters

Watched a scary movie last night, liked it, had thoughts.

Spoilies below!

So people have already talked about the eco-horror/lovecraft elements, so I'm gonna talk about the themes of Time

In the beginning, Michelle talks about the body storing chemicals from LSD in spinal fluid, giving people acid flashbacks later in their lives.

I was like "That there is a theme statement" and i was RIGHT

A big part of the horror for me was how everything kept looping over and over again.

Sounds doubling until they're distorted. Robbie meeting his doppleganger. Robbie meeting the original four of them as they walk through the desert and screaming for them to notice him. Robbie repeating the same prayer over and over while a warped nightmare version of his meeting with his mom plays out in front of him.

They keep going to the dry lakebed. When they film there, you hear the sounds of water bubbling, SONAR pinging. This was a lake once; further back, the whole mountain range was an ocean.

It's like they've slipped into a spot where time is compressed and events that should be linear keep running into each other.

The Beast that Robbie encounters in the dark, we never see it in it's entirety but the sound design and the textures we see evoke dinosaurs. The weird flesh snake things evoke the arms of a squid.

The impetus for me giving up weed was a very bad trip I had that fucked up my perception of time. It is INTENSELY disturbing to feel unstuck in time.

That's what disturbed me so much about this movie. The idea of falling out of the linear flow of time and being lost in the couch cushions of the universe.

The lake is dry, and Robbie chases Michelle over and over across it with a camera. At the same time, it's a lake, and he's drowning. At the same time it is the primordial ocean and he's drowning. At the same time, the four of them are walking to their camping site. At the same time, Robbie is killing his friends with an axe. At the same time, Robbie is attacking Robbie with an axe. At the same time, Robbie encounters a herd of donkeys. At the same time, Robbie encounters a herd of . At the same time. At the same time. At the same time.

Sidenote, I loved the animal encounters in this. It's so clearly just that they happened to find some donkeys, a rattlesnake, an ant's nest, while they were shooting and were like "oh shit we gotta use this," it's delightful.

It has two turns that were DELICIOUSLY stomache-turning.

The first was just after the campsite massacre, when I thought I had a handle on what was happening; okay, there's some kind of interdimensional spookiness happening, and a man with an axe, I see what you're putting down.

And then the subtitles said "Creature hissing" and I out-loud said "What! There are creatures now?!" and there were indeed creatures!! What a delight.

The second was at the very end when you see the severed heads on pikes. Everything up until that point has such a cosmic horror vibe, where the threat is this overwhelming Outside force, but the heads on pikes is so human and so PERSONAL. Like, someone had to deliberately do that. And it was probably Robbie, which is definitely news to poor Robbie.

(In logical afterthought, Man With Axe is also very personal and deliberate, but we don't SEE much of that happen so it didn't have the same effect.)

I think my only big critique is the length. I booted this up and again, out loud said "Oof, almost two hours?!"

I love- i LOVE- a slow buildup, especially in a mood piece like this. But I'm also a big proponent for short movies.

It's not like making this shorter would make it appeal to a broader audience, but I still think they could have lost a lot of the first-half footage without killing the vibe.

Overall, great movie. Three severed heads and a discarded penis out of ???

[fmpsteelmarrow]

Setting Up Menu screens in Unreal

This morning I did some research on YouTube to find a tutorial series for Unreal 5 on setting up a basic menu screen system with customisability options etc. Below are the 3 Parts to the tutorial series I found and followed:

After following along with these videos I felt like I knew what I could and needed to do next when it came to making these menus. I firstly started by adding more buttons to the options menu as I wanted a few extra different types of graphics settings that could be adjusted.

Here I have added things I felt were missing from the videos which are a necessity to an options menu:

Framerate Locks

Screen Modes

An Epic Graphics setting option

A back button (returns to menu screen)

And a Save settings button

I firstly started with the framerate options and created all of them and coded them so that when the button was pressed it would change the framerate in the user game settings. After testing this I discovered Two Issues. The first issue was that for some reason the game was running in slow motion when playing it as a Standalone game and the Second was that the framerate was not changing. I decided to firstly look into the framerate and saw there was an option to just enable Vsync which should do my job for me. After swapping out the set framerates with Vsync because THAT worked for some reason, I then went to google to find out why the game was running in a slow motion like state. To my annoyance, I found on reddit that it was due to me changing the editor to a fixed framerate a lot earlier in the project which makes unreal slow everything else down in order to meet that framerate.

So to solve this problem I switched the framerate back to smooth mode instead of fixed. This then created a new issue for me which was that VSYNC no longer worked (Yay... :/). SO I then decided to test if the framerate lock option now worked by adding another button, which it did. So after all of that I had to remake all my individual framerate buttons again and set them as options.

In terms of the other options they were far easier to find as all I had to do was search for them off of the game user settings with no external settings having to be changed.

After getting the graphics menu setup I had to create a way for the main menu and options menu to switch between each other without overlapping. To do this I made it so that when a button to enter either menu is pressed it will remove itself and add the other menu you're trying to access back to the viewport.

Now that I had a functioning main menu along with options menu I felt that the main menu needed a game title logo and a background of some sort. I started by making the logo for the game and researched for some Ai logo creators. I found a website I liked, put the title of my game in and it made me a logo.

After that I pulled the logo into paint.net and started adding my own touches to it trying to include some hints of tic tacs within the logo. Here is what that looks like:

I really liked how the logo looked with its colour scheme and simplicity.

Next I decided to have some blurred background gameplay footage looping while you're sitting in the menu screen as I had previously seen one of my friends do that on the last project and I really liked the idea of doing that for this one. I followed the same method shown in an earlier blog post of turning a media file into a widget and then made it so that It plays when you're only in the main menu.

Now the only thing I had left to do was make a pause screen for the game. I followed along with the YouTube Video closely. I changed a couple of the options for the pause screen adding a 'return to menu' button and a 'retry' button as I felt these were also missing from the tutorial. The code was really simple with that being it would open up either the main menu level or the current level you're playing again.

Background Audio

The last short thing I want to talk about was that I decided to get some copyright free background audio to have in my game from YouTube. I used the same channel as my last project because I really liked the music they produced. I have a more upbeat happy song for the menu screen and a faster paced intense song for when you're playing the game.

Here are the two songs:

Gameplay Music -

Menu Music -

_

Here is a video showing off all of the menus and background music in game:

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary36

10/10-11/2023

tuesday - wednesday

i need to put the days here so i don't forget what day it is. that's still a problem for me.

saw the hellp!!

look at them, with the ccp behind them. a beautiful image, even if they don't love communism . but i hope they do . or at least one does.

and i just love getting pictures of people taking pictures. my gf took the first photo, i'm not one for pix at concerts but i felt like some heavenly force was telling me to take a photo of that woman taking a photo.

their visuals during the set were great, i think, they have a sense of humor about themselves definitely but they somehow reach towards what dennis coopers does briefly in his second movie, where this boy loops a gif of someone exploding in a movie over and over, ruminating over his own death/desire to explode, that dissociative image, or the image pulled into / extruded by time into dissociativity, and also, the strange sorrow of trawling old imagehosting sites like flickr and things and finding people's random photos. i think they have something very real with that. also they put in footage from one of the lord of the rings movies and i think those movies suck because i don't like fantasy but i think their repurposing of that footage was kind of great, turning it into a weird emotional spectacle briefly.

izzy spears was, i dunno, he felt like he was cut off live, like prevented from getting where he wanted to go, i loved his moves, and he had a great look, but the music was simply not loud enough (my fault for wearing ear plugs? i dunno.) i kind of get the sense/hope though that there's a lot to look forwards to w/ him. i'm still not all the way on his voice and stuff but the stuff i heard that wasn't on his ep (i think) was produced in a very cool way.

i'm right now trying think if i should faff about with a modular synth for a little bit and then go to bed or not.

i think yves had a great leather jacket, very scorpio rising, and scorpio rising's one of the best things ever imo. so they get to remain in my good graces just for their loox alone.

tomorrow is a big day cuz, idk why i didn't mention this sooner but we're going to denver for a bit, my gf has an obligation there, and i'm tagging along cuz i'm curious. i think maybe a lot of people there will find me disgusting or something but i hope not. i just get that vibe but idunno. i don't know anything about colorado really. i'm excited to see the airport. i'm worried about being able to run the blog while i'm away cuz i can't get the app on my phone. i might steal my gf's laptop and try to login to tumblr from there and do my updates. i need to write my password down and stuff.

okay did that. idk how long my entries will be while i am there, or if she'll let me, but we'll see.

i'm excited to come home and get new ears on my music, and also like, i dunno, read more about butoh and angura i guess. i want to keep researching that, i found a wordpress that's dedicated to researching/writing about it, and that person has subtitled and translated some plays and put them youtube. really cool stuff.

here's one i'm excited to get to, a shuji terayama work. i love his film stuff that i've seen, so i'm very excited to see this. i've also read some of his short stories, they're very interesting, if not what i expect from the guy who turns maldoror into a short film, a great and very strange one at that. he really keeps it very poetic and loose and strange, the outer limits of the image unconstrained by narrative editing but the presence of a narrative text binding the work, it gets close to experience of impressions and the flights of fancy present in the book, the excessive images and the way they feel in your heart, rather than how they truly play out. i still need to finish that book but i got into it decently. it's just an issue where i go so slow because i want to drink every page totally, taste every inch of it so i can understand and then, understanding it, i can learn and use what i learn in my own writing. it's one of those books, so ornate and expertly written i just can't help but sit there in awe of it i guess.

listening to this album disrobics by this band gay beast is making me really want to mess with a synth, so i'll give myself some time for that right now i suppose.

that was fun. tomorrow i have to ride a plane. that won't be fun, because i don't like sitting still that long it gets borringggg.

i guess i will talk to myself in denver tomorrow night. how strange. i am scared because apparently there are going to be lots of french people, and there's some kind of bedbug epidemic in paris. that wigs me out terribly. hopefully it's not a problem for these people i'm about to be around.

anyways, i should sleep now, byebye!!

[kaiowut99]

Update: both the above clip and the clip with Samejima scrolling onto Saiou's medal count are all done! I took the above stitched-together English screen and redid the scrolling in Sony Vegas, while for the Samejima clip, I ultimately did redraw him last night so that I could newly overlay him with some transparency to match the original transparency:

Once I did that, I put it in Sony Vegas and masked him out, then masked in the original footage where there wasn't any Japanese text I was covering up to make him and the translated screen blend in better, adjusting for each frame during the screen's scrolling. Once it stops on Saiou, all I had to do was then adjust this redraw to account for the right side of Samejima's beard moving with his lip-flaps and then looping the three frames accordingly with his lip-flaps. Final products below (the first six photos are each one frame long, so while there may be tiiiny bits of detail I couldn't retain in a handful of spots as I did my best to, it's a very quick scroll after the OP in the episode proper; I'd then loop the bottom three frames as needed for his lip-flaps, with the original footage masked in on top to keep the rest of him consistent):

Here's a video showing these off, slowed down some so you can see the edits in motion:

I also included both mockups of what the English dub could've done had 4Kids wanted to keep the text (which I may use at some point for... reasons), and what the actual dub did; note how, on top of them removing the actual medal counts (the entire point of this scene), along with the names (why even leave the boxes in??) and the Monster/Magic/Trap text on the bottom, they also wiped the "Duel Academy/Obelisk Blue/Ra Yellow/Osiris Red" DA circle clean--even though they'd go on to leave it alone in shots like where Martin is walking along the main hallway in 125 and it's on the floor--which I assume was partly to make the editing simpler and partly trying not to replace "Osiris" with "Slifer" there. They also just cut the scroll from Misawa to Saiou for the second clip, so the shot starts with Samejima already scrolled onto Saiou's counts (likely to save their editing team some work), but I could tell they flubbed with how part of the right side of his beard doesn't move along with his lips since that almost happened to me, lol.

(I don't think they'd have had more of the source file assets for the episodes' masters until sometime during ZeXal and ARC-V, when for example the dubified cards start looking good with their outlines and all, so it's likely why they couldn't just edit the screen directly here.)

But yeah, glad these are good to go, I'm really happy with how they came out! Makes for a nice upgrade from my original attempt at these. Now, I just have some card fixes and one or two little animation fixes I'll work on over the next few days, then I'll get to start revising 89 and 90's scripts.

GX Finalized-Subs!90 (WIP): The State of GeneX Medal Play

Spent the past week getting work on finalized 89 and 90 going, and since I only had one quick animation fix to work on for 89, I'm onto prepping 90--as part of that, I'm getting to redo one of my first on-screen translation edits, done way back in 2012-ish when I first subbed 90 using only Sony Vegas and Aegisub, iirc. It's neat to take another crack at it using Photoshop, though I also necessarily had to redo it due to the differences in video quality (I did also use a DVDRip back then, but it was a more manual encode from a different source, iirc, hence the black bars on the side) and the fact that somehow I thought to encode a hardsub into the raw clip... which I wouldn't have done now, lol.

So, this is Samejima's computer screen as he looks over GeneX's progression with our main crew early into the episode; in Photoshop, I first stitched together the screen he scrolls through (on the left), then worked to blank it, painting over the Japanese for most of it. When it came to the DA circle in the middle with the dorm names, I tried to apply a render off DeviantArt, but between the border on each letter and the text not quite matching up, I opted to instead redo some of the letters (mainly the "ISK" in "Obelisk," done with Times New Roman, and painting over the bottom of the "B" in Blue, while I copy/pasted part of the "R" in "Ra" over the "R" in "Osiris" to cover up the end of the "count" kanji). Got it fully blank by about Wednesday night.

Then, yesterday, I started adding in the English text and got that knocked out easily (final product on the right, with my last go at it in the middle for comparison); I don't have the original sub file I used for the text here way back (thanks, failing drive in October), but I did remember using the Corbel font for the header there, then also used it for the "Duel Count," "Medals Won," and "Primary Cards Used" text, while I used Arial here for the names. I also lengthened the boxes under the latter to fit "Monster/Magic/Trap Cards" to match the original text. Applied a light blur and some noise on the text, as well as a light drop shadow, and voila. Overall, I think it looks much cleaner than the 2012 attempt, though I wish I could figure out how to make the drop shadow a smidge less blurry, but it'll do.

So, next steps for this is to throw it into Sony Vegas and redo the scrolling, while applying a light screen flicker (which I'll do using a solid blue every couple frames with a screen blend).

The kicker is trying to make this work in the follow-up scene after the OP with Samejima on top as he scrolls from Misawa to Saiou:

I was originally thinking of also stitching together the scrolling here, then redrawing Samejima as needed on top of the text I'm covering up, and I did stitch it together, but I'm realizing I'll have to make the edits frame-by-frame to account for him and three of his lip-flap frames that I can just loop as needed once it stops on Saiou.

So--and thinking out loud--I'm thinking I'd redraw more of Samejima and then save and mask him out to use later and keep him looking consistent, while I use that stitch I've done to redraw the screen to just leave the text, recycling the text edits for the Duel Count/Medals Won/Primary Cards sections from earlier on Saiou's side; once I redo the text, I'll put Samejima back and make him more transparent where he's on top of the new text. Then, when I throw the frames back into Sony Vegas, I'll take the original video and mask Samejima back on to the parts without text in each. I think... that'd work... Hmm. (I don't mind redrawing him, but if anyone with the skill and time might be able to help a little, I wouldn't say "no," lol.)

Seems I did go frame-by-frame in my last try too, though not as clean as I'd have liked now:

I can see why 4Kids opted to just cut the Misawa-scrolling part of this scene and just keep the Saiou part for the dub (though I would've thought they'd have access to the files used for this at least lol)

[dizzlypuzzled]

Stolen Shadows

Part One

“A boy who’d thrived in the shadows.

Now he had to live in the light.

To live…fiercely.

To fight for every breath.”

~Renee Ahdieh

Jason looked at the bird that was tied up in the back of his stolen van.

He kidnapped him from Titans Tower fairly easily. Especially since he’d been telling the Bat that Robin was his next target.

Which was both true and not.

Talia had wanted him to go after Tim for whatever reason.

But he had told himself long ago after he found his own name or went to college that he wouldn’t be mad if B had found a new Robin after him as long as he was told. He didn’t want to treat the next one like Dick had treated him. Even if they were on better terms later.

Then he died.

Jason sighed. Talia had almost gotten him to turn on his family if she hadn’t tried to get him to kill Tim. It was what had snapped him out of the anger long enough to realize that she was planning something to hurt his family.

Everything became much clearer after that. So, to prevent Talia from straight up killing Tim, he’d told her he wanted to.

It was the only way he knew to protect him for the time being.

He’d gone through his plan, and he knew he couldn’t stray until he had the kid.

So Red Hood popped up and rocked havoc on Crime Ally. His method worked too.

But he knew it still might not be enough. Just like Batman wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t a fool.

So now that he had the bird, he needed a way to warn the Bat about Talia.

Cause he had a feeling that the little boy who looked like Bruce was part of the reason Talia wanted Tim gone.

He looked back and knew that Tim was waking up. He’d let the bird fake sleep for a bit.

He did not jump when his phone started to ring. He fumbled slightly and answered it on speaker since he was driving.

“Is it done?” Talia asked making Jason twitch slightly.

Game time.

“Yes, Robin is dead, and I took the body. I’m dealing with it now,” Jason said hoping that Tim would stay quiet.

He left one hell of a mess in the tower too, but Tim was unharmed.

Hopefully the kid would do a check on that.

Tim shifted quietly and Jason could see his eyes in the rear-view mirror. Jason slowly shook his head hoping Tim would understand.

“Excellent, consider your debt paid then,” Talia hung up, and Jason just threw the phone put the window.

“So, you gonna be a good little bird and play dead for me?” Jason asked. He knew the kid should already be out of the ropes. Tim glared at him. “Get up here and buckle up.”

Tim followed his orders at least.

“Hood, what’s going on?” He asked as he looked out the window. Desert highway.

His best bet so far would be to stay. Hood didn’t answer for another half hour.

Jason sighed as he slowed down and pulled over next to a car sitting on the side of the road. He took off his helmet and Tim just stared.

“Well, there’s a hell of a story here,” Jason laughed before opening his door and getting out. Tim quickly followed him. “Talia wants you dead, and I…I was the weapon she wanted to do it.”

“But I haven’t done anything!” Tim yelled feeling annoyed. He deserves to know why someone wants to kill him.

Jason shrugged.

“I do know why she will want me dead though,” Jason said as he started taking off his armor and throwing it in the trunk. Tim had to stop.

Talia would come after Hood for not killing him. Tim sighed.

He needed more information.

And he needed to know if this really was Jason or not.

Nightwing bolted though the Tower screaming for Tim trying to listen for anything.

Batman was looking for clues though security footage.

There was one that showed Red Hood walking into the Tower.

Everything else was put on a loop.

Batman felt like the world was falling apart again.

He couldn’t lose another. He just couldn’t.

Tim was so special. He didn’t deserve this. Jason hadn’t deserved it either.

Tim was supposed to be safe in the Tower.

Nightwing was back, and Bruce could see the panic in the pale face.

“There’s so much blood,” he whispered.

And Bruce wondered if this might actually break him.

Tim was messing with the radio of the car. Jason didn’t seem to mind all that much.

Tim did not like the story he was told, but it seemed plausible so far. Jason wasn’t hurting him, and he didn’t have any injuries.

Although he was fatigued from whatever Jason had drugged him with.

He rolled over in his mind how Jason had crawled out of his grave and that he wondered around Gotham brain damaged for a while before being found by Talia.

She dumped him in a Pit and he came out angry with bloodlust in his veins.

It was slowly filtering out as time moved on. He didn’t feel the need to kill as much anymore, but he could sometimes feel it.

The bloodlust in his veins calling for death.

“So, we driving all the way to Gotham?” Tim asked wondering how well Jason had this planned. Jason looked at him for moment before turning back to the road.

“No, I was hoping you’d remember the address to Kent farms,” Jason said as he turned off the interstate to a rest stop. Tim blinked.

That wasn’t a bad plan. But it would take them a bit to get there. At least two days including stops for fuel, rest, and sleep.

“What did you leave at the tower? They’re going to know I’m missing,” Tim asked, and Jason flinched. Tim narrowed his eyes.

“I…may have gotten ahold of some of your blood pacts…warmed them up a bit and made some spatter,” Jason answered with an unsure smile. Tim just blinked.

They’d think he’d died. Jason wanted them to think he died.

Talia wanted him dead.

“Why?” Tim whispered as shock shot though his system. He couldn’t… Everything was happening so fast.

Jason just turned off the car and looked at Tim.

“Talia has some kind of plan. She didn’t tell me anything past you being dead. I can only protect you for so long and had I not…” Tim put it together.

He would’ve had someone else come and kill him. The League of Assassins wasn’t on their radar and hadn’t been since they released that virus in Gotham.

“We can’t just…”

Tim couldn’t let them think he was dead until Talia played her hand.

“We’re not…Hopefully they think you’re just hurt, but…I want to give Talia 48 hours and see what she does,” Jason explained. “Hopefully we’ll be closer to Kent Farms and see what exactly Talia planned. She wanted you dead quickly and has been harping on me cause I’ve been putting it off.”

“You don’t have a plan passed getting to Smallville, do you?” Tim asked realizing that maybe this is best case scenario.

At least Jason wasn’t trying to kill him.

“Not really, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to warn B without showing all my cards. I think they were watching the cave. I know I heard Talia complain that you survived that attack a few months ago,” Jason explained. He got out of the car and started pumping gas while Tim followed him. Tim looked around and spotted a few cameras.

“What about Oracle?” Tim asked with narrow eyes. If they could get a warning to her, then maybe they could clear the cave.

Jason only looked at him confused.

“Whose Oracle?” He asked and Tim knew that Barbara was Batgirl during his time as Robin.

“She’s our eyes in the sky,” Tim said leaving it at that for now. Jason shrugged.

“Talia only told me enough to manipulate me, everything else…I did some research, but it’s hard to focus on reading when green starts invading,” Jason said. They were quiet for a moment before Tim held out his hand.

“Can I get snacks?” He asked and Jason handed him 40 dollars.

“Can you get me some of those Starbucks coffees? And also some Cheetos?” Jason said and Tim waved at him before slipping into the store and staying in the camera’s blind spots.

Tim slipped around the bend and looked around. He needed a phone.

But he wasn’t sure who to call, especially if Jason was telling the truth.

So, he closed his eyes.

“Superman, if you can hear me. I’m safe…but I’m heading to your mom’s farm. I’m only safe for now, only answer Batman, if necessary, we think the Cave is compromised.” Tim repeated this four times in the hopes that Clark heard at least one of them.

If nothing else, maybe he could help them once they got there.

He looked up and straight into Jason’s eyes.

“Smart,” Jason smiled before herding Tim to the counter.

Jason didn’t seem angry.

For now, at least.

Bruce was pacing in the Cave as Nightwing and Oracle worked on tracing their lost bird.

Alfred came down the stairs looking annoyed.

“Master Bruce, Miss Talia is here…with a young boy whom she claims is your son,” Alfred informed making everyone stop working as Talia appeared around him.

“Hello, Beloved,” she greeted, and Bruce knew that this wasn’t a coincidence.

“What happened to Tim?” Bruce growled getting in her face. He knew Red Hood had League of Assassins training. Talia glared him.

“What makes you think that I would know?” She asked as she put the boy behind her.

“Red Hood has been trained by the League,” Nightwing cut in. He was trying to keep his anger under control, but it was hard. That was all they could find so far on the new player in Gotham.

The man that took and probably killed his little brother.

Talia sighed.

“Your little bird is likely dead then. While I’m not sure who your Red Hood is, I do know that we don’t train failures,” Talia said.

She needed Damian safe sooner rather than later. And if Bruce decided to never have a Robin again all the better.

Her son needed training, but she did not want him on the streets of this godforsaken city.

“Do you know anything more?” Bruce asked. He wasn’t believing Tim was dead until he had a body.

The blood was from blood bags. He figured that out fairly quickly.

Something weird was going on.

“Nothing that would be of help, now are you going to help your son?” Talia asked. “This is Damian.”

Bruce knew then that something was wrong. But he’d never get it from her.

She just explained to him how she wanted him to finish their sons training.

But she refused to tell him anything more about Hood or who he is. He refused to believe that he lost another Robin.

He couldn’t handle that.

“This is insane,” Tim grumbled. He was getting annoyed, but there wasn’t much he could really do.

Suddenly something was in the road forcing Jason to slam on the brakes.

It was Superman.

He had his arms crossed and was glaring at the car. Tim smirked before getting out.

“What’s going on?” Superman demanded looking Tim over for any injuries before glaring at the driver who had gotten out.

Something tugged at Superman’s memory that told him he knew this teenager.

“Uh, we’re running from the League of Assassins?” Tim offered making the other kid shake his head.

“More like Talia is planning something…and probably wants us dead…well probably me dead since she thinks Timmy there is dead,” the teen said as he leaned against the car with crossed and stared down Superman.

Not many people could do that, and Superman knew he was missing something.

“Jason was sent to kill me and had to change gears when Talia forced him to come after me. Apparently he didn’t want to kill me, but is mad at Bruce,” Tim stated happily. Superman blinked.

Jason.

There was no way.

“Robin?” Superman whispered staring at what could possibly be an older version of the previous Robin.

Tim looked up, but realized it wasn’t him that Superman was referring to.

“Yeah, crawled out of my own grave,” Jason shrugged, but they could see the haunted look in his eyes.

He remembered that part. Every terrifying moment of it.

“How?” Superman asked as he walked forward towards Jason. Jason smiled as Superman stood before him.

“I don't know. Just woke up in my grave one day and dug my way out. Talia found me and then dumped me into a Lazarus Pit. I’ve…I've killed people,” Jason admitted. He hasn't wanted to, but he knew that Bruce probably would figure it out anyway.

“I'm contacting Batman,” Superman said as he raised his hand to his ear for his comm.

Jason looked at Tim unsure.

He wasn't ready to see his dad yet no matter how much he wished he could go home. The Pit still sung though his veins calling for blood.

It wasn’t as bad as before at least.

Tim shook his head seeing that Jason clearly wanted to run.

“He's on his way. Talia stopped by earlier and apparently dropped off her son whose also Bruce's…” Superman trailed off. He hadn't told Bruce what he'd found only that it was related to Tim’s disappearance.

“Jason, you good?” Tim asked. Jason shook his head, but before he could do more, Superman wrapped him in a big hug.

“I'm so glad you're alive,” he said squeezing Jason tightly, but careful not to crush him too much.

Bruce sighed again as Damian seemed to go though the Cave judging things. Talia had already taken off hoping to prevent her father from knowing where her son was.

He seemed interested in being Robin, but Bruce was done.

No more Robin’s. He couldn't lose another.

“I'm sure Drake is dead. He was subpar at best,” Damian said and suddenly he was lifted from the ground and pinned to the wall.

Bruce growled lowly at him to shut up.

“You will never be Robin,” Bruce basically snarled at the boy.

The fear in the ten-year-old’s eyes were the only reason Bruce didn’t take it farther.

Everyone in the Cave was quiet.

Bruce walked to the computer.

Alfred took the young boy back up to the Manor leaving Dick downstairs with Bruce.

“Do you think…” Dick trailed off.

Surely Talia wouldn’t have called for Tim’s death if she wanted to leave her son here.

Bruce groaned and Dick knew that he was trying not to cry.

They couldn’t lose another.

“Bruce?” Superman’s voice called out though the Cave. Bruce wiped his face before answering refusing to acknowledge his tears.

“Have you found anything?” He asked as leveled as he could. He knew his voice shook a little regardless.

He heard Superman breathe deeply.

“You need to get here as soon as possible.”

He sent his location and Bruce prepared for the worst.

He thought about what he’d have to tell Tim’s father.

He ignored the tears going down his face as Dick followed him silently.

Both were crying prepared for the casket they’d be bringing home.

[gureishi]

day 10: broken down the middle

Here’s day 10 of the Human Again prompts. For the master list of all the ficlets, click here.

SaeyoungXReader, T (see cw), words: 2330.

Cw: Detailed description of a panic attack in this fic. These manifest in lots of different ways for different people! I personally get panic attacks in a very particular way, and so I gave my panic attacks to Saeyoung (sry bb).

・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜

Saeyoung’s face goes numb.

The news has been on all day, a constant drone from the speakers under the big TV in the living room. The face of the man he’s spent most of his life trying to avoid is plastered all over all his screens. Even in the RFA messenger, the discussion is centered around his father’s trial. His friends’ tone is victorious.

In the bunker, the energy is very different.

Saeran has gone for another walk; over the past few days, his walks have gotten longer and longer. Saeyoung envies his brother’s ability to escape the oppressive air in the house, the unending loop of trial footage and condemnation and speculation.

Personally, he can’t can’t bring himself to turn off the news, and he hasn’t left the house in three days.

He’s keeping it together, more or less. You’re as bright as ever, finding things around the house for him to fix, trying to keep his hands and mind busy. He knows it’s been hard on you, too—knows that the role of caretaker is taking a toll. He’s been thinking of ways he can make it up to you, when it’s all over.

Now, you’ve gone to shower (only after repeated assurances from him that he will be fine being left alone for half an hour or so). He hates himself for relying on you so heavily; he’s weak, he thinks—Saeran has figured out how to cope. Why can’t he?

Alone in his huge living room with only the footage of his father’s trial to keep him company, Saeyoung finds himself frozen on the couch, the robot vacuum cleaner he’d been re-wiring forgotten beside him. His vision is hazy—he’s not sure how long he’s been staring at the TV screen without really seeing it.

And his face is numb. This surprises and frightens him a little. He twitches his nose, wiggles his eyebrows—they’re there, but it feels like his nerve endings have been cut off. It reminds him of the times the agency gave him high doses of narcotics when he was injured so he could keep working without having to take a break. Those time, he’d felt like his head was floating a foot above his throat. This time the numbness seeps down into his neck like frigid fingers tracing his veins.

There’s definitely something wrong with his vision, too. It’s a little like his head’s been wrapped in saran wrap—the rest of the room looks far away. This is a familiar sensation, too: he’s had his airflow cut off or severely limited before, and he knows what happens just before losing consciousness.

But he doesn’t feel like he’s going to pass out. He’s been breathing, he thinks—he has! He wiggles his fingers and toes—which, thankfully, still feel warm and alive—and tries to take a deep breath. The strangest part of all this, he thinks, is that he was actually feeling okay, just a moment ago. The sense of overwhelming doom that’s been enveloping him after since the start of the trial has faded into the distance, along with his ability to feel his ears.

Okay. He knows how to do this. He knows what a near-death situation feels like, and it feels like this. And he knows how to cope with that. He tries stretching out his arms, and is unpleasantly surprised to find that the numbness is spreading over his shoulders. He tries again to take a deep breath, but it gets cut off in his throat.

Somewhere very far away, through the persistent buzzing in his ears, he hears his father’s voice booming out of the TV again. Turn down the volume, he thinks frantically. If it gets any louder it’ll kill me.

He reaches for the remote but finds he can’t remember how to turn the volume down. The buttons are blurring together, a confusing blob of colors and shapes that he can’t figure out.

Huh, he thinks, somewhat calmly. Maybe this has nothing to do with the trial. Maybe I’m just having a heart attack.

Pins and needles shoot up and down his arms, which seem to confirm his theory. He can hear his heart now, and he’s surprised by how fast it’s pounding—he’d had no idea. He tries to swallow and finds he can’t can’t; his head is spinning and he lowers it clumsily into his hands, which is when he discovers that he’s crying.

What? He still feels nothing—no grief, no anxiety. Just the vague certainty that he’s dying. He doesn’t understand why is face is wet, as if tears have been pouring out of his eyes for some time. For how long…?

His head continues to spin, and he finds he can’t sit upright anymore. He curls himself into the couch, feeling nauseous—he wonders if he’s been poisoned. He knows it doesn’t make sense, knows he hasn’t seen anyone but you and his brother for days, but…but…

The cold fingers reach his chest, and he thinks, no, not poison, but it’s as if he’s been possessed, like his soul is trying to claw its way out of his body. He wraps his arms around himself and scrunches his eyes shut against the bursting, popping lights filling his vision. He waits.

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

You find him like that: curled into the fetal position on the couch, his arms wrapped around his middle, his eyes shut, tears pouring down his cheeks.

Oh no.

“Babe… Hey. Hey. Can you hear me?”

Wrapped in a bathrobe, your hair dripping onto your shoulders, you kneel beside him. You’ve seen Saeyoung at his most scared and his most desperate. You’ve soothed him when he’s woken up screaming, when he’s forgotten where he is, overwhelmed by flashbacks of his past. This is a new one, though; luckily, this time it’s something you understand.

“Saeyoung…honey. Can you hear my voice?”

Careful not to touch him, you crouch by his side, talking softly into his ear. What you’re saying doesn’t matter—you just need him to focus on something that’s not inside his own head.

“Ya…I hear—but…I feel really sick, I…” His voice is slurred, but trying to talk is good. You have to breathe when you’re talking.

“Baby, can you do something for me? Can you lift up your arm?”

He shakes his head. He’s hugging himself so tightly you couldn’t unwrap his arms if you tried.

“Please, babe. Just give me one arm. Trust me.”

He shakes his head again, but at the same time he lifts up one arm for you. Immediately, you see his face relax a little, some of his tense muscles triggered to release by the oxygen that’s forced into his body as he moves.

Gently, you take his arm, and stretch it up, then out. He doesn’t resist, so you try shaking it a bit. You hear him take a breath.

“Honey, I know you feel like you have to lie down, but I need you to try sitting up,” you say softly, slipping a hand under his head. His face is wet with tears and sweat, and his hair sticks to his forehead.

“Can’t,” he mumbles in that same slurred voice.

“If it makes you feel worse you can lay back down right away, I promise,” you coax. You scoop his head up with your arm and he tries to help you, using his other arm to prop himself up. “Good job, baby,” you murmur, guiding him into a sitting position. He opens his eyes a tiny bit, wincing at the light, and you see that his pupils are huge in his pale face. You take his other hand. “We’re just gonna move your arms around, okay?” You pull his arms toward you, away from his body. Then you shake them. He mutters something incoherent, but you see a little color returning to his cheeks. “How does that feel?” you ask him, now stretching out his hands, rotating his wrists.

“Funny,” he says, his voice a little clearer. “My body feels like rubber.”

“I know, babe. Hey, look at me?” You place your hands on his shoulders and rub them, and he blinks as if he’s trying to get you into focus. “Can you feel your arms?” you ask. He wriggles them on his own this time and you feel him take another breath.

“Kind of,” he says. He blinks frantically and his eyes focus on you. “Were numb, but…”

“Yeah. Can you try to take another breath for me?” He takes a slow, stuttering breath. It catches in his throat, and he coughs. “You had a panic attack,” you tell him softly. “The more you breathe, the better you’ll start to feel.”

“Never had a panic attack before,” he mutters, trying another shaky breath. “Thought I got poisoned.”

You almost laugh, shaking your head. “Leave it to you to have more experience with getting poisoned than dealing with your anxiety. Can you take another breath for me?”

You count for him, making him inhale for four counts and exhale for eight. A few more tears leak out of the corner of his eye.

“Take three more breaths like that for me, baby. I’m going to get you something. I’ll be back before you’re done.”

You rest his hands in his lap and dart into the kitchen. You hear him taking two unsteady breaths before you return. This time, you sit beside him on the couch.

“I’m gonna put an ice cube against your cheek,” you tell him. “It’s going to feel cold, but it will help you.” You twist the ice cube tray with both hands and catch a cube in a dish towel. Gently, you press it against his cheek, and a shiver runs through his body. Good. As you move it over his face, you feel his neck muscles relax, just a little bit. He closes his eyes again. “Babe, can you try to stand up?” you ask.

“My legs are still kinda numb,” he admits. He sounds a bit more like himself. “I’ll try, though.”

He stands, a little wobbly on his feet, and you rise with him.

“We’re gonna do some jumping jacks—no, seriously, trust me. We’ll do it together. We can just do five.”

You start jumping and, though he looks skeptical, he follows suit. After five, you have him do ten more. Then another ten.

He looks at you with clearer eyes. You can hear that his breath has deepened.

“Wow, that—really helped,” he says.

“Is your face still numb?�� you ask him. He shakes his head.

“I still feel a little nauseous and dizzy. But I can feel my nose again.”

You smile. “Good. Let’s get you some water.”

You go to the kitchen again and you hear him moving around, jogging back and forth. He takes the cup you offer him with sure hands, and he sips it carefully.

“Babe? Do you think we could turn the TV off for a little while? Or at least mute it?” you suggest.

“Let’s mute it,” he says. “At least for now.”

Relieved, you take the remote and mute the TV. The sound that’s been pervading the house for the past three days is finally cut off. You take a deep breath, and Saeyoung does, too.

He sits on the floor, facing away from the TV, and you sit in front of him, taking his hands.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Apparently I can’t be left alone even for a few minutes.”

You rub his hands, pleased o feel that they are starting to warm up. His blood is flowing again. “You are a very strong and self-sufficient person, Saeyoung,” you tell him firmly. “It’s normal to have anxiety when your father is on trial—even when is is…who he is. Because of all of that. It is normal to need help in this situation.”

He shakes his head. “I wasn’t even feeling bad when it happened,” he says. “I was feeling better and then suddenly—like, my heart stopped working?”

“That’s normal, too,” you say, wiggling his arms again. He relaxes them, letting you.“You’ve been through this with me before. You know it doesn’t always happen when it makes the most sense.”

He takes another long, slow breath. “I thought I was ready to deal with whatever happened,” he says slowly. “Everything’s playing out exactly how I wanted it to, but…I guess I wasn’t as ready to deal with it as I thought.”

You move closer to him and he leans into you, so you wrap up in your arms, cradling his head against your chest.

“Handling it doesn’t have to look like celebrating. Or feeling calm. Or knowing what you’re supposed to feel or think or do. You are handling it.”

“Uggghhhh.” Saeyoung groans and squeezes you tight. “What would I do without you?”

You run a hand up and down his back, along his spine. “You are much stronger than you give yourself credit for,” you tell him. “You would be fine.

He nuzzles his face against your shoulder. “Maybe so,” he says. “But I’m lucky I never have to find out.”

Over his head, on the TV, you see the trial dragging on. The end is inevitable, you think: whether it’s later tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, Saeyoung’s father is going to lose. The twins are going to be safe. They are going to be free.

But right now, that all feels so far away; right now, the figure who has loomed in Saeyoung’s nightmares ever since he learned to recognize him is everywhere, and Saeyoung feels happy and scared and guilty and relieved all at once.

You brush his sweaty hair off his forehead. In the distance, the security system chimes; Saeran is home.

“It’s going to be okay,” you whisper into Saeyoung’s hair, meaning nothing, meaning everything.

“I know,” he says.

[theladyofdeath]

Scary Movies? No, Thank You. {Elriel}

31 Days of Halloween: Day 21.

All installments co-written with @snelbz​

Based on a prompt sent in by anon :   “We just started dating, so we don’t know each other day well yet, but you invited me over to watch a movie, and it’s a scary movie oH NO”

Warning: language.

Autumn/Halloween 2020 {Collection}

It had been a long, long day.

On a normal day, at this point in the semester, Elain might go home and have a glass of wine while she graded her first grade classes assignments. Today was not a normal day though. No, today was Halloween, which meant her kids were wired from the time they sat down in the desks to the moment the bell rang, dismissing them to go home and get ready to trick-or-treat.

When she got home, she changed out of her “teacher clothes” and got comfortable, pulling on a baggy sweatshirt from one of her sorority’s Trunk-or-Treat events they’d put on for the local kids and a pair of black yoga pants. She’d just sat down with the aforementioned glass of wine, the bottle in her other hand, when her phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, how was work?”

Elain smiled the second she heard his voice. They’d just started dating, but she liked him, a lot. “Good. Long, but good. How about you? Good day?”

“Edited all day,” Azriel chuckled, then cleared his throat. “Um, if you don’t have any plans tonight, I thought you’d like to come over and watch a movie?”

“Tonight?” she asked, looking down at her cozy clothes and bottle of wine.

“I know it’s short notice, and Halloween, but I-.”

“No, I’d love to!” she said, feeling like she’d given him the wrong idea in her hesitation. “I’d love to.”

She could hear his smile when he said, “Good. I thought I could make dinner, too?”

“Dinner and a movie?” Elain asked, smiling to herself. “What time should I show up?” 

“How about seven?” he suggested. 

“Seven sounds great, I need to do some grading before I come over anyways,” she said, putting the cork back in the bottle. One glass would have to do.

“Great, then I’ll see you at seven,” he replied.

“See you then.” She hung up the call and put the bottle back in the fridge, before returning to the couch and grading the spelling tests from the day. All the words were Halloween themed and there were certainly some terrifying spellings she came across.

After going over her lesson plans for the following week, she grabbed her purse, hopped in her car and a few minutes before seven, she was knocking on his door.

He opened it and she said, “I know, I’m early, I’m sorry.”

He chuckled. “Early is fine, come on in.”

She entered, and looked around his place as she did so. He had a little apartment, nothing crazy, but it was definitely homey. 

Very comfortable.

“Make yourself at home,” he said, shutting the door behind them.

“It smells amazing,” Elain said. 

“Ah, thanks,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “I’m no chef, but it’s a hobby.”

“I’m sure it’s delicious,” she assured him, setting down her bag and slipping off her shoes. He looked handsome, of course, in that kind of way where he didn’t even have to try.

He wore a simple sweatshirt, jeans, and his hair was pushed back out of his face. She could see the ink of his tattoos peeking out above his collar. 

“Wine?” he asked, leading her into the kitchen. “I have red and white.”

“White, please,” she smiled, sitting down at his little bar. “Thank you.”

There was no kitchen table, but being a man in his twenties, Elain assumed he didn’t host many dinner parties and a simple bar with two stools was appropriate.

“I hope pot roast is okay,” he said, turning off the slow cooker and pulling its contents out.

“That’s more than okay,” Elain said, and she meant it. It looked amazing.

He chuckled and wiped his hands off on the towel tugged through one of his belt loops, before pulling a bottle of white wine from the fridge and pouring them each a glass. Elain took a small drink and hummed happily.

Azriel made each of them a plate as they talked about their days. Elain told him about a little boy who’d come to school in his costume, Spider-Man, of course, who would only respond if she called him Spider-Man, or Peter.

“Peter?” He asked, sitting next to her. 

“Peter Parker,” she said, as if it were obvious.

The blush that rose on Azriel’s face told her it should have been.

“How about you?” Elain asked, after a massive bite of carrots. “Anything exciting happen in the world of editing?”

“Eh, I’m editing this commercial for a local company…” Azriel chuckled and shook his head. “They shot an absurd amount of footage and it’s, uh...incredibly corny.”

Elain grinned. “Now I'm intrigued. You must show me the final product when it’s done.”

Azriel laughed, quietly. “Oh, I will. Get ready for two old men who aren’t actors pretending they're in a very low budget Wild West.”

“Ah, my favorite kind of commercials,” Elain promised.

Once they were done eating, and Elain was stuffed, Azriel was washing off their plates. Elain offered to help clean up, but Azriel poured her another glass of wine and told her to relax.

She was his guest.

“Amazing wine, a delicious dinner,” she said, sitting on his couch with her legs folded underneath her. “I hope your taste in movies is as good as everything else.”

He chuckled and came out of the kitchen, shutting off the lights as he did. “I’d like to think that it is.”

“We’ll see,” she replied as he sat down and picked up his video game controller, turning the console on. “I’m going to run to the restroom before it starts, okay?”

“First door on the left,” he said with a smile.

When Elain returned, all the lights, save for the one on the end table next to Azriel, were off, and there was a big, fluffy blanket between them. She sat down, cuddling up under the blanket, and he asked, “Ready?”

She nodded and he grinned, turning the lamp off and clicking Play.

The introduction to It began to play.

Elain’s shoulders tensed. 

She was not a scary movie person. Yes, it was Halloween, the scariest of the holidays, but she liked the cutesy part of Halloween - the pumpkins, the decorations around her classroom, Halloween parties.

Scary movies? No, thank you.

But she liked this guy. A lot. And she could tell he was excited about it, could tell he loved the thrill as the opening score played.

It was like a train wreck, in the sense that Elain couldn’t look away. It didn’t matter how hard her heart was beating or how terrifying the scene on screen was, she found that she was barely even able to blink without reminding herself to do it.

She hated it.

About halfway through, Azriel got up to run to the restroom. Elain reached for the controller to pause the movie, but he said, “I’ve seen it a hundred times, don’t worry.”

With a forced smile, Elain nodded and leaned back in her spot, her eyes falling back on the screen.

When Az returned just a few minutes later, he found Elain, completely under the blanket, the movie still playing, despite her attempts to block it out.

He pressed his lips together to keep from laughing as he sat down on the couch, shifting the cushions beneath him as he did so.

Elain cleared her throat, still under the blanket. “I got...cold.”

“Cold?” he repeated. “It has nothing to do with the killer clown?”

There was a pause. “He may have contributed.” 

Azriel reached over and pulled the blanket down, just a little bit, so that he could meet her eyes with his own, bright and humored. “You don’t like scary movies, do you?” 

Elain hesitated.

Azriel laughed, quietly, and before she could find something to say, he said, “It’s okay. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have picked something else. Or, asked what you wanted to watch.”

“No, no,” she began, quickly. “It’s fine! I mean, it’s Halloween, and this is what you do on Halloween, right?”

“Is hiding under blankets typical for your Halloweens or can I suggest a change in tradition?” He asked, trying to hide his smile.

She pulled the blanket off of her head. “Of course, it isn’t! I just like funny movies better.”

Azriel was pressing his lips together, trying very, very hard not to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” She asked, blushing. “It’s normal not to like scary movies.”

“Your hair is a mess,” he admitted, finally starting to laugh.

And it was, it was insane from where the blanket had pulled through it and mussed it up. But it was absolutely adorable.

She liked it when Azriel laughed. She could tell it was a gesture that he saved for very few people.

She liked when he looked at her the way he was looking at her then, too. His hazel eyes soft, his lips slightly parted, slightly raised at the corners. 

Azriel reached out and ran his fingers through her hair, smoothing it down. Elain didn’t move. She sat perfectly still, letting him touch her long, wavy locks. She couldn’t ignore the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. 

Those butterflies fluttered faster as he slowly leaned in.

Elain closed her eyes, parted her lips.

Her lips that softly, gently met his.

The kiss was sweet, tender and everything Elain had ever dreamed a first kiss should be. He didn’t immediately begin to paw at her or even try to slip his tongue into her mouth. No, it was with the softest of pressure that he gently pressed his lips against hers and Elain felt like was home.

He smelled like black pepper and vanilla and something smoky.  She could feel the smallest scratch of stubble against her cheeks, from where he’d shaved this morning. And if she-.

A scream from the tv had Elain pulling away, gasping and pressing her hand to her chest.

Azriel was literally rolling on the floor, laughing.

“Don’t laugh!” she cried, but was unable to stop her own laugh from bubbling from her lips. She didn’t mind, though, because he simply shook his head, called her cute, and kissed her, again. 

[writewithurheart]

Hearts of Kyber: Part II

a/n: Hello lovely readers!! We’re back for Part 2 of 3! I’m so happy to be able to share this with all of you. And once again check out the work the rest of Crow Squadron has done because it is absolutely FABULOUS.

Corporalki: @kazandthecrows

Materialki: @anubem (art link) @generalstarkov (art link) @pijoshi (art link) @mitdemadlerimherzen (art link | art link 2) @erandraws (art link) @nannadoodles (art link)

Summary: When an Imperial pilot defects, the Rebellion sends its best spies to find out what he knows. They discover the existence of a planet-destroying weapon known as the Death Star and a scientist who holds the secrets to its only weaknesses. Guided by the pilot, Wylan, and a former storm trooper, Matthias, Kaz Brekker leads a team to uncover the secret that can save the Rebellion before it’s crushed for good.

A Grishaverse Rogue One AU for the Grishaverse Big Bang 2021

Read on AO3 or below the cut: 

Part II

Inej wraps her scarf around her head as the shuttle enters the atmosphere to a downpour of rain. She checks her gear. There’s a couple scorch marks from the earlier fight, but everything else is in good repair. It should keep her relatively dry.

Satisfied with her equipment, she turns back to Nina and Matthias. Nina’s fallen asleep on Matthias’s shoulder, exhibiting that her ability to sleep anywhere remains intact.

He looks uncomfortable with everything that’s happening around him. Despite all he’s already shared with them, Matthias still looks unsettled. His hand grips Nina’s, thumb moving in circles against the back of her hand. Inej isn’t even sure he knows he’s doing it. It’s clear that he and Nina have gotten close over the last two years. Inej is happy for her friend. 

Matthias clearly didn’t sign up for this. He leaned on Nina for support through their entire conversation. She’s seen that confusion in contacts they’re trying to turn before. Normally Jesper was the one to help put them at ease. Kaz and Inej had their own modes of gathering information. 

It can be hard to be thrown into a new situation, and Kaz doesn’t exactly ask your opinion before he turns around and questions your entire belief system. Matthias doesn’t seem to regret what he’s shared. He had only floundered when Kaz had asked about the anti-military defenses. He’d moved past it quickly and all the information fits with what they already know about Imperial procedures. 

She moves through the shuttle back to Kaz’s side, leaving Nina and Matthias in their bubble. He’s on the radio to Rebel Command, sequestered in a little corner. She lets him speak as her eyes drift over Jesper in the pilot seat. The Imperial Pilot - Wylan - is pointing out something as the shuttle weaves around rocky pillars. 

It has something to do with radars and detection. Jesper’s the natural choice to fly, better with the quick maneuvers than anyone else on their crew. Inej leans against the wall and watches the rain through the windshield. 

Kaz finishes his report and turns back to her. He looks tired, his face tight and drawn. They’ve worked together long enough that she can recognize his expressions. He’s shutting down his emotions right now. Whatever they’ve said isn’t something he’s pleased with. 

She tilts her head. “What did they say?” 

His hand curls into a fist. “They want to send a strike team.” 

Inej’s gut clenches at the thought. In the last three years, they’ve, collectively, done terrible things for the Rebellion. They’re the team that gets their hands dirty and keeps the Rebellion well-informed. This weapon - the Death Star - is greater than any other threat they’ve ever faced. She honestly doesn’t know how they’ll face it without more information, which can only be found on Eadu according to Wylan. 

“What’s the play?” she asks. 

He taps his fingers on the head of this cane. He doesn’t look at her as he works through his problem. “They think it’s too risky to leave the scientists alive. We only have a couple hours before they arrive. If there is information, we have to get it before they get here.” 

Inej runs her hand over one of her blades as she considers the change to the plans. “That’s cutting it rather close.” 

He finally looks at her. He doesn’t say anything but he can tell by the look in his eyes that he knows it’s going to be difficult, but that she can do it. 

Inej pulls out her knife and starts to spin it as she thinks about how this changes their plans. “We can’t fight our way in. It would take too much time.” 

Kaz nods. 

“Me, Jes and Matthais,” Inej says firmly, nodding at her own thoughts. Kaz’s brain has to be on the outside if something goes wrong. Wylan is a liability: someone might recognize him. Nina would be an asset but they need Matthias’s understanding of base layout and protocol more. 

“Get the information and get out.” Kaz rubs a gloved hand across his jaw. “If the scientist slows you down…” 

Inej stops the spin of her knife and looks at Kaz. His meaning hits her. He wants her to kill the scientist if necessary. It needles her. He’s never asked her to kill before. It’s always been a matter of survival: fighting because there was no other way out of the situation. He and Jesper are always the ones who carry out of assassination assignments. 

She swallows thickly. 

“I can tell Jesper,” he offers. If he was a soft man, the words might even be tender, but Kaz Brekker has never been soft. 

“He might be the only one with the information,” Inej counters. Her hand lifts to the necklace around her neck. “Force knows we need to find a way to destroy that weapon.” 

He gives her a look. She knows he doesn’t believe in the Force even a little. He prefers to put his faith in his own mind. He also puts an extraordinary amount of faith in her, to the point of being dangerous, bewildering and exasperating. He believes in her and that’s heady, but it’s also exhausting because it’s not like he would ever admit it. 

He watches her for a moment, eyes boring into her soul. 

“We’ve got this, Kaz.” She assures him. She takes a deep breath to breathe in the will of the Force, like her mother once taught her. She doesn’t want to hear his reservations or doubts, because she knows he won’t say them and she doesn’t want this to drag on.  

“Keep your comms open,” he instructs. “We’ll be your eyes on the outside. We won’t be able to call off the airstrike.” 

She takes a deep breath and grips her necklace. She can do this. She’s choosing to do this. 

“It’s now or never,” Jesper announces, jumping out of the pilot seat. He checks his weapons and glances at Kaz and Inej. With his raised eyebrow, Inej realizes just how close they’ve gotten in the little alcove and takes a small step back. “You get in touch with Herr Peskal?” 

Kaz nods. 

“And?” 

“We have ninety minutes.” 

Jesper nods. His brows furrowed. “Any leeway in that?” 

“Should be more than enough time,” Kaz says instead, walking away towards the back. 

Jesper looks back at her, consternation written into his features. 

Inej releases her necklace. “We have to get the information and get out. There’s a strike team on it’s way.” She tightens the band on her braid and tucks it into her hood. 

He pulls on his own poncho. “Kill protocols?” Jesper checks his pistols as he asks the question. When it takes too long for her to answer, he looks up at her. 

“We get the information. If the scientist slows us down…,” she can’t finish the statement. Jesper’s eyes are soft as he nods, understanding what she can’t say. It’s silly that she still has these hang-ups. 

“Got it,” Jesper says. He slides his pistols back into their holsters and covers them with his poncho. 

Inej nods and moves to the hatch. Kaz stands beside the door and looks out. She stands beside him as they look out into the dark rain. He leans toward her, as close as he can be without touching. She meets his eyes. His eyes are heavy with determination about what needs to happen. In the years since she’s known Kaz, she’s seen him trade his soul for the Rebellion over and over again. He shut down his feelings under a layer of armor too thick for anything to penetrate. It’s a rare moment when she can read the depth of his emotions in his eyes. It’s only when he’s concerned about her or Jesper, not that he’d ever admit that. 

At times like this, she wishes she was the kind of person who was more comfortable with touch. She reaches out slowly and clasps his fingers. His eyes drop to her fingers and squeeze hers briefly. His eyes meet hers with the silent order to take care of herself. Inej nods in understanding and then steps back to flip her hood over her head. 

“We’re out.” 

She hears Matthias and Jesper follow her out into the rain. Their longer legs overtake her quickly and she falls into step with them easily enough.  

It turns out the infiltration itself is easy enough. According to Matthais, this base isn’t a military target and is isolated enough that they’re about to sneak in through an air vent. Or Inej is able to. The boys are reluctant to fit themselves into the vents. 

She crawls along to a control panel and allows Matthias to talk her through rerouting the cameras so they loop the current footage. It’s a crude set up but that’s all they have time and prep for. She uses the same panel to open the door for Jesper and Matthias. She sticks to the vents and drops into an empty lab based on directions she pulled from the system. 

“Kaz, who is it we’re looking for?” She asks the comm. 

“Bo Yul-Bayur.” His voice scratches over the open comm. “At least that’s what it sounds like. The pilot’s brain is still scrambled from Bor Gullet.”

She pulls up the scientist directory on a nearby screen and scrolls through the information. “He’s not in the main labs. They look empty. Jes, Matthias, got anything?” 

“It looks like there’s some sort of meeting on the main landing pad,” Matthias answers. 

“Got all the big brass and everything,” Jesper mutters. “They’re still gathering. This is the time to grab the scientist.” 

Inej starts opening cabinets in the room to see if she can find a spare uniform or a lab coat, anything that will help her blend in as she searches the halls for this Yul-Bayur she needs to locate. She’s about to despair when she notices a cubby on the far side of the room with something hanging on it. 

The white coat is a pretty good fit, if a little large on her slight frame. She only takes a moment to note that difference before her eyes land on a small picture that was hidden behind the hanging coat. It’s a holodisc, cleverly hidden that wouldn’t be visible in another light, but that’s not what stops the breath in Inej’s chest. She recognizes the photo and her own eyes staring up at her from the center, wrapped in her mother’s arms with her brother perched on her back. 

She hasn’t seen her family since she was stolen away. This means… 

The name tag on the jacket confirms her suspicion: Ghafa. 

A memory returns of a cold steel building where she used to play with a ship and where her father met with important men. She’s too young to care what’s going on, but she remembers the frigidity of it all. Nothing like the caravan and the acrobats which had always felt like home. She remembers that well. But not the before, not the time when her dad…

Whoosh 

The door opens and Inej throws herself toward the nearest workspace in the hopes that she can look busy, knowing the jacket should be enough camouflage that she doesn’t need to hide in the limited shadows. 

“Hey! You there! What are you doing at my desk?” 

The voice is a chill that runs up her spine. She’d been so sure that he was dead. That her father was lost that day when the troopers came to the caravan. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined he was alive, that he had been taken. 

Inej slowly turns around. There’s a suspicious burning in the back of her eyes as she finally lays on her father. He stiffens with a soft gasp when he finally gets a look at her face. They stand there in silence for a drawn out minute, staring at each other with open wonder. 

“I-I-Inej?” 

Her words are lost as tears start to fall so all she can manage is a jerky nod before she flings herself into his open arms and gives herself over to the joy of her father coming back to life. 

<hr> 

Kaz doesn’t do well when he can’t plan for all the variables on a mission. He scowls and glares out the windshield of the ship at the rain that thuds down on the clear screen. There’s nothing but darkness and rain outside. The comms have gone quiet as Jesper, Matthias, and Inej infiltrate the base. He’s not happy with hastily thrown together plans, even when it’s their only chance to snatch up invaluable information. He’d prefer this to have more finesse. 

Wylan Van Eck beside him still twitches nervously in his seat. His eyes are wide in perpetual shock, as if he can’t believe what his life is or how he got there. He’s going to have to get over that quickly. Kaz doesn’t have time to hold his hand. Whether he knows it or not, the pilot likely has valuable information given his relation to a relatively well-known commander of the Empire. Although whatever the Shu did to him seems to be taking its toll. 

It’s unfortunate. 

Nina finally moves from the back of the ship. In the screen, Kaz watches her stretch to wake up from her nap, as if this was just a normal turn of events. They’re going to have to talk about the last two years and her stay on Jedha, but again, that’s not the priority, not right now. Obviously, she did her thing and convinced a Druskelle to change ranks. It still makes her motivations now unknown. 

Kaz looks over the radar even though he knows the strike team is still a while out. He doesn’t like having nothing to do while his team does the difficult work. His mind is on Plan Q of this improvised operation. He dislikes the amount of variables and his role as back up. It would be irresponsible to leave anyone else with the ship. No one else would be able to make the call to leave if it came to that. 

“What’s got your panties in a twist, Brekker?” Nina asks from behind him. She’s managed to find some supply of sweets on this ship that he didn’t even realize was there. 

Her question prompts Wylan to observe him, snapping him from whatever reverie he found himself in. 

“There wasn’t much time to plan. It’s too sloppy.” It’s too risky. Kaz isn’t convinced that it’s worth the amount being risked. He doesn’t trust hearsay and rumors and fickle scientists. This could easily be a trap. 

“It’s more than that. The Force moves differently around those who are preparing to kill.” 

The pilot jerks in alarm. “What?” 

Kaz looks at Nina, projecting his own blank face. He’d forgotten how annoying her perceptiveness could be. Blasted Force-users. 

“Jesper was prepared to kill. Even Inej-”

“We’ve got a problem.” 

Kaz sits up and leans into the console at Jesper’s voice. “Talk to me.” 

“The scientist we were sent to get. He’s gone.” 

Kaz frowns. “What do you mean he’s gone?” 

“As in, dragged away screaming in front of a cadre of his own scientists and his son,” Jesper reports. There’s a voice too far away for the comm to pick up, which tells him the son is right there. “Kuwei says he knows how to destroy the device. But he won’t tell us until we’re off planet.” 

Kaz glances at the clock. They have time. “Wraith, report.” Each moment of silence screams that something is terribly wrong. “Wraith.” 

“She was in the labs,” Jesper reports. 

“They should be mostly clear by now,” Matthias adds. “We can pick her up on the way out. They don’t have much in the way of holding cells if she was captured.” 

“Because they’re more likely to shoot first than stop and ask questions,” Kaz surmises, an observation that isn’t immediately countered which does nothing to assuage his worry. Not that there’s any reason to be concerned about the Wraith. Inej is too good to be captured. 

“There would have been an alarm raised.” Matthias’s voice is hard. “They’re already on high alert. Jesper should take Kuwei back to the ship. I can blend in better on my own.” 

Kaz grits his teeth. It’s not ideal. Ideally his people need to be out of there but they need to know how to destroy the Death Star. “Do it.” 

Nina reaches past him to slam her hand against the control. “Alright, Brekker. Out with it.” 

She leans against the console and stares him down. Kaz looks blankly back at her. He didn’t miss dealing with Nina on a regular basis. She always struggled with the grey areas of their jobs, the ones where you had to make the tough calls. She liked to rely on the Force, on a higher power. Kaz prefers to rely on his own intelligence. 

“Who are you planning to kill, Kaz,” she enunciates, getting into his face. 

“No one.” Technically true now. The plan to kill the scientist is moot if they need him. The Rebel strike team is the more pressing concern at this time. 

“Don’t bullshit me. If anything happens to Matthias...” 

“You know that any infiltration has some amount of risk.” At this point, the risk is with Inej. If she can, she’ll get out of there. 

“There’s something more at play here.” 

Kaz glances at the time. “We need to know how to destroy the Death Star. That takes priority.” 

“Priority over what, Brekker?” 

He looks at her. “We also need to know they can never create another one.” 

Nina pales. 

“There’s a strike called in for the base.” 

“Well, then call it off. They can blow it up from the inside or something.” 

 He bats her hand away as she reaches for the comms. “We don’t have the explosives for that. Nor the time.” 

“The alarm’s been raised. We’re coming out hot.” 

Kaz’s blood freezes in his veins. That’s Jesper, not Matthias or Inej. That means they’ll have to take off quickly without hope of waiting it out for any stragglers. Nina meets his gaze in a challenge. He flips a button and the engines start up. He turns to Wylan in the copilot seat. “Can you fly us out of here?” 

He nods jerkily and reaches forward to start checks. Kaz bodily inserts himself between Nina and the cockpit. He has to lean heavily on his cane as he pushes back to the loading bay and opens the door. 

“Matthias-” Nina forces her way past him to jam on the button. Kaz smacks it off with his cane. 

“Inej will get them out if she can. We need to prepare.” 

“You bastard! I will never forgive you for this, Brekker.” 

His jaw clenches. Inej would never forgive him if he faltered on his path.  

“I’m going after them.” Nina rushes out the open door. Jesper arrives with an unknown entity in view. 

He can’t afford to wait for her. “Prepare for take off,” he shouts to Wylan as Jesper drags the scientist onto the space ship. 

The scientist collapses onto the bench, breathing heavily. Jesper looks back, pointing over his shoulder where Nina disappeared into the rain. “Where’s she going?” 

Kaz scowls. “She refused to leave her partner behind.” 

“Inej?” 

“Plan J,” Kaz responds. It’s his standard response when things go wrong. It’s their shorthand for ‘she’s going to find her own way out’.  

“We’ve got incoming,” Wylan shouts from the front. Jesper slams the door and dashes to the cockpit. The ship is his baby. 

“It’s the alliance,” Jesper calls. 

Kaz breathes out. He turns away from the door. “Get us out of here.” 

<hr> 

The alarm blares through the compound. Matthias listens to the sirens. Unless they’ve changed the signals, it’s the intruder alarm. Either Inej or Jesper has been found. He sighs and adjusts his suit, tugging at his borrowed uniform so it sits straight. It’s been two years and the outfit that once felt like a second skin now feels stiff and constraining. 

A platoon of troopers races past Matthias, down the hallway in the opposite direction. He overhears their leader shout about an unknown man with Lab Assistant Al Bul. Not that he has any idea where Inej might be. 

He heads towards the labs, nodding to officers as he marches along. He sticks his head into the various rooms. He lifts his hand to the silent comm. 

“Inej? Report?” 

He sees two scientists pulled from a lab in front of them. Only one is dressed in standard Imperial research regalia, the other just has a white overcoat. He vaguely recognizes the slight figure of Inej as she lurks slightly behind the scientist. 

“You’re supposed to be in the main hangar, Ghafa.” 

Matthias freezes. He knows that voice. It’s the same voice who trained him, the one that took him under his wing and trained him to take his place. Jarl Brum was the man who was a father figure since he was an adolescent. He’s the one he spent the last two years considering trying to contact. 

“Of course, Commander Brum. My assistant and I just had to finish one last computation. The captain didn’t communicate the urgency of the situation when he came by earlier.” The man sounds as polite and rational as any might be. 

“You know better than that, Ghafa. My second says he saw you on your way to the hangar when the announcement went up. You stopped. And who is your assistant? I don’t recall seeing this one around before.” 

Matthias curses. Inej isn’t sneaking under the radar. She’s not getting out of here clean, not when they’re already on high alert about a trespasser. The display in the hangar would imply that they know they have a leak, and Jarl Brum is the type to shoot first and then brutally interrogate. Leaving her is not an option. 

He drops his hand to the gun at his side and sighs. Two years ago, this wouldn’t be a consideration. He would turn himself over to Brum and gladly share everything he knew, use that knowledge to ingratiate himself to his pseudo-father. But that was before Jedha, before he witnessed what survival on the street looked like, before he learned what citizens of the Empire would consent to live under rather than suffer Imperial rule. 

He glances down the hallway and sees only one man at Brum’s side. The rest of the hallway is clear, but there’s no guarantee it will stay that way for long. Matthias looks down and sets his blaster to stun. He carefully doesn’t allow himself to think for too long. The first shot goes wide as Matthias readjusts to the Imperial blaster. He readjusts instinctually and the second shot hits the soldier in the middle of his forehead. 

Brum, with typical arrogance, doesn’t even reach for his blaster as he turns to look down the hallway. He blinks in shock as he recognizes Matthias. It couldn’t be too difficult now that he’s finally back in the Imperial uniform. 

“Matthias Helvar? My son, you’ve returned.” He turns away from the scientist. 

Inej has pushed the scientist behind her. She looks nervous as she glances between Matthais and Brum. 

“I’m not your son.” He might be a little defensive on that point seeing as he barely has the trust of this heist team. “We’re going.” 

Inej moves, keeping herself between the scientist and Brum as she pushes him further down the wall. Matthias doesn’t remove his eyes from Brum. 

Brum turns to face Matthias fully. “It’s good to see you. We thought you were lost when you landed on Jedha. You look well.” He takes a deep breath as Matthias starts to back away down the hallway. “You know you won’t get away. The entire base is looking for you.” 

He doesn’t dignify the statement with a response. He could shoot Brum right now, slide the gun from stun to kill. It would cement his change of allegiance. His finger hovers over the trigger for a moment. The hesitation costs him. Troopers round the corner. They waste no time in firing once they see Matthias pointing his weapon at Brum. He ducks and rounds the corner, firing back as he glances over at Inej.

“We need to go. Where’s Jesper?” Inej says from where she crouches beside him.

“He went ahead with the scientist,” Matthias replies. “They’re the ones who set off the alarm.” 

She scowls and glances around. “Where’s the hangar?” 

He pauses in firing. “The opposite direction from where the transport is. We need to go back the other way.” 

“No,” Inej counters. “Jesper and the scientist are back at the shuttle. That means they’re gone. We need alternate transport. Dad?” 

“What do you mean?” Matthias frowns. “They wouldn’t leave…” He’s cut off as the man gestures down the hall. Inej starts to move. Matthias hits his head against the wall. Of course they’re going to do something not in the plan. It’s what he should expect from an undisciplined bunch.

“They had no choice,” Inej whispers. She pulls a blaster on approaching troopers, causing them to drop back to avoid blasters. 

Matthias fires off a couple more shots as they race through the hallways. He curses in Fjerdan as they run. Stupid demon spies with unorthodox plans and no communication skills. “What are you talking about?” 

“There’s a strike team coming. They’re going to blow this base with us in it if we don’t get off planet now.” Inej’s voice is calm. 

When they get out of here, Matthias is going to have some strong words with Kaz Brekker about his asinine plans and the danger he puts his people in. “We’re going to the private hangar. The main one will be too crowded. It’s where they gathered the scientists earlier. Brum’s transport should be on his level.” 

He smashes open the door to an elevator. He lets Inej and the scientist in before him and then slams on the button to the correct floor as he remembers it. Finally he glances at the scientist and then to Inej. “I thought we wanted Yul-Bayur?” 

Inej shifts. It would almost be nervous except she looks completely unapologetic. 

“Why do you want him?” 

Matthias doesn’t speak. He has no idea who this scientist is and isn’t about to divulge secret information. 

“The Death Star,” Inej says, turning to face the man. 

He pales. “They finished it?” 

“How do you know about it?” Matthias crosses his arms, but his eyes follow the indicator on the elevator as they close in on their target. The door opens directly to the flight platform which is blessedly empty of guards. He stands with one foot out so the door won’t close and face the scientist. 

“I worked on it.” 

“We got word from a pilot that there was a way to destroy it.” 

Inej is too trusting. Matthias is ready to leave. 

“Yes, but how do you know this?” The man asks. “I was unable to pass that information along.” 

“You?” Inej laughs, throwing her head back and then throws her arms around the man. “Of course you did, Papa.”

That finally connects the dots for Matthias. He can’t let himself get distracted. If this is the scientist which has the information they need, then they need to get out of here even more now. He turns toward Brum’s personal shuttle. There are two other ships in close proximity - his guard ships. But they only need one. 

“Come on,” Matthias interrupts as he starts toward the main shuttle. 

Inej turns around and stabs one of her knives into the control panel, effectively destroying it in a single motion. It’s clever. He should have thought of it, should have realized. But the more important goal is to get out of here. 

Halfway across the tarmac, Matthias hears the shot. 

Inej’s scream pierces the air and the world stops as he spins around to see her father collapse to the ground. 

<hr>

 Nina regrets her choice as soon as she steps out into the cold, lashing rain. The wind rips at her braided hair. It slaps against her face and lands askew. Her boots are filled with water through the little leaks she never bothered to patch while living on Jedha. It was unnecessary on a desert planet, after all. 

Her robes whip around her and the darkness blinds her to her surroundings. Nina shuts her eyes and lets the Maker guide her steps on the uneven terrain. She knows Inej and Matthias are likely fine on their own. Something calls her forward. It demands she walk into the abyss. It’s a call she’s used to answering. 

She’s helpless to fight it. 

Nina learned it’s best to trust these moments of intuition, even as it annoys Zoya, Kaz, Matthias, and everyone she’s ever served with. It’s part of her unique times. 

The door to the base is ajar, likely propped open for breaks for onsite personnel, the kind that balks protocol and that is largely unknown save by those who frequent it. The site is abandoned in favor of responding to the intruder alarm. The door opens inward to soldier barracks and Nina quickly sheds her robes to change into the standard armor of a foot soldier, unnoticeable in the best of times. It’s the perfect disguise. 

The helmet is almost suffocating as she drops it over her head. The visor allows her startlingly little light to see by, probably as troopers are to be feared rather than effective. Nina lifts her bladder and proceeds into the hallway, falling into step with troopers moving rapidly in one direction. 

“Intruders at the West Entrance. Assistance has been requested.” 

“Belay that order. Platoon B divert to General Brum.” 

Nina follows the example of the troopers around her and salutes to the man who orders their change in objective. She’s part of the Rebellion. She knows the name Brum. Apprehension sends a shiver down her spine at the name of the man famous for rooting out and murdering Rebel spies. That Matthias served directly under him only adds to her anxiety. 

Brum himself meets her new platoon at the elevator with a scowl. It’s the first time Nina has ever seen the man in person but the frosty expression is reminiscent of her first days in Jedha with Matthias in his Druskelle idiocy. He stands stiff and tall, frosty in a way that Nina thinks he never learned to smile. 

“Intruders are headed to my private shuttle. Detaining them alive is preferable. Dead is acceptable. One former Druskelle, one girl, and Scientist Ghafa. THey must not be allowed to escape.” 

Again they salute with terrifying synchronicity. 

“Two of you, with me,” he orders as he steps into the lift. “The rest of you, take the stairs.” 

Thank the Force, Nina finds herself nearest the elevator doors and she steps in alongside another faceless trooper. One the ride, she focuses on her breath instead of her proximity to the man known to have murdered her comrades. Idly she wonders if her breath could fog up the inside of her helmet, if her breath was labored enough. 

She exits the lift alongside the other trooper, finger carefully on the trigger. She calls on the Force to protect Matthias and Inej. Briefly, she considers turning on Brum but the Force screams at her to follow this course of action. She doesn’t understand but she trusts it to guide her in her actions. 

There are already troopers on the platform, firing on Matthias, Inej and the scientist. She swore Jesper was the one with the scientist, not Inej. She watches as the scientist falls to a well-placed shot. Her resolve to listen to the Force almost breaks when she realizes that Inej and Matthias aren’t going to reach the shuttle without further casualties. A moment later, the Rebel spy ship emerges from the darkness of Eadu and rains down shots to cover their retreat. 

The troopers move for cover as Matthais and Inej carry the scientist over their shoulders and race for the ship. It looks almost comical - a man strung between the tall Matthias and the tiny Inej. Nina herself isn’t pleased at the arrival of the ship she swears she just saw fly off with the intent to leave them behind. 

It would appear Kaz and Inej are still doing the same circular dance of flirtation without addressing their own issues and feelings. 

“Bring that ship down!” Brum screams, as if the troopers’ meagre blasters could somehow penetrate the ship’s shield. 

“If I may, sir,” NIna says tentatively enough while still playing the obedient trooper. One with a brain. “Perhaps pursuit would be more successful.” 

Brum stares a moment before he once again starts barking orders. It looks like she’s getting off this rock anyway. The Force still has some use for her after all.

<hr>

They were out. They were minutes from freedom. 

The words are on repeat in her head as Inej drops to the ground beside her father. Rain soaks through her clothes as she pulls her father into her lap. His hand wraps around hers with surprising strength. In the background, she can hear Matthias shouting, the pew pew pew of blaster fire, and then something that sounds like Kaz’s rasp which makes no sense. They should have taken off by now, maybe even be out of the atmosphere. 

“Stardust,” her father whispers. His hand reaches up to brush dripping wet hair from where it hangs in her face. “Scarif...you must go to Scarif…” 

“You’re coming with us,” she whispers. Tears blur her eyes as she tries a watery smile. A hand grips her shoulder and abruptly the rest of the world comes back into sharp relief. She feels each drop of rain from the sky, the sizzle of hot laser blasts hitting water, and Jesper’s plea for her to move. “I’m not leaving him!” 

Matthias grumbles in a different language as he fires off another couple of shots. Jesper circles Inej to throw her father’s arm over his shoulders. Inej rushes to help her. Her father grunts as they shift him. He’s too injured to help them as they half carry, half drag him towards the shuttle. 

Kaz would have her head if he knew they were risking everything to bring her father with them. Her orders were to get the scientist out of there. If Jesper already got one, then they could have left her father behind. It’s her sentimentality. That’s what he would blame it on. 

Inej’s free hand wraps around the necklace tied around her throat. For so long it was the only memento she had of her family. She prays to the Force, to the long forgotten religion of her people as she staggers under her father’s weight. They can do this. 

Her feet land on a metal incline and Inej pushes herself to get to the flat of the ship. Matthias slams on the button to close the doors and Jesper slips out from his position holding Inej’s father up to race to the cockpit.

Only Inej’s superior sense of balance and upper body strength allow her to keep her father from dropping to the floor. Kaz slides over to take Jesper’s place as the shuttle leaves the tarmac. It rocks dangerously as they get her father to a bench. He groans as he lands hard on the unforgiving surface. 

“Matthias, I need you on the guns!” 

Inej blocks it all out as she focuses on her father, drinking in the lines on his face. “I’m here, Dad. We’re gonna help you.” Her eyes land on a med kit Kaz drops beside her. She throws it open to gaze at the contents they haven’t replenished in far too long. She rips his jacket open to find where the blaster shot landed. Her father’s hands fumble to help her only to still her hands. She frowns and looks up at him. 

“Papa-” 

“Listen, Stardust. The Death Star. There’s a way to stop it. A weakness…exhaust port...plans are on Scarif...your mother…” 

“You need to save your strength,” Inej whispers. His hands fall from hers, suddenly weightless. With one hand Inej claws through the med kit, her hands landing on bacta patches. She pulls his shirt back and desperately presses the medication to the wound. 

“You can’t leave me like this, Papa. I just got you back. I can’t lose you again. Not like this. I need you. You’ve got to meet Jesper...and Kaz. Jesper will make you laugh like you’ve never laughed before. Kaz is a bit harder but I think you’ll like how much he cares. He’s been looking for you, you know. You’re going to be okay.” 

She scrambles for the serum that will put him in stasis until they make it back to base. If there’s a chance to save him, it will happen there. Tears are hot on her cheeks. Inej presses her lips to his hands. They don’t grip hers back as he succumbs to the serum. His whole body goes slack under her hands, his eyes shut. The fight slips away from him. Inej loses her own battle and sobs in earnest. One hand finds her father’s pulse. Tension weeps from her body as she feels the faint flutter under her fingers. He’s still alive for now.

The motion of the shuttle smoothes out as the shuttle goes into lightspeed. 

“Inej-” 

Kaz’s voice is cut off as she looks back up at him. She stares at him, finally processing what his presence here means. “You came back.”

Inej forces a deep breath and pulls back from her father. She swipes at the tears on her face. Air won’t come easily. She wrestles with it as Kaz kneels beside her. Matthias returns from where he was manning the weapons. With surprising gentleness, he arranges Inej’s father on the bench, and checks his pulse again. He checks the bacta pack and nods. Inej rises to her feet and takes deep breaths. She tries to reboot her mind, to get it to focus on what the next step is. There’s something she need to be doing but all she can think about is what she just found that was then almost ripped unceremoniously from her grasp. 

They must have done it: gotten away from Eadu in one piece. Her eyes drift from her friends, her heart swelling with warmth only for her gaze to land on the newcomer. She feels ugly emotion rise in her chest as her eyes take in this scientist who was allowed to just walk away while her father is…

Inej can’t finish the thought. She shakes her head, and turns back to Kaz. There’s so much she wants to say, to ask about. The ship should have been gone and they came back. Kaz’s gloved hand slips into hers and he squeezes it. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything else, but it feels like the world has shifted with that one singular motion. 

Her father is dead, but that will not be where this story ends.

<hr> 

Wylan’s hands are steady on the controls as he steers the ship into the landing field of the Rebel base. His breath is uneven in his chest and his heart feels like a jackhammer as he fears what this group will do to his already fractured psyche. He’s gotten better in the last few days - miles better than whatever it is Bor Gullet did to his brain on Jedha. It’s like his brain and body had to relearn how to communicate. 

He hasn’t told anyone that the symbols on the controls and all his displays are illegible to his mind. Struggling with reading isn’t new to him. It was one of those things his father despaired of before he shipped Wylan off to the flight academy, enraged that his son would never be an Imperial officer. Now the screens hurt his eyes. 

It doesn’t matter. He’s trained himself to fly without the assistance. It just gets in the way of good pilots most of the time. Jesper leans forward and looks over the screens, then glances at Wylan. He raises an eyebrow and falls backwards into his chair with an impressed whistle. 

“You’re not even reading the specs, are you? Are you some kind of super pilot?” 

Wylan glances sideways as he lowers the landing gear. He shrugs vaguely. The way Jesper is looking at him sends a shiver down his spine. It’s a loaded glance. He doesn’t want to look too deeply at what it means, doesn’t want to jump to conclusions about what he’s thinking. Any flirting is in his own head. 

“That’s hot.” 

Or not. Wylan frowns at him as he powers down the plane. “Are you serious, right now?” 

Jesper winks, and throws him a devilish smirk. “What can I say? Competence is a turn on.” 

“Stop flirting.” Kaz’s voice breaks through the fog in Wylan’s brain as he briefly forgets how to think. “We need to report.” 

“Aye, aye, captain,” Jesper throws back as he jumps to his feet.

“You’re ridiculous,” Wylan informs him. 

“Welcome to the Rebellion, Sunshine. Let’s go!” With more enthusiasm than he thinks is warranted, Jesper propels Wylan in front of him and out onto the dry base. He receives some interested looks, but not so many as the floating stretcher escorted by Inej and Matthias as it races into the base. 

“Will Pavel Ghafa be okay?” He asks, staring at the stretcher as it disappears. 

Jesper and Kaz both turn to look at him. Wylan wants to shrink away from their gaze. 

“How do you know Inej’s father?” Kaz demands. 

Wylan tilts his head. So that’s what he missed while flying the plane. “He was nice to me. None of the other scientists would speak to me. They…” They thought he was stupid. His first day on base, his father had made a point of shoving his face in everything he couldn’t understand by bringing him to the science labs. The joke was on him because Wylan could understand parts of it, even if he couldn’t read anything. Scientist Ghafa was the only one who noticed. Afterwards, he was the only one who continued to talk to him. “He taught me how to blow things up.” 

Jesper grins. “Damn. I like him already.” 

“Is he going to make it?” Wylan asks. 

“Did he ever tell you about his work? Anything about the Death Star?” 

Wylan pauses and tries to think about their past interactions. The memories stall. He sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He always told me to be careful, to keep my head down. I’m sorry. I don’t know.” 

Kaz nods and turns away. He makes a bee-line for a man and a woman, both waiting by the entrance to the base. The two of them are standing still while the rest of the base moves around them. It takes a special sort of power. 

Wylan looks over at Jesper and then past him to Al Bul. Kuwei had never been particularly kind to him, or mean, really. He doesn’t know much about him at all. He wasn’t happy with the way he was coerced into helping them get rescued, largely because he ended up being interrogated by Bor Gullet. Turns out the Shu weren’t too happy with the potential ability to get back two of their own citizens. Wylan would have appreciated that knowledge before he landed in Jedha to a hostile situation. 

“Don’t worry. We’ll get this solved.” Jesper nods at something Kaz conveys with a quick hand signal. His hand moves from Wylan’s shoulder with a quick squeeze. It lands heavily on Kuwei’s shoulder and pushes him forward. “Come on, Kiwi. We got you out, so now it’s your turn to cough up what you know.” 

<hr> 

The universe is a perpetual joke. 

Jesper plays with the settings on his blasters as he sits in the dark corner of HQ while voices rise and fall in impassioned debate. Kuwei, for all his supposed knowledge, can only tell them that there’s a critical weakness in the Death Star’s defenses. It’s in the plans, which he thinks he can create from memory. The leaders of the Resistance are far less trusting of this information. Spymaster Per Haskell is angry that he’s devoted so many resources on a dead end. Inej is pushing for an expedition to Scarif, where she can recover the plans. According to her, her father knows the plans are there. Genya seems interested in the plan, but the majority of the people present are convinced of the futility of the prospect. 

They’d rather continue along their familiar routes of information gathering. Even from across the room, Jesper can tell Kaz is going to follow Inej on this. That boy will move worlds to get her what she wants. 

Jesper gets to his feet and walks away from the noise of the room. He’d better get their ride ready. Wylan Van Sunshine is the only one to recognize his exit and he falls into step with Jesper.  

“What are you planning?” 

Jesper shrugs. “What makes you think I’m planning anything?” 

“The demjin would not give in so easily.” 

His head whips around to his other side where Matthias is now standing, face set in a scowl. “I’m going to put a bell on you.” They both continue to stare at him. “Stop that. There’s no plan.” 

“There’s a plan,” Wylan says, looking at Matthias. 

“Of course, there’s a plan.” Matthias agrees. “Nina’s on Scarif.” 

Jesper laughs. “That’s quite a leap.” 

“She’s on Scarif,” Matthias repeats. 

Jesper shakes his head. There’s no possible way he can know that. There’s a whole galaxy out there where she could be, and that’s if she got off the planet. The poor guy is delusional. “Look, I know it sucks that we left her behind. The odds of her surviving the strike are not great.” 

“Brum’s shuttle left after us. It survived the strike. She was on that ship.” Matthias says tightly. 

“I want Nina to be alive just as much as you do, but there’s no way you can know that.” Jesper squints at Matthias, trying to determine what Matthias actually knows and what is just him trying to will into being.

Matthias gets a pained look on his normally stoic face. He looks up at the sky, as if he can’t believe what he’s about to say. “I would feel it if she were dead.” 

Jesper looks at Wylan, glad to see that he’s just as lost as Jesper is. Jesper runs a hand over the back of his neck with a sigh. As much as he would love to continue his unbelieving attitude, Jesper knows the truth resonates in Matthias’s words. Nina’s alive and somehow is going to be exactly where she needs to be, but Matthias isn’t in contact with her. He’s just got faith. “I hope you’re right, soldier boy.�� 

“Please tell me there is actually a plan,” Matthias answers. His face is all scowly. 

“Plans are a turn on for you, aren’t they?” Jesper speculates as he looks the soldier over. “How does that work out with you and Nina?” She’s the least rule-following person he knows. She likes to improvise too much when the Force speaks to her. 

Matthias doesn’t answer. He just narrows his eyes at Jesper’s tone. Jesper bites back a smirk. He’d bet good money that the reason it works is because they’re both soldiers, who are loyal and stubborn as hell. Helvar doesn’t seem like a complete dick, and exactly Nina’s type. He really does hope he’s right about Nina. 

Jesper pushes past them both and walks towards the mess hall, where he knows the intelligence agents who are on base spend their down time. Unlike many operatives who find ways to work the Rebel insignia into their uniforms, the intelligence agents are a paranoid bunch who value their identity too much to risk their allegiance being revealed, even a Rebel base. 

Generally, the intelligence agents are known as spies or The Dregs. Kaz calls them the Crows because they go out in the galaxy and collect shiny bits of information which they hoard and return in the hopes that it might turn out to be valuable. They don’t often work in large groups but they can recognize each other. Wylan and Matthias trail behind him as he walks across the way to Rotty, who’s sitting alone and staring into his mug. 

He looks up as Jesper drops into the seat across from him. His eyes take in the three of them, assessing even as he looks half asleep. That’s part of his charm. People underestimate him. He takes them in, looks around the room and then leans forward. “This about the meeting happening right now?” 

Rotty’s good at connecting dots. 

Jesper shrugs as if to say “what can you do”. 

Rotty throws the rest of his drink back and drops his mug on the table. “Is the intelligence worth it?” 

Jesper runs a hand along this jaw and the stubble that’s starting to grow as he looks around, glancing at Wylan and Matthias. “We have confirmation the information’s on Scarif. Nina’s on the inside.” 

Rotty blinks in surprise. “Nina? Zenik? I thought…” He looks at Matthias. “So the rumors about Jedha?” 

“All true. We need to move before things get worse.” Jesper glances around the room. “It looks like the vote will go the other way.” 

The Dregs have the best blank stares. Jesper watches his eyes and the calculations going on behind them. “Kaz?” 

Jesper knows he’s got him. Rotty will help them. “Sent me to spread the word. No orders. This isn’t mandated. It has to be your choice.” 

“Who do you have so far?” 

“Kanej and these two.” 

Rotty snorts. “You’re still hoping that catches on.” 

“It’s so much easier to say than Kaz and Inej every time. When we have time, remind me to tell you about the repressed pining from this last stunt. It’s a good one.” Jesper taps the table and stands. “Spread the word. We’re leaving as soon as the meeting lets out.” 

Rotty nods. 

Jesper is two tables away when Rotty calls after him. “How do you know Zenik is on Scarif?” 

Matthias tenses. It’s comical how easy he is to read. 

“She sent an encrypted message.” Jesper reveals with a grin. Then, because he doesn’t trust the druskelle yet, he throws in a little lie. “In the ship’s lights as Brum’s shuttle left Eadu. Kuwei confirmed Brum would fall back to Mustafar and then likely Scarif to check the Death Star plans. We’re watching the old channels for updates.” 

Rotty nods. 

Matthias shakes his head as they walk out of the cafeteria. “You could have just told me that.” 

Jesper laughs. “And missed the look on your face? Never! Now, come on, Helvar, Sunshine. We’ve got a ship to prepare. Stealthily.” 

<hr> 

“We can’t take no for an answer. You know this is wrong! We have to go. There’s no guarantee Kuwei has any idea what he’s talking about. It’s all guesswork. My father nearly died getting us this information.” 

Kaz leans heavily on his cane as they leave HQ as Inej rants in his ear. It’s been awhile since he’s been the recipient of one of her rants. They’ve long accepted their own philosophical differences. He knows her well enough to understand that this is different. This is the first tangible connection she has to her family. Defeating the Death Star is now a part of his legacy and she’ll do anything to protect that. “I know, Inej.” 

“So why didn’t you say anything?! You stood silently by. You didn’t even argue for a plan that could work.” 

He rubs at his leg like that will alleviate the pain. It’s not great that it’s worse today but Kaz has worked through the pain before. It shouldn’t cause any hiccups assuming that they can get out of here before someone tries to stop them. Based on Genya’s nod as they left, he’s willing to bet that she’ll run interference. 

“They were never going to agree. Scarif is a stronghold. We haven’t been able to infiltrate before. Whoever goes in, even if they succeed in getting the plans, they would likely die.” The words are harsh. They have to be. He can’t have anyone doubting the risks involved. 

“It would be worth it.” Inej’s eyes are fire, pure passion. It does funny things to his heart beat. She’s a woman meant to live life to the fullest. She’s never more beautiful than when her whole heart is devoted to something she cares about. 

Kaz holds her gaze for a minute and then nods. “I agree. That’s why Jesper’s collecting the Crows.” 

He struggles with a smile at the shock and warmth in Inej’s gaze, the way her lips part in surprise. The him of several years ago wouldn’t have made this choice. He turns away from her and continues to walk. His smile would come out if he continued to look at her. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have let this melt the ice around his heart, but he’s started to let people in again. It’s a strength as much as a weakness. 

“We’re going?” She speeds up to walk in front of him, turning so she can face him as she walks backwards. “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“If you didn’t fight for your father, Haskell would have been suspicious. He would have grounded us.” 

Her eyes sparkle and another little bit of ice melts.  Her hand reaches out like she’s going to reach for her hand. Kaz’s chest is tight - both with desire for her closeness and in fear of contact. Slowly telegraphing her movements, Inej’s hand lands on his forearm. He stops in the middle of the hallway. The bile he expects doesn’t overwhelm him. Instead, it feels almost nice. He relaxes into it as he drinks in her gaze. She smiles at him. 

“Thank you.” 

He shrugs. He only did what had to be done. Kaz slowly turns his hand over and pulls it back so that their hands meet, fingers intertwining. He stares at the contact and wonders briefly what it would feel like without the gloves between their skin. He wants to be brave enough to push himself to that point but he’s not ready for that yet. 

He loosens his grip and lets their hands slip apart before he starts walking, glancing around the hallway. Per Haskell has his eyes on them despite being engaged in conversation with Genya in the entrance to the conference room. 

“We need to get out of here before we get locked down.” 

Inej nods. “Right.” She pulls away and they start to walk down the hall again. 

Kaz’s tensions relax when they reach the hangar and see the Crows all milling around the shuttle, looking inconspicuous for the moment in the bustle of people, but he knows it’s not long before they start attracting attention. His eyes flit to each familiar face. They acknowledge the silent signal and all head toward the shuttle. 

It’s a tight squeeze, done nearly silently. It isn’t until he’s moving toward the cockpit when he hears the agitated back and forth of two dissenting voices. 

“You’re doing it wrong. We’re never going to get out of here with that clearance code.” 

There’s an annoyed huff. “Well then, you’re in charge of the code. I can handle the flying.” 

“It’s my ship. I’m the pilot, Sunshine.” 

Kaz reaches the entrance to see both Wylan and Jesper at the controls. 

“You don’t fly like an Imperial pilot. They’re going to notice.” Wylan glares at Jesper and bats his hand away from the control he’s reaching for. “Just focus on the codes.” 

Jesper leans forward. “You know, it’s kind of hot how you take charge.” 

Kaz clears his throat. He ignores the way Wylan’s skin flushes and Jesper’s predatory grin. “Time to fly.” 

Engines hum to life, shortly followed by a radio static call. “Imperial Ship, you have not been cleared for take off. Please state your call sign.” 

Wylan and Jesper look at each other in alarm. It’s almost comical. Jesper, only slightly less useless in this situation grabs the radio. “Oh, right. Tower, this is Rogue...One.”

Kaz closes his eyes at the stupidity. Even Wylan looks pained. Jesper however forges ahead. 

“Rogue One, taking off.” 

He closes the radio connection as Wylan maneuvers the shuttle into the air and they head off into uncertain danger. Kaz glances back at Inej. She meets his gaze with the same stoic determination. At least they’re in this together.  

...

Keep an eye out for Part III coming out next week!

[spontaneousstupidwriting]

FebuWhump Day 3: Imprisonment

Peter gets locked in a closet at school and can't get out without risking his secret being found out.

Also on AO3

Peter sighs as Flash continues to taunt him as he walks through the halls. Normally Peter wouldn't care so much about the bully but both Ned and MJ are out today.

“Hey, Penis, I’m talking to you!” Flash shouts, Peter rolls his eyes and ignores his spidey-sense telling him something is about to happen. He grunts as he's shoved into the lockers. Flash crowds him and the rest of the students don't spare more than a glance at the familiar scene. "You should know better than to ignore me by now, Parker."

Peter huffs, "Whatever, Flash, can we just get this over with, we're going to be late for class."

Flash looks to the left of the lockers then to the thinning hallway crowd before turning back to him, "Oh I don't think you'll need to worry about that."

Flash grabs him by the front of his shirt and drags him to the door by the lockers that he glanced at earlier. "What are you-" Peter isn't given time to finish his question before the other teen opens the door and shoves him into the rooms. Peter stumbles into the shelves lining the back of what is apparently a small storage room. Dust fills the air after he disturbs it leading to a coughing fit.

"Have fun in there, Penis. Maybe you shouldn't ignore people," is the last thing Peter hears before the door is slammed and the light disappears.

His coughing dying down, Peter takes a second to get his bearings. The only light in the closet is what comes through the bottom of the door and as his eyes adjust to the low lighting he sees that he must be in an old janitor’s closet. The shelves are lined with cleaning supplies and everything seems to be layered in dust.

The bell signaling the beginning of first period rings and Peter sighs, one of the few days that he gets to school early and he still doesn’t get to class before the bell. He reaches for the handle and twists. Instead of turning as it should, it makes a grinding sound before it stops twisting completely. Peter uses a little more strength but it quickly becomes apparent that he’d have to use some more than he’s usually comfortable using outside of his suit. He debates with himself, remembering that the school recently installed cameras after someone raided the lockers and that it’d see him breaking the doorknob on his way out. Peter’s shoulders slump in defeat, he can’t handle another mark on his record.

Of all the days to forget my phone, Peter mourns. He resigns himself to waiting and settles on the floor, maybe he can use the small bit of light to outline his English essay. Surely Flash will come back.

So he waits.

He waits through the bell signaling the end of first period, and waits as the beginning of second period starts. He waits as the following periods begin and end and debates breaking the doorknob again as he regrets forgetting to put more snacks in his backpack and lunch begins. He waits as it ends and the later classes begin and waits some more till the end bell rings.

Throughout the day as he hears his classmates walk by Peter can’t bring himself to call out and face the humiliation that awaits his release that way. It’s only until about a half-hour after school ends that Peter gives up hope of being released by his tormentor that he gives in and starts pounding on the door calling for help. He can hear that the few people in the hall can hear him as steps slow and a few mention it to someone else, but no one comes to help him. That doesn’t stop Peter from continuing because surely someone will come to help.

But no one does. Not the stragglers or the club goers, even a janitor passes by later long after school ends, the sound of music coming from his direction, likely from headphones.

Eventually, the school clears out, void of any sounds. Peter slumps against the door, not believing that he was still stuck in here. By this point, there’s no light coming from the bottom of the door and it starts to cool as the heaters turn off for the night.

Peter reconsiders his options, while there's no chance of a person seeing him break the knob the cameras likely continue rolling after school ends and there are security alarms on the doors in case someone breaks in. Would they activate if he opens them from the inside? He doesn’t want to risk it. May is supposed to get home around ten tonight, a time still far off. Once again he resigns himself to wait, but this time it’s much more unpleasant.

His stomach has been growling since school ended and the cold begins to seep into his bones. It’s wintertime now and the temperature continues to drop as the night continues. The lack of food and overwhelming cold slows his thoughts and he just stares at the door in front of him. When was the last time he went so long without food? Mr. Stark is always hounding him to eat because of his metabolism so it’s been a while.

Despite how cold he is, Peter doesn’t shiver, something that seemed to happen due to the bite. He pulls his jacket even tighter around him and regrets not wearing a scarf like May told him to that morning. He shuffles into the corner connected to the door on autopilot and his eyes get heavier and heavier as the temperature continues its descent.

May, finally able to take a break, checks her phone as she takes her break getting some fresh air in the hospital courtyard. She frowns when she sees that she has a voicemail from Peter’s school and immediately checks it.

An absence notice? She checks for any messages from her nephew or Tony, because while these notices used to be pretty common, Tony usually checks Peter out at the office after being appointed as one of his emergency contacts. But there’s nothing from either of them, nothing to tell her where Peter is or if he’s okay.

Panic beginning to rise in her chest she clicks on Peter’s contact and waits with bated breath as it continues to ring. Maybe he’s asleep or in the shower she tries to assure herself but that excuse becomes a bit harder after Peter’s voicemail greets her for the third time. Giving up on that she scrolls over to Tony’s contact, hoping that he’ll answer and have some answers.

Tony’s working in the lab when FRIDAY interrupts his music, “May Parker is calling you, boss.”

Tony frowns, “What time is it, baby girl?”

“It is eight twenty-two p.m. May is scheduled to be working right now and Peter’s suit has not been online since his patrol two days ago. Would you like to answer the call?”

Tony nods, “Answer it and save everything here, for now, something seems off about this.”

Instead of a response from FRIDAY, the next thing Tony hears is May’s voice, “Tony?”

Wiping his hands off on a cloth, Tony answers, “Hey May, everything alright? FRI says you’re supposed to be at work.”

“Is Peter with you? Or have you heard from him at all today?”

Tony freezes, “No, he sent his usually good morning text at the ungodly hour he usually does but nothing else. What’s wrong?”

He can hear May’s shaky breath, “His school says he wasn’t at school today and he isn’t answering his phone. I haven’t heard from him since he left for school this morning,” by the end of it her voice starts to break.

A pit grows in his stomach as he tries to keep his voice steady for May, “You need to take a deep breath okay? I have multiple trackers on him. I'm sure he has at least one on him,” A hologram pops up on his workstation with various items and locations.

“In any other circumstance that’d be extremely creepy,” she faintly laughs.

“From the looks of it his phone and suits are at home but his wallet, keys, nano bracelets, and watch are at Midtown and got there right before school started. So he did make it to school, and because he never takes off the nanotech I’m willing to bet he’s still there.”

“What is he doing there?”

Tony signals for FRIDAY to shut the lab down, “I don’t know but I’m going to head down there, don’t worry May. I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on.”

May sighs, “I’m going to leave early and head to the apartment, please let me know as soon as possible.”

“As soon as I find him, and I  will  find him.”

“I know you will,” is the last thing she says before hanging up.

Tony makes his way up to the elevator, “FRI, landing pad, please. I want an update if there’s any movement on a tracker.”

“Of course, boss, shall I alert Happy to meet you at Midtown?”

Tony is enveloped by a waiting suit, “Tell him to bring some food and water too, it looks like Peter’s barely moved all day and it’s been a long time since breakfast.”

FRIDAY tells him that Happy will arrive ten minutes after him as he navigates the suit to Peter’s school. “What should be waiting for us at the school security-wise?”

“There are cameras in the hallways and classrooms as well as alarms on the doors and windows activated at six-fifteen today.”

Midtown comes into view and he starts to descend, “Disable the alarms and keep the camera footage on loop until we leave. Is there any footage with Peter there today?”

“Yes, boss, in it he appears to be walking to class when another student approaches him and shoves him into a room by himself, there is no footage of Peter leaving the room.”

The pit in Tony’s stomach grows as he enters the school still in his suit, is Peter hurt? Did he hit his head? “Where is the room?”

“Take a left at the end of the hall then a right into the hall after the cafeteria, the last door on the right is the one Peter was seen pushed into.”

Tony thanks his AI as he rushes down the halls. He stops when he gets to the door and notices the knob not turning as it should, “FRI?”

“The lock appears to be tampered with.”

Tony’s frown deepens and he uses the suit's increased strength to rip the door open. He’s greeted by a seemingly empty room. But Peter  has  to be here. He looks up to the ceiling and lets out a breath of relief before the worry sets back in, why hasn’t he responded to the door breaking,

“Pete?” no response. “FRI, vitals!”

“Heartbeat is dangerously slow and his core temperature is ninety-six degrees, nearing hypothermic levels. He appears to be in a deep sleep,” FRIDAY responds, voice worried.

“Shit.” Tony activates hover mode to reach Peter and catches a glimpse of his pale face. He reaches to pry Peter from the ceiling, be as careful as he can as he gives FRIDAY instructions, “Tell Happy to crank the heat all the way up and get the emergency blankets from the trunk. Also, alert medbay.”

“Already done, he will arrive in two minutes.”

Tony thanks his AI as he finally gets Peter into his arms, there’s no reaction from the teen. Tony steps onto solid ground and quickly makes his way to the front entrance again while trying not to jostle Peter.

Happy makes it to the front as soon as Tony opens the door, likely having sped more after the update. He opens the back door then quickly grabs the blankets from the trunk as Tony sets Peter onto the seat. He orders the driver to wrap Peter in them as the suit retracts around him before speeding off into the air back to the tower. When Happy finishes he gets back into the driver's seat as Tony slides in next to Peter. He wraps his arms around his mentee and rubs his arms.

Happy immediately starts driving off to the tower, questions coming, “What happened to the kid? Why the hell is he still at school?”

Fire starts to grow in his chest as he’s reminded how this supposedly started, “May called me saying that Peter was missing and didn’t show up for school but his trackers said he ��was  at school. At eight-thirty. FRI checked the cams and saw another teen lock him in a closet but never saw him come out. Now we’re here.” Tony couldn’t help the anger that shone in his tone, what the fuck was that kid thinking, and why didn’t anyone help Peter? “I’m going through the rest of the footage after we take care of Pete and call May.”

Happy nods silently and speeds up.

The next morning Peter’s still sleeping in medbay, his condition improved with gradual warming and a nutrient drip. According to Cho, Peter adapted more spider-like traits than they previously thought, including hibernation. Because of course he did.

But instead of sitting by Peter’s side Tony is up in the penthouse, boiling with rage after seeing how no one helped his mentee, his  kid , as he was thrown into lockers then shoved into that damned closet, and ignored him again as he yelled for help. Hell, some  laughed  instead of helping him. There was some slight frustration with Peter and how he didn’t use his powers to get out and just  ask him to change the footage and lock like really, Peter, it was so easy, kid.  It wasn’t even a new thing, Tony checked back and that kid had been bullying Peter since before the cameras were even installed.  Why didn’t he tell me?  Instead of wallowing on that he calls May up, his aunt deserving to know what this punk has been doing to their kid.

It’s only a couple of minutes later that May approaches him, having been downstairs with Peter. “Is this where you’ve been?” she asks quietly. “You should come down, you know Pete would love to see you there when he wakes up.” She touches his arm and gives him a sympathetic smile.

Tony smiles back tightly, “I’ll go down after this and handle the rest later, but there’s something you should see.” May nods in assent and he plays the video of Peter being harassed yesterday morning. May gasps and clutches his arm. Before she can say anything Tony stops the video and starts talking, “This isn’t an isolated incident either. I had FRIDAY check all of the footage, and this punk has been messing with our kid since before the cameras were installed a couple of months ago."

May's face tightens and her eyes seem to glow, “And the teachers do nothing? Does anyone help him? This is bullshit! It never should have gotten to this point! If Peter had been in there any longer who the hell knows what could have happened? We have to do something!”

Tony grips her shoulders and looks her in the eyes, “You’re right, and I’ll be with you every step of the way, and with me will be my best lawyers and even better, Pepper. As soon as she finds out about this there will be nothing stopping her from tearing that school apart for what’s happened to Peter.”

May goes to respond but is interrupted by FRIDAY, “I recommend heading back to medbay, Peter is showing signs of waking.”

Instead of saying anything, May takes a deep breath and shakily smiles, “Thank you, Tony. For being here for him.”

Tony relaxes and smiles back, “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

[qvid-pro-qvo]

iii. the dinner date.

ocean’s eleven au, aaron hotchner x female!reader. the dinner date.

inspiration from this prompt. some of the dialogue is taken directly from the film. 

i. // ii. // iii. // iv. // v. // vi. // vii.

-

it’s morning. that’s what hotch sees when he blinks awake.

there’s an upside to infiltrating a five-star hotel and casino you mean to rob, and that’s that the beds are often perfect, and sunlight comes through the windows at the ideal time of day. early enough that the visitor doesn’t feel like the day is wasted, but late enough to encourage going down to the floor, hitting a couple of rounds after a much-too-expensive brunch. 

aaron hotchner is not the target demographic. he knows too much about the behind-the-scenes of this particular place to linger in it, but he is... fond of the bed all the same. there’s something about a hotel bed, the way the sheets feel against his skin, that makes everything feel, at the very least, okay. after all, there’s no personal history in a hotel. there’s only what you wake up to do and fall asleep doing. mistakes left behind for the housekeeping to wash away.

and god knows he has a lot of mistakes to wash away. 

he sits up. moves to the bathroom, to the shower. dresses in a decent suit, because anything less would make him stand out the same way anything more would, and his job isn’t to stand out. his job is to relax, and observe, and remain behind the scenes until he needs to step in. by the time he looks in the mirror, his armor is on, and the sun is a bit too high in the sky for his liking, but he quickly makes his way to the adjoining room, where dave and some of the others are lingering. 

“what’s the problem?” he immediately asks. because alvez and simmons are here, and they shouldn’t be here. they should be on the floor, causing a distraction, because that’s what they do. that’s the plan. 

“i don’t know, boss. garcia said to wait, so i waited,” alvez tells him, shrugging, which earns him a hit from simmons. 

“oh, so garcia said?” simmons rolls his eyes. “i told you we should’ve gone. you know jareau and lewis are waiting for us.” 

“and get caught? come on, man, that’s stupid -” 

“you’re stupid -” 

“hey,” rossi says, firm, and the two of them stop shoving and just glare. hotch just looks between them, finally meeting rossi’s eyes for a casual, silent conversation. 

rossi just smirks. 

you hired them. 

yeah. he did. 

he turns to the other person in the room, gives her a steady gaze. “garcia. what’s the problem?” 

she’s fidgety. hands playing with a flamboyant pen that matches her extravagant necklace. she forces herself to stand out, and it’s why her best work is behind the scenes. “foyet doesn’t want anyone touching what he’s got,” she says. “obviously. so the only way for someone to get in is to get me a hardline wired. that way we have control of visual and audio. it gets us a secure and steady in, rather than me having to fight foyet’s firewalls every time i want to change camera angles, or replace a video - “

hotch lifts his hand to stop her. he doesn’t need the details. he just needs to know if it’s feasible. “so. a hardline would get you what you want?” 

“if we want to finish this recon, yes. it’s the only way for me to get all of the sightlines we need.” she looks frustrated, but lifts her chin to look at him anyway, dips it in a nod. “sir.” 

so hotch thinks. he thinks, because he’s the idea man, and when he nods, it makes garcia raise her brow.

“sir?” 

“get changed. you’ll go in yourself. dave will get you a uniform, and you’ll install the hardline. alvez and simmons will provide the distraction, which was their... original goal, and you will go in and get what you need.” 

her eyes widen, and had been progressively growing to the size of dinner plates during his plan. “sir, i’m not... i’m not meant to be out there. in the field. in the casino. i’m supposed to be here, behind my screen, looking from a distance -” 

he offers her some vague reassurance, with a smile and a hand on her shoulder. “and you will be. as soon as you finish, you’ll be back here, but for right now, what we need is that direct wiring into the system, and i don’t trust these two to get what you need.” 

that gets the attention of the men, who both lift their gaze to glare at their boss. but it’s not a real glare, just like hotch’s slight is not a real slight, and eventually it gets sorted. aaron steps back and watches the inevitable happen, watches alvez and simmons shove each other again on their way out the door. he rolls his eyes, looks at dave again, before taking his own leave. 

“where are you going?” rossi asks, moving towards the bar as garcia sits silent. new for her, with the new role, as hotch starts to move out of the room with a purpose. because hotch is through with watching, after a moment, when another plan springs to mind, another moment formulating in hs brain. 

“going to check on lewis, prentiss, and morgan,” he calls back. “and then i have some... business.” 

hotch and rossi work because they have trust. so there’s no questions, just a brow raise, a nod. 

“leave them be, aaron,” rossi calls out after him, which gets no reply. after all, no one else needs to know that it’s not morgan and prentiss and lewis he’s keeping an eye on, and it’s not alvez and simmons he’s tailing. 

leaving hotch to take care of... business. 

-

it’s evening. two days until their plan kicks into action. but hotch’s mind isn’t on the upcoming heist. no. his mind and his eyes are on you. 

after all, prentiss, playing the big spender, has foyet’s attention. alvez and simmons are working the security, the ins and outs of the place, especially after getting garcia settled in.. reid is on foyet, marking his every move, and jareau and garcia are getting the looped footage for the big day. lewis is at one of the tables, dealing good hands, learning that system.

it works. the team works. 

because while foyet is preoccupied with satisfying a vital customer, it means that he’s late to dinner. and at 7:16, hotch can see the way your head tilts to the side, just a little, the way your eyes start to scan the restaurant with a purpose. his eyes trace the line of your dress, your back dotted with beauty marks that he once had the privilege to put his lips on. 

a privilege he lost. threw away. tossed aside. 

he comes up from behind. walks with slow, deliberate steps, an unconscious attempt to mirror foyet’s gait, and as he moves close the burden of tension in you shoulders releases. you’re smiling, because your ears lift, ever so slightly, and when you turn to face him he pretends for a moment that it’s all for him. 

“one minute late. for a moment there i thought i’d have to start a search...” 

but the smile’s gone. you see him, and your vision goes a shade of red, surely, because your beautiful smile turns into a mouth agape. brows furrowing, eyes wide. your hand clutches your clutch, nails digging into the bejeweled bag, and hotch tries not to think about how in love with you he is but finds himself falling all over again. 

“...party.” 

he says your name. gently, like it’s the word of god. “i got out,” is what he follows it up with. not exactly the smoothest opening line. 

“you got out?” you’re still shocked to see him, so your voice is weak.

“of prison.” 

realization settles over you like a veil, closing you off. “aaron.” 

his given name. the only person who says it much anymore is dave. but in your mouth, it’s the only one that fits. 

shock turned into realization, which is now morphing into indignation. it plays out like a symphony on your face, and he moves to take a seat on your table, looking towards the waiter. he waves him down. “whiskey, and a whiskey.” he pinches his fingers, showing the sizes he wants, turning back to you with an elbow on the table.

there’s no more vulnerability on you. his eyes trace the line of your dress, meeting your eyes with a smile playing on your lips. 

“it’s good to see you,” he offers, but you don’t take the bait. 

“you shouldn’t be here.” 

“i got parole. as long as i call...” 

“i mean here, aaron. at this table. sitting down.” 

there’s faux and real hurt in his gaze as he sits back, your glasses set in front of the two of you gently. “so. no time for old friends?” 

“believe it or not, the less time spent with you the better.”

you lean back. lounging almost, in your chair, like you belong. your chin is raised, meeting his eyes, defiant, and he just sighs. leaning forward to take a drink of the amber liquid.

he didn’t think it’d be easy. bringing you back to him. but damn, if he didn’t think it would be easier. looking you in the eye and realizing he lost so much more than he realized. the room feels like it’s disappearing, and the only thing is the two of you sitting and this table. 

but he pretends. he’s good at that. offers a small smile, a signature of his, and he watches as you tense at the sight that used to bring you so much... comfort. “so you think that foyet is the person who deserves your time? you don’t know who he is. if you think you’re free from a liar and a thief -”

the look you shoot him is nothing short of furious. “i think i’m free from you. and george... george cares about me. which is more than you ever did.” 

he leans back in his seat, too, and looks you over. looks over your dress, the way it shines, the pretty blue, and tries not to reason that you chose blue because he told you once that it was his favorite color on you. because you were more than that now. separate from him. no matter how much he wished it different. 

“the museum upstairs looks great.” his mouth feels dry, but he manages to put something hard in his tone. “tell me, what’s the differnce, between monet and manet?” 

“one that you never bothered to learn,” you quip back, and your hand squeezes your bag just a little bit more. “aaron, you need to leave.” 

“and you need to listen. he doesn’t... care about you.” 

“and you’re one to talk about what it means to care about me, right? the expert?” 

aaron doesn’t know how to respond to that. he was hoping there would be some tact, but you’re doing what you’ve always done. getting to the heart of him, pulling down defenses. but he can play that game, too, looks down at your left ring finger. “what happened to your ring?” 

and because he knows you, he sees the look. the glance towards your own hand, the catch of your bottom lip between your teeth. you’re fighting something, and you must win so you can look him in the eyes once again when you say it.

“i sold it. or did you not get the papers?”

the papers. divorce papers. ones he turned over his hands a few times before walking out of the place. “i did. my last day inside.” he smirks with it, and your eyes drop, not looking at him, looking at almost anything else. 

“i told you i’d write,” you finally whisper. with a sigh, you release your clutch, and glance behind you. waiting for a rescue. 

“i’m sorry,” he tries, earnest. he means it. he doesn’t lie anymore, like he told you, but your eyes just roll. 

“i’m sure you are, aaron. but i’m not.” 

he knows he deserves that. and yet he still pushes. leans close. this is a game, the two of you are playing, and he’s good at those. always has been. “i’m here. for you.” 

it’s the truth. bald-faced, almost as much as his lies before this whole mess, and that irony seems to settle with you, your open mouth closing tightly, jaw clenching. 

“you’re a liar, and a thief. i don’t think i should find it a habit to believe what you say.”

“i don’t do that anymore,” aaron sighs out.

“what, steal? get hunted down by the FBI?”

“no. lie to you.”

you scoff. shake your head. “so you just lie to other people to get what you want?”

“i lied to you because you were all i wanted.” he leans forward, and his hand reaches for yours. by some miracle, you don’t pull away immediately, so he can savor it. your hand in his, like old times. “i’ve changed. i’m not putting up a front anymore. this. this is who i am.”

your jaw clenches. you almost seem to think about pulling away - there’s an aborted twitch of your hand, and his hold on you is loose enough, but then... then it stops. your touch lingers.

“y/n. look at me.”

and you do. turn your eyes on him, and he feels bare. he is bare. there’s no walls up, anymore. no more armor. 

“you’re not the person i thought you were,” he says, brow furrowing as you scoff out a laugh. his thumb catches on your knuckle, and your shiver... disgust? “you’re... more. you’re you. please. come with me.”

“no, i’m just not the person you wanted me to be anymore. the girl who knew nothing because she wanted to know nothing.” your hand pulls from his with a sharp twist of your wrist, and he tries not to think too much about the ring he still has on, the one that you sold. “i didn’t ask questions, and that ended up with the FBI on my doorstep. so. i think i’ll pass.”

his eyes close. “i told you, i’m not lying to you. so i would ask you do the same for me.” 

“i’m not lying, aaron. that was your job.” 

he thinks. thinks about you, and foyet, and how it makes his stomach churn. “does he make you laugh?” 

you push forward now, making sure he hears every sound you make. “he doesn’t make me cry.” 

there’s a silence in the heartbreak. so quiet that neither of you notice the new set of footsteps apporaching the table. 

“mr. hotchner. what a... surprise.” 

the voice makes aaron tense, makes you lift your head with a smile that begs him to set you free. 

“george,” you say, and it’s warm. he reaches for your shoulder and you don’t tense, you move into the touch. 

“foyet,” hotch adds, and it’s polite. civil. cold. 

“sorry i’m late. i was settling things with an influential guest,” he returns, and when he looks at aaron hotchner, there’s something there that sends hotch a chill down his spine. “i guess i didn’t know we’d be having a guest.” 

hotch lifts from his chair, so that he’s eye to eye with the man. george foyet, in the flesh. he’s shorter, up close and personal, but his presence seems to fill the spot by your side. his grip on your shoulder is firm, and one of your hands has lifted to cover his. 

“george, this is aaron,” you tell him, through your teeth. 

when foyet laughs it’s grating. “i see. the criminal.” and even with, he extends a hand, a hand that aaron takes, shakes with a small smile. “the elusive aaron hotchner. it’s a pleasure.” 

hotch’s mind is racing, thinking of how many millions he is going to pull out from under foyet’s feet. but for now, politeness. charm. “of course. lovely hotel you have.” 

“made all the more beautiful by her,” the man brags, and when he leans down to kiss your cheek you smile, ducking your head. when foyet moves to sit aaron doens’t impede him. doesn’t dare disrupt the dinner. “are you enjoying your stay so far?” 

he is, in a way. but not right now. not as he watches foyet take your hand, stretch your arm across the table, kiss your knuckles. “i am. i was just leaving my own meal when i saw my ex-wife and wanted to... just say hello.” 

“exactly. he was just saying hello,” you agree, and when the two of you meet eyes he doesn’t miss your pleading. 

leave, aaron. you need to leave.

“exactly. we were simply catching up. thinking about... better days.” 

a dig that earns him a glare from you, but foyet seems unbothered. 

“well, i hope you have a wonderful night, mr. hotchner,” foyet tells him, and it would almost be sincere if not for the fact that his eyes don’t leave you. “i don’t want our appetites to spoil.” 

aaron’s fingers twist around his ring. 

“of course. goodnight, y/n.” 

“goodnight, aaron.” 

hotch leaves the two of you behind. doesn’t look back, even at the sound of your voice lilting in the dining room, the sound of foyet’s arrogance not too far off either. walks quickly towards the stairs, moves up them with purpose, single-minded and not bothering to think about the lanky rookie trailing a distance behind. 

after all, aaron is good at games. he knows how to play. and in the end, isn’t that what a heist is? a game that aaron knows how to win? 

-

tag list: @blakeprentiss // @genevievedarcygranger // @quillvine // @falcon-arrows // @afuckingshituniverse // @sercyan // @sparklingkeylimepie // @kianagilder-blog // @alexxcorona113 // @mandyandy22 // @thedeaddrop // @angelsbabey // @lolychu // @icyprincess // @gabbygabbie // @cevanswhre // @roses-and-grasses // @mayaaaa // @baadmaxx // @ssaic-jareau // @mooneylupinblack // @rachelxwayne // @greenie128 // @dilaudidwinchester // @stylesboy // @grandpascurtains // @softbibxtch // @winterscaptain // @hurricanejjareau // @evans-dejong

[arsenicpanda]

Bughead Appreciation Day 1 Except It’s Day 2

So I spent yesterday nice and cozy in bed and put this off (good choice, tbh, I was very snug as a bug), but now, now comes the time for me to gush about some people in the fandom!  This is definitely not a comprehensive list, I have absolutely left some people out because I am very forgetful, but, in no particular order and under a cut because I’m a wordy bitch:

@tory-b: A delight and a dear, leading writer of monsterfucker!Betty, co-runner of @riverdaleprideandjoyzine, a legend and a friend, we have no choice but to stan.  Her stuff is so good and varied and just *chef’s kiss* a delight, two favorites of mine are Fangs/com/Match (Betty/dragon!Jughead meet via monsterfucker Tinder, has some great friendship moments with Kevin and Veronica and is v sexy and funny, features the horniest Betty) and Sticky Sweet Serenade ((past)-friends-to-enemies-to-lovers bughead, mixes up some statuses in Riverdale, excellent mystery, I remember reading it and going, “holy shit, a believable take on Northside!Jughead”).  I’ve also gotta mention Whats in a Name? (Betty and Jughead meet on tumblr, Betty writes poetry and Jughead is a shitposter, they slowly connect, it’s great) and To Balance the Scales (scientist!Betty/mermaid!Jughead, currently a slow build, I cannot wait for you guys to see the excellent worldbuilding she’s done).  I could keep going, or you could binge all her fics today, an excellent use of your Saturday, I assure you, because I’ve left a lot out.

@stillhidden: Always good for some great thoughts on the show, one of the best reasons for my your thoughts on Riverdale please show them to me tag, I get psyched every time I see a Riverdale text post or ask answer because I know I’m in for a good time.  Thoughtful and funny and nice, what a combo!

@satelliteinasupernova: So talented!  Author, artist, co-runner of @riverdaleprideandjoyzine, funny, haver of good thoughts on Riverdale is there anything she can’t do?  No, there is not.  Every time I see her art I’m like !!!, the colors! how well-drawn the hands are! the accuracy of their hair! the backgrounds! the way I can see the love in their eyes! I cannot even, there are no words.  Also!  Her fics!  So original!  One of my earliest memories in the fandom is reading The town called Riverdale (a sort of mystery about the meta fuckery going down in Riverdale, explores time loops, stories that control lives, the roles the Archie characters are “supposed” to have, a mash-up with concepts in Princess Tutu that requires zero knowledge of Princess Tutu) and going !!! is this a Princess Tutu mash-up?  Have I been #blessed enough to see a mash up between Riverdale, a story that fucks with archetypes, and Princess Tutu, one of the shows about fucking with archetypes and the way stories ontrol lives?  I was and I am and I raved to my non-fandom but Princess Tutu liker friend about it.  Has also wonderfully tackled eldritch horror in return to Eldervair and gothic horror/romance in The Lady of the Manor, does fluff, does angst, does it all, so go check her out!

@go-ldy: An angst and time skip queen, tbh, and always has some great thoughts on Riverdale, another reason I’m glad I have that tag.  Every time she answers an ask, I’m like, “Yesss, incoming Good Thoughts, I am HERE for this”.  But do not sleep on her as an author!  Into the Deep is some delightful dark!bughead, and I’ll walk with you in the shadows is such good time skip angst and a mystery and there’s a certain surprise I love but is a spoiler but you simply must read this, you must.  The Time after Time series is giving us that good angst bughead content that season 5 is not going to, and I’m so glad it exists and just thrilled that she trusted me to beta it.  I’m leaving a lot of stuff out though, so you should go check her out!

@milajovovich: One of the best gif makers in the fandom, I will fight you on this.  Makes absolute miracles with footage, the way she makes season 4 webrips look like they’re actual blurayrips is godly, they’re so crisp and so smooth and the coloring is always great.  And like, jesus, the way the bluray footage looks?  Fucking outstanding, the talent is off the charts.  Go marvel at their gifs, go, go.

@imreallyloveleee: A prolific, talented author and funny to boot!  loveleee is one of the people who has been here since the beginning, a mainstay in the fandom, and we are so, so lucky she hasn’t left.  How do I even begin to rec you some of her stuff?  She can write smut with fics like burn, baby (a 3x16 missing moment of bughead fucking in the car as the trailer burns, what a gift to the fandom, I can’t even), is queen of pining with fics like boy problems (season 1 post 1x05 canon divergence, a bughead get together but with that quality pining) and her i’m just a shot away series (two fics, one from Jughead’s POV and one from Betty’s, that are fully of pining and sexual tension and miscommunication and major teenage vibes, you gotta read them), and writer of one of the funniest fics in the fandom and one of my favorite, like spirits in the night (the core four + Kevin perform a seance to contact Jason Blossom and yes, it is just as funny as it sounds, perhaps even funnier).  And there are countless others, so settle in and go check her out because she does it all, fluff and angst too, I just don’t have time to rec them all.

@meditationonbaaal: Absolutely one of my all-time favorite fic authors, like across fandoms, the talent, I cannot even properly describe it, like the quality of the prose, amazing, iconic.  the devil’s daughter (a season 2 rewrite with some differences in season 1, jumps back and forth through time in the best way, has the best and creepiest dark!Jughead, has some great smut that includes dom!Betty and dom!Jughead can you believe we are so blessed, such a good rewrite of season 2, and you know how I love season 2, so that is some high praise, let me tell you) is easily in my top 10 all-time favorite fics across the many, many fandoms I’ve read many, many fics of, and you simply must check it out, you will not be disappointed.  develop, stop, fix just blew me away as a kink week fic of bughead playing with bdsm in a dark room, the layers, the smut, the trust, the feelings, I cannot even.  And doll parts!  doll parts is so good, just such an amazing take on drop dead gorgeous, a fabulous Jughead and Betty as per usual, dare I say even better than an already fantastic movie.  I am behind on loose lips sink ships, but I can already tell it’s going to be a great exploration of the Stonies and a great take on season 4.  Keep an eye on her stuff here and here, do not miss out!

@dieqohargreeves:  An icon and legend in gif making, just makes the most beautiful and intricate and creative gifs.  The coloring is amazing, the techniques are amazing, that shit is Art, I will fight you on this.  You gotta check ‘em out, you just gotta, I can’t do their work justice.

@sullypants:  The wit!  The humor!  The observational skills!  The talent, my god!  Sully is the genius behind @bettycooperoutfitwatch and @riverdalearthistory as well as a fabulous writer of both meta and fic, yet another excellent reason for me to keep up with others’ thoughts on Riverdale.  Her a comic miniverse series is so funny and sweet and such a great take on the Archie Comics version of bughead, and the after-party series (Betty and Jughead attend a, well, prom after party, and the events that happen, and I am not doing it justice, but it is v good, I promise) has such a great vibe and such great characterization.  And young adult friction (librarian!Jughead is in a kind of competition with librarian!Betty, it’s so funny and so great) is such a delight, and we do not have time to get into everything great she’s written, but go check it out here.

@lilibug--xx: The queen of bughead smut, can you believe she has graced us with her stuff?  It is steamy and it is in character and it is amazing.  Dark Cherry Chutney is still a fandom favorite of mine, just some great dark!bughead who are unaware of each other’s darkness (but oh, they find out!) as well as some excellent smut.  And Pressed for Time (Betty teasing Jughead with her skirts in an effort to get him to fuck her and he is barely holding on until he isn’t, alternating POVs in the best way) is sexy af but makes you work for it, it’s a delight.  And give you mine (Betty and Jughead fuck at work and it is so hot, I can’t even) is so goddamn good, just some of the best dom!Jughead out there.  Has also written monsterfucker!Betty, which you know I’m a fan of, in once upon a midnight (werewolf-hunter!Betty/werewolf!Jughead with sex pollen where she does not shy away from some wolfy-ness and it is hot af) and has written monsterfucker!Jughead, a rarity but always a delight, with reap what you sow (witch!Jughead/undine!Betty and Betty is so delightfully otherworldly and it is so sexy but also sweet), and there are countless other smut fics, we would be here all day if I went through them all, so you gotta check her out here.  One more thing though: she can also write fluff with Lemon Drops and Chocolate Chips, a sweet fic of Betty and Jughead as neighbors that you should definitely check out.

@thatiranianphantom:  Funny and thoughtful and talented and has correct opinions on musicals!  Writes such good explorations of post-4x17 (and post-4x17 adjacent) scenarios.  Like, the we are a masterpiece series is v good and so interesting, and no one else is singing my song is such great angst as a post-4x17 fic and a great use of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend songs.  I am forgetting a lot of stuff, I know I am, and I think I might be behind like a fool, so let’s go check out all her stuff together here, yes?  Yes.  Also?  Great for Riverdale speculation, especially about the season 5 musical episode.

@heartunsettledsoul:  So talented, queen of canon missing moments, and funny to boot!  I love reading her liveblogging of the episodes, and I cannot recommend her stuff enough.  Her Forgotten Moments series of canon missing moments is iconic, you must go read all of it, especially there’s witchcraft in your hips, a post-2x13 fic of Betty and Jughead being such teenagers and Jughead being a dweeb about his cheerleader girlfriend and I am not doing it justice but you gotta go read it, man, you gotta.  But the series is full of gems from the beginning with Midnight Silence (Betty and Jughead talk post-1x04 about the Grundy debacle and it’s such a delight) and going all the way through to the most recent it might’ve been a nightmare (a 4x12 through 4x16 fic that gives me a wide range of emotions and is fantastic) and your eyes look like coming home (Betty’s diary entries throughout season 1, simply inspired).  But she’s also so good at AUs!  a dark world aches (for a splash of the sun) is already looking so good as a bughead mystery with some varchie fun on the side, just some quality core four content, and won’t be the same (if you’re not here with me) is a favorite of fake dating, Christmas, and there was only one bed, just the best tropefest.  And there are so, so many more, so you must check her out here.

@lovedinapastlife: She writes such a variety of AUs, I am just in awe of them all!  The talent, I am amazed.  The dark!bughead in The Society is peak dark!bughead with a simply iconic yandere!Betty, and you are seriously missing out if you have not read it yet.  Oh, and there’s some more dark!Jughead with a side of dark!Betty in the key to harm(ony) that you must check out because it’s such a great ride and is sexy, what more could you want?  Every movie AU she does really takes the source material and makes it her own from works You Drive Me Crazy (but I'm gonna keep on loving you), based on Drive Me Crazy and definitely better than the movie, to the most recent to all the boys (but especially you), based on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and just so sweet.  But also can write otherworldly fics like Heart’s Desire with genie!Betty and The Second Coming with fae!Jughead, as well as regular aus like Detention (Betty and Jughead in detention and it gets a little sexy but also quite cute), and pure porn like Eye of the Beholder (Betty and Jughead as sorcerers who hook up over sorcerer Tinder and it is sexy but also sweet), as well as some of the best ABO in fandom with her A/B/O Mine series (alpha!Jughead/omega!Betty in high school and holy shit is it hot as hell).  I am only just skimming the surface here, so definitely go check her out!

@kyloren aka @jughead-jones:  Mila is so talented at making gifs, like goddamn, and also so funny, but I bet you didn’t know that she also has written some damn good fic!  She hides it, but it is out there and it is very good, my favorite being let me hang my hook on your splendor, a fandom fave of a Scooby-Doo au that is so much more thoughtful and clever with its casting, and also very amusing, you must check out the rest of her stuff here.

@elizabethbettscooper: A delightful person and a delightful writer who is largely retired from the bughead fandom but still such a talent, like seriously.  Her Twin Peaks Riverdale AU The Past Dictates the Future is so good, you simply must check it out, like you must.  And yours was the first face i saw is such a fun AU of “what if Betty’s crush on Archie was a front for her crush on Jughead”, you must go read it.  And holy shit, her i may be bad (but i’m perfectly good at it) series is peak dom!Jughead/sub!Betty taking place when they’re in college and fucking in so many varied ways, like if you are into that, you must go read these fics, you must, you will have a great and sexy, sexy time.  And there’s so much more good stuff, you gotta go read it all here.

@bettycreeper: She does so much for the fandom and she makes such gorgeous gifs!  Like, the coordination she does on the @bugheadfamily server and @bugheadfanfictionawards and @riverdale-events and probably elsewhere cannot be understated, she is such a valuable presence in the fandom.  And have you seen her gifs?  Gorgeous quality, just gorgeous, and her movie poster gifs for fics are simply inspired.  Also?  She’s an amazing beta, just outstanding.

@stillscape: A very thoughtful person and excellent writer who I can’t seem to tag.  Dianthus Caryophyllus is still one of my favorite fics in the fandom, a high school bughead fic with some amazing pining from Jughead with an oblivious Betty, I can feel it, it’s so good.  And of course there’s Ninia, an amazing take on the soulmates trope, just so good, I cannot do it justice, you must check it out.  The for the life of me series is also such a good AU for Betty and Jughead getting together pre-Riverdale at a summer internship, I have such fond memories of it.  And la peste (the plague)!  So good, I cannot even.  We don’t have time for everything, except you should make time and go check all of it out here.

@theheavycrown:  God, where would we be without Sarah?  She does so much work for the @bugheadfamily and @bugheadfanfictionawards and @riverdale-events and @riverdalecentral and I’m probably forgetting some, tbh.  And so sweet and talented!  Her gifs are fantastic and so are her fics.  Like, Rain Comes Down (Betty and Jughead fucking in the car on the side of the road while cars drive by)?  Iconic, some amazing exhibitionism.  you had me howling(Betty in heat in the woods and then Jughead finds her and fucking ensues)? Fantastic ABO, so horny, so desperate.  Beneath the Silver Moon Rising?  Excellent dom!Jughead, excellent sexy times.  You must go check out all of her stuff here, you must.

@50shades-of-bughead:  Just some of the absolute cutest art that you must check out, especially their series of dark!bughead that is just fantastic.

@thepointoftheneedle: The variety of work here is phenomenal, the talent, I cannot.  Took my ridiculous double fake marriage/draft-dodging concept and turned it into an excellent, thoughtful period piece with phenomenal characterization and a great mystery with Never No Locomotive, I cannot recommend it enough.  And Ghosts and Clouds and Nameless Things (ghost!Jughead/grieving-dead-Jughead!Betty with a side of mystery) gave me so many emotions, I think I almost cried, and I am not a crier, I assure you.  Hey Pixie Dream Girl, I’m Coming for Your Man! (Betty in her bookstore saves Jughead from his date with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl) is so delightfully funny, and Sunflowers (Betty and Jughead share a working space and fall in love) is so goddamn cute.  I have actually found myself behind on her work, which is a crime, it all looks so amazing and I know it will be, and you must check all of it out with me here.

@hellodinoflower:  Such an amazing presence in the fandom, such a delight, so clever and funny.  She ran @bugheaddrabblechallenge this past summer and gave us all so much joy in the process, and, while her fics are deleted now (as is her right), I promise you that they were amazing, you all missed out if you slept on her.  She’s such a great follow, you gotta follow her.

@bluevelvetvideo:  A delighful soul, great character insight, great writing.  Like, her smut is fantastic, have you read Arsenal (a double feature of Betty and Jughead fooling around in public and then having some sexytimes back in private with some quality dom!Jughead, let me tell you, v steamy)?  Because you should.  Christmas Lights (Jughead ties Betty up with their Christmas lights, it’s fantastically sexy) is a delight, and you can’t blame gravity (for falling in love) is a very fun take on soulmates and soulmarks, and you simply must go read it.  She is a master of smut, let me tell you, and you must check out all her stuff here.  Also?  An excellent beta, 10/10, I’m so lucky to have her.

@a-true-janian-reply:  Very funny, has excellent thoughts on Riverdale!  Like, truly, every time I see an original text post or a reblog from her, I am PSYCHED because it’s always going to be SO GOOD.

@writeradamanteve:  Such great talent across genres, really impressive.  Drive (illegal drag racing Betty and college student but former-ish Serpent Jughead, just fantastic) is one of my earliest fandom favorites, I remember excitedly telling my non-fandom friend about it because I thought it was so clever, and we all know how good Daemon Bound is, yes?  Yes, I’m sure we do.  Let’s go make sure we’ve read all her stuff here.

@thugheadjones:  Has some great insights, some great responses to dumb anons, and some fantastic art, like holy shit, I cannot even.

@bugggghead:  A delightful soul, so nice, so talented.  Writes some amazing smut, like, have you read intimately acquainted (alpha!Jughead/omega!Betty, meeting up on an app to help Betty with her heat in a heat retreat, four chapters of excellent smut)?  Because you should if you’re even kind of interested in ABO.  And en pointe is the bughead knifeplay fic of dreams, you gotta check it out.  And there are so many other ones, we do not have time to cover them all.  She also does cute fics, btw, and Message Me (fanfic-author-who-is-actually-the -real-author!Jughead/gif-maker-and-fangirl!Betty meet on tumblr and fall in love and it’s great) is such a delight, definitely go check it out.  In fact, go check out all her stuff here.  Also a fantastic beta, I really owe her for that.

@heavy-lies-the-crown:  A talented soul who has written so much high quality fic, from the hilarious red ribbon winner (a Christmas fic comedy that I cannot describe well but I assure you is both hilarious and sweet) to the emotional and moving road to me (Betty and Jughead break up, find themselves, and come back together and it’s perfection) to the heart-ripping angst of apizza (a semi post-4x17-speculation fic of bughead together but apart at Yale and the way they will come back together and it is so good and so angsty) to many, many more.  You gotta go check it all out here.

@lurker-no-more:  Yet another funny person, we as a fandom are so blessed, you must check them out, you just must.

@iconic-ponytail:  Another excellent writer!  a revelation in the light of day is SUCH a great slowburn and  SUCH a great take on both FBI!Betty and Sheriff!Jughead and the two of them falling in love as adults.  Also, the side varchie is fantastic, and the mystery is amazing.  I have not yet checked out the nighthawks, but I already know it’s going to be good, I can tell, you can trust this author to be quality, so go check all of her stuff out here.

@soyforramen:  Funny!  Very funny!  Also?  Writes some great ficlets that are, I think, exclusive to tumblr, which is a tragedy, tbh, but as is their right.  But I do have the link to this genius fic about bughead and a platypus in honor of the platypus anon that was going around this summer.  Definitely go check them out!

And now I am very tired, I have used up my energy, and I am so sorry if I forgot anyone!

[kaiowut99]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 65 and 66 Subbed (Finalized)

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

Hell Kaiser Ryou! Chimeratech Overdragon

Since his defeat to Ed in the Pro Leagues, the life in Kaiser Ryou has faded.  But at the invitation of a suspicious promoter, he participates in an underground duel--duels in which, crucially, one risks their life to treat their savage audience to a show.  As Acidic Last Machine Virus causes his Machine-Types like Cyber Dragon to rust, the Kaiser is not only cut off from summoning any Monsters, but it causes him to take damage.  With each drop in his LP, an electric current flows through his body, exciting the spectators...

Judai’s First Dream Duel!

Lost in the forest, Judai’s consciousness starts to fade from hunger, causing him to reminisce about his duels thus far--taking down Instructor Chronos’s Ancient Gear Golem with Flame Wingman during his Entrance Exam, battling the then-Blue elite Manjoume and his V-to-Z Dragon Catapult Cannon shortly after his enrollment, battling Misawa’s seventh deck with the right to represent the Academia on the line, and his first loss in the face of Kaiser Ryou’s Cyber End Dragon...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*crashes onto your TL months late with non-corporate coffee*

And these two are finally up and finalized! Sorry for the wait, if you were looking forward to ‘em--as I mentioned in my post on Sunday, they were pushed back a bit while I did one final lookover on 1-64′s scripts and hardsubs so I could actually call them “finalized.” I’d started to get them out of the way while waiting for some potential editing help, then just decided to finish it after scrapping the last little thing I hoped to work on (I planned to break briefly after 66 to do these re-finalizations anyway, but the timing happened to work out).  More details there.

But leaving that aside, here we have a pretty popular episode in Hell Kaiser Ryou’s debut, as he’s pushed to the brink by Mad Dog Inukai after Monkey Monkey Mountain Saruyama invites him to his first underground duel. They do a really good job of portraying Ryou as having lost his mojo post-Ed, showing a realistic view of what the big leagues in sports are like when that happens to you and you lose out on sponsorships/etc, and so when he gets cornered and Saruyama drills into him how he never once thought of winning since that duel, wanting to just stick with his respectful dueling, a spark lights up in him and... well, RIP Mad Dog. (Also, s/o to Takeshi Maeda for really selling Ryou’s shift in mindset by the end, and to his dub VA for sounding similarly good, imo.)

66 is probably less popular in comparison, treating us to our first clipshow of the series, though 66 episodes in isn’t a bad time (could be worse, VRAINS jk).  It’s endearing enough, though--kinda nice seeing SAL again; Judai’s hunger-induced visions give us Chronos, Misawa, and Manjoume making monkey noises; and the duels featured were important for Judai early on.  I also like the bit of new animation as vision!Ryou follows up with Judai about respecting his opponents; goes with what I’d noticed before about Judai adding his Fusion Undone/De-Fusion strategy to his own dueling after losing to him. (also Judai making a signpost sweatdrop from his aloofness pls)

Part of the initial delay with these were the footage fixes I wanted to work on, as well as a couple visual translations here/there which were fun to work on.  Really want to thank @paradoxi-kay for their great work as always in helping to translate the cover of the copy of Duel Magazine that Judai comes across early in 65, and starting the one on Shou’s copy that I finished up.  List of everything worked on below the cut, as usual, if you’re curious.

Enjoy, folks! I’ve gotten some work started on 67 already, and my plan is to try and work on some double releases to make up a bit of time, lol.  I’ll be posting these two on NAC in the next couple of days along with the re-finalized hardsubs and scripts/DVDRips; while I work on getting 67 and 68 done, I’ll also start some work on prepping softsub MKVs (also to go up on NAC) for everything I’ve fully finalized, since it’s been a while on that front.

Fixes/Edits! (65)

As Judai wanders in the forest early in the episode, he comes across a stack of old Duel Magazines; the front cover shows Ryou and is an issue from his winning streak days before his more recent loss to Ed.  Thanks to @paradoxi-kay​‘s great work in typesetting my translation onto the cover I blanked (which I detailed here), you’ll see it in English in the hardsub above.  The translation was first applied to the close-up of the cover that comes after #2 below, and then I took the translated cover and made it its own image that I put into the earlier shot as Judai approaches it while they’re all still tied up (detailed here).  The text reads, “Exclusive!! Kaiser Ryou Marufuji / Breaking down his Cyber Dragon deck!!! / In this issue: / -Duelists Du Jour / -Pro League Battle Data! / -Reader-Submitted Best Duels! / -Strategic Attack Decks by Type!” (Really appreciated Kay’s input on “Du Jour” because my original translation for that, “Duelists Who Are All the Rage,” wasn’t as catchy, lol.)

As Judai picks up one of the older Duel Magazines and flips it open, we see on the back cover an ad featuring the three Phantasms--it’s actually an in-show ad for Shadows of Infinity (since the episode aired around the time the pack came out in Japan); I detailed the process in blanking and translating it here (shared above).  The ad reads, "The Three Phantasms Descend!" featuring Uria and Raviel’s names on their images.

As we go to the Red dorm as Shou narrates about the Kaiser’s slump, we see a magazine page describing what happened to him since his loss to Ed; I covered my blanking/translating this in the link shared in #2.

We then see that it’s Shou reading the page from his own copy of Duel Magazine, this one more recent than Judai’s featuring Ed on the cover, though it features the same SOI/Phantasms ad on its back cover (now showing Hamon and its name as well).  Like with Judai’s issue, I used the Japanese cover and the dub’s edit as reference to just redraw Ed and Diamondguy enough to remove Ed’s name; Kay had started the translation placement and I finished it up.  For the SOI ad, like with #2, I added in the dub’s edit in pieces, tweaking it to match the original image more (since they again oddly edited the text out or redrew Uria/et al weirdly to do so).  We do now see more of the ad which shows that the trio’s names are on each of them, the English of which I added.

As Asuka snatches the magazine from Shou to work on cheering him up, to be consistent, I also worked in these cover translations to the magazine as she lifts then curls it up, using the dub’s blanked Phantasms edit as a base that I touched up a bit while adding back the Japanese cards.  Detailed more in #2′s link.  (We now also see that the ad reads on, “New! Shadow of Infinity - On Sale November 11th [2005]!”; the IRL booster pack came out in Japan on Nov. 17th, 2005, a few weeks before 65 aired.)

Asuka then lifts the curled-up magazine into view in a close-up, with the SOI/Phantasms ad visible which I also applied my translations above to as needed, using the dub’s blank edit as a base that I redrew parts of to touch up and match the Japanese image more.  Detailed more in #2′s link.

As Ryou meets Monkey Saruyama, he introduces himself by handing out his business card reading, "Saruyama Promotion - Representative Monkey Saruyama;" as detailed in #2′s link, I cleaned it up using Photoshop’s Clone Tool, then slapped the translation on using Calibri as the font.

As Ryou contemplates attacking Acid Slime with his Cyber Dragon and Mad Dog Inukai taunts him, as Mad Dog then slides in on a split-screen to “clear his doubts,” there’s a quick frame as Inukai takes over the screen where there’s a gap between his pecs and the split-screen edge.  I fixed it by just drawing in the rest of his chest in Photoshop to fill his side of the split-screen.

As Inukai starts his turn and activates his Contingency Fee Magic Card, there’s a frame where, as he’s sliding his hand with the card into the shot, the card itself slides ahead in his hand before his hand does; as a result, you can see a bit of the background just under the card before his hand catches up to the card in the next frame.  I fixed this by just duplicating the first frame here over it in Vegas.

Two here--first, after Ryou has his Proto Cyber Dragon attack Clone Slime, as Inukai begins to explain its effect, there’s a quick frame before the shot goes from a close-up to a slow zoom as he moves where his neck vanishes (new meme format go); I fixed this by just duplicating the previous frame in Vegas, while also correcting one of his looping lip-flap frames so that the scar on his chin is above the shading under his lip.  Then, as Inukai goes into Clone Slime’s effect and the shot slowly zooms out, we see Clone Slime on his Disk in Attack Mode when it’s in Defense Mode right now; fixed it by placing a proxy in Defense in AfterEffects for a frame, then re-keyframing that frame to the zoom-out in Vegas to put it in place.

After Acid Slime slips out of Inukai’s Cemetery as Clone Slime’s effect activates, Inukai moves to grab it before the two Slimes switch out, but Clone Slime’s still in Attack Mode on his Disk; fixed by placing the Defense-Mode proxy over it in AE, then moving it as he moves his Disk and applying a brief brightness increase as the light from Clone Slime being replaced with Acid Slime grazes it.

As Proto Cyber Dragon’s attack approaches Acid Slime in a quick shot, the card under it in Defense Mode is reversed (the name box should face to the left to match how it’s placed on his Disk); fixed by first applying the correctly-facing proxy in AfterEffects and moving it as the shot moves, then masking Acid Slime back in over it, along with the light coming from the attack as it starts to shine over its card.

As Ryou explains Overload Fusion’s effect, just before it starts to zoom out as he then chooses the six Monsters he’ll fuse, there are a few frames I noticed where Ryou’s whooshing hair throughout this shot suddenly stops whooshing; I fixed it by just masking in his whooshing hair from the previous frames for a few.

As Ryou taunts Inukai about how his Acidic Last Machine Virus will bother him no more, Inukai starts to slide in on a split-screen, but until his split-screen has fully slid in, there’s no border on its edge; I fixed it in Vegas by first masking out the border once it’s fully slid in, then moving it in another video layer with his split-screen for those nine frames.

As Ryou explains Chimeratech Overdragon’s multiple attacks, we see it reversed on his Disk; fixed by slapping on the correctly-facing proxy in AfterEffects, then re-keyframing it to the slow zoom in Vegas for the 94 frames it zooms out in (phew).

One error that I hoped to fix but scrapped happens as Chimeratech Overdragon’s first attack closes in on Inukai’s Multiple Slime, where we see a Defense-Mode card under it despite it being in Attack Mode the way Inukai summoned it (and since he then takes damage from the attack); couldn’t quite figure out how to light up the floor I’d redrawn under it with the ensuing explosion, and had sought a bit of help to get it right but ultimately that fell through. (Incidentally, not only did the dub not catch this as they dubified its card, but they reversed the card, at that, lol.)

Fixes/Edits! (66)

(Note: These are all flashback-related, and I detailed most of them [including a few new ones] in my post from Sunday that I linked just under the summaries; I went on to apply the fixes I’d applied in 66 to the respective episodes, so I’ll be brief here.  Reinserted fixes from a while back are in italics.)

(Episode 1 Flashback) I reinserted the fix I did to replace the blank Normal Monster on Judai’s Disk in Flame Wingman’s spot with its card as Antique Gear Golem crashes onto Chronos.  [Ep. 1 Flashback End]

(Episode 22 Flashback) As Misawa attacks with Litmus Death Swordsman to start his flashback, I reinserted the fix I did to detail the blank cards on his Disk with Diamond Dragon and Litmus Death.

As Misawa finishes explaining Wingbeat of Giant Dragon’s effect and it zooms out to Litmus Death, I reinserted my fix to his reversed card on Misawa’s Disk to flip it right-side-up.

Reinserted my fix to the repeat of #3 as Skyscraper fades.

Reinserted my fix to another repeat as Misawa explains Spirit Barrier’s effect.

R-R-Reinserted my fix to the r-r-repeat again as we see Misawa’s Disk while Judai explains Cyclone Boomerang’s effect (gotta love reused animation!) [Ep. 22 Flashback End]

(Episode 4 Flashback) As Judai prods Manjoume into choosing a card from his hand for A Hero Appears’s effect, I fixed Manjoume’s blazer looking semi-faded for a frame on his split-screen.

As Judai’s LP take a hit from V-to-Z destroying Burstlady, I fixed the four frames where the upper part of his Disk is missing the little bottom part that extends out a bit and Judai’s vanishing Disk wrist grip.

A bit complex, but I fixed Judai’s briefly-still-missing-then-vanishing-again wrist grip, the shading near his Cemetery slot, Judai’s arm becoming part of his Disk, and his wrist grip suddenly consuming his whole wrist. (Detailed in that Sunday post)

Reinserted my fix to the Attack-Mode Winged Kuriboh on Judai’s Disk to put it in Defense Mode as he discards two to activate Evolutionary/Transcendent Wings.

As Judai swings his arm around telling Winged Kuriboh LV10 to “send [V-to-Z’s] energy right back” at Manjoume, I reinserted my fix to put its Defense-Mode card in the spot on his Disk colored like the Monster Zone it’s on for a few frames.

A bit complex again recycling the Judai shot in #9, but I fixed his again-vanishing Disk wrist grip and half-Disk arm, his wrist grip suddenly consuming his whole wrist again, and his yet-again-vanished wrist grip, miscolored undershirt, and his half-Disk elbow while restoring some previous detail to his Disk. (Detailed in that Sunday post)

As Judai summons Featherman–to Shou and Chronos’s surprise–and has him lunge at Manjoume for the finisher, I reinserted my fix to keep the black faraway box that is Featherman on his Disk both as those two slide in on split-screens and as they slide back out. [Ep. 4 Flashback End]

(Episode 8 Flashback) I reinserted my fix to remove Featherman from Judai’s Disk as his LP drop from Cyber Dragon destroying it.

Reinserted my fix to a repeat of #14 as Judai’s excited about Ryou’s Time Capsule.

As Judai draws for his turn, I added a Fusion card over the dark-orange rectangle briefly in his hand as he draws it.

After Judai’s first hit on him, I fixed the error as Ryou Special-Summons another Cyber Dragon as a Monster in face-down Defense Mode on his second Monster Zone (detailed in that Sunday post).

Reinserted my fix adding Cyber Twin Dragon to Ryou’s Disk over a yellow rectangle.

As the screen zooms in on Judai after Ryou declares Cyber Twin’s attack, I added Thunder Giant to Judai’s third Monster Zone, then reinserted my previous fix adding it as it zooms back out while Judai uses A Hero Appears.

Reinserted my fix adding a few quick lip flaps to Judai as he says, “Partner,” out loud.

As Judai thinks about how Evolutionary Wings would evolve his Winged Kuriboh and we then see Bubbleman on his field, I added a missing Bubbleman card to his Disk.

Right after #21, I revised my previous fix to replace the Defense-Mode Mudballman on his Disk with an Attack-Mode Bubbleman, after I accidentally put it in Defense Mode before.

As Ryou grabs Power Bond from his hand before activating it, I reinserted my fix adding Ryou’s two missing Cyber Dragons to his Disk and then one over the blank Normal Monster card in his left hand.

As Ryou slips Power Bond into his Disk, I reinserted my fix adding those two missing Cyber Dragons onto his Disk.  [Ep. 8 Flashback End]

For the Ep. 67 preview, I added my translation of the notice left on the Red dorm by Napoleon which I’ll be using in the episode proper.

[xxwritemeastoryxx]

Painted Souls 9

Author: xxwritemeastoryxx

Pairings: Elijah Mikaelson x Reader

Word Count: 2.9K

Warnings: Can being in a hospital be one? Besides that, we’ve gone back to the tame territory. 

Author’s Note: Soooo this one came out just as quickly as the last part. And Look at that, a Series update in two days! But with this one, we are coming to an end. There is only one more part to this. I hope you guys enjoy this one and look forward to the next. ♥

Feedback gives me life and motivation for future things. ♥

From the moment the ambulance arrived, Elijah never left Y/N’s side. The part of him that was a lawyer knew he should stay behind and give Elena support as she gave the details to the police who had come to investigate. But the part of him that was a soulmate had flared up and wanted nothing more than to be by Y/N’s side to comfort and protect her.

Seeing Y/N in a hospital bed had been the complete opposite of what he believed would happen tonight. He wanted to take her to the cabin, give themselves a chance to wind down, before he gave her a reason to worry. As Elijah sat right next to her bed, he realized that he was too late in warning her.

His head had been resting on his interlaced hands as he sat in the chair next to the hospital bed. His mind raced with things he realized he didn’t know. Things he wished he had. For one, Elijah didn’t know who to call for her. Caroline and Elena had been outside in the waiting room for her already, but when it came to her family, he wasn’t sure what to do.

He knew her father years ago, but he didn’t know him personally enough to just go into Y/N’s phone and call him up. Y/N never mentioned her mother often and it led him to believe her mother was no longer in the picture. But the truth of it all, Elijah had barely known Y/N and it made him frustrated.

The knock on the room door caused Elijah to look up. Elena had been standing there, her eyes landing on Y/N who was still unconscious after the drugs had taken over her system. Elena bit down her lip before looking over at Elijah.

“I called her dad.” She said with a slight nod. “I figured him of all people should know his daughter was in the hospital.”

Elijah nodded his head. “Thank you. I was debating on calling him myself, but then I realized I’m not sure how well that would have gone over.”

“They don’t talk much anymore.” Elena noted as she walked further into the room. “He didn’t even know about her showing.” She shook her head. “Thank you for jumping into action last night. While I know what to do, you did a hell of a lot better at staying calm than I did.”

Elijah huffed. “Maybe, calm on the outside, but on the inside there was a wide range of emotions I was feeling.”

“I don’t blame you.” Elena nodded. “She’s your soulmate. I’m sure Damon would have felt the same if it had been me. You were there for her. And that is what matters most.”

Before Elijah could say anything in return, Y/N had gasped as she sat up straight in the bed. A panicked look played on her face as Elijah moved out of his seat and over to her side. He sat down on the bed beside her, taking her hands in his.

“Easy, Y/N.” He said softly. He didn’t want his voice to be overpowering to her. “You’re okay. You’re safe.” He promised.

Y/N’s eyes searched Elijah’s face for a moment before she relaxed. The monitors she was attached to gave way that her heart beat was returning to normal. Her panicked breaths slowed as she looked around the room. Her mouth was dry as she tried to open her mouth to speak causing her mouth to close and a frown to form on her face.

Elijah shook his head slightly as he looked at Elena. “There’s a cup and pitcher, could you please pour her a glass.” Elijah hadn’t even finished speaking before Elena moved quickly doing as Elijah had asked. As she did, he looked back at Y/N, lifting his hand, he ran it along her cheek. “You’re in the hospital.”

Y/N huffed as she leaned into his touch. “Obviously.” Her voice was rough.

That caused a small smirk to pull at Elijah’s lips. As least, she was still herself even after waking up in an unfamiliar place. Elena walked over and held out the cup for Elijah to take. Instead, Y/N reached for it.

They both watched as she shakily brought the cup up to her lips and took a drink. The cold water felt like a haven to her at that moment. With how dry her mouth had been, she was thankful for the water.

“I’ll go let the doctor know she’s up.” Elena said giving Y/N a small smile and leaving the room.

“Thank you.” Elijah said as he looked over his shoulder at Elena before looking back at Y/N.

Once the cup was empty, she brought it down into her lap, prompting Elijah to take it from her. “What happened last night?” She asked looking up at him.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Elijah wanted to know what she knew. That way he could fill in what he could for her.

Y/N bit down at her lip as she thought about. “Dancing with Elena.” She said with a nod. “I was just about to call you over to dance when I felt something poke me.” She stopped as she tried to think of what happened after. “I felt sick, but I don’t remember anything after that.”

Elijah sighed as he leaned back slightly. “You were drugged. A quick application through a syringe. Elena said it probably happened when you were bumped into on the dance floor. By the time you made it a few steps, the drug was already taking affect. If Elena hadn’t been with you, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Y/N looked down at her hands at his words. Fear had coursed through her about what could have possibly happened. But before she could completely freak out, her eyes landed on the back of her hand.

Elena’s smudge writing had been on the back of it. It matched on Elijah’s as it held the cup in it. If Elena hadn’t been with you, I don’t know what would have happened. Elijah’s words played through her mind even though he had just said them moments before. Elena was the reason she wasn’t currently elsewhere.

That was when her mind clicked with something else. Looking up at Elijah, she shook her head slightly. “Your case. This is what you wanted to talk about.” Her eyes filled with tears as she realized what could have happened.

Before she had left the cabin with Elijah after their date, she remembered seeing the news article about the Soulmate Killer being caught. While Elijah gave very little information on the case, he told her that he was dealing with the man who had been caught.

“He’s innocent.” Elijah said with a nod as he brought his hand back up to her cheek to catch the tears that had begun falling. “We were already asking for video footage from the night the victim had been taken. We were able to pull some strings to get last night’s.”

“Were you able to see them?” She asked, hopeful. If they had been caught on camera, it would make her feel more relaxed.

Elijah nodded, even though his jaw clenched as he had. “We watched as it happened, but there is no clear shot of his face in any frame. Even with Lucien’s case. He was seen the same time the victim had been injected.”

Before anyone could say anything else, Elijah’s phone went off. He shook his head, hating the device in his pocket. It had been ringing all morning, and he wanted nothing more than to toss it out a window.

“You should get it.” Y/N said, encouraging him to take the call.

Sighing, he nodded, he finally answered the phone. “What is it, Finn?” Y/N laid back in the bed as she watched as he listened to what his brother had been saying. “She’s okay. They’re flushing her system of the drugs, but she’ll be okay.” It was the frown on his face that made Y/N raise her brow. “It can be put off until later.”

“If you need to go, you should go.” Y/N whispered catching his attention.

Elijah shook his head at her words and took a hold of her hand. “Have Freya handle it, at least until I get there.” He hung up the phone a moment later.

“Sounds like they need you.” She said giving him a smile.

“Yeah,” He lifted her hand and gently kissed it, right on top of Elena’s smudged message. “What happened last night gives the case everything we need to prove Lucien’s innocence. While they know I’d rather be here with you, it seems that other people require my prescence.”

“You should go.” Y/N said as she watched him. “I doubt I’m going to be let out of here any time soon. Since I was drugged, I’m pretty sure I’ll be confined to this bed until at least tomorrow.”

“That she will be.” Y/N’s doctor said as she walked in, giving Y/N a small smile. “That was a heavy dose they gave you.” She looked over at Elijah. “Mr. Mikaelson, I know that this will be a difficult time to leave your soulmate, but I’m going to need some time with my patient.”

Y/N chuckled. “See, gives you a reason to go take care of what you need to. I’ll be here when you come back.”

Elijah smiled at that. “I shouldn’t be too long.” He promised as he stood from the bed. “If you need anything, please do not hesitate to call or even take ink to skin.” He wanted her to know that even if he wasn’t there, he’d stop what he was doing to come back to her.

“I’ll be okay.” She said with a nod. Satisfied for now, Elijah nodded and leaned in to kiss her softly on her forehead. It caused Y/N to smile. “Go, before the doctor kicks you out and you can’t come back.”

That got a chuckle out of both Elijah and the Doctor. Elijah left moments after that. Though the whole time he walked out of her room and out of the hospital, he hated to do it.

_____

“How is she?” Freya asked the moment Elijah stepped into the conference room.

“Given the circumstances, she’s okay.” He said with a small smile pulling at his lips. “I can tell she’s a bit shaken up from it, but knowing she wasn’t taken was a relief for both of us.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like for you.” Finn said as he looked towards his brother.

His siblings were shocked to find out what happened from Klaus. While Elijah had tended to Y/N, Klaus kept his siblings in the loop. For the siblings that had soulmates, they had spent the night keeping their loved one close, not letting them out of their sights. To have something happen with work was one thing, for it to hit so close to home had them all on edge.

“For a moment I believe I felt every emotion and more in those moments.” Elijah explained as he placed all of his things down on the table in its usual place. “There was even a moment were guilt had filled me while seeing her in that hospital bed.” He looked over at his siblings. “She wouldn’t have been in this situation if we had not gone there last night. We had all the warnings and I did not give them.”

“Don’t do that to yourself.” Freya said as she walked over to him. “We were under the impression, the murder was caught. While Lucien’s alibi still hung in the balance, you had no reason to believe anything would happen last night. Y/N is safe, she was never left alone. You did everything right in that situation.”

Elijah ran his hands along his face. “In my mind all I can see is Elena’s message and getting there and finding Y/N in the state she was.” he shook his head. He hadn’t once let out his emotions to anyone. Y/N needed him more than finding an outlet, and he was willing to do that until the time was right. “It makes me want to call in every favor we have just to get this son of a bitch in.”

Finn walked over to him and placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “That’s what this meeting we’re about to go into is for. Freya called Mikael and he pulled some strings.” The words caused both Elijah and Finn to look over at Freya who had a worried look on her face. “DA dropped the charges against Lucien the moment she saw the footage.”

“This is no longer a case we’re on.” Freya said with a nod. “Which means we’ve went from layers to being family of another victim.”

Elijah understood what that meant. After the debriefing meeting, Elijah would be free to be by Y/N’s side until his next case. His siblings and as surprising it was to all of them, his own father knew the importance of keeping their soulmates safe. And Elijah wasn’t about to let his out of his sight until the murder was caught.

_____

As Elijah entered the room, he tried to stay as quiet as possible. The meeting went longer than he thought it would, causing him to return to the hospital right before visiting hours were over. After security made sure he was clear to stay with Y/N, he went as quickly as he could up to the room.

Upon entering her found Elena curled up in the uncomfortable chair he had been sitting in earlier that day. As he looked over at Y/N, he found her sound asleep. While she looked comfortable to an extent, he didn’t think any of the tubes around her were making her comfortable.

Walking over to Elena, he placed his hand on her shoulder to wake her. The moment Elena startled away, he held back a chuckle. “Your shift’s over.”

Elena relaxed at seeing Elijah and nodded. “Want the evening report?” She asked before a yawn took over.

He shook his head. “I think I’ve got an idea of it. Go home, get some sleep that’s not in a metal chair.”

“Oh I plan on it.” She said with a nod. “I don’t know how you’ll be able to sleep in that thing.”

Elijah chuckled. “I’ll manage.”

Elena grabbed her things and once she collected them, she looked over at Y/N before looking back over at Elijah. “She’s worried, you know.” That caught Elijah’s attention as he sat down in the chair Elena just got up from. “She wont say it out loud, but if you watch her, she’s scared. I had to stop her from going down a rabbit hole on the internet. Some of the things she found on there, it wasn’t good for her.”

Elijah nodded in understanding. He hadn’t been expecting Y/N to walk away from this unscathed. He knew there would be something that lingered with her. “It’s why we’ll be staying at the cabin until her showing.”

Elena nodded in return. “Damon’s driving out and will be here in the morning. Caroline is staying with your brother. And after last night, I’m a bit freaked out, so I’ll be staying with family that’s out here until Damon gets here.”

“We are all on edge. If you hadn’t been staying with family, I’d call one of my sisters and have them leave the door unlocked for you. They’re both a short ride from here.”

“Thanks.” Elena said with small smile. “Have her call me when she gets discharged tomorrow.”

“I will.” Elijah watched as Elena walked out of the room, the door closing softly behind her.

He turned his attention to Y/N and a sigh passed his lips. Standing, he moved the chair closer to the bed before sitting down once more. He leaned with his elbows on the bed and reached for her hand closest to him.

As he did, he found the same words he been surprised with while in his meeting written in the palm of her hand. It was a way for them to communicate without reaching for their phones.

Stop worrying, I’m doing okay.

While the words had been comforting at the time he happened upon them, he wasn’t sure if those words still applied for her. After what Elena had told him, he was even more worried about her. She may have been okay now, but there would be moments where she might not be.

The slight movement of Elijah’s thumb moving over her skin caused Y/N to stir slightly. A small smile pulled at Elijah’s lips as he watched her eyes open. A sleepy smile came from Y/N as she tightened her hold on Elijah’s hand.

“That was one hell of a meeting.” She mumbled.

He chuckled. “I must have tried leaving several times. I wanted nothing more than to come back to your side.”

“Will you be able to stay?” She asked.

He nodded. “All night. Preferably until they’ve been caught.”

A frown pulled at her lips. “I’m not staying in a hospital until then.”

He shook his head with a smile on his face. “No, I meant I’ll stay with you until they’ve been caught. If you’d like, we can stay over at the Cabin. I’ve just had my schedule cleared.”

Her eyebrow raised. “They took you off the case?”

He shook his head. “The case had been dismissed. My siblings offered to take the work load off my plate. If I remember my brother’s words correctly, he said ‘One shouldn’t be away from their soulmate in their time of need.’” He lifted their hands, and he kissed the back of hers. “I dont want to overstep boundaries, but I don’t know if I’d be able to just let you go back to your dorm without any kind of protection.”

She huffed a chuckle. “Believe it or not, having you by my side feels like the safest place to be at the moment. If you hadn’t asked, I probably would have asked.” She gave him a smile.

“And here I was, worrying that you’d say no.” He said with a grin pulling at his lips.

“I don’t think I could be alone after this.” She shook her head. “At least not for a while.”

He brought his free hand up and ran it along her cheek. “I give you my word you won’t ever be alone.”

The comfort of Elijah’s words were all Y/N needed. While her world had almost changed in a way she wasn’t sure she’d come back from, the comfort of knowing that he’d be there to help her made the dark thoughts go away. While they hadn’t known each other this time around for long, they both felt at peace with the other right there next to them. And that was how Y/N knew she would be able to move on from this.

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A/N: whoa THANK YOU for the love on ch 8!! Thanks to everyone reading to the end!! Tell me what you want to see next. More multi chapter? One offs? <3 <3

Hard to Find Someone Like You

Boba x fem!reader, slow burn to smut, some romance, fair amount of plot, Post-Mando 2 Boba

You are a merc serving under Fennec at Fett’s Palace. It’s business as usual until a certain helmet starts tilting in your direction...

TW: unprotected sex, descriptions of violence, brief mention of past abuse

Translations (Mando’a)

Riduur - spouse

Cyar’ika - darling/ sweetheart

***

CHAPTER NINE

You powered up Daesha. Fuck this, you thought. I don’t go and he gets himself captured on purpose. You knew if you were there he would not have done it. You were beyond furious at this point.

You exited Tattooine’s atmosphere, seething. Someone was going to pay. Dearly. You entered into jump space, waiting like an angry caged predator. Waiting to lash out and kill. You exited jump space extremely close to the planet. It was risky, but you had to get past their sensors. You almost crashed into a satellite, narrowly avoiding a collision. You dove into the atmosphere at a sharp angle, burning up. You had to get below their radar before you were detected. You relied on your smuggler’s courage, falling from the sky. You made it, pulling up sharply when you were safe from detection. You piloted slowly, pulling up a map of the capitol.

You scanned when you were close enough. You found Slave 1’s signature. You circled around the city, setting down as close as you could. You made your way through the forest, up to the walls of the city. You snuck in on a convoy, concealing yourself in a wheel well.

Jumping off the convoy, you located the hanger Slave 1 was in. You snuck in silently, holding back your wrath. You cut into the security feed and looped the footage, so it was no longer live. You continued through the facility, stopping at Slave 1 to warm her up. She would be ready to take off when you got back. Now, where would prisoners be kept?

You hacked a terminal nervously. It slowly clicked, taking forever while you were exposed in a hallway. Finally you broke in. You located the detention center. It was a bit of a walk, but that was okay. You would get there.

***
You arrived at an entrance. You began to hack the door. Suddenly you heard footsteps. You jumped up the wall and clung to the eaves, silently hanging as a Mandalorian guard passed under you. You thought about dropping down, sinking your blade into his neck, twisting. But you had to stay on task. He could live.

When he was safely away, you started over. You listened to the terminal click repeatedly. The door slide open. You were in like lightning. You looked up for cameras; nothing. Curious. You continued down the hallway, pulling up a more detailed map as you went. You stopped under a duct and hopped up into the central air system, crawling around. You passed over may rooms full of Mandalorians relaxing. You were filled with anger, looking at them. But you continued on.

You made it to the cells. You carefully crawled over each one until you found who you were looking for. Boba was sitting on a small cot, looking intimidating. He seemed to be favoring his right side a bit. You quietly removed the A/C grate to his cell, and dropped through. He didn’t move except to tilt his helmet slightly upward. “I would be furious you are here, but there’s no point now.”

“Shut up; I’m here to get you and the others out. I know where Slave 1 is.”

He shifted in his armor. “We can’t fit the way you came.”

“I know.” You pulled out your foldable rifle and set it up. “We’re going to kill our way out.”

He snorted softly.

“I’ll then deal with you,” you said ominously. “Get ready to run.”

“I can’t. I’m injured.” He indicated his right side. “Blaster shot. I’m okay but weakened.”

You almost cried, but held it back. A gut shot? He had been so close to dying. Instead, you pulled out your mini torch. “Time to melt this fucking door.”

The lock melted and the door sprung open in no time. You carefully peered out. There was no one, but there was a security camera at the end of the hall. Kriff. This was going to get messy fast. You tossed a blaster at Boba. “Try to stay the fuck out of the way this time.” He nodded, preparing. You hopped out of the cell and shot the camera. At least they were blind. You then set to work torching the other locks. Boba covered you as the guards appeared, guns blazing. You got all the doors open, and your small group advanced. You had only brought two other pistols with you, so the unarmed hung back. You stood pointedly in front of Boba, refusing to let him go to the front.

You shot your way into a break room, and busted out the window there. Everyone jumped out. You followed, transmitting the coordinates of Boba’s ship. The group scattered, looking for cover as they made their way to Slave 1. You and Boba hung back. He could only force himself to go so fast. You provided covering fire for most of the others to escape the immediate danger. You hoped they would make it.

Alarms were going off now. The noise was everywhere, screaming. You grabbed Boba, “This way!” You jogged down the ally, dragging a laboring Boba. Suddenly you saw stars, and your feet weren’t touching the ground. You landed in a little crumpled pile, stunned. You shook your head, mostly coming to. Your vision swam a bit as you saw Boba and a huge Mandalorian facing off. They were physically fighting each other; somehow both had lost their blasters in the confusion. The man swung at Boba, who deflected the blow. But he was too slow to counter attack effectively. The man rushed him. They collided like two sparring animals. You drug yourself foward and grabbed a blaster. The man had Boba against a wall and was trying to choke him. Aiming at his neck, you shot and killed the man attacking Boba. He dropped to the ground. Boba looked at you. “Come on, get your blaster!” You threw it at him and then grabbed him. The two of you hobbled off.

You were getting close; just a few more buildings to pass and you’d be at the hanger. Boba was getting heavier and slower. You hit him in the helmet, “Now is not the time; come on.” He staggered on with you. You reached the final corner and stopped. You peered around. Like a striking snake, an arm with a dagger shot out. You bent your back, narrowly escaping getting your throat cut. You screamed, and ran around the corner with your rifle. She deflected the rifle and somehow got it away from you. She hit you in the face with the butt. You again saw stars, but remained upright. Boba had come around the corner and started shooting at her. She fell back, shooting at the two of you with your own rifle. You were pinned down by her, so close to the hanger door you had already hacked and left unlocked.

Finally you knew what you had to do. You looked back at Boba, who was busy returning fire. You would get him out of here. Boba tilted his helmet then, sensing you were about to do something. He reached to grab you, but it was too late. You were up and over your cover before he could blink. He jumped up immediately to lay down suppressing fire, terrified to see you get shot before him. Your body armor took some damage, but you kept going. It hurt like hell but now was not the time to acknowledge that. You hurtled over the woman’s cover, striking down at her with your knife. You cut her at the shoulder slightly. She turned, trying to shoot you. You viciously kicked the gun out of her hand. The two of you engaged in combat; one of you bare handed but better tactically prepared. Her armor rebuffed the advances of your knife. She punched and hit you in the head repeatedly. You kicked and slashed, aiming at the joints in her armor. You spit your own blood at her, trying to obscure her view. She rushed you; you took the impact and flipped her over you. She rolled up and away from you. The two of you circled. You grit your teeth. No time for this. You would have to make some sacrifices in order to get close enough to wound her enough to stop her. As long as you could drag yourself to Slave 1.

Out of nowhere Boba appeared, looming over the other Mandalorian. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up, flipping her. Grunting from effort, he dropped her face first into the ground. She landed and laid there in a strange position. You looked up at him, surprised. He reached a hand out, “Time to go.” You took it. The two of you stumbled into the hanger. Your companions had made it and were waiting. They ran out and pulled you into the ship. Boba clawed his way to the cockpit. No one else was piloting. Slave 1 was ready, so he closed the hatch and took off immediately, blasting his way out of the hanger.

Slave 1 screamed out of the atmosphere, with several ships in hot pursuit. They closed in; Boba dropped a proton bomb, killing them in the explosion. Some ships in orbit were waiting. They engaged with Slave 1 as it successfully left the atmosphere. Boba played chicken with them, closing the distance. They parted at the last second, unwilling to give their lives. He shot into jump space immediately. Everyone in the observation room sighed, relieved. Boba sat back in his chair, totally spent. You were upon him with a med kit.

“No, later, just let me sit here for now,” he protested. “Let’s fix your face instead,” he reached a gentle hand up to your swollen cheek.

“I just got into a bad bar fight. You’re shot.”

He relented, and lifted up his clothing. You got to work, cleaning the wound on his side. Silence settled. He finally broke it, “Where is Daesha?”

You stopped putting ointment on his injuries. “I had to leave her there. There wasn’t enough space on her for everyone, plus Slave 1 is more important. We can’t have her captured.”

“Practical,” was all he said. You tried to nod dispassionately. Truth was you were heartbroken you might not see her again. “We’ll get her back,” he finally said. You nodded again, unable to speak about it. He seemed to understand. “Did Fennec send you?” He removed his helmet and eyed your sharply.

“I sent myself. She begged me to stay.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t be mad at her.”

“She should have made you stay.”

”That’s not her job.”

He sighed. “Will you ever stop worrying me?”

“Probably not. But didn’t I get you and everyone else off world?”

He grit his teeth a bit, “Yes.”

“So. Next time don’t leave me at home.”

He shook his head, “This does not settle anything.”

You glared at him then, “What would?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re being unfair.”

”Yes.”

You were at a loss for words. His gloved hand gently touched your bruised face. “I don’t want to see you like this.”

You shrugged, “I’m built for it.”

“No one is built for it.” He sighed angrily.

“You don’t know all my secrets. I can take it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t I know?”

You looked down, shrugging. “They never really came up.”

“They’ve just come up.”

You shifted uncomfortably. “I’m just used to being beat.” You refused to elaborate.

“Tell me. If you are my riduur.”

You exhaled. “I just... got beat a lot as a kid. And when I got older I just kept getting into those kinds of relationships.. and bar fights.. and fight fights.”

He eyed you. “Who beat you as a child?”

You returned his gaze, annoyed by his persistence. “My father beat all of us.”

“That’s terrible.”

”I know. But it doesn’t define me. It just means I know how to take a punch.” You tried to smile wryly.


“You don’t have to act.”

You looked down, suddenly sad. “I have to live with it somehow.”

He pulled you into his lap, “Let me help carry the burden.” He kissed you softly. You leaned into him, crying suddenly. He held you to himself until it was time to come out of jump space. You jumped out of it into orbit around Tattooine. Home.

Slave 1 again screamed through the atmosphere, in case there were pursuers. Finally you landed at the palace. You sighed, relieved. Now you could relax.

Boba slowly made his way off Slave 1. Din hugged him, squeezing his torso. He made a pained wheeze but allowed it. Fennec stepped forward and grabbed his hands. “We’re so happy you’re back safely.” He nodded. “I need to lay down.”

“Of course,” Fennec moved to the side to let him pass. She eyed you, and grabbed your hand, stopping you as you moved to follow Boba.

”How badly is he injured?”

”Blaster to the side. He’s okay.”

“Barely.”


You swallowed and a knowing look passed between the two of you. Din interrupted. “We should increase security even more. They’re going to be pissed one merc got Boba Fett from them.”

Fennec nodded, “I’ll take care of it.” She disappeared into the palace. Din turned to you. “I’m sorry this happened.” You scoffed, “This is what happens when you leave me at home.”

He shifted his weight, “Well...”

You held up your hands. “No ‘wells’ — you’re not leaving me home again.” He shrugged awkwardly. You took off after Boba, leaving everyone else in the hanger.

***

You nursed Boba back to health slowly. He was back on the throne the next day as a show of strength, but he was in pain for weeks after. You hovered around him, viciously protective. Even Fennec’s eyes were sharper than normal.

At night you laid next to him, waiting to see if he would need anything. You woke up exhausted often. You kept him happy in all the ways you could think of. You rode him carefully when he wanted to fuck, refusing to let him get on top. You held him to you when he was drifting off, refusing to let go.

Finally he was healed. You touched his blaster scar, the newest of many on his body. He twitched, “Don’t tickle me.” You smiled. Only in bed with you would he use the word “tickle.”

“Just appreciating that it’s fully healed.” He hmmed at you. He opened his eyes. “I can think of other ways you can appreciate I’m fully healed.” You smiled, biting your lip. “Can I be on top now?” He traced your lips with a finger. You sighed, “I suppose so.”

He rolled over onto you, spreading your legs with a knee. He slipped in between your thighs, already erect. You spread them further, anticipating. He growled softly, licking your throat. He bit you softly as he entered you. You moaned with pleasure, feeling him stretch you. He started to fuck you, softly. You were surprised. Was he still in pain? He kissed you on the mouth, then. You put your hands on either side of his face, enjoying the sweet kiss. He picked up the pace slightly. You urged him on. He smiled against your lips, “So eager to get fucked, pet?”

“Yes,” you retorted.

“Did you miss it?”

”Yes,” you started to pant. He increased the pace again, until you were cooing into his ear. You felt yourself about to cum, pussy starting to clutch around him. You gripped his shoulders. “Riduur...” you called out as you came, waves of pleasure emanating from your pussy. Your limbs turned to jelly as you tried to hang on. He grunted and bit your throat, fucking you in a frenzied pace. He nuzzled his face into your neck and came deep in you as you continued to coo sweet nothings in his ear. You laid like that for a moment, you telling him all sorts of secrets that pass between lovers at these moments. Finally he rolled off you. He had a gentle expression, almost vulnerable. You snuggled into him. “What is it?”

“I was... terrified when I saw you come out of the ceiling, you know.”

”No faith in me, huh?”

”It’s not like that. I admit, it took skill and courage to get us all out.”

“Then let me play with the big kids.”

“Will you at least listen to me when I ask you to pull back? You don’t need to be first.” You thought of the Daesha and your dog fight. You swallowed down a lump in your throat; so far she was unretrievable.

“We’ll get Daesha back, cyar’ika.” Boba touched your chin with his hand.

“Maybe,” you sighed. “I don’t need to be first, you’re right.” You looked into his warm eyes.

“Then it’s finally settled,” he said softly. You smiled brightly. “So, how’re we going to get Daesha back?” He returned the smile and opened his mouth to speak.