#I know there's more to this than that i'm not trying to reduce him to “he's a 10 year old boy with murderous intentions lol”

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

#bro even anakin was full;#I'm a monster what have I done

Yeah but no one else really noticed

Padme was full of excuses and I can't even remeber if any of the jedi brought it up ... did they even know it happened? Did he ever tell them and ask for help?

Like I would have asssumed that something like that would lead to being send to an extended retreat ... meditation

Being forced to write an exhaustive report Explaining what the ever lovin fuck happened

A jedi should usually be capable of at least chanelling his baser instincts in to harmless outlets

Even Anakin knows it

ANAKIN: Why do I hate them? I didn't... I couldn't... I couldn't control myself. I... I don't want to hate them... But I just can't forgive them. PADMÉ: To be angry is to be human. ANAKIN: To control your anger is to be a Jedi. PADMÉ: Ssshhh... you're human. ANAKIN: No, I'm a Jedi. I know I'm better than this. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!

Becasue teh thing is

He was a Jedi

He was aiming for rank of master

He should have been able to curb those feeling to where hey didn't have a body count

Like maybe destroy some rocks ... melt some sand ... something

This should have lead to a full inquisistio by the Jedi

But it didn't ...

Because no one noticed that THIS was it

-> Weather he told teh Jedi or not they should have been able to sense that something had fundamentalyl broken in anakin

He had fallen

As a jedi you are intensly powerfull and thats why you have to hold yourself to a higher standard, because you can do so much more harm then a normal person

Just think of teh harm a normal person can do by telling someone "kill yourself"

Now imagine you say that with teh force coloring your voice becasue you happened to be angry

Congrats you have become Zebediah Killgrave

That's why Jedi have to be mindfull at all times

That's why they meditate

That's why they re disciplined

They try to harm reduce

They try to be kind

Or at least that's how they should act

Because they know what happens if they don't

And I think Lucas was aware of all that

And that's why he wrote it like that

Becasue he knew that THAT was teh moment Anakin fell

He had tasted Anger and had found it sweet

Sure he feels bad ... but I think more becasue he knows he should feel bad, becasue he intellectualyl know sthat he has done something wrong

ANAKIN: No, I'm a Jedi. I know I'm better than this. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!

And less becasue he realyl deep down in his herat of hearts didn't burn with a satisfying rigtous anger

Becasue it feels good to punish people who hurt you

ANAKIN: Why do I hate them? I didn't... I couldn't... I couldn't control myself. I... I don't want to hate them... But I just can't forgive them.

If he really didn't want to hate them, he would have not gone back to the village, he would have tried to meditate and chanell hsi anger and if that understandably didn't help he would have gone to the ship called teh temple confest that he and Padme are not in fact on Naboo and asked for help becasue he had teh desire to slaughter a whole village

That's not what he did

Becasue ultimately he DID want to do it

Becasue he didn't wnat to admit to the council that he a) disobeyed their order to stay on naboo to protect Padme b) hat Padme and him have suc an intens emotional connection that she went to Tattoin so he coud go without technicalyl disobeying c) doesn't have a handle on himslef to a degree where he needs help or there will be a body count

becasue he knew those confession would mean that a) he does not get to see Padme again for a long time and b) he would hamper his prospects of becoming a master and he just wanted Padme and to be a master more then he wanted to protect those Tusken lives

And that was teh fall

The putting himslef and his own desires first

The not asking for help becasue it would have consequences

Anakins fall wasn't inevedable

It was something he choose at every turn

And always justefied to himself

It is after all not the way to heaven that is plastered with good intentions ...

THAT is teh story Lucas wanted to tell as far as I can tell

Of a man that had the option not to fall and yet choose the falling option at every turn

Becasue Anakin didn't fall in one big swoop

He fell like you fall asleep ... little by little and then all at once

What has always bothered me about Anakin’s massacre of the Tusken village is that beyond the entire premise leading up to it being a blatant send-up of multiple racist caricatures (though to be clear that is a massive problem in and of itself and it shouldn’t be ignored), canon seems to struggle with reconciling its existence with the perception the creators want the audience to have of the characters involved. Other prequel media leans heavily on Anakin being a good -but flawed and troubled- man before his fall, but it’s hard to accept snarky roguish hero Anakin at face value when the troubled past the writers only vaguely allude to includes slaughtering children years before order 66 even happened. Padmé’s commitment to peace and helping those suffering because of the war is clearly meant to be genuine, but again her speeches about liberty and justice start to ring hollow when you remember that she comforted, married, and is complicit in covering up the crimes of a mass murderer.

I don’t exactly think that retconning the tusken massacre out of existence is necessary; a good writer could find a lot of material to work with regarding Anakin’s more unforgivable behaviour, Padmé being willing to compromise her ideals for the sake of people she personally cares about, their surviving loved ones learning and coming to terms with the truth, or how other Tusken communities responded in the aftermath (the sections of BoBF that focused on the Tusken people were a good start, but there’s so much room for more) when Shmi and the Tuskens haunt the narrative of Padmé and Anakin the way they do now. What I do think is that we can’t have it both ways. Either Anakin is a good man on the road to hell, or his slaughter of an entire village happened and needs to be treated with the gravity that his other dark acts are, but the current weird in-between just does more harm than good.

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[auguryofjellyfish]

me @ ken rn

[morphestic]

Got my brother interested in reading ORV by telling him there's a 10 year old boy that can control a giant praying mantis and who's first solution to everything is murder

[wild-jackalope]

summary :: in another dimension Mark is born a full blooded Viltrumite and is sent to conquer earth, but you change everything.

warning :: Nolan! Mark x Debbie! Reader, smut, porn w/ plot, fem reader, grinding, no use of cock or cunt (yes I'm a prude), cumin inside, breakups, relationship is a little rocky at first, pregnancy, having a child together eventually, Mark is a clueless viltrumite, soft lowkey, likely some mistakes but I tried my best

note :: h..herrow..

You should've known Mark Grayson was too good to be true. Should've known when he stopped an airborne car from ending your life, that his impossibly handsome face wasn't meant to be yours.

Maybe you did know, maybe you just didn't care.

When you first met, he literally swept you off your feet. One moment, there was screeching of metal and car horns: you were stunned, heart racking your bones with intense thudding, eyes blurred with stress-tears and legs failing your desperate, internal pleas to stay alive and run!

The car being hurled towards you wasn't going to stop and you weren't going to move. You were going to die.

But you didn't.

Instead, you looked up into the sky and landed on a stranger who held back your death like it weighed nothing.

Meters above the ground, wrapped in an unknown white and grey uniform that clung to a frame sculpted by something more brutal than earth could offer. A single hand held up the vehicle that had almost killed you.

His silhouette shielded the sun from your eyes and you could just make out the stoic expression holding his face.

"Leave." He ordered.

And just like that, a breath of life filled your lungs, your legs had begun dragging you away from the destruction, although poorly, because you'd fallen to the ground twice. The spasming of your muscles kept you from running far enough. It was like moving in a dream, your mind willing you to escape but your body reduced to uselessness due to shock.

The large arms that had just stopped the car from killing you; scooped you from the ground and took you miles away from the destruction. You caught a glimpse of the ground, watching as you were flown away from the slaughter whilst others ran.

"No— I'm fine! Go back." You blurted, your visceral thought only being that he'd left the fight for you—and more might be hurt because of it.

He didn't respond, only letting you from his arms on a nearby tower. Before he'd completely let go, he took a millisecond to give your smaller frame a squeeze, as if testing the durability of your body. You hadn't time to question it, nor process it, as he was right back into the battle, hair whipping your face from the rush of air he left behind him.

After about ten minutes of regaining your breath and slapping your legs awake, you attempted to find an exit from the roof. The only door to the lower levels had been locked from the inside.

It was funny, really, something you still teased Mark about even on your wedding night. 'You left me on a roof, seriously?' You asked, laughing. 'I came back for you, didn't I?' He replied.

Indeed he did come back, but not a moment before beating the villain wreaking havoc on the city unconscious. Whilst watching dust fly into the sky and buildings sustain damage you had time to consider that maybe this superhero was new.

He returned to you and took you to the ground, resting you on some calm rubble.

"Thank you. I think I owe you— coffee maybe? Dinner? My life?" you laughed.

He angled his chin up, eyes looking down on you suspiciously, almost to study you. "You didn't run," he stated.

You flushed. Were heroes supposed to make you feel embarrassed for becoming a deer in literal headlights? "Next time I'll try to dodge the flying Sudan."

He hovered beside you, perfectly still in waiting. Expecting something.

"Who— are you?" You asked.

"Mary Grayson. I've come from the planet Viltrum to protect your people." He said, as if it were memorised from a script.

"Mark Grayson?"

"Dinner."

"What?"

"I'll accept your offer for dinner." He said.

He was gone before you could even mutter, "Oh."

You didn't expect him to actually show up for dinner— certainly not tapping on your seventh story apartment window like he'd made his reservation at your dinner table. Actually, you weren't sure what to expect. You weren't even sure how he'd known where you lived.

He arrived just after the sun set, wearing the same strange uniform. His hair messily curved, no doubt blown out from his quick flying during the day's catastrophe. Scuff marks peppered his jaw and hands, and a stain you hoped wasn't blood specked across his chest.

Against your better judgement, you pried open your window and let him in.

He didn’t have a clue about how dates worked, let alone human interaction. You offered him water, and he looked at it like it could've been some suspicious poison. You tried to make conversation, and he answered everything in the most literal way possible—no small talk, no polite questions, just raw honesty. At one point, he stared at your TV for a full two minutes, then asked if humans had always been obsessed with wasting their life with entertainment.

Still, there was something oddly endearing about him. He was out of place, odd and— call it crazy— but you enjoyed it.

That meeting seemed to seal your fate, because Mark Grayson was far from done with you.

You'd see his saves plastered on the news, and sometimes even catch him flying by the city. Some weeks, he'd appear at your window with a worn look— like your home was the only place he could think of going.

Asking never seemed to cross his mind; he just appeared.

And you always let him in.

Whenever he showed up at your doorstep, it was always a new surprise— Like the time he brought you a tree, instead of flowers.

"Mark?" You yelled up, startled, your bag slipping from your shoulder as you stepped out of your building. You side-stepped to avoid the crumbling dirt falling from the uprooted tree in his hand.

"This is for you." He landed, touching down with professional ease. The tree thudded into the patchy yard outside your apartment.

"Mark— this is— why?" You croaked.

"It's customary to present someone you're courting with a plant, is it not?"

"Well, yes, but this?"

"I suspected this will outdo those smaller, weaker plants." He stated, as if he were far above handling flowers.

You stared at the massive plant, trunk thick and roots crammed into the dirt. No flower pot could ever hold it and your landlord would likely have an aneurysm if he saw it left on the front lawn.

But Mark was so earnest about it. Prideful, even.

"So you stole a whole tree?"

"I've relocated it," he stated, very surely. "It was unappreciated, it'll be much better with you."

"Mark, this is a cherry blossom tree... from— somewhere. You can't just—"

"There were no nesting animals," he said, "do you not like it?"

That stupid furrow of his brows and the drop in his voice had your heart pulling at your chest. You sighed, long and reluctant. "No, I like it. It's just... different."

"Good," he said, pride returning to his voice, "then I'll continue with my efforts."

One week, it was a tree, the next it was a quartz crystal straight from the earth's crust, still raw and covered in dirt. "Humans like to be adorned with crystals." he reasoned, as though ripping a rock from the earth was the most natural thing to do.

Once, he'd brought you a wild rabbit, its fur bushy and eyes wide in fear. He stated its weak and terrified nature reminded him of you. You took the poor creature from his hand, cradling it and telling him not to kidnap wild animals between light laughs.

You couldn't help but smile at his complete lack of understanding. The innocence in his actions always disarming you. His earnestness was endearing and with each strange gift, each odd comment, seemed to draw you closer to him. Yet, despite the love that bloomed in your chest, there were moments when the differences between you were so glaring they seemed impossible to bridge.

Then came the night when Mark decided you'd be the one he'd try 'marriage' with.

He came to your window, a gash in his arm still seeping blood from the fight you'd seen the news cover just moments ago.

"Mark! Are you alright?" you ushered him to your room, sitting him on your bed and searching your medicine cabinet for anything to stop the bleeding.

He seemed unimpressed with your worry, stating, "I'm going to be fine. I've survived much worse."

"Don't be an idiot," you muttered, placing a gauze on his wound and tightly bandaging it up. You hadn't realised how close you'd become. He fought for the city, then came straight to your home, not the hospital, or Cecil—you.

It was the first time you'd tended to his wounds, but it wouldn't be the last.

Afterward, you sat beside him, eyeing the tight bandage in hopes that it wouldn't bleed through. Mark couldn't take his eyes off you, feeling your warmth radiate on him.

"You always let me in." He stated, not asking but still unsure.

"Shouldn't I?" You asked, meeting his brown eyes.

His jaw clenched, "it's dangerous," he said. "You know what I am, what danger I bring."

"You being a superhero doesn't scare me," you said.

He studied your face, looking for a lie in your eyes but found none. "Reckless." He muttered.

"Says the man, bleeding on my bed." You mused.

That earned the smallest twitch of his mouth, not quite a smile.

You shifted and the space between you dissipated. His breath entwined with yours, short and shallow.

"You're not dangerous to me," you cooed, leaning in and kissing him.

Your first kiss seemed long overdue, because it revealed a deep need through its fever and roughness.

His mouth moved against yours, like trying to find the rhythm of it— trying to immediately master this new experience.

Your fingers found his hair, dragging gently across his scalp until he grunted into your mouth. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw his hands hovering, tense and strained over your sides.

You brushed it aside as a silly alien trait and pressed his hand against your side. "It's okay Mark," you breathed, kissing his jaw, "you can touch me."

His breath hitched, flickering between your lips and where his hands tightly rested. "I appreciate your forward approach, but are you sure you're ready to procreate with me?"

"P—Procreate? What?" You snorted, unable to hide how the absurdity jolted your body.

"That is what you're intending, isn't it— to mate?"

"Lord no—" You said, attempting to suppress any giggles rising up your chest. "On Earth, sex isn't just about having children."

"No?"

"Sometimes, but most times..." you trailed, a finger brushing Mark's arm, "it's simply for pleasure."

That got his attention. His muscle stilled beneath your touch, watching you like you were some rare thing. "I want to feel it for myself," he said.

"I bet you do." You leaned in and pressed a lingering, light kiss to his jaw.

Your hands landed on his chest, the hardness a reminder of his impossible strength. You moved, straddling his lap and letting him feel the curves of your body against him. His breath quickened and you could already feel the effects of your touches, hard against your inner thigh.

Your hands, bold and needy, began to map out the muscles of his body, curving over the planes of his stomach before finding the firm ridges. You let them linger there, listening intently to the puffs of Mark's heavy, anticipated breath.

Once you decided to let up on your teasing, your palm found the curve of his bulge, the heat of him palpable even through the fabric of his suit.

He sucked in a sharp, defensive breath, grabbing your hand tightly as protective instinct kicked in. You took a moment away from his lips to study his face.

You were faced with an expression you hadn't yet seen painting Mark's features. His brows were furrowed in an unfamiliar expression: soft frown, flushed face and wide pupils. You could only describe it as desire wearing the mask of nervousness.

You tilted your head, offered him a knowing smile.

Despite his internal turmoil, you easily freed yourself from his grip and continued your pursuit of his pleasure.

You had managed to reach a strange equality in your relationship: Mark was a super-powered hero with incredible strength, but he knew nothing of the world, and you had to teach him. But this? With Mark's breath spiking at the pressure you touched him with, the way he shivered at your wet kisses. He'd never been at your mercy before.

You pressed Mark down onto the bed, rising only to take your shirt off.

He seemed torn between action and simply taking whatever lesson on human interaction you had to give him. His hands hovered closely, but not close enough.

You took his wrist and guided him to the fabric of your bra. "You're not going to break me, Mark."

"You're frail."

You huffed, raising a brow at his expression, "I can take whatever you want to give me."

That did little to soothe his concern—but it didn't stop him.

You pressed your weight into the stiff shape poking your thigh, driving your hips forward. Mark grunted, the hand on your breast squeezing, the other finally taking a stronger hold of your waist.

"Fuck," he cursed, fingers pushing craters into your soft skin. You repeated the motion, adding kisses alongside it.

"You want to take your suit off?" You drawled, slow and sensual into his ear.

He was naked below you before you knew it. You decided to even the playing field by taking off your bottoms.

He admired your body for a moment, enough to send a kick of embarrassment to your cheeks.

“I’ll turn the lights off.” You offered, reaching towards the lamp.

But he stopped you with a firm hand.

“What is the point of nudity if I’m unable to see you?”

“Well—" you paused, "it’s more about feeling.”

He took two fingers and softly dragged them down the middle of your breasts, along the ridges of your sternum until he reached the plush of your tummy. “I’m more than capable of seeing and feeling.”

You shivered. No hiding, then.

“Let me see you.”

“Mark…” you protested. He was having none of it. You slowly relented, unclasping your bra and sliding off your underwear, the last remaining pieces.

As the covers slipped from your skin, you felt like a dish—and Mark, with his scrutinising gaze, could’ve passed for a food inspector. His eyes roamed slowly, meticulously, like he was checking every bump and curve for perfection.

You took the pause to gander at him, finally letting your eyes settle on his sex. Am I prepared to take that? You asked yourself, god if his hands don’t break me, his dick might.

“Stop staring,” You muttered, unsure if it was for you or Mark.

With no further instruction from you, Mark decided he’d better inform you how quick of a learner he was.

He took you into him with a swift motion, his flushed skin meeting your own burning flesh in a tight hold. As quickly as he palmed your skin, his mouth painted your chest with rough and inexperienced kisses. You could feel his teeth drag and catch on your breast, making your thighs quiver.

Okay, yeah, I can take him. You decided.

You reached down, fingers trailing down his defined abdomen before brushing against his shaft, and you took the size of him in your hand, feeling a hot breath ghost your shoulder. You gave him a firmer grip and Mark’s arms around you became rigid. A slow stroke drew a groan from him, one that was unguarded and ragged.

With a more assured pace and grip, you quickened your rhythm. He twitched and a dribble of precum slicked your hand.

You would save the rest of foreplay for another time.

You aligned yourself with his length and hovered over his tip, slowly fitting him into you.

There was a slight discomfort at the wet tightness but it was taken away by a sharp pain at your shoulder. Mark's teeth had sunk into your flesh, not enough to break the skin but enough to distract you whilst he pulled you flush onto the remaining size of his sex.

"Mark!" You yelped, hands circling his neck to pry him away from your shoulder.

His lidded eyes met yours, and little dazed and partly apologetic.

"You bit me." You stunned.

"I—"

"It's okay," you said, "just.. not so hard." You thought you saw a flash of a surprised grin but became distracted with the twitch of his full length inside you.

"You're soft everywhere," Mark rasped, his hips rolling into you, slow and deliberate.

The confession made your gums itch and your moan met his groan halfway. You steadied yourself on his chest, feeling the intense drum of his heartbeat. His hips continued to push into you in an untrained attempt.

You aided, rolling into him and feeling the slide along your sensitive insides. You cursed.

The two of you found a disjointed rhythm— Mark matching the sway of your hips with a quick intent, whilst you took your time on him, working to have his length hit that perfect spot which drove you quicker to your orgasm.

Even through the fog of his desire, Mark couldn't help but study the way you reacted to him. How you quivered when he reached the deepest part of you, right where his dick curved into your most sensitive part.

He angled his hips to reach further, and your breath caught in your throat.

Mark's grip on your hips tightened and in a possessive motion he guided your hips further on him replacing your grinding with his strong, quick thrusts.

Your body shook against his, responding to him instinctively and Mark couldn't help but think this is right. This is exactly where I need to be.

Your nails pierced his chest, raking white lines against Mark's skin as his dick pushed you to your orgasm.

"Fuck!" You cried, your body racked with the flood of pleasure reaching every nerve in your body.

Mark was sent over, too, consumed by the fluttering of your insides sucking him in. A guttural groan escaped him with his final, messy thrust. His seed filled your twitching sex, kept inside by his length still filling you whilst the two of you caught your breath.

Both of you stayed, matching pants filling your otherwise silent room.

"Fuck..." you exhaled, half from exhaustion and disbelief. Your mind still swam in the afterglow and you couldn't help but mutter, "It took my last boyfriend forever to..." and as the words left your mouth your heart dropped. Seriously? Mentioning an ex while he's still inside me?

"Continue," he said, a flicker of tension in his eyes.

You hesitated, considering backtracking. "I've... never finished the first time having sex with someone.."

His lips quirked into a smirk. "So does that earn me the title of boyfriend?" he asked, his voice tinged with playful confidence. Without waiting for an answer, he shifted his hips upward, lifting you off the bed with ease. You gasped at the sensation, smacking his chest.

"Don't be arrogant," you shot back, raising yourself off of him with a silenced wince.

You pulled a drawer open, rummaging for an oversized shirt to slip on, and tugged it over your head before heading into the bathroom to clean up the warm mess between your thighs.

When you returned, Mark hadn't moved. But his eyes were fixed on the ceiling as though it were the endless night sky.

"What are you thinking about Mark Grayson?" you asked, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

His gaze shifted to you and something of a smile formed on his lips, but soon dropped to a slight frown. "On my planet, home. Mating— sex, is purely to procreate. I never thought it could be a tool for anything else."

"Sounds boring." You hummed.

Mark remained silent.

It really was just the two of you from then on, living life in a new rhythm, one that included Mark in ways you hadn't considered. He was at your side whenever he had time away from saving the world,

but that still left you plenty of time alone.

The quiet away from Mark allowed you to remain yourself. You—not just the girlfriend of a superhero.

Still, his absence was... undesirable, so it didn't take long for him to decide he needed to make it up to you. He had been away for a week, trapped in another dimension battling a monstrous race, and when he finally returned, he insisted on doing something to make up for lost time. That’s when he took you across the globe on your first trip together.

It was supposed to be a nice time, a way to reconnect. But like most things with him, it ended up being more complicated than either of you expected...

That trip was the first time you two broke up.

"I can't believe you organised this, Mark." You poked your chicken chasseur with a fork, "you can be romantic after all."

"I figured you must've missed me," he replied as casual as ever.

"Probably not as much as you're hoping I did." You grinned over the rim of your champagne glass.

Mark's brow lifted, amused. "No?"

"Well, you left with no warning, no goodbye." You said, tone light but edged with something real.

"I would've," he said, softer.

You sighed, warm but honest, "I know. It's just... hard sometimes, not knowing where you are, or how long you'll be gone."

He leaned in, elbows resting on the table. "But I'm here now. So, you'll spend the night with me."

You blinked, he must've really missed sleeping with you. "That's pretty direct."

"I took you to Paris, it's considered to be earth's most romantic city," He said plainly.

"You think because you took me to Paris I'll just crawl into bed for you?" You asked, sitting back in your seat.

"Yes— and continue the course of our relationship."

You laughed, but it was dry and full of disbelief. "So that's what we are? A transaction? You leave for weeks, take me to a nice place and I give you sex?"

His jaw tensed. "That's not what I meant."

"But it's what you think, isn't it?" You leaned forward, voice low but controlled.

"Don't twist my words."

"Pretty sure I'm hearing them clearly." You sighed, attempting to soften to him, "you can't expect everything to return to the way it was when you're ready, like my life is on pause until you come back. Then you expect me to worship you when you get back?"

His brow furrowed, caught somewhere between frustration and confusion. "I'm trying to fit your pace, your customs."

"I don't need you to fit anything, Mark, I just want you to understand me." You pushed your plate aside to reach his hand, "A relationship isn't about scoring points."

He glanced down at your touch, but instead of taking it, he pulled his hand away, fingers curling tight around the edge of the table. "I'm tired of your people's petty traditions. Will you come home with me tonight or not?"

Your mouth parted in utter disbelief, "No." You said, tossing your napkin on your plate and standing.

Mark quickly followed, his chair scrapping loudly behind him. "I brought you here, you can't leave without me."

"Like hell I can't."

That led to you blowing a thousand dollars on a very long plane ride home.

It was the first time you and Mark broke up, but it wouldn't be the last.

He won you back of course, only because you saw him save two children on the news, you decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The second time the two of you 'broke up' was a tad bit... bloodier.

Mark had taken you to a Christmas market, the kind that lit up at night, with fairy lights strung across every stall, holiday music echoing from an unseen speaker being muffled by laughter and chatter.

It was the kind of place that felt safe and warm, despite the freezing winter.

You'd stepped away from Mark for only a moment, drawn to a stall that sold hand carved snow globes. Each little world held in them were so delicate and sweet. You were smiling, ready to call Mark over to show him one that held a home with a joyful family— when a feeling struck you.

The kind that made your scalp tight and your stomach feel light.

You looked up, eyes instinctively grazing over the people nearby when you landed on a man whose eyes glistened red in the cold. It was a man, mid forties with a glare that pinned you in place.

You straightened, looking over the heads of the crowded market to find Mark.

You spotted his distinctly dark hair and tall frame a few stalls down, half listening to a woman trying to sell him mittens.

You walked to his side, pressing to him and keeping your voice hushed, "let's leave, Mark."

He blinked down at you, "why?"

"There's a guy giving me a look and I am not interested in sticking around to see if he'll try anything."

Mark's expression hardened, not in dismissal but recognition. He stared at your face a moment too long waiting to catch your fleeting gaze to the man. When you did, Mark followed your eye line.

You caught a brief sight of his fists curling before he was gone from your side, leaving you with a strong gust of wind.

"Mark no—" it was too late.

He was already gone.

You stumbled by, weaving through people and muttering apologies to reach him. A tight circle of people had surrounded him and by the time you'd pushed through them, the man was stumbling back, clutching his mouth with a bloodied hand.

Mark's fist connected again, a loud thwack! sounding out. The man dropped like a rag doll to the ground.

"Mark!" You shouted, grabbing the back of his coat—the one you'd just gifted to him, still smelling of the store you bought it from. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"He was looking at you with ill intention," He said flatly, disgusted eyes still on the unconscious man, "just as you said."

"Mark, men look at me. Intent isn't a crime! you can't beat them because they stare!"

"I protected you," he said, eyes cooling when they reached you.

"No, you just attacked someone!" Your voice began to crack at the realised gazes around you. Recording phones, light whispers.

Just then, you caught specks of blood on his collar. It didn't seem to bother him. He was too calm, too sure he'd done the right thing.

"You can't hurt people because you think they're bad. The world doesn't work like that."

"I'll do as I please," he said.

Your chest ached. "Yeah?" You whispered, eyes narrowing. "Then good luck fitting in because I'm not going to babysit some alien psycho." You released your grip on his coat, stepping away.

His expression didn't break, not even twitch and somehow that made it worse.

But, third times a charm, right?

You hoped to God it was when you decided to give Mark his third— and final—chance.

He showed up at your window weeks later, disheveled, like he had forgotten how to dress like a human. His shirt was stained, pants crinkled and still wearing the coat you gave him.

He didn't beg, didn't argue, just said: "I've been learning."

A simple truth, a real promise.

You let him back in, not because he had changed but because he wanted to, for you.

Thankfully, no breakups came about after that. There were missteps, yes—misunderstandings, nights on the couch—but no fights that broke your relationship.

There was growth too, and tenderness. Nights in one another's arms, domestic mornings, and something close to peace.

And it stuck.

So the two of you got married. Not long after, you had a beautiful baby girl.

But really, it was all too good to be true.

The night before you found out Mark's true intentions for coming to Earth—that he was the one who killed the Guardians of the Globe and was going to try and indoctrinate your child into a ruthless empire—he'd made love to you like it'd be the last time.

Things had shifted since your daughter had gotten her powers. Mark was quick to anger from the smallest things, his body was continuously tense in a way it hadn't been in years.

But when he laid you down with soft kisses, you thought maybe this was the Mark you'd missed, until he spoke.

"You know you were the first person I ever experienced this kind of love with." His voice was low and subtly disturbed.

"Mark?" You took his face in your hands, trying to soothe whatever sadness had come over him.

"You'll be the last too."

"Don't talk like that, Mark—" A gasp pulled from your chest as he filled you. You must've had sex with Mark hundreds of times over the years, yet the feeling of his length sliding inside you and the spark it ignited never tired.

It likely felt the same for him, because he halted, regaining the steady pace of his breath.

"I'll never want this with another," he whispered.

"Mark—" He kissed you, enveloping his name on your tongue and hushing any further talk. No, he only wanted moans from you.

His arms encompassed you tightly, as did his smell and taste. Just Mark, all around you and inside.

Too good to be true. You knew it. You had always known it.

read a continuation of this AU here

[keferon]

Part 2 of Golem!Prowl AU!

_____________________

“I hate it,” Orion sighs.

“It's understandable. But you can't change the system from the inside without becoming part of it first.”

“I was hoping I could become part of it without becoming a murderer.”

“It's okay” says Prowl ”You don't have to. That's what you have me for.”

Orion twitches.

Part 1. Next->

The fic under the cut⤵️

Orion looks...sick. Worried. Scared.

“Prowl, do you know what the Great Hunt is?”

Prowl tilts his head keeping up with the lists he received from the Council.

“Traditional raids on monsters made to consolidate control over the land holdings of regular Mechs.”

Orion rubs the bridge of his nose

“It's a massacre.”

Prowl twitches his wing.

“It is a measure of intimidation against creatures that cannot be negotiated with. Brutal, I don't deny that, but experience shows it works. The destructive activity of monsters lessens considerably if they know their actions can be followed by punishment.”

Orion stares at him. For a long time. Silently.

Tensely studying him, as if seeing him for the first time.

“You think killing them instead of finding a compromise is...right?”

Prowl thinks he must be treading on unstable ground.

“I think it works. That is all. Monsters do a lot of damage with their existence. They kill, destroy and pillage. If periodically reducing their numbers reduces their damage, it confirms the effectiveness of the strategy.”

“They just want to live. Primus' sake, they want to eat.”

Prowl sighs. More for appearances than for any real effect.

“I suppose I can't judge them for wanting to survive. It makes sense.”

Orion nods.

He looks oddly pensive.

“Ratchet keeps picking up wounded...” he stammers, apparently trying to find a suitable alternative to the word monster “...wounded beastformers. I've been to his house. It's generous, but I'm afraid of what will happen if he gets caught doing it.”

Prowl frowns

“He should have stopped.”

“You wouldn't understand.” sighs Orion ��Him. Shockwave. We want to help. To make things better. I don't need you to chide me for disobeying the rules, I need you to figure out how to change them. Ghosts and insecticons deserve freedom as much as we do.”

“But...”

Orion looks at him angrily.

“No. Whatever you're going to say in response to that. No. I know you're driven primarily by logic, but I need you to remember it well. All sentient beings deserve to live free. Do you understand? All of them. Period.”

Prowl rolls up the lists and interlocks his fingers in front of him. There are small scuffs on his thumbs and index fingers from constant writing. He occupies himself with running his fingers over them, feeling the difference in texture.

“Mech's freedom in such a case ends where someone else's hungry jaws begin. You can't expect monsters and Mechs to just coexist in peace if you give them freedom.”

“No” sighed Orion ”That's why I support Shockwave's idea with creating an academy for magically gifted Mechs. He's helping to show the world that so-called 'dark creatures' can be as civilized citizens as any Mech. He teaches them to find that compromise. We can't just expect centuries of hate and fear to be forgotten once the laws change. We must direct this process. To help the Mechs understand and accept each other. Guide them, you might say.”

Prowl feels a headache coming on, as it always does when Orion requires him to logically solve a problem the answer to which lies in the feelings rather than the intellect. He's not built for this. It irritates him.

Orion stops right in front of him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Tell me what you think of this. If...let's pretend for a second that my morality fiddles don't matter anymore. That the problem of Mechs and monsters coexisting is something you alone need to solve. And solve it in such a way that the outcome is optimal for us as a society. To maximize the number of happy citizens. What would you do?”

Prowl is silent for a moment.

Orion squeezes his shoulder lightly before continuing.

“'Free from my judgmental conclusions, Prowl. From the standpoint of pure logic. What should we do?”

What to do...Prowl's thought process finally finds a direct and understandable train of thought. Monsters make up a paltry few percent of the population of all living Mechs. The numbers fluctuate depending on which region is being considered of course.

In some cities, some types of monsters are considered just fancy Mechs. Some monsters have risen from the status of savages to being respectable Mechs over the course of history. Even Orion's best friend, Shockwave, could be regarded as a mystical creature in some regions due to his gift of flight.

Nevertheless. The percentage is still minuscule.

But even that tiny percentage takes a significant toll on the economy and quality of life, because just one uncontrollable creature can terrorize an entire city.

He notes the weight of Orion's hand on his shoulder. Not judgmental. Orion promised he wouldn't judge.

“I'd get rid of the monsters.”

“Oh” Orion blinks ”Locked them in cages? Chased them away? Killed them?”

Prowl twitches his wings

“Banishment will only move the problem in terms of space, and imprisonment isn't secure enough. It would make sense to get rid of the monsters. Once and for all. It wouldn't be pretty or merciful, but it would greatly improve life for everyone, at the cost of a tiny percentage of living beings who were already of no use.”

“And you believe that would be a good outcome?”

“I believe it would.”

“But you're not a Mech yourself.” Orion reminds “Would you be willing to be exterminated along with the rest of the creatures if your plan were put into action?”

Prowl tilts his head slightly. Just to make it easier to look at Orion.

“You created me to, as you put it, help you make the world a better place. Sometimes in order to improve something you have to cut out the factors that get in the way. It's simple logic.”

“You didn't answer my question” Orion points out ”How would you feel if I decided to take your advice and destroy all mystical creatures, including you?”

“I am not made to feel” straightens Prowl ”My job is to find solutions to problems. I gave you a solution.”

“You don't include yourself in the reckoning.” snorts Orion “Again. You talk as if you will never be affected by anything.”

As it should be, Prowl thinks. He's a conscientious worker and a ..seemingly law-abiding citizen. He does what he can to make Mech's lives better. Even though he may not be a Mech, he's doing the right thing. Why would something happen to him?

Orion removes his hand from his shoulder and shakes his head.

“'Alright. I've heard you. But I want to make it as clear as possible - what you suggested is immoral, cruel, and should never be implemented. Do you understand me? Never. If you want to build a better world, you cannot and will not build it on other people's deaths. Have I made myself clear enough?”

“Perfectly clear.”

“Good.”

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

Ratchet looks...many words could be used to describe him.

He's standing in the center of the trial room with a lot of emotions written all over his face. But if Prowl had to describe - he'd say Ratchet practically radiates rage. Not violent. More of a powerless one.

The rage of a Mech who knows he's cornered, but refuses to even consider giving up and admitting defeat.

Prowl sits in a far dark corner, silently documenting the whole process.

The council is furious. They apparently discovered that Ratchet has been dragging wounded monsters to his house and healing them all this time.

Which is ... very much as expected from Ratchet.

Prowl wants Orion here, but both Orion and Shockwave are now on a diplomatic mission a few days away, so the only support Ratchet has is...Prowl. Who can't help in any way, so he just sits there and meticulously documents the whole process so that Orion can then be informed of every single detail.

The council doesn't look happy. They say that Ratchet is sabotaging the hunters' efforts to contain the monsters by his actions.They are angered by Ratchet's absolute determination to insist that he was doing the right thing.

Prowl would be impressed, if only Ratchet's stubbornness made sense.

It's simple math. Ratchet saves lives. Monsters take them.

Thus Ratchet's life has much, much more weight and is more valuable.

If Ratchet would just accept the Council's decision now and promise to stop curing monsters, the whole problem would be solved as efficiently as possible.

But Ratchet, of course, persists. Probably just because that's his nature.

Ratchet can also afford to be so stubborn because his skill level makes him incredibly valuable to the Council. Prowl knows for a fact that if any other medic were in Ratchet's shoes right now - they would have been sentenced to banishment or execution by now.

When Ratchet realizes exactly how the Council caught him, his rage is instantly replaced by shock.

This revelation is enough to startle him and make him back down. To nod and numbly swear that he will end his "blasphemous hobby."

Prowl carefully folds the scribbled scrolls into the case as the Council doors close behind both his and Ratchet's backs.

“Orion will be happy to know that you were prudent enough to avoid death.”

Ratchet shifts his gaze to him

“You knew? Knew they could see through our optics? Did you know they could find out anything about any Mech at any time?”

Prowl tucks his hands behind his back and nods politely

“Knowing things is my job.”

Ratchet sighs. Heavy. Exhausted. Doomed maybe.

“How does Orion deal with it...”

“Orion has a reputation with the Council. They consider him a decent, law-abiding Mech, so they see no point in keeping tabs on him.”

“Are you kidding?” Raetchet raises his eyebrows “Orion can't do everything he does and remain ‘decent’ in their eyes. He and Shockwave practically cuddle with every possible creature every day and all they get is a little reprimand????”

Prowl tilts his head

“Orion learned to look away in time. And he has me for everything else.”

Ratchet doesn't answer him. He rubs the bridge of his nose tiredly and starts to walk away.

His shoulders look oddly tense. He looks defeated, but not in the way a Mech would describe a slain turbofox. No. There is a deep-seated, angry determination.

A willingness to act dictated by desperation.

The news of the surveillance has thrown Ratchet off balance but not knocked him off his feet as the Council had hoped.

Prowl looks at his back and walks off in the opposite direction. The problems of living, feeling Mechs have always been and will always be mysterious to him.

Ratchet does what no one expects him to do.

He doesn't stage protests. He doesn't accept the verdict.

He leaves silently, taking with him only medical supplies and an old lantern.

The council is furious, turning over every stone in an attempt to find him, but all in vain.

Prowl's daily duties now include “keeping track of any possible news related to Ratchet.“

And then, no matter what he finds, report to Orion that he's found nothing.

Put on a little regular show for all concerned. Show the Mechs in the Council that Orion remains loyal and does his best to find and bring to justice any blasphemer whether it's a friend of his or not.

He is his purpose. But the more time passes, the harder it becomes for him to trace the path to the fulfillment of that purpose. He envies the golems whose only function is to scrub floors. Their lives are understandable. A clean floor is a temporary but easily attainable goal. They are happy to fulfill the goal for which they were created. And then they're happy knowing their job is done well, until the floor gets dirty again.

Prowl is walking towards his goal, but it's not getting any closer. He knows what he needs to do to get there, but the variables are constantly changing and he has to adjust his course of action each time according to new information, conditions, and Orion's opinion on them.

Politics is infinitely more complicated than mopping floors after all.

————————————

Orion doesn't turn around on him as they walk down the hall. But Prowl can physically feel the attention focused on him.

“Prowl. Did you know I was awarded today for my ''outstanding service'' by the entire Council?”

“I did not.

“They've gone through all the reports and discovered that according to the logs me and my mechs are performing excellently when it comes to eliminating mystical threats.”

“Congratulations.”

“It's funny that you feel the need to congratulate me too” Orion continues ”Because I certainly didn't give orders to eliminate anyone.”

Their pacing doesn't falter. They continue to walk calmly down the hallway as if nothing is happening. But Prowl can practically taste the increased tension.

“Prowl” says Orion “Why is the Council rewarding me for murder? And where are the Mechs they think I killed now?”

Prowl checks the scrolls. Not because he doesn't remember. Just to buy some time to formulate an answer.

“They were the inevitable casualties. I took charge of their destruction. On your behalf.”

“You know how I feel about killing.”

“I know.” nods Prowl for some reason. Why? Not that Orion can see it “I also know how the Council feels about Mechs showing suspicious activity. They would have started watching you as soon as they noticed you were letting monsters slip away from you suspiciously often.”

Orion...sounds... conflicted. He sounds struggling.

“You killed them.”

“I gave the order. As any other hunter would have done in my place.”

Orion stops so abruptly that Prowl doesn't catch the moment and bumps into his back.

“We're supposed to be better than other hunters Prowl! How can you still not grasp that concept!!!”

Orion looks furious. Prowl discreetly looks around.

Around them is a relatively empty hall. Windows covered by heavy curtains. The cleaning golems scurrying back and forth.

“I understand” he says “But let me remind you that you cannot test their trust infinitely. Your 'being better' rests on your reputation. And it's my job to make sure your reputation lives up to it.”

Orion looks at him...Prowl isn't even sure how to describe it. Usually he has to argue with Orion's logic, proving his point but this time...Orion is the one arguing with him.

It feels strange. Uncomfortable.

He's doing everything Orion wanted him to do, but for the sake of it he has to do something Orion can't stand.

Orion clenches and unclenches his fists helplessly. Rubbing the fabric of his cloak.

“Shockwave can save lives without killing anyone.”

“Shockwave is one unfortunate act away from serious consequences” shakes his head Prowl “His academy is looking more and more like his own small army every day. His students are not loyal to the Council, they are loyal to Shockwave. And the Council knows that. And will use it. And it won't be pretty when it happens.”

“No...” shakes his head Orion, not addressing anyone in particular ”No no no no no...”

Prowl can understand why Orion is upset. But he also knows he's right this time. Shockwave may look like a fine example of mercy, but he walks on the very edge of the law and any wrong move will instantly turn him from “out of the box thinker” to renegade.

The Council will come for his head and the Council will get his head because Shockwave will have nothing to prove his loyalty with.

Orion will. Prowl made sure of that.

Orion can bend the rules, can borrow the Council's trust, can do all sorts of reprehensible things. He can stumble and fall and then fall a couple more times and find that it doesn't hurt him because Prowl caught him even before he stumbled.

He did it at the cost of lives. Yes.

But Orion's life is far more valuable than the lives of monsters.

Society doesn't need monsters to become better, but society needs Orion. Monsters need Orion. Because if Orion is gone, no one else will care about his idealistic goal.

“Sometimes I forget how creepy you can be...” mutters Orion ”You're going to betray me sooner or later.”

“I could never betray you.” Prowl twitches his wing.

“You've successfully betrayed what I believe in.”

“It's fine with me if you hate me for it. As long as you are alive, safe, and can continue your quest.”

Orion falls silent.

He turns away to stare at a strip of light from a nearby window. There are beautiful, wrought iron grates that cast an intricate, curved shadow on the floor and walls.

A golem janitor hurries past them.

“I hate it,” Orion sighs.

“It's understandable. But you can't change the system from the inside without becoming part of it first.”

“I was hoping I could become part of it without becoming a murderer.”

“It's okay” says Prowl ”You don't have to. That's what you have me for.”

Orion twitches.

Shockwave falls.

Prowl isn't there to see for himself, but a lot of rumors reach him. Lots. Lots of rumors.

The Mechs say the time of the Great Hunt has come.

They say that when the hunters arrived on the Academy's doorstep, Shockwave didn't let them in.

They say. He stood in front of the gates.

With sword in one hand and the Primus Covenant in the other, and declared that his school was a sanctuary for all living beings in need of protection.

Claimed that anyone who dared set foot inside with a weapon would have to go through him.

“And they retreated!” gestures Orion frantically ”They didn't dare test him! They backed away from the walls of the Academy. I don't know how many monsters were left alive in the forests that night, but none of Shockwave's students were harmed...”

Prowl listens with a healthy dose of wariness

“The Council wouldn't just let him do that.”

Orion begins nervously winding circles around the room.

“You're right, you're right. You're right now and you were right back then. They're going to bring him before the Court by tomorrow, and...”

“There's no chance of that ending well,...is there?" Prowl finishes his thought.

Orion looks pained

“They'll be going through everything he's been up to. Every forged document, every enrolled Mech who by all criteria should be considered a monster. Every time he sheltered them from the Council instead of destroying them. They'll realize what he's been doing and they won't like it at all.”

Prowl...trying to sound reassuring.

“Shockwave has tremendous support from his Academy. There's a chance the Council will be afraid of invoking their wrath and won't judge Shockwave too harshly.”

Orion continues to walk in circles

“You think so?”

“There is a good chance.”

Prowl finds Orion in Sickbay. Which is very disturbing and wrong, because Orion was supposed to be at the Trial. Supporting Shockwave and begging the Council to relent.

But Orion is in Sick Bay. When he shouldn't be.

And he's covered in ugly dark burns. From something Prowl can't recognize.

This is all wrong. It's all--

“What happened at the trial?”

Orion sounds. Startled.

“There was no Trial.”

“What?”

Orion sounds as if something inside him has cracked. In every sense of the phrase.

“The Trial hasn't even had time to begin. He...” Orion clutches his trembling fingers, hoping to still them, but it has no tangible effect. His shoulders are trembling.

He looks like his whole body could be torn apart with one careless touch. “They asked him if he would plead guilty to aiding and abetting dark creatures. All they had time to ask was if he realized he was wrong.”

An uncomfortable, prickly feeling settles in Prowl's mind.

"And?”

Orion squeezes his fingers so hard the creaking of hinges becomes audible.

“It...I...Prowl, his very spark began to ooze dark magic. It was horrible, it was like.. it was eating him from the inside. The entire courtroom became darker than night, many Mechs got burned. I've never seen anything like this before! He..It.. started attacking Mechs and destroying everything...it was like it went crazy...it attacked me and I had to...Prowl I had to fight it! I didn't...I'd heard about it happening but I believed until the last minute that I wouldn't have to face it...”

Gears of chaotic detail fall into place in Prowl's mind.

“Shockwave...turned into a demon...?”

Orion nods shakily

“The Council didn't even have a chance to sentence him or spare him or even sort out what happened.....

He stated that he did not consider himself guilty for what he had done and...Primus was the one who made the judgment before anyone else could...”

That's... terrifying really. For a number of reasons. Losing a close friend is awful, being subjected to such merciless punishment is awful, but also...

What sends a chill down Prowl's back is the moral implication that such punishment carries.

Orion, as if reading his thoughts, raises his gaze to him

“Is what we are doing...wrong? I don't...does Primus think helping monsters is worthy of punishment?”

Now that's a really reasonable question.

Shockwave would say that Primus is merciful and would never condemn a Mech for an act of kindness. But Shockwave ended up being condemned.

Ratchet would say that he doesn't care about Primus' opinion because Primus isn't real. But Ratchet isn't here.

Prowl wants to say that it doesn't matter whether or not Primus thinks they're wrong, what matters is that he can at any moment force his justice on any living spark, so his concept of right has to become Orion's too, or else he's doomed. But Orion is definitely in no state to have a philosophical argument. He looks shattered and Prowl almost instinctively is about to go and find Shockwave, but remembers that option is no longer available.

He's not made for this. Shockwave has always been the one to cheer Orion up on a bad day. Not Prowl, no. Prowl isn't sure what to do so he just sits down next to him and gently places a hand on Orion's shoulder. The one where he can't see the burns, so it shouldn't hurt.

“I don't. I'm used to always relying on your point of view as a reference for what's right and what's wrong.”

“I know” runs a shaky hand over his face Orion “But it's not like I'm perfect. I try, god, I try but just like with the logical part - my vision isn't flawless. Have I been...wrong all this time? Trying to disrupt Primus' intended vision? Maybe what I've been trying to fix never needed fixing. Maybe it's just me being so stupid and not understanding things maybe...???”

Orion cuts himself off mid sentence, realizing that he's started raising his voice and waving his arms around again. He sits back down on the medical bed and curls back up into a miserable ball.

“What should I do....”

“I don't know,” Prowl repeats awkwardly.

He is his goal. But his goal ..doesn't exist anymore?

He doesn't know where to put himself.

Golems are made to fulfill requests. But Orion's request system has been evolving and complicating for so long that Prowl can't tell where its boundaries are anymore.

He feels lost.

——————————

Orion stops cold.

“What...”

Prowl, standing at his right hand looks equally puzzled.

They are in a spacious courtyard bordering directly on the Council building. It's a very beautiful, open and spacious place because it was originally built with large crowds of Mechs in mind. There's wide walkways, a massive circular plaza with fountains and statues.

And right now, it's filled to the brim with Mechs, most of whom Prowl is seeing for the first time. They're all wearing knight armor and carrying weapons, however still kept in their scabbards.

They look like a small army. A very, very diverse army, Prowl realizes. Because there are almost no regular Mechs among them.

Orion looks... distraught.

Mechs? Monsters? A few knights separate and come closer, bowing their heads respectfully.

“Orion Pax.”

There is so much grief and disbelief in Orion's eyes that it physically hurts to look at him.

When he begins to speak his voice sounds hoarse, like someone has poured sand down his throat.

“What...what are you doing here...?”

The knight standing in front of everyone ceremoniously places his palm on his spark.

“We are here to fulfill the last will of our mentor and your friend. Shockwave has decreed in his last will that in the event of his death his legacy must pass to you and those of us who wish to carry on his work must publicly pledge our allegiance to your will.”

Orion clutches his hands together to keep them from starting to shake again.

“But...I was there. I...your mentor was slain by my hands...how can you..."

"It doesn't matter. Everything that was his is now yours." smiles the knight sadly "We will make sure his legacy lives on. And even if the Academy falls - you can always count on us."

At the same time as he finishes speaking, the knight in blue armor drops to one knee, pulling Shockwave's sword from its sheath and holding it out respectfully to Orion... who looks like he's about to start crying.

He dazedly accepts the sword, twitching in surprise when it turns out to be heavier than expected and probably tries to say something, but all that comes out is a short sorrowful sigh.

He just.

Clutches the sword to his chest, watching in disbelief as all the arriving mechs get down on one knee following the blue knight. There aren't that many mechs, but at this point - they seem to rival the sea.

Prowl knows some of them. Many of them made their way to Shockwave after Orion found them. There's the harpy over there who nearly ripped Orion's head off the first time they met. A few ghosts he can remember the faces of but doesn't know the names. He'd had a long argument with Orion that day, trying to convince him that he shouldn't take their word for it when they promised to make it up to him.

And now they're all here. In beautiful new armor. Executing their mentor's last will and testament.

Just like regular Mechs, only a little eccentric looking.

The crowd of hunters that has come to find out what's going on looks as speechless and dumbfounded as Orion.

" What" Orion also gets down on one knee to be on the same level as the knight "what's your name?"

Prowl squints warily from behind Orion's shoulder. The blue mech looks normal, but to be honest, there's no way someone coming out of the Shockwave Academy is going to be an normal plain mech. There has to be a catch somewhere.

"My name is Skids," smiles the knight shyly. "I am...was...Shockwave's best student."

"You are very brave Skids" smiles Orion sorrowfully "I promise to do my best to take care of Shockwave's legacy. And you."

Orion drops his head on the table tiredly.

"This is crazy..."

Prowl pulls an important document from under Orion's head

"It's also quite devious. Shockwave told them specifically to swear to you where all comers can see it. So there's no way for the Council to accuse you of purposely swaying an army of monsters to your side. Everyone saw that this gift was given by force. Now you have many allies with unique skills who are loyal to you and the Council won't try to take them away because they are firmly convinced that you are loyal to the Council."

Prowl examines the document for damage before setting it aside.

"It is..."

"Shockwave gave you an opportunity."

"And I don't know what to do with it!" raises his head Orion "Shockwave was smarter than me and made a lot of plans in case of...I don't know...anything?? I didn't...Prowl. We've been down this path for so long and I was always sure there would be something good at the end of it. Or at least better than it is now..."

Orion rubs his chin and shakes his head awkwardly

"...But if there's only the wrath of Primus and endless darkness at the end...I can't ask anyone to follow me there. I'm not sure if I can keep going myself..."

He sighs helplessly

"I'm not even sure if that even matters."

"The chance that Shockwave would try to use you in some way was about twenty-eight percent."

Orion twitches

"What?"

"I understand that you're hurt by his...fate." Says Prowl "But have you considered the possibility that Shockwave was being punished for betraying you rather than the Council?"

Orion doesn't even answer at first. Just looks at him dazed and bitter.

"Prowl...no. He couldn't have."

"I'm just speculating" shrugs Prowl "Shockwave was punished but as far as I know God didn't bother to name the exact charge. We don't know one hundred percent what exactly caused his...sentence. He may have betrayed the Council's ideas, or he may have betrayed yours."

They both just exist in silence for a while. Processing the information.

"If...and I mean if!!! If Shockwave was convicted of harboring monsters, then everything we've been doing all this time can be considered useless blasphemy..." says Orion slowly "...but if he was punished for something else..."

"...then that would mean there's nothing wrong with your idea." finishes Prowl.

Orion frowns

"It would also mean that Shockwave lied to me..."

Prowl nods. The situation is ugly no matter which way you look at it.

Shockwave, as Prowl knows him, would hardly have framed Orion, but Mechs tend to go to great lengths to avoid execution.

If Shockwave had shifted some of the blame to Orion then, it would have partially saved him. Was that what he was going to do? Was this what Primus had stopped him from doing?

Orion's finials twitch slowly

"I don't know Prowl. I don't know what to do. I don't want anyone else to get hurt because of my fantasies."

Orion is hard to read, but right now he's an open book.

Prowl tilts his head

"You're scared."

Orion looks. Defeated. Crumpled.

Discolored.

" I am."

Prowl can't work with that. He's used to solving logical problems and making lists and strategies.

He doesn't know how to get someone to stop being scared.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"I don't know." mutters Orion "I don't know, I have no idea. It's too much...All these new knights, this whole council situation and now you're also saying that the mech I treasured the most could actually be a liar and...just leave me alone."

"But..."

"Just go away!" shakes his head Orion "Go find something else to do, find a hobby, I don't know! Get out of my head and out of my personal life!"

Prowl nods silently.

Places a couple papers in their places and silently walks out the door.

Gestures a greeting to some mech passing by.

And is completely unsure of what to do with himself.

Orion's too stunned by everything that's happened to give him a clear purpose. And without a purpose, he...he's gone.

He continues to stand by the closed door.

A thought runs obsessively through his mind.

If Shockwave was sentenced for something no one knew about, then punishing him the moment of that trial was a truly terrible decision and even worse timing.

But if Shockwave was sentenced for helping monsters...Prowl isn't sure why his mind resists the idea.

Maybe he's not being objective because he shares Orion's views and aspirations.

Maybe because he has looked at the entire square filled with dangerous monsters and has seen nothing but sorrow and respect in them.

The idea comes naturally.

Then God must be wrong.

He looks at the cleaning golems again. He envies them.

They are peace and contentment.

They are a clear and simple goal.

Probably the biggest stress that happens to them is random mechs passing by and interfering with their cleaning.

And then there's Prowl, standing by with no meaning or purpose and wishing he could throw something heavy because the one who gets in his way is an indefinable force of nature and a complex system of values and beliefs created by millions of years of cultural development....

But Primus can't stop him, can he?

Prowl is not alive. He has no emotion so that his intentions can be categorized as evil, but more importantly he has no spark so that its magic can turn him into a demon.

He is his purpose. His purpose is his god. And Primus stands in his way.

He turns around and walks away.

[un-fwuit-un-fwog]

Cards and Casts

Part five of The Rain series

Synopsis: Ace and Deuce's visits to The Prefect in the infirmary after Ramshackle's collapse

TW: Aftermath of Ramshackle collapsing on The Prefect, Ace is out of it, Deuce is (more) all over the place than usual (in a trying to process things kinda way)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 (here), Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 (coming soon), . . .

The next person to come and visit you was Ace.

The moment the news had been announced, Ace was already booking it to sign up to see you. At the time, it hadn't yet been announced that the further up on the list you were, the sooner you'd get to see The Prefect; Ace was just desperate to sign his name as soon as he could. It was almost as if he thought doing so would in a way prove that he did care. That it would redeem him for not being there when you needed him. That it would make him feel less guilty.

A knock was heard from the other side of the infirmary door. You had been told that your next visitor would be ace, but Ace never knocked.

You rand the little bell next to your bed to tell whoever it was to come in (you had a bell because you couldn't yet raise your voice much).

An unfamiliar boy walked through the door. His hair was a ruffled mess, his clothes were wrinkled, and there were dark circles under his eyes. It took you a moment to realize it was actually Ace who stood before you. He looked like a mess. He didn't even have his signature red heart painted on his face.

The smile he gave you looked strained, but you didn't comment on it.

You ended up having to beckon the boy closer after he had been standing in the doorway for a good five minutes. He dropped his shoulders and basically hobbled to your bedside. He nearly toppled over as he tried to take a seat, but caught himself at the last moment.

Tick Tick Tick Tick

"I. . .I brought cards."

And so, that's how you ended up playing a few games of Rummy with him. But he was still off. He was playing like an absolute novice. He was letting you win. He NEVER lets you win.

Eventually, you had had enough, and you set down your cards with a scuffed huff. He didn't even notice!

You carefully reached up a hand and pushed his cards down onto the bed and he just let them tumble.

"Ace." Your voice was gruff, but still somehow airy.

"Oh, uh, yeah?" Ace seemed to snap out of a trance. . .well, more like slowly drift out of.

You tried to meet his eyes, but he refused to look directly at you. You thought about asking if he was okay, but the answer to that question was pretty obvious. You didn't ask him what was wrong for the same reason. Instead, you took a deep breath and held it as you painfully shifted over in the bed. You did your best not to make a noise as not to worry the already clearly upset boy.

Ignoring your screaming body, you mustered your best smile (your bandages kept it from reaching your eyes though) and gently patted the space next to you on the bed.

Ace gave you a hesitant look, but you just patted the space again to tell him it was okay. He wouldn't hurt you simply by sitting next to you.

When he finally did sit next to you, you let your head rest against his shoulder. Neither of you spoke

Tick Tick Tick Tick

When the silence was finally broken it was with a single mumbled word: "sorry."

"Hm?" you coughed.

". . .I-I'm sorry." His voice wasn't much louder, but you could hear it this time.

You slowly picked your head up and looked at him incredulously "What for?"

"I wasn't there."

"You knew Ramshackle would collapse?"

"No, I-"

"If you were there, you would have gotten hurt too."

"No! I could have helped. . .I could have-"

"No. No, you couldn't."

He went silent and his face fell before tightening slightly in the way it does only when someone is on the verge of tears.

"Nobody could have stopped it after it started. Nobody could have made it out in time either." Your voice reduced to a croak, but you continued. "You didn't know the dorm would collapse. It's not your fault-"

"Still!" His voice raised and a waver in his tone became apparent "If I was there, I-"

"Would have gotten hurt too. Then I would be too worried about you to do any healing myself." You could tell your voice wouldn't hold out much longer, so you said one more thing: "It's not your fault. You're doing all you can now by being here and being safe. Thank you."

Tears dripped steadily from the boy's face, but he didn't make a sound.

You lightly took his hand in yours, and you sat like that for hours. Together and safe.

Deuce walked in not long after Ace left.

He walked into the room silently and took a seat next to your bed.

"How are you doing?"

You were about to grab the notebook and pencil next to your bed to write a response as your voice was shot, but she spoke up again before you got the chance.

"Wait, no! That was a dumb question!"

Before he could start further rambling, you shook your head and began to write: 'I'm doing much better. I appreciate you asking.'

Deuce sighed and began fiddling with his hands. "Does. . .does it still hurt?"

You took a moment to think about whether or not you should answer his question truthfully, but ultimately decided not to lie. 'It still hurts, but not as much."

Deuce frowned, but nodded.

'I bet I'll get some cool scars! Like battle scars. We'll match!' You scribbled out sloppily as you weren't exactly able to properly hold a pen with your hands looking like a mummy's. It was meant as an attempt to cheer him up, but he only frowned further.

"You shouldn't have scars. You're a good person."

It was you're turn to frown. 'You're a bad one?'

Before Deuce could reply, you tapped the space next to you: telling him to sit.

Similarly to Ace, he hesitated, but you eventually got him to sit next to you on the bed.

He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut him off again. This time you did so by dragging his arm closest to you onto your lap and grabbing a marker off of the nightstand. You uncapped the marker and rolled up his sleeve.

Deuce was too stunned and confused to say a word as he watched you scribble little pictures on his arm. The pictures were cartoony renditions of various times he'd done kind things for you. When you were done he finally snapped out of his daze.

"Wait! I should be the one cheering you up! First I let you get hurt, and now I can't even comfort you properly! I-I can't do anything right!" Deuce's head falls into his hands and you watch as tears fall onto the sheets.

A marker slips into Deuce's hand and he looks over at you with confused, tear-filled eyes.

You point to the cast on your leg. A blank slate. 'A drawing from you on my cast would make me happy'

"But. . .I can't draw-"

You cut him off by basically shoving the notebook in his face. 'Doesn't matter. Anything you draw will remind me of you, and thinking of my friends will make me happy.'

He ends up doodling a flower and an endearingly poor depiction of him, Ace, Grim, and you together and signing his name.

For the rest of his visit, you take turns doodling different things in your notebook and adding funny little details to each other's drawings.

When Deuce finally leaves, you let out a breath you had been holding. Your face contorts in pain and a soft whimper leaves your throat.

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[messrsrarchives]

i have nothing to say that hasn't already been said in regards to the Uk Supreme Court hearing, nor do i have the mental capacity right now, so you get rhis long draft from february for now instead:

there is no feminism without trans rights. there is no feminism if you are pointing towards trans women and assessing whether they are "womanly enough". there is no feminism if you are pointing towards trans women and saying they can't get periods. "they can't birth a child, how are they women!?". there is no feminism if you turn around to trans men and ask if they've considered their future fertility. if you reduce their worth and their livelihood to their ability to bear a child. there is no feminism if you come after hrt because you can say it's trans healthcare all you want... until they come for your hrt. for your birth control, for your plan b, for your viagra, for YOUR hrt. there is no feminism if you insist on restricting trans healthcare. "no no, they need more time to think about it!" anyway, i'll wait 6 months for a doctors appointment only to be told i must be due on. have you considered it's anxiety??? there is no feminism if you insist on verifying people's sex. hi, hello, sorry! mandatory genital check! yes, we have security stationed outside the women's restrooms! don't worry about it, i'm sure that viral video of a cis woman being hounded by cis men pretending to be security guards is fake, it mustttt be a trans thing. yeah. no, it isn't bad that this trans person got misgendered and hatecrimed and assaulted. look at them, they aren't even trying. if they wanted to not be attacked, they would've worn the right thing. it's what they were wearing, right?

there is no feminism when the arguments against trans people are just misogyny repacked

what makes a woman a woman? no no, wait. you're 18! have you thought about your reproductive future? what if you change your mind and want kids ohhh you're gonna regret that. yes yes, these puberty blockers that both cis and trans people on? those are harmful because we shouldn't be messing with children's hormones but we're only going to ban them for trans people. yeah, i'm sure they work differently for cis kids! don't worry about it, the blockers know when a person is trans and then it starts attacking their body because that is absolutely how science works!

if jkr was a feminist she would talk about women's rights without a trans person coming into the equation.

she would talk about the fact that violence against women has been declared a national emergency in the uk, and she wouldn't follow it up with trans bathroom debates. that 70k donation to stop trans women being legally recognised as women? maybe that could have been spent elsewhere in the legal system. perhaps in ensuring that rapists and abusers actually get convicted of their crimes and that the 1 in 2 women who are victims of this do not shake their head with an empty sigh when they're asked if they would like to press charges. she wouldn't have come online with 14m followers and debated the validity of imane khelif's success, wouldn't have argued that a woman of colour was trans because she don't fit her western ideals of what a woman should look like, because feminism isn't feminism if it isn't intersectional. she wouldn't have handed johnny fucking depp millions upon millions. she wouldn't have given marilyn manson fucking flowers. if jkr were a feminist she would have spoken up about farage and his proposed restrictions to abortion. reform are leading the uk polls right now, this is becoming more of a threat but no no, silence.

if jkr was a feminist, she wouldn't be Supporting Donald Trump. she wouldn't be publicly praising him for his work against transgender athletes in america when he has over double the amount of sexual assault "allegations" than there even ARE trans athletes at college level in america.

there is no feminism without trans rights, and you need to take the wool off of your eyes if you think that you as a cis woman are safe from this. because you're not.

when we start bringing arguments about reproductive capabilities back? when we start arguing about how much "effort" a woman puts in, how much makeup she wears. when we start reducing womanhood back down to aesthetics and reproductive value?

you aren't safe.

and if you aren't standing with trans people right now, if you aren't standing for intersectionality right now?

then you aren't a feminist either.

[cipheramnesia]

The Dungeon Meshi character I think about the most, not love the most but think about most, is Chilchuck. He is much more Some Guy than anyone else, he's got a wife and kids and he's gonna open a store. He's a little dude with sharp senses who knows about locks and traps, and it's all very straightforward compared to like, really anyone else in the manga.

But why I'm fascinated is that his whole core essence revolves around organization and function, around safety not in the sense of cowardice or excess caution, but in the sense of a deeply rooted belief that everyone deserves to live and everything has a place. One day he'll open a shop and retire but right now his people are being exploited and he needs to plan for his future, so he's unionizing half foots and reducing risk and that functions for society because it's dumb using the guy watching your back as bait. It's a broken system he has to fix.

And it's like that with Laios and Senshi and Marcille and Falin. Falin dies, it's a broken system, she was a vital component that kept the group healthy. Eating monsters departs from the system, it's wrong to him, but then he figures out how Senshi has created a new system with better survivability. Senshi interrupts his trap hunting and he goes ballistic because that's not how the system survives. Itzutsumi drives him bonkers because she refuses to be a part of his system. Laios' lack of people skills frustrates him because Laios' charisma has made him a leader. A leader needs to know how to see how people feel, and Laios can't do that.

I think a lot about how his approach and personality are so nicely interwoven with his skill at traps and exploration. Everyone else has big weird personalities, but Chilchuck, well he's not a cool head per se, but his weirdness is less grandiose. He's a puzzle guy, a problem solver, and everyone around him is a moving part he's trying figure out. People ditch the party early on and he's not bothered because that's mechanically sound. Laios and Marcille go back and he has to come too because they're more than friends, they're a part of something that works and survives and even missing a part, he knows he can keep this little machine running. But they won't thrive without him, and he won't work as well alone.

[kanansdume]

Okay, so everybody knows the Obi-Wan and Anakin elevator scene from AOTC where Obi-Wan realizes Anakin's super anxious about seeing Padme again but he doesn't have time to try to have a more straight-forward talk about his feelings and that probably wouldn't relive his stress anyway given Anakin's proclivities towards hiding his feelings, so he instead decides to provide a distraction in the form of provoking Anakin into an argument by blatantly claiming something that isn't true so that Anakin will refute it.

I want Obi-Wan to do that more. More specifically, I want to see him doing it with CODY.

Because Cody, for all that he is obviously a pretty steady person, is also a clone who presumably was told at some point that he had stress bred out of him and would not have a concept of "talking about his feelings" in any meaningful way. So when the war starts to get to him and the stress and anxiety start to get a little overwhelming, he doesn't really have a great outlet for it.

But Obi-Wan has been dealing with someone who isn't great at talking about his feelings and doesn't have a great outlet for dealing with his stress for like ten years now. He knows how to approach this in a way that's gentler than just straight-up asking Cody how he feels (a question guaranteed to get him nowhere, especially towards the beginning of the war).

So the first time Cody maybe shows up to a briefing a little stressed and they have like two minutes or something before it starts, Obi-Wan says something like "You know this reminds me of that campaign we ran on Mimban where I was able to successfully pull off that crazy maneuver" and Cody is immediately like "This is NOTHING like that campaign and that maneuver you pulled was quite literally the opposite of successful, General" and Obi-Wan goes "Ah yes, you're quite right, I remember now" and then laughs a little and Cody just rolls his eyes a bit but he's noticeably a little less stressed now.

But Cody is not Anakin and he cottons on a bit faster to Obi-Wan's game, so the next time Obi-Wan decides to try it, Cody doesn't rise to the bait and instead just responds with "Yes, General, I do, it was such an impressive maneuver you pulled, I'm sure the men would LOVE to do it again, but sadly we do not have the time or resources to implement it this time." Obi-Wan is fucking DELIGHTED, and from that point on, the distraction isn't an ARGUMENT, but a GAME. Any time Obi-Wan brings up some sort of old battle with blatantly incorrect information, Cody will pretend that it's the absolute truth but has to come up with a reason as to why it isn't usable in this situation or something. It's still helpful in reducing stress, but in a different way.

One day, Cody is feeling a little stressed about something, and he goes to Obi-Wan and says "General, do you remember that time on Felucia when you single-handedly took down the enemy?" And Obi-Wan realizes immediately that this is Cody ASKING FOR HELP. This is Cody recognizing what he's feeling, choosing to admit to it, and asking for help managing those feelings. And Obi-Wan is SO SO PROUD of him, and of course immediately picks up the game and helps his Commander.

And maybe, much further down the line, Obi-Wan's feeling more stressed than usual. Maybe it's just the toll the war has taken, maybe something specific has happened to cause it that's worse than usual, take your pick, but Obi-Wan's just... struggling a little, and Cody notices. Cody's seen it before, but usually it happens when they're already tucked away somewhere like Obi-Wan's quarters or something and he can just come straight out and ask Obi-Wan if he's okay and Obi-Wan can talk about what's stressing him out. But for whatever reason, that's not actually an option right now. Obi-Wan is visibly stressed in public and struggling to set it aside until he can get somewhere private to deal with it, so Cody steps up to him and quietly says "General, this situation reminds me of that time on Grievous's ship when I was able to execute a very successful jump and pin on the enemy combatant." Obi-Wan actually hasn't been on this side of the game before and he's a little distracted by whatever's stressing him out, so he doesn't pick up on it immediately, and so he's like "Wait, as I recall, you did NOT manage to do that successfully, and I don't see ANY relation between that situation and this one" and then halfway through he realizes what just happened and starts to laugh. Cody is just pleased that it worked.

[mehiwilldoitlater]

When you were taken by your original world and sent into some kind of ancient China, full of demons and monsters, you weren't exactly sure why you were supposed to assist the "Destined one." Damn, you didn't even know how this.

When you find out that this destiny one was some kind of successor of Sun Wukong, saying that you were surprised was a joke.

His eyes scrutinized you; they were dark with a tint of gold when the light stricked them. He silently circled you, creating some distance between you, himself, and the other monkeys, curious about the mortals that presented themselves on their mountain.

Every time you tried to keep some distance, he was ready to close it enough to never leave his sight. What a strange situation, and what strange creature was sent to him just at the dawn of his journey.

The stories portrayed Wukong, as the name says, as a monkey kind of guy: cheerful, ready to make some jokes, who liked to make fun of people and laugh. And yet, the destined one was nothing like this trope.

He was composed, serious, and always straight forward. It was like he decided to expel every fun side from him in order to fulfill his duty.

Despite that, he showed more side to you: he was caring, trying to understand your confusion and fear while in a new world, always remembering to keep your peace while walking to make sure that you didn't get lost around. He was your protector, always ready to strike at every danger, and a good friend in the moment of agony.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't cry for these things, but... I'm sorry, so sorry."

You missed home. You never could believe yourself, but you missed your monothone and unsavory life. You missed waking up, going to walk, listening to endless hours of your boss rumbling—you missed even the crappy food of the cafeteria!

Everything seems so far away, without hope of reaching it. And you felt like trash because he was the one that was there to listen. You felt ashame, ashame of the fact that you were there complaining about what you lost while he was there fighting for both of you. You tried to cover your eyes, holding your breath to calm down, but nothing worked at all.

A stream of tears keeps on crashing down, hiccups escaping your lungs without stop.

Then, you felt his arms—two pairs of strong and soft arms, protecting your now vulnerable state from everything and everyone. His tail followed his gesture, keeping you in place and warm—so warm.

"Please." His high peech voice is now reduced to a whisper. "Don't hold it. Don't hold the pain. I can't see you like this. Please, whatever cloud your heart, speak to me."

Soon, you both became inseparable. You followed him like a shadow, carrying pills and balms, making plans with him for your next move. Damn, even Bajie couldn't believe his eyes when he saw you behind the monkey, a little afraid of the newcomer of the group.

You weren't anymore just some random mortal the Destined one had found and kept at his tail; now you were the Destined done caompanion and trusted friend. His journey became your journey, and his task your task. You both became bound by a silent vow.

"Say...why don't you choose a name? A real one this time."

"I never thought about it." He started to play with a leaf fallen from the nearby tree, thinking about your new idea.

You reached his side, holding his hand in yours, caressing the black claws on it. Once those scared you, now you wonder if a nice manicure could make them look prettier than now.

"Well, you can't let me call you Destined One or Monkey forever! You need a proper name! Something nice! ...umm...how about... Yuánfèn?"

"Um? Since when can you name people here?"

"Well," you continued, "it's destiny in Chinese, no? Like..fate!"

He looked at you, then laughed between his teeth a little. "There's no difference in how they usually call me then!"

"Yes, but...this is how I call you! So is different!"

Soon, you start to not miss home that much. You start to hope to be closer to him—to not go back. You hope that, after your honeymoon, you can stay together and that, despite all, there can be a happy ending for both of you. And silently, in his head, he hoped that too.

"May i?"

He gave you his silent consent, allowing you to caress his cheek with your so small fingers. Your lips met his own, your gesture so timid and gentle that you ask yourself if it's still a small image in your mind instead of something that you're actually doing now. He hasn't moved an inch; confusion starts to come to him and yourself, to the point that you need to stop. Now you just feel ashamed; you felt that you crossed a line, and now you don't even know if you can even go back.

"I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

A small shush from him, his finger holding your chin and guiding you against him. This time, he's trying to mimic your gesture, a blush forming from his face to the visible part of his ears. His kiss is trembling but fierce. He waited long enough to see your still puzzled face.

"I...may don't get how you did it...Can you show me...again, please?"

You don't need to let him ask again; soon your lips smash together again, showing him exactly what's happening.

Your fate is sealed with that kiss, and there's no force on heaven and earth to undo it.

@sun-jglim

[honey-doc]

Why I appreciate Kabru and Mithrun's relationship in the story (with pictures!)

I just want to express how much I loved reading through the chapter with the 6 days they spent together and how I think their relationship developed in a pretty sweet way.

I feel like a lot of people reduce their dynamic to "nurse and patient" and that makes me sad because I personally got a lot more from it than that.

I do wanna start off by saying I'm here appreciating their dynamic as it is in the text.

Read more (spoilers ofc):

The beginnings

When they first met, there was an air of intimidation surrounding Mithrun as the captain of the ominous Canaries. He demonstrates his proficiency as a fighter and leader which worried Kabru because he knew it would lead to the dungeon falling into elven hands once again. But this threatening aura begins to dim in Kabru's mind as they get to know each other.

Even before they fell down the hole, the both of them ended up relying on each other's abilities a number of times (when the underground governor turned out to be corrupted Mithrun defeated him and Mithrun needed Kabru's deduction skills during the battle on the first floor) which is already the beginning of a great dynamic

(Kabwu is scared but Mithrun just asks for his help)

After Cithis tasked him with "taking care of Mithrun's needs" for the time being, Kabru treated Mithrun with proper respect and doesn't take advantage of his disability, even using his title “Captain” when he knew Mithrun wouldn���t have cared either way after learning about how he lost his desires. This is in contrast to Cithis who immediately took advantage of her position to mess around with Mithrun when she was taking care of him.

(When Cithis was put in charge of taking care of Mithrun)

The whole time Kabru is with Mithrun, he treats him like a person and more than just someone to be taken care of, as also he relies on Mithrun's fighting skills, knowledge of the dungeon, and teleportation magic.

When you reduce their dynamic to just "caretaker and patient", you're ignoring Mithrun's own capabilities and making him seem totally helpless. It actually feels rather ableist. They have a more balanced relationship with what Mithrun brings to the table than you may think. Mithrun couldn't have survived down there on his own, but it's the same for Kabru (who famously dies every time he fights)!

Kabru doesn’t show signs of trying to manipulate Mithrun either, and he's no longer intimidated by him in the slightest once he learns he’s not a threat or after his life. Though he does instinctively revert to his "sparkly" persona to get Mithrun to eat the disgusting mushroom, it doesn’t work so Kabru just has him eat it normally and never tries it again. This is the beginning of Mithrun unintentionally encouraging Kabru to be more honest with others.

(Kabru realizing he can chill out)

(Kabru being unreserved and Mithrun being silly)

bonus funny moment:

Bonding

Throughout the journey they talked to each other, shared things with each other, and ate with each other. And Kabru expresses genuine concern about whether Mithrun is comfortable (which is something he could live without and wasn't something the Canaries told him to do).

(Kabru showing he wants to make him comfortable by making food for him which is a very important part of the narrative)

(Kabru sharing intimate memories with Mithrun)

(Kabru initiating conversation without hesitation or worry. This part also is referencing how Mithrun shared very important details of his life with Kabru. Kabru also ends up trusting Mithrun with information about Laios despite knowing he could possibly tell the other Canaries about him and impede his plans..which he does lol they do end up knowing about Laios before meeting him.)

For a bonus Lycion implies Kabru was taking better care of Mithrun than they had been which is interesting to me.

Mithrun also shows that he has come to trust Kabru's decisions over the Canaries' when he says he wants to stay in the dungeon after fulfilling the caretaker requirement. They did talk to each other a lot, during that time. I wonder what Mithrun's Shapeshifter double of Kabru would look like now?

Here, Kabru goes out of his way to make sure Mithrun doesn’t overexert himself by knocking him out after the demon leaves with Marcille (again, when his time taking care of him is already over), and I think that demonstrates an extra level of concern he holds for Mithrun.

(Kabru holding back a hellbent Mithrun)

(KNOCKOUT!)

He even managed to make Mithrun mad. It's probably because he "let the demon get away" but I think it's cute and funny because would he huff like that at anyone else? Lol

When the demon breaks through the surface

Kabru begins panicking after Laios turns into the giant monster because he's wondering if he made the right decisions etc. If Mithrun didn’t care about Kabru at least a little bit, he would’ve just left him alone when he started losing it (right after Marcille did the same thing and she is technically more to blame for empowering the demon than Kabru was for not allowing Mithrun to go after it), but he went out of his way to snap him out of it.

It also means a lot to me that Mithrun even says Kabru's name, because in Japanese you can go your entire life without referring to someone by name and it wouldn't sound wrong (just rude) and it's the first time Mithrun says Kabru's name on screen (I checked).

Though it was with a slap, I think it says a lot, because if Mithrun didn’t care at all he wouldn’t have done anything and left him alone. It's not like Kabru could've done anything to stop the demon. He didn't even to tell him to do anything even though Kabru looked ready for an order.

(To be honest I don't know exactly why Mithrun starts beating him up here but you can say it's another rare demonstration of emotion Kabru was able to evoke in him lol. Maybe it's payment for Kabru stopping him the first time. That can be interpreted as paying it back and/or paying it forward I think.)

The last few chapters

And in the end when Kabru’s motivating Mithrun to continue living his life, he speaks to him like they’re friends/have no rank between them despite using the Captain title for him the whole time. Even Lycion initially gets upset that he’s acting “too familiar” with Mithrun.

It feels like Mithrun changed so much in the short time he spent together with Kabru and before the final battle, and it’s thanks to Kabru that Mithrun finally starts to be able to move past his lingering obsession with the demon and begin to really heal.

This is despite the fact that he spent so much time with Milsril and the other elves who never managed to break through to him like that.

(Before Kabru) (After Kabru)

And even after his role as Mithrun's caretaker was loong complete, he still shows concern for Mithrun and tells him to take a break when he's using up all his magic to slice the Falin meat (lmao).

He didn't need to do that! But it shows how he at least slightly considers Mithrun some kind of friend.

It all culminates with Kabru helping Mithrun regain his wil to live and Mithrun confiding in Kabru. Their relationship is important. Kabru continuing to do things for Mithrun to me is more of a sign that he just plain cares about him. Isn't it normal when a friend needs medication for you to remind them to take it? I think it's like that.

Kabru is there with Mithrun when he comes out about his feelings of uselessness AND when Senshi helps him put a spin on the 'vegetable scraps' metaphor and he find meaning in his life again. He's the first one to see him cry :')

Along with the fact that it feels like Mithrun is the first person we see Kabru doesn't feel the need to change his personality with or put on airs for since Mithrun doesn't need buttering up and he won't get offended if someone were to say something socially awkward, I think they made a pretty good team!

BUT ALSO the REAL reason I became endeared to them is cute shit like this:

GOD I love them!!!!! There are so many funny sides to Mithrun Kabru was able to bring out, and really show his charm as a character. Mithrun also brings out the best in Kabru while Kabru’s the most genuine he’s been since his debut with Mithrun. We are able to see that he’s just a kind and caring person, rather than the shady obsessed guy most fans have come to believe him to be.

The true depths of their dynamic also grew on me over time :)

TLDR

All in all it’s so nice seeing how even though Mithrun is a really deadpan person, and Kabru is a really secretive and withheld person, they clearly seem to have developed some kind of bond while they traveled together and even changed each other to an extent.

Doesn't Kabru feel more honest near the end? Maybe it's because of how much he talked to and shared with Mithrun during those 6 days so candidly...because they taaaalked a looooot like wow.

They mean so goddamn much to me. I don’t need them to be in a romantic relationship but I do want them to be together forever :'))) or like at least hang out when they have off time since they're still in the same country lol. Praying for Kui to make another side comic of them some time (crying).

Thanks for reading if you made it this far, I mostly arranged this because it makes me sad to see people reduce their dynamic to only one singular aspect.

Anyways ya...love 'em (heart hands)

[scribblestatic]

Since this is now the third post of Spider Shen Yuan, I'll make a masterpost for it. It'll be linked at the end.

Also, fun fact I just found out, but the word for spider in Chinese is 蜘蛛 (Zhī zhū), and, as you know, Shen Yuan's title (given to him) is Lulin Zhizhu (绿林之主 - lǜlín zhī zhǔ - Lord of the Green Forest).

And, like, I know they're two different words because zhū and zhǔ aren't the same. But also, I chose to use Zhīzhǔ because it's close to Shizun (师尊 - Shī zūn), both of which mean master, though Shizun is teacher-master and Zhizhu is lord-master, the latter of which, when using a different word, is also Zhizhu (spider).

FUCK I'm good. Coincidences are on my side on this one.

...Also, if they were to mispronounce his title, he could also be Pearl/Bead of the Green Forest (綠林之珠 - Lùlín Zhīzhū), which I think is cute.

---

The demoness does not take kindly to one of her guards being killed.

In retaliation, she demands that the demon guards use their full power to capture and imprison him.

However, Shen Yuan has not been living and growing for...who knows how many years...without preparing for eventually finding himself in a battle with more intelligent beings than the typical monster.

Using his legs as toothpicks, he stabs each little morsel she sends his way, setting some aside as his little minion spiders wrapped them up to eat later and eating others immediately.

His carapace is quite strong, and his eyes, though lidless, aren't mere weak points some game character could mash until he was destroyed. He has near 360 degree vision with almost blind spots unless he just really isn't paying attention. And since he's paying attention, he makes sure that, even if they haven't hit him yet, he sprays webs to disable the more spiritually-inclined demons staying further back.

When a stronger one approaches, he scuttles out of range, large but extremely mobile. After all, he's covered his entire neck of the woods in his webs, whether visible or nearly imperceivable to the naked human (or demon) eye.

He started as an orb weaver, but over the years, he's adapted to different styles of webs. It's a requirement of the strong to adapt to their surroundings, after all.

Eventually, most of the guards are reduced to little web-covered bags, wriggling futilely to escape, and the demoness, with a few remaining soldiers, cowers as her continued orders start to sputter out.

With a few calculated maneuvers, he causes the presence of the humans to slip from their minds, eventually concealing them in a corner with protective webs. So, even if it occurred to any of them to attempt to use human hostages, they were now out of sight. And taking their eyes off the very real threat in front of them was incredibly unwise, anyway.

Webs thicken. Bodies hang in strong, thick, grey sacks. Little spiders with even smaller legs team together, following under a single spider's orders.

Shen Yuan strategically spins something between a funnel and a sheet web, trapping the remaining demons within. Fire-retardant as his webs are, even trying to burn them proves futile.

The demoness, her guard captain, and the last three demon guards watch in visible terror, squirming deliciously. He's used quite a bit of silk, so he's feeling hungry. Watching them twitch tickles a little part in his brain that says he should bundle them up, nice and tight...

Would he eat them now? Or, perhaps, he should save them for later. Little morsels, qi and blood thrumming through their veins, physical and spiritual.

He lowers himself into the funnel he made, his limbs stretching out, reaching for them.

Surely, they will be—

"...T...There once was a demon..."

Shen Yuan stops suddenly, his legs twitching.

The guard general clears his throat.

"There once was a demon, long ago, who fell in love with a human. A cultivator."

Oh. A story.

Yes.

Yes, Shen Yuan likes stories.

Clearing the hungering fog from his mind, he pulls back, limbs curling in as he watches intently. Listening.

The demon general tells the story of the ill-fated demon and their love for a cultivator. By all intents and purposes, it seemed it was destined to be one-sided.

However, when the cultivator discovers the demon, it turns out she recognizes him. The demon in the story had once saved the human cultivator, and, desiring power, she pursued cultivation so she could stand side-by-side with the demon one day.

They spent many centuries together. But then, the cultivator was made into a god. Drawn up to the celestial realm, the cultivator left the demon behind, and the demon cried out in anguish.

Hatred stewed in the demon's heart over the cultivator's broken promise, and he shot up toward the heavens, ripping into the celestial realm, even as the spiritual qi poisoned him. He ripped and tore through heavenly beings and gods alike, finally coming face-to-face with the goddess that abandoned him.

However, the demon, who still loved the goddess despite it all, could not bring himself to kill her. So, he jumped down from the celestial realm, returning to the demon realm.

Having spent so much time killing gods and spiritual creatures, he was forever altered by the experience. Spiritual qi polluted his body, but he adapted to it, having spent so much time with the cultivator and learning her ways. Determined to not die from qi poisoning, he circulated the spiritual qi and demonic qi, meshing them until it became his own.

Thus, he became the first Heavenly Demon. A demon not even the gods could deny.

That phrase...ah.

Ah, yes. He's heard that term before. From the story he couldn't forget.

Something about this story, about the origin of heavenly demons, didn't sound quite right. A little nigging at the back of his mind. But now wasn't the time to ponder on that too much.

"Hmm... A very interesting story. Of promises broken and power gained. From where did you hear such a tale?"

"My...mother. Used to tell this one of the story," the general stiltedly replies.

"Is it accurate?"

"As far as he knows."

"Very good. This spider very much liked it."

He crawls up higher and begins tearing into the makeshift funnel. Other smaller spiders also begin to tear it apart, unraveling it enough in one spot that something of a door split open in the thick weaving.

"He shall let this group of demons go as thanks for the quality and depth of the story."

But, as the guard captain begins to bow, the little demon princess speaks up, her voice shaking.

"Wait! You! You said you'd make a dress for Li-er!"

Shen Yuan tilts his body, much like one would tilt their head.

"The miss seems to misunderstand. This spider has decided to show her and the remainder of her entourage grace for the quality of the story told to him. However, the story was not only told by the guard captain, but it served as repayment. The story was an expense owed, not one given in return for something else."

He lowers himself closer to the ground, hanging lazily by a single gleaming thread, what little wounds he had already closed and scarred over. The other spiders move around, once again revealing the sky, which has grown naturally dark. The moonlight shines off his round, focused eyes.

"The miss told a story when she arrived. A hateful little tale. About how I, the one recognized as lord of the forest he helped grow, had committed a slight against a nameless little demoness for bestowing gifts upon those who asked for them appropriately. This little miss threatened me, in my domain, with slavery and servitude, to be treated as little more than a slavering beast good only for the produce of its body."

His fangs flex, and she steps back.

"And so, this spider was slighted. Severely. And in return, this spider began to take. And take. And take some more. To take what was owed to me, with due interest."

The withered body of Shen Yuan's first victim lies crumpled on the ground.

"This spider was merely rectifying your sin."

The guard captain extends an arm in front of the lady, but he keeps his gaze low, not daring to look him directly in the eyes.

"...But this guard was wise. He paid this spider with a marvelous story that appeased this one very much. And so, not only has this one decided to let him live, but he's decided to let the little miss and the rest of her guards live as well. A steal, one could say. Five, for the price of one."

He chuckles, light, airy, and rumbling all the same.

"Tell this lord, guard captain. Has this one not been quite magnanimous?"

The captain swallowed thickly, then he lowered himself to one knee. The remaining guards, the ones not bleeding out or cocooned, swiftly followed suit, smelling deliciously of tears, sweat, fear, and salt.

"The Great Spider has been most gracious to us. We thank him for his mercy."

"See," Shen Yuan says, fangs flexing in a poor mockery of a smile. "He understands well."

The little demon princess looks around her, seeming to finally get out of her head and understand what she was dealing with. Her fingers then clutch into her dress, nearly ripping it with her nails... But she slowly lets go, then tucks her hands into her sleeves as she gives a slight bow.

"...Li-er...understands. Thanking this...the Great Spider...for his guidance."

"Hmmh."

Shen Yuan starts losing interest quite quickly. Ruoxing and Miyun are still hiding behind the web he made for them, and with it being dark, they need to head home soon. It's past time to wrap this up.

"This one is a bit surprised this has all turned out the way it has. No demon has been so disrespectful toward me in quite some time. Though, this one supposes, if he knows not your name or title, he shan't expect you to know his. But worry not, worry not. Tis now water under the bridge.

"Though, it is quite late now... Since you no longer owe this spider your lives, perhaps we can barter on much better terms now."

"What would you ask of us, Great Spider?" the guard captain asks.

"The humans you brought with you. Return them to their village. They've garnered this spider's favor, so he shan't tolerate any harm coming to them. This forest can be quite thick and treacherous at night."

"And...in return?"

"The miss shall have her dress."

See? Isn't he so kind?

Miyun won't have to go back home, being led by spiders she's clearly terrified of judging by how she's kept her eyes quite firmly shut for the last few minutes. Ruoxing can show his superiority by helping her get home, even after being attacked by demons. And the little demon princess can have the dress she wanted! Everyone ends up happy.

"...How long should we wait for the dress, if this lowly one may ask?"

"Oh, it should be done by the time you return tonight. This spider wouldn't imagine you all being welcome to rest amongst the humans after such a debacle."

The guard captain doesn't reply, instead looking toward the demon princess. She purses her lips, but eventually, she responds.

"Then, Li-er shall guide the humans home and return. Does the Great Spider need this one's measurements?"

"No. This one has had quite enough time looking at you to acquire them."

Her lip twitch as some indignation returns to her expression. "Should Li-er take this as an expression of lechery?"

"Not at all. Doesn't the young miss also marvel at her food before consuming it?"

As though remembering she was, indeed, almost eaten, she finally shuts right up.

--

The demons do, indeed, return Miyun and Ruoxing home without incident. Perhaps it was because he had his little helpers trail them the entire time, waiting for even a single slip-up or twitch toward taking their anger out on them. Thankfully, they've lost enough lives that day and don't intend to lose any more.

When they return, as promised, Shen Yuan presents the demon princess with a qixiong ruqun, using yellow and other pastels to complement her pink skin (he's been getting into dyes more recently, and he has the fruit to do it). She is immediately enamored by it, but her gaze trails to the webs and the splatters of blood on the ground, and any overt excitement is immediately quenched.

Shen Yuan doesn't feel bad for her, not really. He does feel some sympathy, but lacks any empathy for her situation. If she'd simply come and told a story for her dress, no blood would've had to been spilled, and no lives would've had to be lost.

The dress, which could've simply been paid for with a story, was paid for in blood that wasn't her own. And she would have to face any ire from demons whose family members failed to return due to her own foolishness.

After showing them to the other route, the one that doesn't pass by the village (the one where he's greeted the occasional passing demon), he sends them on their way.

He doesn't expect to see them again, but the little demon princess comes back to commission more clothing, approaching the demon route entrance to his general domain. And this time, she comes with stories.

He comes to learn her name, Xu Meili (许 美丽 - Xǔ Měilì). She's the fourth daughter of some demon general serving a higher lord, but she's basically the equivalent of some human noble, not that Shen Yuan would say that.

Apparently, upon seeing him, they were under the impression he really was just some beast, unaware he was Lulin Zhizhu.

Demons were generally seen as more respectable if they had a more bipedal, humanoid appearance. After all, many weaker demons would cultivate for centuries just to acquire a human form, from huli jing to demonic plants. The fact Shen Yuan still wore a quite monstrous appearance would fool most supposedly decent demons into thinking him a mindless creature.

It also didn't help that, although Lulin Zhizhu was known in little whispers around certain demon communities, for him to be worshiped as a god by humans, they thought he would surely have a human form.

Though, as Xu Meili explained with trepidation, she wasn't using that as an excuse, but merely explaining what she'd thought. That, Shen Yuan could appreciate. As long as she learned her lesson and didn't waste anyone else's lives with her misunderstandings.

Speaking with her, the demon guard general, and other visiting demons helped him immensely. Their stories, while often more bloody and teeming with resentment, were just as pleasing, if not sometimes more so. When he was in a particularly vindictive mood, a demon's story often settled better than something lighter, more forgiving, and human.

He also gained better insight into demon culture... And the fact demons weren't exactly sure how to categorize him. His qi wasn't exactly spiritual, but it wasn't exactly demonic either. In fact, it was that strange mixture of qi that led the demon guard captain to tell the story about heavenly demons.

He was under the impression the spider perhaps was one.

Unsure whether to confirm or deny, Shen Yuan didn't do either. After all, he was pretty sure he wasn't a heavenly demon, but honestly? He didn't know.

So, he'd let the rumor mill roll on that one. Not that he left his forest anyway. Never really saw a reason to get out much when the spiritual and demonic beasts trailing through the forest were plenty enough to fill his stomach. He also had visiting villagers and demons to sate his desire for knowledge. Being a homebody suited him just fine.

--

Han Miyun (韩 蜜韫 - Hán Mìyùn) couldn't quite shake her fear of spiders, so she didn't come back to see him. That being said, it wasn't as though she wasn't grateful. Ruoxing came to visit several times after, seeming even more chummy with Shen Yuan than before, carrying baskets full of mantou and a scroll with a story she wanted to tell him.

When he asked what she wanted of him, Ruoxing said she wanted nothing, and it was simply a gift.

Feeling uncomfortable receiving something without giving in return, he sent Ruoxing back with fruit and qi-infused grass.

This apparently set off a give-a-thon, as Ruoxing swiftly became a willing pack mule between Miyun and Shen Yuan.

"You know, Zhizhu, perhaps you could come out of the forest and visit," Ruoxing hums one day.

Although Shen Yuan's cephalothorax doesn't lend well to expressions, apparently, he had a *look* in his eyes that made the young man fall over laughing.

"You don't have to reject it so strongly! I understand, I understand!"

"This one didn't say anything."

"Forgive me for being impudent, but, Zhizhu, you looked like a cat facing the sea just now."

Listen, it wasn't that Shen Yuan hated the idea of leaving the forest, okay? He simply liked where he was, surrounded by little spider servants that benefited from the fruits of his prior labor and served him in return. He had food, shelter, and visitors. What more could he want?

Traveling to new places...did kinda sound nice But then who would be there to exchange food for storieeessss the spiders could do that. They could. The little ones could possibly take written works and exchange them for other items, like silk, clothes, leather, or whatever else was available.

But still, he could've very well trudge around in his big spider body. That was just begging for every cultivator under the Sun to try to exorcise him or something. He'd have to cultivate a humanoid form. And he...

Did not...really want to?

Mmh.

For some reason, whenever he thinks of a humanoid body... More accurately, of himself within a humanoid body, he thinks of a compressed chest. Of weak limbs. Of heavy breathing, white walls, and monotonous beeping.

He thinks of breaking out in rashes from poor air conditions. Of laying on the floor in a porcelain room, trying to absorb the coolness to combat the heat ravaging his body. Of using some sort of device to support a weakened left leg because his heart wouldn't work right...

Yes. A humanoid body would surely be uncomfortable.

If that meant he had to stay right where he was, so be it.

--

Time passes like that, with demons becoming more frequent visitors on their side and the humans doing what they've always done.

The spiders, although still smaller and with lesser power than he has, seem to be developing more thoughts of their own. Although utterly loyal to him, they also begin acting on their on imperative if he hasn't given them any orders.

One of his older servants, a jumping spider, seemed to take on something of a managerial role. After molting several times, growing larger, and gaining more intelligence, she began collecting stories and making exchanges based on previous examples of his habits.

As it turned out, she had developed a demon core already? Well, it wasn't quite a demon core. She had mostly spiritual qi instead of demonic qi, so she was more suitable for communing with humans.

It seemed that, due to the very instinctual drives they had, coupled with typically being reviled by humans, developing to such an extent was a rarity (of course, that meant Shen Yuan was an outright cryptid).

Through some quiet understanding between them, Shen Yuan ended up naming her. She seemed to accept the name Zhuzi (珠子 - Zhūzǐ - Little Pearl) well enough.

She's rather helpful, especially when someone arrives with a story but he's already occupied with someone else. It doesn't happen often, but with both humans and demons now associating with him more frequently, as infrequently as that can be, having someone else help does wonders.

Fan Zhenzhen visits from time to time, sometimes to tell stories, other times to simply be around him. Sometimes, she'll ask questions about a plant, animal, or some other thing she's seen or heard of.

Of course, Shen Yuan doesn't mind simply sharing knowledge. With all the fantastical creatures in the world, he's quite charmed by them, so talking about them is time well spent. Especially for someone like him, who is simply a spider and doesn't have a job.

As she grows older, she comes to visit a bit less. A little disheartening, yes, but he understands. It makes the times he does see her all the more meaningful.

Fan Ruoxing grows older, and eventually, he marries Han Miyun. He arrives the day before his wedding and gives him a cup of sweetened black tea. It's so small, it's barely anything to him. It tastes fantastic regardless. Shen Yuan sends him off with a wedding gift basket of fresh vegetables, spices, and a poncho shawl to match Miyun's.

On the day-of, Shen Yuan sits in his cave, feeling a bit unsettled.

It's not like he really wants to be down in the village. He likes his quiet, relative solitude. Moreover, what human would want a huge spider at their wedding with their arachnophobic wife? He'd be nothing but a disturbance.

Zhuzi, who ventured out with her smaller, less conspicuous body, watched the wedding from the nearby tree line. He silently gave her more Thrice-Bloomed Yuzu after she relayed the festivities to him.

She did the same thing when Fan Ruoxing's first daughter came into the world.

100 days later, he, Miyun, and Meixiu (美宿 - Měixiù) came to visit, although Miyun was never once able to look up. Even still, after telling him a story, Shen Yuan blesses their child, hoping that her life is as bright and plentiful as the 'beautiful constellations' in the night sky.

He also gives them some of the same yuzu he would give Zhuzi, though he directs them to dilute it. After all, it's very qi-rich and could be a bit much for her developing spiritual veins. Fan Meixiu had the spiritual strength and potential to become a cultivator, after all.

A year and a few months later, and they visit with their second and third children, twins. Qinglian (轻莲 - Qīnglián) and Jiahao (家豪 - Jiāháo) didn't quite have the same spiritual potential, but Shen Yuan wished they would lead meaningful, fruitful lives nevertheless.

With more mouths to feed and more care to give, visits to him become less frequent. Again, quite disappointing, but to be expected.

The same goes for the little demon princess, Xu Meili. Some demon politics and intrigue take up more of her time, and despite being one of nine children, the fourth daughter, eighth out of the nine, she was the one who apparently found the most auspicious husband. This was, according to her, partially due to her many spider silk clothes.

Since she was going quite far away to be with her husband, future correspondence would dwindle. But she does, in that rough tone of hers that she could never quite get rid of, tell him that he would be welcome if he ever decided to step out of his "resplendent hovel".

And so, for the first time in years, Shen Yuan finds himself without his typical visitors.

And he feels alone.

...hmmh.

Maybe cultivating a humanoid body wouldn't be the worst thing to do.

----

For future parts, see the Masterpost (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

Masterpost

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3: here

[ateezscupid]

─── FEB FILTH FEST: Into It - HUMILIATION ♡

SUMMARY / A one night stand with your favorite idol, and he ensures you're ashamed.

warnings ✩ SMUT, A LOT OF ANGST AT THE END, DOM/SUB dynamics, soft (but mean)!dom yunho, sub!reader, fem!reader, humiliation & degradation, unestablished relationship, unprotected sex, idol!au, idol x fan, there's a mirror above the bed

word count ✩ 2,07k

tags ✩ @desirehorizon @tangerineastronaut @felixs-voice-makes-me-wanna @starillusion13 @mingitheskzstan @bbdeongi @dawn-iscozy @xh01bri @mallielovssyou @clxssy1997 @soreberry @nopension @kitten4sannie @faeriehwas @lustfxq @ashistrashhhhhh

ATEEZ MASTERLIST / REQUEST / FEB FILTH FEST

"Such a pretty little thing." Yunho whispers in your ear, tightening his grasp around your neck as his hips grind into yours.

"Oh my god," you moaned, trying to ignore the way your body responded to his touch. "D-Don't stop,"

"I won't." He said with a smirk, pulling away from your embrace. "But only because I know you'll come back for more, begging like the desperate fan you are." He pushed you down, pushing you into the pillow beneath you and keeping your hips raised.

You felt your cheeks burn with a mix of arousal and embarrassment. His words cut deeper than you'd care to admit, but you couldn't deny the thrill of his dominance. He was your favorite idol, after all, and the way he was treating you only added to the fantasy. You bit your lip, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity, but your body betrayed you as it quivered under his touch.

"Sleeping with a man you don't know -- and probably fingered yourself to before. Am I right?" Yunho's voice was a mix of mockery and satisfaction as he watched you squirm beneath him, his middle finger and ring finger brushing against your swollen clit with the same carelessness as someone swatting a fly.

Your eyes widened, and your body froze. The way he talked about you, reducing you to a mere fan girl with no self-respect, hit a nerve. But instead of pushing him away or speaking up, your body responded with a gush of wetness, soaking the sheets beneath you. You felt a wave of shame wash over you, but your hips bucked against his hand, silently asking for more.

"Did you just squirt-?" He interrupted your thoughts, a cruel chuckle escaping his lips as he felt the warmth seep through the fabric of his blankets. He didn't bother to hide his amusement as he removed his hand, holding it up for you to see. "You really are a desperate little slut, aren't you?" His smirk grew wider as he brought his hand back down, wiping the glistening evidence of your arousal across your flushed cheek.

"I-I'm not a slut…" you whimper, relaxing into his bed even more when his hand touched your cheek.

"What kind of girl sleeps with a man she doesn't even know?" he whispers, running his fingers through your hair. "So quick to get me into your pants."

You try to protest, but your voice is lost in the pillow as his hand covers your mouth. "Shh, let's not lie to ourselves, darling. You're here because you want this. You want to say you fucked your favorite idol. That's all."

He moves down to kiss your neck, his teeth grazing your skin. "But you're so eager, aren't you?" he whispers, his breath hot and smelling faintly of whiskey. "I can feel it." He takes his hand away.

He pulled out of you and flipped you over, spreading your legs. "Look at yourself," he said, grabbing your chin and forcing you to look in the mirror at the reflection of your flushed face and your swollen, used body. "This is what you do to yourself when you're desperate for attention."

The humiliation grew as he continued to degrade you, his words like knives slicing through your soul. But his touch remained masterful, his hands and mouth leaving trails of fire wherever they went. You felt yourself getting wetter, your body betraying the emotional turmoil you were in. You hated the way he talked to you, but the way he made you feel was undeniable.

He pushed himself back inside of you, his eyes never leaving yours in the mirror. Each thrust was accompanied by a cruel whisper in your ear, "You're just a groupie, aren't you? A pathetic, lonely fan who'll do anything for a taste of their idol." His words stung, but the feeling of him filling you up was too intense to resist. You moaned against his palm, your eyes welling up with tears that you couldn't hold back.

"Don't cry, baby." he kissed your cheek, his voice still laced with sarcasm. "You're just a fan who got lucky. You should be thanking me." He began to thrust harder, his movements punctuating his words. "Tell me, how does it feel to be used by your favorite idol?"

All you did was moan as he continued, his grip on your chin tightening. Your eyes remained glued to the mirror, watching the reflection of your own body, which seemed to be a complete stranger's. Each thrust brought a fresh wave of pleasure, mixing with the sting of his words. He was right, you were a fan, you were desperate, and you were using him just as much as he was using you.

"Answer me when I ask you a question," he slowed the pace of his hips, moving closer to your ear. "Does it feel good?" Yunho whispers in your ear as your nails claw into his back, the slow strokes of his hips sending waves of pleasure through your body. You nod, breathlessly, eyes squeezed shut. You had never expected to end up here, in a hotel room with the man whose face had adorned your walls for years.

The room is dimly lit, the faint scent of his cologne mingling with the stale hotel air. His hand slides up to your throat, his grip firm but gentle. "Do you think about me when you're with others?" The question hangs in the air, a challenge. You swallow hard, feeling the heat of his breath against your skin.

"Y-Yes," you stutter, the confession forced out by the intensity of his gaze. Yunho's eyes darken, a smirk playing on his lips as he leans in closer.

"Say it," he commands, his voice a seductive purr that sends a shiver down your spine.

You hesitate for a moment, the weight of his hand on your throat both thrilling and terrifying. Then, with a tremble in your voice, you admit, "I think about you."

"And you don't even know me," Yunho says, his tone mocking.

"Shut up-"

"Why? Imagine what your friends would think when they find out you'd sleep with any and everyone." The smirk on his face widens as he watches you squirm beneath him. Your cheeks flush with embarrassment, and you try to push him away, but his grip tightens slightly, a silent reminder of who's in control.

He starts to speed up his hips, the pleasure now laced with a hint of pain from your nails digging in too deep. You want to scream, but the words get caught in your throat as he continues to make you admit your desperation. "Tell me," he says, "How many posters of me do you have at home?"

Your eyes fly open to meet his, and you feel a flicker of anger. You're not just some groupie to him, a mere object of his conquest. You're a person with feelings, with a life outside of this hotel room. "Why does it matter?" you ask, trying to push his hand away from your throat.

He smirks and shrugs. "It's just a little fun. You're not actually into me, are you?"

You bite your lip to keep from saying something you might regret later. "It's more than fun for me," you murmur, hoping he'd stop his taunts.

Yunho's expression softens for a fraction of a second before it hardens again. "I don't do relationships," he says bluntly, his eyes searching yours for a reaction. The realization hits you like a slap in the face, cold and sharp. He's not looking for a meaningful connection; he's just playing a game with you.

"Then why the hell were you moaning in my ear telling me you loved me and you loved my body-?!"

"I was just playing along," Yunho says with a chuckle, his grip on your throat loosening as he starts to move away from you. You can feel the mattress shift beneath his weight, and the sudden coldness where his body used to be leaves you feeling more exposed than ever. "You seemed to like it."

You scoot away from him, pulling the sheets around you. "I don't understand." You say, your voice small and trembling.

Yunho laughs, the sound echoing in the quiet hotel room. "What's not to understand?" He says, leaning back on his elbows, his erection still standing proudly. "You're just another notch on my belt, and you're acting like this is something special."

You gulp and use the blanket to cover your naked body, feeling tears beginning to fall down your cheeks. The weight of his words is like a punch to the stomach. You had allowed yourself to believe that maybe, just maybe, this could have meant something to him too. But now, the harsh reality slaps you in the face, leaving you feeling more alone than ever.

"Fine." you sniffle, wiping your tears and scooting out of bed. You stumble around the room, looking for your discarded clothes. The carpet is cold against your bare feet, and you can't help but feel like a used toy, tossed aside after he's had his fun.

Yunho watches you, a hint of amusement in his eyes. "Where are you going, love?"

You grab your panties, pulling them on with shaking hands. "Home," you reply, your voice barely above a whisper.

Yunho sits up, his eyes following your movements with a mix of amusement and something else - perhaps a hint of boredom. "So soon?" He says, his tone mocking. "But we were just getting started."

You start putting on your underwear and clothes, ignoring him. The room feels colder than ever, the heat from your passionate encounter dissipating rapidly. Each item of clothing feels like a layer of protection from his harsh reality.

"You're going to leave me like that?" He asks, his tone now playful. "After all the fun we've had?"

You still ignore him, looking around for your shoes. You feel a twinge of anger at his callousness, but also a deep sense of humiliation for letting yourself get caught up in this mess. "I shouldn't have come here," you murmur to yourself, trying to hold back the tears that threaten to fall.

As you bend down to pick up your shoe, you feel his hand on your shoulder, his grip firm but gentle. "Hey," he says, his tone softer than before. "Don't go yet. I didn't mean to be so harsh."

"Don't touch me." You spun around, slapping his hand away. The pain from his earlier grip still lingered on your neck, a constant reminder of his dominance. You didn't want his gentle touch now; it felt like a slap in the face after his cruel words.

Yunho's smile faded, replaced by a look of mild surprise. He sat up, letting the blanket fall to his waist. "Look, I didn't mean to hurt you." His voice was soothing, but you could see the challenge in his eyes, daring you to argue.

"What did you expect?" You spat back, trying to keep your voice steady. "You treat me like some disposable fangirl and now you want to cuddle?"

"I didn't mean it like that," he said, reaching out for you again. This time, you stepped back, out of his reach. The room was a battleground of emotions, your heart racing as you tried to figure out what to do next.

"I'm leaving. Delete my number." You manage to say with as much dignity as you can muster, your voice shaking.

Yunho's expression turns serious as he watches you pull on the rest of your clothes. He doesn't argue, just nods slightly. "I'll walk you out."

"No." You say firmly, your voice stronger than you feel. "I can find my own way out."

Yunho's eyes narrow, his grip on the blanket tightening. "Suit yourself." He says, his tone clipped.

You nod, feeling the tears threaten to spill over again. As you turn to leave, you can't help but cast one last look at him. He's sitting on the bed, the picture of nonchalance, his bare chest rising and falling with each breath. It's a stark contrast to the tumult of emotions you're feeling. You want to scream, to throw something, to do anything to make him feel a fraction of the pain he's caused you. But instead, you force yourself to walk to the door, each step feeling heavier than the last.

[idolomantises]

I find Sarcastic Chorus's video on why he's quitting Helluva Boss really interesting but I'm kind of baffled by the number of people straight up not understanding his reasoning for quitting. I think it's interesting how both his video and the online reaction to it is basically the consequences of modern fandoms treating art like its something to mindlessly consume and not worth analyzing and critiqing, or else you're consuming it "wrong".

Like his argument isn't that he hates the show or that he was forcing himself to criticize the show, in fact one of his main problems was that he couldn't be MORE honest in his reviews because of how fans would react to it. The problem was that when your job is to analyze a show, and it has way too many problems to ignore, and you're dealing with a hyper-sensitive fanbase that's hostile to criticism, you end up feeling exhausted or flat out disinterested in reviewing it.

I actually find it really concerning that fans are coping so hard with him quitting that they're framing it like its his problem because he was "looking for problems on purpose" when it was pretty obvious that it genuinely makes him kind of miserable trying to pick apart the show's issues. I remember when he was SO confident that Hazbin Hotel would be amazing and "prove the haters wrong" only for him to acknowledge that it was a complete mess. I'm honestly more confused by the fans who watch a reviewer and then get mad when he... reviews things. It's not even that they disagree with him, but the audacity to even point out very noticeable flaws in the product is enough to set them off and accuse him of being a clout chaser and a hater. Like do you want to see a review or did you just want to watch someone lie to you and blindly praise a series for 30 minutes, because i find it really odd that so many fans are insistent that he should've done the latter.

I also got pretty annoyed by this insistence that he wouldn't have turned on this show if he didnt criticize it and "turned his brain off" instead which is the same stupid excuse people gave for Hazbin's sloppy writing. and I just find that just... baffling? Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss, as extremely flawed as they are, are clearly shows made with the clear intention of being taken seriously. Ffs the crew calls Helluva Boss "queer Bojack Horseman". Helluva Boss tackles topics like abuse, trauma, classism, racism, toxic relationships and redemption and Hazbin Hotel tackles themes like sexual trauma and abuse, redemption and religious oppression. But the problem is that both shows do it so poorly that people genuinely think that it's meant to be slop content that you're just supposed to turn your brain off and listen to.

I'm not going to forget when these fans were treating Helluva Boss's season 1 like peak queer representation and writing and insistent that Angel Dust was this amazingly well written gay male character that people only hated because he was messy and imperfect. Honestly kind of funny that I was chastised for saying that Angel Dust is just a sex joke only for the show, the crew, the merch, and even the damn playbill reduce him to just that. Slapping on trauma (especially knowing that its more of a fetish than a genuine exploration on male sexual abuse) doesn't really negate the fact that Angel Dust is poorly written. Side note: his fans are way too unhinged and aggressive, its getting very weird.

So its funny to me that now that Helluva Boss season 2 completely nose dived and Hazbin Hotel is a sloppy mess that feels more geared for children than adults, that now people are being told they're not allowed to analyze these shows or even pay attention to their problems, and are treated like idiots for doing so.

I think the problem is that I kind of think fans also notice the lowered quality of writing in both shows. because why aren't people actually defending the writing and character progression? instead of "Sarcastic Chorus is wrong because his criticism is incorrect and misses these points" its "Sarcastic Chorus is wrong because he should have shut his brain off and treated these shows like its cocomelon for adults"

[ckret2]

Bill hates it when people mention Euclydia. Everyone thinks it's because he doesn't want to hear his home's real name; it's actually the opposite.

Here, have some fic. The naming of Euclydia (among other things), the birth of the Nightmare Realm, and the Axolotl planting the seeds of a trillion-year-long plan to keep Bill from the death penalty.

This is the 🎉FINAL PART🎉 of a 9-part plot about the Axolotl in the aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. If you wanna read the others (or look at the art), here's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

####

With the immediate crisis averted and the triangle, for the moment, not attempting to invade and/or demolish the multiverse, most of the god militia pulled back. A group remained stationed near the unstable border between dimensions to watch the triangle; but the less powerful gods could trickle back in to get back to their own work, first and foremost the construction workers doing emergency repairs to reformat and stabilize the neighboring dimensions.

The Axolotl—who, he suspected, would have been arrested himself for interfering if they weren't still focused on the triangle—wove through the crowd until he found the Time Giant; and then swam angrily up to her and demanded, "You used me as a distraction?"

She turned a stone-hard look on him. "That was the agreement."

"No! The agreement was that I'd try to talk him down! We'd only resort to distracting him if I couldn't get through to him!"

"Ya didn't get through to him." The Time Giant nodded at the Axolotl's burned side. "Look at you. Your leg's off."

He looked down at his missing foreleg. He'd been so distracted by the near end of the multiverse, he'd barely noticed the pain. "It's just a flesh wound," he insisted. "I'm an axolotl, it'll grow back!"

She shook her head.

"I would have gotten through to him! You saw me talk him down after an entire army threatened him!" the Axolotl said. "What if I had succeeded, and when we left my tank he found out you already wrote him off?! You never gave me a chance—"

"We did give you a chance," she said testily, "and I saw that you weren't gonna succeed." She hooked a thumb over her belt and tapped a finger on her time tape; the stylized symbol of the Time Giants glowed on the side, an unsubtle reminder that she knew what was coming far better than he did. "So I did my damn job."

So she'd sent him in already knowing that he would fail. The Axolotl was speechless for a second. "But—you couldn't know—I got so close, if I'd had just one more try to talk to him..."

"If I'd let you, I'm sure you woulda kept trying until the end of time," she said. "You seem like a good guy, Ax—but you can't save everyone." She pushed past him to get to work. "There's first aid near where Dimension 2 Gamma was. Get those burns looked at."

"They're fine."

She was wrong. He could save everyone. Because he wouldn't stop until he did.

####

"You're replacing it?" the triangle asked petulantly.

"I'm not talking to you," VENDOR said, turned away from the triangle. "You had your chance at diplomacy and you blew it." The crablike cop was holding up a clipboard with some paperwork for VENDOR to review, and didn't look pleased to have been temporarily reduced to a secretary.

"I'm just asking a question!"

"We're not speaking."

At the top of his lungs—which was, it turned out, very loud and very shrill—the triangle said in the direction of the reporters, "Oh wow, that's a crazy thing to say about Lady Morgenstern! And talk about obscene! She'd be furious if she could hear that—!"

"Shhhhh!" VENDOR rounded angrily on the triangle. "You don't even know who she is!"

"I know her name and I'm not afraid to use it," the triangle said. "You're really replacing my dimension?"

"If I can be left alone long enough to finish signing the authorization paperwork," VENDOR muttered. "The construction crew's already out here and waiting, so if you don't mind..."

"It just seems pretty tacky, replacing a universe just like that." The triangle spoke like dimension he was talking about was just a pawn to be used in a trivial argument about etiquette, rather than everyone and everything he'd ever known. "No memorial or anything? Yeesh."

"So hold a memorial for it," VENDOR said. "We don't have any choice, we have to repair all the fallen walls to keep reality stable. If you'd let us into your hovel to sweep up what's left of your old dimension, it could have at least been incorporated into the new one."

The triangle half reached for his hat, stopped himself, and curled his hand into a fist and thrust it down at his side. "Over my dead body," he said. "Which I'm pretty sure got incinerated! So that means never!"

"You're pretty sure?" VENDOR asked archly.

"It... I had more important stuff to take care of, okay? I'm a busy guy!"

"I'm sure," VENDOR said. "Well, it's too late for any cleanup operations anyway. Enjoy rotting away in your landfill."

"Wow, that's how you talk to a refugee from the biggest disaster ever?" The triangle laughed. "Hey, bet the muckrakers over there would love to hear how sympathetic you are to the—what'd you say I am—the 'last surviving soul from my dimension'—?"

"Let's find somewhere quieter to work," VENDOR said to the cop.

He looked relieved "You got it."

As VENDOR and THEIR impromptu secretary moved away from Dimension Zero, the triangle shouted after THEM, "Hey! How do I vote for Municipalitron!"

Volcanoes on several of VENDOR's planets erupted. THEY whipped around to face the triangle. "You don't! You aren't in my district!"

"Well, whose district am I in? This Morgenstern creep you keep bringing up?" the triangle asked. "How's voting work, do you toss a ballot across the border and I toss it back—?"

"You're not in anyone's district! If you were, you'd have been arrested already!"

The triangle stared in dumb shock. "Wait, so I don't get to vote for which of you idiots I have to deal with?" He hollered at VENDOR's retreating back, "That's fascism!"

Fuming, VENDOR passed the Axolotl muttering under THEIR breath about showing the triangle fascism; then stopped, abruptly turned to face him, and snapped, "You."

"You," the Axolotl agreed.

"You're an optimistic fool."

Yes, well, he knew that already. He'd been voted Most Adorably Idealistic in his law school yearbook for a reason. "I don't think I like you, either."

"No one does." THEIR camera whirred irritably as they looked the Axolotl up and down. "What are you doing here, anyway? I assumed you'd been sent to figure out who's liable for this whole mess—but no, you only handle afterlife cases, don't you? Who sent you?"

The Axolotl was silent.

Furiously, VENDOR said, "Are you serious?! We could have avoided half this mess if it weren't for you!"

"If it weren't for me, he'd have knocked down the multiverse before anyone realized he's setting the fires," the Axolotl snapped. "And if you had figured that much out, you'd have gotten your cops killed before anyone realized he's a god."

"The professionals here to handle the situation could have figured it out faster if you weren't derailing their investigations," VENDOR snarled. "And arguing about jurisdiction! We could have arrested that that little troublemaker the moment we figured out just what he's done—"

"Right after you arrested that kid with the spray can who didn't have anything to do with this?"

THEY growled in frustration. "Forget it! I hope you're happy with your genocidal pal over there—you seem about as concerned with public safety as he is." THEY stormed off, the cop with THEIR paperwork chasing after THEM.

The Axolotl watched VENDOR go; then turned to look ruefully toward Dimension Zero.

When the triangle caught his gaze, he formed a heart with his fingers over his top point and called out, gleefully singsong, "Genocide paaals!"

It wasn't exactly the reaction he'd hoped for.

####

The Axolotl was attempting to distract himself from scratching his itchy leg while it regrew by eavesdropping on the triangle. It seemed like the triangle was entertaining himself by darting around the border of Dimension Zero to start arguments with anybody he happened to recognize (except the Axolotl, whom he seemed to be trying to ignore outside of throwing a few odd quips at him.) At the moment, the triangle and the Time Giant were hollering at each other about her decision to reinforce the second dimensions by making them splinter into multiple timelines.

"So you're really willing to sacrifice zillions of lives by letting me incinerate all their parallel timelines?" The triangle laughed in disbelief. "And everyone here thinks I'm the killer! That's not a good look for you, buddy!"

She glanced up from a table full of paperwork to give him a totally neutral look. "You're the one who's willing to incinerate them. You could not do that."

"When I do it, it's justified."

The Axolotl was distracted from the argument as the storm cloud with the apoc agents gloomily blew past him. It was talking into a walkie-talkie as it went: "Yeah, I know he's a nut. But he's a nut that can't throw fireballs outside the border of his dimension, and I've got to finish this report before we can get outta here." He sighed at whatever the walkie-talkie said in response, and said, "Yeah. We'll rendezvous after I have his testimony." It let its tornado suck the walkie-talkie back in and drifted to the Time Giant. "Mind if I steal your conversation partner for a minute? ATTF business."

She grabbed a binder to try to shield her papers from the worst of the storm's rain. "Please. Take him."

"Thanks." It floated closer to Dimension Zero and raised its voice to bark, "Hey! Magister Mentium!"

The triangle looked over mistrustfully. "What?" As he'd talked to the Time Giant, he'd been playing with the fabric of reality, creating a circle out of raw... stuff. The Axolotl couldn't tell what the stuff was, but it looked like it was some sort of animal tissue, except far too uncannily homogeneous to be natural, disturbing in its uniformity. Like a slice of baloney. When he saw who'd called out to him, he rolled his eye and turned his attention to extruding the circle into a baloney cylinder. "Heeey, Officer Fun Police! Here to rain on my parade again?"

"Rain jokes aren't as funny as you think they are," it said. "No, this is Apocalyptic Threat Task Force business."

The triangle's eye narrowed. "What business? Are you gonna complain about my renovations again?"

"No. If you're not about to knock reality down, I don't care what you do anymore," the cloud said. "It's not my business to punish anybody for previous apocalypses, I just want to prevent future ones. Answer a few questions for our incident report and I'll be out of your life." There was an implicit and you'll be out of mine in its tone.

"All right," the triangle said dubiously. "Fffine. Then we're on the same side. I'm not fond of apocalypses either."

It paused like it wanted to argue with that claim, but said, "Good enough for me." It pulled out the soggy notepad it had been using all day, flipped through it, couldn't find a free page, and with a sigh pulled out a tape recorder instead. "You're from Dimension 2 Delta, right?"

"If you say so," the triangle said, lifting his hands in a shrug. "You guys are the ones who named my dimension."

"Uh-huh." Under its breath, the cloud muttered, "Not exactly a name, but... If you're from 2Δ, that makes you the only direct witness to how your universe was destroyed."

The triangle paused. "Mm."

"Can you explain what happened, exactly?" When the triangle didn't respond, the cloud added, "I'm not gonna arrest you for it. If we want to have a chance of stopping something like this from happening in the future, we need to know what happened here."

"Uhhh, yyyeah. Suuure," the triangle said.  It wasn't clear exactly how Dimension Zero rearranged, but the view of the eternal dance party simply vanished. There was no sign of the millions of shapes. The music had fallen near silent, just a constant distant low thumping noise, like your heartbeat in your ears; quiet enough that it couldn't drown out the whispery hiss leaking out of Dimension Zero. "It's not like I have anything to hide." Whatever he was about to say, it seemed like he wanted to hide it from his party prisoners, at least.

A bolt of lightning shot through the storm's recorder, turning it on. "You said you were an active participant in the end of the world, right?"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" He eyed the recorder suspiciously. "What is this, some trick to try to get a confession out of me?"

"Again, I'm not a cop. And you already confessed in front of a thousand reporters," the storm said. "If you were involved, you've got a different perspective than some guy ten superclusters away who only witnessed it, that's the only reason it matters."

"Oh," the triangle said. "Then—yeah, I was there for the whole thing. Start to finish."

"Great," the storm said gruffly. "Then could you explain in your own words what happened when the universe ended and, to the best of your knowledge, what caused it."

"Oh. Yeah. Right. The cause," the triangle said. "It... it was a—monster."

"I thought you said you—"

"It was a monster," the triangle said, more confidently now.

The cloud hesitated. "All right," it said. "Tell me what happened."

The triangle took a deep breath. "Okay. So. It uh—started with the third dimension."

"The monster came from the third dimension?"

"No, we were going to the third dimension. But we needed—"

The hissing background static exploded into a roar.

The void filled with the staticky screams of countless dead voices, pleading for mercy, pleading for it to stop. Death rattles, howls of agony, wails of terror. Most of the crowd of gods outside Dimension Zero fell silent, turning to stare at the disembodied hysterical shrieks.

One voice, strained with pain, rose above the cacophony, crackling, "Emergency services! We need medical assistance! Ambulances, or—please—I don't know what happened—it's like everyone's internal organs spontaneously ruptured, there's—there's hundreds of people here! Some of them are missing parts of their body, they just—disappeared! I'm hurt too, I don't know what it is—I can feel it inside me—"

A second voice replied, "We can't send assistance. Everyone's bleeding, the whole city's dying! We can't help you!"

Whatever the triangle said was lost beneath the roar. He didn't even seem to notice it. His eye was filled with static. The word "blood" was just barely audible. The word "mandibles."

Another voice, trying to sound professional, trying to sound authoritative, but trembling with fear, "This is an emergency announcement! This announcement will not repeat! The fire can transmit over radio waves and sound waves! Turn off all radios and TVs! Turn off all radios and TVs and destroy any wireless phones and pagers! Do NOT listen to the screams! Again, the fire is transmitting over radio waves, this message will not repeat, destroy your radio and warn your neighbors!"

The Axolotl saw images flash in the triangle's eye, too fast for him to mentally process one before another ten had gone by: a plane like infinitely thin glass with tiny delicate shapes painted on its surface shattering in a rolling wave; a bleeding body reduced to shards and then the shards reduced to chips and then chips reduced to dust; fire spitting and crackling into every crack split in existence; a light shaped like a triangle. (Was that the light that had blinded the Oracle's seer?)

Another voice gasping, "It's doing something to the gravity, I-I don't understand—we don't even have the equipment to read... it's like gravity's turned in a direction that doesn't exist! Does anyone know how to stop it?! Our universe is tearing ap—" and the words were cut off with a scream; and the scream was cut off with a sudden silence that was swallowed whole by the other voices.

The triangle had peeled open, shining golden panels stretching out like petals, his mandibles unhinged and curling around his eye in a ring of teeth, like a blooming carnivorous flower, sun-soaked and mesmerizing. God, he was so bright. He shot light in every direction like an explosion that never ended. Like a star trapped in the moment of supernova.

Another voice, shaking with rage, "Did you hear that, you monster?! I told you we weren't ready yet! Why didn't you listen?! I can see the destruction from here—the sky's on fire, everything is burning. How could this happen?! YOU killed them all—" and the rage cracked, revealing the fear and grief just barely hidden underneath, "Remember us. If you're the only one left, you have to remember us. Please—"

The static snapped off; the triangle's body snapped back into place; his eye snapped back into focus; "—and then they appointed me their god," he said cheerfully, "and here we are!"

And with only a couple more dying cries of pain and pleas for help, the voices fell back to their constant background whisper.

The storm cloud had started sleeting.

The Axolotl had stopped breathing. Just the sound of the carnage was enough to make him sick.

But the triangle sounded perfectly at ease—more than he had before he'd answered the cloud's question. "So is that all you needed?" He'd resumed playing with the cylinder of meat he'd been constructing—extruding it further, and then, dissatisfied with the results, collapsing it back into a circle.

His hands were trembling as he messed with the cylinder. There was a tightness around his eye.

"What..." The storm cloud let out a low rumble of thunder, ahem, "what... did you say about blood? I didn't catch it."

The triangle blinked blankly at the storm. "I didn't say anything about blood."

It paused.  "All right, then—what about the other voices? Who were they?"

"What voices?"

The storm stared at the triangle, baffled sunbeam fixed on him; then swung the sunbeam over to the Axolotl. "You heard—?"

So his eavesdropping had been noticed. He nodded. Oh, he heard, all right.

The triangle glanced between them. "I think you guys are hearing voices," he said. "The only one talking here is me."

He said it like he meant it. The Axolotl was sure he did. Had he not heard the voices?

"Never mind, forget it," the cloud said uneasily. "You said someone... Who appointed you their god?"

"Uhhh..." the triangle tilted to the side as he tried to think. "Pretty much all my people? Yeah. It was everyone!"

"Your people? From your universe?"

"Yup!"

"They didn't appoint you their god," the cloud said. "They're all dead."

The triangle scoffed. "I don't know what you're talking about. They're all in here with me!"

"You mean the mortals from the other universes?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the triangle repeated, a little slower, warningly. "They're all from my universe."

For a moment, the cloud just stared at him, at a loss. It glanced again toward the Axolotl. The Axolotl had nothing to offer it.

"Is that everything?" The triangle tried to keep his voice peppy, but there was an edge of exhaustion that hadn't been there earlier. (Yeah, him and everyone else here.)

"I guess that wraps up that part of the questionnaire," the cloud muttered uneasily, trying to recover its professional tone. "Just a couple more questions. I need your name. For the report."

Dimension Zero's hissing background static rose again: "The murderer... The name of the murderer... is—"

"NOBODY ASKED YOU!" The triangle turned and chucked the cylinder he'd been working on into the Dream Realm. He grumbled under his breath, created another circle, and started stretching it out again.

The triangle could hear the voices. Then why hadn't he been able to hear them earlier? Unless he had been able to hear them—and he just... couldn't remember that he'd heard them?

Even if the Axolotl hadn't known about the incomparable trauma the triangle had survived/caused, it would be pretty obvious by now that something was going terribly wrong inside his head. Contradictory stories about his own reality, memories he refused to remember, facts he simply set aside as not relevant. Was he refusing to face them, or was he unable?

From their conversation in the Axolotl's tank, he thought the triangle understood more than he was willing to admit. But the Axolotl might be the only one who knew that.

And that was beginning to give the Axolotl an idea.

"Just—put me down as the Magister Mentium, okay?" the triangle told the cloud. "Everyone'll know who you're talking about."

"If you say so," said the cloud. "What was your universe's name?"

"Its name?" The triangle glanced up from his new cylinder and gave the cloud a perplexed look. "You asked already. You said it's Dimension 2 Delta."

"That's its serial number. Every dimension's assigned one at its Big Bang. But it's standard to let a dimension's own residents choose its name. It makes it more personal." The cloud sounded as though it had memorized this explanation. The Axolotl wondered how many times it had had to take statements from a destroyed dimension's grieving survivors. He hoped it usually got to give this spiel to witnesses of a narrowly averted apocalypse. "Typically the first explorers to leave their dimension get to name it; but the only person ever known to leave 2Δ is... you."

"Oh," he said. "Right."

"So, what did your people name your universe?"

He stared at the storm like it was stupid. "We called it... the universe?"

"Everyone calls their universe The Universe," the cloud said. "Followed by The World, The Dimension, Reality, and Home. They're all taken, come up with something else."

"Seriously? You're making me name my whole universe and now you're telling me how to name it?"

"They're not my rules," the cloud said. "If you don't have a native name, we usually name a dimension after the first known explorer to leave it. Was that you?"

The triangle was quiet for an uncomfortably long moment. His gaze twitched away; and for a moment the Axolotl thought he saw another image flash in his eye: a triangle floating in space, eerily serene, dead. His voice was small when he said, "No."

Surprised lightning quietly flashed in the storm's cloud. "Oh. Do you know the name of the first?"

"Of course I do. He's my..." He stopped himself. He said, too evenly, "His name is Euclid."

Obviously, the triangle wasn't speaking a language that can be spoken with human mouths or written with human symbols. "Euclid" is a stand-in word for an unpronounceable name; trying to say the name without the right anatomy—without even the right laws of physics and sound waves—would only mangle it.

But the rest of the multiverse didn't have the right physics or anatomy either. "Euclid," the cloud repeated, mangling it. The triangle winced. "Fine. How's Euclydia sound?"

"It sounds stupid," the triangle said.

"Well, it's your dimension. Do you have a better suggestion?"

"I..." The triangle floundered helplessly. "That... Okay hold on, I've had a very long..." He floundered again as he tried to figure exactly what kind of time span he'd been having a long one of.

"If you want me to come back later..." said the cloud, who very obviously did not want to have to come back later.

"I don't knowww, gimme a second," the triangle whined. "I've never thought about a universe having a name! It's—it's fine. Euclydia's fine."

"If you're sure—?"

"Of course I'm sure," the triangle snapped. "Euclydia. Yeah. Great. Fine."

"All right." The cloud zapped its tape recorder, turning it off. "Thanks for your time."

As it started to hover off, the triangle said, "Hold on! I answered your questions, you owe me some."

The eye of the storm reluctantly swung back toward the triangle. "What?"

He held up the shape he'd been extruding. "What do you call this... 3D circle thing?"

The sunbeam swept over it. "A cylinder?"

The triangle pointed toward VENDOR, who was out at the edge of the crowd answering the questions of some reporters who'd caught THEM attempting to slink away from the scene. "And what are the 3D circle things Coin Slot over there is hauling around?"

It glanced at VENDOR's stock of planets. "Spheres."

The triangle shook his cylinder. "Well, what am I doing wrong, then!"

"I don't know, math's not my thing," the cloud said. "Try rotating it."

The triangle waited until the cloud had moved on; then created another circle, extruded it again, but curled the extrusion around into a circle. He ended up with a shape like a donut. He said, quietly, "Oo-oo-ooh." He sounded impressed.

The Axolotl swam up alongside the storm cloud as it left. "So. Find out what you wanted to know?"

The cloud laughed ruefully.

That was what he thought. "Are the interviews you've been taking classified?"

"No, our reports are open to the public. Anyone can request copies. The database is a nightmare to navigate, though."

"Let me know who to contact for the records on this incident. Especially the witness testimonies."

"I take it you're also planning to go through that noise we just heard with a fine-tooth comb?"

"That's hardly the start of it."

If the Axolotl had been convinced of anything during all his conversations with the triangle today, it was that the triangle could barely begin to grasp just what it was he'd done to his dimension and all the dimensions around it—and he did a very poor job of communicating what he did grasp.

And if the Axolotl could prove that—if he could build a convincing argument that the triangle hadn't understood what he'd done, psychologically couldn't understand, that even now he only had the fuzziest comprehension of what he was involved in...

Someday, that triangle's sins would catch up to him. Someday, he would be in the hands of the gods of death and justice, and they would have to decide what fate his actions had earned. And when that day came, it would be the Axolotl's job to ensure that the triangle didn't end up damned or erased from existence.

As it was now, that triangle didn't stand a chance in the multiverse of being found innocent. But there was more than one way to avoid a "guilty" verdict.

By the time the triangle stood before a judge, the Axolotl would make sure that the right laws were in place for him to do what he wanted to do.

####

Where there had been swarms of firefighters earlier, now the scene swarmed with construction workers, working on the emergency genesis of over half a dozen replacement universes—carefully, so that the big bangs didn't do any further damage to an already unstable situation; but quickly. Already every destroyed one-dimensional universe had been replaced. Several half-burned dimensions had been supplanted with oddly-shaped undersized universes that met at the older universes' burned edges; jagged 1D dimensions sealed the gaps between these dimensions like a line of solder between two panes of stained glass.

By now, the flat planes and edges surrounded the zeroth dimension like the sleek shifting surfaces of an infinity-sided die; all except for one last missing wall in the middle of the damage.

Dimension 2 Delta. "Euclydia."

The construction workers were already setting up the scaffolding and equipment to set off another big bang.

As the Axolotl looked at the copious warning signs around the construction site—"DANGER! COSMIC EXPLOSIVES" "GENESIS IN PROGRESS"—the specialized equipment, the veritable army of workers, the mountain of papers the Time Giant had been reviewing earlier to ensure that everything was up to code and nothing would go wrong... he couldn't help but think of the triangle holding the seed of a big bang in his bare glowing hand, threatening to set it off right there. The Axolotl had known it was foolish, but seeing all the workers' preparations put just how reckless it was into perspective. Like a toddler holding a stick of TNT over a campfire.

He spotted the Time Giant among the workers, flickering back and forth across the scene as she tried to literally be multiple places at the same time. When she settled down for a moment over a worktable to double check a pile of blueprints and forms and calculations and even more paperwork, she caught sight of the Axolotl passing by, and tipped her chin up at him in greeting.

He paused, then nodded back to her. No hard feelings. He was just following his principles; and she was just doing her job. They'd each found their own way to help hold up the multiverse.

"Hey," she called out, and gestured for him to come over. As he did, she said, "Your leg's healing nicely."

He glanced down at it. His new toes were stubby, but at least they were back. "I don't like being uneven." He'd take a few more days on his tail. "I'll probably pay for it tomorrow, though." When he finally got home, he'd have to see if he could cancel his morning appointments.

"Reckon we'll all be feeling this tomorrow." She tilted her head toward Dimension Zero. "I've got a message for the god of DIY over there. I think you're the only one he likes—you mind carrying it over?"

####

It wasn't hard to find the triangle; he was leaning against the membrane around the zeroth dimension, moodily staring out at the third. He seemed to be gazing past all the gods, unfazed by their hubbub. The Axolotl tried to see what he was looking at, and didn't spot anything of note. As far as he could tell, the triangle might as well just be stargazing.

Along with the police tape and the ATTF barrier and the long-forgotten cordons to hold off the reporters, there was now an additional grid of orange cones set up blocking anyone from getting too close to the destroyed wall and the construction site. The Axolotl glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention before he slipped past the cones and swam up to the triangle.

When he approached, the triangle was muttering under his breath: "Stupid, now it sounds like an STD. I should've named it something cooler. Like... Triangletopia. Or the Party Plane. Or Margaritaville—I bet no one's ever used that one before..."

"Magister," the Axolotl said.

The triangle's eye snapped to him. "Hey, look at that! The pompous psycho is back! If you're even thinking about sticking me back in your 'office'—"

The Axolotl held up his forelegs appeasingly. "I'm not." He wasn't even crossing the threshold into the triangle's turf. "This is the last time I'll speak to you today."

"Finally, some good news," the triangle grumbled. "What do you w—ha! Ah-haha! I caught myself, that one didn't count."

The Axolotl decided not to count it. "The Time Giant wanted you to know they're about to set off the big bang where Dimension 2 Delta used to be. You probably don't want to be too close to the wall when it goes up."

The triangle's expression darkened; but he just said, "All right. Fine. Have fun. Not my problem! Just keep the construction noises down."

That was all he'd been sent to tell the triangle; but he added, "If you ever want to leave your dream realm, this is your last chance."

The triangle groaned. "This again? Listen, frills, I already told you I'm not interested! And you don't have the right to drag me out, this is my sovereign god territory—"

"I'm not threatening to," the Axolotl said gently. "I just—wanted to make sure you know. If you change your mind later, you physically won't be able to leave."

That gave the triangle pause. "I... don't see why not."

"For something to pass from one dimension to another, it needs a large enough hole to pass through," the Axolotl said. "For a person carrying the mass and energy of an entire universe to cross from one dimension to another... they need a hole the size of a universe. The missing wall where 2Δ was is the size your universe used to be. And now... it's the only exit big enough for you to pass through. Do you understand?"

The triangle stared at him silently. There was that hard, heavy look in his eye. It was awful to see. He did understand.

"If you don't come now..."

"We came up with a way to fit my entire universe into this one," the triangle said. "If I ever want to leave, we'll invent a way to get it back out."

"Your universe didn't fit in without incinerating it."

The triangle tapped the side of his hat with a finger; somewhere inside it was the speck that used to be his universe���the seed of a big bang. "It's travel-sized now. The next time will be easier."

For the first time since seeing the awful ruin of Dimension 2 Delta, the Axolotl forced himself to turn his fearful gaze chronologically forward. He squinted toward the hazy, far-flung future; and then he gave the triangle, in the present, a sorrowful look. "No, it won't," he said. "But I'll do what I can for you."

The triangle stared sullenly at him, unmoved by the offer. "I don't see what you're getting out of helping me. Everyone else is dying to send me to ghost jail or however things work around here."

"Isn't it enough to help you just because you exist and that makes you worth it?"

"If you ever, ever say something like that again, I'll kill you. I will find a way."

He wasn't particularly surprised. But that was truly what the Axolotl believed—and believed strongly enough to guide everything else he did. 

The things this triangle had done were too ghastly for even an ancient, experienced god to fully wrap his head around. Without exaggeration, he might have done the worst thing anyone anywhere in the multiverse had ever done.

But.

But if the Axolotl could prove that he, the worst person ever, was worth giving a second chance—that he could change, that he could show remorse for what he'd done, that he could be a force for good in the multiverse... then he would have proven that everyone, no matter what, was worth it.

The Axolotl had been voted Most Adorably Idealistic, but he'd never been called soft. His ideals were harder than diamond and sharper than obsidian. He hadn't decided to protect the triangle in spite of the impact that might have on the multiverse; he was protecting him because of the impact it could have. 

The Axolotl was a god of justice, of monsters, of second chances, and through his actions he could shape what justice meant throughout the multiverse as if he were sculpting clay; and he thought a small, sharp little equilateral triangle would make a perfect sculpting tool.

"In truth, I just don't believe in punishment. Not even for you." The Axolotl lay a forefoot on Dimension Zero's bubble. "But I don't see why you trust me." Because it was clear the triangle did. He'd trusted the Axolotl to judge the character of the other gods. He'd kept looking toward him like he was trying to gauge his own situation based on the Axolotl's reaction to it. He'd admitted the truth about the remains of his universe and his plans for it. It seemed like the Axolotl was the only one the triangle trusted in all this mess.

The triangle thought that over; then said, "You seem like a grade-A sucker."

He laughed. "I'll try to live up to your opinion of me." He had a guess what kind of people this triangle thought were suckers. The charitable; the caring. The people who didn't think that seeing the worth in everyone was a kind of illness.

"You should know, I intend to legally register my tank as a purgatory. I'll probably submit my application before the end of the week. If you claim it as your afterlife, you'll be transferred to my tank for holding while awaiting trial to decide your final afterlife."

"Ugh, now it all makes sense: you're starting a cult! I don't wanna join your cult, frills—I've got my own."

"But you do want to go straight to your lawyer's office if you're about to go on trial for your sins," the Axolotl said pointedly. "I don't intend to house anyone in my tank permanently. It will just be a transfer place for clients preparing for trial or figuring out where they want to go next—another afterlife, reincarnation... You're already technically dead; you can request at any time to come to my tank, and you'll be there."

"Sounds great for your other clients! But I'm not planning to go on trial and I don't want to be in an afterlife," the triangle said testily. "I'm pretty sure we've been over this!"

"I know you don't. I wish you didn't have to face it. But when you have no choice," the Axolotl said. "When you need it. When your time comes to burn like your people—" (the triangle flinched) "—call me. I'll offer you a second chance at any time."

"Low blow," the triangle muttered. "Don't put yourself out on my account. I'll be fine by myself."

"I'm sure." The Axolotl suspected he'd be putting himself out on the triangle's account for a long time. "What's your name? Your real name."

The background hiss of cosmic noise roared louder. The echoes of billions of erased ghosts said, "THE NAME OF THE MURDERER IS—"

With a flinch, the triangle cranked the distant dance music louder so it spilled cacophonously out of Dimension Zero again. It was too late, though. The Axolotl had heard the triangle's real name.

He pretended he hadn't. He waited.

The triangle didn't answer for a long moment. "You probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it."

"Maybe not." He'd seen how the triangle had winced hearing the cloud try to pronounce the name of some other shape. "I still want to know who you are."

He wrestled with his words; then finally gave up and asked his question. "What... is this place? We're not in the third dimension. When I—freed my dimension, I expected to go up; but we went... down. I didn't know there was a down." He confessed his ignorance in a near whisper, almost drowned out by his own music.

"You're in Dimension Zero." But that wasn't right. Dimension Zero was—should be—a point, and it's impossible to be "in" a point. A point simply is. "You are Dimension Zero."

The triangle said, "Then call me King Zero."

The Axolotl considered that. "Yes," he said. "I think that is your name."

Someone shouted, "Clear the way!" One worker at the construction site was looking directly at the Axolotl. "That means you! Unless you wanna be boiled frog legs!"

"I'm not a frog," the Axolotl muttered; but, he turned one last time to newly-crowned King Zero, said, "Call me," then hastily swam to the safe side of the orange cone barricade.

"Five, four, three..."

The Axolotl watched the triangle—and the triangle watched him—until the detonation. The big bang went off in a flash of light bright enough it would have incinerated anyone in the vicinity had it not been contained to a flat plane.

When the Axolotl looked away from the light, the afterimage of a triangle was burned into the center of his vision.

Dimension Zero was sealed off from the rest of reality—locking its king in for the next trillion years.

####

When the triangle said his name was "King Zero," of course, he wasn't speaking English. English wouldn't exist for a long time. The name King Zero is simply a convenient translation.

The English word "zero" comes from the French zéro. Zéro comes from Italian zefiro. Zefiro comes from Medieval Latin zephirum. And zephirum comes from the Arabic صِفْر—ṣifr.

####

Centuries ago, in the dream of a naive, trusting human, the human asked in Arabic, "What should I call you?" And King Zero responded, "Call me Ṣifr."

And years later, a dreaming human asked in Medieval Latin, "What should I call you, o muse of mathematics?" And of the two Latin words descended from his current Arabic nickname, Ṣifr responded with the one he thought was closer: "Call me Cifra."

A dreaming human asked in Old French, "What's your name?" And he replied, "My name's Cyffre."

Speaking Middle English, he told a dreaming human, "My name's Siphre."

And in Modern English, he told Edward Bishop Bishop, "The name's Cipher. But you can call me Bill."

In a year's time, and two years before his death from sleep deprivation, Edward would write Flatworld, a book about a 2D shape and his Muse journeying up to the highest dimensions; and also all the way down, below the spaces and planes and lines, to the self-absorbed King Zero, buried in the point-sized zeroth dimension, who thought a whole universe was contained inside him.

####

(It's FINISHED. 🎉🎉🎉

Hi y'all, if you just joined us for this Axolotl plot arc, usually this is a post-canon human Bill fic. I took a break from the main plot for one week to post a one-chapter flashback and then it was nine chapters. This bitch is 50k words. It's a novel unto itself.

Anyway if you only showed up for this story about the Ax, it only exists in service of a much longer story; so if you enjoyed this check out the rest of the fic. This is technically chapter 69 (lol). (If human Bill isn't usually your thing, I've been told that this is The Human Bill Fic For People Who Don't Like Human Bills because Bill is clearly very much a triangle unhappily trapped in a human body, rather than just chill with being human—so you might wanna give it a shot.)

And for the regulars who are already reading the whole fic: OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY FINISHED, WE'RE FREE, WE CAN RETURN TO THE PRESENT. Listen I love the Ax and his bizarre but unbending morality, but guys. Guys. I miss Mabel so much.

Pre-warning that I may end up needing to skip a chapter or two before the end of the year, because work's piling a LOTTA extra work on me this month and I might just flat out not have time to edit & do art. I'm up at 3 a.m. editing & queueing this post and I was up til 3 a.m. another night doing the art because I HAVE NOT HAD TIME this week to do it any earlier. I did this because I love y'all.

No that's a lie, I did this because I want to FINISH this DANG ARC. That's my birthday gift to me.

Anyway lemme know what y'all think!! 💕)