#It goes spinny perhaps. Who knows

[xbcrafted-daily]

skirt :D

[bropunzeling]

44 Brady/Tim?

sitting on the other's lap

"Dude," Brady says, giggling. "You’re so fucking wasted."

Tim opens his mouth to protest. He is not wasted. Wasted is for people who don't know how to drink, and Tim knows how to drink. Maybe he's had a few beers -- and a hard seltzer -- and then some shots -- but that doesn't mean he's that far gone. He takes another step to get closer to the booth where Brady’s holding court, make sure he can tell Brady exactly what he means, and then the world gets a little spinny, and he has to grab the nearest solid object, which is the edge of the table.

Perhaps Brady has a point.

"Wasted," Brady repeats, shaking his head and clicking his tongue like he’s so much older and wiser, the lofty age of twenty-fucking-five. At least his smile is fond. "C'mon, buddy, come sit by me. Chug a water."

Tim wrinkles his nose. Water sounds like the least appealing thing in the universe.

"Tim." Brady’s not laughing now. He slaps the few inches of the booth bench that are visible, like half of Tim's ass won't be hanging over the edge. The rest of it is taken up by Brady’s thighs, thick and muscled. Not that Tim can see that much, given the table in his way and the shitty lighting and the way his head is still off-kilter, but he doesn't have to see them to know. He's taken a look in the locker room, or Brady's living room, often enough.

"C'mon," Brady says, in that demanding way he can get, when he doesn't think Tim is paying close enough attention. "Sit down."

"I won't fit," Tim says. "There’s no room."

"There’s room," Brady insists. He slaps the wood again. "C'mere."

Tim can be stubborn, but not like how Brady is. Once Brady has an idea in his head -- even that he has to monitor Tim to make sure he hydrates -- that's it. There's no moving him. Tim makes sure his sigh is long and exasperated, but he goes.

Just like Tim expected, there isn't enough room for him, not even if Brady scoots. "Told you," he says, grabbing at the table to keep from tipping onto the floor. "No room."

"No, just -- come here," Brady insists. One of his arms wraps around Tim's waist as he hauls Tim in, the collection of empties in front of him apparently having done nothing to ruin his coordination. His hand feels huge against Tim's hip, bizarrely warm. Tim shudders. Brady grunts, and yanks again, and Tim's stomach rolls, like he’s on a roller coaster about to plummet into the drop. Knowing what's coming like he can see in slow motion, only there's no way to stop it. No way to stop the pull of Brady’s arm, casual strength with which he puts Tim right where he decides Tim needs to go, half-sprawled on Brady’s lap.

"There," Brady says. His breath tickles the nape of Tim's neck. His hand is still there on Tim's hip, branding Tim through his shirt. Tim can feel the muscles of Brady’s quads shifting under his ass, and has to stifle a hysterical noise bubbling up in his throat.

With a grunt of satisfaction, Brady leans over the table -- into Tim's back, he's pressed all along Tim's back, fuck, maybe Tim is wasted, so wasted that he's dreaming this up, because it can't be happening in real life -- and sets a mostly full glass of water in front of Tim. "Drink that."

When Tim hesitates, Brady’s fingers dig into his abs. "Tim."

Tim picks up the water glass. Takes a long swallow. Is very aware of the sound of his own throat, swallowing; of how he's half-hard; of the warmth of Brady’s body, surrounding him; of how the room doesn't seem to have stopped spinning at all. He drinks half the glass like that, then sets it down. "You happy now?"

"Yep," Brady says, breath hot against Tim's ear. "See? All you had to do was listen to me."

Tim laughs weakly. "That easy, huh?"

Brady nods, nose brushing Tim's hair. His mouth is so close to Tim's ear that he's almost kissing it. Tim is mortified to learn he could be into that. He could be into a lot of things, especially if Brady’s doing them. "Yep," Brady says. "That easy."

[chaosnojutsu]

get tagged, idiot (affectionate)

Hello there! You've been tagged! You don't have to do anything if you don't want to, but if you'd like, list 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Learn to know your mutuals and followers!

get answered, idiot (affectionate)

1. in the first hxh opener, killua’s little smile when the song goes “you can smile!”

2. a Really Good burger and fries and perhaps even a milkshake

3. rollercoasters! (not the spinny ones though, they make my tummy hurt)

4. when i post silly little stories online and go through the mental pep talk of “i write for myself, i like this story even if no one else does” and then people leave comments like “this part made me laugh out loud!” or something else they liked and my brain goes brrrr

5. when my sisters send me stupid memes and caption them “you” or something like that

[chaoticevilbean]

Another Star Wars AU, TBN*

*To-Be-Named

I love time travel. A lot. So here is a time-travel au, with the CW trio.

Somehow, perhaps by touching a Sith artifact, perhaps by the Force deciding they should, perhaps from some sort of weird ritual the locals were performing that the trio didn't know about, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Anakin, Rex, and Cody travel aback in time.

[Please keep in mind that Canon Timeline has died tragically in a fire, and I am but the weeping widow with an inheritance.]

Due to whatever happened, they all also end up (technically) deaging. They still have their memories and their knowledge and skills, just stuck in smaller bodies. They can think and act like adults, but they also have to struggle a bit more to implement Older Skills in Younger Bodies.

Ahsoka is 2. She's nubby. She's emotional. She's tired and sore from her deaging.

She wakes up in someone's office. She's in a spinny chair, a big one with leather padding. It's kind-of chilly in the room.

She's not thinking, because all her brain is putting together is that she's still tired. She grabs the jacket off the back of the chair and pulls it over herself. She goes back to sleep.

Rex and Cody wake up together.

They are their actual age, which is to say they're both about eleven.

They find themselves on Mandalore. In the more wild areas.

(let me believe that there are parts of the planet that aren't covered in city)

(also, this is the Mandalore in the cartoons)

They find a teen trying to wake them both up. Rex has absolutely no clue what's going on. Cody has a vague idea, because this girl looks very similar to a picture he once saw...

Obi-Wan does not fare as well. He is 3.

He wakes up in someone's arms. He's just as tired and sore as the other three. However, he's also got more awareness because he's in someone's arms.

He looks up to see who's carrying him.

He looks around at the people walking with them.

He starts crying. He cannot help this, as he is suddenly flooded with Emotions, and he is Smol. Smol = harder to handle Emotions.

Because Qui-Gon is walking right next to him, tapping away on a holopad as they go. Dooku is on his other side, on a comm call where both parties sound very tired.

And Obi-Wan is being held... by Obi-Wan.

So, yeah, not that great for a suddenly Smol Obi.

Now, Anakin is 8, so he's better off in that perspective.

But he wakes up on some remote planet without anyone around. He just was in the middle of a group, so he ends up kinda panicking.

Then he hears something coming towards him, and he panics more.

He's Tiny! He's Smol! He's massively at a disadvantage against attacks! He can't fight off whatever is on a planet like this!

It's Mace (and Depa).

Anakin, however, doesn't realize this. He has gone Feral.

Back to the beginning

Jango Fett has been very busy w/Important Mand'alor Paperwork all day. He finally has time to go and relax a little, and he makes it all the way down to the exit before he realizes:

It is really cold outside. He is not in armor bc he was planning to only do paperwork today (though he still has many weapons). When one plans to stay in the same room for almost the entire day, one does not wear normal garb.

That said, he has no protection from the cold. He forgot his jacket upstairs. He rushes back up to his office.

He distinctly remembers that he left the jacket on the back of his chair, not on the seat.

He also is wondering what that lump is.

He arms himself, grabs some of his "emergency" armor plating, and walks over to the chair.

He lifts his jacket up, expecting a bomb or some paperwork that fell off the desk, or something logical.

He does not expect to find a tiny Togruta child clinging onto the fabric, whining as they're woken up by his yanking of the jacket.

Jango's brain stutters for a moment, then he kicks into action.

First things first, he wraps the jacket around the Togruta. They thankfully stay asleep. Then he turns up the heat, because he knows the office has gotten colder in the twenty minutes or so he's been gone, and Togruta are from warm temperate zones.

He decides to call, in this order, a guard who can help him watch the Togruta (they did break in, after all), a medic to check the Togruta’s health, and the first person he can find in his contacts that might know an adult Togruta.

Next group

Rex and Cody manage to get the teen to stop fussing over them for long enough to ask for her name.

Her, clearly lying, but that’s understandable: My name is Ine.

Cody, who knows exactly who this is now: Oh, kriff. You’re Duchess Satine, aren’t you? Kriff.

Rex: Wait, Satine? As in the General’s Satine?

Satine, now very suspicious and reaching for her stunner: I think you need proper medical attention.

Cody, looking down at their eleven-year-old selves: Yeah, I think so, too.

They agree on one thing, at least.

Next

Obi-Wan is crying. Loudly, uncontrollably, w/too many Emotions to even care that he’s supposed to be an adult rn.

Other Obi-Wan is very uncomfortable, bc he doesn’t know how to handle children too well.

They found this kid unconscious in the middle of a ruined, abandoned town.

Obi-Wan was meant to hold this kid while Qui-Gon did research and Master Dooku tried to convince the Council that it was entirely necessary to bring the kid back to Coruscant. Granted, they can still give the child to the locals at any time before they make it back to their ship, but apparently the Force is Being Loud.

The Force was Being Loud when it told Master Dooku to come along.

The Force was Being Loud when it led them to that town.

Qui-Gon and Dooku have argued fifteen and a half times on this mission, and an additional six times on the flight here. Obi-Wan is trying to mediate but also doesn’t want to overstep. The Force is Being Loud, sure, but the kid is also Force-sensitive so it might be something off that.

He didn’t argue with holding the kid bc he thought that it was better than being caught between the Masters.

Holding a crying child and trying to get two adults to stop arguing bc they can’t decide how to comfort the kid is not better.

Obi-Wan keeps walking past them to the ship with this baby. He does what he’s seen some crechemasters do to the younglings. The kid eventually calms a little, and he belatedly realizes that both Masters are still behind him, not with him.

NEXT

Anakin is panakin.

He is currently in a state of Feralness. His instincts have kicked into overdrive, full-on Survival Mode.

Depa and Mace do not know this. All they know is that there was suddenly an extremely powerful Force presence that started fading quickly (bc Anakin started shielding).

They burst into sight of Anakin and are suddenly attacked by all four feet and some of Feral Force Child.

It’s all they can do for a good minute or so to avoid losing their fingers, eyes, or untorn clothes.

Mace puts a few things together very quickly.

This planet is uninhabited by any sapient life. Therefore, this child is utterly alone. This child also is clearly strong in the Force, and knows how to hide their presence, for whatever reasons. Mace is a Jedi, and therefore is bound by certain duties.

He decides it is his Duty to get this kid back to Coruscant safely.

Back to the beginning

Ahsoka wakes up to find a familiar face looking down at her. She’s still tired, but not as much. She’s very aware of her size, and does a few quick observations.

She does not fully know who Jango Fett is. She does know that some clones run off bc they hate war and weren’t given a choice an- no. Not going down that path yet.

Ahsoka assumes, semi-incorrectly, that she was shrunk or deaged and somehow found by a rogue clone.

She knows it’s a rogue clone bc they’ve got weird armor.

So she does the logical thing and tries to comfort this clone bc he looks really worried and kinda panicked. She stands up on the spinny chair and tries to balance and he practically lunges to help her and she can’t help but giggle, but it comes out in a bunch of chirps instead.

The clone picks her up and looks really awkward so she pats his face bc that’s the best she can do bc she doesn’t want to disprove the fact she’s two yet.

For all she knows, this rogue clone has no idea she’s actually a Commander in the GAR.

He doesn’t, but for different reasons than she thinks.

NEXT

Rex and Cody go with Satine to the city. They have introduced themselves and said that they were separated from their aliit. They don't know where said aliit is.

Satine is highly suspicious by this point, bc these two kids recognized her with only part of her name, and they were alone, and they speak Basic with Mando'a thrown in.

Basically, she thinks that they're children of people like Death Watch, but she's too young to know that Death Watch isn't really into children.

Rex and Cody get checked over by a medic, but also start trying to get access to some working comms. They are refused on account of being suspicious children (which makes them a little upset bc they're not children)(Well, they are, but not those types of children)

They have not yet figured out that they are in the past, bc Cody and Rex only know that General Kenobi talks about Duchess Satine, and they know about Padme Amidala from General Skywalker, so clearly this Duchess is really young and the General simply viewed her as someone he wants to protect.

They are very very very wrong.

NEXT

Obi-Wan manages to calm himself somewhat now that it's just him and... him.

He is three, and he knows roughly what's happening, so he knows he should probably act like a 3yo.

Unfortunately, he has very little understanding of how child ages work. 3 is smart enough to go up the stairs and communicate with adults, but def. not old enough to speak sentences that are 15 words long with at least 2 5-syllable words.

Fortunately, his older (younger?) self doesn't know children either.

So when this 3yo starts telling him that he needs to leave the two Masters on the planet and head to Tatooine really fast, Obi-Wan is more concerned about the idea than the strangeness of "this is a 3yo suggesting this".

Obi-Wan is really good at convincing people. Including himself. He manages to get Padawan Kenobi to leave supplies where the ship is supposed to be and head towards Tatooine.

He says that the Masters will be fine, they know how to survive, and they need to be alone together in order to work through all the tension. Plus, it gives them plenty of time to talk to the Council.

Toddler Kenobi also tells himself that he'll take the blow and say he used a mind-trick.

Padawan Kenobi doesn't believe him yet, but Toddler Kenobi smiles like a very smug adult and says "you'll get there eventually". What he truly means is up in the air.

NEXT

Anakin, since waking up, knows much less than everyone else. Which is saying something.

He knows he's Smol. He knows he's Alone. He knows Someone has come and they are Strangers.

One thing about Anakin's instincts is that they are very much Survival Based. He was Feral when he joined the Jedi, only he had to hold those instincts back for most of his life bc of being a slave.

A slave cannot bite someone who approaches and Vibes Wrong.

By the time he felt okay with being Feral Out Loud, he also felt safe enough that he didn't need to activate his Survival Mode.

What I'm trying to say is that Anakin does not realize how strong his Feral Instincts are. He has absolutely no control over them rn.

When Mace decides to Help this child, this child is trying to Maul them.

Mace makes a small ruckus to draw Anakin's attention to him so Depa can move back. Depa pulls out her saber now that she won't hit the kid. The kid notices Purple and Bright and Lightsaber.

Lorge Jedi Mind says this is Good. Safe. Jedi.

Smol Feral Brain says this is Dangerous. Mean.

Anakin freezes on sight and just starts tracking Depa's saber. She does one of those things where a snake or something is focused and the person waves the fire or the food slowly to make sure the wolf is watching it and usually they toss the thing away so the snake follows it.

Mace instead takes this opportunity to wrap Anakin in his cloak. And Depa's cloak. And the spare ones in their bags.

Feral Child is not happy with this. Feral Child is also unable to scratch or Maul or do things other than bite and snarl.

Depa carries Feral Child while Mace comms the Temple and they walk back to their ship.

The Temple is having a field day.

First, one of their Shadows reports that a well-known bounty hunter got an emergency message from a pal of theirs that said Jango Fett needs help learning Togruta childcare.

Then they get a call from Dooku, which is not the mission report they wanted.

Yoda: Mission report, you have?

Dooku: Of a sort. We successfully spoke with the locals, then went to investigate a rather large disturbance.

Mundi: A disturbance?

Dooku: We found the source to be a Force-sensitive child.

Mundi: So you are here to ask for more time on the planet?

Dooku:...

Yoda: Bring the child back, you wish to?

Dooku, unapologetic: He is of an acceptable age to be admitted into the Temple, and no other beings were around at the time to entertain the idea of there being guardians.

The Council is sighing and muttering bc this is a Disaster Lineage (and they haven't even met the other two yet). Their call is interrupted by the sound of crying and Dooku saying the child's woken up.

Then there's another Shadow who sends a message saying a set of twins that seem like Death Watch were found by the heir of Clan Kryze.

Finally, to top everything off, they get a call from Mace Windu and Depa Billaba. Two very dignified, not-at-all chaotic Jedi from a perfectly respectable lineage.

Yeah, most of the Council and the Order itself forgets that Yoda had a hand in raising Windu. Yoda "Feral Grandpa" who throws children at every problem. Grandson isn't doing too well? Throw a child his way. Other grandchild is struggling to cope with grief? Throw another child their way. Oh, there's a war going on and newest grandchild is angry a lot? Here's a child!

The entire lineage has a soft spot for children.

Anyways...

Mace: Our mission was a success. We found the artifact and both specimens.

Koth: How long until your return?

Mace:...

Yoda: Found a child, you did?

Gallia: Master Yoda, that's a rather illogical guess. Once is unusual, twice is-

Mace: Oh, did Qui-Gon find a child as well?

Yoda, smugly: Bringing the child back, are you?

Depa, from the background, after a rather loud snarl is heard: We do not bite things, young one.

*more snarling*

Mace: We have no reason to believe he was not alone.

Tiin: *deep sighing*

Mundi: *mild confusion noises*

Koon, eagerly: Please send photos of this youngling. For the archives, of course.

Mace, nodding sagely: Of course.

*extremely loud yowl* *sounds of Mace turning*

Mace: DEPA!

Depa: He nearly bit off my finger!

Mace: That doesn’t mean you pinch him!

Depa: What else am I supposed to do?!

*sudden exclamation filled solely of Mando’a, Huttese and Twi’leki curses*

Mace: So, I don’t know if he speaks Basic, but Master Che should be able to talk him through a check-up.

Yeah, several Council members are experiencing headaches now. Normally, they would have some empathy for Mace and his own stress-induced migraines. They currently do not.

Right after that call, Dooku calls back to say that Obi-Wan has left without them.

Mundi: He left the child with you, right?

Dooku:

Mundi: He left the child with you, right?

Obi-Wan did not leave himself with the Masters. Obi-Wan has listened to Mini-Obi and is off on some wild space adventure to a criminal-run planet.

The toddler won’t stop staring at him. He asks for a name. The kid says to call him Ben.

OW: Is that your name?

“Ben”: It is a name I am called :)

OW: That isn’t what I meant.

“Ben”: I know :)

Ben also keeps staring at OW’s lightsaber. OW decides to make sure the kid doesn’t start playing with it when he isn’t looking.

MEANWHILE

Ahsoka has figured out that she was really very oh-so wrong. She’s on Mandalore. As in, the Mandalore that is under Jango Fett. Bc she’s with Jango Fett. He’s holding her hand bc she was nervous about the strange looking medic (who was just wearing armor, but not clone armor and civies don’t wear armor.)

Ahsoka knows very little about Jango Fett. Clone Buir, Mandalorian leader, tried to kill Master Kenobi. Also dead.

He asks how she got in. She shrugs. She is too small to fight back so she can’t let him know anything. Whatever everything is right now. But also, he doesn’t seem mean or evil or anything.

Oh yeah. Skyguy said that Mandos love children. That's why the clones were so protective of her, even with Skyguy on her side of the argument.

She decides to use this to her advantage. She can probably get herself a comm, and enough time to call the Temple. If she can convince them she at least knows a Jedi, then they can come get her and she'll work from there.

ELSEWHERE

Rex and Cody are getting really upset. This Duchess is really nice, but she's acting really weird and keeps insisting she's not actually called Duchess. No one will give them a comm, they keep getting weird looks for speaking Mando'a even though they're on Mandalore, and Satine's father keeps mentioning a Fett. Maybe Boba's set a bad example again.

Rex starts to fall asleep, to his chagrin. He's too bored, sitting and getting some abnormally extensive check-up. Cody is fine, but he's used to the calm that is General Kenobi. Rex usually has a Togruta teen in the vents and a Human that is never where he's supposed to be.

Rex does, in fact, fall asleep. His "twin" starts glaring when a doctor goes to wake him up. Cody makes it clear that his brother is like Cat: once asleep, you do not wake.

Satine is giggling, but trying not to let the others hear. Cody does. Cody looks at her. They have a stare-off.

Cody goes back to glaring at the doctors. He will not admit to any emotions besides Protect™.

BACK TO

Obi-Wan and Ben have made it to Tatooine.

[pinkysfaultorbrainsfault]

pinky and the brain - s1e3b: that smarts

here it is. lol.

episode summary: frustrated at pinky’s constant disruption of his plans (okay, brain, if you say so) brain invents a machine to make him smarter. it goes about as well as you think it would.

the rundown:

it’s acme labs.

unless this is just some cage in the middle of nowhere, i guess. i don’t know.

no, wait. definitely acme labs. brain is writing in his Mouse Diary, probably relating the weird dream he just had about being in post-war japan. he has a lot of those, it seems, probably because it’s a good way for the writers to keep the status quo.

mumble mumble grump grump mumble mumble

“ah!” like he’s just discovered something. you’re not getting anywhere with those formulae though, brain. ∞A2-A= 2 to the tetration is just absolute gibberish and it’s not going to help you at all.

still, i’m glad he’s found what he’s looking for. satisfied with his nonsense calculations, brain calls pinky over.

bomp.

“narf.”

“what were you doing up there, pinky.”

“oh!” says pinky, who has just remembered he’s british. “i was having a devil of a time cleaning the chimney, brain.”

“we don’t have a chimey.”

“oh, well. there you are then.”

yeah.

brain reassures pinky that he is nowhere near the ceiling, which is good, because we don’t want more asthma than this poor guy already has. instead, he proposes to pinky that he’s figured out why they haven’t taken over the world yet.

“oh, i know why, brain. it’s gremlins.”

LITTLE SPRINKLY SPRITES THAT CONFUSE US

ALWAYS TWIDDLING THEIR LITTLE FINGERS IN OUR EARS

“an interesting theory.”

i like how brain draws himself, here. with the little ¬¬ face. grompy.

“but i have reviewed our past efforts, pinky, turning the situations into numbers in an effort to locate the exact problem.”

“well that sounds, um. narf.”

“yes, i’m sure it does.”

luckily, he’s plotted them all out on his little graph plotter, which is apparently going to paint a picture of the thing that’s ruining their plans... because... that’s how numbers work.... apparently? coming from the guy who thinks you can multiply infinity by -2 tetrated, forgive me for being skeptical.

let’s see how this goes!

oh.

still, pinky looks like he wants to put it on the fridge, so it’s not all bad, i guess. “egad, brain! that looks like me! but flat!”

“it is you, pinky. my calcuations have indicated that you are the problem.”

ouch.

“p... pinky?”

the leering figure of brain in his Man Suit behind him doesn’t help the tone, and should also probably serve as a reminder that sometimes it’s-- well, we’ll get to that.

poor pinky. ):

brain rubs it in further by deriding pinky as a “spazzy, beetleheaded dufus.” he has.... diagrams, to match. this is all very rude and unneeded.

😭😭😭😭😭

“but you’re not getting rid of me, are you, brain? i mean you? working as a single? look at what happened to jerry lewis when he split from dean! all that stuff in your hair--”

<gay little hand flip>

“point taken.”

“but fear not.” <gay little hand flip in response.>

but brain has another plan! he is going to make pinky smart. so that’s not too bad, i guess? oh he’s making me change everything about myself! but at least he didn’t dump me.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

i’m waiting for the christmas episode.

so brain gets pinky all strapped into the promare spinny machine.

he also makes this face when pinky asks why people don’t usually just make themselves smarter. so okay. he maintains that “the problem is in the execution”, but quite frankly i think it’s because most people aren’t into eugenics.

anyway brain activates the smartsotron.

it, uh. i don’t know why this shot was taken from this angle. i’m sorry. i’m sure, historically, it made a lot of people happy.

brain does some more scientific mumbling.

“fourty seven knots, six-- nineteen kelvin, fibbonaci, n minus one,”

“coming-- coming--”

in the nicest way possible, brain, i’m not sure he is.

“now!”

if you say so, brain. he goes off to pull the lever that. does that.

it has an effect.

the face of a man who is enjoying himself, apparently.

brain also shorts out the whole electricity for acme labs, which is very funny.

“pinky?” says brain, like he was concerned for his health like five minutes ago, when he put him into the bloody thing in the first place.

“oh, that was fun, brain! haha ha. narf. hoo! i’m all tingly! woo woo.”

“fun, perhaps, but obviously not successful.”

“oh, no, no, i think it was!”

“at first i thought the folded dipole wasn’t working as your centrefed, horizontally mounted conductor,”

“but frequencies below thirty megahertz--!”

“loud and clear! haha!”

“and i must say, brain, the peak value wave shape of the impulse voltage? glorious! i mean, hitting that maximum value without appreciable, superimposed oscillations! egad brain! brilliant!”

haha ha.

“YES!”

good for brain. the worrying implications of his assumption that making pinky smart would cure his tourettes??? we can worry about that later.

narf.

anyway, so tonight’s plan for world domination is that brain will pose as jimmy hoffa--

okay.

anyway, he intends to pose as jimmy hoffa and manipulate the old labour leaders into worshipping him.

with that, they will help him utilise the industrial complex to build a “forced vertoconvector”, whatever that means.

“it will create millions of steaming, tiny guysers that will actually lift people several inches off the ground, immobilising them.”

“egad, brain! it’s like giant air hockey!”

unfortunately for brain, his coefficient values are wrong. “it’s suppose to be sin, not cosin. kind of flips the whole thing around. haha. won’t work.”

inside his head, brain screams, quietly.

but never mind! initially, he’s excited, because pinky has saved them a whole night’s work! tremendous!

and luckily, he has a backup plan, which is also totally going to work. “take a look at this one,”

“colleague.”

“oh, brain.”

this is how mice flirt, i guess.

ignoring that “colleague” is a slight downgrade from “lifelong friend,” brain explains that he intends to program a computer to generate a fantastically popular romance novel, that i actually don’t want to look at the cover of for too long.

ew.

let’s move away from that. the romance novel “will contain a hypnophonetic sentence so long and so confusing that the reader will be forced to reread it, endlessly, out loud, and the frequencies of those sounds will hypnotise all those around them, primed for my suggestion that,”

I RULE THE WORLD. it’s not quite a close up but it’s a funny face so i’m counting it.

pinky is not as hype.

“the frequency needs to be an exact integral multiple of the input, doesn’t it? or it’ll be all wobble wobble bluueeroooogh.”

that’s one way of putting it. “not hypnotic at all, nope. won’t work.”

“yes. you’re right.”

brain is not enjoying this any more, it seems.

“by converting our cage into a nuclear reactor, we can produce enough energy--”

“but your migration area is tiny, brain! the neutron will never be able to slow down from fission to thermal in here!”

“please, pinky. let me finish--”

“but it’s got to be at least one sixth of the square distance between--”

“pinky!”

lms if you are the square distance between pinky.

“it seems to be, brain, that it’s not my fault at all that these plans haven’t worked.”

man. we don’t get to see pinky mad at brain very often? i love it. please let him get this mad in the reboot. madder, even. let them argue, wb!!

i don’t think brain has much grounds to argue, considering that he is, of course, the inventor of Really Big Magnet That Sticks People To The Floor By Their Pocket Change. still, he gives it a go.

he drags pinky back over to his weird little graph machine, citing that he “calcuated it himself” and “the numbers don’t lie.”

<gay little hand flip>. that’s not entirely fair because this is a tween but. it’s funny.

“actually, there seems to be a little booboo right here.”

poke.

he sets about correcting it, of course!

brain may well be at his limit.

(they angle that through the bunsen burner as it boils over, which is a very nice touch. it’s a metaphor, kids! he’s having a Hard Time.)

“these-- this!--”

“it’s preposterous what you’re saying! it’s ridiculous! it’s absurd!”

“but brain--”

“just go!”

“naaaaaarf.” going mouse! leave. ):

but now that brain has vented his own raging insecurities, he has some calculating to do.

well! isn’t that a merry little plot twist.

brain’s response to this is to have a nervous breakdown, because of course it is.

“no!” he cries. “he’s even smarter than i! smarter!”

“but i have accepted my own errors. the team needs balance. balance! yes.”

this can’t be good.

conclusion:

meanwhile, pinky is mourning their friendship! and all of the bops on the head.

“being a smarty is no fun! brain doesn’t like me.”

awww. ):

hm.

meanwhile, brain is wittering on about how “sacrifices must be made,” as he plugs himself into the machine.

“fourty seven knots, six-- nineteen kelvin, fibbonaci, n plus one, coming.” despite that, he doesn’t seem very happy to be here.

bonk.

brain runs back to their cage excitedly, to show pinky what he’s done!

and immediately falls over in the process. aww.

“pinky! look! i’m a ninny! a wooden headed dumbdumb!”

“there’s not a smart thought in my whole empty head!”

this man is having a nervous breakdown.

“narf, i say! narf to the world!”

wait, what’s that noise?

ah.

“ah! it’s good to be back. brain? brain?”

bonk.

that doorway is evidently a real problem for them. someone should probably fix it before they break their little ankles. ):

“i fixed it! i’m a nitwit!” pinky cheers. “hurrah!”

“yes. i fixed it as well, pinky. i’m as dense as a tree stump.”

“you mean--”

“yes.”

“well, we’ll just have to make you smart again, don’t we?”

“we can’t. we’re both too stupid to operate the machine.”

so instead they just sort of sit down and give up, i guess.

“what do you wanna do tonight, brain?”

“the same thing we do every night, pinky.”

“what’s that?”

“i have no idea.” says brain, in a monotone, clearly upset deadpan. “narf.”

so that’s that, i guess.

originally, i was going to give this to brain - they were both as smart as each other, and if they had worked together they probably could have taken over the world. all he had to do was take the L and let pinky advise him.

on the other hand.... pinky is emotionally intelligent enough that i think he could have had a shot at reasoning with brain about it. and if he’d tried, then he would have figured out that brain had put himself in the machine, and if brain had tried to reason through his insecurities, he would have worked out that pinky had put himself in the machine, and--

basically they get half a point again.

brain: 6 pinky: 7 outside influence: 11

because i think that’s fair.

either way, they seem to have fixed it, somehow, by the next segment. so it’s all good.

BRAINSTEM BRAINSTEM.

[gukyi]

the snow globe effect | knj

summary: when a freak blizzard hits and leaves you and kim namjoon trapped in the library together on the eve of new year’s eve, you realize that when life hands you lemons, you make lemon snow cones. 

{librarian!au}

pairing: namjoon x female reader word count: 10k genre: fluff warnings: ill-advised usage of book shelving carts. please don’t do this i can’t be held liable. it feels like slow burn except it’s snowing, so it’s slow freeze. a/n: happy new year, everyone!!!! here’s my gift to you to round out 2018. quite frankly, i think that this is some of the best writing i’ve done all year. i had so much fun writing this fic, so i hope you guys enjoy!! promise we’ll get back to gukyi’s regularly scheduled programming (aka i’ll start writing the things i say i’ll write) soon!

fic playlist: promise by jimin, crystal snow by bts, and moonchild by rm.

“Happy New Year’s,” your coworker, an elderly woman named Gretchen who shows you pictures of her daughter with her wife and their five dogs when you’re on break, says as she gathers her belongings from her desk, leaving just you and Namjoon to man the rest of the library. Not that it’s busy in the slightest—nobody wants to go to the library two days before New Year’s Eve when they have all of their last-minute party shopping to do—but still, it’s a decently large library.

“Bye, Gretch,” you say casually, scanning in a couple of books, the familiar beeping sound ringing out from the ten-year-old computer in front of you. “Tell your daughter I said hello.”

“Will do,” she chuckles. “Hope you guys will be alright. They’re saying it’s supposed to blizzard tonight.”

You shrug. Nobody really believes the weather forecasters anymore, not after the freak incident a couple of months ago when they said a surprise October snowstorm would hit the area and then it was sunny and warm. “I’m sure we’ll be okay. It hasn’t even started snowing yet.” You look up at the big glass windows across the library just to double check that it is as overcast and chilly as it was fifteen minutes ago.

“Alright, but stay warm,” she orders with a smile before waving goodbye to you and Namjoon, who’s standing in the back with a complimentary employee scone in his mouth. You don’t think you’ll have any problem with that—you’re wearing your thickest sweater and the library always has its heat on high—but you do pull up the weather on your phone just to see for yourself what the meteorologists are saying about the supposed incoming snowstorm.

WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 4PM TO 12AM. 18 INCHES OF SNOW EXPECTED. TRAVEL DELAYS MAY OCCUR. STAY INSIDE.

“Psh, yeah, right,” you mutter to yourself, this feeling too much like a boy who cried wolf kind of situation. Not that you think the weather is a fluke, but you can’t say you have too much faith in the predictions. The day before New Year’s Eve and a freak snowstorm? As if. It’s your last day of work for the year—no library with its metaphorical head screwed on straight would be open on New Year’s Eve—and you only have two more hours before you’re free for the next few days. And all you really want to do is stuff your face with the obligatory New Year’s Eve party hors d'oeuvres.

“You know,” a voice says from behind you, deep and husky and warm. You can feel Namjoon’s body heat on your back, the thick cardigan wrapped around his body doing nothing but increasing the local temperature. “They might actually be right this time.” You whip around in the spinny chair to face Namjoon directly, scaring the apparent bejeezus out of him as he jumps up with all of his might, like a cat introduced to a self-moving mouse toy. “They as in the, uh, the meteorologists. Those are the they. I mean—”

“I know what you mean, Namjoon,” you say, calming him. His eyes are wide behind his thick-rimmed black glasses. He looks like he’s about to shrink into the beige cardigan that’s already on the verge of swallowing him whole.

“It’s because there’s a low pressure front over us right now,” Namjoon says, doing that thing you’ve noticed he does whenever he gets nervous, which is becoming wordy. He doesn’t talk much normally—too busy checking items in or shelving books or making jokes with the old ladies who are library regulars—and it’s not like when he does open his mouth he becomes a stuttering, bumbling disaster, but any time you strike up a meaningless conversation with him it turns into a word train. “So this low pressure area, which is called an extratropical cyclone, pushes warm, moist air up and if it’s over a mass of cold land then the cold air will cause the moisture to turn into snow. And apparently there’s a lot of water vapor in the air right now and it’s been below freezing for about a week, so they’re saying snow.” He seems to want to talk more, mouth opening again, but he shuts it immediately.

“Didn’t know I’d be getting a Weather Channel lesson today,” you comment snidely, smiling to yourself. Namjoon looks frozen solid, the only body movement his blinking eyes. “I’m kidding. Thanks, Namjoon. Maybe you should drop this job and go become a meteorologist. You’d certainly be much better than the geezers on TV.”

“No, I couldn’t, I don’t look good on camera.” A lie. Namjoon doesn’t know you think this, but he always looks good. Lived in. Cozy. Like he dressed for himself and not for anyone or anywhere else. “Besides, I’m having enough trouble paying for college as it is. Another degree is not in the cards.”

“What do you major in, again?”

“I’m doing a double in political science and philosophy,” Namjoon says like he’s talking about the cereal he had for breakfast this morning.

“Maybe it’s just because we’re on break right now, but those words just broke my brain,” you tell him intellectually. You’re pretty sure Namjoon could toss you into next year if you were to ever challenge him to a friendly game of Employee Jeopardy!. “So do you just… study meteorology on the side? A hobby, perhaps?”

Namjoon chuckles. “No, I just thought it was interesting. Especially because of that freak not-snowstorm a couple of months ago. No one can really be sure about anything anymore.”

“If that is not the mood,” you hum in solidarity. “But it’s not snowing right now.”

Namjoon looks up at the gigantic windows that your back is turned to, expression unsure. “I don’t know, those white globs outside look like snow to me.”

Shocked, you whip your chair around to find it, lo and behold, already beginning to flurry outside, the sky raining down gently, not like it’s crying but like it’s just bitten into a powdered sugar munchkin from Dunkin’. What? It wasn’t even precipitating in the slightest five minutes ago. Gretchen said goodbye to the both of you, the last two suckers left watching over this barren wasteland of a library, and you swore you could make out some sky behind those clouds.

Now it’s dark, snowing, and you’re stuck here for the next two hours.

“Already? Jeez, that was fast,” you say, flabbergasted. You just made yourself look like a total fool in front of your supernaturally intelligent coworker, and now he’s watching as you eat your words like they’re a three-course meal.

“The weather likes to creep up on you like that,” Namjoon says sagely. “Like you don’t realize it’s coming until it’s already arrived.”

You huff. You hate admitting when things are right and even worse, when they’re true.

“I still doubt it’s going to snow eighteen inches though, right?” You say, trying to retain at least a small semblance of your dignity. Though at this point, you may as well just chuck it out of the library window and let it float away with the rest of the snowflakes. “That seems like an awful lot.”

“You never know,” Namjoon says. “But right now, looks like a bit fat zero on the ground to me.”

“Pretty sure that that’s just because it started snowing like, two minutes ago.”

“Just trying to lighten the mood,” Namjoon says, forcing out a chuckle that sounds more like a horse whinny.

You don’t respond, too busy mentally cursing the meteorologists for being right about the snow. Or cursing the snow for letting the meteorologists be right. Regardless, Namjoon takes your silence as cue to go back to doing the rest of his own work, scanning in recently-dropped-off books before placing them on a cart, ready to be shelved. You, on the other hand, twist back and forth in the office chair with your feet unprofessionally resting on one of the stools you use to get to the high shelves as you organize the online requests from other libraries in the area.

Most days, working goes like this. You and Namjoon are in your own little worlds, doing your own little things, occasionally breaking out of your personal bubbles to crack a bad joke to another coworker. You do your duties as a library employee and mind your own goddamn business. You and Namjoon aren’t close. Just friendly. Enough so that it warrants a mutual smile when you two pass each other on campus once in a blue moon, but nothing more than that. Nothing more than the press of tight lips together as you acknowledge each other’s existence, both during work and outside of it. Most days, this is how it is.

“See you,” another one of the regulars, a girl who’s working on her graduate degree at your university, says as she’s walking towards the exit of the library, coat zipped up tight around her body.

“Leaving already?” You ask. “You’re typically one of the ones we have to kick out at closing.”

She smiles guiltily. She’s told you before how much she prefers working in the quiet of the library rather than her own apartment. “Yeah, since it’s snowing. I’m worried that they’re gonna shut down the buses.”

“It hasn’t gotten that bad just yet, has it?” You ask, taking another quick glance at the window. The gentle flurries have turned into something much more menacing, big clumps of snow that land on the ground with thuds instead of light pitter-patters.

“No, but I hear it’s going to. Better to leave now than to be trapped,” she says. “But I’ll see you guys in the New Year, right?”

If only you had the luxury of leaving the library. “Yeah, see you. Hope you get home safely.”

“Thanks,” she says with a grin, way too warm for this time of year when everything is just variations of cold. “I hope they’ve salted the roads enough, at least for the time being. Wish me luck. Bye, Namjoon.” She waves to him as she passes by the adult circulation desk where the two of you are camped out, the automatic door hissing as it opens for her.

When she’s gone, Namjoon places the book he was sneakily reading under the desk—Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sarte—on the table, the chair creaking as he stands up. “I’m gonna do a lap and see if anybody else is here.”

You nod as proof that you heard him, but say nothing. Namjoon walks out in front of the desk before making a right, heading to check all of the usual places where the usual suspects will hide amongst the bookshelves, hoping not to be found. You severely doubt anybody’s left in this building, the snow making for a major turn-off for library attendance. The girl that left is frequently the last patron in the library on normal nights. You’ll be genuinely shocked if Namjoon finds anybody else.

Sure enough, Namjoon returns empty-handed. Not that that automatically means nobody else is here—he’s not allowed to kick people out until official closing time—but you can tell from the resigned look on his face that he and you are the last two poor, unfortunate souls left to rot in the library for the next two hours.

In a way, it’s sort of comforting, knowing that you’re the last two people in here. Sure, someone could waltz right in through the automatic doors without batting an eye, settling in until closing time, but you don’t think anyone will want to make a purposeful trip out to the library on a night like this, in weather like this. It’s dark and snowy and cold and leaving the comfort of your own private residence is probably the last thing the general public wants to do.

You have the library to yourselves for the rest of the day. Then, the moment the clock strikes six, you’re out in an instant.

“Nobody?” You ask him. He shakes his head, settling back into his chair and picking up his book. “Damn. Don’t think I’ve ever been alone in the library before.”

“You’re not alone,” Namjoon says without looking up. He licks his pointer finger before turning the page. “I’m here.”

The clock striking five o’clock means that you only have one more hour of sitting in silence as you finish up the last of your work responsibilities before being free. The clock striking five o’clock also means that for roughly the past hour it’s been snowing, the flakes getting thicker and thicker as time slowly ticks onwards. And it also means that because of all of those weather conditions Namjoon was mentioning earlier, there’s already a hearty layer of snow on the ground, blanketing the Earth in white around you. It seems to have even bested the salt they’ve put on the roads, a thinner but still formidable layer of white covering the asphalt.

This does not bode well.

“How deep does it look now,” you deadpan to the boy across from you. He’s gotten half of the way through the book within the past hour. It looks to be about an inch-and-a-half thick.

Namjoon pauses his reading, peers out the window, and tilts his head to the side slightly, thinking. “Looks like three or four inches.”

“Ugh,” you say. It’s the only conversation you have for the next forty minutes.

Namjoon is nice and easygoing, but also incredibly inoffensive. On more than one occasion you’ve walked into work and totally overlooked his presence. Not because he’s quiet as a mouse or always disappearing, but because he’s almost never doing anything that appears on your radar. He’ll be shelving books while you’re at the checkout desk, then he’ll walk behind where you’re seated and start doing work of his own, and then you get the fright of your life when he drops a book and it clatters to the floor. But inoffensiveness isn’t something you have the right to complain about, especially not in a library work environment where 90% of your day is spent sitting behind a desk watching as the seconds go by. Namjoon’s not a coworker you’re allowed to complain about.

The snow is piling up outside. Namjoon’s getting deeper and deeper into the enormous book in his hands. Your phone battery is slowly decreasing as you play Piano Tiles over and over.

This is how your days normally go.

It’s actually a real fucking shame that you and Namjoon know each other only and exclusively through work. It’s a shame because Namjoon is a genuinely decent human being who you’re almost positive you’d be friends with if you interacted outside of a work environment. And it’s a shame because you know that, if given the chance, the right time and the right place, you’d get to know him for who he is and not who he appears to be.

In your hands, rudely interrupting what is likely your thirty-fourth round of Piano Tiles of the hour, your phone vibrates with a text message.

Nayoung (5:46PM): hey will u be alright?? i know ur still at work but Nayoung (5:46PM): they’ve shut down public transport bc of the blizzard Nayoung (5:47PM): idk how you’ll get home

What.

“How deep is the snow now?” You ask loudly, breaking the peaceful silence of the giant clock ticking away and the heavy yet soft plunks of snow on the window across from you.

Namjoon looks up from his book, less than a quarter left to read, and squints to look at the snow outside. Not that there’s much to look at other than a blanket of white and a navy blue sky, areas closer to the library illuminated in an ugly haze of orange ground lights. “Looks like it’s half a foot.”

“Fuck,” you say, collapsing back in your spinny chair. You’re sitting in the one with the funky back, so with the force of your figure pressing against it, it dislodges itself, making your breath hitch in fright as you momentarily feel like you’re falling.

“Whoa, you alright?” Namjoon asks, eyes wide. He looks too scared to come over to see if he can help you, like he thinks he’ll only make it worse if he does.

You topple off of the chair, landing on the carpet below you with a thud. It’s rough under your fingertips, and tickles the exposed skin between your socks and your cuffed jeans. With a great big push, you pop the backing of the chair back into its place and dust yourself off. You find that the floor of the library is actually quite comfortable, as floors go.

Tired, inconvenienced, and in despair, you huff to yourself, camped out on the floor as Namjoon watches you from above, where he’s seated in an actual chair and not on the carpet like a toddler, with concern and fear lacing his features. “I hate the snow. Why couldn’t there just be less water vapor in the air? Why couldn’t the extratropical cyclone be over a land mass that isn’t balls cold?”

Namjoon’s blinking at you like you’ve sprouted three heads and a handlebar moustache.

“What?” You ask, almost challenging him. You feel bad for being so aggressive—you’re usually much more laid back when you’re working, but desperate times (snow) call for desperate measures (unbridled rage).

He opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. His expression is soft. “I didn’t know you actually listened to me.”

The surprise in his voice makes you, for some reason, sad. Like he didn’t expect you to actually be paying attention to him when he was telling you something, having a conversation with you. Like it’s normal for him to assume that the other person isn’t listening to what he’s saying when he speaks.

“Of course I was listening,” you say quietly, much quieter than the rest of your unusually boisterous disposition. “I always listen to you.”

It’s not much, not when the only times you regularly interact are when you’re asking him a question about a book that a patron checked out or complaining about how many overdue items you’ve had to track down, but it makes him smile to himself, warm and dimpled.

“The truth is,” you say, getting up off of the ground so you can speak to him without having to crane your neck, and also so it feels less like a kindergarten classroom and more like, perhaps, a library, “I’m mad because I underestimated how bad the snow would actually be, and now they’ve shut down the buses because of the snow and I have no way of getting home. So.” You follow up with a couple of finger guns for added effect.

“Wait, they shut down the buses?” Namjoon asks, eyes going wide, made even wider by the distortion of his prescription glasses. He sighs, but you can barely see his chest move under his cardigan. “Looks like I’m in the same boat as you.”

You pause. “I didn’t know you took the bus.” You’ve had the same shifts more than once. You think you’d remember seeing him getting on the bus at the same time as you.

“I don’t,” Namjoon says with a sigh, rubbing his forehead. “My friend Yoongi normally picks me up since he works at the music store nearby. We try to coordinate our shifts, but he stayed home today to produce, so I had to take the bus. Or, I did, until this happened.”

“So, we’re stuck here,” you deadpan. Namjoon nods.

Saying it out loud makes it real, which is your least favorite part about this. Saying it out loud solidifies the fate you already knew you were destined for but were foolishly hoping would be wrong. Now that you’ve declared it, now that Namjoon agrees, you know you’re doomed. There’s nothing else you can do—not when the blanket of snow outside is only getting higher and the weather doesn’t look like it’s getting any lighter.

At least the library’s heating still works.

“Great,” you say sarcastically, making the intelligent and executive decision not to lean back in your chair for fear of falling off of it again. You lean forward onto the desk, elbows resting against the surface as your hands cup your chin.

Namjoon looks like he has no idea what to do. So he gets up and gets a drink from the water dispenser, flipping the tap so cold water pours into the insulated water bottle he always brings to work with him. He returns to his seat, having almost finished his book, when—

“Your friend produces?” You ask him, and there is really nothing quite like the way Namjoon’s face lights up like the fireworks on New Year’s Eve when you mention his friend. Like all he wants to do is talk about the people close to him.

“Yeah! He does,” Namjoon says enthusiastically, with a head nod so violent it causes his glasses to slide down the bridge of his nose, resting on the button tip. “He’s really into music production, always has been. He learned the piano when he was little and now he works on songs for smaller artists from the area. One time he skipped on buying milk for us for a whole month—he’s in charge of the groceries—because he wanted to save money for a new synth, but I wasn’t able to eat my cereal so I just bought one for him instead. Actually, he—”

“You guys live together?” You interrupt, although you don’t really want to, not with the way Namjoon’s expression has lightened, animated itself.

“What? Oh, yeah, we’ve been living together for two years now.” Namjoon nods. “Sometimes I’ll come home to him blasting some new piece he’s working on, or hear him rapping into the kind of crappy microphone he’s got attached to his desk in his room. He makes his own music, too, and I think that he’s great and that he should send out demos, but he says he doesn’t want to get involved with the mainstream music industry. Says it’s too cutthroat. Which, I agree, but I think he would be such a refresher, you know? Because he’s so down-to-earth and just a generally wonderful person. I have some tracks of his on my phone, do you wanna listen?”

You don’t really have a choice—not that you were going to say no—because Namjoon’s already fumbling for his headphones, fingers digging through his pockets to pull out the white cords, knotted together in a tangle. Namjoon doesn’t need headphones—the library is empty save for the two of you, and it’s closing time now—but his fingers quickly work to untangle them. As he’s doing so, he rolls over to you, closing the gap between your chairs and your bodies as he finally pulls the last knot loose.

Namjoon hands over the earpiece for you to have, the shortness of the wires bringing you closer than your chairs can manage on their own. Next to him, you can feel the heat radiating off of his body, thick and warm from his knit cardigan. Maybe from the way his eyes are all lit up, too.

He fiddles around on his phone briefly before pressing play, and it’s quiet for a second before you can hear the rough, gravelly voice of who you assume to be Yoongi echoing throughout the headphones. There’s an anger to his voice, but not so much a furious kind of anger as much as it is a determined kind of anger. A resilience, like he’s rapping this to prove someone else wrong. It’s good. It’s brand new, but refreshing. The song cuts to some instrumentals, the intensity of them matching that of his voice, which then fades out as the second verse begins.

But this voice is different. It’s thicker in a way, less raw and jagged, smooth around the edges. Warm, but with that same determination in the tone. Then, you realize—

“Oh my God, is this you?” You ask in shock, wondering why you didn’t recognize the owner of the voice the moment you heard it. Now that you know who it is it seems obvious, like it had been staring you in the face all of this time.

Namjoon blushes, cheeks turning red when he notices that you’ve recognized him. He sounds different in this song than he does at work, loud like he wants to be heard, mad like he has something to be said, but still the same. Still the same honeyed tone, like sugar dissolving into tea.

The song ends, and you hand the earphone back to Namjoon, letting the pads of your fingertips rest in his palm.

“Yeah,” Namjoon says shyly, curling into himself. “I—I don’t rap, often. Not as much as I’d like, but Yoongi insisted I write this verse myself. I’m not as good as he is—”

“Are you kidding?” You say, shocked but pleasantly so, like you’ve just gotten a wonderful surprise. “It was amazing! Namjoon, it was so good. I’m serious.”

“It was all him, really—”

“No, you were on that track too. You sounded great, Namjoon. Like a rapper. A real one, too. Maybe it doesn’t have the music industry flair but that was real music, Namjoon. I loved it,” you say, insistent that Namjoon get it through his thick skull that his contribution was worthy. “You and your friend both have a future in music-making. It was beautiful, Namjoon.” Then, “Your voice is beautiful.”

Namjoon blushes again, like he can hardly handle such massive compliments. You think he deserves more than the measly flatterings you can give him, like perhaps a star on Hollywood Boulevard, or at least a Grammy or three, but for right now, this is all you have to offer.

“Thank you,” he says softly, smiling to himself.

“If you ever make more music, Namjoon,” you tell him honestly, truthfully, meaningfully, “I’d be happy to listen to it.”

Namjoon grins.

If you thought time passed slowly while you were at work, it somehow passes even slower now that you’re not. You think that, at this point in the night, you’d give anything to just have more library-provided tasks to keep your mind active and your hands busy, because you’ve played so many rounds of Piano Tiles that when you close your eyes you can still see the flashing squares of white and black. Curse your responsible nature and your desire to always finish 100% of the things assigned to you before the day is done. Now, you have nothing left to do. Next to you, Namjoon’s placed his feet up on the desk, bright yellow argyle socks peeking out from under his clean-cut slacks. He finished the book ten minutes ago and looks equally as bored as you do, resorting to fooling around on his phone because nothing else in his immediate vicinity looks interesting enough to read. You think you see a Nicholas Sparks novel in the corner over there, untouched.

It would be different if you were alone. If you were the only worker left in the library as the snow settled down outside, trapping you inside like frosting cementing a gingerbread house to its platform, then it would feel futile. Feel like an exercise in solitary confinement, though you’d probably end up resigning yourself to reading the plenty of books at your disposal.

But you’re not alone. You’re with Namjoon. Namjoon, who you don’t really know outside of the library, have been given glimpses of who he really is through things like his fashion, his word choice, his music. Namjoon may not be the life of the party but he’s not someone to forget, either. You’ve always said that if you were given the opportunity to get to know him for who he is, you’d take it. Now, the opportunity is staring you in the face. You’d be a fool not to listen to it.

Feeling like a kid dragged out to a party with his parents that forgot his DS at home, you decide to take matters into your own hands, refusing to suffer in this non-awkward awkward silence any longer.

“Come on,” you declare, standing up from your seat, putting your phone facedown on the desk as you do. Namjoon looks up from his spot in the chair opposite yours, and his phone is low enough for you to be able to see what he’s doing. He’s on a color-by-numbers adult coloring book app. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Namjoon asks, but he doesn’t say it snarkily, like he’s not expecting a very intelligent response in return. He asks it genuinely, out of pure confusion.

“Around. The library’s big and we have nothing to do.” This is starting to feel like a red-eye flight. “We should stretch our legs, get in our daily steps.”

“I don’t exercise much,” Namjoon says to himself, but he obliges, getting up alongside you. He places his phone right next to yours.

It’s not like you have a lot of ground to cover. Despite your library’s size, you’re still restricted to it. You can’t leave it because you’d end up locked out if you did, so it’s assumed its position as Your Entire World until further notice. Maybe the snow will let up eventually.

“What do you want to do while we go on our walk?” Namjoon asks by your side. You’re already turning the corner into the children’s department.

You think for a second. More silence would be peaceful and comforting, but you’ve been sitting in relative total quietness for God knows how long already, and your mind needs stimulating again. It feels like it’s been dormant for 84 years.

“Let’s talk,” you say, keeping your eyes trained on anywhere except him. It’s weird, being this close to him. He’s not a stranger but you can hardly call him an acquaintance, either. And the label coworker feels too formal, too professional, too restricted. You’re college students who just so happen to be employed at the same library. You’re not office workers who see each other on a nine to five basis without ever saying hello. It’s different. “Tell me anything.”

Namjoon seems to ponder this for a moment, trying to think of something to say that isn’t the standard ice breaker. You’re not here to listen to him say, “Hi, I’m Namjoon and I like eating pizza.” You’re here for something real.

“Did you know that crabs can swim sideways?” He asks, turning to face you. It is the strangest and most wonderful answer to the prompt you could ever think of. He’s grinning. He must love this.

“No, I didn’t,” you say. “Now that I think about it, actually, it makes sense. If they can walk sideways, there’s no reason why they can’t swim sideways.”

“Yeah!” Namjoon says enthusiastically, bouncing on his feet. “It’s cool, isn’t it? Crabs are a lot cooler than we give them credit for.”

This is the nicest conversation about crustaceans you think you’ve ever had. “That’s really interesting. Do you have any more facts about crabs I should know?”

“They communicate through sound,” Namjoon continues. He must have an entire bank of crab facts up in his brain. “Drumming, mostly. And this weird flapping sort of sound. But a lot of crab species are solitary, so they don’t get to talk much. It makes me sad.”

“Don’t be sad,” you say, reaching out to hold his arm. Not his hand. Specifically not his hand, despite your original trajectory being closer to his hand than his arm. “It’s kind of like us, right? We don’t talk much.”

“We’re talking now,” Namjoon says. “And we should talk more.”

“Well,” you say, passing by the play area, where wooden rocking horses and big Lego blocks sit idly, waiting for the next kid to entertain for the duration of their brief attention span. “We’ll just have to work on that, don’t you think?”

“Tell me something about you,” Namjoon insists. Not that the crab fact had any sort of relation to him, but you learned something anyway. You learned that crabs can swim sideways, and you learned that Namjoon is delicate. Soft. Selfless enough to tell you about something he loves rather than something he is when asked a question. “I think you’ve heard enough of me talking about crabs.”

“What?” You say, feigning offense. “I would never. I love your crab facts, thank you very much.”

He grins and it makes you wonder how many times he’s whipped out the crab facts to an unsuspecting crowd. Makes you wonder if everyone loves listening to him as much as he loves talking about them. He gives you a nudge, prompting you to answer him.

“There’s not really much to tell,” you admit. You’re not the most interesting person. Certainly not when you’re next to Namjoon, who seems to know a little bit about everything. “I don’t have a bank of random but welcome factoids like you do.”

“Well, you must have something to tell me,” Namjoon declares. “Everyone has a story.”

“Okay, but some stories are like children’s books and some stories are like Tolstoy’s War and Peace,” you reason.

Namjoon frowns at your comparison. “Both equally as fulfilling,” he protests. “It just depends on who’s listening in.” So wise, so philosophical. Anything that even borders on self-deprecation Namjoon turns into a life lesson. He’s like a college professor. Or a grandfather. “We’re surrounded by books. You must have one of your own.”

“So insistent,” you muse fondly. Normally you would find such encouragement to be pressuring and awkward, but it’s not that way with Namjoon. It’s less feeling like you have to talk about yourself out of obligation, and more like you’re going to talk about yourself because you want to.

“I just want to get to know you,” Namjoon admits guiltily, like it’s a crime for him to have such a desire.

“Did you know I changed my major three times?” You prompt, making him raise an eyebrow. It’s no secret you’re an indecisive piece of trash but it’s a better conversation-starter than “My favorite animal is a dog” or “I like to sleep.” And it makes Namjoon raise an eyebrow in intrigue.

“Really?” He asks, all lit up. “What did you want to be originally?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “I was an English major, then a history major, and now I’m in linguistics. Not necessarily the most employable of fields.”

Namjoon makes the kind of sound a balloon makes when it’s losing air. “Are you kidding, those are super employable fields! Anything can turn into a job if you try hard enough. I mean, I’m literally majoring in philosophy, but since it’s something I enjoy I’ll find a way to make a career out of it. Maybe not something super lucrative, but something that will make me happy. That’s important.”

“Doesn’t music make you happy?” You ask, wondering why he didn’t major in that instead. He seems to know an awful lot about the subject—more than you do, for sure—but it’s as though he doesn’t see a future where he and music can be joined together.

This question renders Namjoon relatively silent. You’ve rounded the children’s department, weaving through the back bookshelves lined with nonfiction, Dewey decimal markers decorating the tops of the shelves so that patrons know where to find the book they’re looking for. Namjoon’s eyes are tracing the outline of each book you pass, scanning the titles that peek out on the covers, the spines.

“It does,” he admits, perhaps more to himself than to you. It’s not as though you couldn’t figure that out for yourself—no matter if he’s talking about himself or his friend, his face lights up like nothing else when music is the topic of conversation. “But it’s not really something that’s a trustworthy career path. I wouldn’t want to go into music performance or anything. I just—”

“Who says it needs to be a trustworthy career path?” You interrupt. You feel bad for doing it so often, but Namjoon needs to hear something about this that isn’t coming from himself. “You don’t need to rearrange your whole life around music. You can still major in political science and philosophy and make music. You can make a name for yourself through the songs you and your friend produce without having to change your major three times like I did.”

Namjoon looks like he doesn’t really know what to say to that.

“Maybe it’s just me, but you have a future in music-making. There’s a whole world out there for you and your friend to explore. You shouldn’t hole yourself up in your apartment together spitting fire that nobody will ever hear.” In an attempt to get his full attention you stop in your tracks, turning to face him so he’s forced to face you, as well. His eyes are bright, dark brown, deep and endless but laden with flashes of worry, of doubt. “You’re good at so many things, Namjoon. It’d be a fucking crime if you didn’t do as much of them as you could.”

Namjoon smiles.

You keep walking.

There are only so many times you can walk the perimeter of the library before getting immensely bored. By the third lap, you begin to figure that there are better ways to spend your time until the snow subsides and the local transportation system starts back up. Next to you, Namjoon’s also getting restless, fiddling with his cardigan and his glasses and fingers. Every now and then you will point something only remotely funny to him, like the title of a book or trees outside, and the two of you will chuckle halfheartedly to yourselves before settling back into silence. It’s not that awkward, or at the very least, the two of you are trying your hardest not to make it awkward, but there comes a point when you need to stop before the Dewey decimal signs are ingrained in your mind.

You could, you know, read, but no matter how much you love being surrounded by books and cultivating a love for them in others, reading seems remarkably boring right now. Maybe it’s just the fact that if you wanted to read you could while on the job. Being here, being trapped, and most importantly, being unsupervised has created this sort of incessant desire to disobey the laws of the library. The feeling of freedom makes you want to see how free you can be.

After all, there’s no one else here to stop you.

“How much do you work out?” You ask. Perhaps it’s a random question, but you’ve got a purpose to it.

Namjoon looks caught off guard. He looks down at his body, at the cardigan wrapped around his torso making him look much buffer than what’s underneath, and smiles sheepishly. “Not much. Not at all, really. Most of the time I burn my calories by slipping in the shower.”

That is the most endearing thing he could have responded with.

“Well,” you say, coming to a halt in front of one of the empty adult circulation carts. Typically, the pages will fill these with books to place back on shelves, but now there’s an empty one right in front of you, and a whole entire library to explore. “Think you can push me around on one of them?”

Namjoon looks awfully frightened the entire time, even as he’s steadying the metal contraption so that you can settle on top of it. “Are you sure you’ll be alright? I don’t think these carts were built to hold this much weight, Y/N—”

“Psh, it’ll be fine. I’ve shelved books the thickness of your head on these carts and everything’s been fine,” you say, hoping to God that you don’t come crashing through it because breaking it means paying for a new one. Unless you and Namjoon can come up with an incredibly believable lie, but you’ll burn that bridge when you come to it.

“I don’t know about this, Y/N,” Namjoon says, but he doesn’t seem to be making an attempts at stopping you. “I don’t want you to get hurt because of some dumbass cart.”

“If I do, will you kiss it better?” You ask, sort of joking (but also sort of not). Namjoon freezes up for a moment, tensing his body as he grips tightly onto the handles of the cart. “Come on,” you say to break the ice forming amongst his bones. “You’re the truck driver and I’m the cargo. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“This is nuts,” he mutters to himself, but instead of worry lacing his features there’s a smile in its place. He pulls you away from the wall where the cart was parked and begins to push you, slowly and slowly as he gains momentum. You nearly topple off the damn thing in the beginning, but you keep your ground by quickly grabbing onto the handles, where Namjoon’s hands rest. The touch is fleeting, warm and soft but only for the moment it takes for you to regain your balance, but you swear you can feel little sparks where your skin touched his.

After a couple longer passages between bookshelves, Namjoon’s developed something of a rhythm, like he’s pushing a million watermelons in a shopping cart in front of him.

“Are you still okay?” Namjoon asks loudly, over the sounds of your giggles at the rush of adrenaline through your body, the feeling of your bloodstream, electrified.

“Yes, I am, keep going, keep going!” You encourage, smiling and smiling and smiling because it’s like you’ve created your own little rollercoaster, right inside of this library on a cold, snowy night. God, if your manager saw the two of you doing this, she’d probably fire you instantly. Unfortunately for her, she’s safely tucked inside her warm house. Sucks.

At this point even Namjoon’s broken out into a beautiful grin, mouth open wide like there isn’t a care in the world that’s crossing his mind. He’s awfully strong, much stronger than he gives himself credit for, and so despite the fact that you’re sitting on top of a rickety metal book cart with nothing else to keep you padded and safe, it feels like you’re in control.

Famous last words, really.

Amongst all your giggles and laughter and bubbles, Namjoon turns a corner too roughly, too quickly, and suddenly you find the cart colliding with one of the newer displays, a smaller bookshelf with all of the latest releases lining the wood. It’s not so much a head-on collision as it is Namjoon t-boning the damn thing, the side of the cart smashing together with the front of the display.

You feel a jolt run through but you’re still safe and sound, albeit your breath is a bit quicker. The cart didn’t take much of the damage, but what has is the bookshelf, books clattering to the floor at your feet as Namjoon curls back into his cardigan like a pillbug.

For a second, you’re silent.

And then, you laugh. You burst into giggles, letting the wave of hysteria wash over you at how fun this is, no matter the damage you’ve caused. Things can be fixed. They can be replaced. This is a library—people have treated the books more horribly than you have. There are much worse things to do to the books then cause them to clatter to the ground from a bookshelf that’s as high as your waist.

With Namjoon still steadying the cart, you hop off of it, moving it out of the way so that you and Namjoon can clean up the mess you’ve made. This is by far the most fun you’ve ever had on the days right before New Year’s Eve, when you’re usually struggling to complete some last-minute resolutions from the closing year or out shopping for the subpar party you’ve been invited to attend.

Together, you and Namjoon kneel down to redo the book display, flattening out any bent pages and smoothing over any dents in the covers. Instinctively, the both of you start arranging them by alphabetical order according to author, Namjoon handing you the right book without even needing to be prompted as you slowly begin to put them back on the shelf.

“That was fun,” you tell him. You don’t think you’d take back a second of it.

“Yeah, it was,” he agrees. “Oh, look, we’ve dented the shelf.”

Sure enough, right where the handle of the cart met the wood of the shelf there’s an indent, a little dip in the otherwise pristine design. From afar, it’s hardly noticeable, but once you move a little closer you can see the shadow where it rests.

“You think they caught this on the security cameras?” You ask, looking around the ceiling. Even though you’ve never actively sought out any sort of video-recording device while working, you have a sneaking suspicion that they’re here.

“Even if they did, I’ve asked Gretchen and she says that they haven’t checked them for years. There’s never been a need to,” Namjoon says. Normally, you’d peg him for someone who would worry about something like that, fearing that, if found out, it would cost him his job. But now, he seems much more carefree.

There’s a final book on the floor, one written by someone with a last name that begins with Y, so the two of you reach for it at the same time, intending to place it in the last empty spot on the shelf. As you do, your fingertips touch, the book not big enough to separate both of your hands as they hold it together. It’s so high school, so Hallmark movie, but it makes your heart beat faster all the same.

When you’re finished, the two of you get back up and dust yourselves off, taking the cart back to its rightful position along the wall before heading back to the adult circulation desks.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun in this place, and I hide in the shelves and read Harry Potter when I’m bored,” Namjoon admits as the two of you settle back down.

The moment you hit the back of the chair, the power cuts out.

For a couple of seconds, you and Namjoon wait in silence, hoping that there’s a generator that will kick on and bring back the central heating and lighting that you don’t necessarily need, but would vastly prefer over cold darkness. But when thirty seconds have passed and it doesn’t look as though there’s anything coming on any time soon, you sigh. Even outside the lights have shut off, the snow that was once decorated in an orange glow now blanketed in darkness. If you squint, you can see it still piling up. Eighteen inches, they said.

“I’m surprised it took this long for the snow to cause a power outage,” Namjoon says like he’s impressed at how long the library’s power source held out. “It must be at least a foot out there by now.”

“At least this didn’t happen while we were cart surfing,” you reason. You suppose the damage would be much more catastrophic if the power had gone out while you were mid-adventure. You lean back into your chair a bit too far again, but even in the darkness Namjoon reaches his arms out to catch you before you fall to the floor.

“I think we should migrate to the chairs over there,” Namjoon suggests with his hands held tightly around your wrists, keeping you stable. He nods his head towards the big, comfy ones meant for reading, a little oasis in the sea of bookshelves.

“Good call,” you say, quickly getting off of the chair and dusting off your legs. Not as if they need any more dusting. You just need something for your hands to do that isn’t holding onto him.

You settle into the two enormous grandfather chairs, decked out in a floral pattern that looks like it may or may not be one hundred years old. Namjoon seems to relish in the comfort, pulling his legs up and wrapping the cardigan around his body impossibly tighter. It’s like he thrives in the darkness, feeling much more at home when the lights are low and the moon is high, hidden behind the clouds that have trapped you inside.

“I don’t get to do this much,” Namjoon says aloud. Not like he’s speaking to you directly. Like he’s just letting the world know.

“Yeah, this is the first time I’ve been snowed in at my place of employment too,” you joke.

“That’s not what I meant,” Namjoon says with a smile. “I mean, I don’t get to just sit and relax very often. I’m always busy.”

“All work and no play makes Joon a dull boy,” you say sagely. You think that Namjoon’s on the verge of chucking one of the paperbacks at your head, if the roll of his eyes is anything to go by.

“No,” Namjoon says, somewhat exasperated. Not necessarily at you, but at life. “It’s just—I love what I do, and even though it’s technically considered work I enjoy studying and being in university and working towards a degree or two, and I like being here, as well. Staying occupied is good for me, because if I’m left in silence for too long I start thinking about things that worry me.”

“Like what?”

“The future,” Namjoon says. “I know that everyone’s scared of the future, but I don’t like thinking about it just as much as the next guy.”

“You don’t need to invalidate your fears, Namjoon,” you tell him. “Your worries are as valid as everyone else’s. Just because someone else fears the same thing doesn’t make yours less important.”

Namjoon’s silent, but even in the darkness of the library, cold and isolated, you can see him smile to himself. Like your words are all the reminder he needs. The new year’s almost here. If he wants to start anew, rebuild himself piece by piece, there’s no reason he can’t start now.

“I’m just worried that—”

“You don’t need to explain why if you don’t want to,” you continue. “We’re almost through with this year, and anything you have yet to accomplish can be dealt with next year. I’m scared of the future too. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with my degree, and thinking about grad school gives me a headache. But the future is almost here, it’s almost the next year, and we can blossom then if we haven’t already.”

Namjoon hums softly to himself. “You’re so wise, Y/N. Maybe you should be the philosophy major instead of me.”

“Oh my God, no, I think my brain would explode if I was a philosophy major,” you say quickly. “No offense.”

“Bold of you to assume my brain isn’t already totally fried,” Namjoon jokes. “Where’d you learn to be all deep, though? I don’t know if linguistics is as philosophically stimulating as it could be.”

“Pfft, all we do is talk about dumb English is as a language,” you tell him. “But I don’t really think I’m that deep, or wise. I think I just picked up a couple things from the best.” You give Namjoon a nudge, your elbow pressing against the thick sleeve of his cardigan. He grins softly, eyes closed like he can hardly bear such compliments being paid to him. He deserves so much more than the ones you can give him, though.

In the dark of the night, the silence of an empty library, it only takes a couple of questions to get to know Namjoon. For who he is, and not who he seems to be. There’s so much swirling around in his brain, as he furrows his eyebrows and twiddles his thumbs, anything and everything from meteorology to crab facts to his doubts. Namjoon is the kind of person that makes you wonder why you didn’t speak up before, why you didn’t try earlier, because now he feels like someone that would leave a hole in your life if he left. There’s so much more to him than meets the eye, as cheesy and cliche as it sounds. There’s a kind of aged innocence to him, youthful and wise all at once. Like he knows what he’s destined for but excited for the journey to get there.

He’d make a fantastic musician.

“Have you composed anything by yourself?” You ask. Namjoon nods. “Will you play me one?”

He’s allowed to say no and you wonder, for the brief second of silence that follows, if you’ve overstepped a boundary. He was already resigned about his music to begin with, but he’s beginning to open up like a lotus flower in the spring, slowly but surely showing you what’s inside. He pulls out his phone and his headphones, this time much less tangled, and offers one to you.

“It’s called Moonchild,” Namjoon tells you softly before pressing play.

It sounds much different from the song he showed you earlier. Raw, the same kind of raw, same kind of exposed feeling, but less angry. Less of an anger and more of a wistfulness, nostalgia seeping out of the lyrics and the instrumentals and bleeding into your bones, your bloodstream. Namjoon’s expressionless as the two of you listen in, feel the heavy but certain beat of the drums echoing throughout the headphones. It’s the kind of song that makes you wish it wasn’t snowing or cloudy, so you could peer out the window and see the moon waiting amongst the stars, keeping watch over the world until the sun will come to take its place.

When it’s over, the first thing you say is, “Is that what you think of yourself? A moonchild?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon says like it’s a weight being lifted off of his shoulder. “I mean, it’s hard to explain but I just feel connected to the moon more than the sun. Maybe because she’s so lonely.”

“She’s not lonely,” you tell him, interrupting him. “Just because she’s bigger and brighter than everything else in the night sky doesn’t mean she’s alone. There are all of those stars to keep her company.”

It’s your way of reminding Namjoon that no matter what, he’s not alone. He has Yoongi, and he has you, too.

The darkness, no matter the time, always makes you tired. You begin to stop fighting the way your eyelids are starting to droop closed, the only reason you’re still awake being the chill that’s settled into your bones, the heating having been long shut off.

“I’m getting tired, aren’t you?” You ask with a yawn. Never pegged yourself as someone who would sleep in the library, but it’s not like you have anywhere else to go.

“It’s getting somewhat late,” Namjoon agrees.

With another yawn, you curl into yourself, pulling your knees up to your chest to conserve as much body heat as you can. The chair you’ve practically dug yourself into is comfortable, but does very little for your overall temperature. You’re so tired, you barely notice the way Namjoon gets up, peels the cardigan from his body to place over your frame, until you feel the thick fabric laying on top of you. At the sensation you dart back up to see Namjoon settling back into the chair, significantly less warm.

“What? Namjoon, take this back,” you insist, holding the cardigan out for him to grab.

“No, you looked cold. I’ll be fine, I swear,” Namjoon insists with a shake of his head.

“No, I refuse. This isn’t some Titanic-type bullshit. Your cardigan is big enough for the both of us,” you say. If Namjoon won’t take his sweater back, you’ll just take matters into your own hands. Cold but insistent, you get up from the grandfather chair to sit on the couch opposite it, a kind of ugly forest green that’s hidden by the darkness. You make yourself comfortable, body digging into the couch cushions, as Namjoon watches you. “What are you doing? Get over here.”

Namjoon’s eyes widen at the prospect of having to be buried under the cardigan next to you. It’s a large article of clothing, that’s for sure, but not big enough for your bodies to be under it without touching each other. Not that you mind.

“Come on,” you insist, holding out the cardigan so there’s room for him to join you under it. Namjoon’s steps are slow, hesitant, but he does as you say and slides in next to you. You arrange the cardigan neatly over your bodies, the extra body heat not just from the blanket but also from him already making you sleepy. You even make the daring decision of resting your head on his shoulder, less padded from lack of fabric but comfortable and warm all the same.

“Feels like we’ve gotten closer because of this snowstorm,” Namjoon says.

“We’re literally cuddled up under your behemoth cardigan,” you point out.

“Not just that, I mean in general.”

You hum your agreement.

“I’m glad,” Namjoon says, and even though you aren’t facing him you can hear the smile in his voice.

“Yeah,” you say. Under the sweater, you feel your hands interlock with his. This time it’s no accident, but he doesn’t shy away like he would have before. Instead he holds your hand tighter, pulls you closer (you tell yourself it’s because he’s cold), and lets his body relax, tense after years and years of wear and tear. “Me too.”

The next morning is particularly bright, from the sun reflecting on the bright white snow piled up outside. It feels like you’re straining your eyes, blinking and blinking to get them to adjust to the change in light, like someone on Photoshop has switched the saturation bar from black to white. On the table in front of you your phone is buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, left for so long without any sort of contact that it’s going through withdrawal.

Nayoung (8:37AM): Y/N WHERE ARE YOU Nayoung (8:40AM): DID YOU STAY AT THE LIBRARY Nayoung (8:45AM): ANSWER ME !!! Nayoung (8:45AM): ARE YOU SAFE Nayoung (8:45AM): I’M ABOUT TO CALL THE POLICE Y/N WHERE ARE YOU

You (8:51AM): I’m fine Nayoung! Stayed overnight at the library!

Nayoung (8:52AM): oh thank god alright!! well, the buses are back up and running so please come home :(

Next to you, Namjoon’s soft, continuous snores are slowly subsiding as he stirs awake, a couple grunts leaving his lips before his eyes finally open. You turn to meet him when they do, and at the sight of you, first thing he sees in the morning, he grins lazily to himself.

“What time is it?” He asks as he slowly sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His cardigan sits in a pile on the floor in front of you—you must have kicked it off in the night.

“It’s nearly nine,” you tell him. “The buses are back up.”

“That’s alright,” Namjoon says, voice thick with tiredness. He sounds even more attractive like this, though can hardly believe that’s possible. “I’ll probably just call Yoongi to come and pick me up.”

“Oh, well, I don’t want to miss the next bus, so I should just—” Before you can get up off of the couch, Namjoon’s reaching out for you, pulling you back into him, tucking you into the curves of his body. A small gasp leaves your lips as you fall into him, but the noise morphs into a pleasant hum as his arm wraps around you.

“No,” he grumbles into your shoulder. “Stay here. You were warm last night, right?”

“The warmest,” you tell him. Despite everything, it was one of the best sleeps you’d had in a long while.

“Then there’s no reason to go,” Namjoon says. “It’s not like anyone else is going to come in. It’s just you and me.”

Eventually, you do manage to escape his grasp, pulling him up with you as you stretch out your limbs and get ready to go. His friend is parked outside, the snowplow having already come to shovel away the snow in the parking lot outside. Namjoon pouts at the lack of warmth but you just hand him back his cardigan. That’s enough warmth for now.

“We should do this again sometime,” you say jokingly as you’re walking out of the library, Namjoon making sure to lock it up on your way out. “It was fun.”

“I don’t think we need an impending snowstorm to enjoy each other’s company,” Namjoon says.

“It was certainly cozy.”

You don’t know where you’ll go from here. You’ve exchanged numbers but you never see him on campus as it is, your paths only ever crossing when you have the same shifts at the library. But it’s different now—you can feel it in the air around you. Maybe you’ll start making time for each other, make efforts to align your shifts and cross your paths. There’s more to life than what’s already given to you, you realize. Some things you need to take into your own hands.

“I hope the next time I see you won’t be at work,” Namjoon admits, a light red flush decorating his soft cheeks.

“How about we go out for coffee sometime? I mean, we’ve already slept together, so I think a date would be in order,” you suggest.

“A date?” He asks cheekily, though you know he’ll say yes.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

A whistle. The two of you turn to look at Namjoon’s friend, who’s rolled down the window just to shout at the two of you. “Hey, lovebirds, hurry it up! My car’s heating isn’t working and I want to get the fuck home!”

“I’ll text you, okay?” Namjoon says, pressing a kiss to your forehead. You feel the sparks again, where his lips met your skin. Next time, you’ll see what electricity you’ll feel if you press your lips on his. “See you soon.”

Namjoon scurries off to get into the passenger seat of the car, leaning forward to wave out the window. A gust of wind blows by as they drive off, and white falls off the empty branches of the trees that surround you, like it’s snowing all over again. Though it’s cold, though there’s eighteen inches of snow by your shins, there’s something in the air that feels different than before.

Namjoon (9:12AM): I miss you ♡

You smile.

⇒ hmu with feedback or just talk to me here!

[aziraamane]

All the Better Part of Me (Human AU) - Part 7

(Previous) - (First)

Anathema strolled into the lounge, cleaning her glasses on the hem of her frilly blouse. "Both out for the count," she murmured. "Thought they'd stay up all night, the way they were running around…"

"Tired 'emselves out," shrugged Crowley. He'd sprawled out across his sofa in a tangle of limbs, head resting on the rather unwieldy sofa arm and sunglasses askew on his face. 

"That's putting it mildly. I've never seen Adam so excited." Anathema slipped her glasses back up onto her nose as she shuffled around the room, picking up stray toys and rubbish the boys had left lying around. "It's nice, though. I'm glad he's got a good friend now."

"Yeah. Me too."

"And it seems you have as well." She fixed Crowley with a curious gaze. "I wasn't trying to tease you earlier - much, anyway. You do like him, don't you?"

"Ngk."

"Anthony."

Crowley's mouth twitched. "'S not...professional...to talk about that with my employee."

"Anthony," Anathema repeated, dropping to her knees in front of the sofa, "as your employee, I spend a lot of time around you, and I notice things. Namely, that you fucking light up like a beacon whenever you mention Ezra. I've not seen you this happy in years. Something about him is affecting you, and honestly, it'd be great if it carried on, because you're much less of a pain in the ass when you're happy."

Crowley shoved at her, groaning. "Stop it. He's just a friend, alright? Leave it at that."

She opened her mouth to argue back, but suddenly there was a long, repeated pounding at the front door, and they exchanged confused glances. "What on earth…?" Crowley flung himself out of his sprawl and gently shooed Anathema out of the way as he loped towards the commotion. A prank call, maybe, some kids being stupid…

Nope. It was a dishevelled, beaming, and very drunk Ezra Fell.

"There he is! My friend! He won't ridicule me all night!"

"Holy shit, angel. The hell happened?"

Ezra stared at him for a moment - then the smile dropped and he burst into tears.

"They're all so mean to me!" And he fell into Crowley's arms, sobbing his heart out.

Naturally, the best thing to do in a situation like this is to offer some sort of comfort. Maybe a pat on the back, or a firm, squeezing embrace. A few soft words of reassurance and some tissues to mop up the tears. Instead of all that, Crowley uttered, "ngk," and his brain promptly short-circuited into tartan-filled oblivion.

That was how Anathema found them a moment later, Ezra with his head buried in Crowley's shoulder, Crowley clinging to him with a sort of awkward desperation and, presumably, a look of help me in his eyes. Her own eyes rolling, Anathema flapped her hands at Crowley and took a sniffling Ezra to the kitchen, leaving Crowley to stand in the hallway looking utterly bemused. 

Once he rebooted, Crowley realised what must have happened at dinner with Ezra's siblings, and he shook his head to dispel the last dregs of stupor before storming into the kitchen. Ezra sat at the island, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve and looking very wobbly atop the narrow stool while Anathema made tea.

"What did they say to you?" he demanded, grabbing for Ezra's hands. 

"Anthony, calm down," Anathema sighed.

"No, sod off," he replied, childishly. 

Ezra let out a watery giggly, more tears spilling down his flushed, plump cheeks. "Should have just gone home," he admitted, "but I - oh, I don't know-"

"Angel."

"They all think I'm nothing. Useless. An embarrassment to our family." Crowley's hands tightened around Ezra's, jaw clenched. "But," Ezra continued, "but they're right. Gabriel's, well - have you seen Gabriel? He's amazing, so clever and - and - but there's me, and…"

Anathema set a mug of tea in front of Ezra. "Let go of him," she said sternly. 

Crowley withdrew with the least venomous glare he could bring himself to adequately muster. Every nerve in his body screamed to, well, scream "how dare they," possibly break a few things. He was good at that, breaking things. Only when Adam wasn't around, though. 

"It's okay," Ezra murmured, diligently sipping tea. "I'm used to it." And oh, did that hurt a familiar pain. Crowley heard his mother's firm tones ringing in his ears, all her years of grinding her brood below her heel to shape them into what she wanted. Never able to question it, just going along with it, never being enough, wanting to be enough. 

Crowley reached for Ezra's hand again, paused, drew back a moment later. "You don't deserve that, angel."

Ezra said nothing, but a few tears splashed into his mug, lips pressed tightly together as his body quivered with emotion.

"Calm now?" Anathema asked Crowley, who gave a low grunt. "I'll be in my room if you need me." And she swept off, the bracelets on her wrists jangling. 

Now wasn't the time to dwell on his own family matters. With Ezra here, drunk and vulnerable, he needed assurance. Crowley gathered his courage and reached out again, patting Ezra's hand softly. "You alright?"

Ezra sighed deeply. "I suppose. Though the room is very spinny right now."

"How much have you had to drink?"

"Ah, now that -" Ezra held up a finger, giggling again, "well, that is to say, I - might have taken a very expensive Chardonnay, and told Gabriel I'd stick it up his smarmy arse if he protested." Crowley burst out laughing; how could it be possible for this sweet creature to use even the mildest of profanities? "I believe I had two glasses with dinner, and then the bottle on the way here, so…oh dear, that's quite a lot, isn't it?"

"Might be able to out-drink me, angel," Crowley grinned. Now that was difficult to do. Most reporters had learned that the hard way. "Stay here tonight," he offered, "you're not walking alone and I love the Bentley too much to risk you chundering in it. I'll get the spare room ready for you later, yeah?"

"I don't want to impose-" Ezra spluttered.

"I don't think you ever could. 'Sides, Warlock'd love to wake up and find you here. And, uh, I don't have a spare booster seat in the car, so...heh. Forgot about that."

Ezra pondered, staring into his tea. Crowley couldn't help but sigh in relief to see his tears had stopped. 

"Yes, alright then," Ezra said. He looked up at Crowley, smiling broadly, if still a little watery - Crowley might have kissed him senseless if he lacked even an ounce of self-restraint, if he knew more about this peculiar man that had somehow become his friend, knew more about what way he swung, if he swung at all.

 No, it was too good to risk. 

He patted Ezra's hand again. "It's still early. Reckon I might have a few drinks myself. That okay with you?"

"It's your home, darling. Don't stop yourself on my account."

Darling.

Oh, Anathema, you bastard, you’re right.

~*~

The misery of the evening had been promptly forgotten practically the instant the last of the tea vanished down Ezra's throat. He really did feel better - well, still spinny, of course, but no longer with the solid feeling of abandonment lodged in his heart. 

He'd popped his head round Adam's bedroom door, just to see how Warlock was doing, and almost cried again to see the boys topping and tailing in a completely ridiculous sprawl across Adam's bed, cosy in the depths of slumber. Crowley had had to drag him away lest he barge in and sweep Warlock into a tight, drunken hug. 

And now, with the lights dimmed, doors closed, and rock music playing quietly from surround sound speakers, Ezra and Crowley were laughing and joking whilst enjoying a rather splendid Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the year of which Ezra couldn't recall, nor did he particularly care at present. All he cared about was the smooth, dark taste slipping down his throat, the blessed comfort of the sofa beneath him, and the bright, mirthful tones of Crowley's voice on the other side of the upholstery as he rambled.

"-An' I said, I said - shit, what was it now - oh yeah, that it was the whales! Massive brains! Brain city, angel, 'm tellin' ya."

"Well, of course," Ezra giggled, toying with his wine glass. "Quite big creatures, aren't they?"

"That's m'point!" Crowley gesticulated wildly with his free hand. "Huge! An’ - an’ - shit, where was I going with this…?" 

"Whales, brains?"

"Oh, yeah. But then it goes into - into - right, fish ‘r mammal? No idea!” Crowley burst into raucous laughter, almost falling off the sofa in the process. His glasses had come off at some point in the night, revealing the eyes Ezra had been so interested in, but hadn't dared to mention, since he first saw them, the first time he came to the apartment. Amber, they were, or golden, perhaps, with distorted pupils, almost like that of a snake. They were oddly beautiful, if not immediately eye-catching, pardon the pun.

"Anthony, dear fellow." Ezra found himself putting his glass down and scooting closer. Crowley blinked at him, eyelashes fluttering, but said nothing. "May I - I wish to - um…" He shook his head and, without waiting for an answer, raised his hands to cup Crowley's cheeks. The man froze, a choked noise in his throat that Ezra hardly heard as he brushed his thumbs just below Crowley's eyes. "Why do you hide these? They're lovely. Very striking."

Slowly, Crowley lifted his own hands, slender fingers closing around Ezra's wrists. "Have to," he replied. "They hurt otherwise."

"Hurt?"

"Yeah. Light gets to 'em."

"Oh, darling, I am sorry."

"Don't be." Crowley lowered Ezra's hands gently. "Had it all my life. Got a name, uh, colour - colo - coloba - fuck it, can't say words when m'drunk." To Ezra's slight disappointment, Crowley fumbled for the sunglasses lying on the coffee table and jammed them onto his face. "'S better."

Had Ezra gone too far? Even drunk, he felt the gentle pang of guilt, of causing Crowley discomfort in his own home. Dutifully, he shifted backwards on the sofa, putting space between them. With a bleary-eyed glance at the clock, he saw it said two o'clock in the morning. "Oh, goodness me. It's late all of a sudden. I should - well, we should go to bed."

Another choked splutter from Crowley, but after a moment he muttered, "Yeah. Course. Late. Um, I'll set up the guest room - wait here a sec…" And on wobbly, spindly legs, Crowley exited the room. 

It was sweet of Crowley, Ezra mused, to let him stay. A funny, tense sensation in his chest had balled itself up there over the course of their drinking session, and he couldn't quite place it - but he knew who could. With a resolute nod, he pulled out his mobile and, with much squinting and pressing of wrong keys, finally typed out a coherent message to his best friend.

"Tracy, darling, I must talk to you asap."

[glitchvault74]

Take Me down to Diamond City Where the Walls are Green and the Girls are Pretty

[Previous]

The wake-up call from the vault may have been Prince Charming’s kiss after a long two hundred years asleep... But the trip to Diamond City is where everything about this situation becomes real. At first, it was like the trip to the settlement that Rig never caught the name of and won’t know how to find later to prove his innocence to Lady. It was a daze-filled dreamworld of a broken countryside. It was something Rig couldn’t comprehend and didn’t bother to try.

But then Tim has Rig stop by a rusted car, half buried in the ground and with all the windows shattered. Tim has him wait and then wanders off to do something, and Rig stares at the car. He wanders around it, getting the details of it. The paint is long gone and pieces of the car are torn off for who knows what reason. There’s something in the backseat— a... skeleton in the backseat. One that looks much too real to be anything besides human remains. Just something sitting so casually out in the open...

Except it’s not “the open”, so to speak. Rig looks around, noticing more things. Perhaps not finer details, but at the least he can now notice anything about the world around him. Actually perceive it and understand what he’s looking at. Rusted cars everywhere, a freeway collapsed with parts of it hanging precariously, structures that look practically melted with how they’re falling apart. Desolate, decaying, decimated... There’s trash everywhere. There’s a few more bodies.

He covers his mouth and holds his stomach as he crouches. This is real. This is real. Everything’s in a sharp clarity now, that’s buzzing in his ears— Or is that buzzing external...?

Rig looks up and scrambles back at the sight of something giant and flying and scary. Like some sort of hell insect. And coming right at him. He jumps to his feet like an awkward, newborn foal, with all the grace of someone who suddenly forgot how to walk, and he’s about to run when—

BANG!

He runs anyway, at the least to behind the safety of another car, and he peeks over it when the sounds have stopped. Tim approaches the remains of the hellsect, now holding a gun of some sort and carrying a pack holding who knows what.

“Olly olly oxen free!” he calls, waving over at him. “You can come out now! The big scary bloodbug is dead!”

Rig hesitates, but he shuffles out from behind the car and back over to Tim. He wrinkles his nose as Tim pulls out a knife from his pack and cuts off chunks of the “bloodbug”.

“Your first time seeing one of these, yeah?” Tim asks. “Trust me, no one likes these things.”

“Why’s it called a bloodbug?” Rig asks.

“Uh, maybe because they eat blood?”

“Oh, like a mosquito...”

“Spit it back at you too.”

“Oh, like a mutant mosquito.”

“Got it in two, Rigsby,” Tim grins. “That’s exactly what these are.” He wraps up chunks of the bloodbug and shoves it into his pack. “We’re eating like kings tonight. Kings who eat gross bugs.”

Rig pulls a face. Something caught between disbelief and utter disgust. Tim cleans up his knife and puts it away and then stands up, picking his gun up with him.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll cook it first. Less chance of disease that way.”

Rig closes his mouth. He didn’t even realize it was open. He stares at the mess of the bloodbug remains and then back up at Tim. “I’ll be right back,” he says and he wanders off to behind the closest car.

“What?” Tim calls over. “Something wro—?” He cringes at the familiar sound of someone trying to vomit on an empty stomach. “Well. Thanks for not doing that on me!” 

By the time Rig stumbles back over, he’s dizzy and light-headed all over again. The world is back to being spinny— was it spinny before?

“Rig? Rigsby? Hey—”

“Huh?” Rig asks. He flinches when something splashes in his face. “Huh???”

“Here.” Tim shoves something into Rig’s hands. Water. “Drink this.”

“I’m not—” He cuts himself off. His throat is burning. He drinks, not pausing at the taste this time. The vertigo and nausea passes and he hands the container back.

“Feeling better?” Tim asks.

“Less dead,” Rig says, flashing an OK.

“Good enough.” Tim motions for him to follow again. “Man, Doc Teddy Bear was right after all. You would not survive out here on your own. With how fast you’re moving, it’ll be another day before we get to Diamond City. We should find some shelter before night hits.”

“Hmm,” Rig says, glancing back to the car he saw the skeleton in as he follows Tim.

“You taking notes?” Tim asks. “This is your Wasteland Survival Guide. Good ol’ Jim won’t be around to help you forever, you know.”

“On purpose?” Rig asks, distracted.

Tim looks back at him. “I mean, hopefully, yeah—”

“The name thing,” Rig clarifies. “You told me to call you Tim, but you called yourself different things since then...?”

Tim grins. “That’s a test to see if you’re paying attention. Good job. I’ll let you have the nicer bloodbug steak tonight as a treat.”

Rig covers his mouth again.

“Orrrr not! That’s fine too!”

The rest of the day goes much smoother. Rig picks up his pace the moment he feels less sick, follows along just behind Tim who keeps him in his peripheral. They stop a few times to avoid dangers, Tim redirects them a few other times. It’s a long, winding path they’re taking, and not useful for Rig to figure out where he is at all, even with the map Tim says is on his Pip-Boy. It means nothing to him if he doesn’t know any of the landmarks they’re passing.

Tim will not shut up either. But unlike the woman from the caravan, Rig listens more to the things Tim says. After all, while some of the things he says sound like lessons on how to survive... most of it is random comments or references to things or otherwise just interesting wordplay.

Rig smiles to himself as he thinks it over. Too bad he doesn’t have a way to record any of that. Tim says some fun things that Rig wants to relisten to sometime...

The sun sets, and they’re “still a half a day away” from Diamond City, according to Tim. Rig’s not certain how true that is, but with how they travelled today, he’ll accept it. He waits outside on the street in a long abandoned neighborhood as Tim checks to make sure it’s suitable for the night.

“Alright,” Tim calls from the doorway  of a half-collapsed house at the edge of the neighborhood. “We should be safe in here. No raiders or anything.”

Rig walks in after Tim. What’s left of the house is gray and dusty. Part of the roof and the far wall is gone. There’s an old stove in the corner that Tim seems to have lit to cook something in. An old mattress on the floor that someone must have used before only to abandon it in the end... Everything smells of mildew and bad decisions. There’s a couple sturdy crates and Tim sits on one and motions for Rig to take the other.

“Home sweet dilapidated home,” Tim chuckles. “Dinner will be ready soon. Did you have a nice day at work?”

Rig sits down, sending Tim another confused look. Just one of many that’s been shared all day.

“That’s what it’d used to be like, right?” Tim asks. “Couples being all cute, one half working all day while the other stays home to cook and clean... I mean, assuming they didn’t have help...”

“Mister Handys?” Rig asks, pulling a face. “They made me nervous, so we never had one.”

“Oh?” Tim asks. “So who did the cooking and cleaning?”

“I did.” He leans forward on his knees and looks at the dirt on the ground. He could draw something in this. “R—” He stops for a moment. New word. Different word. “Roommate worked, I stayed home. I did the chores, he paid for things. He’d make sure I had a social life. Most of my friends were his friends.” He reaches down and starts to draw something. Tries to at least. Stupid Pip-Boy, making it difficult to see his work.

“Huh.” Tim smirks. “So, I should be getting you to cook for us, shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know how to cook bloodbug.”

“Heh, yeah. I’d imagine pre-war cooking is a bit different from how things are now.” Tim gets up and stretches. “Speaking of. You feeling better about eating that now or...?”

“Not hungry,” he says.

Tim tilts his head and watches Rig draw in the dirt. “Have you eaten at all since leaving that vault?”

Rig doesn’t answer for a moment. He pauses from drawing but doesn’t look up at Tim. “Nnyes?”

“You haven’t,” Tim says. He hums. “But you really don’t feel like eating...? You’re going to starve to death, Rigsby.”

“I died in 1948,” he grumbles.

Tim laughs. “Yeah? And when were you born?”

“I was never born.”

“Ooh, a ghost. That’s so spooky.”

“I could kill Macbeth.”

Tim grins. “I thought you said you weren’t a murderer.”

Rig looks up at him. “I thought you said I didn’t need to be strong to commit a homicide. Macbeth isn’t real anyway. Like... Like... John Hancock.” He immediately sighs and drops his face into his hand. “Stupid...” he mutters.

“Nope, you’re right,” Tim laughs. “John Hancock. Totally fictional.” He goes to check the steaks. “And I know who Macbeth is,” he says. “You’ll get ‘em next time, Macduff.”

“Hmm.” Rig glances at him and then down at his drawing of a skull. He frowns and swipes it away with his foot.

“But no, seriously.” Tim carries the cooked steaks over. “You want one of these or not? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Lost it in the jungle in 1805.” Rig stares at the steaks and grimaces. “It’s... safe to eat?”

“Ouch, what an insult.” Tim sits back down. “If you’re going to keep insulting my cooking, I’m going to file for divorce, honeypie.”

Rig blinks. His confused look returns, this time complete with his eyes darting back and forth as he tries to puzzle out an answer to a question his mind hasn’t thought to ask.

“It’s safe,” Tim says, holding one of the steaks out. “Promise. You have, what, fifteen caps on you? That’s not worth murdering someone over. That shirt on the other hand...”

“.........If I die,” Rig says, a bit slower than before as he actually thinks over his words. He takes the steak. “Then as long as you didn’t divorce me... you’re entitled to my things.”

Tim laughs. “And they say romance is dead!”

Rig smiles a little and then takes a bite of the steak without looking at it. He pulls a face as he chews it. Chews a bit more. Lifts his brow and nods in approval and eats more.

“Really?” Tim asks between mouthfuls of his own steak. “You turned around on your opinion that fast?”

“I’ve had worse,” Rig answers. “Roommate cooked once. Was gross and gave me food poisoning.”

“That’s going to happen at some point. Wasteland Survival lesson whatever number we’re on. You’re going to eat some bad food at some point and get food poisoning.”

“...Gross.”

“Mm-hmm. One of the glamorous things about life.”

The two lapse into silence as they eat their meals. The moon shines overhead. Tim still wears those sunglasses. He finishes eating first.

“I’ll take first watch,” he says. He hums and wiggles his hand as he thinks. “I’ll take watch,” he corrects. “I’m a light sleeper, but I don’t trust you to know what to look for to wake me up in time should something show up.”

“Yeah,” Rig says. “You’re not going to sleep, though?”

“Eh, I’ll catch some Z’s. When you least expect it. You won’t even notice.” He moves his crate over to where his things are resting against the wall, giving him full view over everything else. “But I promised to get you to Diamond City in one piece, didn’t I?”

Rig turns around on his crate to face Tim. “...What’s your story?” he asks.

“My story?” He smiles. “Nothing special. Parents were farmers, so I grew up learning good, working values. Then the farm got overrun by ferals and we were forced to leave. Spent my young adult years going around to different places, doing different jobs, learning new skills. Took up hunting for food at some point. You saw how good my aim was with that bloodbug, right?”

“No, I was hiding,” Rig says.

“You’re honest,” Tim chuckles. “I like that about you, Rig. You seem like you couldn’t tell a single lie.”

Rig’s lips thin. He chews his last bite of bloodbug slowly and swallows it. “Yeah...”

“Anyway,” Tim continues. “Ended up settling in Buttonwood—that’s where Doc Tedds was treating you—while my parents found their way to Diamond City. They’re elderly now, so I make sure to visit them frequently before they shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Rig squints. “Hmm.”

“What?” Tim asks. “Don’t believe me...?”

“...The settlement is called Buttonwood?”

“...Heh.” Tim leans back against the wall. “Yeah. It actually is. Well, get some sleep, Rigsby. We’ve got another long walk ahead of us.”

Rig shrugs and gets up. Weird. He feels a bit better than he did before sitting down... He lies down on the mattress, on his side facing the wall and closes his eyes...

Ends up opening them some twenty minutes later, he estimates, unable to sleep. Maybe he can trick himself to sleep if he doesn’t move from this spot and just... thinks or something...

But everything that happened that day bounces around in his mind. The bloodbug, the skeleton, Lady, the accusation that Rig killed someone... Tim. Whatever was up with Tom. His ol’ pal Jim.

Morning comes with the sound of Tim moving around, just like he did throughout the night, but this time, Rig flips over to face him.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Tim grins. “Want some breakfast?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Not even if I were to offer you... Fancy Lads?”

Rig looks up. “You have Fancy Lads?”

Tim pulls out a package. “And they have your name on them!” He tosses it to Rig who catches it.

Rig looks at the package and sees the “RIG” written on the outside. “...You have a pen?”

“What? Nooo. I found them like that.”

Rig furrows his brow. That... sounds like a lie... “...Alright,” he says, choosing to accept it even if he knows better than to believe that. He’ll find his own pen. Some day... In the meantime: it’s Fancy Lads Snack Cakes for breakfast. Amazing that these things never expire and therefore have to still be edible, because that’s how expiry dates work, right? He gets a mouthful of cake and talks around it as he chews. “These things are as disgusting as I remember them being.”

Tim looks up from his own breakfast. Some kind of fruit maybe? “You don’t like them?”

“I love them,” Rig says. “Doesn’t make them any less disgusting. Hadn’t had them since I was a kid.”

“...Why are you eating them if you think they’re disgusting?”

“You fed me bloodbug last night and now nothing is sacred.”

“Fair enough.”

Breakfast ends with little fanfare. Tim packs up. They head out. Simple as that. It’s back to the same as the day before. Navigating around like in the most zigzag way they can. Avoiding dangers. Probably taking twice as long to get anywhere, perhaps longer. But if they’re having to stop to hide from something that Rig doesn’t have the chance to see but Tim insists is there, Rig rather err on the side of “okay but that bloodbug continues to be terrifying I rather trust Tim that there’s something dangerous we have to hide from than risk dying.”

Even so, Tim’s back to saying things. Rig’s back to listening. It’s a shame they’ll part ways once they get to Diamond City. Rig may not know this man, but likes his company.

The buildings get bigger—the ones still standing that is, as abandoned as they are. There’s more concrete, cracked several times over and broken into chunks. There’s more people, but they don’t stay and chat too long. Tim does his best to avoid anyone seeing them for some reason.

Things start looking a bit more familiar... Like a place Rig’s been to before, only utterly wrecked from time and a war he doesn’t remember. The eerie, empty giants are shells of the past that Rig doesn’t recognize, if he ever could.

Tim leads him along to a... huge-big, green, walled structure. Rig stares at it as they get closer. That’s odd... He feels like he should know this one at least... He’s been here at least, right...? At least in passing...?

They’re nearly right in front of the statue of a baseball player before Rig actually sees it. His eyes widen and he gasps. “Oh! I get it now!”

“Yeah?” Tim grins.

“This is Diamond City?” he asks. “On a baseball diamond? What was the name of this.... Sports... field...? St— Stereo— Uh.” Rig looks down in thought. He snaps his fingers. “Stadium! What was the name of the stadium?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be pre-war?” Tim grins. “You don’t remember the name?”

“I’m not from Massachusetts,” he says. “I was living here only.... Maybe 5 years? Before whatever happened? Maybe more? I don’t know. I’m terrible with time.”

“Ha!” Tim claps a hand onto Rig’s shoulder. “That’s great that you broke your clock and calendar, then.”

Rig frowns. “Yeah...”

“Well, buck up,” Tim says. “As soon as we get through those gates, this part of the journey will be over! You just have to find that detective and convince him to take on your case with those fifteen caps in your pocket.”

“...That’s not worth much is it?”

“Nope! But you could always offer that shirt.”

Rig twists his body away, holding onto his flamingo shirt by the shoulders, utter offense coating his face. The audacity. The nerve.

“Yep,” Tim laughs. “You know how valuable that is. Let’s go, Rigsby. Just a little farther.”

“...How do I find that detective...?”

“Just look for his sign. His is the only detective agency in town.”

Rig looks away as he thinks it over, merely following Tim inside without paying attention to how they got in or where they’re going. “What happens if I—?”

He looks around. He’s in the city, by himself, Tim nowhere to be seen.

...Time to wander aimlessly in hopes of finding where he needs to go.

———

It’s a quiet evening in the Valentine Detective Agency. The sun is setting outside the walls of the office, and there likely won’t be anyone showing up on their doorstep with a case to solve... But that’s just jinxing it. In the meantime, Detective Nick Valentine reads through the paper, reading up on local news for the day. He sent Ellie home early when the day seemed to be bringing no trouble with it, leaving Nick in the office with his trusty partner, Miss Echo Gray, and Echo’s trusty partner, a German Shepherd being spoiled with belly rubs.

“Who’s a good boy?” Echo kneels on the floor as she showers Dogmeat with affection. Dogmeat’s tail thumps on the floor as he gives happy little boofs. “Who’s a good boy?”

“Boof!”

“That’s right! You’re a good boy!” 

“You’re a good man, Dogmeat,” Nick adds, a casual, amused smile on his lips as he turns the page of his paper.

Dogmeet boofs again and then climbs to his feet to run in circles around Echo. Dogmeat then rushes to the door, barking excitedly at it.

“Expecting someone, Nick?” Echo asks, quickly pulling out a pair of sunglasses to cover her silver eyes and obscure the scar running down the right side of her face. She stands up, waiting to hear a knock.

“Not this late, no,” Nick answers. He sets down the paper and heads for the door. “Echo, could you...?”

“Dogmeat!” Echo clicks her tongue. “Here, boy.”

Dogmeat rushes up to her and sits at her side. There’s a knock just before Nick opens the door.

“Oh, Detective Valentine,” a man says, dressed in a coat, a hat, and sunglasses. He dabs a dirty handkerchief to his face to wipe up imaginary tears. “It’s simply awful. I need to hire your services to find my missing insert relation to me here.”

“Deacon,” Nick deadpans. “What are you doing here?”

Deacon grins. “Practicing my acting skills. I think I’m ready to start a theatre troupe. Gotta keep busy somehow, right? What do you think?”

“You know, for someone who lies every other sentence, you’d think your drama skills would be better.”

Deacon clutches his chest. “You wound me!”

Nick rolls his optics. “What are you actually doing here?”

“Can’t a man say hi to his sister once in a while?”

“You have a sister?” Echo deadpans, moving to stand beside Nick. “And before you make the—”

“Of course I do, sis!” Deacon grins and leans in with a motion to his sunglasses. “We have the same eyes!”

“Get new jokes,” Echo sighs. “Maybe then you could do stand-up instead of theatre.”

Deacon grins. “Right back at ya, Bullseye. Say, any new cases pop up in the last... Oh, let’s say three hours?”

“Nope,” Nick says. He finally moves out of the doorway, a silent invitation for Deacon to come in. “It’s been a quiet day. Even sent Ellie home early.”

“Really?” Deacon asks, wandering into the office. “You didn’t see or hear anything from a guy in a stupid shirt with pink birds on it, did you?”

“Flamingos?” Echo asks.

“You’ve seen him!”

“Nope,” she says. “Why, should we have...?”

Deacon goes oddly quiet. “...So,” he says at last. “I guess it’s true what they say. You can lead a vaultie to Diamond City but you can’t make him be able to find the only detective agency in town on his own.”

Nick and Echo both look at him in alarm.

“Deacon,” Nick says. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” Deacon says. “Now, if you were to ask him, he might tell you about a Tim or maybe a Tom who helped him get here, but...”

Echo covers her face. “Deacoooon,” she groans.

“Well, hey!” Deacon grins. “Bright side is, that guy is totally harmless! He’s more likely to get killed than hurt anyone.” He winces. “Maybe we ought to find him.”

“I’ll stay here,” Nick says. “In case he finds his way here after all. Echo, you go with Deacon. Take Dogmeat. Hopefully, this man’s got enough sense to at least say within the city walls.”

———

Rig has absolutely no idea how long it’s been since he got to Diamond City, but he’s no closer to finding where he needs to go than he was the first dozen times he passed by this building despite the fact he knows he’s been trying different paths looking for that sign Tim told him to look for. Detective Agency. Detective Agency. How hard could it be to find a sign that says Detective Agency? He can read. Why is finding it the hard part?

Worse yet, the sun has set. He’s lost, confused, and has no idea where to go. He groans and keeps walking, hoping to spy something different besides the darkness making everything harder to see. Except for whatever that weird red-pink glow is but—

He backtracks and squints at the sign.

Valentine Detective Agency.

Oh.

...The heart and arrow’s a nice touch.

Rig hesitates, looking up and down the street. Would it still be open at this hour...? Well, he doesn’t have much else to do... He follows the sign to a door, and he knocks.

“Dammit,” someone curses from inside. “Just a moment!”

Rig waits patiently. He glances around as he waits, looking at. Just about anything, really. That’s an interesting color of brick. Is that graffiti or glue from an old poster? Is that—?

The door opens and Rig looks at the person on the other side. He blinks, pulling back as he takes in the person’s face. Graying, cracking skin that’s missing chunks. Mechanical parts underneath. Glowing yellow eyes. Dressed like a detective at least. That’s a good sign. The eyes dart down to his shirt. Rig waves, unsure what else to do. “Is this the detective agency...?”

“Yep,” the person says. Because this is clearly a person even if... He motions in with a skeletal, metal hand. “You must be that vault dweller Deacon dragged in.”

“Who?” he asks, following inside.

“Oh, uh... Tim.”

“...His name is Tim Deacon?”

“Well. No.” The person leans against a desk and crosses their arms. “Deacon was lying to ya, kid. Whatever he told you taking you here, most of it was probably lies.”

Rig slumps his shoulders. “Oh... Does that mean you can’t help me with the thing I need help with?”

The person smiles. “Now, that one is less likely a lie. Detective Nick Valentine. My partner, Echo, is out with Deacon looking for you, but they’re bound to give up and come back soon. Why don’t you tell me your situation in the meantime...? What’s your name, kid?”

“...Uh, well.” He winces. “Um... I’m Rig Miller.”

Nick lowers his arm and stands up straighter but doesn’t say anything for a moment. He eyes Rig, almost suspiciously. “Oh...?”

“And I woke up in some vault. 113, I think? And I... went to some settlement where some... I think she was called a ghoul? Named Lady? Said I killed her sister before the war. And I... want to prove I didn’t... But don’t know where to start...?”

“...How did you get in that vault?”

Rig shrugs. “People keep asking me that, but I have no idea. I just woke up there. I don’t remember how I got there...”

“Well, how did you get out?”

“I... don’t know.” Rig shrugs. “I was really dizzy. The door opened and I walked out.”

“That...” Nick trails off and then changes tracks. “Do you remember where it is? Is it on your Pip-Boy?”

Rig looks at his Pip-Boy. “I don’t know how to use this.”

Nick points at the dial. “Go to the maps. See what locations are marked. Hopefully, even if you haven’t been adding locations, it’ll have the location of the vault that this came from on it.”

Rig switches to the maps setting. He winces as the screen fills with bright green. “...I may have broken the map too.”

Nick looks down at the screen. “...How the hell do you break a Pip-Boy like that?”

Rig switches back to the setting it was on before. “One of life’s greatest mysteries... On par with ‘where does sand come from?’”

“Erosion,” Nick says. “We know where sand comes from.”

“Oh. Okay.” Rig looks back to the door and stiffly points at it. “I’ll just go—”

“No, no,” Nick sighs. “Look. I understand how all this must feel. Waking up somewhere unfamiliar, no knowledge how you got there, with only memories of a pre-war life to help you...”

Rig frowns. “Is it rude to ask what you are...?”

Nick smiles. “There’s a lot more ruder ways to ask. I’m a synth. Do you know what synths are?”

Rig shakes his head. “I heard the word mentioned...”

“An artificially made person,” he says. “I’m an old prototype, before the Institute started making them organic. But we’ve since taken them down. Well, Echo did most of the work. But we don’t need to talk about that. What I’m saying is, I was given the memories of an old pre-war cop. So, whatever your situation is, having a life you remember living pre-war... I can relate.”

“So there was a...” Rig squints. “A Nick Valentine in my time too?”

“Yep,” Nick nod. “You remember hearing anything about the Eddie Winters case?”

“...What is that, some kind of sports team mascot?”

Nick grins but and laughs a little, but tries to keep it down. “Not quite. Don’t worry about it.”

“Was it, uh... big?” Rig frowns. “A big case? I didn’t follow the news much.”

“No, it’s fine. We don’t need to go into it.” Nick hums. “Now, Rig Miller... I remember hearing your name around before. That was another case another precinct was following, about a man who supposedly was committing several different crimes. I suppose the murder part of that happened after the original Nick got that brain scan, else I’d know about it now. So you want to prove you never did any of those crimes?”

Rig nods. “That’d be nice.”

“Will be a tough case,” Nick comments. “It’s been over 210 years since the bombs fell. No idea what we’ll find, especially with how the wastelands are if it’s something you’re not used to...”

“...Do you... need to be paid...?” Rig checks his pockets and counts the contents. “I have.... Fourteen caps. That’s money here, right?”

“No, it’s fine.” Nick smirks at the doorway. “I’ll just make Deacon pay for it.”

“Awww, what?”

Rig looks to the door and sees two people wearing sunglasses, and a big ol’ dog standing there. The man looks familiar, but dressed in a coat and a hat. The woman, he doesn’t recognize, dressed in layers and with brown hair pulled into a ponytail. The dog looks like a regular German Shepherd instead of a scary, mutated dog he might have been expecting. Said dog runs in, barking excitedly and jumping at Rig. Rig holds his arms out in surprise and takes a step back.

“Dogmeat!” the woman says, hurrying over to pull Dogmeat away. “Sorry about him. He has the zoomies.”

“Oh, hey!” the man says, waving. “You must be that guy my twin, Tim, told me about!”

“Deacon,” Nick scolds. “I already told him you were lying.”

Deacon grins. “Oh, yeah? Well then. Wasteland Survival lesson number whatever, Rigsby. People lie. All the time.”

Rig furrows his brow. “You kept your promise about getting me here...”

“Well, that’s just because I’m a good and wonderful person,” Deacon chuckles. “You already tell Valentine about that case you need help with?”

“We were just discussing it,” Nick says. “Echo, you need an update?”

“No I’m good,” the woman says. Echo looks up. “Rig, right?” she asks. She stands up once Dogmeat calms down, and she smiles at Rig. “Deacon told me your situation while we were looking for you.” She sends Deacon as pointed a look as she can with her eyes behind sunglasses. “Assuming you were telling the truth about that at least?”

Deacon holds his hands up in surrender. “Yeah. Promise. Rig Miller’s here to prove he’s not a pre-war killer.”

“Rig Miller, not a killer,” Rig mumbles. “Something something... Thriller? Hmm.”

Nick shakes his head. “Alright. It’s late. I don’t need to sleep, but the rest of you ought to. We’ll talk about this case in the morning.”

“Do you need a place to stay for the night?” Echo asks Rig.

Rig blinks. “...Uh...?”

“Yes,” Deacon interjects.

“Yes,” Rig parrots.

“Then let’s get to my place before it gets any later,” Echo says.

“It’s after office hours anyway,” Nick adds, ushering Rig out the door with the others following behind them. He locks the door and then holds out his arm for Echo. She hooks her arm around his.

“Come on, boys,” she says. “Deacon, make sure Rig doesn’t get lost.”

“You heard the compass, Rigsby,” Deacon says. “Keep up.”

Rig glances around at everyone, and remembers to follow a second after. Alright. Everything’s going okay so far... And they seem to trust him not to be a murderer... To want to help him prove he— that Rig isn’t... That he pretending to be Rig isn’t a murderer...

That’s good, right...?

——— 

Echo belongs to @falloutglow​ who also helped with writing this story.

[Next]

[noliereyes]

illumination | flashback 004

in which magnolia jane reyes learns a thing or two about a thing or two. ( flashback set during the 72nd games )

Nolie arrives for her parade prep session and is quickly fussed over by a tiny group of Capitol women. It’s the kind of thing Nolie lives for, laying back and letting people wash her hair, wax her legs, scrub her body, paint her fingernails. She chatters to them about life in Two, about being a young Career, how she hopes she’ll be the next Finnick Odair “but even cuter!”

It’s the first big piece of work she has to complete, the first major show. It began with the arrival in the Capitol, where she waved and smiled and held Miles’ hand and let people fuss over her. Where she tried to be strong and tough but also cute and soft. Now, she changes a little more, becomes the person the stylists want from her, a compliant, soft little girl. She is content to lay back and let people mold her, for now. She knows who she is, even if everyone else thinks they know her better.

The head stylist, Chenille, meets her in the Remake Centre soon, a tall, stern-looking woman who roughly tips her chin up to examine her face, and pulls her hair into curlers with tugs so hard she nearly cries.

“You will not cry.” she says, firmly, with another tug.

“No, I won’t,” Nolie chokes out through a closed throat, blinking the tears back.

Chenille soon dresses Nolie in a soft, flowy dress, a laurel wreath crown, golden wrist gauntlets. Her hair is fashioned into soft curls and her makeup shines a glimmering gold. She wears gladiator sandals and carries a golden bow, a quiver of golden arrows on her back.

She is Artemis, sister of Apollo, the goddess of the hunt, and she rides this feeling as she holds Miles’ hand, riding down the Avenue of the Tributes that night.

The cheers echo in her ears long after she falls asleep.

Anything that Nolie was supposed to be doing went out the window as soon as she enters the training centre the next morning. She nearly skipped in, her long hair fashioned into two long braids bouncing over her shoulders. The moment the head trainer dismissed the tributes to begin training ( as long as they didn’t kill each other, of course ), Nolie launched into a series of cartwheels down the mats. That would be impressive. For sure. She could just see Sponsors’ Weekly now. Look at her tricks! Her acrobatics!

Miles had her by the collar within minutes, dragging Nolie off to talk behind the sword racks.

“You need to stop that,” Miles hissed. “I already have my work cut out for me. The pack doesn’t want you.” Nolie’s heart dropped, as she looked over to the others. There was a soft-looking blonde girl twirling a knife between her fingers with a sigh. A boy attacking a training mannequin with a spear. And the pair from Four, laughing as they sparred with trainers side by side. “I’m going to do my best, but look, you’ve got to be less like a little kid.” Miles took the elastics out of Nolie’s braids with a snap, tousling his sister’s hair out again. “Get it in a bun or whatever you girls do, I don’t know. Pigtails are for kids. You’re not a kid. Not here.”

Nolie stays silent a moment. He’s right, and it makes her insides twist to admit it. “I didn’t put my hair like that, you know.”

Miles laughs. “I know. Look, I…” he shakes his head. “Just try and be impressive, but stay in your lane. If you want to do a bunch of those spinny-kicky-things in your Private, then fine. Enobaria, Fell, Ares, hell, even Enid - they’re not going to support you if you keep pulling the shit you pulled in the train. And you need them.” He patted Nolie on the shoulder. “Get going. And learn some survival.”

“Survival is boring,” she whines.

But she shuts up, walks to the gauntlet and waits her turn. When the course clears, she leaps up and onto it, dodging the Gamemakers with their sparring staffs, leaping effortlessly from block to block. Elliana and Gill both raise their brows, impressed, and Miles Reyes sighs with relief.

Maybe they’ll take her in after all.

Nolie soon gets the hang of what training is.

As a young Career, she’s surprisingly found a number of advantages that she doesn’t think the other tributes have. She’s young and small and cute, and so it’s easy to get some of the other trainers to teach her skills. But she has the focus and ambition that can only be found in Two’s Academy, which helps her hone in on these skills.

It’s the mentor from One who Nolie latches onto the most. Glitter is tall and pretty and has a little daughter who is around six years old, and Nolie strikes up a conversation with her after watching her in a hand to hand warm-up. It quickly grows to Nolie following Glitter like a lost puppy. Both of them know their way around a set of daggers, and as soon as Glitter says that she can teach Nolie how to snap a neck, her eyes widen.

Finally, some place for her acrobatics to become deadly.

“Yeah, you need be fast,” Glitter says, surveying the girl in front of her. “Sometimes who makes it out of a fight alive depends on who is faster.”

“Don’t worry, I’m very fast,” she assures the older woman. “How do I do it?”

Before she knew it, Nolie was launching herself up onto the backs of the training mannequins, snapping their heads into grotesque angles. She catches Miles’ eye as she rips another one, the foam tearing with a sickening crunch, and grins. Perhaps she’s got this after all.

When Nolie takes to the training centre again for her individual assessment, she’s bursting with well-earned confidence. Miles worked his magic and the Career pack agreed to take her in. Against her wishes, she had kept her head down and worked survival, worked on hand to hand combat and self-defence, practiced dodging and leaping and running. It was hard to keep her mouth shut and take her mentors’ advice, but she did: focused on being faster and harder and more skilled. 

She took advice from anyone who had anything to offer her: it didn’t matter if they were tributes or trainers or mentors, if they were from Two or not. And she’d brushed up briefly on her knife work- enough to send a pointed reminder to the other tributes that she was like no fourteen year-old they’d seen before.

After all, Fell had reminded her she’d only have a week to get four years caught up. So she was ready to take all the advice she could. It was time to see if it’d pay off.

Miles goes in first, and Nolie is left on her own for ten minutes. She settles onto the floor to stretch for only a moment before she hears a sharp laugh. “Hey, tiny,” the boy from Four, Gill, taunts as soon as Miles is out of earshot. “You think you’re gonna get score as little as you are?” All of the tributes remaining turn to stare at her, and even though Nolie’s ears burn, she keeps herself calm. Gill is all talk, she’s learned that much this week.

“I’ll outscore you, that’s for sure,” she says coolly, delicately crossing one leg over the other. Her hair is twisted into two little space buns on either side of her head, and it somehow makes her look infinitely sassier as she looks him up and down, brows raised.

The girl, Elliana, laughs. “She burned your ass,” she cackles to Gill, before turning back to Nolie. “You’re alright, guppy.”

Nolie enters the training room with plucky confidence, a skip in her step as she centers herself on the floor. She curtsies to the Gamemakers. “Magnolia Reyes, District Two. Let’s get this party started, shall we?” she asks, and takes off in a series of acrobatic tricks across the floor. A cartwheel, a back handspring, a roundhouse kick directly into a training mannequin, slamming it into the ground. For Nolie it was about building up adrenaline, about building up speed and force by propelling her body. She was small, but she was all muscle. She could pack a punch when needed.

The routine was a dance, from leaping onto the backs of the training mannequins, to lobbing knives into targets. The transitions between stations were polished and perfect, Nolie judging the room as she went. Whenever someone looked bored, it was time for an aerial, to leap from the gauntlet in a perfect back tuck, to do something to keep all eyes on her. Music plays in her head, a symphony swelling into a crescendo as she left shredded mannequins and stabbed targets in the wake of her whirlwind.

When she’s done, Nolie curtsies once more, waving and smiling cutely as she leaves.

She scores a nine, the same as Miles and beating both tributes from Four and the girl from One. The grin on her face grows as she takes in the shock on her mentors’ faces. They’re more impressed than they were when she stepped onto the train, and that’s enough for her now. 

Maybe she has a shot at this after all.

[entergamingxp]

Five of the Best: Villains • Eurogamer.net

Five of the Best is a weekly series about the small details we rush past when we’re playing but which shape a game in our memory for years to come. Details like the way a character jumps or the title screen you load into, or the potions you use and maps you refer back to. We’ve talked about so many in our Five of the Best series so far. But there are always more.

Five of the Best works like this. Various Eurogamer writers will share their memories in the article and then you – probably outraged we didn’t include the thing you’re thinking of – can share the thing you’re thinking of in the comments below. Your collective memory has never failed to amaze us – don’t let that stop now!

Today’s Five of the Best is…

Villains, or baddies as I like to call them. For me, everything revolves around the baddie. They’re the threat, the goal, the quest, and they have to be convincing. If they’re a bit flimsy, the whole thing goes wibbly-wobbly and I’m left thinking what’s the point? But if they’re on point and menacing and, let’s be real, probably quite alluring too, then I’m all in. Take Palpatine in Star Wars: I can’t get enough of him. He’s irresistibly evil and lights up every scene he’s in, sometimes quite literally. His pantomime menace sells (maybe one too many of) the films.

It’s the same for games. If the villain is limp we won’t feel spurred on to defeat them. So let’s celebrate the baddies for a change. Here are five of the best. Happy long weekend!

M. Bison in Street Fighter 2

I broke my fancy see-through SNES pad because of M. bloody Bison. It was in the Street Fighter 2 days and he was the end boss, and whatever I did, I couldn’t beat him. It was that jump he did on top of my head and then the backflip back around. And his spinny forward jump, and the frontflip leg kick – I’m pretty sure I’m nailing the technical terms here. I just couldn’t get a handle on him.

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Actual, tangible proof Bison is evil!

Again and again he beat me, and you know what he did every time he won? He smiled about it. The arrogant bastard. And one day I just couldn’t take it any more. Like a toddler I let loose, jumping up and down on my controller before bending and snapping it my hands like a strongman (or petulant child) bending a metal bar. What a wally. I tried taping it back together but it never worked in the same way again. And it was all M. Bison’s fault. I think.

-Bertie

Darth Traya in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 – The Sith Lords

I almost wrote the Nameless One here, the protagonist from Planescape: Torment, but the more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure if he actually was a baddie. He definitely did bad things but he wasn’t really the baddie.

My gut wants to go with someone else, one of the most memorable characters I’ve ever come across in a game: Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2. Perhaps it’s no surprise KOTOR 2 and Planescape: Torment come up in the same breath, given so many of the same people were involved in both games, Chris Avellone in particular.

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This a nice, detailed explainer.

Kreia begins KOTOR 2 as your friend. In fact she’s more than that, she’s your mentor. She’s the person you look up to and who teaches you in the ways of the Force. But what makes her so unusual in regards to other Star Wars mentors is she’s neither good nor evil, not for the longest time. She’s the one who chastises you for your charity to a homeless person because they’ll get robbed by other homeless people who saw what you did. She makes you think. She is Obsidian making you question how you approach a game like this, and a licence like this.

It’s not until you deal with the game’s two other, equally memorable villains – Darth Sion, a person whose body is crumbling apart and is in constant pain and rage holding it together; and Darth Nihilus, who’s not a person at all but a wound in the force, sucking everything into itself like a black hole – that the real villain, their former ally, is revealed. And of course it’s she who has been beside you the whole game, steering you. It is Kreia, or to use her Sith name, Darth Traya.

-Bertie

Below is a Making Of KOTOR 2 podcast I recorded several years ago now with members of the Obsidian team and the Restored Content Mod team. There’s an adjoining article too.

Kefka in Final Fantasy 6

I mean, of course Kefka’s on this list. How could he not be? Final Fantasy 6’s villain has every right to call himself video game’s ultimate baddie, a cackling clown who is a thing of pure evil. Psychotic foes are ten-a-penny in games, of course, but Final Fantasy 6’s masterstroke is – spoiler alert – showing you what happens when evil wins out. And boy is it not pretty.

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This is a good explainer too.

Even before that point, Kefka’s wrongdoing takes Final Fantasy 6’s adventure to some surprisingly dark places, killing off an entire kingdom by poisoning the water supply – and that’s him just getting started. It’s like pre-Hays Code cinema, before video game’s burgeoning popularity meant a new kind of morality swept across the medium. Even then, there’d never been anyone quite as evil as Kefka in games – and I doubt there ever will.

-Martin Robinson

Mahatma Ghandi in the Civilization series

Nuke-mad Gandhi endures as the ultimate not-a-bug-but-a-feature of video games. But it was a bug once. In the first Civilization game, the story goes, Gandhi’s hidden aggression value was set to the lowest possible value on the scale, which was 1. But if he adopted the doctrine of democracy, which lowered his hidden aggression statistic by two points, he accidentally became the antithesis of himself. It’s because instead of going falling to -1, his aggression counter would loop back around to the maximum value of 255. (An interesting aside here for the real nerds: 255 is a significant number in a lot of games, like Pokémon’s EVs for instance, if you’re into competitive training. In my admittedly limited understanding, this is apparently down to storage. A single byte stores 256 different values, but because it begins from zero, 255 regularly occurs as the maximum value, as in our good old friend Gandhi’s aggression.)

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Anyway! Gandhi, as a result of this little quirk, became the most aggressive Civilization leader ever when adopting democracy. Ever since, he’s been intentionally programmed to be nuke-heavy as a nod to the bugs of the past, though Firaxis has made him a bit nicer for the rest of the game, which is probably fair enough.

-Chris Tapsell

Loot boxes in everything

Surprise! Or should I say… surprise mechanics?

I bet you weren’t expecting to see loot boxes in the mix here, but can you think of a more hated villain in games history? The backlash to EA’s implementation of loot boxes in Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was so severe that multiple countries eventually banned them. Players have spent thousands of dollars on them without even realising, and even the NHS has weighed in to say they’re “setting kids up for addiction” to gambling. That’s quite the portfolio.

For me, and many other players, loot boxes are so hated because they prey on basic human weaknesses rather than just giving the consumer value for money – if you’re chasing a particular skin, you’ll often end up with duplicates and other guff rather than what you want. Then there’s the fact they often exploit those most prone to gambling addiction, relying on big spenders (whales) to sink hundreds into their favourite games. And if you add gameplay-affecting elements into loot boxes, that pressure to spend becomes even more problematic.

An artist’s impression of an evil loot box.

You might think we’ve started to move on from loot boxes towards other forms of monetisation such as battle passes, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Loot boxes are still prevalent in our games, with a recent study finding 71.28 per cent of their sample were playing Steam games containing loot boxes as of April 2019. The European games regulator PEGI recently introduced a “paid random items” descriptor for game boxes – a good start – but while the UK Gambling Commission recognises a potential risk to children, it argues loot boxes cannot be classified as gambling as no money can be withdrawn. Will loot boxes ever get their full comeuppance? I guess we’re still waiting for that chapter.

-Emma Kent

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/five-of-the-best-villains-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=five-of-the-best-villains-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[zekessanctuary]

Yan Jie movie recap: 神算子蔣敬 / Inn on Fire (Divine Mathematician Jiang Jing)

Today, I’ll be recapping 神算子蔣敬, aka Inn on Fire (aka Divine Mathematician Jiang Jing). And by recapping, I mean more like fangirling and squealing aimlessly. SO! Onto the squeeing recap. Oh and I must mention that I watched this movie without any English subtitles which means I actually don’t know what is entirely going on in the story (LOL). 

Other recaps:  杀出太平镇 / Killing Taiping Town

In this movie, Yan Jie plays a character named Jiang Jing. The story takes place in 12th century Song Dynasty China and starts off with a stormy night. Although it’s hard to see his entire face, I can instantly recognise it’s him. Probably due to having spent far too long studying his face. 

Since I don’t understand what he’s saying to himself in this scene, I’m going to guess from what he’s doing that he’s either an exiled General or he’s escaped from his duty due to some terrible incident just before this. I think he’s on the run because later, we find out that he’s a wanted man with a bounty on his head. 

Gotta mention this scene though when he’s pouring wine: he’s lifted the wine bottle SO FAR UP ABOVE those wine bowls that the liquid is barely going in!! LOOK AT THEM SPLASH RIGHT OUT LMFAO and yet he just continues pouring the wine from one bowl to another. LOL what is there left to drink now?! Just sad, sad rain. 

Moving on, he’s removed his armor (omg why did he have to just stop there) and now dresses like a commoner. Enters an inn and asks for more wine. I really wasn’t so sure about this haircut at first - I mean, those... bangs... do they really go with that ancient Chinese style hair? But throughout the movie I got more and more used to it, and it doesn’t take away his cuteness so in the end I liked it. 

Turns out a couple of the other inn guests are there for the bounty on his head, a fight ensues and whoa THOSE SPINNY SPIKE THINGS flying out of Jiang Jing’s abacus! Dat 3D. 

Look at my Handsome Assassin (yes I still sometimes call him Handsome Assassin because of his role in Nirvana in Fire) pose as he holds his... abacus weapon. I mean, I did think it was a strange choice to choose an abacus as your primary weapon, but after googling it turns out this was based on some historical character who really did fight with an abacus. So. Yeah. Besides, he IS the Divine Mathematician after all, and the ancient calculator is therefore mightier than the sword. 

Back to the story. It turns out the enemies got to him anyway with their hidden blades so Jiang Jing drops his precious abacus and spews blood. Honestly he gets injured SO MANY TIMES in this film, I think I’m just going to gif every scene of him getting hurt now because apparently I enjoy watching my Handsome Assassin suffer: 

While he’s being tied up by the innkeeper lady after re-entering consciousness, I’m busy checking out his magnificent manly jaw and chin:

I’m guessing at this point that innkeeper lady wants the hefty bounty reward too, hence her capturing him. But! Due to Jiang Jing’s quick wits and dexterity, he blows out the single source of light in the room, i. e. the candle she holds close to him, and turns the table around by literally swapping his position with the innkeeper lady during those moments of darkness. He relights the candle and now she’s sitting all tied up where he was mere seconds before!

And he cockily throws a nut into his mouth. Everything in the previous sentence was intentional. 

Tons of other story stuff happen but I’m skipping details now as I’m mostly just focusing on his prettiness. Because honestly I’m struggling with following it due to lack of subtitles lmao.  AWWWW LOOK AT HIM HERE HE’S SO CUTE AAHHSADKJFLSKADJF;K

Innkeeper lady totally has the hots for Jiang Jing. She’s filling his wine bowl in this next scene, gets him super drunk and watches him with this hungry expression lmao:

Ooooo she makes a move while he’s barely holding it together. Nice juicy lips on Yan Jie, btw. 

Some bad guys charge in at this point, a fight breaks out and Jiang Jing appears to have some kind of ability to disable movements so all the enemies become frozen: 

However, boss of the bad guys is still conscious, he says something that angers Jiang Jing, probably that his motor disabling skills do not work cos the rest of the bad guys ended up moving anyway, so Jiang Jing’s face goes from:

to: 

Innkeeper lady gets captured and taken hostage by this point, so for a brief moment Jiang Jing lets his guard down and is beaten down a second time:

Unfortunately, the bad guys kill the innkeeper lady, much to Jiang Jing’s grief. But! TURNS OUT THIS WAS ALL A DREAM ANYWAY. Jiang Jing wakes up from his drunken slumber and leaves innkeeper lady, probably realizes that if he hangs around her his enemies would kill her too if he gets caught. 

Timeskip, he’s now doing some stuff with some officials to catch the bad guys. There’s a scene where he’s looking back with the weirdest expression on his face. LMFAO YAN JIE WHAT IS UP WITH THIS FACE?!

Oh my god my retelling of this story is all over the place. Jiang Jing returns back to innkeeper lady, they have some kind of disagreement then the bad guys enter AGAIN and Jiang Jing has to fight them again. This time he incorporates some waterbending shiz though, look at those super smooth fluid movements: 

And as always, the boss of the bad guys is the last one to deal with. Go on Jiang Jing, show him who’s really boss by beating him with your ancient calculator!! 

Unsurprisingly, Boss Bad Guy throws out a dirty trick and poisons our hero. Jiang Jing attempts to dodge it but to no avail, he then tries to steady his hand for one final blow... 

... before he passes out deliciously: 

dear god why HAVE I MADE THREE GIFS OF JUST HIM COLLAPSING wtf is wrong with me

Moving on swiftly, there is a whole crazy scene later at a campfire where Jiang Jing wakes up to find his innkeeper lady friend is also captured by the bad guys and the Boss Bad Guy wants to bang her, but in the previous fight, right before Jiang Jing faints from the poison, his last second move gave the Boss Bad Guy erectile dysfunction so Boss Bad Guy gets all mad and starts strangling Jiang Jing who laughs his ass off at him *breathes*

YEP THAT ALL HAPPENED. We can safely know that Jiang Jing didn’t actually get strangled to death here because the reward to bring him back alive is much higher. 

Anyhow, Boss Bad Guy also has a boss, we’ll call him Boss Boss Bad Guy. He shows up (well he’s been showing up throughout the entire movie, I just haven’t bothered to even mention him until just now), kills Boss Bad Guy (probably for being useless) and has a final fight with Jiang Jing in the inn (hey that rhymes). At this point, innkeeper lady has escaped to find help. 

So Jiang Jing vs Boss Boss Bad Guy/Ancient Calculator vs actual weapon:

Oh I somehow managed to capture this face of Boss Boss Bad Guy in the middle of the fight: 

Terrifying.

At some point in the fight, our hero finally realizes his abacus isn’t really that great for beating up corrupt officials so he bends and breaks it, causing its little spinny spike things (remember those?) to shoot out and severely injure Boss Boss Bad Guy. However this isn’t enough to take down the resilient villain, plus at the same time the spikes have smashed open most of the wine bottles around the inn. The entire room is now flooded with alcohol and the two resume their fight: 

Jiang Jing eventually gets overpowered as Boss Boss Bad Guy who ties him up with a chain, it feels like all hope is lost here: 

But then! In the nick of time, innkeeper lady brings back help from another group of people - I really didn’t understand who they were, perhaps more officials? Possibly. Anyway, so Boss Boss Bad Guy goes out to greet them and is met with a rainfall of arrows. The new arrivals shoot more fire arrows at the inn and, well, upon touching the alcohol-filled inn, the whole building gets set on fire. 

WAIT WHAT

BUT

Jiang Jing is still in there! All tied up!!  But nope, he somehow crawls his way out and hides safely inside a well just outside the inn, because later we see him climb out next morning. Let’s just forget about the fact that he was all tied up in chains eh:

Yaaaay he lives!! He finds a horse and manages to locate innkeeper lady in the middle of the desert. She pretends to be annoyed with him but he playfully grabs her and lifts her onto his horse, much to her excitement (look how happy she is!) and the two ride off romantically into the sunset. 

THE

END. 

My god, this is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever written (so far). There are 2 more to go, might as well rename this to Yan Jie’s movie butchering rather than recaps. Up next, 杀出太平镇 / Killing Taiping Town!

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Somebody I Used To Know -- Corpse Bride: Madness Returns?

Hey all! A while back, I talked about an AU I called Somebody I Used To Know. The gist of said AU was that Victor and Alice were childhood friends, only to be separated when the fire happened and Alice was committed. Around the time of American McGee’s Alice, Victor finally found out she’d been committed instead of being in hospital (as his parents had claimed) and started visiting her in bedlam. He proves to be one of the few people she’ll actually respond to -- and, in a bit of accidental magic, ends up being pulled into the AMA Wonderland and goes through it with her.

Now, that’s all well and good, but what happens after AMA is over and done with and Alice is released? The game does have a sequel, after all -- we can’t let Dr. Bumby escape justice! Nor can we pass up another opportunity for Alice and Victor to activate two-player mode in Wonderland. The obvious solution would be to have Victor visiting his friend around the time period of the second game and being pulled back in with her thanks to shenanigans -- but my chosen timeline complicates things by putting Corpse Bride between AMA and A:MR. Which also adds the thing with Victoria and Emily to deal with. What’s a girl to do?

Well, if you’re me, think about it a lot last Friday and come up with this solution:

FOUR-PLAYER WONDERLAND.

Basically, my idea is that Alice and Victor remain in touch after she’s released into Bumby’s care, and when he tells her about the surprise wedding, she naturally insists on coming over to provide emotional support (after a bit of an argument with Bumby, who caves on the condition he come too). She and Victor have actually developed some feelings for one another by this point, but Victor’s unsure if Alice feels the same way, and Alice isn’t sure when she’ll be ready for a real relationship and doesn’t want to hold him back if he likes this Victoria in the end. The rehearsal goes poorly, Victor flees and accidentally marries Emily, Alice gets to know Victoria a little better while telling her about her new fiance -- and is present when Victor shows up on the balcony, followed by Emily. And the realization that there is an afterlife and that her parents and sister are probably down there, coupled with her nagging suspicion the fire WASN’T an accident, triggers her reentry into A:MR Wonderland early. And, of course, she drags Victor along.

However, thanks to Travel Into Fantasy being a natural talent of hers in this verse and other arcane reasons I haven’t fully sussed out yet, Victoria and Emily get pulled in too thanks to touching Alice and Victor when THEY’RE pulled in. Everyone is -- surprised.

After that, I haven’t gotten the full picture yet, but here’s what I do know:

-->All the A:MR domains show up, though triggered for different reasons (the Van Dorts being fish merchants is probably enough for the Deluded Depths, and it’s possible Nell reminds Alice of Radcliffe for the Mysterious East); there also may not be any “real-world breaks” between domains (perhaps I’ll bring back the spinny portals from AMA!)

-->Victoria and Emily get their own weapons -- I haven’t decided on a full set yet, but I know Victoria will have a sewing-needle rapier, and Emily will probably have something based on her wedding bouquet.

-->Emily’s “murdered bride” backstory will probably get wrapped up into Wonderland (maybe spawning a few unique enemies), allowing them to figure out Barkis is the one who killed her at the same time as figuring out Bumby murdered Alice’s family.

-->Final confrontation may have Bumby and Barkis working together -- not that this will save them from their canon fates (or, well, from death anyway).

-->Emily will be able to look like her living self in Wonderland, and even feel things again (something that thrills her to no end when she first lands).

-->. . .Yup, it’s another poly AU -- Victor and Alice admit their feelings for each other during the game, and fall in love with Victoria and Emily over the course of their adventure. Of course, sadly, Emily knows she can’t stay with the others, being a walking corpse in reality. But the knowledge that she is loved, and having her murder finally avenged, helps her to move on. . .

-->Except “moving on” in this case means “becoming a permanent resident of Wonderland.” Which all of the other three can still enter. Nobody’s quite sure how it all happened, but they’re happy they can all be together in their dreams, at least. (And of course the living three are together while awake -- Victor marries Victoria, who takes Alice on as her “lady’s maid” to disguise the threesome.) (I’m sure the inspiration for this bit comes from a favorite fic of mine, A Cordial Victorian Haunting, where Emily ends up as Victor and Victoria’s house ghost and they all meet again properly in a dream.)

-->And post-death everyone’s Heaven is a happy Wonderland where they can be together forever yay~

Starting to think I need to rename this blog, considering how much I’m getting into the poly thing. . .eh, I still have plenty of just Valice AUs, I suppose. But I like the plot twist I came up with for this one. Now to design some new Wonderland weapons. . .

[pinkysfaultorbrainsfault]

pinky and the brain - s1e5a: where no mouse has gone before

the blood test went okay! i’m still fucking exhausted but i’m pulling through. hopefully when the results come through it’ll be something tame yet treatable.

episode summary: upon learning of a human plot to communicate with aliens from a nearby planet, brain attempts to convince them that he is earth’s leader.

the rundown:

the mice are floating around.

did i need to cap all of those images? no. i probably only needed the last one, honestly. was it funnier? absolutely. so that’s what y’all get.

brain is upside down now.

“look, brain!” cries pinky. “i’m experiencing total weightlessness!”

bonk.

they’re in an anti gravity chamber, for reasons that have not been elaborated upon. they just sort of merrily bump into each other in there until someone lets them out.

bonk.

bonk.

ow. if pinky could die, that would probably be it for his spine. brain looks more like his alarm has just gone off and he really doesn’t want to get up, but god damn it, he has a 9am on tuesdays.

gromp.

“these experiments are degrading.”

“narf! i think they’re fun, brain! i can’t wait for the next ride!”

“that is because you have no dignity.”

but it’s okay. this man in terrifying sunglasses has come to rescue the boys. air mice nyoom is over.

as he takes them back to wherever, brain spots something of interest.

IT’S A DVD. HOW ANTIQUATED. but no, he’s more concerned about whatever it is this dude is polishing.

“did you see that plaque, pinky?” brain asks, and then does... this. for some reason. i don’t know. maybe i paused at a weird time. this is, uh, not a good moment, brain. there are people here.

“poit. he really ought to floss more often.”

this, at the very least, is enough to get brain to stick his ass out slightly less, and as they get lowered into fun little chairs,

he explains to pinky that the plaque "displays representations of man, woman, and the rudiments of earth’s most sophisticated science.”

see! there are the sciences right there. all sciences can be narrowed down to a bunch of dots and pi.

so then they get put in the promare spinny machine for their crimes.

sunglasses man leaves. he has done his duty for bill and country.

completely unbothered by the prospect of fueling the promepolis warp drive, brain explains to pinky that said plaque is being “sent on a probe to the outermost extremities of the galaxy, along with a disk showing earth’s arts and music.” unfortunately, this show is set in the 90s, so it’s a miracle this episode actually happened and the aliens didn’t just listen to a couple seconds of bjork and then decide to call the whole thing off.

meanwhile, the scientist turns the spinny mode up a bit.

“if the aliens look upon it, they will learn everything they need to know about the dominant species on earth!”

“naaarf. too bad there isn’t a picture of you on there, brain!”

“exactly,” says brain, who can somehow still manage a coherent sentence. “are you pondering what i’m pondering?”

“i think so, brain! but pants with horizontal stripes make me look chubby!”

awful. brain somehow manages to convey that if he puts a picture of himself on the plaque, then the aliens will recognise him as earth’s leader.

unfortunately, most of his lower half appears to be significantly broken, so he may need some assistance.

the episode cuts straight from spinny machine to the next scene, so i’m not entirely sure how long afterwards it takes place. i assume at the very least they both had a nap first, but anyway, now the mice are here and significantly less broken, and brain is standing in front of an engraving of himself and saying voila.

“voila.”

not only has he carved himself into the plaque, he’s also carved the human figures out entirely. impressive stuff, considering that tool is bigger than him.

pinky thinks it’s marvellous!

“but who is it?”

bonk.

it gets worse. brain explains that he has “slightly altered the great art masterpieces” to enhance his own importance as earth’s leader.

slightly.

“oh, this is my favourite one, brain!”

“......how did that get in there.”

undeterred, brain switches over to some samples of The World’s Great Works Of Classical Music.

BRAIN’S THE LEADEEEEEEEEEEER BRAIN’S THE LEAAAADEEEEER

he’s even included some examples of america’s contribution to the fine arts!

ROCK. AND ROLL.

A WOP BOP A LOO BOP A LOP BAM BRAIN. let it be known that little richard was actually white and dubiously canadian.

/s

anyway brain wants them to swap his disk and plaque with the real disk and plaque, so they set off to do that.

“but brain, what about ballet? aren’t you going to give them a sample of the ballet?”

“the aliens aren’t going to care about ballet, pinky.”

or perhaps he was just too embarrassed to edit his face onto the ballets russe. it’s okay brain. we love you even if your short legs make your sissones lackluster.

time for Big Rocket.

they’re stopped at the gates, of course.

fear not! it’s only famous jet propulsion scientist wernher von brain from the braun institute in baun.

and wernher von pinky!!! from the mink institute in pink!!!

brain looks at pinky like he’s just said something stupid, and chooses to ignore the fact that wernher van braun had been dead twenty years before this cartoon takes place. very smart, brain. much genius.

still, it works on this guy.

“from now on, pinky, whatever anyone asks you, just say ‘ja’ or ‘nein’.”

BUT NEVER MIND THAT.

IT’S TIME FOR BIG ROCKET.

brain screws his custom Mouse Plaque onto the base of the rocket. he also sticks his ass out again as he does it, because he is clearly having one of those days.

pinky watches as the countdown progresses slowly, from ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-stand by for emission.

“did you hear the countdown, pinky?”

“ja!”

“what number are they down to?”

“nien!”

“nine???”

“ja!”

“excellent, plenty of time.”

<does a gay little run into the distance>

(he did not, in fact, have plenty of time.)

“didn’t you tell me they were down to nine, pinky?”

“ja! nien! poit!”

there’s your answer, i guess.

but it’s fine! brain’s picture is on the rocket, as well as his cultural erasure of little richard, so surely nothing can go wrong now!

look at it nyooming around in space. how cute.

conclusion:

ALIENS LAND ON EARTH.

news man witters on about this being the GREATEST MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD as various politicians and news organisations congregate to say hi to the aliens. they are from firnobulax, and they want to meet earth’s leader!

here they come now!

squelch.

the aliens politely request to be taken to earth’s leader.

“he means me,” says bill, wriggling himself to the front of the line. “i can feel his pain.”

):

the other world leaders don’t seem too sure about this.

including... this guy. who is definitely supposed to be british (”oh, really, old chap, i think he means me��) but i. definitely do not recognise him. who are you??? what did you do to the queen??????? give liz back right now you bureaucrat, or the entirety of england will throw hands.

the aliens care not for this.

so they kind of explode everyone in the venue, as you do.

the politicians watch in horror as the aliens fly right past them, to this innocent looking soap box right at the back.

the inhabitants of which came prepared. very cute.

“you are the earth creature known as. brain?”

“yes!”

“i am the leader of this planet!! ruler of all i survey!!!!!”

good for you! (:

“narf. and he really isn’t just a laboratory mouse trying to take over the world.”

brain will handle this from here, thank you.

the aliens are satisfied, at least. they give pinky a little pat on the head for all his narfs (he speaks excellent firnobulax, don’t you know, narf poit egad) and take the mice away to CELEBRATE THEIR GLORY.

it doesn’t look very comfortable, but neither of them seem to mind.

“at last, pinky! we are finally appreciated!”

“what does it feel like..........”

anyway, the spaceship full of mice flies away. brain regails the firnobulaxians with tales of how he invented electricity.

“but brain. wasn’t that ben franklin?”

bonk.

brain realises mid bonk that this probably looks very suspicious, so he convinces the aliens that this is a gesture of respect on earth.

it goes about as well as one would think it would.

“you mean all those years, you were just showing me respect! i’m touched!”

“yes, you certainly are.”

luckily, they make it back to firnobulax without too much trouble.

there’s a parade and everything. the crowd cheers “narf! poit! brain!” as they’re carried through the street, which is probably a sequence of words that brain is very used to hearing.

i don’t know what these things are, but they’re scary.

they make it to brain’s “domicile” soon enough, which is a big fancy room with a chair in it.

there’s only one chair, which is sad, but hopefully that can be mitigated. brain settles himself down triumphantly.

“from now on, pinky,” he says, “everything will be different.”

which is a good time for bars to fall down over one of the windows.

donk.

the mice look on, horrified,

as it continues around the rest of the room.

and the door, too, for good measure.

“egad, brain!” cries pinky. “they’ve locked us in!”

“yes, pinky.”

“yes.”

awww. ):

as pinky attempts to break the bars, brain wanders off back to his little chair, incredibly despondantly.

he has to prepare for tomorrow night.

“why, brain? what are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“same thing we do every night, pinky. try to take over firnobulax.”

hmmmmm.

man. i just. the plan actually worked, is the thing. it did exactly what brain intended it to. and how could he have known that firnobulax wanted to kidnap the leader of earth for scientific purposes? maybe if they’d been upfront with their intent, we would have had an excuse to send some dictators into space. go figure.

but never mind.

brain: 6 pinky: 7 outside influence: 13

“ooooo, i don’t know, brain. i once saw a group of japanese tourists absolutely melt at the final scene of giselle.”