#Jade being utterly terrifying as always

[merakiui]

*eyes open* corruption kink with crime bosses octatrio

shy, soft, naive and innocent darling gets their attention so they kidnap her. over time, they break her in to be the perfect submissive and breedable pet wife. every day she's tied to the bed while they rail her, and put a pussy plug in her weeping hole, lick anything that drips out despite her whimpers and squirming.

darling is such a simple minded and submissive prize, it's hard not showing her off. after all, that's all she's good for, to be a pretty arm candy for the 3 of them. they don't give her any clothes, she's always naked, and they trained her well so she doesn't complain. they don't let her leave the house, and when she does go to business meetings with them, her pussy, ass and mouth are cockwarming them. or she's sitting on the floor next to them, naked with a collar around her neck. a pretty pet wife good for nothing else except for breeding and showing off. on those meetings, azul sometimes lets other crime bosses, leona, malleus, vil, riddle, idia and kamil, use his pet wife as a cumdump. and if it helps him make a contract, he's not complaining. even if she's sniffling and whimpering at being exposed to and passed around to so many hungry eyes and cocks, her pussy eventually utterly destroyed.

since octatrio have broken her in, and they fuck her boneless literally every day, darling, along with losing her mind, is unable to do anything for herself. it doesn't help that they talk down to her like she's incapable of doing anything for herself. but she comes to believe what they're saying over time. then jade is the one who bathes her, his hands focusing on certain areas more than they should so he ends up fucking her against the bathroom wall. if she's thirsty, she has to get down on her knees and suck floyd off while he's petting her hair and cooing at how cute she looks all naked kneeling on the floor, mouth stuffed with cock and pretty eyes full of tears. azul is the one who feeds her, she's on his lap, pussy cockwarming him, while he gently strokes her hair and coos about what a needy, wanton little thing she is.

when she's bad, they tie her up in the middle of their mansion, all naked with a vibrator in her pussy all day so that anyone can see her. she feels humiliated even if the staff doesn't bat an eye her way, already being used to seeing her naked.

it's worse for her when the trio have days off, she's guaranteed to be fucked silly on every single surface in the mansion. she could be walking in the house, and floyd suddenly pins her to the wall and fucks her against it.

but honestly, what was she expecting? walking around the house naked, perky tits bouncing with each step, pretty pink pussy on display to anyone even with the plug inside her.

there's just something about the 3 of them turning an innocent, pure, naive, soft and wide-eyed darling into someone forced to rely on them and quite literally fucking all disobedience out of her.

OTL anon, this is so good…… omg and you’ve been with them so long, enduring this sort of treatment, that you can’t even remember what your life was like before them or what sort of hobbies you enjoyed or what it’s like to interact normally with others or even what it felt like to be properly dressed. At most, they dress you in lingerie, but it’s always so skimpy and you never feel covered. And you’re so used to being bent over and fucked dumb that when one of the staff talk to you (if they’re daring enough) you expect them to use you as well. >_<

They’ve molded you into a submissive, sex-brained wife who never thinks of anything outside of that. Escape never even crosses your mind most days, and even if it did it’s quickly fucked out of you by one (or all three) of them. You used to fight with what little courage you had, but they’re terrifying crime bosses, smart and strong at levels you couldn’t even compare to. :( it’s only natural you’d eventually be worn down into a shell of yourself, hollowed of everything that made you you and in its place you’re filled to the brim with cum and cock. It also doesn’t help that you’ve developed such horrible separation anxiety, so when Azul tells you you’ll be spending an evening with another crime boss for the sake of a signature on his contract you panic and beg him not to send you away. Anything but that. Azul’s a comforting familiarity; this new man isn’t. You’re so scared and teary-eyed, pleading desperately at his feet. You’re really testing Azul’s restraint; you’re so pretty when you’re sniffling and crying. If not for his contracts, he’d take you right here and now just to see more of your cute face streaked with tears. :)

It’s scary to be in an unfamiliar room with an equally unfamiliar man. Depending on who you’re with, things can go either smoothly or roughly. Riddle’s the third sweetest of them. He’s stern and strict, but he hates to see you cry. He pats your back and shrugs off his jacket, draping it over your shoulders. He may be a crime boss himself, but he functions under lots of hyper-specific rules—rules the trio seem to forgo when dealing with you. Riddle asks if this is what you really want; you can speak for yourself in front of him. He won’t tell Azul. Though he seems sincere, you can’t bring yourself to trust him… it breaks Riddle’s heart when he’s fucking you and you ask him why he isn’t roughing you up. Oh, you poor thing. Sweetness isn’t the same as pain, yet you can’t seem to distinguish the two.

Leona is rough around the edges, but even he knows how to treat a lady. Crime boss or not, he knows very well that you ought to be respected. It’s a shame you’re stuck with that sleazy octo-punk who thinks it right to subject you to humiliation. Although Leona’s just as bad; he’s been given an opportunity here. Do you really think he’s going to sit around and talk cheesy with you? Absolutely not. >:( he’s here to get his dick wet. Why else would he ever willingly sign one of Azul’s contracts? You’re lucky you’re such a tempting herbivore. He’ll give you a fuck better than any of those slimy sea creatures ever could. :)

Kalim is the second sweetest of them. He cares immensely for you. You have to wonder how and why he’s even a crime boss. There doesn’t seem to be a bad bone in his body. Kalim comforts you so wonderfully. He won’t fuck you until you’ve stopped crying and pleading for Azul and you have to promise him to smile. You have nothing to fear here. He’ll take care of you in Azul’s place. Just think of him as a friend! He won’t hurt you. Kalim is so genuine about everything he says that it’s a stark, surprising contrast to the trio. Sex with him feels like a dream because he doesn’t degrade you or choke you near passing out. It’s not dangerous. It’s soft and passionate, yet somehow you feel unfulfilled afterwards. Maybe it’s because he’s not Azul…

Vil is strict like Riddle, but in completely different ways. He can’t believe Azul’s making you walk around naked. At the very least, you deserve equally pretty attire! If you were with him, you’d be given the finest of satins and silks. Vil’s almost offended Azul doesn’t take the opportunity to drape you in all manner of explicit finery. At the very least, he can appreciate the pretty pussy plug you wear. That has some semblance of beauty. But Vil can’t deny that Azul’s trained you well. Even though you’re scared and weeping, you spread your legs so obediently. It’s very cute. Vil supposes he can avoid scrutinizing you for now. It’s much better to shamelessly indulge than it is to be stuck criticizing.

You think Idia might be more scared of you than you are of him. He’s so jumpy and he can’t seem to look at you properly. Is this his first time in front of a naked woman? You wonder why he’s even here. But you recall he and Azul are business partners who often collaborate on certain endeavors. Somehow you don’t feel as nervous as you did before. Maybe it’s because Idia’s reflecting your anxiety and that manages to put you at ease. Though you’ve only ever known how to be submissive, it’s you who ends up taking the lead—at least until Idia familiarizes himself with your body. After that, you’re an incoherent mess. Idia doesn’t look like it, but he has stamina. Maybe it’s just the power of the horny. T-T

Malleus is by far the nicest of them all. He looks intimidating and scary, but he’s so gentle. He lies you down on the bed and spends more time kissing and reassuring you than actually fucking you. And he spends time preparing you! He’s much bigger than you’d imagined, so you’re grateful he’s going to these lengths. You were nervous before, but now you feel so calm and safe with him. <3 Malleus doesn’t intend to scare you, and he greatly dislikes seeing you cry and mourn. You seem to forget all about Azul and the twins when you’re with Malleus, and it’s a night that feels like such a comforting dream—a reprieve from all that usually happens with Azul.

But despite that, no matter which crime boss you’re handed off to, you’re still relieved to be returned to Azul. No matter how sweet they were to you, they still aren’t Azul and your separation anxiety makes you cling to him and the twins. Azul doesn’t like to bully you; he should know what separation anxiety feels like because he can’t stand to be away from you for more than a day. The twins, on the other hand, love to push you to breaking, disappearing for extended periods of time just so you’ll drive yourself mad with worry and anxiety. And when they do return to you you’re desperate to have them in bed. It’s cute how dependent and needy you’ve become. You really can’t exist without any of them, can you?

[lemonadecandy]

Meeting Zhongli [Part 12]

Game: Genshin Impact

About: Zhongli x fem!reader

Note : The premise is that 'you' get transported into the game and journey through Teyvat along with the traveler. This is a reinterpretation of the Liyue Archon Quests. Hope you enjoy~

Warning: Mentions of violence, slight profanity.

The sky had begun to darken as the waves crashing against the harbor slowly increased in intensity. Most of the area around me had already been evacuated due to the quick reflexes of the Qixing. While the stage was being prepared for the main act of the play, Osial, the overlord of the Vortex was rising from the tumultuous sea. And then, right on cue, the Jade Chamber flew over the dock and approached the ancient god. This was the final test. This was what everything had been leading up to. In the countless millenniums of my existence, I had faced and fought through countless dire events, but none had me as anxious as I was now. Perhaps because this time, it isn’t me who faces the calamity.  Will Liyue be able to pull through…?

But strangely, I also felt composed as  her  words once more appeared in my mind.  ‘Liyue will be able to handle it, maybe even prosper from it.’  I hadn’t entirely bought her excuses about otherworldly powers of foresight, but I couldn’t deny her credence when she spoke. It felt as if she believed in this city more than even I did. And there had been something strangely enchanting yet comforting about her words. I wanted to trust her, as though her words were the absolute truth. Perhaps it was precisely for this reason that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t view her with cynicism, I was ready to forgive her for the first plausible excuse she presented. 

That said, the facts she yielded, had all been completely accurate. I need to understand her more before I can truly put my mind to ease. But that is going to be near impossible to achieve. By her outburst outside Third-round Knockout, I doubt she ever wants to see my face again. For the little while we did spend together after that incident, she has built a stone wall between us that even I am not confident I can break. I have already terrified her enough, with our contract in place, the only right thing to do was to respect her wishes.

Heavy doubt had been gnawing at my mind for these past few days. Another  new  experience… I have been decisive all my life, so why was it that whenever the thought of Y/n came up, did I feel utterly lost and hesitant? What I did, was how I  always  dealt with my enemies.  Maybe that was it… deep down I didn’t even acknowledge her as my enemy.  I sighed in frustration at my thoughts.  What’s even the point of thinking about this… 

That said, Y/n is a clever one. Would another approach have even worked on her? It clearly seemed like she had been faced with a similar situation a few times prior. Is that why she was able to maintain her cool so well while I was confronting her? If so, I wonder how those other encounters had gone.

As a measure to not stand out to the Millelith I stepped back under some shelter. Osial had now started his onslaught of attacks, but the Qixing along with the Adepti had already posed their counters. By what I could manage to make out from the hazy sky, it seemed like they had decided to use a copy of the Guizhong Ballista. A clever strategy, but not one that can guarantee their victory. I started becoming increasingly anxious as the battle continued, it was a feeling that I hadn’t been well acquainted with. Every part of me wished that I could somehow contribute, but I tried to maintain my calm.

After having defeated the Harbinger, the traveler must have already hurried to the Jade Chamber.  I wonder if Y/n went along as well? 

And as if to answer my query, the woman I had been thinking about made her appearance. She seemed to be coming from the direction of the Golden House. On closer observation, it seemed like her right leg had been injured causing her to limp as she walked. There were a few other cuts and bruises on her body, but none as severe as the one on her leg. I looked around but her companions were nowhere to be found.  Did they insist she stay back because of her wounds?  It was plausible, the trio seemed to dote on each other a lot. I considered offering my assistance but quickly decided against it. She seemed to possess healing capabilities and I was probably the last person she wanted to see. 

Y/n’s attention had been captivated by the skirmish in the skies but soon noticed my presence. She instantly looked away and proceeded to walk past me, acknowledging her ignorance I looked away as well. But strangely, before she completely overtook me, she had paused. Fazed by her actions, I glanced at her with caution. Y/n was staring at my hands as she sighed with what seemed like pity, “It will be fine.” 

Following her line of sight, I looked down at my hands as well, they were shaking. Not just my hand, my entire body was trembling. I also came to the realization that I had been holding my breath, causing me to lightly pant. I raised my right hand to pop a few buttons on my collar and slightly undo my tie to help calm myself with a deep breath.  I hadn’t even noticed the state of my body!

Despite my attempts, I was unable to entirely regain my composure. I looked back at Y/n who was once again engrossed by the sky. Comfort identical to the one I felt when I’d had drinks with her reached out to me from her unmoving figure. Suddenly she looked back and tossed something toward me. I reflexively raised my hand and managed to catch the item.  

“It worked.”, she huffed with annoyance.  It's the feather…!  I had imbued it with some of my own power, providing protection to anyone who carried it on their person. Y/n had rather begrudgingly accepted it after some insistence. “Thanks”, she scoffed in an almost inaudible whisper. 

But I hardly felt pleasant about her gratitude.  And yet… her leg has been injured.

Contrary to my expectations, instead of swiftly making her exit after returning the artifact, Y/n opted to stay. We only stared at the sky with agitation. The Qixing’s plan had been interrupted by the appearance of the Fatui skirmishers. The traveler seemed to be running around, trying to fend them off. I nervously gasped for air as the ballista slowly started losing its form. Despite the realization, the Adepti pushed forward, trying to hold the line.

Suddenly, Y/n spoke up, “There are tall buildings… super tall ones. More than even 160 stories… but none that float in the sky. Though we do have vehicles that fly in the sky, pretty fast as well. Elemental powers and visions don’t exist there, nor do gods… But we can still be powerful…. Still, perhaps not as close to you archons… But we do have the internet!”, she rambled. I didn’t quite understand her statements, but it seemed like she was talking about  her  world…? She was even fondly chuckling at her own words. “You guys are still a long way from that…”

Tall buildings… and what is ‘the internet’?  I wondered as I remarked, “It sounds like a wonderful place.” Flying vehicles… wasn’t there some novel series that featured those?

“I don’t know… there are ugly parts… a lot of them. But still… it’s my  home …”, Y/n’s tone was solemn. I could make out great sorrow in her eyes as she uttered the last few words. The desolation on her face was similar to the one when she spoke about her family. I too know the loss of losing the ones beloved to you.  I wonder if there’s a way for her to go back home…? 

I was once more tempted to try and comfort the foreigner that stood beside me. It was only adequate for the amount she had unknowingly provided me. I raised my hand to pat her on her head but quickly pulled back as I recalled her words.  ‘We are not friends.’  At that moment I felt a strange surge of disappointment in myself.

Unfortunately, Y/n had caught my movements and glared at me through narrowed eyes, “Don’t be mistaken…. You’re the only one who knows…” She sighed in frustration. “…that’s why.”

I wasn’t sure, had she brought up the topic of her home to distract me or comfort herself…? Either way, it seemed like she really wanted to talk about it. And I felt the urgent need to let her know that her confidence in me wasn’t something unpleasant. “It isn’t pity, nor is it charity. You are one of the strongest mortals I have witnessed. If I were ever to entirely lose Liyue, ‘my’ home, I would lose my mind. Despite knowing the limits of your physical powers, you still persevere. Your desire to go home keeps you fighting, pushing forward. I can’t help but respect such show of fierce resolve.”, I recalled the foreigner’s bravery when I confronted her, it had been quite inspiring. “If you were from Teyvat, your ambition would have gained you a vision by now.”, I stated in hindsight.

“Is that why you  spared  me?”, I glanced at Y/n once more and she seemed a little shocked by my words, but it soon turned into skepticism. “I am flattered… but you overestimate me.”

“Oh? If you were that ‘weak-minded’, you wouldn’t be out here chatting with the one who tried to kill you.”, I remarked, a little taken aback by the lack of self-confidence in her own courage.

“Misery loves company, no?” I had not a clue of the troubles Y/n had faced before arriving in Liyue. But it seemed to have greatly broken spirit. Perhaps… even my  own  actions had played a great part in it. And this fact was truly disheartening to me.

“Y/n—“, I began, but was interrupted by her tapping my shoulder and directing me towards the battle ensuing in the skies. It seemed like Liyue was on the losing side. The Guizhong Ballista had been completely decimated and many of the soldiers had been gravely injured. Caught off guard by the outcome, I tried to take a step forward to perhaps take action before matters got much worse. But Y/n tugged at my elbow, signaling me to stay back.  That’s right, this is a ‘test’.  And all hope has not been lost yet. 

What followed thoroughly impressed me and put my mind at ease at the same time. Unexpectedly, Ningguang seemed to have taken the route of great sacrifice. The jade chamber crashed down onto the ancient god with a giant explosion, pinning him to the surface of the ocean’s floor forever. I felt myself smile with exasperation as the final realizations and implications dawned upon me.  Liyue… will be fine.  An overwhelming sense of melancholy rushed over me as I subsequently rejoiced in the success of my plans. 

“See? I told you, didn’t I?”, Y/n remarked from beside me.

I glanced at her and she too held an appreciative grin on her face. “Yes.”, I affirmed.

We observed the group as they safely descended back onto the ground with the help of the Adepti. “Off to La Signora, I suppose?”, Y/n asked taking a step back to probably go and check on her friends.

“Ah! You’re… right”, I was once more startled by the precision of the foreigner’s abilities. Maybe I should stop being so skeptical and just accept her explanations.  It’s almost frightening how accurate she is.

I sensed a strange heaviness in my heart as I watched Y/n turn around to take her leave. It felt as if a myriad of emotions were tugging at me. But the one which stood out the most right now… was  guilt . I felt a strange premonition, that I wasn’t going to get this chance again, a chance to apologize… a chance to meet  her  again. Right now, the only reason we were interacting was because of the traveler’s quest to meet the geo archon. But what after that? Judging by the state of things at present, she would instantly turn away even if we happen upon each other in a chance encounter. And I didn’t quite understand why, but immense despondency settled within me as I came to this revelation.

“I… I apologize… I sincerely apologize for what happened that day.”, I impulsively blurted out the words that had constantly been haunting my mind. “I could have taken a more peaceful approach.”

I knew that this was just the bare minimum, not even close enough to get back on good terms with her, but it was what I  needed  to do. It’s clear as day that she has had similar encounters before… I know it for a fact, and I also know that they didn’t go any better, it was so apparent from the way she behaved around me. 

Besides, everything was pointing to her innocence. The more I look into it, the clearer it is. I  owe  her an apology. She was just an unfortunate soul who had been given the burden of knowledge, a knowledge that was better not possessed. And I hadn’t even paused to understand her.  Even after all these years… I still can’t reach even a semblance of Guizhong’s gentleness.  She must be disappointed in me.  I  am disappointed in myself.

Y/n looked back, but the expression of solace from just a few moments ago had once again been replaced by cautious resentment. Unsurprisingly, I was only met with a scoff at my attempt at asking for forgiveness. “Well, in a sense you did do the right thing, if you hadn’t threatened me with death, I would never have come clean.”, she sighed as she replied. “Zhongli, you are a mortal now, try being a bit more  considerate  from now on. As for your apology… I will consider it.” 

That’s right… It’s the beginning of a new life, I must let go of my ways as an archon.  But at that moment, instead of her advice, what captivated my attention was the slight smile on her face as she said those words. It was a rather gloomy one. But even in the desolation of her expressions, I could make out an inkling of warmth, of kindliness… of  hope . Hope that it was not entirely over, that there was still some light at the end of this tunnel. And right then, I felt my heart skip a beat. A strange sensation built in my chest as a smile crept onto my face.  Wait, what—?!

“Alright, that’s it I suppose?”, Y/n cut in and interrupted my thoughts, she was once more readying to leave.

“Just one last thing!”, I hurriedly tried to hold her back. Opening the pocket dimension, I rummaged through to retrieve the feather Y/n had returned. Using the power of my gnosis for perhaps the final time, I successfully attempted to enhance the powers of the artifact before handing it back to her. “Keep it. Your journey will only get harder from here on out. I have imbued it with some more of my power, as long as you use it well, you shall be able to evade more injuries.”

This time Y/n accepted the item without any counter. She explained as she examined the feather, which now had a glowing sheen to it, “As much as I want to reject, adeptal magic is a little too good for me to consider passing on.” She smiled with what seemed like sincere gratitude, “Thank you.”

“I am only paying back what I owe.”, I smiled back.

[alexanderlightweight]

Hi! Your pinned post (... That's what it's called right?) says if you don't get a prompt on a Wednesday they still count (and I would have waited until next Wednesday to send mine but to be fully honest I have memory issues and will have forgotten I even wanted to send a prompt in two days).

I read your stuff about Ragnor meeting Alec in the sentient shadows verse (which is excellent, by the way) and I loved it so so so much it was incredible so basically my prompt is : bby Alec (in whatever verse you want!) meeting various downworlders and utterly charming them by just being himself (and being oblivious that he's making half the downworld platonically fall in love with him hahaha).

Have a good day ! Days. Week. A good month even!

He’s that’s what it called! I did end up changing that a bit ago because of how many prompts I’m getting but I still take the prompts especially when people don’t know! And tumblr edits are weird, they don’t always show up for people right away.

I hope you like where I went with this prompt! And enjoy!

—

Raphael freezes, because someone is watching him, or something is.

“You’re really pretty.” A soft, childish voice says and Raphael’s unbeating heart forcibly flutters, just so it can stop beating again.

Raphael looks down and to his left and there’s a small child watching him from the shadows.

“You should not be here, mijo.” Raphael murmurs and he doesn’t step closer, instead he inhales and he winces.

Angel blood.

“You need to leave.” Raphael hisses and he shows his fangs, for once hoping that this child will be just as indoctrinated against vampires. That he will be terrified and run.

Instead Raphael gets a genuine, half-startled smile.

“I want fangs.” The child mutters and he pouts, expression exaggerated as he tries to jut out just his canines. He tries to hiss and instead he just makes a sound like a raspberry and Raphael didn’t realize child soldiers could be cute.

It’s a sobering thought.

“Mijo.” Raphael tries, because being mean didn’t work. “It’s not safe here, okay? My leader hates nephilim and loves angel blood.

“Your leader?” The child asks, precocious and daring and not even a little afraid as he walks a little closer. He’s still mostly in the shadows and Raphael half hopes he’ll be a ghost or something and that Raphael’s hallucinating the scent of angel blood.

“Yes, my clan head. We all must listen to her, no one under her authority can protect you from her.” And Raphael has had very few decent experiences with nephilim interference, he'll trust himself far more.

“If she’s bad, why can’t you remove her from authority?”

“We need a reason and proof, little cherub.” Raphael admits, unsure why he’s being so talkative but he figures it’s the fact that the nephilim is a child. A curious, brave, foolish little boy. Perhaps similar to how Raphael himself once was… a very long time ago.

“Does she hurt you?” There’s a moment and a darkness to the soft voice of the child. “It’s not okay if she hurts you. Do you want me to hurt her back, I can make sure she doesn’t hurt you again?”

Raphael stares because when he first saw and smelled a nephilim child, this is not where he thought his day would go.

“Ay, Dios mio.” Raphael murmurs and then he winces when the child perks up and repeats his offer… in Spanish.

“No. No.” Raphael says in English and then Spanish and then in half a dozen different languages until his eye is twitching. Thankfully, it does work but then Raphael is being met with a protective little scowl, one that looks unimpressed.

“You cannot help me, or anyone in my clan.”

“But I’m a shadowhunter, it’s my job to help.” It would sound almost naive, if there weren’t already a small weapon strapped to his thigh. But Raphael knows better, that this small nephilim will not be able to help and he will grow up far more jaded.

“I’m a vampire. You have no reason to interfere in my clan’s dealings.” Raphael reminds him, because it’s important to make that clear. Even if the child is wanting to ignore the laws in order to help him from some strange misguided sense of protection.

“So I need a reason to help you?” The little, unsettling cherub frowns but it looks more like a pout. Raphael is reminded of the children he used to help watch over and he ignores the pain. There’s a glint of calculation and then a tiny, feral smirk. Far too jaded for such a young child and Raphae recognizes the marks of nephilim born better now.

For none of their babes are ever raised truly as children.

“If we get married I could help you.”

“Excuse me?” Raphael asks, wondering if the sun has suddenly comeup.

“You’re really, really pretty. And mother said I’ll need to get married someday anyways. You’re a vampire, you could wait for me since you’re immortal and then I can marry you and help you.”

A minute later Raphael is watching the child — who still hasn’t introduced himself beyond Raphael’s future husband apparently — sketch out what are basically strategy plans.

They’re crude but usable and coherent, all the parts except where a very small half-cherub is trying to marry Raphael.

“Mijo—“ Raphael sighs, “I’m not going to marry you.”

“My mother is really pretty.” The child says with a shrug, “and I’m going to be pretty deadly when I get older. I’ve heard that’s a good combination.”

Raphael curses as quietly as possible — is still overhead and understood — and then he looks down.

A hand is politely tugging on his jacket.

“Is that not enough?”

“Not for me.” Raphael says gently, “all hearts yearn for different things. Mine does not wish for a partner like that.”

“Oh.” There’s a wrinkle of a small nose and then a sigh, “that makes sense. I think you’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen but they reminded me that we haven’t seen many people.”

Raphael takes that as the platinum lining it is. He’s not sure who ‘they’ are, but for all he knows, invisible friends happen across races.

“So you’ll leave?”

“I’ll leave.” The kid smiles up at him and then his foot scuffs over the dirt in the pothole he was using to draw. “I still like you though. If you ever need help, you can ask for us. If the shadows ever hunt you, then ask for me. Alec Trueblood, Raphael Santiago.”

The kid steps back and smiles, a little hand wave even as Raphael startles.

While he finally has a name… Raphael never offered his own.

Raphael takes a step back, his instincts suddenly screaming and he realizes that he felt nothing around the child. They’re gone, as if they were never there in the first place and Raphael swallows venom as it floods his mouth.

It’s as if the child registered as neither predator nor prey.

Raphae swallows and slides into the shadows and mouths the name, ‘Alec Trueblood’. He doubts he’ll ever have a need, but the child did offer and Raphael will remember it.

Just to be safe.

—

Alec: wow, so pretty. Must marry so can protect

Shadows: there is a big ocean with a much prettier fish that is better for you

Raphael: im allergic to fish. Anything besides blood really but especially relationships

(Apparently in the books canon, baby Alec has a crush on Raphael)

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Yuu can do it!

Part 50

First - Previous - Masterlist - Next

Kuroki had thought, originally, the reason why he hadn’t been scheduled much since Savanaclaw’s whole… thing was because people weren’t visiting the Mostro Lounge as much, and therefore there wasn’t as much need for a second ‘nonthreatening’ server. Kuroki had covered all of Smee’s shifts while his coworker was injured, he thought it was only fair that Smee would get prioritized now that he was able to work again.

But then Smee had come over during their class on Yajugen. Kuroki had paused, his pencil half off the page. Because, yeah, Smee was a TA, but Kuroki didn’t really need help right now? Did he look stressed or something? Or… more stressed than usual? He thought he was doing fine. Relatively speaking, at least.

“Hey, man, you good? I haven’t seen you at work in a while…?”

Kuroki blinked at him.

A realization hit him over the head. He took a pencil to paper, making a note to check out a book from the library later.

He smiled at Smee. “I think you’ll see me around more, don’t worry. Can’t leave my favorite senpai hanging!”

Smee had to have known it was meaningless flattery, but he still smiled and blushed bright red.

Until Professor Hook called out to him and he had to go running back over. Ah, the inconveniences the working class has to put up with…

Kuroki looked down at the new note on his study guide, drumming his pencil on his desk.

(He skipped his next class. It wasn’t like he had ever really cared for choir, anyways, and his voice was always so quiet that he doubted Professor Kaa would even notice that he was gone.)

~

Kuroki stepped into the Mostro Lounge, the familiar sound of jazz washing over him. He hummed along, absently, making his way through the kitchen, mumbling “Behind” whenever he got too close to someone working, because he was not in the business of getting stabbed or doused in hot oil.

He was in the business of getting what he was fucking owed.

He saw the exact moment Jade caught sight of him, and sent his senior a slightly nervous smile. He had, somewhat, gotten used to the primal terror that loved to take him over whenever he got too close to the Leech twins.

Unfortunately for him, he just generally had anxiety about being around people who could and would beat him up, so he was still utterly terrified because of that.

“I didn’t know you were scheduled for today,” Jade said, more for the sake of being polite than anything else.

“I’m here to meet Ashengrotto-senpai, actually!” Kuroki said, bowing slightly, trying to resist the urge to cover the back of his neck with his hands.

Jade brought a hand to his mouth, chuckling. “I see. Then, I suppose I should tell you that customers need to buy something while they wait to meet him. We do not appreciate loiterers.”

Kuroki nodded his understanding and took a seat at the bar. He was half tempted to ask for a shot of ‘liquid courage’, but alcohol tastes terrible, so he would pass on that. Instead, he got himself a plate of nachos that was way too expensive and picked at that while he waited.

He spun around in his bar stool, watching the patrons of the Lounge. Business was booming, if only because there were so many people waiting to see Azul. No one was meeting each other's eyes.

Kuroki thought back to the contract Floyd had once tried to rope him into. Something about how If you’re from another world, Koebi-chan, you’re toooootally gonna fail your tests, right? Kuroki was a little insulted by their lack of faith in him, though he supposed it wasn’t personal — Floyd was trying to pick at a perceived insecurity, which was just part of being a salesman.

Kuroki had always known better than to trust a damn salesman, though.

He wondered, absently, what these people were getting themselves into. What the catch was.

The door at the back of the Lounge swung open. Azul was smiling widely as he led a Savanaclaw student out of his meeting room.

Kuroki sighed. It was one of the people on the Savanaclaw Magift team. Antlers Man. Whatever his name was. Kuroki didn’t particularly like the guy (literally didn’t even know his name), but he felt a little bad for him. The guy was clearly lacking brain cells, Azul was kind of messed up for taking advantage of him.

Azul’s eyes locked onto Kuroki, and for a second the boy’s expression dropped in horror.

0/10 performance, senpai, take notes from, like, any of us Ramshackle people, we could do better, Kuroki chided, mentally. Though he was smart enough not to let this thought show on his face, which only proves his expertise in this particular subject.

Azul hesitated, briefly, before striding over, his weird cane thing gesturing at Kuroki. “It is rude to show up uninvited, but in the spirit of benevolence, I will hear you out!”

Kuroki smiled, leaving his half-finished nachos on the counter, hopping off of the stool and lacing his hands behind his back. “How gracious of you, senpai. Did the Headmaster give you lessons?”

Azul’s eye ticked.

Jade looked like he was having the time of his life. He handed Azul something, and then continued on with his work, mumbling something about how it was a shame Floyd was skipping today…

Which, first of all, hell yeah! No Floyd!

Second of all, Azul was now eating a shrimp cocktail. Okay. This was fine, probably.

“Many people know I’m here,” Kuroki lied, just to ensure that Azul didn’t actually try to eat him. “Just… for the record.”

Azul gave a thin-lipped smile and continued to usher Kuroki into his meeting room.

Oh, they actually had a decent chair on both sides of the desk this time! Probably for the sake of lulling people into a false sense of security before they sold their — souls, or whatever. Still, Kuroki appreciated this much more than the plastic chair he’d been given the last time he was there.

Azul took a seat opposite him, folding his hands on his desk.

“What brings you here?” Azul asked. “Are you interested in one of the Lounge’s services?”

Kuroki gave a small hum. “Actually, I noticed a small discrepancy in my pay. You see, I got the bonus for all of the hours I did during the Magift game, but… funnily enough, I never got Worker’s Comp.”

Azul grimaced, caught.

If he had just scheduled Kuroki as normal, Kuroki wouldn’t have even thought about it. Why would he? He wouldn’t naturally assume Worker’s Compensation was a thing in this world — it just wasn’t something he thought about often.

“Yes… I was attempting to determine just how much the Lounge owed you. You were treated quickly, and there was little reason to assume you would get hit with a stray Magift Disk during the game… it made the situation a little gray.”

Kuroki nodded, slowly. “Well, luckily for you, I seek an alternative means of compensation.”

Azul’s eyes narrowed. “Such as?”

“I would like to cancel any deals my friends — Enma Yuuken, Ito, and Grim — have ever made with you, and ask you to never make a deal with them in the future.”

Azul blanched in surprise. “That’s… why aren’t you including yourself in that?”

He was pretty sure that Azul was just trying to buy himself time to think, but Kuroki didn’t mind answering regardless:

“Because I’m pretty sure you’d use it as an excuse to terminate my contract with you, and I really don’t want to have to find another job.”

“… I’m not sure this is an entirely equal arrangement.”

“I could always go to the Union and ask them why you took so long to even mention possible Worker’s Comp. to me,” Kuroki said, innocently. “And I’m sure the school would be interested to know why our schedules on the day of the Magift Tournament had a sudden alteration that prevented all of our workers from being in the way of that sudden stampede, almost as if you had known that it would happen ahead of time. Or, maybe, I should mention Leona-senpai’s use of a very difficult to obtain Mana Potion?”

The last one was a shot in the dark. Kuroki really didn’t know for sure whether Azul was involved with that, it was just something that he would do. But the way that Azul was getting progressively paler with every word was confirmation of a sort.

Hell yeah. Bluffing for the win!

And then, just to watch his senpai suffer a little, Kuroki added:

“How many other people here know about Worker’s Comp.? Are you giving the bare minimum benefits? Should the Union know about anything else?”

Golden light flickered in Azul’s hands, and before Kuroki knew it a contract was being shoved into his face.

He smiled as he looked it over. Everything was in order, even if the wording was vague in places (because Azul couldn’t admit on paper that he wasn’t complying with the Union’s demands).

He signed his name on the dotted line.

And then leaned back in the plush chair.

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

~

Not even three days later, Grim took a sudden interest in Kuroki’s work schedule. Asking him which days he would have off… and Kuroki would usually assume that the monster was just missing him now that Kuroki was going to work again…

However, the way Grim came home sulking the next day, mumbling about stupid fish, was a small hint towards the monster’s true intentions.

Kuroki breathed a sigh of relief. They were already poor, no need to get indebted to Azul somehow.

As for Ito and Enma… he hadn’t really expected them to go to Azul, the guy was visibly shady. Kuroki simply… hadn’t wanted to risk it. They had shown they were willing to cheat in dire circumstances, back during the Culinary Crucible, and Kuroki would have stressed about every little increase in their grades, natural or not, until exams were over.

In the end, Kuroki never noticed any strange behavior from either of them, so he thought it was safe to assume that they hadn’t gone to Azul.

(Not that they couldn’t fake that, of course, they were both decent actors when they wanted to be. But if Kuroki spent too long thinking about that, he could and would spiral over that thing he wasn’t thinking about right now, so he was ignoring the possibility.)

~

Ah, thought Kuroki. Consequences.

He had thought that Azul wouldn’t have any easy ways to get back at him. He needed Kuroki to be on the waitstaff, so he couldn’t really force Kuroki to get the short end of the stick shift-wise, not without hurting his bottom line. He couldn’t fire him without getting in trouble with the Union. He couldn’t even pull a classic Japanese Evil Boss move and exclude Kuroki to try and make him quit on his own, because Kuroki would love to have an excuse to not interact with others.

He had been invulnerable to anything and everything Azul could throw at him.

Now, his customer service smile was more of a grimace, because he had forgotten about the fucking Leeches.

“Koebi-chaaaaan,” Floyd sulked, practically laying across the bar. “Why don’t you ever go Pistol Shrimp on us?”

“Because my pistol got confiscated.”

Floyd blinked. “What.”

Kuroki blinked right back at him. “What were you saying?”

“I — you had a pistol?! And it got confiscated?!” Floyd said, suddenly perking up, as if he had never been upset at all. Kuroki… wasn’t sure this was a win.

Kuroki sighed. “Yes, I did, now can you please keep your voice down?” He set down the shot glass he had been polishing. It was, typically, best to go along with whatever Floyd wanted, lest you put him in a bad mood, so — after a quick glance around to make sure no one was paying attention to them — he, briefly, pulled a fake gun from his suit jacket. “I would prefer people don’t know that this one is…”

He trailed off, mostly because Floyd had jumped to his feet, smiling widely.

Ah, it seemed he was going to be having a bad time regardless of Floyd’s mood. Damn.

“Fight me!”

“U-uh?” Kuroki said. “No thanks? I’m trying not to die.”

Floyd was, apparently, not taking no for an answer, because he grabbed Kuroki by the arms and hauled him up, right off of the floor, dragging him bodily over the counter and starting to carry him away. If Kuroki wasn’t very invested in the whole ‘not getting his ass beat’ thing, he would have probably made a joke about it.

And then he realized that it wouldn’t help him either way, because Floyd was apparently very interested in fighting him.

“Don’t you know anything about consent, senpai? No means no.”

“Not funny, Yuuya-san. That is a very sensitive topic that you are joking about,” a new voice chimed in, and Kuroki was torn between screaming and crying. A strange, slightly garbled sound tore its way out of his throat in its stead. He wasn’t even all that embarrassed, because why did Jade have to be here, too?!

Kuroki just wanted to do his job!

“Should’ve fucking let Azul fire me during that deal. Could’ve played dumb ‘n everything. Would have been less of a hassle…”

(He could’ve been a really cute librarian, like Grim suggested way back at the beginning of the year! Or! He could work in the infirmary! Crowley hates work, Kuroki can take over for him! He would rock a stethoscope! Or whatever the magical equivalent of one was!)

He’d spoken in a mumble but, it turns out, the Leech twins’ hard of hearing-ness was only applicable when Kuroki wasn’t being actively carried by them.

Jade smiled. “Oh? And what, exactly, did your deal with Azul entail?”

He blinked, stunned into silence.

“Don’t worry, Jade. You’ve already used your UM, but I can get the information out of him the old fashioned way!”

Kuroki spluttered, and only half because Floyd had just tossed him to the ground and it did not feel good. “That’s what this is about?! You could have asked, you know!”

Floyd frowned. “But that’s no fun.”

“Hurting me isn’t ’fun’, either!” Kuroki snapped back.

“Wrong,” Floyd said.

How was he supposed to respond to that?!

“Now, now, Yuuya-san, you said you would give us answers, don’t attempt to change the subject,” Jade said, sharp teeth on display.

Kuroki held his hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t trying to distract you guys!” He would have been more subtle about it if he had been. “I just —…”

Wait.

Azul hadn’t told them what happened? Is that why they’d been paying more attention to Kuroki as of late? Why didn’t Azul say anything? Weren’t they all supposed to be pretty close?

Unless.

Ha.

Hahahahahaha.

No way! Was Azul actually embarrassed?

Kuroki snickered into his hand. “Oh, I’d be happy to tell you about it. Hell, I’d do it through song, if you want.”

“Oh, sweet! Do you need a beat?” Floyd asked.

Kuroki hesitated. “That… was a joke.”

Jade gave what must have been his best approximation of a pout. “Aren’t you in choir? I’m curious as to your singing prowess.”

“How do you know about —?” Kuroki remembered the background check they’d done on him at the beginning of the year. He sighed. “Nevermind. So, what happened was…”

So, he regaled the two Leech twins with a colorful account of his meeting with Azul. He hadn’t told Enma and Ito (he didn’t want them to know — he didn’t know how they’d react — and, if he was lucky, they would never find out), so he might have been a little… pent up? It was strange. He’d never been a particularly social person back in his own world. His throat had ached a little, towards the end of that first day, after he’d shouted at everyone to get them to stop arguing… if he hadn’t gotten that healing potion from Crowley, he might’ve actually lost his voice at some point. He had never had people to talk to like this, he hadn’t known he could be so… reliant on others. To the point where the words were spilling out of him so freely.

Or maybe it was because he was scared the Leech twins might kill him if he didn’t tell them everything.

Or, worse: they might keep bothering him.

At least they would leave him alone once they got their answers.

~

They did not, in fact, leave him alone after they got their answers. In fact, it felt like they were actively trying to be even more annoying now.

”Wooooah,” said Floyd, his head on Kuroki’s shoulder. Kuroki had been placed in the kitchen today, the Sevens only know why. Maybe Azul was getting back at him for telling the twins what happened, maybe Jade had meddled with the schedules. “It’s real shrimp fried rice!”

”This is beef fried rice, actually, senpai,” he said, in the tone you speak to a small child who had said something extremely stupid and were now explaining a basic concept to. “That’s what the customer ordered.”

”You sure do like playing dumb, huh?” Floyd said.

Kuroki’s hand stilled on the cutting board. He had never really… thought of Floyd as observant. If anything, he’d thought the opposite. The guy clearly held no regards for social graces. Even the simple ones, like give the people you don’t know fucking personal space. He had, kind of, just assumed that the guy didn’t know, and it wasn’t as if Kuroki was going to stick his neck out and try to teach him.

But, no, Floyd might actually have a brain rattling around in there. This was, in his opinion, far worse. Kuroki’s hand twitched with the sudden urge to use the paring knife he was using to cut vegetables for something far less kitchen-safe. It would even hurt extra bad, because he was cutting chilies right now.

This mental image calmed him, somewhat. Which was, probably, not a good sign for his current mental state. But whatever. He smiled, and it wasn’t even all that forced.

”No, I think I’m just actually stupid.”

”I hear your grades are pretty good, though. Especially considering your situation.”

”Poor people can get good grades, too, senpai,” Kuroki said. “Lack of money does not necessarily indicate a lack of talent. Usually it’s actually quite the opposite!”

Floyd laughed. He tugged on the tiny puff of hair in Kuroki’s ponytail, as if trying to punish him for playing dumb again. “I was talking about you being from another dimension, actually!”

Kuroki was going to kill this guy. Without lifting his head, he glanced from side to side. If anyone had heard, they were minding their own business. So… no one had heard.

Probably.

He pressed his palms into his eyes, groaning in a strange mix of relief and frustration.

And then he screamed. He’d been working with chilies. Right. Right.

Fucking ow.

At least his screams alerted Azul to the fact that something was off, because he poked his head into the kitchen. “Why are you here? You were scheduled to man the bar today.”

”I was — schedule changed,” Kuroki said, scrubbing his eye furiously with water. It was not helping.

Azul scowled. “I see. Well, get behind the bar.”

”Y-yeah, okay,” Kuroki mumbled. He considered staying for a little longer to soothe his eyes, but whatever. He could not handle any more time with Floyd today. He could deal with blurry vision for a while, if that was the alternative.

Who knows. Maybe he’d get more tips if it looked like he’d just been bawling his eyes out, out of pity.

He pulled his hair out of his ponytail and wrapped the… hair… band… thing around his wrist. It was borrowed from another Mostro Lounge worker, but Ito had a tendency to complain about how hard ‘ligas’ were to keep up with, so… theirs now. Thank you, random coworker, for your generous charity donation.

He made his way over to the bar, still blinking back tears.

”Here.” A towel touched his hand. It was wet, and smelled distinctly of milk. “Press this to your eye. It should help soothe the pain.”

”Thank —,” Kuroki started to say, only to pause. Because he knew that voice. If he gave a strangled scream, it was just because his eyes really hurt. “Thank you, Jade.”

”Of course! I wouldn’t want my coworker to be in pain. I’m not often put on bar duty, and I’ll need your help ensuring I don’t make any mistakes. Let’s do our best, today, yes?”

Is there no justice in this world?!

~

The doorbell rang.

The Ramshackle kids were stunned. They hadn’t known they had a doorbell. Ace and Deuce usually vented their frustrations on their front door — if Ace didn’t just waltz in like he owned the place.

Grim floated over to open the door. “Nice to see you guys have finally discovered electricity — oh! It’s Jack!”

“At least say Jack-kun,” Enma scolded him lightly.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Jack said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Call me whatever.”

“Alright, Jack-chan,” Kuroki said.

Jack sighed and, surprisingly, didn’t rise to the bait. “That’s on me.”

“Nah, it’s on Kuroki,” Enma said, cuffing him over the head. He sent Jack a grin. “Hey, you’re early.”

“I’m… on time?” Jack said, checking his phone for the time. “Honestly, I think I’m a little late. You guys said 18:00, right?”

“Yeah, but Ace and Deuce are usually thirty minutes late.”

“I just — respect your time!”

“Eh, we don’t mind. They’re off, like, making out, probably, and I’d prefer they get that out of their system before they come here.”

“What’s ’making out’?” Grim asked.

“Kuroki, why are you all pouty?” Enma said, a little louder than was strictly necessary.

Kuroki pouted harder now that he had been acknowledged. “Why did Grim get off with a warning but I gotta deal with a bruise?”

“First of all, if you get a bruise from that you’ve got bigger problems. Second of all, Grim is way too small for me to feel comfortable hitting him. And don’t act like you wouldn’t be pissy if I hit him.”

Kuroki pouted even harder.

Enma rolled his eyes.

Ito poked their head out of the kitchen. “Hey! Jack, do you want something to eat?”

Kuroki’s eyes lit up. “Ito, Enma hit me!”

“Did you deserve it?”

Kuroki spluttered, his fake pout immediately dropping in sheer shock and horror. “What the fuck?!”

“You guys really are… spirited…” Jack said, glancing behind himself, as if he was considering turning tail and running.

Unfortunately for him, Ace and Deuce were actually somewhat on time today, somehow, and they all-but pushed Jack through the door.

“Ito, what’re you making?” Ace called.

They shrugged. “I was thinking about whipping up a few sandwiches. I don’t know what Jack can stomach.”

Deuce shook his head. “Nonono, it’s his first time here, you have to go big or go home!”

“We can’t go home, we’re already in our home,” Enma pointed out.

“Exactly! So you gotta go big!”

Ito crossed their arms over their chest. “Fine, fine. I’m guessing you guys want tacos?”

“Yes!” Ace said, pointing. “Make the red thing!”

“… the red — pico? Okay, sure, fine. I’ll make some.”

Kuroki opened his mouth.

“Jalapeños on the side, yes yes.”

He smiled.

“Jack, do you have any preferred type of meat? Or is ground beef fine? Because if not I’m going to have to send you on a quick grocery run, we’re out of everything else.”

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “Um. It’s fine. But I thought we were all going to be… studying?”

“Can’t study on an empty stomach!�� Grim said.

As if he could study on a full stomach.

~

The plan had been simple:

Step 1 was Food. It was a good step 1, Kuroki thought, probably the most important one. Not starving is fun. So is eating tacos. Hell yeah.

Step 2 was to study one core subject each.

Step 3 was to make everyone give a presentation on their chosen subject.

They would still have to study for their elective courses on their own, but… Kuroki was trying not to think about that, frankly.

The first years study session went as so:

Ito, the only person that could actually pay attention to Trein’s class and therefore knew what the man prioritized, gave an abridged history lesson. No conspiracy board this time, thank fuck, just a couple of study guides they’d written up when work was slow.

Ace was the best at math, so he had been put in charge of Personal Magical Ability. This wasn’t a core class, but it was close enough. Over half of the people present took it and, from what little Kuroki had overheard about it, the class was difficult. Kuroki didn’t want to know about how gravity and wind speed affected how your magic interacts with the world. Nor did he need to know, he was magicless. Convenient!

Enma had chosen his Magical Analysis class with Professor Yaxha. No one else was in it — a class on Magical Theory isn’t exactly the kind of thing the average teenager finds fun. But it actually did help the mages get a better understanding of their magic… probably. Jack, Ace, Deuce, and Grim all looked enlightened by the end of Enma’s lecture on visualization and observing those around you, at least. Kuroki, frankly, hadn’t understood a word of it. Nor did he need to! Once again, he couldn’t use magic, so who cares!

(Kuroki and Ito didn’t particularly mind being left out for Ace and Enma’s lectures, since it gave them time to whip up a quick marshmallow recipe, which was a nice break from studying.)

Deuce chose theater, because everyone present was in it, save for Kuroki and Enma. Because everyone else was lucky enough to not be from another world, and therefore didn’t have to spread out all of their classes for the sake of efficiently getting a grasp upon the new reality they had been thrust into without warning. They were free to take the only art elective that didn’t fully require you to put yourself out there.

And Ito had won nosegoes.

Kuroki wasn’t sure which side he hated more.

At least Ace was also suffering. Every time Deuce made a point, everyone would make him recite it, word for word. This was what he deserved for not doing a single page of the homework on his own this semester.

(Enma and Kuroki spent most of that time arguing over whether they should roast the marshmallows or not. Kuroki still held that the only reason Enma wanted to roast them was that he knew he would make their food spontaneously combust regardless of whether he was intending it.)

Jack had chosen Phys Ed. This was a little unfair, seeing as there wasn’t really much to teach in Gym class, but Jack was a sudden addition to their study group, and they’d had to scramble for something to make him do.

And, admittedly, for how little he had to work with, he did a pretty good job presenting. Next semester he would be a valuable addition to their friend group.

Kuroki, of course, ended up with Alchemy, because none of the others should be trusted to teach it, considering they didn’t understand it themselves. Kuroki himself was decent enough at it. It was mostly just following directions. Unfortunately, his friends were basically incapable of following instructions, so his job was essentially to drill all of the rote memorization into their heads.

If they got a good enough grade on the written portion of the exams, the practical portion might not be an issue!

Hopefully.

Thanks to the hours upon hours of his life Kuroki spent poring over their Alchemy textbook, though, he finally figured out why Ito’s cauldron kept exploding:

“Mana! It is a Thing!” he said.

“Ohhhhhhhh…” said Ace. “I’m stupid.”

“Nah, Ito is,” Deuce said.

“You’re not getting dessert,” Ito mumbled.

Ace and Deuce never learn, do they?

Deuce hit the floor. “Aghhhh my blood pressure… it’s so low… I need… sugar…”

Ito raised an eyebrow. “Or salt.”

“… noooooooo...”

Kuroki waved his hands for their attention. “Guys? Hello? I’m trying to fix our explosion problem?”

They, reluctantly, paid attention. Kuroki huffed. He was trying to make sure they didn’t have any more accidents! He had spent an entire day trapped in the same body as Ito last week! He didn’t want a repeat of that event! Please!

“Right, so, Mana, yeah?” Kuroki said. “It’s in everything. When you stir clockwise, it increases the potency of the potion — and, therefore the mana.”

Enma hummed. “I mean, yeah, they didn’t know what clockwise and counterclockwise meant until very recently, but they’re left-handed, wouldn’t they accidentally stir counterclockwise more?”

“… Ito is left-handed?” Kuroki asked, devastated. His theory!

Ito nodded. “Technically, I’m ambidextrous. Most lefties are. But, yeah, I prefer my left hand.”

“Freak,” said Ace, his nose scrunching.

“Dessert,” Ito reminded him.

“Nevermind.”

Ito nodded, once, approvingly. Then they turned back to Kuroki. “I stir with my right hand, though.”

“Oh, wow, left-handed people are just like the rest of us!” Jack joked.

Jack can make jokes? Wild.

Ito rolled their eyes. “It’s so I can prepare ingredients with my left hand at the same time.”

“Anyways, Ito, I am going to drill the difference between clockwise and counterclockwise into your head. Also, stir counterclockwise to dilute potions, don’t add water. It is not cooking. Water has a lot of mana, you’re doing the opposite of what you’re intending.”

Ito huffed. “Alchemy sucks. Is it too late to drop out of school?”

“No! You have to stay!” Grim said.

Ito looked somewhere between touched and wary, as if they were waiting for the catch.

Indeed, Grim soon realized that that sounded too nice, and promptly course corrected:

“Because you’re the best cook here! I can only eat so many omelets.”

“Hey! Why am I catching strays? Make fun of Enma for burning shrimp instead!” Kuroki pointed at him.

He wasn’t sure whether Enma was more offended by the pointing or the reminder of his lack of cooking prowess.

“Excuse me?!”

Kuroki screeched as he was pulled in a headlock, a hand messing up his hair. He called for help, but to no avail.

Even Jack stood by and did nothing. Apparently this visibly uneven fight wasn’t the kind of thing that he would get between.

Damn it.

He hates this school.

~

Grim did not have to do a presentation. Because it was Grim. He gets special privileges.

(And no one wanted to fail, which would certainly happen if they put the fate of their grades in the monster’s hands. He didn’t even have hands! He had paws! How could he properly cradle their fates, how could he keep them from harm, when he had no opposable thumbs?)

When Grim questioned why he hadn’t been forced to do a presentation, Kuroki recalled, loudly, that they had yet to eat dessert. Grim didn’t burn the dorm down, and they got sugary goodness out of it, so Kuroki was calling this a win overall.

~

“Alright, so… practical magic exams…” Enma looked over the four mages in the room. “How about you all try and use each other’s go-tos? Magic is all about visualization, right? You all know each other's magic pretty well…”

Because they’re constantly fighting each other.

Enma cleared his throat. “Alright. Grim, try Ace’s wind magic. Ace, try summoning something. Deuce…” He glanced at Jack, before shaking his head. “Try Grim’s fire magic. Jack… uh… I guess take your pick?”

Kuroki’s eyebrows knit. Why wasn’t anyone trying Jack’s magic? Does Enma not know how closed circuits work?

His thought process was cut off when a cauldron went crashing through the floor. Ace grinned widely.

“I’m so good at magic.”

“… we should have done this outside,” sighed Ito.

“You’re covering repair costs,” Kuroki told Ace, flatly.

Ace swore, loudly.

Enma sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How about all of you mages get some practical magic practice in and summon enough gold to fill this hole?”

“That’s more of an Alchemy thing,” Jack admitted. “And it's super high-level, too…”

Kuroki perked up.

“Nicolas Flamel? King Midas? Watch out, I’m about to steal your shtick.”

“Going to steel their shtick?” Enma asked.

It was hard to tell who groaned the loudest. Jack looked like he was back to wanting to leave and never come back.

“And right after I do that, I’m going to murder Enma.”

“Deserved,” said Grim.

Enma rolled his eyes. “I’m not eating your bell peppers for you anymore.”

“Wait,” said Kuroki.

“Hold on,” said Grim.

“C’mon, man, I was kidding! Don’t do this to me! Do you want me to die? You’re going to kill me —!”

[darthlordcommie]

How They Move

Doing some thought about Jade Empire and the Spirit Monk. Spoilers for Jade Empire ahead.

Dawn Star: She’s not sure when she noticed it, or if it was ever something to “notice”, as opposed to a fact of life. But her oldest and dearest friend has always had a gift for movement of every kind, and that translated into fighting and training. When Master Li was training them, or when she was sparring with them, their talent, quickly being honed by training, for the master would accept no slacking, leapt out. They sometimes struggle with words, sometimes have to stop and think about what they’re trying to say. (When he comes to the school, Gao mocks them mercilessly for it) But when they move, when they act, when they fight, everything they want to say and intend is clear and beautiful, like Master Li’s finest calligraphy. Even the softest movements, a gentle tap on her shoulder, a quiet passing of food, carry so much meaning when they make them. And somehow, that translates to uplifting others, as opposed to pushing them down. Whatever the reason for it, whenever they spar with someone, or demonstrate a technique, or the many times they spar with her simply for the joy of it, or later on, when she fights by their side, everyone always comes away understanding their forms better, or standing slightly straighter. The way they fight alongside her makes her feel as if she can glimpse their gift for combat and emulate it, and she fights better than she could alone. Perhaps someone else might be afraid at seeing their unparalleled skill with fighting, but she’s seen their core for her whole life now. She knows their kindness.

Sagacious Zu: He’s on edge when he meets them. Not because of the thugs who call themselves “soldiers”, but because he can instantly tell in the way they carry themself that if they fought, he would lose. It’s an instinctive knowledge, formed from years of experience that leads him to look at their stance and know that his only chance of victory would be said experience and a great deal of luck. But they don’t fight. Instead, he finds himself working with them to help Dawn Star, the girl he’d spent so many years watching over and protecting. He works... well with them. It’s an unexpected feeling. He’d expected that the two of them would struggle to work together, between their lack of knowledge of each other, and his years alone, working with none. But their adaptability is astonishing. Their style shifts and their movements mold to fit his, to balance into a skilled team. It makes their fight with that brat Gao something to behold. Their teamwork with Dawn Star is greater than anything he’d ever seen in his years as an assassin, where they had all fought for the one purpose. On an instinctive level, borne of trust and knowledge, the two fight as one, as if they were each one hand guided by the same person. Gao never stood a chance. Nor did the soldiers attacking Two Rivers. It’s... frightening. Their skill is one thing. To work so well with others that those others are elevated to approach that skill level? It’s terrifying. And yet... they’re honest. They’re open. When he shuts down their questions, they leave it. They still offer their trust. Zu doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve such a gift, but when he descends into the assassins’ fortress, he does so not merely to make sure that they’re the Spirit Monk they claim to be, but to make sure that the light he sees in them won’t be snuffed out.

Silk Fox: The one thing that smarts more than her bruises is her pride. There had never been a point in her life where she’d been so thoroughly defeated and outmatched. And yet this person who called themself a... Spirit Monk, made her feel like a novice, as if the years of martial training by the top fighters in the Empire and the experience fighting criminals and assassins she’d gathered meant nothing. She had been utterly destroyed, and yet they had managed to beat her down without any permanent harm. The worst part was that somehow, she felt as if her own skill had grown leagues just by her humiliating defeat at the hands of the humble warrior. Her interest is piqued, and when she gets to spend more time with them and learns that while they didn’t know how to speak eloquently, they were fully capable of understanding and communicating thoughtful ideas and making her question so much of what she knows, she can’t help but notice them as a person as well as being a fighter. When she witnesses how utterly they dominate the arena, she knows that the Lotus Assassins will be salivating for the chance to recruit someone with their skill. When she sees their stubborn kindness in trying to help everyone they meet, her heart yearns for more.

... And I’ll probably continue this at another point, bc I have a lot of thoughts about the Spirit Monk’s fighting ability as seen through other peoples’ eyes.

[catleha]

MUSE TRACKS

post  3 - 5  songs  that  remind  you  of  your  muse.

01 .         HEFNA, & VALFOTHR, DANHEIM.

02 .         FLESH & BONE, BLACK MATH.

barely banging at your door     /     don’t hear a sound, don’t know me anymore     / bell a toll to come for me     /     an empty street, a rising steam     / break the Truth inside of me     /     climbed down to hell on a devil’s tree     /

I walk alone, beside myself     /     nowhere to go     / ah, this bleeding heart     /     that’s in my hand     / I fell apart     /      

03 .         LAUKR, WARDRUNA.

laukr is water     /     tears from the eye     / waterfalls from mountains     /     drops from the ice,     / the waves rock me     /     and deeply, I fall asleep     /    

04 .         RABBIT HEART, FLORENCE & THE MACHINE.

I must become a lion-hearted girl    /     ready for a fight    / before I make the final sacrifice     /     this is a gift, it comes with a prize    /   who is the lamb    /     who is the knife  ?   /  

&& in the Spring, I shed my skin     /     && it blows away with the changing wind     /  the waters turn from blue to red     /     as to the sky I offer it     /

05 .         CHURCHARD, AURORA.

words pointy like arrows     /     wounds no one could see     / [she] closed all the windows     /     as [her] anger broke free     I will not remember you as somebody nice     /     please, will you remember me     / && cry?     /

TAGGED BY:     @fracturedreign, thank you so much !  TAGGING:     @siretha, @breselin, @oasisbow, @soarae, @drachenblood, @fallenrelic, @blutkrone, @daintycure, @fallenrelic, @pxlsian, @schildblood, @referentblood & @praynightfalls.

[ayuki-ikuya]

Dorms and Archons

Twisted Wonderland x Genshin Impact

Part 2 of 2

Part 1

Dendro Archon

The Recluse Scholar

𝓚𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓶 𝓐𝓵-𝓐𝓼𝓲𝓶

Kalim was excited to have a new friend! Oh the parties they'd have! The fun! The food!

When he met you, you were... distant. Did he do something wrong? Did he upset you?

He really did try to find out what he did wrong, and often sent you invitations (Malleus eyeing the invitations) you some of the parties he makes, but you don't show up nor reply, making him sadden.

Jamil low key face palming

During a normal sunny day at school, he and Jamil headed to the library to grab some books, and during the process, he found you, tucked in a corner with mountains, upon mountains of books around you, and you? You were reading.

"Ah? S/o??"

"HEEEEK!!!!"

he startled you so badly that plants from outside grew. which of course caused a commotion.

Kalim apologised for startling you, but he asked a question about your attendance, your reply was to fiddle with your sleeves before answering with a small voice that you were afraid of people despite being a deity.

Kalim immedietly thought of Idia, but he crossed the line of no return, but Kalim smiled warmly, held your hand, making you choke, and said a more softer voice that he'd throw a smaller party, just the three of them. (Don't tell me you forgot Jamil, HE MAKES THE DANG FOOD)

You accepted.

Several parties later, you two were unsurprisingly in love with each other that the students of NRC were rolling their eyes at the moments the two shared. COULD YOU TWO DATE ALREADY!?!?

When you two started dating, Kalim made a celebration, but kept you in a more secluded section, that way you could be apart of it, but not near a large crowd of people. And you were thankful for it.

As a couple, Kalim practically adores you. And he's super affectionate too! Jalim is glad to have someone more tameable and it also makes it easier to locate Kalim if he ever goes off by himself.

𝓙𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓵 𝓥𝓲𝓹𝓮𝓻

He thought nothing of you at first.

Until you had full scores on everything.

He had requested you to help with Scarabia's studying, in offer of full meals, which you complied with due to living in a run down dorm and doesn't have a lot of money to support themselves with.

However, the study group went wrong due to the amount of people.

Jamil then figured that you didn't work too well with large numbers of people, and he found that you were slightly dependent on him when it comes to speaking.

He ended up planning smaller groups, working on those who had the worst grades then up.

And thanks to you, their dorm gradually got better.

Jamil spent time with you whenever he was free from following Kalim, and he was fairly fond of you.

You were soft, very soft, but highly reliable in terms of knowledge. So he'd often vent to you which is surprising.

But your presence and advice helped him grow better.

Jamil fell for you when he found you smiling at a Scarabia student showing you their improved grade, you looked like a warm hearted maternal parent, and his heart skipped at the sight.

When you two began dating, it was a bit rocky due to Jamil's family duty to serve the Al-Asim family. But Kalim was very kind to allow Jamil more free time, in exchange that he brings you over for more study parties!

You figured since Kalim wasn't fond of studying and more for partying, that you'd make a study party which improved Kalim's grade by ten folds. Jalim practically wept tears that the seven sent him this angel.

Geo Archon

The Consultant

𝓐𝔃𝓾𝓵 𝓐𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓽𝓸

Azul was greedy for the power you possibly possess. and your money.

Azul underestimated you since he witnessed your lack of brains in terms of money. You forget about having your wallet on you, and whenever someone offers to pay for you, you attempt to buy everything without a single thought.

This was going to be an easy contract, Azul thought. They're an idiot, Azul thought. They can't complete this contract, Azul thought.

"I've completed my end of the contract. Now you must do yours."

"Huh? Nani?"

Azul was stupefied by this, he whipped his head towards the Leech twins, both begrudgingly nodding their heads in confirmation at the archon completing their conditions of the contract.

Azul had tried to change the details of the contract, you of course allowed it the first time.

But when you returned with the conditions once again completed, Azul tried to add more.

However, you weren't having it.

You stood up and leaned down to Azul, towering over him. A sudden pressure weighed the three mercreatures, it was heavy and foreboding. Your eyes glowed a gold with the amber ombre in your hair glowing gold as well.

"I was lenient to allow you the first time. Either fulfill your end of the deal or break the contract. But if you break the contract, you will suffer the wrath of the rock."

Azul was terrified.

When Azul fell for you, he questioned himself. How in the seven did he fall for a person like YOU!? He will never remember how, but all he knows is that he's in waaay to deep.

When you two became a couple, you were far more charasmatic and charming than before, it was like it was turned up a notch. Or two. or more...

The contract loving couple have been making more money than ever thanks to the Geo Archon, the avatar of contracts. It's either fill the conditions or suffer the wrath of the rock. Or just, don't make a contract. Simple.

But then we got the one brain cell trio doing their dumb sh**.

𝓙𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓛𝓮𝓮𝓬𝓱

Oya?

What an intriguing being.

Jade was the first to be interested in you. But he couldn't exactly find you that well since you practically mixed with the crowd a little too well than he'd like. [Bro, Zhongli and Venti has statues of themselves around Liyue and Mondstaft, AND NO ONE MANAGES TO THINK "hmmm.. You know, he looks like one that statue there.. Wait a minute-" LIKE, SRSLY!!! Venti is more obvious, I can understand Zhongli since he wears more funeral consultant clothing, but he still somehow blends in with the crowd. Unlike a Lil wind spirit.]

But when the moment came where you made a contract, Jade was more than happy to hinder you, only for you to complete the conditions before he could figure out your plan.

"... What?"

["OSMANTHUS WI-"]

After that fiasco with you giving a very large heavy warning, Jade was by your side whenever he wasn't with Floyd, questioning your knowledge, in which you were more than happy enough to comply.

Jade fell for you when you showed how competent you were unlike the other miserable guppies in school. Sure you had a few problems, but nothing with a little Jade there and everything is perfect. He also favored your knowledge, specially about fungi.

When you two became a couple, it was.. Strange to say, a air headed but scary consultant with a sadistically calm eelman? That's ringing bells for everyone.

𝓕𝓵𝓸𝔂𝓭𝓮 𝓛𝓮𝓮𝓬𝓱

Floyd had zero, zip, non, 100% no interest in you. Why? You looks, sound and seem boring. And he stand corrected.

it was later when you completed the conditions, which, not gonna lie, spooked Floyd.

"Hah?"

Later, he began to go after you like he did with Goldfish (Riddle), and when he tried to squeeze you, he found himself squeezing a shield instead.

He found himself utterly thrilled and had did several attempts at you, which failed.

His interest in you and your abilities heightened.

Then your relationship bloomed.

It was hard to say if it was romantic or platonic, but either way, Floyd was perfectly happy. Happy to have a partner who continues to show things or tell him things about their world.

As long as Floyd kept out of trouble and/or content, Jade and Azul didn't say question their relationship.

Pyro Archon

The Warlord

𝓛𝓮𝓸𝓷𝓪 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓵𝓪𝓻

Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? What are you doing? Get out.

Leona didn't care for you, not one single bit. Until you messed with his sleep schedule due to your chaoticness.

Whenever your around, you just bring trouble with you. And he doesn't like it one bit.

And when you bring trouble, you bring noise.

Which officially ruins his nap times.

However, Leona praises and respects your prowess in battle. You always gave it your all, which he liked. You weren't holding back, which allowed him to gauge how powerful you were as a deity with or without your element.

As it turns out, you're stronger than what you make yourself out to be, but what catches Leona's attention the most, was how calculating you were. It was as if you were analyzing him

To be honest, he felt violated.

At most times, you're energetic, but when your quiet or serious, it's either pack your sh** and leave or get out of their way.

Because when your either if those, you will either send someone to the nurse with severe casualties or some of the schools property will be destroyed. And of course, there is a justified reason for this.

Other than to make Crowley very upset of course.

Leona fell for you with your strength. He loves a woman who can lead and he could just relax. Unless it comes to some other type of leadership, like in the bedroom, then that will change. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

These two are dangerous as a couple when Leona's awake and active. And when Leona's on the move, expect a gremlin to be tailing after him, and be sure to clear out of their way. Mercy didn't in their vocabulary.

𝓡𝓾𝓰𝓰𝓲𝓮 𝓑𝓾𝓬𝓬𝓱𝓲

Huh? Do I know you? No? Goodbye.

Ruggie, quite literally, didn't give a rats ass about you.

To him, you were like any other beast man, rowdy and rough, other than your form that is.

But thankfully, you knew how to take care of yourself. Less work for Ruggie. I guess.

Not only that you knew how to cook. That was a god sent gift to Ruggie. Sadly though, you only know how to make mostly meat dishes. If it contains vegetables, expect the veggies to be over seasoned.

Leona was scared when he saw you in the kitchen, only to calm down seeing you being calm and not rowdy.

Ruggie fell for your cooking. He is literally the term "To get to a mans heart, you go through their stomach". although you should work on cooking vegetables better for a more healthier lifestyle.

𝓙𝓪𝓬𝓴 𝓗𝓸𝔀𝓵

Strong? Strong.

You two are 100% besties.

You two are glued to the hip whenever you guys are free or share classes.

You both like to exercise and spar, so you two mostly go for each other.

To say the least, Jack mostly saw you as a sibling. Sorry, no romance.

Jack often scolds you for not eating more vegetables.

Which makes you pout and huff.

Cute lil tyke - Leona

Hydro Archon

The Judge

𝓡𝓲𝓭𝓭𝓵𝓮 𝓡𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓼

Nice, another rule setter like me. We're gonna be great friends.

"Explain why two cubes of sugar should be in a lemon tea? It's blasphemy."

I see you have chosen violence 😌

Riddle at first liked you, until you learned about the rules of the Queen of Hearts, did he start to hate you.

"BE QUIET OR IT'S OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!"

He loathed you.

He thought that since your a judge, you'd understand the rules, much like him. But no, you judged the rules as well, evaluating if they are fair or not.

Whenever you call out on the rules that appeared ridiculously stupid to have (like the two sugar cubes in lemon tea. That's bs to you.)

After the overblot, you were more nicer when he changed.

He stand corrected.

But he didn't mind it, he low key enjoyed arguing with you, without him screaming at you of course.

You two as a couple sends fear in everyone. A judge and a tyrant? That's a deadly combo.

𝓣𝓻𝓮𝔂 𝓒𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻

Trey had taken a liking to you, seeing how similar you are to Riddle.

He enjoyed answering your questions about rules, but if there were rules he can't remember, he'd look at them with you to not only answer your question, but to commit them to memory in case.

What he's scared of is when you give trials regarding about incidents. Riddle would present his case then the 'innocent' or innocent would present theirs.

If the person is guilty, you ensure punishment, because like Riddle, you detest rule breakers unless in reason. You didn't mind them bending the rules as long as it doesn't break.

Trey is envious of your abilities, but you reassure him the his Doodle Suit is superior if you can use it against others magic.

You often praised him as well.

You admitted to thinking about a scenario of if Trey was born in Tevyat, he'd receive a hydro vision.

He flushed in response, secretly happy to have caught your attention.

You two as a couple puts everyone, minus Riddle because it's you, at ease.

𝓒𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓓𝓲𝓪𝓶𝓸𝓷𝓭

#ohmyseveniminlove #calltheambulance #loveatfirstsight #goddescendingfromheaven #pinchme #PLSNOTICEMEANDLOVEME #foryoupage

He practically fell for you.

To him, you were perfect.

"You have flaws? I only see perfection!"

He's a smooth talker, albeit feminine due to having a lot of sisters, but smooth nonetheless.

He's a simp for you, willing to use his unique magic to do anything and everything for you.

Literally fell at first sight of you.

As a couple, Cater often takes couple photos with you, at first you were content with the pictures, but at this point they kinda peeved her when he takes pictures on every occasion.

"Smiiiile~"

"Cater, I love you, but please, stop."

"If you give me a kiss I might~"

𝓓𝓮𝓾𝓬𝓮 𝓢𝓹𝓪𝓭𝓮

You're his role model.

Literally the Geno to your Saitama.

He carries a notebook with him to take notes on you since he strives to be like you. A model being.

Even if he looks smart, he still has a split braincell between Ace and Grim.

Don't hold it against him if he's trying to know almost EVERYTHING about you.

More platonic than romantic.

𝓐𝓬𝓮 𝓣𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓹𝓸𝓵𝓪

Complete opposites.

And completely disliked each other.

You rubbed him the wrong way, maybe it was because you were more justified than him, better at things than he was.

He didn't know what, it was just you being better than him. He understands he's not smart, because he foes dumb sh** with the other two.

But whenever you have to deal with their messes on their own, he feels irritated.

He often tries to get after you as well.

"Oh wow, such a god you are. Pathetic."

*cue angry archon noises with an 8 feet tall wave behind them, ready to flood Ace's ass.*

Yeah, your relationship is very... Rocky and slightly concerning.

Here's part 2! I'm happy that you read this! I will have a link to the first part after connecting the links to certain parts. Feel free to request or refer to the main master list pinned on my blog if you wish to see other choices to make! Happy reading!

[tciddaemina]

on law, luffy, and bedtime stories - a random one piece headcanon

okay but, okay but, okay but, has anyone ever thought about what luffy and law’s concepts of bedtime stories must be like? most of the other one piece characters have at least one (fairly) normal adult figure in their upbringing for some portion of their childhood, like usopp and robin had their mothers, nami bellemere, franky had tom, sanji had his mother and then zeff, and chopper had kureha, etc, etc, so you can imagine at at least one point or another they got an idea of your fairly normal concept of bedtimes stories and what you tell kids to help them sleep at night

luffy didn’t though. luffy’s formative years were by and large spent being raised basically single-handled by a pair of feral mountain children, with only minor and occasional intervention by bandits. if luffy was ever told bedtimes stories, it was ace and sabo doing the telling, and god can you imagine? i feel like luffy’s concept of normal bedtime stories would be these incredibly violent and slightly horrific horror stories, like, whatever it is two wild feral preteen boys disillusioned with society and living in the woods think is a) cool and b) scary enough to be worth telling. like, these kids beat people up to steal their money for fun and spend every other day hunting tigers, not to mention that both ace and sabo are literally quite fucked up, traumatized little kids. like, they make it work, but i can’t imagine them telling stories that aren’t immensely fucking disturbing in the way only children's made up stories can so effortlessly be

luffy meanwhile, eats it right up, accepting it without fuss, because the other option is getting teased for being a crybaby, and also he loves them both so much in the respect is imitation kind of way, which means that what they think is cool he also thinks is cool, so he sees absolutely nothing weird about the fact that every time they tell him a bedtime story it’s the sort of plot that could be marketed as an R-18 horror movie. he thinks absolutely nothing of it

and i just like this because it’s the absolute opposite of what you’d expect from luffy, and yet it makes full sense when you consider his upbringing. like, someone ever asks luffy to tell a story and just ends up utterly stupefied at the terrifying horror story he comes out with, because its so utterly unexpected for his bright and cheerful and fairly innocent personality. 

like, between law and luffy, if you had to say one of them was really into horror stories and didn’t know how to tell proper kid’s bedtime stories you’d say it would be law, right? he gives that vibe. sarcastic, jaded, sharp-edged, don’t give a fuck going to spit in the eye of god and cause problems on purpose just because he likes to be a bitch and watch other people clean up the mess. it’s him you’d expect to have this really fucked up notion of it all, especially when you consider the later portion of his childhood post-flevance and the impact that’s had on his life

and this is where it particularly gets fun, because you’d think that right? but you’d be wrong. because before flevance and before the donquixotes and before cora’s death and all of that shit, law was the eight year older brother to a younger sister. and sure, law as a kid may already have been weird and slightly off - he dissects frogs for fucks sake, he was always going to be a character - but he also had a fairly normal family up until a point. his sister, shown to be a sweet somewhat sensitive crybaby (basically just a normal little girl) always asks for bedtime stories, and when law’s parents are busy, he does it instead. but he’s learned from example from his parents, has been on the receiving end of the normal trend of bedtime stories in his own time (even if he wasn’t much enthused by them), and more than that he knows his sister and what sort of stories she likes so Law’s bedtime stories are always these wholesome, sweet tales about princesses and magic and evil curses and true love and friendship saving the day. like, just absolute fucking fluff. it’s not that he likes these sort of stories, he mostly scorns them actually, but he cares about his sister so he sucks it up and tells stories she likes, because if he told the ones he’d like instead she would end up crying. so those are the stories law tells, those are the stories law knows how to tell, because he’s had a lot of practice at it by the end

and so if made to tell a bedtime story (though he’d no doubt go to great efforts to refuse doing so) that’s the sort of story law would come out with, absolutely baffling anyone who has known law for even a fraction of a second, because its trafalgar law. like, what the fuck??  

and i like that. i love that. luffy, who is just such an absolutely cheerful wholesome dude, just putting out these absolute horror stories, while law, cynical, jaded, and sadistic law, tells these really soft moving stories about princesses being saved by the power of true love. it’s so seemingly antithetical to their character, but it isn’t. because maybe it doesn’t speak to them, but it speaks about how they were raised, about who the main figures in their lives were as children and the impacts that these people, now lost, still have on them today

it subverts all expectations, while still making absolute sense for their characters, and fuck if that doesn’t get me. 

[mikami]

Speaking of Youtsuba!Light, why Ohba decided to make him so different from the character we knew before? I mean, even before Light found the Death Note his eyes were empty and he said the whole world was rotten and he was ready to kill some bully in his school ("Should I kill him? No, it's better not to kill someone who can be connected to me").

But in the Youtsuba!arc during Light's internal monologue he says that he can understand Kira's ideas but could never kill a person + i think his scream in the helicopter can be interpreted as his terror at learning how many people he's killed. It's just Kira!Light and Youtsuba!Light feel like completely different people and i can understand those who say that "Kira and Light are different people/Light died in the 1st ep./Ryuzaki and Light are friends, but Kira and L are enemies" etc.

It feels like Ohba couldn't decide whether he wanted to show a sociopath whose motivation is boredom or a righteous vigilante whose motivation is justice and who just chose the wrong path to achieve it

I disagree pretty strongly with your assessment here, but I think part of that is due to the way the anime chose to frame Light in the first episode. The anime amps up the murderousness for him a LOT.

These are indeed some dead eyes. These meanwhile...

... that's a kid bored in class.

I don’t think the way Light acts in the Yotsuba Arc is AT ALL incompatible with the way he acted before getting the Death Note.

Thinking the world is rotten does not make you a mass murderer in disguise. I think in 2021 we can all understand being disgusted with the state of our society - and we’re not sociopaths for it. Light is jaded and unhappy with his life, but he’s not ready to start stabbing people over it.

The consideration of killing  that bully happens after the Kuro Otoharadah kill - which was an accident. He did think the Death Note was a prank. He STILL wants to think it’s a prank, all just a hypothetical game in his head. He doesn’t WANT the result of his test to be that the Death Note is real - when that winds up being the result anyway, he is so terrified that he nearly throws up in the streets.

So yeah, of course Light would think of himself as someone who wouldn’t kill somebody. Because he wouldn’t have, if he had been aware that was what he was doing. But he was a bored kid playing some game with himself (and let’s be real, this is absolutely no different from putting a name into ‘enter your classmate here and they’ll die’ websites which TONS of teens in the real world do). He wound up with a body count without meaning to - what he is doing is justifying himself for that mistake. Without remembering this inciting incident, his own logic would indeed seem utterly bizarre to him.

And I mean, look at him. Laughing about the notebook that he thinks is a prank, walking home laughing with his buddies and most importantly... justifying himself by being a model teenager!

All that Light does in the Yotsuba Arc is perform this model teenager image to the nth degree - and he HAS to because he is literally fighting for his innocence. He cannot admit to a single immoral thought because L is always watching and L is absolutely willing to get him executed for a crime he does not think he committed. Light is showing off his virtues literally for dear life.

Also his dad is there, and Light emulates his dad’s morals super strongly. That’s like half of the reason he became Kira in the first place. And now during the Yotsuba arc he gotta at least make a good impression on dad! His life is in shambles, he’s not gonna let his father down, too, now.

Yotsuba!Light isn’t at all inconsistent with who Light is as a person. The anime changing the first episode up visually does the character consistency a disservice.

[anastasiaskarsgard]

Happy destruction -part 3

Gordon Merkel was somewhat jaded. He’d been through a lot in his short years and seen things that would bring most men to their knees.

Beautiful people were as common as iPhones, and the more beautiful they were, the more dangerous the people they worked for were likely to be. Beautiful women in his line of work always had an agenda and could never be trusted. It was literal suicide.

That’s why his reaction to the girl dancing before him now was so utterly terrifying.

Lark obviously had outer beauty, but that’s not what had him so captivated. It wasn’t even the things her gorgeous body inspired that had his interest. It was the way she danced.

She danced so freely. Like she hadn’t a care in the world. She didn’t have exceptionally sexy moves, or really any kind of set rhythm but you could see she completely gave herself to the music. She had no concern of how she looked or if people were watching, she just danced. It was the most captivating thing he’d ever witnessed.

He tried to recall if he’d ever felt so alive. So free. He couldn’t think of any times even as a child. He’d always had a plan or a strategy. He always had an agenda or goal in mind. He’d never in his life, danced just to dance. It had been to seduce, endear, entertain or out of duty, but never had he been so pure.

Reaching out, he caught her waist and pulled her close to him. She laughed and did a little wiggle against him, before she spun away, doing a very ballet looking sort of move, before spinning back into him. With her ass firmly placed against his groin and her arms coming back and wrapping around his neck, he bent down to bury his face in her hair and smell her shampoo.

Wrapping his large hands around her waist, he felt himself smiling before catching himself, and stepping back abruptly. ‘What in the fuck am I doing? Did I seriously just smell this girl? This is a job, get your shit together!’ He berated himself.

Looking back to Lark, she’d turned around and was looking at him with concern written across her face.

Flashing her a big smile, he stepped forward chuckling, “I’m sorry, you were just getting me really worked up and I didn’t want to disrespect you or scare you if anything made itself known.” He spoke in her ear. Pulling back to read her reaction, he was was pleased to see her smile warmly up at him and then roll her eyes.

She began to dance again as a group of girls ran over and hugged her. Seeing an opportunity, he pointed to himself and then towards the restrooms. She nodded and continued Carrying on with her apparent friends that were making faces and hand gestures toward him, and then all looking at him, so he was nearly certain, he was the subject. Smiling back at them, he couldn’t help shaking his head when they all reacted like he was some sort of k pop star. It only made her that much more attractive, that she could have such interactions. No calculation. No guards up.

Stepping in the bathroom, he got to look at himself for the first time, and he had to admit, he really looked like some otherworldly fae person. He was honestly amazed by her talent and artistry. The fact she could create what he considered a work of art, in a poorly lit alley, on a guys skin, in relatively little time was amazing. He even accented her. They weren’t super matchy, but appeared to be of a similar species. Like they hailed from the same tree or some shit.

So lost in his perusal of his form, he hardly noticed the brick wall of a human being that was suddenly upon him.

“Boss wants to see you pretty boy. Follow me quiet and we won’t have any issues.” He demanded, waiting on a response, gauging Merkels reaction.

This guy was obviously a hired goon, and he didn’t seem particularly tense or concerned. More annoyed than anything. Figuring it was just the fact the boss daughter said he was her boyfriend, he smiled and said to lead the way.

Grunting before turning his massive body around, the man made his way out of the restroom, before opening a door that hid a staircase. Making their way up the staircase, the sound was considerably dampened, leaving only the thrumming of the bass as the only clue of the massive rave going on below.

Going through another door, they appeared to be in a very nice office with large chesterfield sofas around the perimeter, a commanding desk that was sitting in front of a wall of screens showing various locations in the club. Everything in the room was dark woods and deep reds, and there were multiple guards positioned about the room. An older gentlemen stood with his back to Merkel viewing a monitor that displayed Lark and her friends dancing sillily.

“Step forward young man. I don’t bite.” A deep European accent broke the awkward silence. “I just like to meet new faces, especially when my little girl claims they’re her boyfriend.”

Without missing a beat, Merkel stride straight up to the man, holding his hand out to shake. In the corner of his eye, he could see several of the guards spring into action, but were halted in their tracks when the older man held up his hand. Easing back into their places, Merkel took his hand with a firm handshake. “Bruce Wayne sir. Pleasure to meet you. Excuse my appearance but it meant a lot to Lark that I participated.” He said earnestly.

The older man looked him up and down, considering him, before appearing to come to a decision and nodding, “Mark Stark. You have a solid handshake. my Lark is a talented artist and it pleases me that you’re willing to play along with her antics. I keep a close watch on her however and she has her own discreet security. How is it, you’re apparently her boyfriend, yet only last week she was engaged to some idiot, and nobody has ever seen you before today.”

This man was intimidating. He wasn’t posturing or even physically bigger than him, but his presence filled the room, attempting to dominate all within it. This man was not going to be as easy a target as his superior made him believe. Not only was he heavily guarded, he was in a windowless office, with what appeared one entrance, and exuded acute awareness of his surroundings. Even now as Merkel observed him, planning what strategy to approach this situation, he could see the man was doing the same.

The only advantage he had so far was the fact the man didn’t look at him as a threat to his person. He saw him as a possible problem for his daughter. The man was too concerned with protecting his daughter, he wasn’t putting much in protecting himself.

“Sir I will be completely honest with you. I just met your daughter. I recently moved to town, and don’t know much of anyone. I was told about this event and thought I’d check it out and she was appalled by my attire so I gave her free reign to remedy it. She’s very attractive and extremely warm and kind so I just went with it.”

“Have you seen her on television?” He asked.

Merkel honestly had not seen this girl, but felt rather ridiculous if she was some sort of celebrity and he had no idea. The confusion must of showed on his face, because the older gentlemen before him nodded thoughtfully and placed his hands on his shoulders. “Listen closely Bruce. I like that you were honest and didn’t try to bullshit about how you knew my Lark. That being said, she just had a very public break up with this piece of shit professional athlete that was fucking around on her. She doesn’t need to be embarrassed or mistreated in any way. If you have any bad intentions or fuck boy tendencies, I suggest you find you way the fuck out of my club. Period. But if you are not a piece of shit and can treat her with respect, I can see by your shoes and your watch that you’re not a fuck up. Your vehicle isn’t registered to you, but it is to a corporation so it appears you’re gainfully employed.”

Merkel was sort of impressed. The man had already researched the vehicle and apparently appreciated fine watches as well. This man was not going to be easy. Making sure he looked slightly surprised by these observations, he looked around appearing a bit scared. Tripping over his words a bit, it took some effort not to laugh at his performance.

Dramatically taking a calming breath, he looked the man right in the eyes, “sir I have no ill intentions for Lark. I think she’s great. You are correct. That is a company vehicle for the company I am employed at. I am an IT professional, and I never cheated on a girl in my life.” He decided not to mention that he’d never had a girlfriend in his life either.

“Oh ok. A computer nerd? You’re an awful good looking kid for being stuck behind a computer all day. I thought you might be a fucking model or some shit and I’d have to figure out how to kill you.” He chuckled, patting Merkel on the back. “I feel good about you Bruce. A computer guy ain’t out chasing skirts or getting in any trouble.”

Well as Far as overbearing, overprotective fathers went, this guy took the cake. It’s not like he had a whole lot of experience with dads but he had just met this chick. Usually, people in these circles like to keep to their own, so he found it surprising that he was so accepting of an outsider.

Maybe he kept his business and daughter seperate, and kept her in the dark about what kind of man he was. If that were the case, then he’d want her with someone square. Someone who was nothing like himself.

He wasn’t sure why he was even considering all this. He could never take her seriously, and he was exactly the kind of guy her dad didn’t want her with. Literally the man assigned to kill him. Lark would probably find issue with that.

“Well you better get back out there or she’ll think you got lost” Mr Stark stated, leading him towards the exit. “You remember the way back right? You kids have fun.”

Merkel smirked and said goodbye as the door was closed behind him leaving him alone at the top of the stairs. He stood there a moment to get his composure. No matter how sure he was that the man wasn’t onto him, it was always stressful to be surrounded by potential enemies with no weapons.

Slowly making his way down the stairs, he decided that it would be nearly impossible to kill the man here. He was too heavily protected, and the odds of catching him alone, killing him with no notice, and then having enough time to get out, seemed damn near impossible.

He could find a place with a good view of the VIP door and take him out that way. Except then he would most likely be seen since he’d need to be next door. That would not do. He wasn’t a guns blazing type of assassin. He preferred it to be as silent and nonviolent as possible.

Opening the door, he was slammed by the loud music and crazy lights. It was wild how soundproofed that stairwell and office were.

Making his way to the place he left Lark, he scanned the area for her but came up empty. Deciding to go over to the bar so he could scan the whole dance floor, he went to the end and ordered a drink.

Sipping on his drink, he tried to find her wings, when two obviously fucked up girls stopped in front of him and started to giggle and talk to each other. One of them ran her hand up his chest, causing him to grab her arm and shake his head. “No touchy girls.” He said as he let her arm go.

They looked at him like he had just slapped them, and he rolled his eyes, shooing them away with a hand motion. He wasn’t in the mood to babysit, and drugs weren’t his thing.

Glancing at his watch, he wondered where Lark was. Maybe she thought he left her. Was he gone that long?

“Bruce! There you are. I was looking all over the place for you!” Lark exclaimed animatedly spinning around. “Are you having so much fun?”

“I am now that you found me.” He smirked.

“You are too sweet.” She beamed.

“Who the FUCK is this fucking douche bag?” A very athletic, tall guy shouted from a few feet away.

Merkel was rather impressed he could make himself loud enough to hear over the music. This had to be the ex. Pushing off the bar, he walked right up yo the guy and held out his hand. “Hey little buddy, I’m Bruce.” Merk said with a giant smile on his face. After a few beats, he put his hand down and put his arm around Lark. “Have you met my girlfriend Lark? It’s pretty serious.”

Glancing down at Lark, she looked like she was getting more confident with each passing second, and offered him a shy smile before glaring at her ex.

“WHAAATTTT?” He raged. Slamming his hand on the bar so hard, a few drinks fell over, he beat on the bar a couple times, before storming off, shoving everyone out of his way.

Turning around, he stormed back their way. Merk instinctively pushed Lark behind him, ready to defend them from this man.

Suddenly a tall, slender woman with a high ponytail and a suit on, appeared in front of him. with a few swift, sharp moves, she had the considerably larger male on the ground struggling to break the hold she had on him. “Keep moving asshole, and I’ll break your fucking arm.”

Before he could move to help, several guards were there and dragged the man away. The woman stood, brushing herself off and made a curious face at the girl behind him. He couldn’t see her response, but when he turned to look back at Lark, when he looked forward again the woman was gone.

That woman was a professional and not a normal bodyguard. She was highly trained, extremely efficient and stealthy. He had to assume that Lark had a security detail, at all times just out of sight.

“Are you ok? Wanna go some place quiet?” Lark asked in his ear.

Nodding his head, he let her lead him deeper into the club, down a hallway, past some more restrooms and then through a do not enter door. She had opened the door with a fingerprint scanner, making him wonder who exactly he was dealing with.

The room behind the door was large and they were the only ones inside. There were dark blue velvet sofas scattered about, facing a small stage, with small tables in the shape of various animals in front of them. The room had warm lighting, and was soundproofed like the office had been, and he wondered if her father was watching them right now.

Taking a seat on the nearest sofa, he leaned back stretching his arms out on each side and waited patiently for the girl to speak.

She bit her lip, and looked at him nervously, before sitting down next to him, but with a safe distance between them. Not liking that, he grabbed her waist and pulled her in close.

“So…” he prompted.

“So yep. That was my ex. I’m kinda shocked he even showed up or was let in.”

“And that woman?” He asked not being able to help himself.

She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion before her eyes lit up, “you mean Ann? That’s my room mate. She’s really great. She’s really good at fighting, she’s like a ninja.”

Chuckling at her little comment, he wondered if she thought he was that stupid. “You might be too cool for me.” He teased. “Secret rooms, VIP doors, ninjas and jealous exes? Whatever will I do?” He nipped at her lip, before kissing her gently.

Moaning wantonly, Lark wondered if her dad was watching. Making a decision, she got up and pulled him along behind her. “We are going to my house where I know no one is watching us.”

Playing dumb, Merk looked around. “I don’t think anyone else is in here.”

“Eyes in the sky.” She said as she pointed at a camera that was following them across the room.

“Who knew fairies were this exciting.”

Flashing him another one of her gorgeous smiles, she laughed, “you have no idea.”

“I might.”

[merakiui]

MERA, THAT NEW TREY FIC HAS TICKLED MY BRAIN SO GOOD LIKE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! ヾ(≧▽≦*)oヾ(≧▽≦*)oヾ(≧▽≦*)o

Surreal horror has always been one of my favorite types of horror because of the unsettling atmosphere and the reality-bending and you wrote it so well! You did amazing when you wrote the dream sequences in DRU, and now to actually read a whole dang fic with the theme?? With Trey of all people???? OTZ OTZ OTZ You've unlocked so many new possibilities with his Doodle Suit, truly the Gaslighting King of all time 👑👑👑

AND THE SYMBOLISM!!!!! please please please please ramble about them if you want-- I'm having so much fun rereading this fic again and again. The Violet Butterwort caught my attention cause isn't that a carnivorous plant? 👀👀 Trapping insects in its leaves like a certain grass-haired man??? 👀👀👀

Anyway, all I'm saying is, Trey is not the only chef around cause you definitely COOKED with this one 🔥🔥✨✨

( ≧ᗜ≦) AAAAA OMG OMG THANK YOUUUUUU!!!!!! ✨ ✨

I'm so happy it tickled your brain! I adore surreal horror in film and writing. There's just so much potential for the craziest of things to happen! Dream sequences or sequences that feel like dreams are some of my favorite things to write. The ones in DRU are also just as surreal. <3 I originally wanted to write this concept with Jade (Kalim was second on my list), but I decided upon Trey in the end because I think he suits the surreal horror vibes so well! Doodle Suit + the power of seamless gaslighting........ what a terrifying combination.

I wanted the story to feel obscure and almost like a trip with the imagery and descriptions. Sort of like the vibes in Alice in Wonderland. Just,,,,, utterly bonkers.

👀 you are very right about the butterwort hehehe!!! As for other symbolisms/details, these are the main ones in the story! I left out some of the symbolisms of various lines or words because that would make for such a long analysis of my own work. ^^;;;

It is under the cut due to length (forgive me)! A warning for mentions of sexual assault and drugging!

✧ the binary can be translated into messages. :)

✧ the feeling of itchiness - feeling as if you don't fit in your body after it's been violated. Feeling like something (trauma/blocked memories) is beneath your skin and you can't get it out no matter what you do. Also, itchy as in discomfort.

✧ grass - this is meant to be Trey. It's how Reader views him throughout the story.

✧ violet butterwort - as you noted, it's a carnivorous plant that traps insects! It's also a symbol of resilience and a common charm used to ward off supernatural evils.

✧ birthday cake with 20 candles - the plot is that Reader and Trey are/were in a relationship and on Reader's twentieth birthday Trey drugged their tea (chamomile) and had his way with them when they were half-conscious. Thus, Reader was never able to indulge in their birthday cake because Trey took it all. Cake can also be a metaphor for Reader's body.

✧ the line "it will take twenty more..." is in reference to the healing process and how it's going to take Reader time to heal from everything.

✧ xylophone chimes/broken glass - the juxtaposition of something sweet-sounding with something jarring.

✧ the white rabbit - a sense of innocence/comfort lost.

✧ "Soups are easy to eat. Easy to slip special sentiments in." - a reference to drugging.

✧ "Soup is what becomes of your brain when your body is too itchy." - disassociation during something traumatic (in this case, sexual assault).

✧ the hedge maze that never has a true exit - the feeling of being lost and trapped and never having a real escape.

✧ the grass bow around the white rabbit's neck - the obsessive and unhealthy hold Trey has on Reader. How he can't let them go.

✧ static - lots of noise and amidst the noise there's Trey, whose own voice is sometimes static and other times soothing enough to cut through the static.

✧ the sequence of "it's here and then there and then here again..." - an allusion to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland when he's giving Alice directions, but they're all over the place.

✧ every time the grass whispers or speaks - things Trey told Reader when he assaulted them.

✧ "In and out. Out and in. In and out. Out. Out. Out. Incessant itchiness. Get it out." - double meaning for breathing but also the act of sex (thrusting).

✧ the questioning of "that didn't just happen, did it?" - how Reader feels in the aftermath. But also just a general question in response to gaslighting. A consistent questioning of one's reality.

✧ Reader's association of the word "gross" with cake (especially birthday/confetti cake) - it ties into the above and also the part in the story about favorite foods and memories.

✧ teeth falling out - usually, in dream interpretation, this symbolizes a recent loss or mourning of something lost.

✧ hyperdontia - the horror of having a mouth and a voice but never being able to use it because it's so clogged with teeth, so no one will ever listen to or hear the things Reader desperately wants and needs to say.

✧ Frozen Charlotte dolls - Victorian era dolls that could float in the bath. They were also baked into cakes. They're called Frozen Charlottes based on a folk ballad called "Fair Charlotte," which tells the tale of a young girl (Charlotte) on her way to a ball with her lover (Charlie). It's dreadfully cold out, but she frets over the fact that wearing a coat will prevent everyone from seeing her pretty dress. She freezes to death on her way to the ball and arrives in her carriage as a frozen corpse. I think these dolls are fascinating and so cute, so I just wanted to compare teeth to Frozen Charlottes. The description of having a dozen tiny dolls stuck in your throat made for unpleasant imagery, so I wanted to write it!

✧ "A black rabbit blinks up at you with its milky-white eyes. Its nose twitches. Once. Twice. Thrice. A loud gust slithers through the field in which you currently observe, surrounded by decaying greenery and wilted wildflowers. They sprawl endlessly, clawing at the horizon beyond with broken fingers. You watch monochrome tones sway, dried petals flaking off like scabs against a battered, bloodless sky." - this is the same paragraph as seen in the beginning, only certain details have been changed. It's a hint at some sort of cycle that Reader's just only beginning to see. Idyllic beauty is no longer so blinding now that Reader sees what they didn't notice before.

[twisted-in-wonderland-jay]

Birthday from the boys (NRC)

Something to know for reading all of this is that I’m going to try my best to write platonic relationships that can be implied as romantic. Because some people may like a character but not feel romantic feelings towards them but still would like to know how they would act on their birthday.

Part two is the teachers and RSA

Riddle

He would prune the garden himself, regardless of the queen of hearts laws he would paint the roses your favorite color

He would lead you to the garden where the two of you would have tea and talk for hours

Eventually taking you around the garden

Ace

Out of all of these boys, he’s the one that’s most likely to forget your birthday

This man did not write it down

He overhears you talking with the other first years and them saying happy birthday. Then it finally clicks and he remembers that today is your birthday and he plays it off like he remembered

He’s not being mean in any way he just honestly doesn’t remember birthdays well

He talks with the first years while you’re not around and plans a little sleepover of sorts at your dorm

When you come back to your dorm for the night you find all of the first years there and they’re just kind of chilling in the lounge

They bring out a cake for you saying that they all baked and decorated it themselves but with the experience that the first years have it’s a strange-looking cake but it does it taste all that bad it’s just a lot of frosting and decorations because each one of them wanted to add a personal touch.

You guys have fun run around the dorm causing trouble

Then once it turns 12 you guys decide to settle down for the night and plot twist you don’t actually go to bed but instead play Mario kart till 3 AM

Deuce

He would try his hardest the whole day to make it the most perfect and kind of relaxing day ever. But utterly fail

In his eyes, he failed but it’s not that big of a deal

He’ll try to hold the door open for you or carry you around for fun and either, drop you, or trip

He feels really bad the whole day that he keeps messing everything up and it keeps getting less and less romantic

At the end of the day, you assure him that you had the best time and it was very fun. Which he doesn’t really believe because again he feels like he failed but he’s glad you had a good time.

He also stays the night hanging out with you until you fall asleep.

Trey

He would bake you a cake from scratch and decorated it with little flowers of your favorite color

He’s a really sweet guy so he would invite a couple of your close friends maybe three or four of them so that you’re not alone on your birthday and you also won’t have any leftover cake because you’ll eat it all.

A very nice and sweet get together messing around having fun

Cater

The morning would start very easy with the simple happy birthday and him taking you skateboarding you don’t have to go to a skating park or anything like that he’s just gonna teach you a couple of tricks.

But progressively throughout the day, it gets more centric and fun

At the end of the night can you both watch fireworks after you’ve just got done bungee jumping...

Leona

He’s not going to skip his morning to afternoon nap to tell you happy birthday even if he does care

A prince got to get his beauty sleep

When he wakes up he goes and attempts to find you and if he doesn’t he just goes man and gives up but if he does find you he tells you happy birthday and then walks off

Depending on your relationship with him he could be very distant and not caring but if you go and hang out with him during the afternoon when he’s not sleeping he’s pretty chill about it not really caring that you’re there if you have a negative disposition towards him he might care and tell you to leave.

Ruggie

He would take you shopping for the day

You might think he doesn’t have any money but those are jobs that he’s been working aren’t for nothing

He took all of the money he could for an entire month of work and saved it up spending it on your birthday

“What?! this is only part of my savings, not my entire Life funds” hehe...

Jack

Since magic mirrors make travel very easy he decides to take you back to his hometown

Not to meet his parents or anything but just to hang out because he talks about home a lot and wants to take you. What better time than your birthday

He takes you around his town and tells you about all of these places that he has memories that as well as putting you in the general direction of where he lives

He takes you to do all the fun things you can think of where he lives

When you both go back tonight NRC he quickly takes you by his dorm so he can grab something

He comes back with his gift to you which is a little cactus for you to take care of.

Azul

He wouldn’t have a birthday party for you

He would however have you meet him in the lounge

you two would have dinner together

Just the two of you...

you’ll take a walk through dorms halls just to talk in this moment you share alone

Jade

He would hang out with you if you wanted him to if you didn’t want him to he would tell you to go hang out with your friends since it is your special day

He would give you some sort of terrarium or if you’re not into those he would give you a rare plant for you to take care of as a gift

If you did want to hang out with him and you didn’t care where you went he’d invite you to a botanical garden for the day.

Whether you like it or not he’ll probably talk on and on about each plant and its properties in medicine and poison

Floyd

He would throw a great surprise birthday party for you

He’s got all of your favorite foods your favorite drink an awesome cake

And somehow he surprisingly kept this under wraps until the time of your birthday party

It would be in you’re dorm, and don’t worry afterward he would help you clean up the mess

When you walk in the door he has everyone holding confetti launchers... which he 100% is going to help you clean up after a lot of convincing

Kalim

This man knows how to throw parties and that’s terrifying

He would throw a massive party for you

He’s inviting all of NRC as long as they’re friends with you. Hell if you had friends in RSA he would invite them too.

He would have one of your other friends distract you for the day because it’s going to take the entire day to set up this banquet

He’s got everything a giant cake, fancy lights, a lounge area, a DJ, a chocolate fountain anything and everything that you would need for a successful party

Throughout the day if you try to go see him at all somebody’s always there to stop you and to distract you

You guys party for the whole night

Jamil

He would not throw a birthday party for you

As we all know he’s not really a people person

Chill about it passes you in the hall and says happy birthday

He offers to make you dinner but if you want to you can always decline

Although there is one thing you can’t decline and that’s the magic carpet ride he wants to take you on

He wouldn’t ask to borrow the magic carpet he’d just do it

Vil

He would throw a big banquet for you regardless of what you want

He’ll probably say something along the lines of “Fufufu do you think I have the time to do all this? someone else said it was a good idea and they did all the work it’s not as if I care or have time to.” But we all know he cares

He about all of Pomefiore if you have to invite any of your friends outside of the dorm he would be a little irritated and save fine I guess you can about your “other friends”

Epel

It would be the beginning of the day and he’s down the hall in spots you. He would immediately not yell your name but scream it and run to you yelling happy birthday. It would make quite the scene but he wants everyone to know that it’s your birthday and also Vil would probably hate the fact that he just screamed.

He asks you if you’re ready to “rock and roll” (for anyone who doesn’t know this is just a saying to ask if you’re “ready to go”)

He’s taking you on a trip to go do a bunch of fun stuff in town and to probably prank some people because why not.

Rook

Wouldn’t throw you a party instead he would probably stop by your dorm and announce his presence and sing you happy birthday.

Bring you some sort of small gift

He would tell you that he will follow you the whole day and you can do whatever you want with him

Rook is rather chill compared to some of the other boys. However, if you want him to he can take over because he’s kept note of what you like to do so he would take you to do things that you like.

Idia

He wouldn’t do anything special for your birthday

In fact, he’d probably have Ortho buy three slices of cake only, for the three of you

Throughout the day he doesn’t say anything about it

When you go to his dorm later he tells you happy birthday you guys eat the cake together

He kind of half-heartedly apologizes for not being able to throw a proper birthday party for you and that he’s sorry but his anxiety kind of got the best of him.

To make up for it he offers to play games with him until you want to leave

Before you leave he gives you a flower. An Asphodel The primary symbolic meaning of the Asphodel flower is peace after death and the afterlife, but this is not the meaning that is implied it is a white flower which generally symbolizes purity also it��s a symbolic flower of Hades

Ortho

He throws a big party at your dorm (if your dorm is Ignihyde he’d take it somewhere else), not ignihyde. Because the students are quite antisocial and it would be very disruptive.

He would invite all of your best friends

It is the cutest surprise birthday party ever

There would be fireworks, trick candles, and so many fun childish games that you would play at a party

Malleus

Malleus is somewhere in between depending on what you want so no this won’t be a surprise birthday

He’ll either throw a big party for you in the diasomnia dorm inviting basically everyone from all the dorms as long as they know you

Or if you’re more on the reserve side or you want a smaller party he’ll have a couple of your close friends join him and going to your dorm and having a get-together little party for you.

If you want to though he is 100% okay with just you and him hanging out for the day

Sebek

This man is crazy

He wrote down your birthday and planned weeks in advance

He would write down everything that you like in hopes that when it becomes your birthday he has everything that you could ever want on that day

He tries his best to bake a cake but then realizes that he’s actually really good at it

On the day of you’d think that he be really loud and excitable and overbearing but in fact, he is the complete opposite being very considerate and not quiet but an inside voice because he doesn’t want to stress you out or seem disingenuous.

He doesn’t host a party for all of your friends it’s just you and him. The reason for this and putting in so much effort just for you and him is because he’s rather shy when it comes to not just romantic feelings but platonic feelings as well not showing people how he really feels especially when it’s around other people as well. So it’s kind of to make himself feel more comfortable as well

Silver

Silver isn’t the party kind of person so he’ll probably get you a cute little gift like a bouquet of roses specifically white roses to symbolize purity or maybe a charm bracelet.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to throw you a birthday party it’s just that he doesn’t know how to go about it since the only parties ever really celebrated is his own because of Lilia when he was younger.

If you say something about not having a party or a cake he’ll get a little sad thinking that he might have failed you.

He’ll probably just follow you around doing whatever you wanted for the day as long as you didn’t have class.

He would also have a cute little lunch with you of food that he made before. You guys would probably go sit in the courtyard and eat next to a tree. Be careful though he may or may not fall asleep...

You might have to wake you’re sleeping, Prince

Lilia

He’ll invite you to a concert and then right as the performance is about to start he’ll say something like he has to use the restroom or he’s going to get a drink and he’ll be right back he promises.

As the performance is starting and the lights turn off you start to worry that he’s going to miss it

And then as the stage lights turn on and you see him on stage getting ready to perform

He’s going to perform an entire album that he and the light music club came up with for you as a birthday gift

Knowing him at the end of the performance he’s probably going to get off the stage to go and kiss you (Not necessarily on the lips if it’s a platonic relationship it’s probably on the forehead with the cheek as a sign of affection no love).

[bakujho]

A rant about some shady eels...

Let’s talk about Floyd and Jade… like really talk about them. I see a lot of things that paint them in a very different light than they’re presented in canon and I’m not sure if their character is just being missed all together, or it’s been collectively decided by the fandom that they’re too shady so lets all pretend they’re cute, kind, and cuddly… or something. 

Cause reading and rereading the cards really drives home the disconnect between the majority of fandom eels vs canon eels and it drives me fucking nuts. So where do I start with this? I guess we can start at the ‘please actually read the stories that have the eels in them’. Pretty low bar, but here we are. Read the main story. Then the event stories. Then every card story they’re present in. Twstarchives has a list of who appears in what story and that makes it REAL easy. If y’all have read the stories and still wanna disagree with what I’ve got to say, I’m happy to discuss. Also, If you’re cool with OOC eels, feel free to continue on and enjoy the content how you will.

I think imma have to start with Jade cause I see SO much of him being the perfect butler and gentleman, which of course he is, but it’s always missing the underlying cunning. Jade isn’t a docile little slave following orders because he enjoys it. He likes people watching, and doesn’t like when people pay attention to him. How better to go about unnoticed than to stand beside someone like Floyd or Azul who draw attention to themselves simply by existing? He’s almost always planning *something* it’s just not always clear what, and has made it clear that people are easier to manipulate if they trust you.

Jade likes chaos just as much as Floyd does, he’s just better at maintaining his composure about it, which makes him a better architect for it. The poise and grace is an act in order to completely charm and manipulate. That’s why him and Floyd are a team, they’re like the good cop bad cop, both out to get you, but have very different parts to play. His voice lines make it really obvious that he’s got a running interest in causing problems too, “...I would never say that. Yes, ‘I’ wouldn’t”, “Whenever I see someone heavily concentrating on something, I get the urge to start talking to them...”, “...I simply enjoy anything that entertains me” etc etc Him and Floyd both enjoy playing with people, and watching them struggle. 

Let’s talk some Jade facts:

Observant as fuck

Manages to pull one over on Vil, who KNOWS Jade is up to something, but still isn’t able to figure out what.

Tells off Floyd for threatening the students too early...and reminds him that they’re much easier to manipulate if they trust you first. 

Has dirt on LITERALLY every student in the school

Has ZERO problems exploiting Floyd for Azul to fulfil his contract (contrary to the ‘they are inseparable and never fight’ line of thought)

Blackmail is an eels best friend. 

Happily dishes out backhanded compliments

Utterly willing (and probably very ready) to completely destroy someone if he felt the need to.

Now, Floyd is a bit harder to get a read on because his moods flip so easily, but I always feel like he’s portrayed as too childish, too stupid, and too passive. One of our first introductions to Floyd in his SSR is him telling Jade threatening people with words takes too long and it’s SO MUCH EASIER TO JUST BREAK THEIR BONES. Gentle reminder, that literally every single instance Floyd has said he’s going to squeeze someone it has been a THREAT. It’s been shown MULTIPLE times that the other students are terrified of getting on his bad side, he picks fights with people constantly, and he literally harasses people for fun . Floyd is “the muscle” of Octavinelle, and doesn’t bother with all the planning and scheming like Jade, he’s much quicker to violence and clearly loves the thrill of the chase. He’s going to have fun, and it’s very likely at your expense. 

Floyd says on multiple occasions that he does whatever he thinks is fun, and no one can control his moods. Azul and Jade both get annoyed when he starts being a brat, but still can’t control him to do anything that he doesn’t want to do when he’s in said mood. He’s shown multiple times to simply do what he thinks is fun, fuck everyone else and what they’re trying to do. Who cares if basketball club doesn’t mean dodgeball club, he wants to play dodgeball, so get out of the way or you’re getting hit with a ball. The end. There’s no controlling what he does, and he’s not likely to sit and play nice with anyone for hours on end because that’s BORING. All he does he does because it’s fun, and the second he gets bored of something he’s off to do the next thing. He doesn’t like following orders and has been shown getting hostile after being told what to do by “humans”, and doesn’t even follow directions in classes because it’s boring. I can literally not stress enough that Floyd does what Floyd wants, fuck everyone else. 

So here’s some quick floyd facts:

will do what he wants, every single time.If it’s boring, he’s done with it.

is brilliant… if he feels like putting in the work

can be kind...if he’s in the right mood

enjoys playing with people and watching them struggle

doles out threats like they’re candy

has said Azul looks delicious in Octopus form twice (reminder both him and Jades favourite food is octopus)

Okay, so we’ve determined that both the twins like to play with people in their own ways, but what about their relationship with each other and Azul? They’re obviously very close, but not without issues. Floyds mood swings still frustrate Jade and Jade’s compliments often come off as antagonistic to Floyd to the point he picks fights with him. It says that they chose to live together, and are both glad of it cause they each keep things interesting...Which is where their relationship with Azul comes in. They say they knew OF him as children, but didn’t really take an interest in him until middle school and decided to stick with him because he was interesting. Floyd says a  lot of things to do with the Coral Sea is boring, so I suspect an ambitious octopus was intriguing enough for the both of them to force their friendship on him.

...That being said, Jade doesn’t 100% trust Azul. He says he’d never be willing to give him his unique magic for any reason, cause Azul could make up any excuse to get his hands on it (Floyd of course, is much more casual with his magic and has said he could live without it so doesn’t care as much). The twins mention that they continue to stick around with him because he’s entertaining, and the second he’s no longer interesting they’ll challenge him/drop him, whichever is more beneficial to them at the time. So while the three of them seem inseparable, it really is the duo+Azul on the side, and while I personally can’t see them dropping him anytime soon, the threat is still there. (Of course, all of this could be taken as jest as well, so this is just my interpretation here) 

To tie it up, I’ll leave you with the voice lines from their duo magic, in case you still thought they weren’t shady murder eels.

Floyd: “Ahahaha! We’re gonna do ‘em in, Jade~!”

Jade: “As long as you’re having fun, Floyd.”

And

Jade: May I ask that you entrust me with this today, Floyd?

Floyd: ‘Kay~ Jade. What’re you going to do~?

[out-of-this-dimension]

Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others.  We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox.  Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better.  Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all.  Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually.  However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular.  Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive.  I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64.  I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return.  I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies. 

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story.  I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars.  Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky.  Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it.  An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.  

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault.  Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure.  Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault.  This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids.  We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma.  We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma.  That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him.  While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels.  If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels.  Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are.  But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.  

- Revise the scene with Tricky.  I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done.  And why is he suddenly king now?  Did his parents die?  He seems not affected by this at all?  Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it.  Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big.  As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out.  Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously.  And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved.  I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again.  I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive.  This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids.  I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that.  Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask?  I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”.  Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest?  I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off?  They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back.  Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing.  Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning?  Or maybe back in Katina?  And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force.  It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival.  Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen?  I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission.  I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.  

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals.  Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies.  While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well.  While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray.  Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself”.  As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion.  Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there).  But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this.  He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids.  Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo?  Are they safe somewhere else?  Where do they go?  How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs.  A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me.  While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out.  I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be.  “But why, Amalia?  Why are you disappointed by that?”  1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes.  2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy.  And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures.  Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later?  Where were the Krazoa in all of this?  Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers?  It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much.  Which I mean, sure.  Family, kiddo game.  I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant.  As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins.  Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations.  Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast.  Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened).  I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it.  I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria.  Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault.  Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible.  It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it.  Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion.  Why?  Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level.  Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team.  Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria.  The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short.  It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware.  I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place?  I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic?  Also where is my revised Adventures music?  Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t? 

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign.  I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints.  I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign.  Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels.  Self-explanatory.  Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.  

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points.  I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers.  It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good.  Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly.  I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it.  And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault.  But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot.  For variety’s sake.  

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind.  So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future.  I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading!  Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s?  Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

[twstedbeauty]

hcs of the twins, jamil, jack, rook finding out their s/o is ticklish.

oHOHOOOH BUCKLE UP

Disclaimer: This is going off the assumption that their s/o enjoys being tickled. Our bois are respectful and would never touch their love without permission~

Leech Twins

hAHAHAHAHA AHHH....you have a death wish, my friend. 

I said it in the last post, these two do not have the word ‘mercy’ in their vocabulary. 

These two used to torment Azul growing up. Being that he was so squishy and sensitive, he was a prime target for tickling. And these two would tickle him to the point of tears which then made him ink himself. 

So all I’m saying is that if you tell these two that you like being tickled, you better get ready to become their own personal tickle toy. 

They will HAPPILY indulge you whenever you want them to, but keep this in mind: SAFEWORD. PLEASE ESTABLISH A SAFEWORD SO THAT THEY WILL STOP WHEN YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO STOP. PLEASE, I’M BEGGING YOU. YOU’LL THANK ME LATER.

Their preferred method of tickling is ganging up on you: one holding you down while the other tickles you and then they switch after a while. 

But don’t think for a second that they are predictable. In fact, the two of them have a distinct difference in tickling. 

Jade opts for much more light slow tickling, but it’s in the places that he knows you are most ticklish. He just leans over you and smiles that polite smile as you scream with laughter. 

He doesn’t say much while he tickles you, other than to remark how red your face is or how sensitive you are. That polite smile will slowly grow into that toothy one he displays when something amuses him. 

Floyd, on the other hand, prefers to tickle hard and fast, constantly moving his hands all over your body, switching up so quick that you can barely keep up. 

He’s laughing the whole time he tickles you, cooing about how cute you are and tickle talking you to no end. 

Tickling you when they are bored will become their new favorite past time. They have no shame. They will come up and ask if they can tickle you. 

You opened a dangerous can of worms revealing this little secret of yours to them. All I can say is good luck.

Jamil Viper

Just like with Riddle, I would like to say that tickling would be kind of lost on him, except that I remember that he grew up with Kalim. So it absolutely would not have. 

He used to get into tickle fights all the time with Kalim (who would always start them) and he would always win because Kalim STILL hasn’t figured out where Jamil is most ticklish. 

Jamil not really fond of being tickled and he’s kind of neutral on tickling itself. But he won’t say no if you ask him. 

He thinks it’s kind of cute and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t some kind of a power kick out watching you beg and squirm underneath him. 

He’ll make you tell him how much it tickles though. He’ll make you admit you like being tickled because that used to drive Kalim insane as kids.

What amuses him the most is wondering if you’ll have the courage to walk up and ask him to be tickled. He’ll get a slight smirk on his face if you come into where he’s working with your arms crossed and that shy flustered expression on your face. It’s adorable to him. 

From one to ten on the sadistic scale, I’d say Jamil is about a four or a five. He can be pretty cheap with the tickles, but for the most part, he’s doing this more for you than he is for him. 

All in all, Jamil is pretty mild. Not too easy but not too rough either. 

Jack Howl

Oh my god this poor baby jakdljalskdjas

Now mind you, Jack is familiar with the act of tickling. He has two younger siblings that he got into tickle fights with plenty of times. He has earned his place as a renowned tickle monster. 

But when you tell him that you like being tickled, this poor boy’s face is gonna get VERY blushy. 

He’ll warm up to it a lot faster than you think however. 

You’ll come to find out that Jack loves to chase you around with the intent to tickle you. He’ll even get into character! Letting out some menacing sounding growls just to further excite you and spur you on to run and hide from him. 

I firmly believe that Jack puts on this prickly exterior around others, but when he’s alone with someone he cares about, he’s the biggest softie and sweetest boi. So he wouldn’t be afraid to play around and let loose with you~

When it comes to the actual tickling, I feel like Jack can be a little on the tortuous side but he’s careful. He’s pretty quiet throughout the process, just grinning down at you and commenting on how you could escape if you just push him off. 

And you can damn well except the softest and warmest of cuddles afterward!!

Rook Hunt

:) 

:’))))

DO YOU WANT TO DIE???

MY FRIEND, YOU KNOW HOW THIS MAN OPERATES. I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE FOR YOU ONCE HE FINDS OUT. 

You remember that personal story with him and Ruggie? YEAH, THAT’S GONNA BE YOU BUT ALL THE TIME. 

Either way, when he does find out about this, he’s thrilled! He thinks that its adorable that you like being tickled and will happily oblige. 

One of the things that he’ll no doubt enjoy is sneaking up behind you and tickling you out of nowhere, trilling about how adorable you are and how beautiful your laughs are in French.

Speaking of being chased around, you KNOW Rook would enjoy a game of cat and mouse that ends with him tickling you. It’s both exciting and terrifying because he’s practically silent when he’s stalking his prey and you’ll never know where he is. 

The only thing that will give you any indication is the deep chuckles you’ll hear behind you. 

On tickling itself, I have a feeling that Rook is like Jade in the fact that he’s smiling the whole time and complimenting you while he utterly wrecks you. 

You know that very sly, scary looking smile he gets in game sometimes? He’s wearing that the whole time while he’s cooing about how you can’t escape from him and how helpless you are. It’s utter torture. 

But given how adorable you are and the way you just shriek and laugh without restraint, he can’t help but laugh with you and break character. You’re just so cute!

So all in all, Rook is a sweet but very dedicated ler. Watch yourself. Maybe go hide behind Vil’s throne if you see him eyeing you with mischief in mind.

[ravenpureforever]

Day 4: AU/Free Prompt

@takaritsuweek continues and has given me far too much power, so enjoy this snippet for yet another larger au I’m working on! This called the hot neighbor au and it’s basically if what if when Ritsu moved in, he & Takano met? And now we have this mess.

Also on my ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32949100/chapters/81955159#workskin

...

At this point in his life, Ritsu has accepted that the universe loves to mess with him. He is fate’s favorite punching bag; from his first love toying with his pure, innocent feelings to people whispering that he doesn’t even try at his job. As if trying to wrangle Usami Akihiko was easy when he’s had to break down the door to his apartment multiple times because the asshole was always trying to avoid his deadlines. 

But this really takes the cake. 

All things considered, Ritsu got along fairly well with his new neighbor, Takano. The man was also an editor, albeit for shoujo manga, and understood the working hours could be strange and what it’s like to sometimes be drowning in work.

Though shoujo seemed far more terrifying than literature could ever hope to be, no matter what Usami attempted to do. 

Takano wasn’t noisy. He helped Ritsu get adjusted to the workings of his new apartments, and he occasionally invited Ritsu over for a drink. He has become in many ways over the past two months, almost a friend to Ritsu. 

He was also achingly, devastatingly handsome to the point it should be completely illegal, and Ritsu isn’t sure how he’s even able to hold a proper conversation with him some days

If it weren't for the fact that Ritsu was too jaded to ever love again, he’d probably have fallen for Takano by this point, as Takano seemingly slipped into being a good part of Ritsu’s life without him even noticing 

But then Ritsu was invited to come over and drink with Takano and his friend Yokazawa. And he just had to go and get drunk and start sobbing about Saga-senpai, and how his heart was completely and utterly broken at the tender age of fifteen and that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to love ever again. 

And when he woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, wishing for the sweet release of death as a result of the pain of his head and the humiliation that he dumped his relationship problems on them and proceeded to pass out for eight hours.

He was going to have to buy them both a fruit basket or something as an apology if he ever wanted to be able to look either of them in the eye again. 

He’d somehow ended up in his own bedroom, so Takano must’ve been kind enough to bring him home after last night. 

Ritsu stumbles into the kitchen to get some coffee and painkillers, only to find Takano there making breakfast. 

Before Ritsu can get a word in, to apologize, to ask him why he’s here, to try and process what on earth could possibly be going on, Takano turns to him and gives RItsu a grin that sends shivers down his spine, in either fear or arousal. 

“I’m going to make you fall in love with me again.” Takano proclaims. 

“What?” Ritsu croaks out, confused. 

“Back in high school, my last name was Saga, and you are going to confess your love to me again.” Takano tells him, and Ritsu feels his body go cold. 

He thinks that he is perfectly justified in fainting. 

…

Masamune feels a rush of shock when he learns that his cute neighbor Ritsu is his Ritsu. Oda Ritsu is Onodera Ritsu and the sweet, shy underclassmen that broke his heart apparently thought that Masamune didn’t love him, and it was just a stupid miscommunication that caused all this heartbreak and pain. 

This must be fate giving him a second chance to make things right. 

He and Ritsu were never able to get over each other, and this is their chance to try again and get a happy ending. 

For the first time in a while, Masamune feels something akin to hope. 

He won’t lose Ritsu again. 

He won’t.