#Rise of the Third Power
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Some indie game recommendations from ones I’ve played or know enough about them to suggest them to others(mostly in no particular order), Part 8.
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9
LiEat
Rise of the Third Power
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
Indivisible
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass
Eastern Exorcist
Everhood
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User(JJBA fan game)
Gravity Circuit
Rusted Moss
Laika: Aged Through Blood
Bramble: The Mountain King
Refind Self: The Personality Test Game
nameless(fan game for Hololive Vtuber Nanashi Mumei)
M.A.S.S. Builder
NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin and it's sequel NAIRI: Rising Tide.
Fatal Twelve
Fading Afternoon
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa
Killer Frequency
Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator
Full Void
ENIGMA:
Seven Days
Siren's Call
Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony
Little Goody Two Shoes
Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum
Battle Princess Madelyn
When the Past Was Around
#Indie Games#long post#LiEat#Rise of the Third Power#Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin#Indivisible#Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass#Eastern Exorcist#Everhood#JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User#JoJo's Bizarre Adventure#Gravity Circuit#Rusted Moss#Laika: Aged Through Blood#Bramble: The Mountain King#Refind Self#nameless#M.A.S.S. Builder#Nairi#Fatal Twelve#Fading Afternoon#The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa#Killer Frequency#Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator#Full Void#Little Goody Two Shoes#Enigma:#Seven Days VN#Pocket Mirror#Siren's Call
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I wrote a collection of brief reviews based on how well these 15 games managed to distract me from looming existential medical trauma. Check it out! I even included a patented scoring system (your distraction results may vary).
Games included are:
Dave the Diver
The Cowabunga Collection
Rise of the Third Power
Cult of the Lamb
Secret of Mana
Teardown
Dredge
Streets of Rage 4
Mother Russia Bleeds
Killing Floor 2
Ruiner
Idol Manager
Final Fantasy V
Dead Ahead
Elden Ring
#game review#dave the diver#rise of the third power#cult of the lamb#teardown#dredge#mother russia bleeds#ruiner#idol manager#elden ring
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BEHOLD MY R3P HANDCANONS
*ahem*. I had some thoughts about Reyna and various Shield Incidents and well one thing led to another, and I ended up drawing out some ideas for some of the other spellcasters and how their magic might affect them!
(Mild Spoilers for Rise of the Third Power under the cut, I am on my hands and knees begging y'all to play this game and trying to lure you in with pretty pictures)
Reyna was the one who got me on this train of thought- thinking about the constant combat a JRPG demands and how using that much magic might leave marks. First I imagined that her hands might end up irritated from the strain, and then I got to thinking about her backstory and how she's motivated by having witnessed firsthand all the dead a war leaves behind, and not having been able to heal them- and then I remembered the two times in-game she overextends herself shielding the entire party, first three people from a firing squad, then AN ENTIRE FUCKING SHIP FROM CANNON FIRE AND NEARLY DIES ABOUT IT. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if that left scars? If even healing, protection, support- even that gentle magic can hurt you, if you overuse it? If the sigil you cast like a warm light in the dark is still hot? If your hands come away red and raw? If you reach for so much power at once that the holy light burns you from the inside out and your palms are left with Shield burned into them like a brand?
And I decided to make it so.
...uh...Terribly sorry to report Reyna was as interesting and conceptual as it got lol. From here on, I'm having fun.
Aden gets the second most noticeable mark, but it isn't really a scar. Which is kind of funny, that the priestess gets magic burns but the warlock suffers 0 real side effects, but I mean... Aden's a lichspawn, so I'd argue he's built to handle it. Heartier Magical Immune System. So this is less a magical injury from overuse and more a magical stain from consistent use, y'know?
Anyway, this is Aden's Drain spell, which has the really cool visual effect of dragging blood out of enemies into this green vortex orb. I was picturing most magic being generated inside the body and then sort of following the nerves like electricity along wire, and then being expelled either through the hands or an object. But with a lifesteal spell I wanted to emphasize pulling something out of the world around you and into the body. So this stain travels from the tips of the fingers inward, and sticks to the bones as it does. Because, you know, creepy black magic <3.
I'm so sorry Rashim I have nothing interesting for you. These last two are really just me wanting to illustrate spell effects slash complete the set lol. Rashim's spells are also just..mostly basic light flashes so there isn't much to pull from. So this is just the color scheme of Sunray, though it ended up a lot pinker than I meant to now that I look at it again. whoops I imagine the aftereffects for Rashim (and Gage) are pretty temporary since they got that Military Discipline and aren't usually fighting alone. They'd linger for maybe a couple hours after a tough fight, like afterimages. So, I just added a bit of clinging red/pink, like when you shine a flashlight against your hand and it glows through the skin. Just a little lingering light and warmth peeking out.
Okay final one! Gage! Here I really focused in on the "magic travels along the nerves" idea, since we are in fact dealing with literal electricity. Very basic, lightning along the veins and then exiting at the fingertips- or more often into his spear and then out through that. The aftereffect is REALLY subtle, also because I get the vibe he doesn't use his storm magic all that often. The spear probably suffices most of the time- though I did give him some callouses for that reason. He is still a warrior prince! So yeah, the magic residue is basically just stray sparks. Clinging static electricity, and probably fades really quickly. He'd ABSOLUTELY give you a static zap if you touched him before it did lmao so actually he's just one of these
new headcanon for that weather sphere from the Ardo Rita questline. It's Just This Thing.
#rise of the third power#r3p#rottp#my art#break draws#r3p fanart#reyna bertrand#commander rashim#gage noraskov#r3p aden#worldbuilding#magic headcanons#jesus CHRIST it's 4am#what the fuck when did that happen#i WILL be making and posting more fanart for this fucking game though. that is a THREAT#apparently you title a piece of media “rise of the (blank)” and it's just like crack to me personally
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God bless you yaoi warriors naoto shirogane and kanji tatsumi
#world's most powerful gay ship. autism 4 autism. buff guy with a heart of gold. twink who could kill a bitch. transgenderism. bisexuality#they really do have it all!#they even have their own third wheel (rise (she's just there for the funsies))#p4#kannao
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Me vibing in the Tmnt and Lupin III fandoms: Hahaha how cool! I love doing little switcheroos!!!!! Now I can finally relax-
Music playing in the distance ominously
Me: Huh? What's this? Music?
Music coming closer and a bit muffled: -pa-pa.
Me breaking into a cold sweat: Wait a minute, I know that tune.......oH NO-
Music blaring suddenly: NE NE PAPA-!
Me screaming as I'm dragged into hell: NO, NO NOT AGAIN PLEASE LITTLE ITALIAN NATION MAN LET ME GOO NOOOOOOO-
#oli talks#ooc#muns ramblings#mindless ramblings of a madman#shitpost#extreme shitpost#teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise of the tmnt#tmnt#rottmnt#lupin the third#lupin the 3rd#lupin iii#lupin the iii#hetalia#axis powers hetalia#hetalia world stars#hetalia world series#aph#hws#Here I am back in hell once again send help#I knew that my sins would come to get me again eventually omfg
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Read this behemoth twice and have begun to systemise my notes for future reference.
In today’s day and age this should be on everybody’s desk at home.
#The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich#read it because you absolutely must#National Socialism and its consequences#How Nazis came to power by playing shabby tricks on the poor#A similar process is described in the novel It Can’t Happen Here by Lewis Sinclair in which a fascist dictatorship overtakes America#The so-called Forgotten Men (lower class laborers) overthrew democracy to avenge their misfortunes goaded on by a shrewd dictator wannabe#William L Shirer
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USAmerican here. So we have something called the electoral college in the US. Which means people's votes aren't counted individually. Depending on what state you live in, your vote is worth more than other people. States like Nebraska and Wyoming have more votes than states like Maryland or Vermont despite having a far lower population. Those states have conservative majorities and those conservative majorities have more votes than people in liberal (not even leftist) areas. So elections aren't about convincing people in your state to vote, it's about convincing guys in Nebraska. Those guys in Nebraska want a conservative candidate. So the only hope of getting them to not vote conservative is for them to vote for a conservative democrat. Until this system changes, it is not possible to get a liberal much less leftist candidate in major elections. The elections literally do not matter unless you live in a few specific states.
Okay I had heard so much about electoral colleges and gerrymandering but it was never explained this plainly, thanks for sharing that! I thought it's referring to constituencies as usually happens with general elections. So there's the electoral college which means every vote isn't equal, and then the vote from there is just the "popular vote" and isn't the final deciding factor? So it's rigged twice over to not give much of a choice to the citizens, I had been wondering about those write-in votes all this time, and wondering that if voting really is the topmost important thing to get people to do then why aren't more people putting forward Bernie as a big candidate when they get people to vote instead of insisting they vote democratic, but it's making more sense now. And so is everyone who rightly said you can't keep reforming such a system it actually needs to be gone.
#us politics#asks#anons#like sorry if it's none of my business and all that but us stuff affects our nations too#authoritarian sentiments over there were reflected in many other nations also seeing a rise in fascist ideology#and that limiting of the country's voting power to two options sounds like an oligarchy in all but name#ik people will say anyone saying 'you can't vote your way out of this' is a psyop but like. the point is this isn't about local government#you can't keep thinking that you're voting for the right party and that's all well done now when you never could have#voted third party even if you wanted because of how the elections work#you aren't living in a democracy#and this is making me nervous now because it's so normalised as a system even though it's clearly not a democracy?#because with the way OUR government is I can completely imagine the system slowly changing to become something like that#and it being justified as 'that's what it's like in America too'
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Something really amazing happened in France, and I think it'd help us in the US to learn about it. Forgive the long read, but I think this is genuinely great both because of what happened and how.
So as some of you might have seen, in a decision historians will debate for years (mostly to figure out just WTF he was thinking, even though he is alive right now and can be asked), the French president, Emmanuel Macron, currently in power and THREE YEARS before the scheduled election, seeing the far right rise in popularity decided to dissolve the assembly and hold snap elections.
577 seats were up for grabs. Remember that number. Since half of that is 288.5, 289 seats are needed for a majority.
The first round happened last week and boy, was it bad. The far right made HUGE gains. It won or was in first place in so many races. And Macron's party ended up third!
Overall, this is how things ended up after the first round:
Far right bloc: 33%
Left bloc: 28%
Macron's centrist party: 20%
Conservatives: 7%
The way the French system works is that if a candidate gets over 50% of the vote, they win outright, and some of the far right did manage that. But, many races went to a runoff.
Immediate projections after were that the far right bloc might win anywhere from 240 to 310 seats, a catastrophe.
A shameful swing to the far right leading to the first time they'll be in power since the 1940s? Yes, but maybe not??
This is where things get interesting.
Unusually, a lot of these runoffs are 3-way, instead of a simpler 2-way choice. And in pretty much every case, that helps the far right.
So on June 30th, the night of the first round, this is how things went down:
Immediately, the left parties put out the call: anywhere they were third, they withdrew and their voters would go over to whoever was running against the far right candidate. Their goal: form a "republican front" to block the far right. The far right cannot get 289 seats.
Macron's bloc was not so...motivated. Different people put out different instructions: in some places, if they were third, they should drop out, but only to help the center left, not far left, in other places, see how far you are, only then drop out, that kind of thing.
The conservative party simply said they won't drop out and won't give their voters instruction either way in races they're not involved in.
Late night developments:
More people in Macron's party are now beginning to realize the situation and starting to coalesce around whichever candidate can beat the far right one. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, from Macron's party, says clearly the priority is to block the far right. BUT, some Macron spokespeople on TV say they'll form a coalition only with the center left and conservatives, splitting the left bloc if needed. Some individual Macronists still saying they won't drop out, even if there's no hope of winning.
Lol.
So, now July 1st:
Only half so far. In one race, where the sister of Marine Le Pen (the far right leader and the face of their movement) was leading, the third place Macronist refused to bow out.
Excellent quote from another Macronist:
Perhaps realizing the same thing, that Macronist in the race against the Le Pen sister now drops out.
In some places, third place Macronists are dropping out DESPITE Macron bewilderingly telling them NOT to?
Halfway through the day:
Of the 311 3-way or 4-way runoffs, the number is down to 135 because of these candidates dropping out: 121 Left, 56 Macronists, 1 conservative.
Oh, there was this, in case people had any doubts about how terrible the far right are:
And to show the selflessness of the left:
July 2:
The deadline to decide if they want to stay in a runoff is today.
A dozen new third place Macronists who said they'd stay in have now dropped out. One got a call from both the PM Attal AND Macron to drop out, signalling the dawning understanding of the importance of this moment.
Even some conservative party members are now backing the left candidate who faces the far right.
A Macronist who had 30.55% of the vote in the first round and came in third to the far right's 33.11% and left's 32.73% and who would have been tempted to stay has dropped out.
The deadline to stay in or not has now passed.
Look at these far right shenanigans!
Macron still being a freaking loser:
July 3rd:
In the end, of the 311 3- or 4-way run offs, only 91 left. Some polls come out that have the far right getting between 190 to 220 seats.
July 4th:
New polls say the balance of the voting itself isn't transferring between the left and center and predictions have risen for the far right, now predicted to get between 210 and 250 seats.
July 5th:
New polls again, left voters now predicted to do better transferring vote to the centrists, decreasing the far right projections again.
However, scandalous reporting emerges: while Attal was trying to fend off the far right, Macron was not only NOT taking the far right seriously, he was undermining efforts to defeat them. His team shrugged off the first round results and celebrated a BIRTHDAY as the results were still coming in?
July 6th:
A few runoffs happened yesterday, nothing much unexpected, some left and center wins.
July 7th:
The day of reckoning. At this point, the expectations are that the far right won't come close to that 289 number but could still easily have the most seats.
GUYS.
It's over and the left are in the lead!
A LOT of cases where a leftist or centrist was 2nd in the first round and now won.
Amazing:
SO many lessons to take from this.
First, you have to vote! You have to. You can't do anything without voting. The freaking French, who'll protest for anything, are showing up to vote. If you're trying to achieve any kind of result and it's not going to happen by January 2025, you have to vote now.
But just as importantly, the left and center (and even conservative) parties made very key decisions. They were all lucky that Attal, who Macron chose, saw the big picture, bigger than indeed Macron could. A stupid selfish centrist leader could have still ruined everything if it were up to him.
TL;DR: After a disastrous first round in the national French elections where the far right was on the cusp of taking power, the left and center formed a strong coalition and through the power of voting and unity, overcame the far right AND their selfish centrist president to win.
#french elections#us elections#emmanuel macron#marine le pen#gabriel attal#attal really did the thing for them#french politics
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The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.
So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?
Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.
Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.
Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.
Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.
Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.
Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.
Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?
Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.
Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.
Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.
“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).
But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)
And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)
If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?
And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.
#politics#us politics#american politics#us election#election 2024#2024 elections#2024 election#us elections#2024 presidential election#project 2025#agenda 47#antifascism#please vote#your vote matters#voting matters#harris#kamala#kamala harris#my posts
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I was going to oc-fy my ffxiv characters bcs of the cool plot bunny i had but then i realized that instead of having to create a whole ass new fantasy world i could really easily fit them in Tanza with some changes and would fix my Lack of a choesive Second Arc. The problem now is that this new cool idea is now smack dab in the middle of my two unwrittenable uncohesive overcomplicated story arcs and i cant do shit aboit it
#when u just wanted to write about a girl being haunted by the ghost of the person who doomed the world#but now theres so much context around it#PERHAPS i could still work around and make it a single installment#without the first Act context or the third Act resolution#The first act the fall of the old gods#the second is an interlude the rise of the new god and Paradise and the damnation of the Earth#and the thrid is the fall of the new gods (again)#the main theme is that the powerful forces that control the world need to be torn down so man can finally break from the Wheel of time#achieved only trought Over the top Anime Battles
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The economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever. These are all financial indicators. But the crisis strikes deeper at the means of production of the Israeli economy. Israel’s power grid, which has largely switched to natural gas, still depends on coal to supply demand. The biggest supplier of coal to Israel is Colombia, which announced that it would suspend coal shipments to Israel as long as the genocide was ongoing. After Colombia, the next two biggest suppliers are South Africa and Russia. Without reliable and continuous electricity, Israel will no longer be able to pretend to be a developed economy. Server farms do not work without 24-hour power, and no one knows how many blackouts the Israeli high-tech sector could potentially survive. International tech companies have already started closing their branches in Israel. Israel’s reputation as a “startup nation” depends on its tech sector, which in turn depends on highly educated employees. Israeli academics report that joint research with universities abroad has declined sharply thanks to the efforts of student encampments. Israeli newspapers are full of articles about the exodus of educated Israelis. Prof. Dan Ben David, a famous economist, argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff in universities, tech companies, and hospitals). Once a significant portion of these people leaves, he says, “We won’t become a third world country, we just won’t be anymore.”
19 July 2024
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forwards, beckon, rebound. / machine herald!viktor x reader, 18+, reader is fem bodied, angst, size difference, fingering, choking, dry humping, praise, russian terms of endearment, somewhat toxic relationship, mild augmentation kink, way too many emotions, mix of arcane + league lore / spoilers. word count: 16.2k
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Viktor enjoys making you feel helpless.
Technically, it isn't enjoyment so much as it is a responsibility; you'll repeatedly show up at his secluded lab in the Undercity, and as he does with everyone who comes to his doorstep worn and destitute, he'll take it upon himself to give you what you need. You are like the rest of his endeavors — meticulously examined, ambitiously furthered. But unlike his various grandiose experiments and his pursuits for evolution, it isn't just his mind you occupy.
There is some dusty, disregarded hole in his once-perfect mechanical heart, and if the hypothesis he's formed but doesn't want to acknowledge is correct, you are the most probable cause. Or perhaps, you'd be the cure.
Carefully, with his usual amount of precision, Viktor pulls his leather glove from his hand. He allows his fingers to flex: scarred skin improved by intricately-crafted metal joints. He's positioned above you, large and imposing while he keeps you pinned beneath him. The firm, steel surface of his giant worktable feels cool against your bare back. The room itself is dim, worktable lit by an overhead lamp that burns when you happen to look directly at it. Thankfully, Viktor's armored form above you, encased in dark shadow, blocks out most of the light.
The Hextech third arm on his back grasps your wrists unwaveringly, and keeps them in place above your head, utilizing an exorbitant display of strength. You can't move a muscle, not even if you tried. Lingering heat sears into your skin, radiating from the metal — from where the laser he's perfected could easily sever your wrists from the bone.
What's more, you can hardly think. Your head is spinning; your heart pounds from between your ribs, fiercely yet uselessly. You can only stare at the glowing, emotionless eyes of Viktor's mask, and wait for him to decide what he plans to do with you. Gentle. With the way you're looking at him, you need him to be gentle, this time.
He presses his palm to the center of your chest, where he can feel the erratic beat of your heart. Slowly, he begins to drag his hand down. It's a knowing, practiced motion — not as soft as it ought to be, considering his cold, purple-veined hand and calloused fingers. As his touch is brought down to your stomach, your waist, you shiver, and your body relaxes. Finally, fully.
It doesn't take long for you to arch into his touches, just as he predicted, just as you always do. Your flesh loves to sing for him.
This dance has been performed by the both of you numerous times beforehand. Viktor questions if you'll ever grow tired of it. Of the pirouetting, of revolving constantly around unspoken, trembling complications, just to return, to let your mind and your heart reel all over again.
What he feels for you — what he has evaluated from you, because machines do not feel — is something unexplainable, foreign, futile. He knows this, this dynamic you've fostered; it hardly makes sense. You are allies with no common goals. You were friends, some disregarded years ago. Every other night, you stumble into his lab to interrupt his work, and he lets you.
No, he indulges you.
"You are quivering," Viktor hums, voice muffled and deepened by the mask's filter. A usual, matter-of-fact statement, but the edges of his tone sharpen in the wake of a held-back, dark chuckle. "You want me to touch you. Say it."
The powerful, vastly-superior Machine Herald already has you right where he wants you.
Slightly riddled with static, the way his thick accent curls around the words only serves to make you shudder more. Your breathing is choppy, your chest rapidly rising and falling.
Not from fear, if Viktor had to guess. His scans of your heart rate would come across much differently if that was the case. This is from arousal. Clear, easily definable arousal. Just from his thick voice, his soft touch, and the imagery provided by his large body above yours.
The sight of you is addictive. Addiction isn't a sensation built into his mechanical repertoire, but it's the best word he can think of to describe this. You are small when you're underneath him. So malleable, so fragile. So human. How abnormal. The compulsive surge that runs through his veins should not, according to all of his tests and conclusive research, be occurring.
Viktor supposes this type of behavior would be more fitting of the past version of him. Presently, he doesn't have room to let time go to waste. His vision is all that matters. The old him, though, the Viktor you once knew would've given you whatever you desired without a second thought, even though he hardly deserved it.
He was weak, once. For you, perhaps a part of him still is.
You are intelligent, you always have been. He has cast away much of his past in pursuit of chasing a better, more important future, but still, he remembers each and every moment he shared with you quite vividly. They play in the background of his mind sometimes, persistent like a system error, recurrent like a late-night looping television program.
Your inventions often kept pace with his. Your smile was bright, brighter than the pillars of light that shone from Piltover's grandest lighthouses. Starry-eyed and driven, you wanted to improve, as a person and as a scientist. You challenged him to push further right alongside you.
Of course, you knew him better than most, but Viktor wonders: did you ever expect him to go this far? Did you ever plan on retreating back to Zaun with him, to fall further into madness together?
By now, you must be smart enough to know he is different. What you might've had, a friendship or a partnership or something delightedly improbable, it is now nothing. Nothing more than another one of his shed weaknesses and old, discarded memories.
Perfect machinery does not feel. Not even for you, no matter what it once felt. Scientifically, it can't. You should understand this relationship is not beneficial. He could and would gladly break you, it's what he built himself to do. And yet, as he's starting to realize, perhaps being broken by him is exactly what you want.
"Please touch me," You're begging, as his palm caresses the all-too-human curve of your side. Your voice is warm, lustful. A sweet, familiar taste settles in the back of his throat, as you coo the old nickname you still reserve just for him. "I need you to, Vik."
And just like always, because of you, because of his predisposed sense of responsibility, or perhaps because of an unrecognized fault in his complex machinery — Viktor gives in.
He revels in your vulnerable, quivering limbs and your heavy, desperate gaze. The grip of his Hexclaw tightens on your wrists, your hands closing, fingers tensed. He drags his palm down your stomach slowly, carefully. His gentleness is calculated, but it is yours, all the same.
Your legs spread for him on impulse when his hand reaches your thigh. He squeezes, before he brings his hand between them, allowing the end of his index finger to brush your clit; his touch is precise, with all the efficiency and learned confidence of a flawless, apathetic machine. He could make you fall apart for him so easily, every part of you perfectly attuned to his touch, and his touch alone.
Yet, he's teasing you, careful and slight touches barely grazing where you're oh-so sensitive for him. Your thighs shake, and spread wider; your body is exposed to him, soft and sweat-soaked expanses of skin contrasting splendidly with his bulky, armored chassis of metal. Now, instead of his index, Viktor uses his thumb, providing more friction and a slightly firmer touch. You squirm, the pretty features of your face washed over in pleasure, before you breathe a small, satisfied whine.
"That's it," He murmurs firmly. "To think this is all it takes to make you submit."
Viktor allows his thumb to trace circles onto your swollen, needy clit, and your breath proceeds to hitch so deliciously for him. An action, and reaction. Repeated experiments make for predictable results. Hextech hand practically digging into your wrists, Viktor brings his free, metal hand to your cheek. Oddly tender, his cold palm cups your face. He isn't surprised at the response it gets out of you, your chest heaving with a deep, trembling sigh. Every part of your skin tingles, as you lean into his faux, steel touch.
"Earlier, you wished to be defiant. Disobedient." Viktor scolds, his thumb flicking over your clit while his fingers brush your cunt, gathering your dripping slick on the digits. He takes his metal hand away from your cheek, and he presses it flat to the table, right beside your head. Your brows pinch disappointedly, clearly unsatisfied with his subtle form of punishment.
"And now look at you. Wet and desperate."
He's barely touched you, barely even begun with you, and you're already dripping.
"I wasn't- I'm not disobedient," You're countering, although it's damn near impossible to keep your voice sounding steady when his persistent touch is toying with you. He's teasing, circling your clit agonizingly slowly, just to make you squirm. "I brought you everything you asked for. Like always."
"Yes, and you did well," Viktor praises flatly. As though he's reading off a trained script, rather than watching the way your eyelids flutter as his knuckles brush your entrance. "Our current project will run smoothly now, utilizing the tech you acquired for us. But when I told you to wait, to bring the tech after I had finalized our plans, you did not listen."
You admit simply, foolishly, "I missed you."
Those words are familiar. You'll often tell him you missed him when he returns to the lab, home at last after finalizing a few affairs elsewhere. You said you missed his face the first time you saw it, your hands gently holding his cheeks, caressing metal and skin — despite how different he looks now. Despite the scars, the mechanical parts.
He knows you missed him. In a soft, delicate way. In an indecent, desperate way. His form of longing is much, much different. When the mortal matter and fraying wires of his brain yearn to have your presence beside him, with him, under him, it is strong, it is carnivorous. It is encompassing.
"You nearly comprised everything we've been working towards." Viktor's third arm tightens even more, making your wrists and arms go nearly numb. "There is only so much I can do to protect you. I disposed of the last enforcers to attempt tracking you down, but if you were to lead them here, you will not just be putting yourself at risk. You are threatening our entire vision with your recklessness."
Carefully, his index finger finds your entrance: sensitive and wanting. He deliberately pulls his hand away when you whine, instead placing his palm back on your inner thigh. Your skin is soft to the touch. Your gaze stays steady on him, on the unflinching shape of his mask, your eyelids heavy, pupils blown with clear arousal. As though he encompasses all you need, anything you could possibly want, and everything that could devastate you.
You are frustratingly beautiful.
Viktor hums, the sound low, somewhat mechanical. He gently guides his hand over your neck, just how you like, until large, metal fingers are wrapping around your throat. Not squeezing, just tightly holding. Enough to ground you, to remind you of who you belong to. You let go of a sigh, your eyes growing heavier. Your heart is skipping, and with his hand around your throat, the subtle vibrations of your quick pulse shudder through his complex machinery.
"Viktor-" You start, voice weak, barely there. "I'm-"
"I know you want more." He squeezes your thigh, applies just enough pressure to your throat to make your mind go fuzzy. "Tell me what you have been waiting for me to give to you, what you desired so strongly that you ran to me, instead of following the plan. And perhaps, I'll let you have it."
You tremble: a full-body, tingling shudder. Viktor — the Machine Herald — is so much larger, so much stronger than you. He's augmented himself to be significantly taller, significantly more imposing, and underneath him like this, you must look meager. Pathetic. Fully bare, your legs spread open for him. Giving yourself to him so easily. Your chest heaves, your mortal heart skipping and wavering at the sight of him above you, pinning you beneath his heavy, metal form.
"Breathe, zayka," Viktor murmurs, his grip on your neck loosening up. "Your heart is racing. Focus on me."
Taking in slower, deeper breaths, your mind quiets, your pulse calms. Stars and static thrum in the corners of your vision, your thoughts a knotted up blur. Viktor — his touch is all you can focus on — traces his fingers further up your thigh in approval.
"There. Very good. You're alright."
"Your fingers," You pant, "Please."
Viktor scoffs, his tone mechanical and rough, "You can do better. Try again."
Huffing, your head knocks the firm worktable when you toss it backward.
"Bastard." Your hands clench and unclench, your wrists giving a poor attempt at struggling against their hold. To no avail, of course. "Are you at least going to let me touch you?"
"No. Answer me. Do not make me repeat myself."
You briefly gnaw on your bottom lip, your jaw tense, thighs shaky. "I need your fingers inside me, Vik. I've missed you, I need you, please. I'm going fucking crazy."
Viktor's unmoving, glowing eyes examine you carefully. "That's it. That is much more sufficient. So exquisite, when you are begging. Take what you need, then."
You're well aware he isn't the same man you once fell for, nor is he the soft-spoken, bright scientist you once knew. Rumors paint him as a maker, a monster, a machine. He is cold to the touch. He isn't supposed to feel, he removed such functions ages ago; they were useless to him. As were his failing lungs, his weak legs, his heart. A heart made from machinery never skips. It can't be blinded by love, or lust. It cannot be distracted by old, unkindled flames, in the same way you often are. You envy him, somewhat.
But Gods, when it's just you and him in his lonely little corner of Zaun, and when you are at the pleasant mercy of his perfected touch, you swear, he feels more human than anything. Nothing else truly matters, because still, he is yours.
Viktor's index finger slides inside you slowly, just barely stretching you around its thickness. You're wet enough that he could press it in easily, could have you melting and drooling over whatever you're given — but instead, he chooses to let the digit fill you languidly. The feeling is slight, enveloping and enthralling and familiar, yet not enough to make you feel full, at the same time. His fingers are long, dexterous. Pretty and scarred.
You've watched him work on plenty of augments and automatons, hands tightly grasping a wrench to turn it, fingers carefully holding the ends of thin wires to thread them together. Each action swift, exact.
With the same level of precision, Viktor presses his finger deep inside you, and crooks it upward to nudge it right against your sweetest spot — and you whimper, your whole body shivering, collapsing.
"One is never enough to satisfy you," He asserts; he gently pumps his finger into you to a steady, easily manageable pace. "Isn't that right?"
If his mask weren't there, you're sure you'd see him speaking through a slight grin, maniacal and crooked, impossibly him. Your heart pounds. You're doomed, you must be.
In response, you nod your head fiercely. Another shaky moan tears through you as he works you on his slender digit. Pressing in, dragging out. Calculated and perfectly steady, like the continuous beats of a metronome.
"Or," Viktor questions, "Should I have you come undone around just one?"
"No," You snap quickly, although you're obviously in no position to be making demands. Your eyes flutter open, your face contorted in a mix of pleasure and frustration. He finds your desperation strangely satisfying. All for him. It's the same sort of hungry satisfaction that comes with working on an automation, striding closer and closer to a job well done. He adjusts, pushing your legs apart with his large knees when they tremble and threaten to close.
"Give me two," You're pleading, "Please."
Viktor hums, the sound low and vibrating.
"Guiding you to your peak would prove trivial, even without the means of penetration. You are simple. Easy to unravel." His low, intimidating voice effortlessly sends goosebumps careening down your spine. "You could most likely be led to cum against my shoe or my thigh, from modest friction and my voice alone."
"Viktor," You almost wince at how pathetic you sound. "Stop talking."
Viktor eases his index finger as deep inside you as you can take, and heat surges across your form in thundering, breaking waves. "Why would I stop when you are enjoying it?"
Oh, he knows you far too well.
"Dammit, at least-" You exhale, trembling through a moan, and Viktor's Hextech arm holds onto your wrists impossibly tighter as your hips roll into his hand — desperate to feel more of him. It works, momentarily. Until he is using his free hand to firmly grip your waist: thick metal fingers digging into warm, pretty skin. He pushes you back against the worktable, holding you in place.
You groan in frustration. "At least quit teasing me."
"Such impatience. I am working you upwards, gradually conditioning you to take higher levels of stimuli. It will make the process as a whole much more pleasurable."
"Gods if you weren't wearing that stupid mask, I would shut you up in no-"
"I always satiate you, milaya," Viktor answers calmly, as he slowly drags his finger out, leaving you quivering and empty. The nickname he uses is tender, familiar. It reminds you of your once different life. Vividly, it forms blossoms in your chest, unfurling flowers and delicate petals. Tugging sweetly at your thudding heart, despite the cold artificiality of his manufactured tone. Milaya. His darling.
Though, the Machine Herald does not covet. What he desires, he takes and makes his.
"Interesting," He's muttering, seemingly mostly to himself. "Your neediness has greatly increased since the last time we convened. Normally, you are capable of controlling yourself. To a certain extent."
He tsks, metal hand caressing slow, reassuring circles onto your waist, while his other palm dives back between your legs. His fingers drag over your cunt with an irrational sense of clumsiness, considering the motion is coming from him. He lets his fingertips search for nothing in particular, getting them slick with your arousal, nudging your clit carelessly with his knuckles until your back is arching, and your sighs are sharpening.
"Sorry." You mumble a half-hearted apology, eyelids softly fluttering.
"It was not a complaint." Viktor presses his fingertips close, dangerously closer.
Your body needs him, needs what only he can give to you. His hands, his fingers inside you. Every inch of you screams for his touch. As though you are a solved puzzle, a piece of technology broken down to let him understand each individual part. Your thighs shake, and that's part A. Your chest heaves, your shoulders go tense. Significantly human responses. Components labeled B, C, D, V. Your lips quiver, before they mutter another breathless, desperate plea of his name.
Predictable, and understandable. Yet, for certain, you are a delight to decipher. Those pieces and budding sensations come together as he thought they would, and they — and you, are primed to be bent at his will.
You expect him to tease you further. When he falls silent, becoming more impossible to read than he already was, you feel your arms and your thighs tense with what must be anticipation. Surely, he can sense how eager you are.
But Viktor doesn't falter, he does not hesitate. He guides his metal hand underneath your back, predicting its arch, and he presses two of his fingers, his middle and ring, to your drooling entrance. They slide into you with a filthy, wet noise; it's almost obscene how eagerly your cunt accepts them. How you plead with whiny utterances of yes, yes, your voice breaking, eyes closing. He eases them inside you slowly, fills you with them completely — until his scarred knuckles are nudging against you, and you're sobbing through a half-sigh, half-moan.
He doesn't wait to hear you beg for more. You're given a calculated amount of time, just enough seconds to catch your breath and get used to the stretch of both digits inside you. He fucks you on his fingers, pumping them in and out to the tune of your broken whines and gasps for air. It's a gradual process. A coded, mastered technique well-baked into his mind, his heart, and his hardware.
Of course, he's long since learned just how to make you fall apart. He has studied you, he's proceeded to subconsciously store your data in the most important vault in his mind. It is simply a matter of getting you there, of drawing out your pleas for him and your tremors and your pulses, to push you even further past your previous crescendos.
You can always be louder. Finish harder. You deserve to. And when it comes to any and all of his endeavors, including this one, he is persistently, unquenchably ambitious.
"Vik-" You're babbling, in a wavering voice he might logically, astutely label as precious. His quiet lab echoes with the whirr of various displays and devices. With your soft noises, echoing alongside the wet squelch his fingers make each time he presses them deeper. "Please, I just- I'm so- I want you so much-"
"You have me," He answers rigidly. Prepared and intentional, his fingers move slower, drawing out your moans and your shudders of pleasure. "Or were you demanding more?"
"I always want more with you." A faint, endearing pout forms on your features, the kind of look only he can draw from you. "Want- I want you to fuck me."
It isn't anything of importance; just an aimless, desperate plea. The kind you might be expected to ask of him when you're in this state — your mind wandering, your body relaxed. You need fuel for your building fire, you need to hear him outline through words what he can't through actions. You cannot make him feel as you do, but Viktor is kind enough to let you play pretend.
Though, for whatever strange, unrecognizable, illogical reason, he goes against the fixed line of actions he was previously adhering to, and he hesitates. He contemplates. He twitches, circuitry briefly inoperable, fuzzy and working against him. His center, his self-regulating core, hums with marginally more force than it did before. The hand he has pressed to your back trembles. It thrums with artificial, built-up heat, before he grips you much tighter.
Fortunately, he rediscovers his composure as quickly as it waned. Viktor quirks his fingers into your sweet spot to make you cry out for him, and then he drags them half-way out — every moment agonizingly slow, so he can admire the way the digits glisten in the lamplight.
"Filthy little thing." His voice is thick. His words are stern, making you picture how his jaw might be tightened. "I am already providing you everything you asked for, and yet still, you act greedy. Human desire is terribly intemperate."
"As if-" You're squirming, sweating, your hair a mess, warm gaze and moon-wide pupils locked onto his obscured face. "As if you feel nothing from this."
"I cannot feel. You are well aware of this reality. I suggest you do not continue to persuade yourself otherwise."
"Bullshit."
"In fact, I do feel nothing." Viktor brings his thumb to your clit on his next press in, rubbing it roughly, circling it precisely. "I am incapable of experiencing desire," His fingers crook and spread. "Nor enjoyment." They pump slowly, while they stretch you around their shape. "Or affection."
"But you were worried about me- fuck- when I went off on that stupid mission," You're mumbling, barely able to speak through ragged gasps for breath, "You were fretting over my safety. You- hah, you stopped everything you were doing just to check on me, because you felt relieved, you felt happy when you saw me walk in, didn't you?"
Did he?
Hours earlier, you returned to his doorstep, and he knew it was you from the way you knocked; he put aside the small automaton he was working on, and hurried to meet you at the door. He gave you a quick once over — in this form, he is vastly larger and taller than you, to the point where you have to crane your neck to look up at him — but you assured him you hadn't been injured. When you fell against his armored chest in something of an embrace, he didn't push you away. Nor did he protest when you pulled his heavy, bulky shape on top of you as you fell back against the nearest surface, his additional sensors picking up your already increasing breathing and heart rate.
He recalls your arms around him, hands tugging at his cape, removing sections of his armor, fingers threading through his hair. Soft lips pressing to cold steel —
Viktor tenses. You are plenty capable on your own, capable enough that he rarely considers whether or not you'll return. You always do, after all. This mission was considerably riskier, though. Considerably more worrisome.
If anything had happened to you, if he discovered you were injured or captured or worse, his subsequent reaction would be less than logical. His mental processes would malfunction, and he would lose the ability to think rationally. The stifling, unstoppable force that would build within him could be compared to something like rage, something like love.
You swallow thickly, and the room swirls around you in a dizzy haze as Viktor slowly pulls his fingers from you. Leaving you empty.
He murmurs, "Look at me."
It's a little difficult of a command to follow, with your head spinning and your eyes all heavy. Still, you force yourself to breathe deeply, to steady, in the wake of the sudden lack of attention.
You look up, and his hand, fingers slick and filthy, momentarily moves to grasp your chin. He tilts you towards him, to make sure you're watching. Viktor reaches up, and he presses a mechanism on the side of his mask. It hisses, releasing air, small puffs of steam streaming from either side.
He removes it tentatively. He tosses it aside with a bit less caution, causing it to clink, spin, and nearly fall when it hits the upper edge of the table.
You're met with messy brown hair, scarred skin, and familiar moles. The entirety of his jaw is made of metal, reconstructed into intricately crafted steel that continues down his neck and underneath his armor. His skin is overly pale, to the point where you can notice deep eye bags, and the criss-crossings of several individual, purple-hued veins. His expression is stern and deadpan, his brows slightly creased. He takes you in, gaze flickering down for a moment, then back up — and searing eyes, dark purple pools and bright orange suns, finally meet your own.
"Your legs," He's instructing; his voice, no longer filtered through the mask, sounds warmer, clearer, a little less deep. Despite everything, terribly familiar, and blissfully human. "Place them around me."
Unable to stifle a smile, you lift your thighs, casually locking them around his back at the ankles. You rarely get to see his face, and it's impossible to keep your eyes off of him, nor can you stop your heart from pounding. Viktor returns your gaze, cold and unflinching. It's like he's examining you, regarding you with the same restrained interest as he'd have for the subjects of his experiments.
"There you are," You're cooing, head tilting, "Vitya."
Viktor's expression finally shifts from his usual indifference, his brows scrunching up to form a slightly irritated scowl.
"Defiant again. As expected."
"You used to like it when I called you that. Am I not allowed to tease you now?" You're laughing, and your smaller frame, still pinned underneath him, shifts somewhat when he loosens his grasp on your wrists. A faint amount of mercy. You offer him one of those radiant smiles he can't stand — can't resist. "You can be such a hypocrite."
"Open your mouth," Viktor sneers coldly, "So it can be put to better use."
With a firm, metal hand, he holds the curve of your soft side, measuring your individual tremors, paying attention to the steady movement of your lungs. His gaze flickers between your eyes, your lips. Your breath hitches, and your mouth forms a line. You can't help but roll your eyes.
"I can just leave, you know," You mutter, your voice still playful, yet noticeably a few volumes lower. "But I'm guessing you don't want me to."
Funny. You seem to think you could escape from his grasp.
"Open. Your. Mouth. Before I give in, and do something I shouldn't."
"I'm not-"
Your protest fizzles out into a surprised noise and a subsequent sigh; Viktor grabs you, he pulls you closer in tandem with surging forwards, and his mouth promptly crashes into yours.
Finally.
The kiss tastes sharp, like iron and ash, like something distinctly him when his tongue slowly brushes against yours. You allow your eyes to close — but Viktor hardly leaves you any room for air as he practically devours you. It's deep, enthralling, and clumsy. Needy, on your end, and hungry on his. The kind of kiss that possesses you, consumes you. Your mind is dizzy, your breath is gone, but you need to kiss him more than you need to breathe.
You melt into him gently, naturally. Like you were always meant to. His hand cups your face, his thumb brushing your cheek: a motion far too soft, far too important.
When he pulls away, finally giving you some breathing room, your eyes immediately meet. Your chest is heaving, your heart warm and pounding to a tempo made just for him. His gaze is once again sharp, once again perfectly composed.
You miss the softness of his lips already. "Vik."
And he needs you, needs more of you. He's wanted to feel your lips against his for far longer than you or even he could have realized. Since those days when you were both young and stupid, when you vowed to achieve your dreams together. As though your gentle voice pleading his name is just tender enough to push him over a metaphorical edge, to flip some hidden switch in his complex mechanics — He kisses you again, again, again.
All of this, it isn't meant for him. It is unfathomably human, from the way you breathe fervently against his mouth; stuttered breaths, quicker than his, heavier than his own could ever be. To the way he touches you, a half-machine's best imitation of intimacy. His still-human palm moves to brush your neck, then glides further to hold the back of your head. Your body is all awkward limbs and soft edges and smooth skin, but you fit underneath him oh-so perfectly.
He can't stop. It doesn't seem real; Viktor imagines he must have fallen into a different reality, he's in a different body with a different, mortal heart. None of this makes an ounce of logical sense otherwise. Then again, when do you ever make sense?
He can't focus on anything but your lips on his — because for a few fleeting moments, he isn't defined by metal and machinery; he is himself. He is a mess of muddled thoughts and imperfect touches. Your legs around his back pull his figure closer to yours, and you have him wondering what it might entail without any steel in the way. Just skin against skin.
It'd be impossible for him to feel such a thing, when there's little skin left. His entire arm, his legs, his torso, his spine; they've since been replaced, improved upon. Is this the closest he'll ever get to you, to love?
Waves upon waves of warmth wash over you, they drown you, they envelop you. Even once Viktor has finally pulled apart from you with one last soft kiss, you still aren't able to breathe. Your heart pounds against your ribs, so fiercely it almost hurts.
He settles back above you, and as you calm again, he holds your gaze. His slender fingers move to trace the column of your throat, where they not-so-subtly seek out your pulse. It's racing for him. He looks remarkably composed now, compared to how disheveled you're sure you appear.
Gently, he trails his hand upwards. His thumb swipes your kiss-swollen bottom lip. Your mouth parts instinctually, allowing him to carefully press the digit into your warm mouth, onto your wet tongue.
"Do not leave," Viktor murmurs, an analytical edge already returning to his tone, in spite of what transpired between you. He pulls his thumb from your mouth, brushing it over your bottom lip again, smearing your lips with your saliva. "Stay for tonight."
"Are you asking? Or is that a demand?" Your breath on his skin is foggy and hot. When it's clear he isn't going to answer, his gaze regarding you inquisitively, you propose another question. Your hands clench, they briefly push against the unyielding grip of his Hexclaw. "Will you let my hands go now?"
"Tsk. Only if you are capable of keeping them to yourself."
"C'mon…" You hum disappointedly. He appears routinely unaffected by your pouting. So, you change your approach.
You shuffle, trying to get more comfortable. The table beneath you feels especially firm. "What if I say please? Is that what you're looking for?"
"Go ahead. It will not affect my decision."
"Seriously? But I want to touch you. You're so pretty."
Viktor hesitates, but only briefly. He senses the whirring in his chest, the usual hum of his augmented components. Substitutions where imperfect pieces should be, strength replacing frailty, mechanics coming to life once more as his mind becomes forcibly unclouded. His systems are working as usual again. All it took to experience a malfunction was your lips on his, and all he needed to do to rebuild his composure was pull away. And you are still a gasping, heavy-eyed mess.
Still, there is something troubling him. The same illogical functions that've been prodding at his mind since the very beginning. Lingering errors. Faults in his perfected frame. When he looks at you now, he strongly senses the push and pull of those inaccuracies.
If he allows you to touch him, each framework, every mechanism — Everything he's been carefully constructing might come crashing down.
Would that be so bad?
Pretty. How ridiculous. Viktor scoffs, his jaw tensing up, his next words arbitrary. "Most are afraid when they look at me."
Perhaps they should be. Perhaps you should be.
But you just smile, your expression growing soft as you tilt your head, and you answer in earnest: "I don't think I've ever been scared of you."
Again, there goes his worthless, thrumming, obsolete heart.
You should be afraid of a man who's designed himself to fit an image you no longer recognize. You shouldn't try to get so close to him, when his compulsive obsession to destroy and remake borders on a clear line of danger. This new chassis embodies perfection. It has long since relinquished any weaknesses, but if you detested him, he wouldn't blame you. Others are reluctant to embrace his vision, save for a select, fortunate few. You and him have history. History that would make seeing him like this rather difficult, he assumes.
Usually, Viktor is able to keep any oversights from throwing him off course. He can't be distracted from achieving his goals. The people of Zaun need him. This new body poses no hindrances. Pain doesn't disrupt him; it can be turned out, like anything else. Pain of the body, and pain of the heart.
You, though. Any thoughts he has of you start as small blips. Tiny, persistent sparks. They build overtime, burning brighter, hotter. Until he sees you, and you look just like how you did back then, so, so long ago. There are tired lines on your face, faint scars, and he knows they're his fault. All at once, his mind is threatening to become a mess of discordant, fraying parameters, of processes that are refusing to function in the manner they should.
He wants to keep you far, far away; far from him, from this lab. Far from this terrible, awful place you both grew up in. If he could, he'd have you go somewhere so very distant, where you couldn't distract him — where you could be happy and free. You will see the sky, feel the sun's warmth, and breathe fresh, cool air. It'd be what's best for you. And he will continue to further his endeavors in evolution. Alone, as intended.
But ultimately, no matter what he winds up doing to his mind or his body, he would think of you. Of holding you or unmaking you, sometimes he isn't sure which. If you were truly afraid, if you ran, he wouldn't follow on your heels. But along with you, you'd take a piece of himself, a faint trace he would never get back; for better, or for worse.
Viktor listens to the sound of your breathing: steady, deep. His gaze studies you, but it lingers on your eyes for longer than intended. You are still looking up at him, smiling, sparkling like a sky full of stars. As though he is a sky filled with stars.
Your breaths become heavier when he presses his palm to the center of your chest. He drags his touch down, down. You are more sensitive this time, he notes. You lean into him once his hand caresses your pelvis, your waist, and you loosen your legs from around his back to become more comfortable. His fingertips trail up your inner thigh, and you shudder, you shiver.
He thinks of kissing you once more. A couple times more, maybe. Proper judgment tells him he should resist. The thought remains there, lingering and burning between you.
"Viktor…" You murmur, your voice a bit broken, but he's hanging onto every word. "Touch me again."
Pleasant sensory inputs glow within him; tingling veins, reverberating wires. Overwhelming heat fills his shoulders, the back of his neck, his head — the heat of machinery, the warmth of his soul.
Viktor grabs your waist assertively, metal fingers digging into your hip. His gaze doesn't waver from yours as he guides your thighs to spread. Suddenly, he pushes himself against you, until you are hopelessly pressed between steel and metal. Between him, and the worktable.
You feel his weight, you feel the intricate ridges of metal plates and hard edges, the artificial heat of his much larger body radiating against your bare skin. Now, you are completely pinned, practically chest to chest, pressed underneath the Machine Herald so closely it's enough to make your head spin. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating. Perhaps he can hear it. Or maybe, he just knows your heart must be pounding for him, as it always does.
Your limbs tremor with excitement. As his palm squeezes your thigh, you can't help but arch into his touch. Thin, skillful fingers press close and feel how wet you are — still so sensitive, already dripping out onto him. You aren't teased, you aren't even able to catch your breath, because two of his fingers are swiftly dipping inside you, giving you exactly what you need.
It feels so right. Viktor reaches for your cheek. He encourages you to continue meeting his gaze when your eyes flutter and nearly close.
Your gaze on his, you let his name leave your mouth in a series of sharp gasps, and desperate pleas. He fills you slowly, but wastes no time building a rhythm; his fingers pump into your sensitive cunt gently, then methodically. Satisfied, Viktor hums, and he carefully shifts his other arm down. He holds your back as it arches, further pressing you against himself.
Now, the way he pleasures you is deliberate, it isn't enough, but Gods, you'll take anything he gives you.
"That name," Viktor starts, speaking in a smooth, level tone, perfectly contrasting the airy huffs and whines you utter for him. The name he hoped to relinquish, his name. "It sounds best when you are pleading it."
You smile through a soft moan. "It's my favorite. Such a sweet name."
Precisely, determinedly, his fingers crook into the spot within you he knows all too well, and you crumble, you sob.
"The tech you brought to me will accelerate the completion of our latest prototype," Viktor is explaining, matter-of-factly. As though the conversation is as simple as it is necessary. Like he doesn't have his large body shoved against you, and his fingers knuckle-deep inside you. It just serves to excite you further, honestly.
"I will install the heat core, and adjust its interior components accordingly. We could have its systems operational by tonight. However, I doubt I will be able to focus."
You take a forced, deep breath. "Yeah? Because of me?"
Obviously, he wants to say. You'll be here, staying in his lab, as you usually do after a tough afternoon or a previous sleepless night. He doesn't mind. Your chatter might occasionally be disruptive to his work, but your voice is nice, it is calming. Your presence itself might be a distraction, an interference that his mind tells him he should discard, but having you here is a nice change of pace, compared to the long, lonesome hours he's grown used to. He has never minded.
Sleep is less of a necessity for him. Resting for a handful of hours a few times per week is usually enough to keep himself operational. The torn leather couch he keeps in his quarters is there just for you. He no longer needs to eat in the typical sense, although he still needs to recharge burned energy. He keeps stocked up on the foods he remembers to be your favorites.
It's strange, out of everything he's forgotten, he still remembers such useless, trivial details. Each and every detail about you.
Without you, this space — the adjustments he's made to accommodate your presence, the dip in the couch from where you always sleep, your articles of clothing strewn over the floor and the couch arms. His lab would feel so empty.
His next words sound much gentler than usual. Warmer, more desperate.
"Because your voice will not leave my mind. Begging for me. Breaking for me," Viktor murmurs. He nudges his fingers against your walls, testing, teasing you. "Pleading my name."
Once more, he challenges your limits; his fingers slide into you deep, so deeply you can feel them everywhere. Nudging at your core, filling you perfectly. As if on queue, you whimper a broken plea of yes, and as your eyes flutter, you're cascading into a needy mess of pleasant, shaky gasps. You writhe, your pinned hands trembling, wishing for something to hold onto. Though, he keeps you in place underneath him, blissfully unrelenting.
"Say it," Viktor demands, "My name. Tell me who it is you need."
"Viktor," Your voice is light, clumsy and slurring slightly, but in the way you say his name, there's an unmistakable lilt of pure adoration. You need him, you need to feel him everywhere: his practiced touch, his soft skin, his steel-built anatomy. You want him to not have to leave you, to not need to choose between you and the Undercity's future.
You feel completely, utterly dizzy. You want so much. You want his hands, flesh or metal, to study every intricate inch of you. You want him to stop holding back, you need the both of you to make up for the stupid amount of time you've lost — "I- hhah- I want…"
With your eyes nearly shut, static and stars flickering at the edges of your vision, you hadn't noticed how close he'd become until Viktor's voice echoes warmly, right against the shell of your ear.
"You want me to fuck you?"
And holy shit, his tone is sultry, his accent is thick — you shiver so hard you're sure he's left feeling the aftershocks, your body still pressed up right against his, even through his layers of metal armor. Viktor doesn't stop the steady pace of his fingers, pumping and arching and working you so well. Nor does he quit speaking, simply because he knows this is what you want to hear. What you need to hear.
"You are insatiable," He scolds, although there's little emotion in his level tone. Just an obvious, already-known sense of acknowledgement. His voice is a thousand times more intense when it is curling directly into your ear; "You wish for me to render you even more weak than you currently are, so you can be shown exactly who you belong to? Oh, and how I'd fuck you. How I would take you. I would make a mess of you, I'm sure. You'd be begging to be given all of me. To be used by me."
It's merely theoretical, a set of fake promises and dirty words to put pleasant visualizations into your mind — calculated, like everything he pursues. And it works. Predictably, your entire body shudders with pure, forceful need. You pulse around his fingers, throbbing like a heartbeat. You sob, and try to twist to face him, although it's impossible, considering you're still tightly pinned beneath his figure.
You want to see his face, he figures, so Viktor shifts up. He re-puts himself in the center of your vision, and you glance towards him, eyes flickering across his face; your gaze on his is practically teary-eyed. Desperate and eager, you find ways to plead without words.
You want to let go. Of course you do — always forced to be strong, you need nothing more than to melt at the hands of the last person left in Zaun that you trust. Even if he is more machine than person. Even though he is not right for you.
For a moment all too brief, Viktor wonders what it would be like to push those boundaries. To truly have you, beneath his hands and in his heart, to feel you resounding beside him like the echoes of a rippling, rolling wave.
How would he take you? No, how would you want him?
He formulates a few possible outcomes. Perhaps you'd want him hard and desperately. You need to be put in your place, to feel him as close as he could possibly be while he molds you to his shape. You want to be obedient. A good little subject. You want to be called good, very, very good for him while he pounds you into the table, or maybe while he leans back, glowing, masked eyes focused solely on you, your hands gripping his armored shoulders so you can bounce on his lap however you'd like. The Machine Herald's perfect little pawn. He wagers with such filthy actions and words, he could make you even louder than this.
You'd be pinned underneath him, and instead of his fingers, he'd fill you with all of himself — carnal and raw. Warm and sweat-soaked. Yet still, your body pressed to his would be agonizingly tender.
Or maybe you'd want him in a different way. In a much softer way.
Tenderness has never been afforded to him, it's hardly a concept he knows, but perhaps it's what he once hoped for. With you, it's what he once pictured.
Every touch would be slow, delicate. Your hands interlocked. Bodies pressed together, galaxies against galaxies. So close, they could be mistaken for the same shape. He would learn you truly, and honestly. Warm and gentle, you would touch him soft enough to make him human again.
Your voice would beg for him, whispering sweet nothings into his ears, against his form. Useless, perfect declarations of love. Viktor shudders. He imagines your hands, pretty and delicate, brushing the space between his shoulder and his steel spine. Feeling his scarred skin, alighting fiery sensations he assumed he'd long since lost.
Compared to who he was before, he is much stronger. He must be strong, must be forged of grit and iron, he must not submit to worthless, human desires. But you make him oh-so weak.
He isn't supposed to be weak.
"Please," You're gasping. You are barely able to speak at this point, babbling sweetly between broken noises as he fucks you on his fingers; it's just enough to make you shut your eyes and imagine more. "Fuck- Vik- Oh, p-please…"
Splintering, throbbing with mechanical heat, his inner workings surge with a sublime abundance of molten, unbridled energy. Burning, it's burning him up from the inside, melting him down and making him fragile.
You've gone fuzzy beneath him — No, his vision is fuzzy. Your edges are blurred, your chest is heaving as his fingers barely leave you before pressing back in. His hand adjusts, allowing his thumb to brush your puffy clit on the next press in. When you whimper his name, as you've done countless times before, he swears he sees nothing but flickering, colorless static.
Burning and heightening and building, he must be malfunctioning, experiencing crucial gaps in his design. This shouldn't be happening. He should not feel, and this isn't feeling, but there is something building inside of him, something with your name on it.
No, no, your name is flickering through him, pounding against his mind like a drum, and he has to establish control. He has to fucking fix this.
He needs to be closer, so much closer. He needs you in an unexplainable, all encompassing way. In a way that shouldn't be occurring. He doesn't want anything, he can't experience the sensation of wanting because it isn't meant to exist.
Truthfully, he's past the point of no return, and you might be all that's left to hold him in place. Impossible. The only thing he's ever desired is progress, evolution. Improvement is what matters. Improving, fixing, augmenting.
You are going to be the death of him. He needs to be pressed against you, holding you, in you, examining your inner workings, guiding you to reach your true potential —
Something snaps.
"Do you know," Viktor grasps your face, roughly tilting you in his direction. The newfound harshness to his tone is exhilarating. "How impossible it is to resist breaking you?"
He laughs, the sound sharp, almost chilling; his smile is crooked, barely recognizable, showing off even more crooked teeth. His gaze holds your own until it practically burns into you. His body is hot. To the point of overheating. You feel the heated metal against your skin, pressing to your chest, your thighs, faint puffs of searing steam pouring out from gaps in the plating.
The grip his Hexclaw has on your wrists is so tight it nearly hurts. But it's faltering, his hands are twitching. He seems to recognize he might be hurting you, and so he lifts off of you slightly, he forces himself to loosen his hold.
There's a sound coming from him that echoes like grinding gears, like the hiss of burning filaments. Like something is crumbling. Fighting against itself.
"It is all I have ever known, milaya." Viktor lets go of something akin to a sigh, although he has no need to breathe. He is utterly ruined — the poor excuse for a heart he once placed between his ribs is aching, shuddering with the anticipation of a touch, soaring with the softness that comes with a kiss. Is this what it feels like to be dizzy, to be lovesick?
You shudder as his thumb rubs your clit, and he digs his metal fingers into your side, feeling the space just beneath your ribs. "You will soon understand," He murmurs, "And if you are incapable, I am still willing to teach you. To make you into so much more."
There's a stirring in his chest at that, at the thought of completing you; a deep-rooted abnormality he can't quite pinpoint. Is it excitement? Guilt? Lust?
You swallow. You're crumbling, as he sends tingles through your veins in the wake of more enthralling words.
"You are mine. Your fundamental place is at my side." Viktor senses the building heat of his inner workings, a deep wave rolling up from his constructed spine to settle onto the back of his neck. Building, burning, breaking. "I cannot wait to unmake you."
Pulling you apart would be delightful.
Your pieces would be disassembled, separated by each individual, pretty, dizzying section, so you could be redone carefully, gently, with a sense of tenderness only he could manage. He wants to understand you. To know exactly what makes you tick, down to your most basic of functions. To be close. Indistinguishable, the both of you made from the same materials. If you were constructed in his image, your components marked by his influence, there would be no doubt who you belong to.
Through breaking you and mending you, he wonders if he could find new ways to make you sing. You'd relax under each touch, shuddering and breathing his name as he completes your newfound enhancements. Gazes locking. Touches lingering. Metal soldering. Viktor trembles. Gods, how he wants you.
Furthering your potential and heightening your pleasure both require similar sentiments. Trust, and vulnerability. Opening your chest to watch your heart pound for him is the same as measuring your hitching breaths, growing heavier the deeper and faster he presses his fingers into you.
Because delicately pulling you apart just to put you back together is some metaphor for intimacy. Carving out a space for you within the confines of his fake heart is some synonym for tenderness. Holding onto his memories of you, replaying everything he can't quite forget to the point of near insanity — to the point where he attempted to forcibly remove you, by removing those emotions. Only to fail. Feeling these sensations for you when he shouldn't is some form of devotion.
You shouldn't feel for him either, right?
Having you there from the very beginning meant something; you were beside him when he only dreamed of becoming someone greater. When his ideas for evolution were just prototypes, when he first put the full extent of his weight onto both his legs. Didn't it mean the world to you too?
You were equally misunderstood. By your peers, by the world. Just as you believed in him, he saw light in you, from the very start. He thinks you could burn bright enough to melt anyone who stands in your way. And now, years down the line, when he is seen as less than human, you only see him. Not what he's become. It's infuriating. It's unmistakably loving.
You are panting. Getting close. Your bottom lip quivers, and your body tenses, each shudder more forceful than the last. His fingers echo a filthy, wet sound each time they pump into you, and your back is arching, you are simply begging to fall apart around him. For him, because of him. You deserve to.
And you sing, voice trembling like plucked strings, "Just p-please. You can do whatever you want to me, I trust you- I've always trusted you. Vik, I need you. I'm yours. All yours."
All his.
Whatever he turns into, whatever becomes of his body, memories, and heart, you would still follow. No matter what his goal might be; to destroy this city for what it did to the both of you, or to work in unison to try and remake it. Or perhaps, he plans to become more. An example of perfection. A God. As if he isn't one already.
The first time he touched you, when he felt the softness of your skin and heard the plea in your voice, and knew you were in his heart still, still, wasn't it akin to a prayer?
Oh, he is going to unravel you.
Viktor allows his grip on your wrists to finally, fully loosen; his Hexclaw presses flatly to the table, helping to support his weight. Relaxing, you exhale a deep breath, but you don't hesitate for long. Your arms waste no time wrapping around him, pulling him close. When you kiss him, a hand cradling his cheek like he is something breakable, and not a perfected piece of unstoppable machinery, the tender press of your lips to his feels undoubtedly inevitable.
All he knows is since the day he pretended to forget about you, when he decided to become something more, his new heart beat steadily, his enhanced mind was clear. But his systems wouldn't stop buzzing.
When he hardly knew where you were or what state you'd return to him in, the noise grew sharper. Fervently pulling, Hextech whirring, unsated electricity sizzling like fireworks underneath his skin. Having you in his arms once more only made the static form so thick, he thought his mental processes might completely go haywire. All he knows is that now, as he's kissing you, feeling your lips on his, your body against his own, and your hands tangling through his hair — for once, the static is silent. Blissfully silent.
And he kisses you, harder than before. Softer than anything and everything.
"Faster-" You're pleading brokenly against his mouth, between breathy kisses, your voice echoing through him, "More."
Faster, harder, more. Whatever you desire, he's going to give it to you. Viktor mumbles, "Of course."
Finally able to move, you hook one leg around his waist, you use it to drag him in even closer. You rock into his hand when his fingers spread and crook inside you, and you grab tight, messy fistfuls of his hair. His lips on yours, kissing you over and over, leave you little room to breathe.
Once you've pulled away, you're gasping for air, and his gaze fixates on yours: examining, devouring. Viktor takes note of your every movement. How you grind into his fingers when his thumb teases your clit, your bottom lip caught between your teeth, brows pinched. How you fall back against the table when the sensations overwhelm you, eyes shut and limbs weak. Pulsing and tensing around him, so sensitive. So close to falling apart.
Your arms wrap around him again, and he tries to keep the pace of his fingers steady, while you begin placing hurried kisses to his cheek, his neck. You kiss the side of his face, soft lips on soft skin. Then, your lips continue down, they press to his steel jaw. He tilts his head to let kisses fall over the expanse of metal that runs down his neck. Tingling phantom sensations curl into him and split him open.
"Close," You're muttering, so quiet he nearly doesn't hear. You hold him as tight as you can manage. Your breath is warm on the side of his face, tickling his skin, making him feel even warmer within.
"You are close?" He repeats for confirmation; his hand finds your side, and you grip his shoulders, hands brushing over thick plates of metal, desperately searching for something to hold onto. Your nails dig in, firm enough that he thinks the steel might chip. Viktor breathes a slight laugh, "You sound so sweet."
"So- I'm getting so-" You swear, "Oh, f-fuck…"
The only way he might quench what's come over him and steady his systems is by watching you come apart. Pleading his name, while you melt into a needy puddle of all the emotions and pleasant sensations he could never let himself have. Brought to your peak by his touch, his voice, because you are his, all his.
Viktor's free hand traces up, cool steel carefully finding your collarbone, your neck. Then, his fingers are wrapping around. He squeezes your throat just barely, just how you like, enough to make you fall back with your arms sprawled above you. Your head is perfectly dizzy, as his fingers work you steadily, his thumb flicking your needy clit much faster. Pushing you closer, closer.
Until it's far too much, and you are at his mercy, guided right to the edge of an exhilarating, electrifying precipice.
"Let go. I have you," Viktor instructs, "Let yourself submit."
Everything you've been building towards, all of his touches, all of this ecstasy, and how terribly you've missed him coalesces into this. Into a single, shuddering moment, waves upon waves of pleasure pushing you over the waterfall's edge. You're melting, cumming hard for him, your arms shaking, until he's removing his hand from your throat and giving you something to grab onto — delicate fingers laced with thick, strong, metal ones. Perfectly contrasting.
Your vision goes white. Your body tenses and then goes limp, like you've been shut down. The high is forceful, before it becomes soft, ebbing over you with gradual warmth, his hand in yours enough to steady you. Heart pounding, you take quick, loud breaths.
You can't help but feel disappointed when Viktor's hand releases yours to return to your waist. He holds you carefully, cold fingers brushing your skin reassuringly. Every touch feels deliciously raw, alight and sensitive.
Your eyes open slowly. Viktor's hair is a mess in his face, likely caused by you. He seems flushed, if only slightly. His unflinching gaze flickers across your form, before it settles back on your eyes.
"Breathe," He instructs carefully, gently. His hand grips your side a bit tighter; he's clearly affected by the way you sigh. You do your best to follow along, the aftershocks fading as your pulse slows, and as you start to calm.
"There. Excellent, you have done so well," Viktor praises. He smiles slightly in satisfaction. "You have never been this breathless."
Whatever words you could've formed in response don't come. They can't, not when his fingers are still inside you; not when Viktor is pressing them into your sensitive cunt just barely, squeezing your side as he delights in the way you whine. Pleasure, white-hot and familiar, surges through you fiercely.
It's so much, it's so much, it's too much, he's already fucking you with his fingers, and before you can fully wind down, you're swiftly building towards another high. Your body needs this. You just aren't sure if you can take it.
"Ah- shit," You murmur; reaching up, you tangle both hands in his hair, gripping tight for leverage. His expression remains infuriatingly calm. "I want- I need more. It feels so good, Vik," You're practically purring those last words, your whole body shuddering through another wave of ecstasy. "But I don't- I'm not sure if I-"
"You can." Viktor interrupts, assured and composed. "You can cum for me as many times as I dictate."
You're smirking now, obediently spreading your trembling thighs wide, while you roll your hips into his touch; his fingers are so thick, so impossibly, perfectly deep — "Hah- and you said I'm the insatiable one."
"Yes. You are the most insatiable human I have ever known. And it would seem you are particularly insatiable with me."
"You were once- Oh-"
Your head falls back as Viktor nudges that sweet, tender spot inside you, and your body becomes limp once more.
He takes the opportunity to bring the Hexarm's hand to your cheek. It's large enough to eclipse your face, the same way it was big and strong enough to easily pin both your wrists in its grasp. The heat radiating from the metal makes your eyes briefly flutter, before he trails it down to your throat. Perfectly responsive, your eyes grow heavy. He provides you with your favorite, much-needed pressure.
You've watched him use this very same hand to solder metal and create machinery. The device could heat to a temperature a thousand times hotter than it is now, it's capable of firing off a single ray of concentrated energy potent enough to slice through steel. And he has that hand wrapped right around your neck.
Fuck, that shouldn't excite you. It shouldn't have you quivering more and whimpering, shaking while you try your best to keep meeting his eyes, all because you so desperately want to hear him speak again. Praising you — You are doing so well for me, so pliant, so adorable. Or scolding you — Pathetic, aren't you? Quivering like a rabbit, and all it took was a little brush with danger. You are amusing.
Whichever he prefers. Because Viktor is so much stronger, so much smarter, and it hardly matters what he chooses to say, when any and all of it still gets you off.
Deep within your heart, you know he'd never hurt you. He would take away your pain if you asked it of him, so you wouldn't have to feel it again. His words can be sharp, simply because he wants to protect you. He wouldn't even attempt to put his hand on your throat like this if he didn't have complete, total control over the Hexclaw's laser. Carefully, he observes your every movement for any sign of discomfort, calculating and controlling each aspect of your pleasure — and it only serves to make your heart pound faster.
Of course, he can tell when you start to truly shake. He knows every inch of you is melting with overstimulation, and he's going to give you more.
"Take it. I know you are capable." His voice gives you goosebumps, while his fingers press into you shallowly, but the smallest movements are more than enough to make a mess of you. "There, perfect, you are performing excellently. Relax. Continue breathing deeply, nice and slow breaths. I will take care of you, love."
Love.
"Don't-" You choke, trying to keep your eyes on his despite the way your vision wavers and blurs; your reaction is immediate, predictable, and instantly satisfying. "Don't stop…"
You're beautiful like this, when you're underneath him. Since his enhancements, compared to his new body, you are now much smaller. He had to learn to adjust to the touches you need, to be gentle. Like you once were with him. Your roles, reversed in such a crucial way. You are undoubtedly strong in your own right, but when it comes to him, you are as sensitive as you are receptive. He needed to study how to keep from holding you too tightly, how to regulate his temperature to not burn your skin underneath his hands.
You are a pretty sculpture of quivering limbs and glistening skin. Your chest heaving, eyes fluttering. As beautiful as you were back then, before this. Before he lost the warmth he felt in his chest every time he saw you, before feelings on their own became mere faded memories. His iron consequence, locking away his dying love.
He gives you another. Three fingers press inside your dripping cunt, stretching you, filling you. A hand grips your side, his third lightly squeezing your throat — he works your pleasure for all it's worth, and has you gasping as he wrings out your aftershocks.
Viktor's mouth can't help but twitch into the slightest smile. "Look at you. You are worthy of the world."
He would give it all to you.
The Machine Herald will have this city in his hands. His vision is moving fast and accomplishing much, so it is only a matter of time. If you wanted more, he'd just have to reach even further. Relinquishing his human emotions left him without the need to be happy, nor content. But you, your happiness, keeping you safe, seeing you smile. It is stupid, foolish, doesn't make sense; his mechanics stutter, until he thinks he is choking on his own contradictory tenderness.
His body is betraying his mind. There is heat at his center, more than the normal amount emitted by his internal components. A very human, very filthy amount of heat. His skin underneath his armor is flushed and warm, his chest is aching from the weight of your heavy destruction. You are destroying him, and he can do nothing but allow it.
"I missed you," You murmur earnestly, voice weak, close to shattering. Your eyes are closed. Why, why are those words making his hands and his limbs and his heart shudder? "I missed you so bad- don't stop, keep fucking me Viktor- don't, please don't stop talking…"
Is that what you're imagining?
So he doesn't stop.
As you fall back against the table, Viktor removing the Hexclaw and letting go of your neck, he leans in to speak right against your ear. "I am proud of you, lubov. Infiltrating Piltover must not have been simple. You brought me more than I required, you did so with much efficiency. And you returned to me safely. Allow me to reward you. Fall apart for me, cum like I know you so desperately need to."
Your body curls, your hands move to his shoulders and grip them impossibly tight in an attempt to keep yourself steady. "Vik- Viktor-" You're gasping, you're close, "Kiss me, please kiss me-"
His hand holds your chin, the cool, rigid steel of his thumb swipes over your bottom lip; teasing you, making you whimper. Sliding further, into your mouth, until you're tasting the sharpness of metal. Until you're gently sucking, feeling the intricately crafted notches and joints on your tongue. When he pulls it out and kisses you hard, when his lips press to yours and your high-pitched moans become muffled on his mouth, you cum on his fingers hard enough to see the afterimage of stars.
He's trailing kisses down your jaw while you pulse around him, your thighs shaking, your head tilting to let his mouth find your throat. In the wake of his soft kisses, his foggy breath, you melt, and fully succumb to your shuddering high.
Working you back down is a slow, patient process. A kiss onto your neck for every gasp you take in, the feeling of gentle teeth once your body starts to fully relax. Everything you've wanted, everything you missed; far too tender for who he's become.
There are faint marks on your neck by the time he pulls away. Signs he was there. Proof he is softer than he is meant to be.
You could stop here. Instead, the next few moments happen in their own special space of reality.
Away from this city, away from his lab. A different plane made for just the two of you. Your mind feels dizzy, heavy. Viktor meets your gaze, momentarily scanning your face, waiting to make sure you've calmed.
He is all you can think of, all that has ever mattered. And even when he is right here, you miss him so, so much.
You tremble from the end of your spine to the top of your shoulders when he carefully pulls his fingers from you. He brushes his palm from your thigh to your side in one steady, soothing motion. You can feel the scars on his palm, the slight hesitant tremor to his still-slick fingers. You're reaching up, palm pressing to his chest. You absently feel the various ridges of metal. Smooth to the touch, armor radiating the faintest flickers of heat.
He glances down, watching your movement as your palm brushes further, further. Delicate fingertips trail the dips and outlines that continue down his stomach. Eventually, you reach as far as your arm will let you, your fingers drawing circles onto the rib-like sections of steel crossing just above his hips. As he glances back up to you, he finds your soft, pleading gaze to be already looking at him. As sweet as he's always remembered.
Your breathing is heavy. "Vik," You're begging, "We shouldn't- I'm sorry. This is stupid. I know we should stop, but…"
He is going to regret this.
Before he can stop himself, before his mind and his systems can even be led to form a single rational thought, Viktor is pressing the palm of his Hexarm just above your head, flat to the table. He is leaning over you, he is finding your cheek with a soft hand and a gentle touch. He's pulling you in, crashing his lips against yours, and he knows you're right — you shouldn't continue. He shouldn't allow this.
Machines do not feel. The Machine Herald feels nothing, and wants for nothing besides evolution. But Gods, you're kissing him like his lips are a drug, all you need after wanting to kiss him for so, so long. Since before you both became dim shells of what you once were. Your legs are wrapping around him, your fingers are brushing his face with such devastating tenderness, and Viktor believes he is feeling everything.
He's reaching down between your gasps for breath that make gaps in your kisses, and he's deftly activating a set of small, circular mechanisms on either of his sides. The armor on his chest unlatches with a clicking noise, platings becoming loose, unaligned.
The larger, more cumbersome sections of his armor, including his gauntlets, cape, and shoulder pieces have been discarded from the start, making the portion of chest armor come off as two simple halves. He has to pull away, sit up straight, and partially slide off of you to remove it all the way. Both pieces of armor hit the ground with a particularly heavy thud.
Most of his body has been replaced. Underneath the metal armor, there's just more metal; sections of iron that've been fused to replace muscle and skin, alloyed parts that reinforce his thin frame.
You have only seen him like this once. He was fixing some miscalibrated platings on his side, a wrench in one hand, the Hexclaw's laser busy welding a suitable replacement. Two thirds machine, and one part still human, he was definitely much different from what you remembered. Still, there were small sections of pale skin on his back, split where his spine had been reconstructed. And jagged scars, adorned by faint, dark moles. His messy hair still falls around his face just like you remember it.
You wanted to touch — he says he can't feel, but would he sense your fingertips as they traced his scars, would he shudder as your hands felt his skin? If you kissed what remained of him, his hand and each of his fingers, his back and each of those pretty moles, his chest down to his stomach, could you alight new sensations in him?
You've never wanted to touch him more than in this moment.
The bottom portion of his armor comes off much easier, leaving just the thick sections that cover his thighs down to his legs, including the steel brace mechanism. You're only able to catch the faintest glimpse, before he's pulling you into another deep kiss — a kiss that burns with every moment lost, his body pressing you against the table and beneath him. Your arms wrap around him, palms trailing across his back.
As they've always longed for, your fingertips feel the back of his neck: the ridges and hard edges of his spine, the solid base of the Hexarm, his soft skin. Viktor physically shudders. When one of your hands tangles in his hair while the other falls, landing upturned beside you, he kisses you harder, he absently finds your hand and holds it in his. Your fingers lace together. His hand feels so warm, still slightly larger than yours. His skin is scarred, your thumb brushing over calloused knuckles and thin, purple veins. Every touch is so tender, earnest, human, it's nearly unbearable. Your hand was meant to be in his. Even if it won't last.
It's a strange sensation, when his body presses ever closer to your own. Metal leads down from his navel, across to his pelvis, trailing underneath the armor on his thighs as one smooth, solid construction. Partially welded into his skin, but seemingly designed to make some sections removable. It is warm like the rest of him, designed with faint ridges and indents.
Your legs, locked around him at the ankles, encourage him to press ever-closer. He devours you, kissing you deeper than you thought possible. You sigh against his mouth, and hold on tightly to his hair. His body rocks against yours in an instinctual, clumsy motion. Close, pressing, grinding. Warm metal and those perfect little ridges grind between your legs, against your core, against your clit. And you practically jolt.
Oh. You break away from the kiss to toss your head back with a breathy, pretty noise. Pleasure threads through you, thick and unrelenting.
Viktor mumbles something that barely registers in your ringing ears: Should stop, you manage to make out. And then, Are you alright?
"Yes, I just-" You mumble, panting hard, "Don't. Don't stop."
So Viktor grasps your waist in a tight, yet careful grip. His eyes never leave yours, gaze burning with a fire you've never once seen. He guides you to press against him, grinds his body against yours until you're making a mess of the metal. Until the faint ridges are nudging your swollen clit just right, until the heat of the iron is burning through you, into you, and your slick arousal is glistening on the steel.
Your mind and heart are racing.
"Oh, fuck-" You're swearing, your words surely seeming broken; he finds your cheek, he tilts your head up towards him, and you can't decide if the gesture is tender, or possessive. "I need you, I really, really do."
His body feels as though he just touched the surface of the sun, and Viktor hardly knows if the warmth is coming from his overloaded systems, or if it's surrounding him, heat drawn thickly from the friction between the two of you. Perhaps it's a mix of both.
Either way, he is losing himself. It's all happening so terribly fast; when his body rolls against yours, and you whimper through a filthy utterance of his name, there is a clear, undeniable response. A tingling in his veins, an eager sensation that shoots from his back to his chest to his core, consuming everything like a wildfire, and threatening to envelop all of him.
He doesn't even know what to do with this. How to silence these disruptions, how to get his stupid brain to stop picturing you shuddering beneath his form as he presses against you, presses inside you, and brands every inch of you with his own name —
"Milaya," Viktor hums, and you swear, his tone sounds lighter, his voice sounds strained. "I have always needed you. I'm not- No, I want- I shouldn't…"
Trailing off when you cry out, he swallows. His thumb brushes your bottom lip as he continues to guide you towards him. Sweat beads on your chest, your thighs. He instructs, partially shakily, "Keep looking at me. Please."
You've rarely heard him stutter or falter, never seen him anywhere close to worked up. You hardly knew if he had the capacity to feel this way, even though he certainly wasn't built to, even though he definitely isn't supposed to. And isn't it all because of you?
The way your gaze locks with his as he rhythmically rocks against you has your heart skipping beats. There's a slight softness to his cold eyes, to his expression, that you're sure no-one else has seen before. Not since back then. You are impossible to resist, and this definitely needs to stop, this is definitely too far — it's going even further when your hand reaches down, fingertips clumsily tracing the edges of the metal seared into his navel.
He knows what you want. You're greedy, a glutton for punishment, a sweet, terrible fool. But if he's honest with himself, perhaps he is worse. You are pleading his name again, the sound echoing unendingly in his ears, and Viktor is removing the front-most section of the metal enhancement: a thin plate that forms a triangular shape from his hips, all the way down.
When he presses against your form, the next sensation to bleed into you is much different. It's smooth, soft latex, shoving against you. The last layer remaining between you and him and —
And you can feel him. Straining hard and heavy against his underclothes. Firm and warm as he rocks into you, grinding all of him onto your throbbing cunt. You aren't thinking, you can't think anymore. Not when Viktor is hard, and when your heartbeat is so damn loud in your ears, you couldn't possibly hear anything else.
"Viktor," You're murmuring, your chest pleasantly aching. Pleasure welds with emotion, walking the same shaky line, until your heart is unfurling with delicate petals that fill your throat sweetly, consuming you wholeheartedly, "I love you."
If Viktor's mechanized heart was still capable of faltering from its pre-programmed rhythm, he's sure it would be fucking pounding.
Every part of him is set alight. Burning, he feels smoke in his throat, and swears he tastes fire. He's overloading, practically overheating, like a fragile body trembling with need and want, like a system with too many programs open at once — and oh Gods, it just keeps opening more. His vision has long since gone blurry, and every sound in his ears is thick, as though he's been submerged in deep water.
How long have you wanted to say those words? He thinks of quiet days spent with you in Piltover, the lingering glances and faint touches he tried his hardest to forget.
How long has he needed to hear you say them?
Honestly, he could cry, if he was at all still capable of crying. His mind is a mess. Heat is threading through his circuits, devotion and desire, a terrible softness; he's so soft inside, it hurts. It actually hurts, and he believed he taught himself how to forgo any pain.
Electricity and faulty Hextech sizzle in his core, radiating, echoing. His damn foolish, worthless, synthetic heart. He needs to hold you, fuck you, break you. To encode this sensation into his head and his blood, because forgetting the way your voice strummed those words would be worse than admitting he is too weak to discard them.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
He doesn't deserve this. He was not built to love. Love should be thrown out, along with everything else. Love is a weakness. You may be fine with placing your heart on railway tracks, you might not think twice before putting yourself in danger, but if anything were to happen to you, he might be entirely consumed.
With his mechanized existence, he could soon become immortal. This longing would surely stick with him after you're gone, an eternity of something he could never understand. Swallowing him whole, holding onto him tight. Endlessly painful. But right now, when he is here and stuck in a dream at the same time, when he is more of himself than he has ever been, and you are all that exists in his veins, could he ever manage to stop?
You are so close to so much more. So close to ruining everything — just one last layer, one more touch. One movement, one press of his palms to your figure before he slides into you, one last massive, unfixable mistake.
"Vik, please, please, I'm-" You can barely hold on anymore, as much as you've been trying to. You curl into him, grinding back against him hard; "I can't, I can't fucking- hhah- I'm so close-"
Your bodies rock together desperately, beckoning and wanting more of what they shouldn't have. His heat radiates into your skin, and your breath fills the air in thick, heavy huffs. You're still so wet, and it makes every movement slick and simple. Your hands feel his back, his shoulders, his steel jaw, his face. Anywhere you can touch, you're making the most of it.
Viktor finds your chin, he holds it delicately, and when he says your name, it feels personal; devastatingly so. Like he could make a home with the familiarity laced through each syllable. He breathes them like he did back then, coveting you so deeply. Muttering it as one final plea.
If he can't fix this, perhaps you can reconstruct this part of him. Could you show him how to live again, could you instruct his mechanized heart, and finally teach it how to skip?
"I have you," Viktor sighs, because he's sure you want to hear his words as much as he needs to say them. He doesn't require a working heart, when he can let all of himself echo through his still-human soul. "I love you."
Your chest bruises with sparks in the wake of his gentle voice. Still somewhat robotic. Spoken as though each individual, inevitable word is one he is learning to speak. I. Love. You.
Your legs and arms wrap around him, holding him as close to you as he could possibly get. Exhaling shakily, your whines are broken, your nails digging into his back. They'll leave red marks onto his pale skin; he hopes they do. His chest is pressed right up to yours. Viktor allows his forehead to rest just barely against your own, utterly tender, and he melts, as your thudding heartbeat echoes through him. Body to body, scarred skin on softer skin. Delicate limbs held around a partial chassis of firm, strong metal.
Helpless. Perhaps for you, he is the helpless one.
It doesn't matter; everything is crumbling away, and the both of you are thrown right back into reality, because you are falling apart for him at last. One last time.
You shake, liquid hot pleasure drips over you like burning wax, and you're left at the mercy of your blistering, final high. Another few deep grinds into each other are all you need — the both of you throbbing, his jaw tensing, Hexclaw twitching, stiffening, and radiating a powerful amount of heat. His eyes flutter, the artificial glow behind them flickering like a dying lightbulb. You hold onto him tighter, and he lets go of a slight noise. A quiet, shaky, all too desperate moan.
You stay rocking against one another even while you're cumming, even after your voice is sore from chanting Viktor's name so loudly, you briefly worry that anyone just outside of his lab might've heard you.
Finally stopping, you only begin to relax once your whole body is entirely spent.
You breathe slowly. In, and then out. Deep, calming breaths. Your heart pounds with force. The room refocuses around you, the harsh light of his various lamps burning into the back of your eyelids and making you see colorful spots. Viktor waits a few moments, before he shakily pushes up to prop himself above you.
There's a hum of ambient, grinding metal coming from him. The hiss of steam. The echo of small shudders, and forceful gasps. Your vision is still fuzzy, your limbs incredibly weak, but you notice when he reaches for something; the thin metal plating, which he secures back onto himself.
Once your eyes are completely clear and your heart is beating to a normal tune, you're finally able to focus on him above you. In barely any time, with a half-machine's perfected efficiency, Viktor has already regained every last aspect of his composure.
"Stay. You require rest," He instructs matter-of-factly, his tone filled with his usual sternness. His gaze scans you up and down methodically. "I will supply you with a change of clothes."
Right. Viktor's heart can't shudder like yours. Soft sensations have no need to linger. You'd almost forgotten. This is what you were always bound to return to: you, an ally. And he is just a machine.
Through heavy, lovesick eyes, you admire the sight of him above you. His thin figure, enthralled in shadow, light reflecting off of the metal sections of his outline. He runs a hand through his hair to push it from his face, a gesture you find particularly endearing and human.
"Oh, don't worry," You hum casually, stretching your arms and legs out. Your voice is light, foggy and still weak. The table beneath you feels firm against your back, but with how lightweight your whole body feels, you couldn't care less. "I don't think I'm moving even if I wanted to."
Viktor raises a brow just slightly. He taps your neck with a single smooth, metal finger. "And something needs to be done about these."
Briefly, your expression shifts into confusion. You tilt your head, allowing his fingers to trail further, and they examine the base of your neck down to your collarbones; the marks he left on your skin are swiftly darkening, forming blotchy, pretty bruises.
Realizing what he's getting at, you smile smugly. "Worried someone's gonna ask questions?"
"Half of Zaun acknowledges you as my right hand. I am not worried. But they will ask. It could prove arduous." Viktor explains, his tone exceedingly controlled. "Come. Hold onto me."
When you don't immediately move, he stares at you expectantly. So, despite your tiredness, you listen, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and your legs around his middle loosely. Viktor lifts you with ease. His heavy boots clunk with each step, and he carries you just a few paces from the table, setting you down on your back, and onto the familiar, ripped-up leather couch. It shifts, accommodating your weight and his. Compared to the worktable, when your back hits the soft yet worn cushions, you feel like you're resting on clouds.
Viktor shifts, starting to move away, but you keep your arms wrapped around him, and speak before he has the chance.
"Vik…" You're purring, "Stay here."
A brief look of contemplation crosses his face, categorized by the slightest pinch in his thick brows. You smile, and nearly wind up kissing him again. He doesn't attempt to pull apart from you when you drag him closer to yourself, your lips gently brushing his cheek.
At first, he's overly stiff. His arm fits underneath your back to hold you out of mere obligation. In contrast, his metal arm is kept beside you, refusing to touch, steel-jointed fingers flexing absently. But once your hands trail up, your fingers tracing the back of his neck, before they run through his hair, he honestly, earnestly relaxes.
Your body underneath him is comforting. Limbs entangled, your legs brushing steel and the rigid metal brace. His head leans gently into the crook of your neck, almost hesitantly, as though he isn't entirely sure where to place it. He can't help but fall against you, bodies pressed into one another naturally enough to form the same grave. If he ever came face to face with death, he would refuse to accept it, unless it was just like this.
You let your tired eyes close. You allow yourself to focus on his warmth, on the weight of him, and you can almost pretend this is natural. That you are in the past, or perhaps residing in a much different future. You are both lovers, as you wished you would be; simple and uncomplicated, nothing more, resting together in the dizzying comfort of your afterglow.
It'd be nice. Nicer than anything you've been afforded. The only problem is Viktor is all firm steel and hard edges. His metal hand shifts to hold your side, and his fingers are digging into your skin, gripping a bit too tight. His weight on yours is making it damn near difficult to breathe. And right now, he is very, very hot.
You frown, your eyes fluttering open again. "You're overheating."
"My internal temperature is regulated by a liquid cooling apparatus," Viktor murmurs, after a moment. "It seems to be malfunctioning."
His voice is smooth, as it always is, but it sounds much warmer, much quieter, when it's spoken this close to your ear. You sigh softly, and shuffle a little under him, trying to get more comfortable.
"Ah. That sounds concerning."
"The device will adjust itself in time," Viktor clarifies. "If it does not, repairs will take a few minutes, at most."
Your fingertips brush over his back. They feel the thick ridges of his spine, and the thin steel shape of the Hexclaw's base. It feels cool and lifeless under your palm. "This is cold, though."
"It is inoperational. It stopped responding, I will need to reset it individually."
"That so?" You huff in response, laughing a little. You hold onto him tighter, and lean your head into his shoulder. "Whatever. Just don't let go of me."
He doesn't. You exhale a long, weak breath. Your hands tremble slightly, as they uselessly grip onto the sections of cold steel that frame his shoulders. Viktor stays perfectly still, and he allows you to hold onto him as tightly as you need to. This might be the last moment you'll have together. For a while, at least. He has much to attend to, after this. Some tasks he can work on at your side, with your assistance, preferably. Some missions he must complete alone.
The next time you speak, your voice is so fragile, he thinks he should be holding it in his palms. Or else it'll break.
"We shouldn't- or, I guess I shouldn't have said… you know." You shudder, shaking all over before you tense. You're holding him too close to allow him to see your face, but he can picture your expression: slightly playful, to attempt to hide your uncertainty. "Gods, I'm so stupid. But I meant it. And I just-" You laugh, "I'm sorry, Viktor. Maybe you were right. I've been way too reckless."
Viktor has no need to ponder his answer. "I know. Don't apologize. You should be resting, our conversation can continue tomorrow."
You breathe deeply, and he quietly murmurs, his voice echoing through your ears, "I love you, milaya."
Fake. Expected. A ghost of choked-back emotions, of all-too tender moments already slated to become forgotten memories. But something is there, something that tells you he's trying. For now, you'll take it. It's more than enough.
You are close to falling asleep; every one of your nerves, washed over by warm, inviting waves, enveloped in his persistent heat. As though he can sense your building exhaustion, Viktor rubs your back with slow, reassuring circles — as best he can manage, considering your shapes are pinned too close together. Your breathing evens out, and you relax into his touch. Your mind feels as heavy as your weary, weak limbs.
Your love would be soft, he considers, distracted. Gentless personified, warm like your smile, like the radiant sun shining down on one's skin. Patient and alighting. Like being pulled by the wrists, wrested out of a rocky, dark sea — finally alive, and finally able to breathe. The still-human part of him feels in measures of softness. The mechanical part is much, much different.
Heat is running through his veins. It's racing through his system, and he knows it isn't from any sort of malfunction. It burns. The taste of it is like sharp blood on his tongue, it spins in his head like the dizzy grinding of gears, sears through him with fraying wires and sizzling static. Pain and softness, forming a mix he might certainly call love, but might also swear to remove.
There's a certain sharpness gnawing at him. A flickering, raw bruise, brutalizing him from between his ribs, regardless of his attempts to try and ignore it. Your efforts are failing. You are feeling, and that means you have failed. Even dying embers burn out the same as raging flames.
You've drifted off, it would seem, your breathing slow, your body limp. So Viktor holds you just a bit tighter.
For once, for the first time since he truly decided who he wanted to be and what he wanted to accomplish, he is lost.
In the end, he is going to have to make a decision. One that will benefit his vision. Or one that will destroy him from the inside out. He must carve out these distractions, remove the sections of his heart that are faulty, or he must learn what it would mean to embrace them.
It scares him, truly. Viktor, the Machine Herald, genuinely scared over something meant to be so trivial. Fretting over the one person he never wanted to lose, even though he was sure he'd already lost you. He wonders what his opposition would say, what those who view him as soulless might think, if they knew the truth. And if you knew?
Just having to tell you, forcing himself to push you away, or coming face to face once more after he's altered his brain to completely forget you — No, the thought alone might be enough to seal his fate.
He'll make up his mind before you wake. His head will become clearer, eventually. When your voice is gone from his ears, when your phantom touches tracing his skin have finally disappeared. Besides, this moment won't last, and he wants to savor what's left of it.
Whatever happens next, wherever he takes this, he knows you will follow — to a different path, to a better future. Or to the ends of the earth.
#viktor x reader#viktor x you#arcane x reader#viktor smut#machine herald x reader#don't. perceive me#runs away so fast
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Sometimes, as much as I love internet communities and spaces, I really think a lot of people have spent so much time in sanitized, morally pure echo chambers that they lose sight of realism and life outside the internet.
I live in Alabama. My fiancée and I cannot hold hands down the street without fear of homophobic assholes. We have an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. We are one of the poorest states in the US with some of the lowest scores on metrics related to quality of life, including maternal mortality, healthcare, education, and violence. It’s not a coincidence that we are also one of the most red, one of the most Republican states in the Union. In 2017 the UN said the conditions in Alabama are similar to those in a third-world country.
Trump gave a voice to the most violently racist, sexist, xenophobic groups of people who, unfortunately for most of us in the Southern U.S., run our states and have only grown more powerful since his rise to power. The Deep South powers MAGA, and we all suffer for it.
We have no protections if they don’t come from the federal government.
I know people are suffering internationally and my heart is with them. However, this election is not just about foreign policy - we have millions of Americans right here at home living in danger, living in areas where they have been completely abandoned by their local leaders. We need this win.
No candidate is perfect, but for the first time in my voting lifetime I’m excited to vote. I’m excited for the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket because they are addressing the issues close to home. They’re advocating for education as the ticket to a better life, but without the crippling student debt. They’re advocating for the right to love who you love without fear and with pride. Kamala has always been pro-LGBT+ and so has Tim. Again, if you’re queer in the South, we don’t have support unless it comes from the federal government, and we absolutely will not have support if the Republicans regain the White House.
Kamala speaks in length about re-entry programs to reduce recidivism and help people who have been arrested and imprisoned regain their lives. Tim Walz supported restoring voting rights to felons. In the South, you know who comprise the majority of felons? Members of minorities. It’s one of the major tools of systemic racism and mass disenfranchisement, and arguably the modern face of slavery (there are some fantastic documentaries and books that explain the connection between the post-Reconstruction South and the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for BIPOC). Having candidates who recognize this and want to restore the freedom and rights to people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system? And keep them from having to go to prison in the first place? That’s refreshing. That’s exciting.
I would *love* to live in a country where women’s rights are respected, where LGBT+ rights and protections are a given, where we treat former criminals and individuals experiencing mental health crises with respect and dignity. I would *love* to live in a country where education is free of religious interference and each and every citizen is entitled to a fair start and equal opportunities.
But I don’t live in that country. Millions and millions of Americans find their rights and freedoms up for debate and on the ballot.
Project 2025 poses the largest threat to the future of our democracy as we know it. We are being called to fight for the future of our country.
We have to put on our oxygen masks first before we can help others.
You don’t have moral purity when you wash your hands of the millions of us who are still fighting for own freedoms right here.
The reality is that a presidential candidate is a best fit, and not a perfect fit. But comparatively speaking? Kamala is pretty damn close.
#us politics#kamala harris#vote kamala#vote blue#don’t forget about the southern states please#we’re still here
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all the other player characters: a motive embroiled in the current political circumstances and decisions driven by the pressure of their circumstances, with backstories that are intrinsically tied to the impact of the last war.
meanwhile, Aden:
#rise of the third power#rottp#rot3p#jrpgs#god i love the token evil teammate#and then we proceeded to drag him around by the ear <3#aden rot3p
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There's nothing that gets my goat going, for better or worse, more than observing the technology levels in media.
#if anybody ever wants me to type out walls of text all you have to do is ask me about technology!#i've been reading 50 tea recipes from the duchess the past couple days#and i'm this close to typing out an essay on the tech level in that world#primarily MODERN DAY STAGE LIGHTING#in what's supposed to be a world prior to the rise of the steam engine and its widespread use#idk i'm like a third of the way through the manhwa#and it mentions other countries b/c the big theme is How Awesome Tea Is#so maybe they have steam powered ships#manga#armi reads manga
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Here's some of my fanfics that I've written that I'm super proud of personally-
Universal Collision: My Tmnt/Rottmnt crossover fic. It's one of my personal favorites that I'm incredibly proud of. Despite it not having many chapters, I'm thrilled with what I've gotten down so far!
Of Love and Heartbreak: One of my Lupin III fanfics. It's a oneshot involving my favorite OT5 as well as a character study on Jigen Daisuke. Mainly the aspect of his love life and how his past effected him currently in the present. It's also one of my longest oneshots and I'm super proud of it!
The Roles We Play: Another Lupin III fanfic as well as my first one for the fandom ever. It's a fic that again is an OT5 kind of thing but instead it focuses mainly on the LupZeni/LupJig/JigZeni pairings. It also features an injured Zenigata and a feral Lupgang of which I love and adore.
The Princess and Her Dragon: A reader x Malleus fic for Twisted Wonderland. Basically it's a romance story that's got a twist in it. The main protagonist is actually a reincarnated princess who breaks a powerful spell that has been placed on Malleus and his group. Lowkey incredibly proud of this one.
The Dragon's Son: Also another reader x Malleus story but with the reader having grown up and leaving Twisted Wonderland. The reader accidentally takes something more with her though and six years later, she returns to Twisted Wonderland with her beloved son Elliott. Pretty pleased with this one.
My EngIta Week submissions: I'd been asked to join a Hetalia rare pair week last year and had a blast writing for it! I'm honestly incredibly pleased with how my little stories turned out!
These ones are the ones that I'm most proud of and are the ones that I put a lot of effort into them. While I'm proud of all my stuff, it's these ones that I feel like are some of my best written stuff that I've ever published within my lifetime.
#oli talks#ooc#muns ramblings#mindless ramblings of a madman#my writing#teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise of the tmnt#tmnt#rottmnt#lupin the third#lupin the 3rd#lupin iii#lupin the iii#twisted wonderland#twst#disney twst#disney twisted wonderland#hetalia#hetalia axis powers#hetalia world stars#I'm super proud of these ones specifically and I'm glad that I've written stuff for them
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