#Students who turn stuff in NOW after I very clearly told them ''Deadline was two days ago'' can got kick rocks!

[mysterious-prophetess]

FREEEEEEDOMMMM!!!!!

[biisexualemma]

unrequited pt.2. peter parker

word count: 3.6k

warnings: anxiety, panic attack? i guess kind of

requested: yea a few people asked for this lol

plot: you haven’t seen peter for weeks and start to worry about him

a/n: i finished re-writing this late last night and i’ll be honest with you i haven’t checked it over so sorry if there are any mistakes but i’m tired sis goodnight! lmk if you like this! pls comment / share!

pt.1 / marvel masterlist / multi-fandom masterlist

"ned... you're so wrong for so many reasons," m.j.'s expression was flat, her eyes rolling before she continued to fight ned on who was really the strongest avenger. you were supposed to be working on a group project for your history class but somehow the topic of the avengers came up and the conversation derailed. ned was making a, somewhat, compelling case for the hulk but m.j. was clearly winning with her argument for wanda.

"nobody even knows the full extent of her powers... and the hulk? what? he's gonna smash some more?"

you sat quietly, chin in the palm of your hand, listening in and out of the conversation. you didn't really feel much like contributing. you would occasionally chime in to support m.j. but mostly you just heard the noise of their bickering and let it happen.

you didn't want to be that person, but your mind was (much to your frustration) completely consumed with thoughts of peter. and at the worst time, you had so many tests coming up, and essay deadlines were also creeping up on you. usually you were on top of this stuff, but your mind was preoccupied almost all the time.

because of peter, who was no where to be seen. in the past few weeks he had stopped showing up to school all together. ned said it was something to do with tony stark but you had a feeling it was more than that. you didn't know how to explain it.

you hadn't spoken to him in a long time now, and you didn't exactly leave things on good terms. it was the longest you'd gone without talking since peter called you a poopy head in the third grade.

you just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. especially since you had no idea what he was getting up to, peter was known to get himself into some messes when he was left to his own devices. and you just knew ned was lying to cover for his best friend but that only made you feel even more out of the loop.

everything felt a bit off without peter around, like something was missing. that, on top of the guilt and worry you were feeling, was turning your head to mush. last time you'd spoken to peter, he was erratic and wounded and desperate. something bad had to have happened for him to be gone this long.

the bell rang, signalling the end of your last period for the day, and the rest of the week seeing as it was a friday. you snapped out of your daze, jolting as your eyes focused back on your surroundings.

"what time did you say again, y/n?" your eyes drifted to m.j. who was collecting her notes on her desk, her eyes meetings yours, waiting for your answer. a crease formed between your eyebrows, you hadn't heard a word of the conversation before right now. m.j. seemed to realise this, rolling her eyes at you with a playful smile. you did this a lot lately, she was getting used to it. "homecoming? what time did you want to meet tonight?"

"oh," you nodded, still sitting at your desk as your classmates hustled around you. "right, homecoming— i— uh—"

"tell me you're still coming," ned interrupted, his eyes wide suddenly, clearly desperate that your answer was anything but no. "c'mon we've had this planned for ages!"

"no— yeah— of course i am," you nodded quickly to reassure him. "yeah— sorry— i just spaced. is seven good for you guys?"

they hummed in response, nodding.

you packed up your books, shoving them into your bag, still in a slight haze with all these thoughts running through your head about peter. you couldn't think about homecoming, it seemed trivial now compared to the worst case scenarios running through your mind. maybe you could try to call peter again? you thought to yourself as you quickly left the classroom, forgetting about m.j. and ned and homecoming, your muscle memory alone leading you to your locker.

you swapped out your books from your bag with the ones you needed to study from for your biology test next week. after slamming the locker door shut, a familiar face was met with yours.

"jesus," you muttered as he stood inches away from your face, your heart racing from the shock. clutching your books to your chest, after nearly having a heart attack, you let out a loud sigh and furrowed your eyebrows. "peter? where the hell have you been?" you regained some of your composure, enough to find some anger in you towards him. he was the last person you were expecting to see today.

"you're ok?" his usual soft brown eyes looked sunken and tired, his hair was scruffier than usual and his lips chapped as they hung open, his eyes scanning over you.

your mouth hung open to speak but he just shook his head as if answering his own question. he gripped your forearm, urging you to walk with him. you dug in your heels, yanking your arm back, wanting him to slow down and explain before you went anywhere with him. "will you just walk," he muttered sharply when you tried to resist him. "please," he softened quickly, his eyes meeting yours.

you frowned, uncomfortably shifting the stack of books in your arms as peter pulled you along behind him hastily. you watched his eyes shifting about the hallway as students weaved around the two of you, his grip not loosening for a second. he was definitely up to something stupid and dangerous that he absolutely should not be involved in.

he'd dragged you all the way out into the parking lot, pulling you aside and away from the crowd of people.

"what's going on? why do you look like— i mean no offence but— you look like crap," you couldn't help but show some level of concern. no matter how complicated your feelings were for him at the moment, he was still your best friend, and he looked like hell. you couldn't stop yourself from staring at him.

"i need you to just— stop talking and listen to me," the look in his eyes made your heart beat a bit faster, your eyes darting between his trying to understand his urgency. "you're not safe—"

"no— i'm fine—" you were never very good at doing what you were told. you glanced down at yourself, perfectly safe and standing in front of him. "see?—"

"no— no you're not," he gulped, his eyes darting away from yours for a split second. "i'm taking you home and you have to stay there. ok? please."

his voice was horse, cracking when he spoke. you didn't understand any of it. peter was the friendly neighbourhood spider-man, what the hell had he gotten himself into that had him this worked up?

you tilted your head slightly, he couldn't think you'd blindly do whatever he said. you needed some answers. "pete," you mumbled, shaking your head with a faint frown. "can't you just tell me what's going on? you're kinda' scaring me."

"i screwed up," his face contorted, his eyes screwing shut for a second and his nose scrunching. you were glued to him, following his mixed expressions trying to understand what was going through his head. he took a deep, shaky breath, running a hand through his hair. "and i know you— you hate me and the last thing you wanna' do is listen to me but i need you to do this for me."

"alright," you said after a moments hesitation. you just wanted him to relax. all your pent up anger and hurt that you'd felt over peter had dissipated quite quickly. you were too occupied with trying to ease some of his stress, and if that meant becoming a homebody for a few days, you would do it. "alright— don't worry. i've been putting off my english essay for a week now anyway, it's about time i cracked down on it."

you tried to ease the tension, act like he wasn't asking much of you. he let out a heavy sigh, looking over at you with those brown eyes. "it's homecoming tonight, i know w—"

"is it?" you feigned forgetfulness, not wanting to make him feel any worse than he already did. you shrugged. "i was never one for socialising anyway."

peter knew you better than that. he knew what he was asking you to give up. "i'm sorry," he took a step closer to you, his hands hovering in front of you, unsure that you wanted him to touch you. "i'm sorry you got dragged into this."

your eyes lingered on his hands before you pulled back up to his stare. you pursed your lips and shrugged. "i'd feel better about it if i knew what i was getting dragged into," you pulled away from your conversation for a second to slip your books into your bag. "walk me home and you can explain everything."

and he did. he told you all about the vulture, the weapons, what really happened during the decathlon trip. all of it. right up to when the vulture figured out his identity— which lead to him finding out about aunt may, about his friends, and about you. he told you about how he'd spent the past few weeks figuring out where the vulture's next major deal was being held, how he'd messed up so bad and how mr stark had taken his suit.

by the time he'd finished, your mouth hung open slightly. you didn't know how he'd been dealing with all of this by himself. spider-man helped old ladies cross the street and returned stolen bicycles, he didn't fight men in bird costumes to stop illegal sales of dangerous advanced weapon tech.

"peter, this sounds pretty dangerous," you spoke up after he told you about his plan to intercept the vulture's airplane heist. "don't you think you should just call happy? or tony? this sounds like iron man territory."

"i can't do that," he sighed. "besides, i already tried happy— he's not taking my calls right now. something about a time out."

you let out a heavy sigh, having taken everything in that he'd told you. you had reached your door, peter standing behind you with his hands stuffed in his pockets. you motioned for him to come in but he hesitated, opening his mouth to decline. "c'mon," you grabbed his arm and tugged gently. "this heist isn't happening 'til late tonight. you can keep me company 'til then."

"maybe, get some rest, too, you really do look like hell," he let you pull him inside, following behind you. he ignored the second dig you had now made about his appearance.

"may must've been pretty mad when she found out you'd been skipping school?" you collapsed onto your bed, crossing your legs over and watching peter perch himself on the edge of your bed. he leaned forward, his hand running over his face with sheer exhaustion.

"you have no idea," he groaned, holding his head up with the palm of his hand now. "i'm pretty much grounded for the rest of the year. and i have to send her a pic' of me sitting in every one of my classes from now on," you nodded, pursing your lips because that sounded about right. "but mainly she was worried."

"well, she wasn't the only one," he glanced at you over his shoulder, his eyes lingering there for a while. you breathed through your nose, looking away from him and down to your hands to give yourself a moment. you'd forgotten how difficult it was to have him look at you like that. "you just took off with no word, peter."

he turned his gaze away from you, focusing on the wall in front of him, his eyes glossy. for weeks that last conversation with you had been sitting at the back of his mind. he knew he'd handled everything in the worse possible way. he tried to protect you, hurt you by doing so, and then had everything he tried to protect you from blow up in his face anyway.

"i haven't been able to think clearly for weeks," you gulped, scared to meet his gaze again, in fear that you might lose your confidence. "i missed you. and i was worried out of my mind about you."

"y/n—" his voice was quiet.

"and i know i was the one who told you to leave. but i was hurt and sad. i'd convinced myself that you felt the same way, and when you—" you closed your eyes for a second, feeling him watching you. you hadn't been able to say any of this out loud for weeks and now it was just spilling out of you. "anyway— i shouldn't've punished you for that. they are my feelings i need to get over. it wasn't your fault and i'm sorry i made it seem like it was."

he shook his head faintly, sniffling slightly, catching your attention. "i screwed up," he shook his head a little harder, pushing himself up off your bed, his back turned to you. "i screwed up so bad," he ran his hand over his face, his thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose. your eyebrows knitted. "it wasn't supposed to turn out like this."

"don't," you shook your head, willing him to stop. "it's not your fault. i shouldn't have—"

he cut you off, turning to face you as he did. "i'm in love with you," his mouth hung open slightly, his eyes now stinging red. "i was in love with you then, and i'm in love with you now. i think i always will be."

your eyebrows unknitted, your mouth opening to speak but nothing came out. you watched his hand tug on the ends of his curls, his eyes locked onto you the entire time, trying to read your expression.

"i was trying to protect you and it went completely wrong—" his breathing was erratic. "i thought you'd be safer if i distanced myself—" the look on his face was breaking your heart. he knew how stupid it all sounded now he explained it out loud. "i screwed everything up— and now you're in more danger than ever— because of me."

"you— you—" your brain was trying to keep up. you shook your head. you had spent the past month telling yourself that everything you thought he'd felt for you wasn't real, that you'd over thought everything he'd ever done for you. you'd been telling yourself for a month to move on. "you didn't screw up, pete. i know you. whatever you did, you did for the right reasons."

the lump in your throat was growing as you tried to keep some kind of composure. it wouldn't do either of you any good to get upset with him when he was worked up like this. he didn't need to be told he'd made a mistake, he was already painfully aware.

"you don't— you—but— i—" he was hyperventilating, completely vulnerable as he fell apart in front of you.

"pete," you mumbled carefully, climbing over to where he was stood, hand in his hair and he pulled on the loose curls, his eyes wide with anxiety and stress. you moved your hands to his, pulling them down to his side and giving them a small squeeze. "calm down," you cooed. "everything will be ok."

you trailed your hands up to his shoulders, giving them a soft squeeze before pulling him into a tight hug. you wrapped your arms 'round his shoulders, one hand moving to the back of his head, running your fingers through his hair. his head ducked, burying into your neck, his arms wrapping around your waist in a desperate grip. his breathing was heavy at first, uneven and jagged as he clung onto you. your heart was beating out of your chest, you were sure he could hear it, but you held onto him as tight as you could, pressing your whole body against his trying to offer him as much comfort as you could.

after a while of standing around, holding each other, peter's breathing began to grow softer and slower. he began to notice the sweet scent lingering on your skin. his lips innocently hovering over the curve of your neck, breath fanning against your skin. you could feel goosebumps growing on your skin, the hair of your arms standing on end.

"better?" you mumbled softly. he gave you a faint nod in response, his lips leaving your skin as he pulled himself back from you. your hand slipped from in between his curls and down to the neck, your thumb brushing over his skin as he looked straight into your eyes. you gulped, eyelids fluttering.

he was a state to behold. his nose was pink, under eyes wet, your eyes trailed down to where his lips parted. he hiccuped a breath. you tried to push away the impulse to kiss him because he was clearly vulnerable. you didn't want him to later regret anything. "thanks," he mumbled breathlessly. "i don't know what happened there."

you pouted your lips, about to reply when peters eyes fluttered down your face, catching you off guard. his eyes lingered and you noticed his head tilting down and nearer, his lips catching onto yours before you could register what was happening. it was soft, gentle and didn't last longer than a couple seconds before you had to force yourself to pull away.

"peter— you're overwhelmed right now so maybe we shouldn—"

your whispers against his lips where cut short, he pressed his lips to yours again. unable to resist now he'd had a taste. his arms tightened around your waist, pulling you back flush against his chest. you swallowed a gasp, feeling his full weight behind the second kiss. his lips pushed against yours a little more desperately this time, you fell back a step, peter's arms where the only thing keeping you upright at this point.

both your hands where either side of his neck, trailing up into his hair where you pulled softly at the roots of his messy curls. he let out a soft moan against your lips, and you stumbled back once more, your thighs hitting your bed.

your hands quickly slipped down to his chest as you gently pried him off you. your head was spinning a little, his lips were plump and pink and the way he looked at you, with pure love and obsession, made you want to kiss him again and again.

"did you mean it?" you muttered breathlessly.

his eyes trailed back up from your lips, his gaze locking with yours again. he noticed the vulnerability and fear in your eyes now that he was paying you his full attention. he felt a wave of guilt hit him, knowing he was the one that put that look there.

"yeah," he hummed. "i did," he said with his chest. "i do. always will," he was breathless.

"you're not just saying it 'cause you've missed me?"

he shook his head quickly, shutting down any traces of doubt in your mind. "i have been in love with you since that summer we took that trip to coney island when you threw up after you ate too much cotton candy."

your scrunched up your nose at the memory. "gross."

he shrugged. "i don't know what to tell you. that's just when i knew."

your lips twitched into a small smile. "you should probably get some rest," you diverted the topic, trying hard not to kiss him again. he looked so tired. he had poured out months worth of anxiety and stress all in the past ten minutes. "you can't chase bad guys if you're half asleep."

he wore a half-hearted smile, his mind clearly flickering back to the task he had to take on later tonight.

"you can crash here if you want," you motioned to your bed.

"y'sure? i don't wanna get you in trouble."

"mom's working late, so you're good. plus she loves you, pete," your hands slipped down to his, giving them a quick squeeze of reassurance.

"sure she'll still love me when she finds out about us?" he quirked an eyebrow, the small smile on his lips was sloped and tired.

"m'sure," you hummed, biting back your growing smile at the word us. you moved him to sit on your bed again, his hands lazily holding yours. his eyelids fluttered as he looked up at you, a small crease forming between his eyebrows again. you could tell his mind was wandering again. "lie down, you need to rest or you're no good to anyone."

he nodded hesitantly and followed your instruction. "i'll sleep better with you next to me."

his voice was soft after you'd turned your back on him to leave him to rest. you rolled your eyes faintly, smile tugging your lips again. "is that right?"

he hummed, his arms outstretched, waiting for you to fall into them. you dragged your feet back over to him, biting the inside of your cheek, the corner of your lip twitching upwards. "there's a scientific reason behind it but my brain's too sleepy to think right now, so you'll have to take my word for it."

his words slurred together, his eyes rolling slightly the longer he forced them open. you just nodded. "alright, spidey, just this once."

"hm," he hummed as you climbed in next to him, his arms wrapping around you and immediately pulling you against his chest. "thanks," he muttered, his lips pressed against the top of your head. "don't know what i'd do without you."

[esperantoauthor]

Senior year Klaine!!! Applying for colleges! (Or you could just put some headcanons of how that year would go).

Hi Jas! This ask is literally 7 months old but I have every confidence that you still remember sending it because that is kind of your thing. I finally got inspired to pick back up the scene I had written and finish this off. It was a joy to write in this universe again for a little bit; thank you for sending this in when I invited people to send in prompts for scenes from the Express Yourself Verse. Without further ado...

Title: Applying to College [bonus content for the Express Yourself Universe] Author: Esperanto Length: 1,404 words 📚 Read it on Ao3 or below 📚

“You and Kurt talk much about college?” Burt asked conversationally as he handed Blaine a tire iron.

Blaine grasped the handle of the tool. “Some. I, uh, uh, I —don’t want to influ—to effect his de-de-decision so I haven’t shared my list yet.”

“Oh.”

Mr. Hummel looked disappointed. This confused Blaine, whose own parents had given him stern lectures about not throwing away his dreams for some high school boyfriend who, statistically, wasn’t going to be his forever partner anyways. Yes, his father had research to back up his point, as always.

“It’s irresponsible to choose a college based on where your boyfriend is going,” his father had lectured him.

“But he’s the love of-of-of my life,” Blaine had countered.

“Then your relationship will be strong enough to survive a little separation.”

His mother, always with the softer touch, had added, “You are just so young, sweetie, that’s all. You don’t want to limit yourself. It’s the responsible choice.”

They had worn him down in the end. He didn’t always agree with his parents but he knew they had his best interests at heart and as much as he was loath to admit it, he was young. There was a lot he didn’t know about life. College was a big deal and he didn’t want to screw it up by making an irresponsible decision.

But now, it seemed that following his parents’ advice meant disappointing Mr. Hummel. Blaine felt like he couldn’t win.

“So, how many colleges are you applying to?”

“I’ve got, uh, five applications —submitted but I’m not d-done yet.”

Blaine hoped his answer was good enough for Mr. Hummel. What if Kurt has applied to way more? Do I seem behind? I haven’t missed any deadlines.

“Is that, uh, a lot to apply to or… what’s the usual number?” Kurt’s usually confident father looked at Blaine with uncertainty in his eyes.

“Oh, I mean it, uh, it depends but I think like —five to eight is good.”

Burt fell into a plastic lawn chair and made a frustrated grunt. “I knew it!”

“Uh, you kn-knew what?”

“That Kurt doesn’t know any more about this than I do. I thought they had guidance—that’s what they’re called, right?— counselors at that school of yours. Aren’t they supposed to tell him this kind of stuff?”

“Um, they-they-they do, b-but no one has to talk to them. I...what do you m-mean he doesn’t know any more than, uh, y-you do?” Blaine asked, feeling deeply confused. Mr. Hummel was an adult, of course he knew more than them.

“Never went.”

“I...I ne-never realized. Not-not-not that it m-matters, of course!” Blaine felt his cheeks start to flush with embarrassment. Way to assume, Blaine!

“Got a job right out of high school, did the certification course at the junior college, and then I got real lucky that my boss decided to retire and wanted to pass on the business to someone he trusted. Can you do me a favor, kiddo?”

“Of course,” Blaine replied earnestly.

“Talk to Kurt about all this college stuff. He needs your help.”

“Um, o-okay.”

“Good.”

—

Blaine wasn’t sure how to bring up the topic without being heavy-handed but an opportunity presented itself to him just a few days later.

Kurt and Rachel strode into the cafeteria with their arms linked and matching smirks of self-satisfacts plastered across their faces; it was times like these that Blaine thought they could be siblings.

Blaine leaned in to accept the cheek kiss Kurt offered and then raised an expectant eyebrow, knowing that neither Kurt nor Rachel needed much prompting to spill when they were this excited.

Tina was not as patient. “Well?”

Kurt and Rachel turned to face one another before saying in unison, “We found our college!”

“It’s called NYADA,” Kurt added, face glowing with excitement. He pressed a colorful brochure into Blaine’s hands. “Please tell me you’ll apply too, Blaine!”

“Oh, I, uh… l-let me take a… look but, I mean, I p-p-p-probably, sure.” Blaine felt a bit flustered at being asked such a big question on the spot. Kurt’s gaze softened, clearly realizing what was happening and he gave Blaine’s thigh a comforting squeeze under the table.

“The deadline isn’t for another six weeks, so there’s plenty of time. Here, you hang on to this; I have more copies.”

That night, Blaine dutifully read through the brochure and researched the school online. His boyfriend, as always, had impeccable taste; it was clearly a top notch performing arts college. But the more he read, the more worried he became

He needed to talk to Kurt.

—

“Kurt, can we, um, um, well, can we talk about… about NYADA?”

“Sure! Did you read the flyer? Isn’t it just perfection?” Kurt clapped his hands against his thighs and bit his lip in excitement. Blaine swallowed thickly, thinking about how to do this without completely taking the wind out of Kurt’s sails.

“—Totally. The list of-of-of famous alumni alone was enough to, uh, convince me. Kurt, I would—I would love to go there.”

Kurt threw his arms around Blaine’s neck and kissed his cheek. “We’re going to New York! This is going to be perfect!”

“I, uh, I hhhope so. But Kurt… did you see that-that-that they only, uh, only accept 20 st-st-st-students a year? I… I think it would be a good… a good idea to have a backup, uh, plan.”

“You don’t think I’m good enough?” Kurt sounded hurt.

Blaine quickly leaned forward, gathering Kurt’s hands in his and drawing his gaze.

“No, no, sweetie, no, of-of course I do. But… e-e-everyone gets rejected from a-a-a-at least one or-or t-two colleges, Kurt. My…my father went to Harvard Law but even he didn’t get in everywhere.”

Kurt’s nose wrinkled in concern. “He didn’t?”

“He didn’t,” Blaine confirmed. "He was re-re-re—he didn’t get in to-to Colum-Columbia. And he got a-a-a-a-a perfect score on the SAT. He’s the one who —told me how important it is to-to-to apply to several schools, including a few ssssafety choices.”

Kurt sat back in stunned silence. “I thought the hard part was choosing the school… I had no idea. How many schools have you applied to so far, Blaine?” Panic was starting to creep into Kurt’s voice.

“Um, five so far.”

“So far?” Kurt’s voice cracked on the second word and he ran his fingers through his hard, something he only did when he was highly stressed. Blaine felt a sympathetic pang in his chest. “Well, which ones? Is it too late for me to apply to them too?”

“N-no, I don’t—I don’t th-th-think the deadline has-has-has —passed for any of them yet. I, um, let me think. I… applied to CUNY, NYU, Cornell, Northwestern, and-and-and Ohio State.”

“You want to go to Ohio State?” Kurt looked mildly scandalized.

“N-n-no.”

“Then why did you apply?” Kurt asked in befuddlement.

“It’s a-a-a…it’s —called a safety, um, school. It’s just in—just in c-c-c-case I don’t, I don’t get in anywhere, um, else. I’d r-r-rather go there than-than n-nowhere, you know? —Besides, my father said you-you-you-you can al-al-al-al-always transfer after a year.”

“Oh. Well, I guess there’s no harm in that.”

Well, that could have gone a lot worse. Blaine let out a contented sigh. He had managed to talk to Kurt about this delicate topic without embarrassing him.

“I, um, I-I-I can help you with the, uh, uh, um, the, uh, the research if you want.”

“That would be amazing, actually. I’m suddenly feeling very overwhelmed by this whole thing.”

“Happy to help. It is our fu-fu-future, after all. That’s always worth p-p-p-putting in a bit of work for.”

Kurt’s worried expression melted into a fond smile.

“Th-th-th-there’s this one program, actually—“

Suddenly, Blaine was flat on his back, looking up into Kurt’s mischievous eyes.

“Tomorrow, Blaine. We can start tomorrow. Tonight, I have other plans.”

Kurt didn't have to tell him twice.

[quicksilversquared]

A Christmas Liar

After Ms. Bustier mentioned the annual school charity fundraiser in class, Lila seems determined to raise funds for her own "charity", aka herself. There's no way that Marinette is going to let that fly, but how successful will she be in taking Lila down in time for the holidays?

links in the reblog

It started with a normal morning in Ms. Bustier's homeroom class.

"As you all know, it's fast approaching the holiday season, and our collège always does a fundraiser for a charity before Christmas," Ms. Bustier told the class, smiling widely. The first few cut-out paper snowflakes had appeared in the classroom window that morning, and they all knew that the collection would only grow as December went on. "So remember to remind your parents to check their emails for details soon! Our student representatives have been hard at work brainstorming what to do this year."

Marinette smiled, even as she kept drawing in her sketchbook. Jagged Stone had commissioned an outfit for his Christmas present to Penny from her, and wanted the design ready to be sent to his seamstress as soon as possible so that he could have it ready in plenty of time. He had told her not to rush, of course- "you have so much going on, and I don't want to put you behind in your studies!"- but Marinette wanted to try to get things done early.

After all, akumas could appear and eat up her free time without any notice, and so she was going to take advantage of any extra time when she could.

"Oh, a charity fundraiser?" Lila asked from the back of the room, and Marinette mentally sighed before setting her pencil down. Clearly she wasn't going to get anything done now, if she had to deal with Lila's nonsense, and her nonsense-o-meter was going wild. "That's so wonderful! Do you think that- oh, no, I suppose it would come off a little self-appreciating, never mind..."

"No, go ahead!" Ms. Bustier reassured her quickly. "What is it that you wanted to ask, Lila?"

"Well, I was wondering if maybe I could put forth one of my charities to be considered for the fundraiser's proceeds," Lila told the class, and even without turning around, Marinette could picture the way that Lila would press a hand to her chest delicately, doing her best to look bashful. Adrien's eye roll from in front of her told Marinette that her mental picture probably wasn't very far off. "But I suppose that could come off as, well..."

Ms. Bustier perked up. "Oh, how could I have forgotten that we had someone in our class who had done so much charity work before? I don't think it would come off as self-serving at all! In fact, it could add an extra connection and an element of interest to the whole thing if the school picked one of your charities. Marinette, could-"

"Student council has already settled on a charity for this year's fundraiser," Marinette said at once, not even bothering to look up. She could see exactly where this was heading, and she was going to put a stop to it. Now.

In front of her, she could see Adrien's hastily-hidden grin out of the corner of her eye.

"But this is special, Marinette," Ms. Bustier implored. "Surely they'll understand and want to support a fellow student's charity efforts! This is a pretty unique opportunity!"

"We've had multiple meetings about it, thinned our selections down, did all of the background checks and verification on our final pick, filled out all of the paperwork to submit to Mr. Damocles, and let the charity know so that we could get more information to post around," Marinette informed her, because seriously? Ms. Bustier was going to fall for it, just like that? Also, she was super glad that she had pushed for the council to make the decision early this year, because at this time the previous year, they had been working on finalizing everything still, which would have made a last-minute change like this possible. It wouldn't have been fun, or easy, but it could have been possible. "We can't change it now."

Lila let out a small sigh from the back, and Marinette turned around just in time to see her shoulders slumping. "Oh, that's really a shame, then. For a minute there, I was picturing how much good I- we could do for the children in Africa with a bit of extra funding, but I suppose if they've already picked a charity..."

Ms. Bustier glanced from Marinette to Lila. "Marinette, do you think that we could do two charities instead of one, perhaps? It would just be so nice to be able to support Lila's charity!"

Marinette was honestly going to scream.

"I'm afraid that that would make things too complicated," she said instead, politely as she could and with as little teeth-gritting as possible. "We had a couple fundraiser activities in mind- which we agreed was important, in case an akuma attack keeps people away from an in-person event- plus a couple volunteering opportunities that we wanted to offer. Plus, there would be all of the paperwork and the background checks that would have to be done to add in another charity, and that's not exactly a short process. It's a lot of work."

There was also the fact that Lila didn't have any charities, and any money they earned would- if she managed to sneak her way through their careful screening process- no doubt go straight into her own pockets.

"Oh, I could fill out paperwork so that you guys don't have to!" Lila offered eagerly. "I don't mind, it's for the kids-"

"And the email letting parents know about our fundraiser and our selected charity is already scheduled to go out today," Marinette continued, raising her voice just ever-so-slightly to drown Lila out and making a mental note to talk to Aurore to actually get that email sent over lunch. It had originally been planned for tomorrow, actually, but Marinette wasn't going to give Lila any ins. "So the deadline for any changes has passed." She pasted on her best fake smile, trying not to let any signs of a smirk through as she looked back at Lila. "It's just not possible for this year, I'm afraid. Maybe you can bring it up for consideration earlier next year."

"I suppose that's fair," Ms. Bustier agreed. She smiled over at Lila. "It's my own fault for not bringing it up earlier, it just slipped my mind. Hopefully your charities will still get plenty of support! But right now, we're going to move on to today's lesson. If everyone could please get out your notebooks, we're going to start with a quick video..."

Marinette smiled to herself as she put her sketchbook away and opened up her notebook to a fresh page. This probably wasn't the last that she would hear about Lila's so-called "charities", but at least Ms. Bustier had dropped the subject and she wouldn't be getting pressure from that angle.

Now she just had to be ready for Lila's other attempts to get her hands on charity money.

  "I am so glad that you already had stuff all finalized," Adrien said in Marinette's ear as they headed for their next class. Lila was ahead of them, surrounded by several of their classmates. "I got worried for a minute there when Ms. Bustier hopped on the Lila's charity thing."

"I'm just glad that it's a school-wide thing, not just a class-wide fundraiser," Marinette admitted, glancing around to make sure that no one was going to overhear them. She had managed to get out of being blamed for deliberately denying Lila's "charity" a chance to get more money because she wasn't the only person in charge of the fundraiser, and she didn't want anyone in their class mishearing and blowing things out of proportion. Again. "I mean, it's obvious that Lila jumped on that because I'm class representative and she wanted to put me in a bad spot, but she couldn't when I'm just one of the people involved in that process."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. I was so sure that she was going to drop it after you mentioned the background check and verification thing, though, and then she didn't. Which is...weird, honestly."

"Not really. If we tried going forward and I was the one doing the check, she would probably just say that I was making stuff up about her charity out of jealousy or spite and that was why it failed or something." Marinette had thought the same, honestly, but it became apparent pretty quickly what Lila was up to. Lila wasn't nearly as sly as she thought she was. "I'm surprised that she didn't jump on that and complain that I was just making the background check thing up because I was doubting her. Ignoring, of course, that we want to have statistics in our flyers and posters and emails about how the money is used, and how much work they get done, and their rating by a charity watchdog. That's standard."

"Which is why she wanted to do her own paperwork," Adrien added. He made a face. "I bet that she's still going to try to piggyback off of the fundraiser somehow, or at least rope people into donating some of their own money. I already heard Rose bringing it up, and Alya mentioned something to Nino about posting something on the Ladyblog."

Marinette winced. That wasn't good. She would have to forward the link to their charity watchdog site to Alya later on, maybe under the guise of providing a resource to get all sorts of charity statistics at once to put in her posting. That didn't guarantee that Alya would look at it, of course, but it was worth a try.

(Also, she could use her throwaway account to point out the charity's questionable status, and then- well, hope that other people would see her post and upvote it.)

"She's really going too far now," Adrien said after a moment, pulling Marinette out of her brainstorming of how she could keep Lila from pocketing a bunch of charity money. "I mean, she has been for a while, especially when she tried to get you expelled, but this is just the cherry on top of a heap of awful. I just don't know... I mean, she's sunk her claws in really deep now, I don't know how to fix it. I guess I should have recognized it earlier, but..."

"Well, there's no point in worrying about what we should have done earlier now," Marinette said as they went through the door for their next class, though she couldn't help but feel a bit validated, since she had wanted to stop Lila's lies ages ago. "We can brainstorm later, if you can get away for lunch. I was going to talk to Aurore then anyway."

Adrien looked puzzled for a moment, then caught on with a grin. "Aha, right, since she's on student council too. Is she the one in charge of submitting paperwork?"

"No, that was me. She's in charge of sending out the emails to families." Marinette grinned up at him. "And I bet that we can do a bit of damage control with that."

-0-0-0-0-

Aurore was all too willing to bring her lunch over to the Dupain-Cheng bakery instead of eating in the school cafeteria. After all, she told them as they headed upstairs, her lunch was leftovers and best served warm, and the cafeteria microwave was gross.

Marinette could believe that. Aurore had already floated the idea of setting up either a roll of paper towels near the microwave so that people could cover their dishes to keep the contents from exploding all over, or going the more environmentally-friendly route of having microwave plate covers instead, which could then be washed daily in the industrial dish washers that the cafeteria kitchen had. Clearly it was a Big Deal for her.

"You said you wanted to talk about the email right?" Aurore asked finally, finishing her grumbling about someone who had apparently microwaved fish and ugh, the smell was awful. "I thought it was meant to be going out tomorrow? I have a draft that's almost complete, I was just going to review it tonight to make sure that it was perfect, but do you need something changed?"

"We had a situation come up in our class this morning," Marinette told her, leading the way into their kitchen. Her mom had left out food for her and Adrien, it just had to be warmed up and assembled. "I don't know how much you've heard about the new girl in our class..."

Aurore frowned. "Lila? The one with the questionable stories?"

Adrien laughed. "Okay, so we aren't the only ones with working brains in the school, that's good to know. Yeah, her."

It didn't take long to get Aurore caught up, and predictably, she was furious at the idea of Lila trying to hijack their fundraiser funds.

"This is going to go one of two ways, I know it," she told them, pulling out her laptop and getting it set up next to her on the table. "Either this girl is going to make up a charity- name, mission, and all- or she's going to find a charity that already exists, and then she'll claim credit for it. The first one is easy enough to disprove, because no one will be able to find anything about the charity. We could just put a reminder in the email about checking charities out before donating to them, and then enter that link we've been using. But the second one...well, she could use their rating and reputation to collect money, and then- if I'm reading her character right- keep it all for herself."

They all thought about that.

"Well, if Alya posts anything on the Ladyblog, in theory any donations would have to be electronically, though a website," Marinette pointed out after a minute. "As for in-person donations, I would say that people should use checks instead of cash, but I don't know how many people use checks anymore, and besides, that's not going to stop her from cashing them if she wants."

Adrien made a choked, horrified noise in the back of his throat. "It- it won't? How do you even know that?"

"But it might deter her, since that's a traceable crime," Aurore pointed out, her eyes gleaming. She snapped her fingers. "And as for the Ladyblog- if she's capable of creating a website that looks decent, she might give Alya a link for that. So that's still a problem-"

"-unless we notice that and bring it to the attention of the police!" Adrien exclaimed, sitting up straight. He winced. "I'd hate to get Alya in trouble, but otherwise people will be thinking that they're doing something good and helping people in need when actually, they're just giving Lila spending money. And if she told them that Lila gave her the link, then she'd get off pretty fast."

Marinette nodded. Alya would probably be a thundercloud that they had gone to the police first instead of her, but she couldn't say that they hadn't warned her. She just never listened when it came to Lila.

"So we can put in a line reminding people to check charities before they donate and to make sure that any links they follow for charities go to the actual website," Aurore finished. Her fingers tapped away at her keyboard. "My older brother is a computer whiz, so I can text him and ask about things people should look for to make sure that a site is the real deal. Then I can get that typed up and sent during study hall, so it'll go out today."

Marinette could only grin. Maybe Aurore could be hotheaded at times, but there was no denying that she could really pull through. "That would be great."

  Unsurprisingly, Lila sold a sob story to Alya about her charity's website being down at the moment, so she couldn't provide a link right away.

"We're working on it, of course, because this is the best time of the year to get donations and we're going to fall so far behind with every day we miss, but the entire system is down and our tech guy is having trouble," Lila told Alya, looking positively wilted. "It's so upsetting! The longer it's down, the fewer people find out about our work, and the less budget we have to work with next year."

"That's terrible!" Alya exclaimed, frowning, and Marinette exchanged an exasperated look with Adrien. "I just wish there was a way to help..."

"Maybe you could post about our school charity instead, for the time being," Marinette suggested dryly. "Since Lila's charity is on the table for next year anyway."

"But we need budget for this year!" Lila repeated, and- yep, she was gritting her teeth. The glare that she flashed Marinette left no question that she had been trying to set up some sort of fake website and the email the night before had thrown her off. Either she was trying to make a more convincing website or- more likely- she was just hoping to wait until the reminder to be careful had faded from people's minds. Or she had had to abandon the online idea entirely in favor of throwing a pity party for herself in hopes of getting cash donations with the help of their classmates, if that hadn't already been the plan all along. "If we wait for a maybe next year, we could go into debt and collapse!"

Alya was looking worried now. "Marinette, are you sure that the student council can't switch charit-"

"It's all set up. We can't change anything, Alya, we established that yesterday." Marinette spared a glance at Lila, who was clearly working to keep a poker face. "Maybe Max can help you with your website issues, he's quite good at stuff like that. We wouldn't want you missing out on donations, after all."

"Oh, I couldn't," Lila simpered, glancing towards Max as well. "We, uh- well, my tech guy is back in Italy, so they wouldn't be able to work together, and he's quite protective of the system. Plus we were in the middle of upgrades when everything crashed, so that makes everything more complicated."

"We'll figure something out, Lila," Alya promised, patting the other girl's arm. Marinette took that as her cue to leave, but she wasn't going to go far. She needed to be able to overhear, after all. "We don't want those kids in Africa to suffer, after all! We can brainstorm before class."

Adrien caught Marinette's eye as she came back to her seat. "It sounds like she's just going to go another way, but isn't about to give up."

"No, she's got the idea of getting money into her head, and she's not about to give it up." Marinette kept her voice low, so that no one would overhear. "Which means that we need to come at the problem at a different angle. Any suggestions?"

Adrien looked unexpectedly delighted at being consulted, but then he paused, clearly not coming up with any ideas. "Uh."

"My first instinct would be to try to warn Alya and Rose and whoever else is going to get sucked in, but we all know how well that would go over," Marinette said, just to fill in the space. "They would clamp down and refuse to listen."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. But I like what you did yesterday, where you made it sound like you would have gone along if you could and suggested trying next year. Then everyone thought that you weren't fighting against her-"

"-and was actually willing to listen!" Marinette finished, smiling. It was an approach that Tikki had suggested, and she was glad that it had worked. Well, sort of. It had worked in the moment, but just- apparently- pushed the problem off for later. "Yeah, that was nice."

"Maybe we could do something similar now," Adrien suggested. "And offer to be helpful by providing that link still. Like, it doesn't need the website, right? Just the charity name."

Marinette grinned. "Right. And there's no way that she can get around not telling anyone her charity's name. And if she does...well, either it's made up, or she's going to pick a real charity and we can find the real website."

"And congratulate Lila on her site getting back up so quickly," Adrien added with a small laugh. "It's a pain to deal with her, but I'm actually curious about what she's planning on doing going forward. Like, how long can she play this game? She's going to run out of escapes soon enough."

"Yeah, I don't know..." Marinette trailed off as Alya slid into her seat, and she and Adrien exchanged one last look before he turned back to the front, greeting Nino as his best friend entered the classroom.

"Man, I can't believe what bad luck Lila has, to have her charity's website crash at a time like this," Alya said glumly, sliding into her seat. "Lila is stressed about it, of course, but she has so many other obligations for her other charity work that she can't go out and do a collection, not that it would be easy with her throat still recovering from her laryngitis surgery. She can't be out in the cold for more than ten minutes without it causing a ton of pain, which can't be fun at all."

...Naturally.

"I want to help, but if we don't have a working link to put on the Ladyblog, I just don't know..." Alya trailed off. "I mean, we could do a door-to-door, I guess, but that only ever gets fairly minimal donations. And there's so many people who set up near the Eiffel Tower, we wouldn't have a chance. But- oh!" Alya perked up as another thought hit her. "We could put posters up at school, so more people know about it and maybe help us!"

Yeah, how about no.

"That's actually against school rules," Marinette said idly, flipping through her notebook as she waited for Ms. Bustier to call for a start to class. "All posters posted in the building have to be approved by Student Council normally, so that the walls don't get too cluttered, but there's an amendment to that that say that if the school is doing a charity fundraiser, posters promoting other charities can't go up during that time. I think it's to keep the effort from getting too splintered and distracted."

Alya slumped. "Oh."

That was not actually a lie, though clearly Adrien thought it was, if the slight frown on his face was anything to go by. Marinette had picked through the guidelines to make sure that she knew every rule that she could use to turn Lila's attempts aside, and apparently the Student Council had come up with and voted to implement that particular rule at some point in the past.

"Maybe you could do a surprise collection," Marinette suggested. "As a Christmas gift to Lila." She was improvising, admittedly, but this would be a good way to keep Alya and Rose and whoever else was getting sucked in from asking Lila too much and giving her chances to control the narrative. "If you ask her what the name of her charity is, and then you can use the website that we were using on Student Council to look at charities- it has all sorts of stats that you could use, information about charities and their work. That way, you don't need to bother Lila for all that when she's so busy."

"Oh, good idea!" Alya exclaimed. She grabbed Marinette's arm. "You know, none of the rest of us has ever organized any sort of charity fundraiser before- if we put you in charge of that-"

"I'm already busy, Alya," Marinette pointed out. She wasn't about to go make a fool of herself collecting money for a charity that didn't exist, not when she had a million other things to do. "The fundraiser for the school is already going to take up all of my time. I can send you the link that we used, but that's it."

"Oh, but-"

"She already said no, Alya," Adrien cut in, so Marinette didn't have to. "Marinette was telling me about that entire process yesterday, and it sounds like a lot of work and planning to pull something off at the level the school is planning. Asking her to plan another thing on top of that for you, instead of doing it yourself- that's not fair to her."

"I just thought that it might be a good way to repair the bad blood between the two of them!" Alya objected, frowning. "Since Marinette wasn't very welcoming when Lila first arrived."

Marinette narrowly withheld a snort. Gee, I wonder why?

"But if you're busy, I guess you can wait to try to mend that bridge later," Alya added. She sighed. "We probably won't be able to raise as much money, though, since we don't have your experience."

"Mmm," Marinette managed noncommittally, ignoring the clear attempt at a guilt-trip in favor of checking her email on her phone. Alya really had been spending too much time with Lila if she was starting to act just the same. Hopefully she would cut that out after Lila's lies had been exposed and everyone realized what a manipulator she was.

Marinette's phone lit up with a text, and she didn't hesitate to open it at once.

Adrien: Remember, if you commit homicide, you won't be around to gloat when people discover the lies.

Marinette snorted in amusement.

Marinette: I'm going to gloat for a solid MONTH after she gets found out. I wasn't very welcoming? Try SHE was a bully from the start and I wasn't about to tolerate that.

In front of her, Adrien's head gave a tiny nod as he put his phone away, just in time to start class. Marinette locked her phone and put it away, resigning herself to what was probably going to be a week of poorly-concealed efforts to get her into the extra fundraising before Alya either dropped it or realized that something was up with Lila's "charity".

At least now she had Adrien on her side.

  The school fundraiser was going well as they marched steadily closer towards the holidays, their online portal showing just how much money had already been raised by people going through the link that they had both sent out and posted on the school site. There was going to be a bake sale before the break too, with each family asked to donate two dozen cookies for them to sell at their booths near City Hall and (courtesy of Chloe) in the Grand Paris.

Marinette was really happy. People were being generous, and it really was a very deserving charity to receive the funds. On top of that, Adrien had asked for her help in baking his family's two dozen cookies, so they would get to hang out together.

(She was going to ignore the fact that Alya had tried to convince her to make another extra two dozen cookies because Lila "wasn't going to have time" because "all of her charity work"; that attempt had fallen flat when Marinette had just point-blank asked Alya why, exactly, Alya didn't just do that herself. At least with Adrien, he was just a novice baker and was going to be actively participating in the baking, but he just wanted help to be sure that his attempt turned out edible and it was a good excuse to hang out with one of his friends.)

And possibly best of all...well, Aurore's tech-savvy older brother had pulled through for them again.

"I was looking at the email that we had on file for Lila, and something about it just didn't seem right," Aurore told them as they sat together in a private study room in back of the library over lunch. "The domain on it, to be exact, because it was '.net' instead of, oh, I don't know, something actually related to the government. And my brother agreed, so we did a little searching."

Marinette was pretty sure that her jaw was on the ground. Next to her, Adrien wasn't doing much better. "You mean she was keeping her mom from finding out about everything school-related? I wondered how she got away with skipping so much school! And she was probably emailing as her mom, too, to confirm whatever stories she was telling."

Aurore grinned. "Exactly. So we did some digging, and found Mrs. Rossi's actual email. It's almost the same, just with a different domain. So I'm trying to think of what to send that wouldn't sound weird, because obviously we need confirmation that this is the right address so we can get Mr. Damocles to change it for the school system, but I don't want to come off as accusing or anything and have her tip Lila off accidentally."

Marinette exchanged a look with Adrien as she thought about it. "Well, we could just send the fundraiser email again with a comment about how we think that maybe her email was mis-entered before and is this one the correct one that we should be using. That's pretty straightforward and it asks for a response, and she might not even think to say anything about it to Lila."

"Ooh, I like that." Aurore typed that in at once, giving it a quick once-over to make sure that there weren't any errors and that the email had been entered correctly before sending it. "So, what else is going on in Ms. Bustier's homeroom? Anything new with the not-a-charity?"

"Alya's been confused about why our watchdog site doesn't list anything about Lila's 'charity'- she decided to go for the make-one-up route, apparently- and she's still been trying to find stuff on it just on Google, but apparently no connection has been made," Marinette told them, trying not to roll her eyes. "I know she and Rose were talking about trying to just go ahead with a collection of sorts anyway, so I forwarded an email talking about the importance of keeping track of how much money they raised, down to the last cent, in a ledger sort of thing." She couldn't hold back the grin. "Which Rose is really into. So even though they're trying to collect money for Lila still, at the end she won't be able to keep any of it because there'll be record of how much money they collected."

"Which, if we get in contact with Mrs. Rossi, we can make sure that that gets paid back in full!" Adrien exclaimed, scooping Marinette up in a hug for a long few seconds. Marinette prayed that she wouldn't turn red and make things weird. "Genius!"

"As long as Rose doesn't give that to Lila," Aurore pointed out. She raised an eyebrow at Marinette's head-shake. "No? You've already taken care of that?"

"She'll give Lila an electronic copy, but not the hard copy. I suggested that she might want to hold onto that to show what she did for future charity work. Which I still think is a good idea, even if Lila's charity is a sham. It doesn't change the fact that she was doing all of the bookkeeping."

Aurore made a face. "I am so glad that Samuel is doing our bookkeeping for the non-online donations, because that stuff is not fun. It's really fiddly, and if anything gets off..."

Marinette nodded. Things had gotten off fairly early on, and she had head Samuel- another member of Student Council- complaining about having to go through everything to figure out where his mistake was. Since then, he did regular, frequent checks so that he wouldn't have to go through absolutely everything again, just the most frequent donations. Admittedly, Rose was working with much smaller amounts of money- most people wanted more information on what they were donating to than just the name and "helping kids in Africa" if they were going to toss more than an euro or two into the collections basket- but it was still good practice.

Aurore's computer let out a ding, and she pulled up the student council email at once. "We already got a response! Mrs. Rossi says that yes, this one is correct, please keep using it and thank you for catching the error and were there any other recent emails that she might have missed. I'm going to forward this to Mr. Damocles with a message to note the change in email address, just a second- and done."

"Nice job," Marinette told her, leaning across the table to bump fists with Aurore. After a second's thought, she fist-bumped Adrien, too, so that he wouldn't feel left out. "That's one more thing off of our plates."

  Their fundraiser finished right before holiday break with a silent auction, with all of the items up for purchase having been donated by parents, teachers, extended family members, community business owners, and- in the case of an array of signed CD cases and posters- Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, and several of their musician buddies, after Marinette had approached Jagged Stone with the request.

And of course, everyone was invited. Posters had been put up outside of the school and emails had been sent out, reminding everyone about the time and date and their charity, plus attaching a list of the items up for auction to get people's interest.

"My mom so wanted to make it, but work came up," Lila told several of their classmates when she arrived at the auction, looking sad. "And there were several things that she was really interested in, like the-"

"Ooh, barf, I can see what you mean," Aurore said, materializing at Marinette's side and wrinkling her nose at Lila. "That's a pretty obvious ploy to get people to buy things for her, isn't it? Or at least to pitch in some of their own money to help her, so that she won't have to pay them back."

Marinette nodded. It really was disgusting, but at least now Lila was moving off with the group towards one of the items so that they didn't have to hear her. She was steering clear of the signed Jagged Stone things, oddly enough, but maybe that would be a dead giveaway that she didn't actually know him. After all, Jagged Stone would sign anything put in front of him, so her going out of her way to buy a signed item when she was supposedly on great terms with him would be pretty strange.

"Do you think her mom actually can't make it, or Lila just assumed that she wouldn't know about the auction and didn't tell her?" Adrien asked. His arm was tucked through Marinette's, though she was pretty sure that it was just so that he wouldn't lose her in the crowd. "Is the fake email still on the list?"

Aurore nodded. "Yeah, up until this morning. I cleared it off so that there wouldn't be any confusion going forward."

"And I would place bets on Lila assuming that her mom doesn't know anything," Marinette added. "She wouldn't want to risk anyone asking her mom about her charity." She grinned and pointed as she noticed someone new stepping into the school. "And look, over there."

The other two looked. There, standing in the entryway and looking around, was Mrs. Rossi. She really didn't look much like Lila, but it was easy enough to recognize her from her official embassy photo.

(Her official embassy photo, where she wasn't listed as the actual ambassador, but just one of the embassy staff, but that- well, that was an interesting little tidbit that Marinette was going to sit on for a little bit longer.)

"Oh, she's spotted Lila," Aurore said gleefully, craning her neck to follow Mrs. Rossi as she wove through the crowds. "And- whoops, Lila sees her!"

Marinette hastily smothered a laugh. If Lila's expression was anything to go by, she definitely hadn't realized that her mom was getting emails from the school and was going to be coming. She had never seen the other girl look so pale before.

"I'd ask if I should go get some of that amazing-smelling popcorn that they're selling so that we can watch, but honestly, I kind of just want to let things take their course and find out later," Adrien said, glancing down at Marinette. "There's some pretty cool items up for auction that I want to check out."

Marinette considered that. On one hand, she wanted to watch Lila's downfall. On the other... well, she had been keeping an eye on the whole Lila fiasco for a while now, and she was kind of tired of it. It would probably be a bit awkward to watch, too, and there was no guarantee that it would happen right away, and they were too far away to hear anything besides.

...yeah, her decision was pretty well made.

"That sounds like fun," Marinette told him, before glancing over at Aurore. "What about you?"

"I might go point Mr. Damocles in her direction," Aurore commented, glancing around the crowd. "Or maybe that can wait until later, since I don't want to throw everything at Mrs. Rossi at once and disrupt the auction with an akumatization." She sent them a slightly sheepish grin. "But you know I like my gossip, so..."

Marinette had to laugh. That was so very Aurore. "All right. We'll bump into you later, then."

Aurore grinned in return, and then was off. Marinette watched her go for a moment, then let Adrien lead the way off into the crowds surrounding the tables. It was amazing to be able to sit back and relax after the past weeks of planning and making sure that everything, from the online link to the cookie sale to this, was going to go off without a hitch. They were well on track raise more money this year than they had any other year, and that was amazing.

And to think that she had had a hand in setting all of this up...well, Marinette just couldn't be prouder.

It was fun investigating all of the donations with Adrien, even though- as part of Student Council and also part of the team that had photographed and logged all of the donated items- she had seen them all before. Marinette couldn't help but peek at the bids despite herself, grinning when she saw some of the higher ones.

"This is amazing," Adrien commented once they had made the rounds and had gone to browse through the assorted refreshments available for purchase. "There were a lot of nice things donated. And people are definitely bidding plenty of money."

"Yeah, some people will spend more to win the prize than it's worth," Marinette told him. "Like with the voucher for stuff from our bakery- the top bid right now is for more than the value of the voucher. It's interesting, but I think that people see it as buying the item, and then making a donation on top. Or something, I don't know."

"That's really cool," Adrien commented, then pointed. "Oh, look, Nathalie and the Gorilla are here! They said that they might show up and do some shopping. I honestly thought that Nathalie was just saying that to be nice, because she's been sick and hasn't wanted to go out, but I guess she's been feeling better lately."

"Oh, that's good," Marinette said, before a memory made her frown. "Wait, I thought you commented on her being sick, like, three months ago. Is she still having problems?"

Adrien shrugged, but he was frowning, too. "I don't know. She had been having these weak, dizzy spells like Mom used to before she disappeared for a bit before I commented on it at school, I think. Maybe whatever treatment she was getting finally kicked in, I don't know."

Marinette frowned even deeper. Nathalie had been showing the same symptoms as Adrien's mom before she vanished? That was a really weird coincidence. And for both of them- presumably both, at least- to have those same symptoms for an extended period of time?

If Mrs. Agreste and Nathalie had been related, Marinette might have guessed that it was a genetic thing. But since they weren't- again, that was an assumption- then the chances of them both separately having the same condition...

"I cannot believe that I fell for such a manipulative, thieving, disgusting liar!"

Alya materialized at Marinette's side, clearly steaming. Rose, Mylène, and Juleka weren't far behind her. Rose looked like she was close to tears, and the other two just looked lost.

"Pardon?" Adrien asked politely, but Marinette could see the amusement glimmering in his eyes.

"Lila's been leading us all around by the nose, making up stories about her life and about her nonexistent charity- and I've missed a dozen akuma attacks because I was wandering around in the cold, trying to raise money for her! I offered to make a posting on the Ladyblog so that I could put up a link to her site to raise more money! She was probably just planning on pocketing it all!" Alya scowled deeper. "I can't believe we fell for it! And aren't you even surprised?" she demanded when neither Adrien nor Marinette reacted. "At all?"

"Are we meant to be?" Adrien asked dryly. "After Marinette's spent so long calling Lila a liar?"

Alya faltered for a moment, then scowled deeper. "You- you knew, but you didn't warn us?"

"Yes, because pointing out the obvious lies worked so well the first several dozen times I did it," Marinette said, adopting the same dry tone that Adrien had used. "And I gave you the watchdog charity link to use. I rather thought that its complete lack of anything about Lila's charity might tip you off."

Alya faltered. "Oh."

"But we still gave Lila money that was meant for charity," Rose said tearfully. Juleka pulled her to her side, trying to comfort her. "And it was a decent amount, too."

"You have your log, right?" Marinette reminded her. "If you tell Lila's mom how much Lila got for her 'charity', then I bet that she can get that money back to you and you can donate it to another charity."

Rose perked up at once, tears drying up magically. "Oh, that's right! We can still put that money to good use! I'm glad you suggested that we keep track of everything, Marinette."

"Yeah," Juleka agreed. "Lila sucks, but at least we can get the money back."

"We should go talk to Lila's mom before she leaves," Rose decided. She dug in her bag, pulling out the ledger notebook that she had been using for their charity collections. "Aha! Yes, I have the amount we gave Lila yesterday written here. C'mon, let's go make sure that Mrs. Rossi knows!"

"Well, all's well that ends well," Adrien said cheerfully as the other girls headed off. "I bet this isn't how Mrs. Rossi saw her evening going, and Lila definitely wasn't expecting any of this, but at least now the adults can figure everything out and Lila can actually see some consequences. And hopefully next semester, there'll be less drama now that she'll be restrained- or gone, if Mrs. Rossi or Mr. Damocles decides that Lila staying here wouldn't be a good idea."

"Hopefully," Marinette agreed. She grinned over at Adrien. "But that's enough worrying about Lila and her nonsense for tonight. I think we should just sit back and enjoy the evening, don't you?"

Adrien beamed back. "I couldn't agree more."

[purplejeanny]

Reason's Why

⬅️Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Marinette was discharged after a week of being hospitalized. Now, she’s bombarded with her missed school activities with that Alya stayed by her side cheering her up.

“Girl, come on. Get a hold with your life.” Alya seems to be giving up on cheering her. They were finishing her school activities in her bedroom, but her mind is still wondering what Adrien said the day she was discharged.

“Alya, why do he always say that line? It’s getting annoying you know?” Marinette grumbled as she remembers the exact same line over and over again coming from Adrien.

“What do you want me to do? Ask him to not call you a friend?” Alya sighed and sat beside Marinette, who had sprawled herself to the bed. “Honestly, I’m also annoyed with his, ‘just a friend’ line.” Alya made a face and whispered, “When clearly you’re not.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing. Just get your body back to your desk and finish your stuff. Most of your activities has a deadline tomorrow.”

Thanks to Alya’s persuasion and cheering, she had finished most of her tasks and had submitted them on the day of the deadline. She’s gloomily mumbling stuff as she got out of her class when Lila suddenly obstructed her way out of the school’s gate.

“What do you want?” Marinette asked lazily. She had no time to deal with Lila’s schemes. She’s not in the mood to entertain her wisely made mischiefs. Basically, her mind and body are not ready to deal with her.

Lila grinned and leaned closer to her. The way she stares at her made her leaned back. Lila right now’s pretty competitive, for she doesn’t know what reason. She just got back from school, so she had no idea.

“Stay away from my boyfriend, Dupain-Cheng,” Lila whispered in a threatening voice.

“First and foremost, Lila, you should tell your boyfriend about that matter and not me.” Marinette walked past Lila and proudly uttered, “Your boyfriend almost sacrificed himself for me. What a great friend right?”

A fake smile flashed on Lila’s lips. “Right. He’s a great guy and you’re just a friend. Should I emphasize it to you? You will never be his girl and I would never let that happen.”

In an instant, Lila’s devilish smile that she showed to her disappeared.

“Adrien! I’m here!” Lila turned around and ran towards Adrien.

Right. Adrien and Lila were dating. What a slap to her face. Lila bragging to her about it made her want to pounce on her.

Adrien, who just arrived at the school gates, saw the tension between the two ladies.

He could not do anything about it…as of now.

“What did you say to Marinette?” Adrien asked in his serious tone as soon as they settled inside the car.

It’s what always happening between them behind those acts outside the car. He had to act lovey-dovey to Lila, and as soon as they step in the car, his actual act shows.

“Uhm, nothing much. I just told her that it’s good have her back at school.”

Lies again. Adrien knows it’s a lie, of course. Only he and Marinette could see through her lies. However, he sometimes finds it hard to spot the truth and the falsehood of the words she was saying.

Adrien immediately started the engine as soon as he saw Luka heading in Marinette’s direction.

It’s Luka again.

“Oh! It’s Luka. What do you think that will happen if those two spent an evening again today?” Lila seems to be teasing him, making him tighten his grip on the wheels and drove her straight home.

“Argh! What’s going with me?!” Adrien frustratingly buried his head to his pillow before picking up his phone and watch again that nasty video Lila sent her.

He doesn’t care if the pair on the video were naked. He is just staring at the girl’s face, Marinette’s face. He is hoping it wasn’t her, but that call he had with her during dawn made him realize it is possible.

“How did you end up doing this, Mari? With him?”

A sudden call startled Adrien, making him answer the video call immediately. “Nino?”

“Dude! You aren’t with Lila are you?”

“No, why?”

“I’m sending you the address. We’re in this bar. See you later dude!”

“Wait Ni—no.” Nino just dropped the call making him sigh. He doesn’t want to go and see Marinette with Luka. They were in Nino’s background, enjoying each other’s company.

If he didn’t go, Nino and the gang would be disappointed in him. They were already dissatisfied enough when they figured out his sudden relationship with Lila. He doesn’t want to make them upset more.

It’s already deep at night when Adrien decided to go. After all, Alya keeps on sending photos at him. It took him a while before he found the seat the gang was lounging. The lights, the crowd of people, and loud music made him took too long to find them.

“Hey guys? Wait what’s going on here?” Adrien saw a bottle spinning on the table. There are empty bottles below it, indicating that they already drank a lot before he came.

His eyes went to each and everyone who was sitting on the semi-circular sofa. At the very end, Kim and Alix were already arguing, and Max was stopping those two. Beside them was Rose was leaning to Juleka’s shoulder as they are both asleep. Mylene and Ivan watched the bottle spinning on the table and were tipsy, just like Marinette, who sat beside Luka. Alya and Nino were cuddling each other, while Sabrina and Chloe were just staring at the bottle. Somehow Adrien didn’t expect those last two t to be there.

“Sit here, Adrikins!” Chloe patted the available seat beside her, making Adrien sitting on the end of the couch. “We’re playing truth or dare an—oh!” Chloe’s tone changes, “It’s Dupain-Cheng. Whatever, truth or dare?”

Marinette blinks multiple times as her vision’s trying to betray her. The lights hitting wherever in the dimly lit bar made her dizzy. Luka wanted to stop her from drinking too much earlier, but she wavered. She sighed and unconsciously lean on Luka’s shoulder. It’s probably her karma why he looked so wasted.

“Dare,” Marinette answered Chloe.

“Excuse me, Marinette. I need to go to the bathroom.” Luka gently moves her to lean on the couch instead.

“Okay Dupain-Che—”

“Wait!” Alya interfered with Chloe.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “What is it, Cessair?”

“I’ll be the one to give her a dare.” Alya turned her gaze to Marinette. “Kiss someone you like.”

There’s a big whoah at their table when Alya said those words. Everyone was hyping up Marinette whose still somehow fazed.

Adrien can’t help but think that it was Luka. His gaze went back and forth between the two. Why is he the one nervous?

“Luka.”

Everyone’s eyes widened when Marinette said those words. They know it was possible, but they didn’t think it’s possible with Adrien with them.

“Luka, help me stand,” Marinette held on to Luka, who does not hesitate to help her student.

Luka gave her a thin smile. He knows tonight’s probably the night Marinette could hurt him bigtime…even without her knowing.

Marinette leaned down towards Adrien and gave him a peck on the lips. She puts her hands on his shoulders and drunkenly whispered to him, “I love you. I had always been but…but help me give up on you, Adrien.”

Adrien was stunned. Marinette knelled down and lean his head on his chest, making Adrien stiffened.

“What am I doing? Am I really stuck being just your friend? Why can’t I figure the reasons why can’t you date me?”

She won’t figure it out.

If there are one hundred reasons to date her, there’s also one reason why he can’t.

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

Chapter Eight➡️

[forestwhisper3]

Welcome back to the SI/OC series, where I introduce my various brainchildren. This time around, though, we’re gonna do something a little different. Apart from giving you a couple of pics, I’ll also give you snippets that I’ve written out. This is mostly because I have nothing near resembling an actual fic and have literally just written segments.

It’s kinda long, so click the expand to read on.

So...this SI/OC is one that I’ve had in my head for a while. I mentioned her in one of Klonoadreams’s streams and figured I should probably mention her in this SI/OC series too. She is one of two for the Kingdom Hearts fandom, and when the mood strikes, I try to flesh out her story a little more. Maybe one day I’ll have something publishable. For now, here’s Ignis, a fellow student of Master Eraqus, along with Terra, Aqua, and Ventus:

This is her before everything goes to pot, however. The thing with this SI is that, despite her knowledge of the games, and despite all of her efforts to prevent the events of Birth by Sleep, she still fails. Master Xehanort is not a man easily defeated, after all. So, it is a weary, heartbroken Ignis that finds herself on Destiny Islands after she loses everything yet again...

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

'This is...'

I smiled, knowing it was a bit wry in nature. After all, whenever I'd given the thought to being here, I'd never quite pictured it...like this.

"Whoa, you were right! There is another weird person here today!"

I found myself laughing at the comment without meaning to, the reaction startling me and filling me with sorrow all at once. It had felt like ages since I'd laughed so freely...

"Hey...are you okay?"

I looked at the two boys before me, ready to assure them that everything was fine but...the words just didn't want to come out.

"You're crying..."

Fingers touched my cheeks, only to come away wet. How did I not realize...?

I gave a start when I suddenly felt small arms wrap around me, the warmth of the action seeping into the chill that had seemed to settle in me these past days.

"Don't cry," Sora pleaded, his own eyes staring earnestly into my own. "Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?"

If my next laugh was mixed with a sob, I didn't think any of us would tell.

"You already have," I told him once I'd calmed down, making sure my smile was gentle.

"Really?"

"Yes. I think a hug was just what I needed. Thank you."

"Oh! I'm glad! I don't like seeing people sad."

I smiled, the warmth continuing to spread as I studied him. I'd thought...it would be strange to see them as children while not being the same age, but...this felt right.

Suddenly, I knew what I had to do.

"My name is Ignis," I began softly, "and I come from somewhere far from these shores."

"I knew it," Riku piped up. "You're from the outside world! Just like-...uhh..."

I chuckled a bit at his attempts to back up, clearly not wanting to break his promise.

"Going by your comment earlier, I'll have to assume you've met Terra or Aqua?"

"Yeah! Miss Aqua was nice!"

"Terra was too," Riku added.

"And he left you with something special," I finished.

"Err...yeah."

"What?! He gave you a present!? No fair!"

"Hey now, don't get upset. What's your name?"

"Sora!"

"Sora..." I put my hand out, smiling at his gasp when my Keyblade appeared. "Terra entrusted your friend with something very special because he must have seen something in him...just like I see it in you."

It wasn't just because I knew what was to come. Riku's light was...amazing- there was no doubt about that. But Sora-...Sora gave off his own light too. A light so warm, and loving, and kind that it chased away the darkness and made me feel safe. I know the games had always made Sora's light out to be something special, but...Being able to feel it, and knowing that both Aqua and Terra had passed him up for one reason or another made me want to cry all over again at the injustice of it all.

Sora would not be the backup plan. Not if I had anything to say about it.

"In your hand, take this key..."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Master!/Master Ignis!"

I groaned, turning over in my cot and doing my best to block out their yells and subsequent pounding at my door.

"Master!"

I yelped when a large weight practically threw itself upon me, sighing at the sound of Sora's giggles and Riku's snickers. Still, it wasn't quite enough to stop the smile that tugged on the edge of my lips.

"Alright, alright, I'm up. What are you two doing here so early anyway?"

Sora propped his chin up on his hands from his position on top of me and grinned. "It's not early. You just slept in!"

"Yeah...I thought adults were supposed to be responsible and stuff."

Riku laughed when I threw a pillow in his direction.

"You're lucky I like you," I said without any real heat.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"This form was a particular favorite of Master Eraqus," I began, smiling slightly when I saw how much Sora and Riku were struggling to remain in position. "Not so much one of ours."

"I-...I can't feel my legs!"

"Don't tell me you-...you can't handle it, Sora!"

"Your legs are shaking too!"

I felt a laugh bubble up. God, those two really were like-

A sharp pang shot through me, and despite my best efforts, it left me feeling desolate all over again.

'I'll see them again. I know I will...but...twelve years is a long time.'

And I would be the only one to actually age.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Kairi, I understand that you don't like fighting like Sora and Riku do. Really. But...Keyblades don't just go to anyone- you have to be chosen. The fact that you have one...will you at least learn the basics? You don't have to use them, but you'll know them. Just in case."

She mulled it over for a while, before nodding.

"Thank you," I sighed out with a relieved smile.

"It...means a lot to you...doesn't it."

Despite my efforts to the contrary, the question made me freeze. By this point, the boys had given up any pretenses of being busy and were watching in unabashed curiosity. With a welling sadness that hadn't really dulled these past years and an ache in my heart, I nodded.

"It does," I confirmed quietly. "But more than that, I just want you three to be safe. To know how to take care of yourselves if-...Anyway, this is the best I can do."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Master Ignis, when-...when is Master Terra coming back?"

The question, sudden and unexpected as it was (though I really should have seen it coming), hit hard. All of a sudden, it felt like there was a vice-like grip around my heart, and I flinched so violently that there was no way I could have hidden the reaction.

And Riku- who was so clever and so observant that I was constantly reminded of Aqua -didn't fail to catch on.

"...He's not coming back. And...Master Aqua isn't either."

There was a deep hurt in his eyes, and hints of betrayal. All three of them were aware of how the relationship between Masters and students worked by now, which meant that they knew that despite the fact I was teaching all of them, only Sora was my true apprentice. The rightful heir of my teachings, so to speak.

"Oh, Riku," I breathed out, feeling that all too familiar twist of my heart, though this time, it was accompanied by the sharp sting of tears. "They-...They can't."

Riku blinked, the hurt look being replaced by a questioning one. A few feet back, Sora and Kairi watched on, too hesitant to get closer, but not enough to leave their friend completely.

I sighed, and if there was a breath of a sob mixed in, well, no one would know but me.

"Come on...I think it's time I told you."

They were young yet, but if I didn't tell them now, I didn't think I'd ever work up the strength to do it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"...When I finally managed to get back to Radiant Garden, there was no sign of Terra or Aqua- the only hint of their fate being the lingering chill in that courtyard. I-...I can only assume they were dragged into the Realm of Darkness. I spent the next few months searching for a way to get to them, as well as keeping an eye out for Ventus, but..."

"...You didn't find either," Riku finished sadly.

"No. Eventually, I found myself here, on these islands. When I saw you, I-...I knew that I couldn't leave. It would have been the height of negligence and cruelty to move on- to leave you ignorant of the legacy you bear. I knew Terra well enough to say that he had every intention of coming back for you, but since he can't, I will do my best to train you in his stead."

He was silent for a while, mulling it over. Finally, he nodded.

"Thank you for telling me, Master Ignis."

"What about Kairi?" Sora asked, his head tilted. "If Mister Terra chose Riku, and you chose me, who chose Kairi?"

"That would be Aqua," I told them. "Just like I could feel Terra's claim on Riku, I can feel Aqua's on Kairi."

"...I don't remember," Kairi said.

"Perhaps it's one of the things you've forgotten," I told her gently, even though I knew that even if she had remembered her meeting with Aqua, she still wouldn't have known when she was given the power. "But even if the mind forgets, the heart remembers."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The stars were disappearing.

I looked up at the night sky, unease settling in my stomach as I watched another one blink out of existence. It was the third one this week, and while I now knew that some stars actually were just stars in this universe, I also knew that those weren't what was going out.

Xehanort was on the move again.

I'd been wondering about it for a while- mostly since the finer details of the games had slipped from my memory as the years passed -whether or not his plan had some sort of deadline he needed to meet. It seemed I'd gotten my answer. The question now, however, was how were things going to play out.

I was under no delusions that I hadn't derailed things. I had not only trained Sora, Riku, and Kairi, but I had actively done my best to keep them hidden. My unease mostly stemmed from worry over whether it had been enough. If it hadn't, then odds were that Xehanort was going to be paying a visit to the islands soon.

Just the thought of it made my blood run cold.

Ten years, and it still didn't feel like I'd had enough time. I had known what was going to happen, and I hadn't been able to stop it. It had taken everything Terra, Aqua, Ventus and I had had to fight him, and we'd still lost. This time, I was alone. If he came-...

If he came, I probably wasn't going to make it out alive.

I swallowed, feeling my eyes burn as I continued to stare up at the sky. Years ago, that was all I could have hoped for. Anything to escape the agony brought about by losing everything yet again. Now, however...

"Miss Ignis!"

"Master Ignis!"

"Master!"

I found that...I didn't want to go.

"Master...?"

I sighed, a small, wry smile making its way onto my face at the voice. He would be the one to run into me tonight, wouldn't he?

"You should be asleep, Sora," I scolded, though anyone could tell it was halfhearted at best.

"I can't," he said, settling down next to me.

"You should at least try," I told him. "You've got a big day tomorrow."

His grin was just as bright now as it was when I'd first met him.

"That's exactly why!" he exclaimed, turning his gaze up to the night sky. "We've always heard the stories, but to know that we'll actually get to go out there! To see other worlds! It's amazing!"

I couldn't help the fond smile that slipped onto my face at that. He was so much like them, and yet, the warmth he always seemed to instill was unique to him alone.

I hoped that by nurturing it in him, I'd thrown Xehanort's, and even the mysterious Master of Master's, plans awry.

"But," Sora continued, his much more subdued and hesitant tone instantly drawing my attention, "there's...something I've been meaning to ask."

"What is it?"

"If-...If Riku hadn't been chosen when you first got here...or if Kairi had already been with us and not chosen by Master Aqua...would you have still chosen me?"

I blinked, honestly taken aback at the question. "What?"

He seemed a bit more embarrassed now, but the question still seemed to be weighing him down. "It's just- since you've started teaching us how to sense light and darkness in others, me an' Kairi noticed that Riku's...bright. Like, really bright. Then I noticed later that I couldn't sense any darkness in Kairi, and I just-...I couldn't help but think that-...that I-..."

"That you were chosen only because they were first."

He winced and I felt my heart twist painfully at his small nod.

"Sora, no," I told him, perhaps a bit too vehemently, but maybe that would make him listen more. "No, that's not it at all."

I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and waited until he was looking back at me to continue. "Sora, even if I'd had the option, I still would have chosen you. Precisely because you are you."

"Because...I'm me?"

I smiled. "Maybe Riku's a bit brighter, and maybe Kairi's a bit purer, but you...You want to know what I see when I look at you?"

He hesitated for a moment, probably afraid of what I might say, but nodded in the end.

"I see a warm light. Soft and gentle, like a sunset on the beach. It was that very light that reached out to me ten years ago, and pulled me back from the abyss I could feel myself starting to slip into. Sora, I wasn't kidding when I said your hug was just what I needed. That warmth- your warmth -kept me from ending up just like the others."

He blinked rapidly, his eyes becoming glassy with tears, and I sighed softly before throwing an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. Even after all I'd done, Sora had still ended up doubting himself and his place as a Keyblade wielder. Still, at least this had happened now, when I could set him straight, as opposed to later, when I...might not be around.

"...Do you really mean that?" he asked quietly.

"I do," I reassured him. "Never doubt yourself, Sora. If you ever find yourself feeling low just remember this:

I chose, and would always choose, you. Not Riku. Not Kairi. You. Because you are kind, and cheerful, and strong- even if you may not believe it at times. You also have something special that they don't: a warm light that welcomes all. A light that shelters and heals. I know, without a doubt, that you will do great things. Amazing things." I smiled down at him, my heart lightening at the small smile on his face as he looked back. "And you trust your master, don't you? So trust in me now."

"...Okay."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Sora watched with growing concern as his master paled. His gaze fell onto the figure behind her, his eyes widening when he realized it was the man in the cloak he'd spoken with just yesterday.

"I must admit to some surprise," the man continued, seemingly unaffected by the storm that raged around them. "I thought I'd gotten rid of all of Eraqus's pupils, yet here you are- with students of your own, no less..."

She stiffened, finally whirling around to face him with a glare. "You will get nowhere near them, Xehanort!"

Suddenly the gravity of the danger was clear, and going by how Riku and Kairi seemed to freeze right next to him, they realized it too.

Xehanort. The man who was responsible for all of the bad things that had happened to Master Ignis and her friends. Because of him, Mister Terra couldn't be here to teach Riku, and Miss Aqua and Ventus were lost somewhere.

It was because of him that his master was so sad and lonely.

Even his laugh was sending chills down his spine. "Is that so? You may have ten more years under your belt, girl, but you're still nowhere close to my level."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

...To be continued?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this! Maybe I’ll post snippets of my other, as of yet, unpublished SI/OC fics if you all like this well enough. I leave you with a picture of how Ignis looks at the end of these snippets, or rather, at the beginning of the events of KH1:

[spilledinkstories]

One Level Down

(writing prompt: you board an elevator of strangers and someone says “thank you all for coming”— I just kind of ran with this one, didn’t take it too seriously... :P )

“So I bet you are wondering why I’ve asked you here,” said the woman in the red overcoat.

I had been planning this specific trip to my university’s library for about two weeks now. I had placed a hold on a rare copy of a book you could only read in-house, and I had been notified of the date of my viewing. It was in a temperature-controlled basement room, and to be honest, I had been feeling pretty great about the whole experience. Like this made me a Real Scholar, or something. 

It was a book on the archeological findings at a famous site in China. I was writing a paper on how a report provided by women versus men often offered different focal points of the ideas of the ancient society, or different perspectives on that society all together. For example, you might get a bigger focus in a report on home life rather than warfare. That was the department’s hope, anyway. This was of course a research question posed by the department, and I had been wondering what on earth could be so different in two reports filed on the finding of a hairbrush, but anyway. The temperature-controlled room sounded cool, and I was all about that academic aesthetic. I kind of felt like it was part of some Indiana Jones movie, doing research of relics and ancient peoples, being involved in the ongoing discourse around history, the relationship between a person digging up some ancient artifact in a remote land, and then tourists paying pocket change to stare at it for five seconds. 

So, you can imagine my surprise when, crammed on an old elevator with several other people in various states of exhaustion, digging for gum in my overflowing backpack to eradicate the taste of crappy cafeteria coffee on my breath, the woman spoke. 

No one said anything for a couple seconds. 

“Really, no one is curious?” She pressed. 

“We got your memo, ma’am,” said one of the young men in a baggy sweatshirt. 

“Didn’t think to question it,” said another.

“Headquarters told me yesterday, I flew out immediately,” said a girl in a voice simply dripping with a thirst to prove herself. It’s worth mentioning that we were six Americans standing in an elevator in London, England.

“Good,” said the woman in the red coat. 

“Why a library,” whined the first boy. “I thought joining up meant a life of excitement, not…books.”

I had to hide my grin, not wanting to be caught. I don’t know if they knew I didn’t know what was happening, but I’ll tell you: I didn’t. I was intrigued though, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to pretend I was one of them for a little while.

“Well, I assume you all brought your paperwork with you, so we won’t waste any time getting started. I’ve booked the main room down here for one hour, so let’s be sharp, got it?” The woman in red spoke with an authority that was positively presidential. We fell in line like soldiers as the elevator doors creaked open, and she marched down a carpeted hall to what looked like a conference room. 

I was beginning to question my new plan, realizing I’d miss my viewing of the book if I stayed too long with these strangers, when someone spoke in my ear. “I haven’t seen you before, but it’s nice to have another girl on the team. Wanna sit next to me?”

“Okay,” I whispered back. 

“I’m Anna,” she said, smiling.

“Ivy,” I whispered back. 

“Sit,” said the woman in the red coat, as we entered the conference room. She stood at the front and fired up her laptop, and had it projecting onto the screen in a couple of seconds. Images of old manuscripts and letters filled the screen, all too faint to read properly. 

“So, I want you to go around the room really quickly, tell me your names, and your departments,” she commanded, turning quickly to the young man sitting to her left.

“Brandon, fact checking,” he said.

“Adam, restoration,” said the one who had whined that it was a library job. 

“Jake, archeology.” This one shocked me, since he was dressed like a stoner that thought pop music would be the death of culture but was secretly in love with Taylor Swift. Maybe they were all disguised look like students, to blend on campus or something…

I gulped. I was sweating now, the skin behind my knees prickling inside my tights. Clearly this was some official thing – the power suit the boss lady had been hiding under her red coat was proof of that enough. The skater skirt I had on was okay, and my baggy green knit sweater hid the Captain America t-shirt underneath, and my combat boots hid my Dr. Who socks…but I still felt massively out of place. The space buns hairstyle really was the cherry on top. The epitome of e-girl wannabe, nerdy art student, who’d invited herself to this meeting. I gulped again. “Ivy, sociology,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t shake. 

“Anna, state department,” the other girl said directly after I’d spoken. She looked polished too, like an intern at a high end tech company or something. Wait. Did she say state department?

“Great, and I’m Dr. Grayson, here on behalf of, well, a few people. Important people. Okay. Let’s get started. The short version is that the manuscripts you see on this screen are actually fakes, and we have to prove it. The long version is that they were  pulled from a recent dig at a site said to house artifacts from the Byzantine empire, and they are to be displayed at the British Museum next month. It’s a political scheme. In essence, the scientists pushing these documents want to present them to the public as proof that an archaic and brutal form of biochemical warfare was commonly used before, in order to try to naturalize it into the minds of civilians, in hopes that if it’s used later they won’t deem it a warcrime that came out of nowhere.” With that, Dr. Grayson began handing out papers around the table, giving us a moment to digest.

Um. 

What the hell had I walked into? I needed to go. I had to get out of there. But how was I supposed to leave without them knowing I didn’t belong? On the other hand, how was I supposed to sit here and listen to the rest of this and then try to walk away, having heard all their plans? Either way I felt like I was done for. I could feel the sweat prickling my armpits and the backs of my knees, and my toes felt slick inside my shoes. My stomach felt acidic, and I could feel it churning and roiling. I was sure Jake and Anna on either side of me could hear my heart palpitating and my breath coming in short, uneven rasps.

“Your handouts outline the task ahead of us. Of course the lawyers are already trying to handle the scientists putting this research forward as legitimate, so we’re not really going to focus on the publicity angle ourselves. Our focus is to prove that this document is a fake. We’re going to analyze it, and we’ll have to dig up some research on warfare of the time, but we’ll also be dispatching our own team to the dig site. We want to see what other artifacts or things they supposedly dug up there. Anything we can do to discredit this.”

“Right, so Brandon and I can team up, if you want,” Adam said.

“I’d hoped so. You two can work on trying to disprove the authenticity of these artifacts. They’re here actually, in the other room. Being cared for. The staff here put them in the maps room.” 

Holy crap…what had I walked into. I had known choosing to go to university in London would be exiting - I’d always loved British culture, but I thought I’d be reading Shakespeare and arguing essays from Ophelia’s perspective…stuff like that. Saying that Lady Macbeth could be construed as a hero, given women’s issues of the times. Not…this.

“So, that leaves Jake, Anna, and Ivy,” Dr. Grayson was saying, “perfect. We’ll get on the jet, and we should be at the dig in about three hours. You’ll be fitted with the proper tools, of course.”

Oh my god. Oh my god. Why had I followed them off that elevator?

An hour later I was seated between Jake and Anna on a very small airplane, taking off from Heathrow. 

“So, state department, huh? Couldn’t stand to let actual scientists get some work done without a babysitter?” Jake tossed this scornfully at Anna, ignoring me who was awkwardly slumped in my seat and wishing I didn’t exist.

“Unsupervised scientists are exactly what created this mess, dumbo.” 

“Wow, I can’t believe you called me that. Dumbo. Ouch. How am I going to be able to focus on my work, with a wound so deep?” 

“Ugh,” Anna rolled her eyes, and turned to look out her window. And by god, I wish she hadn’t, because Jake turned to me instead.

“Cute hair, by the way. You blended in really well. Sociology, you said? What’s your area?” I gulped, my throat feeling like it was made of carpet. I was an introvert to begin with, so honest conversation with strangers posed enough of a challenge. But this was another beast entirely.

“Im interested in women’s suffrage,” I squeaked.

“Of course you are. No, I didn’t mean your disguise,” he said with a laugh. He must have mistaken my anxiety for anger, because he followed with “I mean, we’re all into women’s rights. Don’t get me wrong. I just meant…like��what’s your speciality, like, why’d you get put on this specific case?” 

I wracked my brains so hard I wondered if it was possible to inflict a concussion that way.

“I was in the middle of conducting research on how different teams of anthropologists or archeologists can influence the public image of ancient societies, based on publication and subsequent publicity.” 

“Oh, so you’re from the office of public affairs, basically,” he said in a bored voice. 

“Have you ever been to a dig before?” Anna asked, sounding politely interested. I simply shook my head. 

“Okay, no worries, Jake and I can handle the grunt work, and you can focus on your write-up. I’m sure you’ve got a tight deadline for this.” I smiled appreciatively, blown away that my answer had satisfied them and terrified of making things worse. 

“Wait, I thought Grayson said we weren’t covering the publicity, that they had lawyers on it,” Jake said.

“It’s more academics,” I said vaguely, and they nodded as though this meant something significant. 

Thank the lord we spent the rest of the flight in relative silence, reading through the documents Grayson had handed out. They really just outlined procedures for the dig site, and our capacity there, but Anna had assured me I could just linger to a side with a laptop if I wanted.

We touched down in Genoa around three in the afternoon. 

At least if it was my last day as a free citizen on this earth, I could say I’d gone to Italy with a frankly quite attractive scientist boy. Not a bad last day, as these things go. With mountains on one side and the sea on the other, it was absolutely breathtaking. If I hadn’t been in the middle of an hours-long panic attack, I think it would have been the best day of my life. 

Off the plane, we got into an SUV right there on the tarmac, and as I watched the scenery slip from urban to rural I wondered what had inspired these fake scientists or whatever to even want to do this. What kind of biochemical warfare were they suggesting? Dr. Grayson hadn’t said, and none of the paperwork had said it either. I suppose the others back in London would decode it from the manuscripts, if that’s what they were doing, but…

“So you’re here to report on us, Anna tells me. I was wondering who you were,” Grayson spoke in a quiet voice from the front seat. I said nothing, feeling like my throat was going to swell shut in panic. Was I busted? Would they tie rocks to my feet and toss me out to sea?

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to speak up until we were on our way. The bureaucrats never want the researchers involved, but then they get mad when the researchers say something they don’t like, so what’s the point? You may as well be here and get the proper intel.” She swivelled in the front seat to face me. “Don’t make me regret it, got it?” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said in what I hoped was a winning voice. I saw a smirk tugging at the corners of Jake’s mouth, and tried to soothe the raging panic in my head and stomach. 

The dig site was honestly kind of disappointing. I had built it up in my head to look like a whole government facility built on a crater in the ground, with tents, scaffolding, desks, the works. But nope. This was just a crater in the ground, with a couple of ropes spanning the width of it here and there, I guess to mark the split between sections or something. That, and a couple of stools and ladders, and it was your run-of-the-mill pit.

“You’ll want this. Don’t forget the back of the neck,” Jake said, handing me a tube of sunscreen. 

“Oh, thanks,” I said, smirking as I took a bit and passed it on to Anna, who began vigorously rubbing some into her face and arms. 

“Tools are in the trunk,” Grayson said, “I’ll be in the car as I have to update the Upstairs. Private phone call, you get it. Get to work.” Anna sprung into action. It was like she was racing Jake to get the tools and pick a spot first, wanting to beat him at every turn. 

“You’re not even a real archeologist,” he grumbled, leaving my side to gather his equipment. 

“Tell that to the state department,” she called, and he looked pissed that she’d heard. 

“Which state, even?” He asked.

“Virginia.” 

“CIA then?” 

“Not necessarily.” 

I said nothing, letting them bicker. I went to the trunk and peered in, seeing a stack of coveralls. I picked on up to inspect it, thinking it might be nice to cover up my outfit that was feeling less and less professional by the second. 

“Good thinking,” Anna said, grabbing a pair herself. All suited up, she pulled a laptop out of a bag and passed it to me. 

“Here ya go, I guess you didn’t get a chance to bring yours.”

“Is there internet here?” I asked.

“Yep, car acts as a router. High tech,” she said. I took the computer from her silently.

The three of us trudged back to the pit, where the other two lost no time hopping in and surveying their turf. 

“So,” I said awkwardly, “we’re supposed to see if we can find any other manuscripts? Or anything suggesting biochemical warfare?”

“Partly, yeah. I’m also going to be inspecting the dig site itself to try to disprove that they found any paper substances. Particles left behind, impressions in the ground, you know.” Jake was bobbing his head, hands on his hip, looking like my dad about to mow the lawn on Sunday morning.

“You can do that?” I asked. He laughed, seeming to think I was being facetious. I wasn’t. I was just clueless, but I guess I’m glad he didn’t see it.

“I’ll just watch you both work for a while, and then I’ll start my write-up. I need to observe to figure out my angle.” I tried to muster as much authority in my voice as possible, as though I’d done this kind of thing before. 

“Yeah, okay,” Anna said absently. A couple of minutes later and some awkward waiting with my hands in my pockets, laptop waiting on a stool, the others had picked work spots and gotten to it. 

The silence was broken only by the sound of shifting dirt, and the occasional ruffle or grunt from one of them. Subtle glances back to the car suggested that Grayson may not be joining us in the pit at all, which was a relief. I watched as Jake poked and prodded at the ground, a look of deep concentration on his face, compared to Anna’s digging with all the fervour of a child told to find treasure in a sandbox. 

There was nothing for it. I went over to the stool, opened the laptop, and started typing. I wrote of the bureaucratic nature of science, as Grayson had put it in the car, and how publication could really be a business. How people had to fight to get their ideas heard. How certain things were deemed more or less important to the government for example, versus the public sphere. 

Basically, I sat in coveralls, on a stool in a pit in Genoa, Italy, and wrote my term paper. 

I tried to spin it so that the finding of a hairbrush, or a kitchen tool, would be treated very differently than the finding of a weapon, and whether or not it was a man or woman who discovered it really made no difference. Both men and women work in bureaucratic systems and in academics in today’s world, and both have access to controlling information. I wrote something like that, hoping if Grayson checked what I’d been working on, she’d see it as a government report on academia, since that was my only thread of legitimacy to work with where these strangers were concerned. After I finished I quickly emailed it to myself, hoping no-one would notice, and then I could just email my professor saying I couldn’t see the book I was supposed to but I’d written a paper for the deadline anyway.

By the time I’d finished my write up it was nearing six o’clock. Jake pulled up a stool next to me, and braced his forearms on his knees. 

“I can’t see any evidence of a real dig here. I don’t get it,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I said slowly, closing the laptop, having quadruple checked that I’d sent the work to my school email and saved it.

“I mean there wasn’t a dig here. This isn’t a real archeological site.” 

“So where did the fake manuscripts come from then?” I asked, wondering how on earth he could tell.

“I don’t know. I also don’t know why Grayson wouldn’t have known that before we got out here.” 

“Well, someone had to be the first to check,” I offered, blushing a little for fear this was a stupid comment. He looked at me, real suspicion entering his eyes for the first time.

“There are scientists in Italy. We didn’t need to fly out here to check it. Something’s up.” In the setting sun, the green flecks in his brown eyes caught the light, and I realized he was younger than I had originally thought. He couldn’t have been out of school that long.

“Maybe Grayson is in on it?” But before Jake could reply to this, Anna joined us in our little corner of the pit.

“Anyone have any water?” Jake passed her some, and she gulped it down before saying, “I’ve been digging for almost three hours and haven’t found a single thing.” 

I felt the familiar surges of panic making their way through my veins, making my ears ring and my head feel stuffy, and making the other two feel oddly distant. 

“Maybe the site has already been cleared out?” I offered, my voice squeaky. Anna passed me the water bottle, mistaking my rasp for thirst.

“How’s it going down here?” The three of us froze, staring at each other. Grayson had gotten out of the car, and hopped into the pit, the heels of her shoes sinking an inch or two in the loose dirt. She shuffled over to us, maintaining her look of authority. 

“Yeah, good,” Jake said, “I think I’ve seen all I need to for a first look.” 

“You’re only getting one look,” she drawled.

“I haven’t found any other artifacts,” Anna said, “I think whoever was here before cleared everything out.” 

“And where would they have put it?” Grayson demanded. Anna fell silent, taken aback. 

“I don’t think anyone really was here before. I think this is a fabricated dig site.” While I didn’t know Jake very well, there was no mistaking the challenge in his voice. Grayson’s eyes narrowed a little, and she took a couple steps closer to where Jake was seated beside me, so she could tower over him. 

“And what are you suggesting, exactly, Jake?” 

“When I’m working I go by Dr. Miller. I’m suggesting that they gave you a fake location to send you on a goose chase, or that perhaps those manuscripts don’t exist at all.”

“Then what would you suggest is in the maps room back in London?” She said dangerously. 

“I couldn’t tell you, seeing as I never saw them in person.” A grin flickered on Grayson’s face. I caught Anna’s eye from where she was standing behind Grayson, and read the worry as a pretty bad sign. 

“Who would want to send me on a wild goose chase?”

“You’re the government official, not me. Who exactly do you work for, Dr. Grayson? And what are you a doctor of, exactly?”

“Political science, it’s just a title. I work for the secretary of defence.” At this, Jake laughed in her face. 

“The U.S. government is worried about some old scroll they dug up in the mountains that suggests some ancient civilization knew how to…what? Poison each other? This is a joke, right?” Jake stood up and strolled away from the group, shaking his head.

“Not poison,” she said quietly.

“Then what?” I asked, immediately realizing I’d broken my vow to myself to keep my stupid gob shut.

“Classified,” she said with an arched brow.

“So again, why fake the site?” Anna asked. 

“The scientists who produced the documents could have said it was here to buy time until the exhibition,” I offered, since Grayson was still staring at me. She flicked an eyebrow up again, and finally broke her stare to turn her eyes on Jake.

“Are any of you wearing microphones?” She asked. 

“No,” we all said unanimously. She exhaled wearily, rubbing a hand over her tired eyes.

“Alright. What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this pit. The scrolls outline a way of spreading a virus that was apparently employed all the way back then. Given the recent pandemic all over the world, that’s not the kind of thing the public needs to be seeing. But these scientists are convinced it needs to go public. You can see how that would strike fear into the hearts of everyone. They’d all be convinced they were the recent victims of a large-scale government attack.” 

“Who are these scientists? Archeologists, whoever?” Anna said, disgust colouring her words.

“We’re wasting time here, we can talk about this on the jet back to London. I want to see those manuscripts,” Jake said, and he strode to the edge of the pit and hauled himself out. I was shocked that Grayson didn’t counter his authority, and instead followed him. 

I slept most of the plane ride back to London. I’d listened to them bicker and swap theories while we ate our way through a couple of pizzas that were waiting for us on the tarmac, but they’d mostly talked in circles. The more they talked, the less Grayson really seemed to know, and Jake kept saying he needed to see these artifacts.

With the time change back, it was about nine when we landed, and ten pm when we reached the university. I felt better, having slept a bit, but my head was still pounding with exhaustion from the events of the day.

We loaded ourselves back into the same elevator in the university library, and headed one level down. Instead of going to the conference room we headed down another hallway, where the map room was tucked away.

“They said they were still here,” Grayson said, leading us. She opened the door, and I would have been impressed by the collection of old maps had I not flown to the northern coast of Italy and back that afternoon.

“Where are they?” Jake asked harshly. 

“I don’t know,” Grayson admitted. 

“Dr. Grayson, have you worked with either Brandon or Adam previously?” Anna asked. 

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t worked with any of you before.” 

“Do you know who they work for?” Anna pressed. 

“No.”

“They just said fact checking and restoration. That could be government, a university,” Anna was trailing off. 

“A museum, even,” Jake offered. 

“I mean now that I think of it, you didn’t check any of our credentials,” Anna said, glaring at Grayson. 

“Hang on a minute, I knew five people were supposed to be joining me in the map room. I don’t appreciate your suggestion that I’m incompetent. They’re probably out grabbing coffee.”

“But how do we know they weren’t just two random guys on the elevator?” Anna said, wringing her hands. I was beginning to think she was scared that her own butt was on the line here, but mine was too so…relatable. 

“Oh, you’re back, perfect,” said a voice as the door opened, and Brandon and Adam walked in. The room was cramped with all of us standing in there. 

“From what we can tell, they’re real,” Adam said.

“They can’t be, the dig site seemed fake,” Jake said. “Let me see it.”

“I mean, obviously more rigorous testing has to be done than what we can do in a day, but it seems pretty authentic to me,” Brandon was saying as he led Jake over to where they’d been examining a very old, gross looking scroll of paper.

“Who do you two work for?” Grayson asked them, and they looked at her in shock. 

“I work for the British Museum, in the restoration department,” Adam said a little uncertainly. 

“I work for the university here, but I was hired as a consultant by the government,” Brandon said a little pompously. 

“And who do you work for?” Grayson said, turning on me. 

My throat burned. My eyes stung. I felt my head swimming, my palms prickling and my knees shaking. My limbs felt weirdly weightless. They were all staring at me now, and I knew there was nothing for it. 

“It’s like Anna said…I was just a stranger on the elevator. I followed you guys to the conference room earlier half as a joke, and then I got too scared to leave cause I thought I’d get in trouble,” it was all just tumbling out of me, and I didn’t care that tears were tracking down my face. “I should never have gotten on the plane, I should have never even followed you down the hall off of the elevator. I was on my way to look at an old book for a sociology paper I’m supposed to submit this weekend.”

To my absolute shock, Jake started to laugh. Not just a chuckle, he really laughed. Despite myself, I laughed a little too.

“I really was supposed to write a paper on different perspectives on the publications in the archeology and anthropology world, but this took it to a whole new level. I did a write up at the dig site and emailed it to myself to submit for class, but I can delete it if you want.” I looked at Grayson, fear spiking in my gut again. 

“I’ll read it first, but you clearly know nothing so I’m sure it’s harmless,” she said with an eye roll. why had I laughed? Surely ‘apologetic’ and terrified was what I should be going for, not acting like I was gloating.

“Are you gonna lock me up?” I squeaked, fresh hot tears running into my mouth and off my chin.

“What for? So you came to Italy, big deal. If Jake is right and the site is fake, you basically flew with us to see a random hole in the ground. We’ll draft up a non-disclosure agreement, track your phone for a few days, keep an eye on you…to be honest, with something like this, it doesn’t really matter that one little girl knows.” I was a bit offended at being called a little girl, but I took her point. Even if I posted about today all over my social medias, I would be discounted pretty quickly by the public, especially since I had no photos to back it up. Kinda like that history channel guy convinced aliens were responsible for historical landmarks.

“So…” I started, unsure what I was attempting to say. 

Adam pulled a wad of cafeteria napkins out of his pocket. “It’s okay, no one thinks you meant anything by it. You got swept up in it. No big deal.” 

“It still doesn’t answer my question though,” Jake insisted. “Where did these come from? If they are real, why do they surface now? Who found them? And if they’re fake, still who?”

“All I know is my boss gave me the assignment,” Grayson shrugged. 

“What does that mean? You’re blaming the American government for this?” Anna said acidly. 

I sat down in a chair tucked in the corner, glad I didn’t have to pretend I knew what was going on, or that I had any roll in this. 

“Can I go?” I asked, suddenly desperate for silence and solitude. I’d had enough.

“Yeah. We know where to find you,” Grayson said, exhaustion dripping from her own voice. 

I left the room. I walked back down the hallway, boarded the elevator and left the university library. I walked back to my dorm, in a complete daze, unable to process the day I’d just experienced. I’d snuck into some top secret government meeting and flown to Italy to attempt to disprove evidence of an ancient virus spreading technique. 

At least I’d still managed to write my paper, and I’d tried pizza in Italy, so that was pretty cool. 

A week later, with an A on my paper that I’d turned in, headlines broke that people suspected foul play with the pandemic we’d just survived the year prior. People began to suspect that it was brought on by some government or other, but then other outlets said that was just paranoia. Others still said it was old news, and what were we supposed to do about it anyway.

I bought a ticket to the British Museum, and saw the manuscript on display for everyone to see. A little blurb was posted beside it, saying how its authenticity was severely questioned, but it was no doubt real. 

No one seemed to care. I never did find out where those manuscripts really came from.

[darkmindsthinktwistedthoughts]

Deadlines Alt End 1

Masterlist

---

Deadlines Alternative End 1: Hideyoshi His POV

It was around the time Mitsunari excused himself for the third time to go and find some other source for his ravenous researching that I noticed that the girl was no longer in the restricted access section. Where did she go? It hadn’t been that long since I looked over was it? I put down my own book and decided to stretch my legs. It was a mystery to me how Mitsunari did it. Prolonged periods of time sitting in one position played havoc with my circulation and I found I had to keep moving around to avoid painful leg cramps.

I moved away from the table and walked around the room a little. That was when I saw her. She was sitting by the window surrounded by papers, a few different pens and highlighters near her right hand on the tabletop as she scribbled line after line of text. I did think it before a little when I saw her blushing, talking to Mitsunari and me but she is quite pretty.

I don’t know how long I stood there watching her. The light of the sun catching her hair that tumbled over her shoulder where it had fallen loose from her messy bun. I was entranced by the look on her face. She was deep in concentration but she had the most adorable look on her face every time she tried to work out something. Her expression changed and she got a little crease on her brow and bit her bottom lip while she processed the next step. I guess I was staring too long because she noticed me.

“Did you want something?” She asked politely but I had seen that look on her face before. The frustration, the tiredness… every time I had looked in a mirror during my second year.

Ever since I had received my scholarship to the university I had been so desperate to prove myself and my worth that it took Nobunaga and Masamune to drag me out of the study halls to force me to sleep. I understood that sometimes what drove you to keep pushing your limits was sometimes more than just achieving a good grade. It was the feeling of value and being valued. But as much as I understood that I still could not avoid feeling the need to try to help when I saw someone struggling. Or my own desire to see someone relax more instead of working themselves closer to the edge of their limits.

“No sorry I was just wondering if there was anything I could do for you.” I schooled my face. I probably failed to mask 100% of my concern because she looked a little like she felt guilty for causing concern. She’s sort of even cuter when she looks troubled.

“I’m not sure there is anything that can be done, to be honest. I mean all the work has to be in my own handwriting and my own words except for the direct quote stuff.” She shrugged giving me a sweet lopsided smile.

“I see your problem. But you have been hitting the books solid since you got here I’m a little worried you might be pushing yourself.” Man, Hideyoshi even you think this sounds like your just meddling.

“HAHA, you sound like my Mum.” Her laugh was musical. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled broadly. Her Mum?

“I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business I… I  should leave you to get back to it.” I was feeling a little embarrassed. Truth be told it wasn’t the first time I had been told that I reminded someone of their mother. It always made me feel a little ticklish.

“Erm Hideyoshi?” I heard her hesitant voice behind me as I turned to leave and stopped in my tracks to look at her again.“Thank you. It’s really sweet of you to care so much.” She smiled and I lost myself for a moment. Showing a guy a face like that. What are you even thinking?  Reaching out my hand to her I put it on her head. I felt her tense up but she relaxed almost immediately afterwards.

“No problem. Just take it easy ok?” I gave her one of my best smiles I could, trying to ignore how much she made me feel. It’s strange I hardly know her in fact, I only met her today and yet I can’t seem to leave her alone.

I went back to check on Mitsunari who was already submerged back in his own little world. He always did that. Give the guy a book he just zoned out and nothing could break his concentration. That was how my afternoon passed. Quitely, peacefully, the sounds of pages turning and pen scratching across paper. Observing two people, one dear friend and one curious girl who appeared out of nowhere but managed to capture my attention and concern all the same.

---

It was the day after most of the exams for the end of the year had happened. We all had gone out to play a game of basketball at the local park. Masa had practically been bouncing off the walls in the dorm and Yasu was talking about putting tranquillizers in the food to try to calm him down. In the interest of keeping the peace and getting some fresh air, we all agreed a game was in order.

“What is with you man seriously?” Masa threw the ball hard at my chest and I let a small grunt sound out as I barely caught it.

“I don’t know what you mean.” It was true my mind had been elsewhere. I couldn't get the girl from the library out of my head. Since then I had seen her on campus looking tired and it had worried me. I really wish I could have done something even then to help her.

“Oh come on. You don’t have your head in the game at all. What is it? A girl?” Masa had his moments of being very observant and also very blunt. Clearly, this was one of those moments.

“There’s a girl?” Mitsunari asked innocently as he looked around. This got a chuckle from most of us and an eye roll from the resident expert in sarcasm.

“There’s always a girl when he is involved.” Ieyasu sighed and raked his hand through his blonde hair. “It’s so apparent its no wonder Captin Obvious over there noticed it.”

“And what is that supposed to mean? Masa gave Ieyasu a little playful shove as he laughed trying to pull him into a headlock.

“Hey, now that’s enough.” Nobu laughed whilst he cast his usual spell over the guys causing them all to regain some composure and settle down. How does he do that?

“Thank you.” I said relieved. I know it was a common problem that everywhere I went on campus I seemed to have a crowd at some point hindering my movements. But the way they talk about it, I shudder to think what others must think of me.

“Yeah Nobu’s right you shouldn’t just assume it’s a girl.” Mitsuhide spoke up from the sidelines as he came closer. As a group, we had all been together since High school. Mitsuhide had his moments of being nice. He isn’t always so bad sometimes he is a really supportive friend. “It could just as easily be a guy. I hear the guys on the track team have their own little fan club developing for our dear sweet little Yoshi.” Mitsuhide reached out to pinch my cheek and I quickly ducked and knocked his hand away. Or not… what a jerk!

---

Our game continued until it started to get late. Masa said he wanted to cook in the dorm kitchen for us all but then got a call about a party. So he changed his mind and decided that he wanted to go crash it. Nobu and Mitsuhide were both on board with that plan. Yasu mumbled something about going to make sure Masa didn’t attempt to dive from someone's balcony like an idiot again. Mitsunari had a tutoring job so he made his excuses and left.

As much as I would have liked to go and keep an eye on them all, I also was not feeling up to it at all. And that was why I was now downtown about to go into a McDonalds to grab some fast food. If Masa saw me now he’d probably kill me. But food is food and I can’t be bothered with cooking right now. I grabbed my order of chicken nuggets and fries, small cup coffee and sat down at a table. It was sort of busy in here tonight. I guess most of the students had the same idea for dinner.

“...Thank you.” The polite soft voice of a familiar female managed to find my ear over the general buzz of human activity around me. Looking up I saw her, the girl from the library… [Name].

“[Name]” I called out to her as she was looking around for somewhere to sit. I have no idea why I just did that. I suppose it was to ensure she didn’t get in a situation where she was hit on by some creep because she was alone. “Care to join me?” Wait that didn’t make me sound like one of the creeps did it?

While I wondered about how I appeared she smiled gratefully at me as she took a seat opposite me then laughed. “Oh my gosh, we have the same meal.” I looked and she was right. Nuggets, fries and coffee. It made me smile to think we were eating the same food. Like a couple… wait what? I laughed along with her and we passed the time with some small talk. I found out she was looking into work at a museum over the holidays. It was just in the gift shop but she really wanted to learn about preserving the paintings. She’s so genuine and so bright.

The more we spoke the more I found myself lost in her eyes. I liked the way she played with the fries between her fingers as she told a story. How she licked the salt and ketchup from her lip after taking a bite. It was nice hanging out with someone that wasn’t poking fun at me as one of the guys or one of those girls that seemed to turn up out of nowhere in pack formation. Yes, this is something I could get used to. I wonder what she would say if I asked her out?

---

On the way back from the party Mitsuhide was the first of the trio to notice the curious pair sitting in the local fast food joint. He smiled as he nudged Nobu on his shoulder and pointed out the couple.

“Well well, it appears that when Yoshi says he isn’t up for partying what he meant was we aren’t his type.” Mitsuhide joked and Nobu just laughed.

“Hey what’s the big deal I thought we were going to hit that Italian place on the way back?” Masa who had been walking slightly ahead of them came back and then followed their gaze to see what was holding them up. “Oh Yoshi is never going to hear the end of this one.” He said with a smile that threatened to split his face in two.

---

[bts-love-sweat-tears]

Julie’s Love Yourself Concert Diary

Concert Date: September 29, 2018

Written: September 30, 2018

Warnings: I curse more than I should?

Words: 3,330ish-added a few  things at the last minute (phew!)

A/N:

[Update: Tumblr couldn’t upload all my photos that I spent awhile choosing and placing, so I’m going to have to pare it down. Sorry bbs! I opted to cut my personal & merch photos in favor of the boys]

So I have one thousand and one things I should be working on-for school, for work, for my eventual job hunt. But instead I am going to write about last night’s experience while it was still fresh in my mind. I was thinking of doing a song-by-song play-by-play, but you can look up the setlist on Wikipedia, so instead I am going to talk about the things that jumped out at me. WARNING: This is essentially one giant spoiler, so I will try to put a “Read More” cut, though it’s been being weird for me lately. So scroll carefully if you’re going to a later date and don’t want to know. All photos taken on my (now ancient) iPhone 6, so I tried to choose the best ones). Will edit as I see typos I made.

I’m a little nervous since I usually write fiction instead of sharing my personal experience. Anyway, full disclosure that this is just my perspective, and I’m (always) happy to discuss things (civilly) if you disagree with me.  <3  Photos and opinions are mine.- please don’t re-post anywhere else.

The Background/ Pulling a Namjoon and Leaving my Ticket at Home

Even though I was going to the Saturday show, I flew into LaGuardia using frequent flyer miles on Friday morning. I was staying with a friend in Queens, so I went straight to her apartment. I’m a grad student as most of you probably know at this point, so I spent most of Friday working on a paper that was due. I had two friends I met at last year’s concert going to the Friday concert, and they went for merch promptly at 9, but I had just arrived and had a deadline to meet for school.  Around 4:30PM, I decided that I was done for the day and opened Ticketmaster to print my ticket for the next day’s show. When I logged in, I saw the notice that the ticket had been mailed to me. I remembered having seen that when I bought the ticket in May, but in my defense I was jet-lagged and ill on that day. Furthermore, I moved to and from NYC in that time for a summer internship, and SO MUCH HAD HAPPENED. The tickets had been mailed while I was living here and I had never seen them, so somehow it slipped my mind. Obviously I lived too far away, but I didn’t know if I could express overnight them, but I think when I called Ticketmaster, the old ones were deactivated when the guy tried to send me the link.

Anyway, print at home was not an option, so I called Ticketmaster and in a panic explained my situation. They said it happened all the time and offered to send me a link. Luckily I kept the rep on the line, because it turned out that even they couldn’t email a link because of the anti-scalpers/fraud/whatever.

Then the rep said that I could show the credit card, but I had literally cut it up the week prior since the Vendor (e.g. the store that the card was through) had switched their card to a different bank (e.g. Visa to Mastercard), so I seemed shady af, even though I was telling the truth. He said as long as I had a login to a statement showing the transaction (I didn’t, since they had opted to close the account at an institutional level).  So I called my mom frantically, and luckily she is the hyper-organized type who keeps paper copies of everything and sent them to me. Seriously, Mom for the win!  I run to this print shop as it’s closing and print everything out.  I had the Ticketmaster receipt & order #, and two photo ID’s confirming my address. The guy said it should be fine, but I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. This was my one birthday gift and something I had been looking forward to for months. Anyway, my friend and I went out to a local bar near the Halsey (yes, the singer took her name from the station) stop on the L line, and I was super anti-social because I was so upset. I also burst a blood vessel in my eye  (it will heal, no worries) because of too much birthday partying the prior weekend, so I’m sure I was a (sour) sight to behold.

I slept poorly for obvious reasons, and left the apartment around 7AM, and arrived to Prudential center around 8:30ish. There were only a few people outside of will call, but the GA line was already wrapped around the building. I made small talk with people outside of the box office, and one woman told me she had gotten soundcheck both days. Seriously, what kind of karma do I need for that to happen to me? She and her friends had been camping out since Thursday, and they were SUPER organized: while she waited in line, one was at merch, and someone else was holding their GA site. I almost wondered if they were a fansite or something. ARMY are a truly organized bunch (except for me, clearly).

Anyway, after another half hour of pure anxiety, they opened up will call and I was panicking, but they were really helpful and gave me my ticket after I verified the order number, showed my id and confirmed some other personal data. I decided then and there that nothing else mattered and I was just happy to be there and be in.

Waiting in line/Logistics/Staff

I left the box office, and got into the GA line. It was probably around 9:15, and the line had already doubled-back on itself all the way around the building. The woman from earlier told me that her friend had got #1000 and was only 3 rows back, so I still had some hope. Basically, you line up to get your spot in line- though it’s kinda dumb that you have to line up twice, it makes security go faster and guarantees that there isn’t a huge surge/stronger people cutting  in line later.

I wore what I thought were my most comfortable shoes, but after standing on concrete for hours, I don’t think it makes a difference. People were so friendly though-  I never once felt awkward even though I was by myself. The same was true last year- the friends who had gone up for merch on Friday I met while in line at last years’ Wings concert. I chatted with people around me, drank the two bottles of water I had, and looked at my phone. Bring an umbrella for shade and sunscreen though-I didn’t and am rocking a nice farmers burn/tan today.  It wasn’t humid though, and it wasn’t raining, so it could have been so much worse.

Even though there were tons of people, everyone was well-behaved. I didn’t see any altercations, though as the day went on the staff seemed a bit overwhelmed with crowd control.  I didn’t see too many people selling unofficial merch like last year, though I did buy a few necklaces (Joon and Chim, ofc).

After 3.5 hours, I finally got my wristband. They told us to be back by 2pm to line up for real, as they were going to try to open the doors at 3 instead of 3:30 (didn’t end up happening).

Merch

I then ran to merch, but there wasn’t much left. The fans/pickets were selling out as I got in line, and people were basically yelling “NOOOOOOOO” everytime the staff put up a “SOLD OUT” sticker. I bought what I could that was left, including a bracelet, which I’m actually in love with, the eco-tote (super overpriced tbh, $50 for a canvas bag), but the shopper bags were gone and I needed something to carry the box and batteries V3 ARMY Bomb I bought. I had one from last year that I also forgot, but I think the new version was cool because they are synced up with the music so you can change colors and patterns along with everyone else. Overall, it’s EXPEN$$$$IVE, but if anyone’s worth it, it’s Bangtan.

Newark

I was getting super tired after this, so I kinda passed on the photo studio table, big poster, and UNICEF stuff. I tried to go to Starbucks, but even though it was the middle of the day, I didn’t feel that safe, even though it was like 11:45 in the middle of the day. I’m a 27 year old who’s lived in Latin America (which is generally stereotyped for violence), solo traveled around the world, and I’m from the Rust Belt (aka home of true urban decay), but that part of Newark sketched me the heck out. Probably it would have been fine, but I opted for caution, and went to a Dunkin Donuts and empanada place right around the corner. The timing was actually good since we had to get back pretty quickly to line back up.

The second line was where the staff struggled, telling people to back up and get in order, but it seemed like staff were doing different things. Plus, if they wanted people to back up, they should have created room at the back first, before telling the front to basically “back that ass up” on the people behind them.

GA vs. Seated

I can say this- if you are short, you probably want a seat. Or if you have any kind of knee, back, or joint problems- I stood for approximately 14 straight hours on concrete yesterday. I am just under 5”5” but I was probably one of the taller people in the crowd, so I had a pretty good view. Even though they asked people to not take videos or record, you WILL be looking through a sea of cell phones. I could see pretty well, but sometimes when they were on the main stage I had a hard time seeing around other people’s arms.

Last time I had P2 seated, and the view was wonderful. I went to the bathroom, charged my phone, and ate nachos (lol), so it was generally a more chill experience. I was still super close but up a little higher and could see absolutely everything. But last night I was SO close I could see Joon’s dimples irl, and got splashed by both Jungkook and J-Hope when they threw the water bottles.  Probably 100 people think this, but I’m also pretty sure Yoongi  (and maybeeee Jimin) saw me jumping and singing along like crazy since I was one of the taller people. At the very least, Yoongi keep looking in the general direction I was in. Ofc I looked gross af with my messed up eye and crazy hair, but what I loved about the concert is that I was 100% able to forget all the insecurities I carry around with me on a day to day basis and have an AMAZING time.

Of course the whole place is crazy high energy, but I feel like last night was INSANELY high. I’m not sure if it was the overall vibe or if that was the GA influencing my opinion.  It just depends on what kind of experience you want to have. Also, if you are claustrophobic, you should probably pass on GA. The guards kept forcing people to back up, at one point even coming in with a flashlight, and people would surge forward whenever a member came close. But someone said the night before was chill, so maybe it’s just luck of the draw.

The Show

The show was absolutely amazing. They opened with IDOL, which got people hyped from the get-go. Their dancing was ON POINT as always. People were chanting during the intro videos and chatting as it filled in, so it was a great vibe once again- just super happy feeling. The audio visual part was AMAZING, though I’m no pro, and I loved all of the concert outfits, especially Jimin’s super sparkly sweater. Lots of jumping, and lots of screams. I didn’t have earplugs and was fine, but if you’re sensitive to loud sounds I definitely recommend them. ISTG I remembered hearing a mashup of FIRE, but maybe not? Wikipedia seems to think not. But they played a few older ones too, which made me so soft and nostalgic.

More on the members during the concert

Kim Namjoon

Ok, this is so so so biased, let me start with that. If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know how much I love this man. Seeing him smiling and happy was amazing. And they had a professional translator for this concert, so I felt like Joon was able to relax a little and enjoy himself instead of worrying about translating for everyone else.  He is just as tall and proportional as everyone says he is.  Everyone talks about how soft he is these days (and I love it), but he has undeniable charisma when he raps. Plus him in sunglasses, ddaeng. Seeing him so close was akin to something spiritual for me (I SAW THE DIMPLES WITH MY OWN EYES), as were people shouting along with him to “Love.” At the end, he commented how we were all sharing the same air, and hearing him think the way (I know at least some of ) us think was so heartwarming.  

Also during some of the videos, there were some NOT AT ALL subtle Minjoon moments.  

Kim Seokjin

The crowd last night ADORED Jin and gave him all the attention he deserves to have all the time. People were chanting his name SO LOUDLY during instrumental breaks in Epiphany. His voice was phenomenal, particularly the high notes. it’s clear how hard he’s worked to make it sound so effortless.  I noticed that people weren’t moving as much during some of his notes and I can only think it’s because we were literally transfixed. It’s well established, but I don’t think this man has any bad angles. Even in the still pictures I took while dancing, he DOESN’T look awkward in any of them. #impossible.

Min Yoongi

Suga was clearly happy about something last night- he was SO cute and happy. Other ARMY on the train back to the city agreed with me. His rapping was fire (duh), but he was really smiley and took out his earpiece a number of times to hear us screaming. “Seesaw” starts with him laying on a couch and I can think of no better way to capture his true soul (lol). He was extra attentive to fans, and  I feel like what Tae mentioned in Burn the Stage, he was trying to memorize ARMY’s faces and live in the moment. I felt bad because there were clearly parts where he wanted us to sing along, but we couldn’t necessarily keep up with his tongue technology :P  But people definitely tried their best.  

Jung Hoseok

Idk what I can say here that’s new. J-Hope is one of the most charismatic members on the stage. And there’s something in the American air that turns him into Jay Hope. Seriously, he’s hard to move your eyes away from. “Just Dance” was the first solo track if I remember correctly and he did not disappoint. His glasses at the end were adorable, and one of the other members called him a “happy grandfather” or something like that.  Seriously, if you’re still sleeping on Hobi, we can’t be friends.  

Park Jimin

Jimin was ethereal as always, and the choreography for Serendipity was…..salacious, to say the least. Like if you thought the “Take Me Down” cover from last year’s Festa was too much, then idk what to tell you. Bring holy water or something. Despite  the free water that fans were providing to others (ARMY are seriously the best) there was a different kind of thirst occurring, if you smell what I’m stepping in. Jimin is pure charisma, like J-Hope. Obviously their styles are totally different, but when they move, you stop whatever you’re doing and watch. Again, I didn’t even see many ARMY bombs moving during Serendipity- I think we were too entranced. I personally thought that he killed his vocals and did great, but he seemed a little tired or like he was working hard at it. Jimin was also the one (at least that I saw from my angle) that got the closest to the fans, crouching down and leaning over the teleprompters/fans/lights/ whatever the black boxes were at the edge of the stage.

Similar to Tae and Yoongi, I saw him looking at fans A LOT during the show. He was exactly how he seems in V Lives and cameras, and I’m fairly certain I would spontaneously combust if I ever ran into him irl (even if I didn’t know who he was)- he just radiates warmth and friendliness. Seriously, if I believed in magic, I feel like he would be able to influence people’s emotions.

Kim Taehyung

So many fic writers have this ultra primal (for lack of a better word?) for Tae, but all I see is a cute sweetheart. Obviously I’ve never seen someone create as much tension with their own arm as he does during Singularity, but when he’s not dancing, I just got a super innocent, cutesy vibe from him. His voice was so smooth last night. I mean, I knew, but now I KNOW.  He actually was shooting hearts at one fan (how lucky they are), and pretended to fall down when they shot him back! They were further back in P2 as well so he really does work hard at paying attention to everyone. He actually called over another member (maybe Yoongi or Jimin? I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe, to see whatever he was seeing).

At the end he whipped a heart out of his beanie (how I pray to god someone got that moment on camera) a la Jin. He just seemed really comfortable in his own skin last night, and I was so grateful for it.  

Jeon Jungkook

I had a hard time seeing most of his Euphoria performance as it was relatively early on and people were taking a shit ton of videos. He also stayed mostly on the main stage, rather than come out to the extension area near where I was. His abs are just as great in person, and the screams were (as is to be expected), absolutely deafening. They’ve talked about it in shows, but his voice is  SO stable. Obviously they stopped at times and don’t use too much backing vocals, but it sounded EXACTLY how it does on the album. He threw something into the crowd  (I think a banner) at the end, and it FLEW so far-back to P2 or further. They’re not kidding when they talk about how strong he is.  

Final thoughts

At first, I was a little exhausted after my emotional trauma of the prior day, and from standing for so long but the minute it started I forgot everything else. I was salty when I couldn’t see that much bc of people recording (esp when they asked us not to), but I understand the specialness of the moment and wanting to have some tangible evidence that you were there. By the time the concert was over, I realized how special GA was, even if it’s more difficult logistically (since I went solo and didn’t have parents or friends to stand in). I still don’t know if it’s hit me that I was like 10 feet away from them, max. It reaffirmed how important they are to me. I didn’t write this to brag, but to hopefully share my perspective and let others live vicariously through my experience. If you want clarification or anything else, write to me!  

[reesebird]

New Post has been published on https://reesebird.com/2019/02/13/im-debating-burning-bridges-with-blood-family-any-advice/

I’m debating burning bridges with blood family. Any advice?

So, this is a little hard to talk about but I’ll try. I grew up in a fairly “average” household. Mom, dad, 1 sibling, 1-2 dogs, for a total of 4 humans and a pet or two at any one time. Before the ‘08 recession, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my dad worked. Following the recession, my mom went back to work, and my dad went from working 40 hours a week to 90+ hours a week. Not the healthiest, but not exactly abusive or anything like that. I’m starting with this, because I want to establish a baseline – my family wasn’t a “classically abusive family” like some of my friends and peers.

When I was in elementary school, there were 3 things that stood out. First, I was bullied incessantly by everyone (save literally one student I became friends with, but have since fallen out of touch). This began with verbal bullying, then in middle school escalated to being beaten up on four separate occasions, and finally, being punched in the face right in front of the teacher, who refused to do anything. Second, I wasn’t ever challenged academically. After kindergarten (which I completed at the local public school), I stopped being really taught. I attended a private religious school whose standards were so garbage that aside from handwriting, I learned next to nothing in my 8 years in attendance. Most of the teachers were lazy, and they cared only about turning in the homework. You could have every answer wrong on every piece of homework, and every answer wrong on every test, but by virtue of having turned something in, you were considered a “good student”. Meanwhile, anyone who had a “reputation for being smart” would be berated and belittled by the teachers for being ahead of the lesson plan. I was even handed a failing grade on a science project because the teacher hated me. And my grades slowly suffered. Not being challenged like I would’ve been at a public school, I slowly gave up. I went from a straight-A+ student to a student barely making C’s between 3rd & 8th grade. Not because I didn’t get the material (though I definitely didn’t get Spanish, and I thought religion made no logical, scientific sense), but because the homework just bored me to tears. My mom would yell at me every report card I didn’t get an A+, too. My first B, I was grounded for a month. When I started getting C’s, she told me I was worthless. And, when I failed Spanish my last quarter in 8th grade, she threatened to disown me. The third thing that stood out was that in spite of all of this, I tried to keep learning. I read constantly. Between 6th and 8th grade, I kept a spreadsheet of all the books I read, and what genre they were, and in total, read just shy of 1,000 books between my first day of 6th grade and my last day of 8th grade. I tried out Khan Academy, and did independent research. I even learned how to use the library’s database on my own so I could read engineering journals for free. And, all in all, I still loved academia.

In high school though, things began really breaking. I’d wanted to attend this fairly prestigious public school that had an actual engineering program (that included shop time!). But, my mom, not wanting me to risk getting involved with drugs and alcohol and gangs and underage sex and shit like that, very intentionally didn’t wake me on the day for testing to go to that school (we had 1 alarm clock in the house at the time, which was my parents’). So I missed the test. And couldn’t go. So, desperate for a chance to not fuck everything up, I tested at one of the 2 most rigorous private schools in the area. I got in, and was immediately made aware that I’d not learned anywhere near enough in grade school. I didn’t know enough to pass algebra 1 in math, I only passed English because my teacher gave me extended deadlines for everything, and in Chinese, despite doing extremely well at first, the original teacher left (family emergency) and I failed because the new teacher made no sense to me. And I struggled. And failed. And my mom would berate and belittle me for it. Finally, I was told I had failed out my freshman year. I hated myself. Everything I was taught to value – what I was taught was my only value – had just been demonstrated to me to be nonexistent. And therefore, I had no value.

Nowhere to go, I stayed at home that summer. I was brought to a crackpot psychiatrist by my mom, and diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. He recommended heavy, regulated, and monitored medication, but my mom wouldn’t hear any of it. She finally caved when told about the weakest medication that had the most marginal chance of helping me, but made me figure it out on my own, and with no supervision. She made me enroll in online classes so that I wouldn’t “waste my life being worthless”. I can’t learn online – it’s too detached, with nothing tactile, and no accountability. And it sucked. My depression got worse, and my medication did nothing, and finally, after a massive argument with my mom, I attempted suicide. My mom got home, and found me right before I would’ve died. She called 911, and I was taken to the hospital. My dad rushed home when he heard what had happened. He brought me my childhood stuffed animal, and fresh clothing, and made sure I was given food the moment I was cleared to. He even slept on the floor of the hospital room so he’d be with me. My mom? She didn’t spend time with me. She went, and told everyone she knew about what had happened, even though I explicitly told her that I wanted privacy on the matter. She continuously violated my trust, and refused to own up to it.

Fast forward to the summer I turned 16. I was slowly recovering from depression (and, as had been discovered by the actual psychiatrists I saw in the hospital, PTSD). I’d just gotten out of a relationship where I’d been gaslighted (though at the time, I didn’t know the word for it), and was questioning my gender identity and sexual orientation. I went to the library every day I could, and spoke with the librarians there all the time. They became more family to me than the family I’d been born with. They provided me resources, and helped me understand what I was going through. And when I finally came out, they were the first ones I came out to. When I was 17, I was walking the dogs with my dad one day, when he asked me when I was going to get my driver’s license (I’d not been in a brick-and-mortar school since my freshman year of high school, and I never really did research into driver’s ed). I told him I wanted to wait. He asked me until when. I then, in probably the dumbest move possible, said “until I can transition and change my gender marker.” His reaction was about what was fair, given that I’d never mentioned gender identity in the past to my parents. However, 6 months later, when in a family therapy session, I told my parents I was trans and wanted to medically transition, my dad responded with “let me look into insurance first, please.” My mom? She nearly made me homeless, and were it not for my dad putting his foot down and demanding she treat me with the dignity of a human being, I think that was what she wanted to do.

Over the course of the next year, I was constantly arguing with my mom, who thought my being trans was me trying to “get back at her” for the argument we’d had when I was 15 that led to my suicide attempt. Finally, exhausted, I gave up. I couldn’t take her anymore. I took the GED, got my high school equivalency certificate, and enrolled in community college. I began taking classes right away, hoping that my natural love for learning would be enough. Unfortunately it wasn’t, and I struggled. I took remedials though, and I eventually learned everything I needed. I recently got everything in line to train as a Honda-certified dealership mechanic. This past year, I dipped into my personal savings and began paying for medical transition through my local Planned Parenthood clinic, and got a psych evaluation done that led to a definitive diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum (a psych eval my mom refused to pay for when I was in the hospital)

I’m now 4 months into transition, and have a stable job & classes to take. I have a small network of close friends, and a couple of people who are basically unofficial surrogate family for me. I’m dating a wonderful woman who I’m absolutely in love with. And, I finally have enough money together to move out and burn bridges. Which brings us back to that question. My mom, I have learned, uses gaslighting tactics, is manipulative, and, had I known at a time that I could report it to DCFS, *clearly* qualifies as emotionally and psychologically abusive. My dad, while not a bad person, has this giant extended family (60+ total) that I hate (minus my grandpa & 1 cousin), but that he refuses to cut ties with. My younger brother isn’t terrible, but he’s a bit of an ass at times – standard sibling stuff. When I spent New Years with my girlfriend, I’d never felt safer, calmer, or more happy. Sure, part of that is that the relationship is still relatively young, but the safety? I don’t feel safe with anyone, even with the librarians I’m still in touch with, who I trust enough that I’d be confident in making them authorized medical decision makers in the event of my incapacitation (if not for state regulations making it impossible for that to happen). Is the potential damage worth it, in the end?

tl;dr – should I start fresh, even if I regret potentially hurting my dad?

[affairsintop]

Is Michael Wolff’s Trump the real Trump?

New Post has been published on http://www.anblogger.com/is-michael-wolffs-trump-the-real-trump/

Is Michael Wolff’s Trump the real Trump?

As nearly as I can see, the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (New York: Henry Holt, 2018) is the 17th book “about Donald J. Trump,” but there may soon be many more. It’s hard to believe. But Amazon claims on its book site that this man long associated with downtown NYC is “…the very definition of the American success story….” Testing, and certainly verifying, I discovered after rummaging, that gadgets or play items (whatever one might call them) entirely devoted to Trump—as figure, not necessarily as just President—come to probably about 50—but clever investigation might well uncover far more than that—especially after the monetary success of this book.

The public is making a huge deal out of the publication getting our attention here. (One would think there’s nothing else to focus on “out there.”) The Guardian proclaimed, “Michael Wolff has written a book to shake America to its foundations.” (So there! Maybe that’s so….) Variety headlines for us the Ten Most Explosive things to be found in Wolff’s pages.

I reluctantly admit that at my Oregon home the television screen has been focused on President Trump like a laser for some time now, and I see no chance of that obsession fading away, even with random tuning of news channels! (For this student of American Diplomacy it’s disturbingly necessary! But enough. Let’s get down to producing paragraphs related to a book that will, soon enough, be the focus after the words “President Donald J. Trump” are pronounced.)

What is this astonishing book? The author asserts that he spent three hours “with Trump” and that he conducted “over 200 interviews.” Pretty impressive, that. But do we have to believe him? Ah. Wolff adds that as he sat on White House “sofas,” he had available to him, well, what? Chatter, I guess. Did he have a conversational lunch every day with a civil service or selected employee? If evident in the text, I at least would hesitate to deny that basic claim. As for his explosive quotations (including those perfectly awful ones with three dots) I feel I must be slow to say he has lied about the vast Trumpisms—by and about.

A mere reviewer surely doesn’t have to go in depth into the relationship between Trump as candidate and as beginning president and that scruffy Steve Bannon fellow who is responsible for something I don’t read called Breitbart. I understand that despite major critical words of mutual contempt exchanged between them this holiday season, that man who thinks he’s primarily responsible for the Trump victory (even though totally absent as election day neared), expects good relations between the two of them to prevail again, ’ere long. (Both seem to have a lot to gain.) It is pretty clear that Bannon is going to be featured in a spring book about himself, and somebody (absolutely not me) will have every chance to explore him in detail.

No matter what the President denies, this book seems to be rooted in a bit of contact with Trump and much with a variety of others. Clearly, there were innumerable interviews, many tape recordings are said to exist—far beyond anything normally granted biographers of those previous Presidents who have tried to run this country and the world from an address on Pennsylvania Avenue. The alert reader who has spent years in the archives studying presidents (hopefully meaning me) thinks of what is customarily prerequisite: ten or twenty years elapse after burial, ye historian gets to read tons of Presidential Library files that are finally open (denied the very best stuff); then may come some or many interviews with aides who were “there”; then comes that endless checking of the New York Times. (I removed 500 footnotes to it just to make room, when turning my dissertation into a publishable book!)

There must be many errors in this type of book. And I am quite aware that historians don’t easily forgive “errors.” Maybe we should take the approach of the Trump aide who, confronted with a pretty clearly false statement by the president, said it was just a “flourish.” Reviewing this book, though a bit time and attention consuming, has been fun. Now, if I could use that word flourish henceforth to replace “error” and “mistake” it sounds great to little old me.

This author seems to claim, essentially, that he went within a few yards of where the President “worked,” talked to anybody he felt like, ate lunch with somebody who was willing, created his own tapes (remember LBJ tapes opened for us only eventually), and, bypassing the university press crowd, got a major NYC publisher to say “yes,” maybe instantly. This reader believes Wolff even got to write as he pleased and told his publisher what he wanted! Think about that, fellow historians, you out there who seldom if ever write about “the present” while it’s still the present…. Well, almost never.

I’m not quite sure how important it is that the author did or didn’t get to interview President Trump as mogul, candidate, or Oval Office occupant. At this writing, the President says not; Wolff insists. He may have been “nearby,” but I personally believe there are Trump words in this book spoken exclusively to Mr. Wolff—and used by permission. (When I was well along on my LBJ book, The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, I detoured the opportunity to interview Lady Bird, for I could easily see that she was revealing virtually nothing to those seeking “the Story” about her complex husband. Her book Lady Bird’s Dairy was long and adequate! I am saying that it’s likely a motormouth like Donald said at some point, “Quite Enough, thank you,” and returned to making history without the likes of a clever, headline-alert, income expecting Wolff.

Those scathing comments by so many that the author passes on to us about the President are gems of criticism. (Usually, however, such crude language originates with “enemies,” not friends and chosen appointees.) By now, I would think, readers of this account have read them often enough. I’ll offer a few of the alleged words, then comment centrally: “idiot,” “dumb as S…,” “dope.” (More.)

Thinking about the above: I have personally worked under and around some top-flight figures in world famous places. Take it from me, on some occasion, I’m sure I privately blurted language something like that—behind their back—when not frustrated by Authority. I would HATE to have those words picked out several months or a year later, maybe, and have anybody leave the impression that the epithets were my printable and overall, considered view of that superior. I must have praised those leaders often enough in public and in private; why spread worldwide the single words of scorn I used once when frustrated about something back then?

Like most of you I have been so very excited, gratified even, to read the Bad about this amateur leader of sorts, but, no, I don’t think it either accurate or fair to assemble one-time words sort of out of total context and let them stand as a DEFINITIVE description. Among other things, could a man so described in such words have become rich, powerful, and President? There has to be something positive to counteract brutal negativism, really a lot, more. Right? Here, it’s a trained historian (me) speaking. I just have to admit, here and now however, that I say things like that about Trump almost daily! How to reconcile?

My introduction to the Fire and Fury book came by slowly reading the very long extracts offered several days before publication. What an easy read! How fascinating! What a collection of paragraphs designed to get national attention—and of course sell books. How the serious reader wishes he were in a position to judge whether Wolff has offered a lot of Truth. How much other Truth is missing because this non-scholar author thought it too “dull,” not “vibrant,” just “routine,” and/or revelatory of a tired, unready, President doing his job. Didn’t Donald ever work until tired, get briefed and, listening, change his mind, thank (or not bother to thank) an aide or general for educating him on “something,” tell off a relative with words like “I know better; you didn’t hear the briefing.”

Turning elsewhere, the deadline for this scathing account was, I surmise, November/early December. The time since this book was signed off on has not been kind for the deteriorating Trump image. Each day, nearly, we have the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and later on, sharp MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell—and other worthies unnamed. I have worked long and hard on three presidents, and must say I’ve been conceding a lot to let these brilliant (but clearly Trump-hostile) reporter/authorities both entertain and inform me. Other sources try to own my mind, pro and con. Some like Hannity and Dobbs, I hasten to proclaim and loudly, border on the absurd and silly for any watcher/listeners blessed with heavy duty educations.

Yet it is true enough that a shopping list of changes in the economic sphere may bring additional favorable income benefits to the well-born and lowly alike. My limited stocks are up. Some Americans now have unexpected jobs. Maybe some bad immigrants have been ousted. And so on. But: drilling for oil off all coasts? Kicking environmentalists in the face? Leaving the Government staffed inadequately? Appointing the clearly unqualified. And so on. The stock market number 25,000, now bandied about, is so nice to hear. But the inundated coastlines of the future? Enough. Mr. Wolff certainly had a gold mine of a controversial leader to write a book about.

I’m betting that as relatively unqualified reviewers check in all over the place, once the Wolff book shows up for purchase, we are going to get a lot of prose reflecting a strong distaste for various “Trumps.” There will be quoting of newsy slurs against current presidential character quoted therein. I just noted it in quantity in the Guardian.

Several things bothered me about Fire and Fury’s assembler/writer/judge. One is the plain fact that the author must have known his lucky chance to damn Trump was going to make him rich. The second is the tendency he has when interviewed to accept (apparently with little reservation) his own conversational evidence that seems stacked to document a mentally incompetent Trump, and/or indicate very indirectly that he is on the verge of becoming so. Suddenly that lucky book writer seems to view himself as competent to, yes, shoot his mouth off about a President (over his head) who is trying to perform competently in the White House and, often, overseas.

There are things to read about Trump as businessman, actor, meddler, rich man, professional groom, and father of beautiful, now grown up, children. One to be admired (that is positive throughout) is Time’s high-class paperback publication, Donald Trump: 45th President of the United States (an update of magazine content) which seems to date back to his beginning time in office. (Oddly, it says on the cover, “Display until 2/17/17.”) Gee, one wishes THAT MAN became our president (I just had to write that). What beautiful rendering in photographs of one who, well, apparently never entirely existed. The Wolff book, naturally, got into the hands of the New Yorker’s John Cassidy so he wrote a think piece published January 4, 2018. His space goes, however, to Comey and Mueller, and Bannon and to the many negative descriptions that are now being reprinted coast to coast.

Overall, we are all indebted to Michael Wolff for helping, no matter what, in exposing the fraud and the dangerous reality that has become the strange Presidency of Donald Trump. I mean it. Every little bit of exposure helps to derail two terms. My goal, as I wrote two evaluative pieces about Trump for History News Network in 2017, six months apart, and gave up writing a third effort after two pages, was always to reveal the sad facts I was viewing. It was back then a substandard candidacy, one unsuitable. Help save my native Country! I guess I had no effect at all, for the degradation of the USA, worldwide, is now common knowledge, requiring documentation infinitely less than this book offers.

While I don’t really want to be in the position of touting this book, ostensibly to help its sales especially, I do recommend the reading of at least part—even all—of a library copy, or piecing together Internet extracts as they emerge to comprise most of the text. This book is going to be obsolete soon enough, I surmise, for this NYC tycoon, romancer, showoff, TV clown, persuasive one, sometime leader, and force for both good and evil (not in that order), is one that will attract historians for decades. And why not?

I have decided that my long, yet ordinary enough, review of this one of a kind book should not detour to the subject now so often in the news concerning “the President’s mental fitness.” Others have picked up on this, partly because of the existence of a publication by Yale’s professor Bandy Lee, entitled, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” Some in a good position to know have flatly denied charges about D. T.’s repeating things, etcetera. (Pretty dramatic stuff, that.) Especially, we will avoid speculation about atomic buttons and the whole North Korea thing, vitally important though it certainly is. Forgive this reviewer.

When looking forward in his NPR interview to the publication of his book, the author Mr. Wolff predicted the Trump Administration’s future as: “the train will hit the wall.” Part of our upset country hopes for that; part fears it. The worst hasn’t sunk in everywhere. Among old ladies in my retirement home, I’m sorry to say, are some who approve of “President Trump” but don’t seem quite sure why. To me, it seems there is very little indifference on that oh so basic matter for those of us quite well versed about earlier presidents. With a president there is so very much to consider. That is, their caution, leadership, respect for opposition leaders, and deserved exile far away from the Oval Office.

Any readers who absolutely deplore the presidency of Donald J. Trump have in Fire and Fury ample ammunition to go forth and by one means or another hasten his return to Trump Tower and the high life of yesteryear lived by him and his dear ones. Scholars seeking a restful book to read, one that will just plain soothe and relax the reader, should look elsewhere. Information in this book seems to be, here and there and perhaps a bit too often, questionable.

Finally, here is a phenomenon, one unprecedented in my view, a book that will unnerve, upset, apparently inform with new information in quantity, entertain, and provide a puzzle that is likely to last, somewhat at least, for the ages.

Vaughn Davis Bornet’s Ph.D. is from Stanford University (1951), the B.A. and M.A. (1939, 1940) are from Emory University, the year 1941 was at University of Georgia. Author of over a dozen books and scores of articles and essays, he has been writing articles frequently in recent years on the internet’s History News Network. He holds “Distinguished” awards from American Heart Association and Freedoms Foundation. He taught at University of Miami, 1946-48, and Southern Oregon College, 1963-80. He was a staff member of The RAND Corporation in the 1960s. A Commander in the Naval Reserves, his active duty was 1941 to 1946. His 2016 books Lovers in Wartime, 1944 to 1945 and another, Happy Travel Diaries, 1925 to 1933 (both Amazon) are recent. Late last year, just ahead of his 100th birthday, he published, Seeking New Knowledge: A Research Historian’s Rewarding Career. He lives, apparently only semi-retired, in Ashland, Oregon.

This article was originally published at History News Network