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subwaysurf45 · 3 years ago

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Winter Makes Ice (Ep.1)

Summary: you’re captured after a brawl at the Avengers building, Bucky and others must save you before Hydra makes a new Winter Soldier out of you, Bucky has given up that title.

Episode: One

Words: 3948

Warning: depiction/description of violence, kidnapping, killing, PTSD, depression.

A/N: I will be making a masterlist for this specific series!

Masterlist!

Winter Makes Ice (series masterlist)

Time: 1:36pm

Date: September 23rd, 2024

“Bucky, I swear to fucking god-” You threw the person you just knocked out onto the ground of the common room, “you have to get out of here, It’s you or this entire building!” Bucky gave you a sympathetic look as you fought off Hydra agents, your gun fired three shots behind you to another agent you sensed running up.

“But I can’t leave you!” Bucky screamed back over the fire and bullets, Hydra agents were running in from every which way. The smoke rising made it harder for him to see you and Sam, who was also there a couple seconds ago. Everyone else was trying to stop the agents from the outside or other levels. It was a complete break-in.

“Fuck all that Bucky, I love you but I can’t love you if you’re dead- Fuck!” You screamed in pure anger as you began hand to hand combat with an agent, he wasn’t good at all so it was a quick take down. “James!” you looked over to just see him standing there, his eyes were watery from the pain and smoke, “you need to fucking leave! Run!” you shouted, waving him off.

“I love you!” He yelled over, hands cupping his mouth to make sure you heard him.

“I’ll tell you I love you after this, we’ll be okay,” you looked over your shoulder to find three new agents running in, their eyes weren’t even looking at you. You looked back to find Bucky still standing there, “fucking run!” Your throat felt raw, all the screaming and fighting was taking a massive toll on you.

Bucky took off in the other direction, the fire was subsiding as he got further from you. The serum gave him lungs like no other, so running through fire and smoke was easy. With a frantic mind and tunnel vision his left and right mixed up, all Bucky was trying to find was an exit and it should’ve been easy but he’d turn back after remembering this wasn’t the right hallway. His hand was gripped tightly on his gun while the metal hand held a knife firmly, after getting his mind back he found he could throw better with his left and shoot with his right- his dominant hand is right anyway.

“Anyone on their com?” Everyone had quickly shoved theirs in during the start of the ambush; half the SHIELD agents weren’t wearing their tactical gear.

“Rogers is here,” Steve ended his sentence with a grunt.

“So is Romanoff,” Nat sounded a bit more composed but still out of breath.

“y/n is down on the main floor, she told me to run because all they’re after is me, someone needs to go down and help her,” he received a few confirmations before focusing back to the task at hand. The bright light of the afternoon sun blinded him for a second, with all the lights shutting off and the smoke it made it seem like it was night. Bucky reached up to rub his eyes to help adjust to the sun but ended up just rubbing smoke and fumes into them, “fuck!” He stumbled back against the closed door as he used his shirt to rub his eyes but that was also covered in his smoke.

Bucky reached back and grabbed a completely full water jug that was the size of his palm, Bucky could feel his heart shatter as his eyes cleared because it was you who- only a matter of hours ago -was leading a very relaxed meeting about these water bottles, ‘you need to hydrate to stay on your feet’ you had said a couple times. His mind was as clear as his eyes, the way you were screaming at him to leave, the way you stood directly between him and the Hydra agents so they had to shoot through you to get him, the way you kept looking back to him with tears in your eyes because all you wanted was for him to stay but you knew better and sent him away. The tears mixed with the water as he sprayed his face, the smoke clung to his sweat like he did to you after a nightmare. The entire Avengers building was slowly caving in on itself, he could feel his heart lurch with every new piece of the building fall on the inside, he just hoped it didn’t hit you.

He kept walking further from what he once called home, trying to get a better view of it all. He wanted to look away because he felt like all at once the building could crumble to pieces and consume you with it, there was no saving the building; and quite possibly you.

“Wh-gent-hu?” Bucky had walked too far away from the building and the coms, all of them were close to low battery because of the last mission. Bucky ran towards the building and couldn’t see anyone on the roof, but as he ran closer the clearer the coms got. “Where-agent-I can’t-what is happ-sto-!” It was three different voices screaming together at once, Bucky whipped the doors open and saw just how much the inside changed.

The walls weren’t a sophisticated grey anymore but rather charred and black, there was no roof, at all. Bucky ran into the common room to find everyone looking under fallen planks and bars of steel, he started lifting them too. Everyone was running around and screaming at eachother, everyone had a different level of injury. Steve was throwing support beams like nothing, Bucky ran over. “Who are we looking for, Steve?”

Steve just looked at Bucky with tears falling down his face, his skin was brown with dirt but his tears left trails down his skin. “Bucky, man, I’m sorry…” Steve sniffled and covered his mouth. Natasha had walked over, her hands were shaking and clutching something close to her heart.

“I think we have our answer,” Nat cried and handed Bucky the water bottles you introduced.

“Who’s-” he was cut off when Bucky flipped the bottle to check the bottom, and there in your hand writing was your name, and a little heart next to it.

Bucky felt as though his soul had just left his body, everyone was getting close to giving up the search for you. If your body would be found it would be a miracle for you to still be alive, your lungs would have been fried due to the smoke and a pillar could crush you like it was nothing. Sparks flew off of snapped electrical that could be electrocuting you at this moment, small fires still burned which could be living off our ashes, any of the pure destruction could be killing you. And yet people were giving up, by the look on Steve’s face Bucky knew he should as well.

Time: 11:45am

Date: September 23rd, 2024

“So you’re saying we have little squirt bottles, this is fucking great!” Sam laughed, he looked at the clear bottle that was shaped into a big teardrop, the kind marathon runners keep on their belt. He pulled a sharpie out of his pocket and wrote his name.

You sat next to Bucky who was still feeling the effects of the last mission, it was at a Hydra base to just get intel but even then, it was still hard. Everyone got back a day ago and decided to push the debrief for the next day because of the shared exhaustion. Bucky slept for twelve hours because of it.

“Do you like them?” you asked, referencing the bottles, you both held yours as you waited for the marker to be passed to you.

“Anything you do, I like, sweetheart.” Bucky pulled you into his side and cuddled with you for a bit, he had always found your touch was a good way to stay grounded. Your heart beat could be felt anywhere, and Bucky would always try and match it. The marker was passed to you both and you wrote your names, a little heart found its home next to the last letter of your name, Bucky could only smile wide and shake his head and he took the marker and wrote his.

You and Bucky made your way back to your shared room before cuddling up in bed, a movie was thrown on and you both watched it as your eyes started to close. Bucky was awake, he kept looking down at your head on his shoulder to leave a little kiss, he’d always let his lips linger on the top of your head so he could smell your shampoo. Normally you were clinging to him for warmth but he could feel you were radiating heat, your sweater was actually his and the covers were tucked to you and Bucky got the edge, this wasn’t new for him. You were almost asleep but still every minute or so you’d subconsciously snuggle your cheek deeper into Bucky’s shoulder, small little circles in Bucky’s shoulder as you got more comfy.

Bucky ended up falling asleep too, it was weird when he would wake and realize how vulnerable he was to be asleep with you beside him and the door unlocked, he would smile at himself and make a mental note to bring it up to his therapist that he slept soundly again. Bucky probably could’ve gone the entire night but was woken up by a hard time breathing, something was caught in his throat so his cough woke him up. Then his dry cough woke you up, right away your nose turned up at the smell.

“Smells like burnt,” you said and stood up, a couple joints popping back into place.

“Ya, that’s what it was,” Bucky nodded, he pulled his shirt over his nose.

“Wanda needs to leave Nat alone with the cooking thing, Nat doesn’t like to cook so I don’t know why Wanda keeps bugging her, right?” you turned back to Bucky, he was nodding along. “Everyone has their thing, cooking isn’t Nat’s thing but that's fine,” you sighed, “I’m gonna actually talk to Wanda about-”

Three bangs landed right on your door, you jumped back from it and Bucky stood up. Two guns were pulled out of the bedside tables, Bucky tossed one of them to you. The banging went again and it wasn’t a friendly bang, you both knew this wasn’t one of your friends. The safety of the guns were both pulled back with a ticking sound, Bucky put his clip in his gun, you like to use a revolver and it was already ready. The top hinge blew off and the door slightly fell forward, the lights were off and the emergency ones gave little light, there was smoke crawling through the cracks in the door. Bucky had made his way to the other side of the bed to you, now you were both in front of the door.

“Who do you think it is?” You whispered to him, your shoulders rubbed against his with quick breathes.

“No idea,” Bucky muttered back, his lips barely moved.

The door busted down and because you both were ready the guy didn’t stand a chance, the intruder fell back in an instant at the rapid fire from the guns, the sound would be as loud as the banging on the door. The intruder wasn’t even ready to fire, his gun flipped out of his holster and slid a tiny bit on the tile floors before stopping. The emergency lights hit the silver gun perfectly, you noticed red on it but it didn’t look like blood, there was some type of symbol or branding on it. You slowly walked closer, your bare feet not giving away you were moving in case someone was waiting before the threshold of the door.

“Bucky…” you whispered and turned to him, “you gotta get out of here,” you slowly bent down and picked up the gun, the Hydra symbol was hard to see now that it was not getting any light. Bucky’s nostrils flared as a way to hide what he was feeling, his mouth opened to try and talk this through but the sounds of coughing, guns, and screams took its place.

You both ran to the common room, everyone was there, fighting an agent. Coming from a third angle you took out some of the agents with your gun, they didn’t see it coming; neither did Nat as she pointed her gun in your direction.

“They want their intel back, go to the computers!” Steve screamed, you turned and ran.

Bucky joined the fight in the common room, he kept looking back to see you getting smaller and smaller down the hall. All he had was his gun and a knife he picked up from his dresser, both were used as more and more Hydra agents ran in and came from the ceiling that was falling apart.

You turned quickly into the room, computers and wires everywhere. Your time was spent in the training room rather than here, but you logged in mission reports on the computers. Hard drives of every mission, every person, and every thing were connected everywhere. Tons of information that could give Hydra the upperhand, there were still hard drives you had just stolen from Hydra that no one had looked into yet. This was all they wanted, but it was weird to see how many agents were coming in and not making their way to the intel room. You stood on guard with your gun out and ready, you weren’t wearing anything protective so you stood behind an old computer that was yet to be thrown out.

A man walked in, he was tall and slim. Brown hair curled down to his shoulders and his eyes were a dark green, they pierced right through you. You were about to shoot but he just put out his hand, his index finger coming up and wagging you off. “I wouldn’t do that,” he warned, his voice was like gravel.

“Why not?” You grunted, finger ready on the trigger.

He didn’t even reach for his gun, his hands out in front of him. “Because, you’d never shoot the messenger, would you?” His hands lowered but he kept them out. You slowly lowered your gun but kept your hands ready, fingers still holding the trigger. “I came on my own terms, no leader sent me,” He added and pulled a chair out.

“Out with it, I don’t need your cryptic bullshit!” your gun was raised again, “hands up!”

He raised them, “we don’t want intel.”

“What?”

“You stole our intel, that’s fine.” his nose stuffed up, “but you steal our weapon, rid him of his purpose...then we have an issue.”

“He’s not a weapon!” you knew exactly who they were talking about, “and we didn’t steal him, we saved him, we saved Bucky!” you yelled again, tears gathering in your eyes.

The man sat back on his chair, “I don’t care at this point, none of us do, you either give us our Winter Soldier or we will burn this place to the ground.” He stood to size you up, “the message has been given, shoot me if you want, I heard humans are flammable so I’d help burn this place-”

The man's brain flew out and hit the walls, blood sprayed over you and the computers. His knees folded in and the hole in his head slammed against the floor, you should have let him suffer but he probably was working for Hydra, and that’s suffering everyday. The man’s skin whitened in a matter of seconds, all the blood rushing out of that one spot was getting near the electrical, so you ran back to the common room.

Bucky was there, “most of them went to the roof, we got it down here!” He screamed.

“They’re after you!” you yelled and shot a few agents down, “this isn’t intel, they want you Bucky!” The smoke was flying up and with all the fast movements, it was getting harder to see him, but you saw the metal arm in the reflection.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m staying here!” He stopped to reload, but you knocked someone down and turned to face him.

Bucky took off but as he ran away, right before you lost sight of him, an arm wrapped tightly around your neck. You couldn’t see a face but you heard a voice, “he’ll turn himself in if he knows we have you, now this will hurt.” the butt of a gun slammed your temple, all you saw was black.

Time: unknown

Date: unknown

Your head hurt so bad, right as you were waking up it was a pulsing ache everywhere from between your eyes to your neck. It felt like waves, for a moment the pressure would drop but then slowly crawl back in, nothing was rigid. In the room you found yourself in there wasn’t much to register, just a cell that was a little longer than arm's length and some black box on the ceiling, it wasn’t a light but it seemed to hold something. There was no bed as well, you were sat up against the wall in a corner. As you moved to look around your neck all the way down to your knees ached; not to mention the pressure building in your head. It felt like you had been struck in the back of the head even though you thought it was in your temple when you were knocked out, your hand cupped high on your neck, right where your hair started. There was a sting and you pulled away with a hiss, a few pieces of scab came with it.

There were no windows, no source of light to see what time it was. But the fact that whatever cut was made to the back of your head was a fully scabbed and not bleeding gave away you had been asleep for a bit, that almost made it worse.

“Welcome, Soldat,” a voice with an accent came through, it was one you couldn’t figure out. “It seems our other weapon got away, we were gifted you instead; we are happy about it no less.'' the voice was coming from a speaker in the top left corner, not the black box directly above you.

“Where am I?” your voice sounded like sandpaper.

“In your cell,” you could hear the smirk, “but you’re not in Avenger’s territory anymore, would you like to know where you are?” he didn’t wait for you to answer, “I’ll give it to you if you follow this simple task, would you mind getting on your knees?” the voice asked, you stayed still, “right, I forgot. Soldat, get on your knees.” right away your knees smashed into the concrete floor. “Would you look at that, how pretty?”

“What that fuck?” you gasped out, your hands folded neatly on your lap as you sat back on your calves.

“Now that we know your abilities, you’re in Iceland, Hydra gifted us you.”

“You’re not Hydra?” you asked, this time louder and looking at the speaker.

“Oh, we are Hydra.” the voice laughed, “just not how you think we are...”

Time: 9:59pm

Date: September 27th, 2024

Bucky didn’t know how long he’d been curled in his bed with the curtains drawn, there was no perception of time at all. All he did was cry, all day. His body ached and crumbled into itself more and more as time went on. Everyone was mourning the loss of a friend, but to Bucky it was a lover. He held the picture you framed after your first date as a couple, that was one of the first times Bucky had truly smiled.

You both went to a really nice restaurant and when you were finished you waiter offered to take a picture because they saw you getting self conscious when your arm was up to take a selfie. The both of you leaned over the table and close to one another, right before the picture was taken Bucky reached over and placed his metal hand over yours, allowing it to be seen in the picture. It was something he regretted but after you framed it and kept it on your side of the bed, Bucky looked at it everyday with a smile.

The picture was still in the frame but it wasn’t on the bedside anymore, rather pushed up against Bucky’s chest. He’d pull it away to look at you from time to time, after picturing all the good times with you, your face seemed to change and warp until it wasn’t you. Bucky would run his finger down the glass and try to imagine the feeling of your skin again, he’d lost almost everyone in his life, all he wanted was to feel you one last time if it really was your time to go. Your smile was so bright it lit up the pitch black room he was crying in, your smile and your personality could keep an entire country running for years.

He ran out of salty tears and all that was left was wheezing and rocking back and forth in his bed, the emotions were working him out, sweat lines the neck rim of his t-shirt, but he’d also use the neck line to wipe the tears that slipped past his nose and lips. They would roll down and hit his pillow, he had already flipped it to get a dry surface.

Steve walked in, he didn’t need to knock because he knew what’s coming. Steve had watched you and Bucky grow from barely speaking to napping on the couch for everyone to see, it took a while but Steve knew from the beginning that you were perfect for him. Steve brought Bucky a sandwich everyday at noon because he refused to eat dinner and breakfast. Some days he wouldn’t eat at all but noon seemed to be the best time for him to eat everything.

“Wanda made it today actually, she added some chips on the side and made it real nice, Buck,” Steve went to the windows and opened the blinds, he did that everyday but when he would come back 24 hours later they’d be closed. “I also have news, about y/n…”

Steve saw for the first time in four days Bucky sit up, he saw the grief fade and a small shred of hope appear.

A/n: if you want to be tagged in this series let me know through an ask or anything!

#bucky series #bucky barnes series #bucky #Bucky Barnes #Bucky angst #bucky x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky x you #bucky barnes x reader

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salimanderwrites · 3 years ago

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Good Days 18+ (Dabi x F!reader)

Good days →

Dabi x Fem!reader 3.6k words

18+ Minors DNI

Synopsis ---- , and when you try to change your situation, Dabi is less than pleased. After all, he takes such good care of you.

Warnings---- angst/fluff, cursing, minor injury, misogynistic views from Dabi (surprise, surprise) , minor spoiler (referenced), reader has implied depression, unprotected sex, reader is a bit naive (is that a warning?), oral! F!receiving,unprotected sex,

Author’s note: Hello everyone! This is my first ever fic and if you read it, thank you so much.

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Tonight, the moon creeps out from behind the clouds, curious why you are still awake. Watching you clutch a warm cup of coffee, aimlessly swirling the liquid, the sugar congregating at the bottom. The bed calling to you in all its unoccupied allure. You didn’t want to be awake this late, opening the curtains every few minutes, biting your nails when there is no sign of him. It wasn’t unusual for Dabi to be out during this time. In fact, it was becoming a pattern. The difference, now, was you having specifically asked him to come back early tonight.

Maybe he hadn’t heard you uttering the words to him early yesterday while buried in the warm sheets. Awakening to hearing him faintly getting ready in the background. His voice pulling you from the soft lull of slumber.

“I want to meet him in person.” He says, clipping his voice. “I’m finishing the job today, but I want to meet him before I commit to anything.” After he hangs up, you wait a few more minutes before opening your eyes. Stretching your sore limbs and letting out a sigh. Dabi watches you from across the motel room. After bringing you here three days ago, he’s slowly getting used to the stained walls, and you waking up wrapped in white cotton.

You don’t ask him where he gets the money for the room. Only content to sleep without shuttering at every small creak or jumping when one of Dabi’s so-called friends gets too close in the night. Right now you have the luxury of privacy with the man you stick beside. You don’t bring up the smell of smoke, or the crazed look in his eye zeroing in on you when he returns. His body soaking in adrenaline, eager to release it inside your embrace. When you wash his clothes, the red stains don’t elude you. Still, you simply put them into the laundry machine and make believe that everything is normal. That you both aren’t on the run or useless street trash destined to be left behind by society.

You sit up in bed and smile at Dabi walking over to you, pulling you close and taking a deep breath, smelling your hair. You press a finger into the crease of his forehead and chuckle, forcing him to relax his face. His jaw unclenches and he grabs your hand, kissing the knuckles.

“Can you come home early tonight?” You say, voice still groggy. He runs his thumb over your cool knuckles and hums in questioning. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

Stiffening in your embrace, he gets up silently, pulling on his jacket while you wait with baited breath. Dabi takes his time opening the fridge and taking out the milk. He looks at you again, before turning to the two steaming cups of coffee. You take a step out of bed, onto the cold floor, and make your way to the bathroom.

“You can tell me now.” He says carefully pouring. You take a deep calming breath, not wanting a fight this early.

“I need to sort a few things out first, that’s why I wanted to talk tonight.” You say resolutely. Dabi harshly places the milk on the counter and rocks forward, staring at the clock, before steadying himself.

“Alright.” He says finally. You stare at him and rush over, pecking his cheek which makes him finally look at you, his eyes guarded. “I’m finishing a job tonight, it shouldn’t be too late.” He shrugs, handing you a mug. “But you never know with these things.”

He’s dangerous; you know that much. It’s hard to remember how you first found him. The memories fade into nights in buildings long abandoned, finding your way into his warm arms when the night chill runs to your bone marrow. Or how he always made sure you had something to eat even when you didn’t want to get up and go on another day. Even getting you medicine when your weak immune system leaves you with a lung or sinus infection. How his quirk rakes through him and incinerates any creep who puts their hands on you, keeping you pressing against him, so you don’t have to watch the mangled body collapse.

He’s dangerous, though it becomes harder to remember when he presses you against dark alley walls and slams into you like you are poisoning him, kissing you like you are his only anecdote. In between gasps, you think he could be good. You bite his lip and grasp at his shirt, his shoulders, his hair. He’s never satisfied until you moan his name and dig your fingernails into his skin. Holding onto each other because it’s the only time that you feel safe. Here, maybe you both could be good.

It’s a lie, of course. Both of you were runaways with pasts you don’t care to talk about. At the start you stuck near him to survive. As much as you wanted to hold up your pride, the world was cruel, and because you were weak, you needed someone crueler.

Your ringtone disrupts your thoughts, his name glaring at you. You take a deep breath, knowing what you would have to tell him. His breathing is audible on the other end, but you’re the one to break the silence.

“Dabi?” No response, so you press, “I need to talk to-”

“Are you still at the motel?” His voice is sharp, but fades at the end. You look at the front door and move to grab your car keys.

“Yes, where are you? Are you hurt?” Your voice was panicky. Too many times have you reached for him, only for him to turn away, claiming he was fine. His hollow chuckle does little to reassure you.

“I’m already here, just unlock the door.” You do as he tells you. Anxiously waiting for the knob to turn.

When he opens the door to find your eyes filled with unshed tears, his heart drops. He was hoping giving you a heads up would calm you down a bit. For a moment his arm reaches out to you to offer… what exactly, he doesn’t know. Dabi is still learning to not flinch at your touch, learning that his touch won’t hurt you either. He swears it each time he holds you after his nightmares. Though right now, he can’t help pulling away from you, knowing what you’re planning.

“I’m fine,” He says, taking in a sharp breath as pain shoots through his body.

“What happened?” You attempt to help him to the couch, but with one look you know he doesn’t want your help. Doesn’t want you to think him weak.

He sinks into the cheap couch and drags his hand along the ripped seams, passively paying attention to you, kneeling on the floor and looking at the stab wound on his side.

“I was rushing home, since you needed to talk to me so badly. The bastard caught me by surprise.” He doesn’t go into more detail. You frown and begin pulling energy from your body and flowing it out to his wound. The injury was his fault, but he tells himself it was yours. He had been on a job, but was busy thinking about the job applications he had seen tucked into the cabinet of the small motel kitchen. They were underneath the shoebox where you kept a photo of your brother, a bracelet from your mother, a few train tickets, and your old student ID. A place you thought he would never touch.

You weren’t dating, but you did belong to him, and he was more than pissed that you weren’t telling him about your plans. He gave you shelter, food, and fucked you stupid. And somehow it wasn’t enough, he thought, if you felt the need to get a job at some measly convenience store. And if you got the job, would you leave him for good? So, he plays stubborn, turning away from you knowing you will search for his voice.

His body hums being so near you because he is also hiding something. The job he took wasn’t temporary anymore. He had come to an agreement to work with a man named Shigaraki. Of course, he was still wary and had it not been for you, he may never have taken the offer. But he knows how badly you want a stable place to call home. And although the work isn’t exactly legal and his blue-haired employer is exceedingly strange. It was still what was best for both of you. Dabi knows this.

Your gentle hands illuminated in front of his wound, and Dabi felt his cells regenerate and heal his side. A healing quirk had been a pleasant surprise for Dabi after he took you with him three years ago. You were still a little naive to the world, believing your parents would come back for you. At first, he’ll admit he was going to steal whatever money you had on you, but his plans changed after seeing a few grown men attempt to lure you away. It wasn’t that he felt bad for you, not exactly, it was more the reminiscent nature of your trust. If you kept walking that path of faith, like he did, with people who promised the world, only to take everything, he couldn’t allow that this time.

He told you what people would do for a quirk like yours after the first time you had healed him in the dark corner of an abandoned building. You had been following him like a lost baby duck for three months at that point, surviving off Dabi’s scraps, him stealing a hoodie and jacket for you, even getting you medicine when your weak immune system acted up. The wound nearly killed him and the healing took all your energy and left you with strong flu symptoms in the morning. But right after he regained his strength and held you close as your body weakened, there was an odd burn in his chest when you snuggled closer to him.

Now, the glow of your hands fade and the only evidence of an injury left was an inch long scar below his ribcage, you lean down and kiss his scar, an action that feels out of place in the run-down motel. This place wasn’t worthy of your tenderness. He sits up, keeping you kneeling between his legs. Against his better judgement, he brings his lips to yours, feeling his cock harden when both your hands cup his face.

You were so beautiful like this, and Dabi wanted to keep you here forever. Had he still had his other life, there was no guarantee he would have met you. But if he did, he would have quirk married you, whether or not you would want to.

When your eyes meet, he promises to take care of you and to protect you. He pulls you to stand, kissing you slowly and more gently than you’re used to. His hands slide down the back of your thighs and you get the hint, allowing him to lift you into his arms. Your lips worked along his neck, leaving soft kisses in your wake.

He lays you on the bed and kneels over you, a creak with every movement. He kisses your collarbone until purple blossoms. Your voice calls out to him,

“Dabi, you shouldn’t push yourself. I’m sure you’re tired.” You soothe and run your hand through his hair. He kisses your lips.

“No, I want to.” He says, straightening and reaching for you with shaking hands. “I need to feel you, baby. Will you let me?” You can only nod for him, too lost in under his gentle touch.

You had observed Dabi for long enough now to know when it was a bad day. Days when his fingers twitch in annoyance when someone places a cup down too loudly. Or the panic in his jaw when someone calls him pathetic or tells him he is causing too many problems and needs to find a new place to crash at. Most often, it’s holding him through his nightmares, telling him he’s safe, trying to get him to recognize you and the room you were staying in. It’s gently approaching him when his eyes go hard, not focusing on anything in the present moment. When he finally comes back to you, he always tries his best to make some semblance of love to you.

Dabi nips your earlobe, breaking your thoughts back to him, then brings his thumb to your lips, pushing into your mouth. Smiling when you reach to hold his wrist and suck. He caresses your sides and helps you take your shirt off. His shirt follows and when you’re both completely naked, he kisses you again. You pause beneath him and his hand grabs your hip as he settles between your legs, grinding slowly.

“Dabi, what’s going on?” You ask hesitantly. His thumb begins to circle your clit, slow and indulgent. You had always marveled at his control, the way he subtly changes the pressure and flexes his fingers, all while fervently drinking in your reactions. Any other day, he is a wildfire, as greedy as he is destructive, pushing you to the brink and then bringing you back. But, sometimes, like today, his urgency fades and he allows himself something softer, something less tortured. A warmth he thought he had lost. He smiles against your lips.

“You’re always so good for me.” Too good. He says, watching his actions while you grasp at his neck, moving his head so he’ll look at you again. Unspoken questions linger in the small space between your bodies. Questions hidden away in the cracked fragments of your souls.

“What,” your voice sighs, he stills and eyes you, his hold on you tightening. “What are we?”

You don’t expect him to answer. He never does, but for a moment you thought he might. His lips meet yours and presses close to your body, impossibly close. They had taught him pressure will keep things whole. He can’t resist and pushes until your back meets the sheets again. Kissing while he works your slick from your folds to your clit and makes slow circles, getting you used to the ministrations. Your tears burn his cheeks.

He knows it’s because this is wrong. Love shouldn’t exist in a place like this. And it’s not love, he thinks, not really. If it was, he would let you go. Keep you out of harm and hope you settle into a normal life.

Selfish, he knows, so he kisses your body, silently asks for your forgiveness. Treats your moans like absolution, looking up at your body admiring you, knowing he can’t keep you away any more.

“Why are you trying to leave me?” His voice sounds so far away. You move to sit up, but he attaches his mouth to your clit and sucks. You moan in shock and Dabi tenderly presses a finger inside of your entrance. Your body flushes, watching his half-lidded eyes get lost in bliss. His languid movements increase when he inches in another finger, his other hand rubbing soothing circles on your thigh.

“I’m just... I just want us to have a normal life. I want to help” Your voice keens at the end, when Dabi presses down hard on your clit, not happy with your answer.

“Why? I take care of you. And I’m going to keep taking care of you. Unless you think I’ve done a poor job?” He asks, while transfixed on your pussy. Watching the way his fingers make you wetter and wetter. With the last question, his fingers heat up and you yelp in surprise. The heat dissipates and Dabi leans down to kiss your clit before sucking again.

“That’s not it at all. I just… rely on you too much. And I thought-”

“Shut up.” He says. Coming up to kiss you and bringing his cock to your entrance. “You want to know what you are to me? It’s simple.” He says and presses inside you. Your grip tightens around his bicep and bury your head into his chest. His free arm wraps around your back, keeping you steady. He can hear your heart beating against his. “You’re my good days.”

Your gasp set him off, slowly thrusting into you. His arm keeps you caged to him, not letting you pull away for a moment. He moans, feeling you tighten and you kiss the corner of his mouth. He turns and kisses you. His tongue against yours, not rushing the moment, paying no mind to the painful world that nips at your door. You moan as Dabi grabs your thigh and brings it toward your chest; the shift making him rub deliciously against you. He breaks the kiss and watches where the two of you connect, thrusting harder into you.

“Fuck, you feel so good.” He says looking back to you, he lets you lay down further on the mattress. “I’ll make you forget ever going behind my back. Ever trying to leave me.” He whispers sharply, punctuating the word with a hard thrust and then slowing back down. You whine and bring your arms around his shoulders.

“Dabi,” you hiccup. The fury radiating from his body mixed between the heat and sweat, your head spinning under the weight. “I’m tired. I’m so tired.” You say, tears springing to your eyes. Dabi slows down until he is only slightly grinding against you. Normally he loves your tears during sex, but now his blood runs cold. Panic rises in his stomach, your words reminiscent of a far too painful time. “I can’t keep running. I can’t handle getting thrown out of places. Every time I get my hopes up it comes crashing down on us and it’s exhausting.” You were fully crying now. Words you had kept away, and feelings you only let loose late at night when Dabi wasn’t holding you close to his heart.

“Baby, listen to me.” His hand cradled your face and his thumb brushed away a tear. Eyes hardening in determination, a look that would send anyone else running. “I got a job. A real one.” He says watching the words wash over you. “No more running. No more tears. Soon we’ll move into an apartment together, only ours.” You stare wide eyed and wipe a tear before placing your hand on his bicep.

“It’s not dangerous?” You ask, ignoring his prayers that you would simply accept his words. Because he didn’t want it to come to this; lying.

“No. I told you I’ll take care of everything. You don’t need to worry, tonight was the last time.” He says, smile fading when you hug him, burying your face in his neck. It makes the sand in his throat easier to swallow when he speaks again. “So, don’t get a job. Please baby, it’s too dangerous. I don’t want them to hurt you again.” You nod against him.

Sighing in relief, he lays you back down and pulls your legs up, putting them over his shoulders. The new position pushing him further inside of you. As he thrusts he leans toward you, brushing against your clit as you moan and keen. He drinks up the sounds. Navigating the map of your body, an experienced sailor over the year you’ve been together. You grasp at his torso, and rub his shoulder delicately. Lastly, finding his hand and intertwining your fingers. His other hand swirling over your clit bringing you closer and closer to the end.

Tonight he is generous, not slowing down, but adding power to his movements when he feels your pussy begin to flutter. He chokes out a groan before biting his lip, holding off his release, needing you to orgasm first. His body slick with sweat, his adoring gaze, and Dabi’s unrelenting pace sends you over the ledge. Your eyes roll back with a series of blissful moans. Dabi’s hips stutter at the sight, he brings your legs down to ease the stimulation while he now moves freely against you chasing release. You purposely squeeze around him.

He cums inside of you, groaning and leaning against your forehead. Your legs hook back around his back keeping him inside. You relish the feeling of him and his hands soothing circles into your skin. Unwinding your nerves, already worn from using your quirk.

“Thank you.” You mumble against his lips.

“For what?” He says, voice playful. He pulls out and lays down next to you. Reaching to the nightstand, he turns off the light. In the darkness you stare at the crack in the ceiling. Outside, a siren blares, an argument rages, and the faint sound of rain can be heard.

“For staying with me. For keeping your promises.” You say into the night. Faintly hearing Dabi shift and get out of bed. The sink runs for a few moments and then Dabi is back wearing boxers with a warm washcloth. Running it along your body, cleaning up the mess he left in you. Giving your thigh a squeeze he chucks the cloth onto the pile of dirty clothes and lies back down with you. Pulling you into his arms and kissing your forehead.

“Tomorrow is going to be a good day.” He says. “I promise.”

#dabi smut #dabi fic #dabi x female reader #dabi imagine #mha dabi #Sali writes

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stillness-in-green · 3 years ago

Text

MVA In Memoriam (4/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia) (Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party) (Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade)

Part Four, Episode 111: Origin: Shimura Tenko

Chapter 233 – Bright Future

• Twice clearly having arranged a Skeptic puppet to where its arm can be used as a pillow for Toga’s neck. A cute little character detail while also being kind of disturbing? Very on-brand for the League! A not-immediately-plot-crucial visual of a member of the League demonstrating obvious care for another member? The guillotine awaits!

• A little explanation about how clones’ physicality and memories work relative to the last time Twice saw the people the clones are based on. This is a very useful little nod of explanation to something that remained unclear from the dialogue of Mr. Clone-press last chapter. Twice’s quirk is pretty arcane in its ins and outs, frankly, and the clearer those details are, the fewer plot holes you’re leaving for later.

• The scene of Skeptic being right on the verge of confronting Twice. Skeptic has, oh, about five moments where he’s obviously a big tense neurotic who’s unpleasant to be around if things aren’t going his way, and the anime deleted or downplayed all but two of them. As ever, it’s obscenely damaging to the characterization of the MLA cast, who we have little enough time with as it is. Further, it was a particularly weird choice to make with Skeptic, who is as of this writing the only major MLA character who’ll emerge still free and active from the War Arc. Why shaft the characterization of the one of new characters who’s going to be getting the most attention out of any of them in the next arc, with yet more scenes yet to come after?[1]

• A full page’s-worth of Spinner’s rationalizations on targeting Trumpet and ordering the Twice doubles to do the same. This lays out the details on why targeting Trumpet stands to relieve some of the load on Shigaraki. It isn’t because Trumpet’s quirk makes the crowds more dangerous, though that is true. Spinner targets Trumpet because he’s seen enough to know that attacking the MLA’s leaders gets them crazy riled up; he knows that if he makes himself a threat to Trumpet, then all Trumpet’s followers’ attention will shift focus to Spinner, leaving Shigaraki with less to deal with. Spinner also knows that that is ludicrously dangerous to him personally, given his weak quirk, but he actively makes that choice anyway, because that’s how much he’s devoted himself to Shigaraki without (yet) quite articulating the nature and reasons for that devotion. Targeting Trumpet without any of that reasoning made for a perfectly sound tactical decision, but it missed the regard Spinner shows the unnamed mobs of the MLA, and it really missed the probable savage beatdown and even possible death that Spinner consciously chooses to risk for Shigaraki’s sake. Of course, a chunk of what the episode deleted is flashbacks to scenes the anime also cut, so they couldn’t figure into Anime!Spinner’s reasoning. This does not excuse yet more cuts to Spinner’s arc and characterization; it only adds to how badly the anime maimed him. Also, on a less salty but still confused note, deleting all the Twice clones from the beginning of the scene and just having Spinner running along a wall past mobs of people instead of laboriously fighting his way through the street to the van was really dumb. Why did all those MLA people just stand there and let him run by? Where did all the Twice clones that just helped save Spinner from a huge flurry of long-distance attacks disappear to? Come on.

• Trumpet’s thought that using Sevens Loud will draw every bit of strength from their warriors, but that it’s necessary. Setting aside that it looks far less necessary when there hasn’t been a crowd of Twice clones fighting Trumpet’s people this whole time, just Spinner by his lonesome, we still lost quite a bit to this cut. Firstly, a nuance on the trade-off Incite gives—that its stat-boost is temporary, and that it’s borrowing from the future to pay for the present, a stock that is limited and a bill that will come due when the effect wears off. Secondly, it’s another demonstration that the MLA leaders aren’t just thoughtlessly wasting their followers’ lives; they’re very consciously doing cost/benefit analysis on how much danger their people are in versus what stands to be gained by the potential exertion or outright deaths those people will suffer. It’s cold reasoning, yes, but that’s how the Liberation Army operates: not for the personal gain or lackadaisical ease of the people on top—Trumpet would just have been in the tower speaking through city-wide loudspeakers, if that were the case—but for the advancement of the group’s ideals. It also just grants Trumpet some interiority, but of course the anime can’t have that.

• The note in Trumpet’s meta-ability explanation that the more his voice causes the air to vibrate, the stronger Incite’s effect. This is—good god, it is literally the entire design mentality behind Sevens Loud! Sevens Loud purpose isn't to make his voice louder so more people can hear him (which I would think is the most logical assumption an anime-only person would make as to why he puts it on); it’s to make himself louder because being louder enhances the boost. It’s about the quality of the effect, not the quantity of targets. This is why Trumpet has the thought about how using Sevens Loud will drain the strength reserves of his people. There’d be no correlation there if Sevens Loud were only about boosting his range.

• When Spinner got porcupined in the anime, they did a close-up on his face, possibly to avoid the gore of showing the spines piercing through his forearm. That’s fine, but they also emphasized the reaction by having him lose his grip on the huge fuck-off knife he had clutched in his teeth. In the manga, sure, he yells in pain, but he doesn’t lose the knife. Indeed, he gets the guy off him by slashing at him with it—a shot the anime dropped. So Spinner doesn’t even get to keep displays of his pain tolerance, a trait he doubtless improved during those six weeks against Machia. Why does the anime hate Spinner so much, you guys? Why did it go out of its way to make him look lamer, when Dabi and Toga were out there getting anime-original flourishes to make them look cooler?

• Spinner’s thoughts, “When I get inspired to act, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing! I’m just a loser jumping on a bandwagon. Or at least that’s what it looks like.” A humorous bit of self-awareness from Spinner here. The anime got at the self-awareness. The humor, as we’ll see, not so much.

• Spinner’s thoughts, “Look at me. Look at me!! With all that prejudice in your eyes!” Hah hah, laughed BNHA the anime nervously, what prejudice are you talking about, Spinner? No idea what you could possibly be referring to there! This one’s particularly annoying because, while one might think that the anime was just dodging the heteromorphobia angle it eradicated all references to back at the beginning of the arc, the prejudice line isn’t even about heteromorphobia, not really. See, the Japanese line there literally translates to, “With those colored glasses!”—to see with colored glasses being a Japanese idiom for seeing something from a biased viewpoint. So aside from being a wordplay jab at Trumpet’s choice in eyewear, it’s also about Trumpet’s expressed view that Spinner, having been a shut-in with a weak quirk who decided to take his resentment out on the world, can’t possibly amount to anything much. So, what, did the people in charge of making those cuts think Trumpet was right? Why even keep the line where he disparages Spinner if you’re not going to let Spinner call it what it is? He’s not calling out fantasy racism there, anime! He’s calling out the bias against weak quirks that even the good guys in this world sometimes partake in! Possibly it’s because non-villains in the world[2] sometimes use reasoning that leads logically to quirk supremacism that the anime got gunshy with it, or it was more reluctance to give the villains—and the Too-Real Iguchi Shuuichi especially—moral ground for accusations against their society that get too close to real life. Whatever the motivation, it’s a bullshit cut.

• Shigaraki calling RD “Detnerat,” presumably because he neither knows RD’s real name nor cares to dignify him by using his code name. The anime, again, made neither the connection nor Shigaraki’s recognition explicit, so it lost the specificity and pettiness of that little snub.

• A little exchange between Giran and a Twice clone as they flee. It doesn’t give you much you wouldn’t assume just from seeing them flee, but it always feels more immediate and empathetic when the characters talk and you can see their expressions, instead of just a quick shot of them from behind as they run away in complete silence. Heck, running away in complete silence is actively out of character for Twice!

• Because the anime has some kind of aversion/restriction on showing hand-related violence, it radically changed how Shigaraki lost his fingers,[3] resulting in the loss of several important shots. To the best of my parsing, in the manga, when Re-Destro makes that first big jump to avoid Shigaraki’s decay wave, he comes back down specifically aiming for Shigaraki’s outstretched left hand, spread wide and flat on the ground. Shigaraki tries to evade (you can see the blur of his left arm in the panel where RD lands), but either RD does manage to clip the hand or he simply hits the ground with so much force that the sheer explosive burst of rock shreds Shigaraki’s hand and part of his coat sleeve. Being so much larger, RD then simply snags Shigaraki by the wrist before he can get out of range. It’s very fast, a burst of speed and violence, and very different (read: cooler) from Shigaraki flipping end over end in slow motion in a way that seemed to imply visually that he was thrown well out of RD’s grabbing range. As to the shots we lost? I counted three. First, Hana’s hand crumpling amidst all the flying debris. Second, that big dramatic panel of Shigaraki’s maimed hand ribboning blood into the air as the narration box finally drops Re-Destro’s identity and code name. Third, the shot of him catching Shigaraki, almost delicately, between one thumb and forefinger and delivering the, “Was it this hand that committed such evil acts?” line—a clear threat to what of that hand Shigaraki has remaining—as we find out what his meta-ability is. This is all hugely dramatic in the manga, because, of course, readers always assumed Shigaraki needed all five fingers to activate his quirk, and here Re-Destro nigh-effortlessly robs him of fully half his capacity to use it. It’s a shocking turn-around and instantly ups RD’s threat level by allowing him to permanently maim Shigaraki in a way that no one, hero or villain, has done before or since. Robbing Re-Destro of the immediacy of that seemingly devastating blow—inflicted within moments of meeting the real Shigaraki—did immeasurable damage to his credibility as an arc boss. The shot in the manga is also just arresting visually, with RD finally getting to properly loom over Shigaraki. Most of the shots up to this point have been framed such that, while RD is obviously bigger, he and Shigaraki have still been moving and fighting in a pretty level way. This is the first place where the viewer is situated so squarely behind Shigaraki that they can really feel how massive RD is in comparison. It’s certainly a more impressive visual than this mess—thanks, anime; thanks, whatever broadcasting standards forced overworked and uninspired animators to undertake a redraw of RD’s quirk reveal panel when every other member of the MLA brass had theirs carried over directly from the manga.

• A chapter-ending cliffhanger of Slidin’ Go helping direct traffic on the outskirts of Deika and the warning rumble as Gigantomachia approaches. Aside from being a nice little tension boost—Will Gigantomachia roll up just in time to see Re-Destro making a mess of Shigaraki? Who will he target? Will Shigaraki ever be able to win him over if he sees a scene like that?—it’s good foreshadowing for what the news reports will eventually be saying. Remember, the claim is that a bunch of villains lured Deika’s heroes away and then attacked the city while it was defenseless; that’s why we never see any of the MLA’s heroes involved with the fight once it starts. And now, here, we find out where they’ve been the whole time: making sure no outsiders get in who might be able to undermine that narrative.

Framing Shifts

• Once again had an MLA member using their Detnerat item say its name out loud, when it’s clear in the manga that they’re just thinking the names internally. Once again, it was kind of silly.

• When Spinner flashes back to watching Stain on TV and being inspired, the manga uses a shot of Stain’s face, snarling and defiant. The anime used—a shot of Stain from behind, only visible from the shoulders to the knees, hunched so that his lower back and ass were towards the camera. Bones… What exactly were you implying lit Spinner’s fire there? Or did you just not have the time or budget to go pull Stain’s reference sheets for drawing his face?

• A tone issue, but a major one: Spinner should be grinning, face alight with accusatory challenge, as he hurls his accusations of the MLA/Trumpet being the same bandwagon-jumping nobodies that he is. This is the moment in the manga where we see Spinner truly throw his hesitations and his doubts to the wind and embrace Shigaraki’s nihilistic fervor and the beauty, value and profundity of emptiness. So what if I’m empty? So what if he wants emptiness? Who cares about other peoples’ ideals if their ideals leave no room for me? It’s not a heroic triumph, but it’s a triumph all the same, and losing Spinner’s smile made the moment far too bitter.

• Meanwhile, in exactly the opposite problem, Shigaraki by this point is not smiling. In fact, he’s barely on his feet, swaying violently in place with accompanying sound effects. While his words are openly mocking, he seems to wholly lack the energy to back them up with his usual verve. The anime didn’t have him smiling, admittedly, but the whole time the ‘camera’ wasn’t directly on his face, his voice actor was reading the lines with an uneven, chuckling cadence that suggested Shigaraki was seconds away from breaking into howls of laughter. He was also, of course, impossibly clean, at a point at which his manga counterpart is muddy, bloody and tattered from the horrifically extended combat he’s been living for six weeks. It’s stuff like this that made it so impossible to take the Army or even Machia as much of a threat in the anime, when, other than the red cords on his hands being broken, Shigaraki looked absolutely no different than usual.

Additions

• Gave Spinner a tiny bit of new animation when he got mobbed by people hopped up on Incite. It was nice, but if they were going to give him a flourish, I’d rather it have come when he swipes Porcupine Dude off him with a combat knife. Or, you know, just kept the bit of him telling the Twices to attack and his reasoning on why.

• Cut inside briefly to show a ballerina girl dancing through a darkened apartment right before she sliced a neat circle out of the wall. I love it, A+, exactly the kind of expansion on the action of the manga I wanted to see. My only complaint is that her manga self looked more like Pearl from Steven Universe.[4] XD

• A quick new shot of RD when Shigaraki was hounding him about his feelings. His teeth were visibly gritted, the corners of his mouth pulled down. It stands out because there’s only one shot of RD there in the manga, and in it, he’s smiling, close-mouthed and calm. The anime copied said shot, smile and all, then cut away, and when it cut back, Re-Destro had a totally different expression on his face. Baffling. Anime!RD having a dour scowl everywhere manga!RD is smiling in a tight, controlled way was all over the fight scene, and it detracted from the sense of RD’s menace every time.

Chapter 234 – Destruction Sense

• The illustration(s) accompanying Re-Destro’s, “Let’s not judge people by their quirks,” line. The pictures are cute, but the real loss there was the note informing us that they’re excerpts from a children’s book published by Shoowaysha—Curious’s outfit—called Quirks and Us. That’s a very concrete illustration of the kinds of things the MLA is getting up to in the world, and an equally concrete thing an anime-only viewer lost. Of course, that viewer never even found out Curious was in publishing, so it wouldn’t have meant anything on that front, but there is one other thing I think is notable: the way that book implies that the only people explicitly pushing a “don’t judge other people by their quirks” message are the radical Liberationists. See, the rest of the story touches on the virtues of a nonjudgmental attitude here and there, but actually finding people willing to say it out loud is—unprecedented, I think. Deku comes across situations where he could say something like that multiple times and he never, ever does—not to Shouto, nor to Shinsou, nor to Eri, nor to the giant fox lady. And that’s not even touching on Shouji’s mask, or the discrimination Spinner faced, or the CRC “losing support” without being declared illegal. I think the manga itself is against judging people by their quirks, but it’s interesting that it doesn’t make its characters into mouthpieces to say as much. This is because its characters are thoroughly enmeshed in a society that very much does judge people by their quirks, regardless of whether or not it will say that doing so is bad or rude or prejudiced. Re-Destro and the MLA aren’t immune, of course—Re-Destro himself says that quirks are linked to personality—but they adhere to a different set of values than the larger society does. While Hero Society talks about quirks in terms of being heroic and/or useful versus villainous and/or useless, the MLA spectrums instead emphasize how capable a person’s quirk is of helping them exert their will and how ambitious the quirk’s bearer is in that exertion. That is, their ethics are less about morality and utility-to-society than they are about aspiration and utility-to-self.[5] Both worldviews have their pros and cons, but that, I think, is what the children’s book is getting at when it says not to “judge”—don’t assign an arbitrary moral value to a quirk; judge a person by their actions. And isn’t it interesting, that the only explicit verbal statement of that value comes from the leader of a radical cult descended from a famous insurrectionist quoting a children’s book published by a member of selfsame radical cult? The value is not ever stated by a member of the heroic cast, so are we to assume that the heroes don't actually believe it? Do people profess to believe it but everyone knows it’s only for courtesy’s sake, with only the MLA willing to breach that wall of “things we don’t talk about in polite society” to actually talk about it in anything other than platitudes? Obviously, you lose this entire line of discussion when the "don't judge people by their quirks" value is just never mentioned at all.

• The phrase, “In that case,” from RD’s, “You will never measure up to me.” It establishes continuity to what RD was saying before. He’s not taking breaks from talking while Shigaraki has flashbacks; the two are happening concurrently.

• RD’s, “Cracking apart…?” reaction to his Decayed fingertip, and the dripping blood from the injury. I’m not hugely fussed about the former, but I like the latter as indicative of what Re-Destro’s Stress powers actually do. That is to say, he isn’t covering himself in a thick shell of Stress power or something; his Stress powers make him physically larger, infusing his body and swelling his size. That’s why he bleeds when Shigaraki touches his fingertip. Admittedly, the size distinction was more obvious in the anime, where the audience watched RD’s shoulders inflate like balloons last episode, compared to the manga, where you don’t get in-between animation. Still, given that RD still has that wound even when he goes back down to normal size, and is still wearing bandages for his speech a week later,[6] it’d be nice to mark the severity of the wound with a bit of blood. Oddly, the anime did keep the wound for the crater scene, visible red slices opened in the flesh along the length of his finger, very obviously the sort of injury that would have bled upon being first sustained. Maybe RD ran afoul of whatever the studio mandate is on when Decay has a dust effect and when it leaves gore? (More of that later.)

• Shigaraki’s, “Mother!” for the first panel we see of her. It’s obvious enough who she probably is, but odd that we got a whole bunch of narration for Hana, and likewise an acknowledgment of his grandparents, but not even a single word for Nao.

• Very significantly drops the grandfather’s, “Eating yummy things helps make the sadness go away.” Grandpa’s not just randomly handing Tenko his favorite snack in that memory—he’s trying to treat some kind of grief or wrong without actually addressing the wrong, opting to just put a flavorful band-aid on it. That could be fine if it were something outside Grandpa’s control, but we’ve already gotten some early hints from Hana’s phrasing that things are not okay in the household, and thus the grandfather’s attempt to bribe Tenko with sweets is just as ominous a sign of what’s to come as the grandmother’s attempt to guilt him into not crying lest he make her cry too.

• A little shot of Shigaraki stirring in the rubble when RD answers the phone. It’s a nice demonstration of their size difference, especially comparing both of them to Machia, who we just saw tearing through buildings like the kaiju his theme music declares him to be.

Framing Shifts

• When Shigaraki narrates that Hana always took him by the hand when he got weepy, she actually does take his hand in the manga, her fingers wrapped around his, his clasped over hers. It emphasizes that this is what he can’t do anymore, simply hold hands with people, the innocence lost aspect, and it suggests the closeness he once had with his sister. In the anime, she reached out a hand but wound up taking him by the wrist instead, his hand splayed open beneath hers. This suggested, albeit very implicitly, that maybe that innocence was something he never had from the beginning; it also suggested less reciprocity in his relationship with Hana. Even though Tomura said in narration that their hands were joined, what we saw was that Hana just pulled him where she wanted him and he didn’t fight her on it, not that he held her hand in return. Alternatively, the anime could have been drawing a parallel to how her hand would eventually be gripping his wrist in a much different context (a more necrotic one, for starters) later in life, though if that's what they were going for, they could have stood to tweak the dialogue so it actually matched the onscreen action. (Credit to @robotlesbianjavert and @aysall respectively for these two theories!)

• Shigaraki still having his fingers when Re-Destro squeezed his hand made RD look like a real moron. I assume the intention was that he assumed he’d done enough damage—broken bones, torn ligaments, etc—to prevent Shigaraki from being able to move his hand in more than spastic twitches, but like, if all it takes is a hard enough spasmodic clench to dust you, you are playing much riskier games than the MLA is generally portrayed as favoring. (Not that the anime kept many of the scenes that demonstrated all the planning and prep that the MLA did as groundwork for their attack, as I have complained about at length.) In the same sequence, Anime!RD turned and bodily hurled Shigaraki away from him, while Manga!RD threw him a similar distance with nothing more than a flick of a finger. Anime, why you gotta make Re-Destro look so lame all the time?

Additions

• Just one episode prior, the anime managed to turn in an entirely reasonable assemblage of swiping and dodging between Shigaraki and Re-Destro while RD was rambling on about the Mother of Quirks. What the hell was the excuse for this episode’s ridiculous shot of Shigaraki literally running circles—big, broad circles—around RD multiple times in the time it took RD to finish one (1) thought? For heaven’s sake, if you don’t have the budget for flashy, just use slow motion or more flashback animation or something. I know there’s more leeway for long thoughts in manga, where the reader understands that thoughts are moving far faster than action, and that it can be hard to bridge that gap for anime, where motion is motion but voice acting still has to rattle its way to the end of a sentence. I understand that measures have to be taken to account for that. Still, I promise, something that just looks a bit padded is much preferable to something that looks outright dumb.

• I admit to having found huge Stress monster RD pulling out a teeeeeny-tiny cellphone very funny—even more so the distinct cracking sound it made when Skeptic reported in bad news and RD’s fingers tightened infinitesimally—but the manga suggests fairly strongly that RD’s just answering on some kind of earpiece or micro-receiver, the same kind of thing Ujiko hands out and that Skeptic is associated with on multiple occasions. It’d be nice if RD could have kept more of the jokes he actually makes, the ones that stem from his native good humor, rather than the anime making up new ones based entirely in the contrast of Re-Destro and the viewer’s expectations of Re-Destro.

Chapter 235 – Shimura Tenko: Origin

• The man at the door, whom Nao is apologizing to at the beginning of the Tenko flashback and the apparent reason Tenko got busted for playing hero. I don’t love the way deleting this obscured that Tenko, in some fashion, troubled someone to lead to Kotarou dragging him down the hall (the anime also dropped Kotarou’s subsequent line, “Causing trouble?!” that’s supposed to supplement his, “Playing hero again?”), but it’s not like the manga doesn’t imply that the same thing would happen for any hero-based rules infraction, regardless of whether it troubled strangers or not. No, the much, much funnier thing to me is how it just fuckin’ torpedoed the most obvious thing people point to when they posit that All For One gave Tenko Decay, kicking off the entire tragedy: the man at the door with the conspicuously shadowed face and the even more conspicuously AFO-like suit and dress shirt with the top button unfastened. Listen, I hate that theory and what it would do to the narrative of Shigaraki Tomura/Shimura Tenko as Hero Society’s long-overdue reckoning, the villain they can’t put down and the victim they can’t silence, so watching the anime summarily cut out the scene that really kicked the theory into overdrive was very validating! Conversely, I still can't deny that it's a plausible theory, so if it does turn out to be true, that means the anime shot itself in the foot on the most obvious bit of foreshadowing this side of AFO addressing Tenko by name when he finds him in the alley. The schadenfreude of that would also be very funny. Really, unlike every other cut this season, I regard this one as win-win for my personal experience with the anime. Incidentally, I was very prepared to complain about the anime dropping all the changes of clothes the Shimura family goes through over the course of the flashback—I regard the timelapse as one of the major points against the AFO Gave Tenko Decay theory, since it’s never taken a quirk bestowed by AFO multiple days, maybe even multiple weeks, to kick in before—but it turns out I’m a lot less bothered about them not taking the time to change the side characters’ clothes when the anime also deletes the dude at the door who is the only reason I care about clarity re: how much time the flashback covers! But just for the record, while they had more outfits than I was expecting them to, the family did go through fewer changes of clothes in the anime than in the manga.

• The full echo of the line about kids being sneaky and simple in favor of Narrator!Shigaraki just letting out this exhausted, rueful, “Ahhh, kids are…” I actually rather like it. It’s a clear reference back to the earlier line without having to restate the whole thing, and Uchiyama Kouki’s delivery is really excellent.

• Kotaro’s first slap of Tenko, the only one directly portrayed on-panel, and Mon-chan’s barking in response. On the one hand, I think there’s an argument to be made for the scene flowing a bit better like this—why wouldn’t Grandpa try to stop him from going for that second slap; why wouldn’t Nao pass Hana off to Grandma and do something instead of just standing there yelling for the entire scene? It makes a bit more sense if they’re hesitant to intervene because Kotarou has “only” grabbed at Tenko’s collar and they don’t yet know how that it’s going to escalate to naked physical violence in a way that it never has before. On the other hand, that first slap is so visceral and shocking. Nowhere else in the manga is domestic violence portrayed more sharply and directly, in greater detail or more cruelly generous panel space than in this moment. It’s in the difference in size between Kotarou and Tenko, the force behind the hit that’s enough to knock Tenko clear off his feet, the pages upon pages of gut-churning lead-up to this moment and what we know will be following soon after. Also too, it makes the family’s failure to help Tenko much worse that no one else acts when Kotarou pulls back for a second hit. The first one, you could almost excuse because no one saw it coming; the second throws those justifications out the window and spits on them afterward. Two hits are important—not only for what they tell Tenko in the moment about his family's inaction, but because two hits speak in ways one hit doesn't to how wildly uneven the power balance is in the house, that Nao and her parents could witness something like that and not only fail to intercede, but then take who knows how long to work up the courage to confront Kotarou afterwards. I understand very well the fear of showing this in a family TV timeslot—the violence is so much more real than any big fantasy beat-‘em-up could ever be—but it’s the kind of thing that really drives home what Tenko needed to be saved from even back then, a social issue that heroes as they currently exist were in no position to address. Far from demonstrating that heroes aren't at fault for what happened to Tenko, though, what this scene truly does is vividly illustrate the flaws in All Might's social contract, in which his power and smile seem to promise that he can save absolutely everyone, only to leave children like Tenko out in the cold with no explanation as to why. It's brutal because it has to be, and the anime shying away from depicting Kotarou's physical abuse undercut that.

Framing Shifts

• There was a bizarre, nonsensical change to the scene at the beginning of the chapter where RD is figuring out how Shigaraki survived/got back up after taking a Burden attack head-on. The manga’s explanation is that Shigaraki didn’t actually take a full force hit because he was Decaying it even as it was blowing him back. This is somewhat silly, given that even a reduced-strength Burden is still strong enough to put him through multiple buildings. It is, however, less silly than the anime’s take, in which Shigaraki touched Re-Destro rather than the corporealized Stress of Burden. How Re-Destro survived a full-fingered touch from Shigaraki’s completely uninjured right hand[7] went totally unexplained; the problem was then compounded by Re-Destro delivering manga-accurate lines about Burden not being an evadable attack despite “evasion” having nothing to do with Shigaraki’s actions. Anime!Shigaraki didn’t dodge the Burden attack any more than Manga!Shigaraki did; unlike Manga!Shigaraki, however, Anime!Shigaraki also did nothing to reduce the impact of the attack. So not only was how Shigaraki survived the Burden attack not explained, the change to the material also opened up the plot hole of how Re-Destro survived a direct touch attack that Shigaraki in the manga never lands.

• There was also an extremely weird decision made to give Tenko dark, gray-blue eyes, obviously reminiscent of Nana’s, and suggest that they became red at the same time as his hair was changing to white. But in the manga, other than the size, there’s no difference between young Tenko’s eyes and how Shigaraki’s eyes have always been drawn—an unshaded iris with a visible pupil and a relatively thick line delineating the iris from the white of the sclera. Tenko’s eyes never matched those of anyone else in his family, least of all his dark-eyed grandmother. His hair changed color because of a trauma response,[8] but his eyes were always red.

• Relocated Shigaraki’s first, “Little kids…are sneakier than you’d expect. And simpler,” to underscore Hana showing him Nana’s picture in the study, squarely centering the line on her. And like, yes, that line does get its bitter echo later when Hana panics in the face of her father’s fury and throws the blame onto Tenko—but that line isn’t just about her; it’s also about what Tenko wanted to hear from the other adults in his life. It didn’t matter that his father didn’t approve; if he could get at least one adult to say he could be a hero, to take his side, then he could feel vindicated. It’s a child’s sneaky, simple reasoning: if an adult’s words are absolute, you just have to get one (1) adult to agree with you. It’s asking Dad if you can do something you don’t think Mom will agree to, and then going to Mom with Dad’s permission held defensively in-hand. Laying the line over Hana obscures that it’s as much about Tenko’s craving for external validation as it is Hana’s (entirely understandable) deceitful streak.

• After half a season full of internal monologue being voiced aloud even when it made little sense to do so, the anime decided to render clearly talk-bubbled dialogue—Tenko’s chatting at Mon about how he feels like he could take on the world—as internal monologue instead. Who talks to their animals in their heads when they could be talking at them directly like pet owners the world over?

Additions

• Added a few extra stills of Kotarou rebuking Tenko and dragging him around. I don’t think they’re inaccurate to the situation, though I wonder if it really needed to be underlined two more times than the manga did. Maybe they were trying to make up in advance for deleting the first slap?

• Added a few new stills of Nana and child!Kotarou. They hurt my soul and I love them without reservation.

Chapter 236 – Shimura Tenko: Origin, Part 2

• Hana’s second apology. What needs to get across was communicated with her first apology, but I do think the second one adds some naturalism to the dialogue. It feels very normal for a child feeling extremely guilty to apologize multiple times, like the more times they say it, the more true/convincing it will become.

• A bit of Tenko’s internal monologue—thinking Hana’s name, and Mon’s, and that he can’t talk. The anime slipped some attempts at verbalizing “Mon” into the dialogue, and it was painfully obvious just from listening to him gag and choke that he was too horror-struck to get words out, in ways that would be a little harder to convey on the page. Also, he thinks again that he can’t talk just as Hana runs away, so it gets across regardless. No real complaints here.

• Some thoughts about how he’s itchy, which, given what his itch represents (or at least what he thinks it does), they probably should have kept for continuity’s sake.

• Tenko’s last, “Hana-chan!” just as he grabs for her. I can imagine it having just that little bit more desperate impact, especially given Sekine Arisa’s great delivery of the first “Hana-chan!” but his delivery of the first one was great—weeks later, I can still remember it clearly—so it’s not a snip I’m inclined to doomsay about.

• Hana’s verbalization as the Decay hits her. Given that they kept Mon-chan’s last whimper, it’s kind of inconsistent not to keep this. It’s grueling, sure, but no more so than the rest of the horror show shortly to follow.

• An echo of Nao’s defense of Kotarou’s anti-hero stance. Frankly, I think anime already over-indulges in echoing dialogue we’ve heard not ten minutes prior, so I don’t mind losing this—in the manga, the moments would have fallen in different chapters, so it makes more sense to squeeze in the little reminder, but that wasn’t necessary for the anime, in which the original moment and the callback happened barely more than five minutes apart. It was obvious what the mental image was meant to draw attention to, since Tomura was narrating about exactly what his grievance was, and the image was followed by the two equivalent moments with the grandparents. (Admittedly, it hurt that correlation a bit that Grandpa’s line about the ohagi being intended to make the sadness go away got cut, but the sentiment was pretty clear from the man’s expression of nervy, abashed guilt regardless.)

• The line of Decay that splits Nao’s eye, one of the more vividly horrific little grace notes in the chapter. It undercut the grotesquerie just the tiniest bit, but the scene’s grotesque as-is, so I can understand that slight edit for TV standards. The discrepancy between Decay-to-dust and Decay-to-gore, discussed below in Framing Shifts, was much more damaging.

• A shot of Kotarou just after he hits Tenko with the tree pruning shears in which he looks, briefly, incredibly distraught, like he’s just realized what a monster he’s become. The anime didn’t make the slightest of attempts to keep that spasm of horror, grief, and regret, and thus lost that last moment of sympathy for a man deeply traumatized by a heroic character’s actions. It’s my only complaint about Anime!Kotarou, who I was otherwise far more pleased with than I was afraid might be the case, but it’s a complaint I must register nonetheless.

• A bit of inarticulate yelling before Tenko screams, “You... Die!!” It helps get across Tenko’s rage overflowing, to have that wordless garble before he can actually wrap words around it. He was still having trouble talking, too, so it makes sense that his first vocalization would just be a long, incomprehensible screech. That said, with the music there to supplement the mood in a way the manga would lack, I don’t think the anime’s rendition of the scene suffered overmuch from its absence.

Framing Shifts

• The anime, of course, has always gone the dust route for Decay because Decay is a little too gruesome for family hour TV, and anyway, when Tomura gets as fast with Decay as he is in Deika, he really is just insta-dusting people, such that not even blood remains. But he wasn’t that fast or that thorough as a child, hence why it’s all so much gorier—and it needs to be, because it’s hard to imagine Hana freaking out like she does if all she sees is a pile of dust instead of, well, dog gobbets. (Also, if his family had gone the dust route, it would have been very hard to convince the audience that Tomura’s hands are his family hands and not fakes provided to AFO by Ujiko.) This obviously put the anime in a difficult spot, but apparently the decision they settled on was—to not decide? Everyone we saw in the active process of decaying decayed into dust as usual, but then once they were done decaying, once that transition from person to ruin was complete, there were all these heaps of gore everywhere. It was a very strange and distracting inconsistency that hurt the scene much more than any of the nearly invisible cuts, and I hope the blu-rays will change it.

• Added Grandpa catching Grandma as she staggered at the sight of things in the yard. Since his body language in the manga (the only non-Decayed shot of him in the sequence) has him leaned more forward, like he’s still halfway through running towards the kids, I thought this was a nice little touch on why he stopped, for reasons other than just the obvious.

---

Episode 111 was about half of a really strong episode. Most of my complaints about the Shimura Family flashback are very minor, and most of the ones that are less minor are still easy to overlook when the rest of the presentation was so strong. Unfortunately, the non-flashback half of the episode had as many problems as ever, and those aren't over yet.

Come back next time for Part Five, Episode 112: Origin: Shigaraki Tomura. Assuming my complaining about the finalized gutting of Spinner's arc doesn't get too out of hand—which it may; if so, I'll tack on one final part to wrap things up—I'll also be running down a quick overview of the Paranormal Liberation Front scenes in the Endeavor Agency arc and some various odds & ends.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Yes, I know the Skeptic Confronts Twice scene goes nowhere, but maybe, instead of deleting it, they could have patched it up by showing Skeptic turning away from the confrontation when the tower went down? You know, actually made an effort to improve on the material?

[2] Bakugou, of course, but also Inko, Kotarou, and, very prominently, even All Might. Deku circa MVA has an entire arc lying in wait for him about how much he’s internalized All Might’s paternalism re: having the strongest quirk.

[3] Indeed, as of the scene in the crater, he still hadn’t lost them at all! He had his prosthetic by the time of the speech, so I guess we’re meant to assume that Ujiko or some MLA doctor declared them past saving and amputated them. I hope I don’t need to tell you how unbelievably lame it is to have a shounen manga character sustain a permanent injury like that off-panel.

[4] It’s the pointy nose.

[5] That, at least, is the best way I’ve found to reconcile all the related-but-distinct values professed by the various members of the MLA brass, from Re-Destro’s focus on liberation and purpose, what exactly Trumpet chooses to cite when he’s talking about Spinner not “amounting” to anything much, Geten’s open extolling of quirk supremacy, and so on.

[6] In the first big double-page spread. Oddly, no bandaging is visible in the other panel that has a good shot of that hand, possibly because Horikoshi was more focused on drawing RD’s empty pant leg. The anime kept the obvious wound during the crater scene, but not the bandages during the speech.

[7] I assume, anyway, that Re-Destro only survives Shigaraki’s first touch because it’s a weaker Decay, coming as it does from only from two fingers rather than five.

[8] The fabled Marie Antoinette Syndrome. Never been scientifically documented as such (hair can whiten because of extreme stress, but not overnight) but it endures in fiction because it’s pleasingly dramatic. Trauma-based eye-color changes, not so much.

#my villain academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha meta #my writing #stillness has salt

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fannishcodex · 3 years ago

Text

2021 Entrapdak Positivity Month: #04

#04 Cleaning

*self-conscious because have seen cute sweet cleaning fanart, and instead i wanted to interpret this completely differently*

A/N: Role Swap AU and Gen Swap AU and Mirrorverse/Moral Swap AU...also just collectively Swap AU at the moment.

Some shortish notes on my Swap AU: Adora is one of many magitech androids (collectively called the She-Ra) that serve their creator, highly advanced and rogue A.I. Light Hope. Adora gets stranded on Etheria and ends up leading the Royal Alliance, a consolidation of royalty and nobles tightening control over the planet. The Alliance dethroned Bright Moon's original monarchy and took over. Hordak is a young soldier training to serve the Royal Alliance and trying to prove himself despite his physical “defect,” until he finds a mysterious magitech sword made by the First Ones. The sword contains a sentient A.I. that goes by Anillis. Since he was little, Hordak has been in the custody of C'yra, shadow sorcerer-general of the Royal Alliance. Since she was little, Princess Entrapta of Dryl has been in the custody of Princesses Perfuma, Mermista, and Frosta. When taken on trips to Bright Moon Castle, Entrapta likes spending time with Hordak, something they have enjoyed since they first met as young children. Hordak and Entrapta are teenagers while Adora, C'yra, Perfuma, Mermista, and Frosta, etc., are adults.

Before things get better, I've been brainstorming things are worse in this AU than they are in canon; like, for example, I’ve been imagining Swap!Royal Alliance worse than Etherian Horde partly because they're already explicitly more in control of Etheria and have a longer history of ruling the planet.

And now I experiment more with clues about events in the AU while writing a character and relationship study under different circumstances in a different world. The events of this may or may not be included in some form in my main swap fic on ao3, but it’s definitely been part of my brainstorming for it.

---

Hordak winced, and Entrapta flinched, shaking hands and the wet cloth they held jerking away from the deep claw marks on his back.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was small. "But I have to clean...this."

"'S'fine," Hordak mumbled, just tired and pained, and Entrapta ached all the more. But she resumed cleaning the bloody wounds that marred her partner, her hands steadying as she went. Entrapta wondered if he would walk away with more scars left behind by his adoptive mother, and her jaw clenched.

Something grazed her ear, and she recoiled without a thought, Hordak asked what's wrong—something was on her head—they were in the woods, and Perfuma could control plants, this was the worst place to be, it didn't matter that her adoptive guardians should've been back at the Alliance headquarters in Bright Moon Castle—

With one hand clutching Hordak's shoulder and the damp cloth pinned against his skin, Entrapta pulled out her shock baton and looked around, breathing harshly. She felt Hordak tense, but he waited, trusting her. Then Entrapta hesitantly calmed, put her baton away, and finally checked her head, finding two dry leaves—one on her shoulder and one with its stem loosely stuck through a little of her tightly shorn hair. She brushed off the foliage (free of magical control), apologized to Hordak and told him it was nothing, everything's okay, they were okay.

Then she heard Evenstar start beeping in a rapid stream, and she and Hordak quickly glanced at the pale blue, circular robot. But she only stood over the First Ones sword that had been dropped to the ground, beeping at it in what she and likely Hordak realized was amiable, excited chatter. Eventually, the sword beeped back, at a slower, slightly deeper, somehow more elegant-sounding clip. Its green gem had a line of crackling white that moved up and down in jagged peaks as it made sounds, and it seemed to glow brighter.

"Oh, you know binary too—um, Anillis?" Entrapta tried, hoping she got the sword A.I.'s name right. She should focus—these wounds were awful—but she desperately wanted some distraction for her and Hordak. But she could multitask. After quickly scrubbing her freckled cheeks dry—a few panic-stricken tears had slipped out again—Entrapta resumed cleaning Hordak's wounds, and listened for the A.I.'s response.

"So far Evenstar is speaking a form of binary I'm familiar with," Anillis's voice emanated from the sword, switching back to her and Hordak's native tongue, and again Entrapta was fascinated. Anillis sounded very much like Hordak, just older—and of course, he was also an A.I. housed inside a magitech sword, an amazing example of First Ones tech! Of course, that was exciting too. But the specificity of the A.I. sounding like Hordak fascinated her even more. Had the A.I. imprinted on Hordak and developed an approximation of his voice? So many questions.

"Evenstar," Hordak rasped out, and Entrapta took a breath and tried wringing out the cloth stained with blue blood and dipping it in the river again.

Resources were scarce after their unplanned escape from the Royal Alliance. She had just ripped off a part of her coat for cleaning Hordak's wounds, and she just had the river to rely on. Fortunately, Anillis had encouraged Hordak to dip him—the sword—oh this could get confusing—to dip the sword in the river beforehand. Hordak's eyes had changed again, but this time they all turned green, no trace of red was left; the emergence of slit pupils turned a glowing white instead of a deep black; and extra eyes didn't split open on his face. And the sword had hummed with energy again, as if preparing to shoot off the energy blasts she'd just witnessed hours ago—but this time the energy made some of the river's water angrily bubble, boiling it, and Entrapta understood what Anillis had wanted to try. Entrapta had waited for the boiled portion of the river to cool, then dipped her makeshift cloth in the water and began cleaning Hordak's injuries. She hoped it had been enough to clear the water of potential contaminants.

"Evensta—Evie, could you keep watch, please?" Hordak sounded even weaker, and Entrapta checked his forehead with a quick graze of her hand—still slick with sweat. What if the wounds had already been infected during the fight or while they fled on Evie? Then again, Hordak's desperate fight with C'yra had been brutal. Of course it made him sweat. (But could it mean more now?)

The robot gave an affirmative beep for her injured creator. "I can assist Evenstar as well," Anillis added.

"Oh...you—you can?" Hordak said, and from his voice Entrapta could picture his eyes getting glazier. Finally she just tore off another piece of her coat, providing a new piece of cloth to try to clean Hordak's wounds with.

"If we need any mobility, that's all on Evenstar," Anillis dryly said, and Entrapta felt a small stab of guilt over just leaving him-inside-the-sword lying on the grass like that and not even propped up against a tree, but Hordak had just finally collapsed and Entrapta had only thought of helping him up—Entrapta took a breath. She needed to calm down. Anillis showed zero problem with this, he must've understood; only she was starting to fret over this. There was no time for that, Hordak needed her more.

"But I can help her with surveillance at least," the sword A.I. continued. "My sensors should be enough for that."

After that, with two A.I. on guard, and Entrapta focused on Hordak's wounds, all went quiet in the Whispering Woods. Finally Entrapta shredded her whole jacket for cleaning wounds and then makeshift bandaging wrapped tight around Hordak's torso. She tended to his armor, particularly on his arms. Claw marks had been gouged through the metal there, but they seemed to have held up better than Hordak’s skin and clothes against a magicat sorcerer. Entrapta did what she could, and told herself she would do more once she scrounged up more resources.

Finally, she helped her partner lie down, and joined him, resting beside him. She wanted to curl close to him, but worried about aggravating his wounds. At least she was close enough for him to reach out to her, and for her to get flustered and tell him he shouldn't move, before quieting when his stiff, trembling hand found her cheek and finally relaxed when he touched her; and she relaxed just as much under his talons, gentle with her even while he clearly suffered and had been thoroughly made into a cruelly clawed up scratching post.

Entrapta closed her eyes as his talons threaded through her short hair.

"I wanna grow it out," Entrapta murmured. "Perfuma and the others wouldn't let me, but..."

Her throat thickened at the thought of her own adoptive guardians. Then her eyes burned. "Oh jeez, did I make you run away just so I can finally grow my hair out?"

"'Course not," Hordak simply said. "And I—I did want this too—I did want to leave—and leave with you—"

Her partner took a shuddering breath, and Entrapta shook her head. "Never mind, don't. Just save your strength. We can talk more when you're better."

"Just talk, please," Hordak said, closing his eyes, his hand growing a little more slack so that it slipped away from Entrapta's hair and just rested on her cheek now. She anticipated it sliding off when he finally fell asleep, and planned to catch it and place his hand gently on the ground instead when that time came. "I just...just wanna listen." Hordak's language was usually more precise than this, and the fact that it wasn't pointed to the severity of his pain and exhaustion.

Entrapta gulped down another breath. This was ridiculous, she hadn't suffered awful injuries like Hordak, why did she keep finding it hard to breathe?

"Sure, can do." She tried to smile, but it wobbled.

And then Entrapta struggled for words. This was the worst time for that. When it was just her and Hordak, words were easier, she didn't have to carefully navigate them like she had to with her guardians and other royals and nobles and Alliance members. Why were words failing her now, just when Hordak needed them the most?

"Thank you for coming with me when I asked you to," Entrapta finally murmured, her voice wet. She removed Hordak's hand, so that it would be easier to place her own hand on his bruised cheek. "I know we had talked about it before, sometimes, but we had never really...decided on anything, and..." Entrapta sobbed.

She scrubbed her freckled face dry again, then placed her hand back on Hordak. His eyes remained shut, and his breathing had leveled out somewhat; he seemed completely knocked out now. She would have to repeat this to him later. "You mean the world to me...so, thank you. Thank you for coming with me."

There was a noise.

Entrapta reached for her baton and placed a quieting hand on Hordak, starting to wake up. Catching her eye, he stilled.

They heard Evenstar revving her laser, until Anillis’s voice broke through, saying, “Wait. Hold your fire, that’s—she’s not an enemy, I know her—”

“Ani dearie?” That sounded like an old woman, and Entrapta began to relax, even as her confusion mounted. She frowned when Hordak started getting up to his elbows, but she helped him rise.

“Anillis,” the sword A.I. corrected, sounding more quietly awed without a trace of irritation. “You’re still here.”

“Of course I am, now wh—” When she came into view of Entrapta and Hordak (now sitting up), the old woman paused, staring at them.

“Oh, Kadroh dearie!” The stranger said, rushing over remarkably fast and briefly reminding Entrapta of a cute little white hedgehog. But when she came a little too close for comfort to a startled Hordak, Entrapta stepped in between them.

But when the old woman ducked under her arm, Entrapta blankly thought, Touché. Boy, she was tired and ready to sleep for like a hundred days or something.

“Kadroh, where have you and Ani been—oh dear, you’re hurt—”

“Um, ma’am, I’m sorry, but you have me mistaken for—I’m Hordak, not...”

“He’s right, Razz,” Anillis said, voice low. “Look at his eyes, look at his crest—”

The old woman—Razz squinted behind her big round glasses. Then her voice softened. “Yes, I see now...so similar, though...you’re Kadroh’s younger brother, aren’t you?”

Entrapta gaped. For as long as she remembered, Hordak had been an orphan and in General C’yra’s custody. Hordak turned to Anillis-in-the-sword. “What’s going on, you still haven’t explained anything—!”

“I will when you’re bleeding out a little less,” the sword A.I. snapped back. Then more calmly, he said, “Razz, do you have a place where we could stay?”

“Of course, dear, same as last time.” Then Razz turned, offering Hordak a hand. “Here, let Madame Razz and your violet friend here help you up—”

Then Evenstar beeped and scuttled forward. “That’s okay, Evie can give Hordak a ride,” Entrapta said, taking her partner’s hand. Then she paused, looked from Razz to Hordak. “You’re okay with this, right? Razz seems nice, and real nonthreatening, Anillis apparently knows her—and sorry for talking about you even though you’re right here.” She shot Razz a somewhat embarrassed look.

“Don’t fret, dearie,” Razz said, giving a smile so calming Entrapta immediately felt a little more relaxed.

“It’s fine, I want—” Hordak winced, and Entrapta held him. “I want answers, and Razz and the sword seem to know—”

“Anillis,” Entrapta corrected him without thinking, and Hordak glared at the ground.

“You can trust Razz,” Anillis said, his voice breaking in again. He sounded detached, but Entrapta thought it was the sort of detached she tried to use with the princesses when she wanted to hide stuff. “She’s an old friend.”

Hordak’s only response was to place a hand on Evenstar, and Entrapta helped him up, settling him on top of his robot. Then she moved to grab the sword, but Razz had already picked him up.

“It’s all right, I’ve got Ani here.”

“Anillis,” the sword repeated, but more out of reflex with less intent on actually being heard. “We’re fine, Entrapta.”

Entrapta nodded, then climbed on top of Evenstar. She’d support Hordak if he started to slump down in exhaustion or actually fell asleep—either way, she’d be there holding him up and making sure he didn’t fall off his robot.

Holding Hordak close, Entrapta and him rode away on Evenstar, following Razz while she held the sword, its green gem glowing in the dark of the woods.

---

A/N: There are some more direct swaps, and some more partial swaps. Like Hordak < — > Adora + Shadow Weaver < — > C'yra more directly, while Entrapta is partially swapped with Scorpia (cheerful Etherian princess raised in antagonist-aligned faction, though I imagine Swap!Entrapta's situation is pretty explicitly worse than Mainverse!Scorpia's) + just exploring Entrapta with a more explicitly traumatic background. (And been brainstorming that Swap!Scorpia more just Gen Swap and protagonist-aligned but still fighting the Royal Alliance, and there'll be no shifting down the line because she's more adamant about resisting the more corrupt Royal Alliance).

Perfuma, Mermista, and Frosta are just generally swapped from protagonist-aligned to antagonist-aligned and not with any specific characters, except maybe also elements of Shadow Weaver actually; they're Gen Swap and Mirrorverse/Moral Swap and explorations of Perfuma+Mermista+Frosta being older and stronger in their magic and more corrupt with their power.

And swapping can also just be pretty fluid/more sorta experimental. For example, C'yra < — > Shadow Weaver directly enough, but C'yra also still just as obsessed with the transforming wielder of the magic sword that rebels and defects, but now framed as an abusive mother than an abusive companion. (There won’t be any reconciliation between Swap!Hordak and Swap!C’yra.) Another example: Swap!Anillis also swapping around Light Hope’s and Horde Prime’s demeanor with being less robotic/a little more visibly snarky, as well as more concerned and invested rather than cold and uncaring.

Like in the mainverse, Emily = Evenstar and created by Hordak, but they're closer in this AU—Hordak personally built her and she's the only one he's created so far, Evenstar hasn’t been mass produced. Her name and paintjob are different since Hordak drew more from the leftover Bright Moon culture/decor he grew up in while he was raised in Bright Moon Castle.

#entrapdak positivity month #entrapdak positivity month 2021 #entrapta #hordak #role swap au

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miracle-sham · 3 years ago

Text

Yet So Poison Entwined We Fracture.

| {Jasonette July 2021, Saturday Challenge 1: Hurt No Comfort} |

| It all went wrong so quickly. Marinette thought she could trust Jason, that he'd never betray her. And Jason thought the same. But with a truth-serum turned poison seeping through their veins, neither had thought to look for the purple feathers. |

| Word Count: 1,706. |

———

| A/N: I'll try and keep this short and sweet but it's nice to dip back into writing for Maribat, I really missed it whilst I was gone. Also I've now got a author's channel in MGI where I sometimes put title sneak peaks, snippets, and random au ramblings, so y'know feel free to pop into the channel and have a gander if you'd fancy! And one last thing, keen eyes may have noticed I've added a Spotify Playlist Link, it contains all the songs I listened to when working on this oneshot, if you're curious! |

| If you want to be tagged in future oneshots/fics or a specific Au, then feel free to send me a dm and or ask! |

| Also side note, Don’t Like? Don’t Read. Also also, please do not criticise any of my writing. This was written for fun and receiving criticism, even in a compliment/criticism sandwich, is the exact opposite of fun. |

———

Marinette staggers back, clutching at her bloodied side as the world spins for a moment and everything blurs. Breath catches in her throat as a sharp pang of betrayal pierces her heart, tears springing to the corners of her eyes unbidden. Whimpering, she barely manages to cry out, “J–Jason?”

Heartbreak coating his name like the truth serum-poison making its way through her system at this very moment.

She makes an awful choking noise and collapses to her knees, scrunching her face up and wheezing. Barely is she able to keep her eyes open, fixated on staring at someone she thought she could trust.

Smirking lazily, Jason saunters up to her, crouches and then grabs her face by the chin, forcing her to tilt her head up to continue staring at him in the eyes. “Aw, did you really fucking think I cared about you this entire time?”

Marinette swallows thickly—unable to conjure up a response to him. Black spots start to form in the corner of her vision like watching a spattering of embers burning away on a piece of paper.

He tilts his head to the side and snorts, “really? Nothing to say, no heartfelt "I trusted you!" or "you're lying!". Not even a "I know the real you is still in there?", how fucking pathetic.”

There's a small part of her brain that starts flashing red lights and wailing alarms—warning her that she's in danger, that she's hurt, that she's stopped breathing. She can't breathe, can't move, can't say anything or she'll spill all her remaining secrets.

Jason sighs and drops her chin. “And here I fucking thought your shitty-ass reaction to me betraying you would be more fun.”

Grimacing, she waits a heartbeat after he lets go before mustering all her strength to slam her skull into his—if I'm going down, you're coming with me for this, Marinette mentally vows.

There's a horrendous thwacking sound as the impact lands, and Marinette feels as though her brain has turned into a blender that just had its blades snap mid blend.

Jason, on the other hand, flings himself backwards and curses up a storm. He pulls out one of his guns and with dizzying vision, manages to shoot a bullet that just clips the uninjured side of her ribs. “That's what you fucking get for that you bitch!”

Marinette doubles over as the pain seems to ricochet through her; vision blacking out completely. She struggles for breath, her hearing cutting off not a second later. Objectively, she's aware she's not alone. But as her senses shut down one by one, leaving her helplessly trapped in her own mind, she can't help but wonder why her heart aches with loneliness. I'm sorry, she silently apologises to no one and everyone.

Distantly, she thinks she's swaying—or collapsing again maybe. But it's hard to tell, it's disorientating trying to focus on the world with dying senses.

Marinette is lost. Every little movement, every little thought—it's agony, a struggle to keep going, keep holding on. Once more, she silently pleas for forgiveness from the kwami.

She stops.

Stops breathing. Heart stops beating. Stops fighting. It all stops.

At least this way, she thinks to herself, I can't spill any secrets from the truth serum-poison if I carry them to the grave instead…

She sinks into the darkness, clinging to her final thought in numb relief as she does so. Everything fades away.

———

Jason groans as the knife Marinette is wielding digs deeper between his ribs.

She doesn't move back immediately, so he grits his teeth and roundhouse kicks at her—the heavy thump of collision makes his wound burn like acid has just been poured on it.

He's a few seconds too slow pulling his leg back, as Marinette slices the knife through his calf.

“Fuck!” He bites out, throwing himself further out of her range and breathing. “Marinette!”

With the gall to smile faux-innocently, she plays with the knife in her hand, slipping it between her fingers and swirling it about. “Yes, Jason?”

“The fuck are you doing!?” He growls, shifting his position when she doesn't move to apply pressure to the calf wound.

She shrugs, seemingly unbothered, “what? Did you really think this wouldn't happen one day? That I wouldn't get sick of you. Show you just how much you've hurt me the entire time we've known each other?”

Jason spits blood from his mouth at the warehouse floor in front of her. “I don't believe whatever shit you're being made to spew, but I sure as fucking hell know that you'd never do something as fucked up as this.”

“Oh, that's cute! You still believe in me. What's next, are you going to beg me to come to my senses? Are you going to cry my name and hope it changes my mind? Are you going to declare that the "real" me is still there inside and that you're going to save me?” Marinette giggles, high-pitched and yet hollow sounding.

Jason flinches at the sound, breathing stuttering as the poison from her knife starts to really seep in. Shit, he thinks to himself, truth serum-poison. If I'm not careful I'm gonna say shit that should stay secret.

A flash of silver catches the edge of his vision. And it's all the warning he gets. He immediately ducks and rolls, cursing under his breath as his wounds are aggravated. The air by his hair swooshes as the blade just narrowly misses.

Marinette giggles taper off into a hiss of fury. Her hair slips out of her pigtails from the constant movement, and multiple strands fall in front of her face. She huffs, ineffectively blowing them out of the way. “Did you really think I ever loved you?”

“Yes!” The words are choked out of his mouth before he can even think, the truth serum-poison kicking in hard and fast. Jason wheezes and the taste of iron lingers like malice in his throat. Fuck, he thinks desperately, I'm running out of time and Marinette isn't snapping out of whatever the fuck's been done to her.

He stumbles into another roll, as the blade comes swinging at him again. His vision blurts violently, and the next thing Jason knows—is that his view has suddenly tipped upside down and that there's a throbbing ache radiating from the back of his shoulders and head.

“Huh, you really do have a thick skull. Normally that'd be enough to knock anyone else out. Well, I guess I'll have to do this the old fashioned way.” Marinette rambles, pulling out a rag.

Jason grunts as he pushes himself only to be slammed back into the concrete warehouse floor, rag pressed firmly over his mouth and nose.

He thrashes and refuses to inhale. Marinette scowls and kicks him sharply into the ribs, causing him to gasp through gritted teeth. But it's enough to affect him.

His vision teeters then flickers to black, he can feel his movements slowing—becoming more and more sluggish until he's as still as he was in that fucking coffin he's had to crawl out of once before. At least, he barely manages to cling to the final thought, I can't spill any secrets if I carry them to the grave once more.

And then it all fades away.

———

Lila steeples her finger and smirks. She's sitting in her plain white office for the Agreste, three monitors set up before her on the desk. The middle screen shows her emails and a few tabs up on fashion for work-related reasons. The outer two screens, however, show the feed to two identical cells—two by four by five metres with cement floors and grey brick walls, no windows and a single plain black metal door. No furniture either, not even beds or toilets, just chains attached to the wall opposite the door. And in the chains is what has Lila so very happy indeed; Marinette and Jason, one in each cell and both stuck in the chains with no hope for escape.

A steady pool of blood has already formed beneath the both of them, thanks to the wonderful work of her Sentimonster duplicates of the two.

Lila can't help but monologue in her glee, “It's so excellently simple really. Even if one escapes, there's no way they'll help the other escape now. Now they've experienced the pain of betrayal and torture inflicted by the other!”

Footsteps approach the door to her office; all it takes is a quick click and click of the mouse and her two outer screen feeds flip to showing more work-related tabs and emails.

The door opens to reveal Adrien, slightly dishevelled—hair and shirt ruffled, eyes red with dark bags beneath them, and shiny tear streaks down his cheeks—he stands in the threshold, shaking. “Did you know?”

Lila smiles in fake confusion. “Know what?”

Adrien swallows, gaze flickering to her screens. “Marinette's dead. So is Jason.”

Lila tilts her head to the side to make it look as though she's thinking. “The Wayne boy that was close to her, right? Oh dear.”

His tired gaze turns back to Lila as he continues. “They think both of them were kidnapped and tortured separately. Police have found traces of an altered truth-serum among the bloodstains and…” He chokes for a second, grief plain as day across his face. “and they found pieces of fingers, ears, slices of skin, and all.”

“Oh, oh, that's horrible!” Lila gasps, covering her mouth with her hands to hide the victorious curl forming on her lips. “Have they found out who was cruel enough to do that to them yet?”

Adrien shakes his head silently.

“Hopefully, the culprit will be found soon. But if you need any support, I'll always be here for you, Adrien!” Lila gravely announces, bobbing her head slightly as she spoke.

He narrows his eyes at her, shakes his head, and then stalks away from her office.

She scowls as soon as his back turns and gets up to shut her door. “Well,” She says to herself as she flips back to the cell feed, “at least that means I'll have plenty of time to pull the secrets from you two without the police thinking to look for you alive.”

———

| Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little oneshot! Comments, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated! |

| Also feel free to send me any asks or comments with any questions you have regarding this oneshot, I'll be more than happy to answer! |

| @jasonette-july-event |

#Maribat #DC x MLB #MLB x DC #Jasonette #Jasonette July #JasMari #MariJay #Marinette x Jason #Jason x Marinette #Jasonette July 2021 #Jasonette July Saturday Challenge #Jasonette July Hurt No Comfort #Yet So Poison Entwined We Fracture #YSPEWF #Sham's Posts #Sham's Writing #Sham's Fics

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trashmenofmarvel · 4 years ago

Text

Branded - Chapter 44

Pairing: Demon!Bucky Barnes x Reader

(This is a fan AU of Falling’s Just Another Way to Fly by araniaart . Please check out this incredible series for all of your demon Bucky needs.)

Chapter Warnings: I won't give specific chapter warnings because it would spoil it. Just... brace yourselves. I mean that, truly. The entire fic has been leading up to this moment, so... take a deep breath. It's going to be okay.

AO3

Demonic claws striking vibranium metal reverberated painfully around the room, like a gong being struck directly next to your head. You couldn’t cover your ears because your hands were occupied with clutching your shirt, helpless to do nothing but watch as Rogers tried to fight off the Winter Soldier.

And he was losing. Each slash kept Rogers on the defensive, holding up his shield to ward off the next brutal attack. Bucky was ruthless and far faster than Rogers was equipped to handle.

It wasn’t long before Bucky managed to land some blows. Talons left trails of bleeding scarlet, whether from his hands or feet, and even his wings had managed to buffet Rogers more than once.

Bucky’s tail, fast as a whip, grabbed for something at Rogers’ hip. A pistol, yanked out of its holster and deposited into Bucky’s grip, he fired several shots at Rogers who barely managed to get his shield up in time. When the clip was emptied, Rogers bashed it out of Bucky’s hands, following it through with his first solid punch.

Bucky didn’t so much as stumble. Instead, he ripped Rogers’ shield out of his hands, threw a pointed, ridged elbow into his face, and sent him rolling backwards across the floor.

Zemo had remained quiet for the fight, but now he moved closer, a glittering hunger in his eyes.

“It seems you have met your match, Captain. And it turns out, even you can bleed. How nice to find a flaw.”

Rogers rose to his hands and knees, glaring up at Zemo as he wiped blood from his mouth. He gained his feet and held his hands into fists like a pugilist.

“I can do this all day,” he quipped, giving a bloodied smile that was all sharp and no humor. He looked exactly like Bucky had in the HYDRA torture video.

That’s what finally snapped you out of it and got you moving.

Bucky was also on the move, striding toward his friend like a hunter stalking prey, and then he delivered a savage kick to Rogers’ face.

Rogers crashed against the wall behind him, hitting it hard enough to slightly bounce off before collapsing onto his knees. He wasn’t going to win this, and from the pained expression, he knew it, too.

Bucky descended on him. You got there first.

Placing yourself squarely between them, you braced your hands in front of you as if to physically stop Bucky.

Surprisingly, he did, head slightly tilted like a curious animal.

“Bucky. Bucky, please, listen to me.” Your hands shook but somehow your voice was steady. “I know you can hear me. I know, because I’ve been there, with you, in your head when you’re him. The Soldier. He’s just another part of you, Bucky. You’re still in there.”

He simply stood there, immobile as a stature except for his tail. It twitched, restless and agitated, different from its controlled, languid movements during the fight.

But he wasn’t moving. He was listening. There was a chance.

“You can feel it, can’t you? Here.” You touched one hand to the middle of your chest. “Zemo tried to break the bond, but it’s there. Faint and dim, but I can feel it. You must feel it, too. Please, Bucky. Fight him!”

Tears flooded your vision and your throat burned.

“Come back to us.”

Eyes as cold as eyes didn’t so much as blink. If Bucky heard you, he gave no sign of it.

“You gotta get out of here,” Rogers said from behind you. He could barely speak, and a glance over your shoulder told you he was holding a particularly large gash across his stomach. “Go! I can take care of myself!”

You ignored him and faced the demon standing before you. You weren’t leaving Bucky to face his worst nightmare all alone. You weren’t leaving him to be someone’s pawn again. And you definitely weren’t leaving him so he could kill the only other person he loved.

All you could hope was that the animus still tied you to Bucky, and that he wouldn’t harm the human he was bound to.

It was a huge gamble, but there were no other cards to play. Everything depended on whether you could reach Bucky. Not a human slave reaching out to its master.

You needed Bucky.

“You belong to me, Barnes,” you whispered.

You somehow got your legs moving and walked forward until you were standing right in front of him.

“And I belong to you.”

Bucky said nothing, his eyes gaze on you in their entirety. Meanwhile, Zemo appraised you for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

“Kill her.”

Bucky raised his demonic arm, claws extended. You didn’t move.

Even as your heart raced and your limbs trembled, you didn’t move.

The arm didn’t come down. Bucky stayed like that, poised to strike while you braced for the killing blow.

But his eyes. The icy blue searched your face, brows pulled into a confused line, and there was a faint glimmer of something within their depths.

He slowly lowered his arm.

“Sergeant, what are you doing?” Zemo glanced between you and Bucky, his expression darkening. “Obey my command! Kill her!”

Bucky’s ears twitched but his focus was completely on you, eyes narrowed and blinking, as if on the verge of remembering.

It was enough for hope to surge through your limbs, and you couldn’t help but give a small, timid smile.

Studying your expression, Bucky seemed dazed, his eyes widening, and his lips parted as he said your name, raw with roughness.

It was the most beautiful thing you’d ever heard.

Zemo clicked his tongue.

“Pity.”

You didn’t understand; Zemo sounded more annoyed than angry. Bucky also frowned, and began to turn to face the man who had enslaved him.

It was when Bucky turned just far enough that his left arm was no longer shielding you that Zemo pulled the pistol from his holster.

You didn’t hear the shots. You didn’t see the flash of a muzzle, either. But you were still knocked backwards by a brutal force ripping through your stomach, and then next thing you were looking at was the vaulted ceiling and the lights glittering above you.

They were oddly beautiful.

You expected the floor to be as cold as the table, but you were wrapped in something warm and strong. A familiar silhouette leaned over you, blocking out the lights with a pair of curved horns and brown hair, and you had an eerie case of déjà vu.

Had it all been a dream? A hallucination? Had you imagined the whole thing and was Bucky only now rescuing you?

No. It wasn’t a dream. Bucky’s face was etched in unimaginable horror. He gripped one hand tightly with his armored claws, the other pressed against your stomach. You could barely feel it, feel any of it, past the cold wetness, as if you’d tumbled into a frozen pond and you couldn’t get warm again.

You opened your mouth to say his name, but nothing came out. Bucky shook his head frantically, and looked somewhere over his right shoulder as he yelled for Rogers to find the fucking sorcerers.

You tried once more, but only a gurgling noise came out. Your mouth filled with iron. It was getting harder to breathe.

“It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay—“

He repeated the mantra but the tears in his eyes alarmed you. It was bad. It had to be for Bucky to look at you that way.

You tried to lift your head to look down, but Bucky told you not to, his large hand still pressed to your stomach as he pulled you close. He was so warm, his scent earthy and alive, but it wasn’t enough. The world was beginning to fade at the edges. You were so tired.

“No, no, don’t close your eyes, don’t—please, please look at me.”

You wanted to obey him, if only to show him you were fine and he had nothing to cry about, but your eyelids were like iron weights.

Trapped in darkness, the cold numbness was winning, robbing you of your connection to Bucky. All that was left were the sounds of his muffled sobs. It was agony to listen to, but you couldn’t find him in the dark.

All that was left was the fading golden thread, and the slowing beat of your heart.

And then, that too, was gone.

***

You were immediately assailed by heat and stinging wind.

You shielded your face as you sat upright, drawing your shirt up to cover your mouth on instinct. The air was so dry and hot it hurt to breath, and when you opened your eyes, you immediately wished you hadn’t.

There was nothing beyond the endless dune of red.

Next Chapter

#branded #bucky barnes x reader #demon!bucky x reader #demon!bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #my fanfiction #my writing

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kerwritesthings · 4 years ago

Text

Subway Surfing

Summary: When a literal run in changes the course of a day, let alone of a life…

Word Count: little bit over 2.2k

Warning: adorable, fluff and funny

Author Notes: A bit of a birthday surprise for @fallinallincurls - Happy, happy birthday Bre! Big birthday deserves nothing more than the start of a new verse for the hockey boy I forced at you last year. Umm sorry not sorry.

Things have been a lot of not ok around here for a good clip, I’ve been really not ok. It’s been hard. Writing hasn’t come, life has just kept throwing me down and down. Trying to fight the way back up, not easy but I’m trying. This was a nice way to try to get back some of that light. I had been poking at this for a beat, the idea gnawing at me with some pieces written, notes scribbled around, but birthday sparkle helped get it over the finish line. Part two already has some bones, as does part three - but please to bear with me if you will.

You hate that it’s a Saturday and you’re trekking your way into the office. It’s finally truly fall in the city and it’s a gorgeous day. The last thing you want is to be stuck at your desk behind a computer screen. You want a hot spiked apple cider, a book, a good playlist and your plaid blanket on the grass in Central Park.

It looks like the rest of the city is awake early on this day for the same reason. The subway, which normally is slightly more bearable at this time on a weekend, is the furthest thing from that. It’s packed with people including the grimy, sweat-ladened guy in the chopped-up joggers and crocs who keeps trying to “accidentally” bump and grab you every chance he gets.

The next stop, you try to move but too many people are coming on and off as the doors only quickly open and shut. You just end up jostling as the car jolts in its start. You can’t fall forward. It would land you right into the situation you’re trying to flee. Instead, you try to lean back but you slip. Fully prepared to wipe out, a hand comes gently to steady your elbow while another holds you at your shoulder.

You hear a mish mosh of “careful there” and “are you ok” crossing together as you get back steady on your feet.

“Thanks for saving me for either face planting or landing in that sweaty creep’s grasp,” you say, sliding your bag back securely on your shoulder before turning.

You know those faces. You’ve seen them on billboards and most definitely on TV. Shit, shit and shit. Of course, the two star, absolutely adorable bestie forwards from the New York Islanders have come to your rescue. This would be your luck. At least you pulled yourself somewhat together for this Saturday jaunt to the office. You keep a straight face, smiling normally and not letting anything on.

“Couldn’t let you risk that. He’s been a bit of an ass since he got into the car. We said if he were still acting a fool at next stop, we would jump in. Plotted a rescue mission and everything,” the one explains, hand running through his hair.

“His mission was to cross his arms and give him the eye,” the other mocks, shoving at his friend’s shoulder. “I mean I guess he can look threatening, like a puppy maybe.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. These two are exactly as they’ve seemed in interviews. Mathew and Anthony really are as thick as thieves.

“That sarcastic asshole is Anthony and I’m Mat. We’ll stay close until he leaves, or you need to,” he remarks.

“You don’t have to do that. It’s the subway. That happening unfortunately is just another day that ends in y, you know?” you explain. “I also don’t want to take up more of your time or ruin any of your plans.”

“You deal with that? Often?” Anthony asks, eyes a little wide.

“Welcome to New York,” you shrug. “Not every day thankfully. But it’s often enough.”

“I hope you know, that wasn’t, and we weren’t...” Mat tries to stumble through.

“No, no, no. Totally. I didn’t get that whatsoever,” you respond. “Not that from either of you guys. Promise. It’s sweet to know there are still gentlemen out in this world.”

They both get a little bashful smile across their pretty faces.

“Glad to help,” they practically say in unison which causes you to bark out a laugh.

Time to shoot your shot, you think to yourself. Worse case, it’s a moment you get to have for a fun bar story.

“I think we need to become friends, boys,” you start. “Or at the very least, I owe you a drink for saving me.”

“Yes,” Anthony jumps in, nodding his head with a wide grin. “You should come to brunch with us.”

“If I didn’t have to get to the office I would,” you reply. “Unfortunately, it’s stuff I need done before a Monday morning meeting.”

“Office work on a Saturday? That’s no fun. Play hooky! We can promise a bottomless brunch,” he teases.

“Maybe after though?” Mat chimes in with a soft smile. “Get what you need to done, give you something to look forward to after?”

“I don’t want to ruin whatever plans you’ve had for the day,” you begin before the boys both shake their heads.

“It’s just brunch and shopping to try to get this one to up his style game,” Mat chides while Anthony rolls his eyes.

You bite your lip fighting back yet another giggle. These two, at the very least, would truly make some good friends. You dig around in your tote, finally snatching your card holder.

“Not sure how long I’ll be stuck. I’m hoping only a couple hours. But. If you’re serious. Text or call me,” you say, handing one off to each of them.

They both nod, each pocketing your card as the subway comes to a halt.

“Oh shit, this stop is mine. Thanks again for the soft hands and clutch assist guys,” you wink, dashing away quickly before the doors close.

“What is my life,” you mutter, the boys waiving as the train pulls away. “I need to get to the office.”

“Ok, I think that’s the first time we’ve ever had someone realize who we are in public, without a whole big scene or making a blatant ass grab type pass. We’re keeping her. Plus, you like her,” Anthony teases, shoving at Mat’s shoulder as they hit the sidewalk coming up from the subway.

“I could say the same thing to you Tito,” he snarks back, shoving in return. “You were batting the eyes. I’m not blind.”

“She seems cool and yeah she’s pretty, but I’m not jaw drop like you were when you saw her,” he chirps back. “I was trying to get a rise out of you dude. And it worked, you actually stepped up the game. And now you have her info. Don’t make me text her too. Cause I will.”

You’re just about to settle into your email with a cup of what your office likes to consider coffee when your phone starts buzzing about in quick succession.

“Looks like this is a thing,” you mumble to yourself, lips quirking up into a half smile as you formulate a reply.

“You knew?” Anthony grins over his beer. “From the start?”

You nod, sipping at your cider. You pushed through your work to be able to meet the two downtown at this tiny spot in NoLiTa that was tucked away from the crazy of the neighborhoods it was snug between. It wasn’t as sleek as you thought they’d choose; it was something much more comfortable and lower key.

“Really?” Mat questions.

“Yep. One of you not with the other? I would have had to do double take. I would have noticed, but probably would have questioned. However, the two peas in a pod together? That was a no brainer,” you explain, fighting back a bit of a giggle.

“You didn’t say anything,” Mat replies.

“How many times does that happen and it turn into a thing or a bit of a scene?” you circle the bottom of the cider bottle around on the tabletop. “There was also no point to, either. You were just trying to enjoy the day and you were being super kind keeping me from wiping out. I get it’s New York, so it’s a less likely thing but it still happens. So, if I could keep it from another one of those moments...”

“Told you Barzy, we’re keeping her,” Anthony taps his beer against yours. “Welcome to the crazy, Evangeline.”

You can’t help but tinge a little pink.

“Well then. If that’s the case, my friends call me Evie,” you smile.

“Evie,” Mat lets the name roll around his tongue.

A couple rounds later, of both beers and darts, you realize how tight the two are and more so, how easily you could become entangled in friendship with them. And you do. Texts and memes and random photos fly back and forth, you all hang when all your schedules align. You’re also fostering relationships with each of them separately too; sharing recipes of things you want to try to bake and longing about the places you miss in Quebec with Anthony while Mat was trying to teach you more about basketball (with little luck) and in turn you trying to expand what he calls music and what actually is music. You also share some of your favorite places in the city that the two really didn’t know about. It was easy with them, together and individually but you were getting a bit more of a tug, a bit of a warmer burn with Mat.

A Saturday morning a few weeks after the afternoon drinking funtivities, you wake up to a few texts, photos really, from the group chat with the boys. First is a pair of tickets and passes to their game that night. Second is two jerseys: a blue Barzal and a white Beauvillier. The third, a text from Mat.

Choose carefully…

We’re also not taking no for an answer. You’re coming. Game and drinks after.

“Oh shit,” you exhale, quickly jumping to your closet.

“Beth?” you call out from your room, tossing through your clothes looking for two specific items. “Please tell me you don’t have plans tonight.”

“Hot date with a bottle of pinot noir and trash tv, why?” she pokes her head into your room.

“Good. You do now. You’re coming with me to the Islanders game tonight,” you mutter, flipping through more hangars.

“Wait excuse me?” she flops down, cross-legged on the end of your bed.

“So, I may have left a tiny detail out from when I told you about the two cute guys who saved me on the subway,” you explain.

“Ok and?” Beth prompts you to continue.

“They’re Islanders…” you trail off.

“What?” she screams tossing one of your throw pillows at you.

“I’m trying to not make a big deal, cause you know. But, at the same time, well you know,” you reply, finally finding the long sleeve you wanted to wear as well as one of your hockey jerseys.

“You need to give me more than this, Evie,” Beth pries.

You lean back against your closet door.

“It was Anthony Beauvillier and Mat Barzal,” you say.

Beth screams and throws another pillow at you.

“You just casually didn’t tell me that you met the damn Calder winner and his like bromance bestie,” she laments. “Evie, what the fuck?”

“This is exactly why,” you sigh. “Like it started out as ok I could have a moment, a cool story to tell. But honestly, they’re two really great guys.”

“You’re not telling me something, I can see it in that wistful look,” she pokes. “Oh god you’re sweet on one of them, aren’t you?”

You shake your head at Beth, not acknowledging the question. Shoving her over a little, you fold the jersey on the bed next to her, so the logo was perfectly visible, but no giveaway of the name on the back or numbers on the sleeves.

Fine if you two summon I guess I must go. I’m bringing Beth, my roommate, so you need to behave. She’s already a pretty big hockey fan so I apologize now in advance for any of her crazy. She’s great but gets excited. Also, easy answer: where’s the Ebs jersey? ;) Or I can always wear this one.

You snap a quick shot of your Dallas Stars jersey.

Mat of course chimes in first.

That’s cold Evie, really cold. And that thing? That’s even worse. Who is on there? Do I wanna know?

Then Anthony.

Non. Non. Non. Why do you even have that jersey!?

“You’ve got that look,” Beth pokes at your thigh. “I’ll leave you be for now. Need to be at the arena what 6? We should leave here at 4:30. Worse case we get there early, we can snag a drink nearby. I don’t trust the train or the subway on a Saturday to be on time. Thanks for bringing me, Roomie. I’m excited and I get to meet these boys of yours.”

I have favorites across the league, you both know I liked the sport well before you two came along. I have the appropriate jerseys for my boys. Well, almost. You guys making me choose is mean af. Rock paper scissors it between you both, whoever wins that’s what I’ll wear.

“Just leave her yours, you know you want to no matter who would win at that little challenge of Evie’s,” Anthony smiles as the text comes through, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “And I know you’d pull shit to do it no matter what. She’s really your girl anyway.”

“What…” Mat starts before Anthony jumps in.

“You know it’s never been like that with her for me, dude. She’s awesome and I’m so glad to have her as a friend,” he replies. “You though? Since moment one, she’s been something else for you. You need to make a move. You’ve got game, I’ve seen it.”

“Evie’s. She’s Evie. There’s more there...” he leans back into his locker.

“More reason to then Barzy,” he volleys back. “Come on, get your shit together. We can drop everything to leave for her on the way out.”

#mathew barzal #mat barzal #hockey fic #hockey imagine

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magnoliasinbloom · 4 years ago

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Lie To Me - 17

AO3 :: Previously

“You must stay close, Fraser.” John Grey’s tone is stern, clipped and anxious.

“I didna intend to let her out of my sight.” Jamie breaks away from the phone for a moment to shove his head through a shirt neckline, and checks his mobile for the hundredth time.

It has been a tense two weeks, while the SCD gets their paperwork and warrants in order. There cannot be any mistakes, or the MacKenzies and their company will get away scot-free, no pun intended. Jamie had returned to the office with little fanfare, but was well aware that he was being watched again. His decision to send Claire away had been a good one.

There had been certain buzz about the upcoming event, but Jamie hadn’t received an invitation himself—for obvious reasons, he thought. He had appraised Murtagh of the fundraiser so he could contact Grey, but no one knew anything; purposefully orchestrated, but no specific details beyond that. Wheedling Louise to add his name to the list to no avail, he’d had to come up with an alternative plan to be close to Claire and protect her as he’d promised.

Grey prattles on in Jamie’s ear, and he looks at the screen once more. No new messages from Claire; the last had been an hour ago, a racy selfie of Claire in her barely-there underwear as she dressed for the fundraiser. Suddenly, a certain word brings him crashing back to Earth.

“What? Ye can’t!”

“Of course I can’t, Fraser,” Grey says irritably. “I only said I wished I could arm you. But you’re a civilian, so that’s a no-go. I’ll have a detail there to help out.”

“I wouldna ken what to do with a gun even if ye did.” Jamie swallows hard, fear in his throat. “Ye dinna think it will come to that?”

“I’m hoping it won’t be. Keep your eyes open and stay alert, Fraser. If you see anything untoward, anything suspicious, call Murtagh.” It would be a very public takedown, and Jamie is equally excited and apprehensive. The videos SCD had discovered apparently show Bonnet’s face clearly, exculpating Jamie from Alexander McGregor’s death.

With a final warning to be careful, Grey ends the call. Almost immediately after, Jamie’s phone beeps with a new text. It’s Claire, in a beautiful yellow gown, blowing a kiss to the camera. Jamie’s confidence is renewed and his spirits lift, to see his Sassenach so beautiful, so brave, so irrevocably his.

X-x-X

The venue is sumptuously decorated, as befits Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. Claire grips her coat as she hands her invitation to the guard at the door and is admitted. Geillis walks beside her, already looking for the servers with drink trays.

“Here ye go, get ye properly soused.” G hands her a flute of champagne. Claire sips slowly, looking around for a tall head of red hair. It’s not noticeable, and she doesn’t know if it’s a good thing that her Viking Scot is well-concealed; she desperately wishes Jamie could be at her side. Claire watches as her co-workers mingle and laugh, eating and drinking. She chats with a few of her colleagues, and while talking to Joe Abernathy, she spots a bright mop of curls skulking behind a set of cubicles acting as the servers’ station. Excusing herself to the loos, she sidles close to the station and faces the room, grabbing another glass flute as she senses Jamie at her back.

“Mo nighean donn, ye look beautiful,” he breathes on her neck, leaning in as close as he dares. He has spent his time hiding out behind the flimsy cubicle walls. Blending in with the servers, he’d made his way through the back-entrance gangway, pretending to be working with them tonight. No one had batted an eye or asked him anything. Donning a white jacket a bit too tight across the shoulders and at least three inches too small at the wrists, he pretended to sort through the champagne glasses and handed full trays out for servers to parade around the museum.

A sudden commotion near the entrance has her craning her neck to see Colum MacKenzie arrive maneuvering in an electric wheelchair, followed closely by Dougal. Claire sees Tom Christie, the hospital director, rush over to greet and flatter them. She can feel Jamie tense behind her.

“Claire, the MacKenzie…”

“I see them, Jamie. Don’t worry.” His hand slips into hers for a moment, warm and strong. She doesn’t dare turn to look at him. His mere presence at her back bolsters her courage, as she downs the rest of the champagne and prepares to walk back into the fray, with Jamie’s parting words in her ears and heart:

Ye need not be scairt, so long as I’m wi’ ye.

They resonate in her mind, steadying her. Claire finds Geillis and they nurse another glass of champagne. Geillis senses her nerves and Claire steers her far away from the gaggle of chiefs and important hospital administrators fawning over the fundraiser sponsors.

“Hey, there you are, ladies!” Joe saunters up to them, clinking glasses together. “What do you think of all this? Pretty swanky, huh?”

“Only the best for Queen Elizabeth’s,” Claire smiles, smoothing a hand down her dress. Her heels are starting to pinch her feet, and she fidgets, wishing she could be in her pajamas cuddled up to her big red Scot. She folds her coat and lays it on the table along with her gold clutch; no chairs have been provided, apparently to force people to stand around and mingle.

“Gowan wanted to see you, Geillis. He wants the donors from Nexus—you know, the hospital beds—to meet you. Can I steal her away from you a bit, Beauchamp?” Joe smiles easily and guides G with a hand at the small of her back. She looks back helplessly at Claire as she’s swallowed up by the crowd.

Claire is trying to find a glimpse of Jamie again at the servers’ station when she feels a strong, callused hand grasp her arm at the elbow. She tenses, fear skittering up her spine—this hand is unfamiliar, rough, and definitely not Jamie’s. She whirls to find Dougal’s grizzled face leering at her, teeth bared into a grin that resembles a snarl.

“Miss Beauchamp—we meet at last.”

Claire tries to wrench free, but that only makes Dougal tighten his grip. She wants to scream, but her throat is dry and she finds they are surrounded by two burly men who block the rest of the attendees from seeing what is going on.

“Let me go.” Her voice aims for strength but there is a tremor of fear.

“I dinna think so, sassenach.” The word takes on its intended meaning, an insult, a slur of sorts. Dougal begins walking her away from the table. “Jamie will heed us, one way or another.”

“Jamie is a good man,” Claire hisses, “not that you know anything about that.” She tries to cast about for Jamie, but they’re heading in the opposite direction from the servers’ station; Dougal yanks her arm again to make her keep up, causing her to stumble. Too late, she realizes she left her clutch—and her mobile—on the table.

“He overplayed his hand. Do ye think we dinna ken about his relationship wi’ ye, what he’s been tryin’ to do these past few months? He broke faith wi’ us, and his wife. Our contract, we willna honor it either.”

“Honor? What do you know about the word?” Claire spits out with as much venom as she can muster

“Honor or no, I ken I always win, lass.” With that, Dougal releases her, but Claire feels another hand descend, this time on her shoulder, gripping, and a small but insistent push at her back. She’s never felt anything like it, but immediately realizes what it is: a gun. Quietly, she is steered away from the crowd, into the exhibits. After hours, there is only emergency lighting barely bright enough to see.

The last thing she hears from Dougal before being swallowed up by the dark is, “I’ll wait in the car.”

X-x-X

Jamie can’t find Claire. He’d spotted her bright gold purse laying on the table where he last saw Claire, and he rips it open; her mobile is in it, and his wame sinks. He has no way of contacting her now, and he fears the worst.

He spots Geillis flirting with an older man, tipping her head back and shaking out her long red hair.

He hurries to her and with a curt, “Excuse us,” takes Geillis’s arm and leads her off to a corner away from the noise.

“What is it, Jamie?”

“Have ye seen Claire? I left for a minute to go to the loo and now she’s gone.”

“I saw her the last time ye did. Do ye think she might have left?”

Jamie’s heart pounds double-time. “Not on her own. I specifically told her not to, not tonight.” He holds up the purse. “She wouldna have left this behind.”

Geillis pales. “I can head home, see if she’s there anyway, or wait for her.”

“Yes, please, do that.” Jamie pulls out his phone, and dials Murtagh. “Uncle?”

“Lad, ye ken ‘tis not safe for ye to—”

“Claire’s gone. They’ve taken Claire.” He knows this with a certainty that shocks him. A series of expletives on the other end before he continues. “Call Grey, tell him to move in now. We canna afford to wait.” Jamie ends the call; he’s on the move now, headed towards the main entrance so he can call a car.

Briefly, he glimpses a broad muscular man in the distance. There is a large black sedan blocking one of the nearby side streets. There is a sense of déjà-vu when he hears a muffled yell, and then he’s racing towards the sound, racing towards his life.

#outlander #outlander au #outlander fanfic #jamie and claire #ltm17 #stuff's going down #i'm back at work tomorrow and in total denial #may the odds be ever in my favor :/

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sugarcomatosed · 4 years ago

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On Miyuki Inaba and Macross:

I’ve heard nothing but love for wave 2-10 of destruction; but I’ve realized that the scene loses some of its magic for western audience because they don’t know it’s a shout out.

So today I want to break down for you today the biggest reference in 13 Sentinels you most likely missed out on; Miyuki Inaba, Lynn Minmay and The Super Dimensional Fortess Macross.

Join me under the cut for massive spoilers for Sentinels of course, and a nearly 40 year old anime you’ve never seen.

I think everyone knows Sentinels is chock full of sci-fi shout outs. From War of the Worlds, to Terminator, The Matrix, heck even GroundHog’s day, the list goes on and on. Most western audiences will be able to spot the bulk, so why haven’t you heard of Macross?

Simply put, copyright battles. In 1985, Hamorny Gold stitched together three unrelated animes to create Robotech. One of the anime series involved was Macross and Harmony Gold has kept a tight leash on the copyright preventing the series from ever getting a real proper English release ever since.

...so what is Macross?

Well, in super blunt Wikipedia stolen summaries:

Macross (マクロス, Makurosu, English: /məˈkrɒs/) is a Japanese science fiction mecha anime media franchise/media mix, created by Studio Nue (most prominently mechanical designer Shōji Kawamori) and Artland in 1982. The franchise features a fictional history of Earth and the human race after the year 1999, as well as the history of humanoid civilization in the Milky Way. It consists of four TV series, four movies, six OVAs, one light novel, and five manga series, all sponsored by Big West Advertising, in addition to 40 video games set in the Macross universe, 2 crossover games, and a wide variety of physical merchandise.

If you asked me to boil the series down to it’s three staples I’d pick the following three elements. Big robot fights, love triangles and music, usually all interplaying together to make some of the most exciting fight scenes in anime.

The series is going strong in Japan ever since its 1982 release, with the most recent series Macross Delta’s newest film “Absolute Live!!!!!!” getting its first teaser trailer days before I sat down to write this post. It’s insanely big in Japan and you’ve probably seen a half dozen Macross references if you’ve watched a sci-fi anime before. Most likely the signature missile blast.

Sentinels pulls specifically from the 1984 film: the Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? The story is largely a shortened version of the first tv series which aired in 82 and is considered in canon a film retelling of the events.

The film focuses on a colony ship adrift through space suddenly being attacked by an alien race called the Zentardi, it’s both a war film and a very quiet drama all tangled up in the three central characters of Hikaru Ichijo, the young pilot, Misa Hayase, one of the bridge officers and then Miss Macross herself; Lynn Minmay. An idol singer aborad the ship who has during its journey become a huge celebrity after starting as a simple waitress at her family’s restaurant.

Minmay is considered something of the face of the series and while other characters may never come up again in its extended universe, the story of Lynn Minmay is akin to legend in later entries in the seires.

When mankind was faced with these invaders, there was one simple thing that managed to send the enemy into disarray, the music of Lynn Minmay shocked the Zentardi who had no concept of culture and music. They end up capturing her and the other two leads during the course of the film and while the others manage to escape; Minmay is trapped behind with the Zentardi.

They eventually ask her to look and exam a relic they’ve kept on board their ship, and Minmay discovers it’s of all things, a song.

So, if isn’t obvious enough by this description alone, Miyuki is modeled after Minmay. It’s not a 1 to 1, but the curls in her hair and the style of her outfit make it even more obvious.

They have a lot of the same general vibes too, Minmay over the course of the film becomes a tragic melancholic figure and a symbol of the war effort against her will. Her sweet dreamy smile and glittering energy become subdued as she faces set back over setback. She remains strong up until a point behind her facade of confidence until she discovers Hikaru now has feelings for Misa. Culminating in the finale of the film where a despair filled Minmay refuses to sing because it all seems pointless.

Miyuki foils this of course with her journey from the plucky Tomi Kisaragi of a prior loop to a ghost in the machine; a somber beautiful figure but a changed person. She only has this role she’s taken on in the end. All she can do to impact the out come of this fight is sing and hope Shu hears her.

In the finale, Minmay is given a wake up call and asked by Hikaru to sing her song and try to save the lives of everyone left aboard the macross. Roused from her despair, Minmay agrees and the final battle is set to the tunes of the song the Zentardi had shown her, now with lyrics Misa had translated. At long last reaching them and halting the conflict.

This is of course, what 2-10 is a direct reference too. Miyuki sings Seaside Vacation until she can’t be heard any longer.

Even if you’ve never seen the film, the clip alone is a treat in itself. It’s a lovely piece of animation

But Macross’s influences go deeper than just Miyuki and the original Macross. In Macross Plus, the primary idol is the artificial intelligence Sharon Apple. She is also it’s major villian as her AI becomes destabilized during the course of the film.

With the illegal modifications installed in Sharon takes control of the capital of Earth with her music and nearly destroys the city. Miyuki’s character is all Minmay, but her role in the story is a heroic Sharon Apple.

And outside of Miyuki, Macross references and influences can be spotted in Tomi’s story in which she and Nenji are trapped in 2025 and he begins to fall for her mirrors the arc that occurs between Hikaru and Misa after they escape the clutches of the Zentardi. The pair find themselves trapped on a mysterious planet, which turns out to be Earth rampaged by the Zentardi. Misa and Hikaru’s hostility towards each other fades as they try to come to grips with this truth. They spend a long time alone in the ruins and eventually fall in love before eventually being saved by the Macross. Which, is roughly what occurs in Tomi’s story between her and Nenji.

Shu’s story as well, with the minor focus on his confusion of his feelings towards Tomi and Yuki are also arguably a tongue in cheek reference towards the series many Love triangles, which aren’t always true triangles but always remain a corner stone of the series.

Does Shu actually have feelings towards Tomi? No but she’s showing up everywhere and it’s left him a little out of sorts and plays into the misinformation sentinels feeds you, leading you to think there’s a triangle of some sorts:

Maybe they’re stretches, but considering it was stated in an interview the film was a huge inspiration for the game, I wouldn’t be shocked. I found the interview on twitter back in November but can’t track it down now and I’m v. sad

There’s also the matter of the Protoculture.

The Macross is a massive colony ship, sent out into space with the goal of returning to earth after a long space voyage to insure humanity’s survival, much like the probes the 2188 colony sent out. Misa and Hikaru return to find this was the only thing that’s had prevented humanity from being wiped by the Zentardi.

While on earth, Misa and Hikaru manages to discover a set of ruins of a highly advanced civilization that had created both humanity and the Zentardi. The protoculture.

The logs they manage to Find reveal that their inventions grew too great and they have all but disappeared from the universe, but humanity in the end are aliens as well. The invading Zentardi were just tools used by the Protoculture to wage war on itself and contributed to the death of their people.

The song Minmay sings is a relic of the Protoculture, an ancient highly advanced civilization from thousands of years ago.

Now Hm. Why does that sound familiar? What was it Fluffy said about 2188 and the Deimos code....

They’re obviously not 1-1 references, but Sentinels was such a labor of love that pulled from so many genres it’s nice to see such an iconic series get a well thought out reference.

I hope this was something of a fun read and gives you a better love of Miyuki and 2-10.

I don’t know if I’d recommend getting into Macross if you liked Sentinels, but if you’re interested send me an ask and I could probably give you a helpful breakdown. I love both series so much and consider them my top two sci-fi!

#macross #13 sentinels: aegis rim #miyuki inaba #lynn minmay #sugar speaks #i almost always listen to macross tunes while working on 13sar fics and am really passionate about both series and ready to shill lmao #i wanted more pictures and tumblr said....no #sugar’s 13 sar collection

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