#YOU EITHER GO DOWN IN A BLAZE OF GLORY OR YOU WIN THE GAME WITH BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS AND YOUR BOAT BOY CHEERS FROM THE AFTERLIFE | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

maraudersftw · 4 years ago

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Glazed Glory

Hello, friends! This is my tribute to Shirtless James Potter May, which is now definitely a Thing™

Dedicated to all my lovely Jily Discord buddies! And special thanks to @mppmaraudergirl @the-dream-team @constancezin and @blitheringmcgonagall for making this happen.

“YES!”

A screech tears from her throat, excited and giddy and decidedly drunk, as the small ping-pong ball lands neatly inside the cup of beer across the table. Her partner’s roar of triumph is followed by an enthusiastic slap of hi-five that has her reeling, the blazing heat of his palm rather delicious against her own.

Quite generously, he decides to bestow more of this warmth onto her person when he lifts her off her feet, mad and grinning, arms tight around her waist. His cheeks, ruddy from all the drinks he’s downed, accompanied by the dazzling brightness of hazel eyes, causes something to clench painfully inside her.

He’s just a mate. He’s just a mate.

“James!” she yells, half-laughing, fully breathless. “Put me down, you big buffoon.”

“We won! Again!” he grins, letting her feet touch the floor after another spin.

Before she can so much as inwardly lament on the loss of his comforting warmth, a pair of lips land on her cheek. Heart thundering, she forgets how to breathe, a reaction that is by no means justified given the sloppy, open-mouthed, intoxicated nature of the kiss.

A kiss that is not even a kiss because it leaves her lips feeling petulantly ignored.

“You…are fucking brilliant, Evans,” James slurs, entirely oblivious to what he’s just gone and done. She can only stare at him with poorly-hidden surprise, face blazing, warmer and warmer by the second.

“Er, thank you,” she sputters eventually, immensely grateful that everyone around them seems too drunk to pay their little interaction any mind.

“Another game!” James announces.

But she can’t; it’s impossible now.

“I think I’m done for the night,” she tells him, fingers brushing over his arm apologetically. “I’ve had too much to drink already.”

“WHAT?” he shrieks, betrayed, glasses sliding off nose. “You can’t ditch me now, Evans! We’re this close to being named The Hogwarts Beer Pong Champions.”

“Winning the Quidditch Championship wasn’t enough for you?” she laughs, hands rising above her head to point at the banners and streamers dangling from the common room ceiling.

“Oh yeah,” he blinks, grins blindingly. “I’d almost forgotten about that. Next year is going to be even more amazing. We’re going to win all the matches!”

“I have full faith.”

James smiles, triggering that annoyingly familiar tumble in her stomach. “You sure you don’t want to play?”

“I’m sure. Why don’t you ask Sirius? He’s probably withered away to ash without you by now.”

“Good call,” he says, instantly cupping his palms around his mouth. “Padfoot! Up for a round?”

“Fuck, yeah!”

She saunters over to the drinks table as Sirius walks by to take her place, casually ruffling her hair as he passes by. “What’s the damage, Evans?”

She makes a show of observing James. “Mm, five shots from blackout.”

“Excellent. Gotta bring that down to one.”

“All the best.”

Sirius adopts a ridiculously fierce expression as he joins James, facing off against two fifth-years. “Let’s take them down, Prongs!”

She chuckles quietly at the silliness, fingers pulling out a bottle of butterbeer despite her previous proclamations of having had enough alcohol for the night. With some sensible distance yawning open between her and the stupidly affectionate Quidditch captain, oxygen is easier to draw inside. She sighs, chilling the bottle with a quick wave of wand.

With sixth-year coming to an end, she feels the significance of everything the past year has brought to her life rather tremendously, but especially on the James Potter front. While being his friend has been an experience she wouldn’t trade for anything in the world—well, it’s also a lie, because there is one thing she would trade it for: being more than his friend.

But she worries, quite justifiably, that they’ve already crossed a phase too many in such a short span of time to tease at their dynamics any more. There’s a strange fluttering in her chest every time her eyes land on crazy hair and goofy grins that she knows certainly aren’t friendly reactions though.

She’s distracted from her thoughts by a sudden wave of excited hoots that ring out through the room. Curiosity piquing, she twists around to spot the fuss, eyes immediately flying to the beer pong table because there’s no doubt that that’s where the eye of the storm lies.

At the sight, the bottle of butterbeer almost slips from her fingers.

James stands, eyes even more glazed than before, crooked grin splitting over his face, bursting with laughter as he chest bumps Sirius. And if she hadn’t already noticed it before (she most certainly had) the action draws her gaze to his very sweaty, very bare chest, no doubt the target of the still ringing catcalls. She watches, mouth completely dry as the muscles in his abdominals ripple with movement when he runs a hand through his hair. It’s almost as if her ogling registers on his radar, because half a second later, James is looking at her.

She immediately lifts the bottle to her lips, hiding the awe-struck expression behind tinted glass. Fuck, was he fit! She’d guessed as much, of course; it was impossible not to when she hugged the boy as often as she did, but knowing and seeing, it turned out, were vastly different things.

“Lily!” he slurs, tongue rolling over the name as he walks over. “We trounced them. Did you see?”

“I think Evans was rather occupied with seeing something else,” Sirius smirks, the look he throws her entirely too knowing.

She takes another swig, unable to reply, unable to breathe, unable to think with James standing so close. The heat rolls off of him in waves, as sweltering as the fireplace in the room. To make matters worse, he raises his hand, swipes a thumb over her cheek. “You’re so red.”

She mumbles something unintelligibly while Sirius snickers.

“Sorry?”

“I’m tired. I’m gonna go to bed.”

And before either of them can protest, she chugs the rest of the beer and all but bolts from the party, heart pounding mercilessly in her ears. She almost makes it to the third step of the girl’s staircase before a hand wraps around her wrist, the warmth of the touch telling her enough. “James,” she sighs, turning around.

“Are you mad at me?” His brows pull together, sweat dripping from his hairline, down the side of his face, over that strong neck to pool into the hollow of his collar bone. She swallows, wondering if it would look too weird if she reaches up and licks it away.

Probably.

“No,” she wheezes.

He steps closer, makes it worse. “Then why won’t you look at me?”

She looks at him then—of course, she does—and something like adoration bursts inside her. “I’m not mad at you, James. You’re just too distracting right now.”

“What?”

Some remnant of Gryffindor courage has her reaching forward, placing a palm over his chest. She feels it, right beneath her skin, when the beat of his heart alters rhythm. “You’re quite shirtless, if you haven’t noticed.”

A rush of breath tickles the top of her head.

“Lily,” James breathes, fingers drifting to her waist, and when she catches his eye again, the look in them has changed wholly. Any previous glaze is wiped clean, replaced by some brightness that wars with the expanding darkness of his irises. “Will you—”

“Wait!” she says, almost moaning when his fingers squeeze her hip. “Not like this. Not now. We’re drunk.”

“I—” he looks down, eyes on her mouth, and she thinks he’ll lean forward anyway, kiss her anyway, fuck it all. It isn’t until he sighs, deep and resigned, that she realizes she wouldn’t have minded. “Yeah, alright.”

“James.”

“Yeah?”

She smiles, slow and confident, because now she knows, and leans forward to brush her lips over his cheek. The hints of stubble feel delectably coarse against her mouth, and even more so when he groans somewhere at the back of his throat. She pulls back sluggishly, weak in the face of her own want. “Ask me later,” she whispers.

James watches dazedly as she takes a step back, then another. Eventually, he finds his smile. “I’ll hold you to that, Evans.”

“You’d better.”

#claudia writes #claudiawrites #jily #jily fic #hodgepodge #glazed glory #shirtless jp may #james potter #lily evans #jily canonverse #james x lily #jily fanfiction #this got longer than I intended tbh #jily drabble

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maybeimamuppet · 2 years ago

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When I am with you I can feel shivers running down my spine/ it's like my five senses make my heart defenseless w cadnis

send me a song lyric and a ship and i’ll write something with it!! once again not proofread or edited :)

Cady Heron’s life is great.

She’s popular. Best friends with the queen of the school. She’s a ‘regulation hottie’ and even has actual brains to match. Good friends, decent grades, the undying admiration of all her peers. What more could she want?

Oh, you have no idea.

Cady wants. Cady craves. Cady… needs.

She needs Janis.

All of this was for her. Was supposed to help her. Help her get revenge, and maybe a bit of closure for good measure. Aaron was a nice bonus, originally, sure. But anyone who willingly would date Regina George twice? Not someone Cady thinks she wants to spend her life with.

Cady can feel herself slipping. Like she’s a rope in some kind of sick game of tug-of-war. And the wrong team is about to win.

She’s turning Plastic. She knows it. She knows she’s flying dangerously close to the sun.

But Plastic melts.

After the winter talent show fiasco, Cady knows she can’t do this anymore. Her phone is blowing up with text messages and notifications and all sorts of things Cady never asked for. That Cady girl’s authentic; one says. Ha. Omg she and Gretchen look like sisters! Closer.

She scrubs off all the makeup and almost tears the skimpy Santa costume in her haste to get it off; practically the second she makes it through the front door of her house. The messages are still coming through.

Cady’s the sun; one says.

Cady knows that is the furthest possible thing from the truth.

The sun is big, bright, bold. The sun shines with a light all its own, something fantastic, a marvel of the universe, a brilliant blazing ball of passion and fury and spirit and life.

If anything, Cady’s the moon.

Dimmer. Easier to look at. Basking in reflected glory. Shining a light she didn’t earn, a light she can’t produce on her own. Small. With a dark side she tries to hide. Manipulating the tides of the status quo. She could never be the sun.

Janis. Janis is the sun.

And before she knows it, like something out of a fairy tale, Cady goes chasing after the sun.

She’s knocking on her front door within a blink of an eye. “Caddy? What’s-”

“Janis, I can’t do this anymore,” Cady says desperately before Janis can even open the door all the way. “I-I want to, I want to help you get back at her, but I’m losing myself, I-I don’t know- I don’t know who I am anymore, underneath all the Plastic and-and I don’t ever wanna be like them. You’re the most important thing to me, and I know if I keep going the way I am I’m gonna hurt you, and I couldn’t live with myself if I did, I just- I can’t… I can’t-”

Janis steps out onto the porch when Cady breaks down into tears. She gently shuts the door behind her and wraps Cady in the tightest hug she can muster. Cady grips the fabric of her famous jacket like a vice, squeezes Janis so close neither of them can breathe properly. Cady sobs into her shoulder, clinging to her waist while Janis gently wraps her arms around Cady’s shoulders. Janis is so warm. She’s the sun.

“I don’t wanna do any more either,” Janis whispers. “It’s not doing anything for me. Not the way I thought it would. And I don’t want to lose you.”

Cady feels a shiver run down her spine as she peeks up and meets Janis’ kind, warm, brown eyes. Her sun is melting the Plastic parts of her with just a few words. Cady can practically feel the weight of it sloughing off her shoulders. Cady’s still human.

She can see Janis’s beautiful face, mere inches from her own. See the brilliant brown of her eyes, the rosiness of her cheeks, the curve of her nose, the fullness of her lips, everything everything.

She can hear Janis speaking, though she can’t process a single word hitting her ears. The low, raspy, dulcet tones of Janis’ voice.

She can smell Janis’ green apple shampoo, a remarkably sweet contrast to the aesthetic of the pink before her. Can smell the laundry detergent that lingers faintly on the fibers of her shirt, the paint on her jacket.

She can feel Janis’ warmth, her weight pressed so tightly against her. The warm puffs of Janis’ breath against her cheek as she continues talking, the weight of her arms over her shoulders, the solidness of her shoulder beneath Cady’s weary head.

She can taste the burning, roaring hot passion of the sun on her lips.

Janis gasps as Cady kisses her, but quickly reciprocates. She cups Cady’s neck with a hand, gently scratches her dull fingernails against the nape of it. Tips Cady up a little higher for a better angle, twines their tongues together in the most electric way when Cady desperately swipes hers at the seam of her lips.

Cady has never been more thankful to be a human than in this moment. Has never been more thankful to be able to experience all of the wonders and joys that make up Janis Sarkisian.

“Your life is gonna be hell with me,” Janis whispers against Cady’s lips when they break apart.

“I’ll face god and walk backwards,” Cady replies. “And we’ll come out singing.”

“Whatever you say, Sunshine.”

#this one got away from the prompt a lil but #bit*#but i hope it was still satisfactory lol #thank you very much for the prompt!!#entropy with ezzy #cadnis #mean girls the musical #mean girls

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comm-caribou · 2 years ago

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Bit random but

If all of the 952nd were in a hunger games kinda thing, who would win?

Oooooo! This is a really good random question, and I love random questions! Thank you!!!

After much thought, there is three answers of who would win. But first, how the games would play out.

Death/Suicide mentioned below the cut:

Fang would die first. He’d panic and not know what to do and someone would easily off him.

Stickler being way too smart and knowing he won’t win, nor wanting to help aid others in the games, would get himself killed off immediately on his own terms.

Coyote would be distraught and try to play the games on his own because he wouldn’t know who to trust, and he’d die either by another player or his own fatal error in surviving.

The pilots would form a big ally group—consisting of Tracks, Cosmos, Dabbler, Squirrel, Max, Goose, Frenzy, Tag, Baby, and Radar. They’d come off as unstoppable to other teams/players, but can easily be picked off one by one, and most are very self-sacrificing. If an attack happened, Max, Baby, and Tracks would sacrifice themselves. Once those three are gone, the others will fall apart and Cosmos would ditch the group.

Keks and Cooper are a team, but Keks would sacrifice himself for Cooper. Cooper, being as smart as he is, would know his chances of winning are zero and “quit.”

Similar occurrences would happen in Tunnel squad. They’d find a secluded area to wait out the games with limited blood on their hands, but Hound would get hurt and get sick from his wounds. Mutt would be very distraught and would want to just end the game, then the squad would go out hunting for other players. Digger, Zombie, Calico, and Mutt knowing they won’t win would go out in a blaze of glory.

Mirage and Boomerang would be allied, finding Shadow along the way. Shadow would play friend, but because he is also very cunning he is only using them. Mirage is strong and can lead them to the finals, Boomerang can heal them if hurt. When the time comes, Shadow would stab them both in the back to win, but underestimate how hard it is to take Mirage down and it will be his downfall.

Hardwire would make it very far. He’s logically really smart, but common sense and reading social cues was never his strong point. He’d be like Fox Face from the movie/book, everyone forgets about him until he makes a fatal mistake that costs him his life.

Fury would unintentionally join an alliance with Grimm and Ace. He’s just there to protect them, and doesn’t really care to win. However, as the others fall, Grimm will realize he could win, but has to kill the other two. When Grimm tries to kill Fury—because he’s the biggest competition—Ace would help Fury, but end up getting killed in the crossfire.

Fury is now on his own again.

Juliette is a skilled survivor and can turn anything she gets her hands on into a weapon. She wouldn’t want to kill other than to protect herself, so she’s keeping to herself. However, that need to help is also in her. So, when she stumbles on dead bodies before they’re taken away, she’ll check for goodies. On one occasion, she finds one alive (Cosmos), and he can easily kill her. The thing with Cosmos is, he doesn’t care about killing her because he’s wounded. They’ll form an alliance until he’s better or he dies from his injuries, if he survives, they part ways agreeing the next time they meet will be a fight.

Let’s say there’s challenges like the Hunger Games in here, such as the wolves, bees, and fire balls. Cosmos would not survive, but he made it to the final three.

Now there’s two: Juliette versus Fury.

Case scenario one: they don’t know each other. Juliette would put up a fight and get some good shots in, but Fury would overpower her, exploit all her weaknesses, and kill her. Fury wins.

Case scenario two: Fury knows her and likes her. He knows she’s trying to kill him, but he can’t bring himself to hurt her. He knows who she is and likes her, even has a crush on her. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he killed her. So, he puts on a show, pretending he’s fighting only to let her kill him. Juliette wins.

Case scenario three: they both know each other. Fury likes her, Juliette likes him. They’re kind of friends, despite the circumstances of their situation, and neither wants to kill the other. They’ll just end each other together, so there is no winner. Depending on how it works, they’re both winners, or they both die.

Either way, take feelings, weapons, and equipment out of the games: Fury is the victor.

#caribou speaks #caribou ocs #star wars #star wars the clone wars

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hope-to-hell · 3 years ago

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The Gentlemen’s Agreement. Helmut Zemo x Bucky Barnes. Smut, angst, dubcon, oral, biting, minor bloodplay. They are complicated messes of men, perhaps more alike than they wish. There’s no excuse for any of this, and yet it happens.

Here’s the thing. He sees the struggle and the hurt of you, and he doesn’t care. He’s Zemo, yeah? He takes and takes and thinks that maybe someday it’ll all add up to equal the gaping hole inside him. He’s wrong, but who cares. Neither of you are likely to live long enough to see the outcome. But that’s further down the road and beside the point; the point is that it’s been a long while since you dipped a toe in the nascent kink scene of the 40’s, sweetheart, and you never would’ve thought this was even possible.

You, Bucky. The big tough, the muscle, the ray of sunshine who could smile and melt hearts from across the room. Yeah. You. Who’d’ve thought you would find yourself on your knees for a man like this? Who’d’ve thought you’d be so goddamned hard for it?

Do you trust me?

No.

Good. Open your mouth.

This is Helmut Zemo’s thumb stroking your lips, assessing, warm, more callused than you thought it would be. He could be feeling lust or nothing at all, and does it matter? Either way you’re here on your knees and you can feel every chip in the concrete and every shameful breath that shudders through you. Oh, Bucky. Listen. You are so fucked.

It’s so easy to let yourself fall beneath his hand, to feel those fingers trail up your cheek and into your hair; doesn’t matter if you’ve cut it short, there’s still plenty left to grab. And he grabs because he knows the way it fires all through you and the way you try to hide it; no teeth because there’s wrong and then there’s wrong; it’s part of the gentlemen’s agreement that you probably won’t kill each other here and you’ll absolutely, definitely keep your teeth off his cock. Anywhere else, though, is fair game.

Bite me, go on. I dare you— ah. Again. Again. Harder. When you taste blood you can stop. You filthy fuck, you love this. On your knees, aching, so fucking hard and I’m not touching you this time. You’re going to make yourself come so there’s no doubt in your mind how much you need this from me.

Zemo’s thighs are blooming red and purple and he is absurdly, preposterously hard; precome slicks him and why don’t you have a taste, you nasty boy? He tastes like salt and sweat and all the shame you feel because freedom is wonderful, isn’t it, but what you want is an order to follow. What you crave is his words in your ear, uncoiling along your spine, freeing you from decision and thought and all the spiraling grief that leaves you shaking in the dark. Shouldn’t have undone it, little man. You’re trapped with your own mind now and it’s so hard; decades of the winter soldier and the good man tangling around each other left you cold and broken and you need this, need it like air. Boy, you’d give anything for a blank mind but you can never tell a soul.

But I know. I know what you need, even if you hate it. Hate me. It’s alright, you’re neither the first nor the last. I’ll use you and you’ll let yourself be used, and in this way we both get something of what we need. He says he needs the win, the last of the serum crushed beneath his heel and all these fucking super soldiers bleeding in the dust (and that means you, friend; you’re a fool and a sucker and if you think he wouldn’t kill you the minute something better came along—)

But what does Helmut Zemo really want? You’ve guessed, haven’t you, in those moments when he comes and he is briefly unguarded; in the depths of his eyes are reflected little moments: firelight, droning insects in summer, silhouettes in the doorway and he is never, ever going to get them back.

Like calls to like. You and I are irreparably broken; I will push and you will fall and we will curve our bodies like the spray from severed arteries. This whole thing is untenable, Bucky-boy; sooner or later the next meeting will be the last and if you’re not in prison for aiding and abetting you’ll probably be burying him. But wouldn’t it be nice— wouldn’t it be nice— if he could grasp hold of your mind again and empty you out completely even as he fills you up? You’re a filthy disheveled wreck with your right hand on your cock and your left digging gouges in the floor; it was either that or crush his femur with the autonomic clench of shining fingers. He sees, and he knows, because he sees right to the heart of you. Doesn’t he?

Of course he does. He’s fucking Zemo and you should know by now that he is keen-eyed and poisonous. And he sees the way you keep your hands aside; he sees it and he doesn’t smile but there is a new sharpness to him. Oh, sweetheart. He’s in your throat and he is thick, isn’t he; when he moves he steals your air and your tears and the ropy thick spit that comes from him fucking in deep. He doesn’t last; he can’t, not when the smell of blood is sharp in his nose and you’re working his cock like your life depends on it.

Come with me, he doesn’t say. And he doesn’t say if your eyes slide shut then you can’t see my face. Can’t see me. Because this isn’t nice and it isn’t right but there’s that little spark of something there. It could be the spark to light your campfire or to burn the forest down, and would you notice? Would you care? When all you want is his gloved hand tight around your mind, what does it matter if you fall to ruin? And when you think about crushing his devious fingers underneath your heel when you’re pulling at your cock deep in the night, why does your mind drift to him breaching you and filling every hole?

Bucky, oh you wicked thing. You straight-spined, filthy little fuck. You’re gonna taste this for days, bitter come in your throat and that salty musk of his skin, and when you lick your lips distractedly it’s because you’re chasing the ghosts of those last dregs. You’re lost, whether you can admit it or not. You’re lost and he sees it, but here’s the thing. You see him too. After all, like calls to like.

And when you come it’s shame and glory; it’s little pearly spatters on the floor and the tensing of your shoulders. It’s his softening cock slipping free, and the way his hand cards through your hair for just a moment. And he was right, you know. He was right although it hurts you and you hate it. You want it. Want this. Want him. And it burns, it burns; the spark falls, and fire blazes up.

#daniel brühl #sebastian stan #baron zemo #Helmut zemo #baron zemo fic #baron zemo smut #helmut zemo fic #helmut zemo smut #Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes smut #my fic #mcu #mcu fic #mcu smut #zemo x bucky

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honkster · 4 years ago

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Why the Dream SMP’s way of storytelling is IMPOSSIBLE to recreate in any other medium.

This has been in the back of my mind for the longest time. I think I finally got it.

People have talked about this before, and they’ve put forward some good points, and good for them – most of them are correct. It’s the way the ccs interact with each other, it’s how plot is mixed in with banter, that’s all good! I wanna put more out there.

So you know how you open a book to read, you start a new show, you sit down to watch a movie – that’s all produced by some sort of company, someone who made it specifically for you to enjoy. You expect a certain dramatic flair to it, certain cinematic choices, certain ways of writing, certain camera angles, certain reactions to things. That’s just ingrained expectations of things now.

The DSMP? Doesn’t have that.

The low expectations work very much in its favor. It’s a Minecraft role-playing server with a bunch of famous youtubers/streamers, who are all good friends and have great dynamics with each other. So when you expect “just another Minecraft video” but in stream form, or you watch the videos because there are certain people in them, you don’t expect to be dropped into extreme lore and sensitive topics, realistic situations proposed in game form, a combination of serious stuff and just fun times with friends goofing around – and you’re pleasantly surprised.

We, the fandom, are used to it a bit more now. How excellently they manage to make a serious story in such a “ridiculous” medium, how much it affects us all and gets our creative juices flowing. But even the ccs can’t predict some of the things that happen. And that’s fun.

The whole election ending the way it has? That was on us. And it made some of the most angsty content there has been in the DSMP. People still theorize about the arc and make connections to now – that’s pog!

Fundy being adopted by Eret – that sparked the whole “Fundy just wants a dad – let’s get him some love” thing that made FundyWasTaken and other Fundy+someone ships happen. I see a different person paired with Fundy every week, and somehow, I agree with all of them. I really got into Fundy because of that stream where Eret “slept through the adoption” and Fundy confronted his real dad and spent time with his granddad. That little stream gave us more insight into Fundy’s whole character (Nevermind Fundy showing off his acting skills – you go you funky little fox), but also justifies some of his actions now. DryWaters? Wanting to kill Technoblade? Fucked up reasons, but we still love him.

Phil being broken out of house arrest ahead of time – still made a great stream and Phil agreeing with Techno’s want for revenge – that made us all very happy. The SBI!!! The AE! And that’s also a thing!

That even if we do know or have predicted what’s going to happen, begged it out of the ccs basically, it is still incredibly fun to watch. Where some books/shows/movies fall short and reveal too much and end up being “too predictable”, they’re not fun anymore. I read this somewhere before, that sometimes holding back EVERYTHING from the reader, and relying on shock value to make a good story is just bad. Whereas if you progress the story naturally and let the reader make some predictions of their own and then they end up being right – that’s a lot of serotonin right there. It’s the re-readability that makes it slightly better the second time.

The DSMP takes this concept and fucking yeets with it. Letting fans engage in the story, letting them theorize and then be right, even acknowledging the fanart that was made, just engaging with the community that their roleplay created – that makes it so much more fun. I bet that even if the whole script was revealed to the fandom we would still watch every plot stream. Even if we knew vaguely what happens in the stream, we would tune in and enjoy every second of it. Because the ccs are just that good, we love them that much, we love this plot that much.

Oh and the unpredictability helps too. Tommy in exile was the vague concept of a lot of the streams – it’s taken that and ran with it in a lot of different directions. All quite enjoyable.

Having said all of that… The fact that this type of telling a story is impossible to recreate in any other medium is… kinda saddening? It is incredibly unique, and I’d say has things that not a lot of the people that produce mainstream media would even consider. “Just friends hanging out” – how would that make the script progress? “Engagement with the fandom, even considering their wishes for the characters” – but we’re telling a story here!

The only thing I can think of that would come close to the vibe, would be just a bunch of writer friends coming together, thinking up a universe and general plot, and then each deciding to write a few of their own characters in that universe. When one author focuses on their main characters, the side ones can feel left in the dust, or not fleshed out. The DSMP is just “every character can write their own story”, which takes a lot of the strain from the “main writers”. But the general thing of “just friends hanging out” would be taken away from it. We’re being serious here, why would we change the tone so quick?

With all of that in mind… I kinda wanna make some predictions? And I don’t know if they’re correct, but it’s fun to theorize. See?

1. L’manburg will die.

And not just because Techno has 54 withers. The country is cursed – it definitely is. There is little sentimental value that can be felt for a few flimsy stilts built on top of a crater. It might go out in a blaze of glory, with the withers (Is history repeating itself an interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?), but it might just be forgotten. Yeah there have been some angsty headcanons about how “no one cares about L’manburg anymore, save for two people” and it just gets abandoned, but how about it just becoming irrelevant?

This all comes back to Dream, it always does! His want, need for the server to be “one happy family again”, it just means one thing. He wants the server to return to the peaceful anarchy that it was before L’manburg. No rulers, no factions, no nothing.

That’s never going to happen.

Try as he might, Dream cannot affect that change that L’manburg did to the server. The introduction of a faction, one that can exist without the interference of a higher power – why do you think so many factions have sprouted up since? And it’s not even serious factions a lot of the time, it’s just a few friends deciding to build their bases on a plot of land that they claim is a nation now. L’manburg has changed the mindset of these people, now an alliance with somebody is a political move. An alliance doesn’t exist if it doesn’t have a faction, and that faction can remain neutral for only so long.

Basically, L’manburg introduced the factions mod into the server.

And the fact that every faction now has enough relevance to hold weight in a war also means that every nation on the server is doomed to follow the downfall of L’manburg. Eventually, they will get into a fight they can’t win, go up against the wrong people, anger someone they shouldn’t have. All factions will either be destroyed, or lose relevance, until their creators, residents and such just… move on.

(And really you can go into meta and talk about real governments and compare them, but it’s far more simple than that. The server isn’t built for peace, it isn’t meant to be a relaxing place where you can just vibe, it may have been made for a few friends to play Minecraft together, but it has turned into An Author’s Curse. The curse that follows any kind of story being told – the fact that peace is boring. People watched the first streams of the DSMP because they liked the ccs, and that’s valid. But how many more people tuned in to watch the war streams because there was PLOT and there was CHAOS and there WASN’T CALM PEACE ANYMORE – that’s the curse of every writer. That you can write about someone just living their life drama-free, you can make interesting peace with characters or circumstances, but it’s always leading to one inevitable conclusion – war, drama, because people read that. And at this point, it’s just a predictable outcome. No matter how much you say that you are retired, that you’re done with violence (Technoblade), something will happen that will prove to you that you believed in people too much. No matter how “neutral” you may be in the matter, no matter how much you claim that you have no allegiance (Philza), you will be forced to pick one, because out of all the bad things, you pick the least worst one, the most appealing to you, the one that can benefit your want of revenge.

And I can go on, but this is far too deep for one simple reason – The Author’s Curse is so prevalent here because THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO STAKES. It’s a video game – you die? You respawn. Something gets destroyed? You can just rebuild. Sure, you’ll want to kill the person who did wrong to you, but whatever they did wrong can just be replaced, remade, recreated. So why not have wars? Why not cause massive amounts of destruction “for the plot”?

It’s literally a playground. How all authors have their little playground with their characters that they meticulously plan out, the DSMP is that playground for all of these people.

And it’s fun! Sure! I like it! I’m just really skeptical whenever someone in character says that they “just want peace”, “are retired”, “swear off violence”, “are building just a little city for themselves”. Because you can do that, nothing wrong. But eventually, no matter how much you distance yourself from all of the chaos happening, all of the wars, you will return.

Because it is just much more fun.

It’s the curse. A cursed cycle.

And everyone is in it.)

2. The prison.

I don’t have anything on the prison because I don’t have anything on the book. Yeah I’ve done a whole post where I overanalyze what it could be, but it doesn’t make it any clearer. Whatever it is, it’s made out to be a huge plot point, something that can only be revealed when the prison is finished.

Cursed. The prison’s reason for being constructed is the book, but the book is only relevant when the prison is finished. We can only wait, and theorize, as we do.

(My only theory is that the book is information about another op on the server. Or at least something related to op or creative mode. Dream only fears one thing on this server, and that’s Technoblade, so if his one fear is the most skilled player on the server, what else could give him existential fear?)

3. The SBI.

Again, I don’t have anything! Yeah the reunion seems to be going smoothly, one member at a time, but there is already conflict in their beliefs among each other. And all that’s happened is a vague “maybe one day we’ll strike”.

Is history repeating itself an interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?

Is L’manburg’s destruction AGAIN really necessary to hammer home the idea that no one likes that place anymore?

I don’t know. Whatever happens, no one’s in the right. No one’s in the wrong either. They’re all not good people and that’s that on that.

4. The Clingy Duo.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

That’s all.

(Okay seriously? All of these arcs are connected. You know what happens when everything seems to be connected to one another?

A giant, dramatic final showdown between the two opposing sides.

Cause it’s just Chaos vs L’manburg. Those are the sides. People that want L’manburg to exist and people that want it gone. There are no other sides, there isn’t someone who’s like “Well maybe it can exist if we do this and this” cause no one wants to put in anymore effort into this cursed country. The only people were the clingy duo and now they’re separated and everyone is just leaving and Tommy is on the Chaos side like at this point he doesn’t care about L’manburg he just cares about Tubbo but he has to convince Tubbo to leave L’manburg but will Tubbo be convinced but will Tommy even consider leaving L’manburg and breaking free from its curse AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Goddamit.)

5. The Egg?

Dunno shit about it. Like the prison – it seems important, but we’re just not being given enough information. Is it a coincidence that the moment Dream commissioned the prison the Egg popped up? Or are the two directly related?

I don’t know. But as long as someone is finding ways to fight the Egg, that’s fantastic. Bad juju indeed.

6. Oh the Butcher Army want to kill Dream!

Hah.

Okay I’ve seen people make the case that the Army is just a bunch of people with trauma repeating the cycle of ab*se that they went through and yes.

Just yes.

And the fact that no one is actually looking at it that way and no one is there to like.. help them or even help them understand that what they are doing is just irrational, even though their reason for doing it and the result they hope to achieve is YES and the only thing that a lot of the people of the server who want peace should try to go for as well, they cannot stand up to Dream on their own. They just can’t, they will get punted into exile. They need allies, and they need powerful ones, people that have also been wronged by Dream and want him gone.

But the cycle continues, and no one knows where it ends.

(Okay but from a writing perspective? Getting rid of Dream is the end goal. It is the be all end all of all conflict, well… most of it, at least most that’s related to the supposed “good side”, or “the side that’s been most victimized”. But from the same perspective, that side is just… no longer. It has proven that is just as bad, if not worse than the final boss. I have to agree that Techno has to pay for his crimes, even though I like him a lot, but Techno did in fact cause insane damage. Yeah L’manburg rebuilt, yeah Wilbur probably caused more – still he isn’t completely free.

But that’s a discussion on morality more than laws.

L’manburg is doomed to die. Dream is doomed to be fought, and probably won against (simply because he has won far too many times already, you know how everyone seems to hate OP characters…). But the Butcher Army is doomed to fail against Dream. So how does that work?

Welp.

Is history repeating itself and interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?

The answer is no.

I’ve repeated that question three times now, and the answer to it is no. No it is not. L’manburg can be destroyed again, and it can be rebuilt again, but the sentimentality that people feel for it will not remain. The cycle of history ends somewhere, and it’s not too far a fetch that it ends here.

So what happens when Technoblade, Philza and Tommy roll up to L’manburg with withers and a destruction wish, only to be met with a bunch of traumatized children with axes and a death wish?

Well, I’ll spare the details, but from a purely writing standpoint…

The two sides team up.

Think about it – The Butcher Army doesn’t care about Technoblade anymore. They’ve seen that Dream is the one pulling the strings, they know that even if they do care about trying to eliminate Technoblade again, they have to get rid of his strongest ally – Dream. But through their anger, they’ve lost their fear. You should fear Dream, he’s a fuckin op. Techno is correct in not wanting to go against him.

But after Tommy? After seeing the Butcher Army at their lowest, screeching about Dream being the villain?

Will Techno finally go past his thinking of “government is evil, always government is source of problem” and realize that Dream has the most evil government in mind for his rule?

I’m still kinda sad that Techno isn’t making the conclusions he should about Dream. But he’s starting to – and really, the SBI-Butcher Army team up is the most logical thing that could happen.

Watch me be completely wrong or miss something and I’ve got ALL of it wrong. I would love that.)

(Also it’s very funny to me that Dream is literally simping for Techno while he’s just here like “Listen bud I would stab you on sight if you didn’t have creative mode”. Dream KNOWS that Techno can and will kill him given the opportunity. Techno knows that that opportunity may never arise.

It’s a weird type of stalemate, to be sure. But goddamn is it interesting.)

Anyway... if you read through all of this... I could bake you a cookie? Thank you! I like to ramble.

#dream smp #gooood its just a block game #ITS JUST A BLOCK GAME #...dammit #anyway #debate me #on everything please

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fresh-prince-of-denmark · 4 years ago

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The Star — Literary References Analysis Part 6: Name One Hero Who Was Happy

Welcome to the (probably?) final part of analyzing the literary references found scattered in each of the endings of Cyberpunk 2077. If you haven’t read the other parts, you should do so through the masterpost here! The Devil was rough — straight up an indirect roast toward V for being an idiot. But I’m thankful to report that The Star has a far for optimistic tale.

I found two references, and believe me, I looked everywhere. If I missed something, let me know! Otherwise this part is fairly short. I may move on later to analyze the meanings behind all of Misty’s readings during the credits, but for now let’s dig into the two references I found: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy, and a portion of The Illiad (Book 9).

The first reference is really subtle, and real easy to miss (I did the first time I played). If you speak to Cassidy before leaving, he’ll say to you:

“See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt.”

He’ll then basically follow this by saying you look like shit, but the family will never turn it’s back on you. This quote is the first line of Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. If that makes your bowels ache and quake like it did mine, then you may be entitled to financial compensation for pain and suffering as a result of being forced to read The Road as a teenager. I don’t know what absolute fuckshit McCarthy was on, but I want none of it. Cormac McCarthy actually ties into Johnny’s story in a really weird way. Not only does McCarthy also have a novel called No Country for Old Men (ring a bell?), but the story of Blood Meridian has striking similarities to Johnny’s past in the wars. Both characters leave whatever childhood they had, for whatever reason, to join an American militia/military situation in their early teens. Both of these wars take place in souther/California Mexico, and our protagonist sees unimaginable horrors. Both barely escape with their lives.

Less related, but you want to know another weird coincidence? The book opens with three epigraphs. The first is by French poet Paul Valéry. Valéry. As in “just-V-only-people-who-really-know-me-can-call-me-Valerie”. Hmm…

There’s a lot more we could do with McCarthy’s novel: Ask ourselves who the Judge in Johnny’s story is (Smasher? Alt? Johnny?), and what it says about the nature of man, violence, immortality, blah blah blah. If that’s something you’re into, have at it. But why does Cassidy say this to you? Why choose the book that haunts AP English students dreams just to tell you that you look like shit? Why mention the idea of a found family having your back in the same breath as a quote from a book that asserts that family absolutely in no way has your back, and that you either die before they do or they’ll let you down in some way (either by dying and leaving you or stabbing you in the back)? Cassidy, a certified literary hoe, would know that Blood Meridian doesn’t exactly have a rosy outlook on family, found or blood.

I think the answer is simple: at the end of the book, we don’t know jack squat.

Just like we don’t know exactly where V’s going, or what Panem’s contacts will be able to pull, we don’t really know what happens to the protagonist at the end of Blood Meridian. Is V truly marked for death? Is Johnny truly gone forever, or is there a chance that his body is out there somewhere, and he could be restored? Is Mikoshi supposed to symbolize hell’s fire or heaven’s grace? (Or something completely different, if we listen to my boi Blake).

It’s such a weird quote to pick, such a weird story to pick. I wish I could derive more meaning from it, but McCarthy isn’t exactly my area of expertise. If anyone more familiar with his work has more to add, please do!

The next piece we find I believe provides more answers to our ending. It is a section of the Illiad, Book 9, found in a shard before you leave with Panem. For those of you unfamiliar with the Illiad, it is about the end of the Trojan War. If you recall, we get another piece of this story in The Devil ending via a section of The Odyssey, which tells the story of Odysseus trying to return home after said war. In this section, Agamemnon has just made a generous offer to Achilles if he aids in helping end the Trojan War, which he has previously refused over a matter of honor. According to Fate, Achilles is slated to die once Hector is slain, which is exactly why Agamemnon needs Achilles to fight since Hector is on some X-games shit. The shard contains Achilles response to the offer of riches, wealth, and the safe return of his favorite slave (who Agamemnon has taken from him):

For my mother the goddess, silver-footed Thetis, telleth me that twofold fates are bearing me toward the doom of death: if I abide here and war about the city of the Trojans, then lost is my home-return, but my renown shall be imperishable; but if I return home to my dear native land, lost then is my glorious renown, yet shall my life long endure, neither shall the doom of death come soon upon me. Aye, and I would counsel you others also to sail back to your homes; seeing there is no more hope that ye shall win the goal of steep Ilios...

Achilles is grappling here with a tough choice; if he stays and fights, he will die a legend. But if he goes home, he will live a long but quiet life.

Sound familiar? What is it going to be, V? Quiet life, or blaze of glory?

The Sun ending seems to be that blaze of glory, much like the ending Achilles’ eventually is forced into. But The Star seems to be the choice of a quiet life; staying with family, living with peace. I like to think that this is the story of Achilles and Patroclus has things not gone awry. A softer, happier, ending for all involved.

But there’s no such thing according to Johnny. Achilles story doesn’t end with the quiet life. Will V’s? According to McCarthy, we’ll never know, and we’re not meant to know. But there are parallels between V and Johnny, Achilles and Patroclus, that are tough to ignore. Achilles meets his demise after Patroclus dresses in his armor, impersonating Achilles, before being struck down by Hector. Achilles, mad with grief over Patroclus, kills Hector, and continues to fight with the ferocity that can only come when one no longer cares if they live or die. His rage threatens the Gods so much they intervene and cause his demise at the hand of Hector’s brother. Achilles’ final request is that his ashes be mixed with Patroclus so that they may become one in the afterlife.

Lots of parallels, right? The merging of two souls — both in life and death. Just as Patroclus adorns Achilles armor, V has the option to dorn Johnny’s clothes (at the very least, obtaining his jacket is not optional), just as Johnny can “wear” V’s body/identity. V even refers to Johnny as “a comrade and a piece of their own soul.” And as time progresses, they are becoming one indistinguishable entity — just as the Greeks believed that each person is one half of a soul, Johnny and V are one half of each other (or the Soul and the Body, inseparable, as Blake would say).

So what is this saying? That they’re both slated to die together? Perhaps. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll fall into the grave together hand-in-hand. I believe that this is meant to give us hope: that V’s salvation is through saving Johnny. If they truly are two halves of one soul, as several other pieces of literature in the game suggest, saving one means saving the other. We don’t know whether V’s new goal is to save Johnny, save herself, or to live out their remaining months quietly (unlikely, especially if you’ve chosen The Sun ending). But I don’t think that saving Johnny and V are going to be opposing goals anymore; just as dooming Patroclus slated Achilles for death, I think the road to both V and Johnny’s salvation are one they must walk together.

#peep the title #Can you tell I recently read song of achilles #he is half of my soul as the poets say #and now I'm crying all over again #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk #cyberpunk 2077 v #cyberpunk2077 #cyberpunk spoilers #v #v cyberpunk #johnny silverhand #the star #the star ending #cyberpunk meta #cyberpunk 2077 meta

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dorevenge · 3 years ago

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where ignorance is bliss - chapter 3: a young fellow

SUMMARY: Obadiah is back from Washington and surprises Maria with a belated birthday trip abroad. [AO3 LINK]

CHAPTERS: 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ☆

November 16, 1959 – Bronx, New York, Obadiah’s Apartment

“Surprise, darling! Happy belated birthday.”

The door swings open, the jangle of keys alarming me, and I run to put his engagement ring back on, tossing the dirty apron back in the hamper. I greet him at the door, with a perfect smile, the image of everything he would want from me. I put the thick folder in the back of my mind, trying not to think about the bookshelf I shoved it behind.

Obie takes me into his arms. My face barely comes up to his collarbones. It was normally a sensation I craved after a long, stressful day, but when the person holding me is the source of my stress, the effect is not the same.

He takes a step back and takes my face into his weathered hands, his cold, tired eyes peering into mine. I try to keep eye contact and return the peaceful gaze. The pressure gets to me, so I reach up and pull his head towards mine.

We haven’t kissed in three months, and it’s almost like we’ve forgotten how. At least, I had forgotten how to enjoy it. His lips feel foreign between mine, like a stranger’s. Like someone I couldn’t trust.

When we break apart, his smile is as wide as his head. “I’ll take that as you missed me,” he says. “I got something for you.” He reaches down to the paper bags he had set at his feet when he arrived. He pulls out an envelope and two small, wrapped packages.

Obie leads me to the couch in the living room and sits me down, pushing the envelope in my hands first. He sits beside me, eager for me to open my gifts.

“Already? I didn’t even get to ask you how your flight was yet.” The envelope felt heavy with unknowing in my hands.

“My flight was uneventful. Please…” He gestures impatiently towards the gift in my lap.

I open the envelope gently. Inside, is a simple card, lilac with the words “Happy Birthday” written in a cursive script on the wrong. From within the card, two tickets fall into my lap.

“We’re going to Monaco?”

“Surprise again! I thought it would be a nice break from New York, get away before the holidays. And I feel terrible for leaving you alone for so long right after our engagement. From here on out, I will be an attentive partner to you.” His joy is so thickly spread across his face, it’s all I can do to smile in return and stare down at the tickets in my hands.

“Thank you, Obie, I-”

“You hate it.”

“No, love, I love it, and I love you,” I’m fumbling for my words, and I hope he doesn’t notice. “I’m just tired. It’s hard sleeping alone, and I’m still surprised that you’re here, let alone going taking a trip with you… Tomorrow?” I read the date on the tickets.

“Why wait? Then we can be back in time for Thanksgiving with your parents.” He kisses me on the forehead, content with my reaction, and stands. “I’m going to unpack my clothes from DC, then start repacking.”

November 20, 1959 – Monaco, France, The Hellfire Club

Obadiah was not a betting man, but he seemed at home at the Hellfire Club & Casino like a Protestant in church. He “enjoyed the company of the machines that controlled men’s fates,” but I imagine he enjoyed thinking he had more willpower than the men who squandered their paychecks and had to return home to their wives with their head between their tails, lying about the state of their finances.

It turns out he had business in Monaco, and surprising me with a late birthday trip seemed easier than leaving me for work again. I was left to my own devices again, but this time it was in a foreign country. I had studied abroad in France my junior year of college, so it wasn’t like I couldn’t talk to anyone here, but rather I have no desire to even leave the room.

Obie would meet me back at the hotel room at night, and we would often play a game of chess before bed. Playing chess with him was one of the best ways to pass the time. It keeps him quiet from rambling on about things I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about, details about materials and manufacturing and marketing. I did the accounting for Stane International, as that’s what I had studied in school, and as long as the numbers added up, I was content. And for every chess game I won, Obie paid me what we had bet, fueling my addiction to the finer things in life. I purchased more purses and linens and dresses and shoes than I would care to admit, but as long as the numbers added up – and as long as I hid the packages at Peggy’s – he didn’t complain.

The Hellfire Club is unusually classy for Obie’s taste; I’ve already started to resent his cheapness and penny-pinching, and we hadn’t even set a wedding date yet. I should have noticed that sooner. Here, gold decorates every pillar and billiard ball, marble fountains and silver pens, a gratuitous buffet and generous décor around every corner. Whoever the owner is has taste and luxury in excess. I am a girl with champagne taste engaged to a cheapskate.

Obadiah had spent the last four days in meetings from sunrise to sunset, and I am bored out of my mind. I have no interest in day-drinking, I’ve already read every book the front desk has to offer, and the pictures playing down the block don’t spark my curiosity. I feel like a tiger pacing its cage in a zoo, and I am ready to pounce.

Touching up my red lip and pinned curls, I leave the room and exit the elevator. I feel the turn of men’s heads like a gravitational pull, the clack of my heels leading the charge, and I’m embarrassed to admit how much I miss that attention. I know how this dress fits, I know how the color complements me; just because I’m an educated woman doesn’t mean I’m not a human one.

I have hours to kill before Obie will direct his attention to me again, so I stride right into the room full of betting games and tables. I pause in the doorway, taking in the sight – and cigar smoke – of men shuffling cards and chips like it means something, until I recognize one of the tables.

I had learned baccarat in my time in France, and despite never fully grasping the French language, I played their game very well. Like all of the casino’s games, the house has the edge, but my host family had taught me their tricks, and I could keep track of the location of every card once I saw it. This casino plays the punto banco style, which is where I excelled.

The first three hours, I did very well. I did so well that the waitstaff came to watch over my shoulder to assure I wasn’t cheating. I had almost doubled Obie’s entire investment portfolio, at least the one I had access to, using his information to start the hand but relying on my winnings to keep me afloat. But after three hours, I got – as I often do these days – bored. Keeping track of the calculations of the face value no longer keeps me entertained. So I start losing. Maximum bets net maximum losses.

I don’t know why I find so much joy in draining Obie’s savings, linked to the banking information from his hotel reservation. I don’t hate the man, but I don’t think I could ever love him. He has done nothing cruel to me, nothing unjust, or even unkind – but I don’t think he loves me either. I am comfortable and convenient; I straighten his ties and predict his chess moves and shake the hands of men he so desperately wants to impress. When you come from money, you learn to smell desperation a mile away, and Obadiah reeks of it. Every privileged man he meets can smell it, too, and until he can mask it, Stane International won’t become that international.

He’s just so boring. He fixates on the most minute details of his plans, his inventions take priority, and I think if I hurt him here, he would finally pay more attention to me than his baubles.

The chip pile, once mountainous, dwindles, replenishing when I transfer more funds, then drain once again. The staff look at me puzzled, wondering what happened to my blaze of glory, and I ask myself the same question as I feel myself go robotic and glassy-eyed. Twisting the probability on its head, I play the moves in the house’s favor, leaving nothing behind but a tray full of cigarette ash and empty champagne classes.

It dawns on me that this game of baccarat reflected Obie’s and my relationship. I feed his ego, his business deals, and checkbooks, and what did I have to show for it? A cheap steel ring, a prolonged engagement with no date in sight, and still living in my childhood bedroom with my parents in Southampton.

As I drain my last glass, several tall men in nice suits approach me, stern looks on their faces. I straighten in my seat.

“Ms. Carbonell?” one of them asks to confirm my identity in an American accent.

“Is there a problem?”

“You’ve attracted our attention with your gameplay. What are your intentions here at the Hellfire Club?”

I blink at the empty glass in my hand, just a hint of the red wine remaining on the bottom swirling at its base. “To win.”

“Looks like you’re not doing much of that now.”

“Winning got boring,” I shrug.

“Please come with us, Ms. Carbonell.”

“I’d rather stay here and keep losing.”

One of the men places a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll come with us now. The owner of the Roxxon Corporation would like to speak to you.” I’m suddenly on my feet.

#where ignorance is bliss #wiib reading #iron man #marvel #what if #canary writes a fanfiction

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firebirdsdaughter · 4 years ago

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Small things that kill me…

… The look on Vergil’s face when Nero gives the ‘Dante’s not going to die up here and neither are you’ speech.

Honestly… Just all of his interactions w/ Nero in that scene.

Vergil’s a fucking dumbass who has no clue how to person at this point, he’s a complete wreck who may or may not have known he had a kid before the whole incident w/ Mundus, but now he’s even less equipped to deal w/ it, he has precious little if any practice not being at the least indifferent at the most hostile…

I think one of Vergil’s big issues is indifference, to the consequences for his actions, especially for others, for what others think, for himself in many ways… While V did develop a bit, enough to realise splitting himself in half caused massive, destructive consequences for countless people. Sure, maybe he couldn’t have predicted (which I don’t think he did) that Urizen would go that bonkers, but setting half a demon loose on the world would generally be a bad idea, to say nothing of ripping someone’s arm off in order to do so (the extreme indifference again, causing him to be unable to properly ask for help—I don’t think he enjoyed or ‘wanted’ to ‘hurt’ Nero, but the consequences never crossed his mind; to him, it was just something he had to do to survive, that was all that mattered). And that’s all a result of what he went through ever since the attack—I have this whole ramble about how I think his and Dante’s fighting styles reflect the (both unhealthy in their own way) way in which they reacted to that traumatic event—but bc he’s been fending for himself since eight, w/ only the Yamato on hand, he’s downright dangerously/extremely self sufficient/obsessed with being completely self reliant. Like the Phantom of the Opera’s ‘the world showed no compassion to me’ except really. His entire life was just about getting through the day, he had it drilled into him by experience that he could only truly trust himself, that he needed to be able to do things entirely on his own—to the point that even after being ripped apart, pretty much literally, by Mundus, he still can’t ask for help. It is a result of his trauma, but it means he has very limited skill in thinking of other people. Like, if we get a future game w/ him as one of the protags, I feel like that would be something he’d absolutely struggle w/, being more aware of others. That it would take him twice as long to react/do things that might take others like Dante or Nero a moment bc he has to actively make himself think about others, forcibly train himself to do that.

Anyway, I’m going off topic. My thought is… Vergil’s definitely not, at first glance, or even second glance, or third, parent material. I love the character, he’s a walking disaster. He’s no good at thinking of others, and is indifferent to what others think of him. I think he still loved Dante in his own, very damaged way, but he’d rallied himself against that feeling for so long, considered it weakness and shut it out, that he likely won’t be able to express it in any understandable way for a long time. And on the inverse, he can’t conceive of, for instance, Dante actually caring about him—like… He doesn’t think he matters to anyone either, puts no emotional value in himself. If that makes any sense? Like… Even when he does encounter compassion, he rejects and suspects it… Dante is a weird case, but I do see Vergil not understanding that he matters to anyone. He’s indifferent to everyone, including himself, and he doesn’t expect any more care or affection from others than he shows—like he’s not one of those jerks who expects people to like him despite being a jerk, he’s just largely given up on relationships (he either thinks they only bring pain, or that, like his softer feelings for Dante, they are weakness).

And I think he went up there to die. Pride and stubbornness prevented him from surrendering, but he had at least some idea of the enormity of the consequences of his actions. At the least, he knew he’d majorly fucked up and caused a lot of pain. I think his intentions were similar to that of Griffon and crew—face Dante one last time, fight all out bc his own pride wouldn’t let him do any less, and leave it up to fate. I don’t think he expected to kill Dante, just that he couldn’t not fight his hardest, out of respect and bc it was his nature. But he had no illusions over his probability of survival. The only reason he did throw the sheath away this time was that it wasn’t a ‘suicidal blaze of glory’ like I think fighting Mundus might’ve been, but more of a trial by combat, to him. Dante, meanwhile, was just assuming/accepting that he was going to have to take his brother out again, and he likely wasn’t planning on ever coming back from that, either (which I don’t think Vergil realised), either by dying in the fight, too, or going into hell on his own.

But then Nero shows up. Now I think V and therefore Vergil were at least aware that Nero and Dante mattered to each other, bc Dante’s the kind and caring one and Nero’s a good kid. Like, I’m sure he was aware of that.

I don’t think he’s surprised Nero interrupted (that form probably was unexpected, but Nero objecting in general or trying to rejoin the fighting wasn’t completely unthinkable) or that Nero was defending Dante.

I think what catches him off guard is the ‘and neither are you.’

He ripped Nero’s arm off and then knowingly deceived him as V, and on top of that, turns out Nero is his son who he pretty much abandoned (like we don’t know the details of when and why Vergil left, or if he knew, but the fact is, he made choices that resulted in him not being there for Nero). And that’s to say nothing of all the hell Urizen caused. Basically, a list of things that would generally result in Nero falling into the same category as everyone else—another burned bridge, another person who hates him, and Vergil is quick to close doors. He expects no consideration from Nero, no more than he’s shown, and V was aware they had horribly hurt Nero (esp since V was weaponising Nero’s issues surrounding that).

But instead of just completely writing Vergil off like Vergil expects, Nero extends this declaration of ‘not dying’ to him as well. Sure, Vergil immediately tries to throw up the usual prideful walls what w/ that ‘if I beat Nero I win by default’ stuff, but then he later tries to get Nero to stand down rather than continuing the fight, saying it has nothing to do w/ him [Nero], and then his reaction to Nero’s ‘it has everything to do w/ me’… He just doesn’t know how to react to Nero? He expects one thing, but Nero just keeps defying his assumptions (which takes some mighty powerful heart and compassion on Nero’s part bc while I do see Vergil as incredibly tragic and don’t think he’s fully ‘responsible’ for Urizen’s actions, Nero doesn’t have a lot of that info, but he’s making the decision that this is fucked up and no family of his is going to kill each other—so anyway while I do love me the angsty drama dads, let me just say I love Nero, too).

It’s with Nero that bits of his awkward, ‘tsundere’ side come out, ever so slightly. He and Dante have trapped themselves in a pattern, Dante bc he’s Tired and has just resigned himself to the necessity of it an wants to get it over w/ and Vergil bc at his core he’s afraid to try anything else bc he sees it as weakness. But I said this before, I think Nero being his son and Nero being… How Nero is, all heart and and good and warm and compassionate, to the point that he’s defying not just the ‘inevitability’ of Vergil and Dante being at odds, but literally fighting to save him, after all he’s done… I think that meant something.

Obviously, it’s not going to be simple or easy, and I do think that, now that he’s been given hope that he can get through to Vergil and not have to kill him (which I think he’d concluded was a sort of mercy kill?), Dante is the best person for Vergil to get used to his emotions etc. w/ bc they have that deep understanding of each other and what happened, esp now, but… I love how Nero cracked his shell there? Like… He’s not really prepared for it, but I think I can see Vergil wanting to at least try to be some kind of parental, esp after he’d recovered a bit more? And I do think he’d also respect if Nero ultimately told him to get lost (although I can seem him, like, watching from afar or something), even now, bc again w/ the whole I think he has no expectations of what others think of him, but… I do see him wanting (and maybe having trouble accepting that he wants it, at first) to be part of Nero’s life in some way? Esp in a vein of… Wanting to preserve Nero’s ‘goodness’ for lack of a deeper word? Bc I can see a slightly more recovered post dmc5 Vergil not wanting his son to fall down the same holes he did. Like, they’ve all gone through trauma, and lost people, but Vergil is now very aware that he ended up hurting and even killing people and very nearly destroying himself and going absolute monster, to the point his twin brother, who understood him on another level, in their own way, resigned to having to kill him to stop it (I genuinely think for all his talk, Dante did see it as a bit of a mercy kill, the only way he could preserve the last shreds of the brother he loved and keep Vergil from actually going Full Urizen [V even existing means that Vergil wasn’t completely gone, but I think he was on thin ice]). Dante’s already dragged into this by the very same events that placed him there, but Nero has a chance not to be, which I think was part of his ‘this has nothing to do w/ you’ thing, and I totally see Vergil following that sentiment and wanting to keep Nero from ever turning out like him.

Vergil’s probably never going to be ‘nice’ or very good at empathy or things like that. It may forever take him more willpower to think about others. He may need to start small (like just Nero and/or Dante). He’ll probably still be insensitive for years to come. He’ll never be able to be as easily open and compassionate as Nero and Dante. And he knows he can’t change the past, can’t undo the Arkham incident, or what he did to Nero, or the fact that his stubbornness, pride, inability to ask for help, obsessive habits, and indifference/inconsideration for consequences had calamitous results. He’s not magically good or saved bc he has a kid, but I think even just knowing about and seeing Nero act the way he did resonated w/ something he thought he’d lost a long time ago. Nero and V’s interactions have a whole new light for him now. I absolutely think if Dante’s willing the twins should stick together bc they balance each other, Dante can watch him, won’t take his shit, and wants to help him be better, but… I think even if that didn’t happen… There’s a chance just knowing Nero exists and is so… Good could enough of a catalyst for Vergil to find a different way to live, even on his own. Like there’s a sense of pride? Not in the vein of taking responsibility for Nero turning out as good as he did, but, like, in the way people sometimes say ‘I’m sorry’ like ‘I’m sorry that you are sad’ as in ‘I am expressing sympathy for your sadness.’ Pride that Nero has achieved this, and is strong in his own right. If that makes sense.

He will always be rather an asshole. But, esp if he has some support for his issues and someone watching him… He can do better. Like… Do better. He’ll always be stiffer and pricklier than everyone else, he’ll probably be more pragmatic, think more w/ logic than w/ heart. Emotions and empathy and compassion will always be hard.

But those interactions (and, honestly, that whole ending, even more honestly, the themes of the whole game), def gave me the impression that he could absolutely do better.

… I just went on a total stream of consciousness ramble, so, uh, virtual treat of your choice if you read all that.

#DMC #today on Fire was looking at gifs and had Feelings #TT^TT #I'm not gonna tag much bc I typed SO MUCH in this post DX #I should really give the fam precious tags I love all three of them so much #Demon Drama Fam

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jaybear1701 · 5 years ago

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Chapter Summary: Scylla begins her new role as an “instructor” at Fort Salem. It goes about as well as you might expect.

“This is some shit.”

Raelle hadn’t voiced the massive understatement. Beth Treefine did. And, for once, Raelle agreed with the haughty High Atlantic. Beth’s Unit stood shoulder-to-shoulder to the left of Abigail, Tally, and Raelle in the small gym that would serve as their training ground for whatever forbidden Work they’d be learning. The walls felt like they were closing in. And Raelle couldn’t even begin to parse out the jumbling emotions that made her head spin as she watched Scylla, back in uniform, trading hushed, tense words with Anacostia and Izadora.

“Isn’t Scylla, like, your ex?” Glory Moffett whispered out of the corner of her mouth to the Bellweather Unit’s right, brown eyes wide and round.

Heat prickled up Raelle’s neck.

Both Abigail and Tally shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

Beth’s head snapped toward Raelle. “Seriously, you dated a terrorist?” Her lips curled in disgust. “Why am I not surprised? You Cessions do love trash after all.”

Abigail grabbed Raelle’s wrist before she could launch herself at Beth and earn a month’s worth of demerits. “Shut your dirty, fetid mouth, Treefine, before I shut it for you,” Abigail threatened with a dangerous glare.

“Come on, Bellweather,” Beth scoffed. “Even you have to admit this is bullshit!”

“And what exactly is bullshit, Treefine?” Anacostia’s question boomed out into the confined space. “Is following orders bullshit?” She stalked toward Beth, who stood at attention. “Or maybe it’s doing whatever it takes to crush our enemies once and for all.” Standing toe-to-toe with Beth, Anacostia stared her down. “Is that bullshit to you, Private?”

“No, ma'am.” Beth kept her eyes trained forward, fear of the Goddess in them.

“Good.” Anacostia walked down the line, glowering at each War College freshman. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” She paused briefly in front of Raelle before she continued on. “You’d do well to remember it.”

When she got to the last member of Glory’s unit, Anacostia returned to a position in front of the soldiers.

“For those of you who don’t already know, this is Scylla Ramshorn.” She beckoned Scylla forward. “Outside, she’s just another soldier. But here, she’ll be your instructor for the next few weeks. Treat her with anything but respect, and you’ll answer to me.” She moved to the side to stand next to Izadora.

The air thickened in Raelle’s lungs as Scylla stepped forward, fingers casually tucked in her pockets, a small smirk on her stupidly beautiful face. Except the smug smile seemed almost too stiff, a brittle mask tenuously held in place.

Scylla cleared her throat. “I know this isn’t ideal for you,” she began, making eye contact with everyone but Raelle. “It’s not exactly a picnic for me, either. But the sooner we get through this, the sooner we can defeat the Camarilla.”

“How?” Abigail asked.

Raelle bit the inside of her cheek, while Tally stifled a groan.

“Bellweather,” Anacostia growled.

“Ma’am, I mean no disrespect,” Abigail explained, even as she eyed Scylla with caution. “A ceasefire is one thing. I genuinely want to know how the Spree can possibly help us.”

“The same old military tactics won’t work against the Camarilla for the same reason you’ve never eradicated the Spree in two decades,” Scylla explained. Off several blank looks, she added, “You can’t kill what you can’t catch.”

“And you’ll catch them with what?” Abigail crossed her arms. “Your winning personality?”

Scylla grinned. “There’s always that.” She slid a hand into her right pocket and fished out a zippo. “And this.” She flicked it open and lit it. Raelle’s lips parted as Scylla brought the flame to the edge of her jaw until it caught fire.

“Holy shit,” Glory gasped.

The blaze consumed Scylla’s entire face for several seconds before it petered out, leaving a second version of Abigail, embers slowly fading from her hair. “Boo.”

Frowning, the real Bellweather stiffened. “What the hell?!”

Dark memories of “Helen Graves” clawed at Raelle’s stomach, sharp and deep. “So, the key to defeating the Camarilla is, what, deception?” She couldn’t stop herself. It was infinitely easier to drop her filter when Scylla didn’t look like Scylla. “You’re definitely a pro at that,” she muttered, earning a jab in the ribs from Tally.

Scylla-as-Abigail blinked once, slowly. Still, she didn’t look at Raelle. Clicking the lighter once again, she burned off Abigail’s visage and returned to her own, blue eyes glowing as flames licked around her face. “If you can’t tell friend from foe, then you’re vulnerable.”

“You mean infiltrate them,” Tally said. “And expose them.”

Scylla smiled, genuinely this time. “Craven, I knew you were the brightest in your Unit.”

Abigail’s scowl intensified. “How are we supposed to infiltrate them if we can’t find them?”

“Who says we haven’t?” Scylla said in a way that unsettled Raelle, who thought back to the latest Camarilla massacre. Scylla had said she was sent to investigate, but had it been more than that?

“So, does no one care that this Work is clearly outside Canon?” Beth unhelpfully pointed out.

Scylla regarded Beth with a look that could only be described as pity. “Canon is nothing more than a cage. Meant to keep you in check so you never realize the full extent of your power.”

Anacostia coughed into her fist and raised one brow at Scylla.

“But I digress,” Scylla conceded. “Who wants to go first?”

No one volunteered.

“Wow.” Scylla held up her hands, lips quirking sarcastically. “Don’t everyone answer the call at once, now.”

“Collar, you’re up.” Anacostia’s bark was unusually loud in the awkward silence of the room.

Raelle schooled her features, even though she wanted nothing more than to glower at her former drill sergeant. Tally and Abigail watched her with thinly veiled apprehension. She followed Anacostia’s command and approached Scylla, who still refused to meet her eyes.

“What Seeds do I use?” Raelle asked, affecting a bored drawl.

Scylla finally looked at her, and all the air squeezed out of Raelle’s lungs. “No Seeds.” She took in a breath that seemed to shake imperceptibly. “Mother Tongue.”

Raelle’s eyebrows arched. “You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m doing standup?”

Scylla recited a short phrase, then repeated its serpentine staccato beats. Despite its brevity, it was difficult for Raelle to follow even as she subconsciously stared at the precise movements of Scylla’s lips.

“Eventually you won’t have to say the words,” Scylla finished.

“What do they mean?” Glory asked, her question startling Raelle.

“In light shall I be cloaked ,” Scylla answered. “In darkness shall I be revealed.” Wetting her lips, she tore her gaze from Raelle to address Glory. “Our ancestors created this Work during the Burning Times. Fought fire with fire to escape from their oppressors.” Her attention returned to Raelle. “Like the Spree do now.”

“And how many die from it?” Raelle’s jaw tightened as she clenched her fists.

Scylla’s stoic expression wavered, a crack in the facade, but she didn’t look away. “How many die from inaction?”

They started at each other for several beats, a game of chicken to see who would blink first.

“Um, hello?” An impatient Abigail interrupted, snapping them both out of their near-trance. “The Work?”

Scylla glanced at Anacostia before offering her lighter to Raelle, who made it a point to take it without brushing against Scylla’s hand. For self-preservation.

Raelle stared at golden zippo, recalling how she had seen it on the small locker Scylla had used as a makeshift nightstand; how Scylla never seemed to be without it. Now she knew why. She pushed open its cap. It took several sparks before it came to life.

“Now, think about someone,” Scylla ordered.

“Who?”

“Anyone. Picture them in your mind.”

Raelle closed her eyes, but the only person she saw was Scylla. As if it could be anyone else. “Okay,” she said, hating herself for her weakness.

“Good, now repeat after me,” Scylla said, once again slipping back into Mother Tongue. In light shall I be cloaked. In darkness shall I be revealed.

Raelle attempted to repeat the Work. Horribly. She tried again. And again. Tried to give shape to the words with her tongue and lips, to get used to how they felt in her mouth.

“Now raise the flame,” Scylla said.

Opening her eyes, Raelle brought the lighter near her face. Its heat stung her jaw.

“Don’t be afraid,” Scylla whispered.

Heart pounding, Raelle lifted her chin. “I’m not afraid.”

The challenge was clear in Scylla’s blue eyes.

Raelle drew her hand closer to her chin, but the flame was too much. It seared her skin, and she dropped the lighter with a yelp. It clattered against the floor as she cupped the burn. She wasn’t sure what mortified her more: the failure or the disappointment that flashed across Scylla’s face.

***

In the breath between life and death, memories flooded Raelle’s vision, hazy and random like hundreds of fireflies on a summer night. Of her mom and dad. Warm smiles, tight hugs, joyous laughter. Of Tally and Abigail. Infectious optimism and steady leadership. Tough love from Anacostia. They blended and bled into her link with Abigail, whose own recollections centered on Petra, her five fathers, her Unit, Adil, and Charvel.

But in the center of the maelstrom was Scylla.

Raelle no longer felt pain from where the Camarilla’s arrow pierced her body. Instead, her chest filled with love and anguish, longing and regret.

“Scyl.” She stretched out her arm, trying to grasp Scylla’s hand and coming up empty, a millimeter out of reach. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Scylla only smiled, a melancholy twist of her lips, sapphire eyes luminescent.

A burst of white engulfed Raelle, blinding and brilliant. Shutting her eyes tight, she felt fingers tightening around her left hand. She squeezed back. She’d never let go.

***

Raelle absentmindedly pushed peas around on her tray, the tines of her fork scraping metal as she separated them from the sliced mushrooms. She wasn’t hungry, despite eating only half a bagel hours ago, her stomach still wound tight after that less than stellar training session with Scylla. Of all the Spree. It had to be her. The absurd coincidence reminded her of that old black-and-white movie her dad loved. How did that one line go? Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. That was it.

Someone nudged Raelle’s shoulder and waved a hand in front of her face, dispelling her line of thought.

“Hey.” Tally said, sympathy apparent in her warm brown eyes. “You still with us?”

“Yeah, of course.” Raelle nodded, putting her fork down.

The crowd in the War College mess hall had grown since they arrived for lunch, as had the volume of chatter from the hungry soldiers, most if not all of them absolutely clueless about the extracurricular activities happening on campus.

“You’re thinking about her,” Abigail observed next to Tally on the other side of the table.

“I’m not thinking about anyone,” Raelle lied even as her traitorous heart wondered where Scylla had gone with Anacostia and Izadora.

“You’re such a liar.” Abigail shook her head as she raised a glass of water to her lips.

“Well, I’m thinking about her,” Tally chimed in. “She’s actually a decent instructor.” She shrunk underneath Raelle’s stare. “You know, all things considered.”

Abigail rolled her eyes. “You’re only saying that because you’re the only one who was actually working that Work.”

“One of the perks of linking with a 327-year-old?” Tally leaned forward as if she was sharing a deep secret. “Instant Mother Tongue.”

“Of all the people to impersonate, though.” Abigail speared a piece of pineapple and popped it into her mouth. “Hilary? Really? I thought you were over her and Gerit.”

Tally shrugged up a shoulder and deflected, “Who did you pick?”

“My mom,” Abigail answered. “Could you imagine her face?” She shared a chuckle with Tally while Raelle continued to sulk. “How about you, Rae?”

“What does it matter?” Raelle asked, knowing full well they knew she only had one person in mind.

“It doesn’t.” Tally reached out and gently covered Raelle’s right hand where it rested on the table. “But, you know we’re here for you. You can talk about her, if you want.”

“Why would I?” Raelle resisted the urge to pull away, not wanting to hurt Tally’s feelings.

“Because you still need to get your shit together,” Abigail said, tone creeping into overbearing Bellweather territory that still managed to set Raelle’s teeth on edge.

“My shit’s just fine.” Raelle clung to her obstinance. Had a knack for it. It was the one thing she could still control.

“Your shit’s a mess.” Abigail’s gaze flicked over Raelle’s shoulder and she did a double take. “And it’s about to get worse.”

Raelle swiveled in her seat, stomach dropping. As if the day couldn’t get any worse. Her mother was now approaching their table. In uniform, no less, a hesitant smile on her face.

“Raelle,” Willa greeted softly.

Raelle gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached.

“This must be your Unit,” Will said when Raelle didn’t respond, offering her hand to Abigail. “You’re Petra’s daughter. Abigail, right?”

Hesitating only briefly, Abigail stood and firmly took Willa’s hand and gave it a firm shake, once up and down. “Yes, ma’am.”

“She’s told me so much about you. I feel like I already know you.” Willa stretched a hand to Tally, who also rose to her feet to clasp it. “And you must be Tally. I knew one of your aunts. Mae? One of the finest soldiers I’ve known. She told me once that the Cravens received a dispensation from conscription.”

“Oh!” Tally’s brows shot up. “Yes, ma’am. But I… I volunteered.”

Willa blinked once. “You decided to serve even though you didn’t need to. Admirable. If only we all could have that same choice.”

An awkward hush wrapped around them, a tense bubble amid the white noise of the mess hall.

“Well, it was nice to meet you officially, ma’am,” Abigail picked up her tray, awkwardly canting her head to encourage Tally to join her. “But we best be going.”

They reluctantly left the table, both eyeing Raelle with concern.

“I should go with them,” Raelle said, standing to collect her own things.

”Actually, I was hoping we could talk,” Willa said.

“Have you talked to dad yet?”

A hint of pain glinted in near identical blue. “No.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about.” Raelle got up and quickly deposited her tray in a receptacle. She made a beeline for the exit, hoping to catch up with Tally and Abigail.

“Raelle, please.” Willa followed her outside into the afternoon heat. “I know you’re angry. And you have every right to be. But if you would just let me explain, you’d understand.”

“Understand what?” Raelle whirled around. “Why you abandoned us? Made us think you were dead? Sent Scylla to…” She stopped short. The last thing she wanted was to talk about Scylla. Didn’t want to even think of the possibility that Willa had deliberately assigned Scylla to train her Unit.

“Yes,” Willa said simply. “You owe me at least that much, girl.”

Temper flaring, Raelle stepped into her mom’s space. “I don’t owe you anything,” she snarled.

Raelle stalked away, emotions ablaze, a ball of pent up fury as she trekked across the grounds. She let the anger consume her, ignoring the sliver of disappointment that wrapped around her heart when her mom didn’t follow. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn’t dense. She had thought about Willa’s reasons nearly everyday. And logically, she understood.

Alder’s military system was slavery. There was no doubt about that. So many women had been forced to early deaths they didn’t choose, and the same fate awaited their daughters, and their daughters’ daughters. Her mom didn’t want Raelle to become war meat. Hell, Raelle didn’t want to become war meat. Perhaps in some twisted way, Willa thought she was also protecting Edwin, breaking his heart to keep him safe from the war. The Spree sought freedom to live their lives without fear of being hunted down and killed, like Scylla’s parents. But they were also murderers, just like the Army–both entities so mired in darkness that Raelle wasn’t sure they’d ever see the light.

She knew all this. But her heart still couldn’t get past the betrayal of it all, and the fear of everything she still didn’t know about the terrible lengths Willa had gone to in furtherance of her cause. It was easier to cling to pain and resentment, than to wade into brackish water and attempt to separate brine from the fresh.

Her eyes began to sting and she stopped to suck in several deep breaths. She had wandered the grounds, unseeing, and somehow found herself at the base of her favorite grand oak tree. It stood massive and towering, limbs curving and snaking toward the sun, the silent keeper of memories and secret moments. Raelle braced a hand against its rough bark, pushing until it dug into her skin. She had to collect herself, or at least fake it as best she could, before her next set of classes, which included even more testing with Izadora. Or else she’d never hear the end of it from Abigail and Tally.

When her anger had cooled from a boil to a simmer, Raelle rounded the tree, intending to settle between it’s exposed roots, only to receive an unexpected jolt when she found her spot already occupied.

By Scylla.

Because, of course, it had to be Scylla. Sitting under Raelle’s favorite tree. Their tree. Where they had stolen kisses from each other and made plans for the future. Where Scylla had once lifted Raelle and spun her in her arms, carefree and in love.

Raelle’s chest constricted at the realization.

“S-sorry,” Raelle stuttered out. “I didn’t realize anyone was here.”

Startled, Scylla dropped the pen she had been holding. It rolled into the gutter of the journal she had been writing in. “Raelle…”

Crystal blue eyes widening behind a pair of black, wire-framed reading glasses. They reminded Raele of the ones Scylla used to wear late at night in her dorm room, studying thick tomes on mycology and necromancy while Raelle dozed on her bed after a long day in the rough room.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Raelle started to back away.

“You don’t have to leave,” Scylla regained her composure and picked up her pen. “I can go.”

“No, you were here first.” Raelle turned to leave. “I’ll just….” Her heel caught one of the tree’s gnarled roots. She stumbled slightly, but managed to maintain her balance, if not her dignity, face red with embarrassment.

Scylla chewed at her bottom lip. “You know, it’s a big tree. And we’re big girls. We can both stay without bothering each other.”

Raelle almost laughed. They both knew that would be impossible. And yet, the way Scylla regarded her with no expectations, an open invitation with no pressure, it made Raelle want to believe they could do it. Co-exist. If not exactly peacefully, then at least politely.

For the mission.

At least, that’s what Raelle told herself as she ignored all her survival instincts and sat on the ground, back against the crags of the trunk a few meters away from Scylla.

Silence blanketed them, not quite comfortable but not unbearable either, as a gentle breeze ruffled the branches overhead. Scylla’s pen scratched softly against paper, and Raelle stole a glimpse of Scylla out of the corner of her eye. The sun’s rays rippled down through the leaves, light and shadow flickering over Scylla’s gorgeous profile, head bent and dark hair swaying in the wind as she resumed writing.

Unlike Willa, Scylla made no efforts to address the unspoken tension between them–more massive than any proverbial elephant. Didn’t try to explain, or apologize, beyond what had already transpired between them in that prison cell so many moons ago. Raelle wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, or if it would even change anything, regardless.

Her stomach sank anyway.

Because unlike with Willa, Raelle felt remorse regarding Scylla, who had been captured and tortured because she had chosen Raelle over the Spree. Regret had burrowed inside Raelle’s heart the moment Scylla had pleaded with her in that horrible dungeon. Had transformed into a gnawing guilt that continued to fester long after Raelle callously dismissed Scylla anyway, wanting to break Scylla heart the way Scylla had broken hers. Raelle had no idea how to fix it, or if she even could.

“How’s your chin?” Scylla broke the stillness.

Raelle gingerly touched the healed skin. She’d almost forgotten it had been burned in the first place. “All fixed up. Which is more than I can say about Treefine’s hair.” She had no idea the High Atlantic could screech that loudly.

Scylla let out a soft chuckle. “It’ll grow back.”

“Not at the rate we’re going.” Raelle ran her fingers through the grass, tips tickling her palm.

“It’s only the first day,” Scylla said. “It gets easier.”

“Oh yeah? How long did it take you?” Raelle asked and then instantly wished she could take it back. Scylla’s parents had probably taught her, and here she was bringing up those painful memories. “Sorry, I…”

“It’s okay.” Scylla shook her head. “A while. I didn’t want to get burned. But, eventually, you get used to it. Learn not to fear it. Until you feel nothing at all.”

I’ve been burned before, Scylla had told Raelle that one time, deep in the cemetery in the woods. Both literally and figuratively. And Raelle had contributed to it. They’d both hurt each other, intentionally and unintentionally. Raelle’s heart throbbed against her ribs. She wanted to reach out, but knew she couldn’t. Not any more.

Before she could respond, someone called out Scylla’s name. A young woman with long, brown hair beckoned from a distance. Raelle frowned.

“I have to go,” Scylla removed her glasses, voice soft. Closing her journal, she pushed herself onto her feet and dusted off her pants. “See you around, Raelle.”

“Scyl, wait,” Raelle blurted out, scrambling to her feet. She didn’t know what possessed her, but she had to get this out.

Scylla paused, head tilting slightly.

“What I said back then.” Raelle licked her suddenly dry lips. “About being sorry we ever met.” Hot shame spread across Raelle’s cheeks. “I didn’t mean it.”

Scylla’s expression shifted through a myriad of emotions–surprise, pain, and sadness conveyed in each subtle twitch of her mouth and crease of her brow–until the sea of her eyes calmed. Softened.

“Thank you,” Scylla whispered before she quickly turned around and walked away.

#raylla #motherland fort salem #raelle collar #scylla ramshorn #motherland fort salem fic

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grandducktale · 4 years ago

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“All Yet Seems Well” - Game of Thrones, Dexter, YGO, and the legitimately troubling trend and implication of “the problem play’s” re-emergence in pop culture

So first off, spoilers, naturally. Gonna be talking tragedy here. Also, cringe warning. I’m going to use mostly anime here. Kid cartoons, even. But there’s a point to all this. If you were fans of Dexter or the television series “Game of Thrones”, any show that had more than anything an “unsatisfying finale” you might be able to pick up what I’m putting down.

What is a tragedy? The definitions vary, but it is a troubling or melancholic story with an unhappy ending.

A Tragic Hero is easy enough to define. Hamlet from Hamlet, and Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop. These two men are tragic because they pass away, and are unable to fully protect what they hold dear. But... I wouldn’t say they’re truly tragic. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to be either of them, but Spike Spiegal and Hamlet do to an extent accomplish some of their goals, and go out in a blaze of glory, score a moral victory, something.

(Pictured Above: Spike saying “Bang” as he bleeds out after killing his nemesis and destroying half a criminal empire in a wild one man blaze of glory)

This post is not about those characters. This post is not even about tragedy, necessary. This post is about problems. Problem plots, problem characters, and problematic implications. The title of this post is “All Yet Seems Well”, because the shows and the characters I am about to discuss are highly reminiscient of Shakespeare’s “Problem Plays.”

To start, let me bring up the character of Shouzu Hiiragi from Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V(a cartoon about children playing competitive card games Konami makes to sell trading cards). Arc-V is basically the “problem play” of YGO, if said play had a caged gorilla break out and steal the spotlight for the last third of the performance. “Problem Play” is a vernacular used to refer to three of Shakespeare’s plays that couldn’t quite be pegged into tragedy or comedy, that provoked discussion either about the plot’s structure, the means used to resolve the problem, or both. For those not even slightly into Shakespeare, I’ve always viewed the operetta The Yeomen of the Guard as Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Problem Play”, so to speak, though Yeomen might as well be a straight up tragedy relative to Gilbert and Sullivan’s other works.

But what makes a “Problem Play” a “problem play”, precisely? Well, since we’re talking about YGO Arc-V, lets go to Act V of one of Shakespeare’s “Problem Plays”, All’s Well That Ends Well. Act V, scene three, to be precise.

King: Let us from point to point this story know, To make the even truth in pleasure flow: If thou beest yet a fresh uncropped flower, Choose thou thy husband, and Ile pay thy dower. For I can guesse, that by thy honest ayde, Thou keptst a wife her selfe, thy selfe a Maide. Of that and all the progresse more and lesse, Resoluedly more leasure shall expresse: All yet seemes well, and if it end so meete, The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

So to understand the “problem” with the above(besides finding a more contemporary translation and supplementing that with sparknotes, tvtropes, and google), one must understand the gist of the plot of “All’s Well That Ends Well.”

Basically, the protagonist of the play, a common girl by the name of Helena, has just prevailed in her desire to marry the love of her life, the highborne Ward of France, Bertram. The audience and the reader should in theory rejoice in such a moment. Helena was given the ability to choose her husband as a reward for saving the ill King, and though she picked Bertram and stipulated that he did not have to marry her, and though Bertram did not directly reject her but instead provided her with two nigh impossible tasks that required guile, intelligence, and strength to prevail, something just seems off. (Perhaps this is why the King says “All Yet Seems Well)

What is it that is off? Is it that Helena was for whatever reason the only one in France capable of curing the King? Is it that for someone as skilled and cunning as Helena, telling Bertram he doesn’t have to marry her is pointless? Is it Bertram’s own psychological manipulation, to the point that even if these two people married and truly did love each other, that their happiness is a righteous person’s misery? That doubt, that uncertainty, the vague feeling that runs contrary to the overt, happy plot is what makes up a “Problem Play.”

Shozu Hiiragi is tragic not because of a vague sense of malice or villainy inherent in his character like Helena. No, in fact, he is an authentic version of the “Noble Commoner” facade that makes Helena so problematic. YGO Arc-V is about a kid named Yuya trying to make it as an entertainer after his father left him at a very young age, vanishing into thin air. Yuya was bullied severely, and his father was supportive and this larger than life figure. Naturally, his abrupt disappearance was a traumatic event for Yuya.

Yuya compensates for this disappearance and his past by playing Pagliacci, a sad clown. The Pagliacci thing aside, the show makes it quite clear in the first three episodes that Yuya holds on so tightly to his identity as an entertainer because of the absence created by his father’s disappearance

Now before I get to Shouzu Hiiragi, I have to talk about Yuzu. Yuya’s childhood friend and sweetheart is a girl named Yuzu Hiiragi.

Shouzou Hiiragi is a lifetime friend and operator of Yushou’s entertainer school. To summarize without being too spoilery, the audience eventually finds out that both Yuya and Yuzu are alot more important than they seem, and that they sort of just... appeared one day as babies. This is where Shouzu starts to become tragic, since we learn that not only did he raise a child that wasn’t his, he did so as a single father

So Shouzu was second banana to Yushou, but he was an entertainer of some renown. He gave it up so he could raise his adopted child, and later on, act as the operator of “You-Show Duel School”, a school named after Yusho but ran by Shouzu since Yushou disappeared.

Now there’s a lot of issues with Arc-V. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. I am focusing on Shouzu but there’s so much to talk about with how this series has a lot of problems that its tone clashes far too hard with. But I’ll show a meme image out of context for the heck of it.

I focus on Shouzu because he is the legitimate avenue towards Yuya and the show’s main conflict of balancing entertainment with legitimate hurt, dangerous conflict, and immense suffering and pain. He is a man who does good and puts his ambition aside out of alturism to start, but more than that, he is a genuine father figure to Yuya despite all that is on his plate.

Like his costume of flame suggests, Shouzu is hot-blooded and passionate. As the plot progresses, Yuya struggles with doing what is right, being a good entertainer, preserving his father’s legacy, and a whole bunch of things. The advice of his father, Yusho, and the advice of his mother, Yoko, is to “smile when he feels like crying”

This advice isn’t bad, but it is a crutch and a mantra for Yuya, one the direction of the show itself portrays as unhealthy and stunted. (When Yuya cries, he tends to wear his goggles so as to not let it show). So let’s analyze a sequence near the beginning of Arc-V��s 140+ episode. Yuya had obtained a special power like any Campbell Hero, but his rival, Reiji Akaba managed to copy said power in a duel against him(Which Yuya won, anyways albeit due to Reiji having bigger things to deal with)

Being bullied and having a traumatic past, then obtaining a special power unique to him that allows him to win duels, and then LOSING that special power, gets to Yuya a lot, even if he is plenty competent as a duelist.

So he runs away in tears.

Shozou hits Yuya with some facts about how naturally, if a technique or special ability in a game was discovered that gave someone an edge, it would only be a matter of time before other competitors used it too. But Shouzou then challenges Yuya to a duel, and instead of telling him to smile instead of cry, instead re-frames Yuya’s situation of losing his unique ability in a postive and constructive manner

A lot goes on in Arc-V, but the pendulum that Yuya swings back and forth on is the legacy of his father and becoming his own person. Shozou, who is Yuya’s de facto father, provides a path towards the latter.

But... to make a long story short, Shozou is forgotten about. Yuya keeps chasing after his father, and the lesson he learned from Shozou is forgotten. Arc-V, which if you haven’t been able to tell from my essay on the main character’s girlfriend’s dad has an amazing ensemble cast, and spends 50 episodes developing these great ensemble characters.

But in the next 50 episodes, the ensemble characters fade into the background, and Yuya takes center stage only to repeatedly just smile and want to be like his father.

And in the last 50 episodes, the show gets downright mean spirited. A likable ninja character that has the design of a generic henchmen is killed off unceremoniously, an unlikable legacy character manages to shrug off that fate with ease.

All the while, the show keeps this upbeat tone of optimism and Yuya triumphing.

And Yuya does triumph, he does save the day, but it’s all wrong.

I am only skimming the surface here, but the reaction I saw and was invoked in me about Arc-V’s ending was the same reaction I saw with Game of Thrones’s ending.

Something along the lines of “I don’t mind a bad ending, so long as it is tonally consistent and not a confused mess!”

Were this sentiment unique to Arc-V that’d be it. But it is applies to the end of Game of Thrones, Dexter, Netflix’s Watchmen, damn near EVERYTHING that was popular this past decade. This trend of something having a strong beginning and then fading into tonal nonsense, to the point that the viewers either speculate on finding the “true” “hidden” meaning of a piece

, or worse yet, an active desire for a bad or evil ending, so long as that evil at least makes sense

So I have a bad feeling about all of this. Not just because a series I liked went down the toilet, but because, well, remove all these other mainstream series with promising beginnings that nosedove into the ground and crashed and burned, and what’s the most recent universally acclaimed show left?

That’s it. Breaking Bad. A nihilistic story of personal triumph at the destruction of everything else. Which has its place. But with Arc-V, with Game of Thrones, with all these shows, I see a trend of the absurd entering and ruining a show, which leaves people craving order, even if that order is horrible.

I mentioned Gilbert and Sullivan before, so I’ll end this rambling essay with a quote from a song from the Mikado that was allegedly almost cut from it.

“ My object all sublime I shall achieve in time — To let the punishment fit the crime — The punishment fit the crime; And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent A source of innocent merriment! Of innocent merriment!”

The Mikado is a tale about the absurd and chaotic, the same absurdity that seems to be turning audiences to darker, more orderly, things. But the Mikado showcases both the trouble of the absurd, and the genuine opportunity and chance for grace the absurd provides.

In my opinion, Problem Play Plots are actually tragedies more tragic than regular tragedies. Borderline horror, even. They bring up problems, and the easiest solution to those problems seems to be that of tragic selfish scheming. But perhaps that needn’t actually be the case. That a benevolent and convincing solution to these problem plots exist - one people can accept, and be inspired by, in a good way.

And if that can’t be done, if the trauma and chaos of these shows serves no point, then the Gordian Knot of problem play plots must be cut. The damage they have done must be acknowledged, the mystery boxes resolved or done away with entirely.

#spoilers #Game of Thrones #Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V #Arc-V #Dexter #Breaking Bad #Shakespeare

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royallyprincesslilly · 5 years ago

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Title: Bet You Can’t {1}

Chris Evans x Uriah & Chris Hemsworth x Summer

Crossover-Collab Four-Part Miniseries

Warning: Cursing, Plot, Fun, and Games, Mild Raunchy Talk

Words: 2.2K

Summary: Uriah and Chris are happily married. A night of relaxing with your best friends Chris and Summer Hemsworth brings up “No Nut November.” Once you hear it, you know where it’s leading. IT was all jokes until somehow it turned serious. The Chris’ strike a full-on bet while dragging their better halves into the madness. The rules are simple, for the entire month of November none of you will have sex, none of you will get that nut in any way. Whichever couple makes it get bragging rights, and the 10k pool bet money. Whichever couple doesn’t make it has to change their social media name to “Failed NNN” for a week and post/tweet as normal and go on IG live to announce their failure. The bet is rigged though when Uriah and Summer decide to sabotage their husbands and make a side bet on who could make their husband fail quicker. All’s fair in love and war, and this is war.

Note: Got this idea from a group conversation with my friends, where a debate broke out about women being stronger and more able to survive NNN than men. It got me thinking, hmmm we know Chris has a dirty mind, dirty mind has to equal freak and always wanting to fool around.

It was too much fun working with @oceanscorazon a while back for her part one to out first collab titled Rumors & Waves. Look out for part two coming soon. I had to do it again. Thank you to the beautiful and phenomenal Amber @oceanscorazon for agreeing to this!!!

This will be a four part story to be posted one chapter a week to show what November is like for Chris and Uriah. @oceanscorazon will also write four parts to show that November is like for Chris and Summer.

***So for Chris and Uriah’s timeline, this is before the events of Rumor Has It.

🍁 🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁

“Oh my god, you guys are so dumb. I cannot even deal right now!”

You couldn’t contain your laughter. Perhaps it was you being at your utmost comfort level, or the fact you were genuinely having a great time or the insane amount of alcohol you’d consumed. Whatever it was, your ugly dork laugh had come out of hiding.

“Oh my god, the dork laugh has returned,” Chris teased, pointing at you from across the huge firepit. Everyone laughed louder as you narrowed your eyes at your husband.

“Oh shut up, you know you love my dork laugh.”

“I do, you’re right. I kinda have to though right, we’re married.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing, sweetheart, just it’s very suspect this laugh of yours didn’t emerge until we’d been married for a week.”

You all laughed harder, fully getting the meaning of his words.

“Oh, mate, are you really implying that you’d have had second thoughts marrying her if you’d heard the laugh before?”

Chris shrugged his shoulders with a smirk on his face before he finished his drink. Summer and Hemsworth roared out with “ohs.” You rolled your eyes at him.

“I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I don’t think anything could have stopped me from marrying her. It was inevitable,” Chris clarified, shooting an enamored smile your way.

“It was inevitable. From the night you got between these thighs, your fate was sealed,” you gibed. Again, you all laughed heartily.

“I agree with Riah; everyone saw how captivated you were once you met. We all placed bets on how long it would be until you married her,” Summer announced.

“Yeah, it was record-breaking time too,” Hemsworth slipped in.

You smiled at Chris, making your way around the firepit to sit on his lap. Chris wrapped his muscular arms around you and placed a kiss on your jawline. “When you know you know,” he finished.

“Aww, baby.”

Your lips met his in a sweet kiss, then turned passionate. Chris pulled you closer, and before anything could turn dirty you pulled back. You heard the low grunt that caught in his throat as he gave you a look that spoke of desire. You knew what was in store for you when you got home.

“You guys are so stinking cute. Five years and still acting like newlyweds,” Summer broke in as Hemsworth leaned over to kiss her temple as the words left her mouth. She smiled and turned to her husband and kissed him softly.

“Look who’s talking,” Chris quipped.

“Oh, can’t believe it’s the last of October already,” Hemsworth lamented with a groan.

You all knew what the end of October meant. It meant that you all were now just two months away from getting back to work from your vacations from filming. Hemsworth and Summer were set to get back into superhero mode with Marvel. You’d been signed to two new roles that were set to shoot back to back while you worked on your debut album in between all of it. Chris, on the other hand, was exploring and filming a few new roles since his departure from Captain America. The silence stretched as the threat of work hung in the air between the four of you.

“I saw something funny on Twitter the other day. There are a bunch of people posting about starting and participating in something called “No Nut November,” Chris began.

You and Summer groaned in unison as your eyes met. You knew what your best friend was thinking without a word.

Hemsworth cleared his throat in true Chris Hemsworth exaggerated jokester fashion then began. “Ah, I know this one. It’s when in November, people commit to not having sex.”

“It’s stupid. I never understood why anyone would do that?” Eyes went to you as you finished your bottle of beer. When you realized it you looked at the three of them “What? Sex is a natural, healthy and fun part of being human. Why would anyone want to get rid of it?”

Summer and Hemsworth laughed again.

“Guess we know what goes on behind closed doors now, huh Mrs. Evans,” Summer joked as her husband snickered with her.

“Hey, we’re adults, and we won’t be shamed,” Chris said coming to your defense.

“No shame at all, boo,” Summer piped up.

“I don’t’ see the big deal. I’d be able to handle it easy,” Summer’s husband added as she nodded right beside him.

You felt Chris’ grip tighten around your waist while his other hand dropped to squeeze the flesh where your upper thigh and ass met. His giant hand was blazing hot. Chris only got this hot when he’d gotten some drinks in him, and his body was turning the alcohol into fuel—but fuel for something else entirely. Your eyes locked onto his to see his teeth sink into his bottom lip. You smiled and mouthed, “behave.” He smiled and buried his face into your neck and teased the sensitive flesh there.

“Eh-em!” You turned to find Summer and co looking at you.

“Hm?”

“Guess we got our answer, you and Evans definitely wouldn’t make it. You’re both too weak,” Summer teased.

“Woah, woah, are we forgetting who was the one playing Captain America, the first strongest avenger?”

Everyone rolled their eyes. “Bro, you’re like an old quarterback who just won’t let go of his glory days. We get it sport, you were the best or one of them, but let’s not forget about who the actual god of thunder is,” Hemsworth gloated while flexing his muscle. You noticed Summer’s broad smile as she stared at her husband’s arm.

“I just don’t appreciate being called weak. My wife and I would more than be able to make it because we’re physically and mentally strong,” Chris professed, sitting up in his Adirondack chair. Your eyes dropped to him, trying to give him the signal to abort what he was saying because you saw where this was heading.

“Oh, so you think you’d be able to win this thing?” Hemsworth added.

The two of them always loved to goad each other. One time, Chris had goaded Hemsworth into a beer drinking match while you and Summer were left as the innocent bystanders watching your husbands act like children, then you had to be the ones to take care of them after they’d both surpassed their limits. It ended in vomit, and neither of you were happy, which finished with both of them being in the doghouse for several weeks. Another time Hemsworth goaded Chris into a surfing challenge knowing full well Chris was not a surfer. He grew up in Boston. That resulted in Chris getting stung by a jellyfish and Hemsworth having to pee on him. You and summer laughed your asses off but never heard the end of it from either of your husbands.

Then there was that time they both tricked each other into some whacky challenge to drive for an hour completely naked. That ended up with both of them getting pulled over by the cops who found it amusing and let them go, but they were then spotted by TMZ and ended up being on the show with the headline “Fast and Furious Streaking Chris’.” It was hilarious, but neither of them lived it down for several months. You and Summer knew this was about to get out of hand.

“Guys,” you began, but neither of them batted an eye to your but in into the conversation. They simply continued debating the issue of who had the mental strength to do it.

“Hello! We the wives have something to say,” Summer attempted. Her husband briefly looked to her then back to Chris.

“Hold on, baby, the men--husbands are in the middle of something.”

Summer’s jaw dropped, and you couldn’t help but laugh. You knew when they got like this, neither you or Summer would get a word in. You stood from Chris’ lap and walked over to the cooler where the drinks were with Summer following behind you. They didn’t even seem to notice.

The two of you stood there and watched your husbands, and loves of your lives continue on as if you weren’t even there. “This won’t end well,” Summer began.

“Oh, girl, I know.”

“Why must they always try to do this one up game?”

You shrugged because you honestly didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t a male thing because sometimes women got into it as well, but with men, it was on a whole different level.

“Remember when Chris dared Evans to hold that rattlesnake saying he’d held them hundreds of times?”

You and Summer snickered at the memory. Hemsworth hadn’t touched it but lied his ass off, and Chris fell for it and held it with no problem only when it was Hemsworth’s turn he chickened out, then Chris chased him around with it.

“For a man who lives in Australia, you’d think him, and the rattlers would be best buds,” Summer joked.

“Remember the time they got into a literal race on Sunset?”

Summer rolled her eyes. The four of you were going to dinner together. After leaving your house, Chris and Hemsworth got into a pissing match over who could run the fastest. It went on and on for the whole eight-mile car drive. When you’d gotten to Sunset both of them got out the car and raced down to the restaurant, leaving you and Summer to drive the vehicles there. When you arrived, it was decided that they’d tied, which led to talks of a rematch.

It was exhausting having them together, but it sure was great comedy. Suddenly both of them stood.

“It’s settled then,” Hemsworth said.

“Damn right it is,” Chris repeated. Both of them looked to you with huge smiles on their faces.

“We’ve decided that we’re participating in this No Nut November, and we’re going to win,” Hemsworth began.

You and Summer quickly spat out your mouthfuls of beer and gaped at your husbands. When neither of their smiles faltered, and neither spoke you and Summer looked to each other clearly thinking the same thing.

“What the fuck!?” It came out at the same time, and the confusion and shock you both felt clearly and precisely came across.

“No Nut November, for the entire month of November,” Chris began before you cut him off.

“I know what the hell No Nut November is Christopher. I’m not an idiot! What the hell do you mean we’re participating? Who decided that?”

“We did,” he informed, motioning between him and Chris.

“Oh, so you two are fucking each other?”

“Really, Summer?”

“That is the only way you two could come up and decide something that involves your wives as well,” Summer continued.

“Babe, we’ve got this. We’ve been married longer and have way more self-control than these two noobs,” Hemsworth slid in as he approached her.

“Hey! We have self-control!” Your outburst was not to defend this stupid idea; it was to defend you and Chris as a couple.

“Sure you do,” Hemsworth added with a snort. “Summer, it’ll be easy, like taking candy from a baby.”

“Whatever, you two are the ones who couldn’t keep your hands off each other during filming. Our godchildren were conceived because you couldn’t practice professionalism and control,” Chris dropped in. Your eyes bugged as did Summers.

“Wow, you went there, Evans? Really?” Chris shrugged his shoulders so matter of factly that you had no choice but to laugh.

“Really, Riah!”

“I’m sorry, I really am. You have to admit though, that was the perfect slide in. He read you both.” You did your best to stop smiling, but it was difficult.

“I say we take this bet and show them what winners look like,” Hemsworth added.

“Not a good idea,” Summer finished.

“We already have a bet Summer. The Evans’ will bring this home!”

“Whatever mate, the Hemsworths are going to claim this victory.”

“Rules are simple. For the entire month of November, neither of us will have sex. None of us will get any nut,” Chris explained as his eyes went from Summer to Hemsworth and then to you.

You and Summer were just stunned as to how this happened, especially with them completely ignoring what the two of you had to say about it.

“Whichever couple makes it gets bragging rights, and the pool bet money. I’m putting down five grand Summer, and I have this.”

“Well, I’m putting down five grand Riah, and I more than have this,” Chris countered.

You rolled your eyes and looked to Summer. She was still frozen, just watching her husband speak.

“Whichever couple doesn’t make it has to change their social media name to “Failed NNN” for a week and post/tweet as normal.”

“Easy. I’m gonna raise that bet, on top of changing your name you have to go on IG live and announce that you failed and lost to us,” Chris raised.

“Oh ho, deal!” Hemsworth and Chris shook hands and looked to the two of you. Again, neither you or Summer spoke. Your husbands walked off together, throwing themselves back into conversation as if they hadn’t just committed to a month of torture without consulting either of you.

“What just happened?”

“Girl, we just got fitted for and shackled with our chastity belts for November,” you informed.

“Ain’t that a--.” Summer started, as the two of you just stood there looking at the men you loved who’d just started yet another war with each other, which had the two of you dealing with the fallout.

“Bitch,” you finished.

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

***If you want to be tagged please SEND AN ASK SO IT WILL BE EASIER FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF. Thank you for reading!!!

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

TagList:

@chrisgalore @chaneajoyyy @rynabarnesrogers @disneysdarlingdiva @bellaamor88 @ab-baybay @sonjashuterbugjohnson @caramara3 @patzammit

#bet you can't fic #Chris Evans #Chris Hemsworth #chris evans fanfiction #chris hemsworth fanfiction #Chris Evans X black reader #chris hemsworth x black reader #chris evans x you #chris hemsworth x you #chris evans x reader #chris hemsworth x reader #no nut november

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aticklishtem · 5 years ago

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Weakness of Doom

((oh boy here I go bringing my bullshit into a new decade again~ this is dedicated to @ticklishjevil bc she is 100% to blame for my descent into ZADR hell and generally inspiring/encouraging the creation of this...thing!! I hope you’re proud of yourself darling 💖

ALSO I’m very sorry if the spacing/formatting is borked tumblr mobile is terrible but I am doing my best to fix as we speak ;w; ))

***

“Give it up, Zim! You’ll never get away with this!”

Dib had lost count of how many times he’d said that by now. Eight years, countless crazy schemes, a couple near total obliterations of the galaxy as they knew it and an almost equal tally of humiliating defeats and triumphant (if temporary) victories for both sides - somehow, it always seemed to come back to the two of them. Dib, Zim, the doomsday device of the day and this seemingly endless chase that remained as frustrating yet exhilarating as it was the day the green kid first rocked up to class. Would it ever end? That almost didn’t seem to matter at this point - this was the life Dib had chosen. As long as Zim was around, he had a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, a duty to the rest of humankind to keep protecting his planet from impending extraterrestrial invasion...even if most of them remained too dumb to appreciate his efforts.

“You’re too late, Dib-stink!” cried the bug-eyed bane of his existence, waving around some kind of remote with a red button. “Just one press of this button, and every single whiffy signal -“

“...do you mean wi-fi?”

“Zim knows what Zim means!” he barked, an antenna twitching with irritation. “As I was saying, every signal will be scrambled, and without their mind-numbing entertainment, your fellow earthworms will inevitably turn on each other! Leaving the planet defenceless for when I, Zim...figure out how to do whatever it is I need to do to destroy you all!”

“Noooo! That’s…” Dib paused mid-dramatic wail. “Actually a pretty solid plan? I mean, I can see your logic. It’s definitely an improvement on some of your others, like that one with the rubber chickens -“

“Silence!” Zim pointed an accusing claw at him, though Dib could’ve sworn he preened a little at the almost-compliment, puffing up his chest and planting his free hand on his hip. “Of course it is foolproof! And if you imagine for a second that the amazing Zim could ever become so distracted by his own ingeniousness that he could be lured into monologuing until a hypothetical opportunity might arise for someone to take - hey gimme that back!”

Fortunately, some things had changed in all those years; puberty had been at least kind enough to Dib so he could now dangle his superior height - literally and metaphorically - over Zim’s head. “Sorry, what’d you say?” he taunted, holding his prize high out of his enemy’s reach after snatching it from his claws. “I couldn’t hear because of how much taller I am!”

His moment of glory was cut short, however, as Zim launched himself at him with a hiss like a feral cat, sending them both crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs and antennae. They were still surprisingly evenly matched; Zim was a lot stronger than his size would suggest, but Dib now had the advantage of longer arms and legs to attempt to hold him off as they wrestled for the device. He might even have been winning - right up until Zim grabbed his side, claws digging into the sensitive spot just below his ribs.

Dib yelped, reflexively slamming his arm down to protect himself; before either could do anything, the remote flew out of his hand and across the room until it disappeared under one of Zim’s experiment tanks. Instead of running after it, Zim took advantage of the distraction to seize Dib’s wrist, pinning him to the floor.

“Ha!” Zim loomed over him, now straddling Dib’s waist so his maniacal grin filled his whole vision. “You flesh-bags really are pitiful, cowering in pain from the slightest touch!”

“That’s not what that - was…” Dib froze, heat rising to his cheeks as his nemesis bore down on him, now painfully aware of his compromising position. Zim couldn’t - did he even know what tickling was? Because this would be a really bad time for him to find out.

“...Eh?” Zim narrowed his eyes, curiosity flickering across his face alongside the usual suspicion and irritation. “What are you smiling about? Why is your grotesquely ginormous head so red?!”

“My head’s not bihihig!” Dib bit down on his lip, but he couldn’t stop a few embarrassing giggles from slipping out when Zim jabbed at his ribs again. He struggled to bat his hand away, but with only one arm free and Zim basically sitting on top of him, he wasn’t having much success. “Quihihit ihit!”

A shiver ran down his spine as he could practically see his doom unfold along with Zim’s smile, sadistic delight sparkling in his eyes, and oh god no Dib thought he was prepared for anything but please not this, anything but this, he’ll never live it down…

“Well, well - you really thought you could conceal such a glaring weakness from me?” he demanded, mercilessly prodding and pinching his way up Dib’s side. “I’d...sort of imagined more writhing in excruciating agony, but this is rather amusing too, watching you squirm like the wretched worm you are!”

“Thihis isn’t fahahahair!” Dib spluttered between peals of laughter; he hadn’t been tickled since he was a little kid, but this was so much worse because it was Zim and he hated giving him the satisfaction but was equally powerless to stop his body from reacting as those probing claws dug right into his horribly exposed armpit. “Zihihihim!”

“Yes, yes, I am Zim!” his foe cackled, releasing Dib’s wrist to attack with both hands, one even scuttling under his shirt - which was so far beyond fair - and scratching at the tender skin almost hard enough to hurt, but his gloves dulled the sensation so it just tickled even more. “If I had known you were this easily incapacitated, I could’ve built a device to take care of you long ago! Now, laugh, pathetic Dib-thing - admit your annihilation, or perish in helpless hysteria at the merciless claws of Zim!”

“Nehehehever - !” Dib had not foiled so many of Zim’s plans to let him win this one by tickling him, of all the cruel and unusual methods. There was only one way to fight back, and he had no idea if it’d even work on an alien, but what else did he have to lose, more of his dignity? Arms flailing as he tried desperately to suck in his stomach before those treacherous claws could get to his bellybutton, he eventually managed to grab a handful of Zim’s side and squeeze it repeatedly.

Zim let out a squawk like a bird having its feathers pulled out, letting go of Dib as he scrabbled to slap his hands away. “D-do not touch Zim with your fihilthy meat-sticks!”

Huh - that sounded like a game-changer, and now it was Dib’s turn to grin like a mad scientist as he kneaded Zim’s sides like his life depended on it - which it might - until he had an armful of squirming Irken trapped in an almost-hug, one arm around Zim’s waist with his PAK pressing against Dib’s chest.

“What’s the matter, does it tickle?” he asked, smirking from ear to ear as he savoured the sweetness of revenge - and possibly the most important discovery of his career as a paranormal investigator. “Is the mighty Invader Zim ticklish?”

“Lies! Cease! Ihihi’m gonna destrohohoy yooooou…!”

It wasn’t like he’d never heard Zim laugh before - only like every day since they were at skool - but this was different; less controlled and mocking, more free and almost joyful, even if it was a joy forced upon him as he writhed, kicked and cackled under Dib’s skittering fingers, exploring the surprisingly soft and smooth skin under his shirt. It wasn’t exactly an autopsy, but the thought that he might be the first to hear - the first to make Zim almost squeal when he wiggled his fingers under his arms - that was more deeply, weirdly, sadistically satisfying than anything he’d imagined. “Wow, I think you’re worse than I am! So are all Irkens this ticklish, or is it just you?”

“Zihim is telling you nohothihihihing!” Zim’s laughter seemed to jump an octave when Dib felt around his back; the skin around his PAK was slightly raised where it was embedded, which was interesting, mainly for the way he bucked and squirmed frantically as Dib traced it with his fingers. “GIR! Where are you?! Do something to make this stohohop!”

“Yes, master!”

Dib looked up just in time to see Zim’s robot assistant propelling towards him at alarming speed, his eyes blazing red. Before he could move to shield himself, however, GIR came to an abrupt stop, eyes flickering back to cyan and his metallic mouth stretching into its familiar hyperactive smile. “Ooooh! Tickle fight! I wanna plaaaay!”

“Now, GIR! Fire the - wait, no, what are you doing?! Put that back!” Both Zim’s and Dib’s eyes widened - in horror and intrigue respectively - as GIR plonked himself down on one of Zim’s legs, picked up the other and pulled his boot off. Dib had never actually seen his feet before, he realised; he had three toes, clawed like his fingers but a little shorter. Judging by how he scrunched them up when GIR prodded them, they were also pretty sensitive.

“This li’l piggy went to Foodcourtia,” GIR chirped, wiggling a toe; Zim made a strangled noise of protest and attempted to pull away, but Dib was still holding onto him. “This li’l piggy went home - aw, we outta piggies! And thiiis li’l piggy…”

“GIR - nooo!” Zim begged, and Dib could actually feel him tremble in his arms as his toes curled in anticipation of what was to come. “Don’t do this! You’re supposed to attack the intruder, not -“

“...went weeweeweeweeeeeeeee…!” GIR hugged Zim’s foot and scribbled furiously all over it, his tiny metal hands a blur as his master shrieked with laughter, helpless to escape his ticklish doom.

“How’s it feel, Zim, betrayed by your own minion?” Dib snickered along with him as it occurred to him he should probably be recording or taking photos of possibly the greatest moment of his life to date, but holding Zim captive and laughing helplessly was way too satisfying, tickling under his arms while GIR happily went to town on his foot. “Maybe I’ll just keep you like this - you’re not much of a threat to the Earth when you’re just a cute little giggly alien puddle…”

“Wh-whahahahahaaaaa?!”

The sheer incredulous outrage in Zim’s voice tore through the air, and Dib couldn’t help but wince, recoiling as the ear-splitting screech assaulted his eardrums. As his grip loosened, Zim wriggled free and kicked GIR off of him, scrambling back to his feet, and the chaos was replaced by an unusual and equally uncomfortable silence. (Apart from GIR eating popcorn out of his head as he watched them, and that was the most normal thing about this situation.)

“I - uh...“

“He thinks you cuuuute!” GIR giggled, grabbing Zim’s cheeks and squishing them together comically.

“No I don’t!” Dib felt his face flush under the spotlight of both GIR’s carefree smile and Zim’s laser-beam glare, the protest coming out just a little too quickly. “I was teasing you - it’s just a thing people say when they…”

He trailed off, because man, things had gotten weird, even by their standards. But this was still Zim, and he was still a jerk and evil and the total opposite of cute, even a little breathless with his clothes all rumpled and one foot still bare, antennae lowered and quivering and what looked suspiciously like an olive-coloured blush staining his cheeks. That warm feeling was just Dib enjoying the sight of his enemy humiliated in defeat, like anyone would. Right? That made sense.

“Give me my boot, GIR.”

“Go long!”

Zim caught the offending item without looking, but instead of putting it back on he hurled it at Dib, who dodged just before it smacked him in the face, bouncing off his shoulder instead.

“Ow - hey, that’s sharp!”

“Good! Suffer! That’s what you get for trying to taint the mighty name of Zim with your disgusting lies like…” He screwed up his face as if he could barely bring himself to spit out the word, making dramatic finger-quotes, “cute!”

“Okay, geez! It’s not like I meant it…” Dib rubbed his shoulder, shifting awkwardly - he wished they’d stop repeating the word like that. But even this momentary weirdness couldn’t change the fact that he’d just uncovered a significant weakness in his nemesis, even if he inconveniently shared it. He’d be an idiot not to exploit this for all it was worth, a smug grin tugging at his lips again as he picked up Zim’s boot. “But thanks for this. I bet I can get all kinds of useful evidence from a genuine article of alien clothing…”

“You…!” Zim’s eyes almost bugged out of his head as he let out an indignant splutter - only to break into a dangerously familiar smile before activating his PAK legs, towering over Dib with a renewed gleam of vengeance in his eye. “Enjoy your last few seconds of freedom, Dib-worm - we shall soon settle who is cute!”

“I’d like to see you - wait, what?!”

Dib didn’t have time to figure out what Zim meant by that as he darted for an escape route, still clutching Zim’s boot - but when he was quickly seized and hoisted into the air by a pair of metal spider legs, he was pretty sure things were only about to get a whole lot weirder.

But this was the life he’d chosen - and would he really want it any other way?

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (138/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[23 November, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

Through his mastery of the alchemical arts, King Rehval III Trismegistus had conquered the universe. The Saiyan had merged his life essense with the Planet Nagoka, making both impervious to any attack. The bulk of the Saiyan species had bound themselves to his will, and any galactic powers who dared to defy him would suffer the wrath of giant earthen creatures that he could control like puppets. The cult of Saiyans who served him had been in high spirits. Their greatest enemy, the Super Saiyan Luffa, had failed to destroy them, and she had fled the Nagaoka System, disgraced and alone.

Then she returned. King Rehval believed she had come back to die in a blaze of glory. For all her power, she was no match for him, or his army of alchemically powered Saiyans. He expected his warriors to hunt her down within a matter of hours.

Eight days later, Luffa was still at large, and the morale among Rehval's followers had declined sharply.

What frustrated everyone was that no one understood Luffa's plan. If she only wanted to die in battle, then there was no need to drag things out. Whatever she was trying to do, she needed at least eight days to make it happen, and in the meantime, Rehval's cult had been powerless to figure out what it was or how to stop it. The two prevailing sentiments among the cultists were:

"Why doesn't Trismegistus do something?"

And:

"Trismegistus has it all under control. Trust the plan."

Because of these contradictory opinions, the growing list of Luffa's victims were viewed both as "heroic martyrs" and "unfaithful losers".

From her lowly position in the cult, Lesseri heard it all. Scrubbing the breeding pits, she would catch parts of a conversation from passers-by. Trimming wicks for the candles, she would overhear idle chatter from the barracks. Disposing of diapers in the nursery, she would see how frightened the children were when they could sense Luffa's ki on the attack. There were a multitude of perspectives, but it boiled down to just two. Either their omnipotent leader couldn't kill Luffa, or he was allowing this terror to continue for unknown reasons.

Lesseri's own thoughts were usually focused on binaries like these. Strength and weakness, acceptance and rejection, good and evil. Of all the cultists, she had actually trained under Luffa during a brief period in her former life. The cult had a dim view of this past association, and Lesseri had been struggling to redeem herself ever since. She found herself awed by their grace, but also frustrated with the way they punished her for something so trivial.

For Luffa, that training camp had been a passing fancy to try to teach other Saiyans her ways. For Lesseri, it was just an opportunity to get close enough to kill her own mother. Vigurd had abandoned Lesseri and her sister in a gestation facility, and Lesseri had been bitter about it ever since. It seemed strange to Lesseri that the cult approved of her ruthless assassination, but not of the way she had manipulated Luffa to achieve it. It wasn't as if Luffa had passed on forbidden knowledge to Lesseri and the others. Mostly, Luffa had nagged them all for not being "Saiyan enough". Lesseri had dismissed Luffa as a hypocrite a long time ago, but the cult still demanded more contrition from her.

But now that Luffa was here, and Lesseri could sense that immense Super Saiyan ki once more, she was reminded of just how deeply Luffa's harsh words had cut. Luffa accused other Saiyans of cowardice. On Nat-Chezz, they had encountered a pair of aliens with the ability to to fool ki senses. They used this power to bluff stronger warriors into surrendering without a fight. Only Luffa had the courage to stand up to them, not because she saw through the deception, but because she alone wanted to fight enemies stronger than herself. The lesson of that incident had been lost on Lesseri that day, but now, Lesseri was experiencing it all over again. Nagaoka was supposed to be an invincible stronghold of power, and yet Luffa had dared to attack it all by herself. Rehval's followers had the advantage, and yet they were still anxious about what would happen to them. None of them were eager to die when they were so close to achieving final victory.

It hurt Lesseri to think about it. She had given herself over, body and soul, to Trismegistus, and yet her old frustrations and doubts still lingered. It had been convenient to blame everything on Luffa, but now she wondered if Luffa's only crime had been to point out the problems that had always been there. And now, she had come to Nagaoka to pass final judgment on them all.

Lesseri didn't know or care who would win in the end. She only knew that, no matter what happened, that Lesseri would surely lose...

*******

The surface of Nagaoka was desolate, but not completely uninhabitable. The persistent cloud cover made the scenery especially gloomy, but enough sunlight made it through to support some vegetation. Most of it was inedible, although Luffa had discovered some roots that were nutritious enough to justify the effort of picking them. Game was scarce. The apex predator in the grasslands of Nagaoka was a small, four-legged dinosaur that chased after rodents. It took patience to catch them, but that was no problem. She needed something to pass the time anyway.

As she chewed on the raw carcass of a fresh kill, she walked back to her latest campsite, which was little more than a small fire and a Saiyan skull she had been using to carry her stone tools. The only other item was her prisoner, a cultist she had captured on one of her raids, three days ago.

"I killed six more," she told him as she slung the carcass by the fire and picked up the skull. "They sent more after me, but it didn't help much. I think Rehval's trying to do a pincer thing this week."

The man lay helpless on the ground, his arms and legs fractured in several places. Luffa had hurt him so badly that he lacked the ki energy to be sensed by his comrades. She estimated that he would die in another day, if not sooner. She kept talking to him anyway.

"Pincer. You know what I mean? Spread out his forces across the planet, then when one group is close enough to engage, some of the others can come in from the other direction and cut off my escape. What he doesn't get is that it just gives me a bigger target to shoot at while I run away."

The man groaned, either from the pain of his injuries, or from hunger, or terror, or delirium, or from all of these. Luffa ignored him and began carving up her kill.

"Funny, that's the same thing Jerk Number Seven said when I killed his six buddies," Luffa said. "You should have seen it. They tried to surround me, but I rushed right into a group of them, like I was trying to slip between them. Then I set off an explosive wave right in the middle of them. The six died right off, but the seventh was far enough away that he just got hurt really bad. He's probably still alive, though. For now."

"Triis... mej... isssss..." the man tried to say.

"He's not here and he's not coming to save you," Luffa said. "You can pray to him all you want, but he doesn't give a damn about you. Idiot. You sold your pride to that fool, and he doesn't even know you're still alive. I doubt he'll bother giving you any medical attention, not after that stunt I pulled on their hospital ward a few days ago. No, he'll want to conserve his supplies for the healthiest troops. The ones who stand a chance of pulling through in time to defend his sorry ass. That won't be you."

She put the bulk of the dinosaur on a spit she had fashioned from a spear she had taken from one of her victims, and carefully positioned it over the fire. "Ahhhh," she said. "This is really gonna hit the spot. It's like the old proverb: hunger is the best seasoning. So how was your day? Anything cool happen while I was gone?"

"Wh-wh-why... are you... doing this?" the man whimpered.

Luffa lay down on the ground, propping her head up on a pile of brush she had gathered. "Really?" she asked. "I mean, we've been over all that, haven't we? I told you all about it. How Rehval's a monarchist fool. How he took my son from me. Twice. He wrecked my marriage-- although I'll take partial responsibility there. And he even showed me that my own species is a worthless band of hooligans that deserves to die. Oh, and he's trying to conquer the universe, which wouldn't bother me so much except for the rotten way he's going about it. Magic potions. Really, what is that?"

"Nooooo..." the man whispered. "Not that... Why...... why... keep me... alive?"

"Oh, that," Luffa said. See, it's actually pretty simple. I learned this when I was a kid. I guess your parents never filled you in on it. See, when you're up against a superior force, you can even the odds with some psychological warfare. Wreck their morale, they start making little mistakes. Before they know it, their advantage starts to fritter away. That's why I hit their medical supplies. I'd like to taint their water supply too, but I haven't planned that out yet. I may not have time to get around to it, actually. Make sure you tell Rehval that when you see them."

"See...?"

"Yeah, they should track down this camp before too much longer. If not, I'll just transform and they'll come running. I'll be long gone when they get here, but they'll find you. And you can tell them everything I've been telling you this whole time. Every last word. Or as much as you can remember. I think the message will get across."

"M-message...?"

"Yeah," Luffa said. "See, I'm not 'keeping you alive'. You'll die eventually, no matter what. But I want the others to see what I've done to you, and hear what I've said to you, and I want them to realize exactly what it is they're dealing with."

She reached into the pockets of her yellow pants and pulled out a wooden stick, about five inches in length. There were several notches cut along its length. As she spoke, she stared intently at it.

"I think a lot of them see me as some sort of ultimate foe, and they get to have this big epic showdown with me, or at least they can die for their master, quick and clean. Makes sense. I'm the Legendary Super Saiyan, and Rehval's taught them all that I'm the devil or something. They want a big dramatic battle, like in a movie. A few of them might get their wish. But not you. No, you get to suffer. And I want them to know that any one of them might get the same treatment as you. Or not. Some of them might luck out and take a Vengeance Cannon through the brain and die painlessly. Some choice, right?"

He shivered, either due to the cold, or the onset of some infection he had contracted, or perhaps simply because Luffa's words horrified him so. Luffa simply did not care. She watched her meal cooking, monitored enemy movements with her ki senses, and then carved another notch on her stick with her thumbnail.

*******

[25 November, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

"The water supply? You're absolutely certain that's what he said?"

The cultists who found Luffa's prisoner bowed low to the ground as they murmured in the affirmative. "He was insistent on this point, Master," said their leader. He rambled like a madman, repeating everything she had said, including many unspeakable insults towards you and your ancestors, but--"

"Enough," Rehval said. "Return to your duties. No, wait. You three." He gestured to the trio of men on the right side of the group. "Go and help the repair efforts on tunnel six. Dismissed."

Normally, he spoke to his followers in more parental tones, closing with words like "Let my triple-blessing be upon you," or "Go with Jindan, my children." But Luffa had been laying siege to his planet for ten days straight. He no longer felt the mood to keep up his role as Trismegistus, the almighty Alchemist Supreme. Even the easy diplomacy of King Rehval seemed to escape him these days. Nearly two thousand of his followers had been killed since Luffa had arrived on Nagaoka, and with each hit-and-run attack, Luffa always found a way to hint that this was only a warm-up act.

"Having trouble, dad?"

He had begun to find a measure of comfort in his daughter, the Princess Seltiss. In his heart of hearts, he had always viewed her as more of an apprentice in statecraft, or a great bridge he had engineered to lead the way to the future. Now that she was back in his life, and now that they were stuck together on this planet, he finally began to appreciate her as family. Of all the Saiyans on the planet, she knew him best, and was never afraid to speak her mind.

"You saw the man they brought in this morning," he grumbled as she walked into his chamber.

"Yeah, I just came from the infirmary. They just pronounced him dead," Seltiss replied. "I came over to tell you. His last words were something about the water resevoir--"

"I already know," Rehval said. "It's bait. It has to be. There's fresh water all over Nagaoka. Even if she does poison our wells, even if she takes out our geothermal stills, it would only be a minor inconvenience."

"Like the spaceport," Seltiss said. "And the medical supplies. And Tunnel Six. She's not interested in striking decisive blows. She's wearing us down, a little bit at a time."

"It's more than that!" he insisted. "She's... building towards something. She threatened to kill us all, even me, when she already knows that's impossible!"

Seltiss shrugged. "She probably thinks that if she kills enough of your followers, then you'll lose the power you took from them, and that'll weaken your connection with the planet," she said. "Could that work?"

"Not well enough to do her any good," Rehval said. "I need the Saiyans. Without them, my work has been in vain. But there are other Saiyans in the galaxy. Weaklings, and not many of them, but enough for me to begin anew. As for this planet, my connection to it is complete."

"Cool beans. Then you have nothing to fear," Seltiss said. "It's like you told us before. Luffa's no threat to you anymore."

"That doesn't matter!" Rehval shouted. He rarely raised his voice. He considered it one of his more admirable qualities. What surprised him more than his outburst was the way he had slammed his fist on the armrest of his throne. Without thinking, he had pulverized it, and sent cracks running down the right side of the seat.

Seltiss had never seen him like this before, and though she tried to mask the shock with cool indifference, he knew better. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed his forehead. "She is the serpent in my garden," he said. "Rebelling, even when there's no possible way for her to win. I have to kill her or control her, or my authority will never be absolute. Her defiance proves that I can never tame the Saiyan heart, no matter how completely I control the others."

"So control her," Seltiss said. "You keeps saying you have the power. Find her, and put an end to this."

"She can mask her ki, and somehow use it at the same time," Rehval said, more despondently than he meant the reply to sound. It was unseemly for him to whine before his own child. "I suspected that she could do something like this, but I didn't realize to what extent. The squads can't find her."

"Then take away her hiding places," Seltiss said. "We know she's living off the land. Like, you keep saying you are the planet now. You can do with it as you please, right? Take the land away from her, and what does she have?"

Throughout this crisis, a thin beard had begun to grow on Rehval's face. He had been too preoccupied to shave. Now, he rubbed the stubble thoughtfully as he considered his daughter's advice.

*******

[30 November, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

Luffa waited for the squad of cultists to fly directly overhead, and then she attacked, transforming into her Super Saiyan form so quickly that none of them had time to react. There were twenty of them in all. The first died instantly, and she used an explosive wave to kill two more, and throw the rest off balance. Then she flew away, leaving the other seventeen to wonder what had gone wrong.

As she flew into the clouds that covered the Nagaokan skies, she took a moment to admire the destruction taking place on the surface. Rehval had finally grown impatient enough to order a carpet bombing of the wilderness. As before, there were groups of twenty or more Saiyans spread out across the planet, but instead of hunting Luffa, they were now scouring the land with ki blasts. This suited her perfectly. With so much Saiyan energy being tossed around all at once, Luffa could fly much more freely across the planet without being detected.

Adjusting her trajectory, she propelled herself directly into the path of another squad two hundred miles away, and powered down so they wouldn't sense her approach until it was too late. Then she transformed again, and tore through them like so much paper. Just as they began to get their bearings, she flew away again, leaving them completely disorganized.

She repeated this trick again and again, picking off targets across the entire planet. It would have been glorious, if she wasn't so furious with them all.

"It's not like it was in the Federation, is it?!" she screamed as she impaled a warrior on his own short spear.

"Boxing me in, forcing me to jump from planet to planet to keep you from hurting innocent people!" she screamed as she broke another's neck three thousand miles to the southeast.

"You thought you could wear me out! Well I'm still standing!" she yelled while blasting four of them with a barrage of energy needles.

"And now you're the ones on the back foot!" she roared. At the equator, one of them managed to get off a decent shot at her, but she pulled one of his teammates into the line of fire.

"You've got nowhere to run!" Her boot slammed into a Saiyan's back at twice the speed of sound, and she grinned at the wet snap she heard on impact. Nearby was Nagaoka's fourth-tallest active volcano.

"This time you're trapped here with me, and I've got nothing and no one to protect!" Near the south magnetic pole, her Vengeance Cannon technique cut through five of them in one shot.

She doubled back to the fourth-tallest active volcano and shoved a woman face-first into a lave floe. "You all move so slow you might as well be standing still!"

She found a beach and decided to stand her ground for a few minutes. This wasn't for sport, but just to remind them that she could. The squad she attacked seemed almost grateful for the chance to try to fight back, but they soon found that their numbers weren't as effective as they'd hoped.

"I've been fighting you clowns for months!" she screeched as she slashed her nails through a Saiyan's throat. As he fell back and clutched his bloody neck, Luffa rolled forward and caught one of his partners with her legs. She flipped him over and sent him crashing down to the surf below, and then fired ki blasts down at him, then towards a third Saiyan who was trying to catch her off-guard.

"All that ganging up you punks do? It doesn't mean anything to me anymore! I've seen all the routines a dozen times! Hah!" She suddenly flung her left hand under her right shoulder and fired backward to catch a Saiyan coming up from behind. "Six? Ten? Twenty? It won't save you!"

One of them had the good sense to focus his ki on protecting his vital organs. Luffa punched him in the forehead and was surprised that he withstood the blow. She kept on punching him, like a jackhammer, until his skull finally gave way.

Before long, she had finished them all off. She sensed reinforcements coming, and by the time they arrived, they found her in a half-squat position, charging her power. Once they were within range, she unleashed it all at once, creating a massive explosion all around them.

"Still alive..." she observed as she flew towards handful of survivors. She rose up into the air above them and swung out her arm at the ground. "Now that's what I like to see!"

Her follow-up fused the sand into glass, but could not penetrate more than a few feet into the ground, thanks to Rehval's mystic power that tied him into the planet. Instead, the energy Luffa released was reflected back upon her targets, and they were helpless to resist the intensity of it. A few survived, and Luffa slaughtered them, lopping off their heads by using the edge of her ki-charged left hand like a knife.

"Enough, Luffa!"

She turned and found a familiar face, and she grinned savagely at the sight of it.

"Well, well," she said. "Look who's finally come out to play."

The ground behind her had swelled up, forming a hill, which gradually shaped itself into the image of a man: King Rehval.

"I'll say this for your stupid alchemy powers," Luffa said, "You've made this planet a lot sturdier than anywhere I've ever been before. I can't destroy it, but that's kind of handy too. It's nice to know I can cut loose while I fight your lackeys, and not have to worry about the whole planet exploding out from under me."

"I command you to stop this immediately!" he shouted.

Luffa responded with a Gallick Gun to his stony face.

"You can't harm me in this form!" he said. Indeed, the attack had left his earthen avatar completely undamaged. Luffa didn't find that very disappointing.

"Don't worry," she said. "That Gallick Gun was just a baby, Rehval. When I'm ready to hurt you, you'll know it."

"Damn you, woman!" he seethed. "You know this is pointless!"

"Sure it is," Luffa said with a grin. "And you came all the way here to remind me, just in case I'd forgotten how pointless this is. Very thoughtful of you."

"If you already know that, then why do you persist in this--?! Arrgh!"

As he had spoken, she gathered her energy and plowed directly into the avatar's body, then released it in a massive explosion. The surrounding area was reduced to charred wasteland, and Luffa alighted near one of the largest fragments of the rock-Rehval she had destroyed. Slowly, it merged with the ground below it, and rose up again to form a new body.

"Will you--! Stop that?!" Rehval seethed.

Luffa laughed again. "What's wrong? If what I'm doing is so pointless, what does it matter whether I do it or not? Don't tell me the almighty god-alchemist, his royal majesty King Revahl the Third is getting flustered over little old me."

"I'm not!" he shouted, and then he attempted to regain his composure. "I just... I don't like when you... when you flout my authority. I wish you would... not do that."

Luffa raised her hand high over her head and extended her middle finger. "And I just don't like you. I don't like your authority much either. I don't think anyone else on this planet likes it much either. I'm just the only one around here with the guts to do something about it."

"I'll kill you," Rehval said. "You won't be able to avoid my forces forever, Luffa. There's only so much habitable land on this planet, and there's less of it each day. Once you run out of hiding places, you'll have no choice but to face the full force of my power."

"It's a date," Luffa said. "You're going to rue the day you first heard my name, Rehval. But right now, I gotta go. See you real soon!"

With that, she shot into the sky like a rocket, just as another squad of Rehval's followers arrived.

"My lord," gasped their leader as she fell prostrate before his earthen likeness. "We came as quickly as we could..."

"The Saiyans who joined us," the rock-Rehval said. "Seltiss's band, the Free Companions. Have they received the Jindan power yet?"

"N-no, Master," the leader said, now rising to an upright position. "There hasn't been time for them to complete the initiation rites, and--"

"I don't care about the rites!" he snapped. Go back and prepare them immediately. I want them as strong as possible, so that I can crush that vile little throwback once and for all!"

The leader was gravely disturbed to hear this, but she was too loyal to question the command. "Yes! It shall be done right away, Great One!"

Then they flew back in the direction of their base. Having no further use for the rock-creature, Rehval allowed it to collapse back into the ground.

From her hiding place in the sky, Luffa saw all of this while she listened in on the comm-link she had stolen from one of Rehval's soldiers. She made a grim smile, then cut another notch in her stick.

*******

[3 December, 233 Before Age.]

As Trismegistus, Rehval had established a lengthy series of rituals and trials for initiates in his cult. He claimed that these were necessary to make the applicant worthy of receiving the potion that granted the Jindan power. In truth, their actual purpose was to brainwash the cultists and erode away their sense of independent thought. Now, as Rehval became more desperate to put an end to Luffa's rampage on Nagaoka, he chose to skip the protocol and dispense his potion to the newest recruits into his fold.

His daughter, Princess Seltiss had assembled a band of independent Saiyans, with the idea of establishing a new Saiyan nation in her father's absence. She had allied this Free Company with Luffa's Federation, but then switched sides, rejoining her father once it became clear that he was unstoppable. Seltiss considered herself a pragmatist above all. In her mind, joining her father in his moment of triumph was completely consistent with turning against him during his apparent madness. The decision was simple. There was no hope in opposing an invincible enemy, one who held every card and offered no weaknesses to exploit. And yet, she still feared for his sanity. The decision to join him had been a simple one, but it was by no means easy for her.

On the other hand, convincing the Free Companions to accept the Jindan potion had turned out to be very simple and easy. Luffa had killed over three thousand Saiyans since she arrived on Nagaoka's surface, and most of these had been Free Companions. The Jindan-empowered cultists were stronger and faster, and while Luffa had killed plenty of them as well, the Free Companions made much easier targets. As much as Luffa despised the cult, she had a real talent for driving Saiyans into Rehval's open arms.

In her quarters, Seltiss contemplated the bottle containing her own dose of the Jindan elixir, the last one. The cultists seemed to trust her to drink it, or perhaps they didn't see her empowerment as a high priority, since Seltiss didn't have a high power level to begin with. There was really no point in anyone checking to make sure she took her medicine. It was a matter of survival now. The curious red liquid might be the only thing that would save Seltiss' life during Luffa's next attack. And even without Luffa rampaging in their midst, she had already resigned herself to drink when she ordered her ship to surrender and land on Nagaoka. Things were happening faster than expected, but the cold equations had not changed. Her continued survival depended on swallowing her father's concoction, and then washing it down with whatever was left of her pride. What was she waiting for? Seltiss herself didn't seem to know.

And then, just as she brought the bottle to her lips, she sensed that terrible ki once more. Luffa was on the move again. Startled, she dropped the bottle, and so great was her dread that she didn't even notice it until the glass shattered on the stone floor. All that remained of the potion was a strange discoloration on the rock, and some maroon stains on her pink Montablanian leather boots.

Seltiss wasn't sure whether to be relieved or afraid. As she sensed the rising powers of her father's followers, she realized that it might not matter how she felt any longer.

*******

There were no names for the places on Nagaoka, and even if there were, Luffa wouldn't have known them. She had chosen a particular location to make her stand, but mostly for aesthetic reasons. It was a dry lakebed surrounded on all sides by buttes and mesas. It reminded her of some of her favorite hunting grounds on Dorlu Prime. More importantly it offered the best of both worlds for a battle: The lakebed was a wide-open space for fighting, while the surrounding topology allowed plenty of nooks and crannies to hide behind for ambushes. Luffa didn't expect any of this to matter, but she had a sentimental reason for choosing her battleground.

She expected it to be her last.

Rehval's forces had destroyed most of the terrestrial life on the planet by now. His hope was to cut off Luffa's supply lines by taking away the flora and fauna that she fed upon in between her hit-and-run attacks. But he had utterly failed to consider the seas, which were abundant in edible wildlife. While his followers had scoured the land in a desperate attempt to flush her out of hiding, she had been diving under glaciers for aquatic mammals. In the lakebed, she now chewed on a piece of blubber while she prepared herself for what came next.

The skies of Nagaoka were perpetually overcast, but on this night there were peals of thunder that hinted at a storm. It was completely dark, save for an occasional faint flicker of distant lightning in the clouds. Luffa took the stick out of her pants pocket and felt the notches that she had made in the wood. Satisfied with the count, she cut one last notch with her fingernail, and then tossed the stick to the ground. The time was right.

She transformed. Since coming to this planet, she remained in her Super Saiyan form only long enough to attack or to outmaneuver an enemy. This time, she stood and waited, letting the yellow glow of her aura illuminate the desiccated ground. She could sense Rehval's minions all over the planet, searching in vain for her. Now that they could sense her power, now that she was staying in one spot, they all began to converge on her position. Within minutes, she was surrounded. Thousands of Saiyans stood on the rocky outcroppings in all directions, all of them dressed in dark red uniforms, and carrying short spears, which seemed to be the signature weapon of the cult. The tips of the spears glowed a pale blue color. Luffa had been dealing with these weapons for some time now, and could only guess that there was some trick to making them work. Every time she had taken one for herself, it only behaved like an ordinary spear.

They all kept their distance. Luffa might have accused them of cowardice, but she couldn't deny that it was the smart play. Anyone who might have broken ranks to rush at her prematurely was probably already dead from all of the previous skirmishes. Those that remained knew that best hope of defeating her was to put their combined might into a single, concentrated force. If they could cut off her escape, if they could keep her surrounded and attack her on all sides, then they would have the power to overwhelm her.

Or so they believed.

At last, King Rehval himself showed up, after a fashion. She could still sense him staying behind at his underground compound on the opposite side of the planet. She had expected as much. He was a coward, above all else. Instead of appearing in person, Rehval used his avatar again. By whatever mystic alchemy he used, he formed a mass of earth and rock to rise up from the ground and assume the shape of his own body, more or less. The eyes of this two-hundred foot tall creature glowed purple as he glared down at her.

"Enough, Luffa. This time, there will be no escape," he announced.

"That's what I was about to say to you," Luffa replied.

"I thought you had some plan," Rehval said. "But I see now that you really did come here to die, after all. You just decided to drag things out for as long as possible. You wanted to kill some of my flock to get a measure of revenge, but now you've run out of hiding places, haven't you? Why else would you stand still and raise your power level? You practically summoned us here to destroy you. You've clearly given up hope."

She turned her head and spat on the ground. "You don't get it, Rehval," she said. "I already gave up hope before I came to this stupid planet. Everything since then has been rage. And patience. The waiting is over, Rehval. I'm ready to kill you all now."

"You don't have the power for that," Rehval said. "And even if you did, you could never kill me, Luffa. I have transcended beyond the mortal realm. I am more than anything you could imagine. I have the power of this entire solar system behind me. What do you have, besides that garish transformation?"

Luffa smiled. "Let me show you," she said.

And then, she began to yell.

Rehval and his forces held back, unsure of what to expect. Luffa's body glowed brightly, and for a moment, some of them expected her to attack, but instead she fired a ki blast straight up into the sky. The energy dissipated into the clouds, and for a moment the thunderheads turned yellow from the light. Then they parted, opening up a hole of clear skies directly above Luffa's head. For the first time in untold centuries, starlight shone down upon the surface of Nagaoka. The hole expanded in diameter, until at last, the clouds had retreated to the horizon, leaving only a panoramic view of outer space.

And there, high above the battlefield, was Nagaoka's moon.

It was full.

Luffa looked straight up to admire it. Her lips curled into a wicked smile, and her green eyes suddenly turned blood red in the moonlight.

"No..." Rehval said quietly as he realized what was happening. Panicked murmurs could be heard among his troops, as the ones who understood explained it to the ones who didn't. Luffa could barely hear them over the pounding of her heart in her chest.

"The tail!" Rehval shouted. "Destroy her tail! Now, before she has a chance to--!"

But it was already too late. Luffa began to laugh, and then a wave of golden energy spread out in all directions. Then another, and another. The Saiyans attacked, firing their own energy in unison, but none of their ki blasts could penetrate through to Luffa herself. They couldn't even see her.

But they could hear. The lakebed echoed with the giddy laughter of a Saiyan woman with nothing left to lose. And they heard this laughter gradually transform into the low, feral growl. Bolts of yellow lightning arced out across the lakebed, dancing from one mesa to the next.

At the epicenter of this terrible disturbance, Luffa continued to stare up at the moon. Her heart beat harder and faster with each passing moment. She let the transformation carry her away, neither knowing nor caring where it would take her. Normally, her body was only sixty-three inches tall. Now, she expanded with each breath, swelling to ten feet, then twenty, then thirty, and more! Her limbs and torso changed proportions as she grew, and a thick coat of fur sprouted from her skin. Her face contorted, warping her nose and mouth into a savage muzzle lined with sharp teeth, and her ears formed slight points on top. Her clothing was ripped to shreds by this awesome change, but this was the furthest thing from Luffa's mind. In that moment, all she cared about was power, and the retribution it would bring.

At last, when the transformation was complete, and her enemy could finally see her clearly, she loomed over them in the form of a giant ape. The Saiyans knew the Oozaru form well, but this was different. For Luffa's Great Ape had glowing yellow fur instead of the usual dark brown. Her blood red eyes glowed with murderous intent, and her bestial lips twisted with fury as she looked down upon them all.

By now, Rehval's followers had been fighting Luffa for some time, and they had allowed themselves to believe that they were used to the idea of what Luffa had become. Now, as each of them felt their blood run cold, they realized that they had no idea what to do. They all stood transfixed at the sight of this new horror, unsure what would happen next.

Luffa threw back her head, and began to pound her fists upon her chest. And then, she made a deafening roar.

NEXT: The Golden Oozaru.

#dragon ball #fanfiction #super saiyan #luffa #lssjluffafic #trismegistus #lesseri #seltiss #nagaoka

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voltrontranscript · 4 years ago

Text

VForce E1: New School Defenders

Episode 1: New School Defenders

Transcript by @dragonofyang

Summary: We meet Daniel, a young Voltron fan after the Voltron Force is decommissioned, as he recounts the glory of Voltron and joins the Galaxy Alliance flight school, where he meets former pilots Lance, Pidge, and Hunk. But the Voltron Force doesn’t simply toe the line drawn by Sky Marshal Wade, and with Daniel and Vince’s help, they retrieve their lion keys.

[Google Doc]

Boy: Come on, Daniel, I dare you to do it.

Girl: Double dare you!

Boy: Do it!

Daniel: When are you guys gonna learn? It’s not a dare if I wanna do it.

[Cut between Daniel and Voltron as they chase the robeast, then return to Daniel.]

Daniel: You guys missed it! The lions just formed Voltron! Someday, that’s gonna be me. I’m gonna pilot the Black Lion.

Boy: Huh. You wish.

[Transition to Daniel’s bedroom, where Daniel narrates to the audience.]

Daniel: Yeah, I do wish. Unfortunately, it looks like that’s all it’ll ever be, now. Just a wish.

[Transition to a flashback of Planet Doom.]

Daniel: Not long after the Voltron Force wrecked shop on that robeast, they defeated Lotor and his Drule army. It was epic!

Lotor: What?

[Cut to a flash forward, where the Voltron Force celebrates their victory with the city.]

Daniel: I even got to go to the galaxy victory celebration. It was the greatest day of my life! Until… It was a disaster, but no one was hurt. That’s why I couldn’t believe how quickly everyone forgot all the good Voltron had done, as if they’d been brainwashed. The Defender of the Universe was declared a hazardous threat and decommissioned without even attempting to fix it. How shady is that? My dreams, gone. Now the only thing that excites me is going fast, really fast. So, I enrolled in the Galaxy Alliance flight academy, where things have turned out to be slow. Really slow. When’s life gonna pick up some speed? Of course, if all that wasn’t about to change, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story.

[Transition to opening sequence, with an electric guitar playing under the following lyrics.]

Woo!

One, two, three four!

Voltron’s here, kicking down your door!

Five, six, get with it.

We blaze ‘em with the sword and they can’t get away.

Seven, eight.

We’re bringing down the hurt so we’re here to stay.

Nine, ten, we here to win.

Voltron’s here, let the games begin!

Oh! (Let’s Voltron!)

Form up, let’s go!

All night! Let’s go!

Alright, we gonna rock (rock!) and roll (roll!)

Now to rock (rock!) and roll (roll!)

Oh!

[Transition to Daniel in class at the flight academy.]

Professor: ...and so the Galaxy Alliance Fractal Fighter has been Earth’s primary strike and defense weapon since… which battle, cadet Daniel?

Daniel: Huh? Um, the battle at Gemini Four?

Computer: Correct.

Professor: Commander Lance. To what do we owe the honor of a visit from the youngest head flight instructor in academy history?

Lance: I realized it was nearly the end of the first term, and I have yet to greet our first-year cadets. I wanted to get a look at the faces I’ll be seeing when they get into the cockpit in their third year.

Daniel: Ugh, third year.

Lance: So, do any of you potential pilots have any questions for me? Yes, cadet?

Daniel: Sir, with all due respect, why are you here teaching instead of defending the universe? What really happened with Voltron?

Professor: Daniel! You know mention of Voltron is forbidden by Sky Marshal Wade! There are severe consequences for violating this order. Commander Lance, I’m so sorry for--

Lance: It’s alright. I’ll speak of this once and only once. Yes, I used to be the pilot of the red Voltron lion, but after the incident, that’s something I’ve put in the past. Myself, along with tech sergeants Hunk and Pidge--formerly the yellow and green lions--are now loyal soldiers in the service of the Galaxy Alliance military. And Princess Allura, the former blue lion, is ruling on her home planet of Arus.

Daniel: What about the leader of Voltron? The black lion pilot, Commander Keith?

Lance: Ex-commander Keith is a wanted fugitive, and nobody knows his whereabouts.

[Scene change to Keith wearing shades on a beach.]

Manset: So, Commander Keith, I hear you are interested in the location of Wade’s secret base.

Keith: Your hearing is good.

Manset: Why are you seeking this base? Are you looking for trouble?

Keith: I’m looking for something Wade has that doesn’t belong to him, which may lead to trouble, but that doesn’t concern you. I paid you good money for that location, so--

Manset: Yes, well, unfortunately, some people are willing to pay more for your location. Please, do not make a big scene.

Keith: The size of the scene is up to you.

[Cut back to Daniel’s classroom.]

Daniel: How could you and the rest of the team just turn your backs on Commander Keith and Voltron?

Lance: Defending the universe is our top priority, and that’s exactly what the Galaxy Alliance is doing! Voltron was just a vehicle.

Daniel: Just a vehicle?

Lance: That’s enough. You, up. You’re coming with me. You, too.

Vince: Me? W-what’d I do?

Lance: Guilt by association.

[Cut back to Keith on the beach.]

Keith: So, this is how it’s gonna be.

Manset: At least I returned your money. You can count it. It’s all there.

Keith: Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

Masked Guard 1: Ah!

Masked Guard 2: Whoa.

Manset: A sword? Really?

Keith: It’s a weapon of honor. You wouldn’t understand.

[Cut to Lance, Vince, and Daniel entering an office.]

Wade: I assure you all, this supposed rising Drule threat is nothing but rumors to stir the masses.

Coran: But, Sky Marshal Wade, our sources have intercepted increased chatter about this mysterious commander Kala, specifically mentioning Lotor.

Wade: Lotor is dead! Furthermore, Ambassador Coran, if your sources happen to be “The Den”, you’d better think twice before quoting their intelligence to me considering they’re viewed as rebels against the Galaxy Alliance. You continually test my patience, honorable gentleman from Arus. Tread lightly. Good day. Commander Lance, these must be the cadets you called me about?

Lance: Yes, sir.

Wade: Normally I don’t like to concern myself with petty academy matters, but I take my “no Voltron” policy very seriously.

Daniel: Sir, I take full responsibility. He doesn’t belong here. I hardly know him, and he--

Wade: Do not speak, cadet, and don’t play that sickening nobility card, either. It’s a liability in combat. I need an army of obedient, ruthless, fighting machines, not some saps who are going to hesitate to consult their moral compass! Of course, this won’t be a problem for you if you violate my policy again, because a second offense would mean expulsion. However, this being your first, you are receiving the automatic sentence: latrine duty for the rest of the first term, and all of the second term, as well. I hope this teaches you to scrub Voltron from your lives completely.

Lance: I’m sure this experience will give them an entirely different perspective on Voltron, sir.

Daniel: It already has.

[Scene change to the latrines.]

Daniel: Man, I am so sorry I got you into this… mess.

Vince: Hey, you just said what I was thinking. I’m more of the non-confrontational type.

Daniel: Yeah, speaking of “type”, I’ve been meaning to thank you for helping me in class. How did you do, uh, that?

Vince: A tech-gician never reveals his tricks.

Daniel: Huh, you’re an interesting guy, um… I don’t even know your--

Vince: It’s Vince. Should I pretend I don’t know your name’s Daniel to make this less awkward for you?

Daniel: Probably. Well, I definitely owe you one, Vince.

Vince: Ah, don’t worry about it. You can just save my life sometime.

Daniel: So, Vince, what do you think of this place so far?

Vince: You mean, besides the life sentence of latrine duty, and the fact that one of our heroes turned out to be a total snart?

Daniel: Yeah, and then there’s this. I came here to fly jets, and all first-years do are stupid simulators.

Vince: Actually, I like the simulators. All the fun of flying, with none of the death.

Daniel: Unlocked?

Vince: You wanna…

Daniel: Totally.

Vince: Wait, I thought you didn’t like the simulators.

Daniel: I don’t, at least not when we’re supposed to be in them. But now, we’re like Commander Keith, rebel outlaws, operating in the shadows.

[Cut to space, where a single fighter cruises across the screen.]

Keith: I can’t believe Manset was a traitor. He was thoroughly vetted by the Den. And why’d he return my money? It just doesn’t make sense… Says the guy talking to a space mouse. Huh? The coordinates to Wade’s base? “It’s all there.” This is Stalker calling the Den. The watering hole has been located. I’m going hunting. Set course for the Tarvos moon of Saturn.

[Cut to the flight simulators in the Galaxy Alliance academy.]

Daniel: See? These simulators are way too easy. I’m ready to try this stuff pulling twelve G’s.

Vince: Alright, Whiny McGee. You want me to make this interesting for you?

Daniel: Whoa! I thought you were non-confrontational!

Vince: I am, in real life. Well, would you look here? It seems the simulator wants to feel more hurt.

Daniel: Easy pickings.

Lance: What? Can’t you boys keep up?

Daniel: Commander Lance?

Lance: You just want to get expelled, don’t you? Considering this is most likely your last act as GA cadets, let’s see what you’re made of. Hope your straps are on tight.

Daniel: Why? It’s not like these simulators are going to rocket off--woah! Whoo-hoo! Yeah!

Lance: You might want to pull your emergency brake right… now.

Vince: Y-your simulator almost killed me!

Lance: Huh, and Voltron contraband to boot. Wade would throw you in a secret holding cell to rot. Lucky for you, I’m not Wade. Boys, welcome to…

Pidge: The Den.

Lance: Cadets, I’d like you to meet--

Vince: You’re Pidge!

Daniel: The Green Lion pilot! That’s Hunk, the yellow lion!

Pidge: What are you doing? You’re not even welding anything.

Hunk: Yeah, but I wanted to make a cool entrance for these little dudes.

Lance: Mission accomplished.

Daniel: Is Keith here, too?

Lance: Always with the Keith.

[Transition to Keith breaking into a building, then back to the Den.]

Pidge: Why would you draw glasses on top of my glasses?

Daniel: Um, six eyes? I don’t know, I’m not an artist.

Hunk: Well, I’d better get back to duty, but I look forward to working with you clowns in the future.

Daniel: Huh?

Vince: Huh?

Lance: We need to keep up appearances. We’ve been pretending to be the epitome of a good soldier and loyal to Sky Marshal Wade so that he never suspects our underground activities. Pidge and Hunk have built this secret network that has access to Wade’s GA resources.

Pidge: It’s been quite useful in helping Keith on his secret mission.

Daniel: What kind of secret mission?

Lance: The kind that’s a secret.

Daniel: Okay, fine, but you still haven’t explained why we’re here. What does any of this have to do with us?

Lance: Let’s just say your talents have been noticed, and we’d like to cultivate them. In fact, how would you like to take a very cultivating course right now, taught by yours truly?

Vince: Totally! What’s the course?

Lance: Toilet Scrubbing 101. Oh, you’re right, you already have a bit of experience. We’ll call it 102.

[Cut to Keith continuing to infiltrate the building.]

Keith: Great.

Guard: All clear.

[Cut back to the Den.]

Daniel: Okay, we can tell there’s something cool going on here, but if it involves cleaning more toilets…

Lance: Look, I’m going to be asking you to do a lot of things in the future that won’t seem to make sense, but there will always be a reason. The question is, after what you’ve seen, do you trust me?

Daniel: I think so, but why won’t you just give us a straight answer about anything?

Lance: Partially because you aren’t ready to know, but mostly because it’s way more fun for me this way. So I’ll ask again: do you trust me? Because if you don’t, I can have Pidge erase this from your memory.

Daniel: Okay. We’re in.

Lance: Phew! That’s a huge relief, because we do not have a memory-erasing device. That’s science fiction.

[Cut to Keith walking through a corridor.]

Keith: What are you making, Wade?

Guard 1: Hey, you. Have you seen anyone suspicious?

Keith: Probably another false alarm set off by space mice or something.

Guard 2: Yeah, but we gotta run through the motions anyway.

Keith: Decrypt security code. Come on, come on. Shh. Shoo!

[Cut back to the Den.]

Lance: School is in session. How much do you know about Sky Marshal Wade?

Vince: He’s the head of the Galaxy Alliance’s military division.

Daniel: And a snart who hates Voltron.

Pidge: True, but it’s more complicated than that. Wade’s been wanting control of the alliance military for years, always claiming that Voltron was dangerous because the power within the lions is an ancient technology that isn’t fully understood.

Lance: Though we can’t prove it, we know he sabotaged Voltron to turn the public against it.

Daniel: I knew it!

Lance: Wade used this as an excuse to convince the Galaxy Alliance that Voltron’s power isn’t to be trusted. He got them to regulate the lions back to their storage chambers on Arus.

Pidge: However, I believe that Wade actually just wanted to study their technology.

Lance: While I believe it’s time to start your first class project. Wade is a well-decorated general, but he’s particularly proud of his four-stripe pin. Pidge has made a replica of this pin, and you boys are gonna swap this out.

Daniel: Your master revenge plan is switch out his favorite pin for a fake?

Lance: Yes. Remember our earlier conversation about trust?

Daniel: Remember you don’t have a mind-erasing device?

Lance: Touche. Let’s continue anyway, shall we? Latrine duty happens to be the only hole in Wade’s security. The toilet-cleaning cadets have pretty much unfettered access. And like all disciplined army men, Wade does everything on an air-tight schedule, and I mean everything. Now, we already know you have a talent for sneaking around, so when Wade’s coat is off for his “0600”, that’s your chance to make the swap. Should be a piece of cake.

[Transition to Daniel and Vince in Wade’s bathroom.]

Daniel: Nice.

Vince: Sweet.

Vince: I think this time he’s finished. Like us. How did you… What were you thinking?

Daniel: I didn’t think at all. Guess you’re lucky I’m impulsive.

Vince: Yeah, well, consider the “saving my life” debt paid. I was hoping to hold that over your head, but--

Wade: Look at this mess, you insufferable beast! I swear, if you chase one more mouse...

[Scene change to Keith, sneaking through the vents.]

Keith: Found you.

[Scene change back to Lance, Daniel, and Vince.]

Lance: Ah, there it is. Nice job, boys. Piece of cake, right?

Vince: More like piece of meat.

Lance: Well, you did such a good job, that I’ve decided to expel you from the academy, after all. Unless you’d rather stay and finish out your two terms of latrine. You are showing great promise in that field of study. Go on and pack your bags, boys. We’re taking a road trip.

[Scene change to space.]

Vince: This is all happening so fast.

Daniel: I often find fast is the best way.

Lance: So, I think you boys have earned the right to know a bit more about Wade’s pin. More like “pins”. And more like “keys” than “pins”.

Daniel: The keys to the lions!

Allura: Welcome to Arus, and welcome to the Castle of Lions.

Daniel: Whoa. Where’s the black key?

Lance: I assure you, it’s in good wrists.

End.

#voltron force #keith #lance #daniel #allura #manset #wade #vince #pidge #hunk #coran #transcript

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