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redorich · 4 years ago

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to those who carried on

A fic for @petrichormeraki and their Hermit!Tommy AU.

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The hermits know Tommy as a quiet young man who is very sad and contemplative. The more time they spend with him (against his will, but they know he needs the company) the more they learn of the little details. His favorite block is cobblestone, he likes building towers, and apparently his favorite woman is the Queen. They don’t ask why he wears a smiley mask even though he never seems happy. They don’t ask why he hides important things in his ender chest. They don’t ask why he wears a shattered compass on a chain about his neck.

(Once, he died in lava and lost his absolute mind. He was so upset about the compass that he didn’t even mention the stack and a half of diamond ore he had on him. Xisuma ended up manually rolling back the server just so Tommy could have it back.)

As time goes on, the tremors in Tommy's hands grow lesser. His dull blond hair seems a bit brighter, his bruises fade quicker, he doesn’t look quite so skinny-- he spends his time serenely building, resource gathering instead of running and fighting. He has a sense of humor under all that trauma, which the hermits unfortunately find out after another massive-scale prank war thought to be instigated by Grian actually turns out to be Tommy's fault.

Tommy starts swearing more. Doc gets the stink eye from Stress for this, but Doc insists he’s never once sworn around the young man. (That’s an absolute lie, but it wasn’t anything Tommy hadn’t heard before. Tommy thinks Doc is remarkably unoriginal in his cursing. He does take note of the German ones, though.)

Inviting Tommy to PvP minigames can be touchy, they learn. He likes to fight, but he fights like an animal with nothing to lose. Grian once chanted, “It stays in the pit!” and everyone present had to spend the next five minutes wrangling Tommy’s soul back into his body from wherever it’d floated off to.

Tommy likes to glide with his elytra. He claims he’s never had one before, but he flies like such a natural that a few people have their doubts. On a dark desert night, with dark blue eyes watching the night sky, he confides to Cub that it reminds him of the way his dad used to fly. He hates rockets, though. He does not confide to Cub that it reminds him of what his brother did to his best friend. He says enough that Cub can guess, though.

Scar gets fed up with Tommy’s creeper holes and makes Tommy help him fix them. At first, Tommy has no clue why Scar is breaking out things like coarse dirt and birch leaves and making the ground all fancy, but he’s not afraid of a little hard work and Scar makes it fun. He learns a lot about terraforming that day, and awkwardly comes back a few days later asking if Scar needs any more help terraforming. Tommy still hasn’t built a real base, not by Hermitcraft standards, but the small hill he’s built his dirt hut near now has a very beautiful, if amateurish, waterfall. He doesn’t tell Scar about this, but Scar finds out anyway. Tommy wakes up one morning to find that someone has left a shulker box in his house. Instead of iron-gripped paranoia, he just feels wonder that someone would give him a gift-- to the hermits, a single shulker box is nothing. To Tommy, it’s everything.

The shulker box contains coarse dirt, birch leaves, and a silk touch shovel.

Tommy helps Xisuma mine a giant hole in the ground near bedrock, because he realizes that he’s never thanked the admin for getting him his compass back. Well, that and the fact that instamining with a haste two beacon and an efficiency five pickaxe is a novelty. Xisuma lets him keep the cobble, since everyone knows it’s Tommy’s favorite block, but also insists he keep some of the other blocks like andesite and diorite. He pats Tommy on the head and tells him to talk to Bdubs about building a house some time. Tommy nods. He's taken aback by how tall Xisuma is, completely contrasting his mild nature. He reminds Tommy of Wilbur, on one of his good days before... Before. Not Ghostbur, though-- the admin is much too alive.

Tommy waits too long, so eventually Bdubs comes to him. The man is silly and outrageous, playing everything for laughs and unexpectedly tender. Bdubs plays up how beautiful he thinks Tommy’s hideous dirt shack is, then offers to help him build a house that’s better. For Tommy, building a house means settling down, accepting that this is his home now. Bdubs doesn’t know this. Tommy builds cobblestone dicks while Bdubs tries to lecture him about depth and block variation. Nothing gets done and Bdubs feels like he might have failed, but come next week Bdubs is flying over the area and sees the dicks are gone; so is the dirt house. In its place is a spruce-and-cobble cottage nestled near the tiny waterfall. Off to the side, he’s made a cozy doghouse for his fox, Theo. Bdubs doesn’t know how close that fox came to being named Fundy.

He spars with False, and she very pointedly does not mention how his stances are uniquely suited to a piglin. There’s only one renowned fighter who’s a piglin, after all. It's Tommy’s story to tell, if he ever does, why he’s seen enough of the legendary Technoblade’s fights to pick up on his stances, yet he’s not experienced enough to know that they don’t suit him. Instead, False gives him different stances suited more for tall, skinny people like the two of them. She’s got blond hair and blue eyes just like him. (Not that she’d know. She’s never seen his eyes, hidden behind his mask as they are.) Every now and then, he imagines her as an older sister, and the one time he says so, she smiles. When Tommy’s at home, looking at his own distorted reflection in his waterfall (he’s improved it since he built it), he muses that their eyes aren’t the same, their hair colors are subtly off. It’s close enough, he thinks.

Stress dies from fall damage and Tommy goes out of his way to pick up her stuff, because the hermits do these things out of the kindness of their hearts. The thought never even crosses their minds to steal. It crosses his mind. He doesn’t do it. Stealing from Stress would be like stealing from Niki.

He shows up at Cleo’s base unannounced and demands to see the “cool shit”. He is appropriately enthused by the giant armor-stand-bugs. She tries teaching him her armor stand magic, but it doesn’t really sink in. It’s okay, she assures him, most people don’t have the knack for it. He does, however, learn that buttons make excellent decorations. He also learns how to braid hair, bribed by ice cream. He is terrible at it, to the point where Joe has to come by to help the two untangle her hair so Tommy can start again. Watching the two bicker over capitalism and six million armor stands and a whole host of other inside jokes he doesn’t get, he thinks he’s starting to understand what friendship is supposed to be like. Joe and Cleo don’t see him clutching his compass. He and Tubbo weren’t too far off from this, given their circumstances. Maybe...

Maybe Tubbo can be forgiven.

Tommy makes minigames of his own, ones that don’t just kill you and steal your stuff. He builds things that are pretty instead of just functional, brews potions with Stress and only calls them drugs once (again, upsetting her is like upsetting Niki. Best not done), and sets up chicken bombs above people’s bases instead of just lavacasting them. (As Grian saw the hundreds of chickens slowly raining down upon his mansion, he got such a peculiar look on his face that Tommy feared he’d fucked up. The shorter, stronger (much stronger oh god why is he so strong despite being so small) man nearly crushed Tommy’s lungs in a hug, proclaiming how proud he was of Tommy. Tommy was proud of himself for not accidentally murdering Grian out of reflex. Was this what healing was like?)

Yes. It is what healing is like. Tommy knows this because that wound gets ripped open again. Tango shows him how to build the most obnoxious redstone-powered noise machine the two can think of. Tango digs a small pit, and asks Tommy to throw down his axe. Suddenly, Tommy’s in Logstedshire again; it’s not Tango asking, it’s Dream. His hands don’t shake when he tosses his axe into the pit, followed by his sword and his armor. It isn't until he’s placed the TNT down that Tango grabs his wrist and asks him what he’s doing. Tommy’s eyes clear enough that he can see past the blond hair and freckles. Tango isn’t green, he’s red. He's shorter than Dream, and his worried eyes are unhidden. Tommy shudders, then tells Tango everything.

Tango has no pity for Tommy, just understanding and sympathy. He doesn’t push Tommy to talk about it, but when Tommy’s done telling his story, Impulse and Zedaph show up. They all pretend that Tommy’s voice isn’t hoarse, that they all didn’t conveniently happen to look away when Tommy took off his mask just long enough to wipe his eyes. The men bake a cake together, fool around with honey blocks, and don’t talk about it.

Tommy knows very little about redstone, considers himself more of a builder and a fighter than an engineer. Still, Mumbo’s living base is inspiring, and Tommy often hangs around the man’s industrial district just to watch Mumbo work. Mumbo knows that Tommy hasn’t purchased a day pass, but it’s nice having someone around to talk to while he works. It’s not like Tommy is stealing anything. (Tommy totally steals from Mumbo’s industrial district storage system. The man’s farms are so efficient that he doesn’t even notice, so Tommy assumes it’s fine. What Mumbo doesn’t know won’t hurt him.)

Lava still isn’t his favorite thing in the world. He stays far away from it, instead of imagining what it would be like to hurtle towards it. Ren doesn’t really notice this, but he does notice that Tommy doesn’t seem to like his mustafarian base. On a spur-of-the-moment whim, Ren whips up some absurd plotline in which he is a lone weary traveller seeking refuge at Tommy’s base from strange alien overlords. The two have fun together, and the young man cracks more absurd jokes about it than the hermits have ever seen him do. When Ren leaves a week later to return to his own base, Tommy keeps being absurd, if a bit more subdued without someone to play off of. He builds a shrine to the “prime log”, which grows more elaborate each day. Beef and xB pretend to be his acolytes, despite having no clue what a “twitch prime” is.

They can’t see his face, but the smile in his voice is a far cry from the despondency he once wore like a heavy cloak. He is so much more animated and alive, full of motivation. He builds an entire island in three days, and hand-delivers an invitation to each and every hermit for his beach party. Everyone shows up, even those with packed schedules (Iskall) and those with introverted tendencies (Etho). Tommy is nearly moved to tears when they show up in groups of twos and threes, as though he hadn’t expected anyone to come. There aren’t enough chairs for everyone, but there is more than enough cake to go around. Tango brings drinks, Impulse brings meat to barbecue, and Zedaph makes an elaborate jump-powered grill. Keralis brings way too much confetti and several handfuls of cheap, obnoxious party noisemakers. Stress brings Tommy a crown made out of alliums. It shines far less than his brother’s gold crown, and it’ll die in a few days, but he wears it all night and keeps it in his ender chest until it withers away.

He spends five days teaching himself to make flower crowns. Even his best attempt is awful, nowhere near as pretty as the crowns Stress makes, but when he gives it to her, she takes off the one she was wearing and wears his until it falls apart.

He dies fighting a creeper on Grian’s behalf, and doesn’t even panic, because he trusts that however many times he dies, no matter how stupid or ignominious or revolutionary or important, Xisuma will always let him respawn.

He spends a grand total of nine diamonds to buy a single plot of land in the shopping district. He builds a cute little bench facing the sunset, with warmly glowing street lights on either side and a small garden. At the end of the bench he places a jukebox, and buys every single disc that Beef’s music shop sells, including Pigstep. He sits on the bench while Mellohi plays and watches the tiny silhouettes of his friends flying in the evening sky. Tommy looks alone on that bench, even if he seems happy, so sometimes other people stop by to sit with him. Scar declares the bench area a public park, since everyone likes it so much, and refunds Tommy his nine diamonds straight from the throne.

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iam93percentstardust · 3 years ago

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Prompt: tony can’t get enough of Steve’s strength and Steve loves it bc he’s still quite self conscious of his body? 💚

I realized halfway through writing this that you probably meant for a canon-compliant fic, but I was already so deep into the worldbuilding for this little science fiction fic (seriously, you don't even know how much unnecessary worldbuilding I did) so I kept with it

Also on ao3 here!

“Steve!” Tony hollers through the communicator. Steve glances up from the board game he’s playing with Natasha and Clint and over at where the communicator hangs from the ship’s wall. He still doesn’t really understand the technology behind the communicators even after a year of being awake, but they’re hung all over the Avenger’s Shieldand he won’t deny that they’re useful.

“I’m here,” he says at a normal volume, knowing that JARVIS will easily pick up what he’s saying and transmit it to Tony. Tony’s just being loud because he’s always loud and because he’s down in the engine room of the ship with all its noises from the conversion of stardust into energy.

“Great! I need your muscley goodness down here like yesterday.”

Steve hides a smile and stands, passing his pieces off to Clint, who’s losing worse than either Steve or Natasha. “Here, you can have mine. Not sure how long I’ll be down there.”

Clint’s eyes narrow and Steve tries not to fidget under the cybernetic enhancements. When he went into the ice nearly three hundred years ago, mankind didn’t even dream of space travel, at least not realistic space travel, and now they’ve got colonies on galaxies as far away from their own, it makes his head spin. Humans have peace treaties with over two thousand alien civilizations. And mechanical body enhancements, meant to augment humans for travel and work and sometimes sheer entertainment, are as common as breathing. But Steve, with his serum-induced enhancements, is somehow still the odd one out.

“You know,” Clint says, “you don’t have to help him out if you don’t want to. Tony means well but that doesn’t mean he can’t be abrasive sometimes.”

“I don’t mind,” Steve says truthfully. Everyone else on this ship seems to dance around his non-cybernetic enhancements—and around the fact that he’d been frozen in the ice caps, now stretching as far south as Florida, for three hundred years—but Tony never once seemed to care. He’s thrilled about Steve’s enhancements—no one else on the ship is quite as strong as Steve is, not since Thor joined the crew of the Milano—both because of what Steve can help him with and because of what the serum means for scientific advancement, though Steve hasn’t let Bruce or Yinsen take any of his blood yet.

He heads down into the belly of the ship, pausing once at one of the portholes to look out at the stars flashing by them. It still amazes him that humans have achieved all of this (and horrifies him that they achieved this but left their own planet behind).

Tony’s “lair” (as Clint calls it) is located at the very bottom of the ship. It’s here that Tony holds his court, making sure that the engines that run the ship are still intact and running smoothly, tinkering with other projects that the other crewmembers give to him, and designing improved systems for the Shield, whether that’s comms, mechanical, or even medical. Tony does it all. According to Natasha, Tony, who’s one of the few nonhumans on the ship, was once a member of high society on his home planet, Aur’a, but left it all behind to join the Shield and travel the galaxy.

Steve opens the door and is immediately met with a wave of heat. It’s always hot down here. Tony says it’s because of the celestial energy, that stars run so hot that even residue energy is still too hot for unenhanced humans to handle. Fortunately, neither Steve nor Tony are unenhanced, and Steve would be willing to bet that the reason it’s so hot in the engine room today is because Tony is working with raw stardust.

The copper pipes running the room are too close to avoid bumping into for someone as large as Steve, so he doesn’t even bother trying to avoid them, letting them brush against his skin as he follows the sound of Tony humming. When he’d first joined the crew, he’d been worried about Tony complaining that Steve couldn’t move around the engine room without knocking something over, but Tony has never once complained, only just made easygoing jokes about bulls in china shops and told him that the pipes are built to withstand forces a lot stronger than Steve. It had gone a long way toward helping him feel comfortable in the space and now he spends a lot of time down here, talking with Tony about the mechanics of the ship, even though a lot of it goes over his head.

He ducks underneath one of the pipes and rounds a corner to find Tony sitting on a bench, carefully chipping at a speck of stardust on the benchtop in front of him. Tony once told him that it only takes a miniscule amount of stardust to power the ship for an entire week, which is good because stardust is difficult to mine. Tony’s goggles are perched on top of his nose, giving him an owlish appearance. Steve finds it adorable, but he waits until Tony is done with the chisel before walking over to drop a kiss on top of his hair.

The rest of the crew doesn’t know that they’ve been seeing each other for a month. After their first kiss, Steve had asked if it would be okay to keep it quiet a little longer. Steve’s brain is still firmly convinced at times that they’re in the forties, so the idea that he can date a man and have it be as accepted as dating a woman is still a little foreign to him. Tony had been more than accommodating though, which is only one of the reasons Steve loves him so much.

“Oh!” Tony exclaims, clearly startled. “Didn’t realize you were already here.” He turns, pushing his goggles up to his hair. “Did you get even more muscley since the last time I saw you?”

“Tony, you saw me this morning,” Steve says amusedly.

“Right you are, Capsicle, but I still stand by what I said,” Tony shoots back with a cheeky wink. He runs his hands over Steve’s biceps, making a low purring sound under his breath. Steve just barely manages to hear it over the sound of the engines, and it makes him smile.

Sometimes, he still feels self-conscious about his size. Spending most of his life looking and feeling one way only to change in only seconds had been disorienting, and he hadn’t had much of a chance to get used to his size before he’d been thrown into the war and then frozen in the ice. Tony’s always good to talk to though when he needs someone to remind him that this is okay, that he isn’t taking up too much room just by existing. Somehow, he always manages to get to the heart of Steve’s insecurities and allay them.

He indulges in Tony’s warm touch for a little longer before asking, “So what did you need me for?”

Tony perks up, spinning on his heel and picking up the speck of stardust with his bare hand. “I need your help opening the converter door so I can toss this in. Something must have gotten damaged during the battle with the Hydra’s Scales, because it’s not opening for me.”

“Huh,” Steve says, following Tony through the warren of copper pipes toward the energy converter. He has no idea how Tony knows where he’s going without a map. Steve still sometimes needs a map and he’s lived on this ship for a year. “That’s not something you can fix?”

“Not with what I’ve got on ship. I’ll ask Fury if we can stop in Knowhere later this week. They’ve probably got what I need.”

“Wow, Tony Stark admitting he can’t jury-rig a solution from his lab. Hell must have frozen over,” Steve comments, grinning when Tony turns to scowl at him.

“You shut your mouth,” Tony growls.

“Or what?”

Tony’s eyes turn dark and heated. He slinks closer to Steve, runs his fingers up Steve’s chest, and purrs, “Or I’ll shut it for you.”

Steve’s brain shuts down. “Uh…”

“But not right now,” Tony says abruptly, tweaking Steve’s nipple through his shirt. He spins back around and marches off, leaving Steve floundering in his wake. He gapes after him for a second before hurrying to catch up.

“You,” he says, carefully bumping Tony’s shoulder with his—he doesn’t want Tony to drop the stardust after all—“are a menace.”

“That’s me: mechanic and professional menace,” Tony says cheerfully.

They stop beside the energy converter. Steve can immediately see what Tony means by there being something wrong with it. The converter is made out of some sort of transparent material—Steve doesn’t know what—so he can see right in to where something is twisted in the converter itself, partially fusing the door shut. Even Tony, with all his abilities as an Aurum, can’t reach into an active energy converter without burning his hand to ashes, and the converter has to stay active or they’ll be dead in space, so they’ll have to stop somewhere where he can make the necessary repairs.

“See?” Tony says. “I need someone who can muscle that open for me.”

“Well, I’ve definitely got muscles.”

“Mmm, yes you do,” Tony murmurs. Steve wonders if Tony’s thinking about the same thing he is: that time he pinned Tony to the walls of their shared bunk and—well, now’s not the time to be thinking about that.

He grabs onto the wheel and wrenches it to the left. Tony sure hadn’t been kidding; the wheel doesn’t budge at all. He applies more of his strength, muscles bulging. Under the squeal of metal, he hears Tony’s breath catch, and he grins saucily at him. Tony sticks his tongue out and gestures at the wheel again.

“Come on, Captain Crunch. Put your back into it.”

Steve, having no idea what Captain Crunch is supposed to be a reference to, makes a mental note to ask Tony about it once they’re done here. For now, though, he uses all of his strength and slowly—so slowly—the wheel turns, protesting the entire way. Eventually, he gets it open, letting another blast of heat into the engine room. Tony tosses the stardust in. It flares in the heat of the converter, setting off beautiful gold and purple sparks. Steve closes the door. It closes a lot easier than it opened. Tony hums thoughtfully at it.

“Well, that narrows things down,” he says, once the door is fully closed.

“What, that it was easier to close than it was to open?”

“Mmhmm. Only a few things that could be. Probably need to tell the One-Eyed Pirate though that we have to stop on Xandar instead of Knowhere. I don’t think Fujikawa will have what I need. Steve, don’t let me forget to tell Fury the course change.”

“Got it.”

“And thanks, by the way. Definitely couldn’t have done it without you.”

Steve glows at the praise. Maybe it’s silly, but it’s nice to be reminded that even in this oversized, clumsy body out of time, he’s still able to do some good. “Happy to help,” he says honestly.

They head back to Tony’s little work area, Tony eagerly chattering on about the project he’s working on for Natasha. Steve listens, fingers itching for the drawing tablet he’d left in the galley with Natasha and Clint. Tony is lovely when he’s animatedly talking about his inventions. Steve has half a dozen folders saved on his tablet, filled with nothing but different poses of Tony.

Tony leans up against the workbench and pulls Steve in, looping his hands around his neck. “Now, where were we earlier?” he hums, eyes dark.

“Careful,” Steve warns, bracing himself with hands on either side of Tony’s body. “I might crush you.”

“You might,” Tony agrees, though he doesn’t sound concerned at all. “And I might like that. All that coiled strength pinning me down? Oh, honey, yes.” He shivers, a small delighted smile curling his lips up.

“You just like me for my body,” Steve accuses. It isn’t the truth and he knows that. Tony loves him for many reasons; Steve’s strength is only one of them. But it’s fun to tease his lover and Tony is always happy when he does. He frequently worries that Steve is too serious.

“Yes, darling, that’s exactly it.” Tony kisses him lightly. Steve lets himself lean into Tony’s body a little more, grinning when Tony shudders against him.

He pulls away, tucking his head against the curve of Tony’s neck. “Thank you,” he breathes. He doesn’t know how Tony always knows when Steve is feeling self-conscious about his body, but he somehow does and he always comes up with something that’ll help.

Tony strokes his hair. “Anytime, darling. Anytime.”

#alle writes #alle answers #stevetony #if you like please reblog

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siriannatan · 4 years ago

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Beeduo Oneshots #3 Unexpected reunion

Ao3 link to the whole series

Disclaimer: All physical displays of affection are meant in a purely platonic way, and I, the author, take no responsibility for how some people may see it. The characters in the stories aren't meant to represent the content creators, just characters they portray in their roleplay.

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Doomsday shook the whole SMP. Dream going to prison didn't help much.

On his end, Ranboo was happy with where he was, as long as he wasn't being evicted that is, but he was good at keeping out of people's business so he was safe. He spends most of his time away anyway, lonely long mining trips and treasure hunts were slowly becoming his favourite activities. When he wasn't waking up in random spots. Aside from that, he was okay being alone. Ranboo wasn't lonely.

On the other end, Tubbo was also okay. Being away from people, alone in Snowchester, as he named the frozen patch of land he decided to live on, was good for him he told himself. He had all the freedom to practice magic and alchemy... All on his lonely own... Back in the day, Dream would visit to see his experiments and compliment him on his good work... He just missed old days, not Dream and his scheming. Tubbo wasn't lonely.

On some level, they both knew they were missing something. They were just unsure what...

Usually, Tubbo would stay in reading some old book in long gone language, making his skeleton's bring him food or fiddle with alchemical formulas or spells. Anyone would want a bit of a break from time to time, so on one a bit less cold day, just after a snowstorm he put on a heavy coat, heavy shoes and went out for a walk.

Ranboo wasn't a fan of his sleepwalking habits, especially when his sleepwalking would deposit him in the middle of snowy nowhere, snowy nowhere that wasn't anywhere near home. At least that was what he thought until he saw smoke in the distance. With that little ray of hope in a slowly dying down snowstorm, he forced his legs to move forwards. Even if he was a bit more okay with cold than most as a part enderman, extended stay outside in the cold still wasn't a good idea. How long was he walking? Was the world always spinning that much? Was the ground always this clo...

Out of all people he used to know Tubbo didn't expect to see Ranboo passed out in the snow barely outside of his land. Alone. Didn't he live with Technoblade and Philza now? Crouching down he poked the enderman hybrid. "You okay man?"

No answer.

With a heavy sigh and a glare to the side, he took control of a couple of skeletons hiding among nearby foliage, probably since the storm and commanded them to carry Ranboo for him. There was no way he could carry him, he was too tall and lanky. There was no urgency in Tubbo's return. Ranboo would be okay, he knew what he was capable of better than anyone, he was usually fixing him for Dream back in the day after all, despite Dream being better at healing magic. It was rather funny how their magic was so opposite. Dream with healing and Tubbo with necromancy. Dream always explained it with healing magic not working well on endermen, and it wasn't like Tubbo was using magic, just heavily advanced, mostly forgotten alchemy he picked up out of boredom.

At home Tubbo went right to work, sending all skeleton's away as soon as his guest was safely tucked away into only bed in the small house. With how tall Ranboo was it was rather hard and looked very funny with how much of his legs were out of the bed. He didn't need Ranboo freaking out right after waking up.

With them alone, he got to work mixing a very familiar formula he didn't do in a while, a specialised ointment for endermen water burns. Even though it sounded easy to make it was a while since he had to make something on that scale so he didn't mind. It was fun to stretch his abilities from time to time.

When Ranboo woke up he was warm and he could hear a familiar low humming. "Tubbo?" he muttered trying to sit up, It was indeed Tubbo who was humming, in simple overalls and a thick yellow sweater, fiddling with alchemical stands. "Your horns got big," he noticed before a jolt of pain forced him to hive upon sitting up.

"No moving for you big guy," Tubbo said turning around, left side first so his good eye could see his guest properly. "You were pretty messed up when I found you."

Ranboo just smiled weakly. He missed Tubbo, more than he realised. "Tommy said you died. He told us Dream got you."

"Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, either way, it was an out from all the conflict." Tubbo said walking closer and passed him a small bowl with some sparkling ointment, "put this on your water burns, should make it better faster than regen potions. You hungry?"

"Yes?" Ranboo wasn't sure what to answer after that.

Tubbo's cottage was nice, not big but Ranboo was used to small spaces living with Techno and Philza. He was sure they made interiors cramped for defensive purposes, it wasn't like they lacked space to build bigger. Soon Tubbo was back with two steaming bowls of some sort of soup.

"But why hide? I'm pretty sure no one would bother you all that much," he asked with a nod of a thank you...

"I didn't like the idea of hiding my horns forever, and who knows how people would react... Everyone saw that Dream has horns and instantly started drawing connections to Schlatt and... I don't need to be involved in that, prison doesn't sound fun."

Ranboo could agree with that. He saw the prison a couple of times and it wasn't a good look, he'd rather didn't need one. Techno and Phil didn't seem to care much. "Yeah... So, Dream also has horns... is that a..."

"Older, he's my older brother. I'm pretty sure he's the only reason I'm still alive because Schlatt shouldn't be trusted with a pair of old socks, not to say a child," Tubbo said looking at the sun setting over the cold bay.

That was a good reason to avoid people. Ranboo knew from previous talks with Tubbo that the glamour he used to hide his horns took a lot of energy to keep up if he didn't want anyone bumping into invisible horns. With both Dream and Schlatt's reputations, nothing would keep people from being weird about Tubbo's family tree. People tended to be weird to him about Techno and Phil and he was just living with them, and they weren't as hated as Dream.

"So you hid amongst snow like Technoblade?"

"It worked until Philza left his compass outside his ender chest. And I probably should add that I can do some necromancy."

"Necromancy? Like raise and control undead?"

"Yeah, that's how I brought you here. Even more reason for people to lock me with Dream," Tubbo shrugged. Ranboo just nodded turning his full attention to his bowl. He was going to die. There was no way Tubbo was letting him go with all that knowledge. He was either going to die or be locked here to keep Tubbo company, undead couldn't be good company.

Ranboo didn't die. He and Tubbo had a lovely evening catching up on what happened since Tubbo 'died', he seemed satisfied hearing he's got a monument dedicated to him and a proper funeral. "Wilbur never got a funeral, maybe Phil did something but I don't know."

"He's got a picture of him in his house but that's all I know. He doesn't like talking about Wil."

"I get it. We should probably figure out sleeping arrangements, I don't get many guests here. Only Foolish ever visits me, to bring some supplies and check if I'm still alive and not undead. He's my cousin actually, through Puffy adopting him."

"Wha? Isn't he like a millions of years old god?"

"Puffy's crazy like this. She sees a sad god in conflict with himself after aeons of destroying and adopt him as her son, unfortunately, Schlatt was good at avoiding his sister so Dream and I had to take care of ourselves. Now, where will we be putting you to sleep..."

Ranboo looked at his hands. Could Tubbo know about the possible connection between him and Dream? How closely was he working with Dream during his presidency? Was Tommy's exile really for the good of L'Manburg? How much of that argument in the blown-up community house was honest and how much was acting?

"I know what you're thinking. Did I exile Tommy because of family relations or because I thought it was a good choice for Manburg, and all the other times I had to confront Dream," Tubbo broke him out of his thoughts "I haven't spoken to Dream as my brother, I was angry at him for a lot of that time, ever since... Schlatts presidency was coddling me and trying to push me to stay away from it all. We had our first decent conversation the evening before the final battle, he proposed this whole fake death thing and at that point, I was okay with that 'we'll make them think we're dead and move far from the server, leave looking after every one to XD...', I was looking forward to it you know. Just me and my brother like in the old days, he didn't think the whole server would show up" Ranboo was sure Tubbbo was about to start crying. He had no idea what to do, he saw Tubbo cry a few times during his presidency but it wasn't this direct, he was usually trying to be a tough Mr President people could depend on. Vwoop Awkwardly Ranbbo dragged his friend closer into a hug. He had no idea why, it was an instinct of some sort. To hug Tubbo and let him cry until he's done. Neither of them mentioned the soft purr-like sound Ranboo started making. It was something along cat purring and a much calmer angry enderman noises. "Sorry," Tubbo muttered between soft sobs. Ranboo just purred more and dragged Tubbo to sit on the bed. Soon they both unknowingly fell asleep. Tubbo crying about what could have been and Ranboo purring softly, purple creeping into the edges of his vision.

Just as Ranboo was falling asleep he could swear he heard Dream somewhere in his mind. 'Take care of him for me, beastie.' followed by a slow humming of a lullaby, both familiar and alien to him (A/N: check Ranboo's Lullaby by Hator).

Ranboo got woken up by the sun right into his lidless eyes. Tubbo was still sleeping so he let him be...

"Morning hot stuff," Tubbo muttered from somewhere around Ranboo's chest "We should probably get up and bring you back to Techno and Philza before they notice you're gone," he added with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"I tend to disappear for long periods of time so I think we have some time, you better?" he asked as Tubbo began attempting to get himself out of the cocoon Ranboo became overnight.

"How often does your communicator ping on those days? Every hour?" Tubbo asked pointing to the thing which, as to give his point some weight pinged at that exact moment.

"Should have written to Phil last evening," Ranboo muttered letting Tubbo go, and just as Tubbo went to the other room to start breakfast did he look at his communicator. Fifty messages from Phil and five from Technoblade, all along the lines of 'where are you?' and 'you good, mate?' With a small smile Ranboo replied:

"I'm okay, communicator died for a while on me. Be back home by evening or tomorrow depending on the weather."

"I think we'll have to get me back to Anarchy Town soon, Phil's freaking out," Ranboo said as Tubbo came back with two steaming cups of tea.

"That's too bad, I was hoping to keep you for a bit longer," he was trying to joke but it was obvious he wasn't.

"I can come by from time to time," Ranboo offered with a meek smile, "as long as no one follows me here we should be okay."

"That would be nice, skeleton's aren't very talkative..."

"Whatever you say handsome," Ranboo said smugly, remembering how Tubbo addressed him earlier.

"You better not be hitting on me, mister," Tubbo feigned being offended as a skeleton brought two identical plates of breakfast with beans, bread, egg, ham and tomatoes. Ranboo looked at Tubbo in distress over the amount of different food on his plate.

"You started flirting first," Ranboo said seeing no sympathy for his weak, brought up on potatoes self.

For a moment they were quiet until Tubbo couldn't stand it anymore. "I'll need more beds if that's the case, and don't bring last night up, that was..."

"That was last night and that's it?" Ranboo proposed with a pretend glare at his food, it was good but he'd never admit it.

"Yes, at least that's something to do. How far do you think your place is from here? You're with Techno and Phil, right? They're also in some snowy hellhole so it can't be all that far, right?" Tubbo agreed.

After a quick check-up with Philza, it was about half a day way in good weather so Tubbo gave Ranboo a lovely tour of Snowchester as he called his one-man colony, and they set out on the long trek to the Anarchy Commune. When the roof of Techno's house could be seen in the distance Tubbo and two skeleton's he dragged with them along the way. "I guess I'll leave you here." As much as they had fun on the way this was suddenly very awkward. "And I'll see you sometime, handsome."

Ranboo laughed awkwardly at the compliment, "I... are you tactically flirting with me?"

"No, I'm going home. So bye, remember to write to me or I'll send an army of skeletons to drag you back or whatever." Tubbo said turning around as not to show how distressed he was.

"Oh, I will call you so you better answer when I do." All seriousness of the statement was lost as both of them burst out laughing.

#dream smp #ranboo and tubbo #ranboo #tubbo #tubbo and ranboo #platonic hugs

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writinginthedarkwood · 5 years ago

Text

Alien Shoto! Capturing your heart <3

Alien Shoto Todoroki x Reader!

This is a continuation of Alien Izuku x Reader AU! You can read that here here -> https://writinginthedarkwood.tumblr.com/post/188136408454/kinktober-alien-izuku-x-fem

This was requested by a follower of mine! They gave me an idea they liked and I ran with it. I’ll write for you toooo just ask <3

Warning: contains kidnapping. Also some freaky alien sex ~

It was all over the news. It started with the disappearance of one girl. She was a freshman in college, a quieter girl. Her mother said she had anxiety and insomnia, and frequented walking in the middle of night when she couldn’t sleep. “She wouldn’t just take off, something happened to her!” She cried on camera when she was interviewed. The police chalked it up to a random incident until about a month later. Every day girls between the ages of 13 and 25 disappeared in rural America. It was slow at first, farm towns in the middle of nowhere that didn’t usually have much trouble were panicking. The police were stumped. Thirty days after the first kidnapping, that girls face with a crown on it was burnt into a soybean field near her college. At first, the police thought it was a tribute to her by other students. The farmer who owned the field was frantic. He said a bright light burnt the picture into his field, killing his crops. The police brushed him off, but people were shaken up all over the country. On the 31st day after that first girls disappearance an entire girls school in Japan was abducted, seemingly out of thin air. Girls 13 to 18, all 300 of them were gone in one night. Their beds were still made like they were in their, nothing was disturbed. One girls teddy bear was gone with her, but mostly all of their things were left untouched. The Russian government reported the disappearance of teen girls went up by 36% in all of their major cities. The strange thing was, it didn’t matter their race, how much money they had or even where they were during the time of abduction. The only thing that connected the girls? None of them were married. The world news exploded, conspiracy theorists claimed it was the end of the world. People rioted in the streets, some families were hiding their daughters in bunkers. Some randomly married their daughters off to try and prevent them from getting taken.

My mom pulled me out of college. I traveled back home, my family lives in New York City. Mom boarded up the windows to our apartment while I watched the T.V. I picked at my nails, people were gearing up for war against the Government. NYC hasn’t been affected by the disappearances. People went missing at a normal crime rate for the most part, which has people thinking the the abductions had to do with some type of project, and the New York elite prevented the government from effecting the city. “This is just a precaution darling, nothing will happen to us here. “ She said as she hammered the wood onto the frames of the window. The news was running a piece on the newest conspiracy.

“This man here say’s that he watched his daughter and her two best friends disappear out of thin air.” The man said with a shaky voice. He was at a dairy farm in Wisconsin. The farmer grabbed the mic out of the reporters hand, his face stained with tears. “They were with me, and then they were gone! A bright light flashed and they were gone.” He stuttered as the reporter tried to take the mic back. He positioned himself in the center of the camera and raised his voice. “It was aliens! I saw the light! The government is ignoring the only answer to this crisis!” He started screaming and the camera cut back to the main station.

A loud crash came from outside the window. Mom and I turned to each other puzzled. “Was that a car crash?” I asked her. She shook her head, her face pale. “It was probably nothing.” She said. People started screaming in the street below us. “Stay right there. Don’t move I’m waking up your brother.” She said, her voice barely above a whisper. She rushed to the back of the apartment and banged on my brothers door. I ran to my room and looked out my window, people were running in a mob away from something. They abandoned their cars, screaming for help.

A mother pushing a baby in a stroller was panicking, a wheel of her child's stroller fell off of the curb and jammed into a sewer grate. She was trying to pull her infant out of his stroller, but people were shoving her. She froze and started crying. I threw my desk drawer open and grabbed my craft scissors. She’s just under my fire escape, I can pull them up here and to the safety of our apartment!

I shoved my window open and almost fell trying to get down the slick metal stairs. The ladder that would lead me to the ground jammed, I stomped it with my foot until it fell to the sidewalk. People scurrying out of the way. I shoved myself against the flow of the mob and looked in the stroller. The baby was red face and sobbing, probably scared to death. I cut the infant free and the mom gathered him in her arms, trying to thank me over a new deafening sound. Was that, marching?

Before I could tell the mom to climb the ladder, she took off running. What’s happening, was there a bomb? Is the army here?

The swarm of people started shoving me away from my apartment building. The wave of frantic humans wouldn’t allow me to push against them. My shoulder was shoved, I’ll have bruises all over my body if I make it out of here.I started to slip to my feet, I can’t move! A strong hand reached out and grabbed me, pulling me out of the crowd and onto the hood of a parked car. He wrapped both hands around my waist, saving my life.

He was breath taking. His face unlike any young man you’ve ever seen. He had a black military cap on, his entire uniform was black except for silver metals pinned to his shoulders. A solider? What branch of the military has all black uniforms? He had long hair that swept over his forehead. One side was bright red, and the other, stark white. He had a deep tissue red scar on the left side of his face. His eyes two very different colors. He shouted over the crowd. “I saw you save that woman back there.” I nodded my head yes, feeling shocked. “Why did you do that?” He asked, it was hard to hear him over all of the commotion. I looked over his shoulder, smoke rose over the city line, something had crashed in the middle of times square, what is that? He asked again, closer to my ear. “Why did you do that?”

Why? I don’t know why. Something came over me and I had to help her. “She was in danger, her and her baby could have been trampled.” I said close to his face so he could hear me. His face was stoic and I swallowed, he was studying me. “We need to get you to safety.” Was all he said, he stood me up and looked around, surveying his options of where to go. He helped me keep my balance, the running mob knocking into the car was making my legs wobble. He held me by my elbows, close to him. This isn’t the time to be thinking about how strong and handsome my savior is, but I can’t help myself. The sound of marching grew louder, and I saw what everyone was running from.

An invading army, men of every shape, color and size plowed through the streets in formation. They were breaking into every building and pulling women out into the streets. I gasped in horror. “What’s happening?” I screamed and the young man pulled me tighter into his arms. “Don’t worry I’m going to get you out of this shit hole.” He had a high tech watch on, he was messing with it in a language I didn’t recognize. I squinted my eyes, the apartment complex across the street from mine was being raided by the men. They wore all white uniforms, similar to my rescuer. A man pulled a woman out of the building, he had huge muscles and purple tinted skin. Are those scales painted on him? The woman didn’t fight him, in fact she looked kind of happy to be with him. She gripped onto his shoulder and before I could even finish blinking.

They were gone.

Aliens, the crazy people on the news were right. The object down the street that had crashed was shining silver in the broad daylight, it was a ship. The man who pulled me out of the street turned my body to face him. He put a hand under my chin and made me look him in the eye. “Hold on tight.” I nodded my head yes, hypnotized by his icy gaze.

“Y/N!!!” I heard a scream. I snapped my head away from him and looked up at my window. My mom was waving frantically, my brother half way down the fire escape coming to get me.

Before I could say a word, tingles ran through my whole body for just a second. Like a light current of electricity rippled over my skin and then dissipated before I could blink.

We were in an all white room, a lot of people were. It was noisy, people were chattering. I looked around. Some men in white uniforms had animal body parts, some were different colors of the rainbow. Some had extra limbs, and some looked completely normal but with brightly colored hair. They all had normal looking women with them, some girls were softly crying, and some were happy and holding onto the man that was with them. They started disappearing through sliding white doors. I realized I was still holding onto the man that saved me. I let go and took a step away from him. “What the hell is happening!” He took a deep breath and adjusted his cap. “I feel so much better getting off of that nasty planet, how do you even breathe all of that smog?” He said, ignoring me. I took another step away, bumping into a girl who was asking the same thing. Her escorting man was holding her hands and kissing them. “So you really are an alien?” She had her jaw hanging open, her tone shrill with surprise. “Yes but we’re going to be so happy together! You’ll start to feel it soon.” He said with a wide toothed smile. Before she could protest, a smile crept across her face too. “You’re so... you’re so sweet.” She said to him and he laughed and picked her up in his arms. She was terrified a minute ago, but after he kissed her knuckles she blushed and was okay with this?

With every couple that left this big white room, another would appear. I shot daggers at the two toned haired boy. “What are you.” I hissed through gritted teeth. He looked at me with a bit of confusion, but then straightened out his face. “You’ve probably gathered that I’m an alien.” He looked around the room, seeming a bit stressed. “Can you just come with me? It’s loud in here.” He stuck out his hand and I rejected it. “Start talking, why did you bring me here!” I shouted, my entire body was shaking with fear. “I want to give you all the answers, please just come with me.” I wanted to trust him, he spoke earnestly. I reluctantly followed him, but refused to touch him. He took me through a busy hall of couples, lot’s of them giggling and kissing. I saw a much younger boy, without a uniform holding hands with a scared human girl, she had to be only 13. They were talking to an older alien man who was smiling. “Isn’t she sweet Kai? You two get to be friends forever. No hurry though, you two need to grow up some!” The older man said as he ruffled the alien boys hair.

He pressed a code into a screen on the wall, a door that blended in with the wall opened and he invited me to step inside. The door shut behind us, and I realized I was in a small apartment type place. Most of the interior seemed normal, a wooden table. A microwave, a bed in the corner with white sheets. The technology on the appliances was all types of touch screen, but other than that it all looked vaguely familiar to a bigger dorm maybe. He sat at the table and I stood by the door. “Won’t you come sit with me?” He asked politely. I shuffled towards the table, sitting across from him. I eyed him carefully, he studied my face with a slight smile. “My name is Shoto.” He had his hands clasped in front of him on the table. “And you’re Y/N, right?” He asked. I nodded my head yes. “Do you believe in fate, Y/N?” He asked while staring right into my eyes.

“I’m not sure.” I said barely getting my voice out of my throat. “Well, fate is the best way to describe how we met, but it’s actually a little more scientific than that.” He gave me a small smile. “My species is very similar to yours, but we have one fatal design flaw that no amount of science can fix.” He started explaining. “Eons ago, before your planet even held homo-sapiens. My species almost died out. We evolved to produce several offspring at one time of conception, but our a mutation in our genes prevents our female offspring from living to maturity.” He messed with his fingers like he was nervous. “Our population numbers dwindled, but our amazing specialists on the matter discovered a solution.” He upturned his palm and held it out on the table, silently asking me to take it. I ignored it. A pained look crossed his face, but he retracted anyway, “We have the ability to mate with species similar to ours, and this helps the spread of much healthier genes. We’re in a constant cycle of finding a new planet, returning home, and then sending the next generation out to find another planet. The system works only if the planet we find has a species that meshes with ours.” He paused for a moment to check and see if I was following. I nodded my head, urging him to go on. “It can be very dangerous if it doesn’t work. We spend our whole lives studying the species, and we send our leader to find his mate first to make sure it works.”

The girl! That girl who disappeared a month ago!

“This is where fate ties in.” He looked like he wanted to reach for my hand again but resisted the urge. “This is my first reproductive cycle, I didn’t have the greatest role models growing up, I learned everything I know from school. So bare with me as I explain this...” A small blush sprinkled over his cheeks for just a moment. “We feel strong ties to the universe, it links us to who our partner at the right time and the right place. None of this is random, it’s all very calculated. I was supposed to find you today. That’s why I lead my squadron through your city.” He fidgeted for a moment. “When we mate we mate for life, our bond will never be broken.”

“You want to...” My face blushed wildly. “You want to mate with me?” I choked out. He nodded his head. “Of course. You’re the perfect female for me, you’ll look beautiful carrying my offspring.”

I felt faint, my head spun and everything hit me at once. “What’s wrong you look-” He panicked and stood so fast his chair hit the floor. He grabbed a bag out of the cabinet and threw it on the table. “I’m fine I just feel like I might pass out.” I leaned my head onto my arm on the table and closed my eyes. This table is so cool, I could just take a nap here. I felt a sharp prick in my arm, but I felt too weak to sit up. “Don’t worry Y/N I read about this in class.” He said softly with a hint of something frantic in his voice. I felt a jolt of energy and sat straight up. “What did you just inject me with?!” I looked at my arm in horror, he’d placed a needle and was filling me with something. “Just some organism essentials. Do you feel better?” He asked, his face riddled with concern. “I feel a lot better actually.” A light spot of blood was left where he pricked me. He dropped the needle in horror and pulled me out of my chair and slammed me on the table. “Hey!” I called out in protest. “You’re bleeding!” He yelled, studying my arm. “Humans can die from lack of blood!” He dug through his medical bag, tossing things onto the floor. I giggled, I can’t help but laugh. “It’s just a speck. You can just wipe it away and it’ll clot on it’s own.” I rolled my eyes and he stopped searching through the bag. “Oh.” He said plainly. He grabbed my arm and licked over the spot of blood, I tried to recoil but he held my arm firmly in place. His spit was extra sticky, like warm honey. He dragged his tongue slowly up and down my arm. His spit sunk into my skin and I felt a rush of emotion. I reached out and grabbed him in my arms. He was stunned at first, but then wrapped his arms around me back. He hugged me for a moment before pressing my back against the table. He planted a firm kiss on my lips and swirled his tongue around inside my mouth, I felt an extreme heat boil in my lower belly. I put both hands firmly on his shoulders and shoved, gasping for air. "What are you doing?" I said losing my breath. He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Is my saliva not working? My hormones should be coursing through you, releasing large amounts of oxytocin in your brain.” He grabbed my chin and tilted my face back and forth, looking deep in my eyes. “Your vitals seem normal...” He trailed off, feeling my pulse on my wrists. “Your spit is supposed to do something to me?” His touch alone was driving me crazy. My heart pounded against my chest, my lungs are tight and I can barely breathe. “Yes it should be signalling to your body that I’m ready to mate. Your ovaries should be excreting hormones preparing your va-” My face blushed wildly and I interrupted him. “I know how sex works!” I blurted out. “Are you trying to brain wash me with that stuff?” I felt my arm where he had licked. Though it felt like gel before, my skin was completely dry in that spot now. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course not.” He spoke so seriously. “My chemistry causes a reaction with your chemistry better than any other potential partner. My instincts guided me to you, your pheromones are very potent to me.” He nuzzled his face in my neck, pressing me close to him with his hand on my lower back. He planted a kiss on my collar bone, he gently used his tongue to glide over the sensitive part of my skin. I shivered, goosebumps covering my whole body. He trailed wet kisses up my neck to my ear. “I can take good care of you, forever...” He whispered, his voice was growing raspy with anticipation. “You don’t need to be stubborn.” He pulled away from me and put two fingers in his mouth. He sucked on them for a moment, covering them in saliva. The sticky substance trailed from his lips and followed him to the waist band of my leggings. He placed the tips of his fingers on my entrance and moved up and down. My body betrayed my mind, I gushed onto his digits. I bit my lip, holding back a moan. He smirked and plunged his fingers into me. “Shoto...” I whined.

You don’t know this man! He invaded your planet and kidnapped you!

My rational thoughts started to fade as he swirled his fingers around. I was expecting some type of pain, his hands look so strong and callused. “Tell me how you feel...” He purred. His eyes were glazed over with want, his cool exterior melting away the more he touched me. “I- I feel good.” I mewled back, my arms shook while trying to hold myself up on the table. “Say you want to be my mate.” He commanded while pressing hard on my g-spot with his fingers. He softened his tone a bit sounding sweet. “Please Y/N... I can’t bring myself to hurt you.” He looked pained. I could see his want press hard against his pants. I melted at his sweetness. “I want to be your mate-” I said breathlessly. He ripped off his uniform jacket and threw it to the ground, the medals on the pocket clinging together as it hit the floor. I pulled my shirt off at the same time. He stopped holding me for only a few seconds but we grasped back onto each other like we were both touch starved. His lips crashed against mine, I clawed at his shoulder blades and he pulled my leggings of with a rip of the fabric. “Spread your legs.” He growled and I obeyed. My legs wrapped around his hips as he pulled his pants down and quickly stuffed himself inside of me. I took a sharp breath in and my body felt just the slightest bit of relief, finally getting what it wanted. He pounded his hips into mine, grabbing onto my back and neck for support. I held onto him as tight as I could, feeling like I couldn’t get close enough. He thrust into me with hard slow strokes. I moaned his name over and over again, feeling my body tighten with pressure. “I- I’m going to cum-!” I couldn’t help but scream. Shoto grabbed my hair at the nape of my neck and groaned a short, almost growl like sound in my ear. “Dammit-” He said under his breath, his body gearing up for his climax. I burst onto him, my body gushing all over his staff. I screamed his name and he quickened his pace, hitting me harder and faster. I started to cry out for more when he stopped and pulled me into a soft kiss, his body pulsing. “Did you finish?” I asked just before his cock changed shape, still inside my canal. I squealed as his eyes rolled back into his head and he panted. I felt a small orb leave his body and pulse into mine. A shiver ran up my spine. “What the hell!” I tried to move away from him and he firmly grabbed my ass, sliding me back to the edge of the table and holding me there. “Don’t panic.” He said with a heaving chest. Another object pulsed into me, and then another. My body suddenly squirted again, an explosive orgasm rocking my entire being. I gripped the edge of the table, unable to even make any noise. He kissed my lips tenderly and pulled out. “Oh my god...” I covered my mouth in shock at his member. It was silver with deep purple veins. It leaked a few shiny gooey drops of liquid before the opening closed, looking vaguely similar to human genitalia, but with no slit.

He quickly covered himself by pulling his pants back up, looking lightly embarrassed. “As one of the King’s generals I should have more composure.” He looked down at me, happy with how much of a mess I look. “But you’re so lovely, I just couldn’t wait any longer.” He helped me off of the table and guided me to his bed. “Come here Y/N. Let’s rest awhile before we go again.” He said devilishly as he tackled you onto the soft comforter.

Part 3~ https://writinginthedarkwood.tumblr.com/post/188289769294/alien-bakugo-x-reader-the-warrior

!!!!! My requests are open, message me let’s have a chat! If you’d like to buy me a coffee while I type your request you can do that here, I never expect tips, I write for fun. It’s just if you feel like being extra generous :) -> https://ko-fi.com/writinginthedarkwood

#bnha au #shoto todoroki x reader #shoto todoroki smut #shoto x reader #alien abduction #bnha lemon #bnha lemon au #lemon #kinktober #kinktober bnha #monster boy #monster bnha #ovipositor #ovipositor kink #inthewoods bnha alien au

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allycryz · 4 years ago

Note

Duende - Uri & Haurche :3

PG because Haurchefant makes innuendo, set during early Stormblood.

The first draft of this was super easy to get out. The edits were a little harder because Urianger’s voice is very different from mine, but a good challenge all the same!!

‘Tis expected of a Scion to battle as expertly as one might pen a treatise. Urianger schedules two ventures per day to hone his physical talents: a bracing run before dawn and a lengthy solo training session at dusk. For the latter, he takes to the rocky shore along the coast line. The precarious climb to his preferred spot (providing both privacy and space) is part of his regimen.

Urianger picks the times when visibility is low and most residents occupied. Small talk is not his wont, nor is he at ease with those not in his immediate circle. There is something about his unmasked, unhooded face that gives strangers tacit permission to approach.

His position and decorum dictate that he engage somewhat in chatter during his errands. The residents do not press overmuch, for which he is grateful. Still, the task fits him worse than the too-small aldgoat leather gloves Lyse gifted him on his last Nameday. (Except, those he could not put on as easily as he might a polite demeanor. They refused to go past the breadth of his palm.)

There are days when the convenience of sunrise and sunset for sundry reasons, prove incompatible with other needs such as visibility and safety.

The unexpected rain pours down as he wends his weary way up the cliffs. It sluices through his hair, running rivulets over his brow. For the dozenth time, he swipes at his face and squints against the onslaught.

His feet remember where to place, his hands where to grip for balance. These are his cliffs and his winding, narrow path. No one knows it better. Should that memory etched into his muscle fail, a fall here would not be deadly.

‘Twould be painful though, and impact his duties for the next few days. For that latter reason–above all–he takes longer than usual along the rain-slicked terrain.

There, he thinks as he nears the safety of the plateau. Urianger blows out a soft breath of relief, relaxing muscles he has kept tense during the arduous journey. For this stretch he has always found it best to walk sideways, arms spread for balance. It has never been a treacherous spot, simply steep enough to warrant caution.

Today, treachery comes at last. He takes a step up the incline, shifts to lift the other foot. The slippery grass beneath his boots gives way and both feet shoot out from under him. He has enough presence of mind to throw his gravity forward rather than backwards.

The impact is unpleasant but survivable; naught but his palms and dignity scraped. Dirt and mud bespatter the front of his shorter training robe. The cotton garment ends below his knees, the boots just above. Thus the joints are spared injury besides a dull ache. He chooses an ignominious crawl up to the plateau rather than risk another fall by rising on the sodden incline.

The rain is not so courteous as to clean his garments. It does offer some reprieve as he turns his stinging palms up to the sky and rubs the rainwater against the creases of grime and grass.

Ah, well. Rain is uncommon enough that he should be glad when it comes. Should his comrades ever summon him to battle in such precipitation, he shall be well-prepared. Lord Haurchefant oft speaks of how training in winter climes these five years have better forged him for difficult conflict. (Urianger suspects it is not only snow and ice that stood in the knight’s way.)

He finds himself smiling, thinking of his new colleague. Though their base is near underground, ‘tis not wholly cut off from the outside world. Vents let in sunlight, rain can be heard pouring upon the streets. Like as not, Haurchefant put a kettle on soon as he perceived the change in weather.

The Waking Sands are enchanted to remain a cool temperature. If the sun does return in full force, they shall not overheat drinking cocoa.

Befouled, bedraggled, and besodden; he returns to the outskirts of Vesper Bay. The twilight and the rain have not put off the residents. A knot of people gathers near the market stalls, the hum of their voices rising just above the thrum of rain upon roof and stone and sea. The citizens hold cloaks and hands over their head as shields, one has a parasol meant for sun and aesthetics.

‘Tis a lovely pink one with expensive-seeming trim. A shame it is likely ruined.

The reason for their cluster becomes apparent. Lord Haurchefant is the focus upon which they circle, tallest among them save two other residents. His silvered head is bent to them as they harken to his low voice. This eve, he has garbed himself in a long scarlet coat over his usual apparel. ‘Tis the first time he has donned sleeves since his arrival.

(For all the good it did me to be tempered by winter, his lordship had said. It does make me rather pitiful in a desert. I shall do my best to acclimate to Thanalan.)

They all gaze upon him with utter rapture. It has ever been so, since his lordship’s residence began in the Waking Sands while Urianger’s comrades and Haurchefant’s love continued on to Gyr Abania. Their adoration is not due solely to his fair countenance or noble title, though both must aid the cause.

There is an...openness in him that beguiles all he meets. Urianger has witnessed the surliest residents and most peevish of vendors open like blossoms to the sun when Haurchefant turns the glory of his attention upon them. Such an unusual power he has seldom witnessed and never from so kind a soul as this knight.

There is no avoiding this throng, even would it not be unconscionably rude to avoid his guest. At least there is a smaller chance of strangers engaging him in conversation. Not with a beacon such as Haurchefant seizing their attention, both intentionally and involuntarily.

“-suppose he will be alright, he knows the land better than I.” He hears Haurchefant saying as he approaches. His noble brow is drawn down, his battle-sculpted arms folded. “But do let me know if you see him. No one expected this rainfall.”

Doth he….speak of me? Urianger wonders. As if attuned to his thoughts, his lordship turns his way. Surprise, then relief, and then rapture all pass across his handsome features.

“Urianger!” He exclaims. “Thank the Fury. I was worried–I know you favor treacherous paths,and with the dark and the rain…”

“I am well,” says Urianger. “Thy concern is much appreciated and noted. ‘Twould have been a perilous journey had I not been close acquainted with yon cliffs.”

Haurchefant steps towards him, gaze sweeping up and down. Lingering on his bare face, throat, and collar. “It seems it was perilous for your clothes. Let’s get you inside and taken care of, yes?”

One of the crowd smiles at Urianger. Mara, he recalls, the tall Hyur woman who hawks fruit. “Well, we’re glad you’re alright, ser. I was just telling June that I worry when I see you go off in the dark.”

“Ah,” he says, trying to recall which is June. The baker. Yonder woman with the braids who oft gives thee extra tea biscuits. “Tis not my intent to cause worry. I am well versed in the land and how best to scale it.”

“Even knowing that, do be careful.” Mara gives an imperious nod. Others nod as well, their eyes on him and not the handsome knight.

He can only nod again, bearing and smile stiff. He does not recall all their names. It makes him feel the most ill-mannered of scoundrels. He sweeps into a bow towards them, hoping it goes to some measure in repaying their concerns. “I shall endeavor to have a care, my lady. Your solicitous care bringeth warmth into mine heart, ‘tis only right I do well by all gathered.”

She smiles and pats his arm. This seems a signal for all to disperse, more residents bestowing upon him pats and nods. It is a wholly alien experience, and he considers he may be lying at the bottom of the cliff in the midst of a delusion. Surely he is not dear to all these people with whom he barely speaks.

“Come friend,” Haurchefant says. “You need to get out of those wet clothes and have something warm in your belly.”

“Thou art just as sodden,” says Urianger. “Pray also attend to yourself. Thou shouldst not catch sick for mine sake.”

“Ah but I would have done so gladly if I had to save you today.” The knight’s smile is wide again, fair dazzling in its potency. Again, Urianger is astonished any resident would look at him with Haurchefant there. Do they not sense the charm radiating from his very core? “I do thank you, for arriving when you did. There are much better games we might play in the dark than hide and seek.”

Urianger near trips on the steps up to the door. Of course, Haurchefant is there to catch him, strong hands righting his balance and smoothing over his back.

“I beg thine pardon,” says Urianger. Regretful that he has no mask or hood to hide the heat upon his cheeks. As Lord Haurchefant is cheeky himself to everyone, he is likely used to it. ‘Tis not the first time Urianger has witnessed or received innuendo delivered so warmly from this man. “Mayhap I used more energy than I surmised, during my exertions today.”

“Yes,” Haurchefant nods, opening the door. “All the more reason for you to come relax with me once you have cleaned up. I shall not have you burying yourself in work when you have earned respite.”

“For a little while,” says Urianger. He glances back at the streets, at the residents seeking shelter in houses and under awnings. At the way some of them look at them–at him. Relief and concern and warmth in their gazes. He frowns and cannot lose the change to his mien, even in the warmth and dry of the building.

Haurchefant pauses at the top of the stares, giving his shoulders a roll before beginning his descent. ‘Tis late and his friend is often tense in his upper body by the time supper comes. He will need help working the knots loose again. Perhaps Urianger might put off his tasks even further to repay Haurchefant’s worry and concern.

As to everyone else in Vesper Bay, he is at a loss on how to make recompense.

His friend reaches the door to their sanctum and turns back, looking up at Urianger still upon the landing. “Dear Urianger, what is the matter? That’s a rather pensive expression.”

“...I didst not realise the depth of their regard for mine person. Yon residents and I art not particularly close.” He shakes his head.

“Oh,” says Haurchefant, that entrancing smile returning to his mouth. “Do ask me an easier one next time.”

Facetiousness is not Haurchefant’s way. The ironic reply seems out of character. “Yes, I am aware the reasoning seems difficult to determine-”

“‘Tis not.” Haurchefant’s eyes crinkle with laughter. It does not sting–there is no malice in it. He doubts such a quality resides in the knight. “You are quite charming, even when cloaked. It inspires others to take interest in you.”

For the second time, Urianger says “I beg thine pardon? I am not given to using mine wiles-”

“No, no. We should all be in trouble should you do it apurpose. But you have a natural draw that leads people to want to know you. As you signal that is not what you want, they have kept their distance.”

It is an absurd supposition that Haurchefant says with all the conviction of his noble heart. So much does he seem to believe it; that Urianger wants to also trust it, if only for his friend’s sake. “I am...uncertain of the validity of thy premise. However, thy kindness and belief warms my heart. Wouldst that every man hath such a friend as you, my lord.”

At this, Haurchefant lets out a clear, ringing laugh. Again, there is no mockery in it. The sound is joyful and pleased, as seductive a sound as every part of the man. ‘Tis a wonder such a man as he thinks his draw is mirrored in Urianger.

“So I must endeavor to convince you of it, till you are no longer agreeing to humor me.” Haurchefant opens the door, shivering at the blast of magically cooled air upon his wet person. “Well, I look forward to the process. One could do far worse than spending an evening convincing a beautiful man of his charms.”

To that, Urianger has no answer. Nor does Haurchefant expect one. He winks and enters the Waking Sands, door closing behind him.

It occurs to him and the rapid beating of his heart, there is a reason he perceives Haurchefant as charming and beguiling and the one who everyone should desire. Projection has not been a key failing of his, but he has fallen prey to it before. And presently, it seems.

And Haurchefant is correct in one thing: there are far worse ways they might spend the evening. Perhaps Urianger shall put his work on hold tonight, to see the knight’s endeavor in full.

#haurchefant x urianger #background haurchefant x wol #ffxiv #:3 #ally writes

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katjacksonbooks · 5 years ago

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Ummm, I started this romance last year at some point and then put it away, as I often do. But now that the world feels super bleak (super SUPER bleak? what’s the scale for everything sucks and I hate it all?) I’ve decided to add this story to my list of things I want to finish soon-ish. (I mean, it’s me tho, so what does soon even mean?)

Anyway, if you want to read a preview of Alien Escape (erotic ffm) and meet Drea, a girl with big dreams and a plan to get as far away from her toxic parents as she can, read on!

CW: allusions to domestic violence and emotional abuse

Also, if you’re wondering if I really have face inspiration for an alien couple, the answer is yes. I do! Y’all should watch Star Trek: Discovery!

Prologue

“Shut up!”

“You shut up! All you do is come in here and whine like a baby until you get your way.”

“When have I ever gotten my damn way in this fucking house? I work my fingers to the bone—”

“Where? When? Doing what?”

“Oh, fuck you! Someone’s gotta keep food on the table in this damn place—”

That’s about when I tune them out. My parents have the same fight every three to four days, like clockwork. It’s not really about anything, or not about anything specific; they just like to fight and really dislike each other. Mom hates living in Ohio, and she’ll never forgive dad for moving us out here. Dad hates living in Ohio too, but he refuses to admit that this was ever his idea. Money’s tight. There’s nothing to do. Neither of them can keep a job. Somehow, this is all my fault.

Different day, same bullshit, and why I don’t bother listening.

We all learn things from our parents, and mine taught me early and often that we all have lots of times in our lives when we can make decisions to not stay with people we barely know and can’t stand. My parents had more roads to escape than most.

My life as I know it might never have happened if their casual fling — without birth control, because dad didn’t believe in it — hadn’t turned into an unexpected, but obviously expected, pregnancy. That could have been a wakeup call, followed by a visit to a Planned Parenthood and an important life lesson learned, except mom was from a hardcore born-again family and didn’t believe in birth control or abortions. She believed in premarital sex, though, so I’m still trying to make sense of that faith system, but the damage was done. The damage being the mess those two made of my childhood because, even though they could have decided to co-parent or something, they apparently felt compelled to stay together. Why? I’ll never know, and I’m convinced they don’t know, either. My earliest self-realization wasn’t “This fucker took my nose!”, it was “My parents see me as a burden.” Can you imagine? Being barely old enough to sit up without wobbling and knowing, somehow, deep in your bones, that the two people who should love you unconditionally, don’t? It’s not a great life, just in case you need to see it in black and white. To my parents, I was just another mouth to feed, the thing that kept them bound to this person they hated more each day. Their entire relationship and my entire existence were just one bad decision after another, and the soundtrack to my entire life has just been this same argument.

They bickered all over New York in the almost-identical shoebox apartments they could just about afford, during our road trip West and ever since we settled in Akron. They don’t even like each other enough to shake up these knock-down, drag-out fights. Maybe a cheating accusation here, or a “Who ate the last piece of chicken?” there, but other than that, nothing.

The most interesting part of my life was that year just before they finally decided to move to Ohio. Dad had tried to feed me and mom some fairytale about how life would be different here — fewer people, better housing, more trees, less pollution and a stronger family unit. I never believed it, because in each of the yarns he spun, I was still with them — both of them — and there’s no happily ever after with them around; not for me, at least. But mom had been swayed, and next thing I knew, we were in a beat-up Ford truck, the entirety of our belongings packed precariously in the bed and heading West. Surprise of all surprises, none of dad’s stories had been true.

Well, okay, let me be fair. There are technically fewer people in Akron than the Bronx, and the house we’ve been renting since we arrived is bigger than those small New York apartments, but besides that, my parents’ dysfunctional relationship and my shitty life are business as usual.

There were more trees when we got here, but I’m not giving dad credit for that since most of them were cut down about a year after we arrived to make room for the new pipeline running right through our backyard. That’s why the rent’s so cheap.

My parents fight about that, too.

The move wasn’t a Band-Aid to their relationship, and it certainly didn’t make my life better — not that anyone was worried about me — and as far as my parents are concerned, every problem in their life is my fault. They fight about it regularly and then circle right back around to being united against me, and that’s why as soon as mom banged the pot of spaghetti on the kitchen table, I scarfed down my portion and excused myself immediately.

Their problems aren’t my fault, I know that, but there’s no reasoning with them. It’s best to just disappear. I headed upstairs to my room with a mumbled “homework” and waited. Once I heard them start sniping at one another, I did what I always do and climbed up to the attic and out onto the roof. This is the only place where I feel safe, emotionally, if not physically. If I’m being honest, I really shouldn’t be up here. It’s slippery, and a bunch of the tiles are a good gust of wind away from falling off, but if my choices are inside my parents’ house and up here, the roof wins every time.

Out here, there’s enough space to escape my parents’ incessant fighting. The late spring air is a marked change from the stifling, probably not-quite-safe gas heat in our house. On a clear night, I can stand on the eastern edge of the roof and see all the way downtown, not that there’s much to see there. I mean, I can see the marquis of the Burger King where I work, but I’m not interested in that, so I usually look in the opposite direction. There’s not much to see there either, just a few farmhouses surrounded by large fields and the pipeline.

But I’m not looking at any of that. I put my earbuds in my ears, turn my music up as loud as it goes and lay back on the roof to stare at the clear, dark blue sky. Sometimes, I haul my sketch book up here to draw, or pull my old astronomy textbook out and try to identify the constellations, but whatever I do, I say a prayer that my singular wish will come true. All I want is to get as far away from my parents as fast as I can.

My classmates are preparing for college, and lots of them want to enlist, but my only real goal post-graduation is to get away. I’ve worked out any number of escape routes up here. Instinctually, I know that I can’t just move to Columbus or Detroit. Those cities aren’t far enough away, and I’ve long been worried that my parents’ obvious co-dependency means that I need to put some serious miles between us if I want to have a chance at real freedom.

I toyed with the idea of leaving the country, but Burger King money doesn’t stretch nearly that far. Right now, I’m making just enough to give my parents one of my checks a month to help with household bills — and keep them off my back — and split the second between my cellphone bill and savings account. After three years, I have enough money saved to absolutely get the fuck out of Akron in exactly six months on my eighteenth birthday, and I plan to do exactly that, but I’m still working out the kinks in my escape route.

I’ve done the math, and I can either buy a decent used car or a plane ticket to California. Every time my dad comes home and tells mom that his paycheck was docked for calling in or mom hides yet another online delivery from dad, I’m tempted to go for the plane ticket, but I usually talk myself down from that impulse because I’m sensible, unlike my parents. Even though the thousands of miles away from here is attractive as fuck, I know that once I get off that plane, I’ll be broke as hell.

On the other hand, the rusty Honda Civic I have my eye on at the used car dealership downtown is sensible. It has less than 100,000 miles, good mileage, and if push came to shove, it could double as a temporary home. It wouldn’t be a six-hour plane ride to California, but I’ve got enough money that I could put some real distance between my parents and myself and have enough to really start the rest of my life.

But when I’m up on the roof, I also have another secret fantasy. It’s not real, but when my parents are really loud, and I worry that the yelling and crashing might turn to the sound of fists hitting skin and bone, I dream of space. Forget California or Tokyo, I wish I could go to the moon or beyond. There’s a tiny, terrified girl inside me that knows in her bones that the only way to really escape my parents is up above me. Sometimes, I lay back on the roof and imagine what it would be like to know that I was far enough away that I’d never have to hear my parents wake me up arguing again. It’ll never happen, but some nights, daydreams of flying up into the sky are the only things that make me feel safe enough to fall asleep. But just like with San Francisco, I bury that deep inside myself and calculate how many shifts I need to work to have the full price of the used Honda. The sky is my fantasy, just like Ohio had been my parents’, but that Honda Civic is the real path to freedom.

The sound of glass breaking hits my ears in the quiet between two songs, and I jump at the shock of it. I tap my cellphone screen to pause my music. I pull the earbud from my left ear and listen, trying to figure out which part of the argument they’re at now.

“Do you feel better?” dad yells at mom.

I roll my eyes, shove my earphone back into my ear and press play on the music again.

Mom likes to break dishes when she’s really frustrated but trying to hold it together; it’s why the few dishes we have don’t match. I suspect she’s gonna drag me to the Goodwill tomorrow to look for a replacement for whatever she’s broken, and I can’t have that. I pick up my phone and tap out a quick text message to my boss, Peter. In a plea that he’s very familiar with, I tell him that I’m available to cover any shifts tomorrow. Peter’s a good guy, and I know that he’ll do what he can to get me a shift, even if it’s just a few hours or closing. I’ll take it, and he knows I will. I’ll also immediately put whatever extra money I get directly into my savings account and readjust my timetable to purchasing the Honda and getting the fuck out of here.

The music builds to a crescendo and mercifully drowns out my parents’ screaming as I look back up at the sky.

On nights like tonight, the moon is so clear and big that I swear it’s close enough to touch. I stretch out my right arm above me, squint one eye closed, tilt my head to the left and pretend to capture the moon between my thumb and forefinger. I smile for the first time in what feels like hours, maybe even days.

And then I see it.

While I’m looking, a small speck in the sky moves across my vision, only visible because it passes the light of the full moon. At first, I think it’s a distant star, or maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. I blink, and something in the sky moves again. Whatever’s up there, it’s too far away to see clearly, so I sit up, trying to make sense of it all. It’s moving too slow to be a shooting star and too fast to be…well, literally anything else. I pull my earphones from my ears, as if it will sharpen my vision. I stare up at the speck that’s now bigger, closer; close enough for me to realize that the one speck is actually a cluster of distant lights. I’m not looking at a star or a planet but a constellation that’s moving in formation towards me. Toward the Earth.

But that’s not possible. I know that. I aced astronomy.

“What the fuck?” I whisper to myself.

As if in answer to my whispered question, those bright not-stars seem to move faster and get bigger in the large pane of sky above my house as they get closer. The lights seem to fill the sky of this boring ass town with a pipeline running through it dangerously close to the local drinking water; this town my parents hate that I can’t wait to escape.

I shake my head and turn to the right. My eyes land on the pipeline cutting through the fields behind our house. I can barely remember a time when it wasn’t the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning. I’ve read dozens of articles about what it is and how much time it’s probably shaving off of my life. I guess the environmentalists were right and assume that thing must finally be leaking. It has to be. Because how else do I explain what I think I’m seeing in the sky?

And when I tilt my head back to look up there, I gasp and jump to my feet.

In the handful of seconds when I’d been looking away, those not-stars seem to have come closer. Like real close. Now they’re so close that no one can mistake them for stars because no stars have ever been so damn clear in the sky or moved so fast. I watch as they get closer and closer, and then I shriek in shock as the constellation breaks apart.

If I’m hallucinating this, whatever the pipeline is leaking is grade-A lethal shit.

The lights disperse so fast that I actually miss it. One second, there’s a cluster of lights heading toward me, too many for me to count clearly. The next second, I blink. Then the next second, there are only five lights still above me, but I can see turquoise blue light streaks in the sky heading in thousands of different directions. And then in another second, those five lights begin to slowly move apart, still descending, closer to the Earth’s surface. They’re landing, I realize, and my mouth falls open.

“Fuck,” I breathe as my mouth curves into a smile so wide it hurts.

Now that there are fewer lights and they’re even closer than before, I can just about recognize what’s hovering in the sky above me. They’re ships, and not space shuttles like the ones I’ve seen in my social studies textbooks about the moon landing. These not-stars are huge, bigger than the biggest plane I’ve ever seen in the sky, maybe even bigger than the entire town, and they’re not US-made shuttles or like anything I’ve seen of Russian or Chinese ships. These big, hovering ships look like they’re covered in shimmering jewels, glittering as if reflecting their own sunlight. “Fuck,” I breathe again.

“Drea, are you up there? Girl, get off the fucking roof, we can’t afford no emergency room visit. Do you hear me?”

I hear my dad yelling at me. I do. I just don’t give a shit, because there’s an alien spaceship in the sky almost directly above our house — an actual fucking spaceship — and this is infinitely more interesting than him reaming me out for being on the roof again. Besides, I hear the moment when he sees what I’m seeing and stops caring that I might stumble and fall off the roof. I hear the choked gasp that comes from his lips just before my mom bangs out of the front door, still yelling. I hear her words cut off when she sees the ship too, the final confirmation I need that I’m not having a pipeline hallucination, but still, I don’t care.

Because I’m speechless. I know, deep down in my gut, that this ship is going to change everything about the world I’ve ever known, and I can’t help but feel elated. My body feels light, as if I weigh nothing more than my fantasies. I swear I could float up to one of those ships, and that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to bang on the door of a ship and beg them to let me in, because I can feel the surety along every inch of my skin that this ship is going to be my way out. This ship is going to get me as far away from Akron and my parents and that damn pipeline as possible.

My mother’s scream is a delayed response to seeing the impossible, and it rips into the quiet night. She keeps screaming and screaming, but dad and I are too mesmerized to stop her. Eventually, I hear our neighbors begin to file out of their houses, probably when they realize that mom’s screams are different from their regular weekday fights. I hear them gasp and cry out. Babies are crying, and other people’s screaming joins mom’s. There’s even the sound of the hurricane warning blaring out eventually, but none of those noises seem to touch me; not anymore. It’s like they’re far away because I’m already gone.

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dmsden · 6 years ago

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Get This Party Started - Unique ideas to start a campaign

We’re going to dive in with a Question from a Denizen. This week, we’re looking at a note from Anonymous, who says they they could really use some ideas on unique, interesting ways to start a campaign.

Well, we all know that the classic way to start is to say, “You all meet in a tavern,” but that’s not the most interesting way to get things going to be sure. A similarly not terribly exciting opening is, “You’ve all been hired by Lord Suchandsuch to do X”. Bear in mind, while these aren’t terribly interesting, they are perfectly valid ways to get the characters together and/or give them a common motivation. You can always throw a twist on them. Perhaps the players are all workers at the tavern when it’s attacked by goblins, forcing them to reveal that they possess skills that would be helpful in adventuring. Or perhaps they’re hired by someone...who turns out to be the major villain...which was my premise in the Tomb of Horrors game I ran recently (sadly, the PCs didn’t return to find out at the end.)

In my opinion, the nature of your campaign should help inform how your story begins. In my most recent campaign, I wanted the characters to be childhood friends. As I’ve described elsewhere in more detail, I ran several sessions before the characters were level 1, giving them scaled down stats to use and mostly just role-playing scenes from important moments with them.

One trope I’ve seen to simulate this borrows from the “Yes, And…” rule of improv. In this opening, it’s assumed that the characters are already together and have had one adventure. They can make references back to things that happened during that adventure, and folks have to agree with what was said. “Just be careful...we don’t want this to be like the time with the kobolds. I don’t know what made you think that you could convince them you were a god.” “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. How could I know that the kobolds were atheists?”

Another trope I think is fun is for the characters to get thrown together by circumstances beyond their control. This could be anything from being shipwrecked together, ending up in the same jail together (which is how the characters met in the game I’m a player in), to being enslaved together (the premise of Out of the Abyss). One Ravenloft campaign run by a friend of mine actually began with the characters all locked up in an asylum, with amnesia as to who they were, and discovering that was the key to escaping.

One fairly common trope, often folded into the others, is “a common threat”. The characters are forced to work together when an attack happens. This gets things started with a bang, and it gives the players a chance to show what their characters can do right off the top. One of these days, I’m literally going to start a campaign with “Roll initiative!” And then, when things wind down, I’ll set the stage more completely.

But you asked for unusual and unique ways to begin a campaign, so here are a few I’ve dreamed up for you.

- The PCs begin trapped on another plane of existence, and they need to work together to get home.

- The PCs are all conscripts in a war, fighting as part of the same unit again strange, alien creatures.

- The PCs have all been enslaved by the same hag. They are sent on quests for her, but their first big goal will have to be finding out how to escape her!

- The PCs wake up in a dungeon, next to dead bodies that look exactly like them. Are they clones? Twins? Dead doppelgangers? The PCs can’t remember, but the dungeon is full of danger, so they’ll need to work together to escape and solve the mystery.

- The PCs are normal people in a small village. They wake up one morning to find that the village is completely empty, except for them, and that they have powerful abilities they never had before. Before they can properly suss out what’s happened, they’re attacked by strange creatures. Solving this mystery might be the goal of the overall campaign.

I hope these help spark your imagination. If anyone decides to take inspiration from these, let me know how it goes!

#d&d #dungeon master #dungeons and dragons #dnd #dungeons & dragons #d&d 5e #dnd 5e #dnd stuff #dnd shenanigans #d&d 5th edition #dm advice #gm advice

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wittyy-name · 5 years ago

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June’s Eighth Patreon Oneshot is Now Available

As part of the Special Offer I hosted in June, every patron of the $35 tier got to give me a prompt for a oneshot. These oneshots will then be patreon exclusive and available for all patrons for $3 and up. One more to go.

Prompt: Coran and Allura wake up early and go to Earth in search of the Blue Lion. Alien / human shenanigans ensue.

Canonverse - Alternate start to season one - 10,658 words From the moment she fell out of the pod, Allura knew that nothing would ever be the same. Alone in her father’s Castleship, with no one but Coran at her side, she sets out to do the one thing that she knows will save the universe from Zarkon’s tyranny: find the lions, find paladins, and unite Voltron once more.

Being the most calm and accepting of the five, they decide to find the Blue Lion first. Though they can’t pin point her exact location, they find out she’s been hidden on a far away planet called Earth, inhabited by beings who have yet to explore the universe.

Not wanting to frighten or alarm the Earthlings, Allura and Coran decide to infiltrate the closest government facility in search of information. A place called the garrison.

If you want access to this oneshot, many others like it, drabbles, early access to chapters, outlines, and other rewards, please check out my Patreon!

Reblogs appreciated! Excerpt Below…

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Ten thousand years.

Her home. Her people. Her father. Gone.

All gone.

The galra more powerful than ever. The empire still raging across the universe. Zarkon still reigning despite the long years.

It had been a lot to take in. A lot to handle. And she can’t say she did it all with grace. It had been hard. But she clung to two bright spots in the darkness that threatened to consume her: Coran and Voltron.

The fact that Zarkon hadn’t found the Lions yet is a miracle in and of itself. One that Allura fully intends to take advantage of.

She’ll continue her father’s legacy. She’ll avenge her people and take down the galra empire. She’ll set things right.

All she needs are the lions and a new team.

“What a brilliant planet to hide a Lion on,” Coran mumbles, not without some awe.

“Why is that?”

“Everything we see here,” Coran says, gesturing to the screen. “Is all new. The inhabitants of this planet have only made these technological strides in the last few millennia. At the time the Blue Lion would have been placed on this planet, it would have been wild and void of any sort of intelligent life. At least, any that Zarkon would be interested in. A primal planet, void of anything beneficial to the galra empire. Save resources, I suppose. The planet is rich in that. But there would have been no locals to help mine such resources. And all the way out here on the fringes of the universe, who knows how long it would have taken them to find it.

“And now!” He throws his arms back, grinning wide as his eyes flicker over video feeds. “The inhabitants, these humans— what a silly name— are thriving! A whole planet’s worth of civilization, built up around the Blue Lion. Without them ever knowing!”

“So none of them have found the Blue Lion?” Allura asks, curious as she makes her way to Coran’s side, brows furrowing. “Even in all this time?”

“I can’t find a single report or documentation of a mechanical Blue Lion anywhere in their recorded history. If she’s been found, she’s been kept hidden.” He turns to her then, voice softer. “Do you think you could pin point her location now that we’re closer?”

She nods. Short and quick. Decisive. Stubborn will hardening her features and pride pulling her head up high. “Yes. I’m certain I can.”

Until she had tried— prompted by Coran— she hadn’t been certain she would be able to find any of the lions. She’s never done so before. There had always been someone else— like her father— to man the ship’s helm. To tap into the sentient energy that runs through the castle ship. To hone in on the Lion’s energy and connect.

She hadn’t been sure she’d be able to, and she’d been afraid to try. But with Coran’s encouragement, she had, and it had worked. She’d felt her consciousness expand the universe. Tugged through the dark void along colored lines. Pulled toward the familiar energy of the Lions, of Voltron. All the while encouraged silently by Black, locked deep within the castle ship, consciousness not connected with her own but giving her a gentle push all the same.

She had hoped to find her father’s lion first, but Red remained a mystery. Her thread was weak and unstable. Almost unwilling to be found. But the yellow, green, and blue threads blazed. After some research, they decided to pursue the Blue Lion first. Not only was she the most accepting, but the planet she was hidden on was the furthest from galra influence.

A good place to start.

Allura nods once more, a determined and excited fire steeling her heart against the ache. “Right,” she says, short and clipped. “Let’s go find Blue.”

“Wait, princess!” She pauses on her way to the helm. “I think it would be unwise to fly the castle ship any closer to the surface, lest we be spotted.” She raises an eyebrow, and he takes a half step back to gesture to the screens. “This race… from what I’ve gathered, they’re growing, and they have potential, but they’re still young. They’ve only just started space exploration, and they’ve only barely managed to scrape the outer reaches of their own solar system. More than that, it seems they do not believe, on a wide or official scale, that intelligent alien life exists.”

Both eyebrows go up at that. “They’re ignorant enough to believe they’re alone in the universe?”

“It seems that way, princess.”

She hums, thoughtful and frustrated, eyes roaming over the display of information. They’d only gotten as close as they dared. Close enough to hack into one of the nearby roving satellites to access the network of information the planet has at their disposal.

They’re in for quite a rude wake up call, she thinks. Aloud, she says, “So if we show ourselves, it might not only cause a panic, but make getting to the Blue Lion more difficult.”

“That is my belief, princess.”

She frowns, excitement and anticipation souring into the nibbling teeth of irritation. “How should we extract her then?”

“Might I suggest some good old fashioned Altean infiltration?” There’s a mischievous gleam in Coran’s gaze. A smile playing at his lips that lifts his whole face, crinkling the crows feet at the edges of his eyes. “We can find the closest establishment to the Blue Lion’s whereabouts, and take one of the smaller cruiser pods down to the surface, leaving our ship on the dark side of the planet’s moon. Infiltrate their society. Learn about them. Find the Lion.” At Allura’s initial hesitation, he continues, “We need paladins, princess.”

“They don’t even believe aliens exist, Coran.”

“True. Perhaps they’re not made of the right stuff to be paladins, but… maybe they are. It’s a good of a place as any to begin our search.”

He has a point, and she sighs. “Very well.” She focuses in on a video taking a moment to really observe these people— these humans. She’s kept herself separated from them, mentally and emotionally, building up a wall to keep her from acknowledging a fact that makes that sore spot in her heart ache. But now, she doesn’t think she can turn from it. “Hey, Coran?”

“Yes, princess?”

“They… kind of look like Alteans, don’t they?” His features soften as he turns away from her, to the screen, and she hurries on. “I mean, obviously there are differences. Their ears, for one, are hideous. They have no markings, and from what we’ve gathered, they have none of the natural abilities we have, but…”

But they have the same basic shape. Five fingers and five toes. Similar facial features. A variety of skin tones and eye colors and hair types.

If she squints, if she ignores the obvious differences… she can almost pretend that she’s home.

“But…” She continues, softer. “They’re close enough to be comforting, don’t you think?”

Coran’s voice is merely a whisper. “I do, princess. I think it will be good to be among people again.”

And that’s when she realizes, despite all his endless enthusiasm and positive attitude, despite the strength and willingness he’s exuded, pushing them both forward, holding her spirits up... behind it all, Coran is just as lonely as she is. He has that same ache.

“Hey, Coran?”

“Yes, princess?”

“Let’s go to Earth.”

#voltron fanfiction #canonverse #canon divergence #patreon #wittyywrites

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nope-we-are-friends-now · 5 years ago

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Nine

Title: Nine

Doctor x General Neutral Reader

Song: Nine by sleeping at last

This fanfic can go for any of the Doctors 9-12.

Special thanks to the people who reblogged/commented on my fics. After posting my fics I always panic and my brain tells me that they’re all bad and I should delete them. When I saw your comments, I couldn’t stop smiling. Thank you so much. I wanted to reply to your comments but I kinda freaked out- I didn’t know what to say. But, your words meant a lot to me and so this is dedicated to you guys. Thank you all so much. Enjoy.

Who am I

To say what any of this means

I have been sleepwalking

Since I was fourteen

The Doctor has lived a long life, this is a fact. He is one of the oldest living aliens in existence and he is tired. Living so long is tiring. The universe is dull, and the Doctor finds himself running through the steps. Pick a planet, try to help someone, run around, and maybe find a companion or two. Planets are nameless, faces blur, and the Doctor always moves on. It’s a cycle that never ends; the only thing that remains is the Doctor.

Now as I write my song

I retrace my steps

Honestly, it’s easier

To let myself forget

The Doctor has lived so long he has forgotten. Forgotten why he is fighting so hard for things to be right when the universe doesn’t want it to be. He has forgotten his true age; he is certain that he’s spent a few centuries being 900 years old. Forgotten why a planet that rains diamonds is as magnificent as humans think it is. Forgotten why children run around laughing, dancing, singing silly songs they had just made up. Sometimes the Doctor forgets who he really is. Is he a healer? The last of the Time Lords? The Warrior? A lone man? Valeyard? The Oncoming Storm? A Soldier? A lonely God?

Still, I check my vital signs

Choked up, I realize

I’ve been less than half myself

For more than half my life

He doesn’t know how he survived for so long. Days blur together and the Doctor moves on. There is a numbness to it all. He had once said that everyone mattered. He’s seen some of the most ordinary people change the world, and so he knows that everyone is important. He has just been alone for so long that he doesn’t remember he’s someone as well.

So, he runs. Goes on adventure after adventure, never stopping to rest because he’s too afraid. The day he stops running is the day he’s forced to see how broken and bruised he truly is. In place of battle scars is phantom pain and nightmares. The ghosts of his past linger all around and his ever-changing eyes always capture how lost he truly is.

Wake up

Fall in love again

Wage war on gravity

There’s so much

Worth fighting for

You’ll see

He sees you for a moment and thinks nothing of it. Hears you laugh while talking to someone and wonders when is the last time he smiled. When aliens try to abduct you, only for to you throw your drink at them and run away screaming, he calms you down and gets your name. It’s not the best name out there, but he finds himself repeating it-in his head of course- emphasizing different letters. Soon the alien issue is corrected and it’s time to part. He waits for you to leave first, wonders if he deserves the right to invite you along. He asks last minute and it’s like you were waiting for him because he wasn’t even halfway finished with his question when you say yes.

Another domino falls

Either way

He doesn’t know how you’ll leave. Some nights when you’re asleep and the TARDIS is far too quiet, he wonders. Would you one day decide you had enough? Meet the one you want to spend the rest of your short human life with? Find a cause, galaxies away, that you need to help? Would you forget him? Would you tell children the story of a madman in a blue box? One day, you might have moved on with your life and only time the word doctor leaves your mouth is when you have to visit the hospital. The Doctor doesn’t know how you’ll leave. You will though. Despite what you said, you like everyone else will vanish from his life, leaving only bittersweet memories in your wake. But that’s okay-No. It’s not. It’s not okay. The Doctor is not okay- it’s okay because the Doctor has always been a boy man standing alone in the desert gasping for water. It’s always been just out of his reach, but if the Doctor is anything it’s stubborn.

It looks like empathy

To understand all sides

But I’m just trying to find myself

Through someone else’s eyes

So show me what to do

To restart this heart of mine

How do I forgive myself

For losing so much time?

He shows you the universe and you show him the person he hopes to become. He feels selfish for dragging you away from your life. Some part of him feels like he betrayed your trust because in a way he is using you. Trying to see how fascinating the universe is through your eyes.

You think he’s brave; he knows he’s not. Yet it’s nice to pretend sometimes. The Doctor a brave, kind man, he knows he can never be it, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try.

Wake up

Roll up your sleeves

There’s a chain reaction

In your heart

Muscle memory

Remembering who you are

Time pass by far too quickly. Each day adds more splashes of color. Each day it gets easier to breathe. To run. To laugh. Again and again, the Doctor forgets and is reminded, life is better when someone is by your side.

Stand up

Fall in love again and again and again

Wage war on gravity

There’s so much

Worth fighting for

You’ll see

Another domino falls

And another domino falls

Your presence is a plant growing in the cracks of a sidewalk. Small and vulnerable surrounded by the Doctor’s harsh lifestyle. A simple human on a planet full of them, the universe in all its vastness might not think you unique, yet the Doctor can’t help but smile at the sight of you. It frightens him, how nice it feels to rely on someone after decades of loneliness.

A little at a time

I feel more alive

I let the scale tip and feel all of it

It’s uncomfortable but right

We were born to try

To see each other through

To know and love ourselves and others well

Is the most difficult and meaningful

Work we’ll ever do

I hope I did this song justice. I heard it a while ago and I instantly thought of the Doctor. This song is really just beautiful and so I had to write. Thanks for reading.

Also, I freaking love candles.

#doctor who #the doctor #x reader #male reader #Female reader #gender neutral reader #doctor who x reader #10 Doctor x reader #ninth doctor x reader #dw #doctor x reader #11th doctor #12th doctor #10th doctor #9th doctor #doctor who fanfic #reader insert #eleventh doctor x reader #gender neutral pronouns

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shealynn88 · 5 years ago

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Feels Like the First Time

Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Mature Warnings: trueform Cas with tentacles, animal limbs, lots of eyes and mouths. Summary: Dean has been asking to see Cas's true form for a while, now. Cas had concerns, but he's found a way to do it. A/N: Nothing especially detailed in the fic, but there is definitely some otherworldly screwing happening so...y’know. Also, the word count on a03 is 1234. What are the chances of THAT?

on A03

Dean had never really gotten a good sense of Cas’s true form. Like, he knew it was really big. And weird. Eyes and wings, potentially. But he’d missed the part where there would be tentacles. Fur. Teeth. Tongues. Suckers.

And, oh, Chuck. It was...it was everything. Awe inspiring.

“Is this...are you here? Is this real?”

The figure was hunched down a few feet away. It was vaguely humanoid if you didn’t count all the appendages, and it somehow managed to look embarrassed. It hid its face with some tentacles and feathers and hands.

Yes, it finally said. Sort of. It’s a dream. You said you wanted to see but...I was concerned for your eyes.

Dean took a deep breath. Let it out.

Reds and purples and greens and colors he had no words for curved along smooth lines of muscle, shone like oil slick in some places, were dull in other areas of fur, scales, feathers.

“Can I…” he swallowed. “Can I touch you?”

If you’d like, Cas responded, sounding doubtful even as he sounded like nothing at all. Even as he sounded like an earthquake.

Dean reached out and a tentacle met his outstretched hand, curved around him and stuck in place briefly, making him gasp. Those little cups were...vigorous. Excitable. The tentacle curved around his wrist and forearm, loose enough that he could escape if he wanted to.

He didn’t.

It had never occurred to him how foreign he must be, with his two arms and two legs and simple, single head. “Am I...do I look weird to you? Is it...gross?”

There was a strange sort of chuckle in his head, like standing too close to a jet engine. No, of course not. You look human. I must look like a nightmare.

Dean smiled softly. Took a good long look at the tentacles, the limbs, the eyes - more than he could count - that all looked at him sort of squinty and blue-tinged.

“No,” he said finally. “You look like you.”

Mouths he hadn’t noticed before smiled.

He kissed the tentacle still wrapped loosely around his forearm, and licked the faint salt flavor from his lips. “This is a really...vivid dream,” he murmured, looking up through his lashes. A blush rose in the lighter areas of the being that stood before him like a force of nature.

How so?

“I can taste you,” Dean said. “Like the ocean.”

There was a sort of pleased hum that filled the air. The tentacle reached out to stroke his cheek and Dean moved forward, into the flesh, the muscle, the fur.

“Cas,” he murmured.

A million mouths responded with a collective sigh.

Dean.

Feathers brushed across his back, down his hips, his ass, his thighs. He was naked, suddenly. Or maybe he’d just realized. Naked in so many ways, open and willing and ready. Naked before Castiel. Angel of the Lord. Many faced, many eyed, and still so familiar and perfectly himself.

He’d always made Dean feel so much more important than he was. So much more than a creature made for killing and hunting. So much more than a shell for an angelic weapon.

And maybe that was what they had in common. The thing that brought them together, over and over. That bound them like blood. They had both been weapons first, and finally, with each other, they were more.

“Cas,” Dean breathed, and the touches against him were impossible to name. They were purely sensation, and then something deep in his bones. A sound that was his name, but so much more.

Dean.

Cas touched him. Gentle feather touches, then something smooth and dry and gently scaled. The scrape of something like talons, a scratch against his shoulder and on either side of his spine, that made him shiver with the blade-sharp danger of it. Danger and affection and protection, all wrapped up in one. Then there was the slick feel of the tentacles, more of them, curling around his calves, his hip, his arms, and then something oddly more alien - human skin against his, in and amongst all the unexpected animal textures.

“You know,” Dean breathed, and then his voice caught as something slid high and intimate inside his thigh. “You know I’m yours, don’t you?”

Mine? Cas asked. His voice was no longer a gravel-low sound. It was a rumble in a cavern. The lost, impossible sound of heaving tectonic plates.

“Yes,” Dean managed as limbs moved over him, grazing and then stroking over the most sensitive parts of him - his throat, his chest, his shoulder, his groin. “Yes,” he repeated, choked by the intensity of it all. “Yours.”

A pleased sound vibrated everywhere. The entire dream. Dean’s entire body.

And I am yours, Cas said, and then the limbs were closer, sliding into him, past his lips, and around his wrists, and around his cock, and slowly, carefully, sliding back and into him, slick and cautious.

It was utterly overwhelming. It could have been pain, or pleasure, or heat, or cold. There was so much that all he could do for some time was just give in to it, terrified and overwhelmed and desperately wanting. He couldn’t ask for anything. He couldn’t wish. He could only feel. An angel. An angel’s trueform was using him, serving him, pulling every bit of pleasure from him that was possible, to the point where his nerves were shrieking from it, body spasming and overwhelmed and overjoyed and burning with it.

He writhed and moaned and twitched and then he came and came and came.

Too much, he tried to say, but his mouth was still full of the ocean, his shoulders still blanketed with the embodiment of air, he was still filled with earth and void and fire when he maybe passed out with the enormity of it - the world went completely white and he faded into nothingness.

He wakes and he’s damp, head to toe.

Cas is kissing him gently, holding him like he’s spun glass. “Dean,” he murmurs. “Are you all right?”

There’s something cooling on his chest, lower down, something on the sheets.

“Jesus,” Dean mutters. “What did you do?”

Cas has the grace to sound embarrassed. “I think I may have...overstimulated you.”

“Fuck.” He lifts the sticky sheet, slides his fingers through what he now knows is his own come on his chest, in his pubic hair, on his stomach. “Let me wash up.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, abashed.

Dean turns to kiss him gently. “Don’t be. That was...we can do that anytime. You...you’re beautiful, you know?”

Cas kisses him, his cheek, him temple, the junction of neck and shoulder. “Thank you, Dean,” as if somehow Dean is the one giving gifts.

He may never be able to explain how goddamn perfect Cas is. He’s never been good with words.

“Sure,” he says. It comes out dismissive, maybe. “Let me, uh....” he gestures down and then glances at his bed. His ruined sheets. “Meet you in your room?”

Cas grins. “Yes.”

Dean grins back. They’ll get there. He’ll make Cas understand.

“Cas?”

He turns at the doorway and raises an eyebrow.

“Thanks.” He means so much more than the orgasm. So much more than the dream. He hopes Cas understands. That he’ll have time to find the words.

Cas looks down, shy, and then up again, smiling. “You’re welcome.”

#supernatural fanfiction #sheawritesfic #destiel

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indomitablemegnolia · 5 years ago

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In this petty paced drudgery that called life it is trusted that time is linear; it is trusted that the setting of the sun will happen in just about twelve hours after it rises; it is trusted that each day when it is ended, it is done; ah, but not all time works that way. Some days are nine hundred and eighty hours long marches through the arid deserts of the unknown with not a drop of water for sustenance; some days are torturous hours sitting in a waiting room on hard plastic chairs to hear the same bad news repeatedly; some days are millions of years long with just the droning ticking-n-tocking of a clock and not enough life or will to sit up or even breathe; and some days you recognize the sinuous travels of time as it curves and bends, turning loops in a devious path of graceful treachery, it loops around repeating, crossing over on itself, and winding its way along those days; I know I have been experiencing these days thousands of times; the only thing that changes is pieces of conversations, a breeze for a half hour during the end of the day, possibly the clothes I wear, but not always; in all actuality, it never changes, not one little bit does this horrible hell alter. Then I feel that time passes again; there is no, how long; I have no watch; and time like this can’t be marked on any watch anyway.

Then, that Goddamn the date, 10/10, how can so much stack up on a set of numbers, the day I was nearly murdered, 10/10 the day I lost my home, 10/10, even just he idea of 10 makes me want to vomit; this year it hit me like a falling mountain 18 years. Anger flared; hate, god I hate, suddenly the tremors and the night terrors made sense, the headaches, the unexplained bruising, the feeling of dread on even a sunny day, panic attacks from accidentally using three coffee filters instead of just the one; then checking the weather told me what my subconscious was screaming for weeks; I realize; why am I always slow to realize, as always in this temporal loop it hits me like a 2x4 in the temple; that no, time doesn’t always proceed dutifully, uniformly, minute per minute each sixty seconds long into eternity; the past in horribly living memory comes to me; the screams, the pain, ripping, the scent of blood mixed with terrible human smell; then I am stuck in that temporal loop that just repeats until I reach that one day where the loop resets, replays for what seems like an eternity of only me stuck in a solitary cell and when I am trying to back myself down talking out the fear, anxiety and pain that is not really there but I still felt it as if the blood hadn’t yet dried; there is no distinction between past and present, flashbacks and demons come to torment me; Fate herself participates for the, as she calls it, fun part, it is nothing but this hellish illusion, a masquerade of pain; flashes of past creep in even while I am doing something as inane as driving, causing an ache in the current; I watch even the few I trust to know everything laugh uncomfortably as I joke about what happened, what happens and this little place in the universe I call my existence, and I know that I can not and will not call present; for if this is a gift from god, I know he isn’t god and I needn’t worry, this was a penance that I bare for bad deeds in another life; I know the next rising of the sun will only continue this; there is no yesterday, today or tomorrow they are just a connection of moments in a never-ending monotony that kills what is left of my soul and confirms to me that, yes, there is a hell, and I didn’t have to die to find it.

God I realize other things as well as if I didn’t have enough to hold my tears back; there have often been accused of not feeling and I have even wished that I didn’t feel, but I feel that a lot, actually, unlike in the movies when this realization comes there are no bags to pack, no plan to form, no zombies to kill or alien invasions to counter; there is no urgent telegram or speeding car at midnight; there is no help even in the flagging form of a beguiling contortionist or an out of luck hit man; this is just a dark legacy of immutable horrors of the past; and this realization doesn’t come with space nor time to undo. I always would perk myself up with the idea, that I want to be alive before my death that I know is coming and soon and it will be long and filled with much pain; I see the beauty and the possible in life, though I have always had to look at the small and intractable to see possibility; I tried to live in the idea that unlikely does happen, but now at my age, in my state, and being me, there is none. What shocks the virtuous philosopher that lives in the A.M. station in my brain and almost delights the guerilla poet shock-talk D.J. that mine most unpoetic of all existence; realizing that better days are gone. I am oddly acquiesced to the idea; there will be no great love this lifetime, possibly even in the next, no guarantees; no kisses, god I loved kisses; no possibility of warmth, caring; in truth no one will ever love me, gag, how very Jane Austin. In truth I had already assumed that as it was I would turn out to be one of those unsmiling acid-faced women that sit behind little desks in offices, stamping received dates on accounts receivable invoices and that was fine; though I had always hoped for just a someone would spend a the small number of hours I have with me, lingering, smiling at me, genuine laughs as we walk slowly to the door uncomfortable in the leaving reminders to bundle up and warm hug as you forget your scarf as a reason to come back, simple and stupid as it is. I was never one to plan or dream of weddings, though I might have a humdinger of a funeral if anyone were to come; no anniversaries...no careers...no children. God, I never was good with kids, but I imagined I would be a good parent... now, the closest I come is cradling a kitten as he sleeps, I pull him tight and rock; I am a mad cat lady, who hopes for 6 more months.

I understand that no end is an ending, but I am now too old, soo very old the 198 .8 years I have passed in my 40, weigh too heavy; no drug can lessen this pain, no alcohol can dull these edges, but in so being free of the distraction what did I learn? Only the kinds of things hidden in post-apocalyptic stories. Bradbury and Orwell cover it better...

Why? Why did I live this life, I am not sure, I suppose someone had to... I am not even a blip to humanity; a balancing of the scales so to speak; and still the universe rejects me?

Perhaps I am right, and hell is here, how very disappointing.

In all this vasty universe, I had three wishes... god, why keep them safe now. A home of my own, a place I don't have to beg for the honour of paying so much; happiness, simple kiss, stupid wake up dig in dirt, grow things, build things, frustrated, stupid, happiness; and a place for my words... Why let them out on a day like this? Why is it any different than waiting for birthday candles or a coin flung midway on a bridge for a troll to grant or New Year’s eve... as none of those panned out, I am going to the day of dead and dying, if the gods can't hear, possibly the fallen can; although I hold hope at bay with a cattle prod and a 3-foot sword. This is my truth… I suppose there are two kinds of truth; the kind that lights the way for all to see, the second warms the heart; the first being science the second being art; as this is neither this may well be just the cautionary tale to pay attention in school or mix that phthalo blue a little better; we are all connected in a never-ending circle. Everything is connected...

Fuuck

@keeper0fthestars @pedeka @writernotwaiting @iamhisgloriouspurpose @anastasiaoftheironwood

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goldstonegolem64 · 5 years ago

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Book 1 Hope returns Chapter 3 A call home Remastered

In the Prometheus

Jay was in his personal Bathroom was the make up off of his face. He hated using make up to hide his marks also get really irritated whenever he put make up over them. But it was a rule the councils had set up to protected any Alteans and half-bloods that decide to join the trade union. After a few seconds of scrubbing his face the four bright red marks finally reappeared.” God I hate doing that “ Jay said as he rubbed his cheeks marks trying to stop the itch it wasn’t working.Jay left the bathroom and walked to his bed and as he did he grabbed his normal prostatic hand and popped it into place and laid down on his bed, turned on his radio and started to drift of to sleep. As he started to drift off he sore he heard someone calling his name an after a few minutes of his eyes being closed he felt his sitting in water.

He opened his eyes to see the star riddled sky “ Ah what will I see to day “Jay said as lay there in the water floating along with the currents. This was a normal dream for jay to be honest this was the only dream he ever had or the only dreams he wanted to remembered

“ Jay “ A familiar female voice said in the distends with the faint sent of fire in the distant

‘ Oh Not again. I just want to lay here looking at the stars not watch my her suffer “ Jay said as he sat up and looked around looking for the source of the smell.

“ Fined me” The voice said then

Jay felt something moving in the water under him. He then looked down to see something ginormous moving in the water. From what he could see it had silver or Platinum Scales as he watched it move it noticed that it was moving around him. Then it dived deep into the seemingly endless ocean Jay was sitting in.Jay got to his feet and started to move from the spot he was in but the moment he moved a pair of red piercing eyes appeared in the water looking right at him then they started to moving towards him “Oh shit OH SHIT” Jay jumped out of the way as the beast break through the waters surfaces kicking up a huge Wave . Jay tried to run Only to get caught up in the wave. He felt his lungs fill with water as he was swept away. After the was crushed Jay started to coughed up the water in his lungs. But as he did this he could hear screaming as well as the sounds of screaming, explosions, and gun fire in the background. Jay started getting to his feet and found himself on a balcony over looking a city on fire. There were familiar looking warship floating in the sky firing down on the city below.

“Nonononono Not here how did they found us.” Then Jay noticed something if this was Ironoath why was there fire if the barrier was destroyed there would be no oxygen and everyone would already be dead or in the safety bunker. Then he notice the way the building looked and felt a little annoyed looking at them. He was either on Altea during what he guessed was her last days before her destruction. Jay felt his heart slow being crush as he watched his fathers birth place being burned to the ground. As He watched the world burn he hear a ear splitting boom. “ What the hell ‘ Jay watched as the Warship turned their the ion Cannon to the shy an opened on what looked like a Silver comet speeding towards them. The ion beams slammed into the comet and expected to see a huge explosion only to watch the ion beams were absorb into the comet. The Comet was frozen in place and jay noticed that it wasn’t a comet but Some sort of metal object.

“ What is that “ Jay asked as the strained his eye to get a better look at it only for it to disappear in a blur of motion that was followed by the sound of metal being crushed an several deafening Explosion. He looked back to the warships only to see them with massive slashes in them or cut in two. Then Some move in front of them and what he saw scared him It was a huge Humanoid looking women With platinum Skin Wearing Silver and gold lined Armor, Massive silver wings, bright red eye that were starring right at him and then it pointed a massive Spear at him

“ What do you want“ Jay asked as he looked at the spear then the women

“ Fined me before it’s to late My pilot “ The giant women said as the world around them slowly started to fade away

“Wait what do you meet before it’s to late where do I find “ Jay said as the world turned white and the sound of his phone going off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h97aI5SZHk4

Jay awake to someone calling him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and grabbed his phone. Turned it on nearly blinding himself “ Quiznak” Jay said blinking a few times before looking at number that was calling him It was his brother Alphonso. He then answered “ Hello Al”

“ Hi Jay did I wake you “ A calm voice said

“ Not really I wake up before you called’ Jay lied not wanting to upset his older brother

“ Ok then I was just calling to see if your going to make it to Peppers Birthday party. See really want to see you. You are her favorite uncle after all” Alphonso said

“ Well about that “

“ Joseph what did you do”

“ I didn’t do anything besides save a handsome man from a crash “

“ Oh that not bad”

“ He’s from earth and might be the cause of the lock down”

“ Oh God dammit. She's going t be up set about it ”

“ I know but hey I left my gift with Dad so he’ll bring it. Just tell her Uncle Jay was busy ” Jay said a little crest Fallen

“ I will and be careful around this earthier Jay” Al said worried about his little brother

“ He’s not that dangerous”

“ Jay stop thinking with your short sword and start thinking with that big head of yours Doctor”

“ Doctor in training get it right Bro and be safe yourself “

“I’ll Try brother See you when you get back ”

“ See you so” Jay said as he ended the call. He then looked at the time on phobos.It was two in the morning “ Great I'm up guess I'll do a inventory check for the last two days salvages. He put on a pair of Cargo pants walked out of his room and down the stairs. He grabbed one of the two tables the were charging on night stand next to the stair case door and started to count what he had. He was happy to see how much stuff he would be able to sell and the money he was going to make off this job.

The manifest

Ten Mobile generators

twenty four security drones.

Eight teen heavy loaders

Several crates full of raw ores of varies types

Four laser guided Mining drills

Fourteen different fire arms and two full ammo boxes.

Two Hover bikes

A moon buggy

two scouting drove and three scouting rovers

A Titian Company Goliath power suit He was going to have fun with that if he ever had the time to try it out.

Then their was the previous mining crews personal stuff. it was Mostly pictures of family members, Some clothes, some Baseball equipment, A Game console and a few games, Books ,Movies, Magazines and a firemen’s Ax made out of a Altean metal of kind

“Oh I'm going to be to pay of my loans without dipping into the money mom left in her will” Jays smile faded remembering that she was gone even after fourteen it was still hard to processes

.An hour late Adam awoke and came out of the guest room he was staying in and walked to the Kitchen to grab a cup of coffee before he did his morning route as he walked to the Kitchen he passed by one of the window that looked out to the cargo hold and saw Jay sitting on one of the hover bike and was glowing a faint red. Adam paid it no and he continued to the kitchen. Then he did a double talk and started to move toward the staircase and quietly walked to where jay was sleeping. This was the first time he had seen jay out side of his Salvager Gear. He was wearing a muscle t and cargo pants. Adam notice that on Jay’s face and Shoulders their were red markings on his face and through the muscle he could see a few more marks. The were all glowing faintly he also noticed Jays metal hand that lead all way to his elbow he also noticed that Jay had several what looked like Scars .across his other wrist. ”What happed to you and what are you”Adam asked himself as Jay started to stir “ Morning Adam” Jay said as he slowly opened his eyes and then he realized what was going on

A few minutes later in the kitchen

“Ok You an Alien”

“Well Half an Alien “

“ And their are six other race living on Mars “

“ Yes”

“ well that makes sense why we lost the war against you guy"

"Well that and we had the resources to fight a planet and planet war"

"And if wanted to you guys could colonies the rest of the solar system. But your not because their hiding from an Empire that is lead by an Undead emperor and a powerful Witch that is also."

“ Yes and I know it’s a lot to take in but just give it sometime it will all make sense soon”

“Ok But Why hasn’t the council of mars shard the tech found on the Arc was it with earth ?” Adam asked

“Yes it’s called the Arc and well have you seen what happens when the Garrison is given power. They sent you to spy on us for no other reason then we may attack even though we have stuck to the treaty and still give you the resources you asked for”

Adam was about argue but stopped seeing as Jay was right about that” Ok you got a point there”

“Good to know man. Now Chug that mug and get ready were going into the mines today” Jay said as he got to his feet and started to wonder why he was drawn

“ok” Adam said as he shot gunned his coffee and followed behind jay. Both readied themselves and made their way to the Mines enters Wondering what they will find.

Unaware of the Galra warship that just exited Warp speed and the edge of the solar system

#voltron #Adam #adashi #takashi shirogane #OC #au #Allura #lotura #vld coran #first fanfic #coran #plance #klance #lance mcclain #kieth kogane #kidge #kidgance #pidge gunderson

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antiquechampagne · 6 years ago

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Chapter 3 - New Acquisition

Nate was quickly reminded to keep his mouth shut and not touch anything before they entered the headquarters for the gang called the Pack. If Nate had though the Pack’s lair smelled ripe from the outside, standing inside the old amphitheater what a whole different kettle of fish, albeit one that had been left out in the summer sun for a few weeks. Gage had grumbled at the idea an outsider be allowed into a gang’s headquarters, but the Overboss’s word was law. It appeared to him as if Liz had completely forgotten their little discussion in the café and was now utterly focused on the task at hand. A task Nate didn’t completely understand.

Once inside, Liz made a beeline past the rows of large cages, each holding creatures Nate had never seen before anywhere in the Commonwealth, including a two-headed gazelle. The old theater stage, framed with tattered red curtains, now hosted a fighting cage. Inside the bars, a slave was trying her best to beat off a pair of attacking mongrels.

Distracted by the fight, Nate almost ran into a free-roaming silverback gorilla. It huffed and thumped a meaty fist on its chest. He shied away, making sure to follow Liz’s shadow more carefully. They made their way into the backstage area, which was now filled with mattresses and cots. A mutant hound slept in the corner, thumping its leg against the concrete wall as it chased some imaginary prey.

Down in the bowels, Liz caught the attention of a musclebound raider with red hair leaning against a wall. His face, covered with colorful stripes, did little to camouflage his matching fiery handle bar mustache and goatee.

“Mason, where is she?” the Overseer anxiously asked.

“Right over here.” Mason glowered down at Nate momentarily before returning his attention to Liz. “Good thing you had the grunts put in this new pen down here. I don’t think she’d fit anywhere else.”

They walked deeper into the compound. Nate slowly realized that everything around them fell into silence. No one talked. Even the water condensing on the decrepit pipes seemed to stop their dripping. They neared what appeared to be a huge hulking metal wall. Nate quickly realized it was actually a gigantic door securing an equally large cell. Four Pack members stood guard, each heavily armored and holding gaudily painted mini-guns at the ready. No one was within 5 feet of the cage. Nate took that as his clue to stay back as well.

Liz drew closer, her eyes nearly closed, her head cocked to the side. Nate strained, but he could hear the low ominous rumble of something large breathing just beyond the door. Liz slid open a small observation hatch.

Her jaw dropped. “My god…” she said under her breath, touching her open palm to her chest. “She’s beautiful.”

Nate strained to see beyond the Overboss’s head, which blocked most of the view of what lay beyond. Quickly and quietly, Liz grabbed Nate’s arm, pulling him towards the door.

“General…” she whispered into his ear. “You have no idea what makes Nuka-World so special.”

Twisting in her grip, he ended up pressing his nose to the cold thick bars. At first, Nate could only make out a mass of scales and horns, all of which was illuminated by some strange blue light. The seconds ticked by until he finally realized what he was really looking at. Inches from his face lay a gigantic deadly beast. It was common enough in the irradiated wastelands of the Commonwealth… but this one pulsed with a cold and alien blue glow.

---

Liz pulled the group back into the previous room, not wanting to wake the sleeping giant.

“Holy fuck, Mason. Your guys got her!” Delight lit up the Overboss’s face. “Did they get to use Lizzie’s new grenade things?”

“Yeah, Boss. From what I hear, it look four of those pheromone chem-bombs to slow her down. They still had quite the fight, though.” Mason wore a stoic mask, but a small scowl tugged at the edges of his mouth. Liz was so excited, she didn’t notice.

“What exactly was that?” Nate asked.

“That is a Quantum deathclaw.” Liz said reverently, gazing lovingly at the creature beyond the bars. “And they bagged the matriarch, from what I can see. Magnificent.” She thought for a moment. “Make sure you reinforce those hinges and double check all the welds. If you can do it before she wakes up, even better.”

“Yes, Boss,” answered Gage. He snapped his fingers at a few nearby men to get on it.

“What the hell are you going to do with it?” Nate looked worried, like being just one room away was too close for his tastes.

Liz waved her finger in front of her lips. “Ahh ah ah!” she scolded. “I can’t go telling you all our secrets, now can I?” She turned back to Mason. “Where is Damion? I have to congratulate that tough son-of-a-bitch!”

Mason’s scowl deepened as he motioned for her to follow. They emerged back outside and headed down a side alley to the ramshackle Pack infirmary. In an alcove-turned-hospital room lay a body on a gurney, his face obscured by a horned yellow gas mask covered in blood. Everything from his chest down was covered with a gore soaked blanket.

As Liz approached, a woman wearing rags and a slave collar backed away from the man’s side. She wordlessly shook her head.

Liz somberly walked up to Damion. Once he saw the Overboss, the prone man struggled to rise, grunting with the effort.

Liz gently pushed him back down onto the cot. “You gotta be stoned out of your gourd to try and get up in the state you’re in.” Liz was silently thankful the gaggle of gawkers had hung back, giving the dying man some space. “You did a hell of a job, Damion. You bagged her. Ain’t no one going to forget that.”

The man mumbled something unintelligible. Liz shook her head in confusion. She wasn’t sure if it was the mask or the drugs garbling his words. He tried again, and failed. In frustration, he ripped his mask off. His gaunt features stretched thin against his skull, a grim visage of what was set in his future. Liz leaned in.

Straining, he managed, “Boss. Some bastard took my weapon,” Blood sputtering on his lips.

Liz’s eyes glazed over as she straightened her spine, her anger flaring momentarily. “Then you’ll have mine.” She unstrapped her combat knife from its sheath on her belt, holding it out to him. Damion wrapped his shaky fingers around hers, guiding the blade over his chest.

The two held each other’s gaze, their jaws set. A mutual understanding passed through their locked eyes.

Suddenly, a hoarse whoop erupted from Damion’s frame, guttural and rattling in his chest. Liz returned it, throaty and coarse. Mason followed, then Gage. A chorus of whoops and hoots echoed, spreading like a wave through the compound. The calls continued as Damion centered the blade over his heart, straining to place his other hand to steady it.

Liz, her eyes still locked on his, used her own hand to plunge the blade in as Damion let out one last raucous cry. The amphitheater fell silent.

Slowly, Liz turned her head, her eyes burning with rage. Coolly, she issued an order.

“Bring me the bastard that disarmed their own brother.”

People scrambled wildly, and within minutes, a man was dragged before her. A few fresh bruises bloomed on his red cheeks.

“You took this man’s weapon.” Liz’s words dripped with ire. “To disarm a fellow raider, that’s against the rules.”

“He... I… He was going to kill himself!” he stammered.

“I wonder why?” the Overboss pulled back the blood soaked sheet, revealing a shredded mess of flesh and entrails where Damion’s abdominal cavity had been. The man heaved at the sight, along with a few others in the vicinity.

Liz gave them a minute to recover before glaring down at the cowering offender. “Take his weapons,” she ordered. The two captors stripped his of his arms.

The man blubbered, trying to apologize for this misdeed.

“For Christ’s sake, shut up!” she barked. Here, she was the judge and jury. The man fell silent. “You can still be of some use, though. Maybe you can redeem yourself.” The Overboss turned to the guards that held his arms. “Make sure our new acquisition downstairs has a proper meal once she wakes up.” The man’s legs began to waver. “Small bites first, start with his feet. We don’t want to give her indigestion.” The prisoner collapsed into a heap, sobbing, before he was dragged away.

Liz now turned her attention to Mason and Gage, who had gathered close. “We’ll have a proper sendoff tonight for Damion in the main square. Make sure everybody knows. Every faction is invited, so play nice. Damion deserves the respect of everyone in Nuka-World.”

Next, she addressed Nate. “I’ve got a funeral to organize, so our little parley is going to have to wait. Feel free to look around, but stay in Nuka-Town. You’ve only seen a fraction of what Nuka-World can throw at you. I don’t need to have the General of the Minutemen getting eaten by some stray cricket while I plan a BBQ. Oh, and I’m going to insist that you attend as a show of goodwill. Participation is mandatory. See you at the pyre.”

Nate frowned. “It’s a date, then.”

#fallout #nuka world #fallout 4 #fanfic #fan fic #ao3 #beastly kingdom #nate #overboss #gore #raiders

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clonerightsagenda · 7 years ago

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#tuesjade #i called what i was doing kid shuffles #just bc kidswap seems to generally be switching their designs and aesthetics around #which is cool but not what i was doing #kid shuffle #kat writes fic #? i guess

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epacer · 6 years ago

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Musical Chairs in the World of SD Unified

Now You See Them, then You Don’t

San Diego Unified Moved a Problem Principal to Districtwide Role, Then Paid Him to Leave

San Diego Unified School District has a history of moving problem principals into a role known as “principal on special assignment” at the central office.

One principal who transferred to the program allegedly covered up sexual abuse at Green Elementary School. A second racked up $200,000 in donations that weren’t backed up by receipts. Another appeared to have falsified his credentials – presenting a Ph.D. from a university in England that seemed to be nothing more than a website. That was Vincent Mays, and the Ph.D. was just a small part of his story.

New documents obtained by Voice of San Diego through a public records request show Mays’ problems in the district went far beyond a fake diploma. A district investigation concluded he also engaged in quid-pro-quo sexual harassment and created a hostile work environment at Junipero Serra High School in Tierrasanta.

And Mays got much more than a central office job for his dubious record, the new documents show. After about a year of working on special assignment – making roughly $143,000 a year – the district then paid him an additional $110,000 just to make him go away.

In exchange for his resignation, which took effect in February, the district also agreed not to tell future employers about Mays’ misconduct. Should he try to land another job as a principal or teacher, San Diego Unified officials won’t be able to give that school any hint he was a bad employee, per the resignation agreement. His future colleagues, students and their parents will have to figure it out on their own.

Along the way, district officials consistently stuck to the story that they were moving Mays to the central office because of his expertise and not because he was a problem principal. And even when asked in recent months whether Mays was still on staff, district officials said he had resigned, instead of admitting he was still receiving a paycheck from the district.

♦ ♦ ♦

From the time he arrived from Newark Public Schools in 2014, Mays seems to have treated Serra High School as his kingdom.

He ruled by decree, not consensus-building, according to interviews with fellow educators in his district case file and interviews conducted by Voice of San Diego. And he also took liberties in the way he spoke to women.

But Mays also knew how to make a good first impression. Kristin Schwall, a parent with two children who attended Serra, remembers the first assembly in 2014 when Mays addressed the whole school.

“He was a good speaker. My impression was that he was like a good motivational speaker, but did not have a lot of hard facts,” she said. “His tag phrase during that meeting was ‘We’re going to make Serra the best school in the universe.’”

“The man has a golden tongue. He can make anyone feel amazing for 10 minutes. I’ve never been around a talker like that,” said Peter Oskin, a former Serra teacher.

But despite Mays’ charisma, his popularity started to deteriorate relatively quickly with some teachers.

Mays did not respond to interview requests from Voice of San Diego.

“It was very clear from the beginning that he was not interested in collaborating. He had his own way of doing things and he wasn’t interested in hearing other people even though it was his first year at Serra,” Nick Cincotta, a special education teacher at Serra High, told me.

Some of the teacher’s complaints against him were relatively minor, but taken together they undermined his effectiveness as a leader and “alienated and divided staff,” according to the conclusions of a district investigation into Mays’ behavior during the 2014-15 school year.

Staff members laid out their complaints in interviews with district officials: He was dismissive of staff in meetings and talked over them, according to multiple reports. He made at least one person feel personally humiliated. He criticized the school’s vice principals for how they made the schedule; cursed in administrative meeting; called one group of teachers “keystone cops”; did not get input on a student’s suspension and refused to allow one department head to be involved in hiring people for her own department.

The names of complainants in the district’s files are redacted. But multiple reports in the file also describe Mays speaking with strong sexual innuendo to female employees and inviting them on dates.

In one case, a boy and girl student had been making out at school. The boy wanted to keep going. But the girl told him to stop. The boy did not listen at first, but then stopped his advances. A woman who worked at the school asked Mays if the boy would be punished.

Mays said he would not. “It would be like if I invited you ______ to my apartment for dinner. We had dinner, then we began to get intimate. I took off your clothes and you took off mine. Then we were nipple to chest. Just when I was about to enter you, you said no,” Mays said to the woman, according to the district case file.

On another occasion, Mays was speaking to a woman in front of a group of people. “You won’t need a Red Bull, you’ll need a black bull. You’ll feel it, it will wake you up,” he said. Mays then made a “hand gesture grabbing an imaginary object and stroking it to his mouth as his eyes opened wide and his mouth opened, as if he were performing oral sex,” according to the report.

Mays made other sexual comments as well. He also repeatedly told one employee he wanted to spend his free weekend time with her. And he asked another to give him the details of her after-work schedule, according to the file.

He gave one employee a promotion and shortly after, asked her to go on a date. After two dates, the employee declined to go on a third. District officials determined this did not constitute sexual harassment, but did say the timing of the promotion, combined with asking the employee out, was “suspicious.”

Much of Mays’ behavior did not rise to the official level of misconduct, district administrators determined. But in one instance, it did.

Mays persistently asked an employee who was coming up for evaluation to go out to lunch. The employee tried to demur, but eventually said yes. Afterward, Mays began pressuring her for dinner and a walk on the beach. The employee “felt she could not refuse because he was her boss and he [had] not given her a teaching evaluation yet,” the report concluded.

“These situations were initiated by you and resulted in an imbalance of power due to your position as her supervisor, this is considered quid pro quo harassment,” Shirley Wilson, an area superintendent, wrote to Mays in an official letter of reprimand.

That was in June 2015. At the time, it might have made sense for the district to try to force him to leave, through a payout or termination proceedings. But the most inscrutable part of the Mays story is that the district kept him at Serra for another year, then transferred him to the central office and ultimately kept him on as an employee until February of this year.

Mays was only forced out of Serra when three teachers started their own unofficial investigation into his behavior. And even then, San Diego Unified officials aggressively defended Mays, despite internal knowledge that he created a hostile work environment and sexually harassed an employee.

♦ ♦ ♦

“All it really took was 20 minutes of googling and a couple of phone calls for us to figure it out,” said Oskin, the former Serra High teacher.

Oskin, along with two other teachers, Nick Cincotta and Ralf Uebel, decided – given Mays’ behavior and poor relationship with some staff – to take a closer look at their principal’s background toward the end of his second year, during spring 2016.

Within minutes, Oskin said, it became clear that Mays’ Ph.D. seemed fake. Stamford Hill University in England actually appeared to be nothing more than a website. (The website has since gone offline.) No record of the university could be found in the United Kingdom or the United States, NBC San Diego reported at the time.

The district immediately stepped in to defend Mays’ doctorate and help launch a counter-attack against the teachers. “These vicious personal attacks on Dr. Vincent Mays are shameful,” district officials wrote in a statement to NBC San Diego. “He has every necessary certification and more importantly the skills necessary to lead Serra High School. He has and will continue to have the full support of the district.”

But because the teachers filed an official complaint, district officials were forced to look into Mays’ Ph.D. Relatively quickly, they discovered the teachers were right. Mays was unable to provide any documentation to prove he actually completed coursework at Stamford Hill. And a district investigator found no conclusive evidence the university had ever in fact existed, according to a district report obtained by NBC San Diego at the time.

Mays – who sweated profusely during an interview with the district investigator, grew irate and continually referred to the investigation as “bullshit” – said he received and turned in assignments through the mail, according to the report. As far as he knew, Stamford Hill was real, he said.

In order to get Mays out of Serra, district officials convinced him to transfer to a position they created just for him. He would be a principal on special assignment, focusing on equity issues and closing the achievement gap. He would make the same salary, roughly $143,000 per year.

In an email to Serra staff, he wrote, “The position is so attractive that I could not refuse it.”

District officials painted the move as a chance to scale out Mays’ achievements districtwide. “The district often shifts principals to other assignments in order to utilize his/her unique set of skills and expertise in particular areas,” Jennifer Rodriguez, a former district spokeswoman, wrote in an email to NBC San Diego. “This is the case with Vincent Mays.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Last September, I wanted to find out what had become of the principals on special assignment. I emailed spokeswoman Maureen Magee and asked her where some of the problem principals, including Mays, had ended up. She said the program was completely finished, no more principals worked on special assignment and that Mays had resigned from the district.

That wasn’t exactly true.

What Magee didn’t say is that Mays was still on the district’s payroll. He had agreed to resign, but that resignation would not take effect for several months.

When asked about this discrepancy, Magee responded in an email, “When you asked if he still worked for the district I responded he resigned, which was correct.”

Mays spent about a year in the district’s special assignment program, before the district struck a deal with him. In September 2017, he agreed to resign on two conditions: district officials would have to keep him on paid administrative leave on a teacher’s salary for a year and five months, and they would agree not to tell future employers about his misconduct, according to the separation agreement.

“The district seeks to resolve personnel matters effectively,” Magee said of the agreement. “The district notified the Commission on Teacher Credentialing about Mr. Mays’ resignation and the circumstances surrounding it. The CTC has the authority to pursue it as it sees fit.”

School districts are required to notify the CTC of substantial misconduct. They are not required to sign agreements agreeing to keep misconduct silent. The CTC has the authority to revoke Mays’ teaching credential in the state of California.

In all – May’s salary during his paid leave added up to roughly $110,000 – it cost California taxpayers about $250,000 to get rid of Mays. During that time, he was not “required to perform any work,” according to the separation agreement. His last day on the district’s payroll was Feb. 28, 2019, five months after Magee told me he resigned.

“It’s quite a costly venture to try to fire a certificated employee, whether it’s a teacher or management,” said Donis Coronel, executive director of San Diego Unified’s management union and a former director of human resources for the district. (The management union did not represent Mays; he chose to secure his own counsel.) She said it can cost both sides between $100,000 and $200,000 to fight a termination.

If the district had tried to fire Mays after the sexual harassment investigation in his first year, it almost certainly would have saved money. During his next year as principal, his year on special assignment and his time on paid leave, the district paid him nearly $400,000 total. Looking at the paid leave payout in isolation, the district probably saved money.

“In both sides of the system there are flaws,” said Coronel.

State education code puts several layers of job protection in place that make termination extremely expensive. Because of that, it is often in a district’s financial interest to pursue a settlement agreement, she said. But Coronel understands that the separation agreements can cause problems for future employers too.

“The internet is available. You can Google someone and find out a lot of information,” she said. “I also understand it can make it difficult if there hasn’t been any media or that person hasn’t been written about.”

Mays, meanwhile, promotes himself through various social media channels and two webpages as a motivational speaker, communications consultant, coach, community leader, mental fitness consultant and aspiring author. In a January post on New Year’s resolutions he wrote, “In 2019, embrace positivity! Nothing wastes time more efficiently than wallowing in regret and self-pity … Think things into existence! If you set your mind to something, you can accomplish great things.” *reposted article for the VOSD by Will Huntsberry of April 2, 2019

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