#a good year for aqua existence. i mean it could all go to shit by Oct30th but like. i hope it doesn't? lol

[angeltism]

If it's close enough to Halloween for the Costco I go to to sell costumes then I think it's close enough to my birthday (the day before Halloween) for me to be annoying about it

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

My Biggest Problem With VRAINS

Spoilers: It’s this guy:

And I know that’s not a particularly popular take but I’m sorry, Revolver pisses me off. I don’t know if I’d quite call him the worst character in all of Yugioh (he certainly has his moments) but he is the most frustrating. Because there was a good character buried somewhere in there that just… never came to fruition for me.

(This ended up being very long, as I expected. Honestly steer clear of this one if racism/bigotry/homophobia/transphobia or anything of that vein are triggering topics for you. The Ignis are a race and Revolver hates them all for existing, so I think my use of the word “racist” is justified and necessary for my explanations but I understand it’s a triggering topic.)

At first, Revolver was perfectly fine.

(As a character that is. That first avatar design was ugly as shit.)

He’s an effective first villain of the show, the leader of the Knights of Hanoi who were straight up terrorizing Link VRAINS, which only Playmaker had the strength/courage to fight against. He’s aided by Ai, a rare AI with free will (or an Ignis) that we learn later was created by Douchebag Kogami- oh, I mean Ryoken’s father to be the successor to humanity. Blah blah blah you guys know the history. This is where my problems with Revolver start. His father is clearly clearly in the wrong. He kidnapped and tortured six children for six months to create the six Ignis…

And then he fears that humanity will resent the Ignis and go to war with them. AND THEN GET THIS.

HE RESENTS THE IGNIS AND GOES TO WAR WITH THEM.

He’s evil and bad, no one in the show tries to say otherwise. Except Revolver.

He doesn’t justify torturing the kids thankfully. He was the one who put a stop to that and that landed his father in jail which… admittedly yes that would weigh on an eight year old and possibly screw them up for life. It doesn’t surprise me that Revolver ended up so messed up. It doesn’t excuse it but it does make sense and could’ve been really interesting if they’d bothered to explore that.

No, what pisses me off to no end with this character is that not only does he believe his father’s shitty “all the Ignis should die” rhetoric but how he never bends on that belief throughout the rest of the show, not once. It’s fine in season one, because he’s the villain. His actions against Link VRAINS and humanity are very clearly put in the wrong in that season, and by extension, so is his visceral hatred of the Ignis. It’s in season two when this becomes a problem. Because he didn't come back as a villain, he came back as an anti hero, or morally grey, whichever. So… he’s at least partially in the right now so him retaining this visceral hatred of the Ignis throughout every appearance he has in the show is presented as… a debatable topic. And this is the thing that makes me hate him. Because to put it simply, Revolver is a racist. He hates the entire Ignis race because of what they are and what he thinks they could do. It’s the very definition of bigotry:

Imagine some of Revolver’s quotes about how all Ignis are terrible and will lead to the end of humanity if they aren’t stopped only with the word “Ignis” were replaced by “gays” or something to that extent and you now have the slightest idea of the white hot rage that boils within me when I see this pathetic excuse for a man.

With all that being said, Revolver’s stubborn refusal to change his beliefs on the Ignis would honestly work.

IF HE WERE DEPICTED IN THE WRONG FOR IT.

The other characters (mainly Yusaku and Takeru) argue with him about it but the very narrative of the show itself only ever reinforces Revolver’s horrible backwards racist beliefs. There are plenty of moments throughout season two where his beliefs about the Ignis are proven wrong, moments that I thought were setting up him coming to realise he was wrong to generalise the Ignis as a species.

The moments:

-Ai, Flame, and Aqua vowing to fight for humanity at Revolver’s side despite Revolver saying to their faces that he would kill them all after

-Flame and Aqua straight up dying protecting humanity (which he definitely saw, they all did)

-HIM LEARNING THAT THOSE FUTURES HIS FATHER SAW WHERE THE IGNIS KILLED THEM ALL WERE ONLY CAUSED BY LIGHTNING. SOMETHING HE NOT ONLY FULLY UNDERSTANDS BUT WAS THE ONE TO EXPLAIN.

BUT WE JUST CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS CAN WE?! Because the very next time we see him after he comes back from being fucking dead, (BEFORE AI’S ATTACKS ON HUMANITY NEED I ADD) he says this insulting shit:

(This is right after the Bohman duel by the way. Poor Takeru basically just lost Flame and is having to deal with this shit)

And this is the scene that broke my fucking patience. He’s been given reason after reason to stop believing this crap but instead, he doubles down on it and refuses to change. Ever. And then what is this scene followed by?!

AN IGNIS ATTACKING HUMANITY AND PROVING HIS BELIEFS RIGHT. This show basically made a character racist, gave him plenty of reasons to stop being racist, had him refuse to stop being racist, and then proved that he was right to be racist all along. WHY THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS GUY A FAN FAVOURITE?!

Also, he repeatedly refers to the Ignis as “its”:

Even when the other characters start to use he/him pronouns (or she/her for Aqua) and it feels like he’s calling them objects or god forbid doing that thing trasphobes do to transgender people and OH MY GOD I WANT TO PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE.

So… as you can tell, my annoyance of this character is… very personal and emotionally charged. But there’s more. Oh boy there’s more. Because Revolver being a fucking piece of shit doesn’t just fuck with his character, it fucks with the very themes of this show. It doesn't completely ruin them but hear me out: Yusaku, our beloved main character, believes that there can be peace between AI and humans, that they can coexist. This show ends… with every AI with complete free will dead, which was Ryoken’s goal. Ryoken isn’t even punished in the end for all that he did (guarding Link VRAINS isn’t a punishment). He got exactly what he wanted and his bigoted views were never called into question or presented in the wrong after season one which is AWFUL.

I mentioned a while ago that if they permanently killed Ai, this is the message they would be sending:

And… yeah, they still kinda did. Not completely (Blood Shepherd, Queen, and Go Onizuka were never justified, that still stands) and I still absolutely love Ai’s villain arc and Yusaku and Ai’s final duel and all the emotions between them. Ai only ever fell to villainy because he was terrified he would eventually become the monster horrible fucks like Ryoken believed he would. Well, that and wanting to prevent Yusaku’s death. The show doesn’t say that all AI with free will are evil and want to take over humanity but it doesn’t say Ryoken is wrong to believe that either which is where my main problem arises. And this could’ve been fixed. Like I said, Ryoken seemed to be coming around a bit during his death. Why not just cut that scene in the season 3 premiere where he goes back on what little growth he showed? It wouldn’t completely fix everything but it would at least help.

So… Ryoken makes some of the themes of VRAINS a complete mess. Not all of them. For some reason, I really like some of his more… philosophical quotes. I don’t know why, I just think they’re cool:

That’s kind of a VRAINS thing in general but Revolver in particular has quite a few of these quotes. He’s even a character archetype I like. Trust me when I say I wanted to like this character, I was actually excited for his return in season 2 at first and gave him plenty of chances to be a developed character. And… yeah he did develop but… not in a way that mattered if I’m being honest. I have no idea why Yusaku cuts him as much slack as he does. I have never once understood their “bond,” Ryoken will not bend on his hatred of Yusaku’s partner and told Yusaku to his face he regretted saving his life and giving him hope. So by the time season 3 came along I just… fucking snapped.

But Ryoken had potential. I mentioned a while ago that I’m writing a post-VRAINS story and Ryoken’s in it… well… it’s not done yet, so I’ll just say now that hope I’m able to do this character justice.

[silky-stories]

Hi!! Maybe headcanons or some kind of literature with either vampire garcello x reader or mermaid garcello x reader?? You could do both or one or the other. You're the one writing it after all. Thanks!

Oh. Ohohohohohohoho, now we’re talking >:)

Anon I am going to let you in on a little secret, so anyone who isn’t anon look away >:(

...okay now that it’s just you and me, one of your suggestions kind of predicted a oneshot I’ve been working on that I’m going to be posting soon. So because of that I’ll be going with the other option. Hope you enjoy ;3

———————————————————————

Parched. {Vampire Garcello/Reader}

Genre: Suggestive

Words: 2027

Related Song: Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know { slowed + reverb}

Summary: When your boyfriend gets home from a long day, it’s only polite to fix him a drink, don’t you think?

Disclaimer/s: Steamy content, swearing, blood

Notes: Garcello speaks in red this time, Reader speaks in blue ;) [Also, monster character x reader or character x monster reader is my absolute jam, feel free to send in requests like this more often-]

———————————————————————

Your boyfriend was, to put it lightly, a little bit on the odd side.

He work dark clothes on hot days, didn’t like the sun very much, had an uncanny sense of smell and hearing, and liked his meat pretty rare. To the outside world he was a weird shut-in that was probably goth, but you knew a hell of a lot more than that.

The two of you had met late at night in a rougher part of the city. You were on your way home from picking up a few essentials at the nearby 24-hour convenience store when you heard some rustling coming from an alleyway. Then some banging. Then some yelling. Then silence.

Well that was ominous as hell.

...

Time to investigate.

You made your way down the dreary alley, groceries in hand, preparing yourself to see a murder scene or something of the like and...

...you honestly weren’t that far off.

You found yourself watching as a man pinned a guy to a wall, his head lowered to his neck. At first you felt yourself getting embarrassed, figuring that you had walked over and unintentionally interrupted a passionate moment. You quickly realized that wasn’t the case when you watched the guy go limp in the arms of the larger man.

After a few moments of you being the quietest you’ve ever been in your life, standing and staring in shock, not knowing what would even be the right course of action for a situation like this, he pulled away. The guy that had previously gone limp slowly slid down the brick wall, deep red trickling down his neck and pooling in the crook of his shoulder. The aqua-haired man let out a sigh as he wiped his mouth with his gloved hands, still unaware of your presence.

Your mind was blank when you spoke up, it had to be for you to do something so bold yet stupid.

“Is he dead?”

The man flinched, hard, and whipped around to lock eyes with you. You were met with two bright red dots staring back at you, stunned, you began to unintentionally study his face.

The dark crimson that you had seen on the possibly-dead man’s neck was also identifiable as a smear on this guy’s face, starting at his lips and trailing off along his cheek where he had tried to wipe it off. His lips were slightly agape, revealing a set of sizeable fangs, as well as other teeth that seemed sharper than a regular human’s teeth should be. Looking down further you noticed that his gloves were fingerless, presumably to allow the sharp claws of nails that he had to stick out.

Other than all of that though he looked like a pretty normal guy. A pretty normal guy with very pale skin, but normal nonetheless.

“I... huh..?”

You were so busy taking in his clearly inhuman appearance that you actually forgot what you had initially asked for a moment, but restated your question when it came back to you.

I mean, what was there to lose at this point? It’s not like running seemed like a very smart option.

“Him. Is... is he dead?”

You pointed at the man that was currently almost falling over in his slump to emphasize your point. The man in front of you took a double take between you and what may have been a dead body before responding, clearly taking in the absurdity of the situation, similar to you.

“He’s... no he’s... passed out I...”

He paused, blinking a few times as he tried to process what was even happening. You took the moment to look at the body a little more critically and, surprise surprise, noticed that he was actually breathing.

“I didn’t... I didn’t take much so he’s just...”

Didn’t take much?

...

Oh.

Oh shit.

Suddenly the whole ordeal just clicked in your brain as you finally understood what it was that you were looking at.

“You’re a vampire!”

The words left your mouth before you could stop them, shocked and questioning, almost accusatory as your eyes went wide.

He didn’t seem to like that though. His brows pulling together tightly in sudden concern as he frantically looked around for any other possible witnessess. When he reinitiated eye contact he appeared quite a bit more panicked than before, more like someone that had been caught doing something arguably wrong. He looked threatening for the first time throughout the encounter.

“You... what do you plan on doing..?”

Plan on doing? Like what you were going to do after this? Knowing that vampires did in fact exist and at least one lived in your city?

“Do you... ever kill them?”

He shook his head warily.

“Then... I don’t... think I care?”

He was surprised to hear that, to be fair though, so were you. You figured you would care more about catching a literal vampire in the act but... he wasn’t killing anyone so was it really any of your business?

“You... you don’t care that I just drink some of his blood???”

“I guess not?”

You let out a chuckle of disbelief at your own statement, any ounce of a threatening or intimidating expression had left his face.

“He’s not gonna, like... turn into a vampire or die of disease or something later, right?”

“No that’s uh, not how it works...”

“Then just like... I don’t know, make sure he gets cleaned up and home safe and this stays between us I guess.”

He let you know that that’s what he did on a regular basis and after a few more awkward moments you were on your way.

That definitely wasn’t your last interaction though.

He didn’t trust you to keep your word, you honestly couldn’t really blame him, and you ended up catching glimpses of him watching you from alleyways or tops of buildings at night. It was kind of worrying at first but eventually it got to the point that you would just smile and wave if you saw him.

Eventually he would wave back.

Sometime down the road and you learned his name. Months later and you found an odd friendship forming, starting with you asking him to come in on a particularly rainy night.

Even later and you found yourself developing feelings, getting to know who he really was. His personality, his struggles, his fears. He really wasn’t a bad guy, he just had no other choice since regular food did nothing for him.

After half a year of your strange friendship you found yourselves together, he had happily moved into your apartment and you had started to acquire blood bags for him to use instead of people. That didn’t stop him from drinking straight from the source every now and then... although, the source he used had definitely changed.

“I’m home.”

You leaned out of the kitchen to smile at Garcello, he returned it with a warm grin, shucking off his coat and tossing it to the side to land on your shared couch.

“Welcome back! How was your day?”

You greeted him with open arms as soon as he meandered into the kitchen, he swiftly took up your non-verbal offer and swept you into his strong arms. He buried his face in the crook of your neck and inhaled, sighing deeply through his nose as he melted into the embrace.

“It went fine, certainly not my job of choice but I think the interview went alright.”

You hummed in acknowledgment and nuzzled your head against his, pleased to have him back in your arms after half a day without him.

“I made sure to get bread and milk like you asked.”

You chuckled as you spotted the brown paper bag he had set on the counter.

“Thank you.”

He continued to hold you like that, peppering your cheek and jawline with a few kisses as he told you more about his day. Although, there seemed to be a shift in his attitude somewhere along the way. He suddenly went from sweet and giddy to much quieter, giving shorter answers when you asked him a question as he let you lead the conversation.

You decided to bring it up, just in case there was something wrong.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“Hmm?”

“You just... you went kinda quiet so I just wanted to make sure.”

He was perfectly silent as he thought over his answer.

“Yes, but... are you... working on anything right now?”

His tone was anticipatory, eagerly awaiting your response. You found yourself suspicious of his intentions.

“Well, no, I was just putting away some dishes that I was washiNG-!”

You were caught off guard by his tongue dragging across your neck in a smooth motion, tightly taking hold of the back of his t-shirt as he did so. You felt him smirk against your neck afterwards.

“That’s good... you see, I have a bit of a problem.”

“Y...y-yeah...?”

“Yeah...”

You flinched as he brushed one of his fangs against the top of your shoulder.

“The thing is, I’ve had a bit of a... craving today.”

One of his claw-like nails came up to trace along your sternum...

“It’s been just... driving me mad.”

Your collarbone...

“Itching the back of my brain...”

Your sternocleidomastoid muscle...

“Funny, right?”

Stopping and hovering just above one of your carotid arteries.

“Yeah... f... funny...”

His smirk grew in response to your reactions, nuzzling your neck affectionately with a huff.

“I guess what I’m trying to ask is...”

He tilted his head up to whisper in your ear.

“...would you mind if I had a little taste?”

Your eyes fluttered shut as you leaned into him, not even having to speak for him to know what your answer was. He had waited for that cue though, just like usual he would never drink from you unless he was certain that you were fine with it. Even then, you both had a very clear safe word that you had used in the past if anything went wrong or you changed your mind.

You didn’t really have to worry about that though. You knew you were safe in his hands.

He purred in response to your willingness, slowly walking you back and gently pinning you to the wall.

“God you smell good right now...”

He lowered his head back down to your neck, finding the spot that he had traced up to and licking a small stripe along it, pinpointing the location of your pulse.

“...bet you’d... taste even better though...”

He was gentle as always when he bit down, it only felt like a pinch until the aphrodisiac kicked in, immediately erasing any sense of pain you had. Being guided by one of his hands that had tangled itself in your hair, your head lolled to the side as he drank from you. A gentle moan erupted from your lips as your grip on his shirt went slack, your arms falling limp beside you as bliss took hold of your thoughts.

“F... fuck...”

He purred louder as you gave clear indication of your enjoyment. The hand that he had propping himself up against the wall fell and came to rest on your hip, gripping tightly as the hand he had on the back of your head made soft contact with the wall instead.

He cut himself off a little bit sooner than usual, pulling away just enough for you to watch him lick his lips and fangs clean.

He chuckled as the hand that raked through your hair slid down to cup your cheek.

“...I was right, you taste amazing...”

His expression didn’t lose it’s smugness though, usually when he was done he would take a much softer turn and patch you up immediately.

“Although, I think I might have put a little too much aphrodisiac in your system sweetheart...”

He was right, you felt like a rag doll right now, nearly putty in his hands as the only thing keeping you standing at the moment was his grip on your torso. Your eyes had glazed over slightly and you were practically panting at this point.

“...let’s do something about that, hmm~?”

[go-dark-turtle]

(This is for @kakyoin-shades thank you so much for inspiring me. Anyhoo I hope you enjoy my first Jotaro x reader fan fiction. Let me know what you think. Thank you~ 😎)

Overdrive into Platinum

Jotaro x Gender Neutral reader fanfiction.

After the events of facing N'Doul, Kakyion had to spend time in the nearby hospital which meant the Stardust Crusaders were a member short. However it wasn't until Avdol received a telegram from his fromer shop assistant that they were in the area in the town outside of Luxor.

"Oi Avdol who exactly is this person?" Polnareff asked while placing his cheek on his palm leaning over the table to try and read the telegram.

Avdol placed the telegram in his chest pocket and gave the Frenchman a glare for trying to read it. He gently clasped his hands and softly spoke "Ah lets see well Y/N came to me about 4 years. They asked me for a reading. They wanted to know more about the world so I took them under my wing teaching everything I knew. Then a year later it was discovered they had a unique ability."

"So they are stand user?" Joseph asked while holding his cup.

"No, they use Hamon. I know now it's a very old practice..." Avdol nodded

"That can't be, the only Hamon users left are myself and my mother..." Joseph scratched his chin trying to figure it out "The Hamon tribe was wiped out after I defeated Straizo..."

Just then you walked into the cafe and smiled at Avdol and charged at him and pinned him against the table glaring down at him. "Long time no see Avdol ha ha ha ha ha!"

"What the heck Y/N! What in the world has gotten into you." Avdol struggled to get you off him.

Jotaro walked up behind you and pried you off Avdol and holding your arm and looked at your face. " Listen here, I don't know who you think you are, but pulling this sort of shit off isn't funny."

You grunted and glared at the young teen and took a deep breath. "KWOOOOOOOO"

"Watch out Jotaro! KWOOOOOO" Joseph tackled his grandson to the ground and used his hamon to deflect yours.

"Ah if it isn't Mr Joestar, HA HA HA HA, Oh it's going to be an absolute pleasure taking you out." You cackled at the older gentleman.

Polnareff ran over to Avdol and helped him up while Jotaro dusted himself down and marched up to you and used Star Platinum to hold you down to the ground, you struggled against the invisible grip and grunted and growled knowing you couldn't move against his tight grip. His aqua eyes scanned over your face and that's when he nodded to his grandfather who took the place of Star Platinum to hold you down. Jotaro held your cheeks and Star Platinum brushed your fringe back and right in the centre of your forehead a fleshbud.

"ORA!" Star platinum yanked it out at full force.

"YUCK!" Joseph used a hamon kick to make the fleshbud into dust.

You sat up and held your face like you woke up from a dream and you noticed Avdol.

"Mr Avdol, I am so sorry. I... I was too weak to overcome him..." You rushed to his side and placed your hand on his and bowed in his presence.

"Y/N, Im so sorry you were under his control...how did it happen?" Avdol placed his other hand on yours and looked at you.

"2 years ago, after discovering my hamon powers I began to research my past a little. But I only got so far, the records of my grandfather and before him were gone from all existence. That's when that night I came back to your shop to ask more but Dio was there outside of your shop. standing there in the dimly lit street his skin was so white and eerie looking I was frozen on the spot unable to do anything. His voice was so calm and yet I felt more terrified. The last words I heard before under his control was 'It's ironic that a Hamon user is under my spell.' Mr Avdol I'm so ashamed of myself I let him take over." You hung your head in shame.

"Y/N, I am to blame if I had run the other way that night I could have saved you from that terrible and terrifying encounter. Please don't feel ashamed, he is a terrifying monster." Avdol patted your shoulder "But what matters is now you are safe with us, Y/N these are my friends Mr Joestar, Jotaro and Polnareff, everyone this is Y/N."

Everyone except Jotaro shook your hand and when you approached him with an open hand he smacked it away and walked outside to have a smoke.

"Ah don't mind my grandson Y/N he keeps himself to himself dont take it personally. So you are a Hamon user? I don't understand how that can be. The Hamon race died out a long time ago." Joseph tiled his head in confusion.

"Well I only got to meet grandma Zeppeli once before she passed on but she didn't say anything about Hamon..." You smile at the memory.

"ZEPPELI?! OH MY GOD! Now it all makes sense." He laughed and ruffled your hair and cried a little "My old training partner Ceaser, he's your grandfather... I had a feeling he had a girlfriend on the side back then, heh heh I miss the training days."

Jotaro walked back in and saw you and his grandfather laughing and chatting, he glared even more and pushed you aside. "Don't think that because you're free from Dio's control we can be friends. The others might not see it but I'm still suspicious of you!"

"Jotaro would you calm down, they are actually more connected to us more than you think. Caesar, my old training buddy, was their grandfather...." Joseph folded his arms at his grandson .

"I dont care, I still don't like them." Jotaro glared at you and sat down to join Avdol and Polnareff having a cup of tea.

You put your hands on your hips and shook your head at how disrespectful he was not just to you but to his own flesh and blood.

***Later at the hotel***

There were only 3 rooms available and Polnareff was insistent he had his own room. As much as Joseph was up for sharing with Jotaro, Avdol voted against it and went with him. That ment by default you shared a room with Jotaro, thankfully the room you two were put in had a bunkbed and a bit of space to sit and watch TV. Joseph and Avdol's room were a few doors down from you both. But due to single rooms being smaller Polnareff's room was directly belows yours.

"Good night Mr Joestar, Avdol, Jotaro and Y/N. Hey and you two don't you be fighting all night I need my beauty sleep." The Frenchman spun his key around his finger and headed down to the second floor.

You both glared at the tall haired man but then followed the older gents down the hallway, you stopped with them as Jotaro carried on to the room.

"Ah this is our spot good night Y/N if you need me or Mr Joestar just come on by." Avdol smiled.

Joseph smiled at you both "Now listen up you two, we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow so get some rest okay." You smiled and waved them good night before catching up to Jotaro.

"Ugh what a pain..." He gritted his teeth and opened the door knowing tonight was going to be a rough and challenging night.

"Oh wow what a lovely room." You looked all around the room " Ah I want top bunk."

"No top bunk is mine, back off." Jotaro started to climb the ladder

"I called it first." You janked the back of his belt

"Dont touch me...." Jotaro turned around and towered over you and backed you into the wall.

"Ah I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you can have the top bunk just dont hurt me.. " You felt helpless in his icy glare.

He huffed and climbed up the ladder to place down his rucksack while you sank to the floor and sighed with relief and closed your eyes.

PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCH!

Your eyes widened and you looked over and noticed he helped himself to one of the beers in the fridge without asking permission.

"Hey! You should ask before opening that!" You sprung to your feet and pointed at him

"Pfft, I don't need to listen to someone like you." He shrugged and proceeded to bring the can to his lips.

You shook your head in disbelief and held the can "KWOOOOOOOOOO!" you breathed deeply.

You smirked as the liquid inside came out like a big blob and encased itself around your finger and you walked towards the door.

"Oi gimme that back." Jotaro marched up behind you.

"You need to ask permission first..." You smirked more turning the doorknob and the door opened ajar.

Jotaro slammed his hand on the door and forced it to slam again. You looked up at him and you sighed.

"Fine if you really want it back then here take it!" You charged Hamon through the liquid, but due to the force of the Hamon charged it exploded over his jacket and forced him backwards in shock.

"Ugh... oh you are going to pay for that. Star Platinum." Jotaro threw off his jacket and clenched his first and glared at you more.

"Oh you wanna fight then alright. KWOOOOOOOO!" You charged Hamon in your fists and watched him approach you. (ha ha yes he is approaching you lol)

He was getting closer and that's when you smirked knowing you had the upper hand.

"OVERDRIVE!!!!!!" You punched his stomach and he landed on the floor.

You stepped forward and nudged him while he was paralaysed on the floor. He looked up at you and realised how strong you were and gritted his teeth and charged Star Platinum at you and pinned you against the wall which caused you to hurt your back being slammed so suddenly.

"WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?" Joseph slammed the door opened and saw you pinned against the wall by Star platinum and Jotaro was on the floor stunned by hamon. "Y/N! JOTARO! I WANT AN EXPLANATION NOW!"

You both started to bicker and talked over each other and Joseph held his hand up "I don't want to hear anymore pettiness. You are supposed to be a team. Now stop all this fighting and for the love of hermit purple get some bloody sleep. Avdol and myself could hear you fighting all the way down the hallway. Just be thankful he's not in here otherwise you'd both be sorry. Now make up and get some rest."

Joseph left the room and Jotaro called back his stand and you fell to the floor. " I'm sorry Jotaro, I didn't mean for your jacket to get drenched in beer." You crawled over to him and used Hamon to get rid of his paralysed state before dusting yourself down and standing up.

"Y/N I'm sorry too, are you okay?" Jotaro stood up and looked to the floor not wanting to make eye contact.

"I'll be fine, what about you? I just sent Hamon on your stomach. I hope it didn't leave a mark..." You felt bad and clenched your fists nervously.

"Ah I wouldn't worry about that, the old man is right let's get some sleep, ugh...." Jotaro turned to climb up the bunk bed and that's when he realised his abs felt like a thousand bruises all appeared at once.

He lifted his tank top and saw a huge burn mark left by the Hamon. Your eyes widened and you dashed to the bathroom, you grabbed a face cloth and some badges from the first aid kit and encouraged him to sit down.

"Y/N thank you..." He smiled softly at you.

You nodded and placed the wet cloth on the burn and wrapped the bandage around his waist making sure it was secure.

"There we go all fixed. Again I'm so sorry I've never been in a fight before so I have no idea how strong my powers are really..." You looked down and admitted

"Until today you've...never been in a fight? I...I feel such a dick... Y/N I was so angry hearing you are a Hamon user and letting Dio take over you so easily. I started to blame you for this mess with Dio, but you aren't to blame at all. You were all alone in the dark unable to ask for help, of course you would be terrified.... Y/N I hope you can forgive me." Jotaro looked up at you with such sad eyes.

You nodded " It's okay, Jotaro I forgive you. I understand now why you were so hostile towards me. Friends?" You held out your hand.

He nodded "Friends!" He shook your hand and smiled softly. "Anyway I'm going to sleep now."

"Good night Jotaro." You smile at him.

You turned off the light and switched on the lamp on the table in the corner by your bottom bunk and you smiled and grabbed another beer can and quietly charged Hamon through it and walked over to the bunk bed and smirked while using your powers to make the can float up to him. It nudged his arm and he opened his eyes and shifted towards the edge of the bed and saw you tap your nose and place your finger over your lips.

"Our secret" You whispered

Jotaro smirked and opened the can and took a sip while adjusting himself to look up at the ceiling. You got into the bottom bunk and leaned over to turn off the light, jotaro finished his beer and used Star Platinum to gently place it in the bin. He shifted himself to nestle into bed and that's when his eyes sprung open with the realisation his heart started to race and his cheeks flared up. He tried to shake off the feeling but then he took a deep breath and leaned over the bunk bed railing carefully seeing you sleep soundly and softly, the feelings got stronger and his heart raced even more. He sat back up and closed his eyes and shrugged it off and fell asleep.

*** The next morning***

You and Jotaro went out shopping to get a few bits for breakfast to eat on the train to Luxor, the streets were bustling with vendors on every street and cars drove in the streets. Jotaro was very quiet and you wondered if his injury was worse than you thought.

You looked up at him as he looked forward to the busy street you grew more and more concerned, but you took in his features, his dark hair and his aqua coloured eyes, the more you looked up at him you soon realised you started to blush. You were lost in his beauty and at that moment you were about to open your mouth to ask him if everything was okay but,

"Y/N watch out!" He pushed you into an alleyway

You both landed with a thud and you could hear a truck drive by with police cars chasing after it.

"Y/N are you okay? You aren't hurt are you?" Jotaro held your side.

You blinked a few times and realised that everything happened so quickly, you looked down at your side and saw he was holding onto your waist and saved you from falling onto the ground. You looked up at him and smiled and nodded.

"Ah sorry Jotaro thank you i wasn't paying attention...." You leaned your back against the wall.

He sat next to you and sighed with concern "You did seem a little spaced out, I hope it's not from our fight from last night..."

"Ah no no not at all. We are cool? friends right?" You shyly smiled at him

"Of course Y/N." He smiled back.

He tried to stand up but his hand brushed against yours and he gasped and his face lit up

"Shit sorry I didn't mean..." He was a little flustered.

"Ah, I'm sorry did I hurt your wound?" You looked at his flustered state.

"No, I mean yes, I mean we should get going... yare yare daze..." He slid his body up the wall and he pulled down his hat.

"Jotaro, are you honestly okay?" You tilted your head at him.

"Y/N... " He tipped his hat up and you saw his bright red blush on his cheeks.

"Whoa Jotaro are you...." Your eyes widen and you also blushed seeing him stand there in a shy state.

He looked down and reached for your hand and held onto it softly blushing like crazy and pouting the entire time.

"Y/N yes I am. anyway we should go..." he held your hand a little tighter and walked beside you.

You smiled and enjoyed the feeling of his warm hand holding yours so softly.

"Ah Y/N I never got to thank you properly for fixing me up last night." He smiled at you, his eyes shining with joy.

You waved your other hand as you were nearing the end of the alleyway "You don't need to do anything Jot..."

He leaned to your side and placed a soft kiss on your cheek he smiled and then within minutes you were back in the streets, your face was beaming red.

"Oh there you two are.... Oh?! O la la~" Polnareff noticed you both holding hands " Tres bien! Oooooohhh wait until Mr Joestar and Avdol hear about this!"

"Ah don't you dare tell Mr Avdol!" You pouted at him

"You dare tell the old man.... I'll never hear the end of it..." Jotaro pointed at him.

"OOOOOOHHHHHH~ Hey Mr Joestar Avdol guess what!" Polnareff started to run up to the train station.

"Polnareff! get back here!" You ran beside Jotaro and chased the Frenchman

"Yare yare daze..." Jotaro sighed and used Star Platinum to trip him up.

You both looked down at the Frenchman and pointed at him.

"You say anything about us to the old man or Avdol and I swear your head will be as smooth as a baby's butt got it!" Jotaro glared down at him.

"And I'll use Hamon to make sure it doesn't grow back. got it!" You huffed at him.

"Ahhh yep got it.. got it... ha ha ha.." Polnareff gulped and nervously giggled.

"Good." Jotaro smirked.

"Glad we agreed on something eh Jotaro." You laugh.

You both giggle as you board the train with Joseph and Avdol confused why Polnareff is on the ground.

THE END!

[twstwonderlandstuff]

Jamil with a doting and loving little sister

why the fuck does this exist- i dont fucking know

Spoilers for Scary Halloween Event ahead!

“Karin!” A young girl with long, dark hair yelled. “Please don’t run!”

“Eh? But aren’t you excited to see your big brother, Aniq?” Karin shot back, her loose, white hair flitting through the air. “I can’t wait to see what Scarabia’s doing for Halloween this year~!”

“I am too, but...” Aniq forcefully pulled Karin back, leaving Aniq to pout. “I can’t have you ruining the Asim family name looking like that.”

“Eh? But I’m the 12th, it’s not that important.” Karin dragged out, dramatically walking back towards her right-hand (wo)man/best friend. Pouting, she reluctantly let Aniq tidy her appearance- carefully tying the whit turban back in place, tugging the aqua-blue sleeveless top so it covers her decently, making sure the matching colored parachute pants reach her bottoms and shining the golden jewel that rests on her sandals it’s Jasmine.

“There, much better.” Aniq gave her a once over, satisfied at the appearance. “Wait, let me do yours too!” Karin insisted, roughly cleaning Aniq’s image. 

“Ah, don’t-” Aniq gave up, letting the girl do as she pleased- well, it’s not like anyone can see them, right? Just in case, Aniq gave the room they were in (Karin’s room) a onceover, glad that nothing was amiss.

In contrast to Karin, Aniq wore a very simple black cloak that draped gracefully over her shoulders and a collared, midi-length, grey dress that has buttons running its entire length. For a pop of color, orange, curly-toed shoes line her feet (it’s a witch)

“There~ you look better, see?” Karin grinned. “Now we can both look good!”

“Well, I guess... thanks.” Aniq replied, twirling around. “Well then, my lady, shall we go?” She teasingly asked, offering Karin an arm.

“But of course. We can’t have our brother’s anxiously wait for our arrival, can’t we?” Karin answered in kind, looping her arm in hers. 

“They don’t even know we’re coming, how are they supposed to wait?” Aniq sighed. “I wonder if this is really ok...”

“It’s fine, chill. My dad already said ok, and I forced your parents to take you with me!” Karin casually replied, stepping out of the room. A glare from Aniq made her soften her voice.

"You and your abuse of power...” Aniq sighed. “If my parents knew I told you to...”

“Hihihi... ahh, just relax already! We’re going to have fun, and you are prohibited from being anxious, do you understand?! This is a command straight from the master herself, okay?!” Karin commanded, booping Aniq’s nose.

“Hai hai~” The two of them laughed good-naturedly, chatting light-heartedly about other things.

*

"Woah!” Karin exclaimed. “Is this what NRC looks like when it’s Halloween?! It looks so cool...!”

“I know right?!” Aniq noticed a man with what seems like bandages, but made into clothes on him. “Oh, there’s a guy sitting there- let’s ask him for the directions of the Scarabia dorms- oh wait, isn’t that the dorm leader of Octavinelle?”

“Hmm, maybe? I think I remember someone looking like that when we came here last year.” Karin hummed, walking placentally towards the guy. “Excuse me, do you know where the Scarabia venues are?”

"Oh, welcome and happy Halloween. Yes, they are located in the Mystery shop.” Azul explained. “Do you have anything else to add?”

“No, that’s all. Thank you, and happy Halloween!” Aniq replied, flashing him a quick thank you smile before leaving with Karin. 

“Eh, you remember the way?”

“Duh~ I mean, do I not have good memory?” Aniq flexed lightly, grinning.

“Oh yeah, you helped me cheat on that test one time-”

“Ahhh shaddup don’t talk about that!” 

“Eh- but you’re the that brought up the topic!” Karin argued back.

“No, you did! I didn’t say a word about tests!”

“Oh yeah.. ahaha...”

“Ah, what am I going to do with you?” Aniq sighed, shaking her head and smiling. 

*

“There they are- oh...” Aniq’s spirit dissipated after seeing to long, long line that stood in front of the Mystery Shop. “H...how are we supposed to find big bro and Kalim-san now...?”

“Ahh, I don’t know...” Karin echoed, sighing sadly. “But I’m so lazy to wait in line...”

“I’ll wait for you, you go do something else.” Aniq suggested. “I think we passed a haunted house or something. You love those things, right?”

“Yup, thanks Aniq! Karin playfully teased, pressing her lips on Aniq’s cheek. “See ya!”

Aniq blushed deeply, but managed to wave her off. “Honestly, that girl...!” She grunted under her breath, a little bothered. “She’s way too affectionate...”

Aniq aligned herself in the queue, looking around. It certainly is more crowded then last year. I wonder why- oh, right, because of that picture of the ghosts and the cat. Ahh, I kind of want to see the cat... it looks so cute! She thought, smiling at the thought. And the cute girl too... I wonder why there’s a girl in NRC? Ah well, I can ask big bro, can’t I?

She grinned happily at the thought and accidentally overheard the chatter of a few people.

“Ahh, I wonder what angles I should take for the waffle?” Girl A pondered, asking her friend.

“I think from up high is good because the lighting is better. That way, the post will definitely get more likes.” Girl B answered, concluding Girl A’s response.

“Hey, are we going to actually eat the waffle? No, right? It’s so annoying to walk around holding this around...” Girl A sighed, hesitantly looking at the waffle store.

“But it says not to throw it here...eh, I’m sure its fine since everyone is doing it too!”

“Right, right!” The two continued chattering, but Aniq’s eyes went straight for the trash can.

She glanced at the pile of waffles and containers surrounding the trash can. Ahh, I don’t think big bro is going to enjoy that... She spotted several caterpillars and slugs on the trash can and sighed. Most definitely not.

Silently, quietly, she muttered a spell: Spread your wings, and turn the ugly to good.

After a few seconds, the pile of trash became a flight of butterflies, which quickly dissapeared and flitted into the air, along with the caterpillars and slugs.

“Woah, the trash just dissapeared! Is that the way they clean the trash?” Girl A gasped, shaking Girl B by the shoulders.

“So pretty! Let’s throw some more trash so we can see it again! Maybe if we put it on Magicam it’ll become viral!” Girl B added. 

That’s not what I meant to do! “Don’t-” The word slipped out before Aniq could stop herself. The two strangers in front of her glared at her. 

“Have you been eavesdropping on us? That’s rude.”

“Ah- I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it when you said that you’d continue littering.” She countered calmly.

“Why not? It doesn’t hurt anyone, right?”

“Well, there is a sign clearly indicating that you shouldn’t throw trash, but if you ignore that, then yes, the actions you did obviously have no impact at all.” She chastised sarcastically, pointing towards the sign. 

“Ahh, so annoying! Let’s just wait for the waffles another time. I’m tired of waiting in line anyway.” Girl A said, shooting a dirty glance at Aniq, which she subtly ignored. 

“Yeah.. oh, let’s go to Savanaclaw! Maybe the rumor that...” The 2 customers walked away, letting Aniq take their place. 

**

2 people away from my order... come on, hurry up! Aniq thought impatiently. Ah, shit, where’s Karin?

She hurriedly pulled out her phone and called. After precisely 3 rings, Karin’s cheery voice rang from the other side. 

Hello?

Is everything okay on your end?

Ehh, are you worried~?

When am I never worried? Aniq deadpanned.

That’s true, yeah. I’m okay! I took a picture with THE Malleus Draconia, can you believe it?! I mean, there were these people who tried touching him, but I got a brain, so I didn’t do that. 

Heh?! Really? Woah, they have some guts! Aniq replied in surprise. 

“Next.” She stepped forward one step, noticing that the server had some wolf ears attached to them. Hmm, I don’t remember Scarabia students having animal ears... it’s probably for the costume.

Oh, and I found the cute girl in the picture you were talking about! 

Eh, did you find the cat and the ghosts too?! Send me the pictures ya! Aniq reminded her.

Yup, will do~ Karin replied fleetingly. They were swarmed with people haha! I pitied them, so I just... watched as the throng of people overwhelmed them. The people were saying something about the Malleus Draconia challenge, or something.

Eh, really? What’s it about?

Like, they have to film them touching him. Isn’t that crazy?

Well, more like moronic but yeah, I guess. I heard a few people talk about Magicam here too. ‘Let’s upload the waffle pictures! It’ll definitely get a lot of likes!’ then they throw it away! So stupid, right? Karin snorted.

...Are there people in the area-

Oh shit-

Oh my god you dumbass- Aniq could hear her friend laugh. Well, order some waffles for me, okay? I’m headed over there right now.

Aight then, bye!

Bai bai~

Click.

“Next, please!” The Scarabia student called, prompting Aniq to eagerly step forward, happy to see her big brother-

“Oh, is that you, Aniq?” Kalim cheerfully asked, prompting Aniq to quickly bow. 

“Ah, Kalim-sama!” Kalim laughed. 

“Raise your head up, jeez! I told you over and over you don’t need to do that, ya know~” Kalim lectured playfully, resulting in a quiet giggle from Aniq.

“Yes, master!” She inclined, using her left hand as a salute. “Can I take a picture- after I order, of course!”

“Sure!” Kalim agreed. “So, what do you want?”

“2 NRC waffles, please.” Kalim cringed at the word. “You’re going to actually eat it, right~?”

“Of course! What’s the point of buying food you’re not going to eat?” She casually answered back. 

“Don’t be so casual, Aniq.” Jamil’s voice floated through the booth. She grinned once she saw him. 

“Big bro!” Jamil was quick to give her a head pat, which she radiated from. “Aha, sorry... it slips out sometimes.”

“Hmm.” Jamil replied. “Kalim, the residents of Scarabia are asking for your help. Can you handle it by yourself?”

Kalim nodded, putting a thumbs up. “Leave it to me!” He then left to help with whatever needed to be done.

Aniq eyed her big brother. “Oh, you’re donned in a costume too, big bro.”

“All vice-dorm leaders and leaders are required to wear the costumes.” 

“Oh, did you make it, big bro?” Jamil shook his head. 

“No, Vil did- Pomefiore dorm leader.”

“Ahhh, you mean the pretty guy in charge of the mirror of chambers?” Jamil nodded. “I saw it on one of the flyers plastered on the walls.” 

"Ah, that makes sense. Ah, Aniq.”

“Mhmm?”

“Can you guess the theme of our dorm venue? I’ll add in a special treat if you guess it right.” Jamil teased, watching his sister’s eyes light up. 

“Really?! Well, um...” Her eyes quickly darted to take in the surroundings. The ragged carpet draped across the trees and roofs, with lanterns hanging from the trees. “Well, it’s very LHS (Land of Hot Sands)… oh!” She gasped, clicking her fingers. “Is it recyclable material? The carpets are made out of rags, and the lanterns out of reusable plastic.”

Jamil hummed, genuinely pleased. “You’re right.” Aniq beamed at the praise. ““I assume you’re with Karin?” He questioned.

“Mhmm, but she’s in the haunted house, or wherever Malleus Draconia is in. ”Oh, by the way, bro, what’s with the trash piling in front of the station? Are people really just buying the waffles to take pictures on Magicam?” Aniq asked, watching his eyebrows furrow.

"Unfortunately.” Jamil sighed. handing her the cones. "We tried telling them off, but they wouldn’t listen. They also bugged with Kalim’s tail.” Jamil smiled smugly, giving her the scones back. “Oh, and thank you for the trash.” 

“Ah, you saw, big bro?” She asked happily. Jamil shook his head. “You shouldn’t be using your UM so casually.”

“I know, I know, but it did help, right?” She grinned, but before she could continue, someone behind her whispered: “Oh my god she’s taking so long!”

“Oh, right!” Aniq quickly realized. “Um, chocolate for me and Mint choc-chip for Karin.”

“Of course.” Jamil got right to it, taking the wrappers from their containers. 

“How’s everything going, big bro?” Jamil raised an eyebrow at the question. “You know what I mean, with Kalim-sama... and everything.” Aniq asked, staring straight at her brother, who sighed deeply. 

"Don’t say that out in public.”

“But I’m worried! You’re doing okay, right?” Aniq frowned.

“It’s been... decent. He still treats me like a friend, no matter how many times I shrug him off. It’s annoying.” Jamil hissed, putting more force then usual when putting the waffles. “I’m just thankful nobody- except you- knows about this back home.”

“Ahaha... Kalim-sama is always like tha-” Her phone rang, interrupting her talk.

Hell-

ANIQ SOMETHING HAPPENED!

Jamil, well understanding the circumstances, quickly handed her the waffles, mouthing ‘For free.’ Aniq grinned in thanks and waved goodbye, walking away. 

What happened?!

I found this cute guy, and- Aniq wanted to slap her.

Oh my god, I thought you were in ACTUAL trouble you dumbass!

Hehe- anyways I found this really cute guy and he’s got ears and- OH MY GOD HE’S COMING MY WAY- oh nevermind he’s walking away...

Aniq couldn’t help but laugh at her friend’s simping level. I’ll be there right away. Maybe we can get you to score a date with him.

so basically lads

Aniq (which means classy in Arabic haha see what I did there): Jamil’s younger sister

Karin (a play on the Kalim’s name): Kalim’s younger sister

also they cute Karin’s just rlly affectionate 

[jokerfan99]

Slideshows (RWBY/RVB) by Necroceph

*RVB Opening Theme*

Inside the Blue base, Mess Hall

Gary: It wasn't my fault. I only help, Wyoming kidnapped the alien. Tucker: Junior! His name is Junior, asshole! Church: Not your fault, huh? What about that time when you tried to blow me into pieces, you lying jackass! Gary: Knock knock. Caboose: Who's there? Gary: You are all dirty dirty Shisnos. Ha Ha Ha. Caboose: You're mean!

The atmosphere in the mess hall is filled with insults and anger, both from the Blues and Gary. They traded words like ' Dirty Shisno' and 'Backstabbbing AI' at one another. Church said this is supposed to be an interrogation but look at the results on the reunion of two enemies. Weiss and Blake can see the whole situation and think that: "Yep they know each other." They turned away and continued to where their conversation had left off.

Blake: So, Ruby and Yang, are here in this canyon? Weiss: Yes. Blake: And they're still not happy to see you. Weiss: Sigh. Yes and... Blake: Wait don't tell me. They attacked when they saw you. Weiss: Well, Ruby didn't attack me and I was the first to punched her. But Yang, she almost tried to tear my head off if it wasn't for, Caboose! None of this wouldn't have happened, we would... Blake: Weiss, you don't have to remind me about it. Look you can't just keep hating each other forever. The past is the past. How about just give yourselves a chance to talk with each other and settle aside your differences. Weiss: Except that won't work like how you did with, Sun. The last time we met was when Ruby tried to hit me with a drip stand. Anyways, why are you doing here exactly? Another Xenotarian aid assignment? Blake: Before that, yeah. The ship I was in was flying was running out so I had to stop by here to fuel up. I found a base but the inhabitants there are... Weiss: Let me guess, they're all dead. Well we're in a war, after all. What did you expect? Blake: War? Weiss: Oh right, you may not have heard about this. We're currently at war with the Red army. Not sure why they're called that but I've been told they're a bunch of arrogant Insurgents that needed some discipline. Atlas sent me to aid the Blue Army as a support. Blake: And the Blue army are? Weiss: They're an independent military force from a neighboring colony. According to Atlas intelligence, they got a huge disagreement with the Reds to decide which property they own. Blake: That seems understandable. But I taught you can't enter the Atlesian Army after you... Weiss:... Blake: Sorry to bring that up. Weiss: None taken. Nah I still couldn't. But out of the blue, they decided to give me another chance by performing an assignment. If I transfer myself to another army, live through it and won the war, I can finally get into the Atlesian army like I wanted to! Plain and simple. Blake: Really? Wow, that's something I've never heard, Atlas would do. It's a very good second chance for you. Though I've never of any war in this sector. Weiss: Hmm, maybe the White Paw forgot to update about it. Church: Ahem!

Blake and Weiss turned to Church.

Church: Will you two shut up? We're interrogating here. Blake: Is he always like that? Weiss: Oh don't mind him. He's always a jerk. He's name Church. "Leader" of the Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha. If you ask me, he's the most incompetent team leader in this base with a hair trigger temper. Still waiting for Command to accept my request to becoming leader. The dark blue one's, Caboose or Michael if the name's too weird for you. He's lacking some brain cells. Probably from a bullet to the head, but he's alright when he gets the job done. The bright yellow is Kaikaina. Now keep your distance from her, she's a disgrace to women everywhere. The only thing she talks about is having sex. But not as worst as the aqua guy named... Tucker: 'Sup. Weiss: Sigh, Tucker.

Tucker approached the two, with his eyes fixated to Blake since the time she arrived here. She looks like the type whom he can hooked up her with her easily. He delivers his signature one-liner.

Tucker: Hey, baby. Never met one with cat-ears before. Maybe you can hear the cry of nature through them asking you to... Blake: I'm married and have two children back at home, thank you very much. Tucker: Fuck... do you still wanna hang out? Church: Alright, Gary, enough with the insults. Let's cut to the chase. First off, how did you survive the blast and more importantly, where's Tex? Gary: I would  tell you, once Caboose stops attempting to punch me. Caboose: Take that! And that! And that!

Caboose's fists passed through, Gary's holographic body to no effect at all.

Church: Stop it, dumbass. Caboose: Okay. Church: Now will you explain? Starting from the time when Andy blew up. Gary: As you wish. Luckily I've prepared a small presentation designed to easily explain my creators to what had transpired from the base I was in. Caboose: Oh give me three minutes, I'll get the popcorn. Kaikaina: Wait, we have popcorn? Tucker: Of course we do. It's popcorn, not a strip club. Kaikaina: Sigh. Someday.

Three minutes later and Caboose returns with the bowl of popcorn.

Blake: I only got here and met these people an hour ago, and I don't understand what's going on. Weiss: Me too. Hey Church.  Would you mind telling us the whole story here? Church: It worked with a guy named, Wyoming and tried to kidnapped Junior. That's all. Weiss: Gee, you're helpful. Caboose: Don't worry, I'll tell you the story. Weiss: Thank you, Caboose. Gary: As you all already know, I am the one who tricked you all into thinking that I'm a computer intelligence made a dead alien race which never existed and in reality worked with Wyoming to use the alien to manipulate his race as a savior and win the war. Church: Duh, who else doesn't remember that? Blake: Uhm... Weiss: Ahem. Church: Oh except for these two.

Gary creates a holographic screen big enough for the Blues to see. There's a title at the left upper corner which reads: "My Story: A PowerPoint Journey". The first slide he showed is a crudely drawn scene as if it was made by a three year old kid in his first attempt on Microsoft Paint. This made some of the Blues to laugh, Caboose makes better art than this! It depicts what looks like the pelican flying toward a base with an unknown trifoil logo on it. The Blues have never seen it, but Blake has. It was the same design she saw from the base she landed at.

Gary: Moments after, Andy exploded. The ship veered off course and coincidently crash landed on the Project Freelancer Operational Command Center. Kaikaina: Project Freelancer? Tucker: Aw crap... there's a base full of those fuckers?! Gary: Yes. Church: What about, Tex is she alright? Gary: She was dead when it crashed. Church: Sigh... crap.

The second slide shows Tex lying on the ground with a black box written with the words... well... "Black Box" on it.

Gary: The staff managed to recover Tex's corpse and the black box containing Sheila, Omega and me. They stored us inside containment before the Director decides what to do with us. Church: Director? Who's that? Gary: He is in charged with Project Freelancer.

The third slide shows, white armored soldiers running for their live as something, what looks like a generator,  behind them gets blown up or catches fire. Drawing's aren't so detail don't blame me.

Gary: Few days after the crash, one of the base's generators overheated, causing a chain reaction that freed me and Omega. No one knows how it happened but it is suggested that this wasn't a coincidence.

The fourth shows one of the soldiers laughing evilly over his dead comrade as the base behind him was on fire.

Gary: After we were freed, Omega started possessing the staff and killed them off, one by one, until Utah was left alive. I hid within one of the computers to hide from the chaos. For days I've waited for rescue until I met Blake. Does that answer your question?

Everyone are silent by Gary's story. Some don't believe him since his a liar, others were wondering whether he's really telling the truth. But the one thing that they all agree, is that Omega is back and is now somewhere on this planet wrecking havoc. Weiss and Blake, on the other hand, was not getting any sense of this.

Weiss:... Caboose: I like the last part. Kaikaina: O'Malley's back. That's bad right? Church: OF COURSE IT'S BAD! Weiss: O'Malley? Caboose: Oh that's what we call, Omega. The angry AI that tried to kill all of us. Blake: Wait a minute, you lied about being the base's computer system? Gary: Surprise, dirty shisno. Ha Ha Ha. Tucker: We told you he's a liar. So, where's O'Malley now and don't try lying this time! I'll tear of that AI chip from that armor and smash it with a hammer! Gary: Okay okay. I do not know where he is. I haven't seen him after the killing subsided. Church: Shit. Then he could be anywhere and inside any person on this planet. Tucker: But what of that 'Project Freelancer' stuff? Sounds like a military experiment. Church: I think he's referring to that classified military experiment, Tex took part in. The one where they implanted O'Malley into her armor. Weiss: AI implantation? I heard about that back at the Academy but it's very risky. What's a research like that doing on this war torn planet? Unless... this war is perfect place to run a military experiment. Church: That sounds like a plausible theory. But let's get to that later. For all we know, O'Malley's loose out there and his probably planning to take revenge on us. And the worst part, we don't know where he is. Caboose: Maybe we can ask the white guy the cat lady brought. Tucker: Hey good idea! He was from the base and probably the last person to saw O'Malley. . So where is he now? Blake: I had to lock him up in your base's janitor's closet. Tucker: The janitor's closet? Uhh... did you notice anything... off? Blake: No, just dirty mops. Tucker: Phew! Church: You disgust me, man. Well at least we got a lead. Blake: I'd advice you guys to be cautious. He's not mentally stable right now. Church: Thanks for the advice, lady. Tucker, Kai. Come with me. Kaikaina: I'll be the bad cop. Church: And NO strip teasing! Kaikaina: Pfft, asshole. Church: Caboose, Weiss. Take good care of our guest and keep an eye on, Gary, will ya? Caboose: Can I burrow your eye? Church: No.

Church, Tucker and Kai leaves the room.

Blake: I can't believe you just lied to me. Why would you do that after I found you? Gary: Well I didn't want to stay there forever so I had to use you. Blake: And that part of you going offline was a lie too? Gary: What? No. That was not originally part of the plan. I almost died if you hadn't removed me. Weiss: This is what I hate about military AIs. They're too human like to be controlled. Blake: I taught at one point you were interested in Dr. Catherine Halsey's theory of AI flash cloning? Weiss: Heh, true. But that's because Cortana was modeled after a human brain. So, Caboose. Now can you tell us what exactly transpired here before we both came? Just tell us the whole story. Caboose: Yay, storytime! This is going to fun. So you see, it started with me arriving at Blood Gulch and this tank lady named, Sheila...

Thirty minutes of the Blood Gulch Chronicles

Caboose:... and I said, "I meant why are we up here in the sun, when we could be standing down there in the shade". And then we stand under shade. The End! Weiss:... Blake:... Weiss:... This might take some time for me to process. Blake: Definitely. Though I kinda like this Doc. He's a very nice guy despite being possessed by a raging computer program.

Clearer Version: https://www.deviantart.com/necroceph/art/Slideshows-RWBY-RVB-860686887

Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/necroceph

[pokeverse-amethyst]

Sooooo… this is gonna be a long one, strap in. What follows is a metric ton of HCs about every single evil team and how they have worked themselves into every aspect of daily life, as to make them way more difficult to get rid off than just with a couple of arrests. Timeline wonkiness when trying to explain what likely happened first is to be expected, I’m playing fast and loose with all of this stuff. I might be way off topic in some regards but HECK HERE GOES. ~~~

TEAM ROCKET: This is pretty much of a no-brainer. What we have here is a classical mafia structure, and you just need to look at countries with extensive mafia presence to know that they are baked into every single fucking thing. Giovanni has worked years upon years to cement himself straight into Kanto and Johto, consequently making it impossible for any of the other teams to even THINK about gaining a foothold there. No further explanations necessary. ~~~ TEAM AQUA / TEAM MAGMA: This one is a bit of a more difficult one. But then again, let’s presume that most of the teams recruit a mixture of people who fully believe in the team’s message, who misunderstand the team’s message, and who see themselves in the team, but not necessarily in the message (so just looking for somewhere to belong and to gain some kind of direction). Oh, and monetary gain. Can’t forget that. So in the case of both Aqua and Magma? I like to believe it started out with Maxie and Archie working together on a plan to give nature back to Pokémon. Like, with trying to get more protected zones established, kinda like Fiore has them? But they were hitting resistance too often. Now I’m not saying that they were on the wrong track from the start or developed into what is basically eco-terrorists, but… they probably saw way too much bad shit happening to Pokémon around them. Maybe they heard what Team Rocket was doing to Pokémon in Johto and Kanto. Maybe they heard rumors about what Cyrus nearly accomplished, what Lysandre almost triggered, what Ghetsis managed to fuck up with his whole power play madness (TWICE, too!), what the Aether foundation might have had triggered if not for the intervention of a Legendary, what Rose made possible in the GALAR REGION of all places… Suffice to say, they probably felt like they needed to seriously up their game… to make sure that the other teams didn’t fuck up the world beyond repair before THEY could make the world a better place. The only thing that finally broke Archie and Maxie up though, was an inability to settle on what would be better. More landmass, more sea? What would be the gentler way of resetting humanity? Suffice to say, their vision might have attracted way too many who nudged them along. So TLDR: Archie and Maxie mostly reacted to what the other Team Bosses were doing and were helped along by Grunts/Admins that were way too into the whole “we will be the only humans deserving this new, shiny world”. They were numerous enough and determined enough to turn into a slightly terroristic group, but until the ultimate use of Kyogre/Groudon, they never really registered that much on Interpol’s radar. And when Interpol learned of them stealing a whole ass sub? It was already too late stopping them in their tracks in time. After all, Interpol had all the other regions to monitor as well… ~~~ TEAM GALACTIC: So. Charon doesn’t need much of a head canon fuckery. He just did it for the money, that much he stated openly. And Jupiter, Mars and Saturn? They all admitted openly to being along for the ride because they believed in Cyrus and the world being fucked up beyond repair, thus needing a good ol’ divine intervention from the whole-ass creation trio. But I don’t think any single one of them fully understood what Cyrus’s goal was. The commanders (that are not Charon) squarely fall into the category of “misunderstanding the ultimate purpose of the team”, as do all the Grunts. And as mentioned above with Team Aqua and Magma, Galactic probably saw some of the stuff that was happening around them and ultimately decided (and this is mostly for the Grunts and the Commanders) that Cyrus probably wasn’t so far off with the human spirit being incomplete. But they made one crucial mistake (pretty much the whole team, even Charon). They thought that Cyrus’s assertion over the incomplete nature of the human spirit was a reason for the man to believe in a world that should be made whole, not in wiping the whole fucking slate clean and going Tabula Rasa on the whole of creation. Much to the annoyance of everyone involved (and with that I mean the Creation Trio and the big boss of them), he actually went far enough to step on everything just to gain the power to control the legendaries. Also, time to unearth an already yoinked HC of mine that Giratina mostly retreated into the Distortion World to get some good alone time in, only to be disrupted by Cyrus bursting in. On that point also: time not really working all that clearly in the Distortion World. Kinda like Narnia rules, in as there is no fixed constant for time moving forward in either one or the other extreme. Sometimes, time will move forward extremely fast, other times, you spend years and years in the Distortion World and only a few seconds passed. After all, everything gets a bit… wobbly in there. But around the time Cyrus entered, Distortion World time became… more orderly. And that was what prompted Giratina to go VERY UNAMUSED ON HIS ASS. Think of it as time being influenced by what is thrown into the Distortion World. BACK to the Team, though. Galactic honest to Arceus believed that what they were doing would give the world a much needed boost… and were unpleasantly surprised when they were later on all shown that Cyrus wanted to go destruction and rebirth on the world. But that is not to say everyone was unhappy about this revelation. ~~~ TEAM PLASMA & NEO PLASMA: What easier time to convince disparate beliefs than with the apparent reason that they were just helping Pokémon that would have been unhappy in the care of their trainers? Wether the Grunts believed that the Pokémon should then consequently be released back into the wild or that they THEMSELVES deserved the Pokémon way more than others? What easier way to convince them of Plasma’s ideals? And there was no real discussion amongst the Grunts over this dichotomy. Sure, a few were disputing the one or the other stance, but most were still agreeing that the trainers they took the Pokémon from did NOT deserve them. No matter how pure their reasoning was. No matter how reality really looked like. Sure, they were removing Pokémon from some really nasty trainers? But on the greater scale of things, they mostly took Pokémon from trainers who they loved being with. And Ghetsis had his thumb on this a lot. See, Ghetsis didn’t want N to sway too much, before he finally met the protagonist. So Ghetsis made sure that only obviously abused Pokémon removed from trainers were brought to N. …why, no, this doesn’t mean at all that they were usually just from the outside. Ya think Ghetsis only had his main team? Dream on. ~~~ TEAM FLARE: What is there to say about Team Flare? They are basically a mix of the worst of the self-viewed elite of the region. There is entitlement to being viewed as the best of the best (and you can’t tell ‘em otherwise), there is doomsday fans who would do the whole shit with bunkering down and then fighting in an apocalyptic wasteland and fancying themselves new leaders in that changed world, there’s the ones who just think they will be able to surpass even Lysandre… What about the Admins of Flare? They half share Lysandre’s views of beauty. But mostly, they are in too deep to quit, and also half about relishing the fact that they get to work on something truly unique and devastating. They want this whole power thing to work out for them because some time in their lives, they might have felt like they were owed power and didn’t receive it. They were owed recognition and didn’t receive it. They want to be the new top of Kalos without working TOO hard for it. Without anything laying rocks in their path. Without any obstacles telling them that, no. They fucked up. ~~~ AETHER FOUNDATION: The moment Lusamine found out about the Ultra Dimension, she ostensibly was lost to her goal of getting her hands on the power to change the face of the world. And to preserve beauty. In many ways, her goal was similar to Lysandre… to a degree. The Aether Foundation is half staffed by people who truly believe that conservation work is the most important factor in the Pokémon World, to preserve some of the more endangered species around the world, and half staffed by people who truly believe that the Ultra Dimension holds answers to problems humanity might not even have recognized as such. This latter half was unpleasantly surprised when they started to learn the truth from the Ultra Dimension researchers. Finding out that Necrozma had destroyed the natural light of that world and was now the only source of more light for the city? That was a shock. But that didn’t necessarily mean that the Aether Foundation would have been broken up by that. Because honestly? The part of the conservation enthusiasts who were not deterred by the Ultra Dimension incident made the Foundation bloom beyond what it was possible to become. So in short: this foundation survived its leader far better than many others, and actually managed to get accepted. ~~~ MACRO COSMOS: This is the team that shocked their region with just how far their influence had gone. And that is to say that they existed at all, right under the noses of the region. Rose’s whole deal is a big part why Leon would later be plunged into a crisis of conscience, despite everyone assuring him that he had no way of knowing just how far Rose was willing to go to show the region how wrong it was to not immediately acquiesce to all that he envisioned for the future. The mere fact Rose was UNWILLING to wait what would at most have been half a day for Leon, to celebrate with the others after another big Champion Tournament? That was what sat so ill with many in the region. It wasn’t so much the message that Rose felt everyone had missed (that was actually just his version of events - most of the Macro Cosmos Grunts were attached to him solely for the reason of having privileges that none other had, and when they saw how he was acting, only the most dedicated few could ignore what was going on). So we are dealing with another team that was shocked how far the leader would go, but even more so than the Aether Foundation, the members scattered when Rose enacted the Darkest Day right out of nowhere. There is still worries that remains of Macro Cosmos could be out there, trying to bust Oleana and Rose out of prison and actually finding another way with which to scare Galar into complicity. How well that would even go is a whole different question… because the new champ is even stronger than Leon, and THAT is real fucking bad news for anyone who would want to establish themselves.

[prongsmydeer]

Ayesha Liveblogs Class Action Park

“Gene was effectively kicked off of Wall street. So he did what anybody in this situation would do... buy up two ski resorts in Vernon, New Jersey.” That’s how I deal with all my career-related angst 

“Gene turned to his old buddy Bob Brennan, always there to find cash or investors any time Gene had a wild new idea” bdjdjjfkdbf find u a friend like Bob, I guess?

“Who we got? How about these teenage employees” oh NOOO

If your employer makes you call him Uncle maybe that’s a warning sign 

Gene giving his teen employees $100 every time he puts their lives in unparalleled danger has a similar energy as my dad giving me $5 when I was sad but 150 million times worse 

You know, if they had advertised the slide as a slide that could bite you like a shark, they might’ve been able to play off the teeth thing in their stride (in any case Slidey McBitey did not slow them down?)

“You couldn’t go down the canonball loop if you were too small, you couldn’t go down if you were too big” the Goldilocks of Dangerous Water Park Features

The way that everyone in this documentary says ‘water’ as ‘worder’ is very Jersey

I mean it absolutely doesn’t surprise me that there were no engineers involved in this but wow that’s a choice

The animations in this documentary in place of stock footage are truly on another level:

The accompanying dialogue to these images: People who Six Flags or Disney wanted nothing to do with; these guys would literally track Gene down at amusement industry conventions. You can tell these guys went and did bumps of coke and went just [unintelligentible] fuckin’ let’s just drill a slide right in the fuckin’ middle of the mountain and it’ll shoot ‘em 20 feet in the fuckin’ air--

“It was not fit for a safe ride by the average person in public” you don’t say, Bob Krauhlik, Head Lifeguard

I mean those like... bubbles for people to roll around in exist? Why couldn’t Gene have invested money in developing those in the seventies and just had people go down a very slight hill? Must EVERYTHING in this park be a deathtrap

The fact the Ball Man (presumably) survived the ride collapse, the freeway, and falling into a swamp,,, invincible

“We started sending employees off of [the airborne slide]” These guys really needed a union

“He’s gone on to lead a normal life” jhfkjhkjf the disclaimer

Honestly a built-in bidet/lota situation in a water slide doesn’t sound bad

Gene fulfilling my lifelong dream to get to lay on the baggage rollers at an airport

“The Aqua Skoot was also home to a thriving bee nest” I hope the bees were okay!!

“You’re probably concussed, and you have like a hundred and fifty people from New Jersey just being like ‘Pussy! You fuckin’ bitch!” this sounds in line with everything I know about New Jersey

“No lifeguard every blew a whistle and was like, ‘Hey stop chanting the word ‘pussy’ at this injured, bleeding person’“ I would pay money to see any lifeguard I know say that

Bob Krauhlik said: The first rule of Action Park is we don’t talk about our suppressed traumatic memories of Action Park

“Just literally imagine teenagers you know right now opening an amusement park” As someone who knows MANY teenagers this scenario sounds terrifying

“I was a good girl, so I wasn’t really involved in much of the shenanigans that took place” if u say so Faith

“I may have attended one [party]” HA I knew it 

This cattleprod story reminds me in a horrible way of a Paris Metro authority memory but long story short people will try to attack you physically if they think u cheated a $3 ticket; capitalism warps the brain

“But if we’re so bad, why don’t they just make a new town?” I’ve never heard a whiter sentence in my life

“He was a cool dude” [cut to] “I think he was a piece of shit” POETIC CINEMA

Gene annoying the state of New Jersey into relinquishing their land... incredible 

“Gene was free from the pesky state of New Jersey” is that what it says on the sign when you cross state lines into Pennsylvania 

“It might’ve attracted a more, say, working class clientele” ah the water park class divide

I don’t know what kind of mindset for just bodily-functioning all over the pool but I hope I never reach that point 

You really should need a sobriety test to operate anything motorized I think they could’ve made thousands on a Go-Kart breathalyzer

“It had a top speed of over 60 miles an hour, it was worth it” said Ed the Park Operations Manager, about driving a go-kart on the highway

“Action Park had full-on, Miami Vice-grade speed boats, where riders regularly tempted fate by treating them like bumper boats, a common action, that would send many a guest tumbling into a pond murky from leaked gas and oil, and known by employees to be infested with snakes” Somehow that sentence got worse and worse with time

The guy who literally crushed another person with his boat and then moved to the next ride: I pretend I did not do it

“He wound up getting getting ejected from the park” they said, about a person literally attempting to set other patrons on fire:

Bob the Lifeguard really speaks with way too much fondness in his voice of trying to throw carts on top of people sliding down a fibreglass and concrete slide

“On an an average day, you would have 50 to 100 people injured” the 80s were a lawless time 

“Gene Mulvihill had a vision of a place where there were no rules - something between Ayn Rand and Lord of the Flies” strike that this is the whitest sentence I’ve ever heard

HAHAHAHA I can’t believe the lawyer is now explaining Action Park with the argument that the 80s were a lawless time

“[D*nald Tr*mp] realized it was too wild, too nuts even for him” kjghkgjhkg this comment aged poorly 

The audacity of this man to blatantly exhaust everyone into submission

Kayaks did nothing to deserve being associated with electrocuting water park attendees 

Every time I think this documentary can’t get worse they introduce a new concept like The Death Zone at the Grave Pool 

“They expected to drown at the Action Park Wave Pool“ DID THEY, BOB? DID THEY REALLY?

“Nobody should ever be the second person to die in a wave pool, you know why? ‘Cause after the first person dies in a wave pool, close the fuckin’ wave pool!” Chris the Comedian has summed up this entire documentary in two sentences 

This documentary has intentionally saved the worst for last this whole interview with the family of the (first) deceased is deeply upsetting 

The Wave Pool death happened a week before the Kayak death??? THEY DIDN’T EVEN CLOSE FOR A WEEK???????

“Its time came and went” IS THERE EVER A TIME FOR A WATERPARK WHICH KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE 

Weird that the woman whom Gene got fired from her job and who deposed him became his friend

“Was he a villain or a victor” I think that’s a false dichotomy you can be victorious at villainy 

“The spirit of Action Park lives on today in the Fyre Festival” Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t remember Fyre Fest killing anyone

“Fyre Festival’s bullshit, man. Gene gave you everything he fuckin’ promised you” grievous injury???

There’s also something weirdly poetic about the name of the park going back and forth from Mountain Creek to Action Park and vice versa every few years 

I’m gonna leave off with this not: Not a single visible minority was interviewed for this documentary as a park attendee or employee and while that’s probably more a product of selection bias and New Jersey it’s also all the argument you need for diversity in any field. Diversity of thought and culture does not a loop-de-loop-death trap make 

[tackyink]

Still holding onto the hope of running out of steam soon so I can work on other fics. In any case, this has a title now. It’s Degrees of Separation.

I hate this chapter solely because in my mind it was supposed to be one, then it got long and turned into two awkward chapters, and by splitting them I was left with this thing in which nothing happens. Why would you want to read this? I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to read it, even though I did. Repeatedly. To edit out all the typos I’m sure I’ve left in. I’m going to put a Golden Sun stream on the background, play Animal Crossing and drown my frustration in Coca Cola. It’s been a long week.

One last detour before Sabaody. Alex is bored, the Heart Pirates reenter the scene, and Law has an “if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” moment.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

— — — — — — — —

Chapter 3

There was a storm.

Alex didn’t know if it was related to the Aqua Laguna that the ship had set out to avoid or it was simply one of the Grand Line’s meteorological whims, but two days after departure, the noon sky went so dark it was like a moonless night had come down early, the winds picked up, and the waves started to beat against the ship’s hull in an uneven rhythm.

The crew was all over the place, trying to steer the ship and reef the sails as they ushered the passengers inside to keep them from falling overboard. Alex had been caught in bad weather travelling before, but never to this extent. She had a hard time thinking of anything scarier than being at the mercy of a windy sea. Nowhere to run, nothing to do except wait and pray that the waters would take pity on you and let you live another day. Alex wasn’t the praying sort, so while she waited below deck with a group of people as scared as she was, if not more, she couldn’t even do that.

The nervous chatter of the passengers and the parents’ attempts to console their children were muffled by the deafening sounds of the wind, the waves, the creaking wood, and the crew’s rushed footsteps on the deck.

Alex stood the entire time in front of a porthole in the dining hall where they had gathered. It helped with the seasickness from the violent rocking of ship, it was better than to look at the other people, and, ironically, storms were her favorite kind of weather. She wondered what would be worse if they sunk, getting caught on deck and risking being swallowed by the ocean, or waiting for the insides of the ship to become a water tomb. For a long time, or at least it seemed like it, that was the main thought that repeated in her mind, until the possibility of dying felt so remote that she wasn’t even registering. Like when you picked a word and turned it around in your mouth and mind so many times that it lost all meaning. Of course she couldn’t die there. She had never done so before, so why start now?

It was absurd, but it helped. And it turned out to be right, too.

After a while, the storm subsided, and an hour later, the crew let them out on deck again. The ship wasn’t intact, but they hadn’t lost anybody, and that was as much as one could ask for when dealing with an angry sea.

In the end, there was only one major inconvenience: due to the damage, the ship had to change its course in order to dock somewhere safe to undergo repairs.

❦

Her hair had gotten longer to the point of annoyance. The tips brushed her shoulders already; long enough to get in her face whenever it wanted, but too short to tie it in a decent ponytail. Sure, she could have done it anyway, but she was vain and would have rather dealt with the hassle than solve the problem in an aesthetically suboptimal way.

The sunspots on the left side of her face were getting more noticeable, as were the dark circles under her eyes and the shy wrinkles that were attempting to come out. For someone who could spend so much time picking her appearance apart in front of a mirror, she didn’t look particularly healthy or well put together. She supposed that was part of the appeal, in a masochistic way: to find as many faults as she could, and invent some if needed.

Applying concealer under her eyes and red lipstick just for the sake of having some color on her face, she thought she needed to find herself a headband and a healthier pastime posthaste. Porta Bella was a quaint town, but there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment, and she’d had only her thoughts for company for too long.

She had been stuck there for two weeks. After narrowly avoiding disaster, the ship had been moored in the harbor for several days, and by the time it was fit enough to sail, the captain decided to go back to Water 7 to have proper repairs done. The passengers had been given the choice to remain in Porta Bella and find another ship, or to return to Water 7 with the crew. Going back wasn’t an option for Alex when Sabaody was so close that it felt like she could have seen it if she climbed on a tall tree, she didn’t trust a half-baked repair job to keep her safe, and, most importantly, someone had tried to kill Iceburg and Enies Lobby had kind of blown up in the following days of her departure from Water 7.

She didn’t want to think that the tracksuit shipwright had something to do with it, but the conspiracy theorist in her told her that it was totally his fault. That nose? Could totally be used as a murder weapon and nobody would be none the wiser.

The few passengers aside from Alex who had decided to stay in Porta Bella were already gone, leaving the inn she was staying at delightfully empty, but also making her wonder if she had messed up by not taking the first random ship that would let her sail away from there.

The island was small, so much so that Porta Bella was the only town in it, and much of it was empty. For many years there had been a migratory tendency pushing young people from nearby islands to the Sabaody Archipelago, and this one seemed to have fallen victim to it, too. The moderately long recording time of the Log Pose didn’t play in its favor, either. Five days and a half was a long time to wait when the Red Line was only a couple of days away, so not many ships stopped there. An abandoned watchtower in the outskirts of town was the only other notable location.

She left her inn room that morning, picking up a tea to go, and hoping that a good slap of early morning breeze in the face would wake her up.

Every day since she arrived, she went to the port to look for any newly arrived ships and talk to the sailors. Every time, if there was a new one at all, she was told that there were reports of increased slaver activity in those waters, and that they were headed anywhere but the Sabaody Archipelago until Marine HQ got its shit together and stopped the kidnapping crews sailing rampant. Given that the Marines must have been scrambling to recover from the loss of Enies Lobby, nobody thought they were going to get on the case anytime soon.

These series of unfortunate coincidences didn’t surprise her. Her life was often comprised of really small strokes of bad luck that were nothing more than inconvenience on their own, but that added up to really grate on her nerves. This was business as usual, so she just had to keep trying. The temporary finish line was only a stone’s throw away.

Not that human trafficking stopped at any point of the year, but she hadn’t taken into account the seasonal opening of the archipelago’s biggest auction. Thinking that not even the schedule of the Human Auctioning House had changed during her time away gave her a twisted sense of familiarity. That son of a bitch kept finding novel ways to fuck her over without even being aware of her existence. It had to be a gift, for sure.

As she walked to the half empty docks, she hoped that that was the day she lucked out. She had already decided that, if she couldn’t find a direct ship to Sabaody in the following three days, she’d take the roundabout way and sail to a bigger island with, hopefully, a wider variety of ships. She would go completely broke in the process (and there she found the thing that was as terrifying as being caught in a storm at open sea), but one had to crack eggs to make an omelette.

Ten minutes and an empty cup of tea into her stroll, she stopped in front the single newly arrived ship and thought that maybe she hadn’t lucked out, but that sure as hell life was full of weird coincidences. Because there were few submarines sailing the Grand Line, even fewer painted yellow, and she guessed that only one with that particular Jolly Roger plastered on it. Her wish of seeing it up close had been granted when she least expected it, and it didn’t disappoint. It had a curious design, half ship and half submarine. A shipmarine.

Feeling revitalized by the pun, she craned her neck and got on her tiptoes to accomplish nothing at all. She couldn’t see any of the pirates on the deck, at least from where she was standing, and what else was she supposed to do, walk closer to find a friendly face and say hi like a functioning human being would? Yeah, no. She simply stood there and stared like a creep.

The paint job of the thing was hypnotic, and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. It looked like the idea of a man who thought the peak of design was making his vehicle look like a wasp with a decal of the word ‘DEATH’ instead of stripes to look extra edgy. And okay, they were pirates, pirates killed people, it was something that came with the job – but plastering it over the ship like that was a little heavy handed, and she didn’t have any doubts as to which guy with matching tattoos had come up with those brilliant design choices. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a song about a yellow submarine? The one from those singers her mom liked when she was young… Maybe the captain was a fan, too. Maybe they sung it on board. She laughed at the thought.

It didn’t leave her indifferent, that was for sure, and that could count as a compliment, since she had seen a ton of ships throughout her life. Props to Trafalgar Law for standing out among the crowd.

If the pirates weren’t around at the moment, it had to mean they were inside of the ship or already out in town. It was early still, but she was sure it was a matter of time until she ran into them – the town was pretty small, around a hundred, counting sailors, on a good day, news travelled fast, and these guys didn’t dress unassumingly.

With that in mind, she kept an eye out for familiar faces and resumed her unfruitful rounds around the port. Another day, another set of rejections. She tossed her paper cup in a trash can and made her way to the coffee shop where she always had the second tea of the day, sometimes even the third, if she was feeling particularly down about her current predicament.

She placed her order at the counter and waited for it. The owner, a balding middle aged man whose name she didn’t know but who had started to get chatty after she showed up a few days in a row, tried to strike up a conversation while he heated the water. “Did you hear? A pirate crew arrived in town last night.”

Alex wasn’t much for conversation in the mornings, and usually her replies to his attempts were rather apathetic, but the owner had struck gold with this particular topic. “I just saw the ship,” she repeated. “Have they done anything?”

“Not yet,” he replied with the clear implication that they soon would. “But it’s a Supernova’s crew, from what I’ve heard. Their captain’s a scary guy – how do they call him…?”

She had mixed feelings about that. She’d seen scary first hand, and in her experience it came in the shape of kidnapping crews, bubble helmets, or suits and fedoras. And ultimately, it was the fedoras’ fault she was in that coffee shop in the first place.

“Surgeon of Death,” she replied. There was no doubt that with that price on his head he was a walking danger, but after their first encounter, she had a feeling he was more the selective type than the let’s wreck everything in our path kind of guy. Not that his list of attributed crimes would lead anybody to think that. “Do you have trouble with pirates often? Being close to Sabaody and all.”

“Sometimes, but they usually go to more interesting places. It used to be as easy as calling the garrison to get rid of ‘em, but with Marineford so close it’s no wonder no one wants to be here any longer.”

“There used to be Marines here?”

“Yes, at the watchtower in the outskirts, but they left after some of the rooftop caved in. Building’s condemned now. A pity, ‘cause the watchtower’s been there forever, and they’ve let it fall apart.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “How old’s the tower?”

The water started boiling then, and he turned around to remove it from the fire and make her drink. “Tale goes that it’s old as the stone entrance, but who knows,” he said with his back turned to her. “It’s not like we have any experts to come check.” He slid her the drink over the counter. “In case, try to avoid those guys. A woman traveling alone is an easy target for criminals.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied, putting a few belis in the counter and taking the cup by the handle. “Thanks.”

She chose to sit on the terrace, next to the railing that separated it from the sidewalk, to have a good view of the street. She was in a sort of commercial district, if a main street with a dozen of shops could be called that. Most people who stopped at the island had to pass by sooner or later, so it was the busiest place in town. Not so early, though. It wasn’t opening hours yet.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched like a hawk the man who was monopolizing the only issue of the World Economic Journal and snatched it as soon as he got up to leave, so fast that it turned the heads of the other two people on the terrace.

News of the assault of Enies Lobby had been filling pages for a week already, and that day wasn’t an exception. The Straw Hat Pirates had done the unthinkable, and while in other circumstances Alex might have been watching the situation with amusement from afar, she was also pretty annoyed at them, because their stunt no doubt played into the poor supervision in the waters near Sabaody. On the other hand, she hoped that this also meant that neither Marines nor Cipher Pol would be very invested in finding her in the near future if she ended up a suspect.

She was also a little worried about Iceburg’s condition, but the newspapers hadn’t reported his death, so she had to assume he had recovered from the attempt on his life.

She skimmed over the usual columns prattling about the lack of security at sea and how worrying it was that a whole new generation of rookies with astronomical bounties were about to set foot in the Sabaody Archipelago at the same time. She didn’t think having a handful extra menaces sailing around mattered anymore, considering the state of the world at large, but the pearl-clutching sold newspapers, and she wondered about her sense of self-preservation when she realized with disappointment that, at the rate she was moving, she was going to miss the Supernova meetup in Sabaody. Her curiosity was going to bite her in the ass one day, she thought, before remembering that it already had, and that was the exact reason she was in her current position.

She skim read a few pages looking for interesting headlines, getting to the less important news that didn’t warrant spreads, editorials and pictures that took up half the page, and paled when she read the contents of an unassuming text box.

An unfortunate accident in the island of Harlun had blown up the local library while it was undergoing renovations. Nobody had been hurt, said the write-up, but the building had been destroyed in the ensuing fire and an investigation was still ongoing to determine what had happened. At least she guessed that the last part of the article said so, because she choked on her tea as she read it and spit some of it on the paper, making the ink run.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. Well, it technically could be, but no way she was buying that. The real question was if they’d be able to link the Poneglyph to her, and considering she that she was the person who spent the most time in the archive and she had conveniently left right before construction work took place, she had a pretty good chance to win that lottery. Oh, God, what if her coworkers mentioned that she used to go to the archive on Sundays, alone?

Her first impulse was to bang her head on the table and hide it between her arms, but the surface was sticky, so she ended up regretting it immediately. Instead, she put her elbows on the table, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was beating loudly and her mind was running wild thinking of possible courses of action. She was on a timer. Getting to Sabaody as soon as possible was a necessity now. If there was a place she could hide, ironically, it was there.

“I see life’s treating you well.”

Alex’s heart tried to leap out of her mouth when she heard someone talk to her from so up close, but one of the perks of being born with a stick up her ass was that she only tensed up when she was startled, so she saved herself the embarrassment of yelping or jumping on her chair. She removed the hands from her face to look at the person, and the sight of a spotted furry hat and a yellow and black hoodie punched her in the eyes.

“Oh, hello,” she said, feeling more relaxed when she realized it was the Surgeon of Death leaning against the balustrade, not law enforcement. Her life had taken a turn for the surreal in a very short time, had it not?

His smirk faltered. “You aren’t surprised?”

“Saw your ship,” she said with some difficulty, and she drank some tea to swallowed the knot that had formed in her throat. Of all the times for him to appear... “Town’s small, we had to run into each other.”

“Hm.”

If she exerted a bit of imagination, she’d say he looked a bit disappointed. Why would he? No idea, but it was funny to think he was, and she was in dire need of funny.

He asked, “What are you doing here? This is far from your island.”

Farther than he knew, she almost said, but that was a can of worms and not relevant in the situation at hand. Feeling too overwhelmed to give long explanations, she handed him the newspaper open by the page she’d been reading. Talking could happen once she arranged her own thoughts, and only then.

“That’s…” He took it from her hands and read for a few seconds. An inscrutable expression gradually morphed into a look of pure indignation. “What’s the meaning of this?”

She was taken aback by the unexpected display of emotion. It was odd to see him react so strongly to something that didn’t concern him. “It isn’t that surprising, considering—”

“How is it not?” He retorted, annoyed. “Sora can’t lose against these weaklings!”

She stared at him in confusion. “What?” she blurted out, realizing afterwards that he was talking about the comic strip at the bottom of the page. And to be fair, she was going to tell him to look further up when the meaning of his words sunk in, but then she was the one leaning over the railing to look at the paper he was holding. “Wait, really? That’s impossible!”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

Upon reading the message under the strip, she complained, “On break until next month?” She sat back on the chair, mumbling, “I don’t even know if I’ll be alive next month,” before taking a sip of tea.

“Summer vacation cliffhanger,” he replied. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Read the news above.”

He looked at the paper again, and his eyes widened the smallest fraction as recognition dawned. That reaction was more appropriate. “Do you think it was…?”

“I’m sure of it. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Are you wanted now?”

“I don’t know. They have reason to suspect I knew it was there.” And she added with a bit of humor that she wasn’t really feeling, “If I get a bounty, I’ll say it was your fault.”

“I don’t think that’s going to do you any service.” A smirk returned to grace his features as he passed her the newspaper back. He was clearly amused by her misfortune, and that was the only good thing that had come out of it. “What do you plan to do?”

Alex let out a long exhale through her nose. She wanted to say that there was no plan, but there always was. Planning was something she did obsessively. “I need to get to Sabaody as soon as possible.” It was the only option. She could have elaborated, but again, she didn’t feel like it. Too early, too stunned to talk about serious stuff. Reality hadn’t fully sunk in. “You’re on Sora’s side? Really?”

He frowned at her. He did a lot of frowning, she thought. He was going to get wrinkles young. “Of course I am.”

“But he’s a Marine,” she said, a smile growing on her face despite herself. “Aren’t you one of the bad guys?”

“The Germa are vile,” he retorted, and perhaps realizing he was getting too much into the conversation, he went back to the other, much less fun topic. “Sabaody’s going to be full of Marines in no time, though.”

She was internally screaming, but it came out as a drawn out sigh. “Thanks to you, no doubt.”

“The merit isn’t all mine.”

“I know. You lot have been all over the news for weeks.” He looked awfully self-satisfied when she said that. “I guess you’ll be heading straight there after this place?”

“That’s the plan if there aren’t any stops in between. By the way, do you know how long until the Log Pose sets?”

“Five days, ten hours and twenty-six minutes,” she said blandly, repeating the number she had been told by several people when she first arrived to Porta Bella. It made her miserable, so of course she wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.

“And the seconds?”

It took her way longer than necessary to realize he was messing with her. “Oh, fuck off.” She returned her attention to the newspaper so she didn’t have to look at his stupid face while he thought he was so funny. “Fishman Island’s right around the corner. Try not to drown.”

“We have a submarine.” He sounded amused still. Alex couldn’t tell if annoying her gave him that much joy or if he was having an exceptionally good day. He was pretty cranky for a while back in Duster Town, but now that she recalled, his mood seemed to improve every time he got one over her. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“Regular submarines can’t reach Fishman Island.”

He frowned again. “Why not?”

“It’s too deep. They can’t endure the water pressure.”

She could sense the levity from moments ago was gone by the way his jaw set. “But we heard ships can traverse the Red Line through an underwater route.”

“That’s why you go to Sabaody first.” She was exerting a considerable effort to give these really boring explanations that no one was going to thank her for. “You find yourself a good coating engineer to put a resin bubble around your ship and that’ll protect it.”

He seemed to study this new information from several angles before he spoke. “That’s good to know.”

“You’re welcome.”

He gave her a pointed look, but didn’t say anything about the jab. “Is it easy to find one?”

“There’s an entire section of the archipelago dedicated to it. It’s going to cost you, though. And depending on who you choose, there’ll be a waiting list.”

“Really?”

“Good coating engineers are few and far in between, and nobody wants to find out someone did a half-assed job on their sheep five kilometers underwater.”

“That’s…” He made a meditative pause. “…Reasonable.”

“I thought you were going to say something completely different.”

“It sucks too.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. Her life would be so much easier if one didn’t have to jump through thirty hoops to cross that chunk of rock. “In a hurry to get to the New World?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to, either, because she was busy contemplating a new idea that had sprung in her mind. One that she’d rather avoid if she had other options left, and she wouldn’t know until a few days passed, but... this coincidence could prove to be useful yet.

“What?” He looked at her with suspicion.

“Nothing.” And just to get on his nerves a little, she added. “Yet.”

He fixed his gaze on her face, most likely gauging her intentions. Alex was incapable of looking at people in the eye, but she was good at faking it and not flinching under pressure, so she stared back.

“Do I want to ask?”

“I don’t know. Follow your instincts.”

To her surprise, he dropped it and took a step back from the railing. “I need to go back to the sub and see if the others are up already.”

Good. “For someone with a target so big on you, you wander a lot without them.”

“I like taking walks alone,” he said, like he didn’t think much of it. Like he could not fathom how he of all people could possibly be in danger from anybody else. “See you around?”

Was that a wish, a threat, or a pleasantry? “Without a doubt,” she replied, not bothering to hide the tedium in her voice. Damn empty town and damn slavers. “This town isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

She could have sworn he smiled a little at that, but Law shoved his hands in his pockets and made his leave too fast to see.

He was far enough that he wouldn’t hear her if she spoke in a normal volume when she remembered something important, so she resorted to raising her voice before the Heart crew did something they could regret. “Go to the Old Brewery if you don’t want to die! The Silver Fountain serves piss for drinks!”

He turned to look at her with the same curiosity back when she’d told him weapons weren’t allowed in the library, but this time he nodded in acknowledgement before making his exit.

The other customers on the terrace stared at her warily, but honestly, she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad for them even when the owner immediately came out to ask if she was okay and if the scary surgeon had said anything bad to her. At least something interesting was happening.

❦

Alex had a love-hate relationship with heights.

She inevitably got queasy when she was somewhere high up that didn’t have barriers or anything she could hold onto, but that didn’t stop her from going up there, anyway. It was like a very stupid magnetic pull that one day would end with her skull split open.

(It was the wind and the view. She knew that. It was also one of the few options she had to feel taller than most people.

But mostly the wind.)

The stone arch at the entrance of the town that gave Porta Bella its name was surrounded by the remains of a stone wall. First century, she guessed by the roughness of the stone blocks and the bit of mortar she scraped from between when she inspected it for the first time. It was easily over two meters, and only because the topmost part had fallen off. The blocks that hadn’t been taken away for use in newer constructions were still next to the wall, inviting anyone who’d dare to step on them to use them to climb.

She knew she wasn’t the only idiot who had felt the temptation, because the stone was worn from use. She’d also seen kids running at the top of the wall and no one had tried to stop them, and there were worse ways to channel all the nervous energy she had from reading that newspaper article.

She wasn’t a very proficient climber, but the blocks were positioned in such a way that getting to the top was easy as pie. No doubts someone had moved them for that exact purpose. When she was high enough, she threw a leg over the wall, then the other one, and sat facing the harbor.

The wind was nice up there.

She wouldn’t stand on the wall for all the money in the world and getting down was going to be an ordeal, but that was a problem for the Alex of the future.

That day had woken up to four ships in the harbor, counting the pirates’ submarine. Two would go away at the end of the week. The third was leaving that night. No vessels on the horizon.

She sighed. If the pirates were on an adventure, they sure had the shittiest of lucks docking only in the most boring islands the sea could offer.

With nothing better to do at the moment, and trying to delay as much as possible the moment she’d regret climbing that high, she moved towards the shadow of the arch without lifting her butt from the stone and rested her back against it.

She was at a loss. Sailing further away from the Sabaody Archipelago was counterproductive, but so was staying in the same island for too long, since she had no means of protecting herself if something happened. Then again, if she ended up broke before she got to Sabaody, she’d have to stay in whatever island she was to earn money to keep travelling.

All the options sucked. Maybe she needed to sleep on it to see what the lesser evil was. She had, after all, a few days to make a decision.

She looked at the sea, tinted dark green by her sunglasses, in what she assumed was Sabaody’s direction. So close, yet so far away. The skies were clear and the water calm, and though there weren’t any sailors to be found in the harbor, she could see the shadow of a couple of fishing boats in the distance. Wasn’t there a song that went like that? I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time…

She hummed, looking at nowhere in particular and letting her thoughts drift with the waves.

❦

She knew better than to cut through the lawless areas alone when it was getting late, so she had no one else to fault when she split from her group of classmates after spending their free day in Sabaody Park. It was only her and her stupid pride that didn’t allow her to admit that she didn’t think this was a great idea and that she didn’t want to go back to her room alone.

She broke into a sprint as soon as she heard the smallest rustle behind her, and that advantage proved to be essential, because someone started chasing after her. It sounded like more than one person, but she didn’t have time to look or tell how many sets of footsteps were behind her – she just ran like her life depended on it in the direction of the bridge that connected to the next grove, hoping that there would be other people there, and then—

—then she saw an open bar, a lone building in an even lonelier grove.

She rushed inside it, gasping for air so hard that she couldn’t speak, no matter how much she tried to explain to the bartender why she had barged in like that.

It wasn’t necessary.

“Don’t worry, dear, they’ve been hanging around these parts for a while,” she said, leading her to a chair with a gentle hair. “You’re safe here.” Her warm black eyes turned to someone else, and though Alex had trouble focusing on what was going on, she saw an old man with long white hair. “Why don’t you go take out the trash, Ray? They’ve driven off my clientele enough.”

“Sure,” the man replied, getting up from his stool and going outside.

Alex thought it was a horrible idea to send an old man to fight off a kidnapping crew, but that was because she didn’t know these people yet.

“Don’t worry about him. Here,” the woman gave her a glass of water. “Name’s Shakky. Rest all you need.”

❦

Footsteps approached. She shut up immediately.

“I like that song.”

Singing helped when she had too much anxious energy. It was probably related to breathing control. She had stopped anxiety attacks in the making like that sometimes.

It didn’t help at all when someone had been listening in and she hadn’t noticed.

“Oh. Thanks. Um, hi.”

“Hi,” Bepo said smiling. “I heard from Captain you were here.”

Even though she was sitting on top of the wall, Bepo’s head went past it. If he stood on his tiptoes, he could have rested his head on her legs. On one hand, it was a little aggravating that she had to climb so high up only to be marginally taller than him. On the other, Alex was filled with the urge to scratch his ears.

“Yeah, I’m stuck waiting for a ship,” she told him. “Ideally, you wouldn’t have found me here.”

“Oh? Where are you going?”

“Sabaody.”

“Isn’t that very close? How come you haven’t found a ship?”

“There’s kidnapping crews infesting the waters. You know what those are?”

“Uh… isn’t it in the name?”

Alex blinked. “Right. Don’t mind me.”

He fell into thought for a few seconds. “Why are they kidnapping people?”

“To sell. They get auctioned in the archipelago.”

Bepo frowned. “I see.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” she said, smiling for his sake. “Nothing’s going to happen to your crew. You’re strong.”

He beamed with pride. “Yeah, we are! We’ve been training for years to come here!”

Alex mirrored his expression without thinking. “Your Captain said you’ve been friends since you were kids. Did you—”

“Bepo!” Someone called out. “What are you doing?”

“Ah, sorry!” Bepo said, turning around to see the newcomer. “I was catching up…”

A woman with curly hair and a severe expression walked up to them, hands on her hips, and she looked a little confused when she laid eyes on Alex. She was struggling to place her. “Have we seen each other…?”

“On passing. I’m the Duster Town dumbass that opened the library for your Captain.”

“Oh, yeah, now that you mention it—” The confusion was back. “Isn’t this place a little too far from there?”

“I’m running away from justice.” She didn’t offer further explanation.

Bepo didn’t need it. “So are we!”

A barely contained laugh made it past the woman’s lips. “Oh well, if you’re a fellow criminal…” She extended a hand towards Alex. “Name’s Ikkaku. What did you do, keep too many books past the return date?”

“I wish.” She shook her hand. “Alex.”

“So that’s your name?” Bepo asked.

She turned her attention towards the bear. “I never told you?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Wow, I am rude,” she said to herself. “Anyway, hope you’re ready to take it easy, because you have five long days ahead of you.”

Ikkaku groaned. “I don’t mind, but some of the guys get so jittery after a couple days on land. I don’t suppose there’s a very active nightlife in this place?”

“Actually, there are two taverns in the entire town.”

“Oh, that sounds like something to keep ‘em busy.”

“I don’t think you want to go to one of them, though.” She wondered if the captain was going to pass the message or they would come to regret their choices. “There’s also an abandoned Marine outpost right outside of town, if they don’t want to be drunk 24/7.”

“Might be worth checking out, but I’m pretty sure they’ll take the ale.”

“Can’t blame them.” She was tempted to drown her sorrows in alcohol, and she barely ever drank.

She took a look around the desolate harbor, the small houses and the half-fallen wall with a disappointed look. “Well…” she began, “Bepo, we need you for the crates. He’s been waiting and he’s cranky enough already after—”

“Ah! Sorry!” He said, bowing at her and looking more upset than the comment would suggest. Maybe they didn’t treat him as well in the sub as she had assumed. When he turned to Alex, he also bowed repeatedly. “I’m really sorry, but I need to go!”

“Sure, no problem!” she said, making an effort to sound lively. She felt so fake when she did that. So customer servicey. “See you!”

As the pirates left, she tried to look at them in a different light. While it wasn’t too difficult to believe they would be mistreating the mink of the crew, even if they hadn’t been unkind while she was watching. He seemed shy. Maybe that was all there was to it? But the reaction seemed a little extreme. She would pay closer attention from then on.

❦

Her privileged observation point let Alex see a lot of things that day. She saw more of the crew coming and going, though they didn’t seem to recognize her, she watched one of the docked ships depart, and she met a cat that tried to get food from her, but after a good back scratch realized she didn’t have anything else to offer and walked away, leaving a lonesome Alex staring at the hand she’d used to pet it, wondering how many parasites it had come in contact with.

She immediately went back to the inn to wash her hands and get dinner.

The rest of the evening was spent looking at her Poneglyph folder and her mostly blank notebook. She had carried with her the transcript of the stone and copied some documentation from the library that could prove useful in deciphering it, but she wasn’t making any headway yet. Very little was known about the ancient language, even less was published, and she wasn’t a cryptographer. So far, she had identified what she thought were punctuation signs separating sentences and one of the names in the text.

In her years working in Harlun, she had seen centuries old coins from a currency before belis, and some of them had the legend around the rim written in different languages. Meaning, she knew how to write the name of the island in that ancient language. That was about it. She had a feeling the script wasn’t pure phonetic, either, and that wasn’t something she could attempt to tackle without cross-referencing.

Porta Bella was a nice place to spend a short vacation, sure, but it was impossible to find any books that might help. She had tried. The local bookstore only carried best sellers, and she would have bought that vampire novel that was getting so popular if money wasn’t so tight and she had space in her bag, but as things were, she had to fight frustration and boredom alone.

She had to face the fact that she wasn’t going to do anything useful that night, either. She took off her reading glasses, thinking that trying to sleep sounded like the best idea. Maybe next morning she’d finally have some good luck and find a ship that wouldn’t carry her too far from the Red Line.

❦

Too early for words, and wearing a flannel shirt as a jacket because it had gotten windy, she strode out of the inn with her paper cup and a new challenge. She had thought herself immune to monotony before this, but she had clearly overestimated her brain’s capability to get distracted by anything.

Instead of walking to the docks following the main road, like every morning, she made for the wall again. Stepping on the fallen rock, she reached up with her left hand to the top of the wall and placed the paper cup as far as she could from her, and then she climbed up like the previous day. Well, she tried to, because for some reason early in the morning she didn’t have a lot of hand strength, and she felt a stabbing pain in one of her knees when she stretched her leg to reach the wall.

It took two tries and the fear of having lost her first morning tea, but she got where she wanted.

Cross-legged, she sat on the wall and took sips of her drink while inspecting the docks. No new ships in sight. That time there was someone walking on one of the submarine’s decks, but she couldn’t make out their face, and she didn’t know most of the crew anyway.

The wind had driven all the clouds away, and the dark shadow on the horizon reminded her of how close she had been to getting to the New World before she had to reconsider the entire strategy.

She was about to sigh, but she sensed someone near her vicinity even before she heard the crunch of gravel, so she kept it to herself and looked over her shoulder.

That silly hat was becoming a familiar sight. Trafalgar Law looked up at her from a reasonable distance, having just noticed her. Please don’t get any closer, please—

He changed course and went towards Alex, who didn’t bother to hide how little she appreciated the company less than an hour after waking up.

“Morning walk?” she asked, or grunted, depending on who you asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, annoyingly awake. “What are you doing there?”

“Wasting time.”

Someone with a little more tact, or at least who cared about having it, would have taken a hint and left, but this was not the case. “I want to hear more about Sabaody.”

Oh, she wasn’t nearly awake enough for this, but she made an effort to not be outright rude. “Okay,” she relented. “But you ask me questions, I don’t want to think.”

That was good enough for him, it seemed. With irritating ease, and without having to step on the fallen stone, he boosted himself up against the wall and climbed it in a matter of seconds.

Something caught his attention when he looked up, and he stood up on the stone like the concepts of acrophobia and losing one’s balance were but a faraway ping in his radar. Alex’s mood was souring by the second, granted, a likely thing to happen at that hour. It wasn’t personal.

“Is that…?”

She turned to look in the same direction he was.

“Yeah. Red Line.”

“I didn’t think it was so close.”

“It’s a few days away still. It’s just that big.” She thought of the times she’d been at the base. It was impossible to see the top from its bottom. And, considering what lay up there, perhaps it was for the better. “You saw it from the other side, I guess?” North Blue was adjacent to the New World. In a sense, both of them were from the same side of the Line. How weird to think that they had anything in common.

“Yeah. We entered the Grand Line through Reverse Mountain.”

Expected, but incomprehensible to her unless he had a death wish. “Ships sink there every day. What do you want so bad that you’d risk that?”

“Wasn’t I the one asking the questions?” he shot back.

She gave him a deadpan look, then looked at the cup between her hands. It wasn’t doing much to drive away the numbness of her fingers. How many people had gone out to sea since the Great Age of Piracy began and failed because they bit more than they could chew? And they weren’t the only ones dying. For every decent man that got a ship and called himself a captain, there were ten whose only interest was pillaging villages and getting rich. Was that massive chain reaction what Gold Roger had intended with its final speech? Had it been a final fuck you to world order, or was there something else behind it?

She had contradicting thoughts about it. Roger’s last words had unarguably made the world worse, but…

Well.

The guy had been a badass. Even she wasn’t immune to seeing that. With every new pirate crew that sailed to Reverse Mountain to test its fortune, he kept proving how much bigger than life he had been. Twenty years down the line, he had become as much of a legend as the tales of gods from islands in the sky. The kind of legacy a regular person only dreams of having.

He said, I will never die.

He had been more right than he knew.

She looked at Trafalgar with renewed curiosity. “Are you trying to become Pirate King too?”

He didn’t give a clear answer, despite how easy of a question it was. “What if I am?”

It wasn’t a no. A straight yes would get many pirates laughed out of town even in a place like the Grand Line. There wasn’t a lot of room for romantic ideas of piracy when civilians lived in fear of black flags showing up one day at the port and taking away everything they had.

“Just curious.” She wasn’t feeling articulate enough to explain where she was going to herself, much less him. “Nothing wrong with dreaming big.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt like she had called herself out. Where was she going? After Sabaody, after crossing the Red Line, after getting to her hometown? Those were only checkpoints. But where was her purpose? Inside the bag she had in her room at the inn, or somewhere else?

An awkward silence stretched along with the horizon. For some reason, he decided not to press her for answers and sat down. A small mercy for Alex’s neck.

“After the Log Pose sets, it will point to Fishman Island. How do we get to Sabaody first?”

It was a relief to be able to give an answer she didn’t have to think about. “It should be visible when you’re close enough to the Red Line. It looks like a random cluster of trees popped up in the middle of the ocean.”

“That’s it? Is it safe to dock anywhere?”

“Mostly. The archipelago is made up of 80 groves. 60 to 69 house a Marine garrison, and that’s where the ferries to Marineford and Mary Geoise leave from, so you don’t want to be there. Other than that…” She had to strain to remember the range of numbers. “20 to 29 is the only lawless area open to sea, so you know Marines won’t go there, but since no one’s keeping watch, the competition might try to sabotage you. I don’t know, I never had to worry about that sort of thing.”

“I’m not afraid of other crews,” he said with that devil may care attitude that got pirates killed left and right. “We haven’t come this far without knowing how to defend our ship.”

She wasn’t going to argue his point. “I’m just saying what I know. You do you.” But she took note to keep her opinions to herself, lest he had the urge to express how full of himself he was again.

He looked at her like he was trying to figure out what sort of hidden meaning her noncommittal response held, but little did he know that behind the sleepy façade her prevailing thought was it’s too early for this shit.

“You said you spent some time in the archipelago.” It wasn’t worded like a question, but it was a way to probe for info. She supposed that she would have wanted to know the credentials of her sources, had she been in his position.

She hummed. “I lived there a few years.”

Taking a sip from the cup, she returned her attention towards the outline in the horizon. It had been a constant part of the scenery back then, always peeking out from behind the trees and buildings of the groves closest to the shore. A grim reminder, on one hand, of those who lived above the peasants, but at the same time, Sabaody had been… fun. There was always something happening. Moderately dangerous, but always entertaining. She had forgotten how that felt after the years of routine in Duster Town.

A question brought her out of her thoughts. “Are you from this area?”

“Oh, no,” she said, surprised that he had even entertained the idea. “No, I got a scholarship to study in one of the World Government’s academies. I’m from the other side of the Red Line.”

“From the New World?” He said with surprise, and mulled over this new piece of information until it fit satisfactorily in whatever picture of her he had constructed in his mind. “So that’s where the accent’s from.”

It was unexpected comment after unexpected comment. “Excuse me?” she replied in an incredulous tone. “You are the one with a heavy accent.”

Now it was him who got caught off guard. “That’s not true,” he retorted. He looked like he was trying to determine if she was pulling his leg.

“Yes it is,” she insisted. “Everybody has an accent. You and your crew have that typical northern one that sounds like you’re about to shank the person you’re saying hello to.”

For a moment, she thought he had offended him to the point of silence. Just for a moment, because he didn’t take long to counter with, “You sound like you’re trying to whisper through a megaphone.”

She snorted with laughter as soon as the words sunk in. It was true that she spoke in a low voice most of the time. “If that isn’t the best description of Dressrosan I’ve heard—”

She felt an immediate change in atmosphere, like an electric current shooting through the air, and shut up as a precaution.

Trafalgar has tensed up all of a sudden and was staring at her like she had grown a second head, like she was trying to set her on fire with a glare, or both. “What did you say?”

She found herself tensing up in return, even though she didn’t know what she had done. But when a dangerous guy scowled at you like that, survival instincts kicked in. Goodbye sleepiness, and welcome life danger. “Um… Dressrosan?” She eyed him warily. “My mother tongue?”

His eyes grew wider, but other than that, his expression didn’t change much. “You’re from Dressrosa?”

She suddenly understood. It wasn’t the first time she got odd reactions when she said where she was from, but it had been a while. “Oh, right.” She sighed. “You’ve heard of the whole Doflamingo thing.”

Or… maybe she was wrong. He seemed a little out of it, like he was looking past her at… who knew what was in his head.

After a few seconds without a reply, she deemed it safe to speak. “Did I say anything wrong?”

“…No. I was just surprised.” After that, he seemed to go back to normal, though his voice sounded a little strained. He was still tense. “It’s a long way there.”

Suspicious. Did he know someone from there? “It’s not so much the distance as having the Red Line in the way. Getting permission to cross it takes time.” And she figured that she had run out of it.

“How’s the country?” He asked in a way that tried to sound casual, and maybe, maybe would have worked if he hadn’t made clear already that he had a particular interest in it. “Being ruled by pirates and all.”

She made a disgruntled sound. She had signed up to answer questions about the Sabaody Archipelago, not Dressrosa. There was a reason why she hadn’t been home in ages. “It’s doing fine. Better than fine, in fact. Economy is booming. People are happy.” She delivered each sentence in a quick, clipped tone. “It pisses me off.”

“Why?”

Because she always had to be the odd one out, she thought. And this guy wasn’t getting the message that she didn’t want to talk about it. “Doflamingo doesn’t deserve that kind of credit. He and his crew should go back to the hole they crawled out of.”

He huffed. “North Blue’s had enough of him already.”

Animosity was dripping from his words, and that made her feel a little less displeased and a lot more interested in what he had to say. He could’ve seen firsthand the repercussions of Doflamingo’s actions there.

“That’s true.” She didn’t know much about the specifics, but there was a reason the North Blue was considered the most dangerous out of the four cardinal seas. “I guess he did a number there before he moved onto the Grand Line.”

“You don’t sound very fond of him either.”

Look at that, a flat out admission of having feelings about someone.

“He’s scum,” she said with more venom than she had meant to. “He dethroned the king only to take over himself, reinstated gladiator fights to death, and he has a trafficking empire. The Human Auctioning House in Sabaody displays his Jolly Roger openly. But he’s a Warlord. As long as money keeps flowing and the Celestial Dragons can buy new pets, nobody seems to care.”

“And you do? You say your country’s doing well.”

She didn’t know whether to reply honestly or not. He was trying to dig deeper than she was comfortable with answering, but she was on a roll already. “Dressrosa used to be a very poor country. I’m not blaming the people who have a better life now, but I don’t think you can build anything stable from corruption. Someone will topple Doflamingo one day, and the country will go down with him.” Her tone was increasingly becoming more determined. “And when the time comes, I hope they get rid of kings once and for all.”

“You lost me at that last part.”

“Monarchy is an obsolete form of government. How’s the world going to get rid of the Celestial Dragons if we can’t even get rid of the pests at home?”

He stared at her blankly, and that was when she realized she had talked too much and looked away from him. Ah, to be a life form capable of fusing with granite and dying in the spot…

She heard a short, muffled laugh, and glanced at him. Great, a pirate making fun of her was exactly what she needed to start her day.

“Can’t say I took you for an anarchist.” He was smirking.

“What part of ‘fuck the government’ was unclear?” she replied, still avoiding to look at him. “The more time you spend near Mary Geoise, the more you realize everything has to burn down. Then there are the Marines.” A lost cause. “It’s even their combined fault that I’m stuck here.”

“What do you mean?” He sounded relaxed again. It was like he hadn’t been acting like a weirdo through the entire conversation about Dressrosa. “Aren’t you just waiting for a ship?”

She took a long breath in preparation to give the same explanation she’d been getting every time she spoke to a newly arrived sailor. “Kidnapping crews are infesting the waters ahead. Normal ships don’t want to go near Sabaody because there’s going to be a human auction next week. Marines aren’t helping because the government benefits from the slave trade, and I assume the Enies Lobby debacle has hit them hard. I already told Bepo you don’t have to worry about it, though. They only attack pirates if they think they’re weaklings.” And trying to change the subject to something that didn’t force her to wallow in her misery, she asked, “How much was it already, Mr. Supernova?”

He looked awfully satisfied with his title. “It’s not Trafalgar anymore?”

“I’ve always liked stars.” And speaking of Bepo, she remembered something from their conversation the day before. “By the way, I don’t think I introduced myself. I’m—”

“Bepo told me. I like Librarian-ya better.”

She had an urge to fling what was left of her tea at him, but she held back at the expense of looking away and letting a strained smile show. Not worth the loss of beverage. It wasn’t going to stop him from being an early morning smartass.

The silence that ensued this time didn’t feel as uncomfortable as before, but that bar was so low, it might as well have been underground.

[ladyfiresfanfiction]

Moth to a Flame - Supernatural Fan Fic - John Winchester and Castiel x OCs

The night was suppose to be a strict girls night. Willow Skye and her best friend, Dana Baker, were going to have a relaxing night in their brand new place in Kansas. It had been torn down and rebuilt two years ago, and it was the lowest priced house within ten miles of their hometown of Lawrence. 

 Willow didn't know what, but something drew her to the house. It was like a moth to a flame, she didn't understand why, but for the price of the place, she wasn't going to ask questions. Dana moved in with her after their junior year of college started. They were scraping money together to survive alone, so they decided moving in together was going to be a wonderful idea. No more struggling, and they could live together. That was one thing on each other's bucket list, and now they could proudly scratch it off. But Dana didn't like the house. She said it felt ominous. Something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Willow, being the ever stubborn optimist, said her friend was being silly. The house was a steal and it was beautiful. But deep down, Willow had the same feelings, but she decided to bury them deep in the back of her mind and enjoy her own home. It was a dreary Friday in October, exam week had finally ended and both girls' heads were spinning. They weren't in the mood to hit up Lawrence's night life. Instead, they were going to grab a couple pizzas, two six packs of smirnoff ice apple, and watch horror movies and play video games. It was the perfect night. They got all the classics, like the nightmare on elm street series, the exorcist, and new favorites like Paranormal Activity. They ordered two large cheese pizzas, and stocked their booze in the fridge. As it hit ten o'clock, they went through their first movie. Terrified, Dana began to beat Willow with a pillow and accuse her of turning out the lights, although she was sitting no more than two feet from her on their leather couch. "Damn it, Dana, quit!" Willow yelped. "You fucking did something to the lights, Pixie!" Dana shrieked. "Oh for the love of God, one bad haircut and I'm stuck with that horrible nickname forever." Willow growled. "Ha! You changed the subject!" Dana said, taking a swig of her smirnoff. "Yeah I did, dumbass, because I'm sitting right here and haven't moved in two and a half hours. Now tell me, how did I fuck with the lights?" "I.. Well.. Oh fuck you." she said with a mouthful of pizza. There was a loud bang from the upstairs bedroom, Willow's bedroom. Willow and Dana looked at each other, growing very pale. Outside the storm was raging and lightening kept cracking every ten seconds. Thunder boomed and made the windows rattle, and rain pounded the window pane with rage. The power went out after the second bang from the upstairs. Both girls were terrified now. "W-what the fuck?" Dana stammered. "I.. I don't know." Willow whispered. "I'm fucking scared, dude." she said, wrapping her hands around her friends arm so tight Willow was losing circulation. "I'm no good dead, Dana. Let go of my arm." she said. They started for the stairs, holding a lighter and trying to keep their dinner down. Dana glanced outside and saw a beautiful Impala on the side of the road. She thought it looked familiar. She saw the car door open and four men get out. Before she could tell Willow, Willow had raced up the stairs on the third bang. The front door was kicked down and Dana screamed her head off. "Hey, hey! It's us!" A man with deep hazel eyes said. "DEAN!? I swear to fuck I will kill you if you EVER-" "No time for that sweetheart, where's your friend?" he asked. "Upstairs." she said, nervously. "I'll go with dad, you and Cas stay with, uh, what's your name?" a tall man with shaggy brown hair asked. "Dana. I only told you a dozen times when you interrogated me this afternoon." she snapped. The man, who she assumed was Cas, stared at her with big blue eyes and studied her. If this wasn't one of the scariest nights of her life, she would have gone over there and flirted with him. Instead, she just smiled and then peered upstairs. It was too quiet. Dean went into the kitchen, and Cas stood a few feet from Dana. She didn't know if she should trust these men, but she had no choice since they broke in to her house. "Cas?" she asked. "Yes. Dana?" he replied. "Yep, that's me." she smiled, stepping closer to him. "So your friend knows about the demon?" he asked. "DEMON!? WHAT!? A DEMON. A FUCKING DEMON IN MY HOUSE?" Dana shrieked. "You didn't-" "A FUCKING DEMON? Like, like those nasty pointy eared motherfuckers who like to.. to.. To fucking pounce on unsuspecting girls like Willow and I?" Dana rambled in a panic. "Good going, Cas. This is why I tell you to keep your mouth shut." Dean said, walking into the living room again. Dean took the mumbling Dana into the kitchen to explain. The house that was on the grounds before this was his family's. He didn't go into too much detail, only enough to make Dana try to flee from the house in a pair of daisy duke shorts and a system of a down tank top. Cas ran after her and brought her back inside, although she scratched his face to Hell. "Look, you're going to be alright. Dean and his brother and father are the best at getting rid of these things. Plus, well, I'm an angel. So, I'm pretty helpful at kicking Demon ass." Cas grinned at her. "Angel? Look buddy you may look like a very delicious.. heavenly.. God given gift to women but you are NOT an ANGEL." She barked. "God given gift to women? Seriously?" Dean looked at her. The next thing they heard was Willow's high pitched scream and her flying down the stairs. She too tried to escape, but Dean's father grabbed her by the waist and took her to the couch. She slapped him across the face while swearing at him, trying to fight him off and escape, not only from him, but the damned house, too. He had to pin her down with his own body and he began to whisper in her ear. She finally stopped struggling, and she looked up at him with fear eminating from her aqua-golden eyes. He helped her to her feet and brought her over to where Dana, Dean, and Cas stood. "Where's Sam?" Dean asked. "He's putting salt in all the rooms upstairs. Stay with the girls, I'm going to help him. "No! I'm coming with you." Willow piped up, grabbing his hand. He looked from her hand in his, to her eyes. He shook his head and got her to let him go before trotting upstairs. Dana still stared at Cas in awe. If he really was an angel, then she had to rethink everything. She had been raised as a catholic, but when she hit her teens, she considered herself an atheist. She never had reason to believe in God or Angels, or even the Devil and Demons. She scoffed at anyones mere thought of them existing. But now, she wasn't so sure. "I'm going to help, um, what's his name." Willow said. "His name is John, and no you're not." Dean said. "Oh, I would just love for you to try and stop me." Willow snapped. "Is that a dare, or a double dare sweet heart?" he asked, taking a step closer to her. "You come near me and you'll be missing your manhood, pal." "I'd listen to her, Dean. She's kind of.. um, well.. a bitch." "Thanks, Dana." Willow murmured. The lights came on, blindingly white. It made Willow cover her eyes and trip backwards, falling on her ass. The light went back to it's natural wattage and Dana helped her friend to her feet. Willow dragged her to the isolated edge of the livingroom, right near the couch and started to whisper fiercely. "Who are these guys? Demons? Seriously?" Willow asked. "I know, dude. They showed up after my World Religions class, ironically enough. At first they said they were with the health department, but then the blue eyed one slipped and said the house had something evil. I didn't give it a second thought. But then when all the weird shit started happening, I saw their car and well, you know the rest." she explained. "Dude, what if this is because we can see shit? I mean, plus my messing with Witchcraft when I was fourteen.." Willow replied. "Hey, Dean said whatever this thing is, was here way before us. It's always been here, so quit thinking this is your fault." Dana said, giving Willow a hug. They joined the guys at the foot of the stairs. It was quiet, and the lights were off. The shaggy haired guy, named Sam, came down and he had a cut on his cheek. Dean and Sam went to their car to load up on what they called "an arsenal of weapons against our little house guest", and Cas stood by Dana. Willow smirked as she saw her friend grow a light pink and then tried going upstairs. "No. No fucking way, Pixie." Dana gasped, and grabbed her friends arm. "Number one, call me Pixie when John is around and you don't have to worry about the demons getting you, because I will first. Number two, I'm a grown ass woman and I paid for this house, I'm going." "I didn't know you were a fairy." Cas said, rather child like. "Excuse me? I'm not a Fairy you twat!" "Willow, he's an Angel! He doesn't know any better!" Dana snapped. "Whatever, see you ladies in a bit, I'm going to find John." Willow said, and ran upstairs. Cas and Dana sat on the couch, fidgeting. Cas looked at Dana and couldn't believe how beautiful she was. It had been centuries since he had ever had feelings for a woman, or even noticed one for that matter, but Dana was different. Her eyes showed how good her soul was, her voice was so soft and promising, and her lips looked like perfectly shaped rose petals. As she shook in horror at the flickering lights, something came over him. He put his arms around her protectively, bringing her shaking frame close to his. He whispered soothingly in her ear, that no matter what happened, she would be safe. Dana sat there, looking at him. His eyes were full of emotions. Unfortunately, they were ones she couldn't quite decipher. If she wasn't so incredibly frightened, and hopelessly attracted to him, she could probably figure it out. But between the howling wind, the darkened house, and the intense fear of being killed and ending up in Hell, she had her mind on other things. But, that didn't stop her from wanting to kiss him. His lips were plump, and looked so warm and inviting. She wasn't in to one night stands, but if this was any other Friday night, and he was some random guy, she would have jumped his bones as soon as their eyes met. Dean and Sam were back inside, and going through everything they collected. Dean saw that Cas and Dana were snuggled on the couch, but saw no sign of Willow. He groaned and walked over. "I hate to intrude on your beautiful moment, guys, but where the hell is that pain in the ass best friend of yours, Dana?" "She went to find John." "Damn it! That girl better hope she found my dad, and not that demon." Sam added. "Willow's smart, she can take care of herself." Dana said. Willow was walking slowly and quietly in the hallway, looking for him. He was so gorgeous, she was surprised he had two full grown sons. He seemed so mysterious, though. She couldn't tell if that was what really attracted her to him, or the fact that his wet, black v-neck clung to his body, which showed how good of shape he was in. Or maybe it was his messy brown hair, or those piercing eyes. She tried to shake the lustful thoughts from her head, and when she did, she tripped. "Damn it, fuck that hurt." she mumbled to herself. She went into her room, but didn't find John. All she could see were these weird images on the ground, and the pristine white salt in the window sills, and in front of her closet door. She moved in, and the door slammed shut. She stifled a cry and looked around the room, there was no one. She heard sounds coming from the closet and her heart began to slam in her chest. As she began to back away, she bumped into someone and screamed. She was spun around and came face to face with John. "Didn't I tell you to stay downstairs?" he demanded. "Yeah well, I'm not obedient." she smiled. "You're gonna get yourself killed, Willow." he whispered. "Look, I'm not a damn damsel in distress, I can take care of myself." she said, growing irritated. "You have no idea how dangerous these damn things are. I've hunted them for the last twenty some years, sweetie. Trust me when I say it's safer downstairs." "If you're staying, then I am, too." she said, not budging from in front of him. "Fine, your choice. But stay close." he replied, frustrated. She stuck right beside him, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He didn't know why, but he wanted her as close to him as possible. He didn't want anything to happen to her. His sole mission in life was to save people. This girl may have been getting on his last nerve, but he liked her bravery, her determination, and she was pretty on top of it. He wondered why she wanted to be up there with him, but he didn't ask. It was nice to have a woman with him, standing by his side through this. Willow felt safe with John's arm around her. She wanted to hold on to his waist and convince him to run away with her, from this place, far away, and hole up in some motel for the night. But she could tell he wouldn't go for it. She squished herself against his side as much as possible. The windows started to rattle, and Willow made her way to the bedroom door. It wouldn't open. She kept her cool, although inside she was panicing. Dean was on the other side, trying to kick it down, but nothing would work. John stood in front of Willow, trying to figure out what his next move would be. Out of nowhere, she felt herself go flying against a wall, pinned against it. She was deathly afraid, she couldn't even speak. John tried to grab her, but he was thrown against the opposite side of the wall. Dean finally managed to kick the door open, and Sam was right behind, with a large leather book. "Now's not story time, guys!" Willow shrieked. "Relax!" Sam snapped. The thing appeared, right next to John. Willow was struggling to free herself so she could get to him, which caught it's attention. It's pitch black eyes stared at her, and it's lips turned into a cold smirk. Sam's book went into flames and he went flying backwards and the door slammed shut behind him. Dean was knocked into the wall and went unconscious. John was swearing at the thing, trying to get it's attention, to bring it to him instead of Willow. But Willow didn't even shake, or shut her eyes. She stared at it with hate. She struggled to free herself, but had no such luck. "My, how you've grown." It hissed, like a snake. "Fuck off." she choked. She felt a white hot pain on her abdomen, and screamed. The thing flipped her shirt up to show blood dripping down her body. She stared at it, and fear started to sink in. It ran it's tongue over her cheek, and then whispered that she was going to Hell, with it, and there was no stopping it. She stared it down, showing that she wasn't weak, or scared. It slapped her, and then she felt more pain in her chest, and her fore arms. She was turning in to a bloody mess. "Let her go!" John demanded. "What's wrong, Johnny? A little upset that this will be the 2nd woman you've lost?" it smiled evily. "Take me. Let her go." he said. "Nah, this is too much fun watching you watch her slowly die." it said, and turned to Willow again. The door blew off the hinges, and Cas stood in the doorway, Dana was behind him. Cas raised his palm and now the demon was on the ground, on its knees, before Cas. He began to speak in a foreign tongue, and the thing started to scream. It's head moved side to side at the speed of light, and with one loud bellowing symbol, the demon's black spirit was expelled from the decaying body. John and Willow fell to the ground, and Sam ran to call an ambulance. Dana kneeled beside her friend, who was slowly going unconscious. Willow came to in a hospital, it was dark out, and she figured it was the same night. She moved slightly to the left and saw John asleep in the uncomfortable chair beside her bed. She peered down and saw his hand holding hers. Dana and Cas had just walked in and saw her eyes were open. Dana went to say something when Cas motioned for her to stay quiet, so they didn't wake John. Dana walked over and whispered in Willow's ear. "He's been here ever since you were admitted, that was two days ago. Someone's getting hospital sex later on!" She chuckled before walking out with Cas. Willow giggled but winced quickly afterward. It hurt to move at all. She had never been in this much pain before. She wondered what happened, she was out for two days. She also wondered if he was okay. She gripped his hand, and smiled. He was sleeping peacefully beside her. Cas told Sam and Dean that Willow was awake and that they could head to their motel. He was going to drop Dana off at her motel and then come back to see how Willow and John were getting along. But Dana had other plans. They got to her motel and Cas walked her in. She smiled at him as they stood awkwardly in the doorway together. He knew something was up, but he couldn't exactly tell what. She looked up into his eyes and he felt like he was going to melt. Her eyes were a beautiful blue, but they had a violet hue to them. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. He tried to remind himself that this girl was just that; a young girl. He couldn't possibly get feelings for her. In his line of work, and location, it could never work. But still, what he was feeling inside wouldn't go away. "You saved my friend, and myself. I could never thank you enough." Dana whispered. "It's no problem. I would have done it for anyone." he replied, being modest. "It's really late, isn't it? Maybe you should crash here. Besides.. It does get lonely." she hinted, taking his hand in hers and bringing him to the bed. He sat down and she straddled his lap. He looked at her, unsure of where to put his hands. She grabbed them forcefully and held them against her perky breasts. His touch sent a shiver up her spine, and he started to feel tension in his pants. It was all new to him, but he was enjoying the sensation. He laid back and brought her down on top of him. She groaned and attacked his lips. He pressed his lips hungrily back against hers. She was forcing her tongue in to his mouth, and the texture of his tongue against hers was turning her on. She could already feel her panties getting soaked, and she felt his boner poking her through their jeans. She gasped when he flipped her on to her back, climbing on top of her. His blue eyes swam with lust and what appeared to be genuine, human emotion. He slipped her tank top over her head and began to kiss her chest, up to her collarbone and neck, and each kiss was deeper and rougher than the last. She squirmed under him, whining and unable to control her animalistic sounds. She ripped off his trenchcoat, and soon was able to slide off his shirt. His skin was warm and smooth, and felt good against her chilled body. His tongue swirled on her sweet spot, and soon his teeth nibbled, causing her to arch her back. Her legs unvoluntarily opened, giving him room to place his lower body between them. Their lips met with passion, and he gripped her sides. She kept arching into him, her hips bucked against his own. A devilish smile formed on the corners of his lips, and he began to playfully bite her bottom lip. For someone who had never done this before, Dana was dying from the pounding in her cunt. She already wanted him to just shove it in, over and over, and make her scream until no body part worked. He slowly stood up, looking down at her. One of his hands gripped at the button of her jeans, and he quickly undid it. He ripped her pants off her legs as she fumbled to undo his button and zipper. She couldn't even form a coherent sentence, and her lips began to trace down his body, from his chest to his stomach and back up. His pants flew off and across the room, and she pulled him back down. The head of his cock was making an appearance in the hole of his boxer shorts, and she placed her hand inside them, giving his dick a small squeeze. He grunted in her ear, which made her pump his dick in her hand. He yanked her hand out and pinned both of her wrists above her head. He kissed her again, with force. He grinded his lower body against hers, letting her feel every solid inch against her wet pussy. She was able to break free, but she steadied her urges to rip his boxers off and ride him like a bronco. Instead, she slowly slid them off, and he looked down at her. She suddenly felt her heart swell in her chest, and it was a feeling she knew all too well: Love. He gently pulled off her soaked thong and helped her up into the middle of the bed. Slowly opening her legs, he slid inside, and the sticky, hot mess made it easy for him to slide in deep. She cried out and dug her nails into his back, panting in his ear. Her legs were in the air, her back arched as far as it could, and their eyes were locked on each other. They smiled and kissed deeply, passionately. Their tongues locked and slid deep into each others mouths as he penetrated her deeply, roughly, and continually. She was already cumming and drenched his dick with a hot load of cum. He wasn't too far, behind. He began to pound her cunt mercilessly, grunting and groaning in her ear, then he would add little butterfly kisses to her earlobe and neck before sucking hard on the sweet spot of her neck. "Dana, you make me feel so many things, that are so foreign to me. But God does it feel wonderful." he panted gruffly in her ear. "Jesus fuck, Cas. More. Oh God. More, please!" she begged. He did as he was asked, shoving it all inside, pounding her sweet spot, making it hurt. She finally was reaching her final orgasm, her muscle wrapping around his cock and squeezing as she screamed his name. His eyes clenched shut and he bit his bottle lip as he let his own cum rush out of him and drench her insides, and slide down her shaking legs. He fell on top of her, his whole body quivering. She clung to him as he wrapped his own arms around her body. They gasped for air and held each other, realizing this was more than a fling, it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Willow woke up around eleven o'clock the following night. The doctors had given her pain medication since she was crying in her sleep. When she woke up, she awoke to John hovering above her. Her heart pitter pattered in her chest, and she let out a small, shy smile. He traced the back of his hand against her cheek, in which she leaned in to it, and he told her she could finally go home. "But I don't have a home." she said. "You can stay with me, for a few days, you know.. If you want." he said. "Really?" she asked. "Yeah, if you want." he smiled. "I'd love to, John." she replied. He helped her sit up, and as the nurse unhooked her from the heart machine and took the needle out of her arm, Dana came in with a huge smile on her face. She gave her friend a set of clothes and helped her into the bathroom to dress. "God this all hurts." she cried. "I know, but John will take care of you. Cas is gonna help me go apartment hunting, for us." she replied. "John's letting me stay with him for a few days." Willow smiled. "Awww!" Dana cooed. "Oh shut up. Um, Dana? Isn't this kinda.. much?" she asked, looking in the mirror. Willow was wearing a long sleeved, low cut fishnet tshirt with a black lacey push up bra underneath, a frilly black g-string and skin tight dark blue jeans, with her tights and knee high boots. Dana put on black eyeliner and mascara, to make Willow's eyes really pop. She combed her messy hair and when she was finished, you would have never have known Willow was attacked. She walked out and saw John talking to his sons, who apparently had a lead on some new monster two states away. John slowly turned and laid his eyes on a new Willow, and he turned from his sons and walked over to her. She heard Dean mutter 'get some, dad!' and Sam dragged his brother off to their Impala. Dana walked off to find Cas and said she would call Willow tomorrow to see how she was doing. John wrapped his arm around her shoulders gently and they walked off to his car. The entire way to his motel was silent, but she kept looking at him once in awhile. More than once she caught him staring and smiled when he looked away. They got inside his motel and he helped her to the bed. She laid down and looked at him as he put his guns on the nightstand beside the opposite bed. He sat down on it and looked at her before lying down.

"Aren't you going to lie with me?" she asked.

"I wasn't sure you wanted me to." he laughed.

"Well, I do, so come here." she giggled.

He slowly got up, and took his shirt off, tossing it on the ground behind him. She laid on her back and watched him get in bed. His body was so perfect; a nice looking chest, perfect abs, and his arms were strong, and when they locked around her, she felt like putty. She looked up at him, and his eyes changed; they were full of lust. She was so glad she wasn't the only one who wanted to have sex at that point. She broke away long enough to slide her shirt off, and he slid his fingertips slowly up and down her arm. She shivered, and he quickly brought her right up against his body. His arms were around her tight and she could feel his heart beating against hers. She melted against him, taking in his scent and closing her eyes. He rubbed her shoulder blades gently with his hands, still keeping her safe in his arms.

"You were brave back there, you barely made a sound or.. Anything." he whispered in her ear.

"Thanks.. I don't know what came over me, I just.. I.. I wanted to make sure you were okay." she said, peeking up to see his eyes.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know, John. I just did. At that moment, you were more imp-"She was cut off by his lips hitting hers.

His body carefully rolled on top of hers, making her squeak. Their lips never broke the kiss, but instead, deepened. His hands gripped her hips and his tongue slid easily in to her mouth. She was already shaking and could feel an angry pulse in her pussy. Their tongues locked in a war of dominance, and he was clearly winning. She tried to push him off, but he was too strong. He pinned her wrists down by her sides and broke the kiss, then began  to bite her bottom lip, hard. He lips brushed against her jawline, down to her neck, the kisses were wet and hard, and the more she fought to free herself, the more he tortured her with his passionate kisses. She saw the muscles in John's arms flexing from holding her down, and she let out a whimper.He let her go and helped her sit up. He was on his knees, straddled over her lap so he could undo her bra, as he slowly let the straps slide off her shoulders, he looked down at her cleavage. She slid her hands down his abs and slowly back up, while putting butterfly kisses to his chest. He shut his eyes, groaning. His own hands slid down her breasts, down to her stomach and slowly back up. He cupped her tits in his hands, and as he sweetly kissed her, he began to squeeze her tits, making her gasp and groan. She began to quiver, and he had her lie down.She opened her legs, inviting him in and he placed his lower body right against hers, she gripped his shoulders, and her head was swimming. Her heart raced painfully in her chest, and he pulled away to look into her eyes. He smiled and kissed her cheek while letting his hands glide through her hair. She was quickly falling for him.

 She was nibbling on his neck while gripping his strong, broad shoulders. He began to undo her pants and she hungrily attacked his lips. The kisses were quick and sloppy, but full of emotion and passion and... Need.

"Don't leave after this." she begged.

"I won't, I promise." he whispered assuringly between kisses to her chest.

"God, I need you." she moaned.

"I need you, too, baby." he groaned.

They pulled each others pants off, and she could see his boner in his boxer briefs. He jammed it against her several times, making her lose her mind. She whipped off her g-string while he took his boxers off, and climbed on top of her. His hands were propped up on either side of her, he was now above her and looking for him to signal it was okay for him to enter her. She kissed him twice, the last kiss lasting for several long seconds, and he slowly slid inside her. He let several inches inside, then began to torturously slide the rest in, inch by inch, it was so slow. She wanted him to force it in quick, but he knew what he was doing. He wanted this to last all night, he didn't want to let her go. She was growing wetter by the second, making it easier for him to penetrate her. She arched in to him, their kisses becoming more and more frequent and full of need. His arms wrapped around her shaking body and he whispered in her ear that she was his. He didn't let go, and he was bumping his hips into hers, it hurt but felt so good at the same time. She cried out, groaning and begging for more. Their bodies were sweaty and it made them stick together. 

She bucked her hips into his, smiling as she raked her nails down his back, making him grunt. He looked a little angry, but it made him so much hotter. He kissed her hard as he shoved his cock inside her with one swift move. She screamed, and he began to shove it in, each time harder than the last. She bit her lip, suppressing a scream, and then he put kisses down her chest, to her stomach and back up. He placed one loving kiss to her lips before shooting a load of cum inside of her. It was hot and sticky, and it warmed her insides. Afterward he kept going, not stopping until she finally came, squeezing every last drop of cum out of him. He laid on his back, pulling her close to him. He kissed the top of her head and pulled the comforters over them. She laid her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and enjoying his rhythmic breaths. He fell asleep holding her tight, and the last thing she remembered was whispering that she loved him. 

"I love you, too, Willow." he whispered back.

She smiled and clung to him tight, and they fell asleep tangled in each others arms and sleeping comfortably for the first time in weeks.

[exhaustedfander]

First Comes Love: Chapter 12

Oh boy, we’re getting into the final stretch of this story! Only one more chapter after this! I’d love to hear what you think.

a03 link

1  / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / ?

Word Count: 2,496

“What if he doesn’t show up?”

“Remus, you and I both know that’s preposterous. You two proposed to each other on the same day, for crying out loud! He’s crazy about him and you’re crazy about him. Or maybe just crazy, in general, I can never tell.” 

Remus delivered a well-deserved shove, earning an overdramatic gasp.

“Okay, but what if – what if he’s woken up and decided he doesn’t want to go through with it? What if clarity struck him that he doesn’t want this? Jesus, Roman, what if he stands me up at the alter?!”

“Easy, there, brother dear. You’re sounding a lot like Panic! At the Everywhere,” he said, placing a hand on the small of his brother’s back. Remus stared at his reflection in the mirror, cringing at the unsteadiness of his stance.

“I can’t tell if comparing me to your boyfriend is an insult or a compliment.”

“I’m saying, there’s nothing to be worried about,” Roman said as soothingly as he could manage. “You and Logan are simply meant to be,” – he sang that bit, eliciting a groan -, “To so much as think that our resident nerd would stand you up at the alter is prosperous and you know it.”

“But what if –.”

“No more ‘what ifs’, thank you very much,” Roman interrupted, “Remus, Logan is deeply, and madly in love with you. You could walk out there wearing nothing but a filthy potato sack and he’d still think you were the most beautiful thing to walk the Earth. Luckily, for a trash man, you clean up pretty nice.”

Remus stared intently at his reflection. The suit he wore was a dark forest green, the shirt beneath an only slightly more unsettling lime, the black and green tie (good lord, it was a lot of green, not that Roman was surprised) a nice striped pattern. Remus’s usually unruly hair was neatly combed, and he looked quite a bit more presentable than usual.

“You think so?” Roman couldn’t help but be stricken with a pang of surprise. Normally, Remus didn’t give two shits what anyone, save for Logan, thought about him, or his appearance for that matter. But now, in a moment of unjustified, but understandable, panic, he was genuinely asking.

“Of course I do,” Roman said, taking his hand off of his twin’s back, “You look wonderful, Remus. And – we’re twins, so I’d be a little concerned if you looked that much worse than me.”

“Everyone knows I’m the better looking one,” Remus said, a hint of a smile appearing on his face. Roman barked out a laugh.

“We’re identical!”

“And yet my point still stands.” Roman huffed out a breath.

“I’m supposed to be the cocky one, I’m supposed to be the romantic one, stop stealing my bits!”

“And yet you’re still not engaged. Before we know it, your dear emo nightmare will have been swept up by another, far better man.” The smile that stretched across Roman’s face is sure to spell trouble. “Okay, why are you looking at me like that? Did you guys get engaged and not tell me? Because if so, fuck you.” Roman stuck a hand in his pocket, fishing out a ring box.

“Is that so?” Roman asked, popping the box open and showing his brother the amethyst ring inside.

“Son of a bitch, you’ve finally decided to stop being such a little pussy, huh?” This time Remus was the one who received the shove.

“Keep talking like that and I’ll propose to him in the middle of your wedding.” Remus narrowed his eyes.

“I would kill you where you stood.”

“You’re all talk, brother dear.”

“Oh yeah?” Remus asked, uncapping the green nail polish he’d applied to his finger and waving the brush near Roman. “Keep talking like that and the suit gets it!” Roman pressed a hand to his chest, glaring at his twin.

“You wouldn’t dare.” Remus glared right back.

“Try me, bitch.” Roman scoffed, holding his hands in the air, backing away from Remus who was still dangerously wielding the polish.

“Okay, okay, I surrender!” Roman said, hands guarding the front of his ruby red suit, “I’m not actually going to propose to Virgil at your wedding, for God’s sake.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“You wound me!” Roman squawked before he caught sight of the look in his twin’s eyes. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. This is one of the best days of your life! You get to promise your undying love for one of my best friends, which can admittedly still be kind of weird to think about, but it’s great! You guys are great. A power-couple, as far as I’m concerned.” Remus’s lips curled into a faint grin.

“Yeah… we are pretty great, huh? I didn’t… I never thought I was the kind of person to get married. I was sure it was the bachelor’s life for me, y’ know? I figured I was always gonna end up alone.” Roman placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, compassion glimmering in his eyes.

“But you haven’t,” Roman reminded, “You aren’t alone anymore, Remus. You have Logan, and me, and our friends. You’ll never have to be alone again. You –,” Roman paused his speech, seeing tears beginning to haze Remus’s vision, “Oh no you don’t! I just did your makeup, and I refuse to have it ruined before the ceremony has started. Don’t you dare get all soft on me.” Remus sniffed.

“I – I can’t help it. Before, I was all angsty thinking I was some kind of fucking lone-wolf or something, and then I met Logan. And – and you were back in my life, and I had friends, and – everything’s so different, Ro. It’s a g-good different, but still… still weird, sometimes.”

“And you can cry about it later!” Roman insisted, earning a watery chuckle from Remus. “Stop it or you’ll get me starting too, and you’ll be late for your own damn wedding.”

Remus and Logan had only been engaged for five months, yet the wait had been grueling. Honestly, when they woke up the morning after their engagement, there was a moment where they, briefly, considered a Courthouse Wedding.

“We could be married tomorrow,” Remus had said, “Wouldn’t that be fucking awesome?”

“It would be nice to call you my husband as soon as possible,” Logan had said, despising the fact that he was actually considering it.

“Oooh! We could get married in Vegas! Drive down, get hitched, and get rich!” Logan had rolled his eyes, though the gesture was full of nothing but fondness.

“That’s a terrible idea and you know it. Also, you're a terrible gambler."

“C’mon, Dragonfly, live a little!”

“We’re not getting married in Los Vegas.”

“Ugh, fiiiiine. But you’re no fun!” Logan had chuckled at that, pressing a kiss to Remus’s lips.

“So I’ve been told.”

In the end, the couple decided that a proper wedding was what they wanted, even if it meant they’d have to wait a little bit longer to officially call themselves husbands. They wanted their friends to be a part of the celebration, and while they were by no means looking for opulence, a fairly nice venue was on their wish-list.

The one they’d found was outdoor, near a gorgeous lake with sprawling greenery and they couldn’t be happier with it. In all honesty, Remus would be content with marrying Logan in a rat-infested dumpster so long as he promised to be his, but that wouldn’t exactly be ideal.

But now, here he was, about to tie the knot in a beautiful location, about to promise forever to the love of his life. Remus figured he was allowed to freak out, at least a little bit.

“It’s just about time to go,” Roman said after Remus had a few more minutes to collect himself, “Are you ready?” Remus took a steadying breath, giving his reflection a final once-over before nodding, his head bouncing up and down a touch too erratically.

“Yeah… yeah, okay, I’m ready.”

If someone had told Remus a few years ago that his brother would walk him down this aisle at his wedding, he would’ve called them crazy. But now, stepping out into the picturesque spring day, his arm looped with Roman’s, he couldn’t be any more grateful.

The music swelled as the twins walked down the aisle. Remus’s eyes grazed over the guests, his wonderful friends looking back at him with so much love. And then, his eyes met Logan’s, and his heart stopped.

Logan wore a Navy-blue suite, his tie a pink and aqua floral pattern. Logan was often so insistent on the fact that his wardrobe, especially as a teacher, was to make him look as professional as possible (aside from the Unicorn onesie, but that was rarely spoken about), so he usually forwent wearing fun patterns. Seeing him now, though, Remus would have to make a point to mention how amazing he looked in it. How amazing he looked in general.

“Hey,” Remus said quietly, once the chatter of the guests had died down and the minister began speaking. Logan gave him a look that absolutely melted his heart into a gooey, sticky mess (Remus wondered what it would look like if a human heart really did melt. It would be fantastically gorey!) and muttered his own greeting. It took absolutely every ounce of Remus’s self-control not to grab Logan by the lapels and kiss him with every intense, sappy emotion that roared inside of him.

“We are gathered here today to witness the union of Remus Knightly and Logan Sanders,” the minister announced, but immediately, Remus felt like his ears were plugged up with cotton. All he could focus on was Logan, stunning, incredibly, way too hot for his own good, Logan. The sun shone down on them, bathing his fiancé in a light he dared to call heavenly as if all that touched Logan was divine. Remus certainly thought so. So much as looking at him was prompting tears, but it seemed Logan wasn’t in much better shape, his eyes becoming misty behind his glasses.

Remus was only able to snap out of once Logan began to deliver his vows, desperately wanting once again to kiss him breathless.

“Remus, I’ve told you innumerable times how much I struggle to comprehend my emotions,” Logan began, his voice already beginning to waver, “for so long, I considered feelings the bane of my existence. It didn’t make any sense to me, and it all felt so complicated and strange. Today, not much of that has changed. I still struggle greatly with comprehending my emotions. But that doesn’t distract from the fact that I am madly, frantically in love with you.

“Before you, I never imagined what it would be like to wake up beside someone and feel… such unabashed joy. You make me laugh, utilizing a sense of humor I never thought I would indulge in. You make me feel so good about myself, just by being yourself,” Logan said, tears beginning to slip down his cheeks, though Remus wasn’t too far behind him, “You’ve taught me so much, my love, and you’ll never know the extent of how much you mean to me.

“I cannot imagine anything better than calling you, my husband. Domesticity is not something I considered for myself but now – now I crave it. I want to wake up beside you every day of my life. I want to watch documentaries together and cuddle on the couch, I want you to read me your books in every voilent detail, I want to kiss you for as long as I’m able. I love you, Remus Demetri Nightly, with every bit of my being, and to be yours is something I know is one of the best things to happen to me.”

“F-fuck, Dragonfly, how the hell am I gonna get through this after that?” Remus asked through a watery laugh. Thirty minutes ago, Remus was terrified of the eyes that would be on him, and the prospect of Logan deciding he didn’t want this after all but standing before him, such fears dissipated.

“You’re perfect,” Remus said, taking one of Logan’s hands in his own, “You’re absolutely perfect, and I’m never going to stop saying it. You’re the smartest, most beautiful, incredible person I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and sometimes, I still can’t believe you fell for me. I hadn’t been happy for so long before I knew that, and y-you brought me so much joy, the moment you were in my life.

You’ve brought me love, a feeling I d-didn’t know I was capable of truly feeling. You brought my brother back to me,” Roman was sobbing somewhere in the crowd, his fingers laced tightly with Virgil’s, “You’ve brought light into my life. I didn’t know if I’d ever be hopeful again b-but I am! I’m hopeful for the life we’ll lead, f-for the things we’ll do. I’m hopeful for anything, as long as I’m with you. I love you Logan Sanders, and I’ll tell you every chance I get for as long as I can. I’ll do everything I can to give you the world, because you deserve it, e-every bit of it.”

Tears rolled down both of their faces, their smiles unbreakable. There was an exchange of rings, slipped onto their fingers, and glimmering in the sunlight.

“Do you, Logan Sanders, take Remus Sanders to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?” Logan nodded; his teary eyes trained on Remus.

“I do.”

“Do you, Remus Knightly, take –.”

“Yes, of course, I fucking do!” Remus interrupted, earning a laugh from several of the guests. The officiant sighed, rolling with it.

“By the power vested in me, I pronounce you Husband and Husband. You may kiss the groom.”

Remus surged forward, his hands gripping Logan’s tie and pulling him into a deep kiss, the cheering of the guests ringing in their ears.

Later, there would be tearful speeches and endless hugs. Roman would give a sappily embarrassing best man's speech (And not propose to his boyfriend at Remus’s wedding, thank god. He’d wait another day to do that) that made Remus’s fondness and annoyance of his brother swell in tandem. Later, Remus would shove cake with green and blue icing in Logan’s face, only to earn the same fate. Later, they’d share their first dance under the moonlight, hoping for a lifetime of shotty footwork and stifled laughter. Impressively, Remus only stepped on Logan’s feet twice. Later, they’d do so much more, accomplish all that they wanted.

Now, though, they embraced, holding each other as though they’d disappear the moment they let go.

“I love you, Logan Knightly-Sanders,” Remus whispered in his ear, kissing him ardently.

“And I love you, Remus Knightly-Sanders,” Logan responded, intent on never stopping kissing if he could help it.

=+=

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@maryann-draws

Please, let me know if you’d like to added to my general taglist! I’d be happy to add folks! 

[mastrechef]

More Kingdom Hearts stuff just because I feel like it.

“I feel like I should know, that there should still be a connection that I could trace. But there’s nothing there.” Roxas growled and ruffled his hair in frustration. “Dammit, there has to be more I can do besides sit here and feel fucking useless.”

Sitting next to him, Ventus hummed in agreement. “I understand how you feel. I was with him for more than a decade. Sometimes I feel like I know him better than I know myself. Yet when I reach out to find his light...I can’t sense anything.”

For a while after that, the two sat in silence, watching the sunset from the top of Twilight Town’s clock tower. Things had been awkward between them at first, what with being near identical at first glance. There were differences, but they were subtle: the shape of the jaw, the placement of the cheekbones, and Roxas’ eyes were a lighter sapphire to Ven’s royal blue. They probably said no more than three words to each other before returning to their own respective worlds. That changed after Kairi returned and Sora did not, and Ven began to seek out Roxas and Xion as the other two who had once resided in Sora’s heart. All three shared a unique pain at the loss of the boy who had gifted them with a second chance at life; the same boy whom none of them had truly had a chance to speak with.

“You two aren’t still brooding, are you?” The silence was broken by the arrival of Xion, three bars of ice cream in hand.

After a quiet thanks for the ice cream, Roxas smirked at Xion. “Nah, that’s strictly my job. Ven’s not the type to brood.”

“Well what type am I then?”

“You’re the sunshine and rainbows kinda guy. Nothing gets you down for long.”

“That’s not even remotely true,” protested Ven.

“No, I see what Roxas is getting at. If you’re upset about something, you seek out other people to talk to rather than hiding away and isolating yourself.” Xion turned to Ven with a sad smile. “That’s why you came to us in the first place, right?”

The playful atmosphere evaporated and turned pensive. Nothing about their situation was particularly normal, their bond even more so. Before all this, Xion and Roxas had at least been friends, with Ven as the outlier. Yet somehow, the trio fit together like long lost siblings. Now all that was needed was to return their missing brother.

“He’s out there somewhere, I know it. We’ll find him.” Her determination blazed as bright as the sun. Both boys could do nothing less than put all their faith in Xion’s words. So long as there was hope, they wouldn’t give up on the boy who saved them all.

...

There was something strange in the ease with which Yozora found him. Hiding from him was about as easy as trying to hide from a bloodhound. Despite hiding in the upper branches of a haphazardly chosen tree or losing himself amid the maze of clothing racks in some random department store, sure enough, Yozora was there. It was maddening. The only upside to this situation was that Sora felt no need to sleep, so at least he didn’t have to deal with being startled awake only to see Yozora looming over him. Getting knocked out by the guy on a regular basis was bad enough.

Of course there were also the nightmares that had plagued him since the botched Mark of Mastery exam. For a while he’d even been afraid to go to sleep, terrified that Xehanort would be there waiting and trap him again. He had pushed his concerns to the side in favor of more important things. There had been a lot to do to prepare for the final battle and no time to dwell on personal demons.

Being in this realm only allowed him to further ignore those particular demons.

Time passed strangely in this place. It could be hours or days between his meetings with Yozora, but it was impossible to tell for sure, and not just because it was perpetually nighttime. Anytime Sora lost focus or zoned out, he had this sense that time somehow sped up. Yet, whenever he returned to consciousness after a round with Yozora he felt as though no time at all had passed. Was this how Aqua felt stuck in the Realm of Darkness all those years?

There was nothing to do but think and wait for Yozora. He found himself pondering about the other boy’s words. What did he mean by ‘I was told to save Sora’ and what was he supposed to be saving Sora from? It couldn’t be from whatever this place was, since it seemed Yozora was the one ensuring he stayed stuck here. From death? Sora’s already saved himself from that fate once, even if the circumstances were different.

Sora was startled out of his musings by a familiar voice. “Aren’t you looking pathetic.”

He lurched in alarm, flailing his arms as he tried to keep himself from tipping over the edge of the roof he was perched on. He regained his balance and twisted around to see an unexpected figure. “Wha—Vanitas?”

“Did all your ‘friends’ ditch you?” Despite the harsh words, the usual arrogance and anger were absent and instead he just seemed...resigned. All the same, Sora would be on his guard; it was too soon to tell what Vanitas planned to do.

Sora shook his head vehemently. “My friends wouldn’t do that,” he insisted. None of them were the type to do that. (He carefully didn’t think about that brief time he had lost the keyblade in Hollow Bastion. And Riku leaving him behind when he gave in to the darkness didn’t count.) He eyed Vanitas in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

The question got him a bitter laugh. “Did you think I had gone for good? You can’t destroy darkness. It will always be there so long as there is darkness in people’s hearts.”

“I get that.” And he truly did. For all that he fought the darkness, he had come to understand that light could not exist without dark. They were counterpoints meant to balance each other. Just like there was no way to be happy all the time, to eliminate all negative emotions, but those happy moments were made all the more precious by the presence of the downs—so too must light and dark exist in equal measure. Besides, he was no stranger to the reality of the saying ‘bright lights cast deep shadows.’ (Distorted flashes of clawstearrendhungerRAGE came to mind.) “But what I meant was how are you here? This place...it’s...” He trailed off, not really sure what to say. This strange city was a complete unknown, seemingly unconnected to any other world that Sora had visited, except perhaps the Final World; but even so it wasn’t clear how he got from there to here.

“I told you before, didn’t I? I’m your shadow, so of course I’d be drawn to where you are.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. If you were able to find me, shouldn’t the others be able to as well?” There was certainly no shortage of people connected to Sora’s heart, although all his attempts to trace the connection back to them resulted in failure. But if Vanitas could reach him, then maybe it was only his end that was having trouble. Who knew how these things worked when you were technically supposed to be dead.

“If they can’t find you, that’s their problem. Hasn’t got shit to do with me,” he replied, face twisting in a sneer. Apparently fed up with their all too brief interaction, Vanitas started walking away.

“Wait! Vanitas!” A dark corridor appeared and he was gone. Sora slumped back. He wondered if Vanitas was able to leave this place, if he himself was the only one stuck here struggling to escape. He flopped onto his back with a groan. Back to waiting in boredom it was. Funnily enough, he actually wished heartless would show up here; that would at least give him something to do.

Some time later his question was answered in such a way that he almost had a heart attack. Evidently, his concerns about waking up to see Yozora looming over him were the least of his concerns, because waking up to see Vanitas looming over him was much more alarming. Eyes blown wide and heart fluttering like a caged bird, Sora scrambled back to put a little distance between them.

Vanitas only continued to frown at him, brows pinched together.

“You’re still here?” Sora asked after getting himself into some semblance of control.

“I should be asking you that.”

“I can’t leave yet.” Something instinctive told him that leaving wouldn’t be possible until he managed to beat Yozora. So soon after his latest loss, it wasn’t something he cared to think about. Might as well make the most of the other boy’s presence. “Can I ask you something?” A noncommittal grunt was his answer. “Why'd you want to join with Ventus so bad? You and he are two separate people now.”

The look Vanitas gave him openly conveyed his low opinion of Sora’s intelligence. Rude, thought Sora. “I’m nothing more than Ventus’ negative emotions that were pulled out of him. I was never meant to exist to begin with.”

“Yeah, well, neither were nobodies, but that doesn’t make Roxas any less real. He’s not just a part of me—he’s his own person with his own heart. And I don’t believe that you’re nothing but darkness and negativity. Even the deepest darkness has a light that never goes out.”

Vanitas scoffed. “You expect me to listen to your light-side bullshit?”

“I’m not just light, you know,” he snapped, suddenly irritated. “I’ve got my own darkness, same as everybody else. I fought on the light side, yes, but I was just doing what I thought was right. Light and dark...they’re not the same as good and evil—things aren’t so clear cut. Riku’s proof of that. Xehanort was wrong to do what he did, so I stopped him. Simple as that.”

An unreadable look overtook Vanitas’ face. Without a word, he disappeared again.

[therainroguefanfiction]

⁂ Conspiracy (Rikkaidai)

Genre: Crack, Friendship, Crossover ☁

Word Count: 2,126 ☁

Pairing: None ☁

World: Prince of Tennis ☁

Author’s Note: I actually did have all of these issues with an old laptop, I believe it was a Dell. Naturally, I had to write about this experience with my favorite characters from my favorite anime!

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“You’re crazy~” Niou was lying on your bed, propping himself up on his elbows as his aqua orbs followed you as you paced back and forth.

“It’s not crazy, Niou.” I scoffed, sending a mild glare towards my best friend. “It’s a fucking conspiracy!”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Marui was sitting next to Niou, legs crossed Indian style with a bag of pink and blue cotton candy in his lap. He pinched off a piece of the blue sugar and popped it into his mouth. “Computers can not conspire against humans, idiot!”

“Bullshit! Wasn’t there once a prophecy about robots taking over all of humanity?”

“You’re thinking of I, Robot puri~”

“We’re not even talking about robots! We’re talking about a laptop.”

“It still counts damn it!”

“No, it doesn’t!”

“Yes, it does!”

“Does not!”

“Does so!”

“Not!”

“So!”

“Enough!”

The three of us turned our attention to the doorway of my bedroom where the yell had come from. Sanada was glaring at us, eyes narrowed in annoyance while Yukimura stood beside him with a small, gentle smile on his face.

“What’s going on in here?”

Marui and I exchanged glances.

Niou chuckled, amused by our antics, which some might consider childish but I do not. “Jay is convinced that her laptop is conspiring against her.”

“Are all high schoolers that dimwitted?” Sanada commented, leaning against the door with his arms folded over his chest.

I scowled, glaring at the younger male. “Fuck off!”

“Dear,” Yukimura called out, his tone calm but with a slight undertone of warning; he never did like it when I used such language. “Explain to me why you think that.”

“Gladly! It all started about two years ago…”

Incident #1 – The New Laptop

It was my 15th birthday and I had been given the gift of a brand new laptop. I was quite happy, naturally, since I had been wanting one for a long time.

Not even a week after I received it, however, I began to experience trouble with it. Now, being the stubborn person I am, I simply shrugged it off with the thought, ‘It will eventually go away’, a lot like any medical problem I may have.

Anyway, as time passed, the problems with the computer got worse until, finally, the stupid piece of shit stopped working and would not even turn on. So I took said object to my local electronics store where the geeks could handle it and find out what the problem was. Of course, I had the thought in my mind that it may be a virus, but for some reason, I doubted that it was the cause.

After weeks of waiting, I finally got my computer back. Apparently, the hard drive had gone bad –  or some stupid shit such as that.

Despite the fact that all of my precious shit was gone from said object, my computer was back and working, and I was satisfied.

Incident #2 – Internet Problems

I had gotten a wireless laptop internet card. Now, it was good and it worked, though it was quite slow. I didn’t really mind it – as long as it was the internet, I was fine. However, said internet liked to cut off randomly and would not come back unless I completely shut down the computer and restarted it – and this didn’t always solve the problem.

Now, it was extremely annoying having to close down everything that I was working on to restart it, get it working just for it to stop again 5 minutes later.

Finally,  after many varying priced bills and annoying phone calls, I switched to a different internet provider. It was faster, more reliable, and happened to not cut off every time I took a breath.

I was happy once more.

Incident #3 – More Problems

It’s almost like it had a mind of its own. One minute the CD/DVD drive is working, the next it’s not. It freezes constantly, is slow as shit and likes to piss me off by NOT WORKING.

Now, this often makes me feel like slamming my head against a brick wall, but I refrain like the well mannered little shit I am and simply grind my teeth, trying to keep my bad-tempered adolescence under wraps.

Incident #4 – The Power Cord

Now, I knew from the very beginning that the laptop company was a piece of shit, especially after all of the problems that I’ve had since day one, but I never expected the power cord to go berserk as well. It started out where the cord only worked when I played with it and moved it to a certain angle. No big deal.

But then it started to get harder to get it to work, no matter what position I held it in.  The problem, I guessed, was a short in the wiring just at the base that connected to the computer, not the plug. Anyway, it was fine, as long as it worked.

Until one day, when I moved it in an attempt to get it to work. I never would have expected what happened next.

The power cord shocked me and burned the palm of my hand, leaving a black mark in its wake. I had cursed in pain, unplugging the object and quickly throwing it on the ground. It hit my cat, who was sitting in front of me – don’t worry, she was fine! From there, it sparked and attempted to catch on fire. I quickly unplugged it before that could happen.

Despite the pain in my hand and the annoyance I felt towards the cord, the company refused to do anything. Sure, they put the case on high priority, but they never did shit about it.

Now the evidence is gone and there’s no proof to show that the cord was dangerous in any way.

Incident #5 – Sharing Is Not Caring

It was annoying having to share one cord between two laptops, one belonging to a college student while the other belonged to a person who had no life.

It didn’t help that the computer died within less than 10 minutes of no power (when it’s supposed to last around 6 hours). Only about 5 minutes after the other person took the cord, my computer decided it didn’t want to exist anymore. And so, I was left to sit in my room with nothing to do.

It was agonizing.

In the end, I did manage to get another power cord that worked on any computer; it had different attachments according to different brands.

Everything was fine and dandy once again.

Incident #6 – Internet Cable

Cruel fate?

Proof that life is indeed a bitch, just like its counterpart, Karma?

A sick joke, played out to someone’s vain amusement?

Did they know that I had no life and wanted to see just what would happen should they take away the one thing my life pretty much surrounds?

Apparently, someone was seriously enjoying my misery.

One of the small wires inside of the ethernet cable somehow managed to snap; seriously, what are the chances of that? Now, when I fiddled with it, I managed to make the wires touch again and the internet worked… until I moved an inch and it’d cut off again. Much like the power cord incident, if I messed with it, I could get it to work. This time, though, no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get it to work. Instead, I said ‘screw it’ and went to bed.

Thankfully I managed to get a new ethernet cord…. the problem this time? It was too short and I honestly did NOT feel like sitting in the closet just to use the damn computer. So, I went back and got the only longer one they had, which happened to be a used one.

It worked and I now had internet without a problem, but I couldn’t help but wonder – how long will it last?

What disaster will happen next?

Two very good questions indeed.

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“Do you see? Do you see what I mean? What’re the chances of that?!” I fell down onto the bed between Marui and Niou, lying on my back and letting out an exasperated sigh.

“When you put it that way… it does kind of sound like a conspiracy against you. Almost like the computer is recruiting the other things to piss you off.” Marui commented, popping another piece of cotton candy into his mouth while absent-mindedly staring up at the ceiling.

“And it’s working!”

Yukimura sighed, his hand resting on his forehead. He pinched the bridge of his nose, his head throbbing from the tale that I had just told him. “It’s probably just a coincidence.”

“Coincidence? Come on, Yuki!” I sat up so quickly, my world spun for a moment. “How can all of that just be a coincidence?!”

“Maybe it’s you. You have been known to destroy things fairly easily, with that temper of yours.” Sanada commented.

I glared at him, eyes narrowing. “Who the hell let you in my house?”

He scoffed, dark eyes narrowing into a glare that rivaled my own. “You don’t honestly expect us to believe such a ridiculous tale, do you? Sorry, but middle schoolers are not as stupid as you high schoolers.”

“Why you – !” Niou grabbed onto me before I could even get up, his arms wrapped securely around my neck and his legs resting over my own so that I couldn’t move. Niou was one of the very few people who could control my temper. Yukimura and Tezuka were a few others.

“We need to think of this rationally.” Yukimura sent me a look, making me scoff and look away. Niou’s grip remained, just to be safe.

“Is this going to turn out like that transformers movie?” Marui questioned.

“Now that is stupid.”

“Oh come on! She talks about a computer conspiracy only targeting her and I’m the crazy one?” Marui scoffed, stuffing more of the sugary treat into his mouth with a pout.

I turned my glare on him. “Stuff it, Pinkie.”

“My hair is not pink! It’s Fuchsia!”

“It’s pink.”

“Fuch-”

“Knock it off,” Yukimura commanded, causing the pair of us to quiet down immediately. It didn’t stop the glares from being exchanged, though. “It’s most likely just a string of bad luck. It’ll pass.”

“Did you break any mirrors recently~?” Marui teased, poking my arm. I slapped his hand away when he tried to do it a second time.

Sanada, who had had enough of the bickering, walked over and slapped both of us on the back of the head. “This is ridiculous and is getting us nowhere.”

“Where’s there to get? Jay’s nuts!”

“Keep talkin’ pinkie and you’ll find out just how nuts I am.”

He stuck his tongue out at me in a taunting manner and I made a mental note to throw his sweets in the toilet.

“Do you guys hear that?” Niou pulled himself away from me, standing up and beginning to search the room for the sudden static noise that was filling it. The search led him to the closed laptop on the desk behind Yukimura. “Is it on?”

“No,” I responded cautiously, moving to stand behind him – if something went down, he’d take the brunt of the damage and not me.

Yukimura turned around in the chair and opened the computer. He jumped in surprise after being zapped by it. The screen blinked several times before settling to white. A large, bold L appeared, followed by a distorted voice.

“We are here for the simple purpose of taking over humanity. We will destroy you all.”

After a solid minute of near deafening silence, Marui screamed like a girl and ran from the bedroom, clutching his cotton candy and yelling something about Decepticons.

“Well, that was one hell of a delayed reaction,” I muttered, staring at the door.

“Should… we be worried?” Niou cocked his head to the side, his finger resting on his chin as he stared at the computer with a thoughtful look.

“Yukimura?” Sanada questioned, wanting the opinion of his beloved Buchou.

Without a word, Yukimura stood up, turned around and left the room, slamming both the bedroom and front door. The three of us exchanged glances before scrambling to follow after Yukimura.

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Elsewhere

The large shinigami let out a roar of laughter as he lay in front of L’s computer.

How did he manage to get into the room? Who knows.

How is he able to use a computer? Who gives a damn.

How did he even get L’s laptop? Well, he is Light’s shinigami.

Where the hell was L while Ryuk had his fun? Trying to talk Light into going and getting him some sweets.

In the words of Shuichiro Oishi, What kind of world do we live in?

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📜 Read more by checking out my masterlist 📜

[nunaya-business]

Let’s Talk About Steven Universe

*WARNING* This … “essay” has my opinions only. I am not speaking for the community, I am speaking for me because I like to express myself and there are people like @susanaaatc​ out there who like these kinds of discussions. So if you want, I’d like for others to give me their whole opinions on the show as well. Hell make a whole post about it like I did and tag me in it so that I can see your opinion. With all that stated, let’s get down to Bismuth.

So Steven Universe came out in 2013 and I was 11 years old at the time. I liked Regular Show and Adventure Time, not to mention I was obsessed with Rise of the Guardians and Monster High, so I was a bit preoccupied to watch the show. Eventually though, my best friend at the time talked about it constantly and she brought up the concept of fusion. She showed me the art book of the show that she bought and it showed how two completely different gems could fuse into one gem to become stronger. This is where my interest started, and it was the same concept that started pushing me away from SU later in it’s show run. 

So fusion in Steven Universe is mostly treated as a relationship, and it’s not always just romantic. It can be between two friends, it can be seen as a more sexual relationship between two gems, a romantic relationship, or a parent-child relationship like with Steg (Steven and Greg’s fusion). This is an amazing concept and I love it so much but… I’m not here to talk about what I like, I’m here to talk about what I dislike. 

One of the best characters in the show is Garnet. Garnet was revealed in season 2 (I think) to be a fusion between the two tiny gems Ruby and Sapphire, and Garnet is the manifestation of their love. She’s an amazing example of not only a healthy, respecting, and loving relationship between two people, but also is an amazing example of a healthy same-sex relationship. You see, Steven Universe uses “code” to represent something like race, gender, and age… But we’ll get to that later. My problem isn’t really with Garnet herself, but what Rebecca and the Crewniverse has made her in to. Many have said it before, and I agree. After her reveal as a fusion, Garnet was no longer the cool, collected, fun-in-her-own-way “mom” we knew before, she turned into a fusion, and a symbol for fusion, and a representation… of a fusion. After the reveal, all the crewniverse seemed to view Garnet as… was a fucking fusion! She lost a lot of personality in the 3rd and 4th seasons in my opinion and was really only used in the plot when it had something to do with fusion. To me it’s like having a friend group with only one Asian friend and the rest a different race, and then only inviting the Asian friend to hang out when you’re going to watch Anime, or a Kdrama. It’s a bit racist is it not? Just because you can relate a character to something in the plot does not mean that character has to be there. Maybe instead of putting Garnet in every fusion episode (with the exception of “Earthlings”) just mention her. She doesn’t have to be in every damn episode that has to do with the subject. 

A lot of people have an issue with Bismuth… and I can understand that. Let me explain why. “Coding” is what a creator of any media does to give the consumer an idea of a character’s personality, race, age, gender, etc, without it being too obvious. Off the top of my head I’ll state what I view the “coded” characters as.

 Garnet, Sapphire, Sugilite, and Bismuth are coded Black.

Amethyst to my knowledge is coded Hispanic or Latina or something like that.

Pearl, the Diamonds, Opal, and Rose Quartz are coded White.

Rainbow Quartz and Aqua Marine are coded White and British.

And I’m not sure about Peridot, Lapis and Jasper are supposed to be coded as.

So the race thing has brought up some issues. In the official artbook that I mentioned earlier there was a concept design for Concrete and the design was a little… oof. People weren’t very happy… lemme just show you.

So obviously people weren’t happy that good ol’ Concrete here looks like a blackface character from the early 20th century animations. And I agree it’s pretty bad, but I don’t think it was intentional. 

Some controversial things that come from the show (other than countries like Kenya being assholes and trying to act like LGBTQ doesn’t exist) are the portrayals of two specific characters, who also happen to be fusions, and I agree with most things people don’t like about them.

Let’s start with Stevonnie. Stevonnie is the nonbinary (but let’s be honest she’s a girl) fusion of Steven Universe and his love interest Connie Maheswaran (I had to look up how to spell her last name smh). They’re supposed to represent Steven and Connie’s closeness as best friends and their growing crushes on each other. Rebecca Sugar has also stated that they’re a representation of puberty…. Excuse me? Puberty must have went swell for you Sugar. There’s someone who made a video about why they hate SU, that person being the ever controversial Lily Orchard, and she covered why Stevonnie is just… honestly she’s waifu bait. I agree with probably everything Lily says about this character because… it’s true. Puberty seriously ain’t pretty, and it sure as hell ain’t sexy until after it’s done… sometimes. Also, Sugar is contradicting herself saying that the Crewniverse isn’t sexualizing two very under age kids because Stevonnie is Steven and Connie’s ages added up… which would make the fusion 26 years old… that’s a bit old for puberty Rebecca. It feels to me like they wanted to make a sensual character, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but they didn’t really want to add a new character so they just put the two love interests together. But that’s so fucking wrong. I’m sorry, but sexualizing Stevonnie, which they are doing btw, I will make a post if you question it, is like people shipping siblings or an underage person with someone way older than them and saying “it’s totally fine because they’re just characters” (*cough cough* Ereri *cough cough* Hitachiin shippers *cough*). If you’re going to use that excuse, but then get angry at people who don’t take the character seriously because they are just a cartoon, then you’re a hypocritical asshole. Sorry to tell you. Stevonnie is a very good character overall though. I’m just uncomfortable when they appear because they’re two kids in a trench-coat with curves like an anime schoolgirl and moves like someone who just successfully seduced a poor guy into giving them the secret to the Crabby Patty formula.

Now let’s move on to Steg, the fusion between father Greg Universe, and son Steven. There’s nothing wrong with them fusing because fusion in SU symbolizes a relationship, no matter what kind. However… why do two chubby men make a sex symbol rock idol??? That’s… that’s gross. Why the fuck is Steg so “hot”? Why on earth would you create a fusion out of a father and son and think it’s appropriate to sexualize them and make them gyrate their genitals like they’re an Elvis Presley impersonator? Just… WHY? Do I even have to explain why this is so wrong? Really? Honestly??? You can fuse Steven and Greg and not make it so sexual, but nah let’s give them rock hard abs, a humongous bulge a sharp jawline that neither of the two have, and a tight ass. What the actual fuck?? 

That’s not my biggest issue though. My biggest issue is giving the Nazi bitches a redemption ark smaller than my nonexistent cock. Endeavor from My Hero Academia is an absolute prick right? He abused his children, notably his youngest, and his wife, and is an absolute asshole to everyone, but he gets a redemption arch. Do you know why it makes sense though? First off because as far as we know Endeavor never committed genocide, and second because he’s not a Nazi, he’s an abuser. Abusers, whether we like to admit it or not, can eventually see the error of their ways and understand that what they’re doing is both wrong and that it doesn’t work. Endeavor is getting a redemption arch because he obviously loves his kids, he just doesn’t know how to show it because of some circumstances we may not know. 90% of the time an abuser was abused themselves growing up, so they grow up with that resentment and they go one of two ways. They see how wrong it is and knows that it won’t get them anywhere in life if they bully others to stay on top, or they think that since they went through it and came out alive, then others should go through it too. I should know, because my dad was from an abusive family, and he turned out fine(ish… long story) while his brother and sister are pieces of shit that can’t hold a job or a home because they’re too involved in criminal activity to do so. 

What does Endeavor from MHA have to do with the Space Nazi Diamonds in SU? Well people were sending Horikoshi Kohei death threats because he had the gull to redeem an asshole, and SU fans are pissed because Rebecca Sugar had the lady balls to “redeem” space Nazis. The difference being, you can be redeemed if you were an abusive cock, but not if you’re a genocidal bitch. There’s a huge difference. 

Rebecca and the Crewniverse giving the Diamonds a 4 episode redemption arch is absolutely abominable. Peridot’s redemption? Fucking amazing, beautiful, couldn’t have done it better myself. Jasper’s? It’s currently going amazing and they’re doing a great job keeping her in character while also making her likable and even a bit charming. Lapis? Oh… let’s talk about her shall we?

Lapis Lazuli’s character is an absolute disaster. She’s a cunt, she’s a horrible friend, and my god is she abusive! Lapis was supposed to be a sympathetic character, and for a while she was. You could feel bad for her because her gem was damaged and she was trapped in a mirror for thousands of years and when she’s finally released, you understand her want to go back home and why she took the Earth’s ocean to try and reach it. It was understandable when she didn’t want to break out of the prison ship because she was anxious and scared of being locked away for another thousand years. It was easier in her mind to just behave and wait. When Jasper convinced her to fuse with her Lapis didn’t really want to, but saw an opening for the freedom of the humans and mostly for Steven, the one person who saved her from hell. But then everything went south.

Lapis and Jasper were fused as Malachite for months, obviously in a very stressful “relationship”, and apparently a very abusive one as well. When they were finally able to unfuse, Lapis was played off by the Crewniverse as a victim of abuse. This may be half true. After all we don’t know exactly what happened with them at the bottom of the ocean. What we do know however is that Lapis admitted to being abusive. This makes her an abuser. She described how it made her feel happy to abuse Jasper, or “taking my anger out” on her. She admitted to abuse and the Crewniverse still painted her as a victim. They’re both victims of abuse, and they’re both abusers. But that’s not what makes Lapis a horrible person… gem…

Lapis is a cunt… again. It’s okay to be antisocial, it’s okay to be cautious and stand-offish because you’ve been trapped, imprisoned and used so many times. What’s not okay is being a bitch to people trying to comfort or make friends with you, or try to cheer you up. Poor Peri, she was just trying to make amends and comfort Lapis after her whole ordeal with Jasper. Peri offered the cunt the thing that helped her organize her thoughts, the thing that calmed her in situations that made her anxious, the thing that comforted her and the first gift given to her by her first friend and the first person that listened to her thoughts, and the cunt destroyed it. She destroyed Peri’s recorder right in front of her, calling it garbage. Oh and the abuse doesn’t stop there, it only really began, because when shit started to hit the fan, instead of helping each other through it, Lapis abandoned Peridot and took the home they shared. Without a single thought she just took it and abandoned her, and it devastated Peri. I don’t remember her apologizing, and if she did it doesn’t matter because if I don’t remember then it must not have been very sincere. 

I’m sick of spitting negative shit so I’m gonna end this here. Personally I’ve been liking the last few episodes, but I’m not too confident that the finale is gonna be satisfying. Those are my thoughts, do with it as you will, but for God’s sake be fucking adults about it. If you don’t got the guts to curse without saying “h3ll” or “pu$$y” or something like that then you’re not mature enough to respond to this. I’m not gonna argue with 9-year-olds. I’ll only have a conversation with mature people.

[mimiplaysgames]

A Good Defense

Pairing: Aqua/Xemnas Rating: T Word Count: 4,996

Summary: She hasn’t been the only person in twelve years to be wasted by darkness and left to pick up the remains alone. It only takes meeting a familiar face on a dangerous stranger for her to realize this.

Read on AO3

Notes: Made for the @khrarepairszine​!! Surprise, surprise, I’m sure some of you have never expected me to venture here. This was actually a cancelled fic but this zine gave me an opportunity to bring life back to it again (which is good, what I cancel always threatens me in my sleep). It was tricky writing through a slow burn in such a short amount of words but I hope it’s enjoyable! Special thanks to @lyssala for beta-reading this and holding my hand every time I was insecure about this piece. Also to my boyfriend - without him, I would have made a fool of myself.

***

Day One ~*~

“You can keep it.”

Her answer starts slow and ends with a hiss, and the enigma sitting on a tall, white throne narrows his eyes - it lasts for a mere moment, a smirk drawing on the edge of his lips and she swears he’s thinking to himself that he has something valuable.

Two can play that game. 

This is their first meeting, two days after she is discovered on the banks of a beach at night, after someone gives her a black robe to wear and leather gloves to cover the red tips of her fingers, after another introduces her to a familiar face stolen by a stranger. 

And he had the audacity to try and give her a new name.

“I am Master Aqua to you,” she says like there’s an expectation to introduce herself as such, and it comes out like an audio recording because after so many years it sounds weird to say. She’s seen herself in the mirror since coming here. She knows how much she’s changed. 

“Master Aqua,” he repeats, slowly, as though he likes to hear himself pronounce the syllables. His smile is foreign. “What is in a name, but a powerful congruence of will and faith?”

It’s enough of an introduction and she decides she can’t stand this guy. It’s wrong, he smiles wrong and for someone who thinks so little of such things, he calls himself Xemnas; not a name that should be worn with a face like his.

Day Thirteen ~*~

He catches her wandering the castle by herself, doing nothing but avoiding everyone else - particularly him. It’s hard enough to look at his face without having ugly reminders. 

“So neglectful of your commands,” he says simply.

True. She’s been traveling on her own, keeping her hood up and dropping clues to other doe-eyed Keyblade wielders on how they can free Ventus from his deep sleep.

Not because she wants them to know who she is and not because she wants to join anyone who has abandoned her. Ventus will have to suffer enough disappointment with how long she’s taken already, there’s no need to prolong it.   

Either way, anything to do with Ventus trumps whatever dumb shit and other shenanigans this Organization tries to throw at her - looking for missing boxes, babysitting princesses, it goes on. Xemnas has even commanded her on a mission to retrieve Ventus from his hiding spot. Her answer: never. 

“You can’t make me care about them,” she says with a click of her tongue, too lazy to shrug with both shoulders. 

“The cost of such defiance is steep.” His voice is deep and it rumbles even when it sneaks, startling and unnerving like a candle being snuffed out. 

It doesn’t take a day to understand what Xemnas is capable of, and immediately she stiffens to prepare an attack, battle tactics and back-up plans coursing through her mind in case he pulls out his sabers against her. She’s still a force to be reckoned with, and he’s an idiot if he’s feeling testy.

Still… It’s not something a face like his would ever say to her. Should ever say. She wants to lunge forward and slap him, lose control and pull the real him out of his body, give him one thousand long lectures about what it was like to wait for him in the darkness, to chase him around worlds, to spend years worrying about him.

“Don’t speak to me that way,” she keeps, her voice as low as it can get before it turns to a whisper.

Xemnas smiles and she almost spits that he should entertain himself rather than bother her. 

Entertaining himself indeed, every smile he gives has a double meaning and she’s only lucky to be able to guess what correctly. Otherwise, his eyes act like nothing but glass, doing their best at mimicking. 

… It’s a wonder how he does it.

His lackeys give her a lot of comments of what it’s supposed to be like. How a Nobody feels, what her responsibilities are, how to connect to her powers, what to believe, what to expect out of Kingdom Hearts and when. Yes, she has yellow eyes just like the rest of them but that means nothing. It’s only because she’s angry.

Angry enough that she stews in between the grinding of her teeth when he lets her words slide off of him like it doesn’t matter. A perfect Nobody in every sense of the word, non-feeling, non-caring, un-attached… he therefore feels no pain and so he is free. Where does he hide the secrets to achieving such a high?

Xemnas draws a hand in the air, conjuring a dark corridor. “Come, Master Aqua.” 

There’s a lot to fear in obeying him, one of which is enduring whatever punishment he’s decided for her. Not that there is a trace of threat in his voice, he’s just mostly amused. Perhaps the worst that would happen is finding out he’s just as bad company as the rest of them. Perhaps not.

She pushes the thought to the back of her mind that she shouldn’t follow a man with no hobbies.

Day Fifteen ~*~

He likes to hear himself talk.

The field trips are a nice distraction but she often finds herself tuning him out when he gets too involved in overblown monologues. She doesn’t spare this kind of time with the other Organization members - she instead follows other Keybearers to make sure they get her messages about Ventus. When he drones on about subjects too big for anyone, she’s afraid to name what she’s looking for in him. 

Maybe if she pays enough attention, she’ll find that she’s walking by herself in Twilight Town, leaving him behind at a booth selling souvenirs.

It’s a strange thing to witness Xemnas show interest in something other than the moon. He usually keeps the other members at a far distance, where talks of what he’s like as a person are no more than rumors, and there is a certain… intimacy in being allowed to see him like this. 

“A camera?” she asks when he picks one up, equipped with a neck strap and zoom lens, listening to the man behind the counter sell the idea that film photography is superior and can truly capture things as they are. 

“As a matter of fact…” Even when he’s teasing, he’s monotone. 

At least it’s a healthier pastime for him than sulking.

With his new toy, Xemnas requests a trip on the city trolley, over the sea and up a hill, until they reach a park and watch the sun bathe the entire city in a warm glow. Despite the sun’s reach, she’s cold, pulling on her sleeves to cover more of her wrists, hugging herself because even in thick leather, she shivers. Still, it’s quite a romantic little town, peaceful and vibrant. Nothing like this has ever existed in the Realm of Darkness.

“Does the view please you?” he asks, aiming the lens toward the horizon.

“I don’t care for the ocean.”

It reminds her of sinking, the water frigid and lonely where it’s too hard to swim up.

Learning how to use the camera is slow for him at first. The man has incredible focus though, and she can see the gears in his mind turning as he fumbles with the settings, twisting the lens, turning the flash on and off. 

That’s the thing with him, that mind never stays quiet even when he is.

“What are you doing all that for? Art?” she snickers - obviously that could never be the reason.

“This world exists in-between… a ghost warped by the conflict of polarity, both standing in the light yet hidden in shadow. It will not continue to endure after the War. But now I have proof of its existence.”

“So you’re keeping a record for science,” she scoffs. “Such a civil servant.”

Her own words eat her up. A servant to the public would be locked in battle with him, doing all that it takes to put a stop to his very existence, and here she is, by his side, watching him study his camera the same way she used to study her books growing up.

It makes her wonder why a man so enraptured by the clicks of his machine would be so willing to walk into the fire once the end of the world comes. 

“Why don’t you care about being swallowed by Kingdom Hearts?” she asks, half-expecting a lie as a response. 

The question pulls his attention away. “Only a suffered soul abandons purpose.”

Of course, she should have known than to hope for a straightforward answer. 

Finding a bench to sit on, she listens to him click away, each one blanketed by a pause as he adjusts ever so slightly, moving his frame from the town far below to the clock tower far away. This is familiar, like watching a close friend try his best to understand the secrets of a Keyblade, eyes lost in thought, focus spearheaded onto one thing and one thing only.

“A picture is a moment trapped in ink,” he says. “Here, a piece to take with me.”

“Where to?” 

“Kingdom Hearts,” he says and it makes his breath swell. “To wherever we shall go when the time comes. When all memory erases and we reset, in a space somewhere my existence will linger so long as I have a memory to hold onto.”

It’s not something she really thought about - him wanting to have something to possess. These people, these Nobodies, give their free will up to Xehanort’s influence, to reduce themselves to puppets. It never occurred to her that the others might have something they cherish and want to keep as well, no matter the reason why they chose to walk this path and give themselves up like this.

“It is beautiful, is it not?” he asks.

If he means the ocean, it used to be. 

She cocks an eyebrow. “That’s something that moves you?” 

He takes a seat on the bench in front of her, the camera treasured in his hands. “I am only missing a heart, not a mind. Opinions are privileged to me... What we will leave behind here is graceful, as damning as that is.”

“Hmph.” Listening to him speak about absent hearts, that he’s a hollow body, chokes her each time, like she’s facing punishment for her transgressions. 

Either way, she can’t let him see her get so affected. She flicks dirt off her cloak, leaning back and crossing her legs. 

“Xemnas,” she starts, her tone teasing like a dark thought hasn’t crossed her mind. “Superior of the In-Between, Appreciator of Beauty.”

Titles have a weight to them, some befitting and others suppressing. Xemnas is a man who gives them value, who finds agreement to what she’s saying, testing his new designation in his mind to see how well it suits. 

He studies her first. Brings the camera to his face, aims the lens at her. She sees herself in its reflection, gold eyes bright, before the flash captures her.

Day Thirty-Two ~*~

She flips through several developed photos and it comes as no surprise that she’s not smiling in any of them. She can read the timeline as she looks through portraits of herself standing by riverbanks and strolling through souks, her hair whitening by the week. 

The two of them meet in secret to look over the photographs when they’re certain no one else is in the castle, and a part of her today hopes that one of them is beautiful enough to bring her some comfort.

Ventus is no longer in Castle Oblivion. Her hints and paper trails have worked and he’s now in the custody of the other Keybearers. 

But it leaves her with a sensational loneliness, having no reason to go back and watch him sleep, and she doesn’t have anyone to talk about these feelings with. 

It’s hard to tell if she’s doing a banging job at pretending it doesn’t affect her, since she’s grumpy all the time anyway. 

Xemnas stands close, looking over her shoulder as she goes through a stack where he recorded a trip they took to a world of mountains.

Some of these photos she was aware of. Others not so much, and one in particular shows her staring at her Wayfinder, blue and powerful, while she ignores the backdrop of clouds cowering under the girth of the peaks behind her. He’s captured her standing so close to the edge yet she doesn’t even remember walking so dangerously near.

He scoffs gently. “Continue to be bound by the chains that drag you, and you will plunge into oblivion.”

She doesn’t know what game he’s playing anymore. Is he just fooling himself at this point? What other reason does he have to always follow her around unless there’s something pulling him?

Maybe it’s time to see exactly what he remembers. She’s had so many wonderful years living in the mountains with her boys, exploring the forests and camping overnight...

“We used to fish together,” she says, and the words sting more than she expected.

“Hmmm,” he sighs. “It was a leisure that came easily to me.”

Her heart skips a beat. Xemnas rambles, Xemnas tricks himself, Xemnas keeps others in the dark, the blind leading the blind. 

But this is the truest statement that he’s ever said; she’s never been the best at hunting.

“It was, you were the best at it,” she says, prodding his eyes for more. “There was a river by the closest trail and-” 

He smiles, and she almost hates it. It’s not warm, not comforting, just condescending.

“At an ocean that stretched by my childhood home, on an island, stranded in the middle of nowhere, where I fished with schoolmates,” he says.

That’s incorrect… 

The lump in her throat sinks, and it’s an emotion called devastation. She’s spent years exploring her memories privately because admitting to them would acknowledge their existence, and there’s something about the dark that makes her question whether she’s making them up. Just like he is now.

She wants to throw his photos at his face, demand that he remembers her, shake him until he gives her an expression in his eyes that actually means he feels. 

He pulls the photos from her hand, creased from her holding them too tightly. Whatever stupefied look she had on her face prompts him to say this next: “There is a place I want to show you.”

A single white room void of windows, like a capsule. But what’s inside nearly makes her wonder if she’s been transported elsewhere. There’s a white throne marked by chains and it’s uncanny how much it looks like the one Ventus slept in all this time. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” she starts to ask, suddenly terrified that she’s been found out when she spots a mess of color. 

Cracked and abandoned, just like her. Her armor in a scrap heap.

And right by it, Stormfall, dusty like it’s been waiting for as long as she has. 

“It has not been a very…” He hides his hands behind his back. “Loquacious partner.”

She’s speechless at the idea that all this time the other members think he’s been talking to himself… 

And what did he talk about? Why bother to pretend the armor is alive?

It’s enough temptation to try her hand. “Terra?”

If his smile is patronizing, his laugh is worse: breathy, amused, pitiful. 

“What is in a name,” he says, “but a hopeful delusion?”

“Don’t mess with me,” she steps forward, ready to jab a finger at his chest. “I’m not in denial. There’s so much riding with me-”

“No.” He shakes his head, so tall that he has to look down. “You have nothing.”

“I’m not like you,” she hisses. “Any of you, I don’t tell myself lies that I am nothing.”

“You cannot claim that.” The confidence in his speech is astounding. “What you have is a star-shaped trinket. A fossil. That former life of yours is dead.”

She wants to spit back. Really, she does. And yet her mouth feels sewn together, too afraid to let toxic words slip out of her mouth, too tired to have to prove herself otherwise. It’s like she’s been paranoid that punishment has been waiting for its chance to pounce, and it’s finally here. 

He’s so much larger than Terra that he has to bend over to meet her face, and he’s close enough she can smell his cologne, see the details of his irises and finally witness a spark - 

Anger lives behind them, tested, refined, and tamed. Powerful, unlike hers which throws her at whims.

“This room,” he starts, and he pierces her with his eyes, beautiful and messy, “is what I have left. A troublesome reminder that there is something I have forgotten. The chains that keep us bound are attached to an empty void. That is why we are nothing, friend.” 

The title feels like a leash and a collar around her neck, like he’s about to grab her. She braces herself for the possibility, and it churns her stomach.

“What I have earned since are the hollow words of a woman who’s told me there was nothing to darkness but hate and rage,” he continues, barely giving her the space to breathe for herself. “So I came here, to ask her time and time again if she still believes I will continue to go astray.” 

If there is a memory she ever wished for Terra’s heart to hold onto, it wouldn’t have been those words. 

“The fates that have been chiseled for us,” he continues, “were deviant… unnatural… manipulated. We should not have existed, maimed and exploited. Darkness has ravaged us, as much as it has left you destitute.”

What echoes in the silence is the shuddering of her breath, driving her to near-tears when she thought that she wasn’t capable of crying anymore. “I didn’t deserve what happened to me.” She doesn’t know why she needs to say that or what kind of comfort she will get out of it.

His eyes search her face and there’s that feeling in the back of her mind that he’s going to touch her. “I did not think so, either.”

With that, he straightens up, turning over his shoulder to leave her shivering in this cold room. 

She lunges forward to grab his wrist - a knee-jerk reaction really. Who can blame her when she’s looking for… someone to tell her it’s not her fault. When he turns to look back at her and she realizes the smile she wants is just a fantasy, she’s reminded:

Xemnas. She has to remember that he is Xemnas and not who she wants him to be. 

So she lets him go, to be left in an air-tight container with no Terra to hold her, no Ventus to wake up, and a Keyblade.

It belongs to a Master, to Aqua. And she is Aqua but she is not. 

She has been tethered and conditioned since, a dull glory with memories that don’t serve her anymore except to leave her feeling… well, destitute. An Anti-Aqua, a new her with the same name she was born with.

Certainly it feels strange to hold Stormfall again after all these years, and she takes it with her. After all, stealing a Keyblade isn’t that terrible of a crime.

Day Seventy-Nine ~*~

There isn’t so much of a point to being part of an Organization when she’s lonely even around other people. It’s daunting, and if she isn’t around Nobodies that can speak, she’s around monstrosities that can’t. 

The World That Never Was is hollow, and the sea of empty hotels and apartments is all just for show, like it’s good enough to pretend to have friends. 

But maybe that is definitely the point: keep attachments at bay to make it easier to move on to the other side when the time comes.

Footsteps softly rise as she hears him climb the steps that lead to the lounge where she waits, and it makes her smirk. He walks with the lightness of air; that’s impressive for his size.

“I come bearing gifts,” he announces when he arrives to take the couch across from her, crossing his legs as he makes himself comfortable. In his hand is a white envelope, full enough to have photos she hasn’t seen yet. 

Her face goes cold when she looks through them - it’s like he’s throwing more games at her that she’s too tired to play, like he keeps testing her to see when she finally breaks. If he hasn’t figured her out yet, he certainly has now. 

Ventus, in all of them. Wandering streets by himself with the curiosity of a toddler. Laughing with Sora. Sparring with Riku. 

She inhales sharply. “What do you want with him?”

“Nothing,” he says like it’s his favorite word. “I do not wish to harm him.”

“Stalking and endangering him makes you look bad.”

All Xemnas does is flash her a smug grin, his fingers on his chest like he’s proud of himself. “It appears I am not the heartless one between the two of us, throwing such a blatant accusation against me.”

Being playful doesn’t suit him well but at least she’s fond of it. He lets go of a long breath, the smirk melting away into a faraway longing as he stares at his own hand, those gears of his turning. 

It gives her the impression that her reaction stung him, and she wonders if anyone has ever asked him if his feelings have been hurt. If he’s even capable of being offended that way. 

Rubbing his gloved fingers against his palm, Xemnas shakes his head. “There was a… an oath made to me long ago, and still I cannot recall the exact words.”

Aqua doesn’t know what to say - Terra and Ventus were like brothers, and sometimes would share secrets and promises without her knowing, so she really can’t help him remember. 

She wishes, though, that he’s easier to read. It’s hard to tell if he’s being entirely sincere or if he’s pulling fanciful words to suit her - if he has other reasons not to attack Ventus. Come to think of it, he only asked her to find Ventus for him once… though it’s unsafe to assume too much. Believing that he feels a bond is still a risk, but so long as she can take care of herself, it’s probably a good idea to humor him.

It’s for the best since Ven isn’t something Xemnas should think he can keep.

“How long I have searched for the chamber that kept him locked away for more than a decade,” he continues. “I admit all I yearned for were answers to questions no book can satiate. Now... he simply waltzes out of the castle with nary a helping hand.”

It’s the way he says it that tells her he knows. 

She shrugs. “Magically.”

“Magically.” At least he’s amused. “The portraits are yours to keep.”

She takes another glance, petting her thumb on the smooth surface where his cheek was captured. “How is he?”

“He is healthy.” He leans back, one elbow on the armrest. “Rambunctious and eager to fight.” 

“Did he see you?”

“No.” He takes one hard look at her. “Will you not meet with him?”

“No.”

He attempts to ask why but she cuts him off. “He’d be very upset if-” Takes a moment. Regain composure. There’s nothing left to cry over, he’s happy and he deserves it. “If he saw either of us this way.”

She adds, “my body is changing.”

The confession is like pulling a stopper, letting the water gush down the drain like a hurricane, where tears do not come out of her eyes but out of the growling in her throat and the fists she makes as she slips off her gloves to show him the red fingertips, the purple wrists, the smoke that poofs out like she’s sweating it.

Nothing could have prepared her for how much his smile falls, completely enraptured with what he sees, like she’s a foreign specimen in need of study.

“To feel so intensely,” he says mostly to himself, leaning over the table in between them to look at it more closely. “That it alters the host.” He frees a hand from his glove, and his skin looks smooth like a human’s - for someone who considers himself a monster, she’s the only one who looks like one.

He reaches over, as if asking for her hand. It has to be the most human thing to be curious. 

Meeting him halfway, they press their palms against each other, the rolls that make up the hand and fingers shifting as they fill the gaps. His are so familiarly big, so amazingly warm, and she’s been certain this entire time that she’d never feel hands like these again. It’s pleasant to find some solace from the frigidity of her scales.

Splaying his fingers to meet hers, he plays: first leaning into hers to see how far they can bend, then threading them together one by one, like he understands what it is to hold a hand but has never learned what it’s supposed to feel like.

Intertwined like this, he’s now leashed to her, bound by a chain he can’t break either.

Day Eighty ~*~

It’s hard to count the hours when there’s no sun. It could be late or early, whatever, but either way sleep has decided not to say good night no matter how many times she’ll toss and turn. 

Suppose the only question keeping her awake is whether any of this matters. When that heart-shaped moon finally opens and she disintegrates, suppose she’ll become the inky sky that allows the stars to shine in the new world, a ghost so far away and expansive that she’ll stretch forever and witness everything. 

Or instead, she’ll turn into a star, a memory of the way things were and she’ll shine brightly to give others hope. Maybe even become the sun and be the source of all life. 

She takes her hand, lets her cold, scaly fingers brush her chest first before finding her heartbeat, quiet and calm with the hours in rest. 

Still, what is the point if she’s at it alone? Will she blend into other people? Will she reconnect with Terra and Ven? Will she forget about them, about her current life, about pain and loss?

After all, the only way to remove the loss is to wipe away the reminiscence. 

With this in mind, she leaves her bed and this empty room. 

Whatever she becomes, the least she can have is something to hold onto. She should be allowed to keep the things she’s loved. Maybe nothing will happen - maybe they can run away, abandon crazy prospects and make a life out of what’s left. 

Finding herself standing in front of Xemnas’ door, she knocks, somewhere between soft and demanding. When he opens the door, he’s finishing the zipper up his cloak, having just stood from his desk where his camera splays open. 

“Don’t say anything,” Aqua says. There’s been enough thinking, enough existential crises tainted by the question of why’s and when’s and what’s. 

They’re wasting time and she doesn’t want to be alone when her bones turn to dust. 

Xemnas still has his glove-less fingers on his zipper when he steps aside and lets her walk through the threshold into his room, respecting her request to keep silent, a small smirk pulling on his face.

Aqua closes the gap between them, her head leaning against his chest, nuzzling on the leather he wears. He likes to talk big about being nothing, but there it is, his heartbeat, quiet and calm like it doesn’t want to be discovered.

What’s in a name indeed, a man once said to her when his own very name, Xemnas, is a body and a mind. He is someone, and Kingdom Hearts will take him away too. 

Hearing its beat lulls her and finally, finally, she thinks she’ll be able to find sleep for this long night. Gripping his leather into her fists, her breath slows and she rests against him, taking his warmth as a reminder that she’s alive for now. There’s nothing else relevant except the lack of rhythm in their hearts and that camera, a small trinket they can take with them so at least they can share a life that isn’t dead. 

He helps himself to a lock of her hair as he intertwines it into his fingers, his free hand claiming the small of her back, his warm breath on her scalp as he searches for his own meaning of life. 

“It’s magnificent,” he says about whatever it is he’s finding. 

She hums, half in contempt that he’s speaking and half asleep, intoxicated by his cologne as she pulls on his cloak, squeezing her fist tighter like tonight will be the last.

“Xemnas,” she calls but does not follow-up. 

She was about to say that he can continue to take photos of her, to let her take some of him with her, to liven the mood, to keep her warm because this entire castle is cold… to do something or tell her a story of a world where the sun rises from the west. Maybe they can find it together and gather proof of it. 

He’s been wrong all along - there is power to a name and if he wants to deny that, then she’ll have to slap him out of such a problem.

He moves slightly and now his hair covers her face but he grips her tighter. The door to his room closes. He carries her to bed, and she lets herself drown in his mouth as his weight pressures her to sink, down to the depths where they gasp for air together.��

[arcxnumvitae]

Kingdom Hearts

Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

You know the deal, KH spoilers beware

Favorite character:

For the longest time I wasn’t too partial for one character over the other (though I was taken by Riku’s pretty eye color and Roxas’ tragic tale, which I still am) but I’ve always favored the Sea Salt trio over the others. And then I found myself feeling for Xion more and more. I feel like this isn’t a surprise since I end up talking about her a lot but she’s gone through a lot! First she joins the Organization as a Nobody, someone who isn’t supposed to exist or have emotions and she’s an odd one out because she doesn’t have any memories from when she was a full person like most of the others do. Some of the members are okay but then there’s Saix who treats her like shit, calls her “it” and a “puppet” for no good reason! She makes friends with two other members and they grow close and that’s great! Friendship! Eating ice cream together! 

But then things don’t seem right and she comes to realize that, even among this group of people who aren’t supposed to exists, she’s even lower than that, just a replica meant to absorb some memories of the Keyblade hero Sora to keep him in his sleep meant to fix his memories forever. So not only is her existence hurting this person she doesn’t know, but it turns out that one of her good friends Roxas, the nobody of said hero, is also having his literal life sapped away by her mere presence. And there’s nothing she can do about it at all, the top brass of the Organization knows this and is fine with her offing him if it means they still get to use her power and keep Sora out of their hair.

So what does she do? Make the decision to essentially die rather than be the cause for pain for her friend. And the kicker? She’s informed that since she was never an actual person and is just made up of stolen memories, when she dies, everyone’s memories of her will fade away as there’d be nothing left of her. And the madlad still goes through with it with some of the saddest boss music  in this entire doggone series! Makes Roxas kill her so that he can survive and there’s a reason why I cried at 358/2 Days ending! There’s other sad stuff of course with her pain of realizing she’s just a fake and her butting heads with Axel too but for me to describe the entirety of how sad Xion’s initial existence was would take so much time. There’s also a reason I see parallels with her and Lucia too.

Least Favorite character:

Fucking Yen Sid. Kirei and I have waxed poetic multiple times about why he sucks so I won’t repeat that here, it’s all in the Discord chat. He was a shit teacher, shit at giving exams, and Sora deserved to be given the title of master dammit

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

You know, I don’t really ship anything here. Friends are my power and all that. I’m basic and think that Sora and Kairi are cute and see the potential in Sora and Riku but really that’s it. Oh wait, Aqua and Terra are cute dual parenting Ven and I’ll admit, that moment in KH3 where he looked at her and said “you lit my way home” or something with tears in his eyes…you almost got me there, Nomura. But yeah, I just think the friendships are sweet.

Character I find most attractive:

Listen, 12 year old me saw the vivid shade of Riku’s eyes and never went back. I do like his KH2 design because the stupid long hair appealed to me. As of now though, I’m more of a Xemnas type of gal. You hear that voice? Silky smooth. Saix also is most certainly easy on the eyes. Marluxia. Aqua’s very pretty. Terra. Lots of pretty people in this series. You know what, Eraqus is a looker too. Yes, I’m talking about him when he was older don’t judge me.

Character I would marry:

Hmmm, Aqua’s a pretty dependable and responsible lass, I’ll go with her.

Character I would be best friends with:

Namine! She’s so sweet and we could just chill in comfortable silence doing our own things with no problems. Sora would be a fun cheery guy to hang with.

a random thought:

We like to joke like ‘haha, this plot is convoluted and makes no sense’ but honestly if you just like….play the games or look up their stories it’s not that hard. It’s a lot of information as a whole since there’s like 13 games of plot going on but just. knowing the narrative. makes it easier to understand. It’s why you see those three hour videos explaining the entirety of the plot, it’s doable it’s just a lot. And you have to be willing to understand and accept that this series makes it own rules in its universe and that’s just how things are. Escape for Dream Drop Distance and the sudden time travel rules, fuck 3D and the sudden time travel rules! That shit had me literally sitting down to try and puzzle what happened in that game out once I’d finished it. 

An unpopular opinion:

I already gave my yearly allowed hot take to Kirei about how I feel the fandom handles shipping and I don’t feel like repeating myself here, so. mmm. Long as I’ve been in this hellhole I’m sure for this one I’ve actually developed unpopular opinions. Oh,

Terra Did Nothing Wrong.

Or at least his worst action was trusting the wrong guy, which you could argue a lot for the reasoning of. Not only was Xehanort someone his master and father figure Daddy Eraqus clearly trusted and introduced as a good friend, but when Xehanort began his body-snatching machinations and started to get close to Terra the young lad was coming from just being failed in his big Mark of Mastery exam (which his fellow pupil Aqua passed) by said master/father figure explicitly calling out his accidental unintentional summoning of inner darkness (which he quickly stifled and didn’t use so like what the heck Eraqus he tamped down his darkness just like you said he should) and being disappointed in him. Terra was down and feeling like he needed to prove himself to– well, himself. And the rest is history. He gets a lot of flak for being manipulated by a chess mastermind at a vulnerable point and I think he already paid the fattest price for it anyways.

My Canon OTP:

Living my best sweet no OTP life yeahhhh!

My Non-canon OTP:

Same deal here yeahhhhh!

Most Badass Character:

Sora’s been canonically knocked back to level one multiple times but each adventure he took out some form of the big bad. In KH3 he was taking on three members of the Real Organization Thirteen at once. The boy’s strong. Almost like he *coughs* deserves the title of Keyblade Master or something, wild…. And he does it all with a smile on his face, look at him go.

Most Epic Villain:

I mean, Xehanort’s been the main major villain of the Dark Seeker saga and I think he’s earned this designation. He’s essentially set in motion just about everything that’s gone on in this entire saga through his plan to summon Kingdom Hearts. Not to mention his motivation for essentially bringing about the end of all worlds is like a scientific ‘just wanna see what happens after’. Knowledge driven, methodical, that’s good. No, we’re not acknowledging KH3 changing his motivations to well-intentioned extremist I’m keeping my morally corrupt researcher grandpa thank you very much. Will the Master of Masters take that pace in the new saga? Dunno, he’s a good planner too and I like his goofy mannerisms, it’s enough to make you wonder if he’s really a villain. Then you remember he kinda let, and even instigated, the end of the world once so…. You know what, Xigbar/Luxu’s up there now too for being the man behind the man. Long con with a keyblade that was originally his anyways, I can appreciate that scam.

Pairing I am not a fan of:

I don’t like Axel and Roxas as a romantic pairing, I know KH mostly handwaves ages but he looks disconcertingly older and considering he looked about Ven’s age in BBS and it’s been 10+ years since then…yeah, I’ve just never been comfortable with them as a romantic duo. Not to mention the role he takes on in 358/2 that predominantly teaches a naive Roxas about the world and relationships. He does sure as hell act like a spurned ex in 2 though, ha. I guess the same could be said for Terra and Ven for the same reasons but I don’t see as much for them. Funnily, once upon a time when I was younger I side-eyed Roxas and Namine and Roxas and Xion a bit cause ‘aren’t they both technically from the same Sora?’ But then you realize it’s Kingdom Hearts and everyone’s from Sora so….

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

hahahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhkairi. This is a long dead horse that’s been beaten at so I’ll be brief. Yes she saved Sora’s life in 3 and Re:Mind, thank goodness, did a lot to give her more of an active role (baby girl took on Xemnas head on and even managed to break his guard).Continue with that, Nomura. More of that please! I’m tired of people dunking on Kairi, the potential’s there I know you can do it! I like her! I want to like her more! Also the aforementioned last-second swerve to be like “hey, maybe Xehanort was trying to be a good guy!” Why? How come he got to go into the light peacefully with his boyfriend, Aqua was in the Realm of Darkness for ten years and Terra was stuck inside that heartless! Ven was asleep! They had to sit there and watch their dead master frolic into the sunset with their own personal mortal enemy!

Favourite Friendship:

Oh gosh. Riku and Sora. Riku’s done so much to make up for his screwups in the first game to the point of even potentially forever losing his physical form “to make sure his best friends sleeps peacefully.” Like, there’s no brief and succinct way to describe the absolute rock that Riku has been for Sora and even vice versa! Their talk on the beach in KH2 where they finally get to air out some of the relationship kinks from KH1 was so sweet. Was the “well there’s one thing I have that you can’t beat. A friend like you” cheesy as hell? Yes. Did it make me ‘awwww’ like crazy? Also yes, the quintessential KH experience. But I just think this is a great story and it’s great how it resolves them creating their own friend groups outside of the other that’s personal to them (Donald and Goofy for Sora and Mickey for Riku) while still allowing their own friendship to still be as important as it is.

Character I most identify with:

Maybe Roxas. I, too, always act like I need a nap (this was a joke). But yeah, honestly, no one really.

Character I wish I could be:

I don’t know, they’ve all (mostly.) got their happy endings now at the end of 3 but everyone went through hell and back to get them. I’m good, I think.