#also I posted this initial with no tags rip

[mushroom-madness]

Welcome, to Mushroom Madness!

The competition to find the funkiest fungi, the most magnificent mush, the duke of decomposers.

Nominate your mushies HERE!

Rules of Submission:

The classic: no real people/ mushrooms. This is a poll about mushroom-based characters, not real species of mushroom. I will take propaganda style asks regarding real life mushroom species, to share the love and knowledge, but they will not be included in the bracket.

Multiple submissions are allowed, but please submit each character only once.

Limit 2 characters per franchise will be included in the bracket, but you can submit as many characters from a franchise as you wish

Examples: Moonshine Cybin (Not Another DnD Podcast), Toad (Mario), Stanley (Spiritfarer), Todd from Mario (Drawfee), Apothecary Gary (Amphibia), Danielle Barkstock (Dimension 20) [NOTE: These characters are NOT GUARANTEED in, please submit them if you want them included. They are just my personal picks so they have one vote by default, and I’ve included them here to give an idea of what kind of characters this bracket is for)

Submissions will close April 5th, or when I have significant (Currently estimated 3+) submissions for 64 unique characters to fill the bracket. Whichever comes first.

Poll will be seeded randomly. Currently no plans for any revival brackets. The mush are decomposers, death is part of their natural cycle.

A list of characters already submitted and qualified can be found HERE. Please keep submitting characters even if they’re already on this list!

LET THE FUNKY FUNGI MUSHROOM MASH BEGIN!

Inspired by @plural-swag-competition @best-bird-bash @autismswagsummit @best-d20-character @beefy-babe-showdown @ultimate-rat-bracket @canonautismclash @selfindulgentcompetition and obvs many more

[cringebureaucracy]

Thanks, Galar, for [checks notes] fictional guy politics.

[todayisafridaynight]

Soooo why do you have the crack ship of Ryo and Daigo?

i see two ex-emo nepo babies and i think they should kiss and play mind games with each other

[fairy-ganj-mother]

i wanna put on a cute outfit and take a dab video for the blog lmao

[lovetaroandtaemin]

Kinktober 2024

Day 4: Mirror Sex

Kim Mingyu x Reader Word Count: 1,089 THIS FIC IS NSFW, MINORS DNI!!! Warnings: Sort of soft dom!Mingyu, dirty talk, unprotected sex, creampie, breeding kink if you squint, talk of insecurities and self-doubt. If you think I missed a warning, please let me know! A/N: If you would like to be added to my Kinktober taglist, you can send an ask, send a dm, or comment on any of my Kinktober-related posts with the username that you'd like tagged. Happy reading!

Fic is under the cut.

You had no idea what Kim Mingyu saw in you. You had met some of the women he previously associated himself with, and they were gorgeous. He had been with models, actresses, and even other idols before the two of you started seeing each other. You hated to admit this but seeing him with idols that he used to date or hook up with made you feel really insecure, to say the least. You thought that you were doing a decent job of hiding your insecurities from him, but he knew you better than you realized.

Mingyu thought that you were one of the most attractive women he had ever seen. He told you how beautiful you were all the time, but you usually dismissed it as him just being nice. So, he started to think about ways that he could get you to see yourself the way that he did. As he considered a few options, an idea came to mind. It was an idea that he wasn’t sure you would be up for, but it was still worth a shot.

The night started like any other. Mingyu picked you up, and you got dinner at your favorite restaurant. After, he took you home. It didn’t take long after that for his hands to find their way to your ass while he kissed you. Not that you were complaining, of course. Mingyu had made it abundantly clear from the way he spoke to you on the drive home what his intentions were for the night. The part that differed from your expectations, however, was being dragged to your bathroom instead of your bedroom when he pulled away from the kiss.

“What are you doing?” you asked.

“Well, I had an idea for something different we could try tonight.”

“What is it?”

“Me fucking you in front of the mirror.”

You thought for a moment before you nodded and said, “Ok, but why?”

“What do you mean?’

“Why are we doing this, Mingyu?”

“We are doing this so you can see how sexy you are,” he said matter-of-factly.

“But I’m not.”

“Yes you are. And if you argue with me about it, I’m going home. Got it?”

“Got it,” you mumbled. You were nervous about seeing yourself in such a vulnerable state, but your desire to get fucked outweighed your desire to protest the mirror.

“Bend over, angel.”

You did as you were told, and Mingyu pulled up your dress just enough to rip your panties off. The next thing you knew, his pants and boxers were on the floor, and you could feel his tip poking at your entrance. Before anything else happened, he said, “Are you sure you’re ok with this?”

“I’m sure. I trust you.”

That was all Mingyu needed to hear to slowly push his hips forward. When he finally felt you, he let out a low moan that drove you crazy. While initially you had been hesitant, you had to admit that you liked being able to see his face in the mirror. The expression on his face as he entered you turned you on more than you expected it to. His eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open like he was still surprised at how good you felt.

Mingyu gave you a moment to adjust, then he started to fuck you. As he did, he opened his eyes just enough to see you in the mirror. When he saw how fucked-out you already looked, he chastised himself for not having this idea sooner. He loved fucking you from behind, but he also loved seeing your face when he fucked you. Bending you over your bathroom sink and fucking you in front of a mirror gave him the best of both worlds. If the look on your face and the noises leaving your mouth were any indication, you were enjoying yourself quite a bit too.

Just when you thought that the pleasure you were feeling couldn’t get any more intense, Mingyu reached one of his hands around you to rub your clit. The combined stimulation was almost too much, but you loved it. With a moan that was almost loud enough to be a scream, you said, “Harder, please.”

Mingyu didn’t need to be told twice. He snapped his hips forward faster than he had been, while keeping the pressure applied to your clit consistent. You felt like you were on cloud nine, and you never wanted it to end. As Mingyu fucked you, you occasionally looked up at the mirror. His face as he lost himself in pleasure was a sight that you wanted to see every night, and you hoped that he felt the same about you.

It didn’t take much longer for Mingyu to feel his orgasm approaching. He warned you that he was close, but he didn’t have time to pull out like he typically would have. So, with a loud moan, he released inside of you. You should have been concerned, but in the moment you couldn’t have cared less. In fact, it only heightened the pleasure you were feeling, and you felt your own orgasm hit you shortly after. The boost to Mingyu’s ego when you screamed his name as you came was astronomical.

The two of you caught your breath, and Mingyu quickly turned you around to kiss you. This kiss felt different, though. Typically, when he kissed you, it was nothing more than an act of foreplay. You didn’t really mind that, but you had to admit that you preferred the way he was kissing you now. It was a kiss that was full of love, and you felt like you were in heaven.

When Mingyu pulled away, he said, “You’re beautiful. You know that, right?” You nodded, and he smiled. Then the two of you cleaned yourselves up and got into bed together. Once you were both settled, he asked, “What if we were more than fuck buddies?”

“Do you mean like a couple?”

“Yeah. What do you think about that?”

“I think that sounds lovely.”

He smiled again, and you kissed him like you would never see him again, excited to start a new chapter of your relationship. Then the two of you spent the rest of the night cuddling in bed and talking about whatever came to mind until sleep overtook you. You had to admit that while you were skeptical at first, you did enjoy Mingyu’s new idea. Especially since it led to the two of you finally becoming a couple.

Thank you for reading! If you'd like to see what else I've written so far and the rest of what's planned, you can find my Kinktober masterlist here. If you'd like to read one of my non-Kinktober works, you can find my general masterlist here. If you'd like to see what I'm going to be working on once Kinktober is over, you can find my upcoming works here. If none of that interests you, or there's something specific you'd like to see, send a request via asks or dms!

Thank you again for reading, happy spooky season!

[randybutternubber]

More goo kid and worker drawings for the like… one other person who remembers them. If you wanna see my first post and drawings of them plus HCs (they’re better than these I swear), you can go through the goo kid tag on my blog. And also one shadow kid snuck in

@mjrdm

I guess I’ll sprinkle in a few more HCS

In the third picture I basically just drew my idea of why the goo kid looks like a burnt up hairball covered in tar. They were chased by a worker(s) into part of the factory that had large vats of that weird goo liquid. The worker ended up attacking them, tearing one of their overall straps, and with no other choice, they took the plunge and proceeded to get lost in the sauce. Quite literally.

The goo isnt something that they can just wash off, especially since they kept putting it back on as a way to blend in with the workers. It’s kind of a part of them now.

The goo ended up blinding them in one eye when they initially fell into the vat

I guess warning for more dark HCs, although I feel like they all align with the darker content in LN

The goo is made up of whatever the workers don’t use from the body of a child, oil, tar, melted plastic and other things that you probably don’t want to be smeared on your body. After a worker kills a kid, they essentially strip their body for parts like fabric, metal or plastic from buttons, teeth, etc. basically any sort of material they can use. Most fabrics and other materials that the workers can’t use are sent up in a dumbwaiter to the chained lady so that she can hopefully find a use for them. Most of the organic parts of the kid can’t be used, so they burn them in a furnace that’s very similar to the one in the maw. It likely has a hand in powering the factory as well. The ash is then processed with some other materials to create the goo. This goo plus some other bullshit or something is how workers are made.

Something something pink sauce McDonald’s

If you actually look at the factory/stone giant as a whole, a lot of it doesn’t actually make sense or should work logically. There are a lot of machines that just shit out their products into god knows where and a lot of them are just needlessly complicated

The reason why goo kid adjusted so well to life in the factory is that they were taken to the nowhere at a relatively young age. The incident with the vat happened shortly after they arrived. They basically grew up among the workers, and while they aren’t really friendly towards them, they aren’t outright aggressive unless they mess with the machines. They probably see them as a defective worker or something.

All workers have mouths, but not all of them have permanently exposed teeth

Workers are VERY fast and able to react quickly, especially to light, but they do still sometimes get limbs torn off by the machine. All workers are ambidextrous, as in they do not have a dominant hand and can use both with an equal amount of skill, so they usually just use their other hand, but since they sometimes use two tools at once, they might use their mouth to carry it or tie it to whatever is left of their arm. The goo can stick to it, but they will usually tear off part of their overalls (most commonly the leg parts/cuffs which is why a lot of workers have torn short overalls) until it grows back.

Goo kid got most of their food from the upper levels of the stone giant- just eating whatever was thrown down into the trash

Workers do eat- but not for sustenance. They use their stomachs as just a place to store stuff. it’s mainly because not all of them have tool belts or pockets, so they might swallow down some nuts (don’t) or bolts or other small objects so they can regurgitate them while working.

Most workers start out decked in the same or very similar clothing (overalls, tool belt, hammer, wrench, etc) but they like to steal from each other, plus it’s a factory setting, and it’s very common for them to get their clothes ripped. Workers do occasionally get new clothing, and while they are somewhat of a hive mind, they do vary in personality, especially when away from others. Some workers also differ visually. They can have all different lengths of hair, unless it’s ridiculously long and gets stuck, which usually isn’t a problem though as the goo mats their hair. Different overalls are usually because the person who makes them, (chained lady or the really weird doll with the sewing machine) sometimes use different materials or different styles

Workers are highly flammable, but do not react if set on fire unless the fire is damaging a machine. Unlike shadow kids who are very scared of fire, workers really just don’t care. It doesn’t hurt them like light does.

Workers are a bit larger than most LN children, it’s just that goo kid is small because he’s younger/just short which might give the appearance in the images of them being a lot bigger

Goo kid wears worker’s overalls but they’re sinched since they’re quite short

Workers can climb on all fours on sheer drops while facing downwards since their feet can twist the other way, similar to a few kinds of cats who can also do this

[soursugxr]

Your boy is cooking.

I’m so proud of how this patch turned out even if it does look kinda shitty, simply because I think it looks really good regardless. I hand painted the letters with an old ass brush and oil paint that got literally everywhere.

I’m 100% gonna redo the letters eventually. Maybe once I get my hands on some actual fabric paint/markers.

Y’all have no idea how long the barbed wire embroidery took :,)

So much back pain.

The initials are a few of my Discord friends :3

The back of this jacket is gonna be so much fun to make. I’m not sure if it’s like, too colorful? But I really like how I laid everything out. The plaid is gonna cover the really blank looking bottom corner, so essentially this design/layout is gonna be the entire back panel(?).

Five of these patches are old (clean) socks that I cut up, and one of them is part of the loop that was on one of my boots that ripped off when I was trying to pull it on, so that’s fun. Also one of them is the tag from an old shirt that I thought looked neat (I then spent almost an hour using a bent safety pin to painstakingly undo the stitches holding it on)

Also yes, I relocated the Mothman patch from the front bc I did a really fucked sewing job and kinda hated it.

Also also the patch I yoinked from that shirt tag is like, silk or some kind of silk-adjacent material so I’m gonna sew it onto some t-shirt fabric before putting it on the jacket. I realize that this could have been avoided altogether by just cutting the shirt, but I still really like the shirt and wanna keep wearing it.

I’m planning on getting a bunch of pop tabs to sew onto the shoulders of the jacket bc I don’t have studs or spikes (and I think it would look cool) so I’ll post an update on that when I get enough tabs for it.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

book 7 part 4 thoughts!!

***THIS POST CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR BOOK 7, PART 4 OF THE MAIN STORY!!***

Usually I would put this in bullet points, but I have so many thoughts that I have to format it as paragraphs. (If you’d like to watch a rough part-by-part summarized translation, please check out this archived stream!)

Please note: this is NOT meant to be a summary or a translation; these are only my initial thoughts on the events that unfold. There may be details overlooked or misunderstood in this post, so PLEASE do not use this as a translation.

LILIA'S SO DIFFERENT 🤡 His voice is deeper, and he speaks more gruffly. He definitely comes off as more combative and having disdain for humans. HE'S POPPING OFF ABOUT HOW BAD SILVER/SEBEK/GRIM ARE AT MAGIC??? Damn, what happened in the following years to make him change????

The contrast between current Lilia telling Silver "there's nothing left for me to teach you" and past Lilia being like, "there's nothing for me to teach you, are you trying to make fun of me?"

The human faction they're fighting at the moment are the Silver Owls!! There are also people who dress in iron (a metal which harms fae in irl mythology), I'm not sure if they are synonymous with the Silver Owls or not.

IHBFIOASBFIAADSI LORD, THE FAE SOLDIERS ARE ALL MIDDLE SCHOOL NEKO GIRLS HISSING AT US

AYO, SEBEK GRANDPA REVEAL????? ??? ? ? ????? BAL/BAAL/BAUL REAL, I CAN SEE WHERE SEBEK GETS HIS LOOKS AND HIS PERSONALITY FROM

Silver's asking to team up with Lilia and his group (Lilia was about to just leave them there because he's concerned with the Silver Owls setting up camp at the base of the mountain)? Bruh, book 1 we're calming down an angry classmate and book 7 is like, HEY KIDS LET'S TAKE A FIELD TRIP INTO AN ACTIVE WAR ZONE.

Silver's hoping to shock him awake via a fight, here comes a Sebek and Silver tag team battle!! RIP Lilia beats them up a little :v (Sebek. Don't fanboy over his strength, WE ARE FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES HERE)

Oop, they disorient him with light and Lilia's mask off!! It's treated like a big reveal????? Sorry, but how does Yuu not notice this is Lilia automatically 😅

Lilia voice) you are not my son (and here you can hear Silver's heart breaking/j)

Oh boy, we get to be prisoners of war/j

NOT LILIA ASKING SILVER AND SEBEK HOW THEY KNOW HOW TO FIGHT SO WELL WHEN IT WAS LILIA WHO TRAINED THEM TO BEGIN WITH

"Fae don't go back on their word" AH SO THEY LIKE TO KEEP PROMISES EH

"May the night bless you" seems to be some kind of salute for nocturnal fae?

LOL Lilia's against being called a father OTL THE IRONY HERE IS SO STRONG

Not Sebek's grandpa telling them off for not showing Lilia respect and saying how great he is... Fanboy genes run in the family/j

DOES YUU STILL THINK THIS IS A PERIOD DRAMA OR SOMETHING

BAAL IS CALLING SEBEK A HUMAN KEK

BAL/BAAL/BAUL REAL DROPS THE CROC MASK???? ?? ?? ?? ? He's got SCALES instead of facial hair???? ???? ? ? Oh man, he reminds me so much of Seteth FE3H OTL The scales are a signature trait of the Zigvolt line! Sebek says his mom has the same scales.

NO NOT SEBEK HAVING TO CONFESS THAT HIS DAD BEING HUMAN, IS THIS THE START OF HIS CHARACTER ARC

LILIA TOLD BAAL TO BABYSIT US...

AW Sebek's so excited about seeing his grandpa in his prime... I'm happy seeing Sebek happy OTL

Lilia's dreaming about the past... I wonder if it's because he was thinking about his life and what he has achieved before leaving his loved ones with his legacy...

Lilia first got the invite to NRC 500 years ago??? So NRC has been around much longer than we expected.

Ahhhh, crap 🤡 The return of book 6 limited battles but now with a battle map. There is a new mechanic where HP carries over from each battle; if a card's HP gets knocked to 0, you cannot use them. (5 cards be restored at random if you get to a heart space on the battle map.)

SEBEK'S ACTING AS OUR OLD FAE SPEECH TRANSLATOR (He's throwing his own angry commentary in, which is hilarious)

The humans arrived on a boat ~100 years ago. Now they have a settlement in the east and are mining around Briar Valley + taking the fae's natural resources. (I think this is why Mystium, that shape-shifting magic green ore that Lilia's weapon is made of, is no longer as plentiful; it was likely mined into obscurity.)

Magical creatures are now coming down from the mountain and causing trouble in Briar villages; the fairies cannot handle all of this. Damn, this is just the plot to the first Shrek movie 😂 They're invading Shrek's swamp--

Oh, interesting! So there are different kinds of fae language (depending on the type of fae they are; think of the diurnal fae from Fairy Gala speaking in bell tinkles), but they infuse their voices with magic so they can understand one another. In modern Briar Valley, there is a common tongue. Omg, Sebek speaks it with his mom and grandma! BILINGUAL KING, HE'S SO PROUD OF HIMSELF... Silver tried to learn from Lilia, but he struggled with it; Sebek's dad had the same issue so the problem must be that human ears cannot pick up on the same range of sounds as fae ears can. This is true of real life as well; different creatures have different auditory thresholds and auditory detection ranges.

Bruh, not Lilia sending out literal children to fight for him on the battlefield...

Eh, new character named??? Some human soldiers are talking about Henrich?? Henrik??? Henric??? He's a commander of the Silver Owls who is conceited and dumps his work onto his subordinates. Errrr he apparently also has a little sister named Leia? Lea??? Leah???? Who is rumored to be in a relationship with someone called the Dawn Knight.

More interesting lore????? Kind of???? Some pixies (small fae) come and warn Lilia about something up ahead, then heal them too. This is notable since in Fairy Gala: What If, we learn that diurnal fae (which I believe pixies are) and nocturnal fae (which Lilia and Sebek appear to be) do not like each other. It seems they got along well enough in the past to confront a common enemy?

They reach a Silver Owl camp!! ... Aaand Lilia tells his soldiers to boot them out so they can take over the camp. I mean, it IS technically the fae's land to begin with, so. Uhhhh, yeah I think I'm with Lilia on this one 💦

I don't think iron affects fae negatively in Twisted Wonderland?? Lilia and co. are having no trouble fighting them even when the humans are clad in iron armor.

HMMMM they've named dropped a formidable person on the human side called the Dawn Knight (Lilia mentions them once, then the human soldiers do). The Dawn Knight is the captain of the Silver Owls and even Lilia considers them a strong opponent. Methinks they'll become a key player later...

OH NOOOO 😭 Sebek’s like, “let’s change this fate!!” but since it’s just a dream, reality won’t be altered at all… Then Sebek suggests just. Staying in the dream???? Which makes darkness spawn… The light from Silver’s ring thing (the trinket he got from Lilia as a sign that he is now a full fledged adult) protects them???

Silver fears the dream will tempt him to stay too 😭 He asks Yuu to snap him “awake” if it ever comes to that… Silver, sweet boy… OTL

NOT SILVER AND SEBEK JUMPING IN TO STOP LILIA FROM COOKING FOR THEM (Come to think of it, how have Lilia's soldiers survive this far with him cooking for them???? ?? ??? ?? ?? )

LILIA THINKING THEY'RE GOING TO POISON THEM, THAT'S SO JAMIL ENERGY

Omg... They're acknowledging their Master Chef training (this is the only time they've referenced events in the main story, if I recall correctly)... Silver even prepares a risotto for them all~ (His own favorite food is mushroom risotto, so I like to think of it as he's sharing a piece of himself with the fae.)

asldiuhaodasidba Lilia complaining about the tiny portions in fine dining...

SEBEK PREPARING A ROAST CHICKEN FOR THEM, they're going all out for this one meal??? ? ? ??? ? ?? Poor Sebek though 😭Baal refuses to eat anything Sebek made, he'd rather starve or eat rations than a human's cooking...

AW BAAL BOUGHT SEBEK BOOKS????? And encouraged his love for reading... 😭

Grim taking Baal's portion of food... (Of course... Did we really have any doubts about that?) Sebek really did get his attitude from Baal... Now Baal's going, "Gimme my food back!" after Grim started digging into it... And then Baal has three entire helpings of risotto... THEY HAVE THE SAME INTIMIDATING-YET-ALSO-PATHETIC VIBES

AYO SILHOUETTE FOR MALLEUS'S MOM????? Her name is (Princess) Mallenoa, the only daughter of Maleficia (Malleus's grandma). She lives at a separate palace and commands the military. Lilia also describes her as being extremely powerful, fickle, stubborn, selfish, and easy to anger. He's just tossing out allllllll the adjectives ahdbayodqdq

Ah, so it sounds like humans greatly outnumber the fae??? So they're at a disadvantage. Normally a royal would handle diplomatic stuff like this but for some reason Lilia is being sent? They're traveling on foot to deliver a message to the human encampment to the east; the last messenger (that travelled there via magic?) did not return. Ominous...

Fae nobility are repulsed by the smell of iron? I'm confused, are fae in TWST impacted by iron or not????

Aww, Silver... He's asking his dad to come to school not to learn, but to make special memories there 🥺 Back to "our Night Raven College"...

NOOO NOW THEY'RE FLASHING THROUGH ALL THE DORMS... while Silver and Sebek monologue about how everyone at NRC is very different, but despite how weird they all are, there is a lot that can be learned from their differences. Silver's spreading what he learned from his dad... and the fact that even Sebek pitched in... 😭

Lilia voice) let's make these high school students our pack mules and unpaid chefs and if they fuck up we leave them for dead in these woods where there are monsters lurking about

Man, he's so ruthless????? Lilia will use anyone he can to succeed in his mission... But then the next second he lays into his princess with a smile www

Lilia knew the princess since they were kids ~300 years ago, which puts the current conflict at ~400 years ago from modern day (since present Lilia is ~700 years old).

asdjbasbldbasdi Gotta love the lowkey jabs at classic fairy tales... Lilia says that human princesses may need protecting but not theirs???? (Yet Mallenoa still stays in her castle all day like she's waiting for a prince.)

THE PRINCESS HAS AN EGG... MALLEUS????? IS THAT YOU???? ???? ????? ? ?? ? ? (LOL at Sebek calling it Tamago-sama asghdyqovywqdwp9qbpacpasb) JAHAJAAH BAAL SUS OF THEM BEING INTERESTED IN THE EGG????

Oooh, so dragon eggs only hatch after receiving enough love and magic from the parents??? (Otherwise the egg will not mature and hatch.) The "power of love" is real, you guys 🥺

ANOTHER new character name drop?????? Levan/Revan??? It's a fae that went missing (probably the messenger from earlier??) I-Is that. Is that Malleus's dad???????? (Lilia says that both the princess and Levan/Revan have been pushing their tasks onto him; he has known them both for a long ass time.)

Baal voice) I still don't trust you

Fandom, back at Baal: Sorry (grand)daddy. Sorry. (Grand)daddy? Sorry. (Grand)daddy? Sorry.

Malleus is 178 years old in current day even though his egg existed 400 years ago, so it seems there was a few hundred years of delay before he actually hatched (normally the egg would hatch in 2-3 years). That means Lilia was ~522 when Malleus hatched and ~683 when he found Silver as a newborn (Malleus was ~161). Silver and Sebek think it’s weird that the timeline does not add up; it means Malleus was dormant for quite a while?? Or is the dream world wonky to accommodate for a “happy ending”? Or maybe the history they know is not correct (since earlier in book 7 Lilia mentions how true history can be distorted over time.)

Very sus, apparently there is not a lot known about Briar Valley's history??? Lilia never talked about the past around Silver, and Baal did the same with Sebek. None of the books Sebek read really goes into that history either. In current day, the palace where Malleus's mom resided isn't even there anymore, it's just land. It suddenly became a mystery...

MAN, I've been wondering this whole time why Lilia's happy ending is wartime but maybe. This is the period where Malleus's parents both died???? Maybe his happy ending is saving them??? Instead of them dying and him having to live with the guilt of not being there to protect his friends and his future prince's parents???? (I previously thought it was during war that Malleus hatched and/or Lilia found Silver, but I guess the timeline doesn't make sense there.)

According to Silver, they cannot stray too far from dreamers or else the darkness will return and try to drag them into a deeper sleep.

asdhbasdobasdbas Sebek is SUPER hype to see baby Tamago-sama Malleus...

Sebek points out that Silver is not nodding off (good catch, I actually did not notice this because I was too busy screaming about the lore); sooo when Silver is dream walking, he's consistently alert. It looks like Silver's narcolepsy is an important detail??? (Lilia took him to lots of doctors that didn't know how to help him, Silver does whatever he can to sleep well and to have a sleep schedule.)

OH MY GOD, I DIDN'T REALIZE THAT YUU AND GRIM STILL DIDN'T KNOW LILIA IS SILVER'S DAD. They thought it was a friendly nickname this entire time??? Kind of late to get to that, but alright 😅 We have acquired the Forbidden Knowledge... (SEBEK'S MOM IS WAY OLDER THAN HIS DAD BUT LOOKS WAY YOUNGER?? I mean, I kind of expected that but to have it confirmed just hits different.)

One of the soldiers tells the kids to stfu so they can sleep and so Sebek yells at everyone to stop disturbing them (you know, in his LOUD AS HECK voice).

Water in the Briar Country is cold because it is located up north (it snows a lot!). The lake water usually comes from melted snow. Checks out, I guess?

They're packing up to leave the camp... Reminds me of Mulan!

[Insert boring trek to the Silver Owls' base. Interesting tidbit: some soldiers we run into comment that Silver resembles the Dawn Knight/they didn't know the Dawn Knight had a lover?????? So... that's obviously gotta be an ancestor of Silver's, right??? Also??? The Dawn Knight apparently never removes their helmet, even around subordinates... VERY SUS, SIR

NAYUUURx NOT SeBEK CAViNG TO THE DATKNESS 😭 I feel like??? This is a really big character development moment for him?? He’s always been pretty blindly loyal to Malleus and hateful of humans, but this marks the first time he willingly does something against Malleus’s will and he calls Yuu and Grim by name… Sebek, sweetie… 😭 (Side note: Silver’s been so strong-willed through all of this, but I’m glad that TWST showed he isn’t perfect and infallible; he, too, was tempted to stay in the dream when Sebek started to consider it too.)

bchsheoxndle Something else I enjoy is Baul being so… tsun?? He complains about the kids but keeps an eye out for them anyway (and Sebek in particular)… The paternal vibes are too immaculate to completely squash 😎]

They made it!! Finally!!

UHHHHH THEY'RE FIGHTING A BIG MACHINE AND. LILIA INSTINCTIVELY BLOCKS SILVER?? (He’ll be fine, he’s in his prime 😌)

Oop, Heinrich and the Dawn Knight were supposed to be in the eastern base but they aren't??? Oh no, it looks like. It was a diversion?????? While Lilia and co. are busy at the base, Heinrich launched an attack on the palace where Malleus's mom is???????

AND OF CORUSE THAT'S WHERE WE CUT OFF?????????? BRUH.

OKAY, so this entire update was focused just on Lilia's dream. We have no clue what's happening in Idia's dream or the real world with Ortho??? Which I'm totally fine with; I feel like we learned SO much about Briar Valley's history and important figures in it. That's a very fair trade-off. I loved getting to learn about the conflict between humans and fae, fae culture, and about how Briar Valley (or Country) works. I'm surprised that the characters themselves know so little about the history, but that just makes me worried that that's because it's a dark part of history that was purposefully censored from the textbooks...

There were a lot of new characters introduced in this part, most of them just mentioned by name or silhouette. It really feels like we walked right into the most dire part of a history textbook... So much tragedy has been set up, so many key players put into place... But being that this is Lilia's promised happy ending, surely he must reverse fate and save the day in the end????? Right? Right??? ?????? ?? ??? ? ? ? ? ? ?????? I have my eyes glued to the Draconia family lore and history, I'm READY to absorb it!

Something else I found really fascinating was learning more about Sebek this update! He still has a very arrogant attitude about him (that much hasn't changed), but I loved seeing how he acts different around his grandfather and how excited he gets over little things like seeing Malleus's egg. I think this part also marks the start to his character arc; he is constantly put down time and time again by his grandpa, someone whom he really loves. Sebek is used to his grandpa accepting him for who he is, but now his grandpa is shouting hateful rhetoric and discriminating against him for being half human. It's the same ugly behavior that Sebek slings to other people, but now the shoe's on the other foot and HE'S the victim in these situations. It must no doubt be extremely uncomfortable for Sebek, but it's also forcing him into a situation where he has to look at his own bigotry head-on, and it gives him a chance to reevaluate himself. It's similar to how Vil had to challenge Epel's outdated gender views even when Epel kicked up a fuss every time Vil did. asdhbsaisdbabdil I'm just really invested in Sebek's character arc!!

I think there's a high probability we'll see all of the silhouetted figures in full in a future update, it's clear that we'll eventually be rushing back to check on Malleus's mom at some point. I'm super interested in seeing how Malleus's parents, the Dawn Knight, Lilia, Baal, and Henrik tie together. (And, of course, we NEED to check in with the Shrouds as well.)

I have heard people say that Henrik may be a reference to King Henry from the live action Maleficent? Then that means that the Dawn Knight may be TWST's equivalent to Stefan/Stephan (Aurora's dad) and Henrik/Henric's little sister is Leah/Leia (Aurora's mom)??? Then I've heard other theories that since Malleus's dad vanished, we have no corpse to confirm he is for real dead and maybe he's actually Crowley who went off to buy some milk and never came back???? (Because “Levan” sounds like “raven” and you know who else is a black bird? CROWLEY. Is he. Is he really going to be the Ultimate Absentee Dad by pulling off his mask in front of Malleus and go, “Luke, I am your father” at him????) And then there's those of us who are drooling over new character designs and screaming about how hot Sebek's grandpappy is. Point is, there are so many wild parallels, theories, ideas, and thirst posts flying around right now. I love how this wild update reinvigorated the whole fandom into a new period of theory crafting and other creative works. asdhabsdasdbasdi Every new book 7 update gets more and more hype... I just hope we get part 5 in July!!! Super intrigued by the history of the Briar Valley~

[sagesparrow394]

Headcanons for if JRWI characters ended up on the QSMP (aka Just QSMP With it)

Continuation of this post and this post! Other posts about this AU are on my blog under the tag #just qsmp with it

I think Chip is initially resistant to cooperating with the Order and the other islanders’ resistance against the Federation. He’s too concerned with just getting his ship fixed and trying to leave the island, making that his priority over whatever is happening on the island. It’s only once it properly sets in that there is no feasible way of leaving as long as the Federation is in control that he agrees to formally join the Order. He’s the last of the Riptide pirates to do so, Jay joining pretty quickly, and Gillion being recruited by Etoiles after expressing a keen desire to help free everyone.

While Gillion helps Pomme train and teaches her fighting skills, Pomme would absolutely return the favour by teaching Gillion French. I also think it’d be funny if Gill was inexplicably really really good at picking up the language. Bro’s almost fluent after a single month, able to have full conversations with Etoiles in French as the two spar.

Jay and Jaiden definitely become friends. Is this partially because their duo name would be Bluejay and that’s too good to pass up? Maaaybe. But I can see Jaiden initially trying to befriend Jay because hey, another woman, we’ve got three now! Girls gotta stick together! (going off the idea the Riptide crew arrive before the frozen islanders are thawed). And then they just bond further over their shared experiences with loss and grief. Jaiden’s death in Purgatory hits Jay pretty hard.

Runt doesn’t get recruited to the Order, she forces her way in. She tails someone and finds the secret entrance, spies in on a meeting or two, and then confronts Cellbit like “I know you’ve got a whole resistance thing going on, and I want in.” And so, not counting the eggs, she becomes the youngest member of Ordo Theoritas. Her first action after joining is to upgrade the Order’s security systems, making it more Cucurucho-proof.

Blink is recruited by Cellbit to the Order after Cellbit learns of his sheer power of bullshitting his way into places. Blink is specifically tasked with bullshitting his way into the Federation workforce. I mean, so far the only spies in the Federation are Fit (just a janitor), Foolish (playing both sides), and Cellbit (basically just a pawn Cucurucho likes to play with). Luckily, thanks to his powers of bullshitting and the Federation’s fondness for birds, Blink successfully is able to get the position of an A-Rank worker, becoming a vital informant for the Order (rip Blink x The Overseer, Blink x Cucurucho is the new ship /j)

At the end of Purgatory, Troy doesn’t leave Egg Island, choosing to stay behind for his egg Hope. Runt tries to convince him otherwise, but Troy just screams “I CAN’T FUCKING LEAVE HER”, refusing to move. Blink drags Runt away, both heading to the boat without him. Troy ultimately joins Baghera and Cellbit as the killers of Purgatory 2, developing a closer friendship with the two of them and exploding strangers with an extra super duper cool sled provided by the Watcher. Then Hope, Pomme, Richarlyson and Philza arrive on their rescue mission. Troy can’t help but feel a little hurt Runt and Blink don’t come too, but buries those feelings deep down. I mean, what was he expecting from the guys who left him to fight 28 guards alone, right?

[serasarascreams]

Might as well add more thoughts into the mix. I was going to do it in the tags of the last post but it felt long enough. The last set of tags was a perspective I don't think I've seen yet, but then again I haven't been here too long. I think they're right in idea that the theme of responsibility doesn't just extend to Curly and Jimmy and that the game itself is a showcase of how all the little things add up and create the bigger issues alongside the certain major steps that were taken. They (aka @son-of-crows-and-rats) put it in much better terms than I did.

I was so focused on the main plot of the game a lot of other things went over my head, and while some things hit me later I'm sure there are more things like the person (and multiple others) pointed out that I'll catch here or again have it hit me later. Fuck Jimmy is the initial reaction I had at the end of the game, screaming disappointment in Curly came next, and the bleakness and awfulness of the events continue to seep through whenever I think about it.

I'm also very much on board with the statement that Curly did not deserve what happened to him and it's kinda messed up to say. Him getting deep fried, for lack of a better term, is another major consequence of him and Jimmy's actions (or inaction in Curly's case) while Anya is another. It's just a consequence that effects him directly now and I think that's a parallel to the way Anya was directly affected by Curly and Jimmy's actions. Neither Anya or Curly deserved the pain inflicted upon them, deserved to be forced to continue to live with it and all the suffering that followed, or deserved to have their autonomy ripped away from them.

Curly is not a trash human being, but I don't think I can call him a good man either. Good natured maybe, but not the best guy. The painful irony of his situation hits harder after the final conversation with Anya. His eye is always open, it's too painful to move, he can't speak. He can only watch and listen. There's no way for him to take responsibility anymore even if he desperately wants to. I think what's worse for him is that he got to live after seeing the monster beneath the skin of his friend destroy everyone and everything around him. I saw someone else say that when he froze the day of the crash it was a moment of "you were everything I feared you were" and I think that just adds an extra layer of awful to it. Curly could have been better, and if he gets rescued and lives, I like to think he will be. But I wonder if in the back of his mind it'll always eat at him that it wasn't when it mattered.

Sorry, that this partially ended up turning into a Curly post. It's just that he seems to be talked about the most. That's fair. He, Anya, and Jimmy are the ones who push the initial topic of discussion to the surface because it's there front an center.

I'll probably have more to say the more realizations dawn and the more I scroll through the tag. This is the first game in a long time that made me cry and the only horror game to really mess me up. Funny enough, it's because Curly scares me more than Jimmy.

I love this game and all the infuriating and saddening elements within and around it. I love and hate how human all these characters are. If Wrong Organ ever makes another game in the future, I'll be running to check it out.

[spiderrmax]

main 4 + love languages

synopsis: what i think the main four boy's love languages would be (giving + recieving) author's note: the first time i posted this i forgot the tags lmao. second try is the charm! also this is my first time writing for these guys so sorry if things r kinda ooc!

Stan Marsh

Giving: quality time + words of affirmation

Stan appreciates any time he has with you, even if it is doing school work together. He never finds the silence to be awkward, and doesn’t feel it necessary to fill the air with chatter. Sometimes you guys just sit there, scrolling on your phones, occasionally showing the other something. Stan doesn’t care; your presence is enough.

Stan would rather verbally let you know how much you mean to him, even if he stutters and stumbles around his words. If you’re wearing a new outfit, he’ll compliment it while looking down, ears red and hot. However, he also leaves compliments and notes on paper as well. If you ever let him borrow your notes, he’ll write small “thank you” and doodle hearts in the margins. Despite the awkwardness, his words are sweet.

Receiving: quality time + physical affection

Again, Stan cherishes any moment he has with you. Knowing that you enjoy that time too, and actively want to hang out with him again makes him grin like a fool. 

Stan, despite being a bit of a wreck, really enjoys physical affection. He doesn’t initiate it often, but won’t stop if you hold his hand. He blushes hard if you ever give him a kiss before leaving, especially in front of his friends. (They definitely rip on him.) Any physical affection leaves Stan giddy.

Kyle Broflovski

Giving: gift giving + quality time

Kyle tends to see you a lot in material items, due to excessively remembering your interests. He’ll see a bouquet and think about how your favorite flower is in it, or anything in your favorite color makes him think of you. A lot of his allowance goes to buying those items; although, not everything is bought. He’s definitely picked up crafting, such as cards or bracelets, because he knows that home-made is even more appreciated.

Kyle also loves spending time with you! Unlike Stan, Kyle will plan out what you two are going to do. His mood gets down if something messes up his schedule, like rain or traffic; however, you always make it better. Kyle definitely googles date ideas. He might even have a pinterest board.

Receiving: words of affirmation + acts of services

Kyle can get insecure; sometimes the guy’s words get to him. He’s okay with taking his hat off around you, knowing you won’t say anything mean, but sometimes he can’t stomach it. So, he really appreciates any compliments you give him. Even if it’s something small like, “You’re looking nice today,” or calling him pretty. Yes, he knows it’s not a traditional masculine compliment, but something about you calling him it, so casual and natural makes him happy.

Kyle also likes knowing you think about him! He really appreciates anything you do for him. Anytime he’s sick and has to miss school, you always make sure your notes are neatly written so he can copy them. (He can tell based on all the erased words on your paper.) Whenever he’s had a bad day, you’ll bring him over his favorite snacks and a movie you rented. He loves knowing you think about him.

Eric Cartmen

Giving: acts of services + physical touch

Not gonna lie, figuring out what Eric’s love language was hard. However, his main one is acts of service. If he finds out someone is being mean to you, Eric will definitely get rid of the problem. He won’t even mention it either, but you know it’s him. He does a lot for you, and he doesn’t even realize. At lunch, he’ll grab extra napkins because he knows you forget too. He’ll send you answers to homework (definitely stolen) if you’re sick. If anyone brings this up, he just says it’s because he knows you’re incapable. 

Eric also enjoys physical touch. Out of the four, he’s definitely the jealous one and that goes hand-in-hand with PDA. He has to be touching you, whether by holding your hand, or having an arm around your waist. He doesn’t give a shit if the guys rip on him either, he definitely throws shade back about them being single. He’s even more clingy in closed-doors; he’ll whine if you sit too far on the couch. He really warms up to cuddling after doing it few times,

Receiving: gift giving + words of affirmation 

Buying things for Cartmen is the easiest way to get into Eric’s heart. You bought him a Terrance and Philip doll once and it sits on his shelf. One time Stan tried to grab it and Eric yelled at him. You’ll buy snacks for any movie dates you have, and he appreciates that you can remember his favorites.

Cartman loves praise. He thrives off your compliments. Even if it’s something simple, saying something he did was cool, he will think about it the rest of the day. If it’s a bigger compliment he will brag about it. “Kyle, [your name] called me pretty and awesome. Do you have a partner? I don’t think so.” Despite being deserved, a lot of the things Cartman hears about himself are negative. Your words are a nice change of pace.

Kenny Mccormick

Giving: physical affection + words of affirmation

Kenny loves physical attention, in public or not. He’ll hold your hand and if it gets too cold will put your intertwined hands in the pocket of his parka. He has no problem kissing you in public as long you are okay with it. He’s so handsy too; he will slip his hand down your back jean pocket. Everyone knows you too are dating because Kenny is stitched to your side.

Kenny also loves complimenting you. He will meet you at your house everyday to walk you to the bus stop and the first words he says to you is a compliment about your outfit. (Even if it’s a repeat.) If you do great on a test, Kenny is there calling you smart. Of course, Kenny’s compliments do get vulgar occasionally, complimenting your butt or any other physical asset. However, despite this, it is always heartfelt.

Receiving: physical affection + gift giving

As much as Kenny loves kissing you, he loves even more knowing you enjoy it as well. He only really blushes when you initiate it; one time you kissed him before he hung out with the boys and they could just see the impact you left despite the fact his red face was hidden in his parka. You rubbed your thumb over his knuckles one time when he was upset and he fell even deeper in love with you. Having you excitedly run up and hug him after you haven’t seen him in a while is one of his favorite things.

Growing up poor, Kenny has learned to appreciate the smaller things. Seeing you spend money on him, and being excited to hand him whatever you bought makes him so happy. On your first Valentine’s day together, you bought him a bouquet; he had his mother press the flowers so he could keep them in his room. It doesn’t even have to be a massive thing. You showed him a cool rock you found, it had been in the shape of a heart, and it’s still in the drawer of all the stuff you got him.

[icequeenbae]

You Bet Your Ass (m) | BBH

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

Established Relationship, PWP, slice of life, fluff, smut

Warnings: explicit content, unprotected sex, anal (m receiving while being a drama queen about it), sex toys (picture fluffy tail butt plugs)

Word Count: ~3.6k

Summary: Baekhyun realizes that betting his ass for a petty argument with his partner was moronic. He is a man of his word though. He will follow through.

© Please do not copy/ post on other platforms without permission.

Author’s note: Yay, it’s time to celebrate another milestone!! Thank you guys for joining me on this wild ride haha I hope you enjoy this little somethin’ bbhorny times detected lmao This would be a little different rip Baek's ass but I just wrote that on a whim in a couple of days and thought it’s great for the occasion. Let me know if you enjoyed it!

Tags: @k-vanity  @exo-writers-net @bbh-net @superm-net

Baekhyun’s eyes were rounder than the moon when he realized that he was wrong.

You were having a very out of the blue argument just the other day, and the fatal words had escaped his mouth.

‘Can you bet your ass that you’re right?’

It wasn’t even a real issue to fight about. The reason you got so fired up over nothing was alcohol, of all things. Neither one of you was willing to let it go and leave the other one having the last word, so...

Baekhyun fucked up.

‘When we confirm that I’m right, I’ll shove the fluffiest puppy dog tail butt plug up your ass and have you call me master.’

Baekhyun royally fucked up.

‘Might clamp your cute little nipples too.’

Baekhyun dug his own grave.

‘Or I will shove it up yours and have you eat your words.’ You simply rolled your eyes at him then, and to a clueless spectator it could seem like you’d forget about this petty argument by tomorrow.

But there you were the next day, standing right in front of your bed and drilling Baekhyun’s bloodless face with your eyes.

‘I told you it wasn't Bugatti. It’s number two on the list.’

Baekhyun was almost glad that you enunciated that, because he couldn’t see the screen in front of him. He stayed still for a bit, as if his soul had fled from his body, leaving him behind as a lifeless shell. His head was a vacuum, and his usually quick-witted mind was failing him at this crucial point of his existence. A few more moments passed before he slowly looked up at you, like a bashful child.

‘Heh,’ he laughed awkwardly, and you only offered him a perfunctory smile. ‘Rolls-Royce Boat Tail is more expensive? It seems like I’ve- made a mistake?’

‘You were totally wrong.’ You responded mercilessly, making him shudder.

‘Babe-’

‘Oh no. Forget it.’ You raised your palm, cutting him off. ‘I had to listen a-a-all night how ‘fun’ it’s gonna be for you to see me all fluffy-tailed and roughed up.’

‘I said no such thing!’ Baekhyun shrieked, quickly catching himself as you gave him a look. ‘Babe…’

‘Did you not?’ You huffed, crossing your arms on your chest. ‘I assume you also do not recall running your mouth about my nipples?’

Baekhyun licked his lips nervously and swallowed.

He remembered. He remembered how he initiated his own demise. Was he for real? And for such a nonsensical argument too…

Baekhyun dropped on his knees right in front of you, and you almost jumped from the sound of him crashing on the floor so dramatically.

‘Y/N-ie, I was in the wrong.’ He said, hugging your legs. ‘I’m sorry.’

When your ass is on the line, nothing would be beneath you, not even begging, right?

However, this did not faze you at all. You were so used to his antics that it only made you even more determined not to let him off the hook.

‘Oh, but Baekhyunie… What should we do? You’ve already purchased the device for the execution.’

This was the reason why Baekhyun avoided drinking as best he could. He didn’t just get himself into the most ridiculous entanglements, he also acted whimsically on his urges. Say, going to a specialized shop to buy the fluffiest looking tail butt plug and a pair of fluffy ears to match. He went as far as to tell the poor cashier that he was going to put it to very good use.

Well, he didn’t specify on whom.

‘Worry not, my love. I got some nipple clamps and a collar to complete your-’

‘Ba-abe-’ He muttered desperately into your thigh, hugging your hips even tighter. ‘Please, I can’t do it…’

‘Why is that?’ You huffed, although unable to resist the temptation to ruffle his soft blonde hair with your right hand.

‘I just can’t,’ he whined childishly, offering no reasoning.

‘It’s funny how you assumed that I was gonna do it the second we ‘confirm’ that you’re right. And now you’re a groveling mess at a mere thought, and I’m supposed to be the better man?’

Baekhyun knew you were right.

He also knew that if he whined for a bit longer, you would probably leave him be. But your words left a bitter taste in his mouth. He was pretty obnoxious about this when you made the damn bet, and he was the one who initially suggested the punishment. And he was so sure he was right that he didn’t even try for a second to step into the loser’s shoes. He didn’t think it through, and now he had to stand by his word and meet his fate like a man. This was only fair to you. Maybe a little less fair to his butt.

You craned your neck forward to peek when Baekhyun became silent for too long. He did make you kinda angry earlier, you weren’t gonna lie, and you were almost determined to make him suffer for it. But he was still your partner, and you loved him. So, when you noticed that he was getting way too stressed about it, your hand moved smoothly to pet his hair calmingly.

‘Baekhyun-ah…’

‘I’ll do it.’ He said curtly.

His voice sounded small and dispirited, and it took you another second to catch his meaning.

‘Huh?’

This time, he made an effort to sound more confident.

‘I said, I’ll do it.’

~

That exchange took place last week. And he still couldn’t do it.

He made an unenthused attempt on that very day, actually. Made a huge mess on the bed, trying to utilize massage oil to get himself ready. Instead, he simply oiled up all of the sheets, and his entire body, and didn’t manage to get the butt plug anywhere near his ass. He was screeching and wailing and groaning – all that without getting it even 0.1 inch in.

You felt like watching it was worse than just doing it yourself.

‘Babe, just give up. I don’t want you to suffer like this.’

‘No. I said I’ll do it, so I will, I just need to prepare. Shall we reschedule for Saturday?’

He had probably hoped that Saturday would never arrive, but it did. And even then, he had yet to muster the courage to take on his punishment with dignity.

But it’d been an hour, and you were getting tired of watching him huffing and puffing, crying about the injustices of life and his poor asshole. He was buck naked the entire time too.

‘I’m also cold… Why is it so cold in our house? Can’t we afford heating? I should try and earn more money…’

You sighed.

‘Baekhyun, it’s not gonna work.’ You stretched your arms and legs before sitting down next to him. ‘Either quit it or let me do it for you.’

‘You? Do it for me?’ He shook his head. ‘Impossible. I’d like to preserve at least some dig-’

‘Lie flat on your belly. Right now.’ You ordered strictly.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

You smiled at his sudden obedience. He obviously trusted you to help him get it over with, but preferred to be strongarmed into doing this. To preserve some ‘dignity’.

‘Just relax, baby. You’re way too tense.’

Climbing on top of him, you poured some of that massage oil onto his bare back. You ran your palms up along his spine smoothly, and Baekhyun grunted like an old man.

‘God, you are just one giant knot.’ You muttered, putting a little more force into it.

Another muffled grunt escaped his mouth, this time sounding a bit more like a moan.

‘Here, here, grandpa. You can entrust yourself to me. Both your back and your butt.’

He grumbled into the pillow, and you could not make out his words. Instead, you went up his shoulders to knead the back of his neck. This spot was always sore, and he did not surprise you by suddenly going tense and groaning loudly before deflating into a lax mess.

‘You know what, Y/N…’ He mumbled between sighs of contentment. ‘You can fuck me in my ass right now and I won’t object.’

‘That’s the plan,’ you giggled, satisfaction washing over you just from seeing his reaction to your touch.

Of course, you knew all of his spots, both physical and emotional. It did not take you long to turn him into a whimpering puppy. The only thing missing was the tail.

‘Seriously though,’ Baekhyun spoke up hoarsely. ‘I think I’m getting hard.’

You tugged your shirt off and leaned onto his back, allowing him to feel your half-naked body.

‘Good for you,’ you purred into his ear, chuckling as he squirmed.

Hand snaking under his abdomen, you found yourself squeezing his length.

‘You’re not ‘getting hard’, baby. You are hard,’ you hummed, giving him a couple abrupt pumps before running your oily fingers over his lower stomach. ‘Let’s get you ready.’

Baekhyun whined and hugged his pillow, while you crawled towards the edge of your bed to get the discarded lube. When you shuffled closer to him again, you couldn’t resist slapping his cute round butt.

‘Ouch!’ He yelped just for the sake of it.

‘Don’t be so sensitive, sweetie,’ you mocked him lovingly.

‘You mean!’ He answered sulkily.

‘I am very nice! And I wouldn’t start a quarrel with me if I were you. My finger’s about to be shoved up your ass quite literally.’

He was whinging again, but quickly recollected himself, throwing a blue glove at your face.

‘At least use this.’

‘Are we playing doctor?’ You teased him lightheartedly.

‘Y/N, I’m gonna die. I’m literally dying.’

‘Okay, okay.’ You capitulated, putting the glove on. ‘Drama queen.’

It wasn’t like you were a pro in this either. He was the one who had put you in this position, not that you’d asked to do this. However, you did use the time in between his last attempt to pop his anal cherry and today to gather some helpful information. So, you were intending on using it to your benefit tonight.

‘You will like it more than me, that you can count on,’ you reassured him.

‘I seriously doubt it,’ he grumbled before jumping up. ‘Ah-ah-ah, what are you doing, I’m not ready!’

‘Sorry, I poured too much lube by accident,’ you smiled sheepishly. ‘Lie back down before it gets smeared all over the sheets.’

He kept complaining under his breath but obeyed.

‘Can you like… perk up your butt a little?’ You asked, trying to find a comfortable position to start.

‘No.’ He shot back unapologetically. ‘I’ll die.’

‘Why do you keep dying before anything happens?’ You reproached him. ‘You are such a pussy.’

Baekhyun turned his head around dramatically to glare at you.

‘What?’ You stared back. ‘Did I lie? Am I wrong?’

He turned back to his pillow and slightly repositioned himself, bending his right knee.

‘Good. Arch your back a little too.’ You pressed on his lower back, and he grumbled again.

‘You hate my guts, don’t you?’

‘I love you a million, baby.’ You replied with a smile, barely containing a schoolgirl giggle from locating his asshole. ‘Wow, I didn’t expect you to prepare. How neat.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he replied, also laughing despite his embarrassment and frustration.

You traced his butt cheek with your index finger before rubbing his anus lightly.

‘Oh shit-’ He tensed up under the pad of your finger, and cursed again.

Giving him some time to adjust to the light strokes, you kept spreading lube over his sphincter.

‘Are you still dying, hon?’ You inquired. ‘Try to relax.’

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ he gurgled into the pillow he kept holding onto.

‘We can stop if you-’

‘Just get it over with! And then I can proceed and finalize my death.’

‘What an honorable man,’ you noted sarcastically. ‘If you squeeze your butt like that, I won’t be able to do anything.’

He huffed like an intimidating hedgehog, and then sighed, giving up the last of his pride.

‘Okay. Just please don’t rip my ass.’

‘Have you seen the size of this plug? You’ll live.’

As soon as he relaxed enough for you to try something, you probed at his ring of muscles again. Praising him for keeping it more or less slack, you were able to insert one digit.

He was now only communicating in breathy curses, so you added more lubrication before slipping your finger out and inserting it back in just as carefully. It took a while for Baekhyun to get used to it and stop resisting the intrusion, and you were beginning to feel more and more like a doctor performing a procedure on him.

‘You’re doing great, baby. Two fingers in.’

‘Y/N… I can’t do this…’ He muttered feverishly, and you knew he didn’t mean it.

Frankly, he looked like he was simply in denial about enjoying this. But he had no idea that you would not rest until you found the most intriguing spot. It was the only reason you had agreed to the whole thing. You were curious about what would happen if you located it and stroked over it gently.

Like so.

‘A-a-ah!’ He jolted, and squeezed your fingers almost painfully.

‘What?’ You asked, unsure about his reaction.

‘That- what was that?’ He muttered, gripping the pillow case with his fist.

‘Did it hurt?’

‘It hurts now… But not before.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt if you relax! And I think it was your prostate. Didn’t know it’s that sensitive though.’

‘My wha-’

‘Can I stroke it again?’ You asked, enthusiasm reignited in you, despite getting rather stiff from the position you had to be in.

‘No! Leave my prostate alone,’ he barked, yet perked his ass up higher.

‘Getting mixed signals here. Should I read your ‘no’ as a ‘yes please’?’

‘Y/N…’ He whined, and you circled his spot again. ‘If you do, I think- I think I’m going to-’

‘Die?’

‘Come…’

You oh-ed in surprise. Not that you didn’t do your research, but the pace of this was unexpected.

‘Not yet. There’s one little thing left.’

You slowly slipped your fingers out of him, making him groan.

Finally, the intricate sex toy was in your hand, ready to be deployed. In several modes too, but your wrought-up partner didn’t need to know just yet. Thus, you had placed an important appliance under one of the pillows earlier.

After holding it for a few moments to make it comfortably warm – Baekhyun was a whiny little bitch, after all – you spread a sufficient amount of lube on it to make sure it’d fit easily.

Baekhyun could be heard cursing again.

‘Okay, come to momma.’

He emitted a growl, which thinned out into a whine.

You sat next to him and stroked his butt cheeks. Now that you were thinking of it, he would look pretty good with a fluffy tail. You didn’t know you had it in you, but now you certainly felt aroused at the thought of pulling at it as he fucked you. Wouldn’t that be just perfect?

‘Shit, it’s cold!’ He complained as soon as you pressed the metal body of the plug to his hole.

‘You are very high-maintenance, did you know that?’ You complained right back. ‘Take it if you wanna finish tonight.’

‘Why do you hate me so mu- a-ah-’

The plug slipped into him with much less resistance than you’d anticipated, and all that was visible now was the tail.

‘How is it?’ You asked, genuinely curious. ‘Baekhyunie? How does it feel?’

He kept breathing through it for another minute, and then managed to retort.

‘Like it doesn’t belong there…’ He tried to glance at his poor ass, but gave up halfway. ‘My life is a joke…’

‘I bet it is.’

He made an effort to glare at you.

‘Get over here.’ His angelic blond hair made him appear much less menacing than he wanted to.

You stretched out next to him, but not before removing the rest of your clothes to become equally as naked.

‘Fuck.’ Baekhyun cursed, burying his face in your breasts. ‘Remind me to never argue with you again, ever…’

‘I thought you were having fun,’ you ruffled his hair a bit, while he was letting you.

‘Yah. The pain in my butt hole isn’t really aligning with my idea of fun.’

You shoved him back slightly to get him off your chest, and groped his ass. The disturbance made him flinch, although not entirely displeased.

‘How would you react if I told you that this cute fluffy thing actually has a pretty handy remote?’

The blond looked confused, but only for a second – before you gripped at the base of his ‘tail’ and angled it.

‘Ah! Fuck this shit!’ Baekhyun moan-yelled, confirming that the toy was damn near his spot.

Chuckling at this, you leaned in to kiss his bare shoulder and reached under the pillow in the search of the said appliance.

‘There it is.’ You showed Baekhyun the remote. ‘I bet this will be nice.’

You clicked once, not giving your partner a chance to say anything.

‘Oh shit-’ He jolted in your arms, and clenched his jaw. ‘Y/N…’

‘I know, baby. I won’t ramp it up much.’ You promised, pressing your index finger to one of his nipples.

The tiny bud was firm, and you could see Baekhyun shiver from the touch.

‘Should’ve clamped them in the beginning…’ You mused, gradually increasing the vibration of the toy. ‘Does this feel alright?’

Baekhyun moaned in response.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ you snickered.

He didn’t let you laugh for much longer though, grabbing your waist and pushing you back down. Opening your legs roughly, he got between them and instantly pressed his hard cock against your labia.

‘Fucking hell-’ He gritted out, as soon as his hips snapped forward, disturbing the plug inside him.

‘This is kinda hot, I’m not gonna lie,’ you sighed, stroking his lower back. ‘Move or I will level your ass massage up again.’

‘Fuck no, I already feel like I could come…’ Baekhyun replied quickly, slowly retracting his pelvis before swaying it into you. ‘Shit, Y/N, it just feels so weird-’

‘Weird but nice, right?’ You lowered your hand to tug on his ‘tail’ again.

‘Oh god please-’ He sighed, dropping his head on your shoulder.

You could feel him shake every time you adjusted the toy. It was definitely affecting his prostate, and the sobbing he tried to muffle by your skin only confirmed it.

‘Babe,’ he moaned, renewing his slow thrusts into you. ‘You want my death or what?’

Snickering at his words, you playfully scratched his upper back with both hands.

‘Faster.’ You replied simply, grasping the remote again.

Baekhyun focused on delivering upon your request, and you physically shuddered with him. The vibration was quite literally driving him mad, so he was soon groaning in both pain and pleasure. His speech was incoherent, and you weren’t sure how many times you had clicked the button, but you could hear – almost feel – the vibration ripping through his tight muscles and abusing his prostate.

You knew his hips were moving on their own, more out of instinct rather than intent, but it was all fine. At this point, you just wanted him to finish. The buildup left both of you a complete mess, and the craving you had in you now was more of his euphoria, not yours.

‘I’m c- babe I’m-’ He tried to speak, but the intense sensation overwhelmed him to the point of squealing.

Readily clutching the remote, you pressed the button several times to avoid overstimulating him instead of prolonging his pleasure, and he still allowed a high-pitched whine to escape. He was trembling and writhing on top of you, and you could feel the hot creamy wetness pooling at your own entrance. The visual stimulation sent you into overdrive.

‘Fuck, Baekhyun-’ You moaned, eyes closing shut as you joined your partner in the oblivion.

~

It was at least half an hour later that you were finally able to untangle yourselves from each other, and free Baekhyun’s abused asshole. Not without him grunting and grumbling the entire time, of course.

‘Shit. I won’t be fucking sitting down for a fucking week.’ Your partner complained in a tired voice, flinching as his sphincter constricted again after the plug was removed.

‘Lying down is better anyways,’ you hummed, planting an impish kiss onto his butt cheek.

Baekhyun muttered something incoherent, and you were sure there was more diffident cursing in there.

You scooted closer to him and stroked his hair lovingly. Suddenly you realized that you did not employ all the inventory you had prepared.

‘Damn, we forgot about the ears and the collar too!’ You gasped. ‘Well, you can always wear them next time…’

You shrugged, trailing off, and turned to him, anticipating his reaction.

Baekhyun’s face assumed the most scandalized expression.

‘Next time?!’

Masterlist

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please comment and reblog, it is important to me and I appreciate your feedback💜 As usual, my asks are open~

[theunhingedcowboy]

A List of things that happened at Collision and ROH taping from this weekend.

First of all getting to be in the environment that has been created at the e-sports from this residency is phenomenal and I hope that it will happen again in the future.

Getting seats four rows back from the ring and we were still so close (that will change I'll explain) and getting to go with both my dad and cousin was so much fun

FINALLY getting to see Darby wrestle in person was amazing

The bull rope match was fucking brutal and the TV broadcast did not do it justice the crowd was so fucking over for Rosa it was awesome

So right in front of us about 30 minutes into the show there was a row of 8 seats that were empty right at the barricade and no one had shown up. So my cousin may have taken initiative and got up to the seats and by the Rush and Vance match we were all up front and no one said anything

My cousin saying to Turbo of the Outrunners that "he was like Hogan without the racism and an actual 10 incher" which Turbo totally popped for

Rush and Vance match was so much fun. Getting on tv for most of that match and me cackling like a psychopath made it loud and clear on the broadcast

Me screaming like a lunatic during swerves's match and afterward the cameraman came over to film me (thank God that didn't make the broadcast)

Swerve v Ishii was so fucking awesome

Heart eyes at Stat

Me handing my dad $10 when Christian walked out in the turtleneck ref sweater

Getting to see HoB so close was so fucking awesome

Juice being the chaos junkie that he is

Shayna talking shit to my cousin and then blowing him a kiss after beating up BBG and HOB

Flipping off the patriarchy

RoH Taping

Having beef with the premier athletes

Abadon, my beloved

Getting to see Sammy wrestle was also a lot of fun

Mina, my beloved

ROCKY

Toa mean mugging me when I did the claw for the von erichs

My cousin cheered on Cage of Agony only to accidentally drop his phone over the barricade and Cage to look at him and call him an idiot even though he wanted Cage to win

My cousin continues his years long beef with Matt Taven and Taven shouting at him "you don't have a wiener"

The Von Erichs and Sammy came over to sign my little autograph book, Sammy was so nice and it was so nice to see the Von Erichs again since I met them last year

This was the next day continuing ROH tapings

Tony coming out to say that someone wanted to say hi to the kids and me fully believing that it was gonna be Mortos until Hologram came out

I love Lance Archer. The guy in front of us had a bunch of signs and one of them saying "The murderhawk just needs a hug" and Lance coming over like he was going to give a hug only to rip up the sign

Watching Ari get beat up by Ishii made my day

Cheering so loud for Rocky Romero and him noticing me and giving me a wink (can confirm I am dead)

8 man tag match between Sammy, Dustin, and the Von Erichs v Dark Order and Undisputed Kingdom, once again keeping up the beef and telling the dark order they can do so much better than undisputed kingdom

When Harley Cameron came out and I told my dad to "get his girl"

Queen Aminata is one of the best female wrestlers right now I genuinely love her so much she is so cool

The Righteous reminding me in person that Vincent looks almost exactly like a friend of mine but with dreads

Taya v Mina was fun

Watching the Premiere Athletes at least 8 times over the course of 48 hours and continuing to make sure that we have beef

Also after the match my cousin and I were booing Tony Neese and he tried to get security to kick us out and my cousin blew Tony a kiss

ATHENA

Getting to see Briscoe wrestle this close was so cool and Mortos is so fucking over I love it.

And that concludes my weekend I will make another post like this next week cause I am going back to collision for the final show. This was the most fun I have had all year and something that I really hope AEW does again in the future

[kamari3]

This is a vent post.

I saw this post about wanting to bring back the energy and vibes and community that was in the 2016 era of the UTMV community. And at first I was elated. I joined the fandom in 2017 and I look back fondly on the community I found myself in. Lots of fanfic comments. Lots of RP Roleplays. Lots of Askblog activity and in-character answers and all these wonderful things.

Yes, there were toxic and mean things too. There always are. But I never really found myself in any of it. I only remember the fun and the joy.

And I initially reblogged that post excitedly responding to it. And I went to the blog to see if they posted anything else good.

And I saw their DNI. "Proship DNI".

Their pinned post literally said to me "hey disclaimer just so you know 'i dont support harassment', but if you (also) dont support harassment, if you enjoy shipping, if you think censorship is bad, then don't talk to me because I think youre a terrible person and deserve being harassed."

And they wonder why the 2016 era of UTMV died.

I would have loved to interact. I would have loved to gush about AUs and fanworks and art. But that person left a big sign saying they think I deserve hate for enjoying fiction and that they dont want to talk to me.

Like. Bro. That is kinda the reason youre not getting 2016 UTMV back. You dont wanna associate with "nasty proship" people. Who uh. sorta made UTMV. UTMV (and lets face it, fandom in general) was built on the backs of Proshippers. (although that is sort of an anachronistic statement -- the idea of "proshipping" is new because it was the default, expected political stance. it wasnt "proship vs anti", it was "everyone (aka proship) vs trolls and haters (aka anti)") Then a bunch of haters started being nasty to frans and papyra and fontcest shippers, and puritanical rhetoric ripped apart what was left of the fandom after art theft and the tumblr purge drove the artists away.

The fandom isnt going to knit itself back together unless we foster a community mindset, which we can only do if we all agree to ship-and-let-ship. Block and mute tags you dont like, learn to recognize when an AU isnt for you, and dont play in tags you dont actually like.

But like, just because I like the color Green doesnt mean I cant appreciate Blue or Red. You can hate Green all you want but alienating Green likers is just going to make it harder to live in a society where nobody is making you like Green.

I dunno I just feel like its not fair to ask for a community effort and simultaneously condemn the very people who would have been part of your community for not being good enough for you. It's mean spirited. It's rude. It's cruel.

I want 2017 UTMV back. I would be more than happy to get to see 2016 UTMV with my own eyes. But it isnt coming back, because it takes people to make a community and nobody wants to make a community welcoming and safe.

[front-facing-pokemon]

gmax sandaconda is the DEFINITION of snootirific. i'm not the nose rater but i have to say gmax sandaconda might have the best snoot in the whole franchise

i saw someone in the tags of one of the posts where i used the word "snootiferous" say that they added that word to their vocabulary. as though it was a word i didn't make up. i totally did make it up and now i keep saying it, specifically in posts on this blog. i have not said it anywhere in my real life but if i can make other folks say it then i think that's the ultimate funny

not getting their models, but rendering the eyes properly. there are two competing and likely theories for why the eyes are so fucked up in gen 9: number one being that the eyes are rendered dynamically in-game as shaders instead of as flat textures like they typically were in past pokémon games so that pokémon can look around, have reflections in their eyes, have more dynamic eyes, et cetera, which means they're much more difficult to render authentically for quick silly tumblr screenshots; and number two being that game freak renders them dynamically as a "security measure" to keep folks online from ripping the models as easily to use them for… whatever they want. such as blogs like this, which are of course extremely harmful to the pokémon company's bottom line and destroying their business et cetera et cetera (sarcasm). either way, the eyes are fucked up, and i either have to find a way to recreate the eye textures from what i am given in the texture files, or i have to find a way to recreate the eyes to the best of my ability using shaders in something like… blender, which is what i've been using for more recent models since gen 7. that puts more work on me for every individual model, and isn't exactly easy for models that i have to rip and convert myself when there are dozens of nodes in the shading panel that i don't know what to do with. for example, here's what quaxly (famously, a pokémon with pupils that can look around, as it appears in a whole cutscene in-game) looks like out-of-the-box when i convert it myself from the model format used in-game:

if you can't tell what's wrong, here's what it's Supposed to look like:

notice the white pupils? those aren't rendered properly in blender, notably because no texture exists for them. no texture even exists for anything you see in the eyes there, but it's all somehow magically appeared in the shading section, by magic. and i am not that kind of wizard

this means very little to me. i just played around with some of the nodes by looking at the strangely-colored textures that were given to me with the .trmdl conversion, and i managed to get something close enough:

but they kinda look like they're looking in two different directions (possibly fine? we'll have to see how they look front-facing) and the colors are slightly off (can anyone tell but me? possibly not); not to mention it likely won't be this easy with every pokémon. pokémon whose eyes are much more complex or have colors i can't easily match, for example, or pokémon for whom multiple parts of their eyes are missing… not to mention i don't necessarily have the time or willpower to be spending hours tinkering with these models every morning to make sure the eyes look right. ideally i can take what i've learned from fucking with quaxly right now to hopefully move forward a bit smoother, and eventually i'll refine a process. but until then, this is what worries me

right, but it's also less funny. the initial concept for this blog, inspired by pokémon like snivy, is that some pokémon look really funny when they're up in your face staring at you. it's a concept everyone loves. but if they're facing away from you, there's considerably less to work with there. they're all Kinda just gonna look the same. they lose a lot of that personality. i suppose i'll consider it if i ever run Really low on options, though

nah. i don't do visual art anymore. that time has passed—now if i do it, it's usually a one-off thing and i never want to look at what i've created again afterward

[brisquad-unit-4402]

zombie au with ike ft. luxiem - In Pursuit to and from the Sun

(i think this submission got lost in the sauce and i can't find it but at least i still have this screenshot)

lmao sorry i went off the grid for a sec. life happens, you know, applied for some vsf programs, went on a classified operative excursion away from my post and got a new writing software. i actually wrote the last of this on a helicopter returning from the mission so that’s why i didn’t proofread beforehand sorryyyyy. but more importantly I TOUCHED GRASS. guys. i touched so much grass. i touched so much grass i could replant a garden. call me a topiary, i touched that much grass. is this what it’s like to work at a dispensary? bc i touched so much grass

a few disclaimers: this fic is ike centric but contains general luxiem angst as a treat and may be read in a platonic or romantic tone, whichever you prefer. it's also another 10.7k words long so if you want to read but don’t have the time, use a like/rb as a bookmark. most importantly: heed the tags for this one, i kind of went off the deep end here

tags: platonic relationship, hurt no comfort, angst, zombie au, no happy ending, gender neutral reader 

⚠️ major character death, suicidal thoughts, gore, infection, arson, and apocalypse-typical violence

continued au notes and commentary here (spoilers)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Ever since the initial zombie outbreak, you’ve been running around the country with your best friend Ike and the circle of close friends you both share. You’ve made peace with the fact that it will always be hard. You and your band hop around from town to wilds, with no real objective other than to survive. Every location has something to glean, after all. It’s just that the zombies are always on your tail, and there’s only so much looting to do before the chorus of dead can tear you and your family apart.

It’s deluded to pretend you’re the invulnerable main characters, though. You and your friends are in a townhouse currently being ambushed by a strain of zombies. You swear they’ve gotten more intelligent since your last encounter. A dense herd of bloodthirsty undead is one thing, but a dense herd of bloodthirsty undead that have a chance of understanding positioning is another. Closing doors is barely a second of relief now. 

You were lucky to be in a room with Vox when you got ambushed. He lived his post-apocalyptic life with a rebar rod in his hand, wrested from a collapsed concrete building early in during the initial outbreak. He claimed to be a trained swordsman once, and even though the rebar was more of a club than a sword, you admit you would’ve been worse than dead if you didn’t have him by your side. You’re sure he’d be screwed without you, too. Now that the world’s gone to the dogs, you stay prepared with a pair of climbing picks that can clobber in zombie brains just as well as scale walls. Vox shoved zombies out of the way while your picks cleared a path to escape from the house out through the window, Vox in tow.

You and Vox reunite with Ike and Shu outside. The former keeps various kitchen knives hidden under his no-longer white mantle, and defends Shu from stragglers while he digs into his backpack. You notice his weapon, an iron fire poker, by his feet along with a bottle. He rips sheets off of an old Millwall brick to stuff inside the bottle.

“Blowing the place up,” Shu says, in case you didn’t make the connection already. His breath is ragged. “Where’s Luca and Mysta?”

Like a stage cue, you hear the rocket of gunfire the second he says it. Your hope is crushed. Noise attracts zombies, and Luca was the only one with a shotgun. If he pulled the trigger, the situation was even more dire than you thought. 

Shu grits his teeth and repeats himself, intensity barely restrained. “Where is Luca and Mysta.”

“I’m going back in,” Vox declares.

Ike drives a knife into the head of a fallen body. Destroying the brain confirmed they wouldn’t regenerate, and he minimizes the risk as precise as a surgeon. He made short work of the zombies that hadn’t overrun the house yet, but you could see them flood the interior. “Don’t be stupid, Vox, that’s suicide.”

“You heard the gun!”

“And I said that’s suicide!”

“Not if someone goes back in!”

“How are you going to find them without getting yourself killed?” Vox opened his mouth, but no sound came out, and Ike took advantage of it. “That’s what I thought. Luca’s our muscle and Mysta’s a clever guy, you’ve seen him outsmart the zombies so many times before!”

“They know basic organization, Ike!”

“All the more reason not to go back in! Have some faith in your friends!”

Vox grants him an unholy leer through his haunting yellow eyes. “How dare you lecture me about faith when I’m trying to save their lives.”

His glare was lost. Ike focuses on confirming the dead stay dead. His back is turned from the swordsman as he chops a skull in two with a butcher’s cleaver. “Because no matter what, they’re going to get out, and they want you out just as much as they’re fighting.”

But Ike’s words were just as lost to Vox; you barely saw the trail of his blood-splattered haori before he ran back to the townhouse, rebar in hand and fury on display.

Shu shoves the remains of the Millwall brick into the cupholder of his pack, a battering ram for another day. He produces a box of matches instead. “It’s best to take them all out at once.”

You speak up. “But Vox just-”

“I know.” Shu’s lips purse. “And I’m not going to throw them. Not until I know they’re all safe.”

You watch as Vox speared through a living corpse, then threw its remains on the ground. The zombies are centered inside the house, but the windows are all covered. The door stays open as he passes through the threshold, but you can’t see a trace of him left.

Ike stabs through a brain close to you and Shu. You see him heft himself up, and the traces of a permanent dead remain on the ground. The head is split open with precision, and the brain blooms out from the skull. It leaks pink nerves and black rot among the blood, like a disgusting flower. 

He passes by you, dead set on his goal. “You’re not going, Reader.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“And don’t expect to.” Ike’s words are emotionless, but not cold. As much as he pushes away Vox, you know he cares for everyone in your group like brothers. He’s the least risky out of all six of you- after all, he’s tearing apart zombie brains without a complaint while you catch your breath and Shu stands watch.

You draw your climbing picks and follow him to the field of dead. “Let me help you.”

You feel useless just standing there, after all.

Though the task of confirmation is much calmer than fighting for your life, it’s still unenviable, and you have to admire how Ike distances himself seemingly so easily from it. You try not to look at their faces, but that’s just as impossible. After all, the brain is right between the eyes. That’s the worst part. 

You made the mistake of looking into zombie eyes twice in your life. 

The first was your first fight of the apocalypse; a zombie had you deadlocked in an aisle of an outdoors store, and only when it was within biting range did you drum up the courage to grab the first thing you saw- two fluorescent orange climbing picks, never used- and drive them into the writhing heart. You bolted then, too focused on escape than freezing, and those climbing picks proved themselves to be your best survival tool in combat and exploration. 

The second was the first time you confirmed the dead, and those eyes, that face- skin and bone but youthful, blue bleeding through the iris like a cracked yolk, remains of eyeliner and mascara along her deteriorated features- she was a person, so young, so beautiful when she was alive, like she knew she had decades to go- sometimes you swear she’s the face you see at night when you remember how human and how simply unlucky this world is now. It’s simply unlucky, and being unlucky is simply brutal. 

(You held back your tears when you bashed her brain in. Later that night you pulled your best friend Ike aside, and cried in mourning of a woman whose name you never learned. He didn’t complain then, either, and you only sobbed harder when you realized as much as he comforted you, he could never muster up the vulnerability to grieve himself.)

You club a pick into the forehead of the fresh, putrid dead. The other pries it open, and a third swipe pulverizes with finality. 

It’s messy. When you drive your weapons into the skull there’s a crack of metal against bone, and a thin gush of blood that spurts out to your arms. Especially large openings reveal nodules of black rot spotted through the brain. If you focus, you can see the moist, moldy texture seep through the wrinkles of the brain, and if you were any less jaded it’d be enough to make you turn your head and hurl. 

But the deed is done in only three stabs, and you cling onto that fact. The more mechanical the task is, the easier it is to drive yourself to just get it done. Club, pry, pulverize. Club, pry, pulverize. 

You pass by one of Ike’s carvings as you move onto another body. His work is premeditated from habit; he usually does this deed while everyone else recuperates. A standard chef’s knife is his weapon of choice when he faces against zombies, but he keeps a cleaver sheathed to his side when he has the time to get precise. One good slash goes through bone. Bone sweeps through the brain, and the work is done, and he carries on to the next, messy on his mantle but clean in the cut.

There are only a few more bodies left untouched on the yard where you hear heavy steps on the grass and Shu’s voice cry out. “Luca!”

You and Ike snap up. Luca’s blond hair is matted to his face with blood and rot as Vox runs beside him. They look like they ran through a blender of decayed flesh, and considering the herd of dead inside the house, perhaps that isn’t so strange of a metaphor. Even as Luca sprints, he turns to pump shotgun lead to the predators when they get closer, and each corpse’s fall is punctuated by hot gunfire.

Shu calls out his name again frantically. The men return, and so do you and Ike, five missing one. “Luca, where’s Mysta?”

“It’s bloody,” Luca simply says. His breath is short, and he wipes at the mess of gore and hair on his forehead. All it accomplishes is smearing black and red together along his face and in a blotch along his arm. 

“But where is he, I need to know!”

“And it’s so much.” He trails off. He stares into the side of the townhouse and beyond the distance. Strapped to his back is his go-to weapon, a baseball bat littered with nails, each with residue dripping off the spikes from freshly killed zombies. “There’s a lot. Oh, I’m feeling kind of- kind of cold.”

“He’s in shock,” Ike says. He takes Luca’s hand in his, but Luca doesn’t even react. “Oh, Luca. What happened?”

“Kind of a lot?”

“Where’s Mysta?”

“He…” Luca’s eyes dart to the center of the townhouse. “He’s stuck, because of me, isn’t he?”

“Alright, lay off the man.” Vox intervenes. “We’re done asking questions. Shu. Your matches. Light it up.”

“What?!” Shu screams at Vox. You’ve heard him yell, but never once have you heard him scream. Especially not with Vox sounding so detached. “No, are you crazy? Mysta is in there!”

“Light it up, Shu-“

“I said, no! No! No way, not a- not a fucking chance!”

“Shu, listen to me!” Vox thunders. “I’m sorry, but Mysta is gone.”

Shu stands his ground. His features are tense, and his ultraviolet eyes burn holes through the earth. “Not a fucking chance.”

“Mysta is gone,” Vox insists, and you hear his bassy voice break even lower. “I saw it myself.”

“He is not.”

“It was too overrun, it’s miraculous Luca even got out.”

“Mysta,” Luca says, and closes his eyes. Ike holds him upright and rubs his arm, as comforting as he possibly can in the worst situation, as much as possible when his own face is just as distraught as everyone else.

“And I wish with everything that I have that I could’ve gotten him out,” Vox continues, more of his own justification than anyone else. “And I wish I was just a little faster, and that they were a little further away, and, God, that he wasn’t trapped, but he was, and I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t close enough…”

Shu is murmuring his own protests to himself at this point, and feeling the pit in your stomach yourself, you reach to hold his hand. He jerks away like you’re made of lava. You feel ill. “You’re lying to me.”

“And he got bit, and he knew that meant death. And he ran, ran upstairs, to draw them away from us, and there were more, and he knew, he knew, he knew he was dead but we weren’t.”

Luca lets his head fall on Ike’s chest. Ike becomes his crutch, and holds him. “Mysta.”

“His distraction saved Luca’s life. And mine if I was slow.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“He was a hero,” Vox says.

“Stop.” Shu’s eyes shut. He looks like stone about to break, paralyzed in denial as the proper grief is setting in. His hands dive and clasp around yours. He’s trembling. You squeeze back. “Don’t talk about him like he’s dead.”

“He was a hero, and our brother, and the sun. Please don’t devalue his sacrifice like that.”

“Oh my god.” Ike interrupts, and his face is paler than the dead. “Oh my god. Oh my god, Luca, don’t look.”

With one hand, he buries Luca’s head into the fabric of his mantle, and with the other, he points to the tallest point of the townhouse. 

You crane your neck up and squint. The townhouse has one window peeking out from the room along one small wall. When you recognize the shapes through the window your legs nearly give out. Startling, saturated, unadulterated horror grips you. You see his hat.

“He’s still alive,” you whisper. “Or he rose. But he’s still surrounded.”

With revived desperation Vox grasps Shu by the shoulders. “Don’t devalue his sacrifice, Shu, you know better than anyone he never wanted to fall victim to that curse. Let him and the rest of the zombies pass on properly, like a hero should. Light the match, please. Please.”

You absorb the chaos as if you weren’t there. You’re detached. Nothing feels real, not even as Ike strokes Luca’s hair, distressed and staring at the window, while Luca is just as distanced as you are. Vox’s heroic resolve shattered as he recounted Mysta’s last moments, and Shu, the smart one out of your group, can’t even function anymore. You knew everyone considered themselves each other’s family, but Shu and Mysta were especially close, and it tears you apart to watch Shu finally grasp the terror of the townhouse ambush. 

Shu lets go of your hands to cover his face. Through the gaps between bloodstained gloves, you can see the sparkle of tears. He’s crying. “This isn’t possible.”

“Do the right thing,” you say. “Do what he would’ve wanted.”

Shu stands so still. He looks up to the sky, as if it could all go back just by an hour. The clouds just kept rolling. 

He picks up a bottle and lights a match.

“This can’t be happening.” A teardrop nearly flicks out the match, but he gathers his strength, and places it by the newspaper wick. The paper flares alive in caution orange.

Shu breathes in. You see his face is scrunched up from crying even as he tries to aim, and it’s like he’s aged years in a matter of minutes. His face has never truly been clean of dirt or gore in weeks, just like the rest of you, but even under the orange fire his eyes go dull. There’s weight under his eyelids, and his mouth is forced into a tight, shaky frown as he exhales.

“I’m so sorry.” Even when it was a zombie Shu always apologized before killing. He treats it as a blessing of what they once were. “I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry it had to be this way.”

Shu throws the molotov. 

You lose track of Mysta’s silhouette as the townhouse goes up in flames.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

The death of Mysta Rias was the death of the sun, and the world has been even drearier than the desolate land would have you think. 

Everyone lives on edge frostily. It’s barely been a month since he passed, but the wound hesitates to close. 

Ike is maybe the best adapted to your band of six now as five, but even then you can tell he’s not the same. He’s a champion of reservation. Every sweep of his knives into dead flesh are purposeful, every word spoken is calculated. 

You think back on that night you cried in Ike’s arms the first time you confirmed the dead. You still haven’t seen him cry. Strange, since he was the type to get emotional at sappy movies and video games before the first outbreak. You’re worried, but he insists he can keep it together. To be fair, he’s doing an excellent job at not having a conniption, but the way that he acts so much more emotionally distant isn’t exactly inspiring confidence either.

But Vox, for all he puffs himself up about making sure no man gets left behind and all that heroic junk, hesitates far more than his honed swordsmanship would have you think now that Mysta’s gone. It hasn’t gotten in the way of surviving yet, but you have to wonder when it will. He’s gotten indecisive and requires time to think- great for planning, not so much for a live-or-die fight. 

Luca’s the one that surprises you. You wouldn’t go so far as to call him happy when your band of friends started roaming the country together, but he was good natured, and was the first to pick himself up from a bad scrape. He had a sly, sideways curve to his lips whenever he laughed, but it’s been so long since you’ve heard it that you’re starting to forget the way his skin curves into smile lines. 

He doesn’t smile at all, really. As optimistic Luca was, it was no secret Mysta was the other half of the laughter in your group, and now that Mysta was gone the morale was as well. Luca keeps up his positive attitude as much as he can but it’s rare, and it’s quiet when you see it. 

You notice whenever someone lights the campfire, he’s never around to watch it, and no one makes him do it. You don’t think anyone’s ever talked about it out loud, nor has he ever let himself show it. But when he turns around to feel the warmth, Vox is always to his front, blocking off the bright blazes, and sits by him while he cooks game. You have a theory Vox hasn’t given up his hero complex yet, but for as tense as he gets by the fire Luca hasn’t had a breakdown yet either. Unless things change, you won’t bring it up. Your group has never experienced a loss quite like this in the zombie apocalypse, and all things considered, for as awful as the morale it could be much, much worse.

Speaking of much worse, Shu…

He was a wreck when Mysta passed away, and that’s putting it lightly. When you ran from the remains of the burning townhouse and into a forest, your footfalls were punctuated by Shu’s shortened breaths, and he held back hiccups as you left Mysta behind. By the time Vox figured you were safe from the horde and Ike’s feet gave out from exhaustion, Shu’s eyes were shut tight in disbelief. 

You barely uttered a word to him before he fell back into sobs, and when you offered a hand he threw himself to you. It was disorienting. You always considered Shu the face of serenity and restraint even in your lives before the apocalypse, and after the outbreak he was always the one that could find the best path to follow for the greater good of all six of you. But now there were only five, and the grief was fresh.

But Shu howled. He clawed himself against your chest in inconsolable wails, and his face was contorted, sore and raw red in splotches of unmuted primality, nearly unrecognizable. There was an animal in your arms. Agonized. 

“It’s not possible,” he heaved. His articulation was lost in his eruption. “It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be!”

You didn’t have any words to say, and clearly Shu didn’t either. He howled again as his bestial hands clutched around your arm. Nails dug through his gloves and into your skin, and if he clutched you any tighter he’d tear the flesh off the bone straight, a creature of despair. Screaming and howling, and soon enough he was choking on his own spit and the block of mourning in his throat, some ugly peals of tears and snot, and the remains of rot on his hands and blood against the hollows of his ghastly cheek; the ash left in his lungs and the smoke that lingered in his hair, and the flames that licked through his fingers and inside the bottle and outside the glass; the blazes that ate through the wood of the house, the very same hue as his brother’s favorite shirts, his hat, flickering a cycle of brightness and color and roiling heat until he knew the fire had swallowed up what remained of Mysta.

Shu had no choice but to scream. When his throat took away that privilege he mustered up what he could of his vocal chords and churned. All his mouth went dry but he still smacked his tongue against his gums and huffed out seethings and surges of thin breath through gritted teeth, more akin to wheezing than anything else he’d howled but the pure distress gone untouched.

He eventually exhaled himself into an uneasy sleep, but even in sleep his face was still struck with suffering. Rest was more like a pause to a realized horror than it was a reprieve. You and Ike cleaned him up and laid him sideways on the ground for the night- after all, it had been an awful day, and as the moon rose in the sky you know you wouldn’t be getting anywhere after the horrible events, much less with an unconscious Shu.

Luca spent the rest of his day detached from his own experience, even after the shock wore off. When Shu’s composure broke, Vox had attended to Luca, and they quietly wept together while Shu bawled. By the time Shu began to rest, Luca looked into the ground, water bottle in hand.

Vox approached you while Ike started a fire and prepared some rations for the rest of the group. “He’s not taking things awfully, but I’m concerned for him,” he said. “Luca, I mean.”

“I know you mean Luca,” you responded. You couldn’t hide your own exhaustion from the day either. 

“As much as I hate to say it, Shu freaking out was to be expected. He and- and Mysta- those two- they were so close. And Luca, too. I thought he would freak out like Shu, but hell, Reader, I cried more than him. I know I get emotional and he’s better at keeping it down than me, but…”

Vox’s eyelids fluttered as he looked up at the dark sky. His eyes were red. “I’m just concerned, that’s all. It’s not like him.”

“Well, living without-” Your exhaustion dragged down your sentence before you could finish it. You thought you were well-adjusted to the death, but your voice caught before you could utter his name. You cleared your throat. “Living like this. There’s going to be a lot of weird changes, and everyone mourns differently.”

“I suppose you’re right.” But Vox didn’t look too pleased to hear that. “We need to protect him.”

“He does plenty of protecting himself. And we look out for each other regardless.”

“Then we should look out for him especially.”

“Of course. I don’t want him to get overexerted.”

“And let’s tap out of any interaction if we can, including looting. Last thing we need is to get into another big fight with the zombies, or worse yet, other survivors.”

“Avoiding fights has always been our M.O.” A chilled breeze ran through the forest. Vox fiddled with his haori. You stared right through him. “Sorry if this comes across as weird. But do you really think laying low is a good idea?”

“It’s dangerous to let anything interfere with us.”

“We’re in the zombie apocalypse, Vox, everything is dangerous. It’s not like I can just wave a wand and poof, we’re immune from the plague. Besides, we’re just two out of s- out of five. We’ll figure it out when it’s not so late, and Luca and Shu are in working condition.” You squinted. “Hey. Enough about them for a second. Has anyone ever asked you if you’re okay, Vox?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Is now. How are you holding up?”

“What, do you want me to lie to your face? No one’s doing well.” He averted his eyes, and you knew he was averting the question. “I could ask you the same thing. Shu was intense.”

“Tired,” you said. “Just plain tired. I don’t even think I have the energy to properly grieve.” And just like the man standing before you, you averted your eyes as well. “I don’t think I want to either. I don’t know. I miss him a lot, but I don’t have the time to miss him. Not when the apocalypse is literally unfolding in front of us and there’s people taking the brunt of the loss way harder than I am. I wish I could give him the remembrance he deserves.”

Vox nodded slowly. He didn’t say anything in response, and the silence made you feel like you aged hundreds of years in his presence. 

“You’re very observant, Reader,” he finally said. “And you spend a lot of time making your own conclusions before you act. That’s smart. But knowing too much prevents you from action, full stop.”

Campfire smoke curls around the chilly air and by Vox’s face. His head was still angled up to look at the sky, and the orange glow against his sharp features weathered him into a dreary oil painting. There was a gash between his cheek and ear where a tree branch hooked him while he evaded a zombie’s grapple, and the light illuminated the soft pink flesh exposed under the cut of skin. The corner of the gash met his thoughtful frown. “Every moment of life teaches you something. I’m wondering when it’ll be too much and we simply can’t go on the way we used to.”

“Might be soon.”

“Today definitely sped it along.”

The fire crackled. You and Vox sat there unmoving, too focused on the blaze and how controlled it was compared to the townhouse. 

Even as the tinder burns, your thoughts were still so awry now that the group got smaller. Vox had a point about Luca. You needed to keep an eye out on him in case he’s putting on a brave front. Even then, you didn’t like how Vox deflected your concern, but prodding him would only make it worse, especially when the loss was so fresh. 

Your thoughts drifted to Ike, and how you haven’t managed to share a word with him at all since the townhouse burning. He hasn’t cried, you recall, not a single time since the first outbreak. You admired his composure but now that Vox admitted his own fears for the others (and neglected to tell you the ones about himself), you can’t help the unease that settled into your stomach. What were his thoughts like? Everything went off the rails whenever you tried to collect yourself, but if Ike was able to keep it all under wraps, then his mind must be a storm.

Speak of the devil. Ike hands Luca a small can of beans, but the blond stayed by his lonesome. Your best friend took the empty seat beside you, and gives you and Vox your dinner.

You thanked him, and after savoring what little you had of your portion, you asked how he’s doing.

“Just gotta get through another day,” Ike responded. 

Then he tipped the last of his beans into his mouth and stared at the fire, just as you did after talking with Vox. He was unreadable as ever, but the only thing you could glean from him with confidence is that he had just as much on his mind as you thought. Maybe even more.

You wished he would just tell you.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

But grass grows over graves, and even if Mysta didn’t have a proper send off, time waits for no one. 

Once Shu woke up, his face was a mess of bleariness and exhaustion. Something in his bright eyes froze over during the night. Amethyst faded to plastic. 

“We’ll keep moving,” he declared, and his voice chilled you to the core. He called out the order as a leader, not a friend, without the care or delicacy he always granted to your group. His emotion died with Mysta. 

(And you saw Vox ready himself to refute, but once he met those purple eyes filled with something unearthly, he shank under Shu’s presence.)

Days pass. All of them are spent on the road. The group spends as little time resting as possible just to get a few extra miles out to your next destination. 

Shu and Luca say it’s to get away, but they end the sentence differently. Shu says to get away from the zombies. Luca doesn’t finish his thought at all. 

It’s no surprise that Vox opposes it. The more distance between the group and the townhouse, the more he speaks his mind. 

But Shu is determined to go further, just as much as Vox is convinced everyone needs to lay low.

And in all the time you’ve known these men, you’ve never seen any of them fight against one another quite like this. Vox always concedes, but not before Shu spits venom and he flings it right back. Their words are always about the plan, their future, where the group is going and why don’t they wait out the zombies instead of these hourly skirmishes on the road; but everyone can tell there’s more lying in subtext than the literal argument. You’ve seen the way Vox grits his teeth and musters up his courage whenever he’s about to tell Shu off, and you know that disgusted glare Shu gives Vox whenever he brings up hiding from the zombies.

Ike usually ends up being the one to break up their fights. One dismal evening while he lectured them both about teamwork and other platitudes, you and Luca sat next to each other. He’s a big guy, but he’s lost a lot of weight from rationing, and his expression looks like an abandoned dog more often than not these days.

He talks quietly, but plainly. “Shu hates me, doesn’t he?”

“What?” The bluntness startles you. “Luca, listen to yourself. He could never.”

“He could.”

“He wouldn’t,” you insist. “He’s gone through a lot, and he’s not taking it well, but I know it’s always because he wants to protect you. All of us.”

“So is Vox. But he just shuts him down without a thought. You ever wonder why, Reader?”

“To get away from the zombies,” you recite. That’s always his reasoning. Staying put in one place just means more time for zombies to gather at the scent of the living.

“So would finding a secure shelter, like how Vox says.” Luca sits with his knees close to his chest, and watches from a distance at the quelled fight. Vox says something, and you can see Shu’s face contort even though you can’t hear what he says. “But he doesn’t even listen to him. He doesn’t even listen to you, Reader, when you try to break it up.” He holds his legs closer to himself. “I don’t know if he’s ever listened to me. Or anyone.”

“He would if you told him you feel like that. He’d understand.”

“Would he really?” You nearly answer that before you realize the question is rhetorical. “You’ve got eyes, Reader. Be attentive like how I know you always are and look at how he looks at us. Me and Vox.”

You try to follow Luca’s request but Ike is speaking, and Shu’s eyes close.

He elaborates. “It’s not a nice look.”

“He’s stressed.”

“Then why doesn’t he ever look at you like that? Or even better, why does he listen to Ike only, and how come it never seems to stick?”

“He’s going through a lot.”

“We all are.”

Across the camp, you watch Ike run a hand through his hair. Shu is still talking, and Vox sighs.

“I think he blames us.”

You grab Luca’s arm. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s obvious anyways.”

“Because that’s our friend.”

“He hasn’t acted like one for a long time.”

“Because he’s lost so much.”

“We were all friends,” Luca snaps. “We lost just as much. Hell! I was in the house! We were together! And then we got separated, and unlike someone Vox actually tried to help him out until- and I should’ve- we saw him get bit, and I couldn’t- I just, I-”

Luca shuts himself up. Your hand falls from his arm to his palm and squeezes. No life returns your gesture. 

You sit in the stagnant silence. 

“I’m sorry.” Luca lowers his head. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Get it off your chest, Luca. I won’t hurt you.”

“No, I don’t think I should.” He unwraps his legs, and stands up from the ground beside you. “I’m not going to say it and be an awful friend, even if he’s acting like one.”

Before you could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Luca already turned his back, and you sat alone from the argument as he walked away from everything.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

Despite all their bickering, Shu and Vox lead the group through travel. It’s more likely that the bickering is the exact reason why. The fire iron and rebar push aside the greenery, until Vox stops with his rebar casting the brush aside. “Fucking finally.”

You catch up and look across the hill. Buildings. This used to be a small rest town in a clearing between the hills before the outbreak, but now the bright signs are dimmed out and dirtied. Not a soul lurks in the abandoned town, including the dead. 

“We’re not stopping,” Shu says.

“Piss off, Shu. I’m tired.”

“You’re never going to be well-rested.”

“Then how does safe sound?”

“Not possible no matter where you go.”

“But safer than on the road-”

“Guys,” Ike interrupts. “Quit acting like toddlers.”

Vox pouts and Shu squints. None of the three want to get the next word in.

So you speak up instead. “We’re running out of supplies. If we don’t find any more food soon, then we won’t even be able to continue on the road.”

“Reader has a point,” Ike agrees.

Shu’s expression sours. “Fine. We’ll look around, but make it quick. Camping out here is a great way to get robbed.”

“Then we’ll move together and keep watch for one another,” Vox declares, and he smiles. “Welcome to the correct side, Reader, Ike. It’s good to have you on board.”

Ike rolls his eyes. “Don’t drag me into your petty fights.” You fight the urge to quip he’s already in the mess as the mediator.

But the group traverses the hills and enters the remains of the town. The ground is littered with garbage strewn about in the haste for its citizens to flee town- or for the ill-fated, become the corpses dragging along the cement. 

The zombies here shamble along independent from one another. That’s the best you could ask for. The only consistent thing about zombie behavior is their danger when in swarms. Alone, they’re nothing but fetid flesh barely clinging onto the skeleton, ready to fall into a hundred pieces at one strike, but when accompanied by others? Fodder makes up for each others’ weaknesses, and no matter how competent or skilled you are, one human is nothing to a crowd of zombies on the warpath. 

The zombies of this town haven’t synced up with one another, and you’d like to keep it that way. While on the road, you’ve had plenty of skirmishes with small groups of zombies, but the last time your band faced off against a proper herd, you lost one. 

A single zombie clambers to the front of your group. You hear metal against fabric as Ike pulls out his cleaver from its sheath, ready to do the deed, but before he can advance Shu already has his fire poker in his hands and the business end driven through the eyes of the zombie. He twists, assuring the brain is too punctured to allow the body to rise again, and the poker is back at rest. He barely even apologizes to the body as everyone trudges on.

Behind his back, Ike resheathes his weapon. He squints through his glasses, and you can read the confusion between his green eyes. Ike doesn’t meet your glance, but his expression is welcome, as unfortunate as it is. At least you’re not the only one that noticed how out of character Shu has been lately. You’re getting a sinking feeling about him.

However, the moment passes as soon as it appeared, and you and the rest of your friends rove onwards until you come across a set of stairs erring into the earth, surrounded by a dirtied glass entrance. 

“Who would’ve thought?” You wonder aloud. “I never would’ve guessed this little town had a subway system.”

Vox raises his hand along the cool glass. “This could be good. The entrance is camouflage pretty well considering the damage of this town, and there might be some preserved food in vending machines. All we need to do is break ‘em.”

“And if there isn’t any food, it’s still a big area,” Ike adds. “Plenty of space and a roof over our heads.”

Luca looks down the staircase. It’s dark, but not unnavigable. The edges of the sidewalk are lined with yellow paint stripes, and features small lights along the walls from a backup generator, most likely. “It’s a good hiding place,” he says.

Luckily for everyone, Shu can already tell he’s defeated, and doesn’t put up much of a fight before you all descend down the stairs. 

Not even ten minutes later Luca found a vending machine and smashed it apart with his spiked bat. Vox unwrapped a pack of Oreos with a smug smile. 

The subway was no longer in operation and the trains themselves were abandoned, but you found a sign with a map of the station. The subway connected the major areas of the town together, and could be used as secret passages through the ruins.

And most interesting, there were even less zombies underground than under the sun. 

“I wonder if the stairs confused them?” Luca says to himself. “Surely a few of them figured it out, since we killed some since we entered the subway, but it might be too complex for herds to come through. Or the architecture itself is confusing.”

You weren’t about to question it. This was one of the most peaceful environments you’ve entered since the outbreak, and there was no way you would ignore the moment to catch your breath, even if you can still cut through the tension with a knife. 

You enter first watch with the drifting bond between everyone on your mind, and when Ike relieves you for his watch, you fall asleep in record time.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

An arm jostles you awake. “Reader. Wake up, zombies.”

You curse, albeit a little groggily, but in a flash you’re on your feet. You thumb under your sleeping pad and grab your climbing picks. “I thought we were safe?”

“Not at all.” Your eyesight adjusts after you start walking, but you can already recognize the voice as Ike. Out of the corner of your eye you can spot Shu trying to shake Luca awake, and Vox gathering everyone’s things together. “They’re flooding in fast. Herds of them. Like they’re all on the same wavelength.”

“Like the townhouse.”

It dawns on you and you say it without thinking. Ike’s shoulders freeze over. “Don’t say that. Not so loudly.”

“Fine. What do you need me to do?”

“Get your things together. They’re not here yet, but they will be soon, around the corner we came.”

Vox approaches halfway through zipping a backpack together. “We should take the next right corridor. I remember that leads to a different exit.”

“You sure it’s not the same one the zombies are coming in through?” You ask.

“Positive.”

“We need to stay ahead of the herd,” Shu said, Luca in tow. “No fighting unless absolutely necessary. If we get started now we should be able to get away without overexerting ourselves. Ready?”

No words need to be exchanged. You leave the clearing just as you found it. 

A collected groan follows behind you, and a chill runs down your spine. You’ve never heard so many zombies, and never so man all in harmony. The moans arrange together in the cavernous halls, bouncing off the cement and down the station. 

The urgency rises once the cries grow closer. Vox breaks out in a run, then Luca, and Shu behind him. 

“Right,” Vox calls, and dives at the turn. A zombie greets him. He drives his rebar into its head and flings it away without a second thought like a lancer. 

The zombie smashes against a sight with arrows to different stations. Ike swerves out of the way. “Fork ahead, where now?”

“Right? I mean-” He goes one way to view a sign, then sprints the other. “Straight! Straight!”

The dead sing. You can’t think to look back but the smell of rot is suffocating.

Your foot falls under the concrete ground in time with your family, and in time with the stumbling zombies approaching faster than you’ve ever felt before. 

Luca halts in his tracks, and you thump against his back. Your mouth parts to speak but your eyes fall upon the exit.

Or rather, the lack of exit.

Boulders of broken concrete hide the stairwell from daylight.

Hot breath strangles you, and you turn with your picks in hand. Swathes of the dead are fixated on your group. 

Ike runs straight-on to the choir. You scream out as one reaches for him before he turns at the last fork in the road.

You cut your scream off halfway when you follow him without a second thought. 

A hand covered in dirt and mold grasps against the sleeve of your jacket. You swivel and sink your pick into the limb, and the wrist pops off under your blade. The hand goes limp and falls from the fabric.

You hear footsteps behind you, and when Luca speaks up you’re full of relief even if only for a moment. “What now?”

“Just run,” You say back, more of a guess than an order.

Shu drifts in front of you. “Where are we?”

“Give me a moment, I’m trying to think!”

“We don’t have time, Vox!”

“I know, Shu, shut up!”

“Going left!” Ike shouts, and you all move without question. 

But you realize only after the zombies cut away the turn that the station turns more decrepit on this side. The tunnels are lined with debris and the floor crumbles away along the painted stripes. 

And before you can find a new route, you see a puff of dust from the ceiling.

“The roof!” You shout. You’re gasping to breathe now, and your words stumble upon the exhale. 

Shu’s eyes roll up to the flickering light, and you both see the elongated crack above your heads. It’s been in decay for years. How unlucky. How simply, brutally, lethally unlucky.

“Hurry!” He pleads. He’s at the front of the pack, followed by Vox and Luca alongside each other. Ike trails behind you. 

The crack in the roof follows your every footstep even as ancient instinct kicks in. Adrenaline shoots through your veins and pushes you forward, accompanied by bits of debris tangling in your hair. The flooring turns from concrete to tile, and with the dirtied mosaic comes a glimmer of hope. Surely you must be going the right way.

The zombies’ cries are loud, but the squeak of your shoe against the tiles is louder. There must be something beyond.

But the ceiling splintering out is the loudest of all.

It all happens at once:

The way that Shu turns at the sound and can’t even get one of his own out before he sees your face-

The powdered cement turning to hail in the blink of an eye-

Your war cry through gritted teeth as you launch off, the fastest you’ve ever run before-

A knife unsheathed in in warmth and frigidity in your midst-

Luca, hated, blamed, petrified. 

Your brain catches up through the curtain of scrap. It’s all because of Luca. Even at his most vulnerable, you’ve never thought of him as weak. Nonetheless, his eyes are dead purple crusted against his ghost-white face, and his lips force open while a vein along his neck strains to scream out your name, but he lets out just one small, throaty heave. A miserable noise.

It silences you. 

You know it, and he does too. A chunk of ceiling drops mere inches from your last step. Vox approaches, calls out your name before he’s even comprehended the truth before him. You see the dark in his pale eyes tighten into a thin reptilian pupil and he reaches out in desperation.

The last of the ceiling shatters. A broken crag hammers into his palm instead. All you hear is Shu finally get out the scream before the remains of the underground roof shuts you out from your family.

The dead rises in volume. The glimmer of hope evaporates.

You force yourself against the barricade, but your weight is no match for the pile of rubble, and you watch the zombies shamble forward with your back against the wall. The only person you have left brushes plaster away from his eyes with one arm and brandishes a knife in the other.

Ike Eveland looks like hell alive. 

It would almost be hilarious if you weren’t facing a subterranean grave. His face is dirtied with mud and rubble, and the legs of his trousers are matted in blood, rot, and dirt, but even then, this is still your best friend. The years you’ve spent alongside him blend together. His once-delicate hands now bear countless scars from travel and fights, but the contours of his face are recognizable even through the dust that mars his skin. 

This is an unwinnable situation. You’re locked in checkmate, but Ike stands next to you.

You speak. “No more exits, right?”

Ike swipes at his face again, and the sleeve of his mantle comes back grayer than before. “I think we both know how this ends, Reader.”

“Yeah. I do.”

You both watch the leading zombie shuffle one foot forward, and each of its followers mimic the motion. 

You notice Ike’s hand against his face out of the corner of your eye. Then how his shoulders jerk up for a moment, before setting themselves in place, stony and rigid. 

His words break your heart. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Me neither.”

“I wish I could refuse all this- all this-” 

He sniffs. 

You move without thinking, and your mind is set. You wrap your arms around Ike. 

He doesn’t even raise his hands. He just leans against your shoulder lifelessly, and lets the tears fall. 

You rub his back as he hiccups into your shirt. How long has he been keeping this locked up? You ache for him and all his repression as his body goes limp against yours, the only thing keeping him standing. 

“It’ll be okay.” That’s only a lie you can hope is the truth. “After all this. We’ll be okay. Shu and Vox and Luca, too. It’s a straight shot now that all the zombies are on us.”

“I’m going to miss you. All of you.”

“We’re together.”

“I’m sorry this is how it ends.”

“We still have options.”

He scoffs, even as his voice cracks through his quiet crying. “We’re trapped, Reader. There’s no way out.”

“We can still go out on our terms,” you say. You place your hand over his, the one that holds the knife. “Once we’re gone, the zombies are going to search for the other three.”

You squeeze one last time, and break away from the hug. You look upon the wave of dead flesh and rot, and draw your weapons. “I don’t want them to fight any more than they have to.”

“That’s hopeless.”

“It’s all I can do.”

“How are you so calm about this?”

“I’m not sure myself,” you admit. “It’s just that right now, I know I’m in a losing battle, and I accept that. But I don’t accept just laying down and dying like that.” 

Your climbing picks cross together as you ready your eerily still mind. The blades scrape against each other. Metal sings. “And I just want to handle things calmly. After all this time, I learned that from you.”

“I don’t know how you can just remember things like that when we’re about to die.”

“I suppose I only die on my own terms. Hey.”

Ike stumbles to his feet. His knife is pointed to the ground. With a tranquility that evaded you all throughout the apocalypse, you steady his posture and guide the blade up to the dead beyond.

Your hand rises up his arm as his eyes close, and he silently murmurs to himself. You rub his shoulder. “You good?”

Ike exhales. His body lowers as he does, and with the breath comes a relaxed posture. This is the most at peace he’s been since the outbreak strangled the past world. 

His eyelashes rise. Stormy green seas focus upon the staggering zombies. 

“No.” Ike’s lip trembles. But he’s set on the zombies ahead, and a bolt of lightning crosses through his eyes. “But I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Good man.”

“There’s about five of them leading the pack in that corner. We can pick them off and get some more breathing room.”

“Understood, Mr. Tactical.”

“Don’t call me that.” Under the exhaustion and the fear and the grittiness that comes with crying, you hear some of that classic, joking exasperation. You snicker to yourself, but the bittersweet smile remains. 

“Mr. Eveland, then.” Your sight hones in on one zombie to your right. Its jaw slides apart as it follows the scent of the fresh living. “It’s been an honor, Ike.”

“Likewise, Reader, we’ll do what we can.”

“Let’s go.”

At your command, you both launch off, laser-focused on the individual dead. 

Ike kicks a corpse down to knock it prone, then rakes his knife into the skull, and that’s all you can see before you throw yourself into the fray.

A one-on-one is simple. The zombie in front of you holds out a decrepit hand, perfect for your climbing pick to detach. It stumbles at the force and grants you an opening to clobber its brain in.

Rinse and repeat. 

You dive between the steps of your latest kills to divert attention in time to slay another and stay moving. The trick is to use gravity to your advantage. They aren’t smart enough to stand their ground, and when they inevitably fold from the pressure of your picks, it’s like the zombies present themselves for you can finish the job.

The next target swipes at you. You jut one pick down upon the corpse and one more meets the brittle skull. This gives you enough time to duck under a lunge, sweep the leg, and aim to kill. 

Something grabs your leg before you plunge the pick in. A body, dismembered from the waist up. 

You yelp as yellow-black teeth rise, and frantically kick. The zombie holds on tight, but when you regain your senses, it doesn’t even see the blade incoming before the soft brain squashes in. Splatters of gore and bits of chunky nerve endings sprays against your frame while your sweat mixes in with the stench of rot and muddy mildew.

You step back to reposition. Ike’s clothing is covered in blackened blood, and you watch him plunge his knife into the chests of whatever unfortunate beast approaches next. He twists and yanks out, then goes in for a final blow between the eyes. He has a rhythm established despite the shades of rot against his mantle and shirt. It almost looks routine. 

His next victim’s head rolls to the ground and breaks apart like porcelain. The brain is still in place, but the elongated gash through the nervous system confirms it would never rise again. 

But one gets the jump on Ike while his back is turned, and he yells out as he thrashes. He swivels on his heel. The zombie maneuvers around even as his hands push back in a fierce gridlock. It snaps its broken jaws in Ike’s face as it snarls, and sinks its claws in. Gunk travels through its saliva.  

“I got your back!” While Ike retreats, you trip the dead that crawls in front of you, and dash to his side. You drag your picks into the nape and back of the zombie’s head, and the creature goes limp just in time for Ike to shove it against the wall. 

Ike catches his breath, brushes his hand against his arm, and meets your concerned look with a nod in silent gratitude. “They’re gaining on us,” he says. “You don’t need to kill all of them, disabling them is fine!”

“Got it!”

But even that is easier said than done. There are so many zombies in the herd, it looks like you haven’t even left a dent, and your space is getting limited. You hack through the edges of the herd and pray that your wild swipes cut through a limb or two. 

“We’re losing turf!”

“Yeah, and I- gaah!”

Ike heaves. Your switch flips from ‘kill zombies’ to ‘check Ike’.

You follow his rasp to the corner of the room, where the ceiling crashed down. His back is pressed against the tiled wall, and he struggles to peel off his mantle. 

You don’t even need to ask. His hand clutches his arm, and the chunk of flesh missing from it. 

“Holy shit, Ike!” You can’t even mute yourself. Millions of warning bells go off in your head. The internals are coated in a dark membrane from where it meets the oxygen in the air, less red than it is purple, and his veins beside the mutilation rise in an ugly green. 

You reach your hands out as you rip off a cut of fabric from your sleeve. “No. No, this can’t be happening-“

He slaps your hand away before you can begin to bandage the blood loss, and immediately crumples. “Don’t do that! It’s the virus!”

“There’s no way it spreads that fast-“

“It will. I don’t want you to have that.” Ike sucks in air through his teeth as he sinks to the floor. 

“How did you even-“ you cut yourself off. “It was the zombie that jumped you, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even notice the pain when it happened.” He curses in his native language. The green in his veins rise, and branches sprout from the veins under his graying skin, like tree bark. The rapid decay of the outbreak. “Oh, that’s not good.”

The din of the battle behind you is entirely forgotten as you focus on the uneven flesh, the imprint of the bite upon his mangled arm, how nearly every level of the wound has turned to the same rot of the zombies. 

Ike’s breathing is labored. The center of his shirt is soaked with the rot of those he killed, and rises and falls shakily. 

He smacks his lips, and you’re struck with the realization that talking is a strain. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

You crouch by his side and nod. 

“The sheath, on my belt,” he says. “Can you unfasten it?”

You comply without question even through your blurring eyes. I can’t refuse a request from a dead man, you think, and then the weight of your thought slams you. 

Ike’s unscathed hand rises from the wound, coated in slick purple gore, and brushes against the handles of his knives. The membrane pools together into beads along the handle. His fingers stop at the last slot in his sheath, and the tip of the cleaver is dyed in the beginnings of the rot. 

You think you’re about to vomit your heart out. 

“No.” Your voice wavers. “No. No, I can’t do this.”

“You can,” Ike comforts you, and you feel even more like trash. You should be the one comforting him instead. “I trust you.”

And that’s what gets the tears to spill out from your eyelashes. “But I can’t kill you.”

“You said it best earlier. Dying on your own terms, right?”

“But I can’t kill you.”

“I don't want to be one of them,” he admits. “Look around, Reader, we’re surrounded, and we both know there’s no way out. And being one of them, it’s unnatural. It’s just messed up. If I’m going to die, I want to know I’m at rest. None of this- whatever all this is.”

His head lolls to the side. “And I want to see Mysta again.”

The chorus of the dead accompanies Ike’s heavy breathing and your weeping. You are a helpless child. 

“I’ll help you,” Ike adds. “I’ll tell you how I usually confirm the dead. You’re my best friend. I trust you.”

It sickens you. 

You let out a puff of air as you draw your palm over your eyes. The gore across your face smears over with your tears. 

You take the cleaver in your hands. 

“Thank you.”

“You deserve better than this.”

“It’s the best we can do. I’m glad.”

“This is so fucked up.” You draw the cleaver with both hands, as if that would end the shaking. Even as you shut your eyes, you can’t get your resolve in place. 

“The trick is to be fast,” Ike says, and it disgusts you at how easily he says it. It disgusts you even more when you know the decay is spreading as he speaks, all the way into his raspy voice. “It’s all in the wrist. That’s what keeps it precise instead of clumsy. It’s where all the force is. Don’t swing wide. Just center it where you want to hit. How are you doing?”

“Not good.” Your breathing deepens, a last-ditch effort to remain calm. “I’m scared.”

You force your eyes open. The world floods in white, then falls into the blurred grays of the subway station. 

Ike is already so much worse for wear. The bite is entirely blackened, and the discolored skin stretches from his arm to his shoulder, creeping along what little you can see of his neck. 

His eyelids are shut, gentle aside from the furrow in his brow. 

“Me too.”

Even with his feigned nonchalance, there is so much sorrow laced between his words. 

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll be safer,” Ike says, and even he doesn’t seem so convinced by it. “Thank you for everything. I’ll miss you too.”

“You’ll always be my best friend.” 

You raise the cleaver. 

“Please tell Mysta I’m thinking of him. We all are, always.”

“We’ll be watching.”

Ike’s head is lowered, but you still see his attempt at a smile. 

You black out as you swing.

There is no memory left of his last moment. It’s all too much to bear. 

You cover your face, because looking at him is simply- just- too- much. Blood mixes in with your eyelashes, and you taste metal on your lips. 

You don’t even have the energy to scream, or cry, or do anything. You are a husk, and you do not hear Ike’s cleaver clatter to the floor. There is nothing. 

Your body moves without your command. You step back, and even though you refuse to look, you know you’re backing away from Ike. Your heart hammers, and so do your limbs. It spreads in droves, this pressure of heartbreak, constricting you and squeezing you apart.

Daggers fall into your skin. You snap out of your stupor. 

But once you identify the daggers as teeth, you wish you didn’t.

You tear your hands away from your face as a glob of rot (his rot, you realize, and you can’t even begin to wrap your head around that) flicks out in an arc. The hammering- it’s claws raking against your flesh and tearing you apart like meat.

While you accompanied Ike in his last moments, the outbreak stopped for no one, least of all you. You are no invulnerable main character. You blocked out the roaring chorus as he lay, but it continued outside of your little bubble, and with your back turned they absorbed the last of your free space for a perfect siege. 

You veer your head away out of instinct when the teeth pull away, and takes a bite of muscle out with it. The pain is blinding hot- you finally regain your voice in time to screech, but it drowns out through the zombie moans. 

A second set of jaws snaps you up. Already your head is spinning, and when you see the sinew from the corner of your vision you resist the urge to faint. If you take a look at the broken skin and extruding vine-veins again, you know you’re going to black out again, and never wake up. 

You force your sight to anything else. 

You make the mistake of looking into zombie eyes for the third time in your life. 

But this time you don’t retain the memory, either. Because for as little time you have left, how could you live knowing that your best friend’s peaceful green eyes snapped open in terror in his final moment? 

You choke out, and whether it’s from pain or grief or pure fear, you can’t even tell. Just that it all mixes together into a toxic blend, the poison of your undoing. 

And to think, you had the gall to meet such a grisly end head-on minutes ago. 

On the ground, next to his limp foot, the steel edge of Ike’s cleaver winks at you. 

It’s all in the wrist, he told you, and your blood burns into dust. But Ike is gone, now, and for as horrified as his melted remains were, he was certainly watching your every move. 

And the infection is unnatural, and climbs along your shoulder, and there is no agony in the world like this fate. 

And you wanted to see Mysta again. 

With the last of your strength you regain your legs, and kick off one zombie from your leg. It topples and gives you enough time to shake off another that has you grappled. 

The weight shift combined with your blood loss makes you hit the ground hard, but you scrape at the floor nonetheless. You are so weak, and you struggle, so focused on the glint of the blade that you ignore your skin crack apart like mud in a drought. 

You reach, bloodied and battered, and so close to rest. 

The washed light shines off the cleaver. Its reflection teases you as a monster snatches your foot and send you back into the horde like a toy. 

You emit your final scream, and that too dies as hundreds of hands hold you back. Your body and blood is swallowed by the herd of dead.

When you can’t keep your eyes open anymore, the dark in your mind rearranges to replicate the cleaver. Then it flattens, and you see the haunted remains of Ike Eveland between it. 

The only sound left is teeth meeting bone. 

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆