#also I want to mention that based on op's replies this seems like a pretty targeted post towards the tgcf fandom | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

venusdebotticelli · 1 year ago

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Hello, I'm here to add some honking! :D

Disclaimer: I went replying to your post as I was reading it for the first time, so some of the things I point out here are things I realised later on that you'd already pointed out in your op as well, so the reply is a bit of an out-of-order mess, I will admit. You can see the exact point at which I realised this and despaired further down the post, but I just wanted to apologise preemptively for being an adhd riddled clown, @girlbossblackbeard 😅

-"I also wonder if the shot of roach shooting a canon at something is him shooting a canon at her"

I'm pretty sure Roach is shooting one of the Revenge's cannons here!

That looks very much like her poop deck, and he's wearing the flower necklace from the torture party, so that's either some celebratory cannoning, or maybe they see the torturers' ship approaching during the party itself, but realise too late to have any chance to stop them from boarding? Another possibility might be that the torturers (or at least some of them) are already present at the party from the get go, since the main guy is also dressed all fancy and has that violin bow, they just infiltrated the ship with our pirates none the wiser until it was too late. (And I'm basing this on nothing but vibes, but I think the torturer may be working with/have been sent by No-Nose?)

-re: the wanted posters: "is this in the republic of pirates?"

I think it might be the entrance to Spanish Jackie'z or somewhere nearby, just because of the similar stone arches.

But there's plenty of Blackbeard wanted posters all over apparently, since the one Stede removes from a wall is on a wooden wall. Also hilarious that on this one the only other poster nearby seems to be an ad for a "Portraiter", because oooofff, yeah, the navy sure went for the most racist/least accurate one.

Also yeah, all the shots under the rain on the street and around Susan's food stall give me Republic of Pirates vibes, very much. I also think that first pic I've included up here might be Stede witnessing the Prince Ricky guy they've briefly allied with getting his nose cut off by Jackie, and this is also a good chance for the Swede to ditch them and stay with the love of his life, who won't try to eat him (or at least not in the cannibal way, hopefully :P)

-"where the fuck is ed when he's sitting in the chair smoking???"

I also have a theory about a bunch of stuff that happens while at Anne and Mary's! :D The tl;dr of it being: EdStede are married and divorced and insufferable while crashing at their place, and Anne and Mary don't just put up with it nicely, they dig their finger in for the drama/chaos/shits and giggles/"maybe they'll finally leave our fucking house if they figure their shit out" :P Anne kissing Stede in front of Ed very much serves that purpose 😁

-"no more booze, no more drugs, and no more _____" not sure what the end of that sentence could be but we know that the "stede" that was put in there is NOT what he actually says!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Ooooohhh, I hadn't noticed that, it does sound like it may be cut from a different scene, now that you pointed it out, although I'm not 100% convinced, idk 😅 Did you have any reason for this theory other than the way it sounds?

-"WHAT IF WE GET THE AITA SCENARIO WHERE ED AND STEDE TELL PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR VERSION OF EVENTS AND NO ONE REALIZES THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT EACH OTHER UNTIL THAT MOMENT BC THEY'RE BOTH SO BIASED ABOUT ONE ANOTHER"

I WANT THIS DESPERATELY 😂

-"the revenge crew is blowing up SOMETHING on the side of a building. maybe to cause a distraction or gain access inside the building? is it the side of Spanish Jackie's?? also hiiiiiiii lucius <;3"

I think Olu's bar fight, Ed's scenes dressed like "a poor" where he's drinking with Jackie, and Leslie Jones's quotes where she mentioned shooting scenes where she fought side by side with Ed might all be the same scene/sequence of events! I already talked about it a bit on this post's tags, but I think No-Nose Prince Ricky could be the one to blow up Spanish Jackie'z, as revenge, and the crew get caught up in it!

-"you're going through that 'if i was a regular dude' phase"/"why would ed be considered a regular dude now?"

I don't think it's that he's *considered* a regular dude by others, so much as it's part of his healing journey of trying to find himself, he's really really trying to be one, "just trying something different, man". I also cried a bit about it in the tags of this other post and the one I already linked in the previous paragraph, but I think the fact that he's wearing Buttons's jacket during this scene may have come from Ed approaching him as a sort of spiritual mentor or something for advice? I just really want more Ed & Buttons interactions, I crave this ;U; I think we may get an arc where Ed tries a different method of wellness and mindfullness or whatever for each episode, including:

-Cleaning up all the drugs/booze/whatever from the ship with Frenchie's help

-Getting high as a kite and bitching and moaning with Anne and Mary

-Going "back to basics", trying to be just a normal dude, being all zen about worldly matters after a talk with Buttons

-Whatever is going on with Hornigold's ghost in the forest/cliff scenes (although as pointed out in one of the posts I just linked, this could be a dream sequence, some fever hallucinations precipitated by almost drowning during the storm, and paralleling Stede's fiery fever dreams from s1. And the headbutt is during this/right after waking up from this, as he still has the cravat that he had on during the storm.)

But none of his methods of cleansing himself of Stede and trying to figure out who he is as just Ed, on his own, actually work, because Stede is following and pestering him throughout most of these? (which yeah, could point to Ed straight up running away to the forest to have his introspective hallucinations in peace, since Stede won't fucking leave him alone :P and then after that yet another reunion during the fight scene at the beach?)

-"ed has a red ring"

I haven't got many deep thoughts about this, but I've also been trying to keep track of Ed's rings, yeah :P Apart from what you said about the red one (which I think the one from this season actually looks a lot more square and slightly more muted in colour than the round one from last season, so maybe not the exact same ring?), I'm also really charmed by his Kraken ring, and the massive green ring on the ring finger of his left hand, which seems different from the one he had last season

Also really interested to find out when exactly he ditches/loses the gloves, and whether they make a reappearance at some point later on in the season or not (it seems to be around the same time that all the necklaces other than the pearl one disappear as well?).

-"someone is a vampire on the ship."

The mental image of Izzy the gangrenous vampire is absolutely sending me 😂😂😂

-"i'm pretty sure stede in his training scenes with izzy is wearing the clothes he wore in that final shot of s1"

During the ones on the ship, yeah. But then there's these ones with the Steard:

And I'm pretty sure this is Stede's fantasised version of just what a good pirate he is now :P Aside from the extremely piratey beard and the snazzy red sash, he's also wearing leather trousers, because everyone knows the best pirates have those 👀 And during the beach duel Izzy still has both legs, which I think is interesting. Also, the sash is made from the same fabric as the sad little scrap he wears as a necktie:

-"or he puts his jacket on before jumping off the cliff"

To me it looks like he's still barefoot and in short sleeves in the shots of him sinking in the water, so he probably does go in the water a lot this season, just living his Little Mermaid life, as @amuseoffyre has been rightly pointing out :P

-"ed his holding his right side as he slashes that dude on the beach"

I said this on one of your previous posts about it, but now I think none of what I said on that post applies really, because I think the headbutt scene happens way earlier than the beach fight scene, which may happen after the torture party scene (or soon before? is the party to celebrate escaping the navy again? but that wouldn't really explain the lack of an earring during the party, as you pointed out, and Ed *may* be present during the party, but we haven't seen any indication of it, and the beach fight scene does seem like one of the multiple reunions this season [this one maybe after the forest finding himself arc, if it's not a dream sequence?]). And also that bts pic would indicate that the hole is already there as early as him wearing the bun and cleaning the ship, so it might not be anything *shrug*

-"that person is our boy lucius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he's wearing a beret??????"

I really really like this theory, but from what I can make out in the blurriness of the movement, this person seems to have all ten of their fingers? So idk :S I do agree he's likely the one in the Buttons zip-line shot though :D My bet is still on this being the reunion:

-"i think jim is behind stede as he breaks into the weirdly religious room we saw in the teaser when stede punches that guy??"

Yes! And I have many more thoughts about that, I wrote them down further below before I reached this part of your post 😅

-"ed in buttons's shirt looking so PEACEFUL what the HELL."

See, this is what I get for replying to your post as I read it for the first time, instead of reading the whole thing first and then replying, because yes!!!!!! My thoughts exactly!!!! I just put them a bit differently up there without realising you'd already talked about this elsewhere in the post 😅 My sincerest apologies for the way my brain works, I am now realising what a mess of a reply this is, but I'm in too deep to turn around and fix it now :P

-"what i believe is the treasure chest we see jim carrying off the ship"

I agree that the chest in Ed's quarters look like the one they're carrying off that ship, but if I may add even more details:

The guy Stede successfully punches is dressed like the crew from that same ship where Ed is dressed like the vampire clown Blackbeard version, still with the makeup on, and shooting at something¿? (I don't think whatever he's shooting at is actually Stede, because you can see Frenchie and Jim's heads on the bottom left of that shot, and they don't seem all that interested in whatever Blackbeard is currently doing, they're just focused on their loot/corpses/whatever. And idk how I feel about the theory that Izzy loses his leg because Ed shoots it, rather than just gangrene, but if we were to go with that one: what if Izzy and Stede have been collaborating in secret, and this raid is when Ed finds out? I don't want or particularly expect that prediction to actually be right, but just putting it out there *shrug emoji* It could then also lead to Ed's "very rough night" and recruiting Frenchie to help with cleaning up his act the next morning?)

Also, when Stede does his swirly bit with the coat he's very much aboard the Revenge, because that's what the internal doors look like on the ship:

But I have no idea how that fits in the timeline. I think there may be a gap between when he first finds the coat, until the moment he gets to actually put on the whole suit with the matching pants¿? Or maybe not¿? Maybe all of that is happening in eps 1-2, which is an insane amount of information¿?¿??¿¿? 🔥🙌🔥

Also, I just realised this after I wrote all of that, I think this might be Jim going in behind Stede into the "I did a punch!" room¿? What's going on?¿?¿¿?¿?¿?¿? 😭

Tl;dr, I am losing my whole mind trying to piece a timeline with this scene 🔥🙌🔥 The reunion could be as soon as ep1 going by this?¿?¿¿? While Ed is still in Kraken mode?¿¿?¿??

Edit: I figured out a more plausible timeline on its own separate post

-"the fucking hair dye dripping down izzy's forehead in this production still"

And!!!!! the whip tied to his waist too, which we see at some points throughout the trailer too :D

And yeah, my brain is fried by this point, everything else you added on the reblog I already touched on in different ways throughout this post or on the other posts I linked, so I'm gonna crawl into a hole for a nap now, or something, after I make a separate post for my revelations about that red ship!!! 🔥🙌🔥

S2 TRAILER ANALYSIS WITH 1 BILLION SCREENSHOTS

obligatory warning that this post is gonna be SOOOOOOOOOOOOO foolishly long and rambling with all my silly little theories and thoughts and if you ALSO have silly little theories and thoughts you should ABSOLUTELY share them here please!!!! we can clown so much harder when our cacophonous honking harmonizes!!!!!!!

NOW ONTO THE POST (putting it under a read more so tumblr doesn't literally explode):

-the revenge looks BUSTED AF: i don't know if this is from general disrepair when ed is in his kraken era or if she was in a battle but her sails are all dirty in the opening shot of the trailer, and later we see stede on her deck with tattered sails and ropes everywhere, AND i'm like 99% sure that the shot of buttons ziplining from one ship to another is him going from the Chinese warfleet ship to the revenge, which i'm guessing is essentially stuck bc the sails are so torn they would never be able to catch the wind strongly enough to move her. I also wonder if the shot of roach shooting a canon at something is him shooting a canon at her since we had all those allusions to her exploding from samba, vico, and david on twitter all those months ago

-stede's earring: he DOES NOT HAVE THE EARRING when we see him lying on the deck next to roach and sighing dramatically nor does he have it during his conversation with Olu about stede dumping him, but he DOES have the earring in later shots like the beach english fight and when he's talking about being a failure his whole life which means WE WILL GET TO SEE STEDE GET HIS EAR PIERCED!!!!!!!!!! we'll get to see him make the decision to look even hotter and who knows who does the piercing for him idk!!!!!! @sluterastede had a dastardly beautiful thought in her brain about ed giving stede the piercing and stede making groaning noises and izzy once again thinking they're flapping their jacks right there on the deck in front of god and everybody!!!!!

-stede is spilling his heart out ("i let him down. i should've just told him how i feel") to susan on her ship (you can tell it's her by the long hair)

-interesting that there's a drawing of a donkey next to ed's wanted poster considering s1 had the line "a rich donkey is still a donkey". also i can't really read what the surrounding posters say other than "WANTED 20 GUINEAS". is this in the republic of pirates?

-stede says "i will find him" meaning ed may be actively avoiding stede at the beginning of the season???? (or the basic laws of travel physics have finally caught up to them)

-"look, captain, you know blackbeard's gonna murder you" i just think it's interesting that Olu is referring to him as blackbeard again even though ed told everyone in his pink robe era to call him ed. like it makes sense that he'd say blackbeard considering ed is on a rampage but it just made my brain wheels start spinning

-the Kraken crew are eating cake :)

-ed is holding a torch while letting the storm rain down on him: i don't think the laugh we hear is his because i don't think his mouth is even open during that slow-mo shot

-STEDE with a TEAR in his EYE as he says "i think i hurt him pretty bad"

-ed sobbing on the floor while the little bride cake topper is next to his head

-ed choking on the weed smoke i'm ACTUALLY crying, but also: where the fuck is ed when he's sitting in the chair smoking??? i thought it was on deck at first bc above his head is really dark and it looks like the lanterns we see on the deck of the revenge but there's a chandelier too?? it might be whatever shop Anne Bonny and her friend "you two know each other?" run bc behind ed in that chair is just a bunch of random furniture and a chandelier like we see when ed and stede are at the market. in fact, i think ed is smoking with Anne Bonny because I think that's her hand in the corner of that shot:

-"you two know each other?" now hold on a sec because it kinda sounds like stede met Anne Bonny and Co. separately from Ed/before that market scene (maybe in the teaser clip of Anne on Stede's lap??) WHAT IF WE GET THE AITA SCENARIO WHERE ED AND STEDE TELL PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR VERSION OF EVENTS AND NO ONE REALIZES THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT EACH OTHER UNTIL THAT MOMENT BC THEY'RE BOTH SO BIASED ABOUT ONE ANOTHER

-the evil guy definitely got his nose sliced off by Jackie. good for her :D I also don't think the evil guy is Hornigold, i'm still holding onto my theory that the man in the white rags we saw in the teaser and this trailer are hornigold's "ghost" that ed needs to contend with to find his inner peace or whatever a la stede with nigel's "ghost". but i DO think the evil guy is the rich prince dude from that leaked audition tape from rhys's friend. if memory serves, the guy wants to buy his way into the pirate lifestyle but he's pompous and entitled which makes him reckless. based off the production stills we also got today, he still had a nose when he went into Spanish Jackie's...but i don't think he leaves with one. so because he gets butthurt over invading a space that was NOT meant for him and faces the consequences of purposely disobeying their customs, he defects to the english navy and goes on a rampage against all piracy, very MRA energy :/ also, later izzy says to him "you don't know the first thing about piracy" which would further support that this guy just tried to buy his way in

-izzy gets an honest-to-god pegleg but he doesn't start the season off with it because we see him in several shots with both legs, like the wedding raid and swordfighting stede on the beach. unsure if he loses it due to infection from the toe situation or if he gets shot in the knee like i've seen some posts talk about, but @sluterastede mentioned that one of the leaked audition tapes for archie included dialogue about an amputation so maybe that character has to uh. Get Her Roach On

-as i mentioned before with the teaser analysis, izzy is clearly training stede for something and now im guessing it's the english but like we kinda knew that !

-olu is in a bar fight??

-THE "ED GETS CAUGHT IN A BUCKET ON A ROPE DURING THE STORM AND GOES OVERBOARD" THEORY IS OUT. THE "ED TIES HIMSELF TO A MF BIG ASS ROCK AND JUMPS OFF A GOD DAMN CLIFF TO GO ON SOME SOUL-SEARCHING JOURNEY UNDER THE SEA" THEORY IS IN. and what the FUCK is the rag man doing with ed up on that cliff hello?????? if my theory is correct and that is in fact hornigold's ghost or whatever, what advice or harmful shit is he saying that makes ed do that?????????????????????? but do note the large rock with the rope around it in the first pic

-the revenge crew is blowing up SOMETHING on the side of a building. maybe to cause a distraction or gain access inside the building? is it the side of Spanish Jackie's?? also hiiiiiiii lucius <3

-"our entire escape relies on this" i'm just assuming they're trying to escape from the english bc that seems to be the Big Bad of the season??

-not plot related but during the rope swinging training session izzy slaps stede on the ass and makes this face (sir??????):

>he also has his pegleg here so their mentorship may ramp up after izzy is out of commission for hand-to-hand combat. maybe izzy was supposed to have a larger fighting role alongside ed in defeating the english but once he became incapacitated he realized he would need to train someone else up for the job so ed would be sufficiently protected. but it also had to be someone izzy knew would be willing to die for ed to save his life if it came to that, just like izzy would

-"i've been a failure my whole life. it's not so bad once you get used to it" is stede talking to ed here? is that ed's hair in the corner of the frame??

>side note: as mentioned above, stede also has his earring by this point!!

-"you're going through that 'if i was a regular dude' phase" first of all, SPANISH JACKIE AND EDWARD TEACH BEST FRIENDS TRUTHERS RISE UP. second, why would ed be considered a regular dude now?? how did he lose his reputation? did he willingly give it up or was it taken from him? is this permanent or just temporary? or did he fake his own death with the cliff and the rock thing so he could retire and live a more normal life?? the swede doesn't seem scared of him at all in the final clip from the trailer, straight up asking him if he's poor and going "back to basics". of course, that could just be a power trip from being one of Jackie's newest husbands (or at least her waitstaff)

-possibly totally minor/just a continuity error thing, but: ed has a red ring. we saw it in s1 as he picks up the rather fine cashmere and we see it as ed dramatically drapes himself across the ship's helm with his head on his hand. we do not see it in the scene where he's smoking (see above) or the scene where he's talking to the rabbit. now, if you'll allow me a little bit of clownery for a moment, red has been explicitly coded in this show to be a symbol of love/the heart, especially as it pertains to edward like his red silk scarf as a metaphor for his heart in s1. what if. what if he. gave the red ring (his heart) to. SomeOne. because.....................because his heart belongs to st--[GUNSHOTS]

-olu, jim, and archie with garlic around their necks and making a cross with their fingers - clearly they think someone is a vampire on the ship. @sluterastede proposed it could be izzy, especially if he's on the brink of death due to an infection and frenchie managed to spread his superstitions to other people on the ship!

-THIS FUCKIN GUY. WHO ARE YOU??? it seems like he kidnaps stede and his crew and throws a party on the ship and drugs the drinks which is why everyone is kinda tripping/laughing in some parts. but then everyone gets tied down (stede to the mast, wee john's hands get squished, olu and roach's heads get squished, and jim and archie's feet get secured to the ship's railing i think??). also that wide shot is definitely the rando dude hitting some shrill high note at the same moment the revenge crew cry out in pain from all the squishing (except maybe jim and archie - they might just be laughing at the others bc they're badasses and this pain is nothing). also don't know what the guy is looking at when we first see him but im thinking maybe it's a wanted poster of stede and he's looking at the description of the gentleman pirate to confirm it's the dude right in front of him/that he's captured?? also i think roach is wearing flowers from the drug party in his apron when he fires that canon, so maybe he's tripping too and shoots a canon?? i need a prayer circle for the revenge's safety at this time

-stede has a bullet hole???????????????? did ed fucking shoot him in the heart?????????????????????????? he also notably does NOT have the earring in this scene but he does have the sexy stiddies (blue) shirt like we see in the other shot where he DOES have the earring. maybe this weirdo dude pierces stede's ear bc he thinks stede needs to look more piratey?? or stede gets absolutely sloshed (or drugged) and gets his ear pierced idk !!! maybe jim does it bc they're effortlessly cool and has a bunch of ear piercings!!!

-idk if this is a coincidence or not but i'm pretty sure stede in his training scenes with izzy is wearing the clothes he wore in that final shot of s1 as he rows to find the crew on the island (white linen shirt, dark pants, brown belt and boots). so either costume changes are happening later in the season, they're reusing outfits like normal people do, or the training montage happens extremely early on in the season

-so originally with the teaser trailer i thought ed falling in the water was followed by the shot of ed coming out of the water on the beach. i don't know if i fully believe that anymore because ed is NOT wearing his jacket on the cliff (see above), but he IS wearing it as he comes up out of the water, so either it's two different events and ed just spends a lot of time in the water this season or he puts his jacket on before jumping off the cliff

-ed his holding his right side as he slashes that dude on the beach so he definitely got hurt in battle but i hope it's not him getting stabbed bc ur supposed to cleverly take the sword on the left where all the unimportant bits are :(((

-I VERY STRONGLY BELIEVE that the person in the scene where stede turns around and shoots his gun into the air and everyone else on deck suddenly draws their weapons against that person is our boy lucius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he's wearing a beret?????????? @sluterastede proposed that lucius got picked up by the english navy after getting thrown overboard and that's why we see him in the english navy garb (which we later see frenchie in too?? i believe an infiltration fuckery is afoot). also the fact that the shot immediately after this one is of Black Pete doing a happy little fist pump which i'm choosing to interpret as a cute little easter egg symbolizing Pete gets reunited with his love. i also also also believe lucius is in the shot of buttons about to zipline from one ship to the other. i missed him :')

-okay i know i said in an earlier post that stede running across the beach was romantic but i changed my mind and i think izzy is just making stede do cardio as part of his training lol. his outfit matches the one he's wearing when swordfighting izzy in that earlier wideshot and i think he even still has the scarf belt and the full beard in both scenes (explained at the end of this post via production stills) so maybe they have an honest to god training montage that takes course over several days and we get an incredible 80s powerballad to play on top of it while stede thinks of ed to motivate him or whatever. david jenkins hire me to help write season 3 i have ideas

-i think jim is behind stede as he breaks into the weirdly religious room we saw in the teaser when stede punches that guy??

-ed is pretty bloodied in the shot of stede leaning over him and saying VERY worriedly "ed????" so my theory is that ed got hurt in battle or he was taken captive by the Chinese warfleet and stede was worried he was grievously injured. however, once ed comes to and realizes who's kneeling over him, he gets pissed and headbutts stede because he's still mad at him for breaking his heart, and maybe his hands are restrained/his body is too weak so he can't push stede away. or maybe they had to begrudgingly work together on some mission and stede fucked it up and ed got hurt so he's mad about that idk!! ALSO HE'S WEARING THE CRAVAT HELLO

-ed in buttons's shirt looking so PEACEFUL what the HELL. obviously it's from the same general time as him being in Spanish Jackie's when she's talking to him about being a regular dude and later when the swede asks him if he's poor addkjfajdfhlkefh i fucking love this show and its writing so much. but ed says "no, i'm just trying something different man >:/" so i wonder if this is ed at the end of s2 or if this is more towards the middle as he's still in the thick of his healing journey. maybe buttons teaches ed about meditation and/or the tai chi he practiced with the Chinese warfleet crew??

-the BTS production still of ed with his "trust no one" tattoo also features what i believe is the treasure chest we see jim carrying off the ship in the shot where fang is smashing two dudes' heads together!

-i also think the BTS production still of stede with the beard is early on in ep 1 because he has a full beard (that im hoping someone on the revenge bullies him into shaving off to the scruff we see in the rest of the promo materials) and ALSO because he's wearing a long red scarf around his waist, which we never see again in any of the other promo material - except, however, around his neck as a makeshift cravat:

>it's the same exact material and everything! my guess is he gets his ass handed to him in a fight (maybe against izzy??) and his scarf belt gets destroyed, so he repurposes the shredded fabric into his necktie

-there's literal gold bars in the background of this production still lmao the kraken crew got BUSY during ed's goth era

>speaking of, the fucking hair dye dripping down izzy's forehead in this production still:

*sad clown noises*

in conclusion:

WE'RE BACK BABEYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

anyway that's my second dissertation on less than 2 minutes of content that turned out to be quite literally 6 pages long :)

#ofmd s2 speculation #ofmd s2 spoilers #Our Flag Means Death #Krakhouse #Born On A Beach #Thrilled To Be Granted Entry #And others #basically everyone gets mentioned in this monster of a post #ofmd meta #kind of¿?#Coolification writes

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masterweaverx · 4 years ago

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The Dumbest RWBY Oneshot Ever

Weiss Schnee was feeling, all things considered, pretty good.

Sure, she hadn’t slept in something like forty-eight hours. And, alright, the immortal witch-queen of the Grimm had parked a gods-damned WHALE as large as Beacon itself on Atlas. And even after Oscar blew it (and her) up with a magic cane, there was still the voluminous horde of shadow demons it had vomited up roving her home city while innocent citizens cowered in the subway. Not to mention the monster that had broken into her own home and terrorized everyone with its creepy speech before it died, leaving behind the mangled body of some poor silver-eyed faunus and traumatizing Ruby with the gruesome implications.

And then there Ironwood going insane, declaring them all enemies of the state, infecting Penny with a lethal virus, and threatening to blow up Mantle. If her sister was to be believed he’d also killed one council members and been barely prevented from murdering one of his own Ace Ops before they contained him. And, of course, there was the tiny fact that Weiss had herself condemned the city of Atlas to fall as a result of all that...

Realistically, she should have been weighed down with guilt, and exhaustion, and resentment, and probably a lot of other things. But what Weiss felt now was something like... relieved pride. Despite all odds, they’d saved Penny. They’d brought Ironwood to heel. They’d even killed Salem--temporarily, she was coming back, but still an accomplishment. And, as she strode down the golden path from the portal and watched people slowly trickle in from the other bright ovals in this... mysterious void, she knew that the citizens of Mantle and of Atlas would escape the calamity that had been wrought.

“Hope Vacuo has enough space for all these people,” Ruby murmured as she helped Penny along on her new feet.

Yang smirked. "If there’s one thing Vacuo has plenty of, it’s space. I’m more worried about dumping everyone on them without warning.”

“That is a tomorrow problem,” Weiss declared.

“Wow.” Blake gave her a wry grin. “I never thought I’d see the day where you, of all people, would procrastinate.”

Weiss whirled, pointing the staff of creation at Blake’s face. “Where was all this sass back at Beacon?”

“Locked behind the trauma of escaping an abusive relationship,” Blake replied casually.

“...Touché.” Weiss shrugged, stepping onto the main platform and waving at the milling crowd. “Excuse me! Can anybody tell me where the Happy Huntresses are? We need to touch base.”

“They’re over there!” a woman reported, pointing at the largest portal. “They’re helping organize everyone going through--getting families back together and all that.” She shook her head. “This is actually happening...”

Yang put a hand on her shoulder. “Yeah. World’s a crazy place. Just... focus on what you need to do now, okay?”

“Okay.” The woman nodded. “I’m going to... look for my husband.”

With a final pat, Yang broke away and the five teenagers maneuvered through the press of people. It didn’t take them too long to approach the three women near the final road, since the crowd was milling that way anyway, and the tall green-haired woman spotted them first. “Hey May, your interns are here!”

“Thanks Joanna!” The blue-haired woman waved the five of them over with a grin. “There’s the heroes of the hour!”

“Interns?” Yang put a hand on her hip. “Are we getting paid for this?”

“Sorry, no pay till you’re officially hired, but I’ll make sure you get an amazing benefits package.” May Marigold had a smile on her face despite her sardonic tone. “How are you kids feeling?”

“Well, Penny’s still getting used to her new body,” Weiss admitted.

“Toes are weird,” Penny reported in a distant tone.

Ruby wrapped her arm tighter around her shoulders. “That they are, Penny,” she agreed fondly.

“Yang and Blake are still insufferably dense,” Weiss continued.

“Okay, that’s unfair!” Yang insisted. “I know I’m dense, but Blake--”

“Yang, you’re not dense!” Blake protested. “You’re one of the smartest people I know!”

May whistled. “Yeowch, I see what you mean. How about you, princess?”

“Honestly, I’m feeling unusually giddy. Not just for this whole situation, but for me personally.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you’re awake for fifty hours straight,” Joanna admitted. “You’re going to zonk out as soon as you hit a bed.”

“I expect as much.”

May shook her head. “Well, you kids have exceeded all expectations,” she assured them with pride.

“Not an uncommon occurrence for us,” Weiss replied.

“Smug little brats. So...” she nodded at the golden rod in her hand. “That it?”

“Indeed it is. The Staff of Creation, in compact form.” Weiss spun the object in her hand. “And it’s surprisingly less heavy this way. Chalk it up to magic, I guess.”

“Right.” May turned to the side. “Hey, Fiona! Got a sec?”

“One moment!” came the reply from a short woman. "You said you can’t find your dad?”

The child in front of her nodded hesitantly. “They tooks him up to Atlas when they was taking people up,” he said.

“Well a lot of those other portals come from Atlas,” the woman replied. “So it’s probably only going to be a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay...”

“My uncle here can look after you until then.”

The child looked up at the old man with badger paws, who gave him a gentle smile. “Okay,” he said, carefully settling himself in front of the man.

Fiona smiled, turning around and joining the rest of the group. “Okay, what’s--Kids!” She skipped over gleefully. “You did it--you have no idea how grateful everyone is!”

“Aha, well, it... it was nothing,” Ruby replied awkwardly. “We just did the best with what we had--”

Joanna clapped a hand on her shoulder. “You had nothing but each other and were up against two whole armies,” she pointed out bluntly. “One had magic and Grimm, the other was Atlas. And you somehow saved everyone. Accept the damn praise already.”

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, gave a look at Penny, and reluctantly let out a small laugh. “I... guess you have a point...”

May cleared her throat. “Anyway. We have an ancient magical artifact that needs to stay out of the wrong hands.” She tilted her head toward the Staff of Creation. “Fiona, if you would?”

“Oh! Right, right.” Fiona accepted the golden rod from Weiss, absorbing it with her semblance.

“Well,” Weiss said. “Glad that’s settled--”

“Whoa.”

Something about the word made the hairs on Weiss’s neck raise.

“What... wow.” Fiona seemed to sway a little, raising her arms. “This is incredible. I have tiny hands.”

“...Fi?” May gave her a concerned look. “You doing okay there?”

Fiona looked down. She raise a leg with an experimental expression, waving it around, before putting it back down. “Huh. I’ve never felt so attached to the ground before...”

“That’s... gravity,” Joanna said blankly. “It’s called gravity.”

“Huh. Really?”

Weiss frowned. “Fiona?” When the woman didn’t respond, she shared an awkward look with May. “Um.”

Blake sighed, kneeling down in front of the short woman. “Fiona, can you focus?”

The woman looked at her strangely. “...who’s Fiona?”

“Oooooooookay yeah, this--this is weird,” May said quickly. “Maybe we shouldn’t have given her the staff--”

“The staff?” Fiona looked up her. “Wait, do you mean my staff?”

“Your... Ambrosus?” Yang stared in utter disbelief. “Is that you?!”

“Well, of course!” Fiona put her hands on her hips. “Who else would I be?”

May looked around at the collection of sighs and groans team RWBY produced. “Okay, somebody want to clue me in to what the hell is going on?”

Weiss sighed. “Ambrosus is the spirit in the staff,” she explained wearily. “So I guess when Fiona used her semblance to absorb the staff, he came along with it and...” She waved a hand at the woman.

“Wait.” Fiona, possibly, held up a hand. “Absorb the staff?”

“Fiona’s semblance lets her store things,” Joanna explained. “We thought she’d keep it safe... we’ve never tried it with anything magical before.”

May took a deep, controlled breath. “Alright. Okay. So... can we fix this? Get Fiona back?”

Blake shrugged as she stood back up. “I think if we get the staff out of her

“Alright. Hey, Fi--Ambrosus.” May crossed her arms. “Can you get out of there?”

“Hmmm.” Ambrosus snapped Fiona’s fingers--or at least tried to. It took three attempts to make a successful snap. “Huh. Okay, there might be a problem, and that problem is I don’t have my powers in this body.”

“You don’t need to create the staff,” Penny pointed out. “You need to remove it from Fiona.”

“You did hear me just say I don’t have my powers, right?”

“Then use Fiona’s semblance.”

“...Doy!” Ambrosus brought Fiona’s hand to her head in a facepalm. “Ow! Huh.” The motion was repeated. “Is this what pain feels like?”

Penny nodded--and then frowned. “Hmm.” She brought her own hand to her head. “Ouch! Oh. Pain does feel different in this body.”

“Maybe we can test that out later in a more controlled environment,” Ruby said quickly, grabbing Penny’s wrist.

“Yeah,” May agreed, frowning as Ambrosus experimentally pinched Fiona’s skin. “Hey!”

“Hmm?”

“Out!”

“Right.” Fiona’s ear’s drooped... and then Ambrosus blinked. “Oh! Motile ears! Fancy!”

Blake sighed as the ears went up and down. “Focus...”

“Right, yes.” Ambrosus held out Fiona’s arms, staring at her hands in concentration. “Semblance. Semblance. Seeeem-blance. Hmmmmnnnnn. Aura, personal manifestation. Semblance. Okay. Any moment now. Definitely going to happen okay I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but nothing’s happening.”

May clutched at her hair. “What kind of ancient spirit are you?!”

“This is new for me too, alright?”

“Maybe you can’t use Fiona’s semblance because you aren’t Fiona,” Joanna suggested.

“That--huh.” Ambrosus nodded. “You know what, that just might be it.”

“Well... switch over and let her have control,” Yang offered. “Like Oz does, you know?”

“Huh. Okay, okay.” Fiona’s eyes shut, and Ambrosus took a deep breath. “Just have to focus inward. Hmmm. No, those seem to be automatic functions... no, that’s... oh, that’s an interesting memory... oh, hmm, closer... Oh! There she is and--oh.”

“Oh?” May said. “What’s oh?”

“Oh is ‘she’s been cognizant this whole time,” Ambrosus replied awkwardly.

Weiss pinched her brow. “Of course. Just... give her control, already.”

“Right, right, yes. I am so sorry for the trouble, miss, I’ll just--”

One moment Fiona was casually rolling a hand as Ambrosus talked. The next she was stock still, standing in a position far to casual for her suddenly blank expression.

“...Fi?” May lowered her hands. “You, uh--?”

With perhaps a bit too much speed, the staff of creation reformed in Fiona’s hand. She shoved it into May’s grasp, taking a few deep breaths. “Oooookay, that was weird.” Her voice was shaky, but not quite panicking. “Freaky and weird and please never ask me to do anything like that again.”

“I am so sorry,” Ruby said quickly. “I--I swear we didn’t know--”

“I know you didn’t, you’re good kids, I’m just going to... cling to Joanna for a bit.”

May sighed as she watched Fiona wrap her arms around Joanna’s waist. “Yeah, that... yeah,” she said, clearly not able to find the words to express her frustration.

“You said it,” Yang replied.

Blake sighed. “Well... at least that’s one unexpected complication dealt with. I hope nothing worse happens.”

"Citizens of Mantle!

Everyone turned to see Cinder Fall flamboyantly flinging off a black cape into the void.

“Bring me the Winter Maiden,” she demanded. “Or face the infinite depths!”

Weiss groaned. “Of course.” She pulled out Myrtenaster. “Let’s just get this over with...”

#The Dumbest RWBY Onshot Ever #RWBY #V8 #Spoilers #V8 Spoilers #Fanfiction #Fiona Thyme #Ambrosus #May Marigold #Joanna Greenleaf #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Penny Polendina #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xiao Long

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captlok · 4 years ago

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Pacifism Isn’t A Character Trait

Or: MLK Day is Upon Us so Let Me Do You a Learn

Or: As An Aang Stan I Got a Bit Over-Zealous But Lemme Explain Why For A Hot Minute

Plus some History and Tumblr commentary that even non-ATLA fans can chew on

And by ‘hot minute’ I do mean this is going to be a long meta, so strap in. For those of you who just might be tuning into this debacle, I, a person who has not used Tumblr, much at all, except for the last half year, ran into some trouble.

If you wanna skip the whole TLDNR interpersonal stuffs and get straight to Why Aang is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, I will embolden the relevant parts, and italicize the crit of Korra, if you want that alongside.

I was excited that ATLA was seeing a resurgence due to the Netflix remake. I wasn’t even trying to apply any steep expectations for it. (learned not to do that the hard way with the last live action adaption, and to a much lesser extent, ATLOK, since it had good . . . elements, *ba dum tsshh*)

So, these are a couple aspects of the issue: (1) Even on the internet, I am extremely introverted and until recently mostly came for content, not socializing. My main online interactions thus far have been in forums and artist-to-artist on DA. Tumblr is still very strange to me because it splits up its ‘threads’ so you can’t see all the replies if a certain pattern of users responds in their own space. I’m not even 100% sure it’s in chronological order, and replies are not nested next to each other so you can look in the comments and someone will be replying to something you can’t see in that window. And also since it is a bizarre hybrid of a blogging system, posts are somehow considered ‘owned by’ or an ‘extension of’ OP in a way forum threads are not. (2) ATLOK was good in a cinematic and musical way, to be sure. It also had some good concepts. I can go into it just appreciating it for the worldbuilding and be somewhat satisfied. But the execution was terrible. I was on AvatarSpirit.Net for years, and If I had maintained my presence on ASN to current day and had gotten around to downloading their archive now that the forum is dead, I would include some links to other peoples’ detailed analyses on just how flawed both the plotting and Korra’s frustratingly flat learning curve was especially in the first two seasons. But, that is a task for another day, and only if people are interested.

No, what I’m addressing today, on the issue of Korra as a writing exercise, is how Mike and Bryan said specifically they wanted to make her ‘as opposite to Aang as possible’ and in so doing, muddied the central theme of the original ATLA series.

Now, again, I was mainly an art consumer for my first major round of ATLA fandom. Tumblr is an alien beast to me. But, after I write my first major Aang meta, talking about how amazing it is that he has the attitude he does, and how being content in the face of this overwhelming pain and suffering is an ONGOING PROCESS and an INTENTIONAL DECISION and not a simple PERSONALITY TRAIT, I start hearing that Aang gets a lot of hate from the fandom. Now this would be bad enough if it were merely people not liking his crowning moment of pacifism because they don’t understand the potential utility (I’ll elaborate on that in another post) or the ethics involved.

Aang is easily the most adult member of the Gaang. But he apparently gets hate for his few moments where he actually acts his age, a preteen, and maybe kisses a girl in a historical timeframe in which ‘consent’ discussions were probably nonexistent. Even in the present day, we are still practically drowned in movies that reinforce this kissing without asking trope. And even some female bodied people complain that asking kills the mood! But somehow he is responsible and reprehensible for this, even though the first time she kissed him back. I’m only going to get into the pacifism discussion today, but that was just another layer of annoyance bouncing around in the back of my head. Other peoples’ crit of Korra that was stewing in my subconscious, plus this Aang bashing, which thankfully I had not directly read much of, made up the backdrop of gasoline for the match that set it off. Even that seems a pretty melodramatic way to phrase what I actually said, which was: Aang, on the other hand, lost dozens of father figures and was being steamrolled by Ozai who was gloating about genocide TO HIS FACE, yet he still reigned in all that quote, ‘unbelievable rage and pain’ (The Southern Raiders). We Stan Aang, the Superior Avatar. No I did not f**king stutter. #AangSupremacy In another meta, someone complained that I was too defensive of Aang as a character and didn’t apply literary analysis enough, which I quickly rectified.

What set this off? Someone was kind of indirectly praising the line from Korra, “When I get out of here, none of you will survive” To them it was emotionally resonant or whatever, and I have to point out that no, it was a martial artist not having control of their state of mind, as is the bedrock of the practice. It was never addressed by the narrative, which is a severe oversight. I had a conversation with someone in the chats, making this distinction between Korra’s character traits and life philosophy. If she were to kill people while enraged and she was fine with that, that’s one thing. But if she regretted it, that’s a whole other kettle of fish. People argue that she comes from a warrior culture, unlike Aang.

Never mind that warrior monks are a thing. That’s what Shaolin monks are. You can be a pacifist and skilled at fighting. Those things are not mutually exclusive, which is the whole point of Bagua, Aang’s style. And also, Katara’s style.

That’s one reason I like Kataang so much- their congruent styles. Both of their real world martial arts are dedicated to pacifism, even though ATLA specifically doesn’t spell that out for Katara and her learning arc.

There was a meta where someone briefly tried to argue that knowing “martial arts” is against pacifism. No. Quite the opposite. I’d argue that you are not a true pacifist unless you know exactly how to handle yourself if someone attacks you. If you are not in a position to make conscious decisions about how much force to use, rather than merely operating on survival instincts, that is not pacifism. Or at least, not any energy or effort towards pacifism as a practical everyday tool. I’ve made a few attempts to learn some tai chi and aikido, and it’s improved my physical and mental health, but some other things have gotten in the way. #lifegoals

I’m not going to tag the unfortunate soul whom I was replying to, because they’re probably tired of all this, but I’ll be sending them a PM to say that I’ve made this into a different post, because as I mentioned before, threads are somehow considered “owned” by OP, so it’s been pointed out to me that I should separate it. I also said, I have basically ZERO respect for Korra uttering violent threats when the writers already minted a far more emotionally devastated and yet still resilient and centered character earlier in their franchise. People always try to excuse away people who genuinely like Aang more. As if it’s just nostalgia or whatever. For me, no, it’s absolutely not. It is respect for a character who stands toe to toe with real people who are kind in the face of overwhelming injustice. (I have another meta on that).

Both OP and people in the chats try to make excuses that she wasn’t raised as a pacifist, and that would be fine if they had addressed it with Tenzin and she had stated outright that she was rejecting pacifism and mind training. As it is, we are left with this nebulous affair where the lines between ideology and personality traits are blurred.

We are told she “has trouble with spirituality” but what does that even mean? Does she have trouble with focus? Does she have trouble relating to the canonically real spirits? And pacifism specifically nor inner peace that it flows from is never even talked about as an extension of spirituality, which is canonically tied to airbending.

“Aang didn't have to deal once with the loss of his autonomy in atla” OP claims.

This was after I had noted that Aang was getting kicked around by Ozai and was most likely going to die. Similarly, someone in the chat rejected the idea that a 12 year old trapped in a stone sphere that is heating up under a cyclone-sized blowtorch feels powerless.

Sorry but that’s flat out ridiculous.

No one wants to admit that both of these people were faced with similar situations, and when push came to shove, one showed his LIFE PHILOSOPHY through conscious effort, and the other was abandoning the basis of martial arts, which is, no matter what the situation, keep thinking. Hold the panic at bay. Non-attachment would have served her well in this situation. Tenzin should have told her this. Before, or afterwards. It should have been addressed in the writing.

People see this as “bashing” Korra, and oh well, can’t help that. If I think the writers didn’t follow through on their themes, that is my concern. OP said I was “offended.” No, not really.

I wasn’t offended by the post itself, or its commentary. Thought I made that pretty clear.

This is not dramatics. Let me be blunt.

As a ideological pacifist, and an actual practitioner of meditation, based on Buddhism, NOT just the fan of some show, I am for calling out writers who write one way from the survivor of genocide, and then stray from that ‘thoughtless aggression is immoral no matter HOW hurt I am’ to ‘let’s not address this character’s aggression in the narrative whatsoever.’ OP attempted to derail by accusing me of being racist or sexist against Korra. Also ridiculous. It honestly should have set me off more, but it didn’t.

Meditation is about reigning in your emotions. Managing your anger when it gets out of hand, and digging down to the roots of it. Being responsible for your own behavoir. Acknowledging ownership of your own actions. Not blaming anything YOU DO on anyone else or any circumstances in your life. Like an adult, or should I say, an enlightened adult.

Or at the very least, that is the ideal ypu strive towards while being imperfect in the present.

. . .

Now.

I’m going to quote a passage in a Google Doc of mine, even though I’d really prefer if you asked to read the whole thing, with context.

“What do humans do when it is necessary to, or greed makes a nation want to recruit?

They go to the army to get trained, right?

Granted, having someone scream and get spittle on your face is, in the grand scheme of things, poor preparation for having bullets whiz past your chest and grenades shatter your ears. And, what do you do to prepare you for the pain of getting your leg blown off? Hopefully, nothing. Like taking a test where you only got half the study guide. But, it’s about the most ethical way to go about it, right?

Not everyone even sees action. So any more more extensive mental preparation for physical pain than that, and you’d have people definitely protesting.

Well, as it turns out, pacifistic protestors themselves, if they were in the right time and place, also very intentionally do this type of mind training. Except, when they did it, they actually did sit still and took turns roughly grabbing each other and throwing each other down and in some cases, even kicking and bruising each other.

Turns out, those pacifists are, in some ways, more hardcore than the army.

Why is this?

Because a pacifist’s aim, unlike a unit, who wants to gain the upper hand in a situation, is to grit their teeth and grind their way through all those survival instincts, and totally submit.

In this, they aim to get the sympathy of the public, who clearly sees they are not aggressive, or a danger, no matter how much the footage is manipulated or suppressed.

In this, they hope to appeal to their attacker’s better nature.

Make them stop and think, wait a second, are these people a threat like we’re told they are? I’m attacking someone who’s letting me beat them up. Or a bunch of people. All forming a line, and letting us peel them off. Or sitting, and bowing their heads. If I’m on the ‘right’ side of things, the law, why am I doing this?

It’s not like a bully, who’s just a kid.” They’re more self-aware.

And might I add the situation influences a pacifist’s actions too. There’s no reason to let a single or a few random attackers beat you up if you can evade or disable without permanent damage.

Pacifism is a dynamic set of responsive actions informed by values. Not a proscribed set or a checklist.

But in terms of organizing against state power, and recording wrongdoing, which unlike during the Civil Rights can happen from all angles from smart phones nowadays, these are the motivations.

“So, the pacifist knows this, and that’s why they go through all that trouble of training themselves to, not only submit, but not turn tail and run, either.”

See, a character trait is something like being a morning person, or ways of handing information, or a given set of emotions a character feels. Once you cross over into actions, you must make the distinction of whether an impulsive character agrees with their own uncontrolled actions, or is embarrassed or remorseful. Those are life philosophy. Now sure, one type of person or character may be more likely to subscribe to pacifism, but there is no gatekeeping on what you have to feel or how you look at things. You can be easygoing, or feel all the rage in the world, but as long as you at least attempt to have a handle on those desires and feelings to where they do not cross into actions, you are still doing the work of metacognition, which is what martial arts and its accompanying mind training are for.

It’s what we see Aang do.

He’s informed us, during the Southern Raiders, on how much rage and pain he feels.

Pain points, TRIGGERS, that were directly struck at when Ozai gloated over him.

He joins with all the past Avatars for several moments, and just like every other time he is in the Avatar State, he is enraged. He wants to exact revenge on the unrepentant grandson of a baby murderer.

We see it when he turns his head away, face still screwed up in anger.

For another example, I could cite my difficulties in being aware and reining in my tongue sometimes. I know the roots of these issues and I seek to let them go.

It’s just that process takes way longer than Guru Pathik would have us assume.

In fact, I would even say that Aang’s portrayal throughout the three seasons is not strictly a realistic representation of at least the sad side of grief. I addressed that a little when I talked about real life figures. But what it IS, is a metaphor that cuts very deep to the heart of pacifism. As I showed in that Doc . . . There is no limit of suffering a pacifist is willing to go through, internal or external, for the preservation of peace.

This was demonstrated during the Civil Rights, and with Gandhi and all his followers beforehand, inspiring them. The pacifists’ method of swaying hearts is probably the reason BLM exists in such numbers as it does today. Will the types of narratives that correspond with their full stories of the way they collectively planned and trained for and approached conflict make it into fantasy media? I’d say, probably not. For a host of reasons.

It could be hoped for, I guess.

But we DO have Aang.

As for myself, whether speaking sharply is an “action,” per se is up for debate- certainly it doesn’t seem to violate the non-aggression principle put forth by the vision of a “stateless society.”

For another example, let’s take my explanation at the beginning. I am examining how circumstances affected my actions, and now am attempting to fix it, if indeed it needs to be fixed.

At least one person said that it not so much what I said, but how and when I said it. I don’t actually think I’ve said anything “wrong” per se. So I have to figure it out.

[I’m considering splitting up this next part into a second post, as it only slightly relates to pacifism itself and is just kinda some more commentary on Tumblr itself- Tumblr discourse, as it were]

[I’ll put more brackets when I’m done in case you want to skip this part as well]

An interesting social difference between Tumblr and other places is this command you often get, “don’t chat/reblog/message me back.”

This is interesting for several reasons. For chats and reblogs, other people may be following the “conversation,” so it’s actually pretty rude and presumptuous to tell a person not to respond to whatever you said, because other people watching still may be interested in your take.

In a forum setting, if someone involved in a conversation doesn’t have anything left to say, usually they just don’t respond.

This method would work perfectly fine for Tumblr, but for some reason, maybe its super odd format, probably due to the “ownership”/“extension of self” I mentioned at the beginning of the essay, people don’t tend to do this.

Now, in comment sections, sometimes you’ll run across an amusing sort of “mutually assured destruction” where two people both say this to each other. You’d better stop responding. Omg just give up. Why are you still arguing. Etc.

But see, no matter where this behavoir pops up, and no matter who starts in on it, those who do this usually want to have the last say on the matter.

Instead of merely not replying, they want to assert verbal control over the conversation.

Tumblr, in its weirdness, is also sort of like a mutant comments section. You can post comment section threads as your own post.

Which is one reason why I’m puzzled when people say ‘don’t read the comment sections’ when Tumblr is so popular.

I’m an oddball in that I browse comment sections for fun.

Probably due to alexithymia, I didn’t really comprehend the emotional toll it takes on many people, so the warnings to “stay out of comment sections” read to me like “hey don’t eat that dessert.” After I’m done with the ‘meal’ of an article or art, I like to see what lots of different people have to say about it. The fluff. Anything vitriolic I either blip over, or extract anything useful, or if I judge the person is reasonable enough, I might engage.

Sometimes I mis-judge on how reasonable someone is, and I shrug and move on after being cussed out or whatever.

In this, I suppose I succeed much of the time in being a verbal pacifist.

[But let’s get back to the more serious stuff.]

We’re talking about what is done in life or death situations, here.

For myself, I may in the near future be working more with dangerously mentally ill people. I’ve had a little exposure to it through various means. Nurses are obligated not to retaliate against patients, and those who have, have been fired in some situations. Again oddly, this is not primarily what triggers my anxiety. Unfortunately enough, this requirement has also resulted in nurses getting seriously injured and violated. I hope to influence whether “no harm” techniques such as tai chi and aikido and arm locks may be allowed. The voluntary philosophy I was luckily already on board with is enforced by bureauacracy, directly relevant to my potential profession.

Were someone to get involved in a dangerous profession, such as a police officer, their moral duty would also be to own up to any spur of the moment anger or fear they acted on.

It’s just that their bureaucracy acts differently, in excusing their actions.

Ideally, they would be taking steps far in advance, to avoid this often-cited fear of death reaction. As training pacifists like Aang do.

And yes, army people are trained differently than police officers because the army, often, even when threatened, is supposed to avoid engagement or deploy deterrents that are non-lethal almost all costs, unless ordered otherwise. Whereas American police are given pretty much complete discretion and often not taught de-escalation techniques. Even police from other nations are better trained in that regard.

Enter the ironically named @avatarfandompolice whose account description should really speak for itself. Combative, dismissive, and their attention-hungry bread and butter is to find people they think it’s acceptable to ridicule. They basically tried to say trauma was a valid excuse to take out your anger on other people, and in this situation, potentially kill.

Now, does this hold up in the real world? Yeah, sometimes. Especially if some law breaker or law keeper has not been given the anger management tools, they perhaps could be excused, or better yet, rehabilitated.

But especially if anyone finds themselves in dangerous situations, or intends to put themselves in such, it falls to them to do this preparation.

As an aphant, I am at a bit of a disadvantage, compared to an average martial artist, being unable to visualize an attacker. But I still attempt it.

As the main “police officer” of the world- the coincidentally blue clad figurehead that is supposed to keep order, it is apparently fine for Korra to not do the work Aang did to keep level. To blow it off as too much trouble: clearing the First Chakra of fear. For herself or others. And its resultant anger. Had she had access to the Avatar State, the authority figure pretty much would have killed people. This is what the “fandom police” and a certain chat goer ultimately support. Maybe they didn’t understand it that way, and since the second had blocked me, they will also never see this explanation. Unless I were to share it in Google Doc form I suppose.

So, I responded. “Remember kids, you are not responsible for your own behavior if you have the excuse that someone else did something bad to you.” A frighteningly common sentiment on this site.

When it’s low stakes like CAPSLOCKING or internet fights, that’s not such a big deal. But what happens if this attitude leaks into the real world? This isn’t even about Korra or Aang anymore, it’s about toxic mindsets. I didn’t know fans taking pro-Korra posts as anti-Aang was a common in the fandom. I’ll say again I’ve only just gotten really active on Tumblr like the past few months. This is about pacifism itself. MLK and his hardworking, training followers (yes some of them sixteen and POC and not super-powered like Korra) facing down firehoses and staging sit-ins long trained for would shake their heads at this defense of reactionism.

Pacifism is not a Personality Trait.

It is deliberate actions and preparation taken over a period of time.

Then the “fandom police” tried more of this, and these two conversations ensued, the comments with another user resulting in the title and main thesis of this essay:

https://captlok.tumblr.com/post/638777472806273024/avatarfandompolice-response-to-my-independent

https://captlok.tumblr.com/post/638806142933467136/the-plight-was-not-what-i-was-getting-at-it-was

#atla #lok #atlok #atla meta #pacifism #martin luther king #civil rights era #history #blm #mlk #mlkday2021

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martellthemandalor · 4 years ago

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Fight or Flight - Part 1

Pairing: Frankie ‘Catfish’ Morales x F!Reader

Warnings: langauge, mentions of drugs, alcohol, mentions of violence, no Tom becuase I hate him

Rating: T (teen)

Word Count: 4.5K+

A/N: After nearly a month of not writing (fuck you writers block), I’m finally here with this Frankie fic. It’s going to be a two parter and part two will hopefully be posted next week, but I’m off to uni this weekend so I’ll have to see if I have the time to finish and post it. As always, likes are appreciated, reblogs encouraged and feedback is adored. (Also my Spanish sucks, please correct me if you see any mistakes)

Masterlist

GIF credit: @conveniently-available

You thought you’d started seeing things when you’d caught the shadowed face of Santiago Garcia, an ex squadmate, staring at you across the market plaza. You weren’t sure whether to be glad you weren’t going insane, or pissed that he’d ignored your blatant choice to ignore him when he had slid into the booth opposite you. Cocking an eyebrow at your old friend, you took a long swig of your beer.

He responded with a familiar smile, one you hadn’t seen in years. He was still as infectious as he was all those years ago, a single smile all it took to break your nonchalant air. You rolled your eyes as a grin broke across your face, shaking your head at him.

“Long time no see Pope,” you started, sliding your bottle across the table to him. He accepted the drink, taking a sip of the cold liquid. It was something the two of you had started back in your squad days, often choosing to share a bottle of whatever alcohol you could get your hands on in celebration. Initially you shared because alcohol was as rare as a total eclipse while at base, but it had quickly evolved into your own tradition. You watched with careful eyes as he handed the bottle back to you. “And here I’d thought I had done a good job of disappearing.”

He laughed at that. The deep belly laugh that, as much as you didn’t want to admit, you had missed so much. You and Santiago had been close friends, practically family, back in the Delta Force. When you went through your early retirement you had told yourself that disappearing was the easier choice, that it would save you a lot of heartache, but you’d be lying to yourself if you said it didn’t hurt like hell to leave him like that.

“You certainly made it fun to track you down, Athena,” He replied, eyes sparking when your own met his in shock of hearing your old call sign. “But it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I take it that means you didn’t get my text then?”

“Given that I ditched my old phone when I left, no,” You took another sip of your drink, before slowly setting it back on the table. “What do you want Santi?”

He leant forward, voice dropping to an enticing rumble.

“I’ve got us a job,” You rolled your eyes at him and opened your mouth to make a smart ass remark. Santi knew you to well and saw what was coming, quickly continuing before you have chance to speak. “Seventeen thousand up front for a weeklong recce, all paid for by the narcotics unit down there. But if we go through with it there’s potential for major upside, I’ve cut a deal with the agency. We keep twenty five percent of whatever we seize.”

“That twenty five percent doesn’t mean shit if it’s some drug running nobody, Pope. Who are we going after?" You ask, reaching for your bottle.

He dropped back in his seat, arms crossing against his chest. His jaw ticked for a moment, stretching out the seconds before dropping his bombshell.

“Lorea.” He shrugged.

“No shit?” Your response was almost instant, disbelief lacing your tone as your hand froze, millimetres away from the frosted glass. “The guy’s a ghost Pope, even my people can’t trace him.”

“I got solid intel, my informant says he’s holed up in a safe house with all his cash, over seventy five million dollars.” He raised both his brows in emphasis, reaching forward to snatch the bottle in front of your hovering fingertips. You watched in stunned silence as he brought the bottle to his lips. Santi chuckled at your expression.

“Fuck me.” Was all you managed to say, gratefully accepting the drink Santiago passes back. You took a long swig, using the little time the action gave to gather your thoughts a little. “Look Pope, I imagine you’ve already got the boys lined up for thi-”

“Nope, I’ve come to you first. I need you on this hermana, your skills are invaluable.” His eyes were pleading with you, chocolate irises piercing into your own. Paired with his boyish smile it was almost enough to make you give in.

Almost.

“But you are getting the boys together, and if you’re getting all of them together… I just can’t Santiago,” you stressed, your tone dejected. Part of you hoped that he only needed you, maybe then could have justified going. “Look, I’ve got a good gig here. I can’t just up and leave for a week with the boyband, stalking around some god forsaken jungle.”

“Is that so?” He smirked at you, eyebrow quirking slightly.

“You know full well there isn’t a lot of good work I get with my ‘skill set’, private security was the best move. It’s really not the sort of job I can disappear from for any amount of time.”

“Oh is that what they call it now?”

It was true that ‘private security’ was a pretty lose term for your job. You were certainly a form of security, but the mansions you protected were occupied by brazen CEO’s whose companies had less than reputable backgrounds. ‘Private Army’ was probably a more accurate job description. Or ‘Gun for Hire’.

“Fuck off Pope, like your job is any better,” You sniped, throwing a dangerous look across the table. Santi threw an equally serious face back at you. Neither of you could keep it up for long though, your stern expressions melting away with a light hearted laugh.

“I missed you Santi,” The sentiment behind your words rang sincere and true.

“I’ve missed you to hermana, I’m sure the other boys have as well.”

You scoffed.

“I’m sure two out of three of them do.”

Pope gave you a pointed look, and then leaned in to rest his forearms on the table.

“Frankie has definitely missed you Athena,” He stated, his voice low as his eyes flickered across your face. He watched as anger sparked across your features, scattering across your face like embers spitting from a fire.

“Frankie has no right to miss me,” You all but spat it at him. Seeing him open his mouth to protest, you cut off his oncoming plea with a sharp “You know exactly why.”

Santi slumped back into the worn cushion of the booth, running a hand down his face. He had hoped the resentment you harboured for your ex had faded over the past few years, but the way your words are filled with venom as you spoke his name he knew that opposite was true. If that was the case, then convincing you to join the job was going to be twice as hard. He shook his head at you.

“I don’t, actually. No one but you and Frankie knows what actually happened that day. You know that the reports for ops like ours are never truthful, our mistakes and injuries always get omitted,” Your sudden laugh caused Pope to pause, a short and sarcastic bark that was quickly followed by a swig of beer. “Look. You know I really need you on this, but I also need Fish. This job requires a pilot and he’s the best one I know.”

“I don’t care Pope. I’m not going if he’s going to be there, simple as. Find someone else with my ‘skill set’, god knows I can give you the contacts.”

With that you hauled your bag over your shoulder and went to leave the booth, pushing the glass bottle over to Santi to finish.

You thought you’d been successful in storming off. He didn’t say a word to stop you, just watched with marksman intensity as you slid out the booth. As you strode past him however, his hand darted out to firmly grip your wrist. Twisting towards him, you found whatever expletives that were rising in your throat died on the tip of your tongue. Those damn eyes of his placated you in an instant. Big and brown and mirroring a look you know you’ve given him so many times in the past.

“Please hermana. I need people I can trust on this, and there’s no one I trust more than you. I know you’ve seen what Lorea does to the city, hell to the whole damn country, but it’s getting personal now. I need to stop him. I need you to help me stop him,” He pleads. It makes you hesitate. You know all the terrible things that have happened under Lorea’s reign, seen first-hand a few of them. It was all Santi needed, he sees the new chink in your armour and jumps to rush into the gap before it closes you from him again.

“Seventeen thousand guaranteed, more if we go through with it, probably enough that you’ll never have to pick up a gun again. A week of work. AND I’ll personally make sure Fish doesn’t talk to you, if that’s what you want. Okay?”

There’s a silence, a lengthy pause where he can see the cogs turn in your head. Your eyes search his face, you’re not entirely sure what it is you’re looking for, but whatever your gaze meets seems to harden your resolve. Dropping your head back you groan dramatically.

“Fine. Alright I’ll do it. You better make good on those promises though.”

“When have I ever not Athena?” Pope grins at you, grabbing his own bag and standing up to join you. He brings you in for a proper hug, both of you grinning and laughing in each other’s ears. When you break he wraps his arm around your shoulders, the two of you walking out the bar in perfect step. That was something else that hadn’t changed then, you and he having a freaky twin-like way of mirroring each other. Even after all this time.

“Remind me again why we had Will as point on all our missions? You are so much more persuasive, and easier to listen to.” You gave him a poke on his ribs, causing another laugh to rumble from his chest.

“I don’t know hermana,” He replied, giving your own ribs a poke. “Now where’s good to eat around here, I’m starving.”

Frankie looked at the text on his phone once again. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, the amount that Pope was promising and just for a consultation alone.

“Hey, Fish, you coming?” Benny slapped down the end of the white tape wrapped around his hand, securing it in place.

“Right behind you Benny,” He replied, slipping the device back into its designated pocket. There was only one thought running rings around his head since he’d received the illusive message.

Had you been recruited for this job too?

Fish knew that you and Santiago had been close friends throughout your army days, the pair of you having closer ties than the rest of squad, save for Will and Benny of course. A bond like that, it doesn’t go forgotten, he knows better than most that even when severed, it leaves a lingering ghost.

Maybe it had pulled Pope to call you in. Maybe it had even convinced you to say yes.

Benny slapped the lockers as the pair rounded the corner of the changing room, the abrasive metallic clanging drawing Frankie out of the black hole of his thoughts.

“Aw yeah where my corner men?” Benny chanted, beelining for Santiago.

Frankie didn’t want to look. Instead he walked swiftly up Will, greeting him with a solid embrace. Pulling away, Will gave him a look. It was one of encouragement and almost… sympathy? Frankie’s gaze dipped away from the blonde man, sending a glance towards his old friend.

A tap on his arm from Will gave him the courage he needed. He turned towards Santiago, head down, hoping that going in hat first would somehow protect him. He painted a smile on his face, swiping his hand to swat at Pope’s arm.

“Hey! todos los días que're más feo,” (“Everyday you’re uglier”) He joked, a genuine chuckle escaping his lips when Santi responded by grabbing the open ends of his jacket.

“Ah, pequeño pendejo,” (“You little shithead”) Santi laughed and pulled Frankie into a hug. He felt a little of his anxiety melt away, things seeming to be normal so far. No ghosts. “Me alegro de verte.” (“good to see you”)

Frankie settled onto one of the benches, watching his hands as they lay clasped, but still fidgeting, in his lap.

“Did you boys get my text?” The answering silence to Santiago’s question was deafening. Not that it put him off of course, if anything the hush just spurred Pope on more. “Yeah? Fish?”

Hearing Pope say his call sign felt almost foreign, even as it sent him hurtling back through time. Back into an apparition of the three of you laughing, joking, ribbing light-heartedly at the names bestowed upon you.

This time it was Santi who ripped him from his thoughts.

“I need a pilot, I can’t do this thing without you.”

“I don’t know man,” Frankie shook his head at his hands, “I got out of this for a reason.”

Lie. There was way more than a single reason. One of which he prayed wasn’t going to round those lockers, like he had mere minutes before.

“What… what does that mean?” Pope questioned in disbelief. “Did you read the text? This can change your life forever Frankie.”

Fish scoffed, rising from the bench. He knew exactly how much this could change his life. However, it didn’t mean it would be changed for the better.

It was easy for Pope to say, to propose it, this had been his life for years, long after the squad had gone their separate ways. The only way to fuel his need to make a difference was, in his eyes, to pick up a gun and do it himself. Frankie still remembered his justification for running back into violence.

“What happened to that bullshit about going back to your Mother’s homeland and empowering the people to police themselves?” Fish’s arms crossed as he fired Pope’s words back at him, a subtle stab that didn’t go unnoticed by the group. Pope chuckled softly in response, his expression hardening for a split second.

“Anyway,” Frankie continued. “I lost my licence. I can’t even fly right now.” His steady gaze dropped at that, the cold water of shame settling deep in his stomach at the admission.

Pope was unfazed, pressing on with double the determination.

“Well, I don’t need a pilot with a licence. I’m in with the army down there,” He took a step towards his capped friend, steadily pressing into the bubble Frankie had built around him. Pope ducked his head slightly, trying to catch his evading eyes. “I just need a pilot I can trust.”

“Yeah. I don’t think so.” Frankie shot back, not missing a beat.

He watched as Popes mouth pressed into a firm line, chucking out a soft “Okay,” before starting on a passionate ramble about Lorea. Fish purposely turned away, tuning out the determined voice of his friend in favour of watching Benny prep for his fight. He hoped that the obvious shun of Santiago’s efforts would make his stance clearer. If he could get any clearer than the obvious “No.” he had given seconds before.

“… There’s a winning lottery ticket stuck to the bottom of your cowboy boot.” The words were spoken close to his ear, swinging his attention back to his exasperated friend. Fuck it. Maybe if he bites at Santi’s line just a little, then his focus would turn to one of the other guys. “Every guy in that gym would jump at this-”

Pope’s voice stalled just slightly, his eyes darting momentarily behind Frankie’s head. Confusion flashed across Fish’s features, until he heard the voice.

That voice, so saccharine sweet and smooth, that haunts him more than any horror he’s seen. Your voice.

“You gonna win for me, Benny?”

Your grin was wide, arms folded casually as you leaned against the chilling metal of the lockers.

“Athena!” Benny all but roared, surging towards you and swiftly gathering you in his arms. Your own came around his neck as he swung you round. “I’m most certainly going to win now my good luck charm is here.” He said, setting you back down on your feet. You could feel Frankie’s stare burning into the back of you as you let your touch linger just a little longer than necessary, fingertips dancing gently across the bare expanse of Benny’s shoulders.

“Good luck charm, hmm? Does that mean you’ve been losing without me around?” You teased, palms resting on Benny’s firm chest.

“No ma’am, just means that winning will be twice as easy now.” He said, squeezing your hips, a move that didn’t go unnoticed. Then you moved to the other Miller brother.

“Hey Will, how you been?” You asked, arms wrapping round him in a much softer embrace. He chuckled against your ear.

“I’ve been fine, better for seeing you though, Ath,” Will pulled back, hands coming to rest in his pockets. “After you left we didn’t think we’d see you again, where’ve you been?”

“A few places, all over America really, went abroad a couple times. Paris was particularly nice I must say.” You replied nonchalantly.

“Paris, eh? Well you’ve certainly done the best out of all of us.” Will acknowledged, a hand coming out to squeeze your shoulder lightly. Your smile was wide and genuine, beaming at the bearded blonde. He responded with a smile of his own, quiet pride etched across his soft eyes.

“We always knew she would,” Pope spoke up, striding over to you. “Athena was destined for better things than us from the start, you boys knew that when you named her for a Greek goddess.” He cajoled, nudging your arm lightly.

“Santiago, you flatter me. C’mere, idiot.” You laughed lightly, pulling in your best friend for a solid hug.

Pope’s shoulders were squared when he finally let go. Your eyes immediately clocking the way he was winding himself tight. His brow ticked up in silent question.

A lull fell over the locker room. The electric energy radiating from Benny made the air thrum as you assessed the potential for disaster. The silence was deafening, if only momentary, as the boys tensely awaited your next move.

Pope’s words swirled in your mind.

“I’ll personally make sure Fish doesn’t talk to you”

You had your hard out.

This time though, you didn’t want to take it.

You turned to your ex-boyfriend, seeing his figure slightly hunched and arms firmly crossed.

“Hello, Frankie.”

The words detonated on everyone at the same time, the potential implications rippling across the boys. No one knowing this time what the true aftermath would look like.

He didn’t even meet your gaze.

“Hey Athena.” His tone was blunt, cold, unfeeling. It slammed right into your gut, worse than any blow you’d taken before.

The bastard.

Santi must have sensed the bonfire building in you, his frame coming to block your path to Fish. Before he had chance to say anything though, Benny’s adrenaline became your saving grace.

“C’mon focus guys, it’s fight night!” He chided, throwing a lifeline into the centre of oppressive atmosphere. Will was the quickest to grasp at it, snapping his focus onto his brother.

“Yeah, don’t worry about that bullshit.” he said calmly, throwing a gentle look over at Frankie.

“Sorry, Benny.” You conceded, scratching the back of your neck.

“You ready for this?” Will checked. You knew on these nights that he was often more anxious than his brother, though he would die before ever admitting that to his younger sibling.

“Hell yeah.” Benny confidently replied.

Frankie’s jaw ticked as he pretended not to watch the way you had linked arms with Benny, walking in perfect step with him out the room.

Santi hadn’t said a word about you coming. Not a single syllable. He wasn’t sure whether to be mad or relieved. Would it have been worse to know in advance? Worse to have longer to revisit the shimmering ghost of your relationship, to think about the way you used to smile and laugh with him, only to have those images marred by the utter disdain you regarded him with now.

Pope lingered for a moment, waiting for Fish to gather himself. A deep breath and a head shake later Frankie strode out to follow the gang, letting Santi walk a few paces ahead.

The corridor was painfully bright as Frankie emerged from the locker room, he always hated bright spaces. Especially when they were accompanied by white walls that did nothing but highlight the way you were parading Benny down the hall.

He tried to focus on something else, anything else, but the image of you talking, laughing, flirting with the tall fighter was steadily being burnt onto his retinas. You were acting as if Benny had been the one you’d dated, been the one you’d slept with.

Had you?

No. That was a rabbit hole he couldn’t let himself fall down. Not now.

Instead, he opted for turning his attention to Pope.

“I didn’t mean to call your shit bullshit,” He started, hovering just slightly behind his friend. Somehow being shoulder to shoulder for this conversation… well, he couldn’t deal with being that exposed right now. Pope chuckled softly.

“It’s all right.”

“I got busted. It’s not a big deal,” Fish paused, wandering for a moment whether he could let that lie stick. No, he couldn’t. “Actually it’s a big deal.”

“Coke?” Santi asked, almost too knowingly.

Frankie couldn’t say anything, just gave Pope a look of confirmation.

There. It was out now.

“Jesus, Frankie.” Santiago scoffed.

“Technically, it’s a suspension. I’m still under review.”

Pope’s face was unchanging, that same slightly sceptical look drawn across his features.

Frankie knew nothing he said would change that, but at least he’d got it out. Part of him hoped that if Santi knew then, well he’d stop him from doing anything to stupid in the face of his old spectres.

He turned his attention to the stoically quiet Will who was walking a few paces ahead.

“Well, what about you? What are you gonna do?” He asked.

“I said if Athena was in, I’m in,” Will said.

Fish watched as you threw your fist in the air.

“Hell yeah!” You chanted, not looking back at the group.

“Come on, stick with me guys.” Benny asserted.

Fish hated the way your arm tightened round his, holding yourself to him tighter.

“Oh, I’m with you, Benny. But are you with me?” Santiago asked. “Are you in?”

Fuck, how he wished he could un-see the way your eyes peered into the steady expression of his squad mate, forget how your face lit up when Benny responded.

“You know I am. I go where you go.”

“That’s what I thought! Benny stands tall!” Pope slapped Benny’s back, his words alive with excitement.

“Fuck yeah he does.” You affirmed.

The announcements from the main arena were getting louder as the group approached. Frankie nearly walked straight into Santi when the group stopped its pace. The jolting stop had been caused by you and Benny, his eyes immediately locking onto the harrowing scene playing out in front of him.

“C’mere Ben,” You said, reaching to tilt Benny’s cheek towards you and pressing a kiss to the warm skin there. “For luck, not that you’ll need it of course. Go knock em’ out, tiger.”

As much as you loved to watch Benny beat the shit out of another dumbass fighter, the climate of ring room had gotten overwhelming hot and oppressive, fast. You shouted to Pope about getting some air, and then slipped into the fresh, quiet open space at the backdoor of the gym.

Your head fell back against the cold concrete of the wall, taking steady gulps of crisp air as you tried to centre yourself a little. You hated loud noise.

Years of training to hone your hearing had made you acquire a preference for quiet places. It wasn’t that your ears were sensitive by any means, years of being near active warzones had made sure of that, but overwhelming noise meant you couldn’t pick up on small hints of danger. It was that which made your heart race and head pound.

The clicking of the heavy door next to you opening alerted you to another presence. You hoped it was Santi, the two of you still had a lot to catch up on after all, but that hope was squashed when the tan jacket of Frankie Morales emerged.

“What do you want, Catfish?” You asked, exasperation lacing your voice.

“What was that?” He asked in return.

“What was what.”

“You. Kissing Benny.”

You tilted your head to get a better look at him. His arms were folded across his chest, cap pulled low over his eyes. His gaze was furtive, eyes flicking between you and the uninteresting tarmac bellow.

“It’s called ‘moral support’.” You scoffed at him.

Frankie shifted his weight, hip jutting out as he rested his hands there. You tried to swallow the small lump in your throat that formed at seeing him do the pose you had loved for so many years.

In the past it had been accompanied by a playful look in his eye before he’d pounce on you, growling slightly as he pinned you to the nearest surface. Usually accompanied by a “You shouldn’t tease me like that, hermosa.”

Now though his eyes were hardened as he stared you down.

You pushed down your emotions. You couldn’t let yourself miss him. Not again. Not now.

“And the flirting?” he retorted

“Me and Ben have always flirted! I only stopped because-“

Because me and you started dating, because I fell head over heels for you faster and deeper than anyone before you, because there is no one who could ever compare to you.

You cleared your throat.

“Anyway, I’m allowed to flirt, Fish. It’s not like I’m seeing anyone right now.” You said sharply.

You heard his breath hitch. Saw his eyes widen slightly in shock, lips parted. For a moment he stared at you, before coming back to his senses.

“You… you’re not?” He stammered slightly.

You sighed. Dragging a single hand down your face, you let it rest on your shoulder before turning to face him fully.

“No,” You said firmly, “I’m not seeing anyone. Do you really think so low of me? That I would come in here and flirt with Benny to what? Make a point? All while I had some partner holed up somewhere waiting for me to come home.”

Frankie’s mouth goldfished at you a couple times. If you had been listening hard enough you may have heard the whirring and clunking of his proverbial cogs turning steadily in his brain. He was frantically trying to think of some way to back pedal on his verbal attack.

No, you categorically didn’t miss him anymore.

“Do us both a favour, yeah? Stay away from me tonight.” You snapped.

You swept past him, back into the bleak walls of the gym. If your strides had been slower, if you hadn’t have been so very desperate to flee, you might have heard his closing remark.

“I thought the world of you, mi petardo.” (“my firecracker”)

Read part 2 here!

TAGLIST

@din-damn-djarin

@phoenixhalliwell

@legili-mens

#Fight or Flight #frankie 'catfish' morales #Frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie catfish morales x reader #frankie catfish morales x you #frankie morales fanfiction #triple frontier fanfiction #santiago pope garcia #santiago garcia #benny miller #will miller

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genderfluidlucifer · 4 years ago

Text

Response to being asked to give an opinion on Connie’s calout by residentevil-4

(Tw: CSAM, rape fic, incest fic, predatory behavior, racism, ableism, kink mention, nsfw mentions. Minors should probably dni.)

“Connie and I know each other irl and went to school together for 3 years, although they now live in a different state and have cut contact with me. We went to a private therapy school in Manhattan as we're both disabled and were deemed unable to attend public school. Even though we were pretty close, Connie didn't like having photos taken of them, so I don't have any selfies of the two of us; however, these are from our sophomore and senior yearbooks which at least confirms that we were in the same year at school. People who have seen Connie's selfies should be able to confirm that that is what they look like. First and foremost, Connie is not TMA. They are intersex and the two of us have discussed intersex issues both in person and online, but they are still decidedly CAFAB.” Ok so first off, I want to address this part of the callout. To be honest...was it really necessary to literally doxx Connie ehre? Because this textbook definition of doxxing. Yes Connie’s done some shitty things but I freally don’t think that what they’ve done warrants this level of doxxing. Or...even better, any doxxing. This feels like a really unnecessary breach of privacy, revealing sensitive information on Connie’s childhood that they choose to confide in you with. I really don’t agree with this aspect of the callout as it feels very invasive and bordering on stalkerish. Btw when I say bordering on stalkerish I’m not directly calling you a stalker Bonnie. Just so we’re clear. I am not defending Connie supposedly faking being TMA. Because faking being TMA is a very serious issue. HOWEVER since I don’t know Connie irl and to be quite frank it’s none of my business what the nature of their agab is. Were not close and I’m certainly not going to like lead Connie onto thinking we’re friends just to confirm this with them because that would be creepy. So to be honest I’m going to take this part of the callout with again of salt for now.

[ID: A cropped screenshot of a numbered list Connie posted to their blog hadrosaurs in response to an ask.

“3. I’m TMA And that’s completely irrelevant. I’m not accusing them because of their gender I didn’t even know their gender when they said that to me saying that they said that because they fucking said that and the reaction to it was incredibly alarming. Don’t fucking say that stuff to people.]

I mean I”m not a trans woman so take this with a grain of salt if you want but...I don’t see how this is really proof of Connie being deliberately transmisogynistic? Yes Connie gives iffy retellings of mistakes they’ve made in the past. I’ve seen that on their blog before and I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen. BUT here they sound genuine enough and to be honest a growing issue I’ve seen with callouts as of late is. A person confirms they in fact did not do the thing they were called out for. And then the people who make the callout choose to see it as proof of incriminating behavior anyways. To be honest it’s a big problem and it’s also incredibly unfair to the person being called out. If you’re so determined at that point to see the person as bigoted no matter what they say then of course anything they say can be seen as proof. So I’m going to have to pass on this bit of evidence. “Connie responded: “Final note: I have spoken extensively with several trans women about using TMA to describe myself. I will not be getting into discourse about that on this blog again. All that leads to is people demanding my medical records and calling me slurs. If you wanna have a thoughtful conversation about it direct message me cause it’s not happening again here.” Again this really doesn’t seem all that self incriminating. Connie mentions here that they’ve talked to rl trans woman about whether or not they can be considered TMA. Connie really doesn’t have to disclose that personal information to people for any reason. Yes even when people are e including this ask response in a callout. And considering lots of people DO get invasive about Connie’s medical history ans general personal life over matters like this? I feel their reaction is pretty understandable here. “Connie has constantly compared “exclusionists” (or anyone, really) to TERFs, even when the people in question are not transmisogynistic, trans exclusionary radfems, or are even transmisogyny affected themselves.

“ Gonna have to disagree with this part of the callout too. Lots of ace inclus blogs, even some run by trans women , have proven that the ace exclus movement was started by swerfs/terfs. But the blog that has the most evidence for this is courteousmingler on tumblr. I suggest you check out that blog’s archiving of the history of ace exclus rhetoric before rushing to call me a transmisogynist for disagreeing with this part of the callout. I looked through all of the evidence for Connie being racist and tbh as a black ndn it all feels incredibly flimsy. It’d be one thing if Connie was using their experiences to derail and invalidate the discussions about how black people are oppressed But they weren’t doing that there at all. This part of the post feels incredibly biased. And like OP is looking for things to be mad about. Going to have to pass on this list of evidence. Also uh I seem to recall that residentevil04 got called out for some questionable behavior as well. “Both me (insepsy, hi) and ezrat have had really weird spikes in activity on our Statcounters, both on the same day. (Saturday, 4/17/21) For both of us, majority of the pages looked at by these visitors have been related to or about Connie, or have been posts that Connie would find "problematic" such as the f slur untagged or something related to "panphobia"/aphobia. I’m sorry but...none of the proof of cyberstalking holds any water. Visiting someone’s blogs and rbing posts to disagree with them is not cyberstalking. Keeping tabs on urls that an abusive person who has harassed are using so you can block them (in this case with kyoshi) and warn your mutuals is not stalking. As a victim of rl stalking it’s...really weird to call this legit stalking at all. Much less claim that you have damning proof of it being stalking when no such evidence exists in the callout. Besides after Connie and nonbinarydave called out one of kyoshi’s buddies for sending a death threat hate anon to nonbinarydave’s toddler st4lker partly admitted to doing it a few times. Then other mutuals in kyoshi’s toxic social circle clearly began joining in. Making side accounts where they tried to spin a false narrative of nonbinarydave’s daughter being one of their alters (ableist as hell.) And also trying to do it in such a way that they thought would trigger nonibnarydave’s psychosis (also ableist as hell.) If you’re going to drag Connie for their mistakes and never let them move on from those mistakes then it’s only fair to do that to people you agree with who also do toxic/bigoted things. ALso the fact that your wording here suggests that you think panphobia and aphobia aren’t real makes me doubt this claim even more. Exclus and their allies are notorious for mislabeling inclus disagreeing with them as stalking. “connie said that they would release that info at a later time and the minor began to argue with them that they had a responsibility regardless of their complicated relationship with age. in this argument connie for a time kept their age ambiguous and at one point told the minor (who confirmed in a later ask that they were severely traumatized by adults) that they obviously weren’t traumatized. connie quickly deleted this ask and any mentions of it and the next post they reblogged was about how wrong it was to try and quantify or discount others’ trauma. on my old blog i @ed them in the replies and asked if they had just done that. connie admitted to it and said it was fucked up but quickly blocked + deleted my comment. i can’t remember whether or not connie apologized to the minor, they may have? but yeah. i thought that was pretty weird.”] I do agree with some of the concern here that adults shouldn’t over expose minors in discourse. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile myself. And trying to figure out how to take better steps to avoid including minors who are triggered by discourse in discourse, especially. HOWEVER I have one little issue with this addition to the callout. If that is the case then exclus and their allies need to practice this as well. You cannot ignore the fact that the reason a lot of minors are getting involved in exclus discourse is due to adult exclus and their allies forcing minors to pick a side in the discourse. Y’all are not at all exempt from this problem. I still remember an ex mutual of mine trying to convince a minor to agree that aces can’t face corrective rape. And based on how aggressive it got with me when I tried to avoid giving an opinion on the matter, I can’t imagine that it would’ve reacted better to the minor refusing to give an opinion or to the minor outright disagreed. Refusing to put these standards on exclus and their allies is both hypocritical and quite frankly very transparent. The claims about them glorifying dark topics on AO3 through their fics also seems unfortunately legit. I mean those asks of shaming people who ask their viewers to not romanticize or glorify abusive relationships in their works is very damning. I’m very disappointed to see that Connie has taken being an inclus to the point of validating antis anti culture wholeheartedly. I can’t think of much more to add to my opinion on that part of the callout. As for the issue of Connie interacting with pro shippers in the past, I do know that this claim is legit. I’ve seen it before and so has Breeze. This was why for a brief time we decided to stop following their blogs. Because it was triggering to have pro shippers put on our dash. And sometimes we just don’t feel it’s worth it to always let people we’re platforming know they’re rbing triggering stuff. So sometimes we just quietly unfollow and choose to not interact until we’re sure they’re filtering what they do and don’t rb in some way. I definitely don’t agree with that behavior. And if they’re still doing that I”ll deplatform again. “The anon asks: “A weird question but do you know any other stimboard blogs with your follow criteria? (No radfems, racists, fandom antis, etc.) I was hoping to find more through your “similar blogs” but a lot have no anti-antis for their DNI or allow truscum/transmeds and exclus. :(“

The user responds: “I know of @turtle-pond-stims, @outofangband, and @kinaesthetics! 🍂🍄" “[ID: A cropped screenshot of an ask sent by Connie from their now-deactivated blog, butch-with-a-tortoise.

Connie says: “hey anon I have safe stim blogs. dm me if you want them. And radfems/bigots aren’t allowed to interact. For my own safety (because the community is honestly terrifying) I can’t publicly say on my blogs that I’m safe for proshippers/kinky people but I try to spread word how I can.”] [ID: Screenshot of a post by evilwriter37, which reads, “I’ve been seeing posts about fandom police leaving ao3, and it’s like: Good. We don’t want you here anyway. Go find your own fanfiction site.”

The post is tagged “#Fandom #AO3 #Antis #Purity Culture” and has 87 notes. It was posted on December 21st, 2020.

There is a reply from main-to-outofangband-andothers saying: “there are Silm antis on that site who are against Russigon (Maedhros and Fingon) not because they’re cousins but because they’re both male (coded)”] [ID: A screenshot of an anonymous (though signed off as being from outofangband) ask sent to evilwriter37, which says, “Melkor and Viggo solidarity is ‘Look there’s nothing wrong with keeping my enemy chained up in my personal chambers at all times so please just focus on the war efforts and I’ll focus on the boy* in my chambers’ -@outofbangand.

*boy used figuratively @ antis”

The user responds: “Pfft!!! Hahaha! You’re absolutely right! (And Viggo does refer to Hiccup in canon as ‘my boy’).”] I can’t really say anything to refute this. Because these are all posts of Connie outright stating that they disagree with antis. And not only sympathize with anti antis but are fully against antis. Looks like very damning evidence. Although ngl I’m not entirely against kinky blogs as a whole? Just so long as they truly stay in their lane with their kink content. And don’t force it on others in any way. Or shame people who are triggered by their kinks. It is true that being entirely against kinky blogs no matter what is dipping your toes into swerf rhetoric. Tbh I’m not going to look at the rest. This is pretty much all I need to make a decision on whether or not I”ll continue platforming Connie. Though I will try to get some more perspective from people who I interact with as well. Because I feel better about making a more definitive decision after doing that. Also in general please don’t not try to get an opinion from me on how I feel about syscourse. A lot of the claims about Connie’s age weirdness and them using their alters as a shield feel like syscourse to me. Especially if this callout was written by one or several singlets. Singlets should never be trying to judge how legit someone’s system is ever. Even if their system friends encourage them to. You can call out a horrible person with a system without trying to insinuate that they’re lying about their alters in some way. Doing otherwise is ableist ESPECIALLY if you’re a singlet. Also in general the reason I stay out of discussions of judging how someone is handling their systems is because it’s syscourse and syscourse is triggering for my system and I. If this post was an attempt to get me to give an opinion on the validity of Connie’s system I don’t appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being dragged into such matters again, thank you.

In general there’s like a few parts of this callout that feel legit. Which is unfortunately cluttered with obvious bias and obsessive hatred of Connie. I’m not here to stan or coddle Connie. I know they are not a perfect person. Especially since no human being in the world is perfect. But I feel the way this callout was created was very sloppy since a lot of the evidence was messy at best. And some points were very hypocritical as well as there being some no true scotsman moments from OP. In acting like exclus never do any of the thing that they tried to call out Connie for. Which is behavior that I am not a fan of. This is why people need to be more careful about callouts and like make roughdrafts and have a more unbiased person helping them if they don’t feel they can do it on their own. I’m even trying to make a resolve to do better at that myself. So it’s not like I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Anyways those are all my thoughts on this messy callout. And tbh I’m not going to get too much more heavily involved in this. Because I need to focus on more immediately serious rl stuff more often, like doing what I can to get out of the hellish landscape of a house I currently am stuck in.

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wu-sisyphus-gang · 3 years ago

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Motion Sickness Chapter 64

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"You owe me big," I said to Bisque. We were watching Wenge and Jasper sprint back and forth across a small courtyard behind the bar.

"I hear you, I hear you," Bisque said. "We were sort of roped into more than we could chew."

"Between the strikes and whatever those leaders want?" I asked.

"People started looking at us like we were supposed to have answers. That's how the old White Fang got started around here. Just as union leaders and such. Now that they've been discredited and with our network people were looking at us to pick up the slack."

"So you got dragged into this, you're being strong armed into doing this operation before y'all are ready."

"By those old miner leaders. Dyne and Barret. Dyne's been around for a long ass time. Barret's newer but they're both close. Barret is backing Dyne. Which means we need to play ball too."

"Which is why you owe me. Big time. I want information. As soon as you have it. I have a list of names I'll want you to keep an ear to the ground about and if you want me to kill Taurus it'll cost you extra," I informed him. Never let it be said I was purely altruistic. I saw my edge over him and I was taking it.

He slapped a hand over his face. "No, no. Don't kill him. At least not yet if you can help it. And I'll take your list of names."

"That's just the start. I don't want Lien. I'll want any other information that you can give me when and if I ask for it. A blank check." I leaned against the wall of the bar beside Neo with my arms crossed.

"Fine. Fair enough." He rubbed his forehead hard. "We do owe you. Thanks Cloud."

"And you'll want to upgrade the fucking squirt gun you've got."

"What's wrong with my pistol?" He asked.

"It's a fucking .22."

"Hey now. It's a .30."

"Still. Those sometimes don't stop regular people. You'll want something with more kick to it. I can pick up something better from Aurum. Lasers, higher caliber, or even something magnetic accelerated so it still has as much kinetic energy as a .44 or .45. Hell, you should probably talk .50 cal if you want to stop anybody with aura and training."

"So I should go big or go home?" He asked.

"More like go big or die, bro," I said. "I knew this fifteen year old who used a .50 caliber sniper rifle. If you're really attached to something small I could get you a submachine gun."

"I'll think about it," he said.

"Think fast," I shot back.

We watched Jasper and Wenge pant and sprint in their suicides for a hard moment.

"You going to -" I was interrupted by the jingle of bells as the bar's door opened.

I was going to ask if he was going to join Jasper and Wenge who were working hard. Avalanche all had aura but having aura didn't make you good, I'd been living proof of that. Even having a semblance didn't make you good. Only training or else real combat could help with that.

I peaked around the corner and through a screen door. It was Robyn Hill in the bar. I recognized her face from the posters of her all over both towns. She had pale hair (not as snow white as Weiss's) and purple eyes, not quite as vibrant as Yangs, but she was still beautiful. Aura-hunter-beautiful.

"Bar's closed," Bisque told her. I heard through the back door entrance and window.

"Oh don't be like that. I just want to talk about the General's project."

"Not this time. You shot us down, remember. Or your agent did, Fiona was it," Bisque returned. He didn't look amused.

"I have some Lien I could offer you." Robyn said and she leaned against the counter. Her face on one palm. "Sorry we weren't about the destruction of Schnee property. But look where that got you."

"The value of money is plummeting for me recently," Bisque said dryly.

I snorted. Money only talked so loudly to hunters like Neo and I. I was willing to bet she had more millions stashed away than the ones we took from Don Corneo. But that wasn't how you kept Neo entertained. Well, drugs and alcohol helped but what she really wanted was somebody to fuck with. Even if that somebody was only me and it had to do with a night I'd gotten black-out drunk on. She was milking that for all it was worth.

"How much will that information cost me?" Hill asked. "What can I do to make you call off these strikes? Come on, work with me here. I'm listening now."

"A few hundred thousand. And we're not in charge of the strikes."

She winced at the price but sighed in a way that didn't make it seem undoable. "I'll see about getting you your money. And that's not the way I hear it. These are your strikes now."

"They're not. You're looking for Dyne or Barret."

"Dyne is unreconcilable. He's on the warpath. He wants the strikes to never end just so long as Schnee suffers. He's unreachable. And Barret is angry. He'll stay that way for the foreseeable future. You're not, work with me here," she said again. "What will it cost? I'm willing to make all kinds of campaign promises. I'll keep them too. I'm a woman of my word. You want dust lung laws? I want them too. Why don't we start negotiating there? The strikes have to end somewhere."

"We want increased safety standards. And we want an increase in minimum wage. Wages haven't kept up with inflation so the current wage is unlivable."

"Done. Please. I can't get elected under this kind of unrest. Just join my voting block, getting your people to join my block will solve both of our problems."

"I'm not sure I can do that. There's more on the way."

"What else is on the way?"

"I can't talk to you about it but we have another operation."

"Another? Like the one that kicked off these protests? Put it off." She sounded desperate. "Cancel it."

"Can't do that. Some old guard in the White Fang are insisting upon it and in the miners guild, too. They're putting pressure on me and Avalanche." Bisque crossed his arms and replied coldly.

"Who?" She demanded. "I'll convince them otherwise."

"You can't. It's Dyne and Adam Taurus."

"Taurus? And Dyne, both? You have to do this?"

"Or else I'm afraid that Avalanche will lose control over the strikes completely."

"So? Let it happen. You can't tell me you meant for things to go this far. Fiona said it was mostly symbolic."

"We'd never be a player in the unions ever again if we stood by the wayside now. We have to be willing to act as much or more than anyone and everyone else."

"Damn it. When's the operation? Will you tell me that at least?" She pleaded.

"Tomorrow night. The others want to put a fire under Jacques Schnee and prevent him from getting comfortable. They want to force him to act and capitulate to the strikes. We had this operation in mind before and one thing led to another once the others found out about it."

"I'll get your money wired to you. Tell me about the General's project with Amity." She leaned forward towards him. She was anxious to hear about it.

I watched her stick out a hand. Bisque took it. A dull lilac hue took over both their hands all the way up to the elbow. I could feel the low hum of aura from where I watched through the screen window. She was doing something .

"The General is turning the colosseum into a satellite. Getting communication back up and running between the kingdoms. It's his current number one priority."

She withdrew. "That's it? That's why he's diverting supplies from Mantle? At least as far as you know, I suppose."

"The intel is good. We had people who worked on the project come to us," Bisque said. "Cetra who were or are involved in the construction joined our union network. They reported it to us."

"That's… that's good news I suppose. But the rest you have got to find a way to settle down the protests and get them to vote for me. I'm willing to grant all your concessions once I become a council member. None of them are unreasonable or outside of my policies," Hill negotiated. She really wanted a bunch of politically active people on her side come election day. I could get that. Voter efficacy was low all too often, even back in Vale.

"I'll talk to people and spread the word. I only promise to try."

"And another thing, Fiona mentioned two other people. She mentioned Cloud Strife. What's his angle in all this? I know he's been involved in the drug game and a prison break," Hill wondered.

"He was after the same information you were. Fiona should have been able to tell you that," Bisque answered. "Now, if that's actually everything, you can wire the money over and get out of my bar. We're closed. No service at the moment. We've got a happy hour at seven. You could come back then."

"Well thank you anyways. And don't worry about your money. I'll leave, then."

He came out to me again through the screen door in the back of the bar.

"You shook her hand," I introduced. "Why?"

"She's got a lie detection semblance. It's touch based, Striker ranged," he informed me.

I raised an eyebrow. A politician that valued truth in their very soul. Not her heart or mind but in the core of her very being. You didn't find that on every street corner.

Well she had my vote. Not that I could vote. None of my identities were Atlas or Mantle citizens so I was pretty much in the same class as a felon. Not that I wasn't also a felon.

"You sure you should have told her so much about the operation. She could interfere," I told him. "If she does that's on you."

"I didn't tell her that much. And if she does interfere it might be for the best. I don't really want this op to happen. Maybe she'll be able to stop the operation, Avalanche won't have to back down, and nobody will get hurt."

"Yeah well I don't want to go to prison. Something to keep in mind. The law isn't exactly on our side," I muttered. "For all that we're standing here plotting this in broad daylight."

"Oh I wasn't aware. I'll try to keep that in mind." His tone was as dry as ice.

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I scoped out the ship I would be sinking with Neo. Or 'Mint' as she was in her disguise. She snuck aboard easily enough and took a photo of a map of the ship with her scroll. She sent it to me and I examined it closely.

I needed to figure out where we would set the charges so that the explosion would just sink the vessel and not destroy the harbor in a dust driven detonation.

The place had cameras for security and a handful of human and faunus guards. But for the most part the ship was ruled and watched over by robots. Robots I'd have no problem taking apart. It was the people I needed to lure out somehow so that they didn't die when the ship went down or similar.

There were lifeboats onboard but I didn't need any more blood on my hands. I was powerful enough that I suppose I could take steps to avoid death now. I didn't need to go all out against a group of aura-lacking sentries anymore.

I could bop them without killing them now. And I knew Neo was in a similar ballpark. She just usually didn't care.

I studied the map in detail. Neo turned visible again as she paced away from the large grey vessel. It had soft blue mooring lights and a big Schnee Dust Company logo on the side.

I could see men and women and machines up on the deck at their posts. They all had smooth looking assault rifles and shotguns. The kind of heavy weaponry the SDC needed to keep their high valued assets safe. I was sure they were on decent high alert now, too. I'd scraped with some of them at the mine so they knew that wasn't just an accident.

She came up behind me on my bike and wrapped her arms around me. I turned around to spot her small smirk. She was still teasing me. At least she was still doing what I told her to do in a general sense.

She pulled herself snuggly against me and pressed her face into my back. I could feel it against my skin after a layer of clothes over armor. Maybe it was just her aura I was feeling against me like the flare of a cold burning candle.

I could feel her mischievous mood. She had no one to target but me at the moment.

"Don't be a brat, Neo." She shuffled softly against me in what I realized was mute laughter.

I revved my engine and pulled away from the ship.

"I'm thinking about setting off an explosion as a distraction. To lure the people off the ship. The last thing we want is to have to kill people and stain our unblemished records."

The wind whistled through my face as I pulled the bike into traffic.

"Maybe I'll set you loose on the guards. Harass them with illusions that get them off the ship. Would that make you happy or would you rather blow something up."

She shrugged against me unhelpfully.

"Well then we will probably do a little of column A and a little of column B. How many people can you teleport at once with you, Neo."

She tapped my chest three times. That meant I could get four of us on board. More if I flew. Just five of us to cause enough of a ruckus that we drew the living guards' attention but not so much noise that we brought the entire facility down on our heads. There was a balance to play. A particular key to strike.

I needed to draw only so much attention and it had to be the kind of attention that grabbed living beings and left the machines to mostly do their work.

I recalled the robots. They were humanoid things for the most part. They were built fast and could be destroyed just as easily by hunters like us. Their weapons would only cause a problem if I gave their targeting computers time to really line up a shot and if I gave them a chance to shoot as a group.

Not allowing them to use their strength of numbers was a good call. Don't sit still enough that they got a good solution for me. It was a good start but I needed more.

There could be more menacing machines on board. Giant spider or scorpion bots or larger humanoid mechs like the Atlesian Paladins we had fought back at Beacon's fall.

I wasn't sure how much trouble those kinds of machines were going to give me given how much stronger I had become. Plus I was loaded with dust crystals and I knew how to use them.

I needed to start a fire. Something like that would draw the human crew to the lifeboats and off the ship but would leave the machines behind.

I could also use Neo's power to get a few of us on board and get the party started.

I pulled up on a gondola for vehicles and pulled out my scroll and started looking over the ships schematics. I say schematics but there was a small 'you are here' sign on it indicating it was really a map set up somewhere inside.

I wanted to set the charges near the front of the ship away from the cargo hold where all the dust was sitting around and waiting to explode.

That should stop a chain reaction of explosions depending on how big the explosives we used were. I had better make those myself.

I was already thinking through the designs I knew to cause a hole just large enough to rupture the exterior hull of the boat. Just enough to rock the ship and not blow up the entire harbor.

I swung by Aurum's club on a gondola for vehicles and picked up a .50 caliber pistol for Bisque who still hadn't made up his mind. So I made it up for him. I put the heavy boxes of ammunition behind me on the bike with the spare magazines for the weapon.

It was a good thing he and the others had yet to be in a real huntsman-class fight or they would have lost pretty badly.

The only thing to do from here was build the bombs and I could do that easily enough at my apartment. So that was my next stop.

I wired together several dust crystals, enough that I thought it would be able to blow a hole in the ship's exterior if it was set against it but not so much that it would spread through the rest of the boat's interior. I made two because I thought one was probably enough to do it so I might as well go all in.

Then I set them up to be able to blow from a remote source. In this case just my scroll. It was actually pretty easy. Not as easy as throwing them really hard but just about using two small arduinos, one a piece.

The only thing left to do was share the plan with Avalanche, the miners, and Taurus and hope that went off without a hitch before the plan even started.

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-WG

#rwby #ff7 #ffvii #cloud strife #biggs #wedge #jessie rasberry #jaune arc #neo #neapolitan #whiterose #white rose #whiteknight #white knight #lancaster #war of the roses #ruby rose x jaune arc x weiss schnee #cloud!jaune arc #sephiroth!jaune arc

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robo-writes-haikyuu · 4 years ago

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Meeting Oikawa in Rio

Summary: Reader is a travelling photographer who encounters Tooru Oikawa in Brazil.

Words: 2.6k ( i went a little overboard I’m so sorry)

Warnings: none; strangers to friends to lovers kind of idea, slow burn, beach vibes, idk that’s mostly it

a/n: This is a request for the lovely @trash-revel!! 💖 I’m so sorry this took forever it’s probably filled with typos and grammatical errors! That said, I loved writing this 💗 Also, sorry if it’s a little too long, I felt a little too inspired! I tried to sprinkle a little bit of Portugese in it with the help of google translate (if anyone here speaks portugese I hope I didn’t butcher it and hopefully did it some justice).

As a travelling photographer, you were living like a nomad, always on the move without a home base to call your own. Instead of renting a house or an apartment, you usually stayed in hotels or airbnbs. Your goal was to travel the world and capture all of the beauty you could find in it… and little did you know that the most beautiful thing you were going to find was on your travels in Brazil.

You woke up early that day, unsure if you were actually on a healthy sleeping schedule or if it was the jet lag talking. You were enjoying your morning coffee out on the balcony of your airbnb in Rio as you watched the sunrise over the beach. The water of the ocean gently tumbled into waves onto the shore as it reflected the vibrant gradients of the morning sky. If you squinted hard enough, you could faintly see Christ the Redeemer in the distance on the mountain. After a yawn and a deep stretch, you decided that it was time for you to get ready for your daily adventure.

You prepared yourself for the unforgiving heat by slathering sunscreen all over your body and wearing loose-fitting clothes. As you got dressed, you could immediately feel the fabric cling to you from the humidity. You made a note to bring deodorant with you because you knew way too well that chafing was only inevitable on hot, humid days. You packed your bag with your camera lenses, a couple of water bottles, some snacks, an ice pack, sunscreen, and other things that will help you navigate your new temporary home. You finished off your look with a hat and your camera slung around your neck so you could have easy access if you see anything interesting to shoot.

After reading up on some of the attractions in Rio, you decided to visit Tijuca national park. You’ve been wanting to get out on your feet after an incredibly taxing, twenty-one-hour flight from Australia, plus there was no way you could pass up getting shots of all of the diverse flora and wildlife. Your plan was to hike as deeply into the forest as you could and then stop at the botanical garden to relax and do some sightseeing.

You sat at the bus stop, just minding your own business and intermittently reference the bus schedule on your phone, when a voice pulled you from your thoughts.

“Erm… perdão,” said a voice that was very much not from around here.

You peeked over to see a Japanese man, probably in his mid-twenties, trying to talk to an elderly man sitting on the bench at the bus stop.

“Este carro... uh... é para o lugar da árvore?” the Japanese man said tentatively, clearly struggling with the language barrier.

The elderly man blinked a few times, and responded with “Que?”

You were equally as confused. Based on the little bit of Portuguese that you knew, you were pretty sure he was asking for a car to drive him to a tree.

The Japanese man grew a bit frustrated and scratched the back of his neck. You could tell the poor guy was embarrassed, so you tried to see if you could help him out.

“Do you speak English?” You ask the Japanese man.

He locks eyes with you, and it hits you how handsome he is. His smile is disarming and his eyes are gentle. His physique is well-built like a professional athlete, and he was dressed like one too.

"I do," he responds. "Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for the bus that goes to Tijuca national park."

"You're in luck," you say, gesturing to the map on your phone. "That's where I'm headed."

You both boarded the bus, which was packed like sardines, and made some small talk along the way.

“Tooru Oikawa,” he says with an outstretched hand. “I’m a volleyball player.”

“(Y/n) (l/n),” you reply with your hand in his and give it a shake. “I’ve never met a professional athlete before.”

“It’s been a dream of mine since I was a kid,” he smiles and proudly runs his fingers through his tousled hair. “Are you a photographer? I just noticed your fancy camera.”

“Yeah,” you cradled your camera in your hand and fiddled around with the lens. “I wanted to check out the wildlife here and maybe try out some new techniques. I figured the national park would be a good place to start.”

“You know, shutterbug,” he says, striking a pose. “ I have some experience in front of cameras. Not to brag or anything, but I’ve been in a few local magazines back at home.”

You roll your eyes and chuckle; this man really is something else. He’s definitely charismatic and charming -- not to mention very handsome -- although there’s something else to him that you can’t put your finger on. There was something about his smile that just didn’t sit right with you. It reminds of you of how you were at family dinners; despite how much was on your mind, you just kept smiling to avoid rocking the boat. But, maybe it was just your imagination.

You arrive at your destination, depart the bus and find an uphill path that leads deeper into the forest. The two of you decide to walk together and continue to get to know each other. You tell him about how you were a travelling photographer and you had a lot of your works published in different magazines. You also tell him about your travels and all of the places you’ve visited.

“What’s one place you haven’t gone to yet?” He asks as he kicks a stray pebble. “Where do you plan on going once you’re done here?”

“Definitely Japan,” you say. “That’s up there on my list, especially the countryside. I just think the scenery there would be amazing to see in person.”

“I’m from the country, you know” he said with a wink. “Maybe we’ll have another fateful encounter there and I’ll show you around sometime~”

You can’t help but hide a blush from hinting at your cheeks.

Despite how flirtatious he is, he seems genuinely interested in you. And you’re equally impressed by him; the way he talks about his history with volleyball demonstrates his deep passion for the sport. He talks about volleyball as if he was knight preparing for battle; he goes into detail about strategies, formations, techniques, everything that makes a good volleyball player. He also goes into detail about his past rivals, although there was an edge to his voice when he talked about them. You decide to not pry too much on the subject.

“So what you’re saying is that you’re kind of a big deal,” you say.

“I mean,” he responds with a wink. “If you think so, then I won’t argue.”

That’s when a toucan flutters out from the bushes and nests into his hair. Oikawa panics and flails his arms, trying to shoo away the bird, but it seemed to have no intention of leaving his locks.

“Wait,” you say, steadying your camera in front of your eye. “Don’t move.”

The look on Oikawa’s face jumps from surprised, to angry, to embarrassed. He crosses his arms and pouts with red cheeks; it seems he was trying to make a good impression on you and the toucan sabotaged his plan. His pout slowly relaxes when he sees the look on your face; you were so mindful about the angle, the lens, and the lighting; it reminded him about how he is with volleyball. He also had to admit, you had a really cute smile; he simply smiles and accepts his defeat.

“Sorry,” you say, snapping a few more. “I’m almost done.”

“No no,” he says. “Take your time.”

That’s when you notice something different about him; this smile seemed totally different from how he was smiling when the two of you were on the bus. The way he smiled then seemed routine or rehearsed. This smile, however, was enough to make your chest flutter. You swear if more people saw a smile like this from him, the world would be a much better place.

“You better send me a copy of those,” he teases, sticking his tongue out at you. “Someday, people might pay good money for them.

“You know it,” you say with a giggle. Although, you couldn’t tell if he was complimenting your work or if he was just that full of himself.

You walk up to him and gently lift the toucan off his head and toss it into the air for it to fly away.

“Well, I hate to leave you like this,” he said, pulling out his earbuds from his pocket. “But I need to get my afternoon run in. I look forward to bumping into you again soon, shutterbug~”

With that, he jogged away, leaving you in a small cloud of dust. The nickname sticks with you and endears you more to him. You stand there with a smile on your face, as you hoped that this wouldn’t be your last encounter with him.

And it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, bumping into Oikawa became a near-daily occurrence for the two of you. You always took the same bus to the national park where he went for jogs and you went for photo ops. Although, the two of you eventually exchanged numbers and made plans to hang out somewhere else.

Every time you talk to Oikawa you always learn something new about him; you learn that his favourite food is milk bread, that his best friend, Iwaizumi, is taking sports science in college, and that he was captain of the volleyball team in his third year of high school. You tell him about your home country and what it was like growing up there, and how you’ve been pursuing photography since you got your first DSLR camera. You tell him about your favourite foods, your favourite music, and your favourite movies.

One evening, after Oikawa was done practice, the two of you decided to make plans to grab dinner and go for a walk on the beach. At dinner, the sun was still high enough in the sky that it wasn’t quite sunset, but it was low enough in the sky that the temperature started to cool off.

The more you think about it, the more it starts to feel more like a date.

“What kind of photos do you take?” he asks. “Now that I think about it, I don’t think you’ve shown me any of your work.”

You take out your phone to open up your digital portfolio and you hand it over to him. He scrolled through your gallery and saw various shots from nature, urban settings, and studios. He came across a folder in your gallery labelled ‘100 Strangers.’

“What’s this all about?” he asked, flipping through the images.

“Oh, that’s just a long-term project I’m working on,” you said. “My goal is to take portraits of 100 strangers that I meet in my travels and post little blurbs about them.”

“I’d offer to pose for a picture for you,” he says, leaning in as he rests his elbows on the table. “But it seems like we’re not really strangers to each other anymore.”

You can tell he’s flirting, but you don’t let him get away with it that easily. “I still have those shots of you and the toucan, you know.”

He flinches and hunches over in embarrassment. “You’re a meanie, shutterbug~”

“What?” you say as you take one last bite of your food. “I love that picture. It’s cute.”

He suppresses a grin as he digs his fork into his food. He tries to act nonchalant, but the blush on his cheeks betray him.

“So,” he says, bringing his food to his mouth. “You think I’m cute?”

A blush sneaks onto your cheeks and you avert your eyes from him. From the corner of your eye, you see him grin to himself in satisfaction. You avoid answering him entirely and just ask the waiter for the bill.

It’s now sunset and the two of you were walking on the beach. You decide to take off your sandals and just enjoy the feeling of the warm sand in between your toes. The breeze was perfect, and it was enough to take the edge off the humidity. You then take out your camera and start adjusting the settings on it. It was golden hour, after all.

You glance over at Oikawa, who ‘s just at the edge of the water and dipping his toes in. He looks out onto the horizon, where you could barely make out the silhouettes of the mountains, and takes in the balmy breeze. The wind swished through his hair elegantly, sweeping it just the right way that made it look effortlessly styled. You steadied your camera and snuck in a couple of shots.

He looks over his shoulder at you upon hearing the shutters and grinned. “Couldn’t resist a photoshoot of me, shutterbug?” He held up a peace sign and placed a hand on his hip, awaiting more shots from you.

After getting a few more shots in, you join him at the shore and dip your toes in, jumping at how surprisingly cold the water was.

“You didn’t answer my question, you know,” Oikawa says, turning to face you.

“Huh?” you chuckle nervously and tuck a few strands of hair behind your ear. “What question?”

“Do you think I’m cute?”

You hesitated and wiped your clammy palms on your shorts. You definitely developed feelings for Oikawa, and you were sure he felt the same way about you. The problem, though, is that you were hesitant to jump into a serious relationship, given all of the travelling that you do.

“I...” you murmur, nervously wiggling your toes into the sand. “Listen, I don’t want to get your hopes up. I travel a lot and I get so busy with work that I--”

“Hey,” he chuckles while scratching the back of his neck, trying to mask his disappointment. “It’s totally alright if you don’t think so, I just thought--”

“N-no it’s not that,” you blurt out. “I don’t want to jump into anything serious only to have it ruined when I eventually start travelling again. I really do like you, Tooru, but I don’t think that would be very fair to you.”

Suddenly, you found yourself merely inches away from him. He softly chuckles and places his hand underneath your chin to tilt your face up to meet his. You look up at him, your face hot from both nervousness and excitement.

“You put a lot of pressure on yourself, don’t you?” he says, as if he wasn’t one to talk. “Don’t worry about all of that stuff. How do you feel right now?”

You feel his fingers gently combing through the ends of your hair, sending tingling sensations all through your body. Your pulse quickens as he places a hand on the small of your back; he doesn’t go any further though.

“I…” you murmur, leaning in and placing your hands on his chest. “I think you’re really cute.”

He lets out a hearty chuckle and wraps both of his arms around you to pull you in closer to him.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he says, inching closer to you. “Because I think you’re very cute, shutterbug.”

You close your eyes and meet your lips with his. From that day forward, the two of you spent everyday together until you left for your next destination. You always kept in touch with one another through text, video chats, and voice calls. Even through the challenging times, the two of you wouldn’t have wanted to be with anyone else.

#oikawa x reader #oikawa #robos requests #tooru oikawa #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #hq #hq!!#haikyu

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scarpool-gmk · 4 years ago

Text

6 Part 2

Title: Godly Marine: Killed Author: Scarpool Fandom(s): NCIS, Percy Jackson & the Olympians Pairing(s): Gen Rating: PG/K+ Summary: Chapter 6 Part 2 (8/13) — Staff Sergeant Michael Kahale, Marine Corps Mechanic and Son of Athena, was murdered. Annabeth Chase is determined to find out who did it and why. She, along with Percy Jackson, Grover Underwood, and Clarisse La Rue, infiltrate NCIS where they team up with NCIS Agents Leroy Gibbs, Anthony DiNozzo, Timothy McGee, and Ziva David. Complete Genre: Fanfiction, Mystery, Drama, Humour, General, Action Warnings: N/A

-Κλαρίς-

Clarisse had to hold in laughing as she saw Annabeth's eyes bulge in fascination as Gibbs used the iris scanner. With a hiss and a clunk!, the doors unlocked. He heaved the door open. "Welcome to MTAC, agents."

"Wow," Annabeth whispered as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

"Sweet secret base you guys got going on," Clarisse praised.

"Thanks!" McGee beamed like he was the one getting complimented. "It's decked out with some great technology sensors. It's completely separate in terms of technology, components, and connection from the rest of the building. Best monitors, state-of-the-art firewall, and the-"

"You guys do any movie nights in here?" Clarisse cut in.

"I-well no. I mean, uh, maybe? I wouldn't know anything about that," McGee spluttered.

Clarisse smirked. "I'll take that as a yes."

"McGee," Gibbs said, saving his agent, "Connect us up with the Staff Sergeant's C.O."

McGee hurried to do as he was told, working with a row of tech. Clarisse wouldn't want to get too close to any of those. Could probably get the entire monster population of the East Coast fixated on their position with those many wires. Annie, Prissy, and Goat boy wouldn't appreciate it. Would make one heck of a battle story, though.

Gibbs, Annabeth, and Clarisse stood in front of the huge screen.

"Morning, agents," the commander said when he flashed on the screen.

"Nice to meet you, Commander," Annabeth said.

"I would rather have not, Special Agent Lima, Gibbs. I take it you still haven't found out who took out my mechanic."

"No, Commander," Gibbs said, "And it seems your mechanic was into a case of his own."

"What do you mean?"

"We believe he was following leads that might uncover cartel movement in D.C.," Annabeth explained.

"Can you tell us anything about anything the Staff Sergeant was involved in?" Gibbs asked, "Any ops that he was assigned?"

"No, sir. This is the first I'm hearing of this. He was designated to go on tour; we were called in to head into NAMRU-6."

"Peru?" Gibbs questioned.

"It was going to be smooth sailing," the commander affirmed. "A secret mission…He was one hell of a mechanic, and even then…"

"Commander?" Annabeth pushed.

"He was too smart for his own good. He wasn't going to be a simple Staff Sergeant for long. In fact, I'm surprised he held out for this long. His excellent, strategic mind and fighting skill, especially in close combat, had placed him in the fast lane for promotion. He may have wanted to be a simple mechanic, and I know he declined several offers, but as good as he was, he gained the attention of those who could force him into positions."

Clarisse frowned. Sounds like Michael had been way too noticeable. She didn't even think that the Navy and Marine corps would inspect mechanics that thorough. How did they test his strategy making?

"Sounds like he was a special case," Clarisse said, "Did he get any flak from his crewmates because of it?"

"Not really, ma'am. He wasn't exactly a social person to begin with."

"He never got into any disputes with anyone?" Clarisse asked.

"Only one, but I've learned to keep them apart."

"Reason?" Gibbs asked.

"Uh, they just didn't see eye-to-eye."

Clarisse almost snorted. Translation: he had no clue. What kind of Officer in Charge was this guy?

"Who's the soldier?" Annabeth asked.

"First Lieutenant Adrian Rodriguez."

"He antagonize a lot of people?" Gibbs asked.

"No, sir. He's actually very well-liked. It was very strange that he turned confrontational with Kahale. Same with Sergeant Kahale."

"And you have no idea as to why this was." Gibbs didn't phrase it like a question. At least they were all on the same page.

The C.O. on the big screen shrugged. "Those are two of the sea's finest. Rodriguez is soon to become Major. They don't have so much as an excuse to hang around each other anyway."

This time, Clarisse didn't bother hiding a sound of disbelief.

"Where is he?" Gibbs asked at the same time as Annabeth said, "Tell us about him."

Clarisse stepped back so the two could glare at each other better.

"He's a skilled Marksman," Commander Oblivious replied, "knows a lot about on-the-spot- field medic stuff…sings pretty good, too." Clarisse shared a glance with Annabeth. That sounded familiar. Annabeth would probably say that it was a textbook definition. Nerd.

"But he has not left the ship," the commander continued, "he's been on board the entire time."

"Then call him over," Gibbs said, "Maybe we can help solve what his problem with Michael Kahale was."

"You can't think-"

"The more we know about our victim, the better we can predict his movements and motives," Annabeth consoled.

The commander ceded the point and nodded at some staff who promptly left the room, presumably to find the First Lieutenant. He turned his attention back to the NCIS agents.

Gibbs continued on questioning him. "Did Staff Sergeant Kahale ever mention an Annabeth Chase?"

The man on the screen frowned. "The name rings a bell; give me a sec." He shuffled some papers around. "Oh! Yes, as one of the emergency contacts. Right there under his father. Annabeth Chase, relation as his sister."

Annabeth showed nothing. Instead, asking, "What is the contact information?"

"A phone number with a New York area code."

"Read aloud the number, please."

The commander read out the numbers as Annabeth instructed. Clarisse immediately recognized it as the mainline to the Big House.

"It's a different number than the one he called," Annabeth said.

"McGee," Gibbs called, giving silent instructions.

"Already on it," McGee said, "Number is to a farm, Delphi Strawberry Service. Located in Long Island."

Clarisse mentally cursed and tried not to self-consciously fidget at the glare Gibbs gave Annabeth.

"But he never spoke about his family. Or friends. Or life. Again, not the most social guy."

There was movement in the back, as the staff member came back with a soldier, who promptly stood at attention.

"First Lieutenant Rodriguez, meet NCIS Agents Gibbs, Lima, and…"

"La Rue," Clarisse supplied.

"First Lieutenant," Gibbs greeted.

"Sir!"

"At rest, First Lieutenant," Annabeth said.

Gibbs started the questions as Rodrigues shifted his stance. "What's your relationship with Staff Sergeant Michael Kahale?"

The soldier frowned, confused. "He was a mechanic assigned to this vessel, sir."

"We're told that you were uncharacteristically disruptive around him."

"Yes, but I haven't been in confrontation with him, as per C.O. orders. If he's said-"

"First Lieutenant Rodriguez," The C.O. cut him off, "Sergeant Kahale was shot two nights ago."

"Shot?" Rodriguez said in shock, "But… we're home…"

"We know that you've been on board the entire time," Annabeth said, "We just need to know more about who Michael Kahale was."

"I-I understand, Ma'am."

"What made you dislike the Kahale, First Lieutenant?" Clarisse asked him.

"It's not that I disliked him, ma'am. Kahale was actually a good guy. Introverted, sure. But he was a good soldier, amazing smart, and easy to talk with. But I…" He faltered. "I don't know. For some reason, the friendly conversations always turned into some sort of fight? Like a challenge I couldn't lose to? I guess?"

"Don't sound sure of yourself," Annabeth noted.

"I can't explain it. Every time, it just led to a fight over any stupid, little thing. I honestly don't know why. I don't expect any of you to understand."

Clarisse heard Gibbs sigh tiredly and mumble, "Oh, I understand perfectly."

"Can you give us some examples of what you fought over?" Annabeth asked.

"They were stupid, ma'am. Like over the name of a future vessel. He thought it should be named USS Zeus. I said it to be USS Jupiter. We also fought over his position. Kahale was a good Marine but could've been even better. But he kept at being a non-commission mechanic because he had an issue with the control of our Superior Officers. I know he even declined a promotion to Warrant Officer. He disliked how strict military life was and preferred the more laxed nature of the machinists. He believed that individuality and improvisation held more value in the field than the collective skill of the group and rigid structure. He did not trust others with making decisions for him and disliked giving orders himself. But I know several of my brothers who have similar opinions, and I've never fought them over it."

Annabeth nodded, humming softly and deep in that brain of hers.

"Did he ever mention some sort of mission?" Gibbs asked.

Rodriguez blinked. "No. Nothing ever like that."

"Mexican Cartels? Arms dealing?" Gibbs fished.

"What? No!"

'Freaking Hades,' Clarisse thought, 'I hope this information isn't supposed to be kept low profile.'

"What about mythologies?"

The First Lieutenant stiffened. He was definitely a demigod. Clarisse would have to see if Chiron knew an Adrian Rodriguez.

"What do you mean?" Rodriguez tried playing off.

"Gods, Roman myths, Greek heroes, monsters, that sort of stuff."

"No."

"Then that's all we need from you, for now, First Lieutenant," Gibbs said, taking a glance at Annabeth.

"Catch who did this to my mechanic, Agents," the Commanding Officer said before the connection cut off.

Gibbs didn't waste any time.

"What am I missing here?"

Annabeth lifted an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

"Some random mechanic gets murdered hours away from his assigned vessel because he was uncovering an entire operation that was way out of his league. His dying words were to some girl whom he listed as an emergency contact with a Long Island number. Suddenly, I've got NCIS agents from a Long Island branch I've never heard of. This case has brought too many outside factors, and I have the feeling my team is out of the loop on specific information that can make this case more manageable."

"We know as much as you do," Clarisse retorted, "And missing information comes with the job. This is a mystery. We investigate and find the answers, complications and all."

Gibbs considered her for a moment before relenting and leading them back out of the heavily secured room. "Fine. I'm going to head to the bar. McGee, get DiNozzo to call the Strawberry Farm. I also want the personal files of First Lieutenant Rodriguez and his C.O. Ziva! Gear up." He looked around at the rest of the agents expectedly.

"Er, trying to squeeze out info of Cartel movement in the area," DiNozzo said, "Not much luck."

"Talked to Abby," Ziva picked up next, "Her professors were able to translate some more of the notes. This Doughnut place is apparently definitely arms dealing with the Reynosa Cartel. Sinaloa involvement is suspected. Middle East connection is pure speculation. Michael also noted that he believed he was found out because he smelled."

DiNozzo made to comment but was silenced by a look from Gibbs.

"I'm still IDing all of Mr. Tarsibo's victims," Grover said.

"And customers," Gibbs added.

"…And customers…"

"No mention of Monster Donut on the web," Percy reported, Annabeth's laptop in hand, "Making sure that if anyone finds it, we'll be the first ones to know."

Gibbs nodded and then headed towards the elevator with Ziva in tow. Clarisse admired the way his silent command to get back to work hung in the air. Except for one problem.

Clarisse was back in the bullpen. She hated it.

-Ζήβα-

Ziva was debriefed about the meeting with the commander on the way to the Drowsy Owl.

"If the Staff Sergeant was being seen by superior officers and the Commanding Officer didn't know anything," Ziva said, "Perhaps our Staff Sergeant was granted a mission."

But why give such an advanced and dangerous mission to a mere mechanic?

"Michael Kahale had been in service for five years," Ziva said, answering her own question. "They had given him training- maybe advanced secret in-training. Kept him officially as a mechanic, using it as a cover."

"But why send him on a case that without providing him resources?" Gibbs asked.

Hm. True. Michael Kahale had lacked money, cover, and backup. The time limit was horrendously short; what he uncovered in such a short amount of time was astonishing. If he hadn't ended up dead, she would have thought that it was a controlled mission.

"You said that First Lieutenant Adrian Rodriguez responded to the mention of mythological connection. Is it possible that whatever mission the Staff Sergeant was on, was not external but internal? An internal audit? But if Rodriguez was his target, he would have responded to the reference of cartel involvement."

"What if the Cartel wasn't initially apart of this operation?" Ziva thought back to her previous line of thought. "What if Rodriguez was involved? As Michael's partner. The First Lieutenant is thought of highly as well."

"Don't get caught up on theories," Gibbs warned.

"Maybe I should just follow my gut," Ziva teased.

"It's always worked for me," Gibbs said.

"What does it say now?" Ziva asked. She looked at him when he did not answer.

"It tells me that the Long Island Agents know something that they aren't sharing."

Ziva frowned but said nothing.

They came up to the store. "See if anyone has seen Tarsibo," Gibbs said.

"Not many people to ask," Ziva grumbled.

Reshaun Sachs was beginning to blindly invite them to choose a place to sit until he looked up from pouring a pint of bitter. "Let me guess," he said, "Navy cops."

Ziva and Gibbs flashed their Identification.

"This about the young Marine or something else?"

"Same one," Gibbs said.

"Didn't realize you had such big teams."

"Neither did I."

Ziva sent Gibbs a look and decided to change the topic, unfolding the blown-up photo of Tarsibo.

"Do you recognize this man?"

"Sorry. No."

"He seems to be a customer of yours," Ziva pushed, "He may have been here during the past week."

The bartender frowned, "If he passed those doors, I would remember. Especially from this week." Ziva nodded. She didn't find him to be lying. There were other ways waste from this place could have gotten to the car rental.

"Do you mind if I talk to your customers?" Ziva asked

Sachs shrugged. "You can, but all of these guys are regulars that just come for their lunch break."

Ziva assumed as much. She left Gibbs to converse with the man.

Sachs was surprised that they had found traces of his business as far away as East Maryland. Like Gibbs, Ziva was getting her own list of negative answers.

She walked around the bar, trying to envision it on a full night with businessmen, college students, and Mrs. Kahale with her entourage. It was an open area, which meant open conversations that could be the center of attention or hidden by those that took that position. The only place that was really hidden was the way to the restrooms, which had its own hidden hallway that led to a back exit. That was where Ziva excused herself to answer her buzzing phone.

"What is it, Tony?"

"Get into any bar fights, yet?" Tony used as a greeting.

"It is still a bit early, but it has happened before."

"Well, don't go too hard on them. People who go this early are there to drown something."

Ziva thought of the three businessmen in the bar hunching over their drinks. He was too right. "As I'm sure you know, Tony."

"I'm not that old," he said.

"You are what? Forty?"

"No!"

"Mmm, but I'm close. How many years am I off?"

"…Two. I'm still young, just have a few years of experience."

Ziva hummed. She didn't tell him that she had more years until she hit thirty.

"Well, I'm sure you didn't call me just for this."

"No, I'm here to update you so you can update Gibbs."

"Why not call him instead?"

"Figured he'd be doing some unofficial interrogation. And I would never break that rule."

"Well, what do you have."

Tony sighed, "Pretty much nothing. Got in connection with the Director of the Strawberry Service, a Mr. Dee. Took forever to get a final answer. 'I have a faint recollection of an Annie Bell.'" Tony droned in imitation, "'Yes, the girl is quite a trouble seeker, although she is one of the brighter ones I have had to deal with. Says a lot about them. However, she left. I don't expect her to be back for a while.' That was fifteen minutes into the conversation. He ends with an 'I grow tired of your pitiable blather.' And just hangs up."

Ziva snickers. "Doesn't sound like a reliable witness."

Ziva could imagine Tony shrugging in the squadroom, "It's what I got."

"Alright. Thanks." Ziva hung up the phone and accidentally stumbled when she bumped into something. Or rather someone "Oh, sorry I-" Ziva stopped as she got a look at who she almost toppled. It was a young man who had just come out of the lavatory. He was of an average built, a bit on the shorter side with a head full of blonde hair. He was in some sort of customer service uniform, a nametag still latched on. But Ziva only gave it an unconscious look over. No, she was more captivated by his eyes. They were a sickly green, and the iris seemed alive, swirling like snakes in a pit. And were those scales on his cheekbones?

"Agent?"

She blinked, and all those features were gone. Snake filled eyes replaced with light hazel ones. No scales either.

"I'm sorry," She told the man who had snapped her out of her stupor. Just what was that? "For bumping into you," she specified.

He smiled at her, "No problem."

She watched him leave her, heading for the back exit. How did he know she was an Agent? Was her badge showing? No… Who was he? She searched her brain for the answers. Wait. She had seen his nametag before getting distracted by his face. (She shivered at the recollection. Was it something she ate?) Then it hit her; the nametag had a cheesy 'Hi, I'm Tommy' in Comic Sans Font. It also had a logo of a one-eyed monster munching on a doughnut.

"Monster Donuts," Ziva breathed out in realization. The back door slammed shut. "Hey!" Ziva shouted, "Wait!" She ran toward the door. Before she exited, she remembered that the store was arms dealing, and anyone connected to it should be handled as armed and dangerous. Pulling out her firearm and quickly collecting herself, she slammed her way out and was met with… no one?

Ziva surveyed the area, circling in a three-sixty. There was no one there. How could he have gone that fast? He was only out of her sight for a few seconds.

Gibbs was not going to be happy with her.

After making sure to uncover any possible hiding places, she went back inside empty-handed.

Gibbs frowned at her as she entered. Ziva trusted him to connect the dots and directed her words at Sachs.

"You didn't say you had someone in your restroom."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Gibbs change his stance, a mixture of weariness and drive to get the truth. However, the bartender seemed utterly confused. "There was? Oh, I had completely forgotten…"

Ziva shared a small look with Gibbs. Sachs seemed muddled all of a sudden. Strange and convincing. Ziva hadn't thought this man to be a good actor.

Ziva described him, more for Gibbs's benefit than Sachs's. "Yes, about this tall, blonde, green eyes, wearing a Monster Donut uniform."

Sachs's face lit up in realization. "Yes! He was one of the guys that the woman hangs out with, the one that the other agents knew, a Mrs. Kahale." His eyebrows scrunched together. "I can't believe I forgot about him coming in…"

Ziva shared another look with Gibbs. Either this man was telling the truth, or he was the best actor Ziva had encountered. Gibbs, although not outwardly changing his calm demeanor, seemed as dubious as she was.

"If he or anyone else from Monster Donuts come in," she said, "Please call us."

"They are connected with this Marko Tarsibo guy? What have they done?"

"A number of things," Ziva said.

The man gave an inquiring stare. Ziva expected that how dangerous they were could affect his business if he let continued to let them be customers at all.

"They are connected to arms dealing, Ziva said. "Also, have a connection to the death of multiple murders, including children."

"They've killed kids?" The statement seemed to call Sachs back from his confounded state. "You said that this guy was a part of this and that he was a car dealer, right?"

The agents nodded.

"The kids, were they middle-school-age? Older girl with Asian features?"

Ziva scrambled for her phone, bringing out the profiles of the most recent child victims. She shoved the phone in the man's face. "Are these them?"

"Yeah, I know them. They had come in, ordered some soda, burgers, and fries. They looked pretty street-savvy, I kept my eye on them to make sure no one slipped them anything or took an order for them. I got something about how they were headed for the Carolinas, I guess they needed a ride. That woman, Mrs. Kahale, spoke with them for a bit. I didn't hear what was said, but if they needed a ride and she knew this dealer, she could've gave them to him."

The NCIS agents didn't give him time to finish as they rushed out the door.

-Περσεύς-

Percy would never get an office job. He thought being a Federal Agent would have been so exciting. Sitting on a desk doing the same thing over and over again was killing him. He kept getting distracted by the happenings outside. (Hey, those windows were huge. Not his fault the outside world was more entertaining.) He couldn't help but feel a bit guilty every time Grover would snap him out of his daydreaming. He was supposed to be helping make official profiles of each victim, so that a) the families could be notified, b) Dr. 'Ducky' could analyze and create a deeper understanding of General Botsaris and his victims, and c) so that Annabeth could report back to Chiron, and they could contact the families of the demigods.

Percy did have to admit that Tony's conversation with Mr. D was quite funny. Although, he was only able to hear one side of the conversation.

'No, not Annie Bell. Annabeth.'

'No, I am not here for strawberries.'

'Yes, wine sounds wonderful, but-'

'So, did she work there or not? What do you mean, who? Annabeth Chase!'

And it just continued. Percy had cracked up as the agent repeatedly smacked his head on his hand while talking to the exasperating god. If only he knew how it felt to deal with Mr. D on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis.

Unfortunately, that was what felt like an hour ago. McGee had sent a file to Tony a while later and was on his way to escape to 'help Abby run prints.'

"I'll be using the system," McGee told Grover and Percy, "Hopefully, it won't slow down too much."

"It shouldn't be a problem." Annabeth walked in, looking a bit disgruntled after her talk with Chiron. "Although we are using the same system, it's coding and routes have changed, meaning it can still use the data and have access to an ever-updating network while not really using the same path and program you'll be using."

Percy would have totally zoned out from that explanation if it wasn't for Grover nudging him to make another profile.

McGee made a face. "You can do that?"

"Not really. It's the computer."

"What are the specs?" McGee leaned in to check Daedalus' laptop's design. "What's the brand? I don't recognize it."

"It's experimental."

"Huh, well I'm going to-"

"Not so fast, probie," Tony called.

Percy looked up. Tony had better not been calling for him. He eased up when it was apparent he was talking to McGee.

"Rodriguez also uses disposable, pre-paid phones," Tony said, "But he makes regular family calls. If we searched his family's phone records, we would find a record of regular calls coming in but from different numbers? Wouldn't that be the case if Michael did the same?"

"But we already checked the Kahale's phone records, Tony," McGee said.

"No. We only checked Patricia Kahale's, and she said she didn't even know Michael even joined the Marines. Daddy, however, had a better relationship."

"And when Percy and I spoke with him," Annabeth said, "He gave me the impression that he knew about Michael joining."

"McGee, pop up the man's phone calls," Tony said.

McGee shared his screen on the plasma. Window screens flashed on and off as McGee used keyboard shortcuts lightning quick, even using long sequences of code that Percy didn't know could be memorized.

"Okay, filtering for numbers that are no longer in service."

"Wow, that's a long list," Percy said. They weren't going to have to go through some sort of procedure on each one, were they?

"He is a lawyer," Grover said, "He must get tons of scam and calls from one-time numbers."

"It doesn't matter," Annabeth said.

"What do you mean it doesn't matter," Percy asked. Was Annabeth okay? How bad was the call with Chiron?

"I mean, I've found what we're looking for." She pointed to a six-minute call starting 12:52 A.M. yesterday morning. That was right before the approximate time of death.

"It's not the same number the Staff Sergeant used," Tony said.

"A spare phone," Clarisse said, "He uses one phone call on a pre-paid, dumps it, and then uses the second to make another call."

A demigod technique. Annabeth and Chiron told him of it when he went outside of camp. The only time it was safe to keep a phone after making a call on it was in or right by camp. Otherwise, it was a traveling beacon for monsters.

"The father made the call," Tony said, "McGee, can you find the location where the burner picked up?"

McGee clicked a couple of times. "Washington, D.C."

"Alright," Tony said. "I'll call Gibbs, and we'll pick him up."

"Sweet, let's go," Percy said.

"Wait, Percy," Grover said with big eyes, effectively killing Percy's hope. "I still need your help with this."

"It's fine. We got this," Tony said, him and McGee rushing toward the elevator.

Percy watched them as they disappeared with a ding. Great, the three people that were the least qualified for desk jobs were the ones left at the desks. At least they had Grover to stop them from accidentally blowing up the place and being labeled as domestic terrorists, yet the way the satyr was inhaling those paper clips didn't bode well.

The phone at Tony's desk started to ring. The four of them stared at it for a second. "Should we get Tony back?" Percy asked.

"Ugh," Clarisse rolled her eyes. What? What did he say? Gods, she was just so annoying. 'And rude,' he added as he watched her get up and answer the cop's phone, but he already knew that.

"Yeah," Clarisse greeted. She was silent for the ten seconds as the caller spoke. Percy wasn't even surprised as the daughter of Ares slammed the phone back down without another word.

"They found Botsaris's car," Clarisse said.

'That at least deserved a 'Thank You,' was Percy's immediate thought.

Annabeth jumped up. "Let's go."

Finally! "Did you get the address?" Percy asked, excited to get out.

"Duh."

Grover looked around as all of them got ready to head out. "Um, should we tell-"

"No!" Clarisse and Annabeth both said, or growled in one case.

Grover held his hands up in surrender. "Okay."

Percy made sure everything he needed was on him and swept the desk clear of a small pile of broken pen clips. When had those gotten there?

"Let's kick some butt!" Clarisse grinned. Percy couldn't agree more.

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#scarpool #fanfic #fanfiction #Godly Marine: Killed #NCIS #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #PJO #Crossover #gen fic #PG/K+#Writing #Complete

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smooshjames · 5 years ago

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forget you not (i)

you returned and the wall comes falling down (or: welcome back to la)

word count: a little over 4k

a/n: friends, quarantine has been good for one thing and one thing only: spurring me to write 20,000 words of shayne topp fanfic. it’s five parts and it’ll be updated (probably?) weekly. maybe more often if a lot of people like it. the premise is that the reader (hey that’s you) is in a band (which is based off of little mix; if you’re unfamiliar you should check them out here because they’ve never written a bad song ever) and uhhh things happen. i didn’t write any of the songs mentioned herein; here are links to the songs mentioned this chapter (x, x)

warnings: a metric fuck-ton of angst, this isn’t gender neutral (reader is referred to with she/her pronouns) so there’s that, reader is also implied to have anxiety but i never use the word directly (idk if that’s a necessary warning but it didn’t fit anywhere else)

Shayne knew something was up the second Courtney rounded the corner. He was sitting at his desk working on some ideas for possible upcoming videos, but he glanced up when he noticed the blonde entering. She cast a quick glance around the room, looking for somebody, and then she made eye contact with Shayne and did that thing she did when she was up to no good: a slight narrowing of the eyes, a slight upturn of the lips. She squared her shoulders and began marching directly toward him.

Great.

“Mr. Topp,” she said once she was within earshot of him. She rounded his desk and leaned back against it, folding her arms over her chest. “I have a proposition for you.”

Great.

Shayne sat back in his chair and nodded.

“I bought concert tickets for this Saturday for me and a friend,” she began. “But my friend just canceled on me -- family emergency -- and now I’ve got no one to go with. I already asked a bunch of other people and they’re already busy. I got these tickets months ago and they’re really good tickets so they were super fucking expensive and I feel shitty just… throwing one away. So I was hoping you would go with me.”

There was a moment of silence as Shayne considered. He was pretty sure he knew what the tickets were for; Courtney had been into some girl group lately. It probably wasn’t his first pick for a concert, but he was free on Saturday and he could tell Courtney really wanted someone to come with her. Plus, he was never one to turn down a free concert ticket.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. It would be good for him to get out of the house, at least. “Why not?”

Courtney grinned and clapped her hands together. “Great! I got a really good deal on VIP tickets so there’s a photo op beforehand. I’ll text you the address, be there at five o’clock on the dot.”

Shayne nodded and smiled over his shoulder as Courtney retreated back to her own desk. With her gone, he turned back to his laptop and got back to work, considering his new weekend plans as he did so.

The band probably wasn’t his first pick, sure, but going to a concert with Courtney could never be boring. And it would sure as hell be better than sitting at his apartment alone all night. So, all things considered, he was pretty excited.

***

It had been a long time since you’d been in LA.

You’d been on-edge all day; jittery, standoffish. Being back in this city was a blessing and a curse. This was the place where you had discovered your love of music and started your career, but it was also the place where you’d suffered the worst heartbreak of your life.

It didn’t help that you’d gotten up at four o’clock that morning.

You and your bandmates had spent most of the day doing press before making your way to the venue of your concert -- not the biggest concert hall LA had to offer, but certainly not the smallest, which was bittersweet in your mind. The decently-sized venue meant you were succeeding and moving up in the world. It also meant a decently-sized paycheck. But, on the downside, it meant that the crowd would be one of the biggest you’d ever performed for. More people meant more eyes watching your every move, scrutinizing you, noticing if you did something wrong. That filled you with dread.

You took a deep breath in the dressing room mirror, trying to convince yourself that everything would be okay. In five minutes, the meet and greet/photo op for people with VIP tickets would begin. You looked stunning; black and white leotard, thigh-high boots, and a faux fur coat which would definitely cause you to overheat under the stage lights. Your makeup and hair were done up to perfection.

You were photo-ready by all accounts except your own. You couldn’t stop fidgeting with your outfit, your hair, your accessories, trying in vain to make yourself look perfect. You could never quite seem to get there.

You were startled out of your thoughts by the sound of the dressing room door opening. One of your bandmates and best friends, Carly, entered the room. She was dressed in a black-and-white outfit to match the theme, but hers consisted of high-waisted leather pants and a crop top. Her makeup was the same as yours.

“Hey,” she said, voice soft. Carly had been your friend since before the band started, and thus she knew about what had happened last time you were in LA. You didn’t like to talk about it much, partly because it made you upset and partly because you didn’t see the point in dwelling on it. It had been years ago. It was stupid to be upset about it, and yet here you were. And Carly knew because you told Carly everything, even the stupid things.

You didn’t say anything in response to her greeting. You just flashed her a tight smile and checked yourself one last time in the mirror. You took a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, trying to calm your nerves. You decided that you’d have to face the music sooner or later.

“We’re all ready when you are, buttercup,” Carly said. You smiled at the sound of her nickname for you. “How’re you feeling?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” you replied. And then you followed her out of the dressing room.

The photo op room was pretty simple. A small room half taken up by a simple white backdrop, half taken up with lights and camera equipment. There were four stools set out for you and your bandmates. The fans would come in through a door to the band’s left, talk for a couple of minutes, take their picture, and exit out the door to the band’s right. From there, they would go to their seats in the concert hall.

All you had to do was stand there, be friendly, smile for pictures. Easy.

And for the first hour or so, it was. You met countless fans and had wonderful conversations with them. A couple of them talked to you specifically about how important and inspiring you were to them, which honestly had you a little bit speechless.

You finished up your conversation with a group of teenage girls all decked out in tour merch, smiled for your picture, and waved to them as their chaperone (one of the girls’ moms, you assumed) led them out.

With the door shut behind them, you heard the door to your left open and the next group be admitted. A girl of average height rounded the backdrop, smiling brightly. She was pretty, you noted; thin, with shoulder-length blonde hair and delicate features. She had her hand wrapped around someone’s wrist, and when your gaze lifted from their wrist to their face, your heart nearly stopped beating.

Shayne.

You knew that Carly realized it was him at the same moment you did because you felt her stiffen beside you. You groped blindly for a stool and sat down on it, forcing yourself not to bolt out of the room. It seemed that he hadn’t noticed you yet.

Carly took a step backward so she could put an arm around your shoulders. If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Everyone knew you and Carly were best friends (there were even quite a few people out there who suspected you were a couple). But you knew that she was trying to ground you in reality, and for that, you were profoundly grateful.

You were also impressed with Carly’s acting ability at that moment because even as her entire body went rigid, her smile didn’t waver for a millisecond. The girl introduced herself as Courtney and began talking excitedly to Alexis, one of your other bandmates, and she seemed to be none the wiser to the sudden tension in the room.

You couldn’t tear your eyes away from Shayne even despite your best efforts to look at Courtney, or Carly, or Matt the photographer, or even the floor. He had grown up a lot since you saw him last, and he looked good. Seeing him again was bringing up all the conflicted feelings you’d been keeping locked inside your chest for the past five years, and you were pretty sure you were going to explode.

For the first few seconds, he wasn’t looking at the band; he turned around the room, looking at the lighting and equipment. You figured, based on the fact that you didn’t really sing Shayne’s type of music, and based on the way Courtney had been holding onto his wrist when they walked in, that it hadn’t been his idea to come to this concert.

You also figured they were probably dating, which made the revolt currently happening in your gut that much worse.

Time screeched to a halt as Shayne turned back around from inspecting the lighting equipment and immediately made direct eye contact with you. His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped slightly. Suddenly, you couldn’t hear what Courtney -- who had now moved on to talking to Piper, your fourth bandmate -- was saying. The ringing in your ears was too loud. A strangled sound was pulled out of your throat and you covered it with a loud, abrupt cough. When you looked back, Shayne seemed to be looking anywhere but your face.

And then Courtney made her way over to you.

She was just another fan, you told yourself. Just another fan, not your ex’s new girlfriend. Just another fan, not a girl who was definitely prettier and funnier and smarter than you, who Shayne probably loved more than he’d ever loved you. Just another fan, not the girl who got to hold him at night while you slept alone in a cold hotel bed.

“Y/N!” she squealed. You swallowed hard and forced a smile onto your face. She seemed really nice, and you hated yourself for hating her. From the way she was acting, you figured that she probably didn’t know who you were. At least, who you were to Shayne. “Can I hug you? I know that’s super forward but you’re, like, my favorite singer in the whole world and I’ve been counting down the minutes until I got to meet you!”

Carly stiffened beside you again, but you ignored her. Piper and Alexis seemed to have caught on by now that something was wrong; they didn’t know who Shayne was, but they knew when you were faking a smile, and they knew that whenever Carly got protective over you, something was wrong.

Doing your best not to think about it, you nodded enthusiastically. “Of course!” you said. You slid off your stool and closed the distance between the two of you, wrapping her up in a hug. There was one awful moment when your feet hit the ground that you thought your knees wouldn’t support you, but you managed to stay upright despite the fact that your bones were turning into Jell-O. You squeezed your eyes shut and pretended you were hugging Carly, Piper, literally any other human being on the planet. As soon as she pulled back, you sat back down, not trusting yourself to stand unsupported.

“Okay, picture time,” Matt said.

Courtney nodded and got over onto your right side, slinging her arm around your shoulders and beaming for the picture. Shayne took his place between Piper and Alexis.

Matt snapped a few photos and then Courtney and Shayne were ushered out of the room by one of the crew people, and it was like you could breathe again. You collapsed against Carly like a house of cards. You were fairly sure that without her there to hold you somewhat upright, you would’ve fallen off your stool and into a heap on the ground. You felt your hands start to shake and you cursed yourself for it, hated yourself for the way your throat constricted with tears.

You heard Piper ask Matt if the band could have a moment of privacy, heard the door shut as he left the room, but it was distant and muffled, like your head was underwater. You pushed yourself away from Carly and gulped in air, trying to remember how to breathe, trying desperately not to vomit.

Carly let you sit up on the stool on your own, keeping just one hand on your arm as support. She knew you well enough to know that you needed a little bit of space to breathe and get your bearings. Alexis and Piper had walked over now, forming a protective huddle around you. You curled in on yourself slightly, crossing your arms over your stomach and staring down at your knees, trying to focus on breathing.

“We need to talk.”

A bolt of panic flashed through you. Shayne had just gotten home, and he was being oddly distant. You asked him how his day was and got no reply, which was strange. For a few minutes, though, you were able to rationalize it; maybe he’d just had a rough day and didn’t want to talk about it.

But then you heard those dreaded four words, and for just a moment the world stopped turning. Your hands trembled slightly as you put your bookmark in the book you were reading and leaned forward to set it safely on the coffee table. You put on the most neutral, unaffected face you could and turned around to face him. He was leaning up against your kitchen island with his back to you. His head was bowed slightly and you could see the tension he was holding in his shoulders.

“What’s up, babe?” you asked. All things considered, you actually managed to sound somewhat normal. You’d been half-expecting your voice to come out as a strained squeak, and half-expecting it to not come out at all. The fact that you’d managed a coherent sentence was a triumph in and of itself.

“This isn’t working anymore.”

There it was. The fear you’d had since day one. The thing that kept you awake long after he’d fallen asleep. He had gotten tired of you, finally realized he was better off without you, that he could do better than you. You felt tears welling up in your eyes but managed by some miracle to hold them back. A question flashed through your mind unbidden; had he already found someone else?

“What?” you asked, hoping against hope that you’d heard him wrong.

He turned to face you now, and his expression was unreadable. His eyes were stony, narrowed, distant. For a moment, you almost didn’t recognize him. You were used to Shayne as he always was; open, gentle, all warm gazes and goofy grins. In all the time you’d known him, he’d never been hard for you to read. But now he was and that was terrifying.

“I can’t be with you,” he said. He didn’t even sound upset; no anger, no sadness. He was just… resigned, passive, like he felt nothing all. Like there was nothing you could do or say to change this. Like it was inevitable.

You shook your head, mouth slightly agape, completely dumbfounded. You were trying to think of something to say, something poetic and beautiful that would make him reconsider, but your brain was making dial-up noises trying to compute what he was saying, and suddenly all the words in the English language escaped you entirely.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And he shrugged.

You didn’t cry, which took an impressive level of self-control on your end. No, you wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry. If he wanted this, fine. If he felt nothing, fine. Then you felt nothing either.

Without a word, you went into the bedroom and threw some clothes into a bag. You grabbed your laptop. You walked into the bathroom to pack the essential toiletries.

Shayne didn’t move a muscle. He stood stock-still in the middle of your living space, staring at the place where you’d been sitting.

Finally, with your bag packed, you walked back into the living room and picked up your phone, keys, and wallet. You also tucked the book you’d been reading into your bag. “I’ll be back in a couple days to get the rest of my stuff,” you said. “You can keep all the furniture. Stay in the apartment if you want. I’m going to Carly’s.”

“That’s it?” he asked. He was staring at you, brows furrowed, voice strained.

You narrowed your eyes, confused and a little angry. “This is what you want, isn’t it? You just said that this isn’t working anymore. Am I supposed to fight? You want our last conversation to be a screaming match? I’ve been in this situation before, Shayne. There’s nothing I can say to change your mind. Better I leave now before we both say shit we regret.”

“I --” he began, but you were already gone.

“That was her ex,” you heard Carly say, and you realized that Piper had asked what was wrong. “He… well, there’s a lot of history there.”

Alexis and Piper both murmured sympathetically. You all had your share of shitty exes and love-related experiences; you’d all written your share of songs about it, that much was certain. Shayne was no exception there, but you were almost certain he didn’t know about your music. He had seemed just as surprised as you were when he saw you.

“Hey, sweetheart,” a new voice caused you to look up from your hunched position. Michelle, your manager, was standing there with a water bottle and a sympathetic look on her face. You took the water from her and smiled gratefully, not trusting your voice. “There are only a few fans left in line and then you’ve got some time between the photo op and mic check, okay?

“Maybe we should tell them that Y/N’s not feeling well --” Alexis began, but you held up a hand to stop her.

“I’m fine,” you said. You took a long drink of water and straightened up, put on a brave face. “I can tough it out through the last few groups. I will not disappoint people who paid money to see me, especially not over a boy.”

“That’s my girl,” Carly said, squeezing your arm before letting her hand drop back to her side. Michelle nodded and went to let the next group in. Matt the photographer reentered.

You smiled through the rest of the meet and greet, and it seemed like the fans were none the wiser. Finally, the last ones left and you felt your shoulders relax. You felt better now that some time had passed between seeing Shayne, still shaken up but far less nauseous.

“Mic check is at 6:30,” Michelle said once the last group was gone. “It’s just after six now so you’ve got a little under a half-hour to finish getting ready for the show. Take a breather, Y/N,” she said. You couldn’t help but laugh a little at that; Michelle was your manager, but she was also essentially the group’s mom while you guys were on the road. She kept you guys on schedule and on task, but always made sure your health was a priority as well. She was a godsend.

Carly, Alexis, and Piper led you back to the dressing room, where you immediately sank down into one of the armchairs in the back corner. It was half-hidden behind your costume rack, but that was alright; it was the most comfortable chair in the room, and you didn’t have to look at yourself in the mirror while you sat in it.

“I have an idea,” Carly said. You raised an eyebrow at the tone of her voice and the look on her face; that little smirk was never good. “Why don’t we sing Towers? You wrote it about him, didn’t you?”

You sighed. She was right; you had written a lot of songs about him, or at least with him in mind, and Towers was one of them. “I don’t know…” you said. On the one hand, it sounded really good. Towers was, in your opinion, one of the best songs you’d ever written, so you knew the fans would love it. And it was sort of a golden opportunity, right? When else would you get to sing one of the songs you’d written about him, one of the last songs you’d written about him, in a forum where you could be sure he’d hear it?

But on the other hand, it felt cruel. Your relationship had ended in fucking flames, but it hadn’t been entirely his fault. You had done things wrong, too, and it would be childish for you to ignore that. Besides, he had clearly moved on. You didn’t want to be the one dwelling on the past and singing a song from five years ago to a boy who was already ten miles past over you.

But on the other other hand, he’d probably never even heard the song before. He wouldn’t know that you specifically had written it, and he wouldn’t know that it was about him. Maybe singing it knowing he could hear would be the thing you needed to finally get closure. He didn’t have to actually know it was about him; you just had to convince yourself that he did. And then maybe your heart would finally put the years you’d spent together to rest. You took a deep breath.

“Okay,” you said. “When’s a good time to slot it in?”

The rest of the band giggled excitedly and began pitching ideas for when it would be the best time to sing the song. You did your best to settle your nerves, still frayed from seeing Shayne and now renewed with the idea of singing this song in front of him. But you were ready. In fact, you were excited.

You just hoped it didn’t blow up in your face.

***

Shayne was pretty sure his fucking lungs were collapsing.

Courtney was talking animatedly as she led him to their seats -- which were, of course, right up against the front of the stage -- but his brain wasn’t processing any of her words. He just mumbled his approval occasionally; yeah, the blonde’s outfit was really pretty, sure, they were all so nice. He desperately wanted to get out of this arena. He considered feigning a stomach ache and going home, but he’d feel like an asshole if he did. He certainly didn’t want to tell Courtney the truth for fear of ruining the concert (or, even worse, the band as a whole) for her. He had no way out; he’d have to suck it up and get through the concert. Once it was done, then he could go home and scream into his pillows to his hearts content.

He was so taken up by the whirlwind of emotions, thoughts, and memories running through his head that he almost slammed into Courtney as she stopped short, evidently having found their seats. He caught himself just in time to avoid hitting her, luckily, but not in time to avoid her noticing that something was up. “You okay?” she asked. Damn her and her perceptiveness.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Just, um… I’m gonna run to the bathroom. I’ll meet you back here.”

She nodded, and he barely even heard her little “okay” before he was walking quickly up the aisle toward the exit. He felt his throat spasming around tears and gritted his teeth against the sensation. He refused to cry. It had been years. He should’ve been over this.

He made his way toward the men’s bathroom and felt relief flood his system when he discovered it empty. He supposed it was still over an hour before the show started; the only people here were the arena crew, the band’s people, and the VIP ticket holders.

Shayne braced himself against the sink counter and gave himself a long, hard look in the mirror. All things considered, he looked alright. His eyes were a little red but he didn’t look like he’d been crying, and his breathing was coming a little more evenly now that he had the time to collect himself.

He just hadn’t been expecting to see you, that was all. It definitely wasn’t that some part of him was still in love with you, that he was kicking himself for letting you get away, and that seeing you in person had brought back every ounce of self-loathing over what had happened. No, it wasn’t that; he’d just been caught off guard. You had seemed pretty stricken yourself, if your widened eyes and shallow breathing had been any indication. His chest tightened at the notion that he may have caused you any anxiety or pain before you had to perform, especially on top of the damage he had already done so long ago.

Breathe, Shayne. Just breathe.

He nodded at himself in the bathroom mirror and went to rejoin Courtney. The whole time, he was desperately trying to convince himself that he would just enjoy the concert. He resolved to ignore the fact that it was you up there singing and dancing (and wearing an insanely revealing costume that hugged your curves in all the right places). He could still have fun.

He would still have fun.

#shayne topp x reader #shayne topp #eliza.txt #forget you not #anyway... here's this

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kenkamishiro · 5 years ago

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zakki:re Q&A replies megathread

A translation megathread of the zakki:re Q&A contest letters Ishida sent back to winning contestants!

As far as I know there were 100 winners, though I only have around 40 in this post. There were more on Twitter, but some opted not to release them publicly on Twitter for personal reasons (such as if they asked personal questions). Some didn’t reveal their question, or all of Ishida’s replies, but I’ve tried my best to guess at their meaning if possible.

The ones I’ll post here are from Twitter, specifically if they came with pictures of Ishida’s art or handwritten replies. I’ll also mention some context if I felt that the conversation/topic between the OPs and Ishida was interesting.

If you see one that I missed, please let me know and I’ll update this post.

Enjoy!

-----

From songbirdfaraway (X):

No question or answer revealed. OP mentioned that since they drew Touka and Kaneki on the postcard they sent Ishida, that Ishida must have figured OP liked them and drew them in his reply.

From mochi_XIII13 (X):

A huge Juuzou fan. OP stated they asked something they’ve always wanted to know from the bottom of their heart for ages, and that they couldn’t stop crying when they got the answer from Ishida. (No question or answer revealed.)

From __rsks__ (X):

OP must have asked how Naki proposed to Miza, because:

Naki: (Oh yeah!) Dunno what kinda pose a “pro-pose-al” is, but I said we gotta be together ‘til we die!!

Miza: You didn’t need to mention that!

From choco__morinaga (X):

The answer was hidden because OP wasn’t sure whether Ishida minded if it was shared publicly since the info he gave in the answer wasn’t mentioned before. Ishida said it was okay to share, but I can’t seem to find OP tweeting anything about what the question and answer was.

Uta: It’s a secret. Just kidding.

From SatoshigeKiya (X):

OP mentioned they sent in a question that didn’t have anything to do with TG, and Ishida’s response:

Soba.

From 00ibushigin00 (X):

No question shown.

Ishida: Correct.

From tsukihoryst (X):

OP asked for Chie’s biography (one of two, actually!).

Hori Chie Birthday: September 30th 136 cm / 33 kg / 21.5 cm Currently on break from university. (Voluntarily on leave.) Hobbies: photography, travelling, going for walks, enjoying drama

Tsukiyama: Little mouse, what are you doing? Chie: I got asked a question.

From Hosaka_0405 (X):

Seems like it was a personal question, so I won’t translate.

From take2129 (X):

OP asked if Aunt Satou, Takizawa’s neighbour who was mentioned in his will, was killed by Ayato? But Ishida stated that it wasn’t Ayato who killed her, just some random ghoul.

From reirei_reina_ (X):

OP was so happy they got a nosebleed LOL. Not exactly sure what they asked.

Ishida: It’s great that I can know about the people who have been reading the series for a long time in this manner.

Touka: Thanks!

From cmnme17 (X):

OP’s question: Please give us more details about Hairu’s hairstyle!

Side: (fluffy bangs) Hairu: Hm...more details…?

Front: Long straight across.

Back: Looks like this from behind.

From go_t35 (X):

Seems like OP asked about the name of a fan club for Ishida based on another tweet of theirs (X)?

Ishida’s attempts: Ishida Club, The 9th Laboratory, Us [Oretachi], We [Wareware], umm? Muscle Lover’S [Kinniku Daisuki’S]. Please tell me of a good one you came up with.

(This is Tsukiyama-level naming lol)

OP later replies to Ishida, saying they were thinking of Sui Sui Club (“club” in kanji).

From 4njo_Usa (X):

OP’s question unknown.

Ishida: No matter how hard things get, don’t forget your goals.

From mishumi_jugem (X):

This OP also asked for Chie’s biography. Similar to the first one, except that she has blood type O.

Chie: Me? I guess I also like seeing drama.

From ChirolMaronLevi (X):

The question wasn’t sent by OP, but by his father. Both father and son are fans of TG (OP grew up reading Jump comics since the father reads them a lot), which amused Ishida greatly. OP is jealous, and his father is smug/happy about it lol (there’s a photo of him holding the zakki:re letter with a glove, with the letter itself wrapped in plastic, with a giant smile on his face).

Also a bit sadder to mention, but OP’s maternal uncle passed away from esophageal cancer. Hearing that his son (so OP’s cousin) has all the TG volumes, OP borrowed the letter from his dad to show to his cousin, which made the cousin happy.

Ishida: Isn't something like that decided at the very end? You're admirable. Please do your best to stay till the end.

From inou_uoni (X):

OP’s question: This is related to Tokyo Ghoul:re. Ihei Hairu has pink hair, but why did you make her hair colour stand out from everyone else’s?

Hairu: Cause I’m cute, of course?

From 3110_mai (X):

OP asked some question about Urie, and the reply:

Urie: Why indeed.

OP is really amused Urie doesn’t know the answer, and it might even be possible that even Ishida himself doesn’t know.

From GW3Q1od9vzXccOM (X):

Funny enough, the preview of the postcards Ishida tweeted shows more of this illustration. (I’m planning on also translating those postcards that weren’t posted by their owners at the end). But it seems OP was concerned about Ui’s smoking habits, because:

Ui: It’s fine, I’ve got strong lungs.

From paralysis_2626 (X):

Seems like OP asked where Furuta’s pseudonym “PG” when he was masquerading as Souta came from. This is what I could salvage based on OP’s multiple photos:

Furuta: Eh, what “PG” stands for? Huuh, is that what you’re asking…? What to do...hmm, alright, this is just between us, but the truth is...PG is [redacted by OP]. What!! Just kidding~ Actually, [mostly redacted, I can make out the parts where OP didn’t blur the text in another image, something about eating bulgogi]. Ahaha!

This is just my personal guess, so take it with a grain of salt. But:

Bulgogi = プルコギ = purukogi = PurukoGi = PG…

OP did mention they were going to get bulgogi after this, so chances of this being right are pretty high lol.

From ute9pmr1 (X):

I think OP asked about what animal Ishida would want to become to relax (for example, OP wants to become a sea creature became they’re drawn to the ocean).

Ishida: If I’m given time to relax someday...I’d keep working as a human. I don’t really want to become an animal…

Ishida later adds in a tweet it’s more fun being a human.

From hare__1127 (X):

OP got back a Houji from Ishida when they asked about hojicha (roasted green tea).

Above Houji’s head: It smells nice. Next to Houji: This is Houji-san.

From re_cord01 (X):

OP was debating whether they should keep it to themselves, but decided it’d be better for them to share so everyone can see (thank you OP, this is personally my favourite reply I’ve seen).

OP’s question: What is Kaneki-kun's life like now? (something small like a simple diary entry...)

Month X Day X

I wake up to the sounds of Touka-chan and Ichika's voices. For some reason, they're excited over some news on TV. I read through the documents related to Countermeasures [most likely something to do with the United Front] , and summarize my opinion on it until noon. Time for lunch. Since Touka-chan went out to the shop, I make lunch for Ichika using the rice I bought. "It tastes better than Mama's," she said, so I replied, "Keep that a secret from Mama." In the afternoon, I think I'll take a short walk with Ichika, and try visiting Anteiku with her.

From Nia__86 (X):

Question or answer unknown.

From OKASHI_monster (X):

Question unknown.

I wasn't prepared at all... If I think about this and that it makes me think, "Ah, I don't wanna do this," so there's times where it's easier not to think about it. It may have been better if I had a "there's all kinds of things huh..." kind of resolve.

From utahira_flour (X):

Question and the full answer unknown. (The postcard on the left is just OP’s message to Ishida about Uta and Hirako).

Uta: Try it out?

From gongon0514 (X):

OP’s question: What is the name of Hirako Take’s Shiba Inu?

Ishida: Kotarou.

From S8OkMMRsYsB7H8i (X):

OP’s fiancee got the reply from Ishida!

OP’s fiancee’s question: Why does Takizawa, when he became a ghoul, begin to hold his fingers in his mouth?

Ishida: Like infants, the reasons can include stress, and suppressing his appetite.

I actually can’t find the OP for some reason, so if anyone finds it, please let me know!

Based on Ishida’s preview of the postcards, it seems like OP asked how Hirako felt when he first got his dog.

Ishida: Something like this. Hirako: …(it’s a dog)

From tacto_0 (X):

Seems the question was personal, and I can only make out something about how once you’re satisfied it will end there.

The reason the mask is in the picture is because OP asked Ishida advice about making Kaneki’s mask a few years back.

From secret_fairys (X):

The first reply that Ishida worked on.

Ishida: I like guys that can win with a hard blow. The weapon is a two-handed sword. Dialogue bubble: I will cut you down.

From kuranosukezemi (X):

I can’t say what Ishida replied to OP since the revealed text doesn’t really say anything substantial, but seems like OP asked something related to the final chapter based on their tweet.

From @S_R_Snow (X):

OP must have asked what Touka named her keychain lol.

Touka: No...since I’m not the kind to name things… Yoriko: She called it Usakichi!

From @rio_080910 (X):

I have no clue what OP asked so the reply doesn’t really make sense. Basically if Ishida has tried doing something.

I never thought about it during serialization. But since it ended, I’m thinking it’d be good to try that kind of thing.

From @Utinni_jawamori (X):

OP seems to have asked a Star Wars-related question since Ishida drew Darth Maul.

Why of course...here. But I also like Count Dooku. Exar Kun symbol.

From @ume__oni (X):

Ishida’s reply was covered up by OP, but OP mentioned in their tweet how they named the onigiri Ishida drew “SSR onigiri”, and that they were thankful for receiving a reply despite their silly question.

Ishida replied to their tweet, and it seems like the question OP asked was about his favourite kind of rice or onigiri since Ishida mentioned something about koshihikari, a type of rice.

From bobriorio (X):

OP’s question: Is there a specific character’s expression that makes you go, “Drawing this face is fun, I love it!”?

Ishida: Something like this broken-looking face, for a lot of reasons…

From nato_noir (X):

OP didn’t mention what question they asked, but probably had something to do with the species of butterfly that appears throughout TG. They also mentioned they started reading TG in 1st grade of junior high, since Ishida addresses that in his reply.

From 1st grade of junior high! I'm happy to hear that. It may look like a "butterfly", but specifically it's a moth called a mock swallowtail butterfly moth. I drew it to symbolize the difference between humans and ghouls even though they look similar.

From Fyt120 (X):

Question is unknown.

Ishida/Matsuri: Even if it cannot be reached, it will be in your thoughts for eternity.

(Why do I get the feeling he’s talking about Urie lol)

From pencil_15 (X):

OP asked about Tatara’s biography.

Now published...!

Tatara (Zhū Lú) [朱鑪, 朱 means 'red' and 鑪 is fireplace, the kanji for Tatara] 186 cm / 96 kg Blood type A Hobbies: Go (taught by his older brother), reading (Takatsuki Sen)

From hachiyone_arai (X):

If you can't stop thinking about the person even though you know it will never happen, that is love. ...according to Matsuri. (I love Urie too.) Urie: No.

From nanasiFAST (X):

Miza: Hm...me? I don’t really rank the things I love.

From Ishida’s preview (X):

Top right - Saiko: Kah!

Bottom right - Maid.

Top left - Nakarai: Recently, Japanese waxwings, I think. (has a rock look to it)

Bottom left - Ichika comic: (you can read here)

I’ll just summarize what I can figure out here since so much of it is concealed.

Higemaru - I think OP asked about how Higemaru ended up working for the CCG because it talks about his history at the Academy and the Qs. Also that Hige really looks up to Urie and wants to keep working with him.

Akira - I think OP asked for advice on dealing with the difficulties with their transfer family, because Ishida suggests using phrases such as, “I see...” or “That’s why~!”. (The alternative is Akira giving Inoue-san (from the transfer family) a Mado Punch lol)

Uta - A personal question, in which Ishida mentioned something about how if OP realized they messed up, and doing what OP needs to do.

Letter below Ui’s - Hide in :re volume 14, huh~ Kaneki also lost his way in OG volume 7 and :re volume 16. [Something about other guys like Naki, and something about how deciding the most important thing is difficult]

-----

The end! If there’s any other replies from Ishida that you didn’t see here, please let me know!

#Tokyo Ghoul #Ishida Sui #zakki:re #Ishida Q&A #Translations #my translations #if you manage to get to the end #congrats :'D

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alounuitte · 4 years ago

Text

Where Loyalty Lies

When shipments from a mining station suddenly stop, Lotor's generals look into the reason and get more questions than answers. At the same station several days earlier, the Blade of Marmora encounters a surprise when they try to take out the operation.

(also on AO3 under LovelyLessie, works/25004566)

Prologue:

She knows something’s weird before she even touches down on the moon’s surface. Everything is totally quiet - too quiet, even for a boring little mining op like this one. She’s pretty sure there should at least be sentries out here, even if this place is too insignificant to be worth real guards.

“I’m in,” she says over her comm, leaning against the console as she surveys the site. “Something’s not right, though.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Acxa’s voice replies with a sigh. “If something wasn’t wrong, you wouldn’t be there.”

“I’m getting there!” Ezor says as she steps out of the shuttle, and cloaks herself before she approaches the building. “Don’t be so uptight.”

“Just tell me what’s going on,” Acxa says.

She hums, looking around as she heads for the doors. “For one thing, shouldn’t there be, I don’t know, guards, or something? This place is abandoned!”

“There’s supposed to be a crew of eight,” Acxa confirms. “Five guards, two operators, and a commander. Most of the site is only patrolled by sentries, and all the machinery is operated remotely.”

“That’s the other thing!” Ezor cuts in before she can keep talking. “This is a mining site, shouldn’t this machinery be doing something? It’s totally shut down!”

Satisfied that nothing’s approaching or watching the entrance, she darts up to the door and punches in the security code Acxa sent.

“No sentries, either,” she adds as she steps inside, and then trips and nearly falls over something on the floor. “Oh, wait—“

It’s a disabled sentry - or, at least, half of one. Its legs have been detached, and after a quick glance around she spots them some ten paces down the corridor. That’s definitely suspicious.

“Uh, guys,” she says, “it looks like this place got attacked.”

“What happened?” Acxa demands. “What did you find?”

“There’s sentries after all,” Ezor says. “This one is in pieces on the floor.”

“Get to the command center,” Acxa says. “Find out what happened.”

“I’m working on it!” she complains, glancing at the site map before heading down the corridor. “No need to be so pushy.”

Around the corner there’s another sentry with its head removed from its shoulders, crumpled in a heap where it stood when it was taken out. No sign of a firefight, even - whoever was here was quick and quiet about it. She jumps over its broken frame and keeps going, running to the lift at the end of the hallway that should lead up to the command center.

“What I don’t get is what those rebels would want with this place,” she says over her comm as the lift powers up.

“Probably the same thing we want,” Acxa replies testily. “It’s the only source of vesperite in the whole sector.”

“I know that,” Ezor scoffs, leaning against the wall of the lift. “But what would they even need vesperite for? I know we have plans for it, but I don’t even know what the empire does with it.”

“It’s used as a coating for armor and ships that need to withstand—“ Acxa begins to explain.

Ezor yawns loudly into her comm before Acxa can get too far into her little speech. “Who cares!” she says lightly, stepping out of the lift. “Anyways, if they wanted the vesperite, wouldn’t they still be running the equipment?”

She looks around the command center, frowning, and crosses the room to the communications console at the far side. There’s no signs of struggle here, either, which she can’t help thinking doesn’t add up. Surely someone should have been in here when the site was attacked, but the room is totally empty. Where are any of the actual crew?

“So what exactly do you want me to be looking for?” she asks, pulling out her security override chip and fitting it into the console.

“Check the logs first,” Acxa says. “See if there’s any mention of what happened.”

“Okay, whatever you say,” Ezor says, rolling her eyes. “You’re the boss. I mean, Lotor is the boss, but he says you’re coordinating the mission so —“

“Just tell me what’s there,” Acxa snaps.

“You don’t need to yell about it,” she says. “I’m just saying, if it were me, I wouldn’t be too worried about making a log entry when the base was under attack.” She pulls the log up anyways, skimming the last entry. “Preparing shipments for coordinates - oh, those are ours - yeah, the last entry is from four quintants ago and it says everything’s fine.”

“See if there’s any video feed recorded on that date,” Acxa says. “Maybe we can confirm whether there was an attack.”

She frowns at the display, humming to herself as she looks through the menus for anything like security footage. “Are there even drones here?” she wonders out loud. “I haven’t seen any, working or not. Would they even need security feeds for a mining operation this…well, pretty much inconsequential?”

“Every operation has an important purpose to the imperial machine,” Acxa says.

Ezor groans. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Oh, here it is—“

She opens a list of recordings and skims them for the stardate of the last log entry before pulling one open. It’s a video of the mining equipment outside, monitoring its operation. Boring. She flips to the next, but it’s just another view of the same.

“These are useless,” she complains, skipping to the third and fourth and finding only more angles of the same machinery.

“You’ve only looked at them for thirty ticks,” Acxa says. “Look through them a little bit.”

“Ugh, fine.” She skips to the next video and discovers it’s the same feed as the first, one quintant later and the only thing that seems to have changed at all is that the equipment isn’t operating. “Oh, no, that’s too far - huh, there isn’t any footage inside the building.”

“Why would there be?” Acxa asks impatiently. “There are only four rooms, aside from personal quarters.”

“Which one do you think is the most important?” Ezor asks as she returns to the right date and starts skimming through the video at high speed. “That’s probably where they all went, since there’s no one dead in here.”

“You can search the building after you check those video feeds,” Acxa says. “This is important. If someone attacked this base, we need to know who it was.”

“What part of finding the site abandoned with the sentries in pieces makes that so unbelievable?” Ezor asks. “Seems pretty obvious to me. Just because I haven’t found the bodies of the crew yet - whoa, what was that?”

She breaks off, surprised, as a flicker of something bright on the feed catches her eye, and skips back to watch it again at the ordinary speed. A flash of light comes from somewhere under the machinery, followed by a plume of smoke as the camera shakes, and the equipment grinds and shudders to a halt.

“Oh,” she says, disappointed. “The equipment broke down, that’s all.”

“Did it break down?” Acxa presses. “Or was it sabotaged?”

Ezor shrugs, and then remembers she’s both cloaked, and talking to Acxa on the comm. “How should I know?” she asks as she skims the rest of the video. “It could have been sabotaged. I just saw it blow up.”

“Check the other feeds,” Acxa says. “Maybe one of them shows more.”

“I’m working on it,” Ezor sighs, jumping ahead in the second feed and starting the playback a few ticks before the time of the explosion.

Nothing happens.

“That’s weird,” she says, frowning, and keeps watching. For thirty ticks, then sixty, nothing changes except a slight stutter and a crackle of static on the recording, before the machinery abruptly freezes.

“Ezor!” Acxa shouts, and she realizes belatedly that she’s been so focused on the recording she hadn’t heard her name being called.

“Sorry!” she says. “What was the question?”

“What are you seeing?” Acxa demands.

“I think someone altered the feed,” she says. “Nothing happened when the explosion should have been, and then the machinery just suddenly stopped. They must have repeated the signal or something.”

“Hmm,” Acxa muses.

“If you don’t believe me, I can copy the feed and you can watch it yourself,” Ezor says, folding her arms.

“Don’t bother,” she replies. “Go search the rest of the base. See if you can find out what happened to the guards.”

“Got it,” Ezor says, relieved to be done with these videos, and pulls her override chip out of the console. “Any clue where I should start?”

“Check the control room,” Acxa tells her. “If something went wrong with the equipment, they must have looked there.”

She hops into the lift and heads back down to the entry level, checking the map as it descends so she knows where she’s going. There are two more busted-up sentries on the way to the control room, but still no trace of anyone who was alive at any point, and to be honest, she’s starting to get a little creeped out by the whole place.

It’s almost a relief when she gets to the door and finds signs of a struggle - a few laser shots scorched into the walls down the corridor, scratch marks on the floor that could be from claws or from a weapon. Of course, there’s no body as evidence that someone got the upper hand, but the attacker could have fallen back, or the fight moved to a better stage.

“Someone was guarding this place,” she tells Acxa over the comm. “No sign of what happened to them, though.”

“That’s something,” Acxa says. “Keep looking.”

But however the fight ended up, it wasn’t in the control room; when Ezor looks inside it’s just as empty as the command center. “Nothing here,” she announces, frowning.

Acxa sighs. “Go check processing and the docking bay. I want to know what happened to the guards before you leave.”

“At least that we agree on,” Ezor says lightly, and laughs as she darts back out into the corridor.

The equipment in the processing chamber is badly damaged, panels ripped off of machinery and the insides slashed and torn out, but there’s no one in the room, dead or alive; the shuttle bay is just as empty, just rows of containers waiting to be loaded up with refined vesperite and three empty shuttles for transport.

“This is seriously starting to creep me out,” she says as she heads back into the corridor from the dock. “It’s like no one was ever even here.”

“Eight people were stationed there,” Acxa says, again. “There must be remains somewhere.”

“Maybe out in the mine?” Ezor suggests. “I mean, if someone blew up the equipment, probably one of the crew members went to check it out, right?”

“That’s a good point,” Acxa agrees. “Go take a look.”

“Wait,” says Lotor’s voice suddenly, and she freezes mid-stride to listen. “Before you go, I’d like you to examine the crew quarters.”

“The quarters?” she echoes, frowning. “But - even those Galra rebels wouldn’t just kill a bunch of mining operators in their beds… would they?”

Lotor chuckles. “No, I don’t imagine they would. Just take a look, and tell me if anything seems unusual.”

“Um, okay,” she says, but his reassurance doesn’t really make her feel any better.

She takes the lift down once more to the crew quarters, looking around the vacant hallway as she walks to the first door and opens it. The room is sparse, the unmade bed and scattered wrappers of a few ration packs the only evidence that anyone ever lived here. Otherwise it’s not too weird, though, so she ducks out to check the next one down the corridor.

“There’s, like, nothing in any of these rooms,” she announces after checking the fourth, before she turns to come back up the hall and look at the other side. “I know the fleet has regulations, and all, but would it kill these guys to personalize a little?” She pauses at the door across the hall, considering what she just said. “I mean, I guess someone probably already did kill them, but--”

“Have you examined all of them?” Lotor asks.

“Just half,” she says, and pokes her head into the next. “Same here, though! At least this one made their bed before they left, it’s like no one’s ever even been in here.”

“Keep looking,” he orders. “And try to minimize the chatter, Ezor, if you must talk to yourself you can turn off your communicator.”

“Sorry, sir,” she says. “Just trying to keep you in the loop.”

The remaining three rooms aren’t much different, barren of any identifying features, some garbage or displaced furniture the only evidence anyone used to live in them.

“Okay, I checked all of them,” she says with a sigh, leaning against the wall outside the lift. “What now?”

“What did you find?” Lotor asks.

“Uh, nothing,” she replies, and rolls her eyes. “Like I told you - some clothes left behind in a couple, some trash and empty ration packs in some. Otherwise they’re totally clean!”

“No weapons left behind?” he presses, his voice calm and level. “No identifying belongings?”

“Nope,” she says. “Just a whole bunch of empty rooms.”

“As I suspected,” he says. “Come back to the ship, there’s nothing else of use there.”

“What?” she asks, tilting her head to the side. “But we don’t even know what happened to the guards! I was going to go check in the mine--”

He sighs wearily. “There’s no need for that, you won’t find them there.”

“Huh?” She usually assumes Lotor knows what he’s doing, but something doesn’t make sense here. “But if there was an attack, there have to be bodies somewhere…”

“Naturally,” he says, an edge of impatience creeping into his voice. “But I don’t believe there was any attack. Come, Ezor, get back to the ship, we can discuss it further upon your return.”

“But...then…” she protests as she heads into the lift, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. “Where is everyone?”

“The crew of this site were relocated, not killed,” he says. “And I’m quite sure my mother is behind it.”

#voltron legendary defender #vld #vld ezor #vld acxa #vld lotor #willwrites #gosh i love writing ezor.

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green--lion · 4 years ago

Note

THis fandom is the worst bottomless pit of scum that ever existed and it's their fault the show fell as far as it did. And you're contributing to it. You don't deserve to call yourself a fan. You may as well forget it existed. I would much prefer that instead of you mocking it.

Oh hey! My first ask! Neat!

Anyway, let’s break down this comment.

This fandom is the worst bottomless pit of scum that existed

I believe this was written in a response to my latest reblog, in which in the tags, I said that the fanon content is pretty good, and the fandom has gotten a lot less rancid since the show ended. This is from my perspective of it all. I’ve never really experienced or seen that many ship wars, that much toxicity, or people blackmailing animation studios for the year and a quarter I’ve been in this fandom. I’m not denying that that ever happened, I’m not saying that those don’t matter, I’m saying that from my experience, and comparing it to the previous things that people reported going on in the fandom, the fandom seems to have improved, or gotten less toxic.

Now, I’m not an omniscient being, I don’t know if people are still doing those things. I don’t know if people are still harassing the VA’s and their families. From my experience, there’s cool people and cool art and cool au’s with only the occasional anti. Keep in mind again, I joined after the fandom had died, after December 14th, after a lot of the shit died down and people moved on. Which brings me onto another point I feel I have to make:

You’re grouping in all of the good people with the toxic ones.

While it is true that there were quite a lot of shitty, toxic people in the Voltron fandom, you neglect to mention that there are good people who just want to make content for a show they enjoy. And it’s true that bad publicity always gets more attention than good publicity. It’s why Rockstar paid people to write bad reviews for GTA V. Bad publicity gets infinitely more attention than good publicity. You’re more likely to focus on a person who continually attacks others based on their beliefs than someone who spends a lot of time and care working on something they really love. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t genuinely talented people creating amazing content purely out of passion.

Now, let’s look at the next part of this sentence.

it's their fault the show fell as far as it did

Here, I’m presuming you’re referring to the show’s reputation, but this is a very shallow mindset, pinning all of the blame on the fandom. I do admit, Voltron’s toxic fandom did give it a reputation, all right, and also served as a warning to other shows as to how toxic a fanbase could become. But you neglect to mention that quite a lot of the bad rep was created by the show and its staff itself.

Let’s take a look at Adam. He was introduced as Shiro’s boyfriend through a tweet made by the official Voltron twitter account. This got fans hyped for the new season, expecting the show to give good representation.

What they got was a short, 30 second scene, which in no way communicated a romantic relationship, and then Adam getting killed. Voltron then got a bad reputation for queerbaiting. The fandom owns neither the twitter account or runs the show. The backlash was produced by the fandom, but that would’ve happened in any other fandom. Promising something in a show, and then falling flat on that promise, especially with something as touchy as LGBT representation, isn’t a fault of the fandom. It’s a fault of the show and its staff.

Oh, and that’s not even touching into the bad reputation built up by the show by its bad writing, which I will get into later.

And you're contributing to it. You don't deserve to call yourself a fan.

Looking at the definition of a fan: an apparatus with rotating blades that creates a current of a- wrong definition, I mean a fan, or fanatic, sometimes also termed aficionado or enthusiast, is a person who exhibits strong interest or admiration for something or somebody. By that definition, I am a fan. Nothing in what you do or say can stop the fact that I find enjoyment in VLD. Sometimes, I just portray that enjoyment by critiquing it, and hating on it.

Second off, you’re just some anon on the internet. Why am I obliged to live by your judgement of who is and isn’t a fan? Whatever you say, I’m just going to make Voltron content anyway. I’m only writing this because I like writing these kind of things, and it’s good practice.

You may as well forget it existed. I would much prefer that instead of you mocking it.

After reading this, it is clear that OP holds the show in a very high light. Focus on the last few words ‘instead of you mocking it.’ OP, you do realise that if something is public, no matter what, it is susceptible to any Tom, Dick or Sally mocking it. I mock VLD because it is far from the best of the best. This doesn’t mean I do not enjoy it. This doesn’t mean no one can enjoy it. It just has a ton of blatant flaws when you look at it in a critique. Don’t believe me? Let me get you a few videos of a few different people explaining in depth why there are issues with VLD.

An In-Depth Analysis of Voltron: Legendary Defender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84sYxPIiCoU

One Year Later: Is Voltron Still Bad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtlqGJTdaxs&t=5s

How Voltron: Legendary Defender Crashed and Burned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae5oovf1CEo

Anyway, that’s all from me for now. I had some good fun replying to this, and even got to visit some cool videos again!

All this typing's made me hungry. I'm getting a croissant.

#voltron #not art #(asks)#voltron legendary discourse

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natasha-cole · 5 years ago

Text

#1 Crush: Part 22

Chapter Summary: Reader has just received a gift that terrifies her even more than anything else that has happened. Now, she needs to tell someone about and she hopes that this someone won’t be too upset.

Word Count: 2958

Warnings: angst, creepy fan, swearing probably, maybe even a little fluff!

Notes: Writing has been hard. But, sometimes my brain lets me get words down.

Series Masterlist

“Y/N…” you heard your handler ask, “are you okay?”

You glanced up at her, noting the worried expression on her face as she carefully approached you.

You were crying now, and since this girl was new, she probably thought you were crazy over the way you were so upset over a gift.

“No,” you replied.

“What do you need?”

“Nothing!” You nearly shouted in return.

The last thing you wanted was more attention to be drawn to you. You also didn’t want Rob to know about this.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine,” you said as you wiped tears from your face. “Everything is fine.”

You clutched onto the necklace and crumpled the paper as you stuck it in your pocket. You made quick work of discarding the box into the trashcan.

***

You went through the day in a sort of daze. You hadn’t mentioned the gift to anyone, but you wore the necklace, occasionally reaching up to touch it to make sure it was still there. The fact that you had it back made you happy, even if the way it came back to you creeped you out.

Right now, you were waiting backstage with Rich and the band as Kim and Briana started to answer their final question of their panel. You were quiet as usual, and you tried to avoid Rob’s obvious glances in your direction.

He had been fairly good about not saying much to you this weekend, but something caught his eye just now that warranted a conversation.

“Hey,” He said suddenly as he approached you. “Is that…?”

He motioned toward your neck, looking sort of surprised. You reached up to see what he was talking about and as your fingers made contact with the pendant, you then understood his confusion. You had almost forgotten that you had put it on at all.

“Oh, yeah,” you answered. “It is.”

“You found it?” He asked. “And you’re wearing it?”

Perhaps it was weird to be wearing the romantic gift that your ex-boyfriend had bought you, and probably even more confusing for him to be seeing you with it on considering you had dumped him; but you had been feeling incomplete without it. It just felt natural to put it right back on even considering the way it had come back to you.

“Oh,” you muttered. “I should probably explain…”

“It’s okay. It was a gift after all… I just can’t believe you found it.”

“That’s the thing that I should probably explain…” you said.

“What’s going on?”

“Can we talk later? Maybe over dinner?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, looking surprised that you had actually asked.

Before either of you could say anything else, he was being nudged by Rich to take the stage as it was time to wrap up the panel.

They would introduce you next and you prepared yourself for yet another awkward stage appearance. You were no longer fun and outgoing up there on stage, and that was mostly due to your growing anxiety over who could actually be out there in the audience watching you. Still, this was your job and you’d be damned if you were going to let some creep keep you from it.

After a long panel in which you fumbled through answers and felt extremely out of place the entire time, you then made it through photo ops in a daze. The events from earlier had thrown you off your game more so than usual. It was getting harder to pretend that things were okay and it was starting to weigh heavily on you.

This particular ‘gift’ though had been the worst so far. It was no longer just an annoyance of flowers being sent to you, now it was a blatant obstruction of your privacy and safety.

This creep had been in your home and stolen from you. You understood that he had sent you this necklace only to frighten you and taunt you. It had certainly worked and you felt sick knowing that he was probably here at this convention. Watching, probably noticing that you were wearing the necklace again, and most likely waiting for something.

Without proper security, you felt vulnerable all over again. But, you wouldn’t let anyone else know this. It was bad enough that your friends and especially Rob were so concerned about you just from all of the things that had been going on up to this day.

Still, you were afraid and there was only one person that you trusted more than anyone. There was only one person that you knew you had to talk to. Even if you had hastily left him despite his begging you to reconsider, you loved Rob and you knew that he loved you. He had been with you from the beginning of all of this, and he at least deserved to know.

***

At the end of the day, you were headed out of the green room when Rob found you. You had become a little less persistent when it came to avoiding him today, mostly because he had already noticed that you were wearing the necklace again. Even just the sight of it around your neck seemed to make him look a little less sad than usual. Considering that he had taken your breakup pretty hard, it was nice to see him smile a bit.

“Hey, Y/N,” he said as he approached you from across the room.

You stopped in your tracks and turned to face him, giving him a smile that you couldn’t hold back even if you wanted to.

“Hey,” you responded.

His eyes darted to your necklace and back up to meet your eyes and you subconsciously reached up to touch it again.

“Are we still on for dinner?” He asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” you replied. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Hopefully there’s some good things,” he chuckled.

He gave a crooked smile and you couldn’t help but smile back at him. You loved this man and it still hurt to not have him in your life.

Before you could reply, he reached up and let his fingertips graze across the pendant of the necklace, his skin making brief contact with your own.

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s good,” you replied.

“Maybe I don’t want to have dinner with you then,” he retorted, half joking based on the nervous laugh following his statement, and half serious based on the hurt in his eyes as he watched you.

“We do really need to talk.”

You wish you hadn’t said it like that. But, it was true. He wasn’t going to like what you had to tell him. Although you loved that he cared so much about you, you also hated how worked up he got over these things. It was hard enough being scared all the time yourself, his fear in the situation only heightened your own fear.

“Okay,” he nodded.. “I’ll text you later. We can meet up and we’ll talk.”

——- at dinner——-

When the two of you arrived at the restaurant later that night, Rob was the perfect gentleman as usual. You sort of hated that he was still this way with you when he should hate you for the way you treated him.

Once the two of you were seated and had ordered your meals, each indulging in glasses or wine, he wasted no time in getting to the topic at hand.

“So, where did you find it?” He asked, referring to the necklace.

“Um, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. But, I don’t want you to freak out.”

“Y/N…”

You immediately knew that he was worried just by looking at him. He had been a nervous wreck through everything, and you starting a conversation by telling him not to worry only made him more anxious. Still, you had to tell him.

“Someone left a gift for me in the green room.”

“Again?”

Even after everything, he still acted surprised by the constant gifts you received, or perhaps it was more of an annoyance to him. You couldn’t really tell in this instance because he had seemed on edge since the cab ride to the restaurant.

“It was different this time,” you explained. “It wasn’t flowers. It was a box. When I opened it, the necklace was in there.”

“I’m confused…”

“And there was a note,” you added hesitantly. “It didn’t have the usual lyrics to #1 Crush… but it was the same handwriting. This time, they used a line from the song you said you wrote about me. The same line that you had engraved on this.”

You put the note on the table and Rob moved to pick it up. He took a moment to read it, his face falling as he made sense of it.

“You’re saying this guy… gifted you the necklace that I gave to you?”

“Yes,” you said quietly.

“He- he was in your house… and took it? And he gave it to you as a gift?”

You nodded in response this time.

“My gift,” he stated as if he were still trying to piece it all together in his head. “The gift that I bought for my girlfriend. The gift that was personal. The necklace that was in your home that he took.”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say…”

“This is sick, Y/N.”

“I know-“

“I can’t fucking believe this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please,” he said, voice raising as he paused for a moment and placed his hands over his face.

You could tell he was frustrated and upset and he was trying to calm himself before speaking to you again.

“Please, stop apologizing,” he said finally.

He looked up at you, his voice calm but his expression the usual look of fear that you had come to know all too well lately.

“None of this is your fault. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like it was in any way.”

“I know,” you replied softly.

“Did you tell anyone about this?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Y/N!” He shouted suddenly, the volume of his voice startling you as you stared at him. “You should have told someone immediately! Even if it wasn’t me.”

His attempt to calm himself had completely disappeared and you understood. More than anyone else, he was the one who hated that you held off on talking about the things going on, no matter how small and trite you thought they were. You didn’t blame him. You had gotten into the habit of downplaying everything.

“I know,” you replied quietly. “In the moment, I was scared, but I just didn’t know what to do.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

He sighed heavily and closed his eyes, his voice back to normal now.

“I’m sorry I yelled.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” he said, shaking his head and looking disappointed in himself. “I just- fuck I’m so worried about you and now that I can’t be with you all the time… it just makes me worry more. The fact that you don’t tell anyone when something like this happens…”

“I know,” you agreed. “I should have told someone right away. You’re right.”

“You need to tell the police about this.”

“I know. I will. I just- panicked.”

“I understand,” he said. “But, Y/N, you have to be diligent with these things. This guy is getting worse and you are not safe.”

“Okay,” you responded quietly. “I’m sorry I even bothered you with this. I know I hurt you and I have no right…”

“You can always come to me with anything.”

He leaned across the table then, reaching out and taking your shaking hand in his. You watched as his thumb brushed lightly against the back of your hand and you truly missed his touches… the way he could comfort you with just a simple movement like this.

None of this was fair. It wasn’t fair that you felt that you had to give up the one person that you loved. It wasn’t fair that you had to live in fear and that the people around you worried about you so much.

“Thank you,” you said. “Even after everything, thank you.”

The two of you finished your dinner together. You tried to sway the conversation to happier things; talking about the convention and anything that wasn’t creepy. He told you a bit about what he had been up to in the weeks following your breakup. It was nice to have a normal conversation for once and it reminded you of all the times he’d take you out on dates to take your mind off of things.

When you left the restaurant, you shared a cab back to the hotel where everyone was staying. Rob reminded you that you didn’t have security for the rest of the weekend, and that just wouldn’t do.

“I’ll walk you back to your room, if that’s okay.”

“I would like that,” you said with a smile.

The two of you walked through the hotel lobby together in silence and once you were on the elevator, you kept your distance as you watched him, wondering what was on his mind right now. You had been thinking about how nice it was to spend time with him even if the reason was unpleasant. You thought about how much you cared about him and how much you missed him. You wondered now if you had made a mistake in your choice to leave him.

The elevator dinged, breaking you from your thoughts as you realized you had arrived at your floor. Rob stepped off first, glancing around the hallway as if he were looking for something. You followed as he led the way, walking you toward your room.

When you got there, you took your keycard out and waited for a moment. You just watched him as he stood there waiting. He looked at you, confused by your hesitation. But, you weren’t ready to say goodbye just yet.

“You okay?” He asked.

“No,” you answered, sniffling slightly as you fought back tears that you hadn’t realized were building up. “I don’t want to be alone.”

You weren’t upset by the evening’s events. You weren’t even upset over the events of the day. Now, you were just upset about this situation between you and Rob.

Whoever this man was that was stalking you, he had ruined everything. This was affecting every facet of your life. Your relationships, your job, your own well-being. While you looked at breaking up with Rob as something necessary that would protect him, you hated that you even had to think that way. You wanted him still, maybe selfishly, but you saw now that he was sticking around regardless. He had made it clear at dinner that he harbored no hard feelings toward you, only love.

“I miss you,” you said, your voice broken as you finally said the words that you had stopped yourself from saying since you had left him. You knew that saying them would only make it harder to keep him away. But you were tired of keeping the people that you loved away, especially him.

“I miss you too,” he breathed out. “So damn much.”

You never really expected responses like this from him. You always assumed that after you broke his heart, he’d just be angry with you. Based on the way he stepped closer to you just now, and the look in his eyes, you could tell that he was hopeful. Maybe you still had a chance.

“I made a mistake leaving you.”

“I get why you thought you had to. I still don’t agree with it, but I get it.”

“Can we go back and just pretend that stupid fight never happened and I never broke up with you?”

“Really?” He asked almost breathlessly.

His lips turned up into a smile, his eyes searching yours for any hint that you might be messing with him right now. But you weren’t messing with him. This was what you wanted, and even if you didn’t want for him to be involved in all of this, you needed him. And, if he was willing to be with you regardless of this mess, then who were you to keep fighting that?

“Really,” you smiled in return. “I’ve just been- not the same without you. You know, I thought it was for the best and I hated fighting with you all because of this… but, we’re better together. I’m better with you.”

“I know I was being overbearing and crazy,” he explained as he grabbed your hands in his. “And I can’t promise that that will stop while this is still going on… but it’s because I love you and I’m scared too.”

“Well, maybe we’re better off being scared together,” you chuckled. “Can you forgive me? Can we just be together?”

“Yeah,” he said softly, giving you a smile. “We can.”

He didn’t argue, didn’t try to make you feel guilty for dumping him in the first plac, he simply took your face in his hands and pulled you in for a kiss. You sighed against his lips, caught slightly off-guard at the suddenness of it, but thrilled that he had forgiven you so easily and completely.

After a moment, you pulled away from him, blushing as you realized this was getting hot and heavy in a hotel hallway where anyone could see you.

“Maybe we should take this elsewhere,” you said as you fumbled with your key in the door.

“Am I staying the night?” He asked.

He raised a brown at you and watched as you opened the door.

“Well, I really hope so,” you teased.

***

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#1 Crush #rob benedict x reader #rob benedict rpf

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