#also i know I drew them in their canon casual clothes but in the AU they'd be in their twenties

[lesbianpunkghost]

Ashley Campbell moodboard + some of my headcanons

Okay guys, I've been in the Sally Face fandom for a long time (4 years) and I have an AU based on the game (I have it written but I've never posted it anywhere) so some of the headcanons might seem weird in the game's canon.

- Ash definitely listens to Billie Eilish and other famous singers. But she also listens to a lot of Indie rock, alternative rock (e.g. Big Thief, Sparklehorses, Radiohead, etc.).

- Continuing with the music world, she certainly has several different playlists for very specific situations. And she organizes them all frequently.

- (I think this one is kind of canon) she is a protective friend and probably stops thinking about herself to help her friends, which ends up making her destroy herself.

- She is lesbian and non-binary, her pronouns are she/they

- She loves more "neutral" clothes, like suits, leather jackets, loose sweaters, because it makes her feel more androgynous and she loves it

- She and Larry have obviously been best friends for a long time and know everything about each other, but she is also VERY close friends with Todd and they definitely gossip a lot.

- She and Sal were always very close but they still didn't know much about each other. One day they discovered that they were fans of the same series and began to have the courage to open up to each other, discovering that they are practically identical (in relation to many things).

- She has had a secret (not so secret) crush on Maple since elementary school, contrary to what many people think, they have always been friends (they even drifted apart at the beginning of high school) but then they got closer and had a quick "casual" relationship, because Ash was going to move to college.

- She and Maple stayed out of touch while Ash was in college (against Ash's will), so she didn't know that Maple had started a relationship with Chug and received the news as soon as she returned to Nockfell.

- She drew Maple at every possible opportunity and in every possible drawing stroke.

- Ash never got over Maple and when they were finally able to be together again she felt so happy that anyone could tell.

- Ash DEFINITELY sang Good Luck Babe to Maple while she was still married.

- Ash and Larry have a habit of leaving the group for a while and going out just the two of them to smoke and talk about life.

- She definitely has mommy issues and her mother was responsible for Ash not getting into an art/photography course.

- She has a problem with self-harm but whenever Sal says he relapsed she starts with the speech that it's not good and that he should stop.

- She hates math.

- She listened to "Do I wanna know?" thinking about Maple.

- She's the friend who has a camera, so every time she goes out with her friends she takes a bunch of pictures and gets a bunch of messages from them saying "send me the pictures from yesterday please"

- She uses kitty emojis

- She loves Instagram or any other social network where you can post photos and her feed is always methodical and organized.

- She has another Instagram, but this one is private and she uses it as a photo album (this one is not as organized) and she always posts everything about her/her life there.

- She and Sal are the "old-fashioned" friends and they make the whole group wear friendship charms, post texts on social media, take funny photos and record videos (and everyone gets on board with them).

- She writes letters (and then turns the letters into text) to all her friends all the time and always posts cute posts about them on Instagram.

- She is an alcoholic who only drinks wine.

- She's a smoker too btw.

- She and Maple have a Pinterest board where they share how they see each other with beautiful pictures.

- She is borderline and the symptom she suffers most from is dissociation and the constant desire to change.

- She is an outgoing person and talks a lot all the time.

- She loves to read and has a giant bookshelf full of books

- Even though she was the one who helped/taught Larry most of the things about art, she is insecure about her drawing style and took a while to show them to her friends often.

- She was a terrible cook as a teenager and now everyone is afraid to try what she makes, even though she has learned to cook properly.

- Her natural hair is wavy and she straightened it during her teenage years.

- She has a problem with anger and suffers a lot because of it because she sometimes pushes her friends away impulsively. And she feels that deep down everyone hates her because of it.

- She has a YouTube channel that she uses as a blog.

- She sees art in everything and is always painting and taking pictures of something.

(Just these for now because I'm sleepy)

[multi-lefaiye]

It's your turn on the STS 🫵🏿 what kinda clothes would Eden wear in the modern day? And his family members for that matter

answering this well over a week late bc the concept of time is nothing to me.

ANYWAY thank you for this ask!!! this is what made me realize that i haven't actually put a lot of thought into what eden's family members wear, either in canon or in a more modern au. and i've drawn modern/human eden before, but i didn't really do anything special for him and just kinda put him in his usual outfit with a few tweaks.

so i'm gonna take this as an opportunity to briefly describe how eden and his family members prefer to dress, and share some images to show how that would translate to a modern au.

gonna go under the cut in case this gets long!

eden:

tends to dress nicely and professionally, but also in clothes that don't restrict his movement too much. in canon, his clothes are modified to accommodate his more infernal features, such as his tail and horns.

gravitates towards specific color schemes. he likes wearing a lot of red and black, with gold or white accents. yes, he knows he's edgy. this is on purpose.

also likes to dress a little cunty. big fan of knee-high boots and long coats.

i've drawn him in the past mainly with western style belts with buckles, but i think he'd like some kind of rope or tie belt.

hypothetical modern eden style vibes:

he'd also still accessorize with a pair of gloves and a necklace with his mother's wedding ring. and also i think modern eden uses glasses, a pair of forearm crutches, and a cane as needed.

michael:

especially as an adult, michael is a very active and outdoorsy type. he's not the type to sit in place and let the world pass him by--he wants to be out in it, living and breathing fresh air and working with his hands. i think, in a modern au, he'd really gravitate towards outdoorsy gear, maybe athleisure type shit.

lots of loose, comfortable clothing when he's just going about his day casually, nice sneakers and running shoes, and then when he's actually out in nature more heavy-duty hiking gear.

unlike eden, michael doesn't gravitate towards any one color scheme, nor is he trying to look cunty. he takes pride in his appearance, sure, and wants to look nice, but the vibes are different.

that being said, i think he'd wear a lot of greys and neutral tones. he likes bright colors, but he doesn't have a lot of confidence in wearing them. at most, i can see him rocking some camouflage patterned shit.

anyway, modern michael style vibes, from the kind of athleisure i think he'd like to more actual outdoorsy clothing:

in terms of accessories, michael wears a lot of hats, and he has a watch from his father he wears rather often.

hannah:

i have drawn hannah exactly once, and that design is very outdated, but the outfit i drew her in then is still pretty close to how i still imagine she dresses: lots of colors, with occasional frills and lace. she's a big fan of patterns, especially floral ones, all of which translates to a modern au well enough, i think.

hannah is not an enjoyer of dark, neutral colors.

i'm a bit torn on whether or not she'd prefer skirts or pants, so y'know what! both! both is good. when dressing up to go somewhere, hannah prefers dresses, and she has a specific off-the-shoulder purple dress with lace trim that she's very fond of. on a daily basis, though, especially once she has kids, she tends more towards high-waisted pants and blouses.

eden gets a lot of his cunty fashion sense from her--while i don't think she's one for knee-high boots or flowing overcoats, she's got multiple pairs of killer heels.

she also would rather frequently wear headwraps, headbands, and scarves, and once again prefers bright colors and patterns. what can i say! she's a woman who loves to dress brightly, if that makes sense.

hannah general style vibes:

(the first one is off because i do not think hannah would wear black, but that's the style of blouse she'd like. and bonus points for her looking a lot like i imagine modern/human hannah, just with lighter skin than hannah actually has.)

abdiel:

in all universes, abdiel is a suit enjoyer. he dresses in a lot of formal, dark clothing, and even when in a more casual setting that's what he prefers. the day he goes without at LEAST a dress shirt is the day he dies.

honestly, i don't think abdiel's fashion would be particularly interesting most of the time. but he would wear some damn nice suits. this applies to both canon and any modern au. he can get a little cunty with it, i'll allow it.

like eden, abdiel tends to wear certain color schemes, but he's nowhere near as specific as eden is, lmao. but abdiel is a big enjoyer of blue and purple.

not much for accessorizing, but he has a small collection of floral ties that he wears on rare occasions, all gifts from hannah to try and add a bit of color to his wardrobe.

like i said, though, he doesn't wear them much. they're gifts from hannah, and so he loves them, but they don't usually match his suits that well.

modern abdiel style vibes:

he definitely would wear those sock garter things

[sadlybeans]

Náro

prince of the noldor, certified chaos incarnate

I am 🎶 way too lazy 🎶 to draw detailed things 🎶 so I just drew this 🎶 in a comic style 🎶

✨ Headcanons ✨

Suffers from chronic baby face. Is often mistaken to be Curvo or Tyelpe by people who don’t know him.

Short hair. Convenient for working in the forges, excellent defence against rowdy children.

Brown skin like Finwë, but looks like a miniature of Míriel.

S h o r t

(Y’know, the average noldo is about a head shorter than Nelyo -commonly used as a measure unit. Well, Náro is the height of an average sinda, which makes him about two heads shorter)

(I cannot emphasise enough how short he is. The only person in the family of his height is Káno)

Hates (wearing) jewellery. Will not use earrings, rings, bracelets or necklaces, but can be convinced to wear a circlet.

✨some more headcanons that have nothing to do with his appearance✨ that are also placed in my personal AU and therefore might be conflicting with canon but i don’t care because i’ve run out of fucks to give, it’s eight am and i haven’t slept in twelve hours

Speaks tons of languages. Will use all of them at once when excited or angry (Nerdanel is never amused by this).

Cannot be trusted to write formal letters and documents. Partially because of the above fact, but mostly because he is the equivalent of a kinder aged child and should not be given important stuff.

Discipline the children? HA. No, he’s sitting down in the corner with them because he’s an enabler and could never say no to a cute pouty face.

Helicopter parent.

Actually allows the kids to socialise with their cousins. What do you mean? Of course he isn’t doing it to have his gaggle of little monsters corrupt Ñolvo and Arvo’s well behaved kids, why would he do that.

Cried for a week straight when he found out Káno was making heart eyes at Findo.

Then he spent a fortnight locked up in his forge and came back with a set of two identical daggers he gave Káno without explanation.

Constantly asks Tyelpe to spy on Nelyo and Finno because goddammit he wants more grandchildren.

Gets drunk easily.

He’s the type of drunk who cries for everything.

He will also constantly ask for Nerdanel like an excited puppy.

Overgrown cat behaviour. And no, he does this sober.

Extended family dinners with half siblings? Will -naturally- push Ñolvo’s cup/utensils to the floor ‘by accident’. Blackmailed by Finwë to stay in Arvo’s house overnight? Slams doors, pushes furniture around, drops shit on the floor. In the middle of the night of course.

Takes the slightest casual comment about a new craft/art that someone is doing as a challenge to do it bigger and better.

Nerdanel can’t sew for shit. Náro embroiders cute little details in the boys’ clothing.

Can’t paint or draw for shit. His sketches and plans for his work are incomprehensible and look like they were drawn by a toddler with Parkinson’s desease. Only the Valar know how the fuck he manages to create exquisite beauty out of that.

Handwriting is damn illegible. He can actually manage something presentable if necessary but he rarely gives enough fucks to do that.

Ambidextrous but instead of being proficient writing with both hands he can’t write with either.

ok i’m tired so i may write more later

wait one more

HE LOVES HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN. that’s it thanks

[n01r-exe]

Long post!! Spoilers for Turnabout Beginnings (AA3-1), possibly Reunion, and Turnabout (AA2-2), Turnabout Memories (AA3-2) and Bridge to The Turnabout (AA3-5)

After ranting and raving about how Turnabout Beginnings (Case 3-1) was set up, I decided to do something about it.

I made a Dahlia Hawthorne Redemption AU - the tags are #dahlia's redemption AU, #dahlia fey AU

I know she's a villain guys, but hear me out - in this AU, she's not. I didn't write a fanfic explaining my views for nothing. It'd make understanding the art above a lot better.

While the fanfic covers my reasoning for Dahlia's redemption, it doesn't fully explain the character reference sheet I drew. I'll go in the order I numbered the drawings in.

Dahlia cut her hair off after the events of Turnabout Beginnings. I headcanon that in the Fey clan, cutting your hair and changing its style from beads, braids and loops is strictly forbidden. Dahlia cut her hair to spite the Fey clan's oppressive family rules, but kept the twin braids to feel close to Iris, Mia and Maya.

Butterflies were Dahlia's favourite insects because they represented the freedom and safety she never felt as a kid.

I feel that Dahlia would have tried to follow in Mia's footsteps as a lawyer, though she probably would have stayed far away from the criminal aspect. She'd become a civil lawyer instead, and would probably be the co-counsel in most of the Ace Attorney cases (sorry Maya, but I don't think that just about anyone can be a co-counsel). I drew what I think is the Japanese Civil Lawyer badge, but I'm not sure if it's correct. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this part!

Since magatamas in the Ace Attorney universe can run out of energy - as seen when Pearls charges Maya's magatama so that Phoenix can use it - I think that it glows when it's fully charged and gets dimmer as you use it till it is completely drained of spiritual ability. Like Iris' magatama, Dahlia's magatama is also pink when charged.

For the timeline of AA1-AA3, I tried to show the influence of Dahlia's canon counterpart on her fashion style. While she dresses in darker clothing as an indication of her 'fall from grace', it's clothing she's more comfortable in. She still keeps butterfly motifs around, but they don't fly around her anymore. (Same can be noted for picture 9 - her casual clothing in the timeline of AA4-AA7)

From the timeline of AA1-AA3, her style of formal clothing would be similar to that of Mia's, seeing as she's got her footing in the legal world only recently.

Dahlia absolutely despises wearing traditional Fey clothes with a passion.

Same as 6.

Same as 5.

Once Dahlia establishes herself as a veteran civil lawyer, she'd probably experiment a lot with formal clothing, thereby setting herself apart from the rest of her family.

I headcanon that there are various abilities in the Fey clan, such as Elemental Manipulation (have you seen the Ace Attorney anime, Mia is an airbender for sure) and being able to communicate with spirits without summoning them, among others. I feel that Dahlia has weak illusory and telekinetic abilities, and her eyes glow pink when she uses them. The butterflies that always flew around her, as well as her ability to always appear charming and innocent were most definitely a product of her illusion powers. As for her other ability, I think that she would have experimented a little after finding out that her family could channel spirits and developed weak telekinesis. I'll probably put up a full post on the Fey clan's secondary abilities later. I also headcanon that people's eye colours change when viewing psyche-locks - both of Dahlia's eyes change colour depending on the colour of the lock (I was just too lazy to draw and colour two sets of eyes separately).

Yeah, that's it! Hope you liked it!

[raiyakun]

Two Worlds 

━━━━━━━ ☆ ━━━━━━━

As always my brain randomly decides to kick into overdrive when thinking of AUs so it took on a life of its own (ADKJSHDKASD), but this was very fun to think of so please have the rest of it under the cut.

(TW for those who might be prompted to check out W: [mostly minor] character deaths, violence, blood, which get more prevalent in later episodes. The music volume changes quickly at certain points too. My concept so far only covers the early half of the series, but still TW for mentions of violence, blood, and minor character deaths.)

(Also a sidenote because I’ve had comments with other AU concepts (；´∀｀) This won’t be a 1:1 AU. The basic premise stands but I make a bunch of changes especially with character roles like splitting and/or splicing roles.) 

❝Keith Kogane is the hero of the immensely popular action mystery webcomic W. Marco McClain, the series’ artist and writer, has become practically a household name as everyone has gotten addicted to the story of Keith, a young man who once rose to fame as the prodigy who became the youngest Olympic judo gold medalist at 18 under his father’s training but gets embroiled in a series of tragedies and injustices as his father is later found dead in their home and his mother discovered missing, with Keith framed and later imprisoned for the murder and abduction by the ambitious prosecutor Zarkon Daibazaal.

Keith is later proven innocent and released following a year in prison, then disappears from the public eye for years only to reemerge later as the successful co-CEO of Voltron Co., and alongside his mentor and brother figure Takashi Shirogane, co-CEO Allura Altea, and assistant Acxa Marmora, he establishes W, a TV program that aims to solve criminal cases and mysteries and give people the justice that they seek for. But Keith’s ultimate goal is to find his father’s killer and his mother’s whereabouts, a goal which he will stop at nothing to achieve.

Meanwhile, Lance McClain is a new resident in the esteemed cardiovascular and thoracic surgery department of the Garrison University Hospital under the tutelage of Professor Iverson, who doesn’t exactly have the most stellar impression of him. That is, until Iverson learns that Lance is the younger brother of Marco McClain, writer and artist of W. Lance sees this as a chance to get on Iverson’s good side and decides to visit his brother Marco, who in reality has had little contact with his family after dropping out of medical school to pursue being a comic artist, much to the disapproval of his and Lance’s parents. His sister Veronica, herself also a doctor at the same hospital, advises him against the idea, but Lance decides to push through.

At Marco’s studio, though, Lance learns through his friends Hunk and Pidge, both assistants to Marco, that his brother has been missing since the previous night, which is a problem since the deadline for W’s latest chapter was the next day. They have absolutely no idea where he could’ve gone, and in the middle of their conversation, Lance finds out about Marco’s plan to kill off his comic’s main character, much to his disbelief. Hunk brings him into Marco’s room to show the last panel he’d worked on his tablet, showing Keith lying in a pool of blood on a hotel rooftop after getting stabbed by the story’s mysterious killer.

After Hunk leaves him alone in the room to attend to a call from the editor, a bloody hand suddenly shoots out from Marco’s tablet to pull him in, and Lance finds himself on a high rooftop, with nobody but a bloody young man with a mullet at his feet. 

Lance is incredibly confused, but quickly jumps into action and helps out the man, saving him from dying from a collapsed lung by puncturing his chest with a pen, the man’s eyes opening for a split second just as Lance does so. After paramedics arrive to bring the man to the hospital (with Lance feeling quite proud he managed to save someone under pressure. Take that, Iverson!), Lance is thanked by the hospital’s manager, and Lance learns the name of who he’d just saved: Keith Kogane.

Wait. Is it a coincidence? For him to have the same name as Marco’s character? But Lance recalls the bloody hand that pulled him in and realizes how the man was lying exactly like Keith in the drawn panel was. And at the corner of his vision, Lance catches the words To be continued appearing out of thin air just before he finds himself back in Marco’s room. 

And that’s how Lance’s curious experiences with moving between reality and (what should have been) fiction begin. What’s worse is that whatever events that happen while he is in the comic world end up getting reflected in W’s story, to the point that Iverson accuses his of forcing his brother to base a new character on himself.

And Marco is little help to Lance’s predicament. He reappears like nothing happened and refuses to listen to his younger brother talking about what he experienced, instead cryptically proclaiming that he needs Keith to die in the comic, even if it goes against what the readers and his editors (and Hunk and Pidge) are hoping he would do.

Lance manages to save Keith’s life a second time after getting sucked into the W world again, and he discovers that the world follows a weird logic that revolves around its main character, and that Lance would only be able to get back to the real world whenever something shocking to Keith happens. 

As for Keith, meeting the man who saved him on the rooftop that one fateful night leads him to believe that he has the key to his existence, his purpose. But the man seems elusive and....very weird. He has a nameーLance McClainーbut it’s as if he swims in and out of existence, with no one knowing him or him disappearing without a trace. But despite his friends’ doubt, Keith is resolute that Lance McClain holds the answer to the mystery governing his life.

The question is, is that a mystery both him and Lance are prepared to unravel?❞

(end of Part One)

This was getting long so I just decided to bunch the rest of some important details into bullet points (；´∀｀) (there’s a LOT more since a ton of stuff happen in the series so there’s a bunch more to come after this. Some might be confusing if you don’t know what happens in the series but I’ll try to clear them up in later posts ksdjfhksdfj)

Romance isn’t a big point in W, but its readers popularly believe that Marco is building a love triangle with Keith and Allura, with whom Keith shares a hatred for Zarkon and some common ground due to her parents also having been murdered, and Acxa, who used to work for Zarkon but whom Keith convinces of Zarkon’s evil and hires as a personal assistant-slash-bodyguard. Lance believed this too, at first, since when they were younger Marco told him about his plans, although at present Lance isn’t sure if Marco still intends it since he’s only played with the idea in the really early chapters but has not touched upon it again. (Later, when Lance and Keith realize they’re falling for each other and the comic IRL begins to turn into a romantic comedy, Iverson rants at Lance about how the story is getting completely ruined by the “new character Lance” and that Keith should’ve gotten set up with one of the two heroines, only for Lance to yell back at him “Well how are you completely sure Keith is into girls in the first place!”)

Shiro’s role is a combination of Do-yoon’s and Hyun-seok’s from W. He was an athlete also trained by Keith’s father and a close family friend. He took Keith in after his release from prison and became the program manager of W. (No, he does not get Hyun-seok’s fate.)

Hunk and Pidge share Soo-bong’s role, although their reactions to realizing Lance can somehow get into the webcomic world are very different: Hunk is extremely anxious while Pidge gets excited and curious.

Keith’s father was murdered by stabbing, and Zarkon framed Keith as the murderer with the knife that Keith got as a gift from his mother as the murder weapon. It’s what Keith secretly keeps under his pillow (which Lance is aware of, much to Keith’s shock. But Lance only knows it thanks to having a lot of knowledge about the webcomic details from the real world).

Lance gets caught by the police in the comic a similar way that Yeon-joo in the series does, but this isn’t due to any purposeful set up by Allura or Acxa the same way the series did for So-hee. I really don’t like how the writing treated So-hee sdjkfsdkjfksf. Lance genuinely becomes friends with Allura and Acxa, and instead it’s Zarkon, thinking that he can use Lance as the key to send Keith to jail permanently, who’s the reason Lance is caught by the police. Allura and Acxa try to help him out but are prevented by Zarkon until Keith’s return.

Marco used to be very close to both Veronica and Lance when they were younger, since all three used to share a love for comics and Marco had a talent for drawing (and although they don’t remember it at first, both Lance and Veronica contributed ideas to what eventually became W). But their parents wanted them to aim for “real” jobs and pressured Marco into studying medicine. While Marco rebelled and left, becoming a small artist that anyone barely knew until W blew up, Veronica chose to bury her love for comics and pursue medicine, thus becoming a doctor. Lance is caught between the two routes they took (wanting to pursue his own dreams like Marco or persisting in the field with Veronica). Despite looking stern most of the time, Veronica is indeed worried and cares for both her brothers.

Eventually, Veronica gets roped into the mess as well, especially after Marco gets attacked and sent to the hospital and when she finds a hysterical Hunk and Pidge yelling about them and Lance getting chased by a killer only for her to find Lance passed out and so weak he needs to be hospitalized.

Eventually, both Lance and Veronica realize that they are able to influence the W world too, since the comic’s logic recognizes them as “part-creators” due to Marco having taken inspiration from them when he was originally planning the comic. I may or may not have a Veracxa agenda here KJFHKDJFHDKSJFHD. Bottom line is: instead of just Yeon-joo and her dad in the original, the three siblings can get dragged into the comic. Okay I admit there is a Veracxa agenda here.

Aaaaaannnnd more to come because W has like 3-4 arcs and both my sister and I can’t stop watching it because it’s cliffhangers everywhere KJDHKJSHKSDJFHKDF

[lunar-wandering]

“this house is a frickin’ nightmare”

so i. decided to write something for the ‘Sitcom’ AU, which is basically just the concept that post-canon, everyone lives in the same house.... its Fun.

Word Count: 2.7k

Read on Ao3

-

"Monkey King, get down from the fridge."

"No."

This exchange is what drew MK's attention to the fact that something was happening in the kitchen.

In MK's opinion, it was far too early for something to be happening in the kitchen.

"Wukong, I swear, if you don't get down from there-"

"What- you gonna stab me? Pigsy, you know full well that method is ineffective."

"What is going on?" MK asked, entering the kitchen and, well, seeing exactly what he had expected; Wukong crouched on top of the fridge, staring down at Pigsy, who was glaring up at him.

Still though. Just because he'd expected to see it didn't explain why it was happening.

"Oh hey, kid." Wukong said, taking notice of him. "Everything's fine, you can go back to your room, breakfast will be ready soon."

"It would be done already if you hadn't burned it." Pigsy said, gesturing to the charred remains of what supposedly had been breakfast. "Seriously, can't you follow simple instructions?? Now we've gotta start all over."

"It's not my fault I'm a visual learner." Wukong said, his tail swinging back and forth.

"It was three steps-"

"What's going on?"

MK barely kept himself from startling at the new voice behind him, turning around to see a very tired looking Red Son.

"Breakfast burned." MK said, catching Red Son up on the situation. Red Son hummed in contemplation, walking into the kitchen, picking up a piece of the unrecognizable charred food, and, ignoring the other's growing horror, he ate it.

"...Tastes fine to me." He said, going so far as to grab and nibble on another piece as he turned and left, presumably heading back to his room. The remaining three watched him go in shocked silence.

"....This house is a frickin' nightmare." Wukong deadpanned. Pigsy nodded in agreement.

"Aptly put. Now get off of the fridge."

"No."

MK decided to go back to bed.

-

It was commonly known, within the household, that somehow, Tang and Wukong continuously managed to get out of doing their fair share of the chores. No one was quite sure how they did it, as the two of them kept coming up with new methods every day.

Today's method was..... interesting, to say the least.

Somehow, someway, they had managed to remove their names from the Chore Roulette Wheel, without leaving any trace that their names had ever even been there. Which was, in fact, rather impressive, considering that the roulette wheel was literally a giant wooden roulette wheel, built by Sandy, and there were no empty spaces were their names used to be, they were just. Gone.

To be honest, MK would've never noticed if Mei hadn't pointed it out.

Now, there was a house-wide search for the two chore-shirkers.

"Found 'em yet?" MK yelled down the stairs into the basement. A few seconds passed, then a unanimous call of "No!" came. MK sighed. If the Spider-gang couldn't find Tang and Wukong down there, then they probably weren't there. (.....Probably. Wukong did have a lot of tricks up his sleeves, and MK didn't put it pass his mentor to use them for something like this.)

That checked off the majority of the house.... which only left-

An enraged scream (courtesy of Mei) from upstairs confirmed what MK had concluded.

They were on the roof.

MK rushed to the stairs, running up them-

Only to pause as he heard a yelp, and a flash of gold fell past the window, followed by a loud thud. MK leaned on the windowsill to look outside, just in time to see Tang fall past it. Wukong, a few branches and grass in his fur from his rough landing, summoned his cloud to catch Tang, before zooming away.

As MK would later find out, in the haste to escape Mei's wrath, Tang had actually pushed Wukong off the roof. Wukong, in return, had unceremoniously dropped Tang on the ground the first chance he got.

Both of their names were back on the roulette wheel by the next morning.

....They still managed to get out of doing their chores though.

-

"Oh, hey Macaque." MK mumbled, tiredly rubbing his eyes, and Macaque, mid-way through stealing a snack out of the fridge, froze like a deer in the headlights.

"Uh.....hey, bud." He said, slowly closing the fridge door, glancing at MK, who was obviously very tired, then looking at the clock on the wall.

2:43 AM. Okay, he could work with this.

"What are you doing up so late?" Macaque asked, leaning casually against the fridge in an attempt to hide his nervousness. If MK had been more awake, he would've noticed and called him out on it, but as it was....

"Just woke up.... wanted to get a snack." MK said, and Macaque quickly opened a nearby cupboard.

"Here, have this." He said, putting a cookie in MK's hands, before grabbing him by the shoulders, turning him around, and gently shoving him back towards his room. "Now go back to bed."

"G'night, Macaque." MK said, nibbling on his cookie.

"Goodnight, MK." Macaque sighed, waiting until he heard MK's bedroom door click closed again before melting back into the shadows.

The next morning, MK thought he had dreamt the whole thing. After all, Macaque had vehemently denied the invitation to live in the house with everyone else, surely if he had changed his mind and started to live with them, someone would've noticed.

....Right?

-

"Monkey King?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you always sleep on the roof?" Red Son asked, "I mean, you do have a room after all, why don't you use it?"

"I just like watching the stars." Wukong said, reclining on his cloud. Suddenly, Mei and MK also appeared beside Red Son, with their arms crossed, looking unimpressed.

"You told me that beds were uncomfortable." Mei said.

"And you told me that you liked the breeze." MK added. Wukong's tail bristled a little, but he still didn't look over at them.

"Well, I mean, all of those are true." Wukong said, "Figured I would just... switch my answers up from time to time, keep things entertaining you know?"

"That doesn't explain why you slept out there in the pouring rain." Mei said, "In fact, the only time we've seen you sleep inside is when we have blanket fort night."

"...The rain was nice?" Wukong said, sounding uncertain. The trio narrowed their eyes.

"Is there something wrong with your room?" Red Son asked, and Wukong flinched.

"No." He said, finally sitting up and looking at them. "Really, my room's perfectly fine, I don't know where you're getting the idea that something's wrong-"

"You're doing that nervous smile again." MK said, and Wukong slammed a hand over his mouth in an attempt to hide what the trio had already seen.

There was a moment of silence, and in that moment, each member of the traffic light trio came to a shared conclusion.

No matter the cost, they would get into Wukong's room.

Almost as though they had actually planned it, the trio took off towards the staircase, ignoring Wukong's yells for them to stop. Hurriedly, Wukong summoned two clones, then rushed after the trio.

Red on got caught on the stairs, the clone grabbing hold of the edge of his coat and dragging him down. It wouldn't be able to hold him for long of course, his fire could quickly burn the clone away, but it would still manage to slow him down.

Mei was captured in the hallway, the clone pushing off the wall to tackle her, accidentally knocking her right into Yin and Jin's room, pining her to the ground as the twins yelped in shock.

...Which just left MK.

Having trained with the Monkey King, MK found himself easily dodging Wukong's attempts to catch him. Slightly out of breath, he skidded to a stop in front of Wukong's door, turned the knob, and opened it.

"I don't really see what the problem is, the room looks fine to me-" MK said, stepping into the room.

"Kid, wait-" Wukong started to say, but it was too late.

MK tripped, tumbling into the room, dispelling the illusion Wukong had carefully crafted and placed over it.

Wukong's room was a mess, to put things lightly. There was stuff everywhere- books, clothes, antiques, food, you named it, it was probably there. It was to the point where there was no place to sleep, the bed being covered in stuff. Which, well, that explained the whole 'sleeping on the roof' thing, but still.

Wukong nervously shifted from foot to foot in the doorway. Red Son and Mei, who had succeeded in freeing themselves, as well as Yin and Jin, who had gotten curious from all the commotion, stared over Wukong's shoulders, taking in the state of the room.

MK sat there for a moment, looking at the mess (and sure, MK's room was messy too, but this-), before slowly turning around to look at his mentor, a serious expression on his face.

"Wukong." MK said, and Wukong stiffened, his nervous smile growing wider at the sound of MK saying his name instead of his title.

"...Yeah?" Wukong said, chuckling nervously as MK's look darkened.

"...I'm getting Sandy."

"Wait, no no no-"

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up Wukong's room, sorting through the piles upon piles of stuff.

Wukong, in a bout of spite, still slept on the roof anyways.

-

Yin and Jin stared in shock at the scene in front of them.

Everyone in the house knew that Wukong and Tang adamantly avoided doing their share of the chores. (The roof-pushing incident was still fresh in everyone's minds, after all).

So that's why seeing Wukong doing the laundry was very out of place.

"...What are you two staring at?" Wukong asked, snapping the twins out of their shocked reverie.

"It's just....weird to see you doing the laundry, that's all." Yin said, and that-

Well, surprisingly enough, that made Wukong actually pause.

"It is?" He asked, slowly setting the laundry basket down on the ground, subtly nudging it under a nearby table so that it was now out of view.

"Well, I mean, with how you and Mr. Tang utilize every method possible to avoid doing the chores, we never thought we'd actually see you doing one." Jin said.

"...I see." Wukong said, quietly. "Well, in that case. You two saw nothing."

"Wha-"

Not giving them a chance to respond, Wukong flashed a peace sign, then vanished, leaving the twins to sputter in disbelief.

(Later, Macaque returned to the laundry room to pick up the clothes he'd left behind.)

-

Syntax paused as he stared at the sight before him.

"...What is this?" He ased, drawing the attention of the occupants in the living room.

"A braid train!" MK replied, and honestly, that's what it was. MK sat on the floor, braiding Bai He's hair, Bai He braiding Red Son's, who was braiding Mei's hair. Mei pulled one hand out of Spider Queen's hair to give Syntax a little wave before returning to braiding the queen's hair. Spider Queen gently weaved Huntsman's hair into a braid that looked above professional level. Huntsman was twisted at an odd angle in order to put some braids in Sandy's beard. And Sandy carefully created some tiny braids in Wukong's fur."

"I....see." Syntax said, holding up his phone and taking a quick picture before any of the braid train participants could notice.

"Do you wanna join?" MK asked, "You can either braid my hair or get yours braided by Monkey King. Your choice."

Syntax took a moment to think about it.

He ended up braiding MK's hair.

-

There was someone in the shower.

Now, usually, this wouldn't be such a mind-boggling thing, but-

All of the house's occupants stared at the bathroom door in trepidation.

"You sure Wukong didn't just accidentally leave the shower on again?" Princess Iron Fan asked, prompting some indignant sputtering from Wukong, who was sitting on Demon Bull King's shoulder. MK shook his head in the negative.

"No, I'm sure I heard someone moving in there." He said, crossing his arms.

"Why don't you or Monkey King just use your true sight and get this whole mystery over with?" Jin asked.

"Yeah, we've already been waiting for like, 20 minutes." Yin said.

"They're in the shower." MK said, "I'm not just gonna invade their privacy like that, regardless of who they are."

The shower turned off, and everyone turned to stare at the door again, in silence. There was some rustling around, and then the door opened.

Macaque. It was Macaque. Who, upon realizing that literally the entire household was standing in front of him, froze.

And then immediately tried to turn and run.

"Oh no you don't." Wukong said, jumping off of Demon Bull King's shoulder, and outright tackling the other monkey to the ground. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, I live here?" Macaque said, sitting up and shoving Wukong off of him.

"You turned down the invitation to come and live with us though...." Wukong said, slowly standing back up. ".....How long have you been here?"

"Two weeks."

"Two weeks?!" Everyone went into various states of shock.

"How could we not have noticed you?" MK asked.

"You- you did notice me though." Macaque said, "Like, we had a whole conversation in the kitchen at around 3 AM."

"You think I remember what happens at 3 am?!" MK said, holding his head in his hands, and Red Son comfortingly patted him on the back.

"What happens at 3 AM stays at 3 AM." Red Son said, sounding like he was saying some ancient wisdom despite the actual sentence being utter nonsense. Yin and Jin snapped their fingers as a look of realization appeared on their faces. 

"That's why we saw Wukong doing the laundry the other day." Yin said, "It was Macaque in disguise!"

"....Yeah, I figured you'd notice if I didn't do some chores, just to clean up after myself." Macaque sighed, and Pigsy turned to glare at Wukong and Tang.

"See? Even the ex-villain does more chores than you two." He said, and Wukong and Tang purposefully looked away, whistling innocently.

"Wait." Mei said, "If you've been here for two weeks, and we haven't seen you use any of the bedrooms... then where have you been sleeping?"

As it turned out, Macaque had been spending his nights in the storage closet, curled up in the darkest corner of the room with nothing other than a blanket and a small pillow. The others, of course, deemed this as unacceptable, and pretty much near shoved him into one of the leftover bed rooms.

...Which he didn't even end up using that night, as it ended up being a night where everyone ended up falling asleep in the living room, blankets and pillows strewn about everywhere.

The next morning, Macaque wasn't there when the others woke up, and there was a brief moment of panic over the monkey's whereabouts-

And then said monkey walked back into the room, using the shadows to help him carry some trays with breakfast on it.

He paused when he registered that everyone was staring at him.

"....What?" He asked, "I woke up first, that means I had breakfast duty, right?"

"I mean.....yeah." MK said, graciously accepting his plate of food. "But, to be honest. I kinda expected you to burn it like Monkey King did."

"Hey, I did that on purpose. For Red Son." Wukong said, "Cause, y'know. He likes charred food. Apparently."

"You did not do that on purpose and we all know it." Pigsy said, "You were just as unaware of Red Son's dietary habits as the rest of us."

"...I literally just woke up and I'm kinda feeling attacked." Red Son mumbled, sitting up. "Should I feel like I'm being attacked?"

"No, you're fine, we're just calling out Wukong again." Spider Queen whispered to him, and Red Son hummed before rolling back over, clearly intending on getting a few more minutes of rest despite the argument starting to occur in the room. Macaque, for his part, remained standing frozen, with MK standing beside him, nibbling at the food on his plate.

"....Should I be concerned about this?" Macaque asked, staring at the fight taking place. MK shrugged.

"Nah." He said, "This is just the same shit as always."

[levi-lover]

So can I pretty please get a thirsty thursday imagine or head cannon for Levi or Erwin with an SO, possibly younger (still of age obvi ) with a dom/sub kink or possibly a daddy kink?

LOL this is from tt from like TWO weeks ago!! y’all I love all of these ideas but i’m such a slow writer(i’m so sorry) anon, i hope you enjoy!! (and i know it’s not thursday but like what is time ??)

{unedited} TW: spanking, praise, daddy kink, dom/sub, 

Erwin aka Dom Daddy Erwin

Plz this man oozes dominance, the way he leads the scouts out to battle?? ASSERTIVE AND SEXY AF 

Canon or Modern AU, he’s the one calling the shots in the bedroom 

As for the age gap, he fucking loves it like he will tease you all the time but you’re his little baby lol

In a modern au, he loves buying you expensive lingerie, he’d make you wear it to special business events and would occasionally whisper something dirty in your ear and tease you over your pretty outfit. By the end of the night you’d be begging him to fuck you.

Okay picture this: 

The night had been long and tedious. You’d spent the night smiling at strangers and laughing at Erwin’s jokes at the correct time; doing your job as his pretty little eye candy. He kept his hand on your lower back, rubbing small circles. He would casually lean over you, the smell of his cologne enveloping you. His hot breath would whisper against your ear, “you’re being such a good girl for daddy.” 

You clenched your thighs, hoping to calm your arousal but watching him speak to another client nonchalantly while he knew he was driving you mad was too much. While Erwin was deep in conversation, your hand slowly reached down to his ass and you grabbed him. He jumped in surprise and tried to play it off, he gave you a side glare. You smiled innocently but you knew there was going to be a punishment tonight. 

When you were splayed on Erwin’s lap, blindfolded and tied up with intricated knots, you couldn’t complain. 

“You’re enjoying this huh,?” Erwin growled from the other, “you like making daddy look like a fool?” His large hand lands on your red ass in a hard slap.

You groan and grind your legs together, feeling your juices slip down your inner thigh. 

“Answer me, baby girl,” he said darkly.

Damn, he’s pissed, you thought. You breathlessly chucked, “daddy, I didn’t mean to.”

He slapped you again. This time he curled his hand around your ass and squeezed you. “Why don’t I believe you?” he questioned. 

You looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Daddy, I promise.” You begged.

“Suck my cock and then I’ll believe you.” he tossed you to the ground and unbuttoned his slacks, pull them off along with his boxers. Erwin sighed as his thick cock flew into the air. You slide your way in between his muscular thighs and looked at him, waiting for your next order. 

Erwin grabbed the nape of you hair and pulled you down on his cock. Your lips hovered over the tip, pearly droplets of precum formed at the opening. Erwin chuckled when he saw the hunger in your eyes. 

“Make me believe, baby girl,” he teased. 

“Yes, daddy,” you moaned and began lapping up his precum, desperate for his taste. Your lips wrapped around his length. The corners of your mouth felt strained but you didn’t want to stop, you wanted more. You closed your eyes and felt Erwin’s cock get wetter with your spit. He pushed your head further down until the tip of his cock was hitting the back of your throat. You groaned, the vibrations send chills up his spine.

“Good girl,” he panted. He brought a hand up to your face and brushed away a tear forming in the corner of your eye with his thumb.

You nodded slightly to signal you were ready for more. Erwin began thrusting forward into your mouth while he kept his hand on the nape of your head, making sure you didn’t move. You hollowed out your mouth to make room for each thrust. He continued to face fuck you mercilessly but you didn’t care, all that mattered was pleasing daddy. 

Erwin’s cock began to twitch uncontrollably as his breathing became uneven. You flattened your tongue to place more pressure on the vein running under his cock, knowing it drove him mad. 

“Fuck, baby girl,” he panted, “so fucking good”

He paused for a second before shoving himself into you one final time, he groaned loudly as his cum shot down your throat. You continued to suck him, loving the taste of him on your warm tongue. 

When Erwin was down, he raised your head, a trail of spit hung in between your lips and his cock. He lifted you until you were sitting on his lap. He kissed your harshly tasting himself on you. His tongue traced your bottom lip and he whispered, “Daddy’s not done with you yet baby girl.” 

Levi Ackerman aka Mr. Sexyman

Okay Levi is not like Dom Daddy Erwin and I know it’s canon that he’s a sub but I feel like he’s a hardcore switch or like a bratty bottom. 

Levi is a giver and would do anything to make sure his partner gets off bc that gets HIM off, watching the way your back arches and your mouth twists into a perfect o, the way you pant out his name is actual heaven 

And yes, guaranteed orgasm every time y’all fuck like plz even just looking at him is a turn on and his tongue and fingers are actual MAGIC

This man is super observant and would immediately pick up what you like and tease you to the max

As the relationship progresses, Levi would be down to explore more dom/sub sex where you, my friend, are the dom and this is a big deal like you’ve earned Levi’s trust during such an intimate moment.

But Levi is a simple guy, no ropes or anything too rough like choking, degradation, etc but so much praise damn from both sides, tell him he’s a good boy and the blood would rush straight to his dick

Overall, sex with Levi is on another level!!

Also, he wouldn’t mind the age gap he wouldn't comment on it until you start calling him names like grandpa grumps or something and THEN he’ll ease tf out of you

Imagine: 

Levi kissed your neck tenderly, his hand lazily ran over soaked underwear. Your hand gently scratched as his undercut. The bundle in your core began to tighten which each circle Levi drew over your clothed clit. 

“Tsk, you’re so wet,” he mumbled against your skin, “I fucking love it.”

His breath made you shudder. You lowered your hands so they were wrapped around his toned biceps. Levi’s slender fingers pushed the fabric away from your soaking cunt. He ran his fingers along your slits, covering himself with your juices. 

He raised his fingers to your lips, beckoning them to open. “Lick,” he ordered. 

You opened your mouth and sucked on his fingers, running your tongue along his skin. Levi stared at you completely in awe. 

He removed his hands and brought them down to your cunt with his middle finger he teased your entrance, slowly slipping in and out. His thumb was delicately rubbing circles around your clit. Your fingernails dug into his arm. Sweat pooled in the back of your knees as Levi brought you closer and closer to your release. You called out his name. 

“You like that,” he askes as he pressed down completely on your clit. You arched your back, pressing yourself closer to him, and started grinding your hips into his hand. He inserted another finger and curled them, hitting the soft spot that drove you crazy. You clenched your jaw.

Levi began to plant small kisses on your jawline until your mouth opened and your moans spilled into the dark room. Beautiful, he thought. 

His thumb continued to stroke circles around your throbbing clit, you were so close. Your thighs began to tremble and your thoughts were incoherent. Levi nibbled on your earlobe, his hot breath fanning across your sensitive skin. It was too much but what drove you to the edge was Levi whispering, “come.”

With that you completely lost it, the tension dissipated into pleasure and you saw stars bloom in your vision. Levi kept his thumb on your clit, riding out your high while whispering, “good girl.” 

Once your breathing regained a sense of normalcy, he removed his hands from your underwear and began to draw small circles on your stomach. 

“So,” he said smugly, “how’d I do?” 

You rolled your eyes and lightly punched his shoulder. He chuckled and snuggled into the crook of your neck. From the contentment in your face, he could tell he did a good job.

[luci-on-the-moon]

ok, i dont know many other artists on this website and i've got a problem idk how to deal with. if you have time i was wondering if you could give your two cents on the issue??

basically someone asked for some art from me, and i said sure bc the request was very simple (canon characters in casual clothes) but then i made the mistake of asking if they had poses/outfits in mind and turns out they were waiting for me to ask bc they immediately told me they actually wanted them to look like knockoff n.w.a. and got very specific with clothing and poses and like... i was expecting to draw the characters in hoodies??? i dont want to draw this anymore?

to make matters worse they had already requested a drawing from me before and i had negotiated it into something i was comfortable with but this time they gave the details later and it really feels like they were baiting me into accepting bc i asked them about posing and they were like "idk you choose" and so i gave them a plan for my drawing and they said "nah, that doesnt make sense, the way i thought you'd do it makes more sense" like bro??? just tell me upfront??

idk... its one thing to look at a drawing and appreciate the work and another thing to actually draw it yourself...

theyre very rude also. they just assumed i would draw whatever they want. their request is very tame movie-rating wise but it feels very off-brand and not anything i would ever draw myself? i do AU character designs mostly, and mostly feminine stuff. i recently drew one the characters they asked for in a skirt and nail polish so very much not what theyre looking for? i tend to tone down the masculinity in characters i like so them asking me to draw characters in baggy pants and gold chains with their arms crossed? idk..

i feel bad saying no after agreeing to the earlier pitch and encouraging them to teel me what their idea was but also this feels very planned on their part so

idk? i hope this isnt too awkward of an ask but i know you do commissions and was hoping you might have some advice? dont worry if you dont want to tho! <3

Well hello there 👋 honestly this scenario happens a lot with artists, it's happened to me years ago: a person guilt-trips you into drawing for them, disguising it as a 'request' but then being overly specific with it.

It happens. Lots of people will see your talent and want drawings for themselves, but they won't pay for art BC they don't understand that art is a skill that needs years to perfect and grow, and that skill should be honoured and paid for accordingly.

Even if you were accepting requests, you have the right to turn down a request you don't want to draw.

Even you opened paid commissions, you have the right to turn down a commission you don't want to draw.

And that 'someone' that's asking free art from you all the time.... Idk man seems sus. I would cut them off.

[scatterpatter]

So guess who stayed up to finish these and didnt have the patience to wait until tomorrow to post!!!

Some designs for the Smithy Gang for Weapon Fam AU: An smrpg au where Geno is Smithy’s son, leaving him a strange half-Weapon half-Star hybrid... and also leaves him as half-siblings with the entire Smithy Gang because Yes Smithy Adopted Them All, Fight Me

I infodump about their designs versus canon under the cut because they were really fun!!!

Yaridovich!

Yari is the oldest of the siblings, and I really wanted to convey “strict older bro” vibes. In canon Yari’s probably the one who intimidated me the most, while most of the other Smithy Gang were Goofballs(which is not a bad thing! It IS a Mario game XD) 

When designing him, my biggest complaint was that it looks like he’s wearing a goddamn diaper, so Stella suggested giving him a kilt instead... AND IT WAS SO GALAXY-BRAINED HOW COULD I SAY NO! I took the kilt look a step further and even added a fly plaid over his shoulder! Straightened the posture, darkened some colors for a more intimidating/sinister look, and tattered up the cape for Drama~ Honestly this one’s my favorite design

Geno!

IM SORRY FANDOM, I JUST- I KNOW ITS A JOKE THAT HE DOESNT WEAR CLOTHES BUT I JUST- I JUST WANTED TO GIVE HIM AN OUTFIT ;_; I really wanted to give him something casual but practical: you know something to go adventuring in. You’ll tear space-cape from my cold dead hands. Also some extra curls sticking out because why not! 

Growing up with the Smithy Gang, Geno would obvi have a different palette of clothing to more match them, but when turning “traitor” to help save Star Road, he’d don a more star-like look to get everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom to trust him more

Bowyer!

OUGH. This one gave me the most hell- WHAT IS THAT CANON DESIGN???? The biggest things I kept in mind while coloring was: 1- I wanted more metallic pieces so that he fit the look of the Weapons more and didn’t stick out as much, and 2- wanted to give him more of an archer look- hence the quiver and bracers!

Made his tail more tail-like, de-saturated the colors to something a little more forest-fitting and les eye-straining, smoothed out a lot of the... whatever bumpiness is going on in the original design... went with more a Sonic look for his mouth/cheeks/whatever that hell is supposed to be. Oh! Nearly forgot! Pulled the classic “their eyes are one color in the art, and another color in the game, so I guess they’re heterochromatic now”

This one’s still up to change, I’m not as happy with this as I am with, say, Yari, but I still like what I came up with so far!

The Axems!

I only drew Red cuz I’m lazy- the rest look about the same, just with slightly different body types like in canon and their respective colors. My biggest beef with the Axems was that they’re clearly supposed to be teenagers(like cuz of the Power Rangers ripoff), but in the game they look like toddlers and... honestly it’s hard to take them seriously XD

So one day when thinking of designs, I thought to a character in FNaF called Lolzhax, who looks roughly like this. I thought to myself “Hey, what if the Axems had a Lolzhax-type of body type?” And I doodled it and... Lo and behind, I think it really works! Also slightly inspired by Axem Rangers X from SMBZ, of course. I wanted them to have that ARX look while still looking something relatively close to canon XD

Green comes to nearly Bowyer’s height, Pink is a little taller than Red, Black is about Geno’s height, and Yellow’s somewhere between Geno and Mack, def closer to Geno in height tho

Mack!

The baby of the sibs! This one I admittedly deviated the most from canon design with, but... I like this design, sue me! I wanted something less “a devil in a red bodysuit and green shoes” and more “a rogue machine who actually looks like he’d use knives”. Darkened the palette to reflect the “rogue” goals, and like Bowyer, added a few more mech-ish points to fit the overall group look of “yes we’re weapons not organics”

... I really hope you guys like them, I just really like this au a lot and could make a whole powerpoint on the story potentials itd open up and- >~<

[edenfalling]

[Fic] “Between the Saltwater and the Sea-Strand” - Naruto

Summary: Yukiko and Kakashi run an undercover mission in the coastal port of Asase during monsoon season. Rain can make anyone philosophical. Part of the Apartment Manager AU, set after The Guardian in Spite of Herself and before An Unorthodox Pedagogical Approach. (3,515 words) Note: Written for warriordrgnmage, in response to the prompt: Naruto: Hatake Kakashi/Ayakawa Yukiko set in the Way of the Apartment Manager Series Timeline. For the Bingo card: Monsoon. It is also a fill for the genprompt_bingo square monsoon. For obvious reasons, Yukiko and Kakashi are using fake names while undercover. Yukiko is Aoi, and Kakashi is Hyoujin. Also, you may notice that this is gen! See, while I am perfectly cool with people shipping Yukiko with Kakashi, that is 100% never going to become Apartment Manager canon, for many, many reasons. If anyone wants a shippy AU, you are welcome to write it yourself, because I flat-out CANNOT. Seriously, even if I tried, you wouldn't want the results. They would be awful. Trust me on that. --------------------------------------------- Between the Saltwater and the Sea-Strand --------------------------------------------- Kuwa Natsume looked up as Yukiko slung herself in through the office window in a spray of rain, raised one eyebrow, and then looked back down to her account books. "Misplaced your shadow?" "Does anyone have a shadow in this weather?" Yukiko said wryly as she shut the window, reducing the sound of rain from deafening to merely incessant and inescapable. "I thought I was used to rain, but coastal monsoons are something new, yeah?" "We get that a lot from inlanders," Kuwa-san said as she drew a sharp line under a column of numbers and wrote a sum. "You get used to it, and it's easier for shinobi -- you have all that fancy ninpou and whatnot. But in all honesty, Aoi-san, where is your partner? I can't finalize your supply contract without both of your signatures." Yukiko made a face as she combed water out of her black-dyed hair. "Is it that important to be fussy when this is all ninety percent illegal anyway?"

"The more illegal, the more important to nail down all the details," Kuwa-san said. "What court would adjudicate the case if you sign alone and Hyoujin-san decides next week that he won't pay for his share?" Yukiko personally agreed with Kuwa-san's caution, but her cover persona would probably make one further push. So, "Oh, don't worry about him. Hyoujin trusts me completely--" Kuwa-san raised her eyebrow again. "--nearly completely when it comes to contracts. What's the point of having a partner if you can't split your responsibilities?" "I would say partners split focus, not responsibility. If you don't maintain some degree of joint liability, what's to stop one of you from turning on the other?" "Ethics?" Yukiko said with a winning smile, and allowed herself to laugh at Kuwa-san's carefully calculated answering smirk. "Fair enough. Let me look over the terms and I'll drag him over here to pretend he knows how to use a brush sometime before-- when do you close today?" "Six." "Before six. Actually, let's say before five, yeah? He's not that hard to track or sweet-talk if you know what you're doing." Yukiko held out her now-dry hand for the supply contract and wiggled her fingers until Kuwa-san passed it across her desk. She retreated to the broad windowsill and began flicking through the pages. It wasn't complicated, just a dead drop of miscellaneous dry goods in neutral territory that would hopefully establish her and Kakashi as reliable clients and Kuwa-san as a reliable supplier -- a standard way for missing-nin and gray market merchants to feel each other out. If the goods wound up as a cache for a long-term Leaf-nin mission, well, nothing in the contract specified that Yukiko and Kakashi had to be the ones to make the pickup. And their cash was perfectly legitimate Fire Country tender, so as far as Kuwa-san was concerned, there was nothing to worry about. (Yukiko was fairly certain there was nothing to worry about on Konoha's end of the bargain either. Kuwa-san had a rock-solid reputation for following through on her contracts. Nobody survived twenty years in the gray market without either keeping their word almost religiously or spending a fortune on bodyguards, and Kuwa-san barely bothered to pay for warehouse security.) "Where do you source kunai?" she asked as the rain's intensity kicked up a notch, beating against the windowpane in a nearly solid sheet of water. "Wind Country," Kuwa-san said without looking up from her accounts. "Earth Country's metallurgy is better, but the border tariffs aren't usually worth the slight increase in quality. I could change that if you're willing to pay the difference." Yukiko feigned consideration. "I don't care, but Hyoujin can get picky about steel composition. What would the increase be for this number of kunai and senbon?" Kuwa-san named a figure. Yukiko made an exaggerated expression of disgust. "No thanks! He can whine and make do. I'm not paying that much more for what, a half percent less chance of flaws? It's not like anyone expects kunai to last anyway. Use 'em and lose 'em and buy some more, that's what I say. Or steal whatever's left from your targets! That's economy, yeah?" "Officially, I can't encourage any behavior that would reduce my chance to sell you more equipment, Aoi-san. Unofficially? Yes, that's very economical. If only all my clients were equally practical." "Eh, there's all kinds of ways to be practical. What we're good at is mostly spying and killing -- it's more efficient to hire a ninja than do that stuff in-house, yeah? Just like you're good at moving stuff around to where we need it, so it's more efficient to hire you instead of us trying to figure all that stuff out from scratch. It's win-win, is how I see it." Yukiko tapped the papers to shuffle them into a neat pile, then handed them back to Kuwa-san. "That looks fine on my ends. Me and Hyoujin will be back sometime this afternoon to sign and pay the next installment." "It's a pleasure doing business with you, Aoi-san," Kuwa-san said. Yukiko grinned and dove backward out the window, into the pounding rain. --------------- Kakashi was lurking in one of Asase's numerous quayside bars, most of which were run out of the back doors of warehouses and also did a brisk side business in assorted seafood dishes. Rain pelted down on the roof tiles in a clattering racket that Yukiko found personally soothing but professionally irritating -- it was a lot harder to eavesdrop through the constant noise, not to mention the complications it added to genjutsu. She and Kakashi had spent their first night in Asase mutually grousing about the unpredictability of electric ninjutsu in waterlogged conditions and the difficulty of filtering ambient sounds out of illusions. Today Kakashi was sipping a bowl of lobster broth through a long, curved straw that vanished into the deep blue folds of the scarf he'd used to shroud his face. To the casual eye he was staring out an open window toward the rainswept harbor, his oversized gray hood restricting his range of sight and hearing, but Yukiko followed the combined angle of his feet and chopsticks to their targets: a trio of young missing-nin drinking in the far corner, defaced forehead protectors proclaiming their renunciation of Kiri. They were small-time, only a few months out on their own each with barely a name and one line of description in the latest bingo book editions, but anyone willing to go against the Bloody Mist was worth a second look. Whether this particular investigation would conclude in a job offer or an assassination was still up in the air. "Heya, Hyoujin. Thinking of roping in some new blood for larger contracts?" Yukiko asked as she dropped into a seat across from him (back to their targets) and set her ramen down on the unsanded wood of the table. Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Three's better than two for flexibility, but more than four on a mission gets awkward without ranks and a chain of command. Nobody who leaves a village wants to go back to those kind of restrictions." Yukiko tilted her hand. "Eh, there's assholes on power trips and there's division of labor -- not necessarily the same thing. I let you take the lead in a fight and you let me take the lead on retrievals. That's just practical, yeah? But we wouldn't throw each other away. Shinobi are tools, sure, but if you don't look out for your teammates, how can you trust they'll look out for you?" Kakashi shrugged again and continued sipping his broth. Targets hear? Yukiko signed under the guise of snapping apart her chopsticks. Yes, Kakashi signed back as he lifted his bowl and drank the last of his broth under the shadow of his hood and scarf. No bite. Yukiko slurped a mouthful of noodles and nicely salted broth. "Grouch. Well, whatever we do for future contracts, today we have to sign off on the supply contract with Kuwa-san. We'll need the goods for that thing in Tea Country and she wants both of our names in writing." "Sign for me," Kakashi said "Tried that. She won't bite." "So fake it. Illusions are your thing, Aoi; pretend I'm there and forge my seal." Yukiko slurped another mouthful of noodles in her best imitation of Naruto's sloppy manners. "Oh, sure. Lying is the best way to establish trust for future contracts, yeah?" "She's a civilian, how would she know?" "Not the point. C'mon, Hyoujin. You won't melt in the rain. Let's go make nice with Kuwa-san and I'll make it real worth your while." She ran the edge of her sandal up the side of Kakashi's shin and gave him her best imitation of her cousin Yura's flirtatious smile. Kakashi twitched. Yukiko slapped the table and let her smile shade into a more genuine grin. "Ha, I win." "Fine. Finish your soup and let's go drown ourselves. Again." "Eh, getting soaked's not that bad. Especially when you've got a partner around to help you peel out of all your soggy clothes and warm up when you get home, yeah?" Kakashi twitched again, then rallied and let a tiny arc of electricity jump between two raised fingers. "And then get wet again?" Yukiko held onto her cover persona by the skin of her teeth. "Now you're talking my language. All right, I'm done. Let's go give a little now so we get more back later." --------------- Signing the contract with Kuwa-san took all of twenty minutes -- half of which was entirely for show, as Kakashi lived up to his cover persona and whined about the kunai quality until Yukiko overruled him -- after which they had the afternoon and evening entirely to themselves and a conveniently established reason to retreat to their rented room and lock themselves inside Yukiko's best privacy genjutsu. "We can't stay longer than another day now that the contract's signed," Kakashi said as he flashed his hands through the seals for a quick and subtle bit of ninjutsu that left their clothes and skin completely dry without spilling any excess heat. "Do you think the targets will be receptive if we approach them openly?" Yukiko shook her head, grimaced at the awkward motion of her still-tangled hair, and began working the tie out of her ponytail. "No chance. I don't know if they'd even be open to a joint mission with Aoi and Hyoujin at this point. Sumire wants security and Kenichi likes profit, but they're still raw enough to see tigers in every other shadow, and Eriko's almost too paranoid to make deals with someone as solid and non-threatening as Kuwa-san. On the bright side, they're wildly unlikely to join up with anyone else." Kakashi slumped back onto the futon with an annoyed set to his eyebrow. "And since they haven't moved against Fire Country assets, there's nothing to justify an assassination without a contract. I hate leaving loose ends." Yukiko dropped down to sit cross-legged beside him, fingers slowly working through her tangles. "Think of it as a guaranteed vacation in a few months. Our agents will send word the next time our trio pass through Asase, Aoi and Hyoujin turn up to sign a new contract with Kuwa-san, and we sound them out for a joint mission. They ought to be the right balance of calmer and hungrier by then, and we'll get a better reading after a week or so of close contact." "Ugh." "Yeah, yeah, talking to people is terrible and scary." Kakashi rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in his arms, the soft, voluminous fabric of his hood blocking all apparent lines of sight. "Only the living." Yukiko froze, then sighed and flopped onto her back with her arms above her head. "Yeah. The dead talk back just as much, but it's still so much easier." "Sometimes I wonder how many people in Konoha would qualify for a 'Lone Survivor of My Genin Team, Including My Teacher' club," Kakashi said into the futon. "Then I stop wondering because the math is too depressing. But we could start a private chapter just for us." "Sometimes I hate that you trust me enough to say things like that," Yukiko said to the ceiling. "Then I tell myself not to be an idiot, because it means I get to say equally horrible things to you. Like that I'm pretty sure if we recruit our targets, at least one of them will be dead within two years, and I'm not sure that balances the odds that all three of them will die within one year if they keep working as missing-nin. After all, there's always a chance they might retire and start a farm." "Says the woman who got so bored with civilian life she jumped into a chuunin exam the minute Sandaime offered her a chance." "Says the Anbu assassin." Kakashi snorted. "We're all so fucked up." "Yeah." "Might as well be fucked up with other people who understand." "Yeah." They lay in silence for some time, listening to the steady thrum of rain on the roof tiles above. The air was warm and sticky, and the breeze eeling through the open window smelled faintly green beneath the ever-present fish-salt-rot odor of the sea. "Let's accidentally-on-purpose bump into the targets tomorrow morning, buy them breakfast, and float the idea of a joint mission later in the year," Yukiko said eventually. "Might as well plant seeds when the ground is soft." "You pay." "It's all mission funds in the end." "To clarify: you handle all the human interactions. I'll stand behind you and look vaguely menacing so they'll think at least one of us is competent." "To clarify: you'll look vaguely constipated, while I impress them with my social competency. Networking is an important skill for missing-nin." "I object to that assessment." "Which one of us has experience making business deals directly with civilians instead of through the mission office?" Kakashi flicked a gust of wind at her, re-tangling her hair. Yukiko pulled out Aoi's grin as she kicked Kakashi gently in the ankle. "Ninjutsu isn't a valid argument, which means I win. Your forfeit is fixing my hair." "Having teammates and friends is a terrible choice and I should never have made it a second time," Kakashi grumbled, but he sat up and tapped Yukiko's shoulder. "Turn around and hand me your comb." --------------- They hadn't been able to slap any chakra tags on the targets -- Eriko's paranoia was too thorough for even the subtlest of genjutsu threads to make it past her guard longer than a couple hours -- but Yukiko had gotten a decent sense of their chakra signatures over a series of not-quite-encounters during the past week. It helped to have rooms in the same lodging house, of course. Kakashi took first watch, leaving Yukiko to spend the back half of the night with a manual on steam heating systems and the interminable patter of rain. Eventually the sky began to lighten from matte black to flat gray and her spider-light sweep across the building and surrounding streets caught movement from their targets. "Time to go," she said as she stood. Kakashi remained unmoving until she nudged him with her foot, secure that he was actually awake and wouldn't strike her in reflexive defense. "I remember pretending to be a morning person when I was too young to know better," Kakashi grumbled into the futon. "It was a terrible idea then and it's a terrible idea now. Nobody should be awake before the sun is halfway up the sky." "Unfortunately the targets set the schedule," Yukiko said as she tucked her book away into a holding scroll. "Come on, put on your face and let's get to work." Kakashi flicked a minor wind jutsu in her direction as he rolled to his feet, but Yukiko had braided her hair so this time it stayed secure and untangled. "I wonder if I should switch to bulky scarves as an off-duty option. It's easier to eat and drink through the gaps between layers than to yank a mask up and down very fast or while people are looking away, and people have been much less interested in Hyoujin's face than they tend to be in mine." "That's because Hyoujin doesn't have a reputation. There's no glory in pulling down some random missing-nin's scarf." Yukiko grinned at Kakashi's affronted eyebrow and slipped out the window ahead of another wind jutsu. It wasn't hard to find their targets today: apparently Sumire's morning grumpiness had won over Eriko's paranoia and the trio of former Mist-nin were huddled near a breakfast yatai, half-sheltered from the incessant rain, and haggling over prices with the male half of the married couple behind the counter. Yukiko couldn't have asked for a better opening if she'd tried. She eeled her way up to the counter and grinned at the woman scraping down the stove from whatever she'd last been grilling. "Two miso and two fish on rice -- salmon for me, mackerel for my partner," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at Kakashi, who was standing, smugly dry, under a wind jutsu shaped into an invisible umbrella. "Oh, and how much extra for nori with the salmon?" The woman named a price. Yukiko rolled her eyes. "I hate bargaining on an empty stomach, so I'll just pay nine tenths of that and we'll all pretend you're not robbing me blind, yeah?" She glanced sideways to where the three young missing-nin were still arguing with the other cook. "I hate listening to arguments on an empty stomach, too, so how about I cover these loudmouths, too? Or at least the difference between what they're willing to pay and what you're asking." "Deal," the man said, interrupting the mockery of persuasion Kenichi was currently attempting. "Pay up and thank the nice lady for making sure I don't turn you away unfed." Eriko slapped her hand over Sumire's wallet. "No. It's poisoned." Yukiko rolled her eyes again. "There's a difference between reasonable caution and paranoia, yeah? I want a peaceful breakfast and our last mission went well, so I'm willing to pay a little extra to smooth things over. It's not like it's that much money. And hey, if it'll make you feel better, consider it a-- a-- Hyoujin, what's the word I want?" "Why would I know? You handle contracts," Kakashi said as he slipped a bite of mackerel through the folds of his scarf. "Ugh, why are we still partners?" "Because I'm very good with knives." "Point!" Yukiko slapped the yatai counter and turned back to the trio of missing-nin. "Anyway, breakfast. You're right that nothing comes free, so let's say that I'm paying for you to consider a joint mission sometime in the future, if me and Hyoujin have a line on a job that needs more than three people and we're kicking around the same market, yeah?" Sumire blinked. Kenichi looked like she'd slapped his face with a whole salmon. Eriko scowled and said, "That's not how contracts work." "Yes it is. It's called a-- a-- it's an option, that's the word! You can ask any of the suppliers in town, they'll tell you. I'm paying for the chance to run a job past you, because anyone who makes it out of Hidden Mist is worth a trial run, yeah? You don't have to accept. You just have to listen. And now I'm done with this conversation because I don't like having arguments on an empty stomach any more than I like listening to them. Don't die, and me and Hyoujin will see you around." She grabbed her rice bowl, her cup of miso, and her disposable bamboo chopsticks and kicked Kakashi's ankle to make him turn around and stop staring creepily at the trio of missing-nin through the folds of his scarf. Bite? she asked in handsign masked by a low-level illusion -- the chakra for which ought to be covered by Kakashi's own completely explicable umbrella jutsu. Maybe, Kakashi signed back, then added aloud, "What do you want to do for our next vacation, if this job goes as well as the last one?" Yukiko shrugged elaborately as she swallowed a mouthful of fish and rice. "Eh, there's worse places than the ocean. And by then, the rain should be over for the year. I like water a lot better when it stays flat on the ground than when it's trying to crawl up my nose and into my ears, yeah?" "That's because you have no imagination," Kakashi drawled. Yukiko considered countering with her own innuendo, but no; they were leaving Asase. They could leave Aoi and Hyoujin behind with the rain and introspection and return to more familiar ground. So she poked Kakashi with her chopsticks instead, and laughed when he neatly dodged the strike. As they walked past Kuwa-san's warehouse, bickering companionably, a watery ray of sun pierced briefly through the clouds over the storm-wracked sea and laid a path west to the green reaches of home. --------------------------------------------- End of Story --------------------------------------------- Well, that took significantly longer than it needed to, but I won in the end. \o/ Also, Kuwa Natsume (from Whose Allegiance Is Ruled by Expedience) is now officially part of Apartment Manager continuity. You're welcome. :D

[maximumsnow]

Chapters: 5/? Fandom: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, HLVRAI - Fandom Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Gordon Freeman, Tommy Coolatta, Dr. Coomer (Half-Life), Bubby (Half-Life), Benrey (Half-Life)

Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical swearing, Basically an au exploring what if HLVRAI followed Half Life a little more closely, Au where there isn't a betrayal in that one spot, Mainly was wondering what would happen to the others if they hadn't been in on it., Some things change some don't, Oh also this is sort of intended as a not a game au Summary:Anyone who knows original Half-Life knows that the ambush happens in that spot no matter what. What would have happened if the ambush was as rough for the others? Chapter Summary: We meet up with some friendly and some not so friendly faces.

The locker room’s other entrance opened up to a break area for the lab workers on this side of the complex. Immediately to their left, there were vending machines, but before Gordon could fully lift his crowbar to the soda one, Tommy shook his head vehemently. “We-we can do that later.”

“Yeah, when we’re not in danger,” Bubby added on curtly and tried to push Gordon’s shoulder so that he would move.

Utterly shocked that Tommy turned down the opportunity for free soda, Gordon was stunned in place. He had only started the action with the assumption that Tommy and probably Bubby would want to continue things as usual, but hearing them both shoot down the idea threw that out the window.

It made something in his chest twist in concern.

When he could get his feet to move, he could see more of the break area. There was a section with more comfortable chairs parked in front of a TV that now only showed multi-colored bars that usually preceded a service announcement. There was also a shelf with books, but the chairs by that weren’t nearly as comfortable looking.

… He could almost hear Coomer going on his chair spiel. A part of him hoped that he would be able to actually hear it again.

The eating area looked like a tornado had spawned long enough just enough to throw the tables and chairs around before disappearing again. What was more concerning was that there was a pool of something dark as ink in the middle of the room that then turned into a large, smeared trail on the floor leading down the hallway to the offices.

“Well, that’s not terrifying,” Gordon said when they stopped at it. “Hey didn’t you- WAIT, DON’T TOUCH IT!” Bubby had knelt down to poke at the strange substance, but Gordon was quick to yank him away from it by the back of his labcoat.

“What was that for?” Bubby was clearly unhappy at being manhandled and grabbed at Gordon’s hand to make him let go.

With him out of danger, Gordon released his hold on Bubby. “We don’t know what that is! For all we know, it could be poison or something that will make your finger fall off!”

“Hey guys, isn’t there- Didn’t you say that there’s a big monster in here? Killing the military? Maybe this is its blood?” Tommy managed to cut off any further sniping by directing them back to the present problem. “Also, why haven’t we seen any dead soldiers?”

“I didn’t see it killing them. I just assumed it since they never came back.” Bubby readjusted his glasses as he continued looking at the blood-like substance. “… Looks like they did a number on it here, though.”

“It’s not green like the other aliens’ blood we’ve seen...” Whatever the hell it was, it wasn’t something they had dealt with before. While Gordon didn’t care if the soldiers survived or not, he hoped that they had taken care of the creature. It had to have been massive to leave that much blood here, and he was unsure if Tommy was good enough to take out something that big in a few shots.

Any further musing was interrupted by something moving out the corner of his eye, and his head shot up along with the others. Tommy was already pointing his gun down the hallway where Gordon could see something moving. The flickering lights made it difficult to make out exactly what it was, but he could tell it was humanoid and dragging something behind it.

It raised its free arm and waved. “Hello! It’s me! Your friend, Dr. Coomer!” The voice immediately put Gordon and the others at ease. Bubby no longer looked like he was going to bolt, and Tommy pointed his gun down.

As Coomer got closer, he could see that he was dragging a sledgehammer-like contraption straight out of Fallout. After a minute, he shifted his grip and then balanced the unwieldy weapon across his shoulders.

He was also completely ignoring the blood trail and walking in it.

Gordon tried to wave him down before he took another step. “Hey- uh, Hey. Coomer? Hey Coomer? You probably don’t want to walk in that.”

“I’ll be fine! A little alien blood never hurt anyone.” Coomer continued his casual stroll towards them, but he did get out of the trail. Once he was close enough, Gordon couldn’t help but look him over.

Dr. Coomer appeared perfectly fine. There weren’t any notable injuries, and while his clothes looked dirty, that wasn’t exactly new. The only new addition to his ensemble was the souped up sledgehammer.

“God, I’m so glad you’re okay,” Gordon couldn’t help but say as he patted him on the shoulder. “Was getting worried about you.”

“I’m in tip-top shape! Handling a couple of boot boys was no trouble for me.” He also didn’t seem too perturbed by The Incident. Which was fine, Gordon guessed; he wouldn’t say no to a little normalcy. At least the Science Team was mostly back together now.

“Any idea what made this shithole a bigger mess than usual?” Bubby impatiently asked.

“Oh, probably the fight between that alien monster and a group of soldiers, Professor.”

“Doctor.” Predictably, Bubby corrected Coomer and Gordon contained his groan as he prepared to get the topic back on track of Alien Monster Fighting the Soldiers.

Until Coomer said, “My apologies, Doctor.” Bubby’s eyebrows drew together, and his eyes narrowed when their usual bit didn’t continue, but Gordon sighed in relief. “Anyway, there were a lot of them running through and throwing explosives, so I decided to hide.”

“What did the monster look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look since I had to hide. Though, I think I saw colors that didn’t exist! All I can tell you was that it was bigger than a human, had claws, and it went that way.” Coomer emphasized his point by pointing towards the exit. Where the trail clearly lead. “Which is also the only way to go if you want to find someone who can let us out of here.”

Gordon tangled a hand in his hair before smoothing it back. “Great, so we still don’t know what it is, and we have to go that way.”

“You got it!”

“… Thanks.” Gordon wasn’t frustrated with him, but it would have been nice to know what they might be walking into.

“Let’s get a move on, gentlemen.” Coomer wasted no time in leading them down the hallway; taking the lead from Tommy as if that was the most natural thing in the world. Gordon nearly called Coomer back to fix the marching order, but then he noticed that Tommy’s hold on his gun had loosened considerably.

Maybe giving Tommy a break would be a good thing.

The floor sloped upwards, and while the angle wasn’t steep, the inky fluid that had smeared itself everywhere made the trip more perilous than it should have been. Even if the possible alien blood was harmless, it still made the floor sticky, and Tommy had had to offer a steadying arm more than once to the two injured parties.

Coomer kept his lead and didn’t look back.

He did, however, stop when the hall took a sharp turn, and he held up a hand for them to stop once they finally caught up with him.

Bubby opened his mouth to snap a question when an unknown voice shouted, “What the actual fuck!?” The heavily filtered voice made everyone freeze in place with bated breath. “What did they find down here?”

A different voice answered, “Dunno and don’t care. Smith says he took care of it, but to keep an eye out while we pick up the goods.”

As the conversation continued, they noticed that the voices were getting closer. Coomer hefted the sledgehammer as he readied a swing, and Gordon began nudging Bubby backwards. Thankfully, the stubborn man took the hint and ducked behind the human with literal body armor.

The casual reference to “goods” probably meant Bubby and Coomer, since it appeared that Tommy’s earlier guess about the military wanting any Black Mesa experiments they could get their hands on was correct. It pissed him off. Bubby and Coomer were people, and he didn’t doubt that the military planned on treating them as far less than that.

Maybe it was dumb of Gordon to insist on staying in front of him, but even if Bubby was more durable than most humans, Gordon didn’t want him getting more hurt than he already was.

The pair of soldiers that rounded the corner never stood a chance. One precise shot from Tommy, and the one without a gas mask was down, and the other one’s head was caved in and flattened with one swing from Coomer’s weapon.

Ignoring the blood that had splattered onto him, Coomer quickly knelt down to grab at the assault rifle, but tumbled backwards when shouting echoed through the hallway. “There they are! Get them!” The sound of heavy boots running towards them was unmistakable.

As was the sight of a grenade landing right in front of them.

“SHIT, GOTTA MOVE!” Gordon had already started backing up before turning around and bolting down the hallway while pushing Bubby ahead of him. They made it back to the first turn when the explosion went off. Thankfully, they were far enough away to avoid the worst of it, but Gordon could still feel some shrapnel bouncing off the HEV suit even at that distance.

A quick head count told him that Bubby and Coomer had followed, and while Coomer’s presence was a little surprising, the immediate problem was that Tommy was nowhere to be seen.

“TOMMY!?” There wasn’t a white coat on the floor with the now decimated soldier corpses, but that didn’t mean he was safe. In fact, given the fact that Gordon could hear bullets being exchanged, it meant that Tommy was in even more danger. He wasted no time in trying to charge back up the hallway, even as his legs protested all the extra movement. “He must’ve gone ahead!”

Coomer was quick to outpace him even while carrying the sledgehammer. “HYAAH!” The shout was loud enough to make Gordon’s ears ache, and he couldn’t help but slow down as the stout scientist sprinted past.

Bubby wasn’t far behind, but he stopped to pick up the now ownerless assault rifle. The confident smirk was back on his face. “Let’s give them hell!” He shouted before hobbling up as quickly as he could.

Gordon kept up with Bubby and entered what he vaguely recognized as a lobby with skylights. He didn’t get much time to look at much else before a bullet ricocheted way too close to him. Bubby was already shooting back, and he could see Tommy ducked down behind a barrier reloading. Coomer’s zealous sprint had taken him to the far side of the lobby already, and given the blood splatter on the walls nearby and on Coomer himself, he had already taken someone out.

No one else saw the camouflaged figure stalking its way behind Tommy’s position.

Gordon charged towards him as he yelled, “Tommy, watch out!” He could see Tommy’s head jerk up and around, but the soldier had already leveled his shotgun to take a shot in point blank range.

Without much thought, Gordon did the only thing he knew he could do. His momentum carried him straight into Tommy, knocking them both over and onto the ground. He could feel the bullets whiz by overhead, and one pinged off the back of the HEV suit.

He heard the soldier suddenly start choking, and when he could make himself focus again, he could see that Tommy somehow managed to keep his grip on his gun and shot the soldier in the throat from his position on the floor.

The soldier collapsed in a miserable pile, leaving his shotgun up for grabs. Gordon scrambled off of Tommy to grab it before thinking to ask, “You okay? And uh, do you want this?”

Tommy’s breathing hadn’t slowed down yet, but he gave a shaky smile. “I’m f-fine. Thanks, Mr. Freeman. And uh, you should take that for now.” With that line, he stood back up and fired a round at the soldier that he had been playing sniper war with.

He just won, judging by the lack of a responding bullet.

Gordon checked the shotgun’s ammo as he kept an eye on the others, and once he was satisfied with it, he slowly got himself up. He knew his body was going to hate him in the morning, but he had to make sure they all got to see that morning.

Bubby had taken cover behind the reception desk while exchanging shots with a pair of soldiers hiding behind some metal crates, and after checking for danger, Gordon ran towards him with Tommy following.

With all three of them ducked behind the desk, Bubby snarled, “They keep hiding before I can blow their brains out!”

“Got any explosives? Maybe we can flush them out?” Gordon suggested as he tried to peek over the desk. A gunshot made him fall back down quickly while clenching the shotgun.

“I’ve- I’ve got a grenade.” Tommy offered before pulling out the referenced weapon.

Bubby reached over Gordon to snatch it out of Tommy’s hand. “Yes, that will work. But I need someone to distract them before I can throw it.”

Again, with barely a thought, Gordon acted on impulse and threw the shotgun he had just acquired into the middle of the room. The thunk and clatter of the tossed firearm drew the attention of the soldiers for just long enough for Bubby to stand up and toss the grenade right behind the boxes they had hidden behind.

The explosion was preceded by a couple of muffled swears, but once the dust settled, silence fell over the lobby. Behind the desk, the three Science Team members kept quiet as they all listened for the heavy footsteps that they had all come to associate with the US military.

After minute that felt like hours, Tommy slowly stood up and scanned the room. Once he deemed it safe, he gestured for the others to stand, and Gordon was able to finally get a good look at what remained of the lobby.

The room had been taken over as a military outpost, but this one was wrecked even more than usual after one of their fights. There were a lot more bodies that Gordon knew they had put there, and it looked like several of them were missing pieces. There was also the matter of the dark blood splattering random parts of the floor and walls from the creature getting shot and blown up.

What the fuck? How was it still moving? And how did that one guy ‘handle it???’ He could see that the trail lead down the open hallway, and he had to assume that it had chased its prey in that direction.

“Where’s Dr. Coomer?” Tommy’s question was a much more immediate concern, and Gordon quickly looked around as his heart rate picked back up.

“Last I saw, he took out someone by the exit over there,” He finally said. “Shit, did he go ahead?”

“Probably. Pretty sure I saw a soldier take off that way.” Bubby had made his way over to the shotgun that Gordon had carelessly thrown. “Since you tossed it at the first opportunity, I’m guessing you don’t want it.”

“I didn’t-” He caught himself and sighed. “You know what? Fine, you can have it.” Clearly his head was not on straight if his first instinct was to throw the gun and not the crowbar. Bubby seemed pleased to rebuild his arsenal, anyway, so Gordon let the matter go.

“How about I go get Coomer while you guys stock up?” He wasn’t too worried about Coomer, but he didn’t want the guy to get too far ahead. And since he didn’t doubt Coomer’s efficiency, it was very unlikely that there were any survivors.

He also didn’t want to waste the opportunity for them to restock their supplies, and between all the supply crates and dead soldiers, they could easily get back up to their pre-ambush levels.

Tommy’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Are you- Are you sure, Mr. Freeman?”

“Yeah, I should be fine. You and Bubby just pick everything clean, and we can distribute it once I get back.” The nonchalant wave he did was definitely forced, but they didn’t need to worry. “We heard them say that they ‘took care of the problem’, so whatever was making such a mess is gone, too.” With his crowbar in hand, he crossed the remainder of the lobby and entered the next hallway.

“Don’t stay gone too long!” Bubby’s shout followed him.

As he rounded the first corner, he was met with yet another dead soldier, and he elected to not inspect the blunt force damage too closely. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he could feel the aches in his muscles protesting again along with his head. No point in tempting fate and making himself sick in the process.

The path split, but since one direction was blocked off by automatic doors that were refusing to open, he was forced to follow the path the strange creature took. Or that’s what he would guess based on the continued splotches of blood that continued to pop up.

Even if the thing was dead, what was left behind sure made him feel like he was walking into a horror movie.

There were stairs going upwards in the side hallway, and soon he realized that he was standing on the balcony overseeing the lobby. Bubby and Tommy were currently dumping everything they found behind the desk, but didn’t seem to notice his presence above them. Just the sight of his friends helped ground him and quieted his anxieties that threatened to overtake him.

But he didn’t want to disturb them with his illogical worries right now, so he continued his trek.

The next hallway quickly rounded another corner and lead into another set of automatic doors. Through the window, he could see Coomer’s familiar head of white hair, and didn’t think twice about marching forward.

As the doors opened, Gordon raised a hand to wave and said, “Hey, Dr. Coomer-” He stopped as he took in the sight.

Coomer had his sledgehammer swung back like he was about to play a strength game at a carnival as he apparently aimed at something on the specimen table.

That something was the spitting image of Coomer with cloth tightly bound over his mouth, and he was lacking arms and legs.

[themandylion]

The Storybook Hour AU headcanons/things not addressed in the series (contains spoilers for Coming of Ages)! Sorry this got really long when I was typing it up on mobile and then I had to wait until I could get on the laptop and put in a cut because tumblr is stupid and I’m still mad about not being allowed sub-bullets. >:(

Gabe is the only active Silurian wizard because all the others are in stasis. He's sort of persona non grata with most Silurians because he hangs with humans, but he doesn't let it bother him.

Related: He's from a secretive South American colony/town where Silurians and humans have coexisted in relative harmony for decades if not centuries. Gabe's still considered a super-radical in his family.

Silurians are interesting creatures in DW canon because even in old!Who they had different varieties? Like, I guess the show creators tried to unify old!Who design with new!Who design by given new!Who Silurians masks that looked like the old face design when they first showed up? Gabe is basically a hybrid between old-and-new Silurians in that his face is more human-like but he still has the third eye (which is closer to where a human hairline would be and more eye-like).

Parthenogenesis among Gallifreyans results in offspring that is, at least in terms of physical features, identical to the parent. So, like. That'll lead to some interesting rumors regarding Shax's parentage when he gets older. (Either the Smiths will have to come clean or Ryan's going to get accused of knocking up his sister. :X )

Mikey and Gerard are totally-probably wizards of the Harry Potter variety. (This fact is no doubt directly related to why they didn't last very long during the Year That Never Was; they probably drew attention to themselves early on and the Toclafane took them out, alas.)

The hilarious thing is that while actual-vampires are in fact canon to the Doctor Who universe (though I think they might have left the main universe for an alternate one at some point in the past? Whatever, I looked into this years ago, my facts are rusty), Bob never does encounters them in the fic beyond his final scene? With the exception of Nadeen the Empacyte (who was created based on my vague recollections of Arcateenians when I had no internet), all other mentioned vampiric aliens are canon (or at least practically so in the case of the Gwanzulum near-alike, who's only a near-alike instead of a Gwanzulum because I wanted something slightly more humanoid for space issues).

Relevant because Bob and Frank are totally on the trail of an actual-fact vampire at the end of CoA and they'll probably run into Mikey and Gerard along the way, as That Is the Way of Things.

Ryan's bio parents never show up for him even after the Doctor brings Gallifrey out of limbo? Who knows why! Possibly because he is alien!Patrick's grandson? The things that don't make it into fics when I don't have betas to bounce ideas off of.

Val goes back in time and finds her mom right after human!Patrick dies. Alien!Patrick thinks Val is a regeneration-induced hallucination when Val removes her alien!Patrick's clothes and steals her wallet.

Val also steals the human identity her mom was using prior to unexpected regeneration (advantage of having the same face) and lives on Earth into the early '90s, keeping an eye on toddler!Patrick!mom and teaching little Earthling children about Cool Science. Yes, she is one of the stealth crossover cameos in the fic. Joe was one of her students, though he doesn't realize it until he sees her step into her bright yellow TARDIS and leave for the past.

Frank's dad was Turlough, in case I didn't make that clear enough.

Carmela and Frank meet at some point and totally hit it off, even though Frank's relationship with the Speech and his use of it is actually more in alignment with wizards than Carmela's status as a more casual speaker. (To make things even more interesting, it turns out that Helena is a fan of MCR and is not sure she can handle that her little brother's questionable dealings with "magic" have resulted in Frank occasionally showing up at the Rodriguez household.)

It's greatly implied but I don't think I ever explicitly stated why Andy was kicked off his planet? Basically, he kept drumming against local sound ordinances and it was attracting the attention of the carnivorous terrorbeasts native to his planet. He was never the political radical he likes to pretend he was. This eventually comes out when his distant cousin Liz shows up, which is, like, a hot second after the end of CoA.

Related: Liz is the Professor's traveling companion/girlfriend and was busy parking the Professor's TARDIS while the Professor took care of personal, mom-related matters. (You didn't think I made Andy a chameleon-like alien on a whim, did you? Because I totally did, he's basically Randall from Monsters, Inc., the entire MSB stealth-crossover was was added in the last six months, alien!Patrick was a man in the first scene up until last year.)

Emile did become a wizard (part of the reason why he and Joe were able to continue to keep in touch long after the Greens left Earth). Because of Time Shenanigans and the Professor, he and Benji end up sharing an ordeal, even though Benji doesn't have his ordeal until six months after the Greens returned to Malacassario.

Malmooths are a bit different in CoA than they are in the DW partly because they're living on Earth and using human social standards/practices to blend in (so they don't frame their sentences with their names) and because the end of the universe (and thus the DW episode Utopia) happens a loooong time after CoA and the Malmooth species changes a lot over the intervening millennia.

Pete eventually told his family about Andy (after Andy'd been secretly living with them for about five years) and he's made an honorary member of the family. Pete's parents never do find out Andy's spaceship is in their garden shed.

Georgie and Susie end up becoming Sky's legal guardians after Susie's cousin Sarah Jane dies so that Luke can continue with university. To make the change easier for Sky, Luke lets them stay in the house on Bannerman Road.

This also means the Bannerman Road gang basically end up adopting Susie and Georgie as their new adult-types for helping with alien-related shenanigans? Which as a result of Georgie's inclusion broaden to also occasionally include magic-related shenanigans?? Spencer is less than pleased about his baby sister's new hobby, but he is in no position to judge, what with how he's been doing the same thing for years.